Analysis & commentary on America's troubled transition from analog telephone service to digital advanced telecommunications and associated infrastructure deficits.
Friday, May 07, 2010
Recommended reading: "Breaking the Broadband Monopoly"
Christopher Mitchell of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance has issued a call for Americans rise to this new challenge just as they did in the 1930s with the Rural Electrification Administration and local utility cooperatives. While noting that every generation believes it bears a bigger burden than those before it, Mitchell asserts building out telecom infrastructure while difficult can be done just as it was with electric power lines.
Mitchell like author Jack Lessinger suggests this build out like electrification of nearly a century ago will help fuel an economic boom. (Building telecom infrastructure publicly and cooperatively also fits into Lessinger's emerging socioeconomic paradigm where "what's in it for me" is being supplanted by a new ethic of "what's in it for us.")
I strongly recommend reading Mitchell's latest white paper, Breaking the Broadband Monopoly. It's a comprehensive and very current treatise on and making the case for locally owned and operated telecom infrastructure. The paper is loaded with examples of community projects, examples of how legacy incumbent carriers fighting the future have attempted to stymie them, and tips and traps to avoid for community activists and local governments looking to take control of their telecommunications destiny and build their own local networks.
Will FCC enforce USF build out requirement?
Genachowski has described the challenge of replacing infrastructure designed many years ago to provide voice telephone service to an IP-based system that serves all Americans no matter where they make their homes and businesses as the "critical infrastructure challenge of our generation." That infrastructure challenge is greatest at the local level -- the so-called "last mile" of the system that connects to customer premises.
As explained by FCC General Counsel Austin Schlick, Genachowski's decision to apply Section 254 of Title II of the Act would support the FCC's plans to retask the Universal Service Fund (USF) that subsidizes service in high cost areas from POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) to IP. As amended by the Communications Act of 1996, Section 254 requires the FCC to pursue policies to achieve access to advanced telecommunications and information services in all regions of the nation including those in rural and high cost areas that are "reasonably comparable" to services and rates offered in urban areas.
It's unknown at this point to what extent the FCC will as part of its plan to revamp the Universal Service Fund to help achieve ubiquitous access will enforce (or alternatively grant forbearance from) another provision of the Act designed to put teeth in the USF via a build out requirement. Title II Section 214(e)(3) empowers the FCC to "determine which common carrier or carriers are best able to provide such service to the requesting unserved community or portion thereof and shall order such carrier or carriers to provide such service for that unserved community or portion thereof." Notably, Section 214(e)(3) is absent from Schlick's explanation of the evolving FCC policy.
Sunday, May 02, 2010
California legislation would expand subsidy program
The California Advanced Services Fund (CASF) was established by the California Public Utilities Commission in December 2007 to subsidize advanced telecom infrastructure in high cost unserved and underserved areas of the state. Up to $100 million was allocated from a 25 percent surcharge on intrastate long distance calls, with the CASF surcharge offset by an equal reduction in the California High Cost Fund-B surcharge created to subsidize deployment of basic voice telephone service.
SB 1040 would leave the CASF in place indefinitely and expand its budget to $250 million with up to $25 million available in any given fiscal year. The urgency measure also liberalizes the use of CASF funds. To subsidize broadband infrastructure construction, $20 million would be allocated to grants and $3 million for loans.
One of the most important elements would be a new Regional Broadband Consortia Grant Account that earmarks $2 million in technical assistance grants to fund the cost of broadband deployment activities other than actual infrastructure construction. The money would be available to a wide variety of groups including local and regional governments, schools and colleges, health care providers, libraries and community-based organizations.
This is a critical element of the bill since many such entities that were interested in applying for broadband infrastructure grants and loans appropriated in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 lacked adequate funding to retain experts to help them with the engineering and business planning work needed in order to prepare project proposals.
A California Senate floor analysis of SB 1040 notes the Senate Energy, Utilities and Communications Committee was told at a Feb. 16 hearing that four percent of Californians - 1.4 million people in mostly rural areas, do not have access to broadband service. Only about half of Californians have Internet access at speeds meeting the CPUC's definition of basic broadband of 3 Mbs down and 1 Mbs up.
SB 1040 is advancing without opposition and would become law immediately after being signed by the governor. The CPUC would then open a rulemaking proceeding to implement the new CASF provisions later this year.
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Another downside to legacy copper plant: cable thieves
Saturday, April 24, 2010
Paradigm shift in telecommunications underway
The FCC's current regulatory framework is more oriented toward PSTN than the Internet that is rapidly replacing it. It too is growing outmoded, leaving regulators struggling to devise a successor.
And as FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski has noted, the FCC also faces a major challenge in figuring out how to best address market failure that has left at least seven million U.S. households offline according to the FCC's own estimates. At a time when the PSTN is replaced by the Internet, if you don't have an "always on" terrestrial Internet connection, you don't have modern telecommunications service. As PSTN becomes obsolete, so does the PSTN means of Internet connectivity: dialup access that was state of the art nearly two decades ago.
This is truly a time of major transition in telecommunications. As with any major shift, there will be a tension between those who want to hang on to the old paradigm -- in this case the legacy single purpose "telephone" and "cable" companies whose business models are based on billing for incremental services delivered over closed, proprietary networks -- and those who want speed the shift toward alternative business models based on open access IP-based networks.
Friday, April 16, 2010
Fed up with circular debate over telecom market failure, British village acts to get broadband
While the UK government (just like America's) engages in a ridiculous circular debate over whether market failure has hampered the deployment of modern telecommunications infrastructure, the residents of Lyddington, Rutland have cried "bullocks!"and taken matters into their own hands.
No debate over market failure there, where according to this Telegraph article their petitions to the incumbent providers to bring them broadband got them nothing. So several local businesses are investing fiber optic cable that will bring the townspeople connectivity of 40 Mbs for £30 a month.
A key excerpt:
Dr Charles Trotman, head of rural business development at the Country Land and Business Association welcomed the project.
But he warned that not all local communities will be able to do it themselves and the next Government must put in place measures to ensure the whole country has superfast broadband.
"You cannot rely on the markets to do it because we know for a fact that large telecommunication companies will not invest in rural areas because there is no market return. If they are not willing to do it then someone has to do it and you have to have a central strategy set by Government"
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
FCC National Broadband Plan lacks sense of urgency
Particularly considering that according to an FCC estimate released when the plan was unveiled last month, 7 million U.S. homes are offline because they are located outside cable company footprints or unable to subscribe to DSL due to distance limitations. Last October, the Yankee Group estimated about 12 percent of U.S. households, including those in some major metropolitan areas, have no access to broadband service.
That's a big infrastructure problem reflecting the fact that the United States is easily a decade behind where it should be considering the rapid growth of the Internet and next generation, Internet-protocol based telecommunications.
Rockefeller's message to the FCC is a problem of this magnitude requires a sense of urgency to bridge the digital divide. I agree with him. As a representative of a state with sizable rural areas, Rockefeller wants the FCC to focus its plan on rural America where IP-based telecom infrastructure is the weakest and least developed.
I would include many metro areas as well, particularly neighborhoods where housing density and topography don't allow legacy wireline cable and telcos to profitably build out their systems. As I have stated repeatedly, the FCC's plan should help alternative entities such as nonprofit coops start up to rapidly construct this critical infrastructure where the legacy providers cannot afford to do so.