Microsoft dusts off TV white spaces wireless tech with "Rural Airband Initiative"

Microsoft proposing $10B program to bring broadband internet to rural America | The Seattle Times: Microsoft is set to propose a $10 billion program to bring broadband internet to the rural U.S., an economic-development program aimed at a core constituency of the Trump administration. The plan, which calls for corporate and government cash, relies on nascent television “white-space” technology, which sends internet data over unused broadcast frequencies set aside for television channels.In an event scheduled for Tuesday in Washington, D.C., Microsoft is to propose using the technology it helped develop as a cornerstone of an effort to connect the 23.4 million Americans in rural areas who lack high-speed internet access.

Ten years ago, Microsoft along with Dell, EarthLink, Google, HP, Intel, and Philips Electronics formed the White Spaces Coalition and submitted a prototype wireless Internet protocol-based telecom device to be tested by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission. The White Spaces Coalition hoped have the device approved for use when analog TV broadcasts ceased in February 2009 in favor of digital transmission, using unused portions of the television broadcast spectrum, 2MHz to 698MHz. The technology never came into widespread use in the decade that followed. According to this story in the Seattle Times, Microsoft’s Rural Airband Initiative seeks to deploy the technology with telecommunications industry partners in a dozen states by 2018.
 
TV white spaces technology isn't being held out as a panacea for the many neighborhoods redlined by incumbent landline telephone and cable companies that are found immediately adjacent to neighborhoods that are served by them. It's specifically targeted to areas with between two and 200 people per square mile, according to a Microsoft blog post. Fixed terrestrial wireless and "limited" fiber to the premise should be deployed in communities with a density greater than 200 people per square mile, according to the post, and satellite should be used to provide service in very sparsely populated areas with a population density of less than two people per square mile. Currently, however, satellite is found in much more populated areas that lack landline infrastructure and provides a far inferior level of service than can be provided by landline infrastructure.

Microsoft's TV white spaces plan faces a number of obstacles mentioned in this New York Times story. They include the high cost of the devices to deliver it, longstanding opposition from the TV broadcast industry concerned about possible interference and limited bandwidth inherent in any advanced telecom technology based on spectrum. There's a larger downside as well: looking to technologies that have limited and unproven track records for delivering advanced, Internet protocol-based telecommunications. It's happened before with Broadband Over Power Lines (BPL), which was first touted in the mid-2000s (around the same time as TV white spaces), G-Fast (souped up DSL) and more recently, AT&T's experimental AirGig technology. None have proven to be lower cost replacements offering the same bandwidth capacity and reliability that fiber to the premise (FTTP) technology provides.

Coming on the heels of a Deloitte white paper declaring building out fiber a U.S. national infrastructure imperative, Microsoft's proposal underscores the poor public policy and planning that brought the nation to where it is today with widespread telecommunications infrastructure deficiencies and disparities. TV white spaces might have made sense as a planned transitional technology on the road to universal FTTP. That it's being hauled back out 10 years after it debuted reflects a desperate, on the cheap strategy borne out of the landline infrastructure deficiencies and disparities rather than a transitional strategy.

Electric power transmission towers and poles provide existing fiber to the premise infrastructure

Nearly two decades ago, investor-owned electric power provider Pacific Gas and Electric Co. considered installing fiber optic telecommunications cable on its poles and towers and leasing it to cooperatives, telephone and Internet service providers. In 2006, PG&E was in discussions with a startup, Current Communications, hoping to roll out new technology to deliver Internet over electrical lines known as Broadband over Power Lines (BPL).

The talks shorted out over money and BPL ultimately proved technologically unfeasible. Interestingly, one of the investors in Current Communications along with General Electric and EarthLink was Google.

Nearly a decade later, Google is building its own fiber to the premise network in two metro areas of the United States and is considering several others although recently put its expansion plans on hold, most likely until the U.S. Federal Communications Commission decides this year whether to regulate Internet service as a common carrier telecommunications utility. Should the FCC do so under Title II of the Communications Act, Google in a December 30, 2014 letter urged the FCC to enforce compliance with Section 224 of the statute requiring utilities such as PG&E to provide access to its poles, conduits and rights of way on reasonable terms and conditions.

controls poles, ducts, conduits, or rights-of-way used, - See more at: http://codes.lp.findlaw.com/uscode/47/5/II/I/224#sthash.YCBB6J1R.dpuf

In the meantime, Google Fiber and PG&E might consider exploring a joint venture that would give Google access to PG&E’s transmission towers and poles that provide existing infrastructure serving millions of premises to speed the deployment of its fiber network. PG&E itself should look not only at Google Fiber but also consider forming a subsidiary that would build an open access wholesale fiber to the premise network. It could then lease access to Google Fiber and other ISPs. (I'll even host the discussions -- off the record, of course --- and some fine Cabernet at an undisclosed winery location if the companies are interested).

BPL an exercise in obsolescence

Broadband Over Power Lines (BPL) is a broadband last mile delivery technology that was declared all but dead in 2008. But BPL refuses to die despite a barely detectable pulse of just 256 Kbs at the low end and 1 Mbs when it's ticking along. Ten years ago that would have worked great for web browsing and email. But now it's a turkey that won't pack the bandwidth needed for fast growing applications like streaming video.

I.B.M announced in November it would pony up $9.6 million in a venture with a small company to deploy BPL via electric power cooperatives formed decades ago in areas of the U.S. skipped by private power companies.

Rather than engage in misguided and already outmoded technological ventures such as BPL, power companies and cooperatives should instead string fiber optic cable cable on their poles and towers and lease the fiber to coops, telcos and Internet Service Providers. Pacific Gas and Electric considered this idea more than a decade ago. It should dust it off and implement it and urge its industry peers to do likewise and avoid investing in BPL technology -- as PG&E wisely avoided -- that's already obsolete even before it's deployed.

BPL gets another lease on life

The obituary for Broadband Over Power Lines (BPL) had all but been written when IBM announced it would pony up $9.6 million in a venture with a small company to deploy BPL via electric power cooperatives formed decades ago in areas of the U.S. skipped by private power companies. Today, these same areas are being passed over by the private telco/cable duopoly and left without broadband Internet access.

According to Yahoo! Tech, the BPL rollout will take about two years and potentially serve 340,000 homes in Alabama, Indiana, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia, and Wisconsin where about 86 percent lack cable or DSL access. The project has received $70 million in low-interest loans from the Department of Agriculture.

Making this project work could prove challenging. BPL utilizes similar transmission technology as DSL that rapidly degrades over distance, requiring extensive and costly amplification to get the signal to homes over long distances.

In addition, by the time this BPL project comes on line, residents of these areas could have superior alternatives such as fixed terrestrial wireless broadband based on multiple current and emerging technologies such as WiMAX and white spaces broadband over unused television frequencies that was given the green light by the Federal Communications Commission last week. And given that these areas have a history of forming cooperatively owned utilities, they may similarly opt to form cooperatives to build fiber optic infrastructure to assure their telecommunications needs are met over the longer term.

DirecTV's "premiere" of BPL dies at the box office

Last August, DirecTV it announced the "premiere" of broadband over power line (BPL) service in the Dallas metro market in alliance with BPL player Current.

The Denton, Texas Record Chronicle reports today the deal is dead and Current has sold its infrastructure to a power company that will use it monitor meters, transformers and other devices on the grid.

Australians pull plug on BPL

Broadband Over Power Lines has short circuited in the land down under, ZDNet.com reports. The problem is the same that afflicts DSL only on a larger scale: rapid signal degradation over distance, necessitating signal boosters:

The case for BPL wasn't helped, either, by rollout costs that would have quickly spiralled due to the need for a repeater station to be installed every kilometre along Australia's tens of thousands of kilometres of transmission lines.

Throw in the need for utilities to manage the telecoms infrastructure and enlist a carrier partner -- one that would also want a cut of the pie -- and it's clear that BPL, despite its promise and technical feasibility, is no longer compelling enough to be attractive for Australian utilities.

DIRECTV partners with BPL player for Dallas "premiere"

DIRECTV announced a couple of months back that it was looking to partner with a broadband over power lines (BPL) provider in order to be able to offer broadband to its satellite TV subscribers.

Today, it announced the "premiere" of the service in the Dallas metro market in alliance with BPL player Current. The companies claim the BPL service, to be offered sometime later this year and early next, provides a faster symmetrical connection than cable but no specific throughput speeds are mentioned.

BPL is considered a dark horse among three possible "third pipe" alternatives to the cable/telco duopoly for providing broadband in unserved areas along with WiMAX-based fixed terrestrial wireless and a venture by a coalition of high tech companies including Microsoft and Intel to use portions of the TV broadcast spectrum to provide broadband over the air.