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The FCC yesterday offered the nation’s largest price cap carriers the opportunity to share up to $485 million in Connect America Funding to help bring broadband to households that cannot get broadband today. The program differs in several ways from a similar program last year and is likely to be viewed more favorably by at least some of the carriers. Most importantly the new program allows carriers to collect funding for areas that currently can get broadband service at speeds up to 3 Mbps downstream and 768 kbps upstream. Last year only areas that could not get service at speeds above 768 kbps downstream and 200 kbps upstream were targeted. Carriers will be offered more money for homes with the slower service, however. While carriers will be able to collect $775 per line for homes that cannot get service above the 768kbps/ 200kbps rate they will collect $550 per line for homes that cannot get service above the 3 Mbps/ 768 kbps rate. And before carriers can collect any funding for homes in the second category, they must agree to deploy service to all homes in the first category that can be economically served for $1550. That number assumes the carrier will accept $775 from the fund and contribute an identical amount of funding of its own. Three of the 10 price cap carriers eligible for funding – CenturyLink, Frontier and Windstream – already have agreed to match whatever funding they agree to accept with their own investment dollars. Click headline to read more--
Yes, Virginia, there is a limit to what Verizon will let you do with FiOS' "unlimited" data plan. And a California man discovered that limit when he got a phone call from a Verizon representative wanting to know what, exactly, he was doing to create more than 50 terabytes of traffic on average per month—hitting a peak of 77TB in March alone. "I have never heard of this happening to anyone," the 27-year-old Californian—who uses the screen name houkouonchi and would prefer not to be identified by name—wrote in a post on DSLreports.com entitled "LOL VZ called me about my bandwidth usage Gotta go Biz." "But I probably use more bandwidth than any FiOS customer in California, so I am not super surprised about this." Curious about how one person could generate that kind of traffic, Ars reached out to houkouonchi and spoke with him via instant message. As it turns out, he's the ultimate outlier. His problem is more that he's violated Verizon's terms of service than his excessive bandwidth usage. An IT professional who manages a test lab for an Internet storage company, houkouonchi has been providing friends and family a personal VPN, video streaming, and peer-to-peer file service—running a rack of seven servers with 209TB of raw storage in his house. Click headline to read more--
Verizon has told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit that its recent ruling in a National Labor Relations Board case forecloses the FCC's argument in defense of network neutrality rules that broadband providers are not speakers but only "conduits" for speech.
In its January filing to the court, the FCC said that Verizon and other broadband providers "do not engage in speech; they transport the speech of others, as a messenger delivers documents containing speech." It drew the distinction between that and "cable systems, newspapers, and other curated media," saying that broadband providers "do not exercise editorial discretion."
In a filing with the court on Wednesday, attorneys for Verizon, which has challenged the FCC's open Internet order, pointed to the case, National Association of Manufacturers [NAM], et al. v. National Labor Relations Board [NLRB], decided by the circuit May 7 to argue that the FCC was wrong.
In that decision, the court pointed to what it said were "some firmly established principles of free speech law," including "the ‘dissemination of messages others have created is entitled to the same level of protection as the ‘creation' of messages."
"NAM found that the posting rule compelled speech by requiring the dissemination of information created by others and stressed that it is no answer, when such speech is involved, to say that alternative avenues of communication remain open," said Verizon in the filing. Click headline to read more--
If you’ve been paying attention lately, you’ll see the signs of a significant disruption in computing. No, I’m not talking about mobile: That disruption already happened and we’re in the midst of it playing out now as PC sales have become stagnant at best. Instead, it’s within the browser: Google Chrome is the harbinger of change and through it, Google has huge potential to change computing once again. In fact, I’d go so far as to say, within a year, many of you will be using a Chromebook. Before you roll your eyes, let me add one caveat: That Chromebook won’t be Google-designed hardware; instead it will be on the Mac, Windows or Linux machine you have at that time. So it won’t be a Google-built device like my Chromebook Pixel is. Let’s step back and I’ll explain. Click headline to read more--
Ever wonder how fast the U.S. subscriber base for broadband is or isn’t growing? What about who is winning the pitched battle between cable and telecom companies to capture those highly desirable customers who can’t live without fast Internet access? The answer to both of those questions comes in the form of a new Leichtman Research Group, Inc. (LRG) study on U.S. broadband. There is good news on the subscriber front and illuminating news on the cable versus telephone company front. If nothing else, it is an interesting snapshot in time to contemplate. Click headline to read more and view chart full screen--
A new report is shining a spotlight on how much money North Carolina legislators received from cable providers during the debate over the “Level Playing Field/Local Gov’t Competition” act in 2010-2011. Now law, the act restricts the ability of local governments in the state to build publicly owned broadband networks.
Dialing up the Dollars: Telecommunication Interests Donated Heavily to NC Lawmakers shows that Republican lawmakers and sponsors of the act — House Bill 129 — received considerably more campaign contributions leading up to the 2010 elections from telecommunications donors than did their colleagues. Written by Denise Roth Barber of the National Institute on Money in State Politics — a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that collects and analyzes data on campaign contributions — the report states that the political action committees of six telecom companies and two related associations gave $1.6 million to state candidates in North Carolina from 2006 to 2011. The law, passed by the North Carolina Legislature last May, places significant deployment restrictions and imposes tax burdens on cities seeking to create their own high-speed networks. Bills similar to HB 129 were proposed in North Carolina in previous years and were voted down by a Democrat-controlled Legislature. But in 2011, for the first time in a century, the state’s Senate and House were controlled by a Republican majority. According to experts, the shift in political ideology might have been one of the contributing factors behind HB 129’s success. But while donating money to a political campaign is common, the amount given to some North Carolina raises the question of whether the funding had an undue influence on those voting for the bill. Specifically, Rep. Thom Tillis, who became speaker of North Carolina’s House in 2011 and ran unopposed in the 2010 election, received $37,000 from telecommunications political action committees in 2010-2011. That figure is almost 10 times the amount he received during the prior two election cycles. Tillis voted in favor of HB 129. Click headline to rerad more--
Here'a an excellent piece on the promise and peril of "smart cities," which could be part of a system to make cities fairer and more transparent, or could form the basis for an authoritarian lockdown. As Adam Greenfield says, "[the centralized model of the smart city is] disturbingly consonant with the exercise of authoritarianism." The author mentions Greenfield's upcoming book "The City is Here for You to Use" (a very promising-looking read) as well as Smart Cities: Big Data, Civic Hackers, and the Quest for a New Utopia, which is out in the fall. Click headline to read more--
High-speed Internet has become such a vital business at Time Warner Cable that the first offer subscribers nationwide see when they visit the website is a pitch for a $19.95 monthly standalone broadband service. For more than a decade, Time Warner Cable, Charter Communications and other major MSOs have focused the bulk of their marketing efforts on selling triple-plays of subscription video, Internet and phone service to subscribers for about $90 monthly. But with demand for high-speed service outpacing sales of the industry's core pay TV product--and data generating higher profit margins than video because of rising programming costs--more cable MSOs are beginning to tout broadband only options.
"The industry has changed and the market has changed, where five or 10 years ago, we went with one size fits all," said Jeffrey Hirsch, TWC's EVP and chief marketing and sales officer.
Click headline to read more--
Speaking at the J.P. Morgan Global Technology, Media and Telecom Conference earlier this month, Verizon CFO Fran Shammo stated that the company's earliest FiOS markets are now reaching penetration targets and that most of their new customers are signing up for faster speeds. According to Shammo, 60% of new FiOS Internet subscribers added in the first quarter chose Quantum speeds of 50/25 Mbps or faster. He also stated that Dallas, Verizon's first FiOS launch market, is now reaching 50% penetration. Previous Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg once suggested he'd wanted to see 40% penetration in most existing markets before continuing FiOS expansion. Subsequent CEOs (and Shammo) have made it pretty clear that another big FiOS expansion push will probably never happen.
U.S. customer satisfaction with Internet service providers (ISPs) is at rock bottom. The bad news is that Americans hate their internet service providers as much as they hate airlines and subscription television services. This is the first year the independent American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) included ISPs in its annual ACSI survey, and the results are horrible. Verizon FiOS, fiber-based wired broadband service, had the highest satisfaction score of 71. The other ISP scores slide downhill until Comcast bottoms out at 62. Time Warner Cable is at 63 and ATT has a score of 65. The average aggregated score for American. ISPs is 65. A May 20 Web Pro News article puts these ratings into perspective: ISPs and only three other major U.S. industries have average customer satisfaction scores below 70. The airline, subscription telephone and social media industries round out the list. ISPs now share space at the bottom with the most joked about, complaint-generating industries in the U.S. A May 20 Yahoo News article says that America's major beefs are with call center service, the variety of Internet plans offered by ISPs, and the quality of online video streaming. Customers also have a hard time finding alternatives in markets where competition between broadband companies is pitiful or nonexistent. Click headline to read more--
Here's an amusing one out of the UK. Nick Henderson has created something of a Swiftian "modest proposal" for people who feel guilty about infringement. Modeled after the idea of carbon offsets to become "carbon neutral," he suggests a process for becoming "piracy neutral," which is that if you happen to infringe by downloading an unauthorized song, you should freely release a track of your own composition into the world without restrictions. Click headline to read more and watch video of his proposal--
Mignon Clyburn, acting chairwoman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), has announced that the watchdog is poised to oversee the second release of Phase 1 funding for the Connect America Fund (CAF). The CAF will offer up to USD485 million to expand fixed broadband in rural America, leveraging millions in additional private investment. According to the watchdog, approximately 15 million Americans, most of them living in rural areas, still lack broadband access. An FCC press release adds: ‘Without broadband, consumers and small businesses are cut off from the USD8 trillion global internet economy, severely limiting opportunities for jobs and economic prosperity’.
T-Mobile US has announced two new international flat-rate data offerings for business customers, with a view to addressing the increased demand for data and the sometimes problematic costs associated with international data roaming. Drew Kelton, T-Mobile’s executive vice president (B2B), commented: ‘The biggest pain point around international business travel, besides the travel itself, is the unpredictability of the wireless bill following the trip – from international data roaming fees to costly overage charges. We are tackling these issues head on and providing our customers with transparency, simplicity, predictability and choice. Our new international data offerings help remove the risk of ‘bill shock,’ enabling business customers to simply focus on staying productive and connected from nearly anywhere’. With the new plans business customers can select passes with up to 150MB of data (USD25 per month) or 1GB of data (USD120 per month), in 119 countries worldwide. Click headline to read more--
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Japan’s Softbank Corp says that if wins control of Sprint Nextel, it will remove all equipment installed by Chinese vendor Huawei that Sprint affiliate Clearwire uses in its network infrastructure. The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reports that the Japanese giant is willing to foot the USD1 billion bill in an effort to please US authorities; a government report last year found that Huawei and ZTE pose a potential security risk because their equipment could be used for espionage purposes. Clearwire has previously indicated that Huawei’s gear is deployed at the edge of its network, while its core network equipment is provided by domestic vendors Cisco and Ciena. In related news, Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son is reportedly willing to let the US government choose one of the ten directors to its board in a bid to allay US security concerns. The WSJ has suggested that the director in question will be responsible for overseeing national security issues. The development comes at a time when rival Sprint suitor DISH Network is attempting to derail Softbank’s bid with an aggressive PR campaign against its Japanese opponent, running full-page colour adverts in publications such as the Washington Post, Politico and The National Journal, comparing Softbank’s proposal to acquire Sprint to the 2006 controversy surrounding Dubai Ports World’s ownership of various ports on America’s eastern seaboard. Click headline to read more--
Steven Cherry: Today’s show is about a country that, after a natural disaster, couldn’t restore phone service to some of its people for seven months. Do I mean Sri Lanka after the 2004 tsunami? Haiti and the 2010 earthquake? Nope, it’s the United States after Hurricane Sandy. In towns in New York and New Jersey, today, in May 2013, the incumbent carrier, Verizon, has not fully restored landline phone service and may never do so, breaking a century-old promise. Back at the turn of the 20th century, the president of the American Telephone and Telegraph Co., Theodore Vail, offered up a new vision of telephony. In magazine ads he proclaimed: “One policy, one system, universal service.” That seemed a fair deal. It was inefficient, at best, to have different phone company wires coming into the home. It would have been worse than inefficient to have many phone companies without interconnecting them—as if Verizon and Sprint and T-Mobile customers couldn’t call one another. So Vail offered for AT&T to be the universal phone company, and in exchange, he would also offer universal service in the other sense—that everyone, every household, every business, every individual, would be connected. Those days are gone. Party lines and Princess phones are gone. Even the dial tone is almost gone. And soon, universal service may be gone. My guest today is Bruce Kushnick. He’s the chairman of Teletruth and executive director of the New Networks Institute, an organization whose tagline is “Telecom and Broadband Research for the Public Interest.” He’s a lifelong telecommunications analyst and a tireless consumer advocate. He joins us by phone. Click headline to read the transcript or listen to the podcast--
The FCC will try again to hand out rural broadband subsidies, this time expanding the areas where it can be used while putting conditions on that expanded build-out, a challenge system for areas identified as unserved, and allowing applicants to get more than they qualify for if, as was the case the first time around, there is money left over.
The FCC Wednesday announced that it is releasing a second tranche of monies -- up to $485 million -- in Phase I of its Connect America Fund investments to support rural fixed broadband buildouts in unserved areas. It is also expanding its definition of unserved area from those without dial-up speeds (768 downstream/200 Kbps upstream) to some areas lacking up to the FCC's definition of high-speed access (at least 3 Mbps downstream and 768 Mbps upstream).
The FCC last fall proposed expanding eligibility for Phase I to get more of the money used.
Most of the first round of Phase I funding ($185 million out of $300 million) was not used -- AT&T and Verizon, for example, did not apply citing the build-out conditions for the projects. The newest round of funding maintains those requirements.
"We applaud the FCC for making these funds available for greater deployment of broadband," said Verizon. "We will make a decision on seeking funds after a careful analysis." AT&T had not returned a request for comment at press time.
There will also be a challenge system to the eligibility of areas identified as unserved by high-speed broadband in the National Broadband Map. Both the National Cable & Telecommunications Association and the American Cable Association said such a system was crucial when arguing for changes to Phase II of the fund (not to be confused with the just-announced second tranche of Phase I). Click headline to read more and access links to prior articles--
In the previous post we examined the state-based ALEC model legislation that was created by AT&T et al and how it was used in some states, including Florida. However, the ALEC model legislation was created by AT&T; the fact that AT&T filed a petition with the FCC to finish the ALEC state-based campaign at the federal level should come as no surprise. Brief History
In December 2009, AT&T filed comments with the FCC as part of National Broadband Plan titled "The Transition from the Legacy Circuit-Switched Network to Broadband" which laid out, in detail, the AT&T-ALEC model of the future -- remove as much regulations and obligations as possible. In 2009, AT&T et al got the FCC to create a group within the FCC's Technological Advisory Council (TAC) to start the process of "sunsetting" -- i.e., closing down America's utility networks -- the Public Switched Telephone Networks (PSTN). As we discussed, TAC is as model of regulatory capture. AT&T and Verizon, (two of the largest incumbent phone companies who control the PSTN in their states) are not only on the committee but the majority of the TAC members have direct financial ties to either AT&T or Verizon or both. Moreover, the TAC has been headed by Tom Wheeler, who is the Obama nominee for the new chairman of the FCC, replacing Julius Genachowski -- and was former head of the cable association, the NCTA, and the wireless association, CTIA. In August 2012, AT&T set the stage with a letter to FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai, outlining the ALEC principles. In November 2012, AT&T followed up with a petition to the FCC to start the process to close down the networks, claiming that this was done because of the aging copper networks and that they were moving toward using Internet protocol services -- such as VOIP. Around the same time, the TAC announced their conclusions: that the networks should be 'transitioned' -- meaning closed, agreeing with AT&T. In December, 2012, the FCC started a "Transition Task Force" to make recommendations to start this "sunsetting" process. And on May 10, 2013, the FCC agreed with AT&T, in part, and has started the path for trials to 'transition' the PSTN. Click headline to read more--
With the recent launch of Google Fiber in Kansas City and the announcements of future deployments in Austin, Provo and Grandview, gigabit connectivity is back in the headlines; however, even with this increased level of attention, the majority of Americans still don’t seem to understand the immediate value of ultra high-speed broadband. Critics boil this key advancement down to superficial uses like the speedy downloads of full-length movies, but gigabit connectivity is about far more than that. Gigabit networks are proving crucial to communities and institutions around the world and right here at home, we’re seeing its value firsthand. Click headline to read more--
Longtime House lawmaker Rep. Robert Brawley, R-Iredell, handed back his Finance gavel Wednesday afternoon with a blistering public letter against fellow Republican House Speaker Thom Tillis. In his letter, read aloud during Wednesday's House session, Brawley says Tillis pressured him over House Bill 557, Brawley's bill to increase the territory area for local broadband provider MI Connections in Mooresville. "You slamming my office door shut, standing in front of me and stating that you have a business relationship with Time Warner," Brawley wrote. "MI Connections is being operated just as any other free enterprise system and should be allowed to do so without the restrictions placed on them by the proponents of Time Warner." H557 was referred to Government, which didn't take it up before crossover. Click headline to read more--
Time Warner Cable executives got an earful last week from investors concerned about the amount of money the company is spending on lobbying activities, the lack of full disclosure on where that money is going, and the cable operator’s continued corporate support for the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). Among those attending the Time Warner Cable Annual Shareholder Meeting in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., was Tim Smith from Walden Asset Management, which owns 369,000 shares of the company. Smith, along with 16 co-sponsors, introduced a proposal to force better disclosure of how their shareholder money was being spent on lobbying, noting Time Warner Cable paid close to $28 million on lobbying from 2008 to 2012. “It’s interesting to note that Time Warner Cable’s spending on lobbying was almost five times the average of its peers,” Smith told the board of directors. Smith noted that Time Warner Cable’s current quarterly disclosures were opaque and hard for the average person to understand and that the company provided almost no information on state lobbying, which he called a “big, big gap.” Click headline to read more--
On The Hot Seat with Matt Beal, CTO, CenturyLink
Matt Beal, Chief Ttechnology Officer (CTO) of CenturyLink, is leading a number of key technology initiatives, including the telco's most recent move to begin a 1 Gbps fiber to the premises service trial in Omaha.
But this is not your typical FTTP pilot. Unlike other providers, which are building totally new networks, CenturyLink is updating an outdated HFC system that was built during the US West days.
Sean Buckley, Senior Editor of FierceTelecom, speaks with Beal about what's driving its 1 Gbps pilot deployment and what it means for the telco. Click headline to read the interview--
"We don't focus on megabits, we don't focus on gigabits, we focus on activities," Frontier CEO Maggie Wilderotter stated at an investor conference last week, clearly trying to counter some of the buzz around Google Fiber. "We go to the activity set to get a sense of what customers are actually doing and the majority of our customers fit into that 6 Mbps or less category." Granted many Frontier customers in our forums will tell you they're lucky if their copper and loop length supports anything more than 3 Mbps, and those who can get faster speeds may not be able to justify paying Frontier's steep price premiums. Frontier's massive deal to acquire Verizon's unwanted DSL networks also left them in a financial position where "focusing on gigabits" is somewhat of a pipe dream anyway.
Many telcos (like CenturyLink) are suddenly having to explain why companies presumably focused on offering broadband services are incapable of offering the kind of speeds now being offered by a search engine company. Granted a big reason these companies aren't offering anything faster or cheaper is because they face no real competitive pressure to do so, something Google Fiber is helping to painfully highlight in some markets.
Frontier is currently using a talking Buffalo to pitch a 6 Mbps DSL line for $20 a month -- if users tack on costly landline voice service and sign a three year contract.
Will blinking blue lights of servers soon fill the aisles that previously offered the Blue Light Special? Sears Holdings has formed a new unit to market space from former Sears and Kmart retail stores as a home for data centers, disaster recovery space and wireless towers. With the creation of Ubiquity Critical Environments, Sears hopes to convert the retail icons of the 20th century into the Internet infrastructure to power the 21st century digital economy. Sears Holdings has one of the largest real estate portfolios in the country, with 3,200 properties spanning 25 million square feet of space. That includes dozens of Sears and Kmart stores that have been closed over the years. “It’s an amazing real estate portfolio,” said Sean Farney, the Chief Operating Officer of Ubiquity. “The goal is not to sell off properties. It’s to reposition the assets of this iconic brand. The big idea is that you have a technology platform laid atop a retail footprint, creating the possibility for a product with a very different look to it.” Farney is an industry veteran who previously managed Microsoft’s huge Chicago data center, and then ran a network of low-latency services for the financial services firm Interactive Data. He sees an opportunity to build three lines of businesses atop the Sears portfolio: data centers, disaster recovery sites and “communications colocation” in which Ubiquity leases rooftop space to wireless providers. Click headline to read more--
Few electric power utilities are complying with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's voluntary measures to protect against the Stuxnet virus, according to a survey commissioned by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA). The survey found that the grid is the target of daily cyber attacks. In fact, one utility revealed that it is struck 10,000 times per month. From our reports store: "Smart Grid Business 2012 to 2017," published by Memoori, analyzes the smart grid market's size, technologies, finance and needed investments, demand forecasts and more. Yet less than 50% of munis and coops have followed through with FERC's recommendations. And fewer than 25% of investor-owned utilities have complied. Waxman and Markey are pointing to the survey results as proof that legislation is needed. “The failure of utilities to heed the advice of their own industry-controlled reliability organization raises serious questions about whether the grid will be adequately protected by a voluntary approach to cybersecurity,” said Waxman.
Not surprisingly, many utilities disagree.
Click headline to read more--
In recent months, multiple regional operators in the United States have selected Ericsson as their Long Term Evolution (LTE) partner of choice, the Swedish telecoms vendor has announced. The list of companies who have inked deals with Ericsson is as follows: Adams NetWorks (western Illinois); Carolina West (North Carolina); Cellcom (north-east and central Wisconsin); Chariton Valley (north-east Missouri); Chat Mobility (south-west Iowa); Colorado Valley Communications (south-east Texas, as part of the NetAmerica Alliance); MidRivers Communications (central and eastern Montana); NewCore Wireless (Minnesota); NexTech Wireless (north-western and north-central Kansas); Northwest Missouri Cellular (north-west Missouri); Rural Independent Network Alliance (Colorado, Idaho, Oregon, Utah and Wyoming); S and R Communications (central Indiana); SRT Communications (North Dakota); and Syringa Networks (southern and eastern Idaho).
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