Who needs a Gig at home? Half of U.S. businesses | Technology Futures

Who needs a Gig at home? Half of U.S. businesses | Technology Futures

Andrew Cohill makes the excellent point that with the emergence of Fiber to the Home (FTTH) telecommunications infrastructure, the past focus on Internet throughput speeds that was relevant to legacy telephone and cable companies is becoming increasingly less so. Since incumbent telephone and cable companies have to compress data to transport it over metal wire cable plant not originally designed to carry Internet protocol-based signals, from their perspective bandwidth is a limited commodity. This also limits their ability to serve all premises in their service areas. Even more so in the case of mobile wireless technology which provides far less capacity and range. Hence, their business and pricing models treat bandwidth like a metered utility such as water or electricity.

With FTTH, that entire paradigm of bandwidth as a finite commodity goes out the window and with it the incumbents' outmoded business models. This also has implications for now outdated government subsidy programs based on rules written nearly a decade ago when DSL deployed by telephone companies was state of the art Internet technology. Those programs now need to be updated to scrap obsolete references to the speed of available Internet technology and treat any area lacking FTTH infrastructure as eligible for subsidies if incumbent or other providers aren't constructing it or opt not to.

N.M.’S Daunting Digital Divide | ABQ Journal

N.M.’S Daunting Digital Divide | ABQ Journal: If matching dollars from telephone companies that won stimulus grants are included, plus development loans from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Rural Utilities Service, broadband investments in the past five years surpass $400 million, according to the state Department of Information Technology.

But many of New Mexico’s rural zones still have no Internet coverage, and many that do are still using dial-up modems, or aging digital subscriber line (DSL) technology, said USDA Rural Development State Director Terry Brunner.

And don't expect Google to come in any time soon and build fiber to the premise infrastructure as it is doing in a single metro area, Kansas City.

“New Mexico still has a digital divide because in some areas it’s just so hard to go through mountains or rock formations, and then you get to the end of the route and find there just aren’t enough homes and businesses to pay for the construction,” said Valerie Dodd, CenturyLink Inc.’s vice president and general manager for New Mexico.

Not a valid explanation because it fails to take into account aerial fiber, using (and upgrading as necessary) the utility poles that deliver POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) via copper cable.

DSL turbocharging schemes remain just that

DSL Renaissance Underway?: Zero Touch Vectoring
Vectoring technology is a relatively new innovation for DSL which basically is a noise cancelling technology which reduces cross talk in copper pairs, allowing DSL to achieve much faster bandwidth throughput as a result. Some vendors are claiming they can squeeze 100 Mbps out of VDSL2 vectoring, albeit at rather short distances. It’s very much a FTTN technology, where VDSL2 connects to the home from a fiber fed cabinet.

These stories continue to appear year after year as vendors hope telcos will adopt their latest sooper dooper DSL turbocharging scheme.  Problem is while telcos aren't investing FTTH CAPex, they aren't investing CAPex or OPex in their aging legacy copper cable plants either and are instead concentrating on the mobile wireless space where more rapid ROIs are to be had.

And the above reference to "Zero Touch" for many telco customers has an entirely different meaning: DSL won't touch their premises because the DSL signal can't propagate far enough over old copper to reach them. Zero Touch=Zero Service.

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).

Migrating from DSL to FTTP

More indications that providers are winding down DSL and migrating to fiber to the premises (FTTP) per this gigaom item on North State Communications of North Carolina:

North State offers an 80 Mbps down/30 Mbps up for consumers at a 12-month introductory price of $49 a month, which is about what I pay for 12-13 Mbps down/ 2Mbps up cable broadband from Time Warner here in Austin. However, the most popular package North State sells is a 30/30 Mbps symmetrical package, although he didn’t disclose penetration or take rates. Tucker also noted that the company is still supporting its 10 Mbps DSL business in its service area, but he doesn’t plan on making more investments in the technology. “Back in 2003 and 2004 and 2006, we were out there shortening loop lengths, building out fiber to the node and all that, but now we’re going to stick with maintenance,” Tucker said

Copper vaporware as AT&T chief declares DSL obsolete

Every couple of years or so, an article like this one by Tara Seals of V2M appears arguing legacy copper telecommunications infrastructure designed for a pre-Internet analog era is far from obsolete. Technical innovations can extend its lifespan, even as bandwidth demand is increasingly challenging its carrying capacity, particularly from Over The Top (OTT) video content:

Telcos are seeking cost-effective solutions to maximize their legacy infrastructure. Reducing crosstalk across copper bonded pairs using the ITU-T G.vector standard (G.993.5), introducing software solutions to maximize network logistics and using caching in the network are all solutions that are occurring right now, as telcos position themselves to meet the rapidly growing consumer OTT demand.

If that's the case, then why did AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson declare this week that the workhorse technology that has transported Internet protocol content over AT&T's copper network for the past decade and a half -- Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) -- is obsolete?

What about that innovation to stave off copper obsolescence? If it were for real instead of vaporware hype, it would truly provide AT&T tremendous opportunity to offer more wireline Internet services to a lot more customers over its legacy copper plant. Clearly for AT&T, that's not the case as the telco shifts away from residential wireline and is instead concentrating capital expenditures on personal wireless services.

DSL reaches end of line as interim pre-fiber to the premises technology

Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) was deployed by telcos starting in the late 1990s as an interim technology to bring Internet Protocol-based telecommunications services to customer premises before fiber optic connections could be brought to them.

Now DSL faces a crisis that dramatically shortens the days it can play this role. While DSL allows telcos to use existing copper plant designed for Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS), that copper plant is aged and deteriorating quickly. DSL tends to work best over newer, more pristine copper. But there's not much of that (if any) being deployed these days. Meanwhile, DSL customers complain about connections that run slower than advertised or are prone to outages as DSL signals struggle across ancient pairs of twisted copper.

And since about 2008 and amid the current economic downturn, telcos have pared back their DSL rollouts. Verizon concentrated on fiber to the premises via its FiOS product offering, prompting customer complaints it was neglecting its copper plant and repairing it with bubble gum and duct tape.

Here's the crisis: Now that DSL has served its role as an interim IP solution on the road to fiber to the premises, the United States is not prepared to make the transition to fiber. Stunningly, this gap in the technology transition isn't addressed in the Federal Communications Commission's National Broadband Plan issued this past spring. Nor is there any indication the nation's two largest telcos are seriously addressing it. Verizon recently halted build out of its FiOS fiber plant. AT&T opted for a hybrid model of fiber to the node and copper to the premise for its U-Verse product. But the VDSL transmission technology that powers U-Verse suffers from far greater distance limitations than previous generations of DSL and greatly limits U-Verse's service footprint.

It will fall to smaller, locally owned and operated telcos, local governments and telecom cooperatives to pick up where DSL left off (or in many cases, left out for those not serviceable by DSL). The National Broadband Plan should recognize that DSL over copper is dead or dying and support efforts by these entities to deploy fiber to the premises with technical assistance grants and infrastructure construction grants and low cost loans.

App-Rising: FCC fudges on fiber

From the perspective of App-Rising, a recent Federal Communications Commission report addressing how to complete America's incomplete IP-based telecom infrastructure suffers from a major flaw. There's too much emphasis on DSL wireline technology intended to serve as a temporary stopgap on the road to fiber to the premises -- technology that will soon be obsolete and already suffers from poor reliability and high maintenance costs given the nation's aging copper cable plant.

The FCC also fudges on fiber by looking to mobile 4G wireless technology as a substitute for fiber to the premises. I agree with App-Rising that's also bad idea. This technology is intended primarily for mobile and not premises service. And unlike fiber, it's not a proven technology. Plus there's no indication 4G won't also become quickly obsolete, unable to scale up as premise bandwidth demand inevitably grows.

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.

U.S. residential DSL access shows no gain since 2006

U.S. residential DSL availability in the first half of 2008 continued to show no increase since it virtually hit the wall in 2006, with about a fifth of the nation still unable to access it.

That's pretty much the same story reported on this blog back in January based on Federal Communications Commission data covering the previous six-month period of July to December 2007. Readers can see for themselves by looking at the first column of Table 14 in the latest FCC report on Internet access released last week.

The same states continue to rank low on residential DSL access, including Vermont, Virginia, New Hampshire, Maine Michigan, Mississippi, Maryland and New York. The FCC withheld DSL availability for some states including Delaware, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Hawaii citing "firm confidentiality."

This redaction and other mechanisms to obfuscate where broadband infrastructure deployment exists and where it doesn't are increasingly cropping up at a time when government initiatives to increase broadband access demand greater transparency. It will be interesting to see how federal and state governments resolve this fundamental conflict.

British broadband deployment strategy stuck in the self limiting box of DSL

When it comes to ensuring universal broadband access for its citizens, the biggest challenge facing the Brits is thinking outside of box of DSL as this Telegraph story today illustrates.

The UK government is bumbling by setting the bar way too low (prescribing a minimum download speed of 2Mbs) and basing its broadband deployment strategy on DSL over copper, a technology intended to serve only as an interim solution from the 1990s and to the middle of the current decade until fiber optic to the premises is build out. It's a vastly underpowered and arguably obsolete technology that itself is responsible for the formation of gaping broadband "black spots" as they are called in Britian. That's because DSL signals attenuate and quickly fade not far from central telephone exchanges, meaning those just a few miles away are left without service.

Our friends across the Big Pond should consult with American broadband experts like Tim Nulty, who is working to bring fiber to the premises in that part of the U.S. known -- ironically -- as New England. Nulty served as director of a publicly owned broadband system serving the city of Burlington, Vermont and now runs ValleyFiber, a nonprofit organization focused on bringing municipal fiber to nearly two dozen Vermont towns.

U.S. "headed into an extraordinary period where the government is directly investing in broadband infrastructure"

From PC World today:

The nation is headed into an "extraordinary period where the government is directly investing in broadband infrastructure," said Ben Scott, policy director of Free Press, a media reform group. "This process of handing out $7 billion, although there's a great deal of urgency to get the money out the door, must fundamentally be data driven. We need to make sure the money is spent wisely, on projects that deliver the biggest bang for the buck for the American taxpayer."

Scott also called on the government to fund high-speed networks, not just basic broadband. "We're concerned that stimulus dollars not be used to build obsolete networks," he said. "If we want to make sure that ... we're not simply re-creating a digital divide by building a substandard network that then has to take another leap to catch up."

Scott's got it right on the money here. The greatest hazard with government subsidization of broadband telecommunications infrastructure is subsidizing yesterday's obsolete technology (such as DSL over copper) instead of tomorrow's (read fiber to the premises).

Anyone who's ever bought more than their first personal computer understands this principle. The best value isn't the lowest priced bargain. It's the machine that's got more processing power, memory and storage than what's presently needed but allows the user to expand and add new applications and programs in later years.

Vermonters declare independence from telco/cable duopoly

The Wall Street Journal today features an initiative by 22 central Vermont towns to take their telecommunications destiny into their own hands instead of relying on a telco/cable duopoly that cannot meet their needs.

They're doing so with a public/private partnership to deploy 1,400 miles of aerial fiber-optic lines to provide high-speed Internet access, phone and video. The project is to be financed through a capital lease, with the towns raising money from investors to build the network, then leasing it back from the investors over 23 years.

Tim Nulty, the project's consultant to the towns, told the WSJ he originally wanted loan guarantees as part of the recently enacted federal economic stimulus package but is now looking into grant funding under the legislation, which allocated $7.2 for broadband built out.

While this project involves a sparsely populated rural area, I expect other more densely populated areas will also form municipal and cooperative fiber ventures as it becomes more apparent that locals must take responsibility for getting fiber over the last mile and cannot continue as they have for years in vain to expect telcos and cable companies to provide it -- particularly when it's not in their business plans.

The article also contains a desperate comment by a telco flak to keep the telco's outmoded copper-delivered DSL relevant -- which due to DSL's notorious technical limitations can't easily serve areas like rural New England -- amid the growing realization that its future prospects are severely limited in the era of fiber.

No antitrust issue in ISP suit vs. AT&T, U.S. Supreme Court rules

Reuters reports the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled against several Internet Service Providers who brought an antitrust suit against AT&T in 2003 claiming the big telco's pricing policies on DSL service constituted uncompetitive market conduct.

The ISPs alleged AT&T and its predecessor, SBC Communications, maintained unreasonably high wholesale access charges to ISPs to deliberately thwart them from competing with SBC/AT&T for Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) customers as permitted under the line sharing provisions of the federal Telecommunications Reform Act of 1996. Ma Bell then lowballed prices on her own DSL offerings, making it impossible for the ISPs to compete on price, the ISP plaintiffs complained.

Don't subsidize slow, outmoded AT&T DSL, groups urge California PUC

One of five AT&T broadband build out projects subsidized with 40 percent matching funds from the California Public Utility Commission's California Advanced Services Fund (CASF) has drawn criticism from community groups in California's North Coast area.

The groups, the Mendocino Coast Broadband Alliance, Redwood Coast Rural Action, Redwood Coast Connect and Humboldt Area Foundation protest the award of $15,200 in CASF funding to AT&T to finance the roll out of DSL technology to serve 97 homes over existing wire line facilities. The groups complain that won't deliver sufficient throughput in the affected areas including Albion, Little River, Caspar, Mendocino, Fort Bragg, Elk and Point Arena. The so-called Comptche project's DSL throughput of up to 1.5 Mbs for downloads and up to 384 Kbs for uploads is too slow, they say, urging the CPUC demand AT&T offer throughputs of 3 Mbs down and 1 Mbs up as originally specified in CASF funding guidelines adopted by the commission in 2007. Moreover, some of the groups say, a Wireless Internet Service Provider (WISP) could provide faster speeds over a shorter timeframe than AT&T's DSL project.

However in its resolution adopted Feb. 20 awarding funding for the project, the CPUC notes it "has no control over what applicants ultimately offer," and that the 3 Mbs download and 1 Mbs upload speeds are guidelines and not firm requirements. "We believe that broadband speeds below 3/1 still offer large benefits to communities that have no broadband service at all and does not hinder the possibility of upgrades by incumbents or competitors," the resolution states.

The unstated cause of the debate: AT&T's aged copper cable plant that cannot support higher throughput as well as the company's reliance on underpowered DSL technology that has very limited range over copper cable due to signal degradation.

NPR story on U.S. broadband access illustrates major flaw in media coverage of issue

NPR's Morning Edition has a story out this AM on the $7.2 billion set aside for grants to subsidize broadband telecommunications infrastructure that Congress sent to President Barack Obama. Unfortunately this NPR story like others in the mainstream media paint the U.S. broadband landscape with far too wide a brush and reinforce the myth that lack of broadband access is confined to rural areas.

Due to the technological limitations of Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) over copper cable offered by telcos and the limited footprints of single purpose cable company plants built decades ago solely to provide TV, broadband black holes can be found most anywhere in the United States: in urban centers, suburbs, exurbs, quasi-rural as well as rural areas.

Homes and small businesses in one part of these areas may have access to broadband while those adjacent and just one or two miles away -- and oftentimes in even closer proximity -- don't. As noted by this blog recently, the Google search phrase that brings the largest number of hits and visitors to it goes along the lines of "My neighbor can can high speed Internet access but I can't/why not?"

Thy neighbor's broadband

In the three years this blog has been in existence, by far the top Google search phrase that directs readers to it goes along the lines of "My neighbors can get high speed Internet/DSL/cable but I can't/why not?"

The common question ultimately reveals the hodge podge, Balkanized deployment of premises-based wire line broadband Internet access that's about as maddening as not being able to get telephone service when the folks next door can. Or them getting electricity while you're left off the grid.

The high frequency of the Google query directed to this blog also calls into question the widely repeated myth that broadband black holes can only be found deep in rural Iowa or Nebraska when in fact they turn up most anywhere in the United States.

The common Google search term also points up the technological shortcomings of DSL over copper, which is very sensitive to and degrades with distance, as well as the severely proscribed footpoints of cable deployments based on the number of dwellings per an arbitrary linear metric suitable only for neighborhoods laid out along urban gridlines.

FCC data show DSL availability hit wall in 2006; nearly 20 percent of U.S. homes continued to lack access in 2007

Newly released data show U.S. telco DSL availability hitting the wall in 2006 with virtually no increase during 2007. The data are contained in Table 14 of the Federal Communications Commission's semi-annual report on broadband deployment as of Dec. 31, 2007.

The data show show the percentage of residences that can get DSL from their telcos during the last half of 2007 -- about 80 percent averaged among all states -- barely budging compared to all of 2006. That leaves about 20 percent of telco customers stuck with circa early 1990s dial up or the substandard option of satellite Internet, a technology more appropriate for the Alaskan frontier than the lower 48 states.

That telco DSL availability showed virtually no increase over 2006 and 2007 starkly illustrates that DSL provided by incumbent telcos over copper cable is a failed technology for delivering high speed Internet access to Americans that should be abandoned in favor of fiber optic-based telecommunications infrastructure.

As with previous versions of the semi-annual reports required by the Telecommunications Act of 1996, the same states remain in the cellar measured on lack of telco DSL access including Vermont (31 percent), Virginia (35 percent), New Hampshire (38 percent), Maine (31 percent), Michigan (29 percent), Mississippi (28 percent), Maryland (25 percent) and even New York (24 percent). DSL availability exceeded 90 percent or greater in just two states, Georgia and California.

Minnesota muni fiber project prime example of where broadband infrastructure stimulus funding should go

Blandin on Broadband tipped me to this municipal fiber project whose $18.5 million bond financing goes before North St. Paul, Minnesota voters next month.

It's a prime example of where the new Congress and the incoming Obama administration should be directing economic stimulus infrastructure funding. Federal funding would help reduce the financial risk of these municipal fiber projects by helping them cover their start up costs sooner while creating badly needed jobs and stimulating electronic commerce.

North St. Paul City Manager Wally Wysopal has the right idea in suggesting this isn't simply about filling in broadband black holes but instead is putting in place vital telecommunications infrastructure that can meet the city's needs going into the future. This approach is far superior to simply playing catch up by wasting stimulus funding on rolling out increasingly obsolete copper cable-based DSL that should have been more widely deployed years ago under the incentives and tax breaks of the 1996 federal Telecommunications Act.

"The idea here is to become the best-connected small town in Minnesota," Wysopal told the TwinCities.com Pioneer Press. "We're not getting into this for the sake of providing lower rates for cable or telephone but to provide a service that's superior to anything that's being contemplated today."

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.