Analysis & commentary on America's troubled transition from analog telephone service to digital advanced telecommunications and associated infrastructure deficits.
Sunday, February 17, 2008
Tennessee broadband build out debate highlights conflict between public and private interests
The redlined areas will likely remain unconnected for decades from AT&T's new U-Verse fiber and copper based service offering IPTV, voice and high speed Internet. AT&T denies it redlines in the dozen states where it has rolled out U-Verse. Wrong, according to a couple of industry analysts quoted in the story. AT&T lacks patient capital to invest in providing a wider base of U-Verse service and therefore installs U-Verse infrastructure in selected areas only where it believes it will get the quickest return on investment.
This story aptly illustrates the clash between public and private interests that has produced the incomplete and balkanized crazy quilt telecommunications infrastructure that has effectively divided the U.S. into two nations: one with access to advanced telecommunications services based on broadband Internet and one without. Public policymakers are rightly concerned about this situation given the increasingly important role of broadband access to the economy.
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Taking America's heartland by storm: WISPs swoop into areas neglected by wireline providers
All of these companies are targeting “underserved” rural markets with a broadband alternative. Underserved generally is a code word for markets served by large RBOCs and/or MSOs who have not invested in local broadband networks. These markets are often identified as a part of the “digital divide.” DigitalBridge says they have reached 10% penetration within 6 months of one their first market entries, Rexburg, ID. These growing rural deployments are leveraging quickly evolving broadband wireless technology and pent up demand for broadband in markets where little or no broadband competition exists.According to Telecompetitor, one of the WISPs, Oklahoma City-based Stelera Wireless, has rolled out service in Floresville & Poth, Texas using recently auctioned advanced wireless service (AWS) spectrum offering maximum speeds of 7.2 Mbps down and 2 Mbps up. However, Stelera informs me that its users get average download speeds of 1.5-2 Mbps down and 350-380 Kbps for uploads.
Notably, the WISP does not use telco circuits for backhaul connections, instead relying on its proprietary OC-3 and OC-12 microwave network. In Stelera's Texas markets, service is backhauled to San Antonio via microwave and from there via long haul ethernet to Stelera's Oklahoma City HQ POP.
Friday, February 08, 2008
At broadband crisis point, U.S. should invest $100 billion to build 100 Mbs fiber to every home by 2012
EDUCAUSE describes itself as a nonprofit comprised of colleges, universities, educational organizations and corporations to advance higher education by promoting the intelligent use of information technology. The white paper, A Blueprint for Big Broadband, argues the current national policy that relies exclusively on private sector telecommunications companies to build out broadband infrastructure is flawed because they are unable to respond quickly enough to rapidly growing demand for faster speeds driven by increased use of video and other bandwidth intensive applications.
Private sector wire line broadband providers are driven by short term economic incentives and operate within — at most — five year time horizons. This has led to drastically slashed R&D spending and curtailed broadband deployments that would serve large unserved areas of the country.
The result in an incomplete broadband infrastructure that doesn’t extend to many homes and businesses, creating choke points on the “last mile.”
Instead, the U.S. should from a public-private partnership to invest nearly $100 billion to build an open access fiber to the premises (FTTP) local infrastructure to ensure every home in the nation has access to at least 100 Mbs (and capable of scaling up to 1 Gbs) by 2012.
How to raise the $100 billion? A Universal Broadband Fund (UBF) modeled after one used in Canada that would get a third of its funding from the feds in the form of direct appropriations or bond proceeds, another one third from the states, and the remainder from private or public sector providers. The UBF would allocate $8 billion per year for four years to be distributed to the states, which would put up matching funds.
"The U.S. broadband crisis is a unique challenge,” wrote the author of the 74-page white paper, telecommunications attorney and consultant John Windhausen Jr. “Unlike past threats to our future competitiveness, the solution to our broadband connectivity crisis is primarily local. The benefits of broadband connectivity are felt directly by every consumer and business, and final decisions must involve our local leaders under a comprehensive federal program. The United States needs to move beyond the rhetoric and begin to adopt a specific action plan for the future.”
The comprehensive report also includes a detailed and current summary of actions by state and local governments to improve broadband access for their residents.
I have questioned the adequacy of state government broadband initiatives since they typically provide funding in 10s to low $100 millions in the form of grants and loans, which isn’t going to be sufficient incentive to private sector providers to deploy fiber infrastructure on the scale called for in the EDUCAUSE white paper.
The key to the success of the proposed UBF is getting the federal government on board as willing partner with the states and the private sector. That’s not likely to happen unless feds are convinced of the white paper’s assertion that universal access to fast broadband will benefit the U.S. economy and its global competitiveness. Congress may be receptive to attempts to make that case given its approval this week of a $150 billion economic stimulus plan.
Tuesday, February 05, 2008
Governor: "We ought to consider what Tennesseans want"
Bredesen underscored that point in remarks reported by the Associated Press Feb. 4 that suggest he's putting the interests of his constituents first:
"Last year and so far this year, it's shaping up into what AT&T wants versus what the cable TV companies want," Bredesen said. "Maybe at some point, we ought to consider what Tennesseans want. It's something I am taking a look at how I might have an influence on."
Monday, February 04, 2008
AT&T hikes DSL prices, newspaper reports
AT&T said the increase is needed to upgrade infrastructure to support more bandwidth intensive applications such as video and music files.
I'm doubtful of the company's stated rationale for the increase because it has effectively pulled the plug on upgrading its legacy first generation DSL plant and is instead directing funding to its hybrid fiber/copper Project Lightspeed deployment in selected metro areas. This deployment is in support of the telco's U-Verse all digital triple play bundle of voice, high speed Internet and Internet Protocol TV (IPTV).
The DSL price boost is an effort to merely extract greater incremental income out of existing services. That's in line with AT&T's highly risk adverse cash flow and depreciation based management strategy that shuns significant physical plant upgrades that would eliminate large swaths of its 22-state service area where AT&T offers no wireline-based broadband services.
2008 a pivotal year for wireless broadband
The Federal Communications Commission is set to make key decisions this year that determine whether broadband will be delivered over the air and provide the much needed wireless "third pipe" for broadband delivery starting in 2009.
The FCC is currently auctioning off portions of the 700mhz spectrum that could carry both mobile and fixed broadband services. The agency is also testing revamped prototype devices
developed by a consortium including Microsoft, Google, Dell, HP, Intel, Earthlink and Phillips that would transmit broadband signals at speeds reaching as high as 80Mps that would blow nearly all existing U.S. wireline broadband providers out of the water.
The White Spaces Coalition's prototypes failed the first round of testing last year. The coalition hopes to prove the prototypes, which transmit on unused portions of digital TV broadcast frequencies, won't interfere with TV signals.
Friday, February 01, 2008
The road to America's transportation infrastructure future should be paved with fiber as well as asphalt
RONALD UTT: We've been providing the public sector with all this tax revenue and what-not for roads, but we have not been getting new roads in return for it.
Utt says part of the long-term solution is to get a significant amount of commuters off the roads -- by allowing people to work from home or at least closer to home.
NTIA report on US broadband access blasted
One only needs to take a look at two states, California and Tennessee, where large areas are mapped as having no wireline broadband services to see how far off base this federal government report truly is.
One of the FCC's commissioners even took issue with his own agency's data that was used in the NTIA report. "This report relies on widely-discredited data in a strained effort that only distracts us from the real work ahead," Commissioner Jonathan S. Adelstein said in a statement.
Gigi B. Sohn, president and co-founder of Public Knowledge, blasted the NTIA report:
Nate Anderson of arstechnica.com had this to say:“The NTIA report presents a distorted view of the state of broadband in the U.S. The Administration should not be boasting about our success at a time when consumers here pay more money for slower service with have fewer choices than do consumers in other parts of the world.
“Almost 97 percent of U.S. consumers have a choice only between their cable company and their telephone company. The Administration wiped out the policies that once upon a time allowed competition to flourish here and which now sustain the competition in other countries that consumers enjoy.
“The short-sighted policies cited by the NTIA have put our economic future at risk. The rosy picture the NTIA portrayed should have recognized that reality.”
As broadband continues to be a key driver of economic opportunity and growth, falling behind the rest of the world will have real consequences for US high-tech leadership. Instead of addressing that crucial question, though, the report is an unabashed celebration of free-market, deregulatory policies. So enamored with their own economic theories are the authors that they resort to dogmatic lecturing throughout the paper.