Silicon Valley startup has big plans for wireless broadband coverage

This venture capital-backed Silicon Valley startup was mentioned on this blog about a year ago. M2Z says it will build a nationwide broadband network that will serve one third of the U.S. population within three years, two thirds within five years and 95 percent within ten years.

Wisconsin offers tax incentives for broadband infrastructure investment

Wisconsin is offering up to $7.5 million in tax incentives to companies that will make investments, over the next two years, in equipment designed to provide broadband Internet availability to unserved or underserved areas of the state.

California PUC a toothless watchdog on broadband access

The California Public Utilities Commission announced it's accepting applications from broadband providers seeking statewide franchises under the Digital Infrastructure and Video Competition Act (AB 2987). The PUC said it will report on broadband availability in California by tracking households by census tract to determine which have broadband access and/or subscribe to broadband services. The PUC also said it would be "a vigilant watchdog in ensuring that this critical upgrade to the state's communication infrastructure reaches consumers of all income levels."

While the PUC's support for universal broadband access is laudable, AB 2987 doesn't give it the teeth to be that vigilant watchdog. The big telcos and cable companies aren't required by the legislation to build out their systems in order to offer broadband to all Californians. Instead, they are required to offer broadband to only half or less of their service areas by 2012 -- and there are are loopholes that reduce that requirement. The PUC can bark and snarl, but it has no bite when it comes to bridging California's digital divide, which by the way has little to do with a household's income but rather its location.

Verizon earns analyst plaudits for upgrading copper to fiber

Verizon paid a short term share price for committing itself to replace copper cable endangered with obsolescence by skyrocketing digital bandwidth demand. But the telco is earning high marks from industry analysts for adopting its FTTH (Fiber To The Home) strategy that better positions the company in the long term to offer the triple play service package of voice, high speed Internet and video since fiber offers far greater carrying capacity than copper. Local governments also see the long term fiber advantage, with some engaged in public/private partnerships to put in fiber-based systems, particularly in areas where legacy metal wire based systems aren't expected to be replaced with fiber in the foreseeable.

Fiber optic, New England town hall style

Residents of the Vermont towns of Jericho, Underhill and Westford will be polled by their selectboard members on whether the towns should take out a lease to expand fiber optic triple play services provided by Burlington Telecom to their communities.

This is an admirable expression of the American spirit -- folks taking control of their telecommunications destiny instead of hoping and waiting the big telco and cable companies will bring them broadband service.

Virginia legislature appropriates $1.6 million for fiber project

Some states are apparently tired of waiting for the private sector to act and are putting their own money on the line as in this project to build out fiber optic-based broadband for Virginia's Eastern Shore.

California bill would add broadband to lifeline service for low income residences

Sen. Alex Padilla (D-San Fernando) has introduced legislation that would require the California Public Utilities Commission to include broadband Internet access in the state's existing lifeline program that provides discounted POTS to low income households.

With telcos like AT&T offering DSL promo rates for residential customers who can get its underpowered DSL service for as little as $13 a month, Padilla's proposal would certainly appear within the realm of possibilities.

However, public policymakers and residential broadband providers should also consider more flexible pricing strategies that allow providers to cover increased deployment costs in less densely populated portions of their service areas outside of urban centers. As things currently stand, too many residences in these areas must choose between cheap but impractically slow dial up and costly services such as satellite -- more appropriate to extremely remote locations of the U.S. -- and T-1 lines which were never intended for residential customers. There's a price point in the middle for fast, reliable wire line broadband and the providers should offer services to meet it.

Digital Deprivation in a Land of Affluence

This story in today's New York Times illustrates that location and not necessarily socioeconomic status defines the digital divide -- this one in relatively affluent Connecticut.

Local public/private partnerships are America's best hope to close the digital divide

America's best hope for the rapid, widespread deployment of fiber optic based telecommunications systems that can serve up a "triple play" array of services -- broadband Internet access, voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP) and full motion interactive video -- lies with local governmental entities such as counties, municipalities and utility districts working in partnership with private telecommunications providers to form open access networks. It's already happening in places like Utah with The Utah Telecommunication Open Infrastructure Agency (UTOPIA) and in rural Southern Oregon. Smart folks in these places realize they won't likely see fiber deployed in these areas for many more years if they wait on the big telco/cable duopoly, which for business reasons must concentrate on densely populated urban regions. They correctly realize they must take matters into their own hands. As UTOPIA's name suggests, the foundation of the private/public arrangement is the systems open infrastructure as contrasted to the wholly privately owned systems of the telco/cable duopoly. That model allows for creative deal making involving valuable public rights of way and the investments of private sector players.

These kinds of public/private partnerships at the local level must be encouraged and supported. Telcos and cable companies should set aside their need for hegemony over their markets and instead of fighting them, find out how they can help them along. They too can come out winners since these public/private fiber projects put in place proven, state of the art fiber optic technology for them, saving them money while opening up a big pipe for them to reach customers with advanced services they currently cannot offer. They might not have total ownership of the fiber infrastructure that results from these public/private partnerships. But access to fiber sooner rather than much later raises all boats, boats that in too many areas of the U.S. remain stuck in the mud without broadband access.

Half of U.S. homes projected to have broadband by year end

Blogger Mark Milliman says the U.S. has a long way to go as a broadband player, citing data released today from Parks Associates projecting that half of the nation's homes will have access to broadband by year end.

A telecommunications industry consultant, Milliman notes independent telephone companies and municipalities are looking for ways to bypass big telcos and cable companies and are building their own broadband systems.

The big duopoly providers are already many years behind where they should be on broadband and fiber optic deployment and will fall further and further behind the broadband demand curve as time goes on, but are too constrained by quarterly earnings pressures to mount a crash program to catch up. It's only natural that more nimble smaller players and local governments are moving to fill in the broadband black holes the big guys have left behind.

Analyst: Telcos are doomed copper dinosaurs

Barron's Online is out with a report today on a broadband market analysis by Sanford Bernstein analyst Craig Moffett, who believes the telephone companies remain too wedded to their copper cable-based infrastructures. Moffett believes their stance dooms them to broadband extinction in the long run, setting the stage for cable companies to walk over their copper carcasses.

Not only that, Moffett opines, the telcos are deploying fiber optic cable in densely populated urban areas where their legacy copper cable plant is in better shape and where DSL's short distance range works best. Good point. I've argued telcos should concentrate on changing out copper with fiber outside urban centers where their copper cable plants are the oldest and most deteriorated and cannot support widespread DSL service as is the case in El Dorado County. The telcos like AT&T and Verizon should reverse their current fiber priorities and put fiber in these areas first. They'll gain customers for broadband services they currently cannot offer there due to the limitations of copper while at the same time be able to continue to derive revenues from urban markets where their copper is newer, more reliable and better able support broadband over the interim until they fully replace copper with fiber throughout their service areas.

Goal of South Carolina resolution: statewide broadband

South Carolina lawmakers have approved a resolution calling for broadband Internet access in all areas of the state. The resolution would create the South Carolina Wireless Technology and Communications Commission. It comes as state governments respond to concerns that large areas of their states are on the wrong side of the digital divide and economically uncompetitive. The resolution follows similar state government initiatives in California, New York, Kentucky, Virginia, Nebraska and Vermont.

The South Carolina proposal pins its hopes for statewide broadband access on still emerging terrestrial wireless broadband technology as the cheapest and fastest way to deploy broadband access.

Bill would require California PUC to report on broadband access, competition

Sen. Christine Kehoe (D-San Diego) has introduced SB 323 that would require the California Public Utilities Commission to annually report to the Legislature on the availability of broadband Internet access, including where broadband isn't available and where there are no competing providers.

Note to Sen. Kehoe: Consider amending your measure to provide for more specific geographic information, using multiple measures such as census tracts, assessors' rolls, electronic mapping, provider subscriber data and ZIP Code plus 4. (See previous post re Maryland's HB 1069. )

Measurements of broadband availability based on a single geographical parameter -- such as a five digit ZIP Code -- are too broad and easily miss large broadband black holes that can exist in a five-digit ZIP where some neighborhoods have access to broadband while others in the same ZIP code do not.

Maryland bill would require broadband statistics

Public Knowledge, a Washington-based consumer advocacy group, reports on its blog that legislation will be heard in a Maryland legislative committee next week that would require all broadband providers to report where they are providing service.

Providers would be required to show on a ZIP code-plus 4 basis where they are providing service, what portion of residents of the nine digit ZIP code subscribe to their broadband offerings and other information. PK hopes the legislation will become a model for other states and serve as an alternative to broadband deployment data gathered by the Federal Communications Commission widely criticized as lacking sufficient detail to guide public policymakers.

PK reports Verizon and Comcast have fired up their lobbying machinery to oppose HB 1069 by Herman Taylor (D-Montgomery County).

Next generation fiber optic blows DSL away, promises to reshape telecom infrastructure

Copper wire-based DSL systems appear headed for extinction based on recent research of new generation fiber optic cable technology that clocked blazing throughput speeds (10 gigabytes per second downloads, 2.5 gbs uploads) on a loop length of up to 100 kilometers, or about 64 miles. That performance blows DSL, which delivers far slower speeds on much shorter loops of three miles or less, completely away.

Not only that, there's no need for remote terminals that are required to distribute copper-based DSL beyond its three mile technical distance limit. The requirement for numerous remote terminals has hamstrung DSL availability in much of El Dorado County and other locations outside of urban centers.

Time for a national conversation and new course on telecom

The year is still young enough for predictions for 2007. Here’s one based on the stories on this blog and elsewhere so far this year: The year 2007 is when the United States will realize that it’s time to have a serious national conversation on the future of the nation’s telecommunications infrastructure and how to get moving to bring it up to date to America’s current and future needs.

Recent reports indicate it continues to fail to meet promised upgrades by the telephone and cable company duopoly — much of it based on hopeful thinking, unrealistic goal setting and public relations spin — and is falling farther and farther behind the booming demand curve for high speed Internet-based services. Too much of the United States continues to be served by a 1970’s era “last mile” infrastructure that can’t deliver broadband digital services now and won’t able to be able do so anytime in the foreseeable future. Not in our lifetimes as one AT&T manager put it to a customer asking when AT&T’s much touted fiber optic-based “Project Lightspeed” upgrade would come to El Dorado County, California.

As a policy paper issued in January by the Communication Workers of America (CWA) aptly described it, the current telecom infrastructure is a “hodgepodge of fragmented government programs and uneven private sector responses to changing markets." Much of 2006 was wasted debating esoteric topics like “network neutrality” that did absolutely nothing to extend digital telecommunications services to a single home or small business in countless areas that are at least a decade behind where they should be today.

One probable conclusion of this national dialogue will be the existing telephone/cable company duopoly lacks the resources to upgrade and expand the nation’s telecom infrastructure rapidly enough to provide near universal service that is the hallmark of an advanced modern economy. Even if they undertook a crash program to do so — which quarterly earnings pressure from Wall Street and shareholders would prohibit — they would likely be unable to deploy updated infrastructure quickly enough and with sufficient bandwidth to meet the ever growing digital demands being placed upon their systems. They are too bogged down by their massive investments in their legacy metal wire-based local distribution systems that served them well for decades for voice phone service and analog television until the Internet began to take off in the 1990s. It’s time to chart a new course.

The Internet Freedom Declaration of 2007

Universal Affordable Access

Broadband Internet access should be universally available and affordable. Rural or urban, rich or poor, every American must be able to access the information superhighway at fair prices and speeds that rival the rest of the world. Like the public highways, the information superhighway must be considered a key piece of public infrastructure -- an indispensable part of our society that provides economic and social opportunities to all.