Analysis & commentary on America's troubled transition from analog telephone service to digital advanced telecommunications and associated infrastructure deficits.
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
Bill would require California PUC to report on broadband access, competition
Note to Sen. Kehoe: Consider amending your measure to provide for more specific geographic information, using multiple measures such as census tracts, assessors' rolls, electronic mapping, provider subscriber data and ZIP Code plus 4. (See previous post re Maryland's HB 1069. )
Measurements of broadband availability based on a single geographical parameter -- such as a five digit ZIP Code -- are too broad and easily miss large broadband black holes that can exist in a five-digit ZIP where some neighborhoods have access to broadband while others in the same ZIP code do not.
Maryland bill would require broadband statistics
Providers would be required to show on a ZIP code-plus 4 basis where they are providing service, what portion of residents of the nine digit ZIP code subscribe to their broadband offerings and other information. PK hopes the legislation will become a model for other states and serve as an alternative to broadband deployment data gathered by the Federal Communications Commission widely criticized as lacking sufficient detail to guide public policymakers.
PK reports Verizon and Comcast have fired up their lobbying machinery to oppose HB 1069 by Herman Taylor (D-Montgomery County).
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
Next generation fiber optic blows DSL away, promises to reshape telecom infrastructure
Not only that, there's no need for remote terminals that are required to distribute copper-based DSL beyond its three mile technical distance limit. The requirement for numerous remote terminals has hamstrung DSL availability in much of El Dorado County and other locations outside of urban centers.
Friday, February 16, 2007
Time for a national conversation and new course on telecom
The year is still young enough for predictions for 2007. Here’s one based on the stories on this blog and elsewhere so far this year: The year 2007 is when the United States will realize that it’s time to have a serious national conversation on the future of the nation’s telecommunications infrastructure and how to get moving to bring it up to date to America’s current and future needs.
Recent reports indicate it continues to fail to meet promised upgrades by the telephone and cable company duopoly — much of it based on hopeful thinking, unrealistic goal setting and public relations spin — and is falling farther and farther behind the booming demand curve for high speed Internet-based services. Too much of the United States continues to be served by a 1970’s era “last mile” infrastructure that can’t deliver broadband digital services now and won’t able to be able do so anytime in the foreseeable future. Not in our lifetimes as one AT&T manager put it to a customer asking when AT&T’s much touted fiber optic-based “Project Lightspeed” upgrade would come to El Dorado County, California.
One probable conclusion of this national dialogue will be the existing telephone/cable company duopoly lacks the resources to upgrade and expand the nation’s telecom infrastructure rapidly enough to provide near universal service that is the hallmark of an advanced modern economy. Even if they undertook a crash program to do so — which quarterly earnings pressure from Wall Street and shareholders would prohibit — they would likely be unable to deploy updated infrastructure quickly enough and with sufficient bandwidth to meet the ever growing digital demands being placed upon their systems. They are too bogged down by their massive investments in their legacy metal wire-based local distribution systems that served them well for decades for voice phone service and analog television until the Internet began to take off in the 1990s. It’s time to chart a new course.
The Internet Freedom Declaration of 2007
Universal Affordable Access
Broadband Internet access should be universally available and affordable. Rural or urban, rich or poor, every American must be able to access the information superhighway at fair prices and speeds that rival the rest of the world. Like the public highways, the information superhighway must be considered a key piece of public infrastructure -- an indispensable part of our society that provides economic and social opportunities to all.
Thursday, February 15, 2007
Satellite Internet fails to live up to expectations
Kyle Houchens of Jericho runs a design business from his home. He often sends and receives large computer files over his satellite Internet connection, which promised to be fast. However, Houchens has found it slower than he expected and unreliable.
RYAN MERCER, Free Press
Vermont governor proposes state telecom agency
The governor's plan starts with creation of the Vermont Telecommunications Authority, overseen by an executive director and a nine-member board of directors.
The authority isn't looking to get into the business of providing Internet service. It would, however, be able to bond for up to $40 million to help others provide service.
That money would be invested in infrastructure such as fiber-optic cable or small towers to bring broadband and cell phone service to unserved or under-served parts of the state. The bond would be paid back through revenues generated from leasing infrastructure to cellular and Internet service providers.
Geographic market failure, inconsistent regulatory policy stymie U.S. broadband access
The existing large telecommunications providers invest their money where there is maximum return on investment, which results in a patchwork of coverage throughout the U.S. Telecom providers maximize profits and spend millions of dollars lobbying to create laws that decrease competitive challenges, while having little incentive to provide new services to less population-dense areas of the country, or to increase speed and lower costs for those who already do have service. This state of affairs stands in marked contrast to the situation in those nations that are truly broadband leaders.In the absence of widespread government initiatives and incentives to roll out broadband services in rural areas, telecom providers have made the decision to maximize profits by rolling out service in those areas that have the highest population density and lowest cost of build-out per customer. The free market wins in the short term, quarterly profits are maximized, but the customers in less-profitable geographic areas lose, and the nation as a whole loses out over the long term, falling behind other nations with more farsighted policies.
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
More "get ready, it's coming" talk on Project Lightspeed
Regarding AT&T's Project Lightspeed, which will extend fiber-optic cable into neighborhoods and add video services to telephone and high-speed Internet options, Whitacre said the company plans "a big time ramp up" in the next couple of months. He did not elaborate on the plans for the project, which he acknowledged has been a "little bit behind" in its rollout.
Monday, February 12, 2007
FTC to look into ISP broadband speed claims
Sure enough, it has. The Federal Trade Commission will be look into the issue in a workshop this week, ars technica reports.
Verizon policy exec calls for federal grants, loans to extend broadband access
Tauke also said the nation needs to come up with a better way to determine exactly where broadband is available and where it's not, suggesting like consumer advocates the FCC's current methodology of using ZIP Codes as measurement units is flawed.
Friday, February 09, 2007
Cooperative research project proposed to study "acute and growing problems facing the Internet" in U.S.
On December 12-13, 2006, the Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis (CAIDA) held a workshop to discuss and ultimately propose a collaboration among researchers and networks to simultaneously solve three acute and growing problems facing the Internet: a self-reported financial crisis in the Internet infrastructure provider industry that poses a severe threat to broadband growth and U.S. competitiveness; a data acquisition crisis which has deeply stunted the field of network science; and a dilemma within emerging community, municipal, regional, and state networks, who need (additional) broadband connectivity but face severely limited provider, service level, and usage options.
Project Lightspeed appears headed on failed course of Project Pronto
AT&T’s latest initiative is dubbed Project Lightspeed. Unlike the failed Project Pronto, Project Lightspeed — AT&T’s scheme to offer a so-called triple play menu of services including telephone, broadband and IPTV (Internet Protocol TV over phone lines) contains no self imposed deadlines. That’s a good thing because it’s moving well below the speed of light, BusinessWeek reports this week.
AT&T wants to make all three digital services run over its existing copper cable, and industry analysts are questioning whether copper — designed to carry low bandwidth analog voice services — can provide enough bandwidth to accommodate the huge bandwidth needs of high definition IPTV. AT&T "competitor" Verizon doesn’t think copper is up to the job and is instead committed to doing triple play over fiber optic cable to the doorstep. By contrast, AT&T finds itself caught between its desire to keep up with Verizon and the cable companies in the market for triple play services and its reluctance to let go of its legacy copper cable plant, a reluctance that ensures an early death for Project Lightspeed and make AT&T an also ran in the triple play game.
In a competitive market — the kind of competitive market envisioned by the federal telecommunications reform legislation enacted in 1996 — the stage would appear to be set for Verizon to eat Ma Bell’s lunch. The problem is there is no true competitive market for residential telecommunications services. Verizon refuses to compete in AT&T’s service area and vice versa. So there’s little pressure on AT&T to upgrade its aging copper cable-based system to fiber. Meanwhile, AT&T residential customers suffer, with large numbers unable to obtain even a “double play” of voice and broadband service promised years ago by the not-so-pronto Project Pronto let alone the triple play of Project Lightspeed.
Wednesday, February 07, 2007
More than 20 percent of local phone company customers can't get DSL
Local telephone companies didn’t offer DSL in more than 20 percent of their service areas last year, according to recently released data compiled by the Federal Communications Commission. The data are contained in Table 14 of the report, High Speed Services for Internet Access as of June 30, 2006.
States with the highest DSL penetration among incumbent local exchange carriers (ILECs) include Florida (88 percent), California (86 percent) and surprisingly, Louisiana with 87 percent. Even less densely populated states such as Nevada and North Dakota exceeded the national average of 79 percent, with 85 percent and 86 percent respectively.
The states with the lowest DSL availability offered by ILECs were New Hampshire with 59 percent; Vermont with 60 percent; Virginia, Arkansas and Michigan with 66 percent; and Maine, 67 percent.
Friday, February 02, 2007
Finally some common sense on broadband -- courtesy of Nebraska Rep. Lee Terry
In addition to ending a federal requirement that high-speed Internet rates be equal regardless of population density, Nebraska Republican Congressman Lee Terry’s draft bill would also require the Universal Service Fund, created to subsidize voice telephone service in higher cost areas, be updated to include broadband, according to this ars technica report.
Terry, a member of the Congressional Rural Caucus, is on the right track policy-wise. Broadband Internet access should be universal and allowing USF funding to help make it so is sound policy. It’s also equitable to allow higher costs to deploy wire line-based broadband to be recovered in the form of higher prices.
Achieving universal broadband access is a high cost proposition and will require multiple funding sources. Terry’s bill strikes a reasonable middle ground that’s vitally needed in finding a way to make broadband universally accessible. Otherwise, everyone living outside of densely populated urban areas will remain stuck in the early 1990s with cheap but impractical dial up Internet access or the costly and undesirable option of satellite, which is best left to television programming.