Speed tests, "broadband surveys" no longer make sense in 2019

PUD plans internet questionnaire: Survey part of strategy to expand broadband | Peninsula Daily News: Commissioners aim to help expand access to broadband infrastructure throughout the county and will gather information though a survey of customers March 19-25.

“We are going to be getting more information on what internet and what broadband access is available in Jefferson County,” said Will O’Donnell, PUD communications manager. “We will be doing a survey of the county’s households and businesses to find out how they are using the internet, what kind of access they have and what kind of speeds they have,” he said. Denver-based Magellan Advisors worked with PUD staff and members of the Citizens Advisory Board broadband subcommittee to develop the fact-finding questionnaire that will be made available to customers through an online portal. A link to a speed test is part of the survey along with questions about cost, what the internet is used for and how reliable it is.

These kinds of surveys and "speed tests" might have made sense a generation ago when IP-based telecom was a novelty and people "went online" to browse websites and retrieve email. It would have been prudent to determine people's needs and preferences around a newly emerging pre-utility service before making plans to build it.

In 2019, it's antiquated, backward looking and no longer makes sense for future telecom infrastructure planning. Fiber to the premise (FTTP) is the infrastructure standard and not prone to throughput speed limits like earlier, metal cable technologies. Now that so much communication has migrated to Internet protocol-based services (voice, data and increasingly HD and UHD video) consuming an ever growing amount of bandwidth, there is no question about it.

"Broadband maps," mobile speed tests won't fix America's telecommuncations infrastructure deficiencies

NACo, Rural LISC and RCAP announce Bridging the Economic Divide Partnership: WASHINGTON, DC — The National Association of Counties (NACo), the Rural Community Assistance Partnership (RCAP) and Rural LISC (Local Initiatives Support Corporation) have partnered to address the critical need for affordable high-speed internet for rural communities across the country. Together, the three organizations developed a mobile app that gives mobile phone users the power to accurately identify areas with low or no internet connectivity and share that information to push for change. Armed with that data, the organizations will advocate for adequate funding for broadband infrastructure across the country.

TestIT Mobile App “TestIT” (available for iOS and Android) uses an open-source sampling tool developed by Measurement Lab (MLab) to aggregate broadband speeds from mobile device users across the country. Accurate data ensures that broadband infrastructure receives the investments needed to provide internet access to rural communities.

America's telecommunications infrastructure crisis is not due to lack of accurate data. Nor will more granular data promote the needed investment to fix it. Identifying the holes in its deplorable swiss cheese advanced telecom infrastructure -- be it by government sanctioned "broadband maps" or mobile speed tests -- won't remedy them because no one is out looking to fill them. Only government investment in the infrastructure can because there is no business case for private sector, investor owned providers to do so.

Municipal broadband internet: The next public utility? | Smart Cities Dive

Municipal broadband internet: The next public utility? | Smart Cities Dive: “Indeed, according to new data, over half of these municipal fiber systems fail to bring in enough revenue to cover their ongoing operating costs, bleeding red ink every day they operate and falling further and further into debt,” McAuliffe, who is also federal affairs manager at the conservative Americans for Tax Reform organization, wrote. “These bad investments crowd out other needs and, in the worst case, can put a city’s financial solvency at risk.”

This warning is grounded in the paradigm of so-called "take rate risk:" that too few premises will subscribe to advanced telecom connections. It's predicated on the now two-decade-old view of advanced telecommunications over Internet protocol as a cutting edge, luxury service that would be shunned by many. That's no longer the case. The expectation now is there be landline connections as common as voice telephone connections were in most of the 20th century. Particularly now that they deliver such a wide array of voice, data and video services. And unlike private sector, investor owned providers wholly reliant on subscription revenues, governments have other forms of financing available to them to build and operate advanced telecom networks.

The more real risk public sector owned advanced telecom projects face now is faulty financial planning and poor project management that leads to cost and budget overruns -- a common problem that many public works projects encounter. These can be managed by employing best practices and fails to support the view expressed here that only private sector, investor owned entities are competent to own and operate advanced telecom networks.

Tipping point may be at hand; advantage public sector ownership of advanced telecom infrastructure

Municipal broadband internet: The next public utility? | Smart Cities Dive: Despite many cities and counties looking to put together a municipal broadband initiative of their own, there remains strong opposition from telecom companies, as well as concerns over cost. While the CTC report found that municipal internet in Seattle is feasible, it also raised concerns about the price tag of the project, which is complicated by the fact that SCL cannot assume additional financial risk and so would need guaranteed payments to cover operations and maintenance.

The legacy incumbent investor owned telephone and cable companies have been conservative in modernizing their infrastructures to fiber and building out to reach every customer premise in their nominal service territories. It goes back two decades to the late 1990s when telephone companies offered digital subscriber line (DSL) as a luxury upgrade over standard sluggish dialup service. Soon thereafter, cable companies offered IP telecom services as an extra cost add on to create more lucrative service bundles beyond their traditional TV programming.

Naturally, these companies wanted to offer a high end upgrade product only where there were a sufficient number of densely developed neighborhoods with incomes high enough they would be a good bet to sign up. Those neighborhoods deemed too risky are redlined -- where too many of them remain today with some 19 million Americans lacking access to landline connections according to current U.S. Federal Communications Commission data. 

Now a tipping point may be at hand. Instead of being regarded as a luxury service as in the past, IP telecom service delivering voice, video and data is widely becoming viewed as a basic utility like voice telephone service was before it, with nearly every home, school, business and institutional building expected to have a landline connection. That shifting expectation alters the risk picture for investing in building universal fiber to the premise #FTTP. If most everyone will take the service, the risk of not generating sufficient revenues to cover capital and operational costs of the infrastructure decreases considerably. Particularly if it's offered at single price point affordable by most rather than costly, confusing and misleading offers that plague today's IP services. Yes, potentially lower ARPU, but a lot more end users to spread out the costs. And there should be subsidies for low income households; it's better they pay something rather than nothing because they can't afford it.

The public sector is beginning to see things as this story suggests. It has a major advantage over investor-owned ISPs in having access to far more patient capital that does not demand a rapid return on investment. Public sector owners of advanced telecom infrastructure also have an advantage in having more broad-based incentives to get it built in the form of what Paul de Sa, former head of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission's Office of Strategic Planning and Policy Analysis, termed "positive externalities" in a white paper since retracted by the current FCC. That's an economic term referring to the beneficial, knock on impacts on economic activity, healthcare, property values and local tax bases, education, and transportation demand reduction when most every premise can get connected to modern, advanced telecom infrastructure.

That's not to say there's no role for investor owned players. They know how to build and operate advanced telecommunications networks and should partner with public sector owners to bring the United States to where it should be amid explosive demand that shows no signs of slowing down.

U.S. falling well short of 2010 National Broadband Plan goal of 100 million homes passed by fiber next year

Small Fiber Builders Making an Impact | POTs and PANs: The research firm RVA, LLC conducted a study for the Fiber Broadband Association looking at the number of homes and businesses that are now passed and/or served with fiber. The numbers show that smaller fiber providers are collectively having a big impact on the industry.

RVA found that as of September 2018 there were 18.4 million homes with fiber, up from 15 million a year earlier.

Goal #1 of U.S. 2010 National Broadband Plan: 100 million homes have affordable #FTTP connections by 2020. With less than a year to go, it appears highly unlikely to be achieved.

Looking back a generation shows still unrealized U.S. policy vision

Excerpted from Service Unavailable: America’s Telecommunications Infrastructure Crisis (2015):

U.S policymaking on Internet infrastructure began shortly before the Internet was decommissioned as a government-run network in the mid-1990s. In 1993, the Clinton administration issued a policy framework titled The National Information Infrastructure: Agenda for Action.[i] It called for the construction of an “advanced National Information Infrastructure (NII),” described as “a seamless web of communications networks, computers, databases, and consumer electronics that will put vast amounts of information at users’ fingertips.” Development of the NII, the document stated, “can help unleash an information revolution that will change forever the way people live, work, and interact with each other.” For example:

· People could live almost anywhere they wanted, without foregoing opportunities for useful and fulfilling employment, by “telecommuting” to their offices through an electronic highway;

· The best schools, teachers, and courses would be available to all students, without regard to geography, distance, resources, or disability;

· Services that improve America’s health care system and respond to other important social needs could be available on-line, without waiting in line, when and where you needed them.

Among its nine principles and goals, the policy called for extending the universal service concept to ensure that information resources are available to all at affordable prices. “Because information means empowerment, the government has a duty to ensure that all Americans have access to the resources of the Information Age,” the policy declared.

In addition to this policy document, the Clinton administration sponsored legislation championed by then Vice President Al Gore, who foresaw the coming role Internet-based telecommunications would play in the future. The Telecommunications Infrastructure Act of 1993 created a framework for its integration with the Communications Act of 1934.[ii] The legislation, which was not enacted and died in Congress, included several findings. The first three findings stated that:

(1) it is in the public interest to encourage the further development of the nation’s telecommunications infrastructure as a means of enhancing the quality of life and promoting economic development and international competitiveness;

(2) telecommunications infrastructure development is particularly crucial to the continued economic development of rural areas that may lack an adequate industrial or service base for continued development;

(3) advancements of the nation’s telecommunications infrastructure will increase the public welfare by helping to speed the delivery of new services, such as distance learning, remote medical sensing, and distribution of health information.

[i] The National Information Infrastructure: Agenda for Action, September 15, 1993, https://archive.org/stream/04Kahle000911/04Kahle000911_djvu.txt

[ii] Senate Bill 1086 (103rd Congress, introduced June 9, 1993), https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/103/s1086.

U.S. losing its build big moxie: telecom infrastructure modernization case in point

Can America Still Build Big? A California Rail Project Raises Doubts - The New York Times: The need for increased infrastructure investment has been one of America’s few remaining bipartisan issues, although left and right differ over whether public money or private money would finance it. President Barack Obama made reinvesting in roads, bridges and power plants a cornerstone of the 2009 economic stimulus package, and during the 2016 presidential campaign seemingly the only disagreement Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump had on infrastructure was about which of their administrations would spend more on it. The issue unites truckers and train buffs, unions and Wall Street, economists from the left and right.

And yet, when it comes to spending the money — and actually getting things built — very little progress has been made. Following a brief spike during the recession, government investment has hovered around 3.3 percent of gross domestic product for the past few years, which is the lowest since the 1940s. In the meantime, roads, bridges and train tracks have gotten steadily older while proposals for new projects are delayed by political intransigence and legal delays.

The failure of the United States to timely modernize its legacy metallic telecommunications infrastructure built for the analog age of telephone and cable TV to fiber optic technology for the digital age is a pertinent example. Federal, state and local elected representatives uniformly proclaim the need is great with many at the state and local level saying it's the number one topic of constituent contacts. It's a major disconnect between what's needed and what's actually being built, reflecting the loss of America's moxie to think big and act big.

Meanwhile as the phone and cable companies incrementally upgrade their legacy infrastructures in search of high margin luxury "broadband speed" rents instead of bringing fiber to every doorstep as was the case with phone service, the nation is already a generation late and falling further behind where it should be in 2019. Fiber connections should have reached every home, school, business and government building by 2010 at the latest. The title of author Susan Crawford's recently published book Fiber: The Coming Tech Revolution―and Why America Might Miss It points up the tardiness of this vital infrastructure reboot. It's not just a hypothetical. As Crawford's book notes, compared to other nations it already has.

Pennsylvania: Another underfunded, sloganistic statewide universal service initiative

Governor Wolf makes case for statewide broadband to support education - WFMZ: Restore Pennsylvania is an infrastructure initiative funded by the monetization of a severance tax. Restore Pennsylvania would invest $4.5 billion over the next four years in projects throughout the commonwealth. The initiative would address five priority infrastructure areas including high speed internet access, storm preparedness and disaster recovery, downstream manufacturing, business development, and energy infrastructure, demolition, revitalization, and renewal, and transportation capital projects.

States cannot achieve universal advanced telecom service with these kinds of woefully underfunded, sloganistic initiatives. There simply won't be enough money if the pot is shared with other infrastructure needs as it is here. In a state as large as Pennsylvania, it's doubtful there would be enough even if the entire sum was dedicated to telecom infrastructure. This is too big of a job for states to tackle on their own. The federal government must lead.

A hybrid model of medical care would also be good for telecommunications

Health Care Spending In The US And Taiwan: A Response To <em>It’s The Prices, And A Tribute To Uwe Reinhardt</em> | Health Affairs: Uwe Reinhardt And Taiwan’s Single-Payer Health System

In 1989, as a high-level government adviser to Taiwan when it was planning to implement universal health insurance, Uwe boldly recommended a single-payer system. Taiwan’s government accepted this recommendation in 1990 and implemented its single-payer National Health Insurance (NHI) in 1995.
Uwe based his recommendation on three policy considerations. First, a single-payer system is effective in controlling cost; this was a major policy goal of the government as health spending in Taiwan was growing rapidly. Second, a single-payer system is equitable: coverage is universal and all insured are treated equally regardless of ability to pay or preexisting conditions. Third, a single payer system is administratively simple and easy for the public to understand. The NHI has achieved all three policy goals. Uwe also suggested that Taiwan retain its predominantly private delivery system. He believed that the private sector has an important role to play in a nation’s health care system. As long as financing and payment were within the purview of government, a mixed delivery system of private and public providers could work well within a single-payer framework. Taiwan’s experience has shown this to indeed be the case. (Emphasis added)

As with health care, the Americans pay more and get less value than other nations for telecommunications services. In a parallel with advanced telecom services, many Americans find needed medical care inaccessible or unaffordable. The late health care economist Uwe Reinhardt's prescription for Taiwan was putting the government in charge of the financial side of medical care while allowing the private sector to do what it does best: providing care.

The United States should do the same for another essential and high cost service: telecommunications. Let the telecom providers do what they do best -- planning, building and operating networks -- and relieve them of the burdens of infrastructure finance and ownership. Their weaknesses here have led to widespread infrastructure deficiencies, market failure and poor value service offerings. Hybrid models get around the winner take all, win-lose dynamics and allow providers and consumers to both benefit.

FCC chief touts hybrid fiber and next gen wireless delivery infrastructure as viable alternative to FTTP

U.S. Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai said a hybrid infrastructure of next generation wireless backhauled by fiber offers an alternative delivery method for fixed premise advanced telecom service where the return on investment to connect premises directly to fiber isn't adequate.

Industry observers are skeptical of this scenario, noting next generation wireless service requires the construction of substantial new fiber infrastructure to support it, significantly weakening the investment case.

Pai disagrees, arguing that sufficient fiber infrastructure is already in place to move ahead with deployment. "Part of the reason is, in terms of the possibilities of fixed wireless, given the fiber penetration that some of your members have," he told the NTCA-The Rural Broadband Association in New Orleans earlier this week. Pai urged the group to "think broadly" about "how to extend this great fiber penetration you’ve got." 

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.

FCC chairman: Connectivity main obstacle of telemedicine | Western Colorado | gjsentinel.com

FCC chairman: Connectivity main obstacle of telemedicine | Western Colorado | gjsentinel.com: Speaking to reporters after the meeting, Pai said, from the FCC's viewpoint, connectivity remains the biggest hurdle to a serious move toward widespread use of telemedicine. "The telemedicine application is only as strong as the digital connections between communities," said Pai, a 2012 Obama appointee who was designated director of the commission by President Trump, and a noted free-market advocate. Pai pointed to his agency's recent infusion of funds into its Rural Health Care Program, which provides funds to some health care providers for broadband and telecommunications services. He also said he is aiming to eliminate outdated FCC rules and encourage competition among internet service providers. "We want to make sure these companies have a strong incentive to upgrade to fiber, especially in these rural communities that need high-capacity internet access," Pai said.

The FCC chairman is right when he says America needs more fiber advanced telecommunications infrastructure deployment as medical care increasingly utilizes it. But it won't happen with Pai's prescriptions. Limited purpose funding such as the Rural Health Care Program will hardly make a dent in the nation's enormous accumulated telecommunications infrastructure deficit where FTTP is the exception rather than the norm it should be.

Nor can regulatory reforms address the fundamental business problem facing investor owned ISPs. Building new fiber infrastructure under their current business models cannot yield positive net present value within the limited patience of their investors' capital looking for rapid returns. And encouraging competition in a natural monopoly market that is telecommunications infrastructure is like expecting ice cream plants to grow in the desert. No meaningful competition can ever occur.

ISPs want to be hotels because luxury accomodations aren't meant for the masses

Net neutrality activists, state officials are taking the FCC to court. Here's how they'll argue the case. | National and International | napavalleyregister.com: But tech companies and consumer groups told the court Monday that third-party services routinely carry out those same functions, and that ISPs cannot lay claim to lighter regulation just because a portion of their business is involved in performing them. "The FCC could not have reasonably concluded that a drop of DNS and caching in a sea of transmission transformed the service into something that could properly be called an information service," the brief said. The overall impression, the group said, is that of trying to deregulate all roads that lead to hotels by simply reclassifying the roads themselves as hotels.

Hotels are often seen as luxury accommodations compared to say Motel 6. The analogy here fits nicely with the legacy incumbent telephone and cable company opposition to being regulated as a common carrier telecommunication utility -- and thus barred under the now repealed FCC Title II rulemaking from redlining and discriminating against neighborhoods they choose not to serve.

Will forthcoming FCC rule on pole attachments and enhanced PON technology lead to reboot of Google Fiber?

Google Fiber Blog: FCC Supports OTMR - Faster and Fairer Rules for Pole Attachments: Fortunately, there is a better way. It is called One Touch Make Ready (OTMR), which is a system where a new attacher does much of the make ready work itself, all at one time. OTMR is a common sense policy that will dramatically improve the ability of new broadband providers to enter the market and offer competitive service, reducing delays and lowering costs by allowing the necessary work on utility poles to be done much more efficiently. This also means fewer crews coming through neighborhoods and disrupting traffic, making it safer for both workers and residents.That’s why we’re so excited by the news that the FCC is poised to pass a rule that would institute a national One Touch Make Ready system, with the goal of significantly increasing the deployment of high-speed broadband across the United States. As the FCC stated, “OTMR speeds and reduces the cost of broadband deployment by allowing the party with the strongest incentive — the new attacher — to prepare the pole quickly to perform all of the work itself, rather than spreading the work across multiple parties.”

The big question here is whether this will spur a serious reboot of Google Fiber as an aerial fiber overbuilder, forsaking its originally preferred buried conduit deployment architecture and its attendant construction delay and high cost burdens.

Along with liberalized pole attachment rules, another factor is enhanced Passive Optical Network (PON) technology that could reduce deployment costs and allow Google Fiber to move beyond the urban and suburban areas it initially targeted to exurban and possibly rural areas. In these areas, Google Fiber would more rapidly capture market share since incumbent telephone and cable companies tend to have partially deployed networks that leave many premises unconnected.

Selling data consumption tiers rather than connectivity

Net neutrality makes comeback in California; lawmakers agree to strict rules | Ars Technica: Wiener's office told Ars that the compromise version will remove a ban on "application-specific differential pricing," which the bill defined as "charging different prices for Internet traffic to customers on the basis of Internet content, application, service, or device, or class of Internet content, application, service, or device, but does not include zero-rating." That means an ISP could sell add-ons to data plans that let customers buy extra data just for a certain type of website or online service. A customer's base data plan would still allow browsing to any kind of website or service in this scenario, but the package of extra data could be restricted just to social media sites, or some other category, Wiener's office explained. The effect would be similar to zero-rating, but Wiener's office said it wouldn't involve exempting any traffic from the customer's base data plan. (Emphasis added)

Mobile device users are familiar with their carriers' business models: selling tiered plans based on the amount of data consumed. The more consumed, the higher the price tier. As well as functional costs such as throughput being throttled back once a certain consumption threshold is exceeded.

This story suggests the expansion of this pricing model to landline-based service. And that the development likely motivated providers of advanced telecom service providers to successfully lobby the U.S Federal Communications Commission to recently scuttle its 2015 Open Internet rulemaking that would have made doing so problematic. If landline like mobile providers can sell finite "bandwidth by the bucket" (or scoop of ice cream to use the Verizon Wireless analogy), that provides them a pricing rationale to offer discounted or better service to end users accessing their proprietary content -- the "walled garden" consumer facing model that characterized the early days of the Internet with ISPs like CompuServe and AOL. And telephone service for decades before, when calls were billed based on minutes used and distance of the call.

The real policy issue here is whether providers of advanced telecommunications services should be able to maintain vertically integrated business structures and product offerings based on those business models of the past and whether doing so is good for consumers. At a time when Internet protocol-based telecommunications can provide so much more than the bill per unit voice phone call of legacy POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) or distant TV channels of the legacy CATV model.

Comcast to build FTTP telecom infrastructure in 2 Michigan townships after tax measure fails

According to the Holland (Michigan) Sentinel, Comcast cites lower deployment costs due to improved carrying of fiber vs. COAX cable:

As Laketown finally gets internet, rural access still a prevalent issue elsewhere: Traditional coaxial cables use radio frequencies as the medium to transmit data, which means there is a larger amount of signal loss compared to fiber technology. This loss of signal that comes with traditional coax has made it difficult to serve Laketown and Saugatuck townships in the past because of large-size properties and widespread homes.
Now Comcast can build fiber to each home without building or extending main facilities to each one at about the same cost as using traditional coax cables to build the network out, Gilbert said.

NTIA Reauthorization Legislation Morphs Into Legacy Incumbent Protectionist Measure

NTIA Reauthorization Legislation Morphs Into Broadband Bill - Multichannel: On the broadband front, the bill establishes an Office of Internet Connectivity and Growth within NTIA to do outreach to communities in need of high-speed broadband as well as hold workshops and develop training tools to help expand adoption and access.

And in a move that warms the hearts of ISPs often complaining about overbuilding and potential waste, fraud and abuse in government subsidies, the new office would create a database identifying how federal broadband money was being used, including tracking construction and access to any infrastructure build-out.

Both of these are cynical provisions that will do nothing to support America's urgent need to modernize its legacy metallic telecom infrastructure to fiber to the premise serving all homes, schools and businesses. They are essentially designed to keep the sub optimal status quo in place and protect legacy incumbent telephone and cable companies wishing to preserve control over their nominal, limited footprint service territories without disruption.

Brought to you by broadband: TV viewing via connected devices up 65% since 2016

Brought to you by broadband: TV viewing via connected devices up 65% since 2016: Connected devices have made video streaming easy and ubiquitous -- 74% of U.S. TV households now have at least one internet-connected TV device, including smart TVs, streaming media devices (like Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Chromecast or Apple TV), connected video game systems, and Blu-ray players. Similarly, households with over-the-top video service are expected to exceed 265 million by 2022. Given the tremendous growth of broadband-powered devices, USTelecom remains committed to supporting policies that foster the innovation and investment necessary to keep pace with consumer demand.

This is an important trend driving the vertical integration of advanced telecom infrastructure with content such as this month's merger of AT&T and Time Warner.  It represents the "cable-lization of the Internet" as some have termed it and a return to the "walled gardens" of the early 1990s such as AOL and CompuServe. These services functioned as integrated platforms for content as well as communications such as email for a recurring monthly fee. We are witnessing a revival of the model, this time with bundled video content those early platforms couldn't deliver.

It's a regressive trend and counter to the move toward Internet protocol-based telecommunications since then that enables access to innumerable information and communication services (including Voice Over Internet Protocol or VOIP), obsoleting the walled garden model of a generation ago. It also represents a misplaced emphasis on entertainment over telecommunications. Capital is diverted to purchasing content rather than constructing and upgrading infrastructure. That reinforces neighborhood redlining as the big ISPs concentrate on affluent, high density neighborhoods where they can maximize ARPU and ROI with their video bundles.

Google Fiber doesn't have a wireless alternative because it would require huge technological breakthrough

Google Fiber Broadband Hype Replaced By Delays And Frustration | Techdirt: To be fair, Google's PR folks can't offer answers of what comes next because Google itself doesn't know what the wireless technology that will supplant fiber will look like. But even Google's wireless promises have been decidedly shaky. After acquiring urban wireless provider Webpass two years ago, some of that company's coverage markets have actually shrunk, with the provider simply pulling out of cities like Boston without much explanation. And many of the executives that were part of that acquisition have "suddenly" departed for unspecified reasons. At this point it's certainly possible that once Google Fiber is done with its multi-year, numerous wireless tests it settles on a cheaper (but still expensive and time consuming) alternative to fiber.

There's a simple answer here. It's because Google doesn't have (not yet, as least) an unconventional wireless technology that can replace fiber. That would require breakthrough technology that can get around the physics of radio spectrum that makes it difficult to reliably deliver bidirectional IP data streams to multiple users while penetrating objects and precipitation without interference. In other words, to get fiber's throughput, nothing tops fiber.

Milo Medin, Google's then vice president of access services, said as much at the 2013 Broadband Communities Summit, disabusing the notion that wireless can replace fiber and thus eliminating the cost of building the necessary infrastructure to support it:

Some argue that fiber networks are not really needed because of wireless network growth. As an engineer, quite honestly, this kind of talk makes my brain hurt. Wireless network growth is driven by fiber. All those base stations that smartphones connect to are increasingly connected by fiber because, as speeds go up, fiber is required to carry that kind of traffic.

In other words, wireless needs a lot of what some hope it can more cheaply substitute: fiber.