Showing posts with label Telecommunications Act of 1996. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Telecommunications Act of 1996. Show all posts

Friday, July 28, 2023

The origins of the FCC "speed trap" and U.S. digital exclusion, inequity

Longtime telecom industry observer and blogger Doug Dawson delves into the origins of the “speed trap” U.S. telecom policy has fallen into as it struggles to provide ubiquitous, affordable advanced telecommunications infrastructure. It begins with the definition of the colloquial term to describe advanced telecommunications: “broadband.”
This raises a question of the purpose of having a definition of broadband. That requirement comes from Section 706 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 that requires that the FCC make sure that broadband is deployed on a reasonable and timely basis to everybody in the country. The FCC interpreted that requirement to mean that it couldn’t measure broadband deployment unless it created a definition of broadband. The FCC uses its definition of broadband to count the number of homes that have or don’t have broadband.
https://potsandpansbyccg.com/2023/07/28/too-little-too-late/

Section 706 is codified at 47 U.S. Code § 1302(d)(1), to define advanced telecommunications capability:
The term “advanced telecommunications capability” is defined, without regard to any transmission media or technology, as high-speed, switched, broadband telecommunications capability that enables users to originate and receive high-quality voice, data, graphics, and video telecommunications using any technology. (Emphasis added).
"Broadband" isn’t defined in the statute. As Dawson notes, the FCC has attempted to define it over the past three decades, distinguishing it from narrowband dialup connectivity commonplace when the 1996 law was enacted. This created sluggish dialup as an anchor, making a commercial market in incremental improvements over dialup sold as an upgrade at a price premium. The more bandwidth, the larger the upgrade and the higher the price.

That market has become firmly entrenched, creating a perception of bandwidth scarcity and digital exclusion leading to what is now termed the “digital divide:” a split between those who can order and afford to pay for sufficient bandwidth to access “high-quality voice, data, graphics, and video telecommunications” referenced in the law and those who cannot – typically those living where the commercial return on infrastructure investment is insufficiently profitable in the broader market context. The commercial market in incremental bandwidth improvements reinforced the FCC policy Dawson describes as both are based on the metric of incremental bandwidth gains.

Supporting this circumstance is the lack of an affirmative policy to modernize copper to fiber to the premises connections. The technology came about two decades before the emergence of the mass market Internet.
First developed in the 1970s, fiber-optics have revolutionized the telecommunications industry and have played a major role in the advent of the Information Age.[7] Because of its advantages over electrical transmission, optical fibers have largely replaced copper wire communications in backbone networks in the developed world.[8]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiber-optic_communication

Legacy telephone companies built on copper developed for carrying analog voice telephone service saw fiber’s potential to deliver high-quality voice, data, graphics, and video telecommunications. By the early 1990s, they planned to replace their legacy copper with fiber to support the rollout of video services. But they opted not to make the transition, instead investing in more readily profitable mobile wireless services according to industry analyst Bruce Kushnick. They included NYNEX, the regional bell operating company created after the 1982 court ordered breakup of AT&T that was rebranded as Verizon. Verizon’s copper to fiber transition was short lived, from 2005 to 2010.

Tuesday, March 07, 2023

1996 Telecom Act, IIJA reflect America’s slow transformation and progress toward digital socio-economy

The United States innovated most of the information and communication technologies (ICT) that over the past 40 years that are transforming an analog socio-economy into a digital one. But the nation has lagged in the transition. Much of its existing telecommunications infrastructure is designed for an analog 20th century world of voice telephone service over twisted pair copper and premium television channels over coaxial cable.

America’s slow modernization of its legacy copper telephone system to fiber reflects the prolonged transition from an analog-based socio economy to a digital one in the 21st century. Related to this is that many Americans do not utilize ICT to allow their “full participation in the society and economy of the United States” according the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) of 2021.

At the close of the 20th century, the Telecommunications Act of 1996 foresaw the digitization of the telecommunications as the mass market Internet was taking off and some regional telephone companies filed plans with state regulators to offer two way video over fiber. But because the Internet as a means of communication was new, its drafters believed market competition would bring about reliable and affordable Internet connectivity as well as Internet-enabled devices and applications and online content.

The market competition will float all boats theory failed to reflect reality relative to Internet connectivity. A quarter century after the law was enacted, millions of Americans lack reliable and affordable connectivity, creating a “digital inclusion” challenge as it is described in the IIJA. Instead, market forces led to market segmentation, leaving lots of locations unconnected. The reason is making those connections isn’t that different from other utilities. Like voice telephone service, those copper cables that delivered it every home and business voice telephone service function as a natural terminating monopoly that doesn’t operate as a competitive market due to high cost barriers to competitor entry and first mover advantage.

That fundamental flaw in the 1996 Telecom Act left the nation further behind than where it should be for deployment of robust digital infrastructure with the old analog copper twisted pair telephone connections replaced with fiber reaching most every doorstep by 2010 at the latest. Over the interim, substandard and less reliable substitutes were employed such as Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) over copper and fixed and mobile wireless and satellite technology.

The IIJA while nominally an infrastructure measure that allocates federal dollars to states to build out advanced telecommunications infrastructure, like the 1996 Telecom Act, it doesn’t affirmatively  specify fiber to the premises (FTTP) infrastructure. However, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), charged with administrating the federal funds to the states, states a clear preference for FTTP. In that regard, public policy is slowly advancing into the digital age.

Thursday, February 09, 2023

Feds punt universal advanced telecommunications service to the states

The U.S. federal government has whiffed multiple times over the past three decades when it comes to mandating universal service for advanced telecommunications as it did for analog voice telephone service before it. A universal service mandate recognizes that telecommunications infrastructure like other utility infrastructure functions as a natural monopoly because of high cost barriers to competitor entry and first mover advantage accorded incumbents limit choice among multiple sellers.

It first did so in the Telecommunications Act of 1996. The statute includes language stating legislative intent that access to advanced telecommunications and information services should be provided in all regions of the Nation including rural and high cost areas -- but no means to ensure that it would.

The closest federal policy came to mandating universal access to advanced telecommunications was in 2015 when the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) placed Internet protocol telecommunications under Title II of the Communications Act of 1934, classifying it as a common carrier utility requiring reasonable requests for service be honored and barring neighborhood redlining. The FCC declined to enforce a regulation adopting the reclassification and reversed course in 2018, repealing it.

Instead, the FCC and state public utility commissions must merely “encourage the deployment on a reasonable and timely basis of advanced telecommunications capability to all Americans … in a manner consistent with the public interest, convenience, and necessity” per 47 U.S. Code § 1302(a). The statute also turns economic logic on its head by mandating these regulatory bodies promulgate “measures that promote competition in the (aforementioned natural monopoly) local telecommunications market.”

In 2021, the feds punted the universal service issue to the states with the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act that appropriates $42.5 billion in grants to the states to subsidize advanced telecommunications infrastructure and prioritizing funding of fiber to the premise (FTTP) delivery infrastructure. The funding is administered under the National Telecommunications and Information Administration’s (NTIA) Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) program.

The BEAD program requires states to develop “Five-Year Action Plans” including “a comprehensive, high-level plan for providing reliable, affordable, high-speed internet service throughout the (state) including the estimated timeline and cost for universal service.” It also frames universal access as a matter of digital inclusion and equity, noting that it's necessary for civic and cultural participation, employment, lifelong learning, and access to essential services. 

For the states, that will mean developing their own concrete universal service policies and funding strategies given that federal policy remains aspirational. A U.S. General Accountability Office report issued in May 2022 concluded there is no national strategy to guide the deployment of advanced telecommunications infrastructure. Instead, the report found, there are numerous, uncoordinated subsidy programs administered by multiple federal agencies.

Thursday, May 12, 2022

Administration favors fiber advanced telecom infrastructure for IIJA funding. Law could advantage governments and utility cooperatives.

Bipartisan Infrastructure Law-funded networks should be built to stand the test of time and be fast enough to accommodate current and future needs. Given current demand and evolving technologies, Bipartisan Infrastructure Law programs should prioritize the fastest speeds possible and require a minimum of at least 100/20 Mbps. Relatedly, Bipartisan Infrastructure Law funding should prioritize fiber-to-the-home wherever practical to future-proof the infrastructure. At the same time, respondents expressed the need for states to have flexibility to utilize both fixed and wireless technologies to fully reach all Americans and called for the ability to substitute fixed wireless and satellite options where fiber is not cost-effective or where no provider is willing to offer fiber. (Emphasis added)

The administration today clearly affirmed its preference for fiber optics for advanced telecom delivery infrastructure funded by the Infrastructure Investment of Jobs Act of 2021 (IIJA), shifting away from the technology neutral policy of the 1996 Telecom Act.

The IIJA prioritizes grant funding for up to 75 percent of capital costs of deploying advanced telecommunications infrastructure for projects where at least 80 percent of the premises to be served are not advertised landline or wireless connectivity of at least 25 Mbps for downloads and 3 Mbps for uploads.

But capital project construction is only part of the overall cost. The fiber infrastructure must also be maintained and repaired. Field electronic equipment must be updated and replaced every several years. These additional costs may deter a commercial entity that must earn a profit for its investors from building fiber in the sparsely populated areas deemed "unserved" under the IIJA and prioritized for funding. That would favor governmental operators and consumer utility cooperatives that operate without the burden of generating profits and paying income taxes, particularly if the federal government deems that grants awarded under the IIJA are taxable income.

Sunday, December 05, 2021

IIJA provides opportunity for structural separation with state, regional wholesale open access fiber networks

With the enactment of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), the federal government and the states have an opportunity to structurally separate advanced telecommunications infrastructure and Internet Protocol (IP) services delivered over it by funding state and regional government owned wholesale open access fiber networks. That would boost access and affordability, and by extension, support virtual knowledge work, learning and telemedicine -- all of which jumped amid public health measures put in place during the COVID-19 pandemic. These large scale entities would also enjoy vital purchasing power as demand for labor and materials to build fiber networks is taxing their availability.

The Telecommunications Act of 1996 contained a structural separation component, requiring telephone companies to offer wholesale access their network infrastructure to retail Internet Service Providers (ISPs) -- referred to as unbundled network elements (UNE). But this provision lacks regulatory incentive for telephone companies to modernize their legacy copper networks to fiber. They leased access to their central office switches and legacy twisted pair copper plant to ISPs via dialup and later, digital subscriber line (DSL) that due to technological limitations could not serve all customers. Moreover, the telephone companies lacked market incentive to upgrade to fiber since they could derive passive revenues by placing the copper in runoff mode without sacrificing profits and shareholder dividends to capital expenditures. Consequently, only about a third of U.S. homes are passed by fiber.

With the IIJA, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration and the states can utilize $43.45 billion in grants earmarked for advanced telecommunications infrastructure in the legislation to attain a superior form of structural separation that can yield far greater public benefit than the 1996 legislation. Unlike shareholder owned telephone and cable companies, government owned networks have incentive to pursue the positive externalities that come with increased access and affordability that don’t accrue to the balance sheets of investor-owned infrastructure. These broad-based benefits clearly outweigh more narrow interests of their shareholders. 

Policymakers should implement and if necessary, amend the IIJA to ensure the widest and most rapid deployment of state and regional government owned open access fiber networks.

Tuesday, August 24, 2021

Localities, consumer utility coops could take default lead role in future distribution fiber construction

The United States continues to lack a unified advanced telecommunications infrastructure policy framework 25 years after the enactment of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. The law did not set forth standards governing physical infrastructure deployment. It merely directed the Federal Communications Commission to monitor the progress of the availability of advanced telecommunications. The FCC opted to measure that progress based on a sampling of throughput – not by the infrastructure being built to deliver it -- as advertised by providers in a given ZIP Code or census block and reported annually to the FCC.

Throughout most of this period and currently, the FCC chose to treat Internet delivered services as optional information services like those that existed in 1996 -- e.g. CompuServe and America Online -- instead of a telecommunications utility with a universal service mandate. Consequently, there was no regulatory incentive for telephone companies to reach all addresses within their service territories or to upgrade their legacy copper cable plants. They instead opted to provide DSL delivered services over copper only to homes that were technically serviceable due to DSL’s limited range. Seeing opportunity with the slow walking of fiber by telephone companies, cable companies revamped their coax cable networks to deliver IP services within their limited franchise “footprints.”

While large legacy telephone and cable companies are now the dominant providers, they are constrained by business models averse to capital investments. They have loads of debt on their balance sheets and investors expecting short term gains and dividends incompatible with the high costs and long term horizon of infrastructure investments. All of these factors led to only about a third of all American homes having fiber connections as the third decade of the 21st century begins.

Several hundred local governments and electric cooperatives stepped into the gap and have and are building fiber infrastructure. The question going forward is how these relatively small scale, disparate deployments created out of necessity will fit into the larger scheme going forward and their role in bringing fiber to every American doorstep. It’s a policy question inherent in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act passed by the Senate this month.

The legislation would allow states to make the initial determination by giving them jurisdiction over how $42 billion allocated in the bill for infrastructure grants is spent, with oversight by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration. Local governments and cooperatives would also help decide themselves since they would have to put up a 25 percent match for new infrastructure. With the structural business model challenges facing the large legacy telcos and cablecos, localities and cooperatives could move into a default leadership position. One off grants can’t remedy the incumbents’ ongoing structural limitations.

While the bill allows states to determine where the funding goes for distribution infrastructure, it authorizes states as well as a broad range of eligible entities to seek grants with a 30 percent match to construct critical transmission or “middle mile” infrastructure. That component of the nation’s advanced telecommunications infrastructure is growing increasingly crucial to support the growth of fiber distribution infrastructure and the resultant bandwidth demand the legislation will spur if enacted. Commercial entities that already own most transmission infrastructure would likely be the primary recipients.

Saturday, June 12, 2021

Legacy telephone companies’ power isn’t so much lobbying as controlling the narrative

Conventional wisdom holds the United States is unable to timely modernize its legacy copper telephone infrastructure to fiber reaching every doorstep because of the lobbying power of big legacy telephone companies. They want to protect their natural monopolies against interlopers and deploy fiber only where it produces a rapid return on investment to select neighborhoods at highly profitable, unregulated prices.

But their more formidable power isn’t so much their armies of lobbyists and campaign contributions to public policymakers. It’s that they’ve established and controlled the narrative built around a single word: broadband. They were so successful that they even managed to get public interest-oriented officials and advocates to adopt the term, creating a decades-long obsession with chasing “broadband” bandwidth instead of concentrating on advanced telecommunications infrastructure that delivers that bandwidth. It also serves as a great distraction since fiber technology has been around for decades and was being considered by telephone companies as early as the 1980s for two-way video communications.

It began with the enactment of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, at a time when Americans used screeching modems to connect to online services such as CompuServe and America Online. The statute defined progress as advancing from that narrowband dialup service to “always on” broadband. It largely left it to the private market to set the course instead of stating industrial policy establishing fiber as the universal infrastructure standard as twisted pair copper was before it. As well as establishing a timeline so that fiber reached nearly all homes by 2010. Instead, more than a decade later, only about one third of all U.S. homes can get a fiber connection. Baked into the 1996 Act is a cognitive bias known as anchoring. Dialup -- state of the art connectivity at the time it was enacted -- is the anchor. Any technology offering incrementally greater throughput came to be valued more highly than modernizing legacy copper telephone lines to fiber.

Lacking a fiber infrastructure standard, in the quarter century since the 1996 Telecommunications Act was enacted, America has found itself bogged down in incrementalism, debating the definition of broadband and even trying to map its location. Elected officials have been dogged by constituent complaints over spotty, poor and unaffordable Internet access, priced at whatever the market will bear. Those complaints grew more strident as time went on and especially during the COVID-19 pandemic that turned homes into offices, classrooms and medical clinics.

With telephone companies dragging their feet on transitioning to fiber in order to accommodate their short term oriented business models, cable TV companies leveraged their coaxial cable to provide Internet access in the decade since the Act was signed into law. Since they have not been regulated as telecommunications carriers with universal service mandates and price controls, they too can -- and do -- charge whatever the market will bear. And bear it the market must since cable has taken a dominant role, putting it in a controlling position.

Seeing that fiber was being slow walked at the same time people grew more desperate for connectivity, various wireless technologies and even satellite services came about to fill the fiber voids. The sad consequence is the nation once seen as a world leader in telecommunications no longer is.

Saturday, May 08, 2021

Public option open access fiber holds promise of ending unproductive "broadband mapping"

First and foremost, the FCC, Congress, local government, community groups, and existing service providers need to work together to create accurate broadband maps. Without an understanding of where broadband infrastructure actually exists, we won’t know which communities lack access to the Internet and which are served.

Risks and Rewards of the U.S. Broadband Funding Boom | Internet Society

While on the surface, this appears to be a rational starting point, in reality it's retrogressive and not a step forward. "Broadband mapping" originates from the Telecommunications Act of 1996 that gave the U.S. Federal Commission authority to define advanced telecommunications based on throughput. The FCC determines what constitutes "broadband" level throughput. Providers are required to report annually to the FCC where they are selling it. Efforts to map this data have resulted in decades of unproductive gaming and wasteful controversy among regulators, policymakers, service providers and public interest advocates over the accuracy and utility of the reports.

The Biden administration's proposed American Jobs Plan properly regards advanced telecommunications as critical infrastructure rather than "broadband" as a service. It defines a level of throughput that makes it a de facto fiber to the home infrastructure standard. It would also create a public option by prioritizing networks owned by public sector and nonprofit entities such as consumer cooperatives.

Instead of mapping "broadband speed," what policymakers should do first is identify existing public sector and nonprofit entities that currently operate fiber networks. The American Jobs Plan and other potential sources of federal funding should be directed to them to expand and strengthen their networks. Where these networks are absent, funding should be allocated to enable regional public sector and nonprofit operators to design and build open access fiber as a much needed public option to remedy widespread gaps in access and affordability.

Tuesday, May 04, 2021

Deloitte white paper points up flawed U.S. policy of chasing throughput versus modernizing copper to fiber

Despite more than $107 billion in federal subsidies between 2010 and 2020 to boost throughput outside of densely populated metro centers, the United States hasn't obtained appreciable and durable benefit, concludes a recently issued white paper by the consulting firm Deloitte.

Optimism over the past 10 years that billions of private and public investment in underserved geographies for broadband access and adoption would help close the digital divide has waned as outcomes have often disappointed. Previous programs increased the number of people with access to the FCC’s definition of broadband by less than 1% (<1%; 1.6 million people) between 2014 and 2019, partially as a result of the changing definition of broadband.

Unless the nation changes course on telecommunications policy and stops chasing "broadband" throughput and instead replaces copper telephone lines reaching nearly every American home with fiber, the paper suggests, it will continue the wasteful cycle and reap less than optimal economic advantage. 

The Biden administration's proposed infrastructure plan offers an opportunity to do that by prioritizing fiber built by public sector and nonprofit corporations that don't carry the burden of generating profits that disincentivizes investing in fiber and only doing so proscribed neighborhood deployments that potentially offer the most favorable return on investment. A big advantage of building public option fiber is it ends the broadband speed chase since fiber can easily accommodate expected growth in bandwidth requirements. That necessitates dispensing with the "technology neutral" standard of the 1996 Telecommunications Act that gave rise to unending debates over what constitutes broadband and the related issue of net neutrality, as described in the Deloitte paper:

Since 1996, the US government has set minimum speed requirements to define broadband service, with the hopes of keeping pace with the exponential growth in consumption. These minimum performance expectations have changed as applications require increasing amounts of bandwidth. From 2011 to 2014, the FCC definition of broadband was 4 Mbps uplink and 1 Mbps downlink. In 2015, the FCC updated its definition of broadband to speeds of 25 Mbps downlink and 3 Mbps uplink. The 2015 broadband definition, which persists today, was more suitable to support new applications. Now, pandemic induced requirements for streaming, videoconferencing, and the promise of further innovation make the FCC’s 2015 broadband definition of 25/3 the topic of ongoing debate at both the state and federal levels.

Wednesday, January 20, 2021

Congress and Biden administration have historic opportunity to reset American telecommunications policy.

Congress and the Biden administration have an historic opportunity to reset American telecommunications policy and put it on a more progressive path going forward. In 1996, Congress and the Clinton administration enacted the Telecommunications Act. It’s based on the goal of attaining higher throughput – referred to as “broadband” and “high speed Internet.” The statute become law at a time when it was decidedly sluggish and most Americans were “going online” with dialup modems connected to copper telephone lines designed and built to provide voice phone service in the early to mid-20th century.

A major flaw of the law is it failed to provide a clear policy framework to guide and speed the migration of that copper to fiber to deliver Internet protocol-based voice, data and video services in the 21st. Instead, the policy underpinning the 1996 law was “technology neutrality,” grounded in the hope that market competition would somehow deliver better throughput.

Twenty-five years later in the third decade of the new century as a pandemic has made homes into offices, classrooms and clinics, Americans continue to struggle with slow and unreliable connectivity and access and affordability challenges. Elected representatives are deluged with constituent complaints as policymakers unproductively argue over “broadband” speeds, maps and subsidies. It is exceedingly clear new policy direction is needed to ensure fiber reaches every American doorstep just as copper telephone line did in the previous century and that service is affordable.

Thursday, November 09, 2017

Fearing state imposed universal service obligations and rate regulation, legacy incumbent telcos, cablecos seek federal cover

A decade ago as Internet-based telecommunications grew and began transporting video content, telephone and cable companies feared local governments would using their video franchising authority established in the cable TV era require them to build out their infrastructures to ensure all residents had connections. The pre-Internet cable television franchise had evolved. It was no longer just about entertainment. In the Internet era, it was now the full panoply of advanced telecommunications services: voice and data as well as video. That in turn would stoke demand for better infrastructure that could reliably deliver them.

However, the legacy incumbent telephone and cable companies didn’t want to be forced to upgrade and build out their cable plants to serve all customer premises in order to do business in numerous localities. Their business models are based on serving selected neighborhoods within arbitrary “footprints” of “serviceable” premises and not entire local government jurisdictions.

They initially sought relief in Washington from Congress and the U.S. Federal Communications Commission to preempt state – and by extension local -- video franchise regulation. That would take care of a multiplicity of potentially troublesome local governments imposing universal service conditions under their video franchising authority. But the National Governors Association and the National Conference of State Legislatures pushed back, wanting to keep video franchising within state jurisdiction.

Incumbents were able to easily pivot from that objection to their Plan B to kill local government video franchising authority: lobby state governments to take it over from local governments. That effort was quite successful, with state video franchising laws put on the books in state after state in the mid-2000s. Those laws such as California’s Digital Infrastructure and Video Competition Act of 2006 did not mandate video franchisees provide universal service by some future date in areas where they were awarded state franchises, thus sanctioning neighborhood redlining. Consequently, local governments that often receive complaints from constituents denied landline connections to advanced telecommunications service by the big incumbents are powerless to do anything about it since those connections fall under state video franchising authority. Calling one’s state representative isn’t helpful either since the incumbents have captured legislatures and state telecommunications regulatory agencies by buying political influence with campaign contributions.

The fight over universal service has now shifted from video franchising to a new regulatory front. But this time around, the incumbents ironically want protection from the states. They’re concerned that if the federal government continues avoid enforcement of universal service policy expressed in the Communications Act as amended in 1996 or the FCC’s 2015 Open Internet rulemaking -- or scraps the Open Internet rulemaking altogether -- the states might opt impose their own universal service obligations.

The big legacy incumbents are also worried over the prospect of states regulating service rates as authorized in the federal Open Internet rulemaking. In the two years the Open Internet rulemaking has been the law of the land, the FCC hasn’t enforced that provision either.

Given widespread complaints voiced by state and local elected officials over both spotty access to service due to neighborhood redlining and affordability challenges for low income households, the incumbents have reason for concern. Two of the nation’s largest telephone and cable companies, Verizon and Comcast, respectfully, are urging the FCC to enact a “clear, affirmative” rule preempting states, declaring federal primacy over state regulatory jurisdiction. However, such a rulemaking could fail to hold up in court against a statute enacted by a state legislature given a 2016 decision by the United States Court of Appeal Sixth District in State of Tennessee et al. v FCC & USA finding the FCC could not preempt state law without express federal statutory authority to do so. That could set up a grueling battle in Congress between the big telcos and cablecos and the states over the regulation of advanced telecommunications services.

With the level of dissatisfaction in the states over access and affordability to landline delivered advanced telecommunications services, it’s not a fight the incumbents would automatically win despite the massive lobbying and campaign cash they can bring to bear in Washington. Many if not most candidates for state and local offices have made access to and affordability of advanced telecommunications services a campaign issue, terming it infrastructure vital to commerce, education and telehealth services. In addition, the level of need and public interest is much higher now than it was a decade ago when the incumbents were lobbying state governments to enact statewide video franchise laws.

Tuesday, April 29, 2014

Top Cable Lobbyist Argues Against Broadband as Utility - NYTimes.com - NYTimes.com

Top Cable Lobbyist Argues Against Broadband as Utility - NYTimes.com - NYTimes.com: While the Internet and broadband systems were built “with the help of the government,” Mr. Powell said, “they have suffered terribly chronic underinvestment.” In 2002, when Mr. Powell was chairman of the F.C.C., the agency voted to regulate cable-modem broadband service as a lightly regulated “information service” rather than as a “common carrier.”
Mr. Powell, a former U.S. Federal Communications Commission chairman, correctly diagnoses the poor state of American Internet telecommunications infrastructure in characterizing it as suffering from chronic underinvestment. But oddly, he offers the wrong remedy in declaring the government should take a hands off approach and avoid treating it as a common telecommunications carrier like landline telephone service, available to anyone who wishes to order it.

That's been the status quo since the 1996 Communications Act become law, leaving about a quarter or more of all premises without modern landline Internet access, with some still offered only dialup service that most Americans were using since before the law was enacted. Powell's tortured logic would suggest that requiring Internet service providers serve all premises will somehow make that sorry situation worse. It simply doesn't add up.

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Fiber infrastructure build out -- not throughput speed-- should be focus of planned stimulus funding

The Washington Post reports today a debate is brewing over how broadband should be defined under the incoming Obama administration's goal to fund new broadband telecommunications infrastructure as part of its planned economic stimulus package. Specifically, the debate is over what level of throughput defines broadband.

Throughput speed is not the issue. Building out fiber optic infrastructure over the local access network -- the so-called "last mile" -- is. Fiber provides a proven, future proof technology that can accommodate the rapidly increasing demand for bandwidth needed by video and other bandwidth-intensive applications. Art Brodsky of Public Knowledge correctly observes in the Post article that providing stimulus funding to telcos for increasingly obsolete metal wire-based broadband services would turn into a wasteful boondoggle.

History supports Brodsky's warning. The bell companies that today comprise AT&T, Verizon and Qwest were to have built out their networks with the tax incentives provided more than a decade ago under the Telecommunications Act of 1996 to provide fiber connections to all homes and businesses by 2006. They didn't. Consequently, the U.S. suffers with incomplete telecom networks that leave millions unable to get decent Internet access more than a decade after the law's enactment. Repeating this error would ignite a race to the bottom and leave the U.S. even further behind other developed nations when it comes to broadband Internet access and modern IP-based telecommunications services.

Rather than large telcos and cable companies, economic stimulus funding should be directed to local entities including for profit companies, nonprofit cooperatives and local governments to construct fiber optic infrastructure over the critical but long neglected last mile.

Sunday, January 11, 2009

Minnesota muni fiber project prime example of where broadband infrastructure stimulus funding should go

Blandin on Broadband tipped me to this municipal fiber project whose $18.5 million bond financing goes before North St. Paul, Minnesota voters next month.

It's a prime example of where the new Congress and the incoming Obama administration should be directing economic stimulus infrastructure funding. Federal funding would help reduce the financial risk of these municipal fiber projects by helping them cover their start up costs sooner while creating badly needed jobs and stimulating electronic commerce.

North St. Paul City Manager Wally Wysopal has the right idea in suggesting this isn't simply about filling in broadband black holes but instead is putting in place vital telecommunications infrastructure that can meet the city's needs going into the future. This approach is far superior to simply playing catch up by wasting stimulus funding on rolling out increasingly obsolete copper cable-based DSL that should have been more widely deployed years ago under the incentives and tax breaks of the 1996 federal Telecommunications Act.

"The idea here is to become the best-connected small town in Minnesota," Wysopal told the TwinCities.com Pioneer Press. "We're not getting into this for the sake of providing lower rates for cable or telephone but to provide a service that's superior to anything that's being contemplated today."

Sunday, August 12, 2007

America's $200 billion broadband boondoggle

Robert X. Cringely explains what went wrong with the federal Telecommunications Act of 1996 and why the U.S. is falling farther and farther behind the rest of the developed world when it comes to broadband Internet access:

There are no good guys in this story. Misguided and incompetent regulation combined with utilities that found ways to game the system resulted in what had been the best communication system in the world becoming just so-so, though very profitable. We as consumers were consistently sold ideas that were impractical only to have those be replaced later by less-ambitious technologies that, in turn, were still under-delivered. Congress set mandates then provided little or no oversight. The FCC was (and probably still is) managed for the benefit of the companies and their lobbyists, not for you and me. And the upshot is that I could move to Japan and pay $14 per month for 100-megabit-per-second Internet service but I can't do that here and will probably never be able to.

Despite this, the FCC says America has the highest broadband deployment rate in the world and President Bush has set a goal of having broadband available to every U.S. home by the end of this year. What have these guys been smoking? Nothing, actually, they simply redefined "broadband" as any Internet service with a download speed of 200 kilobits per second or better. That's less than one percent the target speed set in 1994 that we were supposed to have achieved by 2000 under regulations that still remain in place.