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| Sensible Concern For The Unserved Karl
As you note, it is almost certain that DOCSIS 3.0 will not be available to millions and possibly tens of millions of Americans, and that's something that should be taken care of. My own estimate is that 10-25% of American homes are unlikely to receive DOCSIS 3.0 by 2012-2013, although the companies are refusing to provide their own projections. At least 5M homes will not be served without active government intervention (perhaps through the stimulus) because cable doesn't reach them and they are not in the plans of the companies.
What is to be done? I would suggest
1) Use the stimulus money to reach as many of the currently unserved as practical. Unless senior D.C. people are lying (something I'm investigating), that's 4-7% of homes. I don't believe it's worth spending $10's of thousand for a single home, but more modest sums are the best single use of the stimulus. One USF project came in at $91,000/home. But the prohibitively expensive to reach homes are little more than 1% of the country. I'd use upgraded satellite for that last 1-2%; other people may believe that the government should subsidize them.
2) Find a way to make sure that the next 5-20% of the homes actually are upgraded. I'm guessing that the biggest obstacle will be companies financial issues - Charter and Time Warner to begin. My solution would be to offer them secured loans with stimulus money; ohers may have better ideas.
3) Don't ignore the other problems: high price, lousy service, and an attempt to prevent people from watching enough video over the net that they will drop cable.
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As Saul Hansell in the Times wrote this morning in an update to the story you quoted "Finding a way to bring broadband to remote and rural locations where it is simply uneconomic for commercial companies to string wires is one clear option" for the stimulus. 10's of millions unserved should be unacceptable.
I'm partly responsible for some people's confusion on this. I believe I was the first to provide specifics on the deployment (55-60% 2010-2011, 70-85% likely 2012-2013, according the the companies talking to wall street.) I therefore made the point to the stimulus team major public money shouldn't be provided to telcos for 10 and 25 megabit upgrades in the same areas. I suggested the cable upgrades where they aren't scheduled might be cheaper than the telco alternatives, hence something worth incenting. I also pointed to ways to help the last few percent, as I did above.
Which, like this article, seems sensible to me. | |
Lazlow
join:2006-08-07
Saint Louis, MO | While I am not sure that D3 is the answer, I think we have to look at this as electric and phone were looked at when they first came it. Putting in phone and electric was very expensive for their times too, but it had to be done. The internet is just as important today as electric and phone were in their day.
So far fiber is the only long term solution that I have seen to the problem. Yes, the initial outlay is horrific, but long term is there anything that can compete? Most cable systems I have seen need virtually constant maintenance and they still have signal issues(maintenance cost eat you alive). Satellite systems (not the current Hughes mess) are expensive and I have not heard much about the new Japanese system since it's initial announcement(did it work?). Dsl variants cannot handle the distances required for most rural areas. Wireless has a problem with trees and terrain in general (many of the areas we are talking about do not have cell service either).
Point #3 should also be stressed and should have minimal government expense to do so. | |
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