Broadband

I like to distinguish between "little broadband" (i.e. DSL and cable modem) and "big broadband." What's the difference? "Little broadband" is typically able to consistently deliver only a few megabits per second down. In Blacksburg, as one example, DSL download speed is advertised as 1 megabit. The cable company here sells 20 meg and 30 meg packages, which work pretty well if there are not too many of your neighbors online at the same time. Performance degrades noticeably after 3 PM, when schools let out and kids come home and hit the computer, their tablets, and their smartphones.

In a discussion on LinkedIn, Michael Elling wrote, "Supply follows demand not the other way around." Exactly. I've been making this argument for years. Too many communities get tied up debating how to improve backhaul in and out of the community when they should be pumping intra-community demand by adding shared infrastructure and driving up demand. That local demand will attract investment to build more capacity to the community. It's not a guaranteed strategy in all cases, but it's already happening all over the country--but not in a good way.

Frontier Communications has signed a master network agreement with the City of Eagan, making Frontier the first service provider on the City's AccessEagan fiber network. Design Nine has worked closely with the City over the past several years to help plan, design, build, and manage the high performance network. Eagan is now a "Gigabit City," with a Gigabit standard fiber connection on the network.

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the FCC can enforce "reasonable" approval times for cell tower site applications, meaning that local governments can't stall applications. The FCC has wanted 90 day and 150 day deadlines for approval of cell tower site applications. As I read the article, it does not mean all tower site applications have to be approved by local government, but the local government has to approve or reject the application within the FCC "reasonable time" definition.

Chris Mitchell at MuniNetworks has a great point, and one I've argued for a long time: If most houses in America already have two cables (electric and phone), how is it that it is just too darn hard to run a third tiny cable, much smaller than an electric cable, to most homes? And from the business side, if the phone company and the electric company can make money from providing one service on their respective cables, how is it that the incumbents claim they can't make money from a cable that can deliver several services to a home or business?

Broadband Communities Summit ’13 covers the top broadband issues – with outstanding content and top-notch speakers.

There is a new track on Revenue Opportunities that includes a session on Telemedicine, and one on Revenue Opportunities for Networks that will demonstrate how generate the cash flow needed to make networks financially successful.

Here is a great article from an analyst in Australia. He correctly identifies that high speed broadband needs to be both available and affordable. Exactly. The incumbents are fond of playing a game of "Look,there's a squirrel!" with legislators by telling them that they (the incumbents) can provide high speed broadband anywhere.

The FCC has just released a new challenge to create Gigabit Cities throughout the nation. One might wonder why do we really need Gigabit fiber connections at our homes and businesses.

The China Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has said that all new residences will be connected to fiber if an existing network is available, starting this spring, and the fiber will be operated on an open access basis, with residents able to choose from several providers.

From the always excellent MuniNetworks, the story of how a tiny community out in the middle of nowhere attracted a $600 million data center. If you have never been to The Dalles, it really is an extremely isolated place. It's a beautiful town on the edge of the Columbia River. Fed up with lousy broadband, the community built its own fiber ring, and coupled with reliable electric power, that brought Google and its $600 million data center to the community.

We get asked constantly, "Isn't fiber risky? What if wireless is better?" Fiber is a highly stable, very reliable forty year hard asset that you can take to the bank, because unlike nearly every other kind of community infrastructure (roads, water, sewer), you can increase fiber capacity without digging new ditches or having to hang more fiber on poles. You just change out the equipment at each end, which is a fraction of the cost of building new fiber.

Fiber is future proofing your community and your economic development future.

LinkedIn has announced free voice calling for its members. The business directory service has been adding new features recently, layering Facebook and Twitter style features on top of its basic resume and business contact services. In partnership with Plingm, a Swedish mobile VoIP provider (think Skype), any LinkedIn member will be able to initiate a voice call with any other LinkedIn member anywhere in the world. To take advantage of the service, you have to download the Plingm app for your smartphone.

After Hurricane Sandy, cell phone networks in the affected areas were, by and large, not working. Like the situation after Hurricane Katrina, many cell tower sites had no long term back up power source (i.e. a generator), fuel to keep generators running was not available, or generators were flooded out because they were installed on the ground. In the New Orleans area, it was not the storm that took out networks, it was the flooding.

If you are interested in seeing firsthand what happens when a city invests in open fiber, there is still time to register for the Broadband Communities Community Fiber Networks conference in Danville, Virginia in early November. Danville's open access fiber network has been a key part of an enormously successful downtown revitalization effort that has brought hundreds of new jobs to the community and international firms have been re-locating to Danville in part because of the high performance, low cost open access fiber network.

Susan Crawford, writing as a Fellow of the Roosevelt Institute, argues eloquently for paying more attention to broadband capacity and affordability, especially in rural areas of the U.S. She argues that well-provisioned, modern broadband connectivity is essential to economic growth.

Chattanooga is providing financial assistance to people with technical backgrounds who agree to buy a house and move to the area. It's a brilliant idea, and coupled with their fiber network, Chattanooga continues to prove they are not just serving up the same old warmed over, forty year old economic development strategies.

Via Slashdot, here is a link to a new book that talks about why Internet and broadband in the U.S. is so poor. It's worth a read....basically, all the money has been spent on mobile cellular networks and not on local fiber infrastructure. And adding to the problem, in most markets, there is cartel pricing via the telco/cableco duopoly.

Via Eldo Telecom, there is a Calix U.S. Rural Broadband Report with depressing news about broadband cost and availability in rural America (about 70% of the U.S.). Rural residents don't even have the laughingly pathetic 4 meg down/1 meg up of the national broadband target. Most rural broadband is running between 1 and 3 megabits.

PETALUMA, CA – July 23, 2012 – Calix, Inc. (NYSE: CALX) today announced that New Hampshire FastRoads (NH FastRoads) has selected the Calix E7-2 Ethernet Service Access Platform (ESAP) and 700GE family of optical network terminals (ONTs) to provide point-to-point gigabit Ethernet services to underserved subscribers in 35 communities throughout the western part of the state.

British Telecom climbed aboard the clue train and has rolled out open access (they call it OpenReach) on their fiber network, inviting service providers to sell to BT-connected homes and businesses.