CCG Consulting

How do big broadband providers get away with charging the same prices in urban areas for both slow and fast broadband? An Associated Press article found that one customer was paying the same price for 1 Mbps DSL from AT&T as other city residents were paying for a fiber connection. It would be easy to justify charging the same price for both technologies if AT&T was in the process of converting everybody in New Orleans to fiber, but this is not the case.

I don’t think most folks understand the extent to which businesses are adapting to broadband. One of the best examples I can give you is to talk about a specific business. It’s a casual bar/restaurant that attracts customers by offering good food and arcade games for customers. Consider the following ways this one local business uses broadband:

There is a good chance that if you are reading this blog you are well-versed in a fair amount of telecommunications industry jargon. Every segment of the industry has its own jargon. Wireless folks know what’s meant when a colleague talks about MIMO, QAM, and RAN. Fiber folks understand what is meant by OLT, jitter, and backscattering. Cable company folk can talk about DAA, CMTS, and DOCSIS. The folks that finance broadband networks talk about yield, basis points, and acid tests. Regulators all know what is meant by NARUC, NOI, and CPNI. It’s hard to avoid using jargon.

When ased for an estimate of the cost of building aerial fiber, I always say that the cost is dependent upon the amount of required make-ready needed. Make-ready is well-named—it’s any work that must be done on poles to be ready to string the new fiber. Broadband providers complain when saddled with the full cost of pole replacement. Many of the issues described above should more rightfully be borne by the pole owner. But the federal and most state make-ready rules put the entire cost burden of a pole replacement on the new attacher. Poles don’t last forever.

There is an interesting recent discussion in Europe about net neutrality that has relevance to the US broadband market. The European Commission that oversees telecommunications and broadband has started taking comments on a proposal to force content generators like Netflix to pay fees to Internet service providers (ISP) for using the Internet.

I ask this question after Gigi Sohn [Senior Fellow and Public Advocate at the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society] recently withdrew her name from consideration as a Federal Communication Commissioner. But the objections to Sohn were all the kinds of smokescreens that politicians use to not admit the real reason they opposed the nomination; because she is in favor of regulating broadband and the public airwaves. The big broadband providers and the large broadcasting companies (some companies which are both) have been lobbying hard against the Sohn nomination since it was first anno

Innovative Systems of Mitchell (SD) commissioned a survey of broadband and bundled rates paid by rural residents. This is the eighth year of the survey. The 2022 survey focused on zip codes that are completely rural in order to find out about rural rates. The results come from surveys administered to 841 rural residents. The study showed that the average rate paid for rural broadband increased from $68 per month in 2021 to $71 in 2022.

Several states have already announced that there will be multiple rounds of Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program grant applications. This makes a lot of sense for states that will be receiving a significant amount of BEAD funding.

The Minnesota Public Utilities Commission recently ordered a series of public hearings to investigate the quality of service on the CenturyLink copper networks. The hearings were prompted by a complaint filed by the Communications Workers of America (CWA). The complaint listed the failures of CenturyLink to meet state service standards due to the deterioration of the copper network. CWA also noted that CenturyLink is planning to eliminate half of the remaining technicians who work on copper.

Several local politicians ask me why they should pursue getting grant funding for their county since Starlink satellite and fixed-wireless access (FWA) cellular broadband seem like good broadband alternatives that are already here today. I hate to tell them that these technologies are not a good permanent solution. At the same time, I stress that they should be promoting these technologies to make sure that folks know there are some better alternatives available today than other extremely slow broadband options.