FCC Chair Pai falsely characterizes satellite Internet as innovative telecom technology

REMARKS OF FCC CHAIRMAN AJIT PAI
AT THE SATELLITE INDUSTRY ASSOCIATION’S
21ST ANNUAL LEADERSHIP DINNER
WASHINGTON, DC
MARCH 12, 2018

Next-generation satellites are bringing new competition to the broadband marketplace and new opportunities for rural Americans who have had no access to high-speed Internet access for far too long. That’s why the FCC under my leadership has moved quickly to give a green light to satellite innovators.

Here, U.S. Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai falsely characterizes satellite delivered Internet connectivity as innovative. It is not. It's been around since the 1990s as a forced option for Americans who needed better than glacial dialup Internet access over legacy copper telephone lines but weren't offered DSL or later by cable companies.

We’ve also made satellite broadband providers eligible for our upcoming Connect America Fund Phase II reverse auction, which will provide up to $2 billion over ten years to expand broadband deployment in rural America. To be sure, I understand that the satellite industry disagreed with some of the decisions that the FCC made in developing rules for the reverse auction. We are forging new ground with this first-of-its-kind auction, and in doing so we had to make some hard choices. But, I nonetheless hope that satellite companies will study this opportunity closely and choose to participate in the reverse auction. 

This is an incredible waste of subsidy funding. With satellite, the FCC is subsidizing a substandard and kludgy form of connectivity subject to high latency and bandwidth usage caps. Subsidies should instead go to deploying fiber to the premise connections that offer far superior connectivity and aren't as subject to obsolescence.

Go suck a satellite

That's the message to adjacent landline redlined households seeing this tree placard pitching satellite Internet service. That's Comcast cable on the nearby utility pole. Dateline: El Dorado County, California.

FCC Chair Pai papers over market failure as regulatory failure, claims satellite-based advanced telecom is competitive

Can a free market solve the digital divide? | WUWM: Pai: There are two different aspects to the answer to that. No. 1 is that I have focused on digital redlining as an issue

Wood: We should define what digital redlining is.

Pai: Digital redlining is the notion that within a certain geographic area, a company might have a business case for building out in areas A, B and C. But in area D they simply say, "We're not going to deploy there because we don't see the return on the investment," or for whatever reason. So from a regulatory perspective, we want to make sure that there are no rules standing in the way of them doing that. 

Had regulations been obstacles to deployment of advanced telecommunications infrastructure over the past 20 years or so, they would have been well identified by now. The issue of regulatory impediments is a red herring. As Pai points out, the issue is primarily economic insofar as redlining occurs in areas where the return on investment isn't sufficiently robust to justify the capital expenditure. Market failure is not regulatory failure. 

Pai: Absolutely. I mean, we can't punish companies to the extent that they don't build out and they don't have federal obligations. But what we do try to do is encourage them as strongly as we can. If they're violating FCC rules, certainly we will go after them for doing that. And in the meantime we're going to try to keep encouraging competition as best we can. Some of these smaller providers too, they're really providing an impetus in the marketplace. A couple of months ago, we approved for the first time a satellite company's application. They want to deploy 720 satellites in low-earth orbit. And they think that would be a really substantial competitor to terrestrial.

Instead of connecting all homes and businesses with modern fiber optic infrastructure, Pai is tacitly endorsing a lower service standard provided by satellites that can't provide the carrying capacity to accommodate rapidly growing demand for bandwidth that is doubling about every three years. As many Americans who reluctantly rely upon it are painfully aware, satellite connectivity is a poor substitute and hardly competition for terrestrial landline telecom infrastructure.

In 2017 America, there is no collective “we” or “our” when it comes to telecom infrastructure

In 2017 America, being served by landline digital telecommunications infrastructure isn’t about where we live, with nearly all homes served by water, electrical power and other utilities. There is no collective we. It’s all about where you live. Especially when landline infrastructure ends just down the road, over the hill or around the bend. You and more specifically your home are in the wrong spot and that’s too bad for you.

Case in point is a direct mail satellite Internet service provider advertisement offering “AFFORDABLE, HIGH-SPEED INTERNET + DISH that’s “AVAILABLE WHERE YOU LIVE.” That’s because the target market is premises redlined for landline by legacy incumbent telephone and cable companies.

Despite widespread agreement telecommunications is a utility that should be available to all and a network we all share and use, it is far from that in a nation where landline telecom infrastructure availability is spotty, comparable to a Swiss cheese full of holes.

FCC inquiry could set stage to further reduce pressure on telcos, cablecos to deploy last mile infrastructure

Now that the U.S. Federal Communications Commission appears to be whiffing on enforcing Title II’s universal service and anti-redlining provisions relative to Internet service despite deeming Internet service a common carrier utility in a rulemaking earlier this year, it appears to be setting the stage to give big incumbent telephone and cable companies another potential pass on modernizing and building out their last mile infrastructures.

The FCC signaled that possible gambit this week in opening its annual review as required by Section 706 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 to determine whether advanced telecommunications capability is being deployed to all Americans in a reasonable and timely manner.

In previous reviews, the FCC examined advanced telecom infrastructure providing both landline premise as well as mobile wireless and premise satellite service but opted to include only premise landline service in its determination, citing “significant concerns about the quality and reliability of the mobile and satellite service data” as well as factors including latency and usage allowances.

The 2015 review determined infrastructure deployment remained untimely as in previous reviews dating back nearly two decades and that 55 million Americans – 17 percent of the population – lack access to advanced telecommunications services capable of supporting high-quality voice, data, graphics and video.

For its next annual review, the FCC announced an inquiry this week seeking comment on whether mobile wireless and satellite should be included:

While fixed terrestrial broadband service can have advantages for high-capacity home use, mobile broadband has become increasingly important for many uses, including connecting on social media, navigating during travel, communicating with family and friends, receiving timely news updates, and more. In the event mobile broadband is added to the assessment, the FCC is seeking comment on what speed of service should serve as the benchmark for assessing availability. The FCC is also proposing to consider the availability of fixed satellite broadband in its annual assessment of fixed broadband availability.

Such a move could also pave the way for creating a benchmark lower than the new speed standard of 25 Mbps down and 3 Mbps up established in the 2015 Section 706 review since this level of service is not offered by mobile wireless and satellite providers. That would make it easier for the FCC to declare advanced telecom infrastructure is in fact being timely deployed. Doing so would effectively sanction the deplorable status quo that has existed for many years where about one in five customer premises remain unable to obtain premise landline Internet service.

It's a bird, it's a plane, it's the rebirth of satellite Internet | Network World

It's a bird, it's a plane, it's the rebirth of satellite Internet | Network World: There's a ton of room for providers who want to help people in remote or sparsely-populated areas get online, both at home and abroad, dovetailing nicely with the Obama administration's stated goal of getting more Americans online in service of furthering education and stimulating the economy.

The problem is there is also a ton of premises on satellite Internet that aren't in remote or sparsely populated areas of the United States. They're at the outer edges of metro areas, exurbs and semi-rural areas lying outside of the limited footprints of landline Internet infrastructure. While mainstream and tech media may hype a "rebirth," the fact is satellite sucks and is a national embarrassment that so many still rely on it in 2015.

No fast or slow lanes for Internet? New rules proposed | The Sacramento Bee

No fast or slow lanes for Internet? New rules proposed | The Sacramento Bee: "Net neutrality" means that whether you're trying to buy a necklace on Etsy, stream the season premiere of Netflix's "House of Cards" or watch a music video on Google's YouTube, your Internet service provider would have to load all of those websites equally quickly.

This is a much less important problem in the United States than inadequate Internet infrastructure that leaves millions of American homes and small businesses to substandard slow dialup, satellite or costly bandwidth rationed mobile wireless connections. The Federal Communications Commission recently reported that Internet infrastructure is not being deployed in a timely manner.

Colorado measure would bar Internet infrastructure subsidies to small towns served by satellite ISPs

Broadband act could expand service in Chaffee County - TheMountainMail.com: Free Content: As introduced, the bill’s language would define unserved areas as: areas outside a municipality or a city with less than 5,000 people in which a majority of households do not have access to at least one satellite and one non-satellite broadband provider.

Summed up in two words: Useless and laughable. It basically tells Coloradans with no other premise Internet options to go suck a satellite and be happy with the crappy customer experience, bandwidth "fair access" caps and poor value. A bill only the incumbent preservatives could love. Indeed, they probably drafted it.

Satellite broadband: can it light up the UK's broadband blackspots? | News | TechRadar

Satellite broadband: can it light up the UK's broadband blackspots? | News | TechRadar: Due to the distance the signal travels, latencies never dropped below 700ms and hovered around the 800ms mark. Even with predictive caching that makes web browsing speedy, there's always that near-second delay traversing pages. It's not annoying enough to stop you browsing, but it just doesn't feel as snappy as a landline internet connection.

Despite new sooper dooper "Surfbeam" technology, latency remains sub par as this story shows and bandwidth is costly and rationed. This item appeared the same day as this ridiculous story on Google's O3b satellite venture that will supposedly provide 1 gigabit speeds via medium orbit satellites. And at latencies of less than 150 milliseconds, according to this IDG News Service account.

I'm not buying it. Satellite Internet sucks, period. It cannot support reliable voice or real time video connections or provide a high quality Internet connectivity user experience. Google should scuttle this misadventure and instead partner with community fiber projects instead of perpetuating this substandard Internet connection scheme to as a poor substitute to badly needed fiber to the premise infrastructure. 

Verizon Hopes to Nudge Some From Wired to Wireless - NYTimes.com

Verizon Hopes to Nudge Some From Wired to Wireless - NYTimes.com

This story illustrates why communities must build their own fiber networks.  The incumbents like Verizon aren't going to do the job.  As the story notes, that leaves residents and business owners with lousy options:  poor voice quality over garbled wireless premises phone service that can go out in a prolonged power failure and data capped satellite Internet service.

Dish Network Offers To Buy Sprint In $25.5 Billion Deal

Dish Network Offers To Buy Sprint In $25.5 Billion Deal: For years, Dish has been able to grow rapidly by luring cable TV subscribers with better deals. But its subscriber numbers have been flat for the past three years. Unlike TV cables, satellite dishes aren't good conduits for Internet access. That means that Dish and larger rival DirecTV have been left behind in the rush to connect homes to broadband, while cable has been able to retain customers by offering TV, Internet and phone bundles

Nor are mobile wireless networks good "conduits" for premises Internet access.  This is a move of desperation on the part of Dish Network.  The trend is toward high capacity, low latency premises Internet service delivered via cable or optimally, fiber optic infrastructure.  Both the satellite TV providers and the dedicated satellite Internet providers such as HughesNet are caught on the wrong side of the trend and face a limited future.

Large WISP bites the dust; Satellites swarm for former customers

Main Street Broadband shuts down | JCFLORIDAN

According its LinkedIn profile, Atlanta-based Main Street Broadband, LLC is a privately held wireless broadband service provider "committed to bringing affordable high speed internet access and digital phone service to the un-served and underserved markets in the southeast" using "the latest in wireless broadband technology for both residential and business services."

The reason for the shutdown of the WISP according to the linked newspaper story is loan funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Rural Utilities Service was terminated.

Fixed wireless premise service like Main Street's plays an important interim role until communities and alternative business models emerge to construct fiber to the premises infrastructure needed for today and tomorrow's Internet protocol-based services.

Now satellite Internet providers are swarming to scoop up the defunct WISP's former customers.  Unfortunately for them, they now like all too many Americans face the lousy choice of sucking a satellite and its punitive bandwidth caps and poor connection quality or turning back the calendar to 1992 and dialugging over obsolete legacy telco copper cable.  But it doesn't have to be that way.  Communities can and should invest the necessary time, money and energy to build their own fiber infrastructure and operate it prudently and sustainably as a community and economic development asset.

Drop DSL and go suck our sooper dooper satellite!

Satellite Internet providers that serve a captive market of those who are off the Internet grid because of a lack of terrestrial infrastructure now hope to attract DSL subscribers by offering higher speeds. But as this USA Today article points out, converting DSL customers won't be easy since they have to buy the dish and installation. Not to mention they'd be getting much higher latency, hardly worth the trade off for higher speeds.

Satellite providers are a national embarrassment that point up how just how much of the United States remains a backward Internet backwater. The service should only be available in the Alaskan wilderness and places like Buford, Wyoming (Pop. 1).

Satellite Internet provider targets U.S. exurbs as growth market

The notion that being disconnected from the Internet is a problem largely confined to rural areas isn't true. The latest evidence comes courtesy of Arunas Slekys, vice president of corporate marketing for satellite Internet provider Hughes Network Systems.

Slekys told The Washington Post that Hughes' best growth prospects aren't necessarily deep rural America but the outer rings of metro areas where telcos and cable companies haven't built out their wireline infrastructures to provide premises Internet connections. "These aren't people sitting on a mountainside in Idaho," Slekys told The Post. "They're actually exurban. You can go 20 or 30 miles outside of D.C. and there are a lot of areas where you can't get terrestrial broadband."

Indeed. Ditto for other metro regions of the United States. Living in the exurbs often means no Internet, which won't help property values recover in despite their typically upmarket homes.

Slekys makes a excellent point about the extent of the problem in the U.S. But his company's solution is, frankly, not a solution. Even on an interim basis until terrestrial infrastructure is constructed to serve these offline areas. Satellite Internet connections are notoriously sluggish due to the high signal latency caused by the 46,000 mile round trip to the satellite and back to the Earth's surface and are prone to frequent drop outs. Then there are the dreaded FAPs, aka Fair Access Policies. This fine print in satellite providers' contracts allows them to slow your connection to dial up speed -- often for days on end -- if the connection is used too much or for applications that use a lot of bandwidth such as video.

So those of you in the offline exurbs, forget about streaming Netflix films on a satellite connection unless you want to spend some time in FAP jail with your Internet connection slowed to a crawl. And if you're an executive who lives in an upscale exurban property or a small business owner/consultant, forget about using your satellite connection to videoconference with your offices or to exchange large files. The connection isn't sufficiently robust and stable to support it.

Suck a bigger, faster satellite!

Satellite companies have been the also-rans of Internet providers. They serve a little more than one million customers, most in rural areas that have no other options. Their services can be painfully slow and cost twice as much as high-speed broadband. But two companies, WildBlue and HughesNet, are now in a race to change all that.

Both plan to launch satellites in the next couple of years that will dwarf their predecessors in space. WildBlue’s alone will have 10 times the capacity of its three current satellites combined. Such behemoths, the companies say, will enable them, at prices similar to what they now charge, to provide Internet service at speeds many times faster than they now offer — as fast, in some cases, as fiber connections.

Further, the companies argue, satellites can provide service more easily and cheaply per subscriber than their earthbound cable and phone company competitors, particularly to the 14 million to 24 million Americans who live in areas without broadband service.

Read more of this New York Times story by clicking here. (Registration required)
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This is a crock and a travesty. Internet protocol based services via satellite will never measure up to terrestrial fiber telecom infrastructure and should never be offered anywhere outside of the polar and most remote regions of the globe.

The mere fact that satellite Internet connectivity is sold anywhere in the lower 48 United States is and should be regarded as a national embarrassment showing the rest of the world how far behind the information technology curve the nation has fallen.

Memo to HughesNet and Wildblue: sell your new and improved services to SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) in order to allow off world intelligent life to connect to the global Internet.

"Broadband in a box" is prime example of going backward on telecom infrastructure

Stories like this one in Telephony Online depict the U.S. headed backward in a race to the bottom rather than forward when it comes to deploying advanced telecommunications infrastructure. This so-called "Broadband in a Box" might make sense for some isolated part of the Third World. But what's sad is it's being deployed in the United States of America. West Virginia, to be exact.

"Broadband in a Box" combines two of the absolute worst forms of Internet Protocol-based connectivity: sucking a satellite on the downlink and dialugging for the uplink.

It's so pathetic that it rightfully doesn't even meet the U.S. government's definition of broadband -- already arguably obsolete at 768 Kbs down and 200 Kbs up -- for the purposes of broadband infrastructure subsidies in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

Just say no to broadband stimulus funding for satellite

Here's another boondoggle in the making: a plea by satellite Internet providers for some of the $7.2 billion in federal economic stimulus funding for broadband infrastructure.

Giving even a dime to satellite Internet providers would be a major mistake and waste of taxpayer dollars. Doing so would underwrite an inferior and costly stopgap technology intended to temporarily fill in where advanced telecommunications infrastructure is lacking -- and not be a permanent solution. Talk about unclear on the concept.

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.

AT&T's Web site engages prospective broadband customers in circular shell game

I recently ran a drill I've been running for the past four years to check wireline broadband availability on AT&T's Web site. The availability search engine would predictably come back with the news that DSL was "unfortunately" not available at my location. Unfortunate indeed since I was ready to order it in early 2003. I was then invited to register to be notified "if" DSL became available. In the meantime, the message suggested, I may qualify for satellite Internet. Newsflash to AT&T: In case you hadn't noticed, I don't live in the Arctic Circle; there's fiber just 1.5 miles from my location. I'll pass.

Then earlier this year, the DSL availability check produced a new message, sans the dubious invitation to go suck a satellite:

You may qualify for AT&T U-verse High Speed Internet and TV. AT&T U-verse is a bundled service of 100% digital high-speed Internet with TV that provides you the ultimate home entertainment experience.

If DSL becomes available at my location, Contact Me

I inquired with AT&T's U-Verse folks to see if I qualified for U-Verse. It should be available in 1-2 months, I was advised in an email. When I noticed no VRADs were being installed to deliver U-Verse's VDSL-based service, I asked about the 1 to 2 month timeframe.

That resulted in another email from Ma Bell:

Although service was estimated back in April to be available 1-2 months, it was just an estimation. Unfortunately, we are not provided with enough accurate information to be “positive” on the feedback we provide.

In the meantime, the latest from AT&T's Web site is I "may" qualify for U-Verse. Bottom line, no DSL and no U-Verse. As usual, the ever equivocal Ma Bell says maybe and that's final. She's all dressed up with nothing tangible to sell.

Update 6/30/08: Ma Bell has changed her mind -- again. Now I no longer "may qualify" for U-Verse as an alternative since DSL isn't offered. It's back to "Go suck a satellite." No wonder some wags have aptly dubbed U-Verse "Re-Verse:"

AT&T High Speed Internet

	Our system indicates that our DSL service, AT&T High Speed Internet, is not available at your location. However let's see if we have another solution for you: You qualify for Satellite Broadband from AT&T Learn More

Among the benefits AT&T touts of satellite is "Wide Footprint" because it can reach people even in remote locations. In my case, remote means two miles from a major U.S. highway with buried fiber cable plant along a frontage road 1.5 miles from my location. Gee, and here I thought I must be residing somewhere in the Arctic Circle.

Clearwire is missing market opportunity to fill in broadband black holes

A couple of weeks back, I blogged that the big WiMAX players like Clearwire aren't likely to fill in America's many broadband black holes where neither cable nor telco broadband is available.

Here's more evidence: The Tennessean.com reports today Clearwire is sticking to more populated areas of Nashville. There are more customers to be had there of course but there's also lots of broadband competition from the wireline telco and cable broadband providers. While there are fewer prospective subscribers outside the city limits, Clearwire shouldn't neglect these areas since they face little competition other than satellite Internet, which it can easily outperform from a price/performance standpoint.

Read this lamentation from one prospective Clearwire subscriber who like your blogger is situated on the dark side of the digital divide by only about a mile:

One group of people who may be disappointed with Clearwire is rural residents who don't have access to broadband through AT&T or Comcast. Clearwire is sticking mostly to major population centers in the Nashville area with its service.

George Reynolds hopes Clearwire gets to his house in west Nashville on the Cumberland River.

"Broadband is available on Charlotte (Avenue) and that's one mile from my house,'' he said, adding that he has been trying to get AT&T to give him broadband service for about three years.