Once Upon a Honeymoon

Internet Archive: Free Download: Once Upon a Honeymoon

Color Telephones! Better than deploying rural broadband... Awesome!

Found this while doing real research. Likely more invested here by incumbent telcos than on real rural infrastructure.

Send in the Clowns - The Coming Spin Cycle from Incumbent Broadband Providers

New York Times reports on FCC plans for credible broadband infrastructure.

As always, read the 100+ comments which will make you want to turn the car around and go home. Believe me, facts hamper vigorous debate!

The incumbents will take on roles made famous from great traditions mixing Noh, commedia dell'arte, mystery plays, and s(l)ideshows featuring tethered services provided with consultants (Slideshow Bobs?) and lobbyists to avoid the public ever having to be informed.

Ah, the incumbents. Service providers. What Newspeak. I want common carriers with firewalls to keep them from owning content and applications. I believe in markets, innovation, and low frictional cost structures.

Here's to physics over monopoly. (And I don't think this FCC vision's close to what it needs to be, but direction positive.)

New America Foundation has a series of policy papers emphasizing intelligent spectrum management at http://wirelessfuture.newamerica.net/archives/policydocs. This is quite important for empowering rural areas, in particular, with modern broadband.

It doesn't take a carrier. Watch this space.

Cue the duckspeak.

F.C.C. Plan to Widen Internet Access in U.S. Sets Up Battle

By BRIAN STELTER and JENNA WORTHAM

Published: March 12, 2010

The 10-year plan would reimagine the nation’s media and technology priorities by establishing high-speed Internet as the country’s dominant communication network.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/13/business/media/13fcc.html

More more at http://www.fcc.gov/ on spectrum policy, consumer broadband test tools, etc.

TechCrunch The Long Tail of Video

From the five cents a glance validation crew:

The Long Tail Of Video Sites Capture Half Of All Viewing Minutes

Back to writing here...

Failed US Rural Broadband Policy

I posted a shorter version of this comment at the Chronicle of Higher Education in response to their article "Government Report Lauds Broadband Progress."

The two reports discussed are:

• “Networked Nation: Broadband in American, 2007” (pdf) by the National Telecommunications And Information Administration (NTIA) and

• "A Blueprint For Big Broadband"presented by EDUCAUSE at the recent "State of The Net" Congressional Conference

Poor, Known Faulty Sample Method Used

The NTIA report continues to rely upon illogical survey information for broadband: five digit zip codes.

In rural areas, some zip codes cover large areas, but if the respondent at the edge of a city with broadband can say “yep, I got broadband,” that entire zip code counts as having broadband service.

This sampling defect is well known and has been a point of annoyance for policy makers who understand the desire to game the system.

US Rural: Slow Deployment, Low Penetration, Stifled Innovation

With reference to regional and rural economic development, educational facilities here (in Southern Illinois) quickly find the limitations of broadband infrastructure. It’s minimal, and localized, at best, and expectations have been worn down by the incumbents.

Rural broadband is essential to sustainable, self sufficient, United States economies. Not sufficient, but certainly necessary.

This NTIA report will, unfortunately, be used as a rebuttal to those trying to make for rural change.

Those who tout its statistics should note that it is a lampoon of good policy, the data are blurred, and the myth of “competitive market solutions” continue apace.

The changes are coming, but the innovation seems to come from upstarts; the incumbent providers apparently move only when threatened.

Educause Report Substantiates Failed US Policy

EDUCAUSE raises good points vis a vis relative US position, but the emphasis (from my own self interest!) is not so much the 100Mb services as the need to get deployments of above 1Mb services, at a minimum, into the “flyover country” and economically depressed towns.

Netflix, for example, needs at least 1.0 Mb for good video quality, with best quality at 1.5+ Mb services.

But the use of a network adds value to all the connected.

These higher speeds will enable new educational models, new business forms, and new sources of entertainment on demand. Applications (payroll, hr, product catalogs, customer relationship information, health records) are becoming more a Service In The Cloud, and designers are improving the effectiveness of "local" and "distant" cooperative applications.

A small business can deliver much of its own infrastructure as a service reached across a reliable, high capacity, network.

Apple continues to drive innovation in the educational segment: iTunes U delivers digital content for free to students from Kindergarten and up. Apple provides free materials for "how to do this" type of education. But this all depends upon a robust ubiquitous broadband network into the communities served.

And we in the rural parts of the world haven't got that network yet, although this was promised in deals made back in the mid 1990s in exchange for "deregulation".

Poppycock.

And the network latency of many "well you could do this" proposed solutions of EDGE, satellite, etc. is a fable best told to the illiterate.

Of course, the further parts of the guile includes capacity lids for numbers of bits passed through the network to "protect the infrastructure". Balderdash.

Market Failure

Because of the low population density of the rural US, providers using old school thinking and relying upon old economic models give a great example of “market failure”; precisely the sorts of conditions which drove rural electrification and taxes for “Universal Service” for the regulated Bell monopoly.

The relief may well come from initiatives that resemble the TVA/REA works and rural electric coops. By other measures in the news these days, history seems to be repeating itself in other ways as well.

Nonetheless, when my neighbor's copper wire from the road to the house broke, the local telco rolled out a truck and crew to replace the copper wire with.... more copper wire. Three times. Not the crew's fault, but it is a grand example of failed policy. Give those telcos out here the Hobgoblin award.

Chakra and Feng Shui of Site Privacy and FCC Policy

I dunno.... maybe its the haze of the pork roast slices I grilled off for a whupass stew that's now biling in the oven.... but I swear like I truly saw an insightful piece in [here] and when I clicked the thingie was taken to a page that began:

"Our site visitors’ privacy and trust are important to us. We provide this notice in order to make sure that your expectations and our practices are aligned, and that you are aware of your choices with regard to our use and disclosure of the information you provide to this site."

1. The policies are even more important to me, t'ellwith "us".

2. Aligned expectations and practices? Oh for the love of....

I'm too unaligned with damn few chakras left these days, and the colors I'm projecting just are purely inconsistent with Feng Shui best practices.

In any event, upon careful reading (ty to the coffee now kickin in) I found the piece to be a rehash of things already published regarding the flat out goofy practices of collecting user data for broadband by zip code (which has the approximate granularity and utility of keeping mosquitos off of the porch with chicken wire) plus an attempt to define broadband with 2meg down, 1meg up as a starting point.


So, in the great blogging tradition, this is a string of ad hominem, invective, and futile musings with no discernable purpose.

Time to go stir the slow cookin good eats.

Happy Christmas & Best

More On Google Wireless at dslreports.com

Titled "700 Mhz & the Highest of Theatre" article follows up on Google, links to Bob Cringely.

Google On Wholesale Wireless

Thoughtful piece on upcoming FCC spectrum auction by Google's council.

What's fascinating (well, in the same sense as watching a loop of a pratfall) is the "business knows best" themes vis a vis public policy.

Google fer sure will serve its own interests but at least the concept of bandwidth liquidity and reduced friction (prayer here) could point to more rapid innovation and market entry by new competitors, such as:

• peer to peer small cell networks
• gigabit (wave hands here) overlay networks
• the favorable innovations driven by open access, in that I don't have to master, lock up, and control the entire application, end device, and bandwidth melange. (NB: Read your cellphone contract and just try to download verboten things.... like new non incumbent approved software.)

The paradox is delicious: one FCC commissioner touts that government should be totally hands off and let "the market" work.

Groovy, if that market were competitive.

Groovy if that market were provisioning into rural sites in the US. Groovy if that market worked. Back when, I recall a quote in an econ course.... "markets are great slaves but horrible masters."

Now, the market does work pretty well, but there are cases of market failure or cases of public policy wherein the innovation can be supported through enlightened government policy.... even if that policy is just to enforce playing with each other nicely and not kicking the public's back seat.... cause we're not there yet, are we Bub?

REA, anyone?

The incumbents, I perceive, have residual DNA from the time that ISDN was hoped to sell at 25 or 50 cents per minute.

The further rationale that "we have invested in the build out" could well be emended with a view of that "investment" as sunk cost, expense, not investment, and perhaps representative of obsolete technology.

This is precisely why I ran screaming from Macro to Micro economics back when I had hair and why I should really think about getting away from strong coffee.

Broadband Deployment Comments to the FCC

From the Illinois Broadband Council.... a listing of comments from (most) of the usual suspects.

For those of us without broadband.... these are pdfs. I shall not comment upon the wisdom of some of these submissions amounting to 9 megabytes or so.

I find the CCIA comments quite worthwhile regarding

• the evolutionary view of "what's broadband",
  
• inclusion of wireless broadband in demographics,
  
• consideration of market competitiveness and
  
• improving the granularity of service coverage statistics (viz, zip plus four)
  

Broadband Deployment (From The Illinois Broadband Council)

Comments, GN Docket No. 07-45

" 5/16/2007 - The following comments have been filed in response to the Commission's April 16, 2007 Notice of Inquiry concerning the deployment of advanced telecommunications capability to all Americans in a reasonable and timely fashion. NTCA believes the FCC should continue to develop rural broadband incentive programs targeted towards unserved and underserved areas, provide rural carriers with a sense of regulatory certainty, and ensure that all providers who use rural ILEC networks are required to pay their fair share of network costs. AT&T believes the Commission should maintain a stable deregulatory environment by keeping the status quo."

Alexicon Telecom Consulting

Alliance for Public Technology

American Library Association

AT&T

Clearwire Corporation

Computer & Communications Industry

Connected Nation

Consumers Union

Covad Communications

CTIA

Embarq

Fiber-to-the-Home Council

M2Z Networks

Metro Washington Council of Gov

NASUCA

Native Public Media

NATOA, NLC, NACo, USCM

NCTA

Nebraska Rural Independent Cos

NJ Division of Rate Counsel

NTCA

NuVox Communications

OPASTCO

Pacific Lightnet

PCIA

Puerto Rico Telephone Company

Qwest

Roy Elloitt

Sprint Nextel

Telecom Industry Association

Time Warner Telecom

Tropos Networks

Verizon & Verizon Wireless

Wireless RERC