Analysis & commentary on America's troubled transition from analog telephone service to digital advanced telecommunications and associated infrastructure deficits.
Tuesday, April 01, 2008
America needs broadband czar, tech-oriented FCC to solve last mile problem
Wu's solution for the next administration that takes office in January 2009? Appoint a broadband czar reporting to the president. "Right now, broadband is no one's responsibility, and the buck keeps getting passed between industry, Congress, the White House, and the FCC," Wu writes. "The point of a czar would be to make it someone's job to figure out what it will take to fix broadband."
Wu also advocates revamping the Federal Communications Commission to remake it from its current political and lobbying based culture that tends to support the nation's mediocre broadband status quo to a technology-driven "dream team" agency run by the "wisest tech experts and visionaries."
Read this and Wu's other recommendations for the incoming administration by clicking here.
Monday, March 24, 2008
Another paper chase diversion on the road to full broadband deployment
Earlier this month, I blogged about mapmaking drills purportedly designed to show where broadband access exists and where it doesn't. (As if telcos don't know where their own infrastucture is deployed.)
The latest paper chase is called "aggregation of demand." It's a key element of the AT&T and Verizon-funded California Emerging Technology Fund's Strategic Action Plan presented today to the California Assembly Committee on Utilities and Commerce. The idea is driven by the bogus notion that telcos don't believe people really want broadband and need to be shown proof of demand before they offer advanced services, particularly in higher cost areas.
Grassroots-based efforts in Northern California petitioning AT&T to deploy broadband services in areas where it's not offered have already demonstrated that the so-called "aggregation of demand" tactic is a wasted effort that does nothing to prompt intransigent telcos to get off the dime and offer something better than early 1990s-era dial up.
One such petition in El Dorado County has garnered more than 200 signatories since it was started two years ago with no change in the dialug status quo.
Ditto a door to door petition in the Lake Tahoe basin by resident Patti Handal who along with 600 of her neighbors petitioned AT&T in late 2006 requesting DSL service. Patti and some of her neighbors did end up getting DSL last year, but only because last June's devastating Angora Fire burned out the existing ancient aerial infrastructure, forcing AT&T to upgrade it. Patti's still getting calls and emails from those who have signed and/or heard about her petition complaining about the lack of wireline-based broadband.
It's a wanker, mate: Aussie WISP abandons WiMAX
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.
Thursday, March 20, 2008
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
Burlington Telecom head: Broadband infrastructure a natural monopoly that should be publicly owned
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."
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
FCC finally abandons useless 1996 broadband measurement standard, will require more detailed reports by providers
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.