Analysis & commentary on America's troubled transition from analog telephone service to digital advanced telecommunications and associated infrastructure deficits.
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Public utility districts can provide cable TV service, California Court of Appeal rules
The ruling is significant because it provides solid legal authority for California utility districts to partner with private companies to build open access telecommunications networks over the objections of existing cable providers and telcos who don't want new competitors offering superior broadband services. These networks can provide much needed alternatives to bringing broadband and other advanced digital telecommunications services to areas existing providers choose not to provide and introduce competition that can benefit consumers.
The ruling clears the way for Roseville, California-based SureWest Communications to explore a public/private partership with the Truckee Donner Public Utility District to install a fiber optic-based cable system in the district's jurisdiction, The Sierra Sun reports.
Charter, AT&T draw fire from South Lake Tahoe customers
One commentator says both companies have left the area in the digital stone ages without advanced digital services and broadband. Another called for Charter to upgrade or get out of the area.
Wednesday, April 04, 2007
Americans pay 7 times more than Japanese for broadband
Why the difference? Unlike the U.S., Japanese government policy views broadband as vital infrastructure and provides economic assistance such as zero-interest or low-interest loans for cities and businesses to deploy broadband as well as tax breaks for the purchase of networking equipment, Ebihara said.
Ebihara, whose company is partly owned by the Japanese government, also credits a more future oriented, patient investment philosophy than in the U.S. "We see the future, and then we do what we feel is right," he said. "[Making low-yield investments is] very difficult for American companies like Verizon and AT&T. They have to answer every quarter to investors."
Tuesday, April 03, 2007
Sub-broadband option going by the wayside in UK
The technology is being rendered obsolete by DSL and other "always on" broadband connections, although broadcasters miss ISDN's rock solid stability and audio quality for remote broadcasts.
California PUC grants AT&T franchise
According to PUC President Michael R. Peevey, "Because AT&T's service territory covers approximately 75 percent of the state, a large part of California can look forward to more choices in video programming and service options as a result of today's action."
Don't hold your breath, especially when AT&T can't (or more accurately, won't) provide broadband at any speed throughout much of its service area in California.
Consumer advocates criticize Japan junket by AT&T, California regulators
The trip is being paid for by the California Foundation on the Environment and the Economy, a nonprofit that isn't required to disclose its donations and is run by executives including those of California's major telecommunications and energy companies.
While the consumer groups rightly raise ethical concerns the Japanese junket appears too cozy for comfort with regulators and the regulated likely toasting with shots of sake, there is a potential positive upside. The visiting officials and execs will see first hand that Japan's broadband telecommunications infrastructure is light years ahead of California's. That will drive home how shameful it is that the state that once claimed to be an information technology leader is loaded with broadband black holes where residents continue to be relegated to early 1990s dial up Internet access.
Monday, April 02, 2007
Australian labor party wants to sell Telstra shares to finance national broadband expansion
Australia’s Federal Labor has unveiled plans to raid the Future Fund to build a A$4.7 billion ($3.8 billion) national high-speed broadband network, a New Zealand Herald report said. The report said under the plan, Labor will sell up to A$2.7 billion ($2.1 billion) worth of Telstra shares held in the Future Fund to help pay for the project.
The project will connect 98% of Australians to broadband services with a speed more than 40 times faster than most current speeds, the report said.
Sunday, April 01, 2007
Google unveils Toilet Internet Service Provider (TISP)
"Dark porcelain" project offers self-installed plumbing-based Internet access
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., April 1, 2007 - Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) today announced the launch of Google TiSP (BETA)™, a free in-home wireless broadband service that delivers online connectivity via users' plumbing systems. The Toilet Internet Service Provider (TiSP) project is a self-installed, ad-supported online service that will be offered entirely free to any consumer with a WiFi-capable PC and a toilet connected to a local municipal sewage system.
"We've got that whole organizing-the-world's-information thing more or less under control," said Google Co-founder and President Larry Page, a longtime supporter of so-called "dark porcelain" research and development. "What's interesting, though, is how many different modalities there are for actually getting that information to you - not to mention from you."
Friday, March 30, 2007
Vermont House approves formation of state telecom authority
The state has set a goal of getting reliable cellular telephone service and high-speed computer service known as broadband into every area of the state by 2010. Now, wide swaths of Vermont get no cell signals and computer users must use much slower dial-up service.
The Telecommunications Authority would have the power to float state-backed bonds valued at $40 million to build the poles, towers and other parts of the basic network. It then would lease space on the network to companies that would sell their service to consumers.
The House Commerce Committee was the lead panel in crafting the legislation, which won overwhelming support. Chairman Warren Kitzmiller, D-Montpelier, said the bill "has as much important to Vermont as did the Rural Electrification Act of the 1930s. This bill can have profound impact on every citizen of the state and its economic impact is huge."
Broadband black holes in the Big Apple?
But in New York City, the nation's largest and most densely populated urban center? How can that be? It's apparently so according to this Newsday story that cites aging infrastructure and lack of competition in Big Apple boroughs where the telco/cable duopoly holds the cards.
Thursday, March 29, 2007
Broadband over TV spectrum would dramatically alter Internet access
As Eric Bangeman of Ars Technica writes, should tests of the technology being pursued by Microsoft, Intel, Dell and Google succeed, the broadband landscape would be dramatically altered when it comes on the market in early 2009.
"Wireless networks using the spectrum should be relatively easy to deploy, and would provide residents of rural areas easy access to broadband while giving everyone else a third alternative to DSL and cable," Bangeman writes.
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
AT&T chief's words at odds with company's pathetic broadband deployment efforts
“I’m asking you, I’m pleading, don’t let them go until they’re happy,” The New York Times quoted Whitacre as telling AT&T employees. “You just can’t let them go. Hang on till it’s done.”
But rather than hanging in with customers, AT&T has hung out large numbers of them to dry, letting them go years without broadband services and without any meaningful hope of getting broadband anytime soon.
They may be only a mile from existing broadband infrastructure, but Ma Bell won't go the extra mile to provide service as Whitacre as exhorts his workers. Instead, customers are told the system cannot provide broadband because they're too far from a central office, their loop's too long, there's no neighborhood DSL gateway and any number of "no can do" excuses.
While Whitacre may insist AT&T can't "just can’t let them go," that's exactly what it's doing with a sizable segment of its residential customer base.
Monday, March 26, 2007
Analysts question AT&T broadband strategy
Analysts aren't the only ones questioning Ma Bell's broadband strategy, one that can't deliver any broadband services at all let alone IPTV to large portions of her service area.
But there is potential downside for AT&T too, analysts said, particularly when it comes to its closely linked broadband and television strategies. Some analysts assert that AT&T has set itself up poorly to compete in those areas, which are considered essential to the telecommunications product bundle.In the case of TV, the strategy is called Uverse, and it entails delivering programming over the Internet, called IPTV. But the service has been plagued by delays and glitches and, even now, takes on average more than six hours to install in a home.
"If it cannot be called a complete failure, it's at least struggling," said Phillip Swan, president of TVPredictions.com, a Web site that tracks the television technology industry. He said that if things did not pick up soon, AT&T might have to get back into the acquisition game to buy a TV distributor, like a satellite or cable company.
Friday, March 23, 2007
Newspaper stories suggest AT&T contributions to Schwarzenegger committees linked to AB 2987
The Times reported AT&T gave a cool half million dollars to Schwarzenegger's After-School All-Stars, a tax-exempt group founded by Schwarzenegger in the early 1990s to provide tutoring, recreation and other programs to poor children.
The Bee reported today in a page one story that eight high level AT&T executives gave $5,000 each to Schwarzenegger's reelection campaign committee in recent weeks.
Both stories contained strenuous denials from the governor's office and AT&T that the cash contributions had anything to do with Schwarzenegger's signature on AB 2987 last October.
The stories put the donations in the context of AB 2987's allowing AT&T to provide television programming and bypassing local governments by putting the California Public Utilities Commission in charge of issuing video franchises. It should be noted however that the cable TV industry also supported AB 2987.
The real issue isn't AT&T's ability to sell television programming since its aged copper cable-based infrastructure cannot reliably transmit Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) service to the vast majority of California households and won't be able to anytime soon. Rather, it's AB 2987's limited build out requirements that allow the telco/cable duopoly to leave vast areas of the state -- ironically many of them inland counties inhabited by Schwarzenegger's fellow Republicans -- without any broadband services whatsoever.
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
State franchise laws codify the digital divide, consumer advocate argues
Ben Scott, policy director of the advocacy group Free Press, told the National Journal's Technology Daily that by allowing telcos and cable companies to pick and choose areas where broadband will be offered, state franchising laws "unfortunately, are going to write the digital divide into law."
Sunday, March 18, 2007
Qwest follows dubious AT&T strategy of video over copper via DSL
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
Fiber may be the future, but copper is now for cable rustlers
Verizon spokesman Jon Davies said the company had lost $297,795 in copper since 2006 in California alone, not including money spent on work to replace the wire or loss of service to customers.
"This is a national problem," he said. "We try to keep our cables high on the poles to make it harder to get, but the people who do this are highly motivated, and they have the equipment to get at it."