Friday, May 30, 2008

California's "surprisingly low" ranking for broadband connectivity speed

California may be widely considered the U.S. information technology leader as the home of the famed Silicon Valley. But when it comes to broadband Internet connectivity, it doesn't even make the top 10 among states, according to Internetnews.com's report on a recent study by mammoth Web server farmer Akamai.

David Belson, Akamai's director of market intelligence, told InternetNews.com that California ranks 17th, with just 21 percent of its connections coming in at 5 Mbps or higher over Akamai's network. "It was surprising that California didn't rank higher on the high broadband list," Belson said.


The top states are Delaware with 60 percent of its connections to Akamai measured at 5 Mbps, Rhode Island (42 percent) New York (36 percent), Nevada (34 percent), Oklahoma (33 percent), Connecticut (32 percent), New Hampshire (30 percent), Massachusetts (29 percent), Maryland (27 percent) and the District of Columbia (27 percent).


A possible contributing factor is the mediocre, incomplete state of the Golden State's broadband infrastructure. In January, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's Broadband Task Force reported California's broadband infrastructure is unevenly deployed with nearly 2,000 towns and communities lacking broadband access -- many in Northern California -- while other parts of the state, mostly in metro areas of Southern California, enjoy state of the art connections.

What's truly surprising isn't so much Akamai's findings but AT&T's dubious assertion in a recent California Public Utilities filing that it provides broadband to its entire service area in the state.

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Offline outside of Olympia

According to the Everett, Washington HeraldNet, much of Washington state outside of its urban centers is still offline when it comes to broadband Internet access. The newspaper reports the Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission is expected to release a study next month of the disparities in broadband use and availability in Columbia, Ferry, Grays Harbor, Lewis and Stevens counties in response to a legislative mandate to fill in the black spots.

Tuesday, May 27, 2008

WSJ: About 60 municipal fiber projects deployed in last decade

According to The Wall Street Journal, about 60 U.S. towns and small cities including Bristol, Va.; Barnsville, Minn.; and Sallisaw, Okla., have built state-of-the-art fiber networks and an additional two dozen municipalities, including Chattanooga and Clarksville, Tenn., have launched or are considering similar initiatives.
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The newspaper notes the projects have revived policy debates similar to those of more than seven decades ago when local governments opted to build out their own electrical distribution infrastructures to serve areas large private sector providers neglected.

The Nashville Tennessean, which carried and supplemented the WSJ story, reports Clarksville's Department of Electricity is building some 860 miles of fiber cable to offer TV service, broadband Internet and phone, and will start to sign up customers this year. Meanwhile, Columbia Power & Water Systems offers from 1Mbs to 7Mbs of broadband Internet speeds for residential customers at prices ranging from $29.95 to $52.95 per month.

The public providers complain the private providers are moving too slowly. They're willing to take on more risk than the private sector, and that risk is real for poorly planned and executed government run fiber systems as recent events with Utah's UTOPIA and IProvo systems illustrate. IProvo's financial problems have prompted the Provo City Council to consider selling off that city's system; a vote on the transaction is set for this week.

Friday, May 23, 2008

Cynical spin campaign shifts broadband build out burden to consumers

Telecommunications companies are engaged in a subtle PR campaign that attempts to shift the burden to consumers to prove they want broadband before they build out their infrastructures in order to make it available. Their position -- made clear in this PC World item via Yahoo News -- is unless demand can be shown, we aren't building it.

It's really nothing more than a cynical, self serving delaying tactic, part of the paper chase diversion of drawing maps and aggregating demand that allows the telcos and cable companies to sit back and do nothing, content to depreciate their aging and increasingly obsolete infrastructures instead of investing in upgrading them for the modern Internet era of telecommunications. They're essentially saying, if consumers can't prove to our satisfaction they really want broadband, then they can get by with circa 1992 dialup connections or go suck a satellite and put up with high cost and sluggish, often unreliable connections. The problem is consumers won't ever be able to do so since the true intent is to buy time, not prove market demand.

Consultant Jeff Kagan tells PC World most consumers don't need more than a 3Mbps connection even as broadband providers are rolling out connections up to 20Mbps. For now and for those mired in broadband black holes for years, Kagan's right. But just because most consumers don't need a 20Mbps connection doesn't mean they don't need -- or want as some industry apologists suggest -- a 3Mbps connection. Providers should be providing broadband throughout their entire service areas at that minimum level of service right now and planning for 20Mbps connections in the near future.

Wednesday, May 21, 2008

AT&T audaciously claims "broadband access to all of its California service area"

One of the physical principles of cosmic black holes is no information can be known about what's inside of them because no information can escape the powerful gravity of the singularity at their centers.

Clearly, that same principle also applies to the numerous broadband telecommunications black holes in California based on a recent AT&T filing with the California Public Utilities Commission. In the introduction to the April 16, 2008 filing, AT&T asserts it "now offers broadband access to all of its California service area."

Apparently the unfortunate residences and small businesses who cannot order wireline-based broadband service from AT&T such as DSL or the telco's next generation U-Verse bundled service offering higher speeds than AT&T's legacy DSL service haven't gotten the message. Of course not. In AT&T's universe, they simply don't exist and nothing can be known about them. Out of sight, out of mind.

Perhaps AT&T is fudging by counting the limited areas where it offers its EDGE wireless network service that provides throughput not much better than the antiquated 1994 Federal Communications Commission "broadband" standard of 200Kbs. No dice. By today's standards, that's not broadband. Ditto satellite, which the telco deployed throughout much of the U.S. -- as if the entire nation was situated in the remote regions of the Arctic Circle -- in 2006 via a reseller agreement with WildBlue.

The AT&T filing objects to proposed CPUC rules designed to reduce California's digital divide and speed broadband infrastructure build out by requiring telcos and cable providers to report by census tract where they provide broadband and delineated by various speed tiers, i.e. less than 1 mbps; 1-5 mbps; and 5-10 mbps. The AT&T filing asserts CPUC has no authority to regulate broadband services because they are information services preempted by Federal Communications Commission jurisdiction.

Report: Comcast considers selling off infrastruture in Maine

The Times Record of Maine reports today that Comcast is mulling selling off its holdings in the state as part of a plan to dispose of 46 properties nationwide. (Separately, an industry source discloses one of the Comcast plants to be divested serves Coalinga in California's Central Valley.)

According to the newspaper, municipal officials in several Maine towns said they were contacted by Comcast and informed of the possible sale. A Comcast spokesman declined to comment on the report.

Following this report, the Associated Press May 23 reported Comcast plans to sell off its plant in eight states serving between 400,000 and 500,000 subscribers. The states reportedly include Maine, Kentucky, Louisiana, New Mexico, Virginia, Georgia, West Virginia and California. Comcast is staying mum on the specific locations where it will sell off its assets.

Robert Serrano, an analyst at SNL Kagan in Monterey, Calif., told the AP Comcast is "pruning some of the more outlying areas in order to make a more efficient cluster."