It's a wanker, mate: Aussie WISP abandons WiMAX

Hervey Bay, Australia WISP Buzz Broadband has pulled the plug on WiMAX, panning it as a "miserable" technological failure at an international WiMAX conference last week in Bangkok.

Commsday.com quoted Buzz Broadband's CEO Garth Freeman as saying WiMAX's non-line of sight performance was “non-existent” beyond just 2 kilometres from the base station, is hard to receive indoors and is plagued with high latency.

Buzz Broadband will instead use an alternative wireless protocol based on the TD-CDMA cellular protocol with compression technology capable of throughput up to 38Mbps in the 3.5GHz spectrum. Buzz and other WISPs in Australia are targeting areas like Hervey Bay where about 80 percent of residents are unable to get ADSL because of the use of digital pairgain by incumbent telco Telstra and the exhaustion of existing DSL ports -- a dismal situation mirrored in much of the United States.

If the troubles down under with WiMAX spread, it could have implications in the northern hemisphere, where AT&T a year ago began trials of WiMAX in Ancorage, Alaska with a planned ramp up this year in its 22-state service area. They could also hit big WiMAX player Clearwire and could explain why the company has concentrated going head to head with wireline broadband providers in metro areas instead of targeting non-metro regions where WiMAX signals have to travel farther and can face more challenging terrain and dense foliage.

Airspan, Buzz Broadband's WiMAX equipment vendor, blamed the WISP for the problems, saying it elected to use lower cost equipment with less range and refused technical support.

Survey: All should have broadband access without regard to location

Americans should have access to broadband regardless of where they live, according to 80 percent of 451 readers of leading U.S. telecom publications in a survey commissioned by telecommunications network vendor Tellabs.

Respondents strongly support expanding broadband availability in the United States, especially in under-served rural areas. The lack of broadband availability, whether due to geographic or economic reasons, hurts productivity, according to nearly 90 percent of survey respondents. Eighty percent believe the U.S. should use at least some of the current Universal Service Fund to expand rural broadband.

Burlington Telecom head: Broadband infrastructure a natural monopoly that should be publicly owned

Here's a guy who really understands the economic big picture when it comes to broadband infrastructure: Tim Nulty, director of Burlington Telecom, which built a publicly owned broadband system serving the city of Burlington, Vermont.

Nulty sets out crystal clear guidance for public policymakers on broadband infrastructure: it's a natural monopoly that by its very nature can't foster robust market competition to ensure the needs of the public are met. Hence, Nulty says, it should be in the public rather than private sector like roads and highways. Nulty's observation has enormous implications for the current misguided notion being embraced by some states at the behest of AT&T that state regulation preempting local governments will lead to a competitive market for advanced services. AT&T's approach creates a duopoly of telcos and cable companies and a duopoly does not a competitive market make.

Here's an excerpt from a recent profile of Nulty appearing in Vermont's Business People magazine:

He likens his fiber-optic superhighway to a more commonly understood network. "Nobody thinks twice about the roads being in the hands of the public," Nulty says. "The thought that a private company could own the roads and charge whatever they pleased to anybody who goes on them is ludicrous anywhere in the world. That's what this is: the public roads."

FCC finally abandons useless 1996 broadband measurement standard, will require more detailed reports by providers

The Federal Communications Commission, which for years has been the target of justified criticism for failing to update how it measures broadband adoption as required by the Telecommunications Act of 1996, is finally getting up to speed with more than a decade of changing technology.

Instead of the much derided standard of measuring by ZIP Code and deeming the entire ZIP Code as having broadband service if it has just one subscriber with a data connection of 200kbs in just one direction, the FCC announced today it adopted an order expanding the number of broadband reporting speed tiers to capture more precise information about upload and download broadband speeds.

The next semi-annual report on broadband deploying covering the second half of 2007 and subsequent reports will also require broadband providers to report the number of broadband subscribers by census tract, broken down by speed tier and technology type, the FCC announced.

FCC broadband data for first half of 2007 show nation plagued by persistent telco broadband black holes

The Federal Communications Commission's semi-annual report on broadband deployment as required by the Telecommunications Act of 1996 covering the first half of 2007 is out and the numbers aren't good. (See Table 14) They show virtually no improvement in the percentage of residences that can get high speed Internet from their telcos during the first half of 2007 compared to all of 2006.

On average, nearly 20 percent of Americans still are unable to get broadband from their incumbent telephone companies. In some states -- notably Vermont, Virginia, New Hampshire and Maine -- the number is even worse, with fully one third of state households cut off from the modern era of telecommunications. No state exceeds the 91 percent availability rate of Georgia, though Nevada and California come close with 90 percent and 89 percent, respectively.

Kentucky's figure of 87 percent also casts doubt on the claim of Connect Kentucky in an Aug. 9, 2007 news release that 94 percent of households in the Blue Grass State can get broadband and no households will be left in digital darkness by the end of 2007. The organization was the subject of a January expose by Public Knowledge's Art Brodsky, who debunked its overblown broadband access claims.

Seattle gets serious about building municipal fiber infrastructure

The Puget Sound Business Journal reports Seattle city officials, growing increasingly frustrated with the metal wire-based broadband offerings of incumbent telco/cable duopolists Qwest and Comcast, are preparing to issue a request for proposals to build a fiber optic telecommunications infrastructure.

According to the newspaper, in 2005 a city-commissioned task force recommended a fiber-to-the-premise (FTTP) system as the best way to provide Seattle's populace with high-bandwidth voice, video and data options.

Support building for California legislation allowing local governments to construct broadband infrastructure

Political support appears to be building for legislation that would authorize community service districts, a form of California local government, to construct broadband infrastructure.

Humboldt County Supervisor Supervisor Roger Rodoni is asking the county's supes to write a legislative committee in support of the legislation, according to The Eureka Reporter.

“With passage of this bill, Humboldt County would have opportunities to bring in multiple broadband services and help to prevent the gridlock we’ve had in the recent past because of our limited broadband service,” Rodoni was quoted as saying.

Lawmakers should broaden the scope of the legislation, SB 1191, to include all forms of local government in California considering a January 2008 report by report by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's Broadband Task Force finding nearly 2,000 California communities lack high speed Internet access.

WISP gets $35 million low interest loan from USDA, plans major expansion

One month ago, I blogged about Wireless Internet Service Providers (WISPs) sweeping into America's heartland where wire line broadband providers refuse to go. One of the WISPs, Stelera Wireless, rolled out service in Floresville & Poth, Texas using recently auctioned advanced wireless service (AWS) spectrum offering average speeds of 1.5-2 Mbps down and 350-380 Kbps for uploads. According to Stelera's CEO Ed Evans, the company is the first in the nation to introduce this technology in support of a wireless network purely focused on broadband services.

Stelera announced today it has received $35 million in low interest loan funds from the US Department of Agriculture that will allow it to expand to 55 towns and cities that have 20,000 or fewer inhabitants.

The WISP plans to use the capital infusion to expand to serve locations in Texas, Kansas, New Mexico, Colorado, North Dakota, South Dakota, Washington, Oregon and Arizona. Larger markets will be included as growth continues, the company said.

A major potential roadblock to the company's growth plans could present itself in the form of expanded wireless options offered by cell phone providers that provide throughput speeds in the same range as Stelera's. Stelera and other WISPs will have to offer significantly higher average throughput speeds -- in the neighborhood of 5 to 10 Mbs -- and solid connections if they expect to have a competitive market advantage over these services.