"Everyplace outside a metropolitan area was experiencing the same issues.”

Georgia Tackles the Digital Divide - Broadband Communities Magazine In summer 2016, Gooch and State Rep. Don Parsons formed a joint committee that included 10 members of both legislative houses and held a series of hearings all over Georgia. The committee heard testimony from local governments, state agencies, academic researchers, chambers of commerce, health care providers, incumbent telcos, trade associations and many other interested parties. In addition, it posted an online survey to ask residents about their broadband experiences. With very little promotion, the survey received 12,000 responses. Both the formal testimony and the survey responses confirmed that rural broadband was deficient all through rural Georgia – not just in the areas served by the provider in Gooch’s district. “Everyplace outside a metropolitan area was experiencing the same issues,” Gooch says. “There was no incentive for the providers to upgrade their infrastructures. It was an eye-opening conversation – all these people were from different parts of the state and had different phone companies.”

Georgia's experience shows deficient advanced telecommunications infrastructure is a widespread problem not limited to one part of the state. Nor is it limited to one state. Georgia's experience repeats all over the United States.

Deficient telecommunications infrastructure is not a local or state specific problem. It's a national issue requiring a national solution to bring robust fiber optic telecom infrastructure to every state in the union and to the doorstep of every American home, school and business. And just as long distance telephone service was interstate in the 20th century, so is Internet protocol-based service.

The adverse impact of deficient telecommunications infrastructure

Municipal Broadband | POTs and PANs: Local governments are finding that nobody wants to buy homes without broadband if there is a nearby community with broadband. Worse, communities are seeing businesses move away or bypass them when considering new locations. Lack of broadband puts school kids at a definite disadvantage and there are still a lot of households that drive kids daily to public hotspots just to do homework. And lack of broadband takes away all the opportunities for working at home – probably the biggest area of job growth in rural America. I see small communities – even down to really small sizes like townships with 700 residents – trying to find ways to build a broadband network. I’ve read a few hundred RFPs from rural communities over the last few years, and probably not more than 5% want to become an ISP. But they will do so if they can’t find a commercial company willing to do it. Rural communities largely favor of public-private partnerships. More and more of them are willing to kick money into a building a network if an ISP will invest in their community and operate a broadband network. I believe that within a decade we are going to start seeing broadband ‘deserts’ where communities without broadband start withering – just as happened in the past to communities that didn’t get electricity, or that were bypassed by railroads or interstate highways. It’s hard to think that a community today can keep their kids at home without broadband – and this is starting to scare local governments.

I agree with the writer that the impact of not having advanced telecommunications infrastructure in the 21^st century will indeed have negative consequences just as the lack of electrical distribution and transportation infrastructure did in the 20^th. But the analogy isn’t directly comparable what’s happening on the ground. Electrical distribution and transportation infrastructure deficiencies
(and railroads in the 19th) affected large regions of the nation in early in the previous century. The lack of advanced telecommunications service on the other hand is better equated to neighborhood redlining associated with mortgage lenders and insurance companies. It’s far more granular. A household can be served by advanced landline telecommunications infrastructure while another just down the road, over the hill or around the bend is not. This post at Steve Blum's blog as well as any number of “broadband maps” paint a crazy quilt of served and unserved areas that looks like this:

And as unfortunate members of those unserved households will attest, their pleas for service have fallen on deaf ears for more than a decade now or have been met with vague promises of service. Someday. Maybe. But mostly likely not because they don’t fit the business models of investor-owned providers that is incompatible with high cost, long term investment required for infrastructure
projects. 

Capito introduces bill intended to spur rural broadband expansion | The State Journal | theet.com

Capito introduces bill intended to spur rural broadband expansion | The State Journal | theet.com: U.S. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., has introduced federal legislation intended to make it easier for companies to expand broadband internet service to rural communities. Capito introduced the Gigibit Opportunity Act on Wednesday, May 3, according to a a news release. The legislation would give temporary tax deferments to broadband providers and allow communities to set up "Gigabit Opportunity Zones" to encourage expansion.

Perhaps well intended, but misses the mark. Private sector ISPs aren't deterred from investing in telecommunications infrastructure due to tax burdens. Rather, it's long waits for return on investment with their business models based on selling subscriptions one premise at a time to Internet-enabled services over their networks.

Infrastructure costs a lot -- billions. The United States isn't going to get the advanced telecommunications infrastructure it needs quickly today and for the future as demand for service and bandwidth grows exponentially by offering tax breaks worth millions. Particularly by continuing to rely on private sector investment due to the aforementioned ROI obstacle. The public sector has to take the lead just as it has with roads and highways.

Beyond Net Neutrality: The Importance of Title II for Broadband - Public Knowledge

Beyond Net Neutrality: The Importance of Title II for Broadband - Public Knowledge: Title II classification is critical for protecting an open internet, but it is also just as important for preserving our values of service to all Americans, including universal service and consumer protection. Broadband has the power to transform people’s everyday lives. Title II classification of broadband must remain in place to continue protecting the fundamental values of our communications systems.

H/T to Yosef Getachew of Public Knowledge for this item emphasizing the Federal Communications Commission's reclassification of Internet as a common carrier telecommunications utility under Title II of the U.S. Communications Act in its 2015 Open Internet Rulemaking. 

Title II's universal service provision has unfortunately been buried under the mainstream media "net neutrality" meme that is utterly meaningless from the perspective of the 34 million Americans the FCC found in 2016 lack access to advanced telecommunications infrastructure capable of delivering high quality voice, data, graphics and video. Here's what I wrote on the topic shortly before the rulemaking was adopted.

A universal service standard prevents all too common crazy quilt pattern of telecom infrastructure deployment such as this accompanying a post at Steve Blum's blog illustrating how legacy incumbent providers engage in neighborhood cherry picking and redlining.

Deceptive deal: Verizon Wireless 4G LTE "unlimited" isn't

Verizon Wireless which like other wireless ISPs has historically offered metered "data plans," sold in multiple price tiers based on the amount of data transacted over the connection. Under pressure from falling subscriber growth, Verizon Wireless recently introduced an "unlimited" service that dispenses with the meter and offers a flat monthly recurring charge under a 2-year contract. Sounds like a good deal, right, especially for the many households in areas redlined by landline ISPs and without an option for service?

Wrong. It's a lousy, deceptive deal. The VZ Wireless meter is still running under this so-called "unlimited" service which is in fact data limited. And it's a hard limit. Once the meter hits 10GB, the service is shunted off VZ Wireless's 4G LTE network and onto its outmoded and crippled 3G network that can't support streaming or Skype until the start of the next monthly billing cycle.

FCC Chair Pai wrongly describes natural monopoly of telecom infrastructure as competitive market

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai on Why He's Rejecting Net Neutrality Rules - Reason.com: If left in place, however, the Title II rules could harm the commercial internet, which Pai described as "one of the most incredible free market innovations in history. Companies like Google and Facebook and Netflix became household names precisely because we didn't have the government micromanaging how the internet would operate," said Pai, who noted that the Clinton-era decision not to regulate the Internet like a phone utility or a broadcast network was one of the most important factors in the rise of our new economy.

Companies like Google (excepting Google Fiber's now defunct venture into fiber to the premise service), Facebook and Netflix aren't network providers. Consequently, they don't face the high costs associated with building and operating telecommunications infrastructure serving homes, businesses and institutions that deters market competition and promotes market failure.

Ajit Pai: The funny thing about that is because it's precisely because the phone company was a slow moving monopolist. That's exactly the point we're trying to make. These rules, Title II rules were designed to regulate Ma Bell, and the promise with Ma Bell, the deal with the government was, we'll give you a monopoly as long as you give universal service to the country. As a result, for decades, we didn't see innovation in the network we didn't see innovation in phones and it's when you have a competitive marketplace and you let go of that impulse to regulate everything preemptively, that you finally get to see more of a competitive environment.

Pai is engaging in the distortion of describing the natural monopoly market that telecommunications infrastructure is as a competitive market. Wishing it were competitive won't make it so. The cost barriers to entry are simply too high. Just ask Google Fiber. Or the 34 million Americans who have experienced sell side market failure, their homes and small business not offered landline connections capable of delivering high-quality voice, data, graphics and video, according to figures released by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission in 2016. Market failure is hardly an indicator of a robustly competitive market.

Pai's predecessor Tom Wheeler indulged in the misguided notion that telecom infrastructure could be competitive market, even though the FCC under his leadership adopted the 2015 Open Internet rulemaking predicated on regulating Internet service as a natural monopoly, classifying it as a common carrier telecommunications utility.

No FCC enforcement of universal service, anti-redlining provisions of Open Internet rulemaking

Cable, internet connection still not available for many: After 36 years of not being able to access standard internet and cable TV at their home in Deerfield, Gloria and Greg Kasprowicz recently had a Spectrum representative come to their door asking if they would like to have service. The couple, who live three miles from the local Spectrum headquarters on Firehouse Road, were excited when the representative told them they could get service through Spectrum, so they set up an appointment and waited anxiously.

But the date and time of the installment came and went, and no one showed up. So Gloria gave Spectrum a call to see what was going on and was told the company wasn’t able to service her house at this time. “What do you do at this point?” Gloria asked. “(Service) comes up from the bottom of the road, so the first couple of houses, I believe, have it. And it comes down the road to probably a half a mile up the road from us. There’s like a mile stretch — the last mile — for some reason they started from the top and came down and started from the bottom and came up.”

Technically under the U.S. Federal Communications Commission's 2015 Open Internet rulemaking that classified Internet protocol-based telecommunications as a common carrier telecommunications service, Spectrum would have to honor the Kasprowiczs' request for service. That's because the reclassification under Title II of the federal Communications Act includes that requirement as part of Title II's universal service and anti-redlining provisions. But despite adopting the rule, The FCC has never enforced those requirements. The current FCC chairman, Ajit Pai, is reportedly preparing to reverse the rulemaking.

NC bill that permits leasing of muni fiber raises question of how it reduces infrastructure construction costs

Rural broadband internet bill passes NC House | News & Observer: House Bill 68 is titled the BRIGHT Futures Act, which stands for Broadband, Retail, Internet of Things, Grid Power, Healthcare and Training. Its main goal is expanding access to high-speed, broadband internet in rural areas of the state where it’s often too expensive for private service providers to extend their lines.

*  *  *
Bill sponsors say cities, towns and counties could make use of what’s known as “dark fiber” – additional capacity in existing infrastructure that government uses to connect traffic lights, schools and public facilities. Leasing capacity to private internet providers could provide revenue to local governments that could support the expansion of
government-owned fiber networks.

The problem as stated here is it's too costly for private telecom providers to extend their infrastructure to rural areas. So how does allowing these providers to lease local government owned fiber address the cost of building the needed infrastructure that connects homes and small businesses? Particularly given the challenging business case to justify building infrastructure to serve these areas?

A concise summary of poor state of American telecom

The FCC Is Leading Us Toward Catastrophe – Backchannel: Adding a little internet-y flavor to basic, physical telecommunications lines makes zero difference to the economics of building these essential connections. Because the upfront costs of building communications lines — very physical things, lots of labor costs involved — are high, because no one needs two lines to their house, and because it was cheaper to upgrade the cable systems to higher speeds than to dig up copper wires and replace them with fiber, we have ended up with a country subject to geographically divided markets, private, unconstrained monopolies, and big holes where internet access is rare and expensive where it exists at all. In urban areas, local cable monopolies generally wield tremendous power and charge as much as they like. Rural places, meanwhile, are often relegated to inadequate connections over copper phone lines.

Susan Crawford provides an concise summary of the poor state of American telecommunications borne out of misguided and excessive reliance on market forces to modernize and build out the nation's telecom infrastructure in a natural monopoly market where market forces don't work.

Robert W. Taylor, a pioneer of the modern computer, dies at 85 - LA Times

Robert W. Taylor, a pioneer of the modern computer, dies at 85 - LA Times: Robert W. Taylor, one of the most important figures in the creation of the modern computer and the Internet, has died. He was 85. According to his son Kurt Taylor, the scientist died Thursday at his home in Woodside. He suffered from Parkinson’s disease and other ailments. Taylor’s name was not known to the public, but it was a byword in computer science and networking, where he was a key innovator who transformed the world of technology. Taylor was a Pentagon researcher in the 1960s when he launched Arpanet, which evolved into what we know today as the Internet.

Presaging the concern in our current time over disparate access to advanced Internet-based telecommunications, Taylor wrote the following in a paper he co-authored, The Computer as a Communication Device published in April 1968 in Science and Society:

For the society, the impact will be good or bad, depending mainly on the question: Will "to be on line" be a privilege or a right? If only a favored segment of the population gets a chance to enjoy the advantage of "intelligence amplification," the network may exaggerate the discontinuity in the spectrum of intellectual opportunity.

USTelecom is right -- and wrong -- on public telecom infrastructure

Survey: Most Americans cities to build, sell Internet plans: Proponents of independent Internet networks argue that a "public option" for Internet access could help drive down the price of broadband and increase speeds. Opponents say the expense of building new networks represents an unacceptable financial risk for many local governments. "Municipal broadband networks too often end up failing and costing taxpayers millions," said USTelecom, a trade association representing Internet providers and telecom companies.

USTelecom is right. Modernizing telecommunications infrastructure rapidly enough to meet the nation's needs in an era of Internet protocol-based services will indeed cost tax dollars. It simply has to because infrastructure costs billions to build. That high price is not compatible with the short term business models of private investor owned legacy telephone and cable companies. That's why they're confined to piecemeal build outs and bandwidth rationing that leave many existing and putative customers in their service territories unserved and undeserved and complaining about lousy, poor value service. Even conservatives are waking up to the fact of this market failure, recognizing that market forces don't work well when it comes to high cost infrastructure. And it's about time.

USTelecom is also correct that local governments face significant financial risk due to the large sums involved. That's why I propose in my eBook Service Unavailable: America’s Telecommunications Infrastructure Crisis a federal "public option" since only the federal government -- and not state and local government -- can shoulder the burden.

Where USTelecom as well as those who support local government telecom infrastructure modernization projects are wrong is claiming these projects represent market competition with legacy incumbent telephone and cable companies. They do not and cannot. Local governments are responding to market failure, not any desire to compete in the telecommunications industry. They are looking to meet their needs to support economic development in the digital economy and address their citizens' complaints about crappy service from the incumbents. That situation has occurred because telecommunications infrastructure by definition is a natural monopoly and not a competitive market characterized by many sellers and buyers. Thus market forces fail, too weak to provide incentive for incumbent telephone and cable companies to provide better service.

U.S. at crossroads on telecom infrastructure modernization. The choice is to look to the past -- or to the future.

The United States stands at a crossroads when it comes to modernizing its telecommunications infrastructure. Many observers including Susan Crawford and this writer believe that modernization must be future-focused, providing an infrastructure that’s sufficiently robust and able to accommodate the rapidly growing demand for bandwidth that comes with the transition to digital, Internet-protocol based telecommunications. That means replacing the legacy metallic infrastructure that worked well for telephone and cable TV service in the 20^th century with the infrastructure of the 21^st: fiber optic connections serving every American doorstep. The future is big and it demands big thinking.

Others such as Doug Brake of the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation argue for a retrogressive approach that encourages us to think small. It proposes incremental fixes, prioritizing those areas worst impacted by market failure borne out of the misguided heavy reliance on investor-owned infrastructure. Instead of producing a future of bandwidth abundance where the term “broadband speed” is obsoleted, Brake’s incremental outlook would condemn Americans to a future of ongoing bandwidth poverty and its adverse effects for the larger socio-economy.

Competition isn't the answer for better premise telecom service

California lawmakers give cable utility perks, without utility obligations: Historically, there was a difference between telephone companies, which have been state regulated utilities for more than a century, and cable companies, which were originally franchised by local governments but managed to escape that oversight ten years ago. At least in California. Today, the differences are diminishingly small, particularly in urban and suburban markets where cable and telephone companies sell the same services and enjoy a comfortable, unregulated duopoly.

The distinguishing characteristics of a natural monopoly are high initial capital costs, usually related to infrastructure construction, and powerful economies of scale, both of which give the first mover in the market insurmountable advantages over would be competitors. In the old analog world, telephone and television service were completely different businesses, linked only by a common dependence on wireline networks. Now, both offer voice and video, and face competition in those segments from wireless providers. But they are also almost always the only wireline broadband option and wireless service is not a credible substitute, in either practical or microeconomic terms.

This is an excellent and much needed microeconomic description of the dominant privately owned telecommunications infrastructure that dominates in the United States that is all too often absent from the current policy discussion. Many ask why there isn’t competition in the telecommunications industry like exists in most consumer products and services. If it works there, then it must work in telecommunications also. More competition is the answer for better choice and consumer value, they conclude.

But as Steve Blum explains in his blog post, that reasoning is fatally flawed. More competition isn’t possible in a natural monopoly market where high cost barriers and the power of incumbency deter would be competitors. (Just ask Google how its flagging Google Fiber venture worked out) Telecommunications infrastructure will never be a robustly competitive market, defined as one with many sellers and buyers offering consumers many choices, enabling market forces that allow consumers to choose the best value and force out uncompetitive players.

When it comes to landline premise telecommunications service, most Americans can select from no more than two providers. And sadly for millions, none at all since the business model of vertically integrated investor owned providers must naturally redline and cherry pick among neighborhoods, creating winners and losers among consumers. As long as the nation relies on this broken model, it
will continue to lag when it comes to building the world class telecom infrastructure it needs to accommodate the explosion in digital communications.