Wednesday, October 28, 2009

White paper highlights role of muni fiber as U.S. develops national broadband plan

Here's an excellent white paper on the status of U.S. municipal fiber to the premises systems issued this month by the Fiber to the Home Council.

The report lists 57 muni fiber networks that serve both homes and businesses operating as of October 2009 (it adds at least 15 more serve businesses only), noting that "a growing number of municipal governments are taking it upon themselves to build FTTH networks – much in the way that they have previously built roads, sewers and/or electrical systems – as a means of ensuring that local residents have access to necessary services, in this case, Internet connectivity for the 21st Century."

These muni fiber systems typically spring up after private service providers have declined to upgrade their networks or build such systems, the report notes. As such, the white paper concludes, these networks are an important component of the U.S. telecommunications infrastructure and should be encouraged.

That conclusion should be given due consideration by the Federal Communications Communications Commission as it develops a recommendation due to Congress in February 2010 on a national broadband deployment plan.

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Broadband stimulus funds insufficient -- but agreement ends there

It seems everyone agrees that the $7.2 billion in subsidies set aside in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 for broadband infrastructure construction aren't anywhere close to what's needed to overhaul the U.S. telecommunications infrastructure to allow it to support ubiquitous next generation, Internet-Protocol-based telecommunications.

Blair Levin, the Federal Communications Commission's broadband czar, described the stimulus subsidies just days before President Barack Obama took office in January as a down payment, representing only a portion of the new administration's planned efforts.

This week, the Boston-based Yankee Group concurred, issuing a summary of a study concluding the $7.2 billion figure is woefully inadequate, representing less than a third of the needed investment.
The Yankee Group study also reinforces the FCC's own findings. In a Sept. 29 news release, the FCC declared $7.2 billion in grants and loan subsidies contained in the economic stimulus package "are insufficient to achieve national purposes." The FCC said $20 billion would be the price of a minimum "basic" broadband that would be quickly outmoded.

The Yankee Group put the minimum figure close to the FCC's: $24 billion. Either of these figures would represent a wasteful investment in technology that would soon be obsolete. The FCC's $20 billion would achieve connectivity ranging between 768 Kbs -- already outmoded -- and 3 Mbs, which is on the verge of obsolescence given the growing amount of high bandwidth video content. To bring the U.S. where it needs to be for the future -- fiber to the premises providing throughput of 100 Mbs or better -- the FCC puts the number at $350 billion.

Behind the consensus that more money is needed beyond the $7.2 in the stimulus package is disagreement over where it will come from and under what terms. Splits exist even within the Obama administration. Earlier this month Levin was quoted in Multichannel News telling an FCC meeting that private investment -- and not by implication federal subsidies -- would foot the bill. But just four months earlier, Jim Kohlenberger, chief of staff for the White House’s Office of Science and Technology, said private market failure has hamstrung telecom infrastructure investment.

The private sector -- largely represented by the legacy telco/cable duopoly and their astroturf groups -- is firing warning shots across the bow of the FCC as it readies a major regulatory policy recommendation due to Congress in February. They are sending the message that unless they can invest in infrastructure on their own terms and retain control over it, further investment will be jeopardized. That will lead to a reverse stimulus, eliminating rather than creating jobs, the Internet Innovation Alliance warned Oct. 20.

Thursday, October 15, 2009

FCC likely to favor open access networks in forthcoming policy recommendation

The Federal Communications Commission is approaching a critical juncture in its congressionally mandated task of devising national policy to further advanced (broadband) telecommunications infrastructure build out. The issue facing the FCC is to what extent the nation emulate the open access network regulatory model used by other countries that have leaped past and made the U.S. and its proprietary, closed networks an also ran rather than a leader in deploying advanced, Internet protocol-based telecommunications.

The FCC commissioned a report suggesting that regulatory policy in the form of the 1996 Telecommunications Reform Act requiring telcos to unbundle their networks and allow providers of voice and Internet services to lease space on them had it right and that model needs to be embraced again. Here's a good summary of the study by Internetnews.com.

Look for the FCC will lean strongly toward open access in developing its plan due to Congress next February. The Obama administration stipulated that subsidies set aside for broadband infrastructure construction in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 be for open access networks. That sends a strong signal to the FCC where it stands on open access.

The incumbent duopoly telco and cable companies will protest open access will discourage them from investing in building out their proprietary networks. It's a non sequitur. They're already discouraged from doing so by the economics of their business models. Those models simply don't allow them to make the big investments in their network infrastructure necessary to allow the United States to catch up and bring its outdated telecommunications networks -- particularly over the last mile -- to where they need to be.

This isn't economic rocket science. The average consumer who has asked his or her local telco or cable company for years why the folks a couple miles away -- and often closer -- have broadband and they don't already knows this. They've been repeatedly told by customer service and field personnel -- when these personnel are being frank and direct -- that their neighborhoods simply cost too much to serve and they're SOL for the foreseeable.

Friday, October 09, 2009

Prince Charles warns of UK "broadband deserts"

The UK's broadband "not spots" are getting royal attention from the Prince of Wales. The BBC today reported Prince Charles wrote the Daily Telegraph to point out that "Too many rural households are currently unable to access the internet at satisfactory speeds."

As the Brits would say, Charles used rather extraordinary language to condemn the situation, calling the lack of investment in modern telecommunications infrastructure "vandalism on a grand scale" of rural economies.

From my perspective from across the Big Pond and on the other side of the North American continent, it seems a big contributor is inside the box thinking among our British friends. They appear stuck in the publicly switched voice telephone over copper network paradigm that can only deliver DSL -- and only so far. Instead, they and the rest of us need to be thinking in terms of advanced, second generation telecommunications over fiber to the premises delivering multiple digital services that copper was never designed to accommodate.

Monday, October 05, 2009

FCC's Levin: Private sector must foot bill for broadband build out

A Multichannel News item today quotes Blair Levin, the Federal Communications Commission's broadband czar, as telling an FCC meeting last week on the broadband deployment plan mandated by Congress that it will largely fall to the private sector to fund the build out America's broadband infrastructure.

Whatever the cost, FCC broadband consultant Blair Levin conceded that private industry will foot most of the bill.

“We have to recognize that most of this [broadband] ecosystem is funded by the private sector, and we expect that to continue,” said Levin. "But government has a role to move whichever levers are necessary to improve the health of that ecosystem, he said.

I respectfully submit Levin's analysis is too limited in scope. The ecosystem will also require substantial public sector involvement and that of non governmental organizations (NGOs) like nonprofit telecom consumer cooperatives that bridged the gap at the beginning of the 20th century when investor owned telephone companies shunned their communities because they couldn't afford to both serve them and earn a return for their investors.

Reconstructing America's outdated single purpose, copper-based analog telecom infrastucture and replacing it with the open access, next generation fiber to the premises Internet Protocol-based system it needs now and in the future is an enormously costly endeavor that cannot be borne solely by investor-owned telcos and cable companies.

In developing its forthcoming national broadband plan, the FCC has estimated it would cost $350 billion to build this kind of infrastructure. So costly in fact that just days after the FCC issued that estimate, the
James L. Knight Foundation issued a report equating the task of building adequate infrastructure ensuring all Americans have access to the modern digital telecommunications necessary for a 21st century democracy to the Eisenhower administration's 1950s project to build the interstate highway system.

Had the private sector been relied upon to foot the cost of the massive highway project, Route 66 might have been in use as the nation's main cross county highway until only recently instead of serving as a reminiscent film setting of post WWII America.

Levin's suggestion the private sector primarily bear the cost of updating the nation's telecom infrastructure is also at odds with remarks by another Obama administration official at the
Broadband Stimulus National Town Hall held in Washington in early June. Market failure has constrained the ability of America's privately owned telecom infrastructure to deliver universally accessible broadband-based services, requiring government to fill the gap, Jim Kohlenberger, chief of staff for the White House’s Office of Science and Technology told gathering, according to a BroadbandCensus.com report.

Wednesday, September 30, 2009

FCC: More subsidies needed for U.S. telecom infrastructure

Just days before President Barack Obama took office this year, his then-technology advisor and now Federal Communications Commission broadband czar Blair Levin told the State of the Net Conference that the $6 billion allocated for broadband infrastructure in the forthcoming American Recovery and Reinvestment Act represented only a portion of the new administration's planned efforts to boost broadband deployment in the U.S. (Congress increased that amount to $7.2 billion in the final version of the bill.)

The FCC clearly signaled more robust federal subsidies will be needed in an update released Tuesday on its progress and plans toward developing an overall broadband build out strategy to achieve universal access as required by the economic stimulus legislation.

Current subsidies including the the $7.2 billion in grants and loan subsidies contained in the economic stimulus package "are insufficient to achieve national purposes," the FCC said in a Sept. 29 news release. The reason as explained in the news release: $20 billion in subsidies would be needed to fully deploy slow speed "basic" broadband that would be quickly outmoded. To bring the U.S. where it needs to be for the future -- fiber to the premises providing throughput of 100 Mbs or better -- the number rises to $350 billion.

Monday, September 28, 2009

Internet access -- not the coffee -- is likely primary attraction of U.S. coffee shops

MuniWireless has a summary and link to a social commentary piece that posits Americans go to coffee shops like Starbucks not so much for the coffee and baked goods or even the social ambiance savored -- slowly -- in European coffeehouses.

Instead, the draw is wireless high speed Internet access that has made U.S. coffee cafes more like public computing centers with patrons' making more eye contact with their laptop displays than other customers. (Query: I wonder if any U.S. coffee chains or shops applied for public computing center subsidies in broadband component of the economic stimulus package, especially during the current downturn that has customers buying fewer premium four dollar espresso drinks?)

Rather than socializing and conversing like their European coffeehouse counterparts, Americans are primarily there to get Internet access and to get work done -- or dash out the door with coffee to go in a paper cup instead of one made of china.

I suspect the difference between U.S. and European coffeehouses can't be fully ascribed to sociological factors. For many Americans, Starbucks and other retail coffee venues are about getting affordable broadband that can't be obtained at home due to the fractured and subpar state of premises-based advanced telecommunications infrastructure.

Thursday, September 24, 2009

IP-based service convergence rendering broadband debate irrelevant

Comcast's move into digital voice in 2006, AT&T's disclosure to Investor's Business Daily two years ago that it ultimately plans to shut down its existing voice network and replace it with a VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) system in the limited areas where its U-Verse offering is being deployed and Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg's assertion at a Goldman Sachs investor conference last week that his company is migrating from the publicly switched telephone network (PSTN) and central offices designed to handle plain old telephone service (POTS) delivered over twisted pair copper wire to fiber to the premises (FTTP) all signal that wireline telecommunications is undergoing a paradigm shift.

The transition is away from the single purpose voice telephone and cable TV systems of the past to Internet-protocol based telecommunications infrastructure capable of delivering various media including high speed Internet connectivity, voice and video.

This paradigm shift is rendering the debate at the U.S. Federal Communications Commission and elsewhere over what constitutes broadband Internet increasingly irrelevant. What's gaining importance isn't the download and upload speeds that have dominated the debate over defining broadband but rather how to ensure these various IP-based services can be reliably and economically delivered to end users.

That takes a new and improved telecommunications infrastructure. This emerging IP-based infrastructure and the business models that can most rapidly deploy and support it is what truly deserve attention going forward. The pointless back and forth over how to define broadband keeps the conversation oriented retrospectively to the 1990s instead of where it needs to be: forward into the 21st century.

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Verizon abandons PSTN, commits to next generation IP-based services

Verizon has become the first big telco to fully commit to next generation Internet Protocol-based service delivered over fiber in which the Internet replaces the publicly switched telephone network (PSTN) designed for plain old telephone service (POTS) delivered over twisted pair copper wire.

“We don’t look any different than Google,” Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg told a Goldman Sachs investor conference last week. “We can begin to look at eliminating central offices, call centers and garages.” Seidenberg's remarks were reported in Saul Hansell's Bits column in The New York Times.

That means a much smaller, shrinking wireline footprint for Verizon as the company sells off its old copper plant and deploys its FiOS fiber to the premises plant. In effect, Verizon is starting almost from scratch to build a new wireline plant. And just as with the early copper cable plant, urban areas will see it many years before those living outside them will. That sets the stage for history to repeat the cycle of the early copper POTS deployments of a century ago in which less densely populated areas established telecom cooperatives in the meantime. Only this time the coops will be putting up fiber instead of metal.

In contrast to Verizon, the dominant American telco, AT&T, is trying to keep one foot in its PSTN past by attempting to pound the square peg of ever increasing IP-based bandwidth demand -- particularly for video -- into the round hole of copper POTS with its Project Lightspeed/U-Verse FTTN architecture. This gambit leaves AT&T far less strategic headroom and could ultimately lead to the company getting out of residential wireline altogether in the first part of 2010.

Monday, September 21, 2009

FCC Proposes New Open Internet Rules

The concept, referred to as net neutrality, pits open Internet companies like Google Inc against broadband service providers such as AT&T Inc, Verizon Communications Inc and Comcast Corp, which oppose new rules governing network management.

"Today, we can't imagine what our lives would be like without the Internet -- any more than we can imagine life without running water or the light bulb," Genachowski said in his first major policy speech at the Brookings Institution, a public-policy think tank.

But service providers say the increasing volume of bandwidth-hogging services -- such as video sharing -- requires active management of their networks and some argue that net neutrality could stifle innovation.


This is baloney. Big telcos like AT&T continue to introduce technical advances in long haul infrastructure that can handle ever increasing bandwidth. What they really fear is this proposal will have the effect of requiring them to increase bandwidth over the middle and last miles -- and do so faster and at higher cost than their business models permit.

That in turn will lead to pressure for alternative models in which states, local governments and telecom cooperatives will do the job with open access networks, rendering the incumbents increasingly irrelevant over the middle and last miles.

Incumbents protest Missouri broadband stimulus project

There has been much speculation that incumbent telecom providers would challenge projects seeking broadband infrastructure construction subsidies of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

One such challenge is shaping up in the Show Me State. Missouri has endorsed a proposal by Marshfield-based Sho-Me Power to lay 2,500 miles of new fiber-optic cable and build 200 new wireless towers to improve broadband access. The project seeks $142.3 million in federal stimulus funds that would be matched by $25.2 million in state funds.

The incumbents contend they already have plenty of middle mile in place and worry the state wants to avoid paying for access to their infrastructure and build its own.

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

As with proposed health care coops, U.S. should seed telecom coops

One of the most debated aspects of the current health care reform effort pending in Congress is how and to what extent any overhaul should foster market competition among managed care plans and insurers. Due to the high costs of paying for medical care for large numbers of people and the substantial capital barriers to entry, the market is oligopolistic with a relatively small number of players operating in each state.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus's (D-Mont.) solution unveiled today in his markup of America’s Health Future Act: purchasing pools for small businesses and consumer cooperatives. The Baucus bill appropriates $6 billion in seed money to help the coops cover start-up costs and to meet solvency requirements.

What does this have to do with advanced telecommunications infrastructure? Like health insurance, the market over the so-called "last mile" also tends to be uncompetitive due to the high capital costs of entry. In fact, it's even less competitive than health insurance from consumers' perspective as telecom infrastructure is a natural monopoly or at best, a duopoly. Here too, coops can provide a degree of competition and choice that's lacking.

Not only that, they can help the Obama administration fulfill its stated policy goal of extending broadband access to all Americans by building out advanced telecommunications infrastructure. As Sen. Baucus proposes, Congress and the administration should similarly seed fund telecom cooperatives that also face high start up costs and capital requirements.

Monday, September 14, 2009

"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.

Wednesday, September 09, 2009

U.S. posts database of first round broadband economic stimulus projects

Summaries of projects proposed in the first round of U.S. broadband stimulus funding that closed in mid-August ($4 billion of the total $7.2 billion allocated for broadband infrastructure subsidies in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009) are available via a searchable database at the broadbandusa.gov Web site.

Maps of the proposed projects -- which are also required to be posted at the site -- haven't yet been posted.

Friday, September 04, 2009

Why the incumbents prefer a sub 1 MBs broadband standard

Some are scratching their heads at recent comments submitted by large telcos and cable companies to the Federal Communications Commission recommending that broadband be defined at speeds of under 1 Mbs in the national broadband plan the FCC is due to present to Congress by February.

Why would they set the bar so low, observers rightfully wonder, particularly since such a low standard is already becoming obsolete given the explosive growth in bandwidth demand and video content.

It's clearly incongruous that Comcast, for example, would urge the FCC define broadband at circa 1998 levels of 256 Kbs at the same time it rolls out its DOCSIS 3.0 software upgrade providing downloads of 50 Mbs and potentially higher. Or for Verizon to suggest broadband be deemed 768 Kbs down and 200 Kbs up (the current FCC definition of "basic" broadband service) when its own fiber to the premises offering, FiOS, offers throughput on a par with that of Comcast.

Here's the explanation: These sub 1 Mbs standards are based not on what the providers are technologically capable of delivering today but instead on their business models. They have built out their proprietary infrastructures to the extent these models allow while providing a reasonable return and dividends for their shareholders.

By advising the FCC to define broadband on such obsolete and arguably bogus terms, the providers are essentially telling the feds they aren't serious about the issue. It's a frivolous, throwaway position that summed up says "forget about any national broadband plan and leave us the hell alone." It's reminiscent of the scene in the 1980s film Tin Men where a car salesman asks a tin man played by Danny DeVito what he's willing to pay for a Cadillac and DeVito answers "Five dollars."

That stance is likely to lead to more complaints from top FCC brass that the FCC's call for input on a national broadband plan is producing self serving and unconstructive comment that doesn't provide any illumination or guidance.

Tuesday, September 01, 2009

What do fuel efficiency standards and broadband have in common?

Like the decades-long policy debate over fuel efficiency standards for automobiles, a new one is springing up. This time it's over minimum broadband speeds with incumbent telecommunications providers arguing for lower standards and consumers demanding higher numbers.

Free Press advocates for a "future proof" telecommunications infrastructure. Based on current, proven technology, that means fiber optics to the premises. Free Press also correctly observes that unlike automotive technology that can be incrementally improved to deliver more fuel efficient vehicles, telecommunications is basic infrastructure and thus requires the right choices to be made up front to protect it from obsolescence and provide sufficient flexibility to accommodate both current and future needs.

Fortunately, there's a way around this debate, which the Federal Communications Commission will soon discover is unlikely lead to a useful outcome or do anything to improve America's fragmented and inadequate telecommunications infrastructure. It's empowering local governments and nonprofit telecommunications cooperatives to build and own their own fiber telecommunications infrastructure -- and ultimately define broadband on their own terms.

Canada's version of broadband stimulus

Two weeks after the U.S. government closed out the first round broadband stimulus funding applications seeking seven times more funds than available, the Canadian government is ramping up its own broadband infrastructure subsidy program.

Like the U.S. broadband stimulus targeting unserved and underserved areas, it too appears aimed at creating jobs and economic activity as rapidly as possible. Applicants have until Oct. 23 to apply for subsidies of up to 50 percent of project costs (compared to 80 percent subsidies under the U.S. Broadband Technology Opportunity Program.)

Unlike the clearly inadequate minimum 768 Kbs download standard for the U.S. program, the Broadband Canada: Connecting Rural Canadians initiative calls for a minimum standard of 1.5 Mbs. While twice that of the U.S. minimum, that standard is already on the verge of obsolescence, barely capable of supporting the growing amount of IP-based video content.