Google Fiber considering Los Angeles and Chicago

Will Google free me from the evil clutches of the dreaded Time Warner Cable?

Google's first foray into municipal networking was connecting 12 square miles of Mountain View California in 2007. In 2010 they issued a call for proposals from cities wishing to participate in an "experiment" called Google Fiber, which would offer symmetric, 1 Gbps connectivity to customers. In 2012, Kansas City was selected as the first Google Fiber city.

But, was it an experiment? An attempt to goad ISPs to upgrade their networks? The start of a new Google business? In 2013, Milo Medin, who was heading the Google Fiber project, said that they intended to make money from Google Fiber and that it was a "great business to be in."

Today, Google Fiber is operating in three cities and they are committed to installing it in six others. Eleven cities, including Los Angeles and Chicago, have been invited to apply.

Google is considering big cities Los Angeles and Chicago.

Los Angeles and Chicago were just added to the list and it is significant that they are the first very large cities -- both in population and area -- on the list.

Since the initial installation in Kansas City, Google has codified the city-selection process in an informative checklist document. Google knows they are offering a service that will benefit the city in many ways, so the checklist is essentially the guide to an application form in which the city has to offer access to poles and tunnels, 2,000 square-foot parcels for equipment "huts," fast track permitting, etc.

I expect that Google will also have their eye on the Los Angeles tech startup community and entertainment industries. While Google Fiber does not seem to be a mere "experiment," they will doubtless enable and discover new applications that captialize upon gigabit connectivity (and increase Google ad revenue).

Rollout order within a selected city is governed by the willingness of residents of a neighborhood to sign up for the service. High demand areas get high priority. But, this can exacerbate the digital divide within the city -- serving wealthy areas before poor areas. Google encountered this problem in Kansas City. As shown below, wealthy neighborhoods (green) committed before the poorer areas, so Google initiated programs to reach out to them.

Wealthy KC neighborhoods committed early.

Based on that experience, they now consider inclusion plans in the application process and hire city-impact managers for fiber cities. They also offer very low-cost copper connections for those who cannot afford fiber.

I am not familiar with the situation in Chicago, but Los Angeles has been pursuing fiber connectivity for some time. The city issued a request for proposals for city-wide fiber two years ago, and last year CityLinkLA was formed with the goal of providing "basic access to all for free or at a very low cost and gigabit (1 Gbps) or higher speed access at competitive rates." The effort has been led by Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and Councilman Bob Blumenfield and they are working with both Google and AT&T toward that goal.

I assume that AT&T will upgrade their current infrastructure to DOCSIS 3.1 in order to achieve faster speeds over copper running from fiber nodes to individual premises, but they only serve a portion of Los Angeles. Other areas may have to wait for Google. It seems that Verizon gave up on their fiber offering, FIOS, some time ago.

Now for the belated full-disclosure. I live in Los Angeles, and am hoping that competition between Google or AT&T or someone will one day free me from the evil clutches of my current monopoly broadband service provider, the dreaded Time Warner Cable.

Recommended podcast: James Baller on Fighting Telecom Giants (6m 52s)

Bob Garfield of On the Media interviews James Baller, an attorney representing local governments in their effort to provide or help provide broadband service.

"I believe communities should have the right to choose for themselves. They’re the most affected by the decision and should have the right to make it." James Baller

Baller, who has worked on municipal broadband networks for many years, points out that when a city asks a cable provider to upgrade their service, they are often turned down because the cable company does not think it is a good use of their capital, but, if the city then decides to do their own network, the cable company fights them in court.

"The commercial broadband providers want to not have their cake and not eat it too." Bob Garfield

The large ISPs have succeeded in passing legislation blocking public broadband networks in nineteen states and they are currently trying to do the same in Kansas, perhaps triggered by Google Fiber's presense there.

(Note that the FCC may try to overturn turn those state laws).

The Baller-Herbst web site also has links to a lot of resources related to community broadband.

Google and Kansas City push to narrow the digital divide

We have covered various aspects of Google's gigabit connectivity trial in Kansas City. Their plan is to install fiber first in areas of the city, "fiberhoods," with high demand for the service, as measured by the percent of households willing to pay a $10 pre-registration fee.

The deadline for pre-registration was midnight last night, but, as of last Friday, the map of fiberhoods that had met their goal reflected the digital, cultural, racial and income divide in Kansas City, Missouri.

Google and the City worked hard to bridge the divide. The threshold to qualify for fiber was higher in affluent areas than poor. For example, in the circled area on the map shown below, only 5% of the households had to register in order to qualify.

Furthermore, on August 31st, Google adjusted some of the thresholds to make it easier for poor neighborhoods to qualify.

During the last weekend of the six week registration drive, Google and the City worked overtime to close the gap. They held meeting, walked door to door, deployed an ice-cream truck refitted as mobile registration site, and more.

The map below shows that many fiberhoods east of the traditional Troost/Paseo Avenue division line met their thresholds during thd weekend push. (This map shows Kansas City Kansas as well as Missouri). Google reports that 63 fiberhoods qualified during the last week of the registration drive and that at least 180 out of 202 have qualified for service. They will announce the final tally on the registration drive and publish a fiberhood installation schedule next Thursday.

This is important for two reasons. Google will give free gigabit connectivity to all schools, hospitals, libraries and other public facilities in qualifying fiberhoods. That will mean more to a school in a poor neighborhood than an affluent neighborhood.

Furthermore, while Google will charge subscribers $70 per month for gigabit access, they offer free 5 mb/s DSL connectivity to those who wish to pay less. (Households that elect free connectivity must pay a $300 installation fee in 12 monthly $25 installments).

While 5 mb/s sounds slow compared to gigabit connectivity, the fastest DSL speed Verizon can offer me in my middle class Los Angeles neighborhood is 3 mb/s for $29.99 per month. At that rate, I could pay off a $300 installation fee in ten months.

(Verizon does not offer fiber service in my neighborhood, but, where they do, they charge $89.99 a month for 75 mb/s service).

I would expect less contention for backhaul with Google DSL than Verizon since they are provisioning for gigabit service. Five mb/s customers will not add much load.

Google's free DSL service will be more important to many households on the wrong side of the digital tracks than their gigabit service. It will provide very usable speed to newly connected households.

I have said a lot about Google's effort, but, as Timothy B. Lee points out, Kansas City is an active partner. To attract Google, Kansas City taxpayers offered power, office and equipment space and more.

This is a good example of blended public-private investment. It reminds me of Stockholm where the municipal government provided "middle mile" fiber then invited private companies to compete using that infrastructure.

Lee points out that some right-wing commentators have claimed the Kansas City project shows that industry (Google in this case) can build exellent infrastructure without government guidance or subsidy. That is clearly not the case in Kansas City. Hundreds of cities applied to participate in this pilot study, and I am sure they all offered various incentives to Google.

Google and Kansas City cannot bridge the cultural, income and digital divide by themselves, but they are making laudable effort and I applaud them.

Google unveils Gigabit network in Kansas City -- will they disrupt the ISP and mobile access industries? (and other questions)

Google has announced three pricing plans for gigabit networking in Kansas City:

Gigabit +, $120/month: You get 1 Gbps Internet access plus TV. You also get a 2TB cloud DVR with 8 virtual tuners and a Nexus 7 tablet that you can use as your remote control.

Gigabit Internet, $70 per month: You get 1 Gbps Internet access plus "advanced" WiFi and 1TB of cloud storage on Google Drive.

Free Internet, $0 per month: You get 5 Mbps, but there is a one time, $300 construction charge that can be paid in $25 installments.

Note that they are not even bothering with a telephone/TV/Internet "triple play" -- they assume you will do IP telephony and/or have a cell phone.

Google's rollout scheduling is innovative. Instead of doing purely speculative installation in various parts of the city, they are asking people to pay $10 to pre-register. Those pre-registrations will determine the scheduling of installation in various "fiberhoods." The fiberhoods with the highest pre-registration percentage during the next six weeks will get Google fiber first.

They urge people to encourage their neighbors to pre-register and they have sweetened the pot by promising to give community buildings like schools, libraries and hospitals in the fiberhood free Gigabit Internet.

Well, there are a lot of unanswered questions. Is the Internet service symmetric? How many fiberhoods will Kansas City be divided into? Local channels are included in the television coverage, but which other channels will be included? Will there be bandwidth caps? Will the subscriptions be month-to-month? How good a job will they do integrating the Nexus 7 controller with the TV set? What will be the uptake and response to the fiberhood rollout plan? What new applications will be developed to utilize the bandwidth? Will Google "seed" the Gigabit application market?

I wonder what Google's deal with Kansas City looks like. The City is gaining valuable infrastructure and Google is getting a pilot-test network. Is Google paying anything for access to City tunnels and conduit? Is the City paying anything to Google? (Remember that many cities wanted in on the program). Is there any sort of exclusivity? Time limits?

This also reminds me of Google's 2007 WiFi rollout in Mountain Veiw, California. I've not heard much about that recently, and looking at the project Web site, it does not seem like a lot has been happening.

The most important question is -- what will be the response of the cable and telephone companies in Kansas City? Google's high speed service is a direct competitor to cable companies (and FIOS where available) and the slow, free service competes with DSL. And, just maybe Google has provisioned enough fiber to eventually provide backhaul from cell towers. Is this the beginning of the end of the "gentleman's agreement" to divide up landline and mobile Internet access among the cable and telephone companies?

Regardless, my hat is off to Google for trying and I hope they succeed!

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Google has answered the questions about their contract terms. After a year, you have paid your $300 construction fee in full. For TV customers, your first set top box (and Nexus 7) are free. You can rent ($5 per month) or buy ($120) more if you have multiple TVs.

They also adjusted some of the fiberhood thresholds to make it easier for poor neighborhoods to qualify.

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Timothy B. Lee provided answers to my questions about Google's deal with the city in a post entitled How Kansas City taxpayers support Google Fiber. Lee points out that the city offered Google many incentives and includes a link to the text of their agreement for those wishing to delve into the details. It turns out that Google is receiving power, office and equipment space and more.

If I lived in Riga, I would not bother to cut the cord

Triple play pricing from the top 15 ISPs

(Versions of this post appeared on aNewDomain and Slashdot. There is extensive discussion at Slashdot).

Living in the US, we can lose perspective, assuming that things are the same in other places as here. I am a cord cutter, but, if I lived in Riga or Paris or many other cities I would not have cut the cord.

Instead, I would be a "triple play" subscriber, receiving television, telephone and Internet connectivity from one service provider.

I cut the cord to save money. I live in Los Angeles and pay Time Warner $84.94 (plus $6.56 tax and fees) for telephone service and Internet connectivity at "up to" 20 Mbps download and 2 Mbps upload speed. Adding digital TV to round out the triple play would cost me an additional $58.99 per month -- just about what I paid for my Roku box.

If I lived in Riga, I would simply get a triple play subscription with 20 Mbps up and 5 Mbps down from service provider Balti-Com for $25.43. That price was disclosed in the New America Foundation report The Cost of Connectivity, which compares prices charged by 885 ISPs in 22 cities worldwide. (This report is no longer available -- see instead their 2014 Cost of Connectiivty report, in which Riga still looks a lot better than my home town, Los Angeles).

Above, you see the triple play prices of the 15 cheapest ISPs in the comparison. My triple play would be about $150 per month in Los Angeles. Now, to be fair, I don't know how the TV content in Riga compares to what I would get in Los Angeles, speed measurements can be slippery and parts of the city may not be covered, but the price difference is dramatic.

A clue to the source of that difference is the fact that five of the top 15 ISPs are in Paris. That is what competition looks like in "socialist" France. In my neighborhood in Los Angeles, the only alternative I have to Time Warner Cable for Internet service is Verizon DSL at 3.1 Mbps, a non-starter.

As study co-author Benjamin Lennett says, our telephone and cable companies have arranged a "negotiated truce" in which cable incumbents enjoy a de facto monopoly on high-speed broadband service, while Verizon and AT&T focus primarily on their wireless platforms.

The report attributes the French success to a regulatory decision in 2000 that forced the former state-owned monopoly, France Telecom, to open its network to rival operators. The US Congress tried to spur competition in a similar manner with the Telecommunication Act of 1996, but the incumbent operators defeated that attempt in courts and state houses.

William Kennard, who, as chairman of the United States Federal Communication from 1997-2001, was charged with implementing the Telecommunications Act, stated near the end of his term that “all too often companies work to change the regulations, instead of working to change the market,” and spoke of “regulatory capitalism” in which “companies invest in lawyers, lobbyists and politicians, instead of plant, people and customer service.” He went on to remark that regulation is “too often used as a shield, to protect the status quo from new competition -- often in the form of smaller, hungrier competitors -- and too infrequently as a sword -- to cut a pathway for new competitors to compete by creating new networks and services.”

Along with many many others, I've been writing about this sort of thing for years, but the situation seems to get progressively worse. In 1996, when the Telecommunication act was passed, I could choose among many ISPs. Today, I have only one viable choice, and the price is about six times what I would be paying in Riga.
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Update 11/19/2013

Retiring Senator Jay Rockefeller has written a bill designed to save the US Internet by bringing competition to the ISP and video markets. Incumbents in both markets have succeeded in stifling competition, but maybe this bill has slim chance of doing what Congress tried to do with the Telecommunication Act of 1996. We can dream.

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Update 12/28/2015

I've included a link to an updated version of New America's Cost of Connectivity report. Connectivity in Riga still looks a lot faster and cheaper than in my home town, Los Angeles.

Google is ready to roll out fiber in Kansas City

A while ago, Google invited cities to apply for subsidized installation of fiber infrastructure, and Kansas City was selected.

They have now completed detailed engineering plans and are ready to begin installing fiber in Kansas City.

There are many models for fiber infrastructure ownership -- a mix of private companies, government agencies, home and building owners, etc. For example, the ownership of a portion of the infrastructure by Swedish government agencies has enabled them (and others) to surpass US Internet service.

Here's to the Google experiment and what we may learn from it!

(This fell through the cracks and was not posted at the time I wrote it -- better late than never).

Does your city offer Internet service? Why not?

         

The community broadband map on the left shows the 133 US cities that offer residents Internet service. Is your city one of them?

It is common for local government to offer services like gas, electricity, water and sewage disposal to residents. Why do only 133 cities offer Internet service?

The reasons are different in each case, but one factor that is common to every case is that the telephone and cable companies do not want competition from cities. They fight to block municipal Internet services in many ways. In some states they have even gotten laws passed to prohibit cities from offering Internet service. The broadband preemption map on the right shows states with legislation prohibiting or making it difficult for cities to offer Internet service to residents.

(Both maps are interactive -- you can get further detail on the services offered and the restrictions placed on them by visiting the map pages and clicking on them).

The maps are taken from a report called Publicly Owned Broadband Networks: Averting the Looming Broadband Monopoly that was written by Christopher Mitchell and published by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance on March 23, 2011. You should also read Bob Frankston's comment on the report.

You may also be interested in Breaking the Broadband Monopoly, a report Mitchell wrote last May. It covers similar ground and includes many examples of municipal networks.

(We have also covered related topics on this blog in the past).

AT&T, the nations second largest wireless Internet service provider is trying to acquire T-Mobile, the fourth largest provider. If the acquisition is approved, how will that affect wireless Internet competition, service, and prices?

What are the arguments for and against municipal Internet service?

Singapore is installing fiber to every building

This figure is taken from a an ITU study on the Internet in Singapore that I worked on several years ago. It depicts the government role as an equity investor in the ISP industry. (The government has played a similar role in the oil, finance, shipping and biotechnology industries).


Continuing that policy, the government of Singapore is investing in fiber to every home, school, government building, business and hospital. Their Next Generation Plan is for 95 percent of buildings to have access to a 1 Gbps connection by 2012.

They will also follow the model of competitors using open, shared infrastructure, which seems to be working well in Stockholm and other cities.

There are caveats. Singapore is a small, city nation, and a very high percent of the population lives in apartment buildings. That makes this plan relatively cheap. Retail connectivity prices are also a question mark -- will there be sufficient competition over the shared infrastructure to keep them low?

If the network succeeds, and 1 Gbps connectivity becomes ubiquitous, what applications might they develop? What would you use a 1 Gbps link for?

Essential ban on new public power companies and projects barely fails -- will public Internet infrastructure be next?

California voters narrowly rejected proposition 16 yesterday. Had it passed, it would have essentially banned new and expanded municipal power projects, by requiring 2/3 majority support from voters before local governments could form or expand municipal utilities.

Pacific Gas and Electric (the power company portrayed in the movie about Erin Brockovich) spent over $46 million on the campaign.

PG&E's non-stop ads claimed to be protecting our right to vote, but blocking competition from municipal power companies was the clear motive. Had their goal been thoughtful debate on proposed public power projects, they would have said so in their ads, and called for a simple majority rather than a prohibitive 2/3 majority.

This was a close call, and it illustrates the political power of a wealthy corporation.

Large ISPs like Verizon and AT&T fight vigorously against public Internet projects by lobbying at all levels and in court. Might we one day see a proposition on the "right to vote on public Internet projects?"

Government AND private industry can be inefficient and bureaucratic

As a California State University professor, I see a lot of waste and bureaucracy -- government organizations can be very inefficient. But so can private companies. Consider my experience with my ISP, Verizon.

Last week I ordered 7 Mbps service from Verizon, but, after they switched it on, I was only getting about 1.5 Mbps. I assume there were tons of re-transmission errors due to an overly aggressive modulation scheme.

When I called to complain, a Verizon "technician" kept me on the phone trying one thing and another for nearly an hour before he gave up and got his bosses permission to schedule a "truck roll" to come to my house and fix the problem.

The minute the driver arrived, he told me that, at 9,000 feet from my central office, there was no way I was going to get 7 Mbps. He checked the line, and concluded that I could reliably run at 4.2 Mbps, but, unfortunately, Verizon only offers 3 and 7, so I could only get 3 Mbps.

They could have easily told me at the time of the order that 7 Mbps was not available at my house, saving an expensive truck roll. The technician who scheduled the truck roll when I called customer service to complain could have done the same.

The driver told me he does about five calls per day and three are typically fruitless. He added that he was happy with the system because it gave him job security. What a guy.

When he left, I had to make yet another 30-minutes-on-hold call to Verizon to change my order to 3 Mbps. The driver could not change the order automatically.

Verizon information is walled off in "silos." The truck driver can determine the distance of my house from my central office, but cannot change my service order. The ordering system can sign me up for a service, but cannot determine my distance to the central office to see if it is feasible. The customer support technician cannot do anything except, eventually, order a truck roll.

In chatting with the driver, he also confirmed the Internet rumors and leaked memos saying that Verizon was not installing new FIOS fiber, but focusing on increasing the take rate on what they have installed already. So much for me getting fiber from them any time soon.

(I wonder how much Verizon has extracted from the California Public Utilities Commission in return for "promises" to install fiber. For more on Verizon's broken promises, see this book by Bruce Kushnick.)

What has been your experience with customer service from your phone company or ISP?

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Addendum:

I continued limping along with 3 Mbps service, hoping for FIOS, when my bandwidth dropped to just over 1 Mbps. When I called to complain, I was told that I was so far from the central office that I could not get 3 Mbps service, so my rate was lowered. I explained that it was working fine at close to 3 Mbps, but that did not sway them.

I gave up on FIOS and switched to Time Warner cable. FIOS is still not available in my neighborhood.

Would you like to own and install fiber to your home?

There are many examples of municipal ownership of access networks, but ownership and control could also be pushed out to home and building owners.

Wu and Slater discuss this alternative in a recent paper and a test is underway in downtown Ottawa, Canada, where fiber has been deployed to serve a 400–home neighborhood, but a service provider has not yet signed on.

The Norwegian telecommunication company Lyse Tele reports that 80% of their 130,000 customers have agreed to dig their own trenches and bury their own fiber in exchange for a discount on installation. This has been good for business -- only .2% of customers who have installed their own fiber switch to another service provider.

While this sounds good, there are questions. Who owns the fiber, Lyse Tele or the home owner? Who controls the fiber -- can their customers reach competing services or are they locked in to Lyse Tele?

I have seen estimates that it costs Verizon about $1,000 to connect a home. I would gladly pay that if it meant I owned and controlled the fiber and could get connectivity from competing ISPs over it. I would consider it an investment -- increasing the value of my house -- not an expense.

I own my own sewer, water and gas lines and call a plumber when there is a problem. I would be happy to own my fiber.

Four excellent videos on municipal fiber networking

We have discussed infrastructure ownership options, and Benoit Felten has posted four excellent videos on municipal fiber networking. Three are interviews of people who gave talks at the recent Freedom to Connect Conference: Terry Huval, Tim Nulty and Bill St Arnaud. The fourth is a presentation given by Felten in New Zealand last month.

1. Terry Huval, Director of the Lafayette, Louisiana Utility Service fiber to the home project.

Huval discusses the motivation and business model that gave rise to the project, their legal battles (3 years of fighting until the State Supreme Court ruled unanimously in their favor), the services they offer, and the applications they will be offering in the future.

2. Tim Nulty, Project Director, East Central Vermont Community Fiber Network (ECFiber).

ECFiber plans to build rural fiber connectivity to 21,866 households in and around 22 Vermont towns. (So far 21% of those households have pre-registered). Nulty presents data on costs and revenue, and concludes that the network is a viable business. They will offer both retail and wholesale Internet service over the network, and he explains why a pure wholesale network like that in Stockholm makes sense in Europe, but would be defeated by the incumbents in the US.

3. Bill St Arnaud, Chief Research Officer at CANARIE, Canada's research network with a mandate to develop next generation networks, applications and services.

St Arnaud describes the "G-commerce" model, which combines connectivity with energy savings and pollution reduction. Installation of fiber to the home will be financed by a 1-2 cent per kilowatt hour increase in electric bills and energy-cap savings from reduced power consumption as high speed communication substitutes for transportation.

4. Benoit Felten, Senior Analyst, Yankee Group.

Felten gives examples from France and the Netherlands showing that network sharing is profitable even for incumbent ISPs. Take-up rate is more important than average revenue per customer, and the fastest way to convert 100% of the population to fiber is sharing it among service providers. He outlines and presents examples of several business models ranging from passive sharing of access and rights of way to offering retail service.

Why is connectivty in Stockholm so much faster and cheaper than in US cities?

We've been discussing US broadband policy and the stimulus package, and this table shows the cost of fiber-based, residential Internet service in several cities (Brough Turner provided the European and Asian data):

Where?	Monthly cost	Uplink (Mbps)	Downlink (Mbps)
Stockholm	$11	100	100
Seoul	$24	100	100
Hong Kong	$35	100	100
Tokyo	$61	100	100
Amsterdam	$127	100	100
Lafayette, LA, Municipal	$58	50	50
Lafayette, LA, Cox Cable	$140	5	50
US, where available, Verizon	$145	20	50

Can we explain the large speed and cost differences?

The Cox Cable offering in Lafayette, Louisiana seems to be the worst deal. It is the slowest and only five dollars a month less than the Verizon network. The municipal network in the same city is faster and cheaper. The Cox network reaches more neighborhoods than the municipal network, and they are forced to compete with temporary sale prices.

Stockholm is at the other extreme. They have a municipal network that reaches every block in the city. Unlike Lafayette, they do not offer consumer service over their fiber, but lease network access to anyone who would like to offer service. The Internet service providers, including incumbent telephone and cable companies, compete on an equal footing.

As a result, there are many competing service providers in Stockholm, and, as Turner points out, the city owns the expensive, long-life assets like fiber, rights of way, conduit, and tunnels, and the service providers own the electronic equipment that is relatively cheap and is upgraded frequently as technology improves.

Many factors determine the cost of Internet connectivity, but the ownership model is significant, and it seems the Stockholm model is superior to those in the US.

Note that analysts at the OECD also endorse the Stockholm ownership model, writing that:

Municipal networks can play an important role in enhancing competition in fibre networks. If these develop, governments should encourage them to be open networks, that is providing dark fibre to service providers rather than becoming themselves service providers. Nor should the existence of a municipal network providing dark fibre mean that investment in other fibre networks in that municipality should be prevented.

Should some of our broadband stimulus funds be used for Stockholm-style municipal networks?

Click here for a paper with more on this topic.

Click here for a PowerPoint presentation on this topic.

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Update 11/10/2014

Stockholm reports 19 years of financial and user success. The Stokab report should be required reading for all local government officials.

Let's slow down on broadband stimulus in order to consider ownership alternatives

The economic stimulus package is moving through congress. Republicans are fighting it on the grounds that more tax cuts are needed and we need more time to make sensible investments. I agree that we need to slow down on broadband stimulus to consider ownership alternatives. Here is the "elevator ride" pitch:

• The current strategy of privatization with hope for competition under independent regulation has failed in many developed and developing nations. In the US, regulators have been unable to create competition and our infrastructure has suffered.
  
• The large broadband incumbents have benefited from public subsidy, have failed to live up to commitments, and have used their power to defeat attempts to create competition
  
• The US has little fiber in the access network today, but will have fiber to all urban and many rural homes and buildings in the long run. The question is not whether we are going to deploy new infrastructure; the question is “who will own it?”
  
• We should take the time to evaluate decentralized alternatives to near-total ownership by the incumbents. Local governments, cooperatives, small ISPs, and home and building owners might own parts of our next generation infrastructure.
  
• This evaluation can be fast and cheap. The work of the National Science Foundation in designing and creating NSFNet and connecting universities, colleges and foreign networks provides an excellent example of a small government staff calling on experts from academia and industry to design a network and a strategy for deploying it, followed by procurement via competitive bid.
  
• We need immediate economic stimulus, but that can come from tax cuts and investment in many sectors as well as broadband.
  
• Nobel economist Paul Krugman acknowledges the need for rapid stimulus, but in this article he says we should downplay the “jump start” metaphor and focus on job creation through infrastructure investment over the next four plus years.
  
• We will be living with the fiber and high-speed wireless infrastructure we build today for many decades. We will also be living with its owners.

Click here for a paper with details on the above.

Click here for a PowerPoint presentation on the above.

Municipal networks and federal apathy in the US

We have seen that access networks in the United States have fallen behind those of many European and Asian nations. There is no federal government effort or planning, and the ISP industry is dominated by telephone and cable companies which were able to defeat Congress' attempt to generate competition in the 1996 Telecommunication Act.

William Kennard, who, as chairman of the United States Federal Communication from 1997-2001 was charged with implementing the Telecommunications Act, stated near the end of his term that “all too often companies work to change the regulations, instead of working to change the market,” and spoke of “regulatory capitalism” in which “companies invest in lawyers, lobbyists and politicians, instead of plant, people and customer service." He went on to remark that regulation is “too often used as a shield, to protect the status quo from new competition - often in the form of smaller, hungrier competitors -- and too infrequently as a sword -- to cut a pathway for new competitors to compete by creating new networks and services.”

In many cases, municpal governments have tried to close the access gap by developing and contracting for Internet access networks. They have a mix of motivations -- use by city employees, narrowing the digital divide, economic stimulation, providing a service to citizens, etc. and a mix of public-private funding and business models.

W2i organizes conferences on municipal networks, and they have compiled a database with 91 case studies. The case studies include an overview, contact information, and presentations on the projects as delivered at W2i conferences.

Muni-Wireless is another excellent source of information on these networks. They also organize conferences, have an excellent blog, and a Web site with sections on technology, applications, initiatives, and other topics.

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What are the implications of the US falling behind in access networks?