Analysis & commentary on America's troubled transition from analog telephone service to digital advanced telecommunications and associated infrastructure deficits.
Friday, September 26, 2008
Aussies feel pull of broadband black holes
The usual suspect: the limited range ADSL deployed by the big Australian telco, Telstra. Read the item in Adelaide Now.
AT&T will likely abandon residential wireline segment, U-Verse in early 2010
The nation’s dominant telco — like other telcos — has been losing landlines to wireless phone service for several years now. When AT&T pulls the plug on U-Verse, which it began rolling out in selected markets in 2006 and which continues to fall behind deployment targets, it will likely cite unanticipated cost, technological and competitive market challenges.
The Achilles Heel of Project Lightspeed/U-Verse lies in the technological shortcomings of digital subscriber line (DSL). While DSL allows AT&T and other telcos to provide broadband over their existing copper cable plants, it’s hobbled by very limited range. When telcos first deployed ADSL around at the start of the decade, DSL’s limited range forced telcos including AT&T into a lose-lose proposition. Either they could spend significant sums of money installing remote DSLAM terminals to extend DSL’s notoriously feeble reach or leave money on the table in the form of lost opportunity costs, unable to serve subscriber premises not located close enough to their CO’s (central switching offices).
ADSL’s limited range also makes for unhappy customers who believe they are purchasing a particular speed tier only to find themselves involuntarily downgraded because the DSL signal isn’t sufficiently robust to support the level of service they ordered.
VDSL, the upgraded version of DSL that AT&T utilizes in its hybrid fiber/copper Project Lightspeed deployment, suffers from even greater range limitations. As such, it requires far more field equipment and fiber/copper interface cabinets (VRADs) than ADSL since VRADs can serve only premises located within 3,000 feet. While providing theoretical downside throughput of 25 Mbs, VDSL over copper also suffers from limited ability to scale up bandwidth to 100 Mbs and higher in order to remain competitive —at least when it comes to video — with MSOs (cable providers) and pure fiber triple players like Verizon and Surewest Communications.
Some market observers believe once copper has reached its throughput limit — many would maintain it already has — all AT&T has to do is change out the old copper for new fiber. That isn’t likely to happen. AT&T won’t bear that additional and substantial CAPEX burden and threaten its generous stock dividends when it is already struggling with the cost of the limited Lightspeed plant it has deployed to date and is reportedly cutting expenditures on it.
Additionally, given its existing alliance with Dish Network (to be replaced with DirecTV starting Jan. 31, 2009), it can still offer video without the associated CAPEX costs of Project Lightspeed and U-Verse just as it does with its marketing partnership with Wildblue to provide satellite “broadband” to the many residences located outside the restricted range of its DSL services.
What will happen to AT&T’s aging residential copper cable plant when it goes all wireless in this market segment? It will be put into runoff mode and minimally maintained — a plan that some would argue is already being implemented as resources have been redirected to Project Lightspeed. That will likely result in noisy and failed lines. But AT&T will probably simply pay any fines levied by regulators as a cost of unwinding its residential landline business with the expectation residential customers will migrate to its wireless service with the encouragement of limited time pricing incentives.
Monday, September 22, 2008
Dialuggers have company in high places
According to this item in PC World, Edwards said at a a OneWebDay event in Washington that she hasn't used her home dial-up connection for months. "It's too much of a pain," PC World quoted Edwards as saying. "It's too cumbersome. All of the data, all of the information that really I most want, you can't just handle on dial-up." Very true as many frustrated dialuggers well know.
PC World reports Edwards and Federal Communications Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein called on Congress to develop a far-reaching broadband policy that would accelerate the rollout of faster broadband across the U.S. But what specifically? How about greater financial assistance for communities and local governments to build open access fiber optic last mile infrastructure for starters since the existing telco/cable duopoly apparently can't absorb the required capital expenditures. After all, if the government can come to the aid to the U.S. financial services industry with hundreds of billions of dollars, it seems to me it could also help in the development of the infrastructure over which finance and commerce is increasingly transacted. A bonus would be increased economic activity as indicated by this California study issued last November that concluded the state stands to gain 1.8 million jobs and $132 billion of new payroll over the next 10 years with a 3.8 percent increase in the utilization of broadband technology.
Friday, September 19, 2008
"Behold America's broadband backwater"
Behold America's broadband backwater. For the nation that pioneered the Internet, extending fast connections to small towns and rural areas has proved a daunting challenge. Carriers are loath to build networks where they can't sell service at a profit, and since 2003 more than $1.2 billion in federal loans aimed at helping private carriers serve remote areas has addressed only the most extreme cases. According to a study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, released in July, only 38% of rural American households have access to high-speed Internet connections. That's an improvement from 15% in 2005, but it pales in comparison with 57% and 60% for city and suburb dwellers, respectively.
The lack of fast Web access is helping create a country of broadband haves and have-nots -- a division that not only makes it harder for businesses to get work done, but also impedes workers' efforts to find jobs, puts students at a disadvantage, and generally leaves a wide swath of the country less connected to the growing storehouse of information on the Web -- from health sites to news magazines to up-to-date information on Presidential candidates. "Broadband is a distance killer, which can especially help rural Americans," says John Horrigan, a Pew researcher. "Broadband is not just an information source for news and civic matters, but it's also a pathway to participation."
Friday, September 12, 2008
Bugged by persistent Yahoo/Firefox browser navigation problem
The reason: a nagging navigation compatibility issue with your blogger's -- and many other folks' -- favorite browser, Firefox 3.0. Clicking on an article link in one of the My Yahoo! modules gets a user to the article fine and even remembers where on the page of the article one left off if one navigates back to the article from the My Yahoo! home page.
But back navigating out of the article back to the My Yahoo! home page takes the reader to the top of the My Yahoo! home page, losing the location of the module containing the article viewed. That requires scrolling up and down the My Yahoo! home page to visually locate the module.
Yahoo engineers say they're aware of the problem but point the finger of blame at Mozilla, Firefox's creator. Mozilla has confirmed the problem and has had an open "Bugzilla" on the issue since not long after Yahoo's "upgrade" but still no fix.
Since Mozilla can't seem to squash the irksome bug, seems to me the best solution here is for Yahoo to simply allow users to migrate back to the previous -- and bug free -- version of My Yahoo!
UPDATE 2/16/09: The problem still continues despite this 10/30/08 email from Yahoo! Customer Care:
Patience, indeed. I imagine for many Firefox users out there, their patience has worn pretty thin by now after months and months with no fix.
We understand your concerns. We are working to resolve the technical issue with your browser not returning to the same position on the page when navigating back to it as soon as possible. While we cannot provide you with an accurate estimate of how long this resolution will take, you can rest assured that we hope to have the issue resolved soon. We appreciate your patience.
Many industrialized nations barely keeping up with Internet throughput demand
According to the survey, that minimum standard is an asymmetrical connection of 3.75 Mbps on the downside and 1 Mbps for uploads -- with latency of no more than 95 milliseconds. However in just three to five years, burgeoning Internet content and applications will require download speeds of 11.25 Mbps and uploads of 5 Mbps even lower latency -- 60 milliseconds or less.
These numbers are sobering and starkly illustrate how fast broadband throughput demand is outstripping capacity, pointing to the need for a major overhaul of the current telecommunications infrastructure. What's more, many in the U.S. where Cisco is based, for example, can't even get throughput anything close to what the survey considers necessary for a decent Internet experience.
Tuesday, September 09, 2008
Senate Commerce Committee Sets Broadband Hearing
Broadcasting & Cable reports today that the Senate Commerce Committee scheduled a full committee hearing Sept. 16 on the benefits of broadband.
Extending broadband to underserved areas is one of the priorities of a Democratic administration, according to the recently approved Democratic platform, which pledged that the Democrats will "implement a national broadband strategy … that enables every American household, school, library and hospital to connect to a world-class communications infrastructure."
The hearing, "Why Broadband Matters," will examine various areas, including access to government information, education, jobs and telemedicine.
Saturday, September 06, 2008
Misgivings in Maryland over Verizon FiOS reach
SouthMdNews.com reports:
‘‘I want to know how we’re improving what we [have] now,” said commissioners’ President F. Wayne Cooper (D). He compared the pending Verizon deal to that of a builder making big promises in order to secure approval for a small project.Sounds like the commissioners need to consider alternatives such as open access fiber lest they end up with angry constituents due to the limitations of the proposed Verizon FiOS project.‘‘This sounds an awful lot like ‘let me build the retail now, and I’ll build the offices later.’”
Again, staff was reluctant to discuss the details of the Verizon agreement on the record. However, Rick Elrod, the county’s consultant for the Verizon deal, admitted that the Verizon project being discussed would not be as broad as the commissioners would like.
Friday, August 22, 2008
4G wireless broadband seen as potential game changing technology
Blair Levin, an analyst with Stifel Nicolaus and a reportedly a rumored Federal Communications Commission nominee in an Obama administration, apparently thinks 4G will alter the playing field in broadband, telling this week's CoBank Communications Industry Executive Forum in Colorado that it has the potential to dramatically expand the cannibalization of wireline-based connections. That means people will not only ditch their voice landlines as they have in droves over the past few years, but also their cable and DSL-based broadband services since 4G's speeds will surpass these and at least approximate the 50Mbs throughput of pure fiber plays offered by Verizon, SureWest Communications and others.
But once again, 4G's broadband capabilities remain speculative and no one yet knows if 4G can really deliver on its potential and whether its costs can support a business model allowing it be be widely offered in the same footprint currently covered by existing 3G wireless services, which in some areas without wireline-based services is the sole terrestrial broadband option. Additionally, 4G must overcome the high latency that can render 3G connections decidedly less than snappy.
Meanwhile, the Sprint and Clearwire predict with expected regulatory approval by year end, their WiMAX rollout will leapfrog 3G and offer a technologically superior alternative with better range. Longer range translates into fewer transmission towers and lower latency. Not only does WiMAX's longer range make it more suitable for less densely populated areas, it also reduces the need for fiber backhaul -- less widely available outside of metro areas -- since there will be fewer transmission sites to feed.
Looking ahead over the next several years, it appears likely the U.S. wireless broadband market will bifurcate with 4G/LTE-based systems run by the big telcos like AT&T and Verizon dominating in metro areas and WiMAX and WiMAX players such as Sprint/Clearwire taking control at the fringes and outside of metro areas.
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Go suck a satellite, AT&T spokesman reiterates
AT&T's marketing slogan "Your world delivered" should be followed by a huge asterisk directing readers to fine print that states:
* Provided you reside in our world, which may or may not exist in this or other dimensions, parallel universes or those comprised of dark matter and/or energy.
An AT&T spokesman drove home the point this week, telling the Eureka (Calif.) Reporter “People choose to live where they choose to live. (How profound) We have a broadband solution for everybody in areas where it’s not feasible to stretch the wireline network via satellite.”
In other words, "Your world isn't necessarily our world and if it's not, we're sorry, you'll just have to go suck a satellite." However, that's hardly a good option as some local residents quoted in the Reporter article note, pointing to its slow and less than reliable connections and high costs that make it more suitable for remote Arctic regions than the lower 48 states.
Connie Davis, a Web-based business owner and treasurer of the Hoopa (Calif.) Association, has the right idea when it comes to countering the big telco's lackadaisical stance. Davis says people cannot look to large telcos or even their local governments for help (the latter hardly surprising given California's difficulty in keeping both state and local govenment functioning these days) getting broadband. They must take matters into their own hands at the grass roots level and most importantly, think outside the box. Moreover, Davis has no time for delaying games packaged as "studies" of broadband availability and demand. "We don’t need to do studies," Davis says. "We don’t need to talk about this. We just need to do it because we need it.” I couldn't have said it better myself, Connie.
I hope the millions of folks stuck in broadband black holes throughout the U.S. follow her advice and form fiber optic and wireless cooperatives they can control and operate rather than leaving themselves at the mercy of big telcos and cable companies who are about as responsive to their needs as the former Soviet phone company.
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Telecompetitor: Telcos should offer complementary wireline and wireless broadband to residential customers
Telcos can ameliorate the threat, telecompetitor suggests, by segmenting their residential broadband offerings into two complementary products: A wireline-based broadband "heavy" connection featuring fast throughput and a broadband "lite" wireless service delivered via their 3G and, later, 4G, cellular system-based service.
Service that will seamlessly extend the broadband experience, both inside and outside of the home, is "quite compelling," telecompetitor concludes, pointing to a Nielsen Mobile study released Tuesday that found wireless broadband access cards while originally targeted at mobile users are increasingly popular among fixed residential users.
Although it makes sense on its face, this strategy is currently flawed insofar that it assumes telcos are already providing robust wireline broadband connections to residential customers who can get them. That's hardly the case for most residential customers whose DSL connections typically max out at 3 Mbs and often at slower speeds very close to current 3G cellular wireless broadband throughputs. (I omit AT&T's U-Verse and Verizon's FiOS services since they're available to only a small fraction of their residential customer bases.)
The rise in fixed residential use of 3G cellular broadband connections discovered by Nielsen Mobile is likely being driven by the lack of wireline-based broadband offerings. As this blog reported a few months back, some telcos such as Verizon Wireless have picked off AT&T residential customers in the many areas where AT&T has neither wireline nor terrestrial wireless-based broadband offerings. That strategy also gives Verizon the opportunity to cross sell its cellular voice plans to AT&T customers and build brand loyalty.
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Comments by AT&T exec show U.S. cannot rely on big telcos to speed lagging broadband deployment
"The ideal way to deploy technology is on the last day as fast as possible, because it gets more capable and cheaper every day," Donovan told the newspaper. This has been AT&T’s failed broadband deployment strategy that has seen its seemingly bold broadband initiatives such as Project Pronto and Project Lightspeed collide with the company’s conservative culture aimed at maximizing depreciation and cash flow and paying large dividends to shareholders.
As your blogger has previously noted, that conservative capex strategy also likely reduces demand for advanced IP services over time since residential and home office based users who have repeatedly asked for such services conclude they will never be made available to them and give up and stop requesting them. The reduced customer demand in turn self justifies AT&T’s decision not to upgrade its plant and also limits competition since competitive local exchange carriers can’t sell their services if there are no circuits over which to deliver them. Moreover, cable companies won’t bother to extend their systems to such deprived areas either, leading to highly persistent broadband black holes.
The U.S. has already begun to move toward an alternative last mile broadband delivery model that’s playing out at the local level with support in some cases from state and federal funding. Under this emerging model, the last mile infrastructure — typically fiber — is privately owned and maintained by local property and business owners similar to privately owned roads. On a larger scale, entire communities opt to form nonprofits or cooperatives to deploy fiber systems. California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger recently signed legislation into law that would allow community services districts to construct their own infrastructure if for profit providers decline to do so.
Sunday, August 17, 2008
Expert says municipalities should facilitate fiber builds versus wireless
Nulty uses a transportation metaphor to illustrate that while wireless systems may offer mobility, a fiber-optic network connected directly to homes boasts nearly unlimited capacity. "Think about 747s and helicopters,” Nulty told The Progressive magazine. “Helicopters are marvelous when they’re used for what they’re good at. But you don’t use them to fly thousands of people between Boston and Chicago. For that you need 747s.”
Nulty makes a valid point that has been missed by most industry observers. Exploding demand for bandwidth could make even wireless broadband technologies with 20Mbs throughput such as WiMAX and 4G LTE cellular obsolete not long after they are projected to hit the market by 2010-12. (Indeed, existing wireless broadband infrastructure is arguably already obsolete, typically unable to deliver even speeds matching DSL and hamstrung by 1970s era copper T-1 technology used for backhaul)
Only wireline-based fiber has the capacity to handle the booming demand for bandwidth. Local governments should encourage fiber optic infrastructure investments, particularly since their residents and business owners cannot necessarily count on telcos and cable companies to step into the gap.
Monday, August 11, 2008
Consultant: U.S. broadband market still has "a lot of growth potential"
Read the full article at Yahoo news.
Tuesday, August 05, 2008
ISPs target remote areas of Northern California for state subsidized broadband infrastructure
The providers -- whose identities remain under wraps until the close of the application process being overseen by the California Public Utilities Commission -- have apparently chosen to deploy outside of metro areas where they believe they could face near term competition from the telco/cable duopoly. That unfortunately means for those mired in broadband black holes where telcos and/or cable companies have limited, incomplete broadband infrastructure in parts of metro area counties such as the Sierra Nevada foothill counties of El Dorado and Placer and portions of Silicon Valley, relief doesn't appear likely anytime soon from one of these subsidized ISPs. In El Dorado County alone, for example, the California Broadband Task Force identified more than five dozen communities that aren't provided any wireline broadband services -- and that's not counting the numerous broadband black holes adjacent to U.S Highway 50.
Providers seeking the CASF funding were allowed to propose either wireline or wireless broadband projects providing minimum throughput of 3 Mbs down and 1 Mbs up.
Update 9/3/08: The CPUC has released ZIP Codes, Maps and Census Block Groups for proposed projects filed by the Aug. 25 soft deadline that would build out broadband infrastructure to underserved areas, which the CPUC defines as those where broadband is available but no facilities-based provider offers service at asymmetrical speeds of at least 3 Mbs for downloads and 1 Mbs on the upload side.
As with the proposals for unserved areas, defined as defined those not served by any form of facilities-based broadband, or where
Internet connectivity is available only through dial-up service or satellite, the vast majority of the proposed projects for underserved areas are situated in Northern California. This latest batch of proposals is heavily concentrated in Sierra Nevada and Sierra Nevada foothill counties including Toulumne, Mariposa, Amador and Calavaras counties.
Monday, August 04, 2008
Will state broadband subsidies have meaningful impact?
The Berkshire Eagle of Pittsfield, Massachusetts reports Bay State lawmakers have sent Gov. Deval L. Patrick legislation that would provide $40 million to help underwrite the cost of building infrastructure in the notorious sprawling broadband black hole in the western part of the state. According to the newspaper, the goal of the legislation, signed into law today by Patrick, is to wire 32 unserved communities with high-speed broadband in the next two years.
Out on the left coast, a deadline passed July 24 for providers to submit proposals to the California Public Utilities Commission under which they would receive a 40 percent subsidy to deploy either wireline or wireless-based broadband infrastruture capable of speeds of at least 3 Mbs down and 1 Mbs up. Priority will be given first to unserved areas and then underserved areas. The $100 million California Advanced Services Fund is funded by a surcharge on telephone bills. The CPUC is expected to announce those projects selected for funding by the fall or later this year.
Given the high cost of broadband telecommunications infrastructure, it remains to be seen if these relatively small state subsidies can make a signficant dent in both states' many broadband black spots. Some believe broadband market failure is so pervasive that a much broader, larger federal initiative similar to the Eisenhower-era federal highway act is needed to bring America into the modern age of Internet-based telecommunications and are urging presidential candidates to back such a program.
AT&T sees WiMAX as solution for less densely populated areas of U.S.
AT&T's new technology chief John Donovan is making AT&T's view of the future its aged copper cable plant in these regions more clear in a published interview with USA Today: It's a costly, obsolete albatross -- a legacy of the analog era of plain old telephone service (POTS).
Now that AT&T defines itself more as a wireless than wireline carrier, wireless is naturally viewed as the logical copper cable replacement strategy. At the top of the list, USA Today quotes Donovan as saying, is WiMAX, which AT&T apparently sees as a longer range and more robust solution for both fixed and mobile voice and data services outside of densely populated areas. In the latter, the telco will likely deploy its planned 4G Long Term Evolution (LTE) cellular service that is expected to provide far faster Internet connections than its current 3G system that itself isn't universally deployed in AT&T's 22-state territory.
Donovan told the newspaper WiMAX appears particularly well suited to rural areas of the U.S. where it's becoming prohibitively expensive to maintain copper.
Telecompetitor speculates that AT&T's interest in WiMAX as a replacement for copper cable represents the start of a "coordinated rural market divestiture strategy."