MultiChannel News reports the Federal Communications Commission's broadband czar Blair Levin is underwhelmed by the quality of comments the agency has received in response to its call for public input for a national broadband policy. Congress set a February 2010 deadline for the policy as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act enacted earlier this year.
The gist of Levin's complaint is the comments are overly self serving and don't help the FCC shape a broadband policy that will further the Obama administration's goal of making broadband accessible to all American homes and businesses.
That's hardly surprising given the inherent tension between the public's growing and nearly insatiable demand for more and faster broadband and the private telco/cable industry's duopolistic control over who gets service and at what speed and price -- and only provides it when it's in their and not necessarily in their customers' interest.
Implicit in this tension is the evolution of the U.S. telecommunications infrastructure and services away from the closed, proprietary single purpose systems of the past that provided basic phone service and cable. The future is locally owned and operated open access-based fiber infrastructure to the premises that can deliver various advanced Internet-protocol-based services to business, government and residential consumers with bandwidth to spare. In that regard, Levin's FCC is likely getting variations on the theme "fight the future" from a telco/cable duopoly that fears it.
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
App Rising: Ten ways broadband stimulus rules fail America
From App-Rising's perspective, the Notice of Funds Availability (NOFA) announced July 1 for the first round of $7.2 billion of grants and loan subsidies for U.S. broadband telecommunications infrastructure falls short of the goal of Obama administration and Congress in authorizing the funds as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Some key excerpts:
On the other hand, App-Rising sees this first NOFA as all encompassing broadband policy. It is not. The broadband provisions of the economic stimulus legislation call for the creation of an omnibus U.S. broadband policy by Febuary 2010. Plus the funding allocation was described by Obama administration officials as a "down payment" on a badly needed upgrade of the nation's telecommunications infrastructure. Finally, there's a good chance the rules of the first NOFA will be revised based on complaints such as these in the second and third rounds of funding later this year and early 2010.
I agree the rules governing this first NOFA issued two weeks ago create too much opportunity for incumbent providers to delay proposed projects in order to maintain their territorial hegemony that is a hallmark of America's privately built and operated telecommunications infrastructure.
In large part this stimulus is business as usual for America's broadband policy, or lack thereof. We're continuing to muck around, shuffling our feet when the rest of the world is racing forward. It's not just that this NOFA isn't aspirational enough, it's that it does seem to be aspiring to anything at all. There's no ultimate goal for what it's setting out to achieve other than getting some people some broadband. And there's seemingly little being done to even use this as a learning experience that we can build from and help guide future investments. It feels like NTIA and RUS just took the safest route, followed the same steps that have failed us in the past, and at best only marginally improved the approach. Because of this I can't help but feel pessimistic about what the ultimate impact of the broadband stimulus will be.
There are a host of truly shovel-ready, truly innovative, true testbed showcase projects for us to be supporting through this broadband stimulus. But based on how things are looking so far, I can't help but feel like this NOFA is already a massive failure and the money hasn't even gone out the door yet.
On the other hand, App-Rising sees this first NOFA as all encompassing broadband policy. It is not. The broadband provisions of the economic stimulus legislation call for the creation of an omnibus U.S. broadband policy by Febuary 2010. Plus the funding allocation was described by Obama administration officials as a "down payment" on a badly needed upgrade of the nation's telecommunications infrastructure. Finally, there's a good chance the rules of the first NOFA will be revised based on complaints such as these in the second and third rounds of funding later this year and early 2010.
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
California PUC approves subsidy for fixed WISP build offering 14Mbs symmetric service
The California Public Utilities Commission announced July 9 that it approved a 40 percent subsidy totaling $2.8 million from its California Advanced Services Fund for fixed terrestrial wireless infrastructure to provide broadband connectivity to more than 14,000 unserved premises in Alpine, Amador, Calaveras, Tuolumne, and Mariposa counties.
According to the CPUC resolution approving the project, it will be built over a 20-month period by Mother Lode Broadband and will leverage a regional network of existing mobile cellular towers reinforced with "expanded backhaul" -- most likely fiber.
The proposed throughput will blow existing WISPs -- both mobile 3G cellular as well as fixed premises providers -- clean out of the water. It's on a business class scale providing symmetric connectivity of "up to" 14 Mbs. There's no word on latency and Mother Lode Broadband is mum on what protocol -- WiMAX is a likely possibility -- that it plans to use. In addition, the CPUC resolution is silent on the technology that will make service this scale possible, only revealing it will employ "high capacity licensed spectrum."
Only time will tell if this is for real or simply more wireless vaporware. With the deployment planned over 20 months, there is a relatively large amount of that -- and probably too much for those 14,000 premises that needed broadband 10 years ago and are still stuck on dialup or sucking a satellite. "I'll believe the speeds when I see them," one skeptical Northern California industry insider tells me.
According to the CPUC resolution approving the project, it will be built over a 20-month period by Mother Lode Broadband and will leverage a regional network of existing mobile cellular towers reinforced with "expanded backhaul" -- most likely fiber.
The proposed throughput will blow existing WISPs -- both mobile 3G cellular as well as fixed premises providers -- clean out of the water. It's on a business class scale providing symmetric connectivity of "up to" 14 Mbs. There's no word on latency and Mother Lode Broadband is mum on what protocol -- WiMAX is a likely possibility -- that it plans to use. In addition, the CPUC resolution is silent on the technology that will make service this scale possible, only revealing it will employ "high capacity licensed spectrum."
Only time will tell if this is for real or simply more wireless vaporware. With the deployment planned over 20 months, there is a relatively large amount of that -- and probably too much for those 14,000 premises that needed broadband 10 years ago and are still stuck on dialup or sucking a satellite. "I'll believe the speeds when I see them," one skeptical Northern California industry insider tells me.
Fed up with "depressing" service, Virginia county forms broadband authority
BEDFORD — After several months of consideration, the Bedford County Board of Supervisors narrowly voted Monday to form a broadband authority.
The authority, which was enacted by a 4-3 vote after a public hearing, is a legal entity that can contract directly with private providers to deliver broadband access to residents and businesses. The seven-member board would serve as the authority and could appoint an advisory committee for technical assistance.
“We do envision this as a public-private partnership,” Assistant County Administrator Frank Rogers said of the authority’s purpose. He said the county “is not looking into the business of being a broadband provider” but rather a vehicle to help facilitate service to parts of the county that are not served or underserved.
Monday, July 13, 2009
California issues updated "unclassified" state broadband availability maps
The California Public Utilities Commission has published updated versions of maps of broadband availability in the Golden State that were issued in early 2008 by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's California Broadband Task Force.
There are two versions of the maps: "classified" versions accessible only to approved providers and "unclassified" maps that are publicly available and published online as .pdf files. The secret maps -- classified at the insistence of incumbent providers who don't want the public or potential competitors knowing exactly what they are providing (and more importantly, not providing) and where -- purportedly reveal street address level broadband availability organized by census block. The unclassified public maps by comparison show only the view from 60,000 feet and are sanitized via rasterization and the omission of key highway and road identifiers and town markers. This renders them nearly inscrutable to outsiders and consumers -- some of whom complain the maps exaggerate the boundaries of where broadband availabilty truly exists.
Notably, the two federal agencies administering the distribution of $7.2 billion of grant and loan subsidies to faciltiate the build out of broadband telecommunications infrastrucutre -- the Dept. of Agriculture's Rural Utilities Service (RUS) and the Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) -- issued rules last week for the first round of funding requiring proposed projects include service area maps delineated by census block and posted on the federal government's Broadband Stimulus Portal.
When compared with the California maps, these newly created maps of proposed project areas may show where the broadband black holes really exist in a way the California maps do not.
There are two versions of the maps: "classified" versions accessible only to approved providers and "unclassified" maps that are publicly available and published online as .pdf files. The secret maps -- classified at the insistence of incumbent providers who don't want the public or potential competitors knowing exactly what they are providing (and more importantly, not providing) and where -- purportedly reveal street address level broadband availability organized by census block. The unclassified public maps by comparison show only the view from 60,000 feet and are sanitized via rasterization and the omission of key highway and road identifiers and town markers. This renders them nearly inscrutable to outsiders and consumers -- some of whom complain the maps exaggerate the boundaries of where broadband availabilty truly exists.
Notably, the two federal agencies administering the distribution of $7.2 billion of grant and loan subsidies to faciltiate the build out of broadband telecommunications infrastrucutre -- the Dept. of Agriculture's Rural Utilities Service (RUS) and the Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) -- issued rules last week for the first round of funding requiring proposed projects include service area maps delineated by census block and posted on the federal government's Broadband Stimulus Portal.
When compared with the California maps, these newly created maps of proposed project areas may show where the broadband black holes really exist in a way the California maps do not.
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Ironically, some broadband stimulus projects may need stimulation of their own
Grants and loan subsidies totalling $7.2 billion in the Obama administration's economic stimulus package are aimed at "shovel ready" broadband telecommunications infrastructure projects that can generate employment and do so quickly while expanding access to broadband .
Project plans that have already been drawn up and have been sitting on the shelf and not proceeding but for sufficient capitalization will likely be the only ones that will be able to meet the fast approaching Aug. 14 deadline for the first round of funding under rules developed by the two federal bodies administering the funds, the Dept. of Agriculture's Rural Utilities Service (RUS) and the Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA).
However to qualify for subsequent rounds of funding, start up projects -- particularly those proposed by nonprofits and telecommunications cooperatives -- ironically face significant financial hurdles just to get their stimulus funded project proposals ready. That's because the funding application guidelines jointly issued by the RUS and the NTIA and published last week in the Federal Register require extensive preparation including the foundational step of identifying contiguous census blocks that fall within the guidelines' definition of "unserved" and "underserved" when it comes to broadband access. And that doesn't include the actual project network plan that in the case of a project that will cost more than $1 million or more to build requires retaining professional engineering consultants to review and sign off on the build.
Both of these pre-build steps can run anywhere from $30,000 to $100,000 and potentially far more depending upon the size and scope of the proposed project. While the rules allow these application preparation costs to be reimbursed should a proposed project be approved for funding, raising these sums on the front end with no guarantee of reimbursement given both the complexity of the rules as well as likely challenges of proposed projects by incumbent providers as specifically provided under the guidelines could prove to be an insurmountable hurdle for projects by telecom coops and cash-strapped local governments. That will lead to far fewer potentially meritorious projects being proposed than might otherwise be the case. For the next two rounds of broadband stimulus funding this fall and next year, the RUS and the NTIA should liberalize the rules to include at least some of these costs for broadband build out projects proposed by nonprofits and local governments.
Project plans that have already been drawn up and have been sitting on the shelf and not proceeding but for sufficient capitalization will likely be the only ones that will be able to meet the fast approaching Aug. 14 deadline for the first round of funding under rules developed by the two federal bodies administering the funds, the Dept. of Agriculture's Rural Utilities Service (RUS) and the Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA).
However to qualify for subsequent rounds of funding, start up projects -- particularly those proposed by nonprofits and telecommunications cooperatives -- ironically face significant financial hurdles just to get their stimulus funded project proposals ready. That's because the funding application guidelines jointly issued by the RUS and the NTIA and published last week in the Federal Register require extensive preparation including the foundational step of identifying contiguous census blocks that fall within the guidelines' definition of "unserved" and "underserved" when it comes to broadband access. And that doesn't include the actual project network plan that in the case of a project that will cost more than $1 million or more to build requires retaining professional engineering consultants to review and sign off on the build.
Both of these pre-build steps can run anywhere from $30,000 to $100,000 and potentially far more depending upon the size and scope of the proposed project. While the rules allow these application preparation costs to be reimbursed should a proposed project be approved for funding, raising these sums on the front end with no guarantee of reimbursement given both the complexity of the rules as well as likely challenges of proposed projects by incumbent providers as specifically provided under the guidelines could prove to be an insurmountable hurdle for projects by telecom coops and cash-strapped local governments. That will lead to far fewer potentially meritorious projects being proposed than might otherwise be the case. For the next two rounds of broadband stimulus funding this fall and next year, the RUS and the NTIA should liberalize the rules to include at least some of these costs for broadband build out projects proposed by nonprofits and local governments.
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