telecompetitor

If CenturyLink’s plan to merge with Level 3 Communications is approved, the combined carrier will get 76% of its revenue from the enterprise and wholesale market, said a Level 3 executive. After the CenturyLink, Level 3 merger, the combined company would be the most heavily business-focused of the nation’s five largest service providers by a long shot, according to data presented by Level 3 Chief Financial Officer Sunit Patel at the Bank of America Merrill Lynch Leveraged Finance Conference, which was also webcast. AT&T would be in the number two spot, with 17% of its revenue coming from enterprise and wholesale, followed by Verizon and Charter who are tied at 13% and Comcast, which gets just 6% of its revenues from the enterprise and wholesale market.

The combined Level 3/ CenturyLink enterprise and wholesale markets “really becomes the prime business of the company moving forward,” said Patel. At $32.5 billion for 2015, AT&T would still have the largest overall enterprise and wholesale revenues after a CenturyLink/ Level 3 merger. But the merged company would be in the number two spot with combined CenturyLink enterprise and wholesale revenues of $18.8 billion, followed by Verizon, Charter and Comcast.

Growing fixed wireless momentum across the globe is leading to the concept of wireless-to-the-home (WTTH), promising fiber like speeds that are increasingly seen as lower cost alternative option for traditional wireline fixed broadband service. WTTH was on full display recently with particular emphasis on 4.5G WTTH, during Huawei’s Mobile Broadband Forum (MBBF), which took place in Tokyo. WTTH is seen as the next generation of fixed wireless, providing speeds of up to 1 Gbps, a dramatic improvement over first generation fixed wireless. Huawei likes to call it WTTH 2.0. The coming launch of 5G wireless will initially be focused on fixed wireless applications (WTTH 3.0), before providing true mobile broadband services, but a recurring theme at MBBF, is you don’t have to wait for 5G.

Growing numbers of Americans are relying on Internet, and increasingly mobile broadband, connectivity to earn their livings. Broadband connectivity also offers numerous and varied opportunities for consumers to save money, and the Internet Innovation Alliance highlights the top 10 of them in a new study about broadband economic benefits.

Starting out with the Labor Department’s ¨2015 Consumer Expenditure Survey¨ IIA went online to search for discounts on essentials such as housing, apparel, gasoline and food, as well as more discretionary spending, such as the cost of leisure activities. In its latest report IIA zooms in on online shopping savings for five of the 12 largest U.S. cities by population: New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Dallas and Jacksonville. Some of the resulting data required specific, city-level analysis while other was broader based. Online savings opportunities were greatest in the entertainment category. Consumers could save significantly by ¨cutting the cord¨ on a traditional cable TV subscription and relying on an OTT streaming video/TV service, such as Netflix, IIA highlights in an infographic about the broadband economic benefits.

Two key telecommunication associations – USTelecom and NTCA—The Rural Broadband Association – have asked the Federal Communications Commission for additional Universal Service funding. The requests come in the wake of the revelation that more rate-of-return carriers than anticipated had opted for A-CAM Universal Service funding based on a cost model, creating a budget shortfall of $1.6 billion over a 10-year period. At the time this news came to light, the FCC asked for input from stakeholders about how to address the shortfall.

A-CAM is an acronym for “alternative Connect America model.” Carriers opting to receive Universal Service funding based on that model also must commit to building out broadband to customers that cannot get broadband today in conformance with strict targets and deadlines that are more aggressive than those for carriers not opting for A-CAM funding. In separate filings, USTelecom and NTCA asked the FCC to make up the $160 million annual funding shortfall in A-CAM Universal Service support for the next 10 years.

AT&T Fiber locations now reach 44 markets across the US, with the announcement of four new metro areas coming online with the gigabit capable fiber-to-the-premises service. AT&T eventually plans to reach 67 markets/metro areas nationwide, covering 12.5 million locations by mid-2019. The new markets include Baton Rouge (LA), Birmingham (AL), Charleston (SC), and Reno (NV). AT&T also announced expansion of AT&T Fiber in 16 existing markets. AT&T claims they now have an addressable AT&T Fiber audience of 3 million locations, of which over 500K are apartments and condo units, or MDUs. AT&T is expanding their AT&T Fiber locations, just as Google fiber retracts. They have made a point of highlighting this, gleefully so in some instances. As an incumbent provider with an extensive existing network, AT&T has distinct advantages over upstarts like Google fiber, who must overbuild markets at great expense and time.

Facebook has achieved broadband transmission of 20 Gbps over an eight-mile distance using millimeter wave technology. The Facebook millimeter wave broadband wireless technology could be used for several different applications, eventually including connecting the company’s Aquila communications drones with ground stations, the blog post said. Other applications might include providing backhaul connectivity for Facebook’s OpenCellular wireless access initiative or as backup to free space optical communications. “One of our goals is to provide connectivity in areas without traditional infrastructure and reliable power sources,” said Facebook.

A good idea for small carriers pursuing gigabit networks comes from 11 carriers in South Carolina. The carriers, who already work together on the Spirit Communications statewide fiber network, have undertaken a new initiative dubbed GigUP South Carolina that aims to spur economic development through gigabit network deployment. An impressive 60% of South Carolina residents and 80% of businesses in the state have gigabit service available to them, according to the Spirit Communications GigUP web page. Those are important numbers for other small telcos to consider as they pursue gigabit networks. Rather than touting just your own capabilities, wouldn’t it be a good idea to see what other carriers in your state or your part of the state are doing and consider banding together to determine the combined achievements you could highlight?

This week brings two more announcements involving small town gigabit networks. One comes from LS Networks, a company formed by a consortium of electric cooperatives, which will offer broadband at speeds between 100 Mbps and 1 Gbps in rural Maupin (OR). The other announcement comes from MaxxSouth Broadband, a company that operates fiber-to-the-home networks in three Mississippi markets and plans to launch gigabit service in Oxford (MI) – a college town with a population of 20,000. Smaller town gigabit networks are more common than one might expect, because many of the smaller carriers that serve those towns had previously deployed fiber-to-the-home networks, which in many cases can be easily upgraded to support gigabit service. Neither the LS Networks nor the MaxxSouth Broadband announcement today involved a network upgrade, however. Both companies are making their initial fiber-to-the-home deployments in the announced communities.

The Federal Communications Commission plans to vote in Nov on a proposal for a Universal Service/ Connect America mobility fund that FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler shared with other commission officials recently. A fact sheet about the FCC mobility fund proposal released to the public raises some important questions about the fund and how it would be implemented. Also last week, Chairman Wheeler circulated a proposal regarding data and VoLTE roaming within the commission – another proposal scheduled for a vote next month by the full commission.

One question I would ask about that is whether there are any currently subsidized areas that are high-cost for the landline provider but not for the wireless carrier. If so, it would appear that a wireless carrier who doesn’t really need funding might still get it if all of the 4G LTE carriers serving an area were previously collecting high-cost funding. That carrier would have to underbid the other carriers to continue to collect funding, but might not actually need funding at all. It also isn’t clear whether the proposed budget is sufficient to achieve what the FCC wants to accomplish, as the budget seems to have been calculated based on historical support for wireless carriers, rather than on an examination of the funding needed to achieve program goals.

High-speed, reliable broadband is an important factor in deciding where to live, according to a new fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) satisfaction survey conducted by research and consulting firm RVA LLC for the Fiber to the Home Council. Ninety-one percent of respondents said quality broadband was “very important” in choosing a community in which to live — second only to “safe streets,” which was cited by 98 percent of respondents.

Other highlights of the RVA/ FTTH Council research:

• North America has experienced record growth in fiber to homes for the last 3 years of which Google, according to analyst reports, makes up a relatively small piece.
• During 2004-2013, large telcos (Verizon, AT&T, CenturyLink and Frontier) accounted for about 83 percent of the FTTH build, while other providers added just 17 percent of the annual additions.
• But in the last three years, the large telcos only accounted for about 52% of the build while the “other 1000” FTTH providers added 48 percent in aggregate. And Google’s only one of those.
• In addition, Internet users with FTTH connections are clearly more satisfied than those who don’t have them, according to FTTH Council’s report. More than 7 in 10 survey respondents with gigabit FTTH connectivity (73%) and 57% of those with standard FTTH connections said they were ¨very satisfied¨ with reliability (service up-time). That compares to 37 percent of those with cable Internet and 38 percent with telco DSL connections.
• Similarly, 7 in 10 of those with gigabit FTTH and 51% of standard FTTH were ¨very satisfied¨ with the download and upload speeds. That compares to 38 percent of those with cable and 30 percent of those with DSL connections when it comes to download speed, and 32 percent and 29 percent, respectively, regarding upload speed.