AT&T, cablecos poised to close Tennessee franchise deal that will leave gaping broadband black holes

AT&T and the cable companies are about to screw over much of Tennessee that has been waiting to come into the modern telecommunications age and obtain broadband Internet access.

They are set to announce a deal today in which the cable industry will drop its opposition to legislation that would preempt local government regulatory authority over Internet-protocol based TV (IPTV) service AT&T wants to offer in selected areas of the state. The same thing happened in California in 2006, leaving about 2,000 communities still without broadband access according to a report by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's Broadband Task Force issued in late January.

Tennessee's cable companies, which earlier this year criticized AT&T's initiative because it provided for only limited infrastructure build out requirements that would leave large areas mired in broadband black holes, have reportedly dropped their opposition.
The Tennessean reports today that under draft legislation that was still being negotiated over the weekend, AT&T would have to cover just 30 percent of its territory within 3½ years after it begins offering IPTV, citing sources involved in negotiations.

According to the report, the draft legislation would apply credit toward AT&T's minimal build out requirement if it offers DSL service of at least 1.5mbs to homes that don't now have access to broadband. It's a meaningless provision. Even if enacted, AT&T is likely to ignore it since it has effectively halted new DSL deployments and is concentrating exclusively on its IPTV-based U-Verse offering. Those without broadband will simply be left twisting in the wind. Why would AT&T need the credit anyway with with legislation's already minimal buildout benchmark?

Bottom line is neither AT&T nor the cable companies have lost any skin in the deal and have sacrificed Tennesseans instead by relegating them to dial up and satellite Internet access. That leaves it to Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen to look out for the interests of his constituents as he indicated he would do in early February. Rather than endorse this lousy deal for consumers like Schwarzenegger did in California two years ago, he should reject it.

America needs broadband czar, tech-oriented FCC to solve last mile problem

Slate.com's Tim Wu says that while technology has advanced rapidly in the last several years, the so-called "last mile" telecommunications infrastructure connecting Americans to the Internet has not. He's dead on -- and regrettably -- correct.

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.

Another paper chase diversion on the road to full broadband deployment

Rather than filling in their broadband black holes with updated infrastructure, telcos are instead proposing paper chase exercises that are little more than PR gimmicks designed to create the appearance they are actually doing something to end the digital divide.

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

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."