Resolution Seeks High-Speed Internet For All Putney Residents | Vermont Public Radio

Resolution Seeks High-Speed Internet For All Putney Residents | Vermont Public Radio: “The governor made us a promise at town meeting here last year that he would get everything wired 100 percent, no ifs, ands or buts,” Field says. “I’ve got the quote.”

Instead, area lawmakers got an earful from residents who say they’re tired of hearing that Putney already has Internet service.

"Close to 300 of us in Putney only have dial-up," says Field. "In my case I pay $80 a month to Hughes.net. Can’t Skype, can’t stream anything. My wife’s a pediatrician in town. She can’t do her electronic medical records."

Nancy Braus says people on her road are getting Internet from Comcast or Fairpoint. But not her house. Braus has a daughter who’s deaf.

A couple of observations on this story:

• It's an example of the blow back politicians face after years of promises to address deficiencies in premises wireline Internet service with little or no tangible results.
• Ms. Braus's comment illustrates the highly granular nature of broadband redlining that renders government subsidy programs based on mapping and funding only "unserved" and "underserved" areas impractical. One address is offered service by incumbent wireline providers while another nearby premise is not.

U.S. Internet policy fails expectation of universal premise service

For nearly every American who has been alive since the end of World War II, the availability of telephone service at a home or business premise is taken for granted. Need a phone line or several lines? Contact the phone company, order them and they’ll get hooked up.

With wireline premises Internet service, it’s been a very different story. According to the U.S. Federal Communications Commission as of 2012, 19 million Americans couldn’t order an Internet connection because none was available for sale. Some of those Americans live in California’s Gold Country, located in the western foothills of the Sierra Nevada. And they can’t understand why if people in Sacramento -- or in many cases just down the road -- can get wireline Internet service, why can’t they? Plus they hear messages like this one that only five percent or fewer premises are unserved and have a hard time believing their home or business is one of them, particularly when nearby premises do have service.

It’s therefore unsurprising that “[m]any residents without access feel a sense of entitlement to broadband (Internet) service,” according to the Gold Country Broadband Consortium’s annual progress report. The consortium is among 14 regional consortia formed by the California Public Utilities Commission in 2011 to promote local Internet access and adoption of Internet-delivered services.

Unfortunately, neither California as the largest state nor the nation as a whole has a public policy to meet the expectation that Internet service in 2014 should be as ubiquitous as telephone service. Nor as the case with telephone service is there a workable subsidy program to ensure high cost areas are served.

California screamin: Internet policy quagmire fosters failure

Plan for rural broadband collapses | The Press Democrat
This story illustrates the real world consequences of what happens when legacy incumbent wireline Internet providers control government subsidy programs designed to help cover the cost of deploying Internet infrastructure. They refuse to accept the subsidies themselves for high cost areas and lobby to influence the eligibility rules so that others can't easily qualify for funding.

These comments in the story from Cathy Emerson, manager of two consortia involved in expanding Internet access and Mitch Drake, head of the company that applied for subsidy funding from the California Public Utilities Commission, sum up the sorry situation:

“We're looking at a significant Catch-22,” Emerson said. “The federal
and the state programs are trying very hard to make use of legislative
moneys that have been collected, intended to be used for broadband
deployment. And yet the very language of the legislation has been so
effectively edited to the favor of the incumbents that it's extremely
difficult to try to offer services to these rural-most pockets.”

“I call this the great stalemate,” said Drake. “There's a huge need in
Northern California, and we've got a program that was designed to take
care of the need, and we've got incumbent carriers who made this
financial decision, for one reason or another, not to serve these rural
communities. But at the same time they are the biggest opponents,
preventing anyone from doing anything about it.”

It's going to get even harder for non-incumbent providers and local governments to qualify for the CPUC's California Advanced Services Fund network construction subsidy dollars in this year's funding round under revised rules recently adopted by the CPUC. Steve Blum has the depressing details in this blog post.

Slow broadband wipes 20% off house prices - Telegraph

Slow broadband wipes 20% off house prices - Telegraph: Slow broadband speeds can wipe as much as 20 per cent off the value of properties and lack of superfast connectivity in an area can be a dealbreaker in house sales, property experts have said.

With growing numbers of people going online to perform tasks ranging from working to grocery shopping and streaming entertainment, good broadband has become critical.

Property search website Rightmove has now added a broadband speed checker to every one of its listings alongside factors such as quality of local schools and transport links.

It's only a matter of time before we'll see this spread to the United States where plenty of residential properties nominally in the service areas of incumbent telephone and cable companies nevertheless lack Internet connections.

Policy debate -- not market competition -- predominates in U.S. premises Internet infrastructure

In the United States, the major competition in last mile wired premise Internet infrastructure is playing out in the public policy arena more than in the marketplace. In order to have market competition, there has to be a market. In many areas, there isn’t one. Those looking to purchase wired premise Internet service cannot do so because no providers want to sell it to them. The basic definition of a functional market is willing buyers and willing sellers. Others want better value service and more options. Here again, the market fails. No providers are willing to make the necessary investment in order to sell better value services to them – the impetus behind many municipal Internet infrastructure projects.

Second, telecommunications infrastructure due to its high construction and operating costs excludes many potential providers. It’s what known as a natural monopoly or at best, a duopoly. Roads and highways are tremendously expensive and thus tend to be operated by one provider that can bear the large cost burden: the government. In a limited number of cases, a duopoly exists where motorists have the option of taking the public highway or a private toll road. By definition, there cannot be a competitive market, which is one made up of many sellers and many buyers.

Which brings us to the major ideological battleground over last mile wired premise Internet service: Whether it should be operated like a closed, private toll road or an open access public thoroughfare. Big money has joined the fight to bolster the latter position. Macquarie Capital Group, an Australian firm that invests in multi-billion dollar infrastructure projects around the world, is considering investing in UTOPIA, an open access fiber to the premise (FTTP) network serving 11 Utah municipalities. (See item here).

On the other side of the debate are the legacy incumbent telephone and cable companies that want to preserve their closed network models. As Community Broadband Networks reports, they are sponsoring bills in both chambers of the Utah legislature opponents say are intended to scotch a potential Macquarie investment in UTOPIA. In Kansas, the cable company lobby is seeking legislation that would add Kansas to the roster of 20 states that bar local governments from building Internet infrastructure projects to serve their citizenry.

Verizon CEO wrongly compares Internet usage to basic utility consumption

Internet Service Cost: Verizon CEO says heavy broadband users pay more | BGR: Are you constantly streaming high-definition video, downloading tons of Xbox One games and sending massive files to friends and family? You should pay more for Internet access than your neighbor, who only uses a 10-year-old PC in his living room to read email and occasionally browse the Internet for cat GIFs. This is the position of Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam, who said this week that heavy broadband users should have to pay more for home Internet access than those who don’t take full advantage of the service for which they already pay top dollar.

McAdam's logic would make sense if an Internet service was like that of other utilities such as electric power, water or natural gas. These are limited commodities that require some incentive to conserve their use so that they may be available to all who need them. That's why these utility providers use tiered billing schemes that tap into price elasticity -- the tendency to use less of a commodity as its price increases -- and create incentive to conserve via penalties for excessive consumption. There is no similar need to conserve Internet bandwidth. Someone who uses more of it does not impose higher marginal costs on Verizon or any other Internet provider to deliver that higher level of usage.

That said, McAdam is correct to expect that customers of its FiOS fiber to the premise service to help offset the capital and operating costs of the service. But treating bandwidth as a limited commodity when in fact it is not isn't the way to go about it. Instead of creating a false paradigm of bandwidth scarcity, McAdam and other industry leaders should endeavor to foster a mindset of bandwidth plentitude. Big bandwidth promotes more uses and applications of it, making it more valuable to households and businesses. And as those users realize that value, demand for fiber connections will grow, in turn increasing the value of the network under Metcalfe's Law and Verizon's investment in it. When it comes to the Internet, more is better -- not less.  What Verizon and other telecommunications companies should remember is they are not in the business of bundling and selling bandwidth. They are in the communications business.

Rural areas shortchanged in broadband Internet service - Paradise Post

Rural areas shortchanged in broadband Internet service - Paradise Post: Jim Moorehead is working with the Broadband Alliance of Mendocino County to get the service to that county's rural areas. He said there are about 16 other counties in the same boat.

"We're not critical of the big companies for not doing it," he said. "They've got a responsibility to their shareholders." Still, he said he would like to see more money going toward installing those services for rural areas.

When a ratepayer gets a bill, he is paying a lot of nickel and dime charges. One of those charges is the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF), which is money that goes into closing the "digital divide," Moorehead said.

"That fund can help close it," he said. "The problem is, the carriers are fighting it."

A lot of this going on in California. It costs too much for the legacy incumbent telephone and cable companies to provide Internet connectivity to all premises in their service areas, so the kids there end up marooned in broadband backwaters. The incumbents don't want the subsidies Moorehead mentions to offset the high costs -- or anyone else receiving them either.

In addition, the CASF utilizes outdated, speed-based standards to determine areas eligible for subsidies rather than setting a higher, goal-based standard such as universal fiber optic premises Internet connectivity. It's a perfect prescription for a race to the bottom in a state that has historically viewed itself as a leader.