Analysis & commentary on America's troubled transition from analog telephone service to digital advanced telecommunications and associated infrastructure deficits.
Tuesday, March 13, 2007
Tech coalition wants to use TV airwaves for broadband
"Broadband drought" in the land down under
A first step is to build fibre-to-the-node (FTTN), extending optical fibre from telephone exchanges to street-corner nodes from where houses would be served by their telephone connections.
Telstra has offered to invest $4.2 billion in FTTN but has it on hold because the regulatory environment does not suit it.
Meanwhile, it is pursuing persuasion and public relations. "We have a broadband drought in this country, there's no question of that," Dr Burgess says. "This week the Government announced a broadband program at 256 kilobits per second, at almost the same time as Singapore announced a program to bring 100 megabits per second to 95 per cent of its population."
Sunday, March 11, 2007
Comcast chief: DSL becoming the new dial up
Roberts' remarks reported in The Motley Fool would certainly give indigestion to lots of folks in places like El Dorado County who are stuck with dial up, unable to get DSL and often located only a mile or two -- or less -- from existing Comcast cable. Adding insult to injury, Comcast's Web site will inform visitors that cable is available in their ZIP codes when in fact it's not.
Saturday, March 10, 2007
Telco/cable duopoly kills proposed legislation requiring disclosure of broadband deployments
Apparently the telco/cable duopoly fears embarrassment and potential regulatory directives to expand broadband deployments if Maryland residents were able to determine the location of these companies' broadband black holes.
Friday, March 09, 2007
AT&T/Yahoo! High Speed Internet partnership in flux
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!
Thursday, March 08, 2007
Wireless in America's heartland
Fiber consortium calls for national broadband policy
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.
Wednesday, March 07, 2007
The case for local government broadband initiatives
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.