Outmoded 1990s thinking retards U.S. telecom infrastructure modernization

Digitally Unconnected in the U.S.: Who’s Not Online and Why? | NTIA: But what about those Americans who do not use the Internet? Whether by circumstance or by choice, millions of U.S. households are not online, and thus unable to meaningfully participate in the digital economy. Data from NTIA's July 2015 Computer and Internet Use Supplement to the Current Population Survey confirm that the digital divide persists. In 2015, 33 million households (27 percent of all U.S. households) did not use the Internet at home, where families can more easily share Internet access and conduct sensitive online transactions privately. Significantly, 26 million households--one-fifth of all households--were offline entirely, lacking a single member who used the Internet from any location in 2015.

This report reflects the limited thinking that retards the direly needed modernization of telecommunications infrastructure in the United States. It adopts a one-dimensional view of modern telecommunications rooted in the later 1990s and early 2000s when internet protocol-based telecommunications solely meant going on line with a computer, using dialup or DSL where it was being rolled out.

Nearly two decades later, the internet isn't just about going online, particularly as legacy telephone companies look to retire their aged and obsolete copper cable plants and fiber to the premise (FTTP) obsoletes metallic cable and can support multiple telecom services. Internet protocol also supports voice service (Voice Over Internet Protocol) as well as video, both one way and interactive. It's a multi-modal telecommunications platform.

Why market competition cannot remedy America’s lousy telecom service

Almost daily, the justifiable criticism of the lousy state of America’s telecommunications service includes the demand for more competition as the solution. Providing more competition – and specifically as fiber to the premise (FTTP) -- for indolent incumbent legacy telephone and cable companies in no hurry to modernize their aging and increasingly obsolete metallic infrastructures will provide superior service and value for consumers. Sound good in theory, but completely misguided.

Telecommunications is not and will never be a truly competitive market where consumers can select among many sellers. The economics simply don’t allow it because it costs too much to enter the market and the return on investment under the dominant, vertically integrated, subscription-based business model is too skimpy or too far in the future to attract would be competitors. If telecommunications were a truly competitive market, consumers no matter where they live would have multiple sellers and services from which to choose just as they do other consumer offerings. Cherry picking in a few select metro markets as we’ve seen with Google Fiber and AT&T’s “Gigaweasel” as fellow blogger Steve Blum dubs it is hardly robust market competition.

That’s a key distinction. Telecommunications is not a consumer market. It’s a natural monopoly market and the incumbents have established their place in it. And they vigorously defend that place. That’s not evil as Susan Crawford recently pointed out. The incumbents are merely doing what they must do to faithfully and diligently serve the interests of their shareholders no matter how smarmy, greedy or disingenuous it may appear at times. Shareholders come first, market demand second. And the interests of the demand side of the market can easily remain in second place in a natural monopoly market because there is and won’t be any pressure to offer more to maintain market share because market share is assured. The market will accept whatever it’s offered because it has no choice – and cannot have meaningful choice. That’s why consumers complain service sucks equally between legacy telcos and cable providers.

Light-based quantum Internet protocol requires FTTP

Particle teleportation across Calgary marks 'major step' toward creation of 'quantum internet' - Calgary - CBC News: In a "major step" toward practical quantum networking, researchers at the University of Calgary have successfully demonstrated the teleportation of a light particle's properties between their lab and the city's downtown area, six kilometres away.

It doesn't exist yet, but the dream of a "quantum internet" involves taking advantage of a key element of quantum mechanics — the fact that observing a particle's quantum state changes that particle's quantum state. This creates the opportunity to communicate with a degree of security never before possible, because no one can intercept a communication without the intended receiver of the information knowing about it.

A couple of takeaways here:

1. A light-based Internet protocol will require fiber optic to the premise (FTTP) communications infrastructure. The metallic infrastructures of the legacy telephone and cable companies that dominate today aren't going to cut it. (A bonus: fiber is non-conducting and thus invulnerable to high energy solar flares.)
   
   
2. Quantum-based encryption as described here looks even more hack proof that the current cutting edge blockchain technology.

Relying on legacy incumbents, state government for telecom infrastructure modernization -- That dog don't hunt

Rural residents push for broadband | Local News | daltondailycitizen.com: After hearing from frustrated residents and community leaders, Sen. Steve Gooch, R-Dahlonega, who co-chairs the committee, sought to reassure service providers. "We need the Windstreams, the AT&Ts, the Comcasts," he said. "We're not running anybody off. We're trying to keep them here, keep their jobs here, but encourage more investment." One proposal is the elimination of a sales tax on telecommunications network equipment. Others have recommended boosting coverage by restoring state funding for local public-private projects and doing more to hold companies accountable when their service is not as advertised.

As they say in the south, that dog don't hunt. The "Windstreams, the AT&Ts, the Comcasts" aren't going to invest in telecom infrastructure to fill in service area gaps in any reasonable timeframe because the ROI is simply too far in the future to justify the investment to their shareholders.

Expecting state government to step up with the billions in needed funding isn't realistic either. A robust, well funded national telecommunications infrastructure initiative is needed.

FCC Commissioner Pai's deeply flawed "Digital Empowerment Agenda"

Ajit Pai, a member of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission, has proposed a "Digital Empowerment Agenda" relying on tax incentives to promote telecom infrastructure investment. Pai's proposal is deeply flawed because it:

• Assumes tax breaks combined with regulatory streamlining will eliminate the massive telecom infrastructure disparities in the United States. Pai need only ask legacy incumbent telephone and cable companies (and Google Fiber) why he's misguided. They will tell him the primary impediment is the return on infrastructure investment is too far in the future in certain areas and neighborhoods to justify investment. Net present value is zero or below. That's a fundamental challenge of the investor-owned, vertically integrated business model to when it comes to infrastructure capable of supporting modern advanced, telecom services. Tax incentives and regulatory streamlining may help the math, but aren't alone going to make the business case for investment and eliminate disparities.
• Reinforces existing infrastructure disparities by offering incentives for landline infrastructure in some areas of the nation but only mobile wireless in others that is inadequate for premise service.

Failure of Google's "Homes with Tails" concept correlates to dearth of consumer telecom coops

Britain mulling broadband speed disclosure for every home - AlphaBeatic: The idea is reminiscent of “Homes with Tails,” a paper published back in 2008 by Columbia Law School professor Tim Wu and Google public policy manager Derek Slater. In the paper, the duo envisioned a future where consumers owned the fibre connections to their homes, obviating the need to go through an ISP to connect to the internet. Such fibre connections would lower the cost of internet service and raise the value of the homes. A typical home with a fibre connection was worth $4,000 (U.S.) more than one without, the duo argued.

Home ownership of fibre was attempted in Ottawa several years ago, but the idea never got off the ground. Bill St. Arnaud, the project’s founder, attributed the problems to central exchange providers, who were unwilling to open up their networks to allow competition for the likes of Bell and Rogers. There was also the issue of trying to convince home owners to spring for building the fibre connections, which can run thousands of dollars. Consumers are accustomed to effectively renting their internet connections, rather than owning them, so it may have been an idea ahead of its time.

This also explains why consumer telecom cooperatives have not sprung up in the United States to build and own fiber infrastructure serving member premises. People have been conditioned to see telecommunications as a consumer commodity purchased from a centralized corporate provider. Even though these monopolistic providers have no incentive to avoid redlining neighborhoods they don't want to serve and have a lousy customer service ethic, people would rather bitch about shitty service options when renting their telecommunications circuit than pony up a few thousand dollars to own it and set their own terms of service. Even when that investment would raise the value of their property by amount of the investment as research has shown. Brings to mind the old adage that one gets what one pays -- or not -- for a product or service.

Why state and local government are ill equipped to modernize U.S. telecom infrastructure

West Virginia Broadband Enhancement Council Chairman Seeks Gigabit Internet Statewide: (TNS) -- The new chairman of a governor-appointed panel wants to set a lofty goal for broadband speeds in West Virginia: Make gigabit internet service available statewide.

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“I applaud your thought, but I think, at this point, it’s a very unrealistic goal,” said council member Robert Cole, adding that the 1-gigabit service would require extensive excavation work to install large high-speed fiber lines. “If we scare [internet providers] off, they’re going to put up a wall. Getting their cooperation is key.

This exchange encapsulates the challenge confronting state and local governments eager to modernize their telecommunications infrastructures to universally available fiber to the premise (FTTP) as an economic development strategy. There is currently no viable business model to finance it in either the private or public sectors.

The amount of investment capital needed is too high and the ROI too long for private investment capital. That's why investor-owned telecom providers have only sparingly deployed FTTP -- in discrete, compact neighborhoods they believe will generate sufficient revenue to offset construction and maintenance costs.

On the public side, state and local governments struggle with their existing obligations including maintaining roads and highways and water and sewer systems as well as accumulated public pension obligations. That reality leaves states like West Virginia here to engage in a pointless debate over "broadband speeds" which isn't really relevant when it comes to FTTP given the technology's enormous capacity compared to legacy metallic telephone and cable networks.

Universally available advanced telecom infrastructure requires public ownership

EU seeks to spur fast broadband roll-out with telecoms reform | Reuters: The costs of running optic fiber - which can deliver speeds of up to 1 gigabit per second - into households are high. Telecoms operators such as Orange, Deutsche Telekom and Telecom Italia have long complained that the current rules forcing them to open up their networks to competitors at regulated prices do not allow them get a decent return on investment.

Unbundling of Networks Elements (UNE) is a key part of the 1996 amendment of the U.S. Communications Act. The thinking was this would hasten the availability of advanced communications services by spurring competition among service providers. The problem however is those advanced services require infrastructure upgrades and fiber to the premise -- upgrades the vertically integrated incumbent telephone companies are loath to make since they would have to share them with other service providers offering competing services. Meanwhile, 20 years after the enactment of the amendment, the United States suffers from widespread infrastructure access disparities, with some premises still only offered the same dialup service that was available in 1996.

That's not to imply that the EU's approach is the right one since it like U.S. policy is overly reliant on competitive market forces that have limited effect in telecommunications infrastructure owned by vertically integrated, investor-owned players that want to protect their natural monopolies and cherry pick and redline down to the neighborhood level. Achieving universal advanced telecommunications service thus requires public ownership of the infrastructure.

Limited thinking major obstacle in telecom infrastructure modernization

Rapid climb in California's broadband speeds and use: The average speed at which Californians connected to Akamai’s content delivery network in the first quarter of 2016 was 16.4 Mbps, according to Akamai’s State of the Internet Report for the first quarter of 2016. Despite lagging behind U.S. leaders, that’s stilll a healthy jump from a year earlier, when the average was 13.6 Mbps, and a huge improvement over the 5.7 Mbps we were clocking five years ago – a 188% improvement.

This exemplifies a big part of addressing the challenge of modernizing America's telecommunications infrastructure for the digital age: how we think about it. Our thinking tends to be constrained and parochial, measuring success based on throughput speeds and limited to a given state or local jurisdiction rather than conceptualizing it as essential interstate infrastructure connecting every American home, business and institution.

State rep flustered by AT&T FTTP deployment to unspecified areas of Bradley County, Tennessee

Report: State broadband access lacking | The Cleveland Daily Banner: The debate is now continuing over whether Tennessee should change its laws allowing municipalities, such as Chattanooga’s EPB, to extend its broadband service footprint into adjacent areas. Communication conglomerates such as AT&T and Verizon have been vigorous in their fight against such measures saying any competition between government and private companies would not be fair. There are those who argue that point, particularly noting AT&T has received hundred of millions of dollars in federal subsidies that are supposed to aid in providing broadband access to rural areas.

AT&T announced Aug. 25 it would be introducing its fiber network to “areas of Bradley County.” State Reps. Kevin Brooks and Dan Howell, who have spearheaded efforts in Nashville to change the laws, questioned why the announcement said “areas” of the county. “What areas exactly? Why not all areas of Bradley County?” Brooks asked in a statement to the Cleveland Daily Banner in response to the announcement.

The answer, Rep. Brooks:

1. Whatever areas we cherry pick because the FCC isn't enforcing its Open Internet rules classifying Internet service as a common carrier telecommunications utility requiring universal service and barring redlining.

2. Even if it did, we couldn't afford to comply and would have to go bankrupt.

Russ Feingold calls for making internet a utility | Local | lacrossetribune.com

Russ Feingold calls for making internet a utility | Local | lacrossetribune.com: Feingold called for a “robust” federal program of broadband build-outs by both private and public providers to bring rural residents up to the same level of service as people in the city, at similar rates — similar to federal subsidies in the 1930s that expanded electricity to those same areas. “This needs to be a utility,” Feingold said. “Everybody needs to have it. You can’t let these three big companies have control.”

Feingold's on the right track here. States and local governments aren't up to the monumental task of modernizing the nation's telecommunications infrastructure from the metallic networks used for decades by telephone and cable companies to fiber to the premise (FTTP).

Feingold's also correct in asserting that the United States cannot rely on these legacy companies to ensure universal service. I propose a similarly aggressive approach in my 2015 eBook Service Unavailable: America's Telecommunications Infrastructure Crisis, calling for a crash federal telecommunications infrastructure modernization initiative to bring the nation to where it should be now and will need to be going forward.

A refreshingly honest assessment from AT&T: Building advanced telecom infrastructure is "tough."

AT&T rips Google Fiber - Business Insider: Google's service has been a big threat to AT&T and other telcos since it promised to offer faster internet speeds at lower prices. But a series of recent reports noted that Google's broadband service has garnered disappointing subscription numbers and is scrambling for a new wireless-based model as it cuts back the size of its staff. The two corporate giants have clashed before, including ongoing legal battles over access to utility poles. But the latest salvo by AT&T, which reads as part take-down, part tantrum, stands out for the undisguised derision and sarcasm it heaps on Google, while touting what it says is its own $140 billion investment in broadband.

"Moral of the story," writes AT&T VP of federal regulatory Joan Marsh, "Building reliable, ubiquitous high-speed broadband connectivity is tough."

A refreshingly honest assessment here. AT&T certainly knows it's hard building ubiquitous advanced telecommunications infrastructure, particularly when it like other legacy providers is hamstrung by a vertically integrated, "bill and keep," subscription-based business model that requires selling one customer premise at a time. The evidence: the widespread infrastructure gaps in its nominal "service territory."

If the United States continues to rely on this impaired business model, it will continue to suffer from inadequate infrastructure and disparate service access for decades to come.

Legacy telcos want out from under FCC's Title II universal service requirement -- for both voice phone and Internet

CenturyLink, heir to old Bell system, wants to be freed from state oversight - StarTribune.com: CenturyLink’s petition is a “first-of-its kind request in Minnesota to deregulate basic local phone service following legislation enacted by the Minnesota Legislature in 2016,” according to a PUC filing by the state attorney general’s office. “The company’s request is premised on the alleged existence of adequate alternative means of communication,” the filing said. “Significant questions remain as to the existence of those alternatives on a universal basis — e.g. in all homes, in all parts of the state, etc.” 

The dominant telephone and cable companies dislike the U.S. Federal Communications Commission's Open Internet rules issued in 2015 that reclassified Internet as a telecommunications utility subject to universal service and anti-redlining requirements under Title II of the Communications Act of 1934. For now, however, it appears they have little to complain about in practical terms given the FCC's lack of enforcement of the regulation. The regulatory agency's posture is if a customer orders Internet service and is denied it and complains, we'll just look the other way.

An emerging question is whether the FCC and state public utility commissions will take the same position on telephone service. Legacy telephone companies like CenturyLink also don't want to comply with the longstanding Title II universal service mandate requiring voice telephone service be provided to all customer premises in their service territories that order it.

For both voice and Internet service, the reason for the resistance is the same. It would require investing billions of dollars on fiber to the premise infrastructure to replace old metallic outside plant -- billions the legacy providers lack. Ditto newcomers like Google Fiber. There just isn't adequate economic capacity among investor owned providers to address America's telecommunications infrastructure deficit.

The false analogy of comparing analog telephone service to Internet

Clinton pushing broadband growth as big part of $275 billion infrastructure plan - Watchdog.org: Brent Skorup, who studies broadband issues for the Mercatus Center in Fairfax, Virginia, told Watchdog the goal of 100 percent broadband usage is unrealistic because some people — largely skewing older — have no interest in internet access.
“It’s been 100 years and there’s still not 100 percent penetration of the phone market,” he noted.

This furthers the falsehood propagated by the incumbent legacy telephone and cable companies that Internet protocol-based telecommunications is solely about getting a "broadband" connection to a desktop or laptop computer. If people don't use a computer much, the so-called "digital adoption" logic goes, then they don't need "broadband" and can get along fine with 1990s-era dialup or first generation ADSL. Ergo, they certainly don't require a fiber to the premise (FTTP) connection and the current infrastructure will suit them fine for the foreseeable.

This is nothing more than a concocted justification for not modernizing telecommunications infrastructure from the metallic cable put in place decades ago to carry phone calls and cable TV signals to FTTP. The telephone was the first form of telecommunications to serve people in their homes, businesses and institutions. It broke new ground and had longer path toward universal acceptance and daily use.

Nowadays, telecommunications technology is widely adopted and used by nearly every address. IP is a multimedia platform that supports not only data but also voice and video. IP over FTTP is an evolutionary shift and not a fundamentally revolutionary development as was the telephone. The analogy fails.

Tennessee's telecom infrastructure gaps not just a Tennessee problem. It's a national problem.

EPB Says Those Without Broadband Should Make Their Voices Heard - Chattanoogan.com: “Ultimately, Tennessee’s broadband gap is a problem for Tennesseans, and we need a Tennessee solution,” said David Wade, president of EPB. "We will continue to work with the growing number of state legislators and grassroots citizens interested in removing the barriers that prevent EPB and other municipal providers from serving our neighbors in surrounding areas who have little or no access to broadband.

I respectfully dissent. America's telecommunications infrastructure deficiencies manifest in every state, not just Tennessee. It's a national problem that demands a national solution. I elaborate further in this post from earlier this year.

Dismal state of U.S. telecom modernization enters new dilatory phase, prolonging infrastructure deficiencies

The dreary state of the modernization of America’s deficient telecommunications infrastructure -- already more than two decades tardy when it comes to the task of replacing metallic legacy telephone and cable systems with fiber optic to the premise infrastructure (FTTP) – is entering a new dilatory phase. Inspired by fellow blogger Steve Blum of Tellus Venture Associates, I’m dubbing it the “magic radio” phase. The goal: forestall FTTP infrastructure investment and instead experiment with various wireless technologies. As Blum correctly nails it, it’s based on “eternal hope that magic radios will appear one day and render wireline technology obsolete.”

It’s wishful thinking driven by the continued misguided reliance on undercapitalized investor-owned players like Verizon, AT&T and Google Fiber. All are looking into fixed premise wireless technologies, with Google Fiber the most recent, putting its FTTP builds on hold last week while it searches for the right radio magic. They all like the idea of employing wireless technologies for premise delivery because no one player has the many billions of dollars necessary to build out FTTP, spawning a search for lower cost alternatives.

The problem is the physics of radio spectrum are even more constrained than their finances. There’s only so much data than it can carry. Higher frequencies can carry significantly greater amounts. But only over such short distances that their use would require fiber to be brought so close to customer premises that the hoped for savings by avoiding FTTP deployment would be severely diminished. Not to mention the fact that higher frequencies are easily blocked and subject to interference without an unobstructed line of sight.

Extending incrementalism of current U.S. telecom infrastructure modernization programs won't acheive ambitous Clinton campaign pledge of universal service by 2020

Hillary Clinton's Broadband-for-All Plan Faces Hurdles: In seeking universal, affordable broadband access, the Democratic candidate is aiming to “close the digital divide,” according to her campaign website. Clinton pledges to deliver on this goal with continued investments in the Connect America Fund, the Rural Utilities Service program and the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program, and by directing federal agencies to consider the full range of technologies—including fiber, fixed wireless and satellite—as potential recipients.

These are existing programs that simply aren't big and bold enough to achieve Clinton's goal of universal advanced telecommunications service by 2020. They preserve the vertically integrated, investor-owned, closed access network and subscription-based business model that produces widespread market failure leaving too many American premises unable to obtain service. Two of these programs are aimed at rural areas and thus fail to address the fact that much of America's infrastructure gaps exist outside of rural areas as Clinton herself pointed out in an economic policy speech this week.

The programs cited by Clinton embody the incrementalist thinking that is part of the problem and not part of the solution that requires a radically new approach. Meeting her objective on telecom infrastructure will require a far more aggressive policy such as the National Telecommunications Infrastructure Initiative outlined in my 2015 eBook, Service Unavailable: America’s Telecommunications Infrastructure Crisis.

Hillary Clinton gets it: U.S. does not just have a "rural broadband" problem

It's a well established management and planning axiom that effectively addressing a problem or issue relies upon a clear definition of the problem. When it comes to modernizing its telecommunication infrastructure and addressing infrastructure disparities, it's too frequently imprecisely defined as a "rural broadband" issue.

That papers over the fact the United States suffers from very uneven deployment of advanced telecommunications infrastructure in all areas: rural, exurban, suburban and urban. In short, the U.S. doesn't only have a "rural broadband" problem. It has significant, widespread gaps and incomplete infrastructure everywhere in the nation. It's folly to define the issue purely based on geography.

Finally that realization is beginning to register with public policymakers and office seekers as illustrated in a speech this week by Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton:

You know, I happen to think we should be ambitious. While we're at it, let's connect every household to broadband by the year 2020. It's astonishing to me how many places in America not way way far away from cities but in cities and near cities that don't have access to broadband. And that disadvantages kids who are asked to do homework using the Internet; 5 million of them live in homes without access to the Internet. So you talk about an achievement gap, it starts right there. (Emphasis added)

Excerpt courtesy of Newsweek. Full transcript here.

Yet another pointless "broadband survey"

County looking for participants in broadband survey - Salisbury Post | Salisbury Post: There’s roughly one month left for Rowan residents to participate in the county’s broadband access survey. The survey was posed on Rowan County’s website roughly one month ago and has one month to go before it’s taken down. It’s purpose is to gather information about areas of Rowan County that are underserved by internet providers. It can be found on the front page of Rowan County’s website: www.rowancountync.gov. Those interested can access the survey by clicking a link that states “Broadband Service Survey.”

Yet another pointless "broadband survey." U.S. landline telecommunications infrastructure is very uneven with numerous service gaps and disparities in all areas. We don't need more surveys to point up that fact.

San Jose's Google Fiber rollout is delayed while tech giant explores alternatives - Mercury News

San Jose's Google Fiber rollout is delayed while tech giant explores alternatives - Mercury News: SAN JOSE -- Google has told at least two Silicon Valley cities that it is putting plans to provide lightning-fast fiber internet service on hold while the company explores a cheaper alternative. The news comes nearly three months after San Jose officials approved a major construction plan to bring Google Fiber to the city. Mountain View and Palo Alto also were working with Google to get fiber internet service but said Monday that the company told them the project has been delayed.

The economics of selling monthly subscriptions to one customer premise at a time -- the business model employed by the vertically integrated legacy telephone and cable companies Google is challenging -- are difficult. That's why it has produced widespread market failure and disparate access. And when the incumbents throw up legal speed bumps to slow deployment like making access to utility poles difficult, the business case for infrastructure ROI becomes even more difficult.

It's no surprise Google Fiber is reconnoitering. Using the investor owned, vertically integrated, subscription-based closed access business model favored by the incumbents to finance and construct advanced telecommunications infrastructure is like building roads based on the number of occupied garages -- preferably housing BMWs, Lexus and Mercedes. Google Fiber's problem is it's insufficiently disruptive. It's taking on the legacy telcos and cablecos with their own business model -- one that favors established incumbents and not new entrants like Google Fiber -- without any major cost or marketing advantage.

Public-private parterships for telecom infrastructure modernization hamstrung by subscription-based business model of incumbents

Citywide broadband service could cost over $200 million, study says | Local News | host.madison.com: In the report, CTC recommended that the city pursue an approach in which the city would build and own the fiber network. Private businesses would then provide internet service and build lines connecting individual users to the network.

This of course assumes those "private businesses" are willing. This is a major downside of applying an end user subscription-based model employed by legacy incumbent telephone and cable companies that has produced widespread cherry picking, redlining and market failure in the United States. Using the same business model isn't going to result in a rapid project that builds out to serve all Madison, Wisconsin homes, businesses and institutions. The private partners will run the numbers and likely conclude that simply doesn't pencil.

Soglin said covering the cost for the project would be a challenge, but said the move would foster competition among internet service providers and force them to improve their services.

Perhaps among the service providers. But certainly not among infrastructure builders since telecom infrastructure tends toward a natural monopoly due to high costs to play in the market.

"It will be a fight, politically and economically, with the companies that would rather have monopoly kind of control," Orton said.

That would be Barry Orton, chairman of the Citywide Broadband Subcommittee and a professor emeritus at UW-Madison. And he's right. The subscription-based, sell and own the customer business model favored by legacy telcos and cablecos promotes a winner take all mentality that along with the aforementioned microeconomic realities foster a monopoly market.

Market failure, not lack of competition drives telecom infrastructure deficiencies, disparate access

Charter, Comcast, AT&T Really Want To Stall Chance Of Competition From Google Fiber – Consumerist: As we’ve seen over and over again, high-speed broadband competition is hard to come by in huge swaths of the country. And one reason for that is because incumbent companies, especially AT&T, have a habit of throwing their weight around when competition does finally (try to) come to town. Meanwhile, though, it remains the best chance for consumers: both Comcast and AT&T charge less for their service in cities with Google’s super-speedy competition.

"Lack of competition" continues to be proffered as the primary rationale for America's telecommunications infrastructure deficiencies and disparate access. But that's the wrong analysis for the simply microeconomic fact that telecommunications infrastructure connecting customer premises is not and will never be a competitive market with many sellers and many buyers. The cost barriers to entry for would be competitors are too high. That's why one doesn't typically see multiple natural gas, water or power lines serving a given premise. It would be ridiculously wasteful and make it even harder for the builder of that second or third connection to achieve a return on their investment in a reasonable time frame.

The real reason the United States suffers from less than world class infrastructure connecting all homes, businesses and public institutions is excess reliance on investor-owned infrastructure providers overly prone to market failure. Since the microeconomics don't work, they can't meet the buyer side demand for affordable access even as it grows exponentially. They simply cannot make a decent return on investment, so they naturally don't invest in infrastructure. Not because they "refuse" to as many analysts claim. Because they simply can't afford to, whether it be AT&T, Comcast, or Google Fiber.

Nearly 80 Community-based Providers Delivering Gigabit Broadband to Rural Communities | 2016 Press Releases | ABOUT NTCA

Nearly 80 Community-based Providers Delivering Gigabit Broadband to Rural Communities | 2016 Press Releases | ABOUT NTCA

The bulk of these are located in the Midwest and upper Midwest -- areas of the United States that formed telephone cooperatives in the early 20th century to provide phone service to areas not served by investor-owned providers. In these areas, it's a natural migration from voice telephone service to Internet-based multimedia telecommunications.

A big challenge today is unlike the 1920s and 1930s when entire rural regions had little or no telecommunications infrastructure, the current state of modernizing telecom infrastructure in the Internet era doesn't neatly fall along rural demarcation lines.

Legacy, investor-owned telephone and cable companies have plenty of infrastructure in rural areas. It's just not even distributed. One group of premises will have landline service. But go down the road a mile or two, over the hill or around the bend and there's another group that does not. Consequently, it's hard to band together consumers to form telecom cooperatives in nominally rural areas other than those with a history of consumer utility cooperatives when those who have service don't perceive the need for one. Even if they aren't all that crazy about their current Internet service provider. 

Yet another silly "broadband mapping" project

FCC Plans to Map Broadband Access to Aid Chronic Disease Care: The new mapping tool aims to continue this mission by identifying gaps in connectivity at the neighborhood level, highlighting opportunities for improvement, and giving community coalitions the data they need to form new partnerships and tailor their activities to their unique needs. (Emphasis added).

Yet another useless, going though the motions "broadband mapping" project. The United States would have had fiber connecting every home, business and institution in place by 2010 had it done the proper planning and construction starting a generation ago. Today, very few areas of the nation are fully fibered. The opportunity for improvement is most everywhere. A map isn't needed to illustrate that.

Political talking points can't trump the microeconomics of residential telecom market

Tennessee Study Shows State Remains A Broadband Backwater Thanks To AT&T Lobbyists, Clueless Politicians, And Protectionist State Law | Techdirt: "Norris, who said he remains wary about municipal broadband based on the failure of Networx in his district near Memphis, said he hopes the push for more broadband is not an excuse for bigger government. Sen. Mark Green, R-Clarksville, vice chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, also expressed concern about allowing government-owned utilities like EPB to compete with private firms such as AT&T or Comcast. "We want to look closely at this study, but in general, I am not for government and business competing in the marketplace," he said.

Carrying the water of the legacy telephone companies, Green is painting a false dichotomy that went by the wayside in 2015. That's when the U.S. Federal Communications Commission adopted its Open Internet rulemaking classifying Internet as a common carrier utility under Title II of the Communications Act.

Those rules implicitly recognize residential premise telecommunications service due to the high cost of building and maintaining infrastructure tends towards a monopoly market. By definition, competitive market forces are absent in such a market. It's another example of a politician trying in vain to trump microeconomic fundamentals with political talking points.

U.S. does not just have a "rural broadband" problem; Bold federal initiative needed to address widespread infrastructure disparities

In these troubling times, senators unite to end America's big divide – rural v urban broadband • The Register: The US Senate has formally formed its first informal committee to push for better broadband in America's countryside. The bi-partisan Senate Broadband Caucus will be made up of five senators who represent states with large rural populations and will push for laws that help to expand high-speed internet service into those underserved markets. The caucus will initially comprise of Senators Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), John Boozman (R-AR), Angus King (I-ME), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), and Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND). Each comes from states where large tracts of uninhabited land make the installation of fiber networks financially unappealing to commercial providers.

This would be fine if disparate access to modern telecommunications infrastructure was solely a rural issue as electrical power distribution infrastructure was at the start of the 20th century when entire rural counties and regions were left off the grid.

The problem is it's not. Driven by cherry picking and redlining by legacy telephone and cable companies, access disparities tend to be far more granular, occurring in rural, suburban, exurban and even urban areas. Neighborhoods and clusters of premises may be served by landline internet infrastructure while others just a mile or two distant -- or even less -- are not.

That's not a "rural broadband" problem. It's a national crisis of deficient telecommunications infrastructure for the 21st century. The United States needs a bold federal initiative to ensure fiber optic connections to every American doorstep and institution and to replace legacy metallic infrastructure. And in the shortest possible time frame given the task should have been started a generation ago. I present the case and outline how it would work in my recent eBook Service Unavailable: America's Telecommunications Infrastructure Crisis.

Time to end the Google Fiber media hype. It's not going to solve U.S. telecom infrastructure crisis

Google Fiber no longer a moonshot — it's a 'real business': Internet giants Google and Facebook, frustrated that telecom companies aren't moving fast enough, are building all kinds of technology to extend the reach, accelerate the speed and lower the cost of the Internet, from high-altitude balloons to drones. The perpetually sorry state of U.S. broadband prompted Google to take an even more ambitious step: It announced Fiber in 2010. Google's lucrative advertising business relies on the use and growth of the Internet. Faster, cheaper connections mean more people spend more time online using Google services such as search, YouTube or Gmail, and viewing Google ads, says Recon Analytics analyst Roger Entner.

This is essentially PR flackery for Google Fiber. The idea that Google Fiber is somehow lighting a fire under the asses of the incumbent telephone and cable to modernize their metallic legacy infrastructures is ludicrous.

Google Fiber holds no business advantage over the incumbents. Both are constrained by business models that limit their ability to modernize America's telecom infrastructure to fiber to the premise. They can only move as fast as their budgets allow. Neither the incumbents nor Google Fiber have the billions needed to accomplish the task in the near future. So they're reduced to cherry picking lucrative urban markets and issuing hyperbolic news releases that are nothing more than a PR pissing contest.

What's needed as I suggest in my recent eBook Service Unavailable: America's Telecommunication Infrastructure Crisis is a crash federal telecom modernization initiative wherein the federal government would build fiber to every doorstep in the nation.