Less than enthusiatic response to California broadband build out subsidy program

A key recommendation of California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's Broadband Task Force to build out broadband Internet infrastructure in the Golden State is getting a less than enthusiastic response from the state's incumbent telcos.

In comments filed last week with the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), which is considering expanding eligibility for 40 percent project subsidies to a wide variety of organizations and local governments, both large and small Incumbent Local Exchange Carriers (ILECs) complain the 40 percent subsidy is too low to make it worthwhile to invest in infrastructure for high cost areas currently unserved or underserved by broadband providers. They call on the CPUC to abandon the fixed 40 percent subsidy and instead award amounts based on the cost of the project.

The CPUC's internal Division of Ratepayer Advocates (DRA) is also calling on the CPUC to revamp the subsidy program, the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF). "The general paucity of bidders for CASF funding" and just six ILEC-proposed projects submitted for funding to date "suggests that the Commission’s anticipated advancement of broadband availability and competition is not bearing fruit," the DRA stated in its filed comments in the CASF proceeding. "While the factors that have led to this outcome are unclear, what is clear is that one of the Commission’s goals for the CASF – encouraging a diversity of advanced technologies and service providers – is unlikely to be met unless there is a critical review of the CASF, as it is currently structured and administered."

The DRA also recommends against allowing municipalities and other entities that are not under the CPUC's jurisdiction from proposing projects because the CPUC would have to enforce compliance with CASF funding requirements through the courts.

The six ILEC-proposed projects to bring wireline-delivered broadband unserved areas to be considered by the CPUC at its Nov. 21 meeting total just $372,976 in requested CASF funding.

The largest of the six proposals is by Verizon California and seeks $174,000 to serve 382 housholds in the Pinyon Crest area of Riverside County. AT&T has proposed four projects in both northern and southern California, including what is arguably a token effort to bring broadband to two residences in the Mount Wilson area of Los Angeles County.

Only one of the proposed projects meets original CASF project criteria of being capable of providing at least 3 Mbs downloads and 1 Mbs uploads -- one by Frontier Communications to provide service for 171 households in the Lake Almanor area of Plumas County.

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.

Gullible, disingenuous pols enact state video franchise schemes unlikely to lower cable rates

Gullible and intellectually dishonest politicians enacted so-called video franchise schemes in about a dozen states over the past few years pushed by big telcos like AT&T. They were gullible at best and disingenuous at worst because they parroted the telcos' party line that such regulatory "reforms" would enhance competition for video services by allowing telcos to compete with cable companies, resulting in lower prices for consumers.

Well surprise, surprise, surprise. Cable rates are headed up -- and not down -- despite the entry of telco TV offerings such as AT&T's U-Verse, according to this weekend item from the Milwaukee, Wisconsin Journal Sentinel. This week, the Federal Communications Commission launched an inquiry into cable rate increases in advance of next February's mandated cutover to all digital television broadcasting.

"On balance, the law hasn't been good for consumers but has been very good for the companies that wanted it," Barry Orton, a telecommunications professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told the newspaper. "Two years from now, I don't think you will be able to say that consumers saved a lot of money if any at all."

Telcos sugar coated their true agenda with the false patina of increased competition and lower rates for consumers. Their real goal was to get local governments that wanted them to build out their broadband infrastructures evenly to serve all and not just some of their residents off their backs. It's far easier to lobby a single state regulatory agency and influence the pols who appoint their members (and get them to put in place rules sanctioning broadband black holes) than to herd the political cats who sit on city and town councils and county boards of supervisors.

Broadband's potential to drive small town economic boom

"If you don't have broadband, it's as bad as not having electricity, running water or sewer utilities in your town." So says Jack Schultz, author of Boomtown USA: The 7 ½ Keys to Big Success in Small Towns.

Schultz has got that right. Broadband enabled telecommunications services make location and distance irrelevant and allow entrepreneurial activity to occur where it might not otherwise, which Schulz says is increasingly important to the economy at a time when the number of big companies that are expanding is decreasing.

Access to broadband could also fuel a population shift along the lines predicted by author Jack Lessinger in his prescient 1991 book Penturbia: Where Real Estate will Boom After the Crash of Suburbia. (Perhaps aided by the current real estate bust that began in 2006?)

A big roadblock however is America's spotty and incomplete last mile telecommunications infrastructure that leaves far too many home-based entrepreneurs struggling with dial up or substandard satellite Internet connections. Schulz correctly notes they cannot wait for the telco/cable duopoly to provide them the broadband they need to grow their businesses. "People must try to research and find alternate ways to get broadband in their communities," he says.

Schulz's position here coincides with my view that the last mile telecommunications infrastructure will become increasingly locally owned and operated as we are seeing with the proliferation of small mom and pop fixed terrestrial wireless Internet Service Providers (WISPs) and in initiatives by local governments and cooperatives to install fiber optic connections to homes and neighborhoods.

CLECs fear loss of access to copper loops being retired and replaced with fiber

Competitive Local Exchange Carriers (CLECs) established under the federal Telecommunications Act of 1996 that requires Incumbent Local Exchange Carriers (ILECs) to sell them access to their copper cable loops apparently fear the copper is literally about to be pulled out from under them and replaced with fiber, leaving them without access to their customers.

An organization of California CLECs, the California Association of Competitive Telecommunications Companies (CALTEL), petitioned the California Public Utilities Commission to adopt rules requiring ILECs to obtain advance approval from the CPUC before retiring copper loops and replacing them with fiber and demonstrate doing so would be in the public interest.

The CPUC declined, instead requiring ILECs to notify the CPUC and all CLECs interconnected with their copper plants before replacing copper with fiber. In addition, ILECs must engage in "good faith commercial negotiations" CLECs that want to purchase or lease the copper loop, the CPUC said in a Nov. 6 news release.

"I believe that this decision balances state and federal goals of promoting the deployment of broadband networks against the interests of competitors to retain access to the copper loop," Commissioner Rachelle Chong stated in the news release.

ILECs have long chafed under the line sharing requirements of the 1996 federal reform law and have dragged their feet and litigated with CLECs seeking to connect to their lines. Apparently CLECs now fear ILECs are about to use their ultimate weapon to make them go away for good, rendering them irrelevant by replacing their copper with fiber since they don't have to provide CLECs access to their proprietary fiber under a 2006 U.S. Court of Appeals ruling.

But ILECs have largely resisted employing the fiber strategy on CLECs since it requires them to make substantial investments in upgrading their wireline infrastructures that they have been reluctant to make. It's possible ILECs are now concluding doing so is worth it because it both disposes of pesky CLECs while also enabling them to exclusively offer far more advanced IP-based services that can be more reliably delivered over fiber than copper.

It will be interesting to watch how this plays out in California and other states and whether CLECs will bid on telco copper loops made obsolete by fiber. Probably few will since copper does not provide a future growth path for offering advanced services due to its technological limitations as have been painfully illustrated with the limited range and throughput of DSL over copper. In addition, aged copper loops are likely to be a low repair priority for ILECs, making it difficult for CLECs to provide reliable service. This could be the beginning of the end for CLECs.

Location, location, location: Broadband access now a factor in residential real estate

Associated Press writer Peter Svensson reports on what I've predicted will be a growing factor affecting the residential real estate market: whether a home has broadband access. Broadband has become a basic telecommunications utility. Homes that lack it are becoming about as desirable as those without electricity or water hookups. Svensson quotes Edward Redpath, a real estate broker in Hanover, N.H., as saying he's seen deals fall through once the buyer realizes a home can't get broadband.

I disagree with Svensson's theory that over time the lack of universal broadband in the United States along with higher gasoline prices could pull people from the countryside toward cities and suburbs.

Small local Wireless Internet Service Providers (WISPs) are springing up throughout the U.S. to provide wireless broadband where the telco/cable duopoly does not. Residents and businesses will also take matters into their own hands and form and invest in cooperatives to build their own local fiber optic telecommunications infrastructures just as they did several decades ago to bring electricity and telephone service to their communities.

As Svensson's story suggests, they will be motivated by economic considerations to boost the market appeal and value of their homes -- particularly as they work to crawl out of the current real estate market downturn -- and to support their ability to start businesses and telecommute to their jobs.

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.

Cable company capitalizes on AT&T's failure to deploy DSL, inability of telco's aged copper cable plant to support bundled services

Two years ago, South Lake Tahoe was one of El Dorado County, California's most puzzling and persistent broadband black holes. Neither incumbent telco AT&T nor the incumbent cable provider, Charter Communications, offered broadband to many of the area's neighborhoods, leaving residents with the dreary Hobson's choice of antiquated mid-1990s era dialup technology or costly, substandard satellite Internet connections.

Patti Handal was fed up with the situation and went door to door with some of her neighbors, collecting signatures of nearly 700 residents of the affected neighborhoods petitioning AT&T to deploy DSL and do so ASAP. Then several months later in June 2007, the Angora Fire incinerated some of these neighborhoods along with portions of AT&T's aerial copper cable serving them. AT&T's replacement of the fire damaged infrastructure enabled the telco roll out DSL to Handal's and some -- but not all -- of the Tahoe neighborhoods stranded on the dark side of the digital divide.

In retrospect, Handal believes the petition campaign to show AT&T demand was there for DSL had no meaningful impact despite the encouragement of the effort by AT&T and local elected officials. Instead, it was the Angora Fire's destruction of AT&T infrastructure that altered the dial up status quo.

Now Handal reports Charter is about to roll out service to much of Montgomery Estates, all of Echo View Estates, all of Angora Highlands, and all of Mountain View Estates with Christmas Valley and all of Montgomery Estates in the near future.

Charter officials were likely motivated by a report in the Tahoe Tribune that AT&T decided in January 2008 not to expand DSL service in the area in the foreseeable future, seizing an opportunity to take and hold market share since in a duopolistic market, whichever provider deploys first enjoys initial customer appreciation and loyalty for bringing them out of dial up purgatory and into the modern era of telecommunications.

Notably, AT&T isn't matching Charter's bundled services including video. According to Handal, an AT&T representative told a South Lake Tahoe Chamber of Commerce meeting two months ago that it would not be offering its bundled U-Verse service. Instead, AT&T has chosen to deploy DSL in some but not all of the areas served by Charter in a limited response to Charter's deployment initiative.

The likely explanation for AT&T's decision to select a partial DSL deployment strategy is going head to head with Charter for bundled services would require AT&T to replace most of its aged copper cable plant that can support only slower DSL speeds but cannot carry the higher bandwidth VDSL signal used by U-Verse.

Despite the expectation that AT&T introduced U-Verse in order to compete with cable companies, the scenario playing out in some South Lake Tahoe communities is likely to be mirrored throughout much of the United States where telcos' aged copper cable plant precludes them from offering bundled services and higher speeds to effectively compete with cable providers.

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.

Fairpoint chooses WiMAX where DSL fails

Fairpoint Communications, the successor to Verizon in much of New England, has opted to deploy fixed terrestrial broadband to make up the shortcomings of underpowered DSL. Fairpoint has selected WiMAX technology based on equipment provided by Nortel Networks Corp. and Airspan Networks that will provide throughput of 1 to 3 Mbs.

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.

California PUC considering expanding eligibility for broadband build out subsidies

The California Public Utilities Commission is soliciting comment on potentially expanding eligibility for 40 percent grant funding from its California Advanced Services Fund (CASF) to build out broadband infrastructure in unserved and underserved areas of the Golden State. The commission has set aside $100 million for qualifying projects to be funded over a two-year period, paid for by a 0.25 percent surcharge on end-users’ intrastate telephone bills.

Proposals to serve unserved areas were due July 24 and underserved areas by Aug. 25. Only entities with a certificate of public convenience and necessity to offer telecommunications services or those registered with the CPUC provider of wireless telecommunications services were eligible to submit project proposals by those dates. The CPUC is now considering accepting proposals from municipalities, community-based cooperatives, Native American tribes as well as funding economic development corporations to issue loans to finance projects.

"We further anticipate significant unserved and underserved areas will remain after grant of the current pending applications," CPUC's Oct. 15 ruling states. "During our first round of applications we received significant interest from serious potential applicants who were uncertificated internet service providers in areas geographically close to unserved or underserved areas."

Survey suggests telcos should channel CAPEX to wireline -- and not wireless -- broadband

While mobile broadband has been much ballyhooed over the past few years, the vast majority of those with mobile devices don't utilize their Internet capabilities to watch videos, play games or even send email. That's according to a Accenture Research survey out this week picked up here by Telephony Online.

This survey strongly implies people want broadband at home much more than they do outside the home. For telcos, that means investing more in wireline -- and particularly fiber optic infrastructure -- and less in wireless broadband. The demand for home-based wireline broadband services is also likely to grow as people spend less time and money outside of the home and cocoon during the economic downturn.

Telco market segmentation has shrunk U.S. residential wireline service area map, setting stage for locals to take over last mile

The widespread prevalence of broadband black holes throughout the United States — which can be found in urban, suburban, semi-rural and rural areas — has brought to light a major change in the landscape of residential telecommunications service. In modern times, residential telecommunications has meant near universal service to all but the most remote areas.

With the advent of high speed Internet, the residential wireline market is no longer a single one but has been segmented by the telcos who maintain monopolistic control over their markets. Over the past 2-3 years, the boundaries of broadband black holes have hardened and delineate the two segments.

The more accurate description is the residential market hasn’t been so much segmented but rather shrunk. One only need compare the telcos’ maps of where they provide Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS) and areas where advanced Internet protocol-based services are offered to graphically see the shrinkage.

This is a permanent alteration of America’s telecommunications map. Despite telcos’ promises to “turn up” advanced services to these areas over the past decade, it’s now apparent that these statements are a time buying PR ploy to keep regulators and politicians at bay. Now the residential wireline telecommunications map is posed to shrink even further with the limited rollout of fiber to the home service by Verizon and AT&T’s technologically constrained deployment of its fiber to the node Project Lightspeed as both companies migrate from DSL.

This redrawing of America’s telecommunications map has major implications for so-called “last mile” residential wireline. Where they don’t provide last mile IP-based access, the telcos will instead serve as first and middle mile telecom providers. Small local telcos and the residents themselves will become the default last mile providers. Where it makes business sense, smaller telcos that specialize in serving communities will deploy fiber to the node and fiber to the home. Where the numbers don’t pencil out for the small telcos, the residents will deploy their own fiber and fund it though voluntary cooperatives and special taxing districts.

Over the next several years, fiber will come to be viewed as a utility not unlike electric power and water and will appear on residential MLS real estate listings. Properties that lack fiber optic access will be at a distinct disadvantage to those that have fiber, creating a strong incentive for property owners to work together to bring fiber to their neighborhoods to better capitalize on recovering real estate values following the current market downturn.

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.

Private, public sectors clash on broadband deployment

As fiber optic guru Tim Nulty accurately observed, wireline telecommunications infrastructure is a natural monopoly. That fact has spawned conflict between the private and public sectors over which will build out infrastructure to provide modern IP-based services. At issue in this confrontation that has played out throughout much of the United States over the past decade is who will get first rights to build since whoever deploys infrastructure first dominates the market given its monopolistic nature.

But there's more to it than that. Both sides have conflicting agendas. The private sector telcos and MSOs (cable companies) want to maintain an open ended option to build whereas public sector entities like muncipalities motivated by constituent pressure to rapidly deploy, pressure that naturally increases over time as demand for broadband-based services from consumers and businesses grows. In that regard, time is on the side of the public sector. That reality has spurred private sector players to employ litigation to buy time to preserve the option to serve a given area.

Case in point: this week, a Minnesota judge ruled this week that Minnesota cities have the authority to issue bonds to finance community fiber-optic networks. Monticello, a town of 12,000, has been locked in a legal battle with its incumbent phone company, TDS Telecom, which filed a complaint to prevent the city from building a network its citizens overwhelmingly approved in a referendum last year, according to Christopher Mitchell, Director of the Telecommunications as Commons Initiative for the Institute for Local Self Reliance (ILSR). “All along, we have said that this lawsuit is frivolous and was merely a delaying tactic,” Mitchell said in a news release. Mitchell adds that TDS "was merely trying to protect its monopolistic interests, much to the detriment of the citizens of Monticello who clearly want a local, accountable alternative to existing services.”

More delay could be in store. ILSR reports Monticello had to put the project on hold until the case was decided and escrowed funding until the case is fully resolved and all appeals are exhausted.

At present, the rules allow private sector providers to game the system to buy time. Even if they lose on the merits of muni fiber project legal challenges as in this case, they still win because they've achieved their goal of buying time to exercise their option to build. The problem is that option is currently open ended at a time when the nation is falling farther and farther behind on broadband and time is of the essence.

It needs to be tightened up with legislation that would give either public or private sector providers the option to build broadband infrastructure and subject the party exercising the option to deploy it to stringent oversight including incremental progress deadlines, late penalties and completion bonds.

Limited DSL range disappoints in Western Massachusetts, divides towns into digital haves and have nots

As reported earlier this year, Verizon is rolling out DSL in 24 Western Massachusetts towns. But state Rep. Denis Guyer, D-Dalton, is hearing from irate constituents who understandably believed that if their town is getting the service, that's just what it means and are flummoxed that they're still stuck with dialup or forced to suck a satellite.

The problem is Verizon is using underpowered DSL technology -- which should be dubbed "Doesn't Serve Lots"-- that can only serve parts of the towns. This puts pols like Guyer who are pushing to bring their districts into the modern age of telecommunications in a tough spot since voting districts don't necessarily coincide with DSL availability limits. For those covered by Verizon's DSL deployment, pols like Guyer look like a hero. But from the perspective of his constituents outside Verizon's DSL service limit, he looks like a ineffective bum. As this blog notes, like politics all broadband is local.

The item published in the North Adams Transcript is aptly headlined Guyer says Verizon's Broadband not so broad. So true for not only Western Massachusetts but sadly anywhere in the U.S. served by feeble telco DSL.