The world's going broadband, but El Dorado County still stuck with dial up

The days of dial-up Internet access are nearly done as global demand for broadband booms according to research firm IDC, reports Reuters in this USA Today story.

Worldwide high-speed, or broadband, subscriptions will almost double in five years to nearly 400 million in 2010 from about 205 million in 2005, fueled by cheaper prices, increased customer choice and the growth of devices and applications built for the use of broadband, IDC said in a study made public Monday.

For many El Dorado County residents, however, the reports of the demise of dial up Internet access will provoke rueful laughter as they continue to struggle with sluggish dial up connections with no indications of relief for the foreseeable.

AT&T customer service lacking

There have been complaints about poor quality telecom service from AT&T such as long service outages and noisy or crossed lines and for too many in El Dorado County, no wire line broadband Internet service.

Apparently customer service in this day of voice mail jail and transfers to busy signals and outsourced customer service reps half a world away in India leaves something to be desired as well. Carol Anne Ogdin, a Placerville correspondent of this blog, shares this account of her recent experience:

Well, now that SBC has absorbed AT&T and assumed that venerable name, they're engaging in the same brand destruction they've been perpetrating on themselves through previous name changes. Each new name change brings progressively worse service.

Today, I tried to call AT&T to talk about my bill and my business DSL service. After slaving through their "voice mail jail" and listening to numerous self-promoting (and lengthy) announcements...then assuring me my call was really "important" to them, I was informed by the voice mail I'd be answered by the next available agent. Whereupon, I was connected directly to a permanent "busy" signal.

I tried again. same result. A third time...same result.

On the fourth try, I actually was informed I was now in the queue, and "an agent would be with me in a moment." Three minutes later, I reached a human who actually informed me she was incompetent to help me, but she'd take my telephone number and name and have someone call me back...in a day or two!

Fifteen minutes wasted, just so I can leave a callback number! Gee, most companies have automated equipment to take voice mail, why not AT&T? This is how AT&T (nee SBC, nee Southwestern Bell) wants to treat its customers: Mere irritants to their single-minded focus on making money to fatten executive wallets.

I wonder if I'll ever get a call back.

Oh, how I wish I had a choice for telephone service! I'd be happy to pay anyone else for customer service, accurate bills, reliable service...and true broadband, not some inadequate satellite-based substitute.

AT&T, Comcast expanding, upgrading in greater Sacramento area

The Sacramento Business Journal reports AT&T and Comcast are gearing up to spend billions on expanding and upgrading their networks in the greater Sacramento region -- which ostensibly includes El Dorado County where both companies have a presence.

AT&T said it will invest up to $1 billion to "push fiber closer to our customers' homes," according to company spokesman Gordon Diamond.

Meanwhile, Comcast, which had previously positioned itself as an entertainment company, is going into full telco mode. Comcast plans to launch digital phone service across central California from Chico to Fresno as early as first-quarter 2007, said spokeswoman Erica Smith.

Readers of this blog will recall that AT&T spokeswoman Vanessa Smith told the Sacramento Bee in late April that AT&T is committed to expanding broadband offerings in El Dorado County in 2006. As for Comcast, the company isn't saying whether it has any plans to expand its rather limited footprint in the county this year or next.

Another supervisor candidate calls for better Internet access in El Dorado County

Yet another of five candidates in the District 4 county supervisor race says he wants to expand Internet access in El Dorado County. Alarm company owner Todd Schwenk wants Internet "easily accessible to rural residents," according to today's Mountain Democrat. (The newspaper does not provide the article on line).

As with fellow candidate Wendell Smith who took out a full page ad in the paper on Friday calling for the county to "add DSL and cell service" to improve the county's business environment, I applaud the goal. But specifics are needed, not just appealing rhetoric. How do these candidates propose to accomplish their goals and how quickly? There's a longstanding surplusage of talk on this issue and a glaring deficit of action.

Many El Dorado County residents are outraged and desperate for broadband access ASAP after being stuck with dial up modem access that was state of the art technology when Bill Clinton was starting his first term as president but impractical for today's Internet. Read some of their comments accompanying their signatures on this on line petition calling on AT&T to upgrade its infrastructure to fiber optic or divest its holdings in the county and you'll get a sense of what I'm talking about.

My concern is politicians exploiting the genuine frustrations of these folks through sloganeering merely for short term political gain with no follow through. A concrete plan of action from these or any other supervisorial candidates -- if there's a runoff after Tuesday's election -- would go a long way to alleviate my concerns.

Seen any service improvements lately?

Readers of this blog should recall AT&T's promise several weeks ago in Bob Walters' Sacramento Bee column to expand broadband Internet access in El Dorado County this year. But is the big telco following through? What about the quality of your phone service? Has it gotten better?

If you've recently been offered wire line broadband service where there was none before or you've noticed better quality and reliabilty for voice service, click on "Post a comment" and tell others so we can determine if AT&T is matching its words with actions.

You don't need to provide your name and address, but a general location such as "2000 block of El Dorado Road" would be informative.

Telcos pocketed $200B in rate charges and taxpayer subsidies but failed to deliver promised broadband network, author claims

By 2006, 86 million households should have been rewired with a fiber optic wire, capable of 45 Mbps, in both directions. -- read the promises.

The public subsidies for infrastructure were pocketed. The phone companies collected over $200 billion in higher phone rates and tax perks, about $2000 per household

E-book, $200 Billion Broadband Scandal.

El Dorado supe candidate calls for broadband, wireless expansion: Where's the beef?

Wendell Smith, a candidate for the El Dorado County Board of Supervisors, ran a full page ad in today's Mountain Democrat newspaper that lays out his campaign platform. Under the "Strengthen business" plank, Smith calls for the county to "add DSL and cell service."

It's a laudable goal, but is it meaningful or just more election sloganeering from another do nothing politician trolling for votes on the eve of next week's election? I'm admittedly skeptical and lean toward the latter.

Why? I sent Smith email several months ago soon after he declared his candidacy and was profiled in the Mountain Democrat. Smith told the newspaper El Dorado County needs reliable high speed Internet services. I let him know about the on line petition drive urging AT&T to upgrade its aging copper wire based system to fiber optic -- which would support Smith's purported goal of expanding broadband Internet access in El Dorado County -- or to divest its holdings in the county and let someone else do the job.

I didn't even got the courtesy of a response. I wonder if Smith even cares about the concerns of the 160 El Dorado County residents who signed the petition to date?

Comcast going telco?

Most El Dorado County residents are likely aware that Comcast has a somewhat limited presence in the county and has traditionally offered TV programming, describing itself as an entertainment provider.

Now the big cable company could be morphing into a telco, going head to head with AT&T and Verizon. Comcast COO Steve Burke told the “D: All Things Digital” conference in Carlsbad California that within five years, Comcast will be primarily providing meat and potatoes wire line telecommunications services: digital voice and Internet access. Burke told the conference that Comcast expects to have 25 million Internet and voice accounts, significantly larger than its current base of 21.5 million video subscribers.

Click here for the report in Multichannel News.

Residential broadband shows 40% annual growth rate

This report released this week by the Pew Internet & American Life Project found a big increase in the number of residential broadband users in the U.S. The number of Americans who have broadband at home jumped from 60 million in March 2005 to 84 million in March 2006 – a leap of 40 percent. That growth rate is uniform among both urban and rural residents, the survey found.

"A significant part of the increase is tied to internet newcomers who have bypassed dial-up connections and gone straight to high-speed connections," the report states. It added this trend "is a striking change from the previous pattern of broadband adoption" in which residential users started out with dial up service.

Underserved areas like much of El Dorado County however don't have that option. It's either dial up or nothing as the rest of the nation takes the high speed bypass to the information highway, leaving the county stuck on a rutted dirt road. "It is still the case that broadband penetration rates in rural areas lag those in suburban and urban areas," the Pew report notes.

Gut check time for Ma Bell

Here's a news release issued by AT&T today announcing the rollout of satellite-based broadband Internet service in a deal with a satellite Internet service provider. It's an extraordinary development because AT&T is stepping out of its traditional role of being a telecom service provider and into that of a reseller of basic telecom services.

It's gut check time for Ma Bell. She needs to take a deep breath and think hard about whether she wants to be in the telecom business or just another retailer like Radio Shack or Best Buy, reselling someone else's service. And a service that's inferior to what she herself can provide. Market perceptions are incredibly important and this deal confuses and undermines the public perception of AT&T as one of the nation's preeminent telecommunications companies.

More alarmingly, the announcement could portend AT&T's abandonment of its existing wire line infrastructure outside of urban areas. Let the aged copper cables rot on the poles until the system finally gives up the ghost and customers won't even be able to make phone calls over it. Let's hope that's not the case. Otherwise much of AT&T's 13-state service area will end up like that of a third world country.

The news release offers no details as to whether this service will be offered in El Dorado County. But even if it were, your blogger -- and I suspect many other county residents and businesses -- aren't going to get excited over it since they've had the ability to go to satellite Internet providers at comparable prices and speeds long before today's rollout.

AT&T needs to stick with what it does best: providing its own telecommunications services. That means planning for the future needs of its wire line-based system and rapidly bringing the system up to where it needs to be in the Internet age and putting in place a system based on proven technology like fiber optic cable that offers a future growth path, rather than reselling someone else's satellite service.

Telecom industry analyst sees wireless supplementing AT&T wire line infrastructure

This report by telecom industry analyst Northern Sky Research sees AT&T adopting a strategy to use both wire line and wireless technology to provide broadband services. Note the report predicts AT&T will deploy satellite-based broadband only in the hinterlands, which in this blogger's view does not include markets such El Dorado County situated within a major metro region.

As NSR sees it, AT&T is taking a multi-tiered and mixed technology approach to offering a high value bundle of services, a strategy which may well be followed in one form or another by all large telcos in the coming years. Fiber will be used to serve residences and businesses in the high and medium population density areas, which will generally account for the large majority of clients. Where fiber does not reach based on economics, terrestrial wireless technologies will bring services to lower population density areas, and satellite will serve those clients on the very farthest edges of the existing copper network.

Silicon Valley venture firms back start up planning universal wireless broadband service

WASHINGTON, May 16 (Reuters) - Three Silicon Valley venture capital firms are backing a project to grab a slice of valuable U.S. wireless airwaves to offer nationwide high-speed Internet service, according to a recent regulatory filing.

Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Charles River Ventures and Redpoint Ventures, each with more than $1.5 billion under management, are financing a firm called M2Z Networks Inc. to launch the project.

Most wireless spectrum is auctioned to the highest bidder but M2Z has offered to pay the U.S. Treasury 5 percent of its gross revenues from the premium broadband service it plans to offer alongside free, but slower, Internet access.

M2Z is trying to capitalize on President George W. Bush's call to have universal access to high-speed Internet, known as broadband, by 2007. The United States recently fell to 16th in world rankings for broadband penetration.

"M2Z's ultimate goal, through its own service, is to drive development of the broadband marketplace so that access is affordable and future penetration levels are near-ubiquitous throughout the country," the company said in a filing with the Federal Communications Commission.

Full Reuters story here.

The major questions here are how M2Z's backers define "near ubiquitous" service and what technology the service will utilize to overcome obstacles to wireless signals that make wireless broadband deployments challenging in hilly areas like El Dorado County.

Vandals cause telecom blackout in South Lake Tahoe

As if El Dorado County didn't already face enough telecom service challenges, vandals added to them earlier this week when they cut an overhead cable between Placerville and South Lake Tahoe, blacking out communications in South Lake Tahoe.

Story by Clint Swett in today's Sacramento Bee.

California PUC deluged by complaints -- most about phone service

Clint Swett reports in today's Sacramento Bee that the California Public Utilities Commission is getting consumer complaints at the rate of 150 per day -- two thirds of them related to phone service -- and has a backlog of nearly 20,000 complaints.

When does the broadband railroad come to El Dorado County?

According to this telecom industry publication article, telcos are throttling up their network upgrades to support broadband services. When will the tracks be laid in El Dorado County?

"Broadband access network spending has been slowly gaining momentum, like a freight train, and now it is screaming down the track," John Lively, Ovum-RHK’s vice president of forecasting, said in a prepared statement.

GAO Finds Flaws With FCC Broadband Estimates

GAO developed its own model for broadband analysis using the Form 477 data as well as numbers from a private-industry research firm, which seems to suggest the FCC’s conclusions are too optimistic. Among its conclusions, GAO found that only 17 percent of rural households subscribe to broadband services, significantly lower than urban and suburban households. “Our model indicated, however, that when the availability of broadband to households, as well as demographic characteristics, are taken into account, rural households no longer appear less likely than urban households to subscribe to broadband,” GAO said.

The emergence of satellite Internet alternatives to cable modem and DSL is a factor that complicates broadband penetration calculations. “It is not clear how satellite service should be judged in terms of deployment,” the report finds. “Since it is available throughout the entire country, one view could be that broadband is near fully deployed. Alternatively, it could be viewed that satellite broadband—while available in most areas—does not reflect localized deployment of broadband infrastructure and should therefore not be counted as a deployed broadband option at all.”

Item at NRTC Update

This blogger agrees. The California Public Utilities Commission also committed the satellite cop out in its May 2005 legislatively mandated report on broadband access in California wherein the CPUC concluded that "broadband service is available to every Zip Code in the state," although conceding that not every customer who wants it has service and some may be limited to satellite-based service that the CPUC admitted "tends to cost more and can be of lower quality."

Satellite is fine for TV, but it shouldn't been seen as an option (and an expensive one at that) for broadband services except possibly for those who inhabit the most remote areas of the nation.

WISP serves small area near Cameron Park, Shingle Springs

An established El Dorado County Internet Service Provider has become a WISP (Wireless Internet Service Provider) and is currently serving a small, 15 square mile section of the county east of Cameron Park and north of Shingle Springs.

This service is based on an emerging technology that has attempted to plug holes in wire line broadband availability in underserved areas. However, it contends with the same reception problems as radio and TV signals in El Dorado County's hilly topography.

In addition to technical obstacles, WISPs also face business challenges competing with far better capitalized telcos. And since they tend to serve only small geographical areas, they like the wire line telcos leave thousands of homes and businesses without broadband access.

It remains to be seen if WISPs such as this one surmount the formidable challenges facing them and gain market momentum. If they do, they could provide another impetus for AT&T to finally get its act together in El Dorado County and upgrade its system to support broadband access.