Larry Lessig
I have my doubts - unfortunately - that Obama will be much better on the crucial broadband issue for two reasons:
Verizon, AT&T, and their regulated cohorts love to blab how the "free market" and "competition" will keep prices low for consumers. According to California, it's a big fat expensive lie. The cost of basic phone service has soared since the Public Utilities Commission lifted price controls in 2006, leading the agency to conclude:"There is no indication of any change in the near future regarding the current state of competition. Market forces have not yet met the challenge of controlling price increases."
A failure to communicate between Monticello and TDS Telecom, its chief phone and cable provider, is threatening to short-circuit plans to make the city one of the most wired communities in the nation.Fascinating. It's not like TDS is building fiber to the home here. We're stuck with (and continue to pay for) nearly century old copper networks. Much like roads, I believe that public fiber networks (open to any player) make sense, particularly when there is no evidence that the incumbent telcos plan to upgrade their infrastructure.Both Monticello and TDS Telecom are constructing multi-million dollar fiber-optic networks that will directly connect to every home, office and business in the city.
When the networks come online in the next year or so, they would be among only about 45 in the country that provide such connectivity.
But Monticello -- a city of about 11,000 in northern Wright County -- also may be the only locale where the public and private sectors are competing so directly for paying customers.
The acrimony from such direct competition has led to the filing of what may become a precedent-setting lawsuit by TDS questioning whether municipalities can use revenue bonds to create fiber-optic networks.
Fios also has helped future-proof Verizon's network. While its cable competitors buckle under the pressure of peer-to-peer traffic on their networks, Verizon has enough capacity in its network, thanks to its fiber upgrades, to weather the storm unscathed and work on its own timetable to find more efficient ways to handle peer-to-peer traffic.The Madison area is stuck with an aging telco infrastructure. Neither AT&T, nor TDS have any plans to upgrade their networks to the home. Not good.... Verizon FIOS Deployment Map.Mark Wegleitner, Verizon's senior vice president of technology in charge of broadband and consumer services, has helped develop and drive Verizon's fiber strategy. I sat down with him at the Nxtcomm trade show in Las Vegas last week to talk about a wide variety of topics, including the controversy over Comcast's treatment of BitTorrent traffic, faster speeds for Fios, and what the company plans to do next when it reaches its 2010 goal of passing 18 million homes with fiber.
Internet traffic is growing faster than at any time since the boom of the late-1990s. Places like Chattanooga are trying hard not to get stuck in the slow lane.Madison's pitiful broadband infrastructure could certainly use a shot in the arm.Some 60 towns and small cities, including Bristol, Va., Barnsville, Minn., and Sallisaw, Okla., have built state-of-the-art fiber networks, capable of speeds many times faster than most existing connections from cable and telecom companies. An additional two dozen municipalities, including Chattanooga, have launched or are considering similar initiatives.
The efforts highlight a battle over Internet policy in the U.S. Once the undisputed leader in the technological revolution, the U.S. now lags a growing number of countries in the speed, cost and availability of high-speed Internet. While cable and telecom companies are spending billions to upgrade their service, they're focusing their efforts mostly on larger U.S. cities for now.
Smaller ones such as Chattanooga say they need to fill the vacuum themselves or risk falling further behind and losing highly-paid jobs. Chattanooga's city-owned electric utility began offering ultrafast Internet service to downtown business customers five years ago. Now it plans to roll out a fiber network to deliver TV, high-speed Internet and phone service to some 170,000 customers. The city has no choice but to foot the bill itself for a high-speed network -- expected to cost $230 million -- if it wants to remain competitive in today's global economy, says Harold DePriest, the utility's chief executive officer.
Cable is not a monopoly. You can choose from any cable company you want in America, just by moving your house.@ Freedom to Connect.
The US is in desperate need of 100Mbps "big broadband." That's the conclusion of a new report from EDUCAUSE (PDF), a group that represents IT managers at over 2,200 colleges and universities. But these 100Mbps connections are coming slowly; in the meantime, countries like Japan already have them. To avoid falling further behind, the report calls for a national broadband policy to be passed this year, one that includes $100 billion for a fiber-to-the-home infrastructure that will connect every household and business in the country.The report opens by citing the familiar, dreary facts: US broadband might now be widely available, but it's slow and relatively expensive. Between 1999 and 2006, the US fell from third place to 20th in the International Telecommunications Union's broadband usage measurements. When it comes to average connection speeds, the US isn't beaten just by Japan but also by France, Korea, Sweden, New Zealand, Italy, Finland, Portugal, Australia, Norway, Luxembourg, the United Kingdom, and Germany. And it's not about population size or density, either; Finland, Sweden, and Canada beat us on most broadband metrics despite having lower population density. Finally, we're getting beat on price, coming in 18th worldwide when it comes to cost per megabyte.
Even as Sprint tentatively rolls out the XOHM network here in the States, the largest Indian telecom company is planning to build a mobile WiMax network covering three states on the subcontinent capable of serving 250 million people. State-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited is leaning on Soma Networks to build the broadband-speed network in response to government requirement that 20 million broadband lines be in service by 2010. The WiMax rollout will first hit the largest and most-connected states, but BSNL is planning on extending the network if things go well.
A reader forwarded this full page, color advertisement paid for by large telco (AT&T, etc.) front group TV4us. The advertisement appeared in this morning's Wisconsin State Journal. The State Journal supports the AT&T "video competition bill". 
Click to view a larger version
Brian Clark has more:
Vergin said he's pleased he'll only have to get one state franchise, instead of having to deal with the 33 different municipalities in his service area.The Governor and Legislature appear to have obtained nothing while giving away significant regulatory changes. A disaster for Wisconsin business, schools residents and public agencies. What a deal for the large telcos: spend money on lobbying and advertising but not fiber to the home. Classic rentier approach: milk the slow copper network that we've paid for many times over as long as possible.“That’s a big benefit for us and what I think the bill is all about,” he said.
Vergin said his company’s prices won’t be any lower than Charter’s. But he's convinced his firm will be able to offer better service and options to bundle cable, phone and wireless service.
He said he was opposed to proposed rules that would have required his company to serve entire communities. He also rejected suggestions telecommunications firms should be ordered to run fiber optic to homes and businesses.
“The 100 requirement would limit us,” he said. “And we are running fiber optic to new construction, but not existing buildings. I just don’t think the government should tell us what technology we should use. The market should decide that. I also think have 50 percent of any area covered is better than none.”
.....
(Charles) Higley (Citizen's Utility Board Executive Director) said he, too, would have liked to have seen a requirement that companies build fiber optic cable.
“We’ve had promises to build it before and it didn’t come,” he said. “In the future, if not already, broadband is an essential service like telephone and electricity. We think government should require essential services.”
Keep in mind Verizon's FIOS, a fiber to the home product installed in many communities [Service Map] - none in Wisconsin.
I recently had the opportunity to use basic FIOS service while on travel. The service was symmetrical - that is, upload and download speeds are the same. Local dsl services are not symmetrical - AT&T and TDS limit upload speeds to a very slow 768kpbs.
This archaic approach is awful for those of us creating, uploading and backing up media (photos, videos and music, not to mention data heavy scientific applications). FIOS provides at least 5 to 50X the speeds of the fastest dsl service generally available in the Madison area. Slow networks limit entrepreneurial opportunities, particularly emerging home based businesses.
Finally, I spoke briefly some years ago with then Gubernatorial candidate Jim Doyle at a campaign event. I mentioned Wisconsin's very poor broadband infrastructure. He said he understood these issues but could not address them in his first term but hoped to in a second. Will Doyle leave a legacy of aging, slow copper networks? I put a call into Susan Goodwin, Chief of Staff, for an update.
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A bit of sugar for AT&T. This giant organization is fully capable of implementing a modern, high quality, fast fiber network. They simply need to make the strategic decision, as Verizon has, to upgrade their network. How much longer must we pay for the old, old copper lines? I've received excellent, economical service from AT&T's cell network.
Background:
His first inkling that something was amiss came in summer 2002 when he opened the door to admit a visitor from the National Security Agency to an office of AT&T in San Francisco.Perhaps our elected officials might consider this matter vis a vis AT&T's flawed video "competition" bill. unlikely"What the heck is the NSA doing here?" Mark Klein, a former AT&T technician, said he asked himself.
A year or so later, he stumbled upon documents that, he said, nearly caused him to fall out of his chair. The documents, he said, show that the NSA gained access to massive amounts of e-mail and search and other Internet records of more than a dozen global and regional telecommunications providers. AT&T allowed the agency to hook into its network at a facility in San Francisco and, according to Klein, many of the other telecom companies probably knew nothing about it.
Klein is in Washington this week to share his story in the hope that it will persuade lawmakers not to grant legal immunity to telecommunications firms that helped the government in its anti-terrorism efforts.
If your municipality isn’t looking at creative ways to develop new strategies that include having a state-of-the-art network infrastructure to support economic growth and development, they will be stagnating your property value and quality of life in your area. This was the message I conveyed in a speech on intelligent business campuses at the RTC last week.Simply put, the three most important words in real estate (“location, location, location”) have turned into “location, location, connectivity” in urban, suburban and rural America.
Corporate site selection committees have included broadband connectivity as one of the top three criteria they are looking for when researching locations for corporate facilities. If your community does not have a good platform for broadband connectivity, it will simply be passed over in favor for one that does.
As a keynote speaker, I also presented these concepts on Tuesday to an urban symposium at the Milwaukee School of Engineering in Milwaukee.
The critical message is the same whether it is for a 5,000-person village in Virginia, a 50,000-person county in downstate Illinois or a 500,000-person city in Wisconsin: “Economic development equals broadband connectivity and broadband connectivity equals jobs.” Without connectivity, there will be little economic development and little if any new jobs.
The table below represents the layers of critical infrastructure that must be taken into account when reviewing regional opportunities.
Some residents of New York, Connecticut, and New Jersey who live inside the boundaries of Verizon's FiOS network will be the first to be able to take advantage of Verizon's new 20/20 FiOS service. As the name implies, 20/20 FiOS is a symmetrical 20Mbps connection (same speed in both directions), and it's one of the first symmetrical services to target the consumer market.We're a long way from this type of service, unfortunately. AT&T sells us slow copper internet services.Available today, 20/20 will cost $64.99 per month and will include Verizon's Internet Security Suite and 1GB of online backup (up to 50GB can be purchased at "competitive rates").
Susan Retta, the company's VP of Broadband Solutions, was quick to compare the new plan to cable. "For more than a decade, the Internet has been defined by how quickly you can download content," Retta said. "Our 20/20 FiOS service changes everything by creating an entirely new category of US broadband where 'fast' means fast in both directions."
A bill introduced into the House of Representatives this week will attempt to spur broadband development in the US by overturning existing state bans on municipal broadband deployments. Titled the Community Broadband Act of 2007, the bill (PDF) is cosponsored by Rep. Rick Boucher (D-VA) and Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI).Currently, laws in Arkansas, Florida, Missouri, Texas, and a handful of other states prevent cities and towns from installing and operating their own broadband networks. Most of those laws were enacted in the wake of heavy lobbying from the telecommunications industry, which doesn't want to see competition coming from local governments.
Last year's attempted rewrite of the Telecommunications Act contained a similar provision but never made it to the floor of the Senate for a vote. With the state of broadband in the US a hot topic of discussion lately, both on Capitol Hill and around the country, Reps. Boucher and Upton may be able to find allies in Congress a bit more easily this time around. The congressmen are hopeful that, should it be passed, the Act would lead to more—and better—broadband options for US citizens.
There are now an estimated 137 million internet users in China, second in number only to the United States, where estimates of the current internet population range from 165 million to 210 million. The growth rate of China's internet user population has been outpacing that of the U.S., and China is projected to overtake the U.S. in the total number of users within a few years.The influx of tens of millions of new online participants each year can be expected to have far-reaching consequences for the Chinese population, for China itself and for the larger world. At the very least, the internet will offer ever greater numbers of Chinese a much more sophisticated information and communications world than the one they currently inhabit. And because the Chinese share a single written language, despite the multiplicity of spoken tongues, it could have a unifying effect on the country's widely dispersed citizenry. An expanding internet population might also increase domestic tensions that could spill over into China's relations with the U.S. and other countries while the difference between Chinese and Western approaches to the internet could create additional sore points over human rights and problems with restrictions on non-Chinese companies.
Apple's iPhone has received no shortage of hype since it was announced earlier this year. From a technology perspective, I find the multi-touch interface most interesting. It cleanly addresses many small screen issues, including navigation and zoom in/out.
Having said that, I believe the real paradigm shift is the activation process. Years ago, while replacing a dead phone, I stood at the usual cell phone counter for quite some time while the customer in front of me went through a long activation process with Verizon's representative. What a waste of time.
Apple has dramatically simplified (assuming it works) the activation process by baking it into iTunes. Buy the phone via bricks and mortar or online, sync and activate with your mac or pc and get on with it.
In many ways, Apple has pulled an identity-ectomy (identiectomy?) on AT&T. They are selling phones via AT&T's channels, but the user experience (and therefore brand and stock price leverage) is all Apple. AT&T will get the fumes, but this is Apple's win. I'm no fan of AT&T [rss].
Finally, two years ago, while on travel, I spoke with someone who should/would know. This person told me that the iPhone was due later that summer (2005). I wonder if Apple scrapped an early version and decided to wait for the right time and place in terms of technology and software? If so, that takes guts, particularly given the pieces that need to be in place for a launch.
What could AT&T be praying for? Plenty of things, but the most obvious theme I see is how to compete with Verizon, Comcast, and all the national cell phone providers. With Verizon, AT&T has to defend its decision to stick with a copper broadband infrastructure instead of the more expensive optical fiber Verizon has picked. With Comcast, AT&T has to defend its copper plant against Comcast's copper plant, which is about to gain a LOT more bandwidth thanks to new modems using more advanced modulation techniques. And against the other mobile operators, AT&T has to defend its decision not to go full 3G with the iPhone.AT&T clearly prefers to spend money on lobbying and advertising, rather than substance (fiber to the home).
Are you noticing a trend here? AT&T is facing a potential bandwidth crisis when it comes to customer perception and it is logical to assume that Apple helped create that crisis. After all, the iPhone could easily have been made to work with 3G. Since AT&T HAS a 3G network, the decision not to use it was probably complicated and some of that complication may have come from Steve Jobs saying, "We don't need it. The iPhone will be insanely great with G2.5, thanks."
AT&T Inc. has joined Hollywood studios and recording companies in trying to keep pirated films, music and other content off its network — the first major carrier of Internet traffic to do so.AT&T's complicity in domestic surveillance via an EFF lawsuit. Duncan Riley offers up a name change: American Tracking & Takedown. David Weinberger notes that AT&T is going to "exit the internet". It is disappointing to see our local politicians carrying the water for AT&T.
The San Antonio-based company started working last week with studios and record companies to develop anti-piracy technology that would target the most frequent offenders, said James W. Cicconi, an AT&T senior vice president.
The nation's largest telephone and Internet service provider also operates the biggest cross-country system for handling Internet traffic for its customers and those of other providers.
As AT&T has begun selling pay-television services, the company has realized that its interests are more closely aligned with Hollywood, Cicconi said in an interview Tuesday. The company's top leaders recently decided to help Hollywood protect the digital copyrights to that content.
"We do recognize that a lot of our future business depends on exciting and interesting content," he said.
But critics say the company is going to be fighting a losing battle and angering its own customers, and it should focus instead on developing incentives for users to pay for all the content they want.
Saying that the FCC "has not kept pace with the times or the technology," Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) opened a hearing today into the FCC's methods for measuring broadband availability in the US. The US lags in speed, availability, and value, said Markey, compared to a country like Japan, where most residents can pay $30 a month for 50Mbps fiber connections to the Internet (which some senators would like to see migrate across the Pacific). But without accurate data on US broadband, neither the government nor private industry will be able to put forward a comprehensive national broadband plan.Problems with the FCC's broadband data collection methodology have been well-known for years, and Congress is finally poised to step in and tell the agency how to fix the problem. The Broadband Census of America Act, currently in draft form, asks the FCC to increase its broadband threshold speed from 200Kbps to 2Mbps and to stop claiming that a ZIP code has broadband access if even a single resident in that ZIP code does. It also asks the National Telecommunications and Information Administration to prepare a map for the web that will show all this data in a searchable, consumer-friendly format.
The mood among the members of the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet was jovial; Rep. Mike Doyle (D-PA) even opened by asking (in reference to the proposed map), "Why do maps never win at poker?" The answer: "Because they always fold." Groan.
A recent article chronicles the telcos' slow start in cable TV. I don't think the telcos stand a chance of succeeding in cable TV. Instead, if they're to succeed at all, they'll probably buy or form alliances with existing cablecos. (Dale Hatfield put it most memorably when he said, "Duopoly is an optimistic assumption.") But they'd better start swimming, because the times are a changing; I think four things will make the video entertainment space different in the near future: new devices, RSS, faster than real-time downloads and the end of the Kontent Kartel. Here's an article I wrote last year for VON Magazine about that:Informative, particularly in light of AT&T's extensive lobbying to supply "tv" across their old Wisconsin copper network....
An hour or so ago the Vermont House and Senate both gave final approval to a bill designed to make Vermont the nation’s first e-state. As defined in Vermont, e-stateness means cellular and adequate broadband coverage – fixed and mobile – everywhere in the state by 2010. The initial definition of adequate fixed broadband is 3 megabits per second service in at least one direction; but the bill contains a mechanism for ratcheting that up as requirements escalate. It is estimated that this requirement may be as high as 20 megabits in both directions by 2013.Quite a contrast to Wisconsin's process, where AT&T's stagnant infrastructure (and more importantly, their lobbying prowess) carries the day. Gotta love our forward thinking politicians.Although the bill passed the Vermont House with an overwhelming 132-2 vote more than a month ago, it was by no means assured of passage. Vermont’s citizen legislature is hoping to adjourn for the year sometime tonight. There was a danger that the Senate would not have the time it needed to consider all aspects of this very large bill. But they did!
In the movement to blanket cities with Wi-Fi, economic realities are setting in as service providers look to tweak their business models to turn a profit. Since the municipal Wi-Fi movement started taking shape a couple of years ago, politicians, community organizers and the companies building the networks have touted Wi-Fi as a cheap solution to a myriad social and economic problems plaguing cities today. Some cities see it as a way to bridge the digital divide, while others see Wi-Fi as providing a third alternative to a broadband market dominated by the cable and phone companies. Up to this point, the financial risk has mostly fallen on the service providers that have put up the capital to build the wireless mesh networks.
AT&T doles out $54,000 ahead of cable bill debate
Doyle, lawmakers say money won't affect stands on deregulation legislation
Communications giant AT&T pushed a controversial bill to have state government license cable systems by showering more than $54,000 in campaign cash on dozens of lawmakers and Gov. Jim Doyle over the past 15 months.
Campaign-finance records show that AT&T's political action committee gave a total of $10,000 to four legislators and the Assembly Republican Campaign Committee in the past two months, when legislators negotiated details of the complex package with AT&T's 15 registered lobbyists.
Where to begin?
Prior to a recent Asia trip, I needed to obtain a SIM Card for my old Cingular (AT&T) phone that would work while on travel. (I now use a Verizon phone due to our experience with Cingular's poor network coverage - dropped calls on John Nolen Drive, for example).
I called Cingular and explained my requirements: a prepaid SIM Card that would work for 30 days while on travel overseas. The telesales representative explained their different services, including data, worldwide calling and various monthly minute plans.
I provided my credit to close the transaction and a few days later, the Cingular SIM card arrived. I also requested the codes to "unlock" my old phone. Unfortunately, despite our prior long term Cingular arrangement, they insisted that I had to use the phone for 90 days before they would provide the unlock keys. This would prove to be a problem when I found that the SIM card Cingular sold me did not, in fact, work internationally.
Fortunately, a friend let me use an old phone, which would accept any SIM Card - easily purchased in most countries.
I called Cingular upon my return to express my disappointment. Farrah in Halifax was as helpful as could be expected, given their organization. She phoned their "sales" department to see if I could obtain a refund. The "sales" person told her that they "don't sell SIM Cards"! I mentioned that while I'm unhappy with Cingular, I'm glad she had that experience with sales, particularly while I was on the line.
Bottom line: If you are looking for a world phone, look elsewhere. I've heard good things about T-mobile, though your mileage may vary.Wisconsin residents would lose their rights to cable television repairs within 72 hours, credit for service interruptions and advance notice of rate increases, under a bill on the fast track in the state Legislature.Pitsch mentions this:
The proposal, designed to increase competition in an industry dominated by cable companies, is supported by the lobbying muscle of telecommunications giant AT&T.
It's part of AT&T's challenge to cable companies such as Charter Communications, which are licensed by local governments.
There is little agreement on whether the proposal would help consumers or hurt them.
But proponents say the bill would lower costs for telecast delivery - whether by cable or AT&T's fiber optic lines - by up to 23 percent by introducing competition and deregulating the industry.What fiber optic lines would that be? AT&T has done nothing to upgrade it's copper based network to the home (other than spend money on lobbying and advertisements regarding the ongoing resale of the old network, something we've paid for over and over and over...), unlike Verizon in other parts of the country. Nice to see our politicians continue to "stick it to us". `
Speaking with VOA's Mandarin Service Wednesday after arriving in Washington, Yu Ling said Chinese police arrested her husband, Wang Xiaoning, partly because Yahoo's Hong Kong office gave Chinese authorities information about his e-mail accounts.
Yu Ling said she has come to the United States to sue the company for damages and to demand an apology.
Last year, Yahoo provided the Chinese with information about Shi Tao, a journalist who emailed to Western news outlets details of China's plans to handle the 15th anniversary of Tiananmen Square.
Local governments have taken the lead in U.S. broadband policy. Hundreds of communities of all sizes are making decisions about how to best deliver universal, affordable access to high-speed information networks. Many are offered seemingly attractive arrangements with no upfront cost to the city. They do themselves and their households and businesses a disservice if they do not seriously explore the costs and benefits of a publicly owned network.
In this report, we highlight five arguments for public ownership.
1. High-speed information networks are essential public infrastructure.
Just as high quality road systems are needed to transport people and goods, high quality wired and wireless networks are needed to transport information. Public ownership of the physical network does not necessarily mean the city either manages the network or provides services. Cities own roads, but they do not operate freight companies or deliver pizzas.
There is mounting evidence that the cellular service companies are going to do whatever they can to kill Wi-Fi. After all, it is a huge long-term threat to them. We've seen that the route to success in America today is via public gullibility and general ignorance. And these cell-phone–service companies are no dummies.
The always-entertaining Pew Internet & American Life Project ran a survey, and the results show that 34 percent of Internet users have gone online with a Wi-Fi connection or one of those newly popular and overpriced cell-phone services. Two years ago, this number was 22 percent. Another factoid from the survey: 19 percent of all users have Wi-Fi in the home. This number was a mere 10 percent just one year ago. The last tidbit from the survey worth noting is that only 56 percent of the people who have PDAs that hook to the Internet have actually gone on the Net via their PDA. The same goes for the people who have cell phones with Internet capability; not much more than half have actually used it.
But then, that’s not news. I’ve been trying to get Joost working at home and was cursing it, but I was cursing the wrong party. Joost works fine at work. I can’t wait until Verizon finishes laying fibre on my street so I can get FIOS. Except Verizon hired the worst contractor imaginable to get the job done. They have been at it for more than two months on a street with fewer than 20 homes; they’ve managed to cut our cable and gas line and a neighbor’s electric line and they’re not nearly done. I’m about to go out with a shovel myself just so I can get rid of Cablevision sooner.At least Jarvis can look forward to fiber to the home, via Verizon. Locally, AT&T is content to spend money on advertising and resell us the copper lines we've paid for over and over and over.
But it turns out that there was a lot more to the story. Google leaned hard on North Carolina lawmakers and officials, not just to get the fattest deal possible but to choke off the flow of information along the way.Barry Orton keeps up with AT&T's Wisconsin Lobbying.
According to documents obtained by The News & Observer of Raleigh, the company went beyond reasonable expectations of confidentiality to demand absolute secrecy while negotiations were under way, even asking participants to sign nondisclosure agreements; some legislators and local officials did so, but Department of Commerce officials did not. Google executive Rhett Weiss badgered Commerce Secretary Jim Fain about the state's adherence to process, complaining, for example, when lawmakers wanted an estimate of the cost to North Carolina in lost tax revenue, and threatening to kill the whole thing if Google didn't get its way.
Businesses need some measure of confidentiality when putting together this kind of transaction. Fair enough. But this is the people's business, and Google's high-handedness is an affront to the people of this state.
And then there's that whole "Don't be evil" thing. Google spokesman Barry Schnitt told me that the company's negotiations with the state were "very standard." If that's the case, and this is standard operating procedure for the company, then something has gone wrong in Silicon Valley.
The Missouri Senate is considering one of the best-written pieces of legislation to come before it in some time: Senate Bill 284, the Missouri Video Franchise Bill. It should be a good bill, considering how much money AT&T spent to write it.The video franchise bill has something in it for every large telecommunications company: reducing public oversight, eliminating local control, cherry-picking high-profit customers and protection from prying public auditors. It would be wonderful - if it weren’t such a complete betrayal of the public trust.
SB 284’s most important feature is to strip local government of its authority to regulate companies that offer video services. Right now, local cable television companies receive their licenses to operate from the municipalities they serve. Cable TV companies get to use a city’s rights of way for running their lines. In return, local municipalities receive a franchise fee and are provided a few channels for local citizens and government to use, so-called PEG - for public, education and government access - channels. Until now, this arrangement seemed like a reasonable exchange for the huge benefit of accessing city rights of way.
Steven Colbert on the reconstituted AT&T. We still don't have any prospects of fiber to the home in Madison, much less around the state.
This leaves us with the mystery of why Apple deliberately hobbled the cellular Internet capability of its iPhone, Apple Phone, whatever. As described this week, when the iPhone ships it will only work with Cingular's EDGE network, which is its 2G Internet service that maxes out at 170 kilobits per second on not just a good day but on a day that is so good it never happens. I've used the EDGE network and it feels like dial-up to me.
The iPhone is this amazing connectivity quad-mode device that can probably make use of as much bandwidth as it can get, so making it suck through the little straw that is EDGE makes no sense from a user perspective. But remember that the parties involved here are Apple and Cingular, neither of which is 100 percent allied with user interests. Cingular has a 3G network called BroadbandConnect or "MediaNet" if you buy Cingular's associated Cingular Video service.
Here's a list of ISPs (Internet service provider) that are known to cause trouble for BitTorrent clients or P2P in general and the reason why. If you are using one consider finding a new, better one. If your ISP is not on the list come to the IRC channel and tell the OPs, they can add it. Read about Good settings and NAT problem first though.
TeleGeography estimates that Skype users are on track to make over 27 billion minutes of computer-to-computer calls this year, with about half of them used for international long distance (all free). While that sounds like a lot, it still represents just 4.4 percent of total international traffic in 2006, up from 2.9 percent in 2005."David Isenberg has more:
Even if most of these minutes are new minutes that are only there because C2C Skype is free, this is impressive -- in part, because with new computer devices, e.g., open WiFi phones, it is getting hard to distinguish a C2C call from a Phone-to-Phone call. In addition, the new computerphones are erasing the ease-of-use factor that keeps us glued to RJ-11.
"Our view at this point is that we're not going to have go 'fiber to the home.' We're pleased with the bandwidth that we're seeing over copper," Chief Financial Officer Richard Lindner told a Credit Suisse conference.Nice to see the status quo - standing still while the rest of the world moves on.
"On average, at this point, we're producing about 25 megabits (per second). But in many many locations, we're producing substantially more than that."
The debate over net neutrality1 has often focused on video as the dominant medium that made the prioritization of packets either crucial or harmful. However, video is not the offering that will suffer the most if net neutrality becomes a wistful memory. Rather, the users that are likely to be most materially disadvantaged are those that utilize the Net for interactive communications – particularly voice over IP (VOIP) and online gaming. Of these two finalists for the dubious title of “innovation most likely to be stifled to the detriment of everyone by loss of net neutrality,” gaming is by far the more irreplaceable and senseless loss.
Unlike video and voice, ISPs are unlikely to have or be able to obtain a viable material stake in the gaming business and have no replacement for the service. As a result, consumers stand not only to lose their choice of the source of this product, but the very value of the gaming service itself.
Chicago has finally released its RFP for a citywide Wi-Fi network. In May 2006, Mayor Richard M Daley had announced a plan to provide affordable broadband Internet service to all Chicagoans and to make computers more widely available to low-income residents. The Mayor also offered $250,000 in grants to help community groups come up with innovative ways to help close the digital divide, and he appointed an advisory panel to make further recommendations on the issue.Full RFP [pdf]
The City of Chicago’s Department of Business and Information Services (BIS) introduced a Draft RFP for comments on May 30, 2006. The City received many meaningful comments and suggestions, which are incorporated in the Final RFP, which it issued today.
Opening a new front in its battle with cable companies for the country's Internet, telephone and television customers, AT&T Inc. on Tuesday started selling Web-based TV service.
For $19.99 a month, the telecommunications firm is offering about 20 channels over the Internet, with the promise of more soon. The service is available to anyone with a high-speed, or broadband, Internet connection - wired or wireless.
The rollout is "an example of how we're trying to evolve into an entertainment company," said Sarah Silva, Milwaukee-area spokeswoman for AT&T.
The “universal service” regime ostensibly extends local phone service to consumers who could not otherwise afford it. To achieve this goal, some $7 billion annually is raised – up from less than $4 billion in 1998 – by taxing telecommunications users. Yet, benefits are largely distributed to shareholders of rural telephone companies, not consumers, and fail – on net – to extend network access. Rather, the incentives created by these subsidies encourage widespread inefficiency and block adoption of advanced technologies – such as wireless, satellite, and Internet-based services – that could provide superior voice and data links at a fraction of the cost of traditional fixed-line networks. Ironically, subsidy payments are rising even as fixed-line phone subscribership falls, and as the emergence of competitive wireless and broadband networks make traditional universal service concepts obsolete. Unless policies are reformed to reflect current market realities, tax increases will continue to undermine the very goals “universal service” is said to advance.Alex Tabarrok adds:
Guess how much would it cost a farmer to get telephone service in a small rural county far from a major city? Let's say $800 for satellite service.
Now guess how much the government subsidizes rural phone carriers to provide this service. The answer? As much as $13,000 per line per year.
Teletruth believes there exists an inherent contradiction in representations of the SBC-AT&T and Verizon-MCI mergers in the complaints and consent decrees filed by the DOJ October 27, 2005.
The complaints note broad competition. For example - "SBC and AT&T compete in the sale of wireline telecommunications services to retail and wholesale customers in the United States." The complaints note particular concern about Local Private Lines. For example – "the proposed merger is likely to substantially reduce competition for Local Private Lines and telecommunications services that rely on Local Private Lines to those buildings." The DOJ believes the magnitude of these concerns provides sufficient justification to block the mergers. For example – "that Defendants be permanently enjoined and restrained from carrying out the Agreement and Plan of Merger dated January 30, 2005."
I’ve seen a lot of WiFi models lately but this appears to be the first from a local newspaper. (You’ll let me know if I’m wrong, I’m sure.) The Pilot, which covers Pinehurst and several other communities in North Carolina, will provide free WiFi across Moore County. Publisher David Woronoff explains: “The Pilot’s mission is to serve Moore County and we think the technology has advanced to the point that we can help bind the community together in a dynamic and compelling way with The Pilot’s products and Internet service.” They’ve acquired WiFi equipment, hired a GM and will start the rollout with a transmitter on their own building in Southern Pines. This isn’t a value add for print subscribers — it will be accessible to readers and non-readers. The Pilot plans to launch a fee-based WiMax network later this year.
The Actiontec router's 100 Mbps capability allows Verizon to continue to provide higher data speeds to the customer, as they become available in the future, without having to install a new router or other equipment in the customer's home. Verizon's FTTP network is capable of providing such speeds. In addition, the new router allows Verizon to remotely assist customers in configuring it to meet specific needs within the home. Verizon also provides customers a business-class Internet firewall on the router.Where's SBC/AT&T in all of this? They don't seem to be spending their money on infrastructure....
"The ability to remotely diagnose problems and help the customer configure the router was a key goal for us," Wimsatt said. "In-home networking can be complex, but we have the right people -- and now the right equipment -- to help the customer."
Verizon is the only major telecom company building fiber-optics directly into customers' homes, paving the way for an array of advanced and reliable voice, data and video services. The company is currently building the network in parts of 16 states. By the end of last year, Verizon had passed some 3 million homes with the new technology and expects to pass 3 million more this year. The company began building the network in 2004.
Apparent there are now allegations that SBC and Verizon forced the deals through DoJ when the designee for head of antitrust was on Senatorial hold for too activist an enforcement bent. DoJ cleared the deals and the hold was lifted. DoJ then ignored the amended Tunney Act and let the companies close the deals even before the judge did the Tunney Act review.
This is sleazy stuff, and it forms the real basis for being concerned about the games the network owners would play if free to play games. The really striking part of this (to me, a constitutionalist) is how the legislative branch keeps passing laws that the executive branch just ignores. And why ignore the laws? Corporate influence. That’s what this case reeks of.
Under the agreement, Sacramento residents would pay monthly subscription fees of about $20 to use MobilePro's wireless service, local businesses would pay $90 to $250, and Sacramento's city agencies would be able to use the service free. The agreement resembled that of many other municipal wireless deals across the country. For MobilePro, based in Bethesda, Md., a full year of service would bring in $2 million to $4 million in revenue, analysts estimate.
But earlier this month, the deal fell apart. The reason: Sacramento city officials had noticed new municipal wireless deals inked in San Francisco and Portland, Ore. The Portland rollout, sponsored by Silicon Valley startup MetroFi Inc., and the San Francisco deployment from Google Inc. and Earthlink Inc., both offered wireless service to those cities with expanded free access for some businesses and residents. Instead of relying on user subscription fees, MetroFi, Google and Earthlink planned to make money off local advertising that would be embedded in their wireless service.
Verizon infamously hired an ‘astroturfing’ company to send faxes to the mayor of Red Bank proclaiming to be from local residents. Mayor McKenna sensing something afoot with these faxes did a little research and called Verizon out. Verizon wanted it to appear that there was a real grass roots effort in support of them being undertaken by the residents of our small town; but there wasn’t. It was all made up and it backfired miserably.
R.E.M has joined a growing coalition of artists and musicians who have signed the Artists and Musicians for Internet Freedom petition. The petition is being circulated in response to a large telecommunications bill Congress will soon vote on, one part of which would gut Net Neutrality, the long held principle that all online speech is equally accessible to Internet users, regardless of its source. In practice, Net Neutrality levels the internet playing field, insuring that small blogs and independent sites open just as easily as the sites of large media corporations. It allows every voice to be heard by thousands, even millions of people (Click here to read an article by Robert Reich in American Prospect for background). This freedom is currently under threat because the nation’s largest phone and cable companies have pressured Congress to give them more control over which Web sites work for users based on which corporation pays them the most! If Congress caves, consumer choice will be limited, the free flow of information will be choked off, and the free and open Internet will become a private toll road managed by these large companies.
Please take a minute to watch this enlightening video which clearly explains the Net Neutrality issue.
read with great interest the biggest issue burning up the internets today, a USA Today article about the National Security Agency (NSA) collecting a database of phone records with the assistance of AT&T, Verizon and Bell South. "For the customers of these companies," USA Today reports, "it means that the government has detailed records of calls they made -- across town or across the country -- to family members, co-workers, business contacts and others."More on AT&T.
Having been an AT&T Wisconsin customer since it was named SBC, I take this news seriously and immediately thought of two questions I'd like my phone company to answer. Were records of my calls made via AT&T included in data provided to the NSA? If so, did this violate the company's privacy obligations as a service provider?
I can't explain it to you, but it has a powerful deja vu. When I got up this morning and read the USA Today headline, I thought the future had been a little more evenly distributed. Now we've all got some...
The interesting thing about meta-projects in the sense in which I used them [in the NYT editorial] is that I don't think species know what they're about. I don't think humanity knows why we do any of this stuff. A couple hundred years down the road, when people look back at what the NSA has done, the significance of it won't be about terrorism or Iraq or the Bush administration or the American Constitution, it will be about how we're driven by emerging technologies and how we struggle to keep up with them...
Net Neutrality is an international issue. In some countries it is addressed better than others. (In France, for example, I understand that the layers are separated, and my colleague in Paris attributes getting 24Mb/s net, a phone with free international dialing and digital TV for 30euros/month to the resulting competition.) In the US, there have been threats to the concept, and a wide discussion about what to do. That is why, though I have written and spoken on this many times, I blog about it now.
Twenty-seven years ago, the inventors of the Internet[1] designed an architecture[2] which was simple and general. Any computer could send a packet to any other computer. The network did not look inside packets. It is the cleanness of that design, and the strict independence of the layers, which allowed the Internet to grow and be useful. It allowed the hardware and transmission technology supporting the Internet to evolve through a thousandfold increase in speed, yet still run the same applications. It allowed new Internet applications to be introduced and to evolve independently.
The Internet is largely meritocratic in its design. If people like instapundit.com better than cnn.com, that's where they'll go. If they like the search engine A9 better than Google, they vote with their clicks. Is it a problem, then, if the gatekeepers of the Internet (in most places, a duopoly of the local phone and cable companies) discriminate between favored and disfavored uses of the Internet? To take a strong example, would it be a problem if AT&T makes it slower and harder to reach Gmail and quicker and easier to reach Yahoo! mail?
Welcome to the fight over "network neutrality," Washington's current obsession. The debate centers on whether it is more "neutral" to let consumers reach all Internet content equally or to let providers discriminate if they think they'll make more money that way.
This is an international issue. In some countries it is addressed better than others. (In France, for example, I understand that the layers are separated, and my colleague in Paris attributes getting 24Mb/s net, a phone with free international dialing and digital TV for 30euros/month to the resulting competition.) In the US, there have been threats to the concept, and a wide discussion about what to do. That is why, though I have written and spoken on this many times, I blog about it now.
Twenty-seven years ago, the inventors of the Internet[1] designed an architecture[2] which was simple and general. Any computer could send a packet to any other computer. The network did not look inside packets. It is the cleanness of that design, and the strict independence of the layers, which allowed the Internet to grow and be useful. It allowed the hardware and transmission technology supporting the Internet to evolve through a thousandfold increase in speed, yet still run the same applications. It allowed new Internet applications to be introduced and to evolve independently.
Gov. Jim Doyle plans to sign the broadband bill passed by both the state Senate and Assembly on Tuesday, a top aide said Wednesday afternoon.I hope that Governor Doyle will insert some language into this bill that requires the recipients of this subsidy - local Telco's - to provide symmetrical internet access, not the odd services they largely provide today where the downstream and upstream services run at different speeds. The internet is not TV. Our generally poor broadband service significantly limits the opportunities for emerging home based internet businesses and services. This is a trivial change and should be a no brainer for the Governor. Learn much more on these issues, including why the US is so far behind countries like Japan and Korea in true broadband (100mbps symmetrical speeds), here. Om Malik tells us why this is important.
“The governor supports it,” said spokesman Matthew Canter. “In fact, he helped lead the way for it. It’s part of his Grow Wisconsin plan.”
The legislation will give telecommunications companies tax exemptions if they provide high-speed Internet service to parts of Wisconsin that lack it or are underserved – mostly in the rural and northern areas of the state.
The Joint Venture Silicon Valley public/private partnership has issued its RFP: The group of cities, counties, governmental bodies, and corporations want a wireless network of some kind--technology isn't decided and could be a broad mix--that would cover Silicon Valley. Winning vendor(s) will be selected from the respondents to their RFP by September, and recommended to the 16 cities, San Mateo County, and 16 other jurisdictions that have signed on. I wrote in January about the scope and nature of this 1,500-square-mile potential project....
insanity:unsoundness of mind or lack of understanding as prevents one from having the mental capacity required by law to enter into a particular relationship, status, or transaction or as removes one from criminal or civil responsibilityWhich leads me to the phone companies.
Here's an update to last week's post about AT&T's practice of leaving unwanted 8-pound phone directories scattered in doorways around the nation...
The airport has an interesting history with Wi-Fi that I’ve been writing occasionally about since 2003: It’s a fairly small airport, not atypical for state and province capitals that tend to be located in politically expedient places that aren’t often also bustling metropolises compared to the big towns that developed in their political unit. (Olympia? Albany? Austin?)This is Madison's fate as well. The economics will make it free over time - assuming we have wifi at the airport - some day.
Sacramento originally contracted with Airport Network Solutions, which said back in 2003 that it would cost $110,000 to add service. I noted in Aug. 2003 that without aggregation and resale they’d never recoup even the modest cost based on their assumptions of users and what they were charging for a day pass ($6.95). The airport apparently bore the cost of installation repaid out of fees rather than requiring its contractor to eat Capx, which is quite odd.
AT&T is seeking the return of technical documents presented in a lawsuit that allegedly detail how the telecom giant helped the government set up a massive internet wiretap operation in its San Francisco facilities.
In papers filed late Monday, AT&T argued that confidential technical documents provided by an ex-AT&T technician to the Electronic Frontier Foundation shouldn't be used as evidence in the case and should be returned.
The documents, which the EFF filed under a temporary seal last Wednesday, purportedly detail how AT&T diverts internet traffic to the National Security Agency via a secret room in San Francisco and allege that such rooms exist in other AT&T switching centers.
Here's a very well-written report of the Bell's trail of Rate Relief and Broken Promises. It is funded by Broadband Everywhere, a consortium that's openly funded by small cablecos and the NCTA, who are fighting back against the Bell-flavored franchise reform law moving through Congress. It relies heavily on the work of Bruce Kushnick, but it also cites many relevant local press stories from, e.g., Enid OK (where a promise of 500 jobs led to rate relief and a net loss of jobs), Austin TX (where a new Texas law that assumed "competition" would lead to lower prices and granted rate relief actually led to rate caps), etc., etc., etc.
Really good stuff on a bad story that demands more attention! Mainstream reporters, attention please!
Former FCC chairman Michael Powell is up on the stage at the Freedom to Connect conference right now, and he warns the tech elite crowd here not to be naive about the dangers of asking Congress for legislation on Net Neutrality. As he explains:David Lazurus has more on the proposed legislation.
The legislative process does not work well when it has a weak understanding of innovation and tech policy. You are talking about 535 members who need to to get this. They have a very shallow understanding [of Net Neutrality]. If you go give them a quiz about the seven layers of the Internet, good luck.
By several measures, the US appears to be less "connected" than many other countries.
At this week's Media, Entertainment and Telecommunications conference, AT&T COO Randall Stephenson told his listeners that increased bandwidth was no longer of great importance to consumers.AT&T, formerly SBC is the dominant internet provider in Wisconsin...... Stephenson completely misses the point that bidirectional fast networks to the home will open up many, many small business opportunities.
"In the foreseeable future, having a 15 Mbps Internet capability is irrelevant because the backbone doesn't transport at those speeds," he told the conference attendees. Stephenson said that AT&T's field tests have shown "no discernable difference" between AT&T's 1.5 Mbps service and Comcast's 6 Mbps because the problem is not in the last mile but in the backbone.
The transformation of American politics by the Internet is accelerating with the approach of the 2006 Congressional and 2008 White House elections, prompting the rewriting of rules on advertising, fund-raising, mobilizing supporters and even the spreading of negative information.No Doubt.
Democrats and Republicans are sharply increasing their use of e-mail, interactive Web sites, candidate and party blogs, and text-messaging to raise money, organize get-out-the-vote efforts and assemble crowds for a rallies. The Internet, they said, appears to be far more efficient, and less costly, than the traditional tools of politics, notably door knocking and telephone banks.
Analysts say the campaign television advertisement, already diminishing in influence with the proliferation of cable stations, faces new challenges as campaigns experiment with technology that allows direct messaging to more specific audiences, and through unconventional means.
Those include Podcasts featuring a daily downloaded message from a candidate and so-called viral attack videos, designed to trigger peer-to-peer distribution by e-mail chains, without being associated with any candidate or campaign. Campaigns are now studying popular Internet social networks, like Friendster and Facebook, as ways to reaching groups of potential supporters with similar political views or cultural interests.
Reeling from the Asian financial crisis of 1997, South Korea decided that becoming a high-tech nation was the only way to secure its future.
The government deregulated the telecommunications and Internet service industries and made investments as companies laid out cables in cities and into the countryside. The government offered information technology courses to homemakers, subsidized computers for low-income families and made the country the first in the world to have high-speed Internet in every primary, junior and high school.
What this means is that Google and Earthlink plan to use online files (known as cookies) and other data-collection techniques to profile users and deliver precise, personalized advertising as they surf the Internet. (Earthlink is working with the interactive ad company DoubleClick, which collects and analyzes enormous amounts of information online to engage in individual interactive ad targeting.)
Not everyone is enthused by the Google/Earthlink model. San Francisco was advised by a trio of privacy advocates to develop policies that would respect personal privacy. In letters to the city, the ACLU of Northern California, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) urged the adoption of a "gold standard" for data privacy (pasted in below from http://epic.org/privacy/internet/sfws22106.html), insuring that its Wi-Fi system would "accommodate the individual's right to communicate anonymously and pseudonymously." The groups also suggested that the city require any Wi-Fi company to allow users to "opt in" to any data-collection scheme. [Full disclosure: I rent office space in Washington, DC, from EPIC].
The issue of importance is not the cost of broadband; that is higher than it should be in the US, but it will fall. Neither is the issue of importance the speed. Higher speed is nice, but what's available in the US is adequate for now.Handley is correct. www.schoolinfosystem.org is a very small attempt to address some of these issues.
What is important is the extent to which home users on the internet are empowered: Do their terms of service allow them to run their own web pages off their home machines? Can they run personal blogs and wikis for their friends to visit? Can they log into their home machines from somewhere else? And so on.
The common place TOS in the US prevent such activities; the powers that be in the US are interested in making the US an alternative form of television, and very much a one-way medium. Not only is this profoundly immoral, it is profoundly undemocratic, and profoundly stupid (since it is yet one more attempt to freeze an existing business model rather than looking at the big picture of how to take advantage of new, as yet undreamed of possibilities); but of course, this sort of trifecta is about what one expects from US business these days.
The point of my writing is to express my disappointment that these issues were not raised; either in the context of the US or in the context of France. I would like to hope that French companies are being better citizens about this than their US counterparts, but I have no reason to believe so. I would, however, hope that a newspaper article would include at least some nod to issues more important than saving a few bucks on one's cable bill.
Yours sincerely,
Maynard Handley
For years, France's telecommunications industry was a state-owned monopoly with one of the world's most backward broadband markets. But thanks to deregulation six years ago, French consumers have access to high-speed Internet service that is much faster and cheaper than in the U.S.
One telecom company in particular has exploited the changes and created competition in France -- a start-up called Iliad. Over 1.1 million French subscribers pay as low as €29.99 ($36) monthly for a "triple play" package called Free that includes 81 TV channels, unlimited phone calls within France and to 14 countries, and high-speed Internet. The least expensive comparable package from most cable and phone operators in the U.S. is more than $90, although more TV channels are generally included.
It will be interesting to see what happens when the FCC begins reviewing thereported and alleged merger of the AT&T/BellSouth deal. As it may be a much different Commission body with the hopes of Robert McDowell's confirmation by the Senate.I can't imagine this will be, in any way positive for our lagging broadband services. Read "We thought you said spend the $200 billion on dark fiber" for more on this mess.
Mr. McDowell is a telecom lawyer who currently serves as assistant general counsel at Comptel and opponent of the AT&T and Verizon mergers last year. Mr. McDowell is scheduled to appear before a Senate committee on Thursday for his confirmation and is likely to be asked about the merger.
The finalization of the deal hinged on a separate contract for access to light poles: I’m not sure why this wasn’t reported earlier, but the first I heard about this utility pole arrangement being a gating factor is in this article in today’s Philadelphia Inquirer. The agreements could be introduced to the city council for approval tomorrow. Details of the main contract for service have been only sketchily released. For instance, I found out a few weeks ago—and had confirmed by city CIO Dianah Neff—that a 15-square-mile pilot network has to be built by EarthLink and tested through early users and independent evaluation before the full network is built. This is a prudent step.
The principle seems to be, "If it helps the Bells, leave it in. If it hurts them, take it out."
The need to communicate is primary, like the need to breathe, eat, sleep, reproduce, socialize and learn. Better connections make for better communication. Better connections drive economic growth through better access to suppliers, customers and ideas. Better connections provide for development and testing of ideas in science and the arts. Better connections improve the quality of everyday life. Better connections build stronger democracies. Strong democracies build strong networks.
F2C:Freedom to Connect begins with two assumptions. First, if some connectivity is good, then more connectivity is better. Second, if a connection that does one thing is good, then a connection that can do many things is better.
F2C:Freedom to Connect belongs with Freedom of Speech, Press, Religion and Assembly. Each of these freedoms is related to the others and depends on the others, but stands distinct. Freedom to Connect, too, depends on the other four but carries its own meaning. Unlike the others, it does not yet have a body of law and practice surrounding it. There is no Digital Bill of Rights. Freedom to Connect is the place to start.
Wonderful... More here.The United States is the 19th ranked nation in household broadband connectivity rate, just ahead of Slovenia.' Want to know why? Because, contends telecom analyst Bruce Kushnick, the Bell Companies never delivered symmetrical fiber-optic connectivity to millions of Americans though they were paid more than $200 billion to do it. According to Kushnick's book, "$200 Billion Broadband Scandal", during the buildup to the 1996 Telecommunications Reform Act, the major U.S. telcos promised to deliver fiber to 86 million households by 2006 (we're talking about fiber to the home, here). They asked for, and were given, some $200 billion in tax cuts and other incentives to pay for it.' But the Bells didn't spend that money on fiber upgrades -- they spent it on long distance, wireless and' inferior DSL services.' Some headlines from Kushnick's work:
- By 2006, 86 million households should have been rewired with a fiber optic wire, capable of 45 Mbps, in both directions.
- The public subsidies for infrastructure were pocketed. The phone companies collected over $200 billion in higher phone rates and tax perks, about $2000 per household.
- The World is Laughing at US. Korea and Japan have 100 Mbps services as standard, and America could have been Number One had the phone companies actually delivered. Instead, we are 16th in broadband and falling in technology dominance.
To answer that question, this Committee must keep in view a fundamental fact about the Internet: as scholars and network theorists have extensively documented, the innovation and explosive growth of the Internet is directly linked to its particular architectural design. It was in large part because the network respected what Saltzer, Clark and Reed called “the ‘end-to-end’ principle” that the explosive growth of the Internet happened. If this Committee wants to preserve that growth and innovation, it should take steps to protect this fundamental design.Lessig makes sense, while the incumbent telcos do not. Cringely has more.
Recently, executives at some telephone companies have indicated that their business models for providing broadband service include not only charging their end-user customers for an Internet connection but also assessing a fee on websites for users to reach them more quickly. They claim that to offer advanced content such as multiple video-programming channels in competition with cable they need to prioritize their bits to deliver quality programs. They then propose that they will give the same priority access to other companies that pay them for it.
Essentially, what these executives are proposing is the creation of a two-lane Internet where larger, more established websites with financial resources could squeeze out smaller, emerging websites. One clear victim will be the innovation that has thrived on the open Internet. Startups simply could not afford to pay for fast-lane treatment nationwide. One must ask where the next Google or Yahoo will come from if new innovative companies can receive only inferior, slow-lane Internet access...
In countries such as Japan and Korea, network speeds over the last mile of 100 megabits per second (mbps) are common. In the United States, our typical speed is less than 1 mbps. If broadband providers would increase their network speeds to approximate those in other countries, all content would reach consumers with assured quality. No prioritization of bits would be needed.
FON is a Global Community of people who share WiFi. Share your WiFi broadband access at home/work and enjoy WiFi all over the world! FON: small cost, great benefit!
To become a Fonero, all you need to do is register with us on our website, have broadband connection, and download the FON Software onto your WiFi router. It’s that simple. Just share your connection and the rest of the Community shares back with you. Join FON and enjoy connecting from anywhere within the WiFi World.
To start sharing, set up your access point where you can receive the most coverage, generally close to the window or outside your home. The rest of the Community will be thankful.
The nation's largest telephone and cable companies are crafting an alarming set of strategies that would transform the free, open and nondiscriminatory Internet of today to a privately run and branded service that would charge a fee for virtually everything we do online.
Verizon, Comcast, Bell South and other communications giants are developing strategies that would track and store information on our every move in cyberspace in a vast data-collection and marketing system, the scope of which could rival the National Security Agency. According to white papers now being circulated in the cable, telephone and telecommunications industries, those with the deepest pockets--corporations, special-interest groups and major advertisers--would get preferred treatment. Content from these providers would have first priority on our computer and television screens, while information seen as undesirable, such as peer-to-peer communications, could be relegated to a slow lane or simply shut out.
My friend Bruce Kushnick is a man on a mission. In The $200 Billion Broadband Scandal, he writes:More here.. . . in the early 1990's . . . every Bell company . . . made commitments to rewire America, state by state. Fiber optic wires would replace the 100-year old copper wiring. The push caused techno-frenzy of major proportions. By 2006, 86 million households should have had a service capable of 45 Mbps in both directions . . . In order to pay for these upgrades, in state after state, the public service commissions and state legislatures acquiesced to the Bells' promises by removing the constraints on the Bells' profits as well as gave other financial perks . . . The phone companies collected over $200 billion in higher phone rates and tax perks, about $2000 per household.The manipulations, deceptions and broken promises are documented in detail in New Jersey, Texas, Pennsylvania, California and Massachusetts. Book synopsis here.
How did France get it so good? By following the rules the US passed in 1996, but that telecoms never really followed (and cable companies didn’t have to follow): “strict unbundling.” That’s the same in Japan — fierce competition induced by “heavy handed” regulation producing a faster, cheaper Internet. Now of course, no one is pushing “open access” anymore. Net neutrality is a thin and light substitute for the strategy that has worked in France and Japan.It will be interesting to see where our Wisconsin politicians land on this matter.
Today's Wall Street Journal had a cover story on the Telco's desire to charge consumers extra to download video from Google or a song from iTunes.Sure, the Telcos might be able to get more money from people who need super fast, six sigma reliability Internet connections. There has always been a business model around super high performance networks.
But this is really just marketing spin. What's really going on is the CEOs of Verizon, AT&T, Bell South and the other Telcos are looking at their margins going down month after month while the service providers like Apple and Google, who deliver their services to consumers over the Telco's networks, are watching their margins go up and up.
Jarvis calls the Telcos "robber barons" and Om Malik calls this hairbrained scheme a "chimera". I had to look that up. Om's either calling this money grubbing scheme a "fire breathing she monster" which sounds about right, or a "creation of the imagination" which it clearly is.
Many Airport authorities are adding Free Wi-Fi high speed internet access as an amenity for travelers. Some offer access in the entire airport while others may limit access to specified terminal or waiting areas. In addition, many airline club lounges may have their own free access available.Green Bay's airport offers free wifi, while those of us in Madison are still waiting....
Like I said, this isn't about having/not having a tiered Internet. It already is tiered. This is a battle over whether or not we have an OPEN Internet. The Ed Whitacre's of the industry want it to be a RESTRICTED Internet. A restricted Internet where they not only hold the keys, but where they're free to swing their swords as well.I have many more posts and links on this issue here.
San Francisco's request for proposal for its citywide network is out: The city published a PDF of the RFP today; responses are due Feb. 21, 2006....
Props to TDS for taking the plunge locally. TDS's fibre to the home service supports 10mbps down and 4mpbs upstream. Not a bad start. Jeff Richgels . Bundles range from $64 to $89/month.
David Eisenberg notes the need for net neutrality amongst the telco's.
How many small and home office (SOHO) businesses would be made possible by services that let people produce as well as consume?Amen
How many small service businesses can't grow because people can't (or don't bother to) run servers in their homes? How many business-building activities are strangled before they are born by prohibitively narrow upstream bandwidths?
There's a consensus emerging among my friends Brough Turner, Bill St. Arnaud and Martin Geddes, that Network Neutrality by regulation is not practical. Each has their own reasons, but the conclusions converge inescapably with mine -- given current industry structure, the incentives are all wrong. Vint Cerf's fervent wish (hey, mine too, were it possible!) for a "lightweight, enforceable Network Neutrality rule" is a pipe dream. Any such rule I could think up would put today's carriers in an untenable, self-competitive situation.
Local incumbent telco SBC (now known as AT&T after the acquisition) is evidently not going to bring fiber to the home. Rather, they are planning to use the long since paid for by us copper to the home infrastructure to send TV to subscribers.... competing with the cable companies (Verizon is installing fiber to the home). This all seems to me to be ill-advised. Why not help all of their customers grow their own media. That's where the market is going... Lorne Manly and Ken Belson have more:
"It's awfully difficult to see how a late entrant operating at a dramatic cost disadvantage and employing a strategy of charging less for more has any shot at earning acceptable returns," said Craig E. Moffett, a cable and satellite analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Company.
Verizon's decision to run fiber-optic cable all the way to customers' homes is a calculated - and expensive - risk, and a counterpoint to AT&T's television strategy. Verizon will spend an estimated $22 billion through 2010 burying high-capacity cables, according to Sanford C. Bernstein research. But that substantial investment gives Verizon the flexibility to add data-hungry high-definition programs, faster broadband speeds and other features that customers like Mr. Rodges are already enjoying. Though costly, these fiber connections are seen by Verizon as the only way to reliably leapfrog the competition. By the end of 2006, the company expects to make these fiber-based services available to six million homes in its territory, including Fairfax, Va., and Huntington Beach, Calif.By contrast, AT&T is installing fiber cables only to within 3,000 feet of homes and using compression technology to make sure that television, phone and broadband signals can travel the rest of the way over older and narrower wire already in the ground. That will save billions of dollars in construction costs and help AT&T start selling television faster. Sanford C. Bernstein estimates that AT&T will spend more than $7 billion through 2010; the company has said that it will spend about $4 billion through 2008.
Verizon: FiOS On Schedule To Pass 3 Million Homes By Year End From a client note by UBS analyst Aryeh Bourkoff: Verizon CFO Doreen Toben told attendees at the UBS Global Communications Conference Thursday that the Keller, TX launch of FiOS was on track for double-digit penetration by the end of the year, ahead of expectations. Verizon still expects to cover 3 million-plus homes passed by the end of the year with launches coming in New York, Texas, Massachusetts, Florida and California, and 6 million or 20 percent of the footprint by the end of '06.
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The subjects covered here are no less enormous than the Net and its future. Even optimists agree that the Net's future as a free and open environment for business and culture is facing many threats. We can't begin to cover them all or cover all the ways we can fight them. I believe, how