"Broadband use is surging," Coe says. "Based on current trends, total bandwidth in the AT&T network will increase by four times over the next three years."
Analysis & commentary on America's troubled transition from analog telephone service to digital advanced telecommunications and associated infrastructure deficits.
"Broadband use is surging," Coe says. "Based on current trends, total bandwidth in the AT&T network will increase by four times over the next three years."
AT&T continues to use its decades-old copper cable plant designed for carrying analog voice traffic to distribute Internet protocol traffic via Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) and more recently, its triple play voice/Internet/TV bundled service, U-Verse.
This strategy has allowed AT&T to avoid large expenditures to replace its last mile copper with fiber optic cable while continuing to depreciate the aging copper cable plant. But over time, it could prove to be a costlier strategy. The reason is that it takes a lot of field-based booster equipment — remote DSLAMs in the case of DSL and VRADs for U-Verse — to pump high bandwidth digital signals over old copper.
AT&T has all but abandoned putting in more remote DSLAMs to provide DSL, choosing to concentrate instead on fiber-fed VRADs to distribute U-Verse. However, if DSL Prime has got it right, Ma Bell will need a lot more VRADs than DSLAMS to reach customers. While DSLAMs can reliably propagate DSL service up to 12,000-14,000 feet, the VRADs used to distribute far more bandwidth intensive U-Verse are considerably less robust, not able to reliably serve premises more than 3,000 feet away. According to DSL Prime, AT&T erred in initially believing their reliable service range was 5,000 feet.
If true, that’s going to cost AT&T big time. Both in higher infrastructure costs because it will have to install more VRADs than anticipated and in lost opportunity costs since it will have to turn away droves of potential customers — including many who missed out on DSL and are still relegated to early 1990s era dialup because the telco failed to install enough remote DSLAMs.
FCC Chairman Kevin Martin continues to mischaracterize America’s poor broadband build out track record as a rural issue, telling last week’s D: All Things Digital Conference that the U.S. lags on broadband access “because it costs a lot more to build out in more rural areas and people who live further apart.”
Memo to Mr. Martin: It’s not a rural vs. non-rural issue. Rather, it’s one of incomplete telecommunications infrastructure that for all too many is an unfinished onramp to the information highway. Or a Balkanized “hodge podge” as the Communications Workers of America termed it.
There are plenty of folks residing in metro areas who can’t get wire line broadband connections from either telcos or cable companies. Oftentimes a neighbor will get service while another down the street cannot. In my own case, there’s both buried telco fiber and Comcast aerial cable 1.5 miles from my home that has existed for years. But neither the cableco or telco offer wireline broadband to me or my neighbors.