U.S."bandwidth problem" direct consequence of massive policy failure

The moving target: The amount of bandwidth required to make people happy increases each year as the benefits of broadband increase. What looked like a good technical solution a few years ago may not look like one today. That means any true solution must be future proof. Providers in the United States have made great strides toward modernizing their network infrastructure, and they continue to do so. But truly solving the bandwidth problem will require a national commitment to ensuring a world-class infrastructure. 

So writes Masha Zager, editor in chief of Broadband Communities magazine in her column appearing in the the January-February 2018 issue. Zager's column is titled The Bandwidth Problem. The origins of that problem stem from a massive policy failure dating back to the early 1990s. Public and regulatory policy regarded advanced digital telecommunications as a luxury add on to legacy telephone and cable TV services.

That perspective badly hobbled the necessary modernization of America's metallic cable infrastructure designed for 20th century analog telephone and cable TV service to fiber optic to the premise infrastructure for advanced digital telecommunications in the 21st -- the world class infrastructure referred to by Zager. It also established a mindset of bandwidth poverty instead of bandwidth abundance.

Consequently, a generation later the nation is limping along, trapped in a continuous, frustrating cycle of infrastructure failing to keep up with burgeoning bandwidth demand and the embarrassment of Americans still forced to use dialup and satellite services. Also absent is the national commitment that Zager calls for to address the problem. That commitment should be to solve it once and for all with a declaration of a war on bandwidth poverty and an aggressive national initiative to fast track construction of a fully fibered telecommunications network reaching every American doorstep.

Big ISPs once again at odds with local governments over universal service demands

FCC says small cells will close the digital divide. Most say they won't | Center for Public Integrity: The FCC’s claim doesn’t convince officials in Lincoln, Nebraska, which experienced the same reluctance as Montgomery County did by wireless companies willing to deploy small cells to rural areas, said David Young, manager of fiber infrastructure and rights of way for the city. In 2015, when Lincoln officials were negotiating with Verizon Communications Inc. over how much the city would charge the company to attach small cells to municipal property, the city said it would charge the carrier an annual $95 fee — if the carriers would commit to deploying broadband in rural areas in Nebraska. Over the next two years, Lincoln offered the same deal to other carriers and builders. Young said the companies said they couldn’t commit to anything. So, Lincoln went ahead with an agreement that have the companies paying $1,995 a year to attach small cells to city poles, more than 20 times as much. If Pai is serious about 5G closing the digital divide, Young said, “then I’ll make that deal: You cannot deploy any small cells in an urban environment until all the rural markets are covered. Until we can make that deal, I'm calling foul” on the assertion 5G will help close the digital divide.

The deal here is the essentially the same one local governments proffered to cable companies that wanted a franchise. Serve all premises within our jurisdiction or no deal. No cherry picking and neighborhood redlining. Cable companies didn't want to have to meet universal service demands in franchise negotiations and went over their heads to state governments in the mid 2000s and lobbied them to preempt the localities and take sole authority over so-called "video franchises." That preempted local government leverage.

Now local governments are pressing big telcos for universal service such as Lincoln is here. The telcos don't like the demands for universal service and are once again seeking preemptive relief from federal and state governments. Large telephone and cable companies also successfully lobbied the U.S. Federal Communications Commission to scuttle its 2015 Open Internet rulemaking classifying Internet service providers as common carrier telecommunications utilities, subjecting them to universal service and anti-redlining requirements.

Playing the preemption card again to avoid universal service obligations and continuing to leave many homes, schools and small businesses without connecting infrastructure to advanced telecommunications services will likely backfire on big telcos (and cablecos looking to get into mobile wireless services). Angry voters who have gone more than a decade with limited or no service options are increasingly likely hold elected policymakers who side with them in this fight accountable at the polls.

Google Fiber reconnoiters, seeks 10x advantage over incumbents with fiber deployment

Ruth Porat on Google Fiber pause: At the Morgan Stanley Technology Conference, where Porat was speaking, an analyst asked about Fiber's change in strategy and the company's new milestones. Porat said that Fiber's rollout has been paused until the company finds a way to make the service 10 times better. "As we were looking at our rollouts going back to 2015, 2016, our view was that we had not done enough," Porat said. She said that Fiber hadn't achieved its "10x moment," which is Google-speak for getting a 10-fold improvement over existing technology.

It's been a tough couple of years for Fiber. Launched in 2010 with the promise of bringing fast and affordable internet service to municipalities across the country, the initiative has endured cost-cutting measures, layoffs and two CEO resignations since becoming part of the Alphabet unit Access. Porat said that Alphabet was holding off on pushing Fiber into new markets until it could find a better way to "bring technology to bear in a meaningful way." She said that the company won't start "accelerating the rollout" again until it can prove that it has a valuable new deployment and delivery method.

Google Fiber faltered because it offered no overwhelming technological, cost or marketing advantage over legacy incumbent telephone and cable companies. AT&T even mocked it as a bumbling rookie as it paused fiber infrastructure deployment in several U.S. metro areas last year. Now it's reconnoitering until it can find one.

Last October, Phil Dampier of Stop the Cap! penned this post mortem on Google Fiber's ill fated initial foray into fiber to the premise (FTTP). To achieve that 10x deployment advantage, Google Fiber will have to develop an innovative FTTP deployment methodology that is far less labor intensive given labor accounts for the vast majority of fiber deployment costs. And one that doesn't involve the ponderous mass digging up of streets and front yards to bury fiber conduit.

As former Google advisor and co-founder Larry Page put it in Dampier's blog post, "There’s no flying-saucer shit in laying fiber." But it will have to find some (and maybe enlist the help of some of those flying saucers) in order to achieve the radical workaround it needs to rocket past slow moving incumbents as well as new entrants hobbled by high construction costs.

Barring extraterrestrial technological assistance, Google Fiber might look at more conventional albeit cutting edge technology to reduce the labor cost of hanging fiber on utility poles such as employing UAVs to lift fiber spans between poles as installers make the connections and splices.