The iPhone, Net Neutrality and the FCC

  By

Mr. Kessler hits the “nail on the head” by stating that competition will increase broadband penetration and solve net neutrality issues, but threatening regulation is not the way to achieve his goals.  Only by introducing more service providers in each market will the objectives be achieved.  The “beat them with a stick” approach does not work most of the time.

Regulatory uncertainty is spoiling the rollout of Steve Jobs’s latest inspirations.There’s a better way to spur broadband competition.

AT&T’s Picturephone, shown at the 1964 World’s Fair, was a huge flop. Apple’s new iPhone 4, announced this week, has a front-facing camera for video chats. It might succeed, except that AT&T isn’t providing enough bandwidth capacity.

First, the company won’t allow two-way video to work over its data network. Second, AT&T just made bandwidth-intensive video expensive by dropping iPhone and iPad’s $30 per month unlimited data plans and replacing them with a two-tiered plan of $15 a month for under 200 megabyte usage or $25 for two gigs. Not that I have a problem with AT&T charging me or the 2% of its customers who are heavy data users. I can always sign up with a competitor. Oh, wait. There are none. AT&T has an exclusive contract with Apple.

Continue reading

Small Town’s Telecom Drama Continues: Municipal Utility Sues Cable Group For Discriminatory Access To Programming

  By

Sarah Lai Stirland, Assistant Managing Editor, BroadbandBreakfast.com

NEW YORK, June 10, 2010 – A long-running feud between a municipal utility in Lafayette, La. and Cox Communications appears to have revived itself Wednesday when LUS Fiber filed a lawsuit against the National Cable Television Cooperative. LUS Fiber charges that the cable group is unfairly denying it membership, thus depriving the Lafayette utility from millions of dollars in savings when buying television programming.

The dispute’s worth tracking because LUS Fiber is one of a growing number of municipalities around the country that has built a publicly-financed fiber-to-the-home network, the economics of which are still unproven. The project is being watched closely by others in the telecom industry across the country: An executive from Google’s gigabit-per-second fiber-to-the-home project  in April made her only conference trip of the year to visit and inspect LUS Fiber’s 100 megabit-per-second fiber-to-the-home  roll-out.

Continue reading

Stimulus winner Rural Telephone targets 100 Mb/s to the home

  By

While some rural telcos protest proposed modifications to the Universal Service fund that would support only 4 Mb/s service to the home, one rural telco is moving ahead with plans to deploy a fiber to the home network supporting speeds up to 100 Mb/s service to sparsely populated areas of western Kansas. The deployment is made possible by $101 million in funding through the Broadband Stimulus Program, which was awarded on a 50/50 grant/loan basis to Rural Telephone, a rural ILEC that also has CLEC operations.

Continue reading

75% of New Zealanders to get 100Mbps fiber by 2020

  By

Add New Zealand to the list of countries that understand that the key to broadband penetration is building and open-access infrastructure.  The Kiwis join their neighbors Australia and other Asia-Pacific countries like Singapore in building an independent open-access fiber infrastructure.  Even though the country is small, the federal government recognizes the need to build the infrastructure on a local level through a public/private partnership.  While the FCC is trying to flex its enforcement muscles, other countries are implementing plans to increase their broadband penetration via affordable, open-access networks.  If more U.S. municipalities pursued open-access networks, net neutrality would be less of an issue.

By Nate Anderson | Last updated 33 minutes ago

Taking a page from the Australian broadband playbook, New Zealand has decided not to sit around while incumbent DSL operators milk the withered dugs of their cash cow until it keels over from old age. Instead, the Kiwis have established a government-owned corporation to invest NZ$1.5 billion for open-access fiber to the home. By 2020, 75 percent of residents should have, at a bare minimum, 100Mbps down/50 Mbps up with a choice of providers.

Continue reading

Brigham City hears from UTOPIA

  By

The sponsoring cities and UTOPIA have the right concept.  UTOPIA is now being better managed, and the network penetration is increasing.  I know that they can start meeting their objectives and eventually be profitable, but their members need to continue to invest in them.  The $54,000 that the city of Brigham needs to contribute to keep UTOPIA going is a small price to pay for the economic and consumer benefits the network brings.  I’ve seen cities blow that much money on studies that are never implemented and just sit on a shelf.   I hope Brigham residents and the council have the foresight to continue investing in this valuable asset.

By Nancy B. Fuller (Standard-Examiner correspondent)

BRIGHAM CITY — After months of rumors, the Brigham City Council had its first formal meeting with UTOPIA executive directors on options for implementation and long-term commitments for the city to continue with the fiber-optic network.

The meeting was held one hour before the regular city council meeting, which didn’t leave enough time for council members to address their concerns, so the council requested another meeting with UTOPIA.

Continue reading

FCC Seeks to Reclassify Broadband as Regulated

  By

This article is a thorough review of the different options to create and enforce net neutrality.  The bottom line is that we need to rewrite this country’s telecommunications laws, but the current Congress is not up to that task.

Owen D. Kurtin | The National Law Journal

null

On March 16, the Federal Communications Commission issued its National Broadband Plan, a compendium of lofty goals for extending broadband penetration throughout the United States and targeting specific industries and sectors, such as health care and education. As part of the plan, the FCC explicitly supported the principle of “net neutrality,” that of ensuring that internet backbone providers may not impose premium pricing or discriminatory access upon content and applications providers that use their networks, no matter how heavy their use of the available bandwidth.

Continue reading

Chattanooga Announces Nation’s Only 150 Mbps Residential Internet Offer

  By

Chattanooga Area 10 Years Ahead of FCC’s National Broadband Plan

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn., June 3 /PRNewswire/ — EPB Fiber Optics, Chattanooga’s municipally-owned fiber-to-the-home network, announced it will introduce a 150 Mbps symmetrical residential Internet product later this month. EPB Fiber Optics’ product, Fi-Speed Internet 150, will be the only offer of its kind in the U.S.

Continue reading