AT&T/Yahoo! High Speed Internet partnership in flux

AT&T is negotiating with Yahoo! over the future of its six-year-old partnership that features Yahoo! Web ads for AT&T's residential DSL service, The Wall Street Journal reports according to this Reuters story today.

One likely reason is AT&T has tapped out the Yahoo! market for its DSL services and lacks the necessary infrastructure to sell additional DSL connections to Yahoo! clickers such as your blogger who are constantly greeted with the message "AT&T Yahoo! High Speed Internet is not yet available" for their home phone number.

Additionally, given AT&T's promo rate of its lowest speed DSL service for $14.99 a month, there may not be enough money in the deal to justify continuing its partnership with Yahoo!

Wireless in America's heartland

Wireless broadband is best suited to America's heartland where line of sight radio signals travel relatively unimpeded over flat terrain. It's a natural interim alternative to more costly fiber wire-line based systems in places like Altus, Oklahoma. The city is entering negotiations for a citywide wireless broadband utility that will bring not only provide high speed Internet, but also bring money into the city's coffers.

Fiber consortium calls for national broadband policy

The Fiber to the Home Council, which describes itself as nonprofit consortium of telecommunications and networking companies as well as utilities and municipalities promoting the deployment of Fiber To The Home (FTTH), is calling on Congress to promulgate a national policy objective of providing next-generation (fiber versus metal wire based) broadband networks to a majority of Americans by 2010 with universal access by 2015. "To ensure that consumers can both receive and transmit video and other high-speed services, applications, and content, these networks should have transmission speeds in excess of 100 Mbps and symmetrical access capabilities," the FTTH Council said.

The FTTH Council is also urging Congress to enact legislation providing tax incentives for next-generation broadband deployment, preempting state laws barring local governments from building broadband infrastructure, reauthorizing the Rural Utility Service Loan Guarantee Program for next-generation broadband networks, permitting the Universal Service Fund to be used for next-generation broadband network deployment and earmarking $500 million in USF funds for broadband deployment in rural areas. In addition, the Federal Communications Commission should be required to issue annual reports on next-generation broadband network deployments and include recommendations on additional policies that would accelerate the deployment of next-generation broadband networks, the FTTH Council said.

The case for local government broadband initiatives

Thanks to Eldo resident Ron Britvich for passing along this comprehensive report by Becca Vargo Daggett of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance.

Its premise is the "last mile" of the U.S. telecommunications infrastructure is a broken down highway onramp, clogged with Internet traffic jams of data on their way to the 10,000 lane fiber optic freeway that carries Internet traffic. It posits the best way to clear the backup is to bring fiber optic cable to all homes, which Daggett notes unlike copper-based DSL has a built in future growth capacity for decades to come. Currently the overall carrying capacity of the Internet in the U.S. is quite low because of the traffic jam on this critical "last mile." The Internet is only as strong as its weakest link, Daggett observes, and it's pretty weak in the United States.

The privately owned cable/telephone company duopoly that provides nearly all Americans their Internet access isn't likely to upgrade to fiber for the foreseeable and under current regulations has no business incentive to offer universal broadband access.

Daggett asserts that high speed Internet should be treated like other critical public infrastructure such as highways and municipal utilities like water and sewers. She lays out several scenarios for publicly owned, open access high speed Internet networks that contrary to the fears of telcos and cable companies don't cut them out of the picture. The report includes several case studies of local government open access networks. It also features a very clear and thorough description of various wire line and wireless high speed Internet technologies.

Future of the last mile: Fiber beats out wireless

A research study on behalf comms regulator Ofcom has found that wireless systems cannot compete on technology or cost grounds with optical fibre systems for the provision of broadband services to the user.

A six month research study, carried out by a group led by Plextek for Ofcom, was set up to investigate the use of wireless technology as an alternative for the provision of last mile communications to the home.

The study found that wireless cannot realistically compete with fibre for the provision of future broadband requirements over the whole of the last mile.

Municipal fiber in the heart of Silicon Valley

Most people probably think Silicon Valley lacks broadband black holes. After all, it is California and the nation's high tech capital and home the Internet's biggest innovators and suppliers.

But as a recent item on this blog showed, that's not necessarily the case. Much to his surprise, BusinessWeek's Silicon Valley bureau chief recently moved to a new home on the wrong side of the digital divide, smack dab in Palo Alto. So it's no wonder the Palo Alto City Council is moving forward with plans to construct a city wide fiber optic system. According to this story, Palo Alto may be the first city in the Golden State to do so.