Showing posts with label LTE. Show all posts
Showing posts with label LTE. Show all posts

Monday, October 20, 2014

Rural America: Welcome to Verizon LTE Broadband - $120/Mo for 5-12Mbps With 30GB Cap • Stop the Cap!

Rural America: Welcome to Verizon LTE Broadband - $120/Mo for 5-12Mbps With 30GB Cap • Stop the Cap!: “Definitely stay away [...] unless you like to see your data charges skyrocket (in my case more than doubling) when your use doesn’t,” reported Richard Thompson. “I’ve pulled the plug on it — literally.”
Time to dump the "bandwidth by the bucket" pricing model that bears no economic relationship to the marginal cost of providing it. It's a gouge, pure and simple, enabled by a natural monopoly market. Verizon has these consumers over a barrel in areas where its landline marketing partner, Comcast, doesn't offer service.

Saturday, September 20, 2014

LTE Reinvigorates the Broadband Wireless Access Marketplace, According to ABI Research - Yahoo Finance

LTE Reinvigorates the Broadband Wireless Access Marketplace, According to ABI Research - Yahoo Finance: LTE has turbocharged the mobile Internet experience for end-users, which has reflected in rapid adoption of LTE-capable smartphones along with other mobile devices, but it has also reinvigorated the broadband wireless marketplace. According to ABI Research, 1.26 billion households do not have DSL, cable, or fiber-optic broadband. Fixed and mobile telcos are looking to LTE to make the connection.
This is more an aspirational than realistic scenario. Radio spectrum lacks the bandwidth necessary to serve premise demand where there are typically multiple devices and heavy use of video streaming. In addition, the business and pricing models of the mobile space players like Verizon and AT&T are not designed to serve premises with "bandwidth by the bucket" pricing tiers and consumption caps.

Saturday, September 22, 2012

AT&T may invest in rural lines rather than divest, CEO says

AT&T may invest in rural lines rather than divest, CEO says: AT&T has said it would consider selling its rural access line unit, but Mr. Stephenson hinted earlier this year that such a sale could prove complex. The difficulty comes from the lines spanning multiple states and therefore needing several regulatory approvals that would likely take significant time.

On Wednesday, he said finding an internal solution for the business would avoid having to go through that process.
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There is also a simple business fact at play.  Who wants to buy obsolete copper cable plant?

He also noted that AT&T's wireless service could ultimately prove to be a solution for fixed-line broadband connections in less-dense markets as its next-generation LTE network rolls out.

"LTE can become a fixed-line replacement or even better than what you get from fixed line," he said.
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If Mr. Stephenson is talking about first generation ADSL, he would be right.  But wireless cannot equal or exceed wireline fiber to the premise.

Tuesday, March 06, 2012

Verizon's residential LTE "HomeFusion" likely to serve only fringes of small number of metro areas

Verizon's announcement today of its HomeFusion wireless residential Internet service offering based on its nascent 4G cellular LTE service appears aimed at picking up marginal residential market share in suburban and exurban fringes of U.S metro areas where wireline connectivity from incumbent telcos and cable providers is sketchy. These are also areas where Verizon might otherwise deploy its FiOS fiber to the premise residential wireline product but will not because the company has called a halt to further FiOS expansion.

It's not likely HomeFusion will be broadly deployed in predominantly rural and quasi-rural areas. Like Verizon's mobile wireless offerings, it's bandwidth metered and can't offer the ample headroom for bandwidth demand growth -- much of it driven by video -- that fiber does. In order to improve Internet deployment and access in these areas, these communities will have to build their own fiber to the premises networks constructed by local governments or telecom cooperatives.

AT&T has effectively thrown in the towel in serving these areas. HomeFusion represents Verizon's last ditch effort to pick up some limited revenues in these underserved markets.

Sunday, January 09, 2011

The Economist: Why LTE can't substitute for fiber

Some believe the Internet will become untethered over the last mile and point to cutting edge wireless transmission technology known as LTE or 4G. The two biggest telcos in the U.S., Verizon and AT&T, are rolling it out (or are about to in the case of AT&T.)

But it won't be able to replace the nation's aging copper cable infrastructure that has grown increasingly difficult and costly to operate reliably. Nor is it likely to provide sufficient capacity for future growth in bandwidth demand -- something that Verizon and AT&T are acutely aware having faced growth pains and capacity constraints with their current generation of 3G wireless.

The Economist explains why:

Already LTE has shown itself good for at least 5Mbps—impressive for a mobile technology still in its infancy (see “Generational change”, December 3rd, 2010). But with peak speeds of 1Gbps theoretically possible, LTE’s next iteration should make downloads of 100Mbps over the airwaves a matter of routine. Developments beyond that could lead to near-gigabit speeds.

Of the two, though, a fixed link like fibre remains the better bet. Sooner or later, even a 4G wireless protocol such as LTE or its country-cousin WiMAX will become overwhelmed by the exponential growth of mobile traffic. By contrast, an optical link to the home could use a multitude of different wavelengths to boost throughput almost indefinitely.

Network World also weighs in:

So the next question about wireless broadband as a substitute. Recall that according to the U.S. Government Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 1 in 4 homes has cut the legacy wireline phone cord in favor of wireless-only voice. Could we see wireless substitution rates that high for broadband access? We think not because radio spectrum is a limited resource, and unlike wireless voice networks that have plenty of spectrum to manage voice calls, if 25% of broadband users shifted from wireline access, the demand for wireless broadband would likely exceed available spectrum given today's technology.

Friday, April 02, 2010

The view from the UK: America's "lame" "costly" "third-world" telecom infrastructure

The Economist offers this critical perspective on America's "lame" "costly" "third-world" telecommunications infrastructure that combines the worst of all worlds with poor quality service at high cost compared to other advanced nations. But the dreary state of affairs isn't much better across the pond in the magazine's UK home base either. Just a few months ago, Prince Charles warned much of the British countryside is in danger of becoming a "broadband desert," hamstrung by an aging, latency copper wire infrastructure that can't deliver sufficient throughput to enough of the populace.

As Exhibit A of the U.S. broadband gap, the magazine pointed to the outpouring of supplications to Google urging the company to roll out its experimental 1 Gigabit fiber to the premises telecom infrastructure in their communities.

Much of the article goes on to repeat the same points made elsewhere about the flaws of the U.S. telecom paradigm and the sturm und drang industrialized nations are undergoing as they transition from legacy wireline single purpose systems designed to deliver voice and television signals to fiber optic infrastructures capable of providing multimedia and interactive applications using Internet protocol.

The article closes with a bit of wireless vaporware by suggesting Verizon is abandoning its FiOS fiber to the premises service in favor of Long Term Evolution (LTE) wireless service that could deliver 150Mbs. Perhaps over Starfleet Command's quantum sub-space channel. But not in today's world where people are literally jumping into freezing lakes in hopes of getting Google to deploy real state of the art fiber technology to their homes and businesses.

Monday, February 23, 2009

Telco plans LTE for fixed premises broadband

FierceBroadbandWireless reports CenturyTel CEO Glen Post told the publicly traded telcos's quarterly conference call that it will deploy Long Term Evolution (LTE) aka 4G cellular broadband in 2010 as a platform to serve fixed premises customers in rural areas. CenturyTel serves small and mid-sized markets in 25 states, according to its Web site.

If this really occurs and isn't yet another of the vaporware technology claims common in the wireless broadband world, it could provide a superior interim fixed premises broadband pipe in broadband black holes until these areas can be wired for fiber optic cable plant.

Currently 3G cellular broadband plays that role in some areas lacking wireline delivered broadband. But it's more appropriate for mobile broadband than for fixed premises users given the tradeoffs of relatively slow throughput speeds, high latency and low bandwidth caps. Locally owned and operated fixed terrestial Wireless Internet Service Providers (WISPs), which also presently play a major role in bridging the broadband gap created by the limited technological reach of DSL and the limited service area footprints of cable companies, aren't likely to be competitive with 4G where it's deployed.

If it can deliver with good latency numbers, LTE could also offer better coverage than 3G since it will utilize 700 MHz radio spectrum that was purchased by CenturyTel Broadband Wireless and other telcos such as AT&T and Verizon in federal auctions conducted last year. The spectrum was formerly used for television signals and is noted for its robust ability to carry through rolling terrian and trees and buildings.

LTE will also potentially offer far higher thoughput -- in the range of 10-15 Mbps, according to Sidecut Reports. That's at least five times faster than what's currently available from 3G and WISPs.