Broadband

According to most reports that I have seen, the Heartland Institute is an "astroturf" organization (the term refers to a group that has a hidden agenda--in other words, it's appearance is fake, like Astroturf).

There are many advantages to working out of the home, but snow days are not one of them.

Normally, the neighborhood cable network is reasonably responsive during the day, because kids and parents are at work. I can get done what I need to do without waiting.

But with six inches of snow on the ground and more falling, schools and many businesses are closed, and apparently many people have headed for the Internet, completely bogging down the cable modem service. It's very pokey, with long waits for simple things like loading a Web page.

The New York Times (registration required) has a very biased article about Philadelphia's plan for citywide wireless broadband. The paper interviewed mainly opponents of the plan, and seemed to go to great lengths to interview those opponents, while trivializing successful community projects. Worth a read just to understand the anti-community sentiment out there.

If you are interested in community broadband, you may want to take a look at the upcoming Digital Cities Expo, which will be in northern Virginia (Reston) in April.

The conference will have sessions covering the economic, legal, financial, technological, and infrastructure issues surrounding municipal broadband (Disclaimer: I'm one of the speakers).

This CNet article says that businesses are realizing the value of dark fiber, and are willing to pay for it.

Here is the money quote:

"....Ford [Motor Company] found that it would cost less to lay its own optical fiber lines than to subscribe to a service from the local phone company."

Here is an excerpt from a brochure about a project in Southside Virginia, a rural area that has traditionally relied on tobacco as a primary engine of its economy. Furniture and textile manufacturing were also mainstays for jobs and development, but over the past twenty years, all three have declined sharply.

The low cost of living, combined with the proximity to Greensboro and the North Carolina Research Triangle, may make Southside one of the best places to work in America, once this infrastructure is in place.

Also included as a service will be MSAPs in some locations, which create very high performance community intranets that support next generation multimedia services. The MSAP concept was pioneered by me while I was Director of the Blacksburg Electronic Village. Blacksburg has had an MSAP in operation since 1999, and Danville, Virginia also has an MSAP.

Note the emphasis on leasing capacity to "all interested providers," which includes incumbents, who, if they are smart, will realize they can lower their costs by leasing instead of overbuilding.

The Mid-Atlantic Broadband Cooperative (MBC), a non-profit cooperative with funding from the Economic Development Authority (EDA) and the Virginia Tobacco Commission (VTC), has contracted to deploy an advanced open-access wholesale broadband network in Southside Virginia. The RBI is a 700-mile fiber-optic network with 48 strands of dedicated fiber backbone, Synchronous Optical Network (SONET) architecture, dual rings with 13 OC-192 backbone sites and 65 satellite locations providing low speed & high speed interconnect facilities (OC-3, OC-12, OC-48, STS, VT). In addition to the turn-key implementation of the RBI, MBC has invested in building a new state of the art Network Operations Control Center (NOCC) in South Boston, Virginia.

The RBI network will connect four cities, 20 counties and 56 industrial parks providing access to nearly 700,000 citizens and more than 19,000 businesses throughout Southside Virginia. The goal of this project is to promote economic development opportunities for the region, attracting technologybased business and industry. Network construction begins in January 2005 and will be turned-up in phases. MBC plans to have the entire network fully operational by December 2006. MBC will be selling/leasing fiber and services on a wholesale basis to all interested providers.

Northern Illinois, which is surprisingly rural in nature despite being a relatively easy drive to Chicago, has grabbed hold of the future. Below is a press release announcing an ambitious regional project to get affordable, high capacity broadband throughout that area. In announcing the effort, an official connected with the effort said, "The communication infrastructure we're talking about will be as important as electricity, water."

Northern Illinois Technology Triangle Unlocks New Opportunities for Northern Illinois Communities

Rochelle Municipal Utilities announces plans for a multi-gigabit capacity fiber optic ring to serve local rural communities

Rochelle, IL - Today, Rochelle Mayor Chet Olson unveiled plans for a superior fiber-optic telecommunications network labeled the Northern Illinois Technology Triangle (NITT). The network will provide multi-gigabit capacity to the Northern Illinois region, connecting communities across Northern Illinois and opening new opportunities for growth in education, research and business.

The NITT is a joint venture between Rochelle Municipal Utilities (RMU) and the Illinois Municipal Broadband Communications Association (IMBCA). It will provide a looped broadband fiber network in a triangle along I-88 from Rock Falls to Naperville, with a section north to St. Charles, and from St. Charles along I-90 to Rockford, and then along I-39 from Rockford to Rochelle. The physical infrastructure will be implemented in three parts. IMBCA has already leased existing fiber along I-88 from Naperville west to Rock Falls and is now negotiating leases for existing fiber on I-90. Rochelle Municipal Utilities plans on installing the remaining leg of the triangle, from Rochelle to Rockford, where no fiber exits. The NITT is the first municipal utility fiber optic network consortium in Illinois.

Chet Olson, Rochelle's Mayor, said, "We're pleased to play a part in bringing about the Northern Illinois Technology Triangle. NITT is the beginning of a new era, not only for Rochelle, but for all communities in this region that choose to access this network. For my community, it means an opportunity to expand our economic base from manufacturing and rail service to technology services and support." The network ring is based upon fiber optic cable and will offer 33 (or more) wavelengths, each with the capacity to carry data at a rate up to 40 Gigabits per second. With just one Gigabit connection, a family can download their favorite DVD movie in less than one (1) minute, something which would normally take 13 days to download using a telephone dial-up connection.

The northern region of New Hamphsire is taking control of it's economic future by developing a technology master plan for the region, as reported by the AP.

One of the drivers of the project is the need to be competitive from an economic development perspective. Design Nine is providing the coordination and guidance for the effort.

The City Council of St. Paul, Minnesota has approved a study to consider the feasibility of citywide wireless broadband.

The three month study will look for "the common good" that might be gained from community-managed telecom infrastructure. This is, as far as I know, the first time the common good has been explicity acknowledged in this kind of study. It has been implicitly part of many other community telecom projects, but it's about time we started this particular conversation in more earnest.

USA Today has an article about Lafayette, Louisiana, which has been trying to put together a community fiber project for the past year. The southern Louisiana community has apparently been beaten down by BellSouth, which has vigorously opposed the deal.

BellSouth has claimed it is "unfair" for communities to offer a service the company could offer, even though it provides only DSL in the community, a pale shadow of the robust fiber network the city was planning.

At the risk of boring my regular readers, there are two ways to approach community telecom projects. One is to regard telecom infrastructure just like roads. Communities build the roads, but private companies (like BellSouth) deliver services (like dialtone or TV programming) to customers. The other approach is to regard telecom infrastructure like the municipal water or electric system, in which the city itself provides the customer services.

The latter is certainly more efficient, but given that many of our elected leaders still don't take any of this very seriously and given that we have a ridiculously complex regulatory environment, I think the former approach (a public/private partnership) is the only alternative.

Rightly or wrongly, communities that are trying to create public monopolies in this area are losing. The telecoms are outspending them and are buying whatever laws are needed to prevent community investments. But communities must invest to stay viable in the global economy, and Lafayette knows that. From the article:

"The future of Lafayette shouldn't be left to the whim of the big telecommunications companies, insists City Parish President Joey Durel. Installing fiber-optic cable, he credibly argues, is no different from laying down sidewalks or sewer lines.

In fact, the "triple play" plan mirrors the action Lafayette's city fathers took a century ago when they realized the private power companies were passing them by in favor of larger, more lucrative markets in Baton Rouge and New Orleans. To survive, they built their own municipal power system.

Here is an excellent article full of details about the citywide wireless project in Rio Rancho, New Mexico. Rio Rancho is a fast-growing suburb of Albequerque. Here is the quote that shows that Rio Rancho leaders "get it."

"We see it as an economic development tool—today's business needs good quality access, Palenick said [the city administrator].

Yet another former third world country has broadband projects underway that leave U.S. efforts in the dust. Andra Pradesh, a state of India, has embarked on an ambitious but entirely doable project to build a statewide network consisting of a 10 gigabit per second backbone, 1 gigabit Ethernet trunks to a thousand locations, and 100 megabit fiber connections to every town in the state.

Esme Vos at MuniWireless thinks that the real reason behind Verizon's fevered opposition of community wireless in Philadelphia is that Verizon is terrified of cheap VoIP over WiFi.

Holman Jenkins, an editorial writer for the Wall Street Journal, has an article (p. A21) about DSL and the future of that technology. Jenkins calls the '96 Telecom Deregulation Act a "DSL nuclear winter." That's probably a bit strong, but hardly anyone on either side of the linesharing issues of the telephone companies would say the law was crafted properly.

The original law forced the phone companies to share their copper lines with competitors, and it was only this fall that the FCC relaxed those rules. Again, no matter what side of the issue you are on (phone company or community), the outcome of the original ruling was to stall broadband investments by the incumbent phone companies.

As so many Federal initiatives ("We're from the government and we're here to help you..."), unintended consequences kicked in, big time. While the phone companies dithered, moaned, and complained, the cable companies upgraded their systems and captured 75% of the current broadband market, leaving DSL (the phone companies) with a paltry 15%.

Since the FCC changed the rules to free the phone companies from line sharing at wholesale prices, DSL costs have fallen dramatically--by as much as 50% in a lot of markets, and the service is generally priced below cable modem service.

But from a community perspective, the news has been bad and still looks bad. The marketplace, because of all this, has been effectively re-monopolized, but instead of a regulated public monopoly (pre 1996), communities are stuck with marketplace monopolies by the phone and cable companies.

To make things worse, in places like Pennsylvania, Verizon says it must be consulted before communities start their own broadband services. Even worse, lawmakers like Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell (D) thinks it is just fine to give a private company control over the future of rural communities.

The solution is for communities to stay away from the service end of the business. Treat broadband infrastructure just the way communities manage roads--build digital roads, but let private companies deliver the services while paying a use fee.

According to a CNet article, BellSouth plans to provide higher capacity broadband to most of its customer base in the next five years.

Video is driving the plans. The cable companies have not only captured about 75% of the broadband market, compared to the phone companies' paltry 15%, but the cable companies can offer the fabled triple play--voice, data, and video.

Iowa has what many other communities won't take the time to get--a clear, concise vision for the future. A consortium of Iowa communities and businesspeople have decided on a very simple goal--to have the best broadband infrastructure in the country.

Even better, based on the news article, they are doing it exactly the right way--with community investments in the transport layer (e.g. dark fiber) and leasing it to access and service providers who will deliver the services.

The City of Philadelphia has been much in the technology news lately because of its ambitious plans to offer wireless broadband throughout much of the city. It's now back in the news with its announcement that it will fight a statewide ban on municipalities offering Internet access and related services.

I had the privilege of attending what I think was a historic and potentially revolutionary meeting in Vancouver, British Columbia, on Tuesday. The provincial government had convened an all day conversation about the broadband needs of rural communities, and how to best get affordable broadband connections to those communities.

It was Garth Graham, one of the real pioneers of the community technology movement, who grabbed me after lunch and pointed out that as far as he knew, it was the first time ever that four different groups of people met in the same room to talk about rural broadband problems. Represented at the meeting were:

• Provincial government leaders, who had convened the meeting and wanted to explore ways to use the telecom buying power of the provincial government to get better broadband services into rural communities.
• Large and small telecom access and service providers, including the incumbent telecom providers Bell and Telus.
• Community network managers and leaders; in British Columbia, community networks play a key role in providing Internet access in rural parts of the country, and collectively they have thousands of customers.
• Community leaders, who were there to share their needs, goals, and aspirations, and to learn about what they can do to get affordable broadband to their communities more quickly.

It was a remarkable meeting, with open, frank, and stimulating dialogue from all four groups. The fact that it happened, that so many people attended (over 50 people), and that there was such honest speaking, listening, and understanding, suggests that we have truly turned a corner in beginning to identify and actually implement community telecom solutions that have a chance of meeting both public needs (the common good) and private needs (increasing shareholder value).

The group agreed that more meetings were needed to hash out details, but there was remarkable consensus that the problem is largely one of policy, administration, and management, and that this is not a technology problem, in the sense that it is NOT a matter of just picking wireless, or fiber, or Gigabit Ethernet, or so on. All parties agreed that communities and regions need some new and yet to be determined entity to help with telecommunications issues (infrastructure, access, services, policy, regulation).

A flurry of articles like this are talking about ADSL2+, a new standard for DSL service over old copper phone lines. ADSL2+ is not only too long as an acronym, it offers too little, and ironically increases the digital divide, in my opinion.

In short, the new service will provide increased bandwidth over copper phone lines, but only if you are about one and a half miles from the telephone switch, as opposed to the three miles of the current DSL offering. ADSL2+ also will go further than the old three mile limitation, but only at low data rates--about four times dial up speeds.

So a few subscribers may get DSL service where they could not before, but only at much slower than "normal" DSL. And a few subscribers may get much faster service, but only if they are very close to the telephone central office. And it's important to remember that the distance rule of thumb is not line of sight, but cable feet; not only that, the ability to deliver DSL is highly dependent on the quality of the copper cable. In many rural areas, DSL just does not work on older cable plant, even inside the distance limits.

It's hard to see how this benefits anyone, even the phone company. It further segments their own customer base and prevents them from offering the same set of services to all customers. For example, some ADSL2+ customers might be able to get a single channel of high quality high defintion TV (HDTV), but others will not. How you market that is a mystery to me--"HDTV--it might work in your area, but maybe not!"

The phone companies are still very fixated on market share, rather than on offering good services in a competitive marketplace. So in their minds, anything that continues to allow them to lock customers up over copper is good, even if it's bad. Does that make sense to you? It doesn't to me either, but that's their strategy until they can figure out a way to justify running fiber to neighborhood.

In the Northern Neck of Virginia, broadband is being viewed (appropriately) as a critical economic development issue.