BellLabs: Soaring VOD, OTT Video Usage Shaking Up the IP Edge

BellLabs: Soaring VOD, OTT Video Usage Shaking Up the IP Edge: Bell Labs researchers make their forecasts in a report titled “Video Shakes Up the IP Edge,” in which they predict that by 2020, U.S. video consumers will access a whopping seven hours of video each day, up from 4.8 today. Consumers also will turn increasingly to tablets to watch videos whether at home or on the go, says BellLabs.

This trend will be accompanied by “a dramatic shift in viewing habits,” as viewers switch from watching broadcast content to video-on-demand (VoD) services, demand for which will grow to 70% of daily consumption from 33% today, the report says. The researchers also note that cloud services, news sites and social networking applications will become more video-based and be accessible anywhere, anytime via tablets, which suggests Internet video content will increase 12 times.

These trends, according to Bell Labs’ predictions, “will stretch the capabilities [of] the residential broadband networks many service providers use today. As the delivery of video content rapidly moves from traditional broadcast TV to the ‘unicast’ delivery of personalized content to individuals, disproportionate pressure will be placed on the ‘IP edge’ of these networks,” where most of the network ‘intelligence’ needed to deliver personalized content on-demand resides.

In case anyone was wondering why fast fiber to the premises Internet infrastructure is now an imperative.  And consider the additional demand should personal video communications take off as a new (not so new, actually) app.

Mississippi map malarkey

A fundamental purpose of a map is to plan a route to an end point – a destination.  But when it comes to what’s called “broadband mapping,” the goal isn’t the destination.  In fact, this wasteful activity has resulted in a circular journey to nowhere, diverting precious resources that could otherwise be invested in building out Internet telecommunications infrastructure as this boondoggle out of Mississippi painfully illustrates. 

It’s a good thing the United States chose not to remedy the market failure that produced large gaps in electric power and telephone service availability in the early part of the 20^th Century by engaging in folly such as drawing up maps of existing electrical and telephone service and promoting electricity and telephone adoption where there was no service.  If that had been the policy, many areas of the nation might not have had power or telephone service until well into the 1950s and 1960s.

Telecom coops offer much needed alternative to build out U.S. Internet infrastructure

This Wall Street Journal article explores the Faustian bargain AT&T, America's largest wireline telecom provider, struck with the U.S. Federal Communications Commission to begin winding down its obsolete copper Publicly Switched Telephone Network (PSTN):

Mr. Stephenson himself has made it clear that AT&T would rather just sell off its regulated phone territories the way rival Verizon has done. But those sales haven't worked out swimmingly for the buyers, so now buyers can't be found, and neither would regulators likely bless further sales.  AT&T's plan, then, amounts to a compromise: AT&T will spend several billion dollars making undesirable investments if Washington will relieve it of the unsustainable regulatory burdens associated with the old copper voice network.

This is not an optimal solution for either AT&T's shareholders or for the many Americans who despite AT&T's expansion plans would remain disconnected from the Internet and the Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) service it could provide to replace voice telephone service delivered over the nation's aging copper Publicly Switched Telephone Network (PSTN).  An alternative is clearly needed.

The good news is one exists as does its funding mechanism: cooperatives.  In the 1930s, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Rural Utilities Service (RUS) made funding available to coops to build the needed infrastructure to deliver electric power and phone service.  The RUS remains in place today.  Given the problems investor-owned telcos like AT&T face deploying needed Internet infrastructure as shown in the WSJ story, the RUS should be given a higher profile and adequately funded to facilitate the much needed telecom coop alternative for the construction and operation of Internet infrastructure.

Telecom infrastructure demands competing business models

The Salt Lake Tribune has published a set of articles on UTOPIA, a public open access fiber network.  For other publicly owned and operated telecommunications infrastructure, the take away is they are like building and financing toll highway systems over a period of many years.  A prudent, long term financial plan is essential and their success can't be measured in isolation over the short term.

That's why investor owned incumbent telco and cable providers haven't built out fiber to the premise infrastructure. Their shareholders expect a certain return on investment within five years or less as well as hefty dividends.  Infrastructure projects have long term time horizons that aren't compatible with their business models.

Some of those interviewed in the articles assert that UTOPIA and other publicly operated telecommunications networks shouldn't be competing with incumbent, investor owned telcos and cablecos.  I disagree.  The challenges of constructing and operating telecommunications infrastructure demand competition to produce the best business models demonstrating the greatest potential for long term viability.  It's not an easy task.  The incumbent providers been unable to produce one.  That has led to extensive market failure in wireline telecommunications services, leaving millions of Americans without premises Internet access.  UTOPIA and other non-incumbent operators despite their shortcomings are to be commended for making the effort to develop alternatives to build and construct this essential infrastructure for the 21st Century.

Broadband delayed again� - News - The Charleston Gazette - West Virginia News and Sports -

Broadband delayed again� - News - The Charleston Gazette - West Virginia News and Sports -

This sickening story highlights the pathetic, on the cheap state of today's U.S. telecommunications infrastructure. Providers battle over subsidies that would be better invested in fiber to the premise infrastructure rather than stopgap, obsolescence-prone DSL and terrestrial wireless.

And the DSL provider (Frontier) has the temerity to suggest since it offers its West Virginia customers satellite Internet service -- a national disgrace that should only be serving locales north of the Arctic Circle -- it is therefore providing sufficient service.

AT&T forced to invest in wireline plant to stem residential cord cutting

This item from Bloomberg/Businessweek helps explain why AT&T is opting to invest $6 billion in its wireline infrastructure.  The telco has been bleeding residential connections for years as these customers have dropped landline service and migrated to mobile wireless.  This is particularly true for those residential customers not offered wireline Internet service and thus had no reason to keep their landline account active.

AT&T is apparently now hoping to win those customers back and retain those thinking of cutting the cord by providing them Internet service via its proprietary, VDSL-based U-verse IPDSLAM service.  According to an AT&T news release today announcing its 3-year, $14 billion CAPex plan, U-verse IPDSLAM will provide Internet access and Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP) to 24 million customer premises in AT&T's wireline service area by year-end 2013.

California PUC rectifies its mischaracterization of Internet infrastructure subsidy fund

Several months ago, this blog called out the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) for incorrectly asserting the public policy goal of its program to subsidize the build out of Internet infrastructure in the Golden State was instead to encourage “the adoption of broadband.”

To its credit, the CPUC has rectified its gross misstatement of the law authorizing its $100 million plus California Advanced Service Fund (CASF). It did so this week, buried 18 pages deep into a proposed order that would loosen eligibility for CASF infrastructure loan and grant funding to include entities not holding a Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity (CPCN) or a Wireless Identification Registration (WIR):

“We wish to make clear that although we propose to modify the CASF eligibility requirements to include both for profit and nonprofit broadband infrastructure providers, it is not our intent to change the focus of the CASF program. The CASF was created to fund the deployment of broadband infrastructure in unserved and underserved areas of the state, rather than the adoption of broadband services.” (Emphasis added)

The CPUC should also make it easier for consumer owned, community-based providers such as telecom cooperatives to access CASF funding for last mile (to the premises) Internet infrastructure construction – a critical infrastructure link singled out for attention in the proposed order. A key need of these providers is technical assistance grant funding to retain engineers and expert consultants to develop preliminary network designs and business case analyses. These deliverables would help ensure that the contemplated projects pencil out and would generate sufficient revenues to justify the prudent investment of CASF funds.

The CPUC should also revisit its unworkable, hair splitting exercise in futility of attempting to map out what neighborhoods are considered “unserved” and “underserved” based on throughput speed and census block groups. The inherent variation of legacy telco infrastructure Internet service from one address to the next doesn’t lend itself to these broad brush delineations. Internet service available at a given premise can be entirely different from another one just a quarter mile or a half block away.  Some overlap or "overbuilding" as it is called by incumbent providers will the inevitable consequence of progress.  But it must occur if the United States is to remedy what President Barack Obama decried in his State of the Union speech at the beginning of this year as the nation's "incomplete" Internet telecommunications infrastructure.  A network filled with holes does not a network make.