Analysis & commentary on America's troubled transition from analog telephone service to digital advanced telecommunications and associated infrastructure deficits.
Friday, March 02, 2007
Silicon Valley startup has big plans for wireless broadband coverage
Wisconsin offers tax incentives for broadband infrastructure investment
California PUC a toothless watchdog on broadband access
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.
Thursday, March 01, 2007
Verizon earns analyst plaudits for upgrading copper to fiber
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Fiber optic, New England town hall style
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.
Monday, February 26, 2007
Virginia legislature appropriates $1.6 million for fiber project
California bill would add broadband to lifeline service for low income residences
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.
Sunday, February 25, 2007
Digital Deprivation in a Land of Affluence
Saturday, February 24, 2007
Local public/private partnerships are America's best hope to close the digital divide
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.
Friday, February 23, 2007
Half of U.S. homes projected to have 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
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.
Thursday, February 22, 2007
Goal of South Carolina resolution: statewide broadband
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.
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
Bill would require California PUC to report on broadband access, competition
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
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).
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
Next generation fiber optic blows DSL away, promises to reshape telecom infrastructure
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.
Friday, February 16, 2007
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.
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.