Tag: broadband access

Santa Fe Launches Municipal Broadband Project

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Santa Fe, New Mexico is the latest city to support its own municipal broadband infrastructure. The city is launching a million dollar effort to build out its own fiber optic infrastructure with the goal of increasing both broadband access and competition among broadband providers.

Santa Fe has slower broadband than large surrounding cities like Albuquerque, which undermines local economic development, and frustrates residents according to city officials who have recently faced backlash from broadband providers. Incumbent providers in Santa Fe say they may consider litigation and that the project won’t drive up speeds. We’ve seen this movie before in municipalities where officials take action when providers fail to provide adequate services. Continue reading

Two Critics of Broadband Regulation Lament How Broadband Utility Advocates are ‘Taking their Case’ to American Public Net Neutrality

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FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai and FCC Secretary Ma...

FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai and FCC Secretary Marlene Dortch (Photo credit: ALA Washington Office)

, Reporter, Broadband Breakfast News

WASHINGTON, July 1, 2014 – The best way to prevent the internet from “fundamentally changing” is to not “fundamentally change internet regulation,” according to Federal Communications Commissioner Ajit Pai.

In a speech that attempted to rally the faithful to his “light touch regulation” approach, the commissioner was also joined by Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., at the Free State Foundation last week. Both slammed approaches to net neutrality through public utility regulation under Title II of the Communications Act, or under the less draconian Section 706. While “the former is outdated and politically corrosive,” Thune said, “the latter is legally untested and potentially far too broad.”

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Colorado’s Gigabit March Continues

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English: I took photo with Canon camera in Lon...

English: I took photo with Canon camera in Longmont, CO. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The city of Longmont should be required to provide equal access to any qualified communications company with non-discriminatory pricing so it does not compete with commercial service providers.

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The city of Longmont, Colorado which voted in 2011 to build out its own gigabit municipal network is moving forward on this plan with Calix. Longmont Power and Communications will be the new municipal entity tasked with providing electricity and telecommunications services to residents. Calix will be providing voice and data fiber and network technology for the project.

CivSource has been following efforts in Colorado to work around a 2005 law made at the state level which made building municipal broadband networks challenging. In recent years, cities in Colorado have voted on provisions to go ahead with these networks and gigabit access as telecom companies have been slow to act. Boulder,Colorado most recently decided to move forward with two ballot initiatives that would let residents decide how to move forward on gigabit broadband there.

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Is municipal broadband more important than net neutrality?

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I had high hopes for this article because the author successfully saw the link between the two concepts.  Maybe he read my tweets.  There is a definite correlation between municipal broadband and net neutrality, but I have only read one or two articles that actually get it right.  

Municipal broadband evolved from the concept that the cost of building these networks is prohibitive so it is a function that the government could provide.  That concept is fine when no service provider is serving an area but most of the municipal broadband deployments have one or two franchised providers.  This situation results in the government competing with private enterprise.  Granted that a duopoly does not create a competitive market, but the government has several advantages over private enterprise that makes it an unfair competitor.  Also, any subsidization of broadband networks by taxpayers creates an unfair advantage.

The reason that there are not more competitors for broadband network is that they are extremely expensive to build.  Investors do not like waiting almost 10 years to see if their investment is going to yield a profit which is what would happen with 3 or more competitors.  People seem to overlook that fact when accusing the incumbents of snuffing out the competition.  Economics have snuffed out the competition.

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New fiber optic line planned from Casper to Colorado

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Wyoming Governor Matt Mead Joined the Line-Up ...

Wyoming Governor Matt Mead Joined the Line-Up of Speakers (Photo credit: USFWS Mountain Prairie)

By TREVOR GRAFF Star-Tribune staff writer

Gov. Matt Mead announced Tuesday the planned installation of a new fiber optics line that will run from Casper to the Colorado border.

Advanced Communications Technology, based in Sheridan, is installing the line as part of the Governor’s initiative to boost the expansion of broadband services in the state’s rural regions.

“Any time we expand broadband, it benefits people and business. ACT is one of many companies operating in Wyoming. This means more options for Wyoming people and more access points for communities from Casper to the Colorado border,” Mead said.

With the new line, ACT’s network will now service the entire state.

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Google Fiber Is Beginning to Look Like a Head Fake

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How a little knowledge is a dangerous thing especially in the hands of people making investments.  There is no question that “The Motley Fool” provides investment advice; therefore, it is in the business of analyzing and editorializing so I’m fine with Tim’s predictions.  I’m just going to debunk them as foolish.

Google’s Wi-Fi initiative is complementary to Google Fiber.  Their objectives are to increase people coming to Google properties to look at ads and content.  We all know that Wi-Fi signals barely cover most homes and that they need a wired network behind them to work.  What Google is doing is providing public broadband access to compete against other wireless providers.  These little Wi-Fi hotspots will not provide a signal into residential neighborhoods so it is no threat to Google Fiber that has deviated from its initial mission.

Secondly Google is supporting the misinformation campaign of “net neutrality” because it is in its best interest all the while expanding Google Fiber and Wi-Fi to prepare for the era of “walled gardens” should they occur.  Providing free power and cooling is a token effort for only those content providers large enough like themselves and Netflix to deploy thousands of servers across the country instead of relying on content delivery companies and managed services.  

Is it still net neutrality when a small startup cannot afford to create their own caching appliance to deploy in all of these offices like Netflix and Google?  Aren’t these little startups at a disadvantage and a virtual walled garden is created?  Hmmm.  The content providers, of which Google is one, are merely trying to preserve status quo to maintain their bandwidth costs and keep smaller players out of the game all while trying to appear to be not evil.  

I’m not saying Google is evil no more than I’m saying that Comcast is evil.  They are just behaving like any market-driven company until they divert from capitalism and use the government to gain a business advantage.

By Tim Beyers

English: Comcast service van, Ypsilanti Townsh...

Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOGL  ) (NASDAQ: GOOG  ) may not need to blanket the country with Fiber after all, Fool contributor Tim Beyers says in the following video.

According to a report in The Information (via Android and Me), the search king plans to supply businesses with low-cost Wi-Fi equipment for enabling broadband access at retail locations and the like. A recent deal with Starbucks to power Wi-Fi at its various locations could serve as a template for others.

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Google Fiber Fights Buffering Issues for Users

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Google has done a good job of avoiding the discussion of the effects of the equipment in their and other networks have on quality of experience.  They discuss what happens outside their network and imply that buffering problems are caused by the content providers, other service providers, and inadequate peering arrangements.  I agree that all of those components are potential culprits for the dreaded “buffering” message, but Google neglects to mention that network equipment, in and out of the Google network, contain buffers.  

Those buffers fill and empty as packets transit through them.  When they are flooded with video traffic they fill to capacity and other traffic has to wait until the queue is not full anymore before it can start accepting packets again.  It is this effect that “slows” down packets on the network the most.  Network operators can either make the queues very large or they can choose to set up multiple queues to manage packets based on parameters such as traffic type.  This is where the issue of packet prioritization comes in.

Google is implying that since most of the problems with buffering happen outside their network, content caching in their network will solve the problem for Google Fiber.  It will certainly help but there are still multiple network elements between the caching servers and the customer that have queues that can become bogged down.  Proper traffic management will reduce the latency and jitter of those time-sensitive services to ensure a quality experience for all traffic types.  I truly wish that the people at Google Fiber would have discussed this aspect as well, but it would fly in the face of the other part of Google that is against paid peering and prioritization. 

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Google Fiber Logo

By Todd R. Weiss  |  Posted 2014-05-27

Google says it is working more closely with content providers to make service as efficient as possible, including allowing content providers to install their networking gear in Google facilities.

Google Fiber wants users to know that it is continuously working hard to ensure that its customers are getting the best service possible, making constant adjustments and configuring to keep bothersome video buffering to a minimum.

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