October 2009

FCC Seeks Comment on Cost Estimates for Connecting Anchor Institutions to Fiber

In developing a National Broadband Plan, the Federal Communications Commission is relying on a variety of data to fully evaluate the costs of deploying broadband infrastructure throughout America. On October 5, 2009, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation filed a cost model and cost estimates of providing fiber optic connectivity to anchor institutions, such as public schools and libraries, community colleges, and hospitals. On Thursday, the FCC sought comment on questions raised by the estimates including:

1) Are there other categories of buildings that should be considered anchor institutions?

2) How well do the four categories of population density (dense urban, urban, suburban and rural) segment anchor institutions? Is there need to further divide, for example, the rural grouping to treat more remote areas differently?

3) How accurate is the assumption that 80% of anchor institutions lack fiber? Does it vary across the different population-density groups? Does it vary by type of anchor institution?

4) To what extent are the cost estimates for bringing fiber to individual buildings accurate?

5) What incremental inside-wiring, or campus-wiring, costs should be added to these estimates? For what type of institutions in what geographies?

6) To what extent will right-of-way issues lead to incremental costs not reflected in these estimates? How will right-of-way issues impact the timeline of build-out to these institutions?

7) Should operating expenses be a consideration when calculating cost for connecting anchor institutions to fiber? What operating expenses would be associated with running these networks, and how would those vary by type of institution and geography?

8) To what extent will providing fiber to these institutions improve the build-out economics in currently un- or under-served areas?

9) To what extent will providing fiber to these institutions directly assist last-mile build-outs in currently un- or under-served areas? For example, will bringing fiber to local schools generally provide shorter loop lengths to surrounding homes, or is the location of the communications plant relative to the school and community the primary driver? How will that vary by population density?

Comments are due October 28, 2009.

Connected Nation Buys Off Florida Challenger

[Commentary] Connected Nation, the big-telecom and cable front group, has won a lucrative broadband mapping contract in Florida by buying off the company that protested Connected Nation getting the contract. On October 2, with the blessing of the state of Florida, Sanborn dropped its challenge, and now we know why - Connected Nation used some of its high-bid money to clear the way by cutting Sanborn in on the action. According to the settlement agreement signed Oct. 1 and filed the next day, Connected Nation, Sanborn and the state of Florida officially gave Sanborn status as a subcontractor for the broadband mapping project. Under the deal, Connected Nation will contract with Sanborn "for no less than 40% and no more than 50% of $1,896,565 over a two-year period which represents the anticipated grant award for technical mapping." The final percentage will be based on how much work Sanborn does in comparison to the total project. That means that a company which wasn't even in the top six got back in the game to the tune of as much as $950,000, while the other five firms which lost to Connected Nation get zip. The Florida contract also as the possibility of a three-year extension, in which Sanborn would not participate. Under the terms of the agreement, Connected Nation, which, according to the state has a "longstanding relationship with providers across the nation," will manage the "initial engagement" of collecting the information while Sanborn will do the follow-up field-based collection from providers which don't have information readily available, counting and evaluation wireless towers and finding publicly available data sets. Sanborn will also validate some randomly selected data collected by Connected Nation and do the Geographic Information System (GIS) processing.

No Retreat On Net Neutrality

Two Q&As with Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski.

How will the FCC deal with questions of network management that are unique to the wireless industry? As Americans increasingly shift from wired to wireless broadband, it will be essential to ensure that the Internet remains free and open. A consumer accessing the Internet through a laptop with a wireless data card will have the same expectations regarding their Internet use as a consumer accessing the Internet utilizing the same laptop through a DSL or cable modem connection. However, managing a wireless network isn't the same as managing a fiber network, and what constitutes reasonable network management will appropriately reflect any operational differences. Above all, transparency will be important for any practices that providers implement.

Also, listen to a LA Times interview with Chairman Genachowski.

Lawmakers seek FCC probe into Google Voice

Twenty Members of Congress have signed a letter to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski asking the FCC to investigate Google's ability to block calls to rural telephone exchanges. In 2007, the FCC told carriers they could not restrict calls to avoid fees associated with adult chat lines or free conference calls by companies routing calls through rural carriers in order to generate fees. The spat prompted an attorney for some rural carriers, Ross Buntrock, to file a letter on October 1 with the FCC to complain that AT&T is refusing to pay its bills to rural carriers. "The only difference between Google's alleged call blocking and AT&T's refusal to pay terminating access charges for conference and chat-line calls is that the (local carriers) are forced to incur the costs of terminating AT&T's customers' traffic," Buntrock wrote. A Google spokesperson said on Thursday that for AT&T to invoke rural America while AT&T is behind in its payments to rural carriers is "the height of cynicism."
The lawmakers said they find Google's position "ill conceived and unfair to our rural constituents." They also said that they are concerned that the market and support for universal service will be undermined if Google is allowed to operate its telephone services outside of the rules that govern carriers.

AT&T's CTO defends wireless network

AT&T's chief technology officer, John Donovan, is defending his company's wireless network, despite complaints about dropped calls and slow Internet access from frustrated iPhone users. Donovan, who gave a keynote speech here at the CTIA Fall 2009 trade show Thursday, said that despite what people might be saying about problems on AT&T's network, his company is focused on providing customers with an excellent wireless experience. "I'm not ignoring the criticism of our network," he told the audience. "I'm well aware of what's being said in the press, in blogs, and on Twitter. But I don't base my network plans on what I read on blogs. No one knows more about the wireless data customer experience than AT&T." Donovan said that AT&T has more customers using "integrated devices" than any other carrier in the U.S. In fact, in the second quarter of 2009 nearly 60 percent of AT&T's wireless subscribers bought an integrated Web device, he said. He said that wireless packet data has increased more than 18 times in the last two and a half years. And voice traffic on the AT&T wireless network has nearly doubled in that time. These customers and the increase in data traffic are putting strains on the network. Because data traffic tends to come in bursts and because it's often difficult to predict when and where subscribers will flood a given cell site with mobile Web usage, AT&T has had to rethink how it plans its network.

Wireless future road-blocked by backhaul

Qualcomm co-founder Dr. Irwin Jacobs and current CEO and Chairman Paul Jacobs took the CTIA IT & Entertainment Keynote stage to reflect on where wireless has been and what it will take to achieve the future of wireless ubiquity that they are imagining. In the wireless future that the Jacobses are envisioning, new uses for wireless present the most exciting opportunities. Dr. Jacobs said e-readers and using technology in the classroom, two initiatives Qualcomm is currently working on, are most compelling to him. To his son, wireless power and the ability to charge multiple electronic devices by placing them on a platter will be an important opportunity. Qualcomm is also working on cyber-signs that send deals to the mobile phone when a consumer passes through, essentially turning the phone into a digital sixth sense, he said. The phone will be a remote control for things in the physical world, but also will be the most direct, personal way to access information about consumers. There will be formidable challenges on the path to achieving this vision, both agreed. Most pressing is wireless operators need for more headroom on backhaul. Dr. Jacobs said that Qualcomm has done all it can do with spectral efficiency and is now exploring other architectures and tricks to further stretch existing spectrum. He noted that the industry has gotten where it is from reusing spectrum and will have to continue to expand available spectrum through backhaul, devices like femtocells that offload services and reusing what spectrum is already available. "We are getting to the point where in the labs we've done what we know how to do to optimize the spectrum," the younger Jacobs said. "We have to do new tricks now." He anticipates an eight to 10 times improvement in user experience if operators build their own networks, but this will take backhaul and the move to LTE to make it work.

Clearwire Can't Stray From WiMax 'Til 2011

Because of an agreement it has in place with Intel, Clearwire cannot switch from mobile WiMax to Long Term Evolution (LTE) until 2011. In a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing the company writes, "We have committed to deploy a wireless broadband network using mobile WiMax technology and would incur significant costs to deploy alternative technologies, even if there are alternative technologies available in the future that would be technologically superior or more cost effective." One of the reasons Clearwire would even consider changing technologies is that vendor support for WiMax devices and infrastructure in the future is uncertain. "We cannot assure you that... vendors will continue to develop and produce mobile WiMax equipment and subscriber devices in the long term, which may require us to deploy alternative technologies," Clearwire notes. Clearwire might also consider switching to a competing technology like LTE for competitive reasons, if, for instance, another technology comes along that allows other operators to compete more effectively and deploy more cost effectively than mobile WiMax. This is a scenario, which the filing states, "may require us to deploy such technologies when we are permitted to do so."

Feld Interviews Feld on Wireless Issues

[Commentary] What if Harold Feld was invited to speak at the International CTIA Wireless Conference? He might get to answer some questions.

1) Q: What are the biggest benefits wireless consumers stand to receive in the next two years?
A: Elimination of handset exclusivity and early termination fees and the freedom to use whatever apps they want and access any content they want.

2) Q: Are the OECD's rankings an accurate measure of US wireless broadband?
A: The problem is that in the US we use the term "broadband" to mean a lot of different things. I don't know how many 11 year olds are doing their homework on mobile phones, for example, the way my son does with our FIOS subscription. Certainly people are using mobile devices for a lot of very cool, sophisticated things - such as avoiding SWAT teams at the G-20 summit with Twitter. So the OECD ranking is very relevant for telling us about a particular - and particularly important — service that has many uses that overlap with mobile, but that mobile simply does not replace (at least for now).

3) Q: How will the existing regulatory structure impact the ability of wireless providers in an all-IP world?
A: As data replaces voice, we need to bring the rules that made wireless voice possible to data. Wireless voice could not become a viable service until Congress passed Section 332 which made mobile voice a telecommunications service with interconnection rights and required in exchange that carriers not mess with traffic. When everything is data, and voice is only an application, we need the same rules for data that we needed for voice. By the same token, we also need to mandate data roaming in the same way we mandated voice roaming - or else eliminate mandatory voice roaming. But we can't pretend that these are different worlds subject to different rules when the network treats them as the same thing and where users expect to use all these services equally.

House Committee Extends PSIC Grant Program

The House Communications Subcommittee voted unanimously Thursday to extend the Public Safety Interoperable Communications grant program administered by National Telecommunications and Information Administration and the Department of Homeland Security for another two years. The initial deadline for handing out the $1 billion in funds was December 2010. Most of the money has been handed out to programs in all 50 states, but the Department of Commerce's Inspector General concluded that the initial time frame did not allow states to take "full advantage" of the program funds.

House Commerce Approves Local Community Radio Act

The House Commerce Committee passed the Local Community Radio Act, a bill that would allow more low-power FM stations into the radio band, something the National Association of Broadcasters has argued could create undue interference with commercial stations. The bill was amended to include stronger interference protections for low-power translators used by full-powers to extend their coverage and a faster track for any interference complaints by full-power stations, but it removes the third-adjacent-channel protection for those stations.

Benton

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