Broadband 'black spots' across UK - Yahoo! News UK

Broadband 'black spots' across UK - Yahoo! News UK: Britons living in rural areas are stuck in "digital ghettos", an expert has warned as figures showed average broadband speeds have more than trebled in the UK.

These now reach 12 megabits per second (Mbps) - around three times the speeds recorded in 2008 and up by a third in the six months from May to November.

But "black spots" still exist across the country and users face a "postcode lottery" in terms of the service they receive, it was claimed.

More than three years ago, Prince Charles warned of the emergence of UK "broadband deserts."  Apparently he was right. 

California PUC misstates public policy goal of Internet infrastructure subsidy fund

The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) has adopted a decision implementing a grant and loan program to subsidize the construction of advanced telecommunications infrastructure in the Golden State through its California Advanced Services Fund (CASF). Under urgency legislation enacted in 2010, SB 1040, $100 million was allocated for grants and $15 million in revolving loans for the CASF's Broadband Grant and Revolving Loan accounts. The CASF is one of several subsidy funds administered by the CPUC to help offset the cost of providing telecommunications services in areas of the state where it is costly to provide them in order to make them more widely available.

The CASF is codified at California Public Utilities Code Section 281(a) which directs the CPUC to "develop, implement, and administer the California Advanced Services Fund to encourage deployment of high-quality advanced communications services to all Californians that will promote economic growth, job creation, and the substantial social benefits of advanced information and communications technologies..."

While not stated as a finding of law in a draft of the decision issued for public comment prior to its adoption earlier this week by the commission, the decision adopted by the CPUC nevertheless states on page 3:

"We emphasize that the ultimate goal of the CASF program is to increase the adoption of broadband."

A plain reading of that assertion does not comport with California Public Utilities Code Section 281(a), which clearly states public policy intent that the goal of the CASF is "deployment of of high-quality advanced communications services to all Californians."

The CPUC's declaration is also illogical. In order to increase the adoption of broadband, infrastructure must first be built to deliver it. That's the commission's stated purpose of the CASF Broadband Grant and Revolving Loan -- to help capitalize the construction of infrastructure capable of providing premises Internet connectivity in high cost areas where it hasn't been deployed. Moreover, the CPUC's decision distinguishes adoption from infrastructure deployment, noting at page 9 that applicants for CASF-funded infrastructure projects must submit a plan to encourage adoption of the broadband service in the proposed area(s) including the number of households the applicant estimates will sign up for the service (the take rate), the marketing or outreach plans the applicant will employ to attract households to sign up for the service.

Without deployment of the necessary infrastructure, broadband simply isn't available as hundreds of thousands of Californians trying to get by on dialup and satellite are painfully aware. And if broadband isn't available at any price, it cannot be adopted by anyone. First things first.

Broadband expansion positively correlates with local economic growth, study finds

The Public Policy Institute of California has issued a new study finding a positive relationship between broadband expansion and economic growth, particularly among information-based industries and in areas with lower population densities.

The study is based on a comparison of Federal Communications Commission data on the number of broadband providers by ZIP code and employment data for the period 1999 to 2006.

Study author Jed Kolko however qualifies the findings given the shortcomings of the FCC data that overstate broadband availability and define broadband at throughput speeds most observers today consider outdated.

Kolko also cautions that the availability of broadband is a relatively recent phenom making it difficult to reach firm conclusions on its impact on economic activity. (Not to mention that data from the years 2007-09 were not included in the study)

In addition, the PPIC report notes increased deployment of fiber to the home infrastructure could lead to different findings. If combined with low cost videoconferencing equipment, fiber could also boost telecommuting -- for which Kolko found no demonstrable increase with the most widely available premises technologies during the study period, i.e. DSL and cable.

It's the infrastructure, stupid

This Rollcall article by think tankers Robert Shapiro of the Georgetown Center for Business and Public Policy and Kevin Hassett of the American Enterprise Institute implies that broadband black holes are caused by a lack of Internet bandwidth. To fill in the holes, Shapiro and Hassett suggest, simply charge large bandwidth users more.

The problem with their analysis is that it assumes broadband black holes are a pricing problem. Wrong answer. It's an infrastructure problem. The holes are there because the business models of the incumbent telco and cable providers don't allow them to fill them. The investor-owned incumbents must earn a return on their capital expenditures within five years but they can only do so in selected parts of their service areas. Hence, limited availability of the advanced telecommunications infrastructure necessary to deliver Internet protocol-based advanced telecommunications services. The telco/cable duopoly has long charged business users higher prices to subsidize services to lower revenue residential customers. That pricing differential has done nothing to spur investment in investor-owned advanced telecommunications infrastructure.

What's needed to fill in the broadband black holes are alternative business models such as nonprofit consumer-owned telecom cooperatives formed a century ago when the investor owned telcos were unable to profitably provide telephone service to large parts of the nation. Local governments can play a similar role.

Broadband demand vs. supply siders: Real debate or a diversion?

As in macroeconomics, an ideological split appears to be developing among supply siders and demand siders over government policy designed to make broadband available to all Americans.

The demand siders tend to hail from the telco/cable duopoly such as Kyle McSlarrow, the president and CEO of the National Cable and Telecommunications Association (NCTA). Policy should focus on the demand side, McSlarrow told a conference hosted by the Family Online Safety Institute. "[T]he way we need to think about this is to think about this in terms of broadband adoption. We have it a little backwards right now."

Demand siders got a boost last week with the release of a study by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation concluding the U.S. should create several programs to address demand for broadband in addition to subsidizing deployment of advanced telecommunications infrastructure.

Supply siders however question the need for government programs to stimulate broadband demand. IDG News Service reported at a recent California forum, some speakers suggested broadband adoption would continue to rise in the U.S. without significant help from the government. Connecting to broadband will eventually be like electricity, easy and inexpensive, Google cofounder Sergey Brin was quoted as saying.

I question whether the supply/demand side debate is real or contrived. The fact that the demand siders tend to be in the telco/cable camp raises my suspicion that their pushing the issue of adoption is more of a tactical move than substantial policy difference, aimed at diverting attention away from the problem of numerous broadband black holes. Last month, the Yankee Group issued a report noting about 12 percent of U.S. households, including those in some major metropolitan areas, have no access to broadband service, landing the U.S. at a dismal 15th in broadband penetration worldwide.

Even if we were to give the telco/cable duopoly the benefit of the doubt and accept a true policy split exists, I'd have to lean toward the supply siders. Unlike the far slower rate of adoption for basic telephone service, demand for and adoption of broadband has been explosive by comparison.

We also have to be careful not to frame the issue too narrowly. It's not just about high speed Internet connectivity but rather the larger migration to next generation, Internet Protocol-based telecommunications infrastructure than can provide not just fast Internet connections but also voice communication and TV/video -- both services that have very high rates of adoption in the United States.

U.S. residential DSL access shows no gain since 2006

U.S. residential DSL availability in the first half of 2008 continued to show no increase since it virtually hit the wall in 2006, with about a fifth of the nation still unable to access it.

That's pretty much the same story reported on this blog back in January based on Federal Communications Commission data covering the previous six-month period of July to December 2007. Readers can see for themselves by looking at the first column of Table 14 in the latest FCC report on Internet access released last week.

The same states continue to rank low on residential DSL access, including Vermont, Virginia, New Hampshire, Maine Michigan, Mississippi, Maryland and New York. The FCC withheld DSL availability for some states including Delaware, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Hawaii citing "firm confidentiality."

This redaction and other mechanisms to obfuscate where broadband infrastructure deployment exists and where it doesn't are increasingly cropping up at a time when government initiatives to increase broadband access demand greater transparency. It will be interesting to see how federal and state governments resolve this fundamental conflict.

App Rising: Ten ways broadband stimulus rules fail America

From App-Rising's perspective, the Notice of Funds Availability (NOFA) announced July 1 for the first round of $7.2 billion of grants and loan subsidies for U.S. broadband telecommunications infrastructure falls short of the goal of Obama administration and Congress in authorizing the funds as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Some key excerpts:

In large part this stimulus is business as usual for America's broadband policy, or lack thereof. We're continuing to muck around, shuffling our feet when the rest of the world is racing forward. It's not just that this NOFA isn't aspirational enough, it's that it does seem to be aspiring to anything at all. There's no ultimate goal for what it's setting out to achieve other than getting some people some broadband. And there's seemingly little being done to even use this as a learning experience that we can build from and help guide future investments. It feels like NTIA and RUS just took the safest route, followed the same steps that have failed us in the past, and at best only marginally improved the approach. Because of this I can't help but feel pessimistic about what the ultimate impact of the broadband stimulus will be.

There are a host of truly shovel-ready, truly innovative, true testbed showcase projects for us to be supporting through this broadband stimulus. But based on how things are looking so far, I can't help but feel like this NOFA is already a massive failure and the money hasn't even gone out the door yet.

I agree the rules governing this first NOFA issued two weeks ago create too much opportunity for incumbent providers to delay proposed projects in order to maintain their territorial hegemony that is a hallmark of America's privately built and operated telecommunications infrastructure.

On the other hand, App-Rising sees this first NOFA as all encompassing broadband policy. It is not. The broadband provisions of the economic stimulus legislation call for the creation of an omnibus U.S. broadband policy by Febuary 2010. Plus the funding allocation was described by Obama administration officials as a "down payment" on a badly needed upgrade of the nation's telecommunications infrastructure. Finally, there's a good chance the rules of the first NOFA will be revised based on complaints such as these in the second and third rounds of funding later this year and early 2010.

Fed up with "depressing" service, Virginia county forms broadband authority

BEDFORD — After several months of consideration, the Bedford County Board of Supervisors narrowly voted Monday to form a broadband authority.

The authority, which was enacted by a 4-3 vote after a public hearing, is a legal entity that can contract directly with private providers to deliver broadband access to residents and businesses. The seven-member board would serve as the authority and could appoint an advisory committee for technical assistance.

“We do envision this as a public-private partnership,” Assistant County Administrator Frank Rogers said of the authority’s purpose. He said the county “is not looking into the business of being a broadband provider” but rather a vehicle to help facilitate service to parts of the county that are not served or underserved.

BBC study finds broadband "not spots" not confined to rural areas

People tend to stereotype broadband black holes as a rural issue both in the U.S. and elsewhere. The assumption is often inaccurate and apparently so in the U.K, according to a study commissioned by the BBC:

The research revealed that so-called notspots are not limited to rural communities, with many in suburban areas and even streets in major towns.

The government has pledged a range of technologies to fill the gaps.

"We had assumed that these notspots were in remote parts of the countryside. That may be where the most vocal campaigners are but there is a high incidence of them in commuter belts," said Alex Salter, co-founder of broadband website SamKnows.

Tim Nulty attacks conventional thinking on rural fiber, broadband mapping

Here are two reports on a panel discussion held last week in Washington DC hosted by the Benton Foundation.

In both accounts, Tim Nulty -- who's making fiber to the premises a reality in Vermont -- stands out. Nulty trashes as "nonsense" conventional wisdom that there's little demand for fiber in less densely populated areas of the U.S. and that a business case can't be made for it in this dispatch by ars technica's Matthew Lasar:

"The standard traditional wisdom is 'Oh no you can't do that; impossible,'" Nulty noted. "'Can't make fiber work in rural areas. You've got to use some half-baked technology like WiFi or something like that." Au contraire, he told the audience. "It's actually significantly easier and cheaper to do fiber today than it was to do copper when our forefathers did it in the thirties."

And Nulty's right on the money when he suggests broadband mapping is nothing but a time wasting paper chase charade that makes incumbent telecommunications providers appear to be doing something instead of actually getting fiber on and in the ground. Nulty said this at the Benton event according to Blandin on Broadband:

Sometimes these maps are used to postpone action. A map of 200K access is not that helpful. In Vermont we had towns that were officially served – but ask people if they are served and they say no. The maps help get the incumbents off the hook. Access to info is good – but not if it distracts from promoting activity.

NC county opposes broadband black hole preservation act

The notion held by big telcos that their service areas are proprietary, exclusive franchises isn't sitting well with the Rockingham County, North Carolina Board of Commissioners. The board voted unanimously last week to oppose state legislation that would prohibit local governments from providing communications services to areas that private companies don’t serve.

More power to them. A telco's service territory is not a franchise. Telcos can't have it both ways, claiming they can't serve certain areas with advanced digital services because they are unprofitable but at the same time looking to state legislatures to lock up these areas with these broadband black hole preservation acts.

They're patently unfair to those mired in them: Residents and small businesses that needed high speed Internet access yesterday, last year and five years ago. They should not have to suffer the consequences of private market failure. Local governments and nonprofit telecom cooperatives should be permitted to step in where the private sector fails and provide the urgently needed solutions to bridge the digital divide unhindered by these audicious telco power grabs.

Thy neighbor's broadband

In the three years this blog has been in existence, by far the top Google search phrase that directs readers to it goes along the lines of "My neighbors can get high speed Internet/DSL/cable but I can't/why not?"

The common question ultimately reveals the hodge podge, Balkanized deployment of premises-based wire line broadband Internet access that's about as maddening as not being able to get telephone service when the folks next door can. Or them getting electricity while you're left off the grid.

The high frequency of the Google query directed to this blog also calls into question the widely repeated myth that broadband black holes can only be found deep in rural Iowa or Nebraska when in fact they turn up most anywhere in the United States.

The common Google search term also points up the technological shortcomings of DSL over copper, which is very sensitive to and degrades with distance, as well as the severely proscribed footpoints of cable deployments based on the number of dwellings per an arbitrary linear metric suitable only for neighborhoods laid out along urban gridlines.

Alabama governor announces initiative to boost broadband availability

Here's the news release issued by Alabama Gov. Bob Riley and an AP story based on the release. According to the AP story, the initiative -- funded mostly by federal grants -- will fund the deployment of both wireline and wireless broadband infrastructure in unserved and underserved areas of the state.

Riley has apparently grown frustrated at the lack of broadband access in Alabama, which according to Federal Communications Commission ranked among the lowest of all states as of June 2007 -- the most recent period for which the FCC has released data -- measured on wireline-based telco broadband availability.

Vermonters starved for broadband

This item at Burlington FreePress.com starkly illustrates how far behind the demand curve telcos and cable companies have gotten in rolling out high speed Internet. Chittenden County, Vermont residents needed broadband yesterday. More accurately, make that last year or the year before.

The lag between broadband demand and availability here and elsewhere throughout much of the U.S. is likely to continue for many more years. The basic broadband such as being deployed here is already all but obsolete and will be unable to support the increased use of video that is making up ever larger portions of Internet traffic.

Netflix Tivo deal still not ready for prime time

SAN FRANCISCO - Home entertainment trendsetters Netflix Inc. and TiVo Inc. are finally joining forces to deliver more movies and old TV episodes to their mutual subscribers, consummating a relationship that was supposed to come together four years ago.

This deal is still four years too early and not yet ready for prime time given the pathetic state of America's broadband telecommunications infrastructure. The throughput speeds for downloading movies simply don't hack it in much of the nation and many homes are still unable to get even basic broadband connections.

Telcos cynically cite demographic data to justify failure to invest in broadband infrastructure

Here's some typical telco funded propaganda on broadband. It's designed to shift and downplay the focus away from the lack of broadband availability due to inadequate telco infrastructure to broadband adoption rates. Once that's accomplished, it's time to play the socioeconomic card and decry low computer literacy among certain demographic groups.

Bottom line, the telcos are looking to justify their failure to upgrade their plants over the last mile to support broadband by blaming poor, older and less educated people who say they don't use computers and don't need broadband. In other words, we don't need to deploy broadband because you're simply too ignorant to use it even if we did.

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.

Go suck a satellite, AT&T spokesman reiterates

AT&T's marketing slogan "Your world delivered" should be followed by a huge asterisk directing readers to fine print that states:

* Provided you reside in our world, which may or may not exist in this or other dimensions, parallel universes or those comprised of dark matter and/or energy.

An AT&T spokesman drove home the point this week, telling the Eureka (Calif.) Reporter “People choose to live where they choose to live. (How profound) We have a broadband solution for everybody in areas where it’s not feasible to stretch the wireline network via satellite.”

In other words, "Your world isn't necessarily our world and if it's not, we're sorry, you'll just have to go suck a satellite." However, that's hardly a good option as some local residents quoted in the Reporter article note, pointing to its slow and less than reliable connections and high costs that make it more suitable for remote Arctic regions than the lower 48 states.

Connie Davis, a Web-based business owner and treasurer of the Hoopa (Calif.) Association, has the right idea when it comes to countering the big telco's lackadaisical stance. Davis says people cannot look to large telcos or even their local governments for help (the latter hardly surprising given California's difficulty in keeping both state and local govenment functioning these days) getting broadband. They must take matters into their own hands at the grass roots level and most importantly, think outside the box. Moreover, Davis has no time for delaying games packaged as "studies" of broadband availability and demand. "We don’t need to do studies," Davis says. "We don’t need to talk about this. We just need to do it because we need it.” I couldn't have said it better myself, Connie.

I hope the millions of folks stuck in broadband black holes throughout the U.S. follow her advice and form fiber optic and wireless cooperatives they can control and operate rather than leaving themselves at the mercy of big telcos and cable companies who are about as responsive to their needs as the former Soviet phone company.

Consultant: U.S. broadband market still has "a lot of growth potential"

Bruce Leichtman, president of Leichtman Research Group, said Monday that while U.S. telcos and cable companies added the fewest number of new broadband subscribers during this year's second quarter than any of the past seven years, it's not because there are no new customers to be had. According to Leichtman, "there's a lot of growth potential out there" among people who use dial-up or don't have Internet access at all.

Read the full article at Yahoo news.

ISPs target remote areas of Northern California for state subsidized broadband infrastructure

A review of broadband infrastructure projects filed by the July 24 soft application deadline for 40 percent buildout subsidies from the California Advanced Services Fund to service unserved and underserved areas of the state shows nearly all of the proposed projects are located in Northern California. Most are in ZIP Codes and census tracts in North Coast counties and heavily concentrated in remote Sierra Nevada counties.

The providers -- whose identities remain under wraps until the close of the application process being overseen by the California Public Utilities Commission -- have apparently chosen to deploy outside of metro areas where they believe they could face near term competition from the telco/cable duopoly. That unfortunately means for those mired in broadband black holes where telcos and/or cable companies have limited, incomplete broadband infrastructure in parts of metro area counties such as the Sierra Nevada foothill counties of El Dorado and Placer and portions of Silicon Valley, relief doesn't appear likely anytime soon from one of these subsidized ISPs. In El Dorado County alone, for example, the California Broadband Task Force identified more than five dozen communities that aren't provided any wireline broadband services -- and that's not counting the numerous broadband black holes adjacent to U.S Highway 50.

Providers seeking the CASF funding were allowed to propose either wireline or wireless broadband projects providing minimum throughput of 3 Mbs down and 1 Mbs up.

Update 9/3/08: The CPUC has released ZIP Codes, Maps and Census Block Groups for proposed projects filed by the Aug. 25 soft deadline that would build out broadband infrastructure to underserved areas, which the CPUC defines as those where broadband is available but no facilities-based provider offers service at asymmetrical speeds of at least 3 Mbs for downloads and 1 Mbs on the upload side.

As with the proposals for unserved areas, defined as defined those not served by any form of facilities-based broadband, or where
Internet connectivity is available only through dial-up service or satellite, the vast majority of the proposed projects for underserved areas are situated in Northern California. This latest batch of proposals is heavily concentrated in Sierra Nevada and Sierra Nevada foothill counties including Toulumne, Mariposa, Amador and Calavaras counties.