Showing posts with label Andrew Cohill. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Andrew Cohill. Show all posts

Sunday, March 29, 2015

Open access fiber networks offer way to boost access to Internet services

The United States suffers from costly and disparate Internet access due to a vertically integrated business model based on the old copper telephone network. Under that model, the network infrastructure and the telecommunications services sold over it are provided by a single company such as AT&T or Verizon. It’s the same model used by cable companies, where the network operators that bring the cable to customer premises “own” the customer and bill for separate or bundled services on a monthly subscription basis. Google Fiber also operates under this business model.

That business model is inherently limited because it can expand and upgrade service only to the extent new customers and revenues can be added quickly enough to generate a rapid return on the money invested to build out the infrastructure. That circumstance and the high cost of constructing telecommunications infrastructure naturally make telcos and cable companies very conservative when it comes to expanding their networks.

That risk aversion in turn has brought about widespread market failure. There are potential buyers clamoring for service but the telephone and cable companies decline to provide it. This is essentially where the U.S. has been stuck for the past decade, creating massive frustration for consumers and for state and local governments hoping to improve Internet telecommunications access that has grown increasingly vital for their communities and economies.

Fortunately, there is a way out of the mire with open access fiber networks as Andrew Cohill of Wide Open Networks explains in this article appearing in the March/April issue of Broadband Communities magazine. Highly recommended reading for government officials and consumers.

Monday, October 28, 2013

Who needs a Gig at home? Half of U.S. businesses | Technology Futures

Who needs a Gig at home? Half of U.S. businesses | Technology Futures

Andrew Cohill makes the excellent point that with the emergence of Fiber to the Home (FTTH) telecommunications infrastructure, the past focus on Internet throughput speeds that was relevant to legacy telephone and cable companies is becoming increasingly less so. Since incumbent telephone and cable companies have to compress data to transport it over metal wire cable plant not originally designed to carry Internet protocol-based signals, from their perspective bandwidth is a limited commodity. This also limits their ability to serve all premises in their service areas. Even more so in the case of mobile wireless technology which provides far less capacity and range. Hence, their business and pricing models treat bandwidth like a metered utility such as water or electricity.

With FTTH, that entire paradigm of bandwidth as a finite commodity goes out the window and with it the incumbents' outmoded business models. This also has implications for now outdated government subsidy programs based on rules written nearly a decade ago when DSL deployed by telephone companies was state of the art Internet technology. Those programs now need to be updated to scrap obsolete references to the speed of available Internet technology and treat any area lacking FTTH infrastructure as eligible for subsidies if incumbent or other providers aren't constructing it or opt not to.

Thursday, January 10, 2013

Internet co-creator says U.S. broadband competition has ‘evaporated’ - Yahoo! News

Internet co-creator says U.S. broadband competition has ‘evaporated’ - Yahoo! News: Cerf didn’t offer any concrete suggestions for ways to make the American broadband market more competitive, but generally dismissed the idea that deregulating broadband services would magically lead to more options and lower prices for consumers.

Mr. Cerf's dearth of suggestions to increase competition is because there are none as long as he's talking about investor-owned telecommunications infrastructure competition.  What's needed to end years of these continuing lamentations by Cerf and others is publicly- or consumer-owned open access fiber to the premise infrastructure where service providers pay for network access and compete for customers.  As Andrew Cohill aptly put it a few years ago, the current investor-owned model is broken because it's about as economically inefficient and nonsensical as having package delivery predicated on Federal Express or UPS to first have to invest in building private roads so their delivery trucks can reach customers.