Analysis & commentary on America's troubled transition from analog telephone service to digital advanced telecommunications and associated infrastructure deficits.
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Regional alliance encompassing 3 states eyes U.S. broadband stimulus funding
The Tri-State Alliance was initially formed to address asphalt and concrete highway issues and has now broadened its focus to the information highway that is broadband telecommunications. It's interested in tapping into some of the $7.2 billion set aside in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to subsidize broadband infrastructure.
Thursday, May 07, 2009
It takes a village to build fiber
The same principle applies in the U.S., where the $7.2 billion in broadband infrastructure subsidies in the recently enacted federal economic stimulus package makes it much easier to accomplish.
Wednesday, May 06, 2009
Amended legislation would put CPUC in charge of broadband stimulus funding
Undecided however is which California entity would be in charge of doling out the money -- assuming the two federal agencies administering the funds ultimately decide by next month to channel it through the states rather than accepting funding applications directly.
Would it be Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's chief information officer as the governor initially suggested? The California Public Utilities Commission? Or the California Emerging Technologies Fund, a nonprofit to increase broadband deployment and adoption formed and funded as a condition of recent telco M&A activity?
Legislation pending in the California Assembly was amended May 5 reflecting the recommendation of the state Legislative Analyst that the CPUC be in charge of the stimulus funding. You can link to the measure, AB 1012, here.
Tuesday, May 05, 2009
California seeks $1 billion in broadband stimulus funding
Your blogger -- walking his talk in urging local empowerment and action to fill in broadband black holes -- is quoted. Sunne Wright McPeak, president and CEO of the nonprofit California Emerging Technology Fund, is also quoted.
Sunday, May 03, 2009
NC county opposes broadband black hole preservation act
More power to them. A telco's service territory is not a franchise. Telcos can't have it both ways, claiming they can't serve certain areas with advanced digital services because they are unprofitable but at the same time looking to state legislatures to lock up these areas with these broadband black hole preservation acts.
They're patently unfair to those mired in them: Residents and small businesses that needed high speed Internet access yesterday, last year and five years ago. They should not have to suffer the consequences of private market failure. Local governments and nonprofit telecom cooperatives should be permitted to step in where the private sector fails and provide the urgently needed solutions to bridge the digital divide unhindered by these audicious telco power grabs.
Friday, May 01, 2009
Feds should prioritize broadband stimulus funding for local telecom cooperatives
The federal agencies responsible for disbursing $7.2 in economic stimulus funding to build advanced telecommunications infrastructure should give telecom cooperatives and other local entities funding priority to help make this a reality. America's telecom future isn't with the failed top down strategies of the past. The way to go is bottom up empowerment of communities that have been left on the wrong side of the digital divide for years. Policymakers should also adopt Google's call for state and federal tax income tax credits to provide incentive for homeowners to invest in their own fiber connections.
Saturday, April 25, 2009
The 3 biggest obstacles to rapid deployment of advanced last mile telecom infrastructure
1. Top down thinking by large telecom providers and governmental agencies tasked with subsidizing and otherwise facilitating the deployment of advanced telecommunications infrastructure. Wrong approach. Locals best know their needs and have the greatest incentive to see they are met over both the short and long term. They are intimately familiar with their incomplete last mile telecom infrastructures and are in the best position to know where gaps need to be bridged. Governmental programs to increase access to advanced telecom services should be directed to the locals -- local governmental entities and telecom cooperatives.
2. Self-centered thinking by ISPs more interested in preserving their proprietary technologies -- such as satellite Internet service -- that cannot substitute for robust fiber-based last mile advanced telecommunications infrastructure and are already technologicially obsolete or will be soon.
3. "Analysis paralysis" in the form of attempts to "map" broadband black holes and household and socioeconomic demographic surveys that distract from and delay the urgent task of getting fiber that should have been in place a decade ago deployed and deployed ASAP -- particularly at a time when such deployments will create badly needed jobs and increased economic activity. We cannot study, map or talk our way to where we should be with our telecommunications infrastructure. What counts is getting fiber on the poles and in the ground.
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Broadband black holes: Not just a rural issue
One of the most persistently inaccurate and misleading portrayals of U.S. broadband availability is that broadband black holes are confined to rural areas. Unfortunately for those marooned within them, they can be found in plenty of other places due to telco deployments of technologically limited DSL that deteriorates just a few miles from a central office or remote terminal -- and less than that if the copper cable isn't in pristine condition.
Case in point is part of the Northern California suburb of Vacaville, located not far from Interstate 80 west of the college town of Davis. AT&T is requesting a 40 percent subsidy from the California Public Utilities Commission's California Advanced Services Fund (CASF) to extend wireline broadband to 33 households in this area as one of five AT&T CASF projects up for consideration Thursday by the CPUC.
These projects -- designated for "underserved" areas where residents can't get broadband of at least 3 Mbs down and 1 Mbs on the upload side -- are being trumpeted by the CPUC as helping close Golden State's digital divide. But given their small size -- ranging from just five households for the smallest to 125 for the largest -- there's a danger this will make the CPUC look like it's putting out AT&T PR puffery.
Thursday, April 09, 2009
FCC seeks comment on U.S. broadband deployment plan
Here's a link to the FCC news release.
Thursday, April 02, 2009
New mindset emerging on U.S. broadband build out
So reports internetnews.com in this dispatch on the Freedom to Connect conference held April 1 in Silver Spring, Maryland discussing the $7.2 billion in broadband build out subsidies allocated in the recently enacted American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA).
Some key excerpts:
"We are turning away from what I believe was a misguided effort to restructure the economy along the lines of selfishness: I've got mine and if you don't have yours, that's too bad for you because it's how the market works," said Harold Feld, legal director of consumer lobby Public Knowledge.
The act assumes that broadband provides benefits to a whole community, creating a new ecology. "For years, the debate has been about incenting the market and getting carriers to invest," Feld said. "Entities that were despised in yesteryear -- and I mean literally last year -- such as state and local entities and non-profits are now presumed to be most in tune with the philosophy of a broadband ecology."
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Forget about broadband mapping; it's time for consumers to take control
In fact, as Brodsky suggests, mapping is nothing but a feel good PR ploy favored by the telco/cable duopoly to create an impression they're doing something to fill in the holes while at the same time playing hide the pea. It's about going through the motions while doing nothing.
Homeowners and small business owners don't need a map to know they're in a broadband black hole when they're forced to resort to early 1990s era dial up or substandard satellite for Internet connectivity. They should get together with their neighbors and take control of their telecommunications destiny by forming fiber optic telecom consumer cooperatives as quickly as possible and applying for federal and state grants and loans to help finance the cost of deploying the fiber. Bringing the U.S. last mile telecommunications infrastructure up to date is a bottom up-- not top down -- endeavor that does not require maps.
Saturday, March 21, 2009
Just say no to broadband stimulus funding for satellite
Giving even a dime to satellite Internet providers would be a major mistake and waste of taxpayer dollars. Doing so would underwrite an inferior and costly stopgap technology intended to temporarily fill in where advanced telecommunications infrastructure is lacking -- and not be a permanent solution. Talk about unclear on the concept.
Friday, March 20, 2009
4 of 5 proposed California state subsidized broadband projects challenged
The reason, according to a recently issued CPUC resolution as well as other documentation posted on the CPUC's Web site is they were challenged by unnamed providers on the grounds they didn't comply with CASF funding guidelines targeting unserved areas (no broadband access) and underserved areas of the Golden State (broadband access at speeds less than 3 mbs down and 1 mbs up).
There's a lesson here as the federal government revs up its own plans for subsidizing broadband infrastructure buildout: avoid going down this slippery, ever changing slope of throughput requirements and attempting to define what constitutes served, unserved and underserved when it comes to advanced IP-based services.
These metrics are simply too subjective and prone to being manipulated and gamed by providers, particularly incumbent local exchange carriers (ILECs) more interested in preserving their territorial hegemony than serving their customers' telecommunications needs.
The better course is to allow entities such as local governments and telecommunications cooperatives with priority for federal broadband economic stimulus funding determine for themselves where infrastructure buildout is most needed. Most of these entities will likely opt for fiber and avoid the issue of throughput speeds altogether given fiber's tremendous capacity to accommodate current and future bandwidth requirements.
Monday, March 16, 2009
Feds shouldn't provide broadband funding directly to large telcos, cablecos
March 16 (Bloomberg) -- Groups representing companies including Comcast Corp. and AT&T Inc. pressed U.S. regulators to let broadband providers and equipment makers apply to a federal program disbursing $4.7 billion in grants to expand high-speed Internet. Companies already providing broadband “have extensive technical, financial, and managerial experience and expertise,” Curt Stamp, president of the Independent Telephone and Telecommunications Alliance, told a meeting in Washington today. The program is part of the U.S. economic recovery package.
Bad idea. True, these companies have technical expertise to deploy broadband infrastructure. But their role -- except perhaps for small, locally owned providers -- should be limited to that when it comes to distributing $7.2 billion in grants and loans contained in the recently-enacted federal economic stimulus legislation. They should NOT be the direct recipients of any grants or loans for last mile infratructure.
Instead, the stimulus finding should be directed to nonprofit telecommunications cooperatives and local government entities to put in place buried and aerial fiber optic cable and distribution plants over the last mile the telco/cable duopoly has neglected for years.
We should not forget the lessons of history and repeat the fiasco following the enactment of the Federal Communications Act in 1996 that saw an estimated $200 billion in tax breaks and subsidies to deploy advanced digital telecommunications infrastructure virtually disappear, spawning in the current plague of broadband black holes instead of near ubiquitous fiber that was to be in place by 2006.
If the feds directly provide the telco/cable duopoly broadband infrastucture monies as either part of the stimulus measure -- described by the Obama administration as a down payment on America's sorely needed telecommunications upgrade -- or in follow on funding, the U.S. will likely find itself shortchanged again with a substandard telecommunications infrastructure done on the cheap that won't meet the nation's current or future needs.
California PUC sets March 23 public meeting re broadband funding in federal stimulus act
The governor's office has asked the California Public Utilities Commission as well as the nonprofit California Emerging Technology Fund (CETF) to get stakeholder input on how best to use the CETF and the CPUC's California Advanced Services Fund (CASF) as vehicles to "quickly target initial federal stimulus funds toward California." The goal is also to determine how to leverage California’s existing broadband programs to assist applicants seeking federal funding available for broadband infrastructure in the stimulus bill.
The CPUC has set a public hearing for March 23 in San Francisco.
"We seek input from a broad spectrum of interests, including broadband providers, public agencies, and consumer groups," the CPUC's notice states.
California PUC approves broadband subsidies for 9 Northern California, Central Valley communities
The $728,093 in funding for the projects comes from the CPUC's California Advanced Services Fund, which is funded by a surcharge on intrastate long distance telephone calls.
Here's the CPUC's press release.
Friday, March 13, 2009
Using U.S. economic stimulus funding for native fiber backbone and FTTH
The article also discusses the downside of Broadband over Power Lines (BPL), which in the opinion of this blogger isn't deserving of either investment capital or federal stimulus subsidies.In addition to building fiber backbones in rural areas, some ISPs also think that subsidizing fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) connections would be feasible for certain rural areas that have relatively high population densities. Patrick Knorr, the COO of cable and broadband provider Sunflower Broadband, says there are some suburban communities in his vicinity that have been sprouting up in rural areas that would have enough population density to justify building out FTTH infrastructure.
"Fiber to the home, like a lot of wire-based solutions, is cost intensive," he says. "But it is cheaper than DSL or coaxial cables. Fiber works better over long distances because it doesn't require as much maintenance as a lot of other technologies. The issue is that there is a significant initial infrastructure cost, which is why there should be opportunities for subsidies to build FTTH in areas that otherwise wouldn't be able to access fiber service."