Bob Walter, columnist for the El Dorado County section of the Sacramento Bee, reports in today's column his April 27 column on the AT&T "upgrade or divest" petition garnered strong reader interest, demonstrating that quality telecommunications services is an issue of concern to county residents.
This blog is also mentioned...Analysis & commentary on America's troubled transition from analog telephone service to digital advanced telecommunications and associated infrastructure deficits.
Sunday, April 30, 2006
Friday, April 28, 2006
Fiber is the future
Fiber-connected U.S. homes doubled since October
By Ed Gubbins
Apr 27, 2006 3:15 PM
The number of U.S. homes connected to fiber has doubled in the past six months, according to new data released today from Render Vanderslice and Associates.
Between Sept. 31, 2005, and March 31, 2006, nearly 350,000 U.S. homes were newly connected to fiber, bringing the country’s total to 671,000, a 107% increase.
Fiber is the future. It's time for El Dorado County to embrace it and abandon aging, antiquated copper cable.
An insane and highly ironic commute
If you're howling about paying a lot more to fill up these days, thank your lucky nozzle you're not David Givens.
Every weekday, Givens drives 372 miles commuting from Mariposa to his job at Cisco in San Jose.
On Thursday, as prices in California skyrocketed 3 cents more, to a record average of $3.18 a gallon and Exxon Mobil reported a historic first-quarter profit of $8.4 billion, Givens talked with resignation of doling out $40 a day, $200 a week, $800 a month in gas money.
For his daily round-trip journey, Givens won the ``America's Longest Commute'' contest conducted by Midas Muffler, which received nearly 3,000 entries from New York to the Golden State as part of a 50th anniversary celebration. Considering the average one-way commute nationally is 25.5 minutes, you can call Givens a runaway winner.
Story in San Jose Mercury News
Are we on the same planet here?
AT&T expands broadband service
Seeking to stay competitive in the hotly contested broadband market, AT&T said Wednesday it will offer a new tier of service with download speeds of up to 6 megabits per second and uploads of up to 768 kilobits per second for $27.99 a month.
Thursday, April 27, 2006
Sac Bee: Drive for faster online access boots up in El Dorado County
AT&T spokeswoman Vanessa Smith says the company is committed to expanding broadband offerings in the the county. Your blogger is quoted expressing a healthy degree of skepticism given years of promises and no action. I'm from Missouri on this issue. "Show me."
Wednesday, April 26, 2006
Telecommuting interest rises with fuel prices
See related story Fuel Prices have workers eyeing telecommuting
Monday, April 24, 2006
Florida town's problems with wireless Internet pose implications for topographically challenging deployments
Illinois municipality joins with AT&T to offer broadband
Starting next week, high-speed Internet connection will become a basic municipal service available to Bedford Park residents, much like garbage collection, police protection and library access.
The southwest suburban village has struck a deal with AT&T Inc. to deliver digital subscriber line connections to all residents who want it, paid for by the village.
Story in the Chicago Tribune.
Saturday, April 22, 2006
AB 2897: Millions being spent on regulatory battle instead of service improvements
Here’s an analysis of legislation, AB 2897, that would give the California Department of Corporations sole authority to grant cable and video franchises, preempting the existing authority of local governments to grant the franchises.
The bill’s proponents including AT&T and other telecom vendors want one stop shopping to obtain video franchises from the state rather than having to separately negotiate agreements with cities and counties.
There’s nothing in the analysis that suggests AB 2987 would do anything to expand broadband Internet access in El Dorado County despite the bill’s stated purpose to promote competition among providers. It’s unfortunate that these vendors are spending millions on regulatory food fights rather than investing those dollars in urgently needed improvements to upgrade and expand their services.
Thursday, April 20, 2006
Americans commuting farther, longer than ever
Presently, however, too many can't get on the information highway from home, trapped on the wrong side of the digital divide and relegated to sluggish and outdated dial up connections to the Internet.
Population shift to exurbs has major implications for telecoms
Northeasterners are moving South and West. West Coast residents are moving inland. Midwesterners are chasing better job markets. And just about everywhere, people are escaping to the outer suburbs, also known as exurbs.
This story has huge implications for telecommunications companies that serve outlying areas who should be putting in place updated networks now to serve the growing population.
Tuesday, April 18, 2006
Think tank: Rural U.S. faces potential loss of telecom infrastructure
“If changes are not made soon, then the universal service system as we have known it will suffer irreparable damage. Consumers in the most rural and high-cost areas of the nation will face the very real possibility of having no telecommunications carrier capable of connecting them to the telephone and information networks,” the firm concludes in “Universal Service: Rural Infrastructure at Risk, Release 2.0,” a white paper published earlier this month.
Article at NRTC Update
Friday, April 14, 2006
Broadband in Iceland, but not El Dorado County
U.S. government officials have noted that the low population density of the U.S. makes it difficult to deploy broadband over large areas of the country, but the advance of other low population density countries like Iceland, Norway, Finland, and Sweden seems to indicate that broadband can be deployed in rural and remote areas if there is a will.
Article in Internet News by TechWeb News
Sacramento Bee: Rain exposes problems with AT&T's aging infrastructure
By Clint Swett -- Bee Staff Writer
Published 2:15 am PDT Friday, April 14, 2006
Carl Wood, a former commissioner at the California Public Utilities Commission and now a labor union consultant in Southern California, said AT&T may be more vulnerable because it serves a large geographic area and much of its infrastructure is aging.
Tuesday, April 11, 2006
Senate hearing on wireless broadband set
SELECT COMMITTEE ON
E-COMMERCE, WIRELESS TECHNOLOGY AND
CONSUMER DRIVEN PROGRAMMING
FLOREZ, Chair
10 a.m. to 1 p.m. - Room 3191
SUBJECT: Wireless Communities:
Connecting Communities
Rural and Urban Broadband Possibilities
Wi-Fi vs. Wi-Max
Frustrated with long phone outages? Tell the Sacramento Bee
From the Sacramento Bee Business section:
Published 5:55 pm PDT Monday, April 10, 2006
Some Sacramento-area residents are complaining of lengthy outages and of waiting more than a week to get service restored to their landlines.If this has happened to you, Bee reporter Clint Swett would like to hear your story. E-mail him at cswett@sacbee.com with a daytime phone number.
Saturday, April 01, 2006
Pipes? What pipes?
AT&T CEO Ed Whitacre recently proclaimed that businesses like Google and others who reach their consumers over the Internet should pay for the right to use AT&T's system. "Why should they be allowed to use my pipes?" Whitacre told Business Week Online.
The inhabitants of El Dorado County must be collectively scratching their heads at Whitacre's remark. For most of them, their sluggish dial up Internet experience courtesy of AT&T is like sipping through a cocktail straw. Pipes? What pipes?