Friday, January 31, 2020

Elizabeth Warren’s telecom policy: First FTTP infrastructure, then level of service standard

A major flaw in current U.S. telecom policy is that takes a completely backwards approach. Instead of first establishing an infrastructure standard – fiber to the premise (FTTP) – it begins with a level of service standard: bandwidth. That set the stage for years of unproductive debate over what constitutes an acceptable level of throughput for Internet service, mostly measured in bandwidth but also latency. At the same time, bandwidth demand doubles about every three years. What was deemed sufficient bandwidth not long ago soon becomes less than adequate. Policymakers end up chasing their tails, caught on the downside of the bandwidth growth curve and skating to where the puck was instead of where it’s going.

Unhappy with slow and congested bandwidth, Americans continually pressure their elected representatives for more bandwidth to support faster throughput, making it one of the top issues for their constituents. Nationwide, the politicians are listening. Hearing their constituent complaints, they proclaim the problem is poor “broadband speeds.” “Better broadband” is the obvious solution. But among them, only Sen. Elizabeth Warren seems to correctly understand the issue. She has put the chips in the correct order in her presidential campaign’s telecom policy. First, it sets forth an infrastructure standard, proposing generous federal grants to electricity and telephone cooperatives, non-profit organizations, tribes, cities, counties, and other state subdivisions to build FTTP reaching every American home. Second, it establishes a level of service standard: symmetrical bandwidth of at least 100 Mbps both directions.

Thursday, January 09, 2020

California PUC Report: Worsening landline service from AT&T and Frontier


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This disturbing San Jose Mercury News story on a California Public Utility Commission survey covering 2010-2017 found rampant residential landline redlining and lack of investment in landline infrastructure by two of the states largest telcos. From the story:

  • Deteriorating service quality. The quality of AT&T and Frontier
    voice services has steadily declined over the eight year period, with
    the number of outages increasing and the service restoration times
    getting longer.
  • Persistent disinvestment. The depreciation in the value of the
    AT&T and Frontier networks was greater than the companies’ capital
    investments. This was most pronounced in rural and low-income service
    areas.
  • Degradation of landline service and support. AT&T no longer
    actively markets “Plain Old Telephone Service,” or “POTS” and is instead
    promoting broadband service to grow revenues.
  • Failure to improve the network infrastructure to withstand bad
    weather or fire events. The companies’ engineering, design and
    construction, and maintenance practices are not as robust as they need
    to be.
  • Preferential focus on higher income communities. There is an inverse
    relationship between household income and wire center service quality
    performance. For instance, AT&T wire centers that have been upgraded
    with fiber optic disproportionately serve richer communities. Areas
    with the lowest household incomes have the highest trouble report rates,
    the longest out-of-service durations, and the lowest percentages of
    outages cleared within 24 hours.
  • Increased focus on the most competitive communities. AT&T and
    Frontier offer the greatest service in regions of the state where
    competition — and potential loss of customers — is greatest.

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The story notes California law mandates telcos to restore 90 percent of service outages for telephone service within 24 hours or less, on statewide average. “Yet the largest service providers routinely fail to meet these requirements,” said CPUC commissioner Clifford Rechtschaffen. AT&T has the financial resources to maintain and upgrade its landline network in California, it has not done so, according to the CPUC. Frontier, in contrast, said it wants to invest in upgrades, but lacks the financial capacity, the Mercury News reports, citing the CPUC report.

A note regarding report item on the promotion of "broadband service" instead of POTs. When AT&T first rolled out Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) service nearly two decades ago, that product was promoted during the initial decade. Now that DSL is being phased out as the copper cable plant is placed in runoff mode, that's no longer the case and no successor residential landline product is being promoted for homes not served with fiber connections.