Broadband stimulus package should be thoughtful

Submitted by acohill on Mon, 12/29/2008 - 10:10.

Wired has a thoughtful article about the potential (good and bad) for a broadband stimulus initiative. There is much speculation that the incoming adminstration will, among other spending initiatives, provide funds for broadband deployment.

Ironically, taking fiber to every home and business in America (about 80 million premises), would be much less expensive than many of the other "bailout" initiatives and would be much more likely to have positive effects. The total cost would probably be around $175 billion if done the right way, which is a series of well-designed local and regional initiatives pursuing a single open access, open services network with all telecom services provided by the private sector (and the network, the digital road system, managed locally or regionally as a public good).

Ownership and management structures should be allowed to vary; in some places direct municipal ownership might be the best approach. In other parts of the country, a regional broadband authority or a broadband coop might be more appropriate.

What we don't need is handouts to the incumbent telcos, who have, for the most part, diligently pursued failed business models and who have stubbornly refused to provide affordable business class services in the face growing demand. And we don't need a Federal Bureau of Telecommunications creating an Orwellian nightmare of centrally managed services. Local and regional governments have successfully managed road networks locally for decades. We can use this tried and true approach to build digital road systems. The Interstate Highway System is a good example of useful Federal intervention: Federal funds financed the development of highways, but states took over ownership and management once they were built.

We now just need to push that down a level, as what is badly needed is NOT more "information superhighways," but instead local connections to homes and businesses. When you get down to hooking up local property, this is best managed locally. Do we really want State or Federal agencies plowing up our yards and streets? Better to work with local governments, who already do this very well with water, sewer, and roads.

FCC Chairman calls for free wireless Internet access

Submitted by acohill on Wed, 12/03/2008 - 10:52.

Outgoing FCC Chairman Kevin Martin has called for free Internet access nationwide, with adult content filters in place to prevent children from accessing porn. This would cost billions to implement, and it is not at all clear who would pay for it. "Free" to the user is not the same as "free" of all costs. Someone still has to fund the construction of the network and pay for the substantial ongoing support and maintenance. Free muni wireless networks have not always fared well, and many "free" projects have suffered from low use rates and mediocre service.

The fundamental problem with "free" broadband services is over-use because the cost to the user appears to be zero. Fees for broadband services are a very useful mechanism not only for paying for the system but also to regulate use. Network admins have extensive data that shows a small minority of users (typically about 5%) tend to use a disproportionate amount of total bandwidth (often using more than 50% of available bandwidth). Pricing services helps regulate use and maintain more consistent levels of service for all users.

Requiring providers to set aside a portion of the wireless spectrum for free use only raises prices for everyone else buying the euphemistically called "premium service." From an economic development perspective, free wireless broadband is not a business attraction strategy, and may even drive businesses away.
Wireless broadband is not a business class service unless no other alternative (e.g. fiber) exists.

Monticello, Minnesota telecom lawsuit dismissed

Submitted by acohill on Thu, 10/09/2008 - 13:15.

A lawsuit filed by the incumbent telephone company in Monticello, Minnesota sought to stop the city from building its own fiber to the home (FTTH) network. The project was designed as a public/private partnership, with Hiawatha Broadband Communications, another Minnesota telecom firm, signed up to operate the system and provide services.

Yesterday, the 10th District Court in Minnesota dismissed the case, finding that the city had the right to issue bonds for a telecom utility and that the city had the right to operate a telecom utility.

The Court went into some detail about the meaning of a "public convenience," as there is a Minnesota law on the books that gives municipalities the right to own and operate a "public convenience." Part of the lawsuit alleged that a fiber network was not a public convenience, but the court has said that it is.

This ruling applies only in Minnesota, but it still may have some influence in other states. Monticello was particularly lucky, as the case was resolved in less than a year. Courts have generally found in favor of municipalities, but the cases often drag on for years.

End user agreements give away your rights

Submitted by acohill on Thu, 09/04/2008 - 08:50.

With the release of Chrome, the new Web browser from Google, a side story has developed, as it appears that the End User License Agreement (EULA) for Chrome gives Google an irrevocable right to use any content you might post using the Chrome browser. As it turns out, the legal language in the Chrome EULA is cut and pasted from Google's other EULAs, including the Google services like their word processor and spreadsheet.

So anything you write using the Google word processor, Google immediately has a license to use, in perpetuity. That would include novels, short stories, business plans, school reports, news stories, blog postings, podcasts, videos--everything becomes the property of Google. It's a nonexclusive license, meaning you can still do whatever you like with it, but if you write the great American novel with the Google word processor, they can print it and sell it in direct competition with you. They can make a copy of your company business plans and sell it on the Web to competitors.

There is still no such thing as a free lunch.

Update: Google has amended the Chrome EULA to remove the clause that gives them the rights to content. But the problem still remains with other Google apps and services.

Can covered bonds build telecom for communities?

Submitted by acohill on Mon, 08/04/2008 - 07:49.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Paulson has endorsed "covered bonds," which are a new idea in the United States but have been used in Europe for centuries, according to this article. Covered bonds are secured by loans carried on the books of the issuing bank. Keeping the loans on the books forces the bank to pay attention to the performance of those loans, unlike the mortgage mess, where mortgages were packaged, re-packaged, and sold until no one really knew how the mortgages were performing.

Covered bonds can be used as an investment vehicle for issuing mortgages, but in Europe, they have been used heavily by the public sector to finance infrastructure, and are backed by the governments receiving the funds. Why are they different than general obligation bonds? Covered bonds enable local governments to tap a much larger, global marketplace of capital funds, meaning more cash could be available for local infrastructure projects at lower rates because of increased competition among lenders.

NATOA calls for local government action, fiber

Submitted by acohill on Tue, 07/22/2008 - 14:05.

The National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors (NATOA) has called for a range of policy changes and investments that includes a guaranteed right for local governments to invest in broadband and fiber as the preferred mode of access.

Comcast in trouble over service blocking

Submitted by acohill on Fri, 07/11/2008 - 09:12.

Comcast has been reprimanded by the FCC for blocking certain Internet services without telling customers and without regard for the level of use. Service providers can be as arbitrary as they like in managing their Internet access services, but they have to tell customer what they are doing. A service-based network would not need to penalize customers for doing something they enjoy, but they would probably pay more. Today's broadband model is upside down for service providers because they make the most money when a customer never turns their computer on; they make the least if the customer is on the Internet all day long. That is the exact opposite of every other business in the world, and it's why broadband is such a mess in the U.S. Fortunately, communities like Danville, Virginia are changing that model.

FCC provides new definitions of broadband

Submitted by acohill on Wed, 06/25/2008 - 10:01.

The FCC has finally released new definitions of broadband.

• First Generation: 200 Kbps up to 768 Kbps

• Basic Broadband: 768 Kbps to 1.5 megabits per second
• 1.5 Mbps to to less than 3 Mbps
• 3 Mbps to less than 6 Mbps
• 6 Mbps to less than 10 Mbps
• 10 Mbps to less than 25 Mbps
• 25 Mbps to less than 100.0 Mbps
• 100 Mbps and beyond

This is a major improvement over the old definition of "200 kilobits" as broadband. By this old definition, the country has very high levels of broadband penetration, but made the U.S. the laughingstock of the rest of the world. In much of Europe, residential broadband tends to be north of 40+ MEGABITS, or about 200 times more capacity than the FCC definition.

The graded scale is useful because it can provided benchmarks to measure progress in a community or region. If the FCC has provided targets, that would have been even better. For example, a ten year target could be to have 90% of businesses and homes in the "100 Mbps and beyond" category, and indeed, U.S. community broadband projects like the one in Danville, Virginia are deploying "100 Mbps and beyond" today.

Comcast to target users, not protocols

Submitted by acohill on Thu, 06/05/2008 - 12:07.

Comcast has announced that it will start slowing down the traffic of its broadband users if they are using too much; "too much" generally means running P2P (peer to peer) filesharing applications like BitTorrent, which can run for hours or days while sending or receiving large files (like movies or music).

The strategy is reasonable, given that cable companies price their Internet services in part based on average use. Customers that far exceed those average use parameters slow things down for everyone else on that cable modem network segment, which often includes 100-200 neighbors. Cable modem bandwidth, like most wireless services, is shared among all connected users at an access point (wireless) or a cable network mode. Fortunately, not all users are doing something at the same time, but background applications like BitTorrent do run continuously for long periods of time.

Broadband Properties '08: FCC--Bandwidth doubling every two years

Submitted by acohill on Sun, 05/04/2008 - 14:32.

FCC Commissioner Deborah Tate spoke on the last day of the Broadband Properties conference. She had some interesting statistics that should give pause to anyone who thinks that DSL and cable modem broadband services are "good enough." Commissioner Tate noted that:

• Demand for bandwidth has been doubling every two years for the last ten years.
• By 2015 (just seven years from now), the FCC thinks bandwidth requirements will be fifty times (50x) what they are today.
• In Japan, where they have had 100 megabit connections to homes and businesses available for several years, they are already observing congestion--meaning 100 megabit pipes are already filling up.
• Americans are watching more than 10 billion videos per month over the Internet.

Tate went on to enumerate that choice was important to buyers of telecom services, and she listed that choice should be available for services, for providers, and for equipment.