Showing posts with label U.S. broadband policy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label U.S. broadband policy. Show all posts

Thursday, July 04, 2013

The U.S. Needs A Federal-Aid Highway Act For Affordable Broadband -- Now - Forbes

The U.S. Needs A Federal-Aid Highway Act For Affordable Broadband -- Now - Forbes

Digital media veteran Gary Myer urges a massive Internet stimulus program that goes far beyond the $4.5 billion allocated for Internet infrastructure in the American Investment and Recovery Act of 2009.  (Most of that money went toward middle mile infrastructure that typically left residences and small businesses off the net).

Myer as well as some of the commentators on his Forbes piece point out getting fiber to every U.S. doorstep not only would create a lot of jobs since a large majority of the cost is labor.  It would also make the U.S. network more valuable since more would be connected to it, replacing the current dysfunctional, hodge podge of disparate legacy cable television and telephone company networks whose high cost business models fail outside of densely populated areas.

Myer also puts to rest the fanciful, wishful thinking that cell phone networks obviate the need for premises Internet connections.  Those networks are designed for lower bandwidth mobile voice and data and lack the capacity and reliability to serve as primary premises connections. Those bandwidth caps on mobile service exist for a reason.

Monday, February 15, 2010

Google's fiber foray: Likely goal is to test alternative business model

Google's demonstration of concept fiber to the premises "experiment" announced last week could represent the start of a major transformation of how consumers receive information in an age where information is increasingly delivered via Internet protocol.

The potential transformation: from the telco/cable business model that brings the bulk of Americans Internet access that due to CAPEX constraints cannot reach about 12 percent of U.S households to the advertising-based business model used for decades by mass broadcasters. Investors provide much of the funding needed for costly transmitters and other broadcast equipment. But advertisers provide another deep and ongoing source of cash to invest in the necessary broadcast equipment to reach consumers.

Google's experiment isn't likely about testing fiber to the premises technology. Fiber is a well demonstrated means of getting lots of bits and bytes to the doorstep with plenty of capacity to spare. Rather, I suspect it's to explore an alternative business model to bring Internet protocol-based services to homes that is to a large degree based on the network broadcasting business model.

Notably, Google's announcement comes as the U.S. government struggles with the inherent conflict of implementing policies to expand advanced telecommunications infrastructure to all Americans while paying homage to the privately owned telco/cable dominated Internet "ecosystem" that makes doing so impossible without substantial subsidies in a time of economic penury.

In the 1960's, mass communications theorist Marshall McLuhan predicted an electronic global village linked together by a broadcast television -- a medium so powerful that the medium itself would be as important as its content. "The medium is the message,” he famously declared. While McLuhan's observation was about TV, in retrospect it applies even more so to the Internet. Google's foray into fiber may well have been undertaken with McLuhan firmly in mind.

Friday, January 15, 2010

Yet another flawed analysis of forthcoming U.S. broadband plan

Here's another in an ongoing series of flawed analyses in the mainstream media lately on the U.S. Federal Communications Commission's statutorily mandated task to develop a plan to ensure build out of advanced telecommunications infrastructure accessible to all Americans.

The problem with them is they incorrectly conflate lack of competition with market failure to suggest why this infrastructure isn't fully built out. It's the latter and not the former that's the cause. There isn't robust competition in a failed market because the business economics and externalities keep vendors out, leading to the formation of broadband black holes. The lack of competition is the symptom, not the underlying disease. Why is it that no one seems to get this simple, basic reality in the current coverage of the FCC's forthcoming broadband plan?

Friday, January 08, 2010

FCC chief: Formulating U.S. broadband deployment policy "really hard"

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski offered some perspective this week on why the FCC has asked Congress for another month to complete its policy recommendations on expanding advanced telecommunications infrastructure to all Americans.

"I can't tell you that we've figured out the solution completely and I can't tell you that we'll figure out the solution to this perfectly by the time we do the National Broadband Plan," he told GigaOM, according to this Reuters dispatch. "This is really hard."

Indeed it is, because this isn't about simply tweaking the existing, incomplete infrastructure -- or "ecosystem" as some federal officials have termed it -- that leaves lots of Americans reliant on the outdated copper-based infrastructure put in place decades ago to deliver plain old telephone service (POTS).

As AT&T noted in a recent FCC filing, that system is on the verge of obsolescence. The United States now needs a new infrastructure for a new Internet-protocol based range of telecom services that go far beyond standard voice service. Genachowski has described it as "the critical infrastructure challenge of our generation."

Getting there won't be a natural extension of the old infrastructure but instead a radical overhaul calling for new business models, particularly among the last and middle mile segments.
It's as much of a business model challenge as an infrastructure challenge. That scope forces the FCC to engage in original, outside the box thinking -- which as Genachowski aptly noted is hard -- but necessary -- work.

Monday, December 07, 2009

Kiplinger predicts U.S. tax to bolster telecom infrastructure

The Kiplinger Letter is predicting the U.S. Federal Communications Commission will propose a tax next year to subsidize private telcos and cable companies' cost to build out broadband to serve all Americans. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 tasked the FCC with providing Congress a plan for universal broadband access by Feb. 17, 2010. Kiplinger Senior Associate Editor Richard Sammon forecasts the tax will be part of the plan.

But at the same time, Sammon says enacting such a tax will prove politically difficult. The take away is the FCC should be considering alternative entities that can roll out advanced telecommunications infrastructure for less money than the big telcos and cable companies that must produce hefty profits and pay fat dividends to satisfy shareholders.

That means turning to the nonprofit sector and specifically local governments and consumer-owned telecom cooperatives. There, taxpayer dollars can go farther and these smaller, more nimble entities can move more rapidly to deploy broadband infrastructure to fill in the areas where the business models of the large telcos and cable companies don't pencil out. Instead of new taxes, policymakers should enact tax breaks to encourage homeowners and small businesses to buy their own last mile fiber connections through cooperative ventures and public/private partnerships.

The need for alternative business models is underscored in a report prepared for the FCC by the Columbia Institute for Tele-Information and released last month.

A key conclusion: a significant number of homes -- 5 to 10 million representing 4.5 to 9 percent of U.S. households -- will continue to have "significantly inferior choices in broadband" between now and 2015. "Most of these homes will have wireless or wired service broadband available only at speeds substantially lower than the speeds available to the rest of the country," the report notes, adding that some homes "will have no choice except satellite broadband, which has some performance attributes that make it less satisfactory for many applications than a terrestrial broadband service."

Saturday, November 07, 2009

Shifting telecom paradigm poses challenge as FCC crafts broadband plan

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission is drafting recommendations due to Congress in a little more than three month's time on a national policy to ensure universal broadband access.

It's no easy task. The reason? We're in the midst of a paradigm shift away from yesterday's proprietary, closed single purpose telephone and cable systems to an open Internet-based system that can deliver everything these systems provided and so much more.

In fact, yesterday's closed telco/cable paradigm is itself the major impediment to universal broadband because its business model cannot easily accommodate that goal. Subsidizing it to expand broadband access using old models designed to expand access to the basic telephone service of yesteryear isn't likely to accomplish the goal of universal broadband access. The subsidies will prove to be too little, too late (such as this legislative proposal to expand the Universal Service Fund to include broadband defined as the soon to be obsolete speed of 1.5 Mbs), unable to keep up with the rapid advance of IP-based applications and their accompanying demand for ever greater speeds and bandwidth. It's like like subsidizing mainframe computing and keypunch machines in a new distributed computing age of powerful servers and microcomputers.

It is therefore essential that the FCC think outside of the box of the legacy telco/cable duopoly and look to innovative approaches and alternative business models as it prepares its recommendations. At the top of the list should be locally owned and operated open access fiber to the premises infrastructure. Whether these systems are operated by local governments, cooperatives or public/private partnerships, they can be more rapidly deployed and are thus more likely to expediently meet the goal of expanding broadband access to all Americans while simultaneously providing protection against technological obsolescence.

Thursday, October 15, 2009

FCC likely to favor open access networks in forthcoming policy recommendation

The Federal Communications Commission is approaching a critical juncture in its congressionally mandated task of devising national policy to further advanced (broadband) telecommunications infrastructure build out. The issue facing the FCC is to what extent the nation emulate the open access network regulatory model used by other countries that have leaped past and made the U.S. and its proprietary, closed networks an also ran rather than a leader in deploying advanced, Internet protocol-based telecommunications.

The FCC commissioned a report suggesting that regulatory policy in the form of the 1996 Telecommunications Reform Act requiring telcos to unbundle their networks and allow providers of voice and Internet services to lease space on them had it right and that model needs to be embraced again. Here's a good summary of the study by Internetnews.com.

Look for the FCC will lean strongly toward open access in developing its plan due to Congress next February. The Obama administration stipulated that subsidies set aside for broadband infrastructure construction in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 be for open access networks. That sends a strong signal to the FCC where it stands on open access.

The incumbent duopoly telco and cable companies will protest open access will discourage them from investing in building out their proprietary networks. It's a non sequitur. They're already discouraged from doing so by the economics of their business models. Those models simply don't allow them to make the big investments in their network infrastructure necessary to allow the United States to catch up and bring its outdated telecommunications networks -- particularly over the last mile -- to where they need to be.

This isn't economic rocket science. The average consumer who has asked his or her local telco or cable company for years why the folks a couple miles away -- and often closer -- have broadband and they don't already knows this. They've been repeatedly told by customer service and field personnel -- when these personnel are being frank and direct -- that their neighborhoods simply cost too much to serve and they're SOL for the foreseeable.

Friday, August 14, 2009

Big telcos, cablecos say no thanks to broadand stimulus funds

This week saw the nation's three big telcos (AT&T, Verizon, Qwest) and the dominant cable company issue a firm "no thanks" to the $7.2 billion in broadband infrastructure grants and loans in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports AT&T, Verizon and Comcast say they are flush with cash to upgrade and expand their networks on their own and don't need the money. They also don't like the conditions attached to the funding, fearing it would create regulatory precedents that would threaten their closed, proprietary networks. "We are concerned that some new mandates seem to go well beyond current laws and FCC rules," said Walter McCormick, president of USTelecom, a trade group that represents telecom companies including AT&T and Verizon, is quoted as saying.

This is all well and good. Subsidies should be directed to smaller providers, local governments and cooperatives who have a greater commitment to their local areas and can likely do a far better job than the big guys.

Friday, August 07, 2009

Promises, promises: FCC building record to rebut telco broadband deployment claims

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski is ramping up his agency's work on a national broadband deployment plan due six months from now as required by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

As the plan is developed, the FCC will be heavily lobbied by telcos and given assurances the companies will be building out advanced telecommunications infrastructure and turning up service pronto, as one failed AT&T deployment scheme that turned out not to be such was dubbed. Therefore, the pitch will go, the best national plan is no plan. Just leave it to us and we'll get 'er done.

But such platitudes aren't satisfactory to FCC officials, who have publicly complained they have received too much empty rhetoric and not enough substantive input in response to the agency's call for industry and public comment on what a broadband plan for the United States should include.

Being a careful, methodical lawyer, Genachowski is already building the record to rebut industry puffery with facts. Multichannel News reports the FCC has retained the Columbia Institute for Tele-Information (CITI) at Columbia's Business School in New York, to fact check previous broadband deployment capital expenditure claims of telecom companies.

"CITI will provide an analysis of the public statements of companies as to their future plans to deploy and upgrade broadband networks," Multichannel News quoted the FCC as saying, "as well as an historical evaluation of the relationship between previous such announcements and actual deployment."

Thursday, July 30, 2009

Jump in online video calls for higher FCC minimum broadband definition

PC Magazine reports this week on a survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project that found the percentage of adults who watch video online has nearly doubled since 2006, up to 62 percent versus 33 percent in December 2006.

The item underscores the inadequacy of the current minimum definition of broadband of at leasat 768 Kbs download standard adopted by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission, which has also been written into the rules governing the disbursement of $7.2 billion in federal economic stimulus funds for broadband infrastructure. That speed isn't going to hack it for video, which most observers agree is the fastest growing form of online content.

The 768 Kbs standard also represents a huge step down from the speeds Congress contemplated in a January draft version of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act as minimally defining wireline broadband of at least 5 Mbs download and 1 Mbs uploads and 45 Mbs on the downside and 20 Mbs up for "advanced" wireline broadband.

Under the stimulus legislation, the FCC is required to develop a national broadband plan and present it to Congress next February. The agency should dispose of its outdated definition of broadband and instead adopt the minimum standards outlined in the draft stimulus legislation as they are better matched to meet the growing bandwidth requirements of online video.

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

FCC broadband czar underwhelmed by public comments on U.S. broadband policy

MultiChannel News reports the Federal Communications Commission's broadband czar Blair Levin is underwhelmed by the quality of comments the agency has received in response to its call for public input for a national broadband policy. Congress set a February 2010 deadline for the policy as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act enacted earlier this year.

The gist of Levin's complaint is the comments are overly self serving and don't help the FCC shape a broadband policy that will further the Obama administration's goal of making broadband accessible to all American homes and businesses.

That's hardly surprising given the inherent tension between the public's growing and nearly insatiable demand for more and faster broadband and the private telco/cable industry's duopolistic control over who gets service and at what speed and price -- and only provides it when it's in their and not necessarily in their customers' interest.

Implicit in this tension is the evolution of the U.S. telecommunications infrastructure and services away from the closed, proprietary single purpose systems of the past that provided basic phone service and cable. The future is locally owned and operated open access-based fiber infrastructure to the premises that can deliver various advanced Internet-protocol-based services to business, government and residential consumers with bandwidth to spare. In that regard, Levin's FCC is likely getting variations on the theme "fight the future" from a telco/cable duopoly that fears it.

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Broadband provisions of U.S. economic stimulus legislation

Here are the broadband grant funding provisions of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 signed into law today by President Barack Obama, taken from a summary of the bill prepared by the House of Representatives:

Provisions on Broadband Infrastructure

The Conference agreement creates a new Broadband Technology Opportunities Program within the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (“NTIA”) of the Department of Commerce. The new grant program will distribute $4.7 billion to fund the deployment of broadband infrastructure in unserved and underseved areas in the country, and to help facilitate broadband use and adoption. An additional $2.5 billion in loans and grants will be administered by the Rural Utilities Service.

The Conference agreement combined portions of both the House and Senate bills. The main provisions of the NTIA program include:
  • Grant Recipient Criteria. Any entity is eligible to apply for a grant, including municipalities, public/private partnerships, and private companies, so long as the entity can comply with the grant conditions. Applicants must put forth 20% of the proposed project’s total cost, subject to a financial hardship waiver.
  • Grant recipients must agree to abide by a set of conditions, including adhering to a build out schedule, to interconnection and non-discrimination requirements as established by NTIA, and to the principles contained in the Federal Communications Commission’s Broadband Policy Statement. The Conference agreement does not require that grant recipients meet certain broadband speed thresholds, although the NTIA is expected to consider and support the highest possible broadband speeds in awarding grants.
  • National Broadband Plan. The Federal Communications Commission is required to develop a national broadband plan within one year.

Monday, September 29, 2008

Pols pay lip service to vague "national broadband policy," support time wasting availabilty studies

In this election season, politicians are paying lip service to the idea of universal broadband access in the United States. The problem is just that: lip service in a support of a "national broadband policy" to spur broadband infrastructure rollout and studies to obtain "better data" on where broadband is and isn't.

Re the former, exactly would that policy be? They (and unfortunately too many advocates) are not saying. And in the unfortunate absence of specifics, they make it seem as if they would prefer the telco/cable duopoly be nationalized in order to speed broadband deployment. If that's what they're advocating, they ought to have the guts to say so directly instead of chanting repeatedly that the U.S. needs a "national broadband policy."

Re getting better data on broadband availability, that's a sucker's game that plays straight into the telco/cable duopoly's strategy of buying time to "study" the issue without having to spend a single dime on expanding their broadband infrastructure. Even if availability throughout the U.S. was extensively mapped down to the census tract level, we won't know much more than we already know right now: that the nation's telecommunications infrastructure is shot through with broadband black holes of all sizes, some massive encompassing entire communities and some as small as part of a single block. Politicians already know this, having heard from increasingly irate constituents tired of being forced to choose between obsolete dial up and substandard, costly satellite Internet service.