Generation into IP telecom era, AT&T still has no durable, scalable premise service delivery infrastructure

AT&T Does a Flip Flop on Fixed 5G, Now Sees It “Unequivocably” a Landline Broadband Replacement - Telecompetitor: “As we look at 5G will you have enough capacity to have a good broadband product that serves as a streaming service for all of your DIRECTV NOW, your Netflix, et cetera?” asked Stephenson in a SeekingAlpha transcript of today’s earnings call. “I absolutely am convinced that we will have that capacity, particularly as we turn up millimeter wave spectrum. That’s where the capacity and the performance comes from and that’s where you’ll begin to see a broad – a true replacement opportunity for fixed line broadband. So I have little doubt that in the three to five year time horizon you’ll start to see substitution of wireless for fixed line broadband.”

The concerns that Stephens expressed last year related primarily to the cost of backhaul to support 5G fixed wireless. Stephens apparently also was envisioning fixed 5G wireless being deployed in the millimeter wave spectrum band. Millimeter wave spectrum will support the highest broadband speeds, but over relatively short distances. Hence there is a need for dense backhaul infrastructure.

It is unclear what has caused the company to have a change of heart about the prospects for an AT&T fixed 5G wireless offering. Interestingly, however, the company recently released a policy paper touting the potential of using its AirGig fixed broadband technology in combination with 5G. Although the paper doesn’t provide details, perhaps AT&T is looking at the possibility of using AirGig to provide backhaul for fixed 5G.

A generation into IP telecom era, AT&T has no proven durable premise service delivery infrastructure easily scalable throughout its service area as its 1990s DSL over copper outside plant goes obsolete. AirGig remains an experimental technology. And the millimeter wave frequencies used by 5G can't penetrate objects.

Texas Hill Country: Where the "rural broadband" descriptor and comparisons to electric power in 1930s fail

Broadband Communities – News & Views / GVTC Launches New Fiber Internet Tier Structure in Texas: SMITHSON VALLEY, TX — GVTC, a fiber communications provider internet, digital cable TV, phone and interactive home security monitoring to residential and business customers in far north San Antonio, the Texas Hill Country and South Central Texas, is simplifying its fiber-to-the-home offerings with a new fiber internet tier structure. GVTC launched brand new fiber internet plans that feature standard download speeds of 250 Mbps in its fiber-to-the-home areas. In addition, upgrades to 500 Mbps and 1 Gbps are offered, all three plans featuring 250 Mbps upload speeds as well. New plans are available to both new and existing customers.

Despite the availability of fiber to the premise advanced telecom service in these areas, there is a continued misleading and overly broad description of America's telecom infrastructure deficiencies as a "rural broadband" issue. They've also been inaccurately compared to the lack of electric power infrastructure in the early 20th century when these same areas were completely unwired and left in the dark. Electric power infrastructure was truly a rural problem then because it didn't exist outside urbanized areas. Advanced telecom infrastructure by contrast is deployed in a far more granular manner by investor owned providers that cherry pick nominally rural neighborhoods where they believe they can earn the fastest return on investment and redline the rest.

Oregon opens broadband office to connect rural residents

Oregon opens broadband office to connect rural residents: Spokesmen from the governor’s office told StateScoop the office would essentially serve as a policy and planning hub, responsible for coordinating a statewide strategy and securing funding to ensure everyone in the state has access to high-speed internet. In Oregon, some communities in urban areas have less broadband access than others, but the issue primarily affects rural communities outside of the state’s more populous western cities.

Given the above mission statement, the office would have to include a major federal lobbying function to secure the billions needed to achieve universal advanced telecom service. And especially considering the state's budget allocates just $5 million for infrastructure projects, an amount that won't go very far statewide.

CenturyLink Down, Not Working? Nationwide Outages Reported By Users

 

CenturyLink Down, Not Working? Nationwide Outages Reported By Users

When the Internet was created in the 1960s by the U.S. Defense Department's Advanced Research Project Agency, it was designed to be "self healing." That means if one part of the network is taken out (in DARPA's scenario, a nuclear strike on one or more American cities), the network routes around the damaged areas and keeps functioning as a "network of networks."

As legacy telephone and cable companies became Internet Service Providers using the Internet protocol technology to deliver voice, video and data telecommunications, the survivability and redundancy built into the Internet has weakened. Too much of their network operations functions are centralized, rendering their entire national networks vulnerable to a single hardware or software glitch as shown by today's most recent outage taking down much of CenturyLink's network.

The lesson here for policymakers and regulators is the United States needs to ensure the advanced telecommunications services the Internet transports must be designed and managed to build on the original resilient design of the Internet. That could mean reducing the role of private sector, investor owned players like CenturyLink that are naturally inclined to limit network operational capabilities in order to avoid the expense of managing multiple and redundant network assets.

While technically more complex, given their vital role advanced telecommunications should be as solid and reliable as basic analog voice telephone service that preceded it.

USDA ReConnect Rural Broadband Pilot Rules Released, Allocates $600M in Loans and Grants - Telecompetitor

USDA ReConnect Rural Broadband Pilot Rules Released, Allocates $600M in Loans and Grants - Telecompetitor: To be eligible for a 100% loan or 50% loan / 50% grant, the service area must be in a rural area where 90% of the households do not have sufficient broadband access. To be eligible for a 100% grant, the service area must be rural and 100% of the households must lack sufficient broadband access.

These funds are apparently targeted to truly rural America where they'll make only a slight dent in advanced telecom infrastructure deficits. They won't help in much of the United States and particularly exurban and metro edge communities where redlining by investor owned ISPs is commonplace.

California policymakers should consider creating public utility to serve Northern California delivering electric power -- and advanced telecommunications.

Northern California’s electric utility Pacific Gas & Electric’s future as a going concern is in doubt in the aftermath of enormous wildfires in the region the past several years, most recently the disastrous Camp Fire that incinerated the town of Paradise. The investor-owned utility is potentially facing liability claims running into the many billions of dollars from deaths, injuries, property damage and fire suppression costs that it will be hard pressed to pay. This circumstance is raising the question of whether the public interest of reliable and safe electric power would be better served by a publicly owned utility.

The question presents at a pivotal time as regulators prepare to reassess PG&E’s organizational structure going forward, the Legislature begins a new biennial session and new administration is about to take office. Veteran Sacramento columnist Dan Walters suggests they explore whether California’s electric utilities should become governmental entities – regional versions of municipally owned utilities already operating in the state. “All of them have markedly lower rates than the three big private utilities, and have governing structures that are much more transparent and accountable, not only to ratepayers but to voters.”

Policymakers would be wise and forward looking to also consider expanding the scope of a publicly owned regional utility to include advanced telecommunications. Consumers would likely get a better deal there as well. Much of PG&E’s service area lacks adequate landline telecommunications infrastructure, nominally served by investor owned corporations like PG&E. A publicly owned utility would operate without the need to generate profits and could concentrate on providing the highest possible level of service and value to all – and not just some premises. Particularly when advanced telecommunications service is increasingly seen as essential as electricity.

New methods of installing fiber optic cable on poles owned by PG&E show promise to lower construction costs compared to the traditional strand and lash method of utilizing a separate metal suspension cable hung in the middle part of the pole leased by telephone and cable companies. These include lighter weight all-dielectric self-supporting cable and aerial conduit used in conjunction with smart grid technology. Smart grid technology could also improve safety management of the electric infrastructure, reducing wildfire risk.

Cooperatives served early 20th century exurban America's electricity and telephone needs, but face far more challenging situation for today's advanced telecom

Matheson: ‘We Want the Consumer to Have Real Broadband’ - America's Electric Cooperatives: NRECA CEO Jim Matheson, speaking before a Washington audience of business strategists, outlined how federal policymakers can help close the digital divide and what innovative electric cooperatives are doing to meet rural America’s broadband needs in the meantime.High-speed internet service “is important to us as electric cooperatives because we are owned by the communities we serve, communities that won’t have much of a future without broadband,” Matheson said at the Next.2018 conference held Nov. 13-15 by Bloomberg BNA, a news and analysis company.

Matheson underscored how electric co-ops are leaders in smart technology, yet Federal Communications Commission policies fail to make the most of co-op investments for broadband development. “The FCC has spent $114 billion, and there are still 23 million people without access to broadband,” he said. This gap in service is due in part to the commission’s reliance on self-reported and unverified data about internet service from incumbent providers.

Electric power was first deployed in urban areas of the United States at the start of the 20th century. That's what led to the formation of electric cooperatives in the 1930s to provide electricity outside of urban areas.

Today's advanced telecom infrastructure deficiencies are a different story. Unlike early electric power service, advanced telecom infrastructure does exist outside of urban and suburban areas. But it's generally only deployed to discrete areas where legacy incumbent telephone and cable companies believe they can earn a relatively rapid return on their capital expenditures and maintenance costs. As per the previous post on this blog, that can mean service for one house while another just down the road, around the bend or outside town limits is deemed unservicable.

Incumbents aren't keen on federal subsidies for providers desiring to serve those they do not since they potentially infringe on their territorial monopolies. Consequently, federal subsidy program rules hamstring potential alternative providers, impractically targeted at filling the only the unserved redlined holes in the incumbents' swiss cheese distribution networks. The incumbents lobby for those rules. They naturally want to maximize the size of the cheese and minimize the size of the holes in the data on infrastructure availability they are required to report to regulators under the 1996 revision of the Communications Act. The incumbent rigging of the rules leaves cooperative leaders like Matheson understandably frustrated.

When one premise has advanced telecom service and another nearby does not, it's not a "rural broadband" issue

Electric coops could end Mississippi's broadband 'deserts': What’s considered a “broadband desert” can be deceptive. My elderly parents, for example, live in a rural area between two cities that are served by broadband, but still can only get basic dial-up services. People just up the road can receive broadband from AT&T, and when we recently inquired about services, AT&T looked up the address, assured us they could help and dispatched a technician. But when the tech showed up and tried to install the equipment, he apologetically explained that the home was just out of reach. He was sympathetic to my parents’ plight, and it wasn’t his fault, but it was just not happening.

This account illustrates why America's advanced telecom infrastructure deficiencies cannot accurately be described as a "rural broadband" problem as it's typically dubbed in both mainstream and info tech media. As has been the case for at least a decade as reported on this blog, the problem is redlining by legacy incumbent ISPs with no universal service requirement as exists for traditional voice telephone service. One premise is offered service while another nearby is not. That wasn't the case with electric power distribution infrastructure in the early 20th century. That was truly a rural issue since rural areas were bereft of electric power service.

Purpose of "broadband maps" is to protect legacy incumbent telephone and cable companies, delay progress

FCC leaders say we need a 'national mission' to fix rural broadband - CNET: But before you can really get things going, you have to address one key issue, Rosenworcel said.
"Our broadband maps are terrible," she said. "If we're going to solve this nation's broadband problems, then the first thing we have to do is fix those maps. We need to know where broadband is and is not in every corner of this country." You can't solve a problem you can't measure, she added.

And one can't reach a destination or goal without a plan. Rather than serve that purpose, American policymakers have instead used "broadband maps" to protect legacy incumbent telephone and cable companies and delay progress. They're continuing the fool's errand the incumbents assigned them. Policymakers instead need to set the goal of bringing fiber to every home, school and business and work from the rebuttable presumption that it doesn't exist in most of the nation.

“Net neutrality” fight over nothing less than the future business and regulatory model of advanced telecommunications

The state vs. federal showdown over “net neutrality” is about far more than regulating ISPs’ ability to favor or “speed up” some advanced telecommunications services or slow or even block others. It’s a fight over nothing less than the future business and regulatory models of advanced telecommunications (ATC). Should ATC be bundled with services owned or procured by the ISP or be a common carrier “dumb pipe” in which the role of ISPs is primarily to provide connectivity?

Because Internet protocol enabled digital ATC can deliver far more services than the analog voice telephone service that preceded it, ISPs naturally see a gold mine in monetizing these services. An example is their push for “video everywhere” displayed on home TVs as well as personal devices and acquisitions of video content producers such as AT&T’s recent purchase of Time Warner.

This is the ATC as an information service regulatory approach favored by ISPs and expressed in current public policy wherein the U.S. Federal Communications Commission has reclassified ATC as an information service rather than a common carrier telecommunications utility as the FCC classified it in its 2015 Open Internet rulemaking.

The problem with treating ATC as a proprietary information service instead of a common carrier telecom utility is it will always have limited availability because the infrastructure to deliver it will only be built to serve “high potential” neighborhoods deemed sufficiently profitable by ISPs. The FCC’s now repealed Open Internet rules by contrast included a mandate on ISPs to make ATC available to any customer in their service territories making a reasonable request for service. As information service, that provision contained in Title II of the Communications Act doesn’t apply since information services are regulated under Title I of the statute.

Big ISPs naturally prefer Title I information service regulation because it supports their vertically integrated business models favoring proprietary content delivered to end users over proprietary infrastructure. That supports their top lines. And not having to serve “low potential” neighborhoods reduces capital and maintenance costs, benefitting their bottom lines. It’s a lopsided winner take all scheme in which the ISPs win big and consumers lose.

It's not the data, stupid. It's the FCC's crazy back and forth regulatory posture on advanced telecommunications

Rural Americans Suffer the Costs of Faulty FCC Broadband Data - Pacific Standard: The FCC conducts a review of the state of broadband deployment and access every year, as required by the 1996 Telecommunications Act. As part of this analysis, the FCC must determine whether high-speed broadband is being deployed to "all Americans in a reasonable and timely fashion."

Here, accurate data is crucial. If the FCC finds that high-speed broadband is not being deployed to all Americans in the way it spells out, it must "take immediate action to accelerate deployment." In other words, if broadband isn't being deployed in a timely way to all Americans, the FCC is obligated to enact policies to remedy that. But without reliable data, the FCC might restrict its own ability to do what it's supposed to do. (Emphasis added)

The premise here is flawed. The FCC has already hampered its own ability to ensure universal advanced telecommunications service by failing to consistently regulate it as a common carrier telecommunications utility under Title II of the Communications Act. That regulatory regime accelerates deployment by mandating universal service and prohibiting neighborhood redlining by requiring ISPs to honor reasonable requests for service.

Instead, the agency has vacillated over the past two decades between regulating it under that scheme and as an information service under Title I of the statute. Most recently, the FCC has shifted back to Title I information service regulation after repealing its Title II-based 2015 Open Internet regulations in late 2017. The lack of a consistent regulatory policy and the resulting infrastructure deficiencies is spawning a movement to deprivatize advanced telecom infrastructure as localities study ways to finance and build their own.

Why is Verizon chasing 4G speed records with 5G only days away?

Why is Verizon chasing 4G speed records with 5G only days away?: After nearly a year of hype, actual 5G service is now only days away. Verizon is launching commercial offerings in four cities next week — but the same carrier is touting an eleventh-hour breakthrough in 4G. Working with Qualcomm and Nokia in a live New York commercial environment, Verizon achieved a peak data speed of 1.45Gbps using LTE Advanced technology.

To put that in some perspective, Verizon’s 5G service is promising customers peak data speeds of 1Gbps — 10 to 100 times faster than typical cellular speeds today — with more typical performance in the 300Mbps range. So when Verizon says that (certain) 4G phones might outperform its 5G network, by a factor of nearly 50 percent, that’s a sure-fire recipe for customer confusion.

Adding to the confusion is the blurring between mobile and fixed service given Verizon's limited test market introduction of 5G fixed premise service. This is where mass marketing fueled expectations collide with reality since this service is naturally very limited to areas with sufficient existing fiber infrastructure and free of terrain and foliage obstructions that block 5G signals. But consumers naturally think it's available to them because a large mobile carrier is deploying it and may already be Verizon Wireless customers. Some have even jumped to the conclusion that it has obsoleted fiber to the premise technology.

Asking for meaningful competition in telecom infrastructure is asking for the impossible

These Minnesotans Are Fed Up With Frontier | community broadband networks: Speaker after speaker pointed out that they recognize the root of the problem is lack of competition. In addition to their description of specific issues, almost every attendee expressed a desire to give their business to some other company but they had no other option for Internet access provider — none. Folks in Wyoming feel they’ve been mistreated because Frontier doesn’t have to worry about losing their business. The people in Wyoming are right and Frontier isn’t the only company with the same attitude. Big cable and telecom companies have divided up America’s geography in to slices of monopoly pie, creating an environment in which subscribers can be neglected or even abused. With no other option for Internet access and our dependence on connectivity, subscribers face a tough choice between paying for horrible Internet access or having no connection at all.

It's natural for consumers to want more competition and choice when the market isn't providing the service, value and choice they expect. The problem is asking for more competition in telecom infrastructure is asking for the impossible. There can be no meaningful market competition because telecom infrastructure is very costly to build and maintain. Those high costs typically torpedo the business case for a new player to offer services -- something Google Fiber found out the hard way.

Consequently, the economics of telecom premise landline infrastructure make it feasible for only one or two providers. And as this post points out, providers can gouge and provide poor value service because they can. Consumers have no real alternative. This is the unfortunate consequence of telecom policy that has left advanced telecom infrastructure largely to investor owned providers whose first loyalty is to their shareholders, not their customers. Only public ownership of telecom infrastructure can serve the public interest and provides a needed solution to the failure of market forces in a natural monopoly market. That's not to say there's no role for the private sector. Investor owned companies have the know how and experience to build and operate advanced telecom infrastructure and deliver services over it.

Fiber to the prem renders issue of "broadband speed" largely irrelevant

Why are kids doing their homework in McDonald's parking lot?: An area of northwest Alabama is already seeing some benefit to that federal money, of course. Aderholt announced in May that Tombigbee Communications had received $3 million as it expands online connectivity services in Marion, Winston, Fayette and Lamar counties.

The meeting last week in Guntersville included business and elected leaders who gathered in a roundtable discussion to talk about the specifics of expanding broadband in northeast Alabama. Steve Foshee, the president and CEO of Tombigbee Communications, was among those in attendance.

That conversation, Aderholt said, got as focused as what internet speed would be best - not too slow to be useless but not too fast as to be cost-prohibitive.

The question posed in the last sentence reflects the misguided notion that regards advanced telecommunications infrastructure like water pipes. The bigger the pipe, the higher the cost. It's a false tradeoff, largely put forth by incumbent telephone and cable companies reluctant to modernize their legacy metallic infrastructures to fiber to the premise. Fiber has such abundant carrying capacity it renders the "broadband speed" issue largely irrelevant.

Tennessee U.S. Senate race offers sharp policy debate over public vs. private ownership of telecom infrastructure

Bredesen wants TVA mission expanded to provide rural broadband service | Times Free Press

A Tennessee U.S. Senate contest provides a sharp policy contrast between public versus private ownership of advanced telecommunications infrastructure. Former Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen favors public ownership via the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), formed in the 1930s to provide electric service in areas avoided by investor owned providers. U.S. Rep. Marsha Blackburn on the other hand opposes public ownership of telecommunications infrastructure, contending that unleasing market forces and reduced regulation will encourage investor owned providers to build the necessary infrastructure.

The history that led to the creation of the TVA however suggests market forces aren't up to the challenge. Then as now, if the return on investment isn't sufficient, the market fails on the sell side. Providers cannot earn enough profit in a reasonable timeframe to justify the capital expenditure on infrastructure. In that regard, Bredesen is on the right side of history.

That's not to say however that investor owned players and market forces cannot play a role. Privately owned providers can make money building and operating advanced telecom infrastructure and providing services over it -- and with far less risk than they would face as both owner and operator. Competition can take place in these realms. For example, Ammon Idaho is building publicly owned fiber to the premise telecom infrastructure that allows end users to select among competing ISPs.