U.S. at crossroads on telecom infrastructure modernization. The choice is to look to the past -- or to the future.

The United States stands at a crossroads when it comes to modernizing its telecommunications infrastructure. Many observers including Susan Crawford and this writer believe that modernization must be future-focused, providing an infrastructure that’s sufficiently robust and able to accommodate the rapidly growing demand for bandwidth that comes with the transition to digital, Internet-protocol based telecommunications. That means replacing the legacy metallic infrastructure that worked well for telephone and cable TV service in the 20^th century with the infrastructure of the 21^st: fiber optic connections serving every American doorstep. The future is big and it demands big thinking.

Others such as Doug Brake of the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation argue for a retrogressive approach that encourages us to think small. It proposes incremental fixes, prioritizing those areas worst impacted by market failure borne out of the misguided heavy reliance on investor-owned infrastructure. Instead of producing a future of bandwidth abundance where the term “broadband speed” is obsoleted, Brake’s incremental outlook would condemn Americans to a future of ongoing bandwidth poverty and its adverse effects for the larger socio-economy.

Copper culprits hasten obsolescence of twisted pair

The obsolescence of twisted pair copper cable is being hastened by thieves who want to quickly resign it to the scrap heap in order to recycle the valuable metal and put money in their pockets.  By comparison, the tiny glass strands of the modern standard for telecommunications -- fiber optic cable -- offer no such market incentive to copper culprits.

Check out this Fresno Bee story that reports that the crooks have gotten so brazen they are toppling utility poles in order to get at AT&T's cables.

BPL an exercise in obsolescence

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

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

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

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.

Obama administration should offer incentives for homeowner-owned fiber over the last mile

The incoming administration of U.S. President-Elect Barack Obama has tagged rebuilding America's aging infrastructure as a key policy objective. That includes its badly outdated last mile telecommunications infrastructure in order to make broadband accessible to more Americans.

Since the primary inadequacy of the telecommunications infrastructure when it comes to supporting broadband-enabled IP services isn't with the long haul and mid-mile portion of the network but rather the so-called "last mile" local access network, the administration should concentrate its efforts on developing incentives to hasten the change out of copper cable to fiber optic cable over this segment.

The administration should pay particular note of a recently issued working paper by the New America Foundation authored by Derek Slater and Tim Wu. The paper, Homes with Tails What If You Could Own Your Internet Connection, recommends state and federal tax credits to create incentives for homeowners to spend a $2,500 to $4,000 to connect their homes to last mile fiber built by existing carriers, neighborhood cooperatives, developers, local governments and private fiber optic vendors.

The authors seem to acknowledge that while there's near universal agreement that fiber over the last mile is essential to the future of America's telecommunications system and the critical role it plays in the nation's economy, there also is a substantial amount of inertia on both the supply and demand sides of the equation that keeps the U.S. stuck behind a technologically obsolete "copper wall" built decades before the Internet was created. The limitations of telcos' circa 1970s and earlier copper cable plants have become painfully obvious to all too many Americans who have vainly attempted for years to subscribe to their telco's DSL (or VDSL)-based services, only to be told it can't reach their homes or the copper cable is too old and degraded to support it or find it can't reliably deliver the throughput they'd like.

Telcos that have to produce quarterly profits are inherently conservative and won't make a long term capital investment in deploying fiber over their entire networks. They argue there's not enough evidence that homeowners will subscribe to fiber-based services at a sufficient "take rate" to justify such a major expenditure unless homes are densely packed cheek to jowl, thus reducing their investment risk. The problem is a lot of Americans don't live in such neighborhoods nor have any desire to do so. And since telcos operate in a duopolistic and often monopolistic market environment, telcos eschew meaningful market research and don't get hard data that might indicate that if they built fiber, customers will sign up for advanced services.

Hence, Slater and Wu posit -- correctly in this blogger's opinion-- that it falls to consumers themselves to break down the copper wall in favor of fiber over the last mile since risk averse telcos will continue to default to the safe status quo whenever possible.

The authors aptly acknowledge that many homeowners might balk at dropping a few thousand bucks to connect their homes to locally owned fiber and that there needs to be a compelling financial argument in addition to bringing their dwellings into the modern telecommunications age. In this regard, they point to a study by RVA & Associates, a market research firm that focuses on fiber networks, estimating that fiber connection increases the value of a home by about $4000. If the Obama administration combined that with a tax break, the proposition becomes even more appealing, particularly along with incentives for mortgage companies and other lenders to extend low interest fiber loans to homeowners. The tax breaks could be partially offset by stimulating economic activity that would bring in additional tax revenues.

Slater and Wu are to be commended for advancing the discussion beyond the true but tired themes of how much the nation is falling behind other developed countries when it comes to broadband and needs a national broadband policy to outlining a strategy to make it happen. It's no longer useful to call for a vague "national broadband policy." Since the U.S. is already years behind where it should be when it comes to broadband telecommunications infrastructure, what's sorely needed an action plan and rapid implementation. The solutions don't have to be perfect when the dreary U.S. broadband status quo is unacceptable and grows increasingly so as time goes on. As business gurus Tom Peters and Robert H. Waterman Jr. advised in their 1982 book In Search of Excellence: Ready, Fire, Aim.

Broadband squared: state leverging fiber for roadway information and local telecommunications service

Here's an interesting item out of Massachusetts courtesy of The Berkshire Eagle that illustrates how fiber infrastructure can be leveraged for multiple uses. In this case, providing traffic data while also providing backhaul capacity to help serve the western part of the state where broadband access has been severely constrained.

White spaces broadband faces uncertain future

Expectations should be tempered contemplating the implications of this week's action by the Federal Communications Commission approving the unlicensed use of television broadcast "white spaces" spectrum being freed up by the February 2009 transition to all digital TV broadcasting to deliver wireless broadband.

There are many unknowns as to whether white spaces will ultimately deliver broadband over the airwaves in the real world or whether it will remain an impractical concept that goes the way of Broadband over Power Lines (BPL).

They include a probable years long legal challenge by broadcasters worried over potential interference despite FCC field testing showing otherwise. It should be borne in mind the purpose of the FCC testing was to assess potential interference with broadcast and short range microphone signals. How white spaces broadband will perform and the kind of throughput it can reliably deliver remain major unknowns until it's actually deployed.

White spaces broadband could well end up being too little to late once the legal challenges have run their course given that Clearwire is already rolling out 2.5 Ghz WiMAX in some areas and deployment of 4G wireless broadband by telcos is expected by 2010.

Potential key advantages of white spaces broadband over these other wireless technologies is superior range and greater ability to penetrate trees and buildings since it operates in the 700 Mhz TV spectrum.

An additional challenge could come from telcos who may resist providing the necessary "fat pipe" backhaul for white spaces broadband if they see it as a competitive threat to their own wireline and wireless broadband franchises. That could generate more lengthy litigation such that between Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and telcos over access and pricing of line access under the Telecommuncations Act of 1996.

Finally, all wireless broadband technologies at this point don't appear likely to be able to match the fiber gold standard of 100 Mbs and greater throughputs that will increasingly be in demand for fixed broadband services. For the foreseeable, that relegates wireless broadband -- likely including white spaces broadband if it comes to market -- to a transitional broadband technology for fixed locations in areas unserved and underserved by wireline broadband providers and for general mobile use.

Green movement could spur public sector investment in fiber to the home

When the 1996 Telecommunications Reform Act was enacted, it was anticipated it would drive competition giving most Americans fiber optic service by 2006. Didn't happen. Plenty of mid-mile fiber got laid but much of it was never lit up following the dot com bust of 2000. Then in the years following the dot com downturn, telcos opted to avoid the CAPEX of fiber over the last mile and instead retain and depreciate their aging legacy copper cable plants and deploy underpowered DSL service over them that left millions without broadband access.

Now the Fiber to the Home Council (FTTH) expects increased interest in reducing carbon emissions will drive fiber over the last mile. Updating the last mile to fiber will deliver substantial environmental benefits in the short term outweighing the environmental costs of deployment in as little as six years, the FTTH says, citing a study by the consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).

The study found that by 2010 and later, an estimated 10 percent of the working population with FTTH service would telecommute an average of three days a week because bandwidth improvements will make working from home more feasible. That's a lot less driving and reduced gasoline consumption and savings on road maintenance and construction.

Since government is in business of building and maintaining roads, it indirectly benefits by investing in last mile fiber such as selling bonds to finance its build out as Monticello, Minnesota and other local governments have done. At this point, it appears to be far easier to make the business case for fiber to the home in the public sector -- which can raise more patient capital -- than the private sector where telcos and other providers require rapid returns on their capital investments that has discouraged them from deploying fiber to the home.

Misgivings in Maryland over Verizon FiOS reach

Charles County, Maryland commissioners are concerned a franchise deal the county is finalizing with Verizon to install Verizon's proprietary FiOS fiber optic cable in county rights of way won't serve the county's telecommunications needs.

SouthMdNews.com reports:

‘‘I want to know how we’re improving what we [have] now,” said commissioners’ President F. Wayne Cooper (D). He compared the pending Verizon deal to that of a builder making big promises in order to secure approval for a small project.

‘‘This sounds an awful lot like ‘let me build the retail now, and I’ll build the offices later.’”

Again, staff was reluctant to discuss the details of the Verizon agreement on the record. However, Rick Elrod, the county’s consultant for the Verizon deal, admitted that the Verizon project being discussed would not be as broad as the commissioners would like.

Sounds like the commissioners need to consider alternatives such as open access fiber lest they end up with angry constituents due to the limitations of the proposed Verizon FiOS project.

4G wireless broadband seen as potential game changing technology

Fourth generation (referred to as 4G or LTE--Long Term Evolution) wireless service expected to be deployed between 2010 and 2012 has the potential to be a game changer for IP-based advanced telecommunications services. The GSM Association (GSMA) predicts the technology will be able to provide 100 Mbps broadband connections, rivaling the throughput of fiber optic wireline services such as Verizon's FiOS, according to a report published this week in mobile news. The big questions of course are whether and when it can.

Blair Levin, an analyst with Stifel Nicolaus and a reportedly a rumored Federal Communications Commission nominee in an Obama administration, apparently thinks 4G will alter the playing field in broadband, telling this week's CoBank Communications Industry Executive Forum in Colorado that it has the potential to dramatically expand the cannibalization of wireline-based connections. That means people will not only ditch their voice landlines as they have in droves over the past few years, but also their cable and DSL-based broadband services since 4G's speeds will surpass these and at least approximate the 50Mbs throughput of pure fiber plays offered by Verizon, SureWest Communications and others.

But once again, 4G's broadband capabilities remain speculative and no one yet knows if 4G can really deliver on its potential and whether its costs can support a business model allowing it be be widely offered in the same footprint currently covered by existing 3G wireless services, which in some areas without wireline-based services is the sole terrestrial broadband option. Additionally, 4G must overcome the high latency that can render 3G connections decidedly less than snappy.

Meanwhile, the Sprint and Clearwire predict with expected regulatory approval by year end, their WiMAX rollout will leapfrog 3G and offer a technologically superior alternative with better range. Longer range translates into fewer transmission towers and lower latency. Not only does WiMAX's longer range make it more suitable for less densely populated areas, it also reduces the need for fiber backhaul -- less widely available outside of metro areas -- since there will be fewer transmission sites to feed.

Looking ahead over the next several years, it appears likely the U.S. wireless broadband market will bifurcate with 4G/LTE-based systems run by the big telcos like AT&T and Verizon dominating in metro areas and WiMAX and WiMAX players such as Sprint/Clearwire taking control at the fringes and outside of metro areas.

EE Times: European firms engaged in R&D consortium to drive down cost of fiber optic infrastructure

LONDON — Optical components specialist Ignis Photonyx AS (Birkeröd, Denmark) is leading a European R&D project dubbed GigaWaM, that will tackle one of the biggest barriers to the uptake of next-generation broadband access technology Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) PON -– the current high cost of the components needed to deliver a wavelength to each customer's home.

One of the major partners in the project — which is being funded by the European Commission by approximately $4.7 million — is Ericsson AB.

The GigaWaM (Gigabit access passive optical network using wavelength division multiplexing) team also includes two German firms, component manufacturer FiconTEC GmbH and laser diode vendor VertiLas GmbH , and focuses on developing "application specific optical components... with a high level of integration in addition to new manufacturing processes" with a view to enabling a WDM-PON system cost per subscriber tha is lower than current GPON systems can manage.

Population density not determining factor in Verizon fiber deployment, spokesman says

More so than population density, the condition of the existing copper cable plant influences where Verizon plans to deploy its FiOS fiber optic infrastructure, a Verizon spokesman told the Worcester (Mass.) Business Journal.

"If you have to replace the copper in a particular area, there's no sense putting more copper in there," the spokesman told the newspaper.

Another factor driving fiber is the need to offer bundled services to attract residential customers who have abandoned POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) over copper in favor of wireless phone service.

Seattle gets serious about building municipal fiber infrastructure

The Puget Sound Business Journal reports Seattle city officials, growing increasingly frustrated with the metal wire-based broadband offerings of incumbent telco/cable duopolists Qwest and Comcast, are preparing to issue a request for proposals to build a fiber optic telecommunications infrastructure.

According to the newspaper, in 2005 a city-commissioned task force recommended a fiber-to-the-premise (FTTP) system as the best way to provide Seattle's populace with high-bandwidth voice, video and data options.

Fed up with dial up, 20 Vermont towns give green light to fiber infrastructure

Residents of 20 Vermont towns have had it with dial up Internet access that was state of the art when Bill Clinton was starting his first term as president and are sick and tired of waiting for an alternative from an unresponsive telco/cable duopoly.

In nearly unanimous voting Tuesday, March 4, the townspeople approved nonbinding resolutions to create a subscriber-funded fiber optic infrastructure provding Internet, telephone and cable television opportunities in central and southern Vermont.

Qwest bullish on residential broadband, plans $1.8B FTTN deployment

Dow Jones reports today that Denver-based telco Qwest Communications International plans to spend $1.8 billion to build fiber to the node (FTTN) infrastructure serving 1.5 million homes in its top 23 markets.

Qwest joins AT&T in adopting the lower cost FTTN fiber/copper hybrid architecture, which AT&T is deploying as Project Lightspeed in selected areas to support its triple play IPTV video/Internet/voice bundle marketed under the brand name U-Verse.

By contrast, the nation's second largest telco, Verizon, has opted for a costlier Fiber To the Home (FTTN) architecture that offers residential customers higher throughput speeds, greater potential for expanded service offerings, and reduced risk of technological obsolescence.

Qwest estimates the FTTN deployment will run about $175 per home -- far less than FTTH. Qwest says about 60 percent of its upgraded homes will have speeds up to 7 Mbs.

Vermont towns strive to enter modern era of telecommunications

Their residents understandably sick and tired of sluggish "dialug" Internet connectivity that was state of the art technology in the early 1990s, the Associated Press reports more than 20 Vermont towns are forming a community owned, subscriber funded nonprofit to deploy fiber optic telecommunications infrastructure.

According to the AP, a financial institution would finance the system and lease it back to the nonprofit, which would cover the lease with subscriber fees that would run around $120 a month for a "triple play" bundle of TV programming, voice and Internet service.

Firm claims to give new lease on life to DSL--at "up to" 400 Mbs

A Canadian firm claims it has developed proprietary DSL transmission technology that would allow DSL to run over copper pair at speeds "up to" 400 Mbs, easily lapping cable. Moreover, boasts Calgary, Alberta -based Genesis Technical Systems Corp, its Bonded DSL Rings(tm) Technology (BDR), is so economical to deploy that telcos could get back their investment in one year, even in rural areas.

The company elaborates in a press release issued today:

High quality television over copper telephone lines can be a reality for Telcos using Bonded DSL Rings(TM). Bandwidths of up to 400 megabits per second - at a cost much lower than fiber - are achievable using BDR. This will allow Telcos to compete head-to-head with cable companies at a price point that is attractive to consumers and very profitable for Telcos.

The company claims it demonstrated BDR's viability in proof of concept demonstrations at trade shows in 2007. The real proof of concept as this company likely well knows is whether telcos buy its claimed breakthrough that provides extended life to DSL, an interim wireline broadband technology on the road to fiber.

There have been a number of companies claiming breakthroughs such as this in DSL technology. Given the fact that copper is a poor transmission medium for broadband due to the tendency for signals to degrade quickly over short distances, such claims should be met with a healthy degree of skepticism.

In addition, a diagram of the technology's components at the Genesis Web site shows it requires remote field equipment. The telcos have long had remote DSL terminals. The issue isn't lack of technology but rather an unwillingness on the part of the telcos to invest in infrastructure and equipment to deliver broadband.

Trend: Rural telcos move to fiber

Two years ago, only about 12 percent of rural telcos were utilizing fiber to the home (FTTH) and/or fiber to the curb (FTTC) to offer broadband to customers. Last year, that number had grown to 28 percent. It now stands at 32 percent, according to surveys of members of the National Telecommunications Cooperative Association, and the vast majority of survey respondents (84 percent) already utilize fiber fed nodes to extend the reach of their digital subscriber line service.

Report: DSL must make way for fiber

Many people fail to understand that the world's most predominant method to deliver residential broadband Internet access -- Digital Subscriber Line or DSL -- is an interim technology and not a viable long term option.

I and others have observed that as broadband bandwidth consumption increases, driven in large part by the proliferation of bandwidth intensive full motion video, DSL capacity will grow increasingly tight. Already there are reports that DSL users are straining the telco network, with users reporting their connection speeds declining or losing their connection altogether, often during night and evening hours.

Like the U.S., Europe and much of the world gets broadband access via DSL. Consultant Frost & Sullivan is out with a report warning Europe must wean itself off of DSL and migrate to fiber optic to the home (FTTH) which offers far greater carrying capacity than copper cable-based DSL.

Ma Bell forsakes existing customers, deploys fiber for new ones

AT&T doesn't give a rat's patootie for its existing customer base, large numbers of which have no wireline broadband options at all.

New customers however get first class treatment and state of the art fiber optic connections to the Internet.

Way to go, Ma Bell! If you don't want your existing customer base and thus don't want to invest in it, why don't you sell it off instead of letting it die on the copper vine?