Dot com coalition calls on Congress for federal broadband policy

The Open Internet Coalition, in a letter to Congress sent Thursday, said the U.S. government needs to adopt new measures to ensure universal affordable access to broadband, net neutrality and increased competition in the broadband market. The letter is the first step in a concerted effort coalition members will make to push broadband legislation in Congress, members said.

The U.S. lacks "any stated policy" to bring affordable broadband to more residents, added Gigi Sohn, president of Public Knowledge, a digital rights advocacy group and member of the coalition. "The government doesn't have an overarching vision on how to address these problems," she added.

Consultant: AT&T slows DSL buildout

“DSL shipments into North America will continue to decline, due to the slowdown in AT&T’s buildout, Verizon’s shift to FTTH and the absence of alternative service providers,” Dittberner said.

This likely means those who have been waiting for AT&T to deploy DSL to their neighborhoods will probably have to continue waiting indefinitely.

Appalachian broadband summit set

U.S. Rep. Zack Space, the Dover Democrat who represents Ohio’s 18th Congressional District, will hold two one-day broadband summits called "Connect Appalachia" next week in an effort to explore bringing high-speed internet access to rural areas of Appalachia.

"Just as railroads in the 19th century and our interstate system in the 1950s represented revolutionary breakthroughs in transportation infrastructure, broadband represents the breakthrough for our generation. We absolutely need wider access to broadband in order to attract new industries and jobs," Space said in a news release.

Lack of broadband hurts Tahoe property values

It's only a matter of time before properties in broadband black holes began to fetch less than comparable properties that have high speed Internet access. That downside is likely to be exacerbated in the current soft real estate market:

The lack of high speed internet access frustrated both business owners and residents in the area, and also began to take a toll on real estate values. Local real estate agent and petition organizer Brett Williams of Agate Bay Realty had this to say: “It’s starting to affect the values of the properties of the areas that are not serviced by high-speed,” said Williams. “If you are trying to fill a rental property, two that are similar, one with high-speed and one without, its difficult to lease the second property. You have high-tech people who are looking to lease a property for four to five months for a ski lease, and can’t telecommute.”

"White space broadband" could revolutionize Internet access

As the U.S. and much of the world struggles with wire line infrastructure investment shortcomings and regulatory confusion that keeps broadband inaccessible for many, there's a potential technological advance that could completely revolutionize Internet access if it succeeds.

This "killer app" is called white space broadband and would provide wireless broadband at speeds that would blow away DSL and cable high speed Internet offerings and offer throughput comparable to fiber optic connections. It would utilize unused parts of the television broadcast spectrum called "white space."

Eric Bangeman of ars technica reports:

The White Space Coalition is comprised of Dell, EarthLink, Google, HP, Intel, Microsoft, and Philips Electronics. The FCC should conclude its testing of the white space broadband prototypes in July and the first rules governing the use of the spectrum by wireless broadband devices should be released in October 2007. Once that happens, the IEEE will likely begin the work of standardizing the tech. If all goes as planned, white space broadband service could begin in the US as soon as February 2009.

California rural lawmakers back UC request for FCC telemedicine pilot funding

The California Legislative Rural Caucus has lent its support to the University of California’s application for $24 million in funding to the Federal Communication Commission Rural Health Care Pilot Program. According to the caucus, the federal funds would be matched with funds from the California Emerging Technology Fund to speed broadband deployment for telemedicine applications in rural areas of the Golden State.

"Together with an investment from the California Emerging Technology Fund, the FCC’s funds will make quality health care more accessible to Californians living in rural areas," the caucus wrote in a May 15 letter to FCC Chairman Kevin J. Martin. "Many of the challenges in rural health arise from limited access to core health care services. Lack of access to healthcare may mean that appropriate treatment is delayed or deferred, causing unnecessary hospitalizations, higher costs, and greater disability and personal suffering. Health information technology (HIT) provides powerful tools to enhance access to comprehensive, quality healthcare services in the most geographically isolated areas. HIT can assist rural providers to better coordinate services for their patients by bridging distances and providing immediate access to clinical knowledge, specialized expertise, and services otherwise unavailable in rural areas."

The letter was sent the same week Blue Shield pulled out of four California counties, complaining medical care costs incurred by state and local government workers and retirees covered through the California Personnel and Retirement System (CalPERS) are signficantly higher in rural parts of the state.

Municipal wireless broadband off to inauspicious start

"I will be surprised if the majority of these are successful and they do not prove to be drains on taxpayers' money," said Michael Balhoff, former telecom equity analyst with Legg Mason Inc. "The government is getting into hotly contested services."

The vendors remain confident despite technical and other problems. Chuck Haas, MetroFi Inc.'s chief executive, said Wi-Fi networks are far cheaper to build than cable and DSL, which is broadband over phone lines.

Demand could grow once more cell phones can make Wi-Fi calls and as city workers improve productivity by reading electric meters remotely, for instance.

Balhoff, however, believes the successful projects are most likely to be in remote places that traditional service providers skip — and fewer and fewer of those areas exist. Cities, he said, should focus on incentives to draw providers.

I think Balhoff's called it right. In more densely populated areas where municipal wireless broadband Internet access is being deployed, residents generally have one or more wireline broadband providers -- telcos and cable companies -- whose speeds and reliability can often exceed those offered by wireless systems.

At present, wireless broadband appears most suited to the plains and deserts -- relatively less populated regions in the heartland and the southwest -- where both economics and relatively flat terrain make it a viable option for the relatively near future.

It's only natural: U.S. Supreme Court rejects anti-trust action targeting big telcos

Bloomberg reports the U.S. Supreme Court today tossed out a lawsuit alleging telcos Verizon, AT&T Inc. and Qwest violated anti-trust law by colluding not to compete in each other's service areas.

The high court found there was no evidence of collusion. Rather, the justices ruled 7-2, the fact that the former baby bells hardly ever directly compete is a natural consequence of their business models. "There is no reason to infer that the companies had agreed among themselves to do what was only natural anyway," Justice David Souter wrote for the court.

Maryland county lacks adequate broadband access, report finds

The insufficiency of existing services doesn’t come as news to Ken Decker, chairman of the Carroll Cable Regulatory Commission. Home-based workers in Carroll often need broadband access and can’t get it, he said.

The report recommends the county increase broadband access by exploring partnerships with service providers, conducting a feasibility study of a public broadband network and considering how other infrastructure projects can provide opportunities to add fiber-optic lines.

Arizona state broadband authority backed

According to this item in the East Valley Tribune, the Arizona Telecommunications and Information Council has given its support to the creation of an Arizona Broadband Development Authority that would oversee the implementation of a statewide plan for high-speed Internet service. It would study ways to reduce the cost of extending broadband infrastructure including fiber-optic lines to rural areas and ensuring that local communities play a major role in the process.

The council also proposed a revolving fund under the control of the authority that would be used to help pay for rural broadband projects that could be funded by a 50 cent surcharge on the monthly bills of existing broadband customers, said Michael Keeling, chairman of the council. Implicit in this subsidization scheme is the recognition of broadband as vital as basic telephone, roads and utilities.

Federal measure would map broadband black holes, redefine broadband

Nate Anderson of ars technica reports on draft federal legislation, the Broadband Census of America Act, that would define broadband as 2Mbps and have the National Telecommunications and Information Administration create a searchable, Web-based map census of broadband availability. The cable/telco duopoly has historically resisted such maps since they would show large portions of their service areas don't include broadband access and discredit providers' claims that market dynamics are filling America's broadband black holes.

A broadband census has already been enacted in California as part of that state's Digital Infrastructure and Video Competition Act of 2006, AB 2987. It requires those providers who hold broadband "video franchises" issued by the California Public Utilities Commission to provide the PUC broadband penetration data by census tract each year beginning April 1, 2008.

Tales from the dark side of the digital divide, 95709

Nearly seven years ago, a postcard arrived in the mail from Internet Service provider EarthLink announcing that DSL was available in my El Dorado County, California neighborhood. That turned out to be premature — very premature. Seven years later and two years after a promising community meeting with a regional manager for the incumbent local exchange carrier (ILEC), then-SBC Communications and now AT&T, DSL is still not available despite fiber optic cable less than two miles away on a frontage road for a major U.S. highway. Nor is Comcast cable, which recently declined to extend its existing cable plant located a mile and a half away, citing a franchise agreement that allows it to skip neighborhoods that aren’t set up like densely developed common interest developments with zero lot lines.

Today, another postcard — actually the size of a flyer — arrived in the mail. This one from HughesNet satellite Internet and addressed to:

DIAL UP INTERNET USER AT
ADDRESS
CITY, STATE, ZIP

"Been overlooked by DSL and cable?” it asks. “Your high-speed Internet solution has arrived."

Judging from a neighbor’s experience with HughesNet, I hardly think so. It’s maddenly sluggish and not surprisingly so considering each keystroke to load a Web page must make a 46,000 mile round trip up to the HughesNet satellite and back down to the surface. For months, about 20 percent of his inbound email wouldn’t download to his Outlook Express program. So we installed Thunderbird mail as an alternative. The emails came in OK, but nothing would go out.

We spent two hours on the phone with some incompetent HughesNet support guy in Bangalore who couldn't solve the problem. So my neighbor is now relegated to using HughesNet’s crappy Web-based mail program. That’s not all. About a month ago, his granddaughter downloaded a TV program and HughesNet responded by throttling down the throughput to dialup speed as punishment for using too much bandwidth since it has too many ex-dialup desperados trying to cram onto too little HughesNet bandwidth. Many of these ex-dialuggers including my neighbor — large numbers of them seniors simply seeking a viable Internet connection to share pics with the grandkids — have been sucked into signing two-year contracts for what more aptly should be dubbed “MolassesNet” on steroids.

I imagine in another two years, another postcard will arrive in the mail addressed to:

DIAL UP INTERNET USER AT
ADDRESS
CITY, STATE, ZIP

Telecom association chief's assertions at odds with reality

United States Telecom Association President and CEO Walter B. McCormick Jr. filed comments with the Federal Communications Commission this week that contained two key myths of telco propaganda when it comes to broadband deployment in the U.S: 1) that competition is speeding broadband deployment and 2) that telcos are investing in broadband deployments in less densely populated areas of the U.S.

“In addition to deploying new and innovative products and services in urban and suburban communities, telecom companies are spending billions of dollars to reach many of the most geographically challenging and expensive rural areas in the nation,” said USTelecom President and CEO Walter B. McCormick Jr. “The FCC’s market-based policies encourage communications companies to stay ahead of the competition and continue to make significant infrastructure investments. These policies are working and we strongly urge the Commission to allow the highly competitive broadband market to continue to thrive.”

First of all, there's no real market competition in areas that lack broadband access since no one's providing service there. Second, telcos are NOT investing in infrastructure in less populated portions of their service areas. Just the opposite. Infrastructure investment is being concentrated in urban areas such as AT&T's Project Lightspeed and U-Verse initiatives and Verizon's FiOS fiber optic deployment. The FCC's own research found that as of last June, more than 20 percent of telco customers couldn't even get DSL over telcos' aging copper cable plants.

Protecting the telco/cable duopoly

This story out of New York state shows that telcos (in this case, Verizon) can offer broadband-based Internet Protocol TV (IPTV) in without legislation the telcos are seeking in the Empire State to put the state in charge of issuing so-called "video franchises" In this case, Multichannel News reports, the towns of West Haverstraw and North Castle approved Verizon's applications to provide IPTV over its propriety fiber optic FiOS infrastructure.

The telco/cable duopoly has pursued similar legislation in about a dozen states, claiming it would allow them to bypass local governments, bring greater market competition (pretty hard to do in a duopolistic market) and deploy broadband-based services more rapidly. However, at the slow pace at which the telcos and cable companies are expanding the availability of their broadband services, doing with local government regulation one area at a time certainly doesn't seem to be an impediment.

Rather than speed up deployment of broadband, the true objective of the state franchise measures, like a recently-promulgated Federal Communications Commission rule (which is being legally challenged by local governments), is to protect telcos and cable companies from local government demands they hasten the build out of their infrastructures in order to make broadband available to unserved areas.

Ma Bell pipe dream: $1 billion in ad revenue in 3 years

Seems that everyone wants a piece of Internet-based ad revenue. Now even the companies that provide the "pipes" that carry the Internet want in on the action, including Ma Bell.

John Stankey, AT&T's president for operations support, told the Reuters Global Technology, Media and Telecoms Summit in New York that advertising could bring $1 billion to Ma Bell's top line in three years time. Stankey said AT&T can reach that revenue goal by virtue of being the biggest U.S. broadband provider, a wireless carrier and most recently, a purveyor of Internet Protocol Television Service (IPTV) via its nascent U-Verse video service.

I think Stankey's time line is far too optimistic given the slow pace of AT&T's U-verse rollout whose functionality hasn't yet been demonstrated on a large scale. Also the company's sluggishness in even upgrading large portions of its service area that must continue to use early 1990s dial up modem technology to access the Internet or the so-called "Molasses Net" -- satellite Internet service -- which AT&T is hawking via a reseller deal with satellite provider WildBlue.

Rather than the pipe providers getting into the advertising biz, the more likely scenario is the media giants like Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. and Web portals Yahoo! and Google getting into the pipes business, partnering with other companies to build their own broadband infrastructure after tiring of waiting on the telco/cable duopoly to expand their networks.

Vermont legislature approves $40 million bond measure to speed universal broadband access

Blogger Tom Evslin reports Vermont legislation that would make the state the nation's first "e-state" featuring universal broadband and wireless coverage by 2010 is on its way to Gov. Jim Douglas. It defines fixed broadband as a symmetrical (same speed for both uploads and downloads) 3Mbs connection.

The bill encourages both public and private provisioning of service. It includes authorization for up to $40 million in revenue bonds by the State to build infrastructure like radio towers and middle-mile fiber. The State is NOT authorized to become a retail ISP but the plan is to encourage private wireless ISPs (WISPs), wireline ISPs, and cellular operators – as well as municipalities – by making infrastructure broadly available at a reasonable cost even in areas where the short term economics are tough. The bonds need to be repaid out of revenues but this will be “patient” money.

The measure also authorizes local governments to engage in municipal broadband projects. As Evslin states in an earlier post on the legislation, implementation of it could prove more difficult than getting the bill into law. I would agree, considering that $40 million likely represents a small portion of the investment that will be needed to bring universal broadband access to Vermont in just three years.

U.S. Dept. of Agriculture revamps rules for funding rural broadband projects

Dorr outlined several key elements of the proposed rules: Promoting deployment to rural areas with little or no service; Ensuring that residents in funded areas get broadband access more quickly; Limiting funding in urban areas and areas where a significant share of the market is served by incumbent providers; Clarifying and streamlining equity and marketing survey requirements; Increasing the transparency of the application process, including legal notice requirements, to make more informed lending/borrowing decisions; Promoting a better understanding of all application requirements, including market survey, competitive analysis, business plan, and system design requirements; and ensuring that projects funding are keeping pace with increasing demand for bandwidth.

Dorr noted that significant progress has been made in facilitating rural broadband deployment since the program began. Over 70 loans have been made totaling $1.2 billion for broadband deployment projects headquartered in 36 states. Through these loans, more than half a million households in more than 1,000 rural communities will receive broadband service. Over 60% of these communities had little or no broadband service at the time.