| Should I feign surprise... that people have already forgotten about the arguments and results of the triennial review order last year.
People need to be aware of what is happening here.
This is another kind of bait and switch.
In the triennial review order it was decided that new fiber build to the premises would not have to be shared and would not be treated as copper is treated. Sbc/whitacre was arguing that this would motivate fiber build, that he couldn't build until he got regulatory certainty on this. Well he got it and within a few months was out shooting his mouth off about how there wasn't going to be fiber build. There wasn't a business case for it(we will ignore the fact that he knew this perfectly well while he and his lobbyists were out deceiving the government into believing they were going to move on fttp build.
Sbc has decided that they want to resurrect the pronto idea. Even whitacre has grasped the fact that they are going to have to have something beyond present dsl service if they want to be able to keep up with cable's rapid speed developments(cable has been spending the money to upgrade infrastructure in preparation). That is, they want to push fiber closer to the neighborhood so they can feed high speed dsl. This fiber to the node is what he is talking about when he talks about the 5-6 billion in spending. They will now try to argue that since fiber is being pushed closer to the home that it should be treated in the deregulated way that full fiber build out is treated under the triennial order.
from burstein's dslprime
" Whitacre's SUPERCOMM keynote called installing some DSLAMs "fiber to the neighborhood." He spoke of "up to $4-6B" in "incremental investment," but neither SBC nor Wall Street has raised capex estimates. This ordinary puffery became a pr coup for SBC, however, as most reporters echoed the company line. Key questions remain "Are you really increasing investment, now that you've won in D.C.?" and "When will SBC get to the 100% coverage Whitacre committed to for 2004-2005, and George Bush set as a national policy?"
note the line about no raised capital expenditure estimates.
"Ed Whitacre announced an "SBC strategy could result in an incremental investment of $4 billion to $6 billion over five years." That includes "deploying fiber deeper into neighborhoods," and "testing an IP-based switched television service based on the Microsoft TV IPTV platform." "Fiber to the Premises (FTTP) for new network builds, such as developing subdivisions," would represent a miniscule fraction of subscribers, which I would guess would be fewer than 10% after a decade. SBC's position is "the cost, deployment time and customer inconvenience required for FTTP deployment in existing neighborhoods makes widespread deployment impractical for SBC companies." The release speaks both of " nodes within 5,000 feet of homes and businesses" as well as "nodes that serve 300 to 500 homes," which generally would be much shorter distances. The current network planning at SBC is oriented to the former; if they were headed to the shorter distances of 300-500 homes, many locations would be VDSL, not ADSL.
Simplifying, SBC is putting inexpensive DSLAMs in the field, with fiber backhaul. They will use ADSL2+, the current generation, meaning many customers will get 15-20 mbps downstream, and one or two megabits upstream. This is less ambitious than Pronto, circa 1999, which deployed full DLC remote terminals, for voice, data, and even fiber. Pronto involved substantial new fiber builds, going to new locations. The new units will sometimes be closer to homes (5,000 foot goal), but will be far less expensive to deploy because they will predominantly use existing cross connect boxes and rights of way. "
" SBC will not be running fiber, except to a very limited number of new developments. Instead, they are betting ADSL2+ (15/2) will, per Chris Rice "'future-proof' our network and meet customers bandwidth needs for decades to come." Whitacre believes "In short, our network will be faster and more capable than any other," (quoted by Telephony's Donny Jackson.)"
This is, of course, not the fiber to the home that sbc claimed would be incentivized by the triennial review order.
There is always "just one more demand" with this guy.
The government should simply say to him "We are tired of your threats." "If you aren't ready to roll out, don't roll out. Goodbye." |
