New Homeowner Has To Sell House Because Of Comcast’s Incompetence, Lack Of Competition – Consumerist

New Homeowner Has To Sell House Because Of Comcast’s Incompetence, Lack Of Competition – Consumerist

A sad tale of a consumer jerked around by incumbents and misled by the U.S. government's "broadband map" -- a major and useless component of the Federal Communications Commission's 2010 "National Broadband Plan."

And the consumer might find it hard to sell his home since not having an Internet connection is increasingly becoming like living off the grid.

Let's hope the FCC's recent policy deeming Internet as a common carrier telecommunications service requiring providers to universally serve all premises can help avoid these kinds of unfortunate circumstances that leave consumers high and dry.

Opinion: Internet infrastructure can't be built in a reasonable time frame with limited, incremental funding

Want to boost rural tourism in Maine? Raise Internet speeds — Opinion — Bangor Daily News — BDN Maine: The catch is that corporate providers, like Time Warner Cable and FairPoint Communications, see no profit in extending fiber optics to remote, sparsely populated areas. So the state must be involved, and several remedies are being explored at the State House. Most of these approaches are “incrementalist”; that is, focused on giving slightly more funding to the ConnectME Authority. One proposal would authorize ConnectME to provide more grants so additional communities can plan for extending fiber-optic networks, creating wireless nodes and boosting connection speeds. Other bills propose small bonds to boost ConnectME’s funding.

Incrementalism, however, has fundamental limitations: Few rural communities are prepared to compete for limited ConnectME funds, and few low-density, low-income communities can afford broadband investment on their own. With incrementalism, it will take years, perhaps decades, to connect all of Maine.

Some progress is better than none, but ultimately rural Maine needs a “big push,” analogous to the New Deal’s Rural Electrification program that transformed life in rural America. The big push strategy’s basic premise is that broadband is critical for rural economic competitiveness and also a public good to which all should have access. Rural electrification relied on community-level planning, but it was also backed by massive public investment.

The author of this op-ed nails it. Internet infrastructure like any infrastructure is costly and can't be put in place in a reasonable time frame with limited, incremental funding. The states can't do it alone. The United States needs a national Internet initiative on the scale that built today's highway and electrical distribution infrastructures.

The medium is the message: Google Fiber is primarily an advertising platform

Lest anyone forget that notwithstanding Google's construction of proprietary closed access fiber to the premise networks in a few metro areas of the United States, Google's core business is and remains advertising. FTTP is simply a better way to put ads on more screens and in front of more eyeballs, albeit an expensive one -- hence the limited deployment of Google Fiber.

And what better way than the leading advertising medium: high (and super high) definition TV. Over the next few weeks, Google Fiber will test targeted TV ads over its Kansas City build. The ads will run during existing ad breaks, along with national ads, on live TV and DVR-recorded programs and will be matched to the viewer based on geography, the type of program being shown or viewing history, according to a March 20 post by Google Fiber. Subscribers will be able to opt out of seeing ads based on viewing history, according to the post.

In addition to generating advertising revenue, the TV ads will also help offset operating costs, particularly the rising costs of TV programming. Google recently increased the monthly price of its TV and Internet bundle to $130 a month, according to a report in the Kansas City Star.

Advertising on large screen devices is critical to Google's business according to this analysis which notes online stores that advertise via Google are not optimized for small smartphone displays.

US federal government will have to provide substantial funding for Internet infrastructure construction

Obama: This federal council will jumpstart broadband - CNET: Obama first introduced this idea in January, when he traveled to Cedar Falls, Iowa to announce his plan to promote "Broadband that Works," a public-private effort to help more Americans get access to speedier broadband.

As part of this new push, he urged the FCC to strike down state laws to ensure communities could build or expand their own 1 gigabit-per-second networks, which offer downloads 100 times faster than conventional connections.

The new council will include 25 federal agencies and departments that will work with private industry to understand how the federal government can help communities increase broadband investment and reduce barriers to deployment. The council will be co-chaired by the U.S. Commerce and Agriculture departments. The council will report back to Obama, within 150 days, with the steps each agency will take to advance these goals, including specific regulatory actions or budget proposals.

The biggest barrier to Internet infrastructure investment is private market failure on the sell side. That's been patently obvious for more than a decade; it doesn't take more than two dozen federal agencies and departments to ascertain that. The existing dominant U.S. commercial model for providing telecommunications services is based on selling "subscriptions" to and "owning" the customer, consistent with the natural monopoly market that favors large vertically integrated legacy telephone and cable TV providers.

Its primary weakness is it is wholly dependent on ARPU and ROI which don't easily pencil out in much of the nation and aren't likely to given that labor costs that make up about 70 percent of network deployment and maintenance expense are not declining and don't benefit from economies of scale. This produces an all or nothing scenario and lots of winners and losers -- with millions of premises stuck in the latter category for nearly two decades.

If the United States is to have modern telecommunications infrastructure in the 21st century that serves all Americans wherever they live or operate their businesses, the federal government must commit big as it did for electrification, water, telephone and highways in the 20th century. The states don't have the funding to do the job on their own such as Maine, for example, where the state has appropriated only $1 million to fund Internet infrastructure projects that won't go very far when billions are needed. In New York, $500 million in matching public funds isn't attracting much interest as legacy incumbent providers stand warily on the sidelines.

What will be truly interesting is what regulatory actions and budget proposals will be recommended by the newly created federal council. On the regulatory front, the Federal Communications Commission has already acted by deeming the Internet as a common carrier telecommunications service. That leaves it up to fiscal strategies, which should include substantial technical assistance and infrastructure funding for the states along the lines of existing block grant and federal highway programs. Or in recognition that the nation is a generation behind on construction progress, the federal government could built it directly on a crash program basis with early completion bonuses for contractors. Then operate the network on an open access basis, contracting for operations and maintenance and leasing out access to providers under long term contracts.

Obama administration continues to ignore US need for ubiquitous FTTP

The Obama administration continues to ignore the need for ubiquitous fiber to the premise infrastructure serving all American homes and small businesses.

The administration instead is pursuing a PR campaign to shift attention to mobile wireless service that can't accommodate growing premise bandwidth demand as well as pointless activities such as "broadband mapping" and measuring "broadband speeds" that will do nothing to construct the FTTP infrastructure the nation should have been putting in place a generation ago.

Major fail: West Virginia Internet infrastructure policy

The Charleston Gazette | W.Va. broadband panel to get new duties, but no funds: Roper’s group supported the broadband expansion bill, arguing the project would help improve education and healthcare, and spur entrepreneurship in West Virginia.

“If we solely depend on private industry, we’ll just stay at the status quo,” Roper said. “If students can’t access textbooks online at home, and if doctors can’t access electronic health records, we’re in trouble. [Broadband] is like good roads and water lines. It’s everything.”

This sums up the situation well, but the state's plan is to essentially pass the buck (and the hat) while continuing the useless exercise of mapping and comparing "broadband speeds" -- the do nothing approach favored by all too many state and local governments that won't build needed infrastructure:

The new legislation, which Tomblin is expected to sign into law, creates a “broadband enhancement fund,” but state lawmakers didn’t set aside any money for the fund. The bill, however, seems to  allow outside groups to donate to the fund. The panel also will receive any  money remaining from the former Broadband Deployment Council’s account, but the  council announced last year that it planned to spend all leftover funds on  final reports and audits. At the outset, the new broadband  council is expected to gather data about residential and business customers’  Internet speeds – and compare speeds to those advertised by broadband  providers. The new council also will be asked to examine existing  broadband networks.

Accelerating implosion of pay TV will hasten AT&T exit from residential wireline

The accelerating implosion of subscription pay TV offerings will hasten AT&T’s exit from the residential wireline market segment and could also result in the telco’s withdrawal of its planned acquisition of satellite provider DirecTV announced in 2014.

AT&T offers video packages with its U-Verse-branded triple play Internet-video-voice product. With the DirecTV deal pending regulatory approval, AT&T hopes to expand its audience of potential viewers and consequently, boost its purchasing power with TV programming providers as negotiations with the programming providers have hardened in recent years.

Viewers have historically regarded the TV programming packages as a poor value for the money since they typically watch only a handful of a few hundred channels. Now they can stream only the video programming they desire via their Internet connections, disrupting the triple play revenue model.

In addition, AT&T’s U-Verse product is delivered to residences over its aging legacy last mile copper cable plant that offers far less bandwidth headroom -- much of it consumed by video -- than hybrid fiber-coax (HFC) cable plants. To keep technologically abreast of cable, AT&T would have to replace its copper plant with fiber. But it is unable to easily do so, constrained by shareholder expectations for earnings and high dividends that militate against substantial capital expenditures.

That leaves AT&T with only one viable option – to continue to sell off chucks of its residential market as it did in December 2014, spinning off its Connecticut residential landline unit, including Internet and TV services to Frontier Communications for $2 billion.

FCC’s Title II order adopts ultra light touch on net neutrality enforcement

While much of the media has been abuzz over the concept of net neutrality – the principle that all Internet traffic be treated equally – an initial review of the FCC’s report and order issued last week classifying Internet services as telecommunications services under Title II of the Communications Act indicates the regulatory agency is adopting a decidedly light touch approach on enforcing net neutrality. The question of whether net neutrality is being respected has arisen at interconnection between network layers, choke points specifically addressed in the FCC’s order and report.

Paragraph 4 states the order’s policy respecting net neutrality, described in the media as a ban on network providers creating paid fast lanes, drawing on the metaphor of toll lanes on a busy freeway:

4. The lesson of this period, and the overwhelming consensus on the record, is that  carefully-tailored rules to protect Internet openness will allow investment and innovation to continue to flourish. Consistent with that experience and the record built in this proceeding, today we adopt carefully-tailored rules that would prevent specific practices we know are harmful to Internet openness— blocking, throttling, and paid prioritization—as well as a strong standard of conduct designed to prevent the deployment of new practices that would harm Internet openness. We also enhance our transparency rule to ensure that consumers are fully informed as to whether the services they purchase are delivering what they expect.

Paragraph 30 however specifically declines to apply Title II rules to interconnection, noting frictions among commercial players have produced differing accounts of how Internet data traffic is being handled:

30. But this Order does not apply the open Internet rules to interconnection. Three factors  are critical in informing this approach to interconnection. First, the nature of Internet traffic, driven by massive consumption of video, has challenged traditional arrangements—placing more emphasis on the use of CDNs or even direct connections between content providers (like Netflix or Google) and last-mile broadband providers. Second, it is clear that consumers have been subject to degradation resulting from commercial disagreements, perhaps most notably in a series of disputes between Netflix and large last-mile broadband providers. But, third, the causes of past disruption and—just as importantly—the potential for future degradation through interconnection disputes—are reflected in very different narratives in the record.

At paragraph 31 of the order, the FCC opts for an information gathering stance vis a vis disputes over interconnection rather than a strong enforcement role:

31. While we have more than a decade’s worth of experience with last-mile practices, we lack a similar depth of background in the Internet traffic exchange context. Thus, we find that the best approach is to watch, learn, and act as required, but not intervene now, especially not with prescriptive rules. This Order—for the first time—provides authority to consider claims involving interconnection, a process that is sure to bring greater understanding to the Commission.