N.J., Verizon deal could leave Hopewell without broadband Internet | NJ.com

N.J., Verizon deal could leave Hopewell without broadband Internet | NJ.com

Apparently this New Jersey township will have to explore alternative business models to build premises telecommunications infrastructure given that Verizon will only offer it metered mobile wireless service.

Event highlights scarcity of high-speed Internet in rural areas | The News Leader | newsleader.com

Event highlights scarcity of high-speed Internet in rural areas | The News Leader | newsleader.com: During a break, Korte explained how he, his wife, and their business, The Balance Group, switched to 4G cellular broadband service. However the data limits cellphone providers set make business more expensive, Korte said.

They’ve had to stick with it, though, and absorb the cost from exceeding data caps.

“I go to the (cellphone provider) and say, ‘Well, we need 300 gigabytes a month. That would probably do it.’” Korte said. “They laugh at it, and tell me to go to the cable company.”

Like many residents in Augusta County and those served by the two-dozen other rural, local government officials gathered for the workshop, cable service doesn’t extend to his home.

This pretty well sums up the sorry state of Internet infrastructure in much of the United States and trying to get by on mobile wireless.

IP Transition Must Advance, CES Panel Says | USTelecom

IP Transition Must Advance, CES Panel Says | USTelecom: Meanwhile, AT&T has been eager to begin moving forward with the IP transition and last year proposed that the Federal Communications Commission begin trials to test the effects of a full network transition, said Bob Quinn, AT&T senior vice president-federal regulatory. The role for FCC is to oversee the "turning off" of the old network, Quinn said. "There will be an enormous amount of policy concerns involved in doing this, and we need to figure out what this new world will look like."

"We've reached the point where the IP network is superior to the old switched network," said Internet analyst and author Larry Downes. "The policy issue is what do we do about people who have not yet made the switch?"

There's also the issue of telephone companies that have not yet changed out their old POTS copper cable plants to fiber optic capable of supporting data and video as well as voice services using voice over Internet protocol (VOIP). This isn't only about consumers who haven't made the transition off wireline POTS for premises service. For many, they don't really have a choice for wireline-delivered voice service.

AT&T and other telcos are hoping consumers will be satisfied with using mobile wireless service for both voice and Internet access since they don't plan to invest in fiber to the premise (FTTP) infrastructure to replace their obsolete copper networks that cannot serve many homes and businesses due to technological limitations. Communities can offer their residents a far better option by building municipal or consumer telecommunications cooperative owned and operated FTTP networks instead of leaving their residents relegated to supbar mobile wireless services that can't provide adequate bandwidth and value.

Mobile isn't premise service

AT&T’s latest home broadband service isn’t DSL or fiber. It’s LTE — Tech News and Analysis: The idea of using a mobile network to connect homes that have either no or slow broadband access is definitely an admirable idea, but it has its limitations. Today’s mobile networks simply aren’t designed for the intense data demands of are increasingly hungry home broadband appliances — they have limited capacity and that capacity must be shared with all of the other users on the network. That’s why the per-gigabyte costs of mobile broadband are so much higher.

An excellent point in this GigaOM article that puts this service in the proper perspective.  It's designed for mobile and not premises services. Offering a mobile service to a premises does not make it a premises service.

A few paragraphs down, the article notes:

In fact, AT&T is trying to eliminate the distinction between residential and mobile service entirely.

Nice try, but it won't work.  Mobile is mobile. Premises is premises.

Google's Project Loon no cure for the common Internet not spot

Google's experimental Project Loon unveiled this week that envisions a fleet of high altitude balloons providing Internet connectivity is likely to benefit only the most remote and undeveloped areas of the globe.  Fittingly, remote New Zealand was the site of the first experimental deployment of these 'loons, mate.

The technology won't be a panacea for more populated parts of the globe in developed nations plagued by incomplete wireline Internet infrastructure that serves only some residences and businesses while others adjacent are left off the Internet grid.

Nor can it provide sufficient throughput to support the rapid growth in bandwidth demand driven by video and the use of multiple devices common nowadays in many households.  According to Google, the high altitude digital dirigibles will provide connectivity at speeds comparable to 3G, the legacy mobile wireless service now being superseded by higher bandwidth 4G mobile wireless.

Look Out Google Fiber, $35-A-Month Gigabit Internet Comes to Vermont - Digits - WSJ

Look Out Google Fiber, $35-A-Month Gigabit Internet Comes to Vermont - Digits - WSJ: VTel’s Chief Executive Michel Guite says he’s made it a personal mission to upgrade the company’s legacy phone network, which dates back to 1890, with fiber for the broadband age. The company was able to afford the upgrades largely by winning federal stimulus awards set aside for broadband. Using $94 million in stimulus money, VTel has invested in stringing 1,200 miles of fiber across a number of rural Vermont counties over the past year. Mr. Guite says the gigabit service should be available across VTel’s footprint in coming months.

VTel joins an increasing number of rural telephone companies who, having lost DSL share to cable Internet over the years, are reinvesting in fiber-to-the-home networks.

As Google targets large metro areas of the United States for fiber rollouts, small incumbent local exchange carriers (ILECs) like this one are upgrading their outmoded copper cable infrastructure with fiber to the premise (FTTP). Nevertheless, significant gaps will remain, particularly in areas of the U.S. served by top tier telcos like AT&T and Verizon that have essentially put their copper networks into runoff mode with no plans to upgrade them with fiber plant as they concentrate their CAPex on mobile wireless services.  Due to their smaller populations, these areas are also unlikely to attract Google fiber and will have to build their own community-based FTTP networks.

Australians Without Broadband Call For Changes To NBN | Internet

Australians Without Broadband Call For Changes To NBN | Internet: Experts have blamed Telstra for failing to upgrade creaking infrastructure because the NBN will limit the return it can get on its investment. Meanwhile many of those without broadband face over three years on dialup or expensive and patchy wireless plans as they are not part of the early NBN rollout.

At least the Aussies can claim they have active construction underway to build fiber to the premise infrastructure -- albeit not fast enough for areas that must still rely on early 1990s era dial up over twisted copper pair and data capped mobile wireless service.  The United States does not: only the travesty of a "national broadband plan" that exists on paper only.  There, the wait to get off dial up may take even longer than for the folks down under unless American communities take the initiative to build their own community fiber networks.

Verizon's residential LTE "HomeFusion" likely to serve only fringes of small number of metro areas

Verizon's announcement today of its HomeFusion wireless residential Internet service offering based on its nascent 4G cellular LTE service appears aimed at picking up marginal residential market share in suburban and exurban fringes of U.S metro areas where wireline connectivity from incumbent telcos and cable providers is sketchy. These are also areas where Verizon might otherwise deploy its FiOS fiber to the premise residential wireline product but will not because the company has called a halt to further FiOS expansion.

It's not likely HomeFusion will be broadly deployed in predominantly rural and quasi-rural areas. Like Verizon's mobile wireless offerings, it's bandwidth metered and can't offer the ample headroom for bandwidth demand growth -- much of it driven by video -- that fiber does. In order to improve Internet deployment and access in these areas, these communities will have to build their own fiber to the premises networks constructed by local governments or telecom cooperatives.

AT&T has effectively thrown in the towel in serving these areas. HomeFusion represents Verizon's last ditch effort to pick up some limited revenues in these underserved markets.