Seen any service improvements lately?

Readers of this blog should recall AT&T's promise several weeks ago in Bob Walters' Sacramento Bee column to expand broadband Internet access in El Dorado County this year. But is the big telco following through? What about the quality of your phone service? Has it gotten better?

If you've recently been offered wire line broadband service where there was none before or you've noticed better quality and reliabilty for voice service, click on "Post a comment" and tell others so we can determine if AT&T is matching its words with actions.

You don't need to provide your name and address, but a general location such as "2000 block of El Dorado Road" would be informative.

Telcos pocketed $200B in rate charges and taxpayer subsidies but failed to deliver promised broadband network, author claims

By 2006, 86 million households should have been rewired with a fiber optic wire, capable of 45 Mbps, in both directions. -- read the promises.

The public subsidies for infrastructure were pocketed. The phone companies collected over $200 billion in higher phone rates and tax perks, about $2000 per household

E-book, $200 Billion Broadband Scandal.

El Dorado supe candidate calls for broadband, wireless expansion: Where's the beef?

Wendell Smith, a candidate for the El Dorado County Board of Supervisors, ran a full page ad in today's Mountain Democrat newspaper that lays out his campaign platform. Under the "Strengthen business" plank, Smith calls for the county to "add DSL and cell service."

It's a laudable goal, but is it meaningful or just more election sloganeering from another do nothing politician trolling for votes on the eve of next week's election? I'm admittedly skeptical and lean toward the latter.

Why? I sent Smith email several months ago soon after he declared his candidacy and was profiled in the Mountain Democrat. Smith told the newspaper El Dorado County needs reliable high speed Internet services. I let him know about the on line petition drive urging AT&T to upgrade its aging copper wire based system to fiber optic -- which would support Smith's purported goal of expanding broadband Internet access in El Dorado County -- or to divest its holdings in the county and let someone else do the job.

I didn't even got the courtesy of a response. I wonder if Smith even cares about the concerns of the 160 El Dorado County residents who signed the petition to date?

Comcast going telco?

Most El Dorado County residents are likely aware that Comcast has a somewhat limited presence in the county and has traditionally offered TV programming, describing itself as an entertainment provider.

Now the big cable company could be morphing into a telco, going head to head with AT&T and Verizon. Comcast COO Steve Burke told the “D: All Things Digital” conference in Carlsbad California that within five years, Comcast will be primarily providing meat and potatoes wire line telecommunications services: digital voice and Internet access. Burke told the conference that Comcast expects to have 25 million Internet and voice accounts, significantly larger than its current base of 21.5 million video subscribers.

Click here for the report in Multichannel News.

Residential broadband shows 40% annual growth rate

This report released this week by the Pew Internet & American Life Project found a big increase in the number of residential broadband users in the U.S. The number of Americans who have broadband at home jumped from 60 million in March 2005 to 84 million in March 2006 – a leap of 40 percent. That growth rate is uniform among both urban and rural residents, the survey found.

"A significant part of the increase is tied to internet newcomers who have bypassed dial-up connections and gone straight to high-speed connections," the report states. It added this trend "is a striking change from the previous pattern of broadband adoption" in which residential users started out with dial up service.

Underserved areas like much of El Dorado County however don't have that option. It's either dial up or nothing as the rest of the nation takes the high speed bypass to the information highway, leaving the county stuck on a rutted dirt road. "It is still the case that broadband penetration rates in rural areas lag those in suburban and urban areas," the Pew report notes.

Gut check time for Ma Bell

Here's a news release issued by AT&T today announcing the rollout of satellite-based broadband Internet service in a deal with a satellite Internet service provider. It's an extraordinary development because AT&T is stepping out of its traditional role of being a telecom service provider and into that of a reseller of basic telecom services.

It's gut check time for Ma Bell. She needs to take a deep breath and think hard about whether she wants to be in the telecom business or just another retailer like Radio Shack or Best Buy, reselling someone else's service. And a service that's inferior to what she herself can provide. Market perceptions are incredibly important and this deal confuses and undermines the public perception of AT&T as one of the nation's preeminent telecommunications companies.

More alarmingly, the announcement could portend AT&T's abandonment of its existing wire line infrastructure outside of urban areas. Let the aged copper cables rot on the poles until the system finally gives up the ghost and customers won't even be able to make phone calls over it. Let's hope that's not the case. Otherwise much of AT&T's 13-state service area will end up like that of a third world country.

The news release offers no details as to whether this service will be offered in El Dorado County. But even if it were, your blogger -- and I suspect many other county residents and businesses -- aren't going to get excited over it since they've had the ability to go to satellite Internet providers at comparable prices and speeds long before today's rollout.

AT&T needs to stick with what it does best: providing its own telecommunications services. That means planning for the future needs of its wire line-based system and rapidly bringing the system up to where it needs to be in the Internet age and putting in place a system based on proven technology like fiber optic cable that offers a future growth path, rather than reselling someone else's satellite service.

Telecom industry analyst sees wireless supplementing AT&T wire line infrastructure

This report by telecom industry analyst Northern Sky Research sees AT&T adopting a strategy to use both wire line and wireless technology to provide broadband services. Note the report predicts AT&T will deploy satellite-based broadband only in the hinterlands, which in this blogger's view does not include markets such El Dorado County situated within a major metro region.

As NSR sees it, AT&T is taking a multi-tiered and mixed technology approach to offering a high value bundle of services, a strategy which may well be followed in one form or another by all large telcos in the coming years. Fiber will be used to serve residences and businesses in the high and medium population density areas, which will generally account for the large majority of clients. Where fiber does not reach based on economics, terrestrial wireless technologies will bring services to lower population density areas, and satellite will serve those clients on the very farthest edges of the existing copper network.