A new FCC initiative promises to accelerate the delivery of 1 Gbps connections to all fifty states by 2015, though the plan upon closer inspection appears to be another hollow agency puppet show. FCC boss Julius Genachowski received ample press attention last week by proclaiming that the FCC was spearheading a new agency program that would bring 1 Gbps connections to all fifty states in just two years. Few stopped applauding long enough to notice the plan's hollow core.
In a press statement, the FCC announced their new "gigabit city challenge" would help foster development of ultra-high speed connections, spurring national innovation and driving business development nationwide. According to the FCC, only 42 communities in 14 states are served by ultra-high-speed fiber Internet providers.
Genachowski pitched his initiative in a guest editorial over at Forbes, in which the FCC boss "challenges" the industry to get moving:
quote:I challenge broadband providers and local leaders to bring at least one gigabit testbed community to all 50 states by 2015. The FCC will actively engage with broadband providers and community leaders to help achieve this goal, including by launching a clearinghouse for best practices on speeding gigabit deployment. America led the 20th century economy because we led the world in innovation.
While this all sounds great on the surface (ooh a clearinghouse!), the FCC is once again putting on an empty stage play here. While it's true that the scattered 1 Gbps connection options that exist in this country today exist thanks to the FCC -- ironically it's the FCC's failures that are to thank for creating them. The agency has repeatedly failed to foster competition and stand up to incumbent operators, forcing neighborhoods to take things into their own hands (often quite painfully and at great cost) without the FCC's help.
Municipal broadband operations, for example, have bubbled up because of a lack of competition in the market. Lafayette, Louisiana had to fight tooth and nail against the sleazy antics of both BellSouth (AT&T) and Cox, who tried like hell to prevent the service from ever happening. Politicians were a no show during the entirety of that struggle, unless they were busy helping incumbent carriers shut these services down. The same can be said for other municipal operations around the country, from Chattanooga, Tennessee to Lake County, Minnesota.
Google Fiber, like municipal deployments, wouldn't exist without the lack of competition the FCC's policy failures helped create.
Google Fiber, like municipal deployments, similarly wouldn't exist without the lack of competition the FCC's policy failures helped create. That a search giant was forced to enter the United States broadband market because United States competition was so pathetic speaks volumes. Unfortunately, Google's symmetrical 1 Gbps for $70 connections will likely only expand into a small handful of additional cities outside of Kansas City.
While existing 1 Gbps services emerged despite the FCC, the 1 Gbps ball is similarly being moved forward without the FCC's help or "challenges." Blair Levin's Gigabit Squared, which we covered last May, is already busily partnering with universities and anchor communities to help speed up the deployment of 1 Gbps connections. This is great news for University anchor communities, but the initiative won't do much for the tens of millions of consumers stuck on sub 3 Mbps DSL or immensely-overpriced cable due to limited competition.
The combination of Google Fiber, Gigabit Nation, and municipal fiber deployments should bring 1 Gbps to tiny portions of all fifty states in the next two years without the FCC doing a thing. This kind of hollow-centered automatically self-fulfilling FCC "goal" is not new for Genachowski's FCC.
So before we pat Genachowski on the back for "aiming high," it's important to note his goal is yet another empty promise designed to make the chairman look superficially competent before he hops off to his next higher-paying job at Silicon Valley or at a DC think tank.
Genachowski's FCC now has a long history of setting already-achieved or easily-achieved goals just to score easy political points. The FCC's national broadband plan (drafted by Levin) called for 100 million homes to get 100 Mbps speeds sometime in the next twenty years, something already soon accomplished by expected cable deployments of DOCSIS 3.0 technology. Genachowski and the Obama administration also promised 98% coverage of 4G wireless technologies, something that had actually already occurred without the FCC lifting a finger.
So before we pat Genachowski on the back for "aiming high," it's important to note his goal is yet another empty promise designed to make the chairman look superficially competent before he hops off to his next higher-paying job in Silicon Valley or at a DC think tank. The reality is that his tenure at the FCC has been a significant failure, pockmarked by his unwillingness to address competition, skyrocketing broadband prices, anti-competitive implementation of usage caps, unreliable meters and predatory below the line fee price gouging.
Promising 1 Gbps to a few scattered neighborhoods (already in the process of getting them without the FCC's help) changes none of this.
So the real plan is to funnel more money to the ILECs who will use the money to invest in other things and continue to work to run CLECs out of business?
Super high speed for the few is not the problem. Reasonable speed for everyone at an affordable price is.
I'd rather see 100Mbps - 200Mbps for 80%+ of the population instead of 1Gb for 10% and at good pricing and without caps. What is available now all too often is overpriced and increasingly is capped making it useless.
Super high speed for the few is not the problem. Reasonable speed for everyone at an affordable price is.
I'd rather see 100Mbps - 200Mbps for 80%+ of the population instead of 1Gb for 10% and at good pricing and without caps. What is available now all too often is overpriced and increasingly is capped making it useless.
/\--- I nominate you as head of the FCC I completely agree with your statement
the thing is once you run the fiber the costs for 1Gbps over 100Mbps are trivial
Who said anything about fibre? You don't need fibre to get 100Mbps - 200Mbps service to most people. Having fibre everywhere is the most ideal situation but it isn't going to happen.
to get 100/100 or 200/200 you bet your ass you need fiber sure as hell not going to doing over the copper on the poles now ask AT&T how thats working out
to get 100/100 or 200/200 you bet your ass you need fiber sure as hell not going to doing over the copper on the poles now ask AT&T how thats working out
Yea for real world speeds like that you need fiber, cable can do it downstream now and has to potential with upstream channel bonding to do it up as well.
But old pots lines aren't going to do it, at least not unless the vdsl box is on the customers property , at the distances needed for that kind of speed, your better off doing fiber into the house.
Yea for real world speeds like that you need fiber, cable can do it downstream now and has to potential with upstream channel bonding to do it up as well.
Cable is unlikely to ever see symmetrical speeds or anything close to it. In theory you could do a lot better but the existing legacy services already in use to deliver TV services get in the way. Way down the road when cable providers finally migrate to an IPTV based platform and get rid of digital cable they could do things properly. But that is so far out.
Perhaps. But A single pair for VDSL can push 100/100 in real deployments in countries like Finland. If you were to bond that, you could increase both the distance and the speed.
really theres a Nobel prize in it for you if you can figure out to put 200/200 down 100 year old telco copper
Just to clarify, it is not speed per sa that is the problem. It is delivering high speed over thousands of feet of copper.
ADSL and VDSL do a fantastic job moving bits over voice grade twisted pair. VDSL2 is capable of 100/100 Mbps but is limited to only 1,000 feet. Not very practical in the real world. The fact there has not been a new ADSL/VDSL standard in years indicates copper has run out of gas, even with clever modulation/recovery techniques.
80% of US customers are 15,000 feet or less from the central office. Statistics for rural customers is much worse, Less then 50% are within 15,000 feet. I'd love to see some clever engineering that utilizes existing copper infrastructure but I'm not holding my breath.
Fiber is the only solution for wired broadband. Once installed is is actually cheaper then copper because maintenance costs are much lower. The down side is high up front capital investment that no quarterly profits driven CEO is willing to make.
ADSL and VDSL do a fantastic job moving bits over voice grade twisted pair. VDSL2 is capable of 100/100 Mbps but is limited to only 1,000 feet. Not very practical in the real world. The fact there has not been a new ADSL/VDSL standard in years indicates copper has run out of gas, even with clever modulation/recovery techniques.
The lack of a new standard doesn't mean anything. There isn't a requirement for a new standard. The existing VDSL2 standard can have a variety of speed profiles and there is definitely on-going work by the major vendors to improve VDSL2. One such major improvement that is being rolled out by carriers around the world over the next 2 years is Vectoring which will allow existing connections able to attain 25Mbps service to now be able to attain 75/100 Mbps service. Using VDSL2 Bonding which utilizes 2 pair that can be raised to 150/200Mbps. Alcatel-Lucent is working on Phantom Mode which when used in conjunction with Bonding can further raise that upwards of 300Mbps.
80% of US customers are 15,000 feet or less from the central office. Statistics for rural customers is much worse, Less then 50% are within 15,000 feet. I'd love to see some clever engineering that utilizes existing copper infrastructure but I'm not holding my breath.
You don't feed VDSL2 directly from the CO. That's why you build VRADs close to the customer.
Fiber is the only solution for wired broadband. Once installed is is actually cheaper then copper because maintenance costs are much lower. The down side is high up front capital investment that no quarterly profits driven CEO is willing to make.
I don't agree and if you're hanging on to the dream of fibre everywhere it'll be just that.. a dream.
Even in the countries where people go on about fibre out the ying yang a significant portion of the users if not almost 50% are still receiving Internet via VDSL2. Fibre makes up a very small percentage of the over all broadband market around the world.
Trust me I'd love to see fibre everywhere but it is not realistic. Even Verizon with their FiOS did a pretty poor job at it.
Well I guess while they are busy moving those VRADs closer to the customer at about 1000ft they might as well finish it up and give real speeds huh?
Keep preaching the silly VDSL. It isnt going anywhere fast and hasnt for years.
Which is what I said is coming.
I am not preaching anything. I'm living in the real world unlike some of you guys deluded thinking these companies are going to roll out fibre everywhere. It isn't going to happen. I am not saying that if they all of a sudden did roll out fibre I would be against it. But these companies are not going to spend the hundreds of billions it would cost to tear out all of their existing DSL/cable networks and replace it with fibre. If it is rolled out I want to see it pretty much everywhere, not some swiss cheese coverage where it's available to houses down one side of a street and not the other side of the street like Verizon or that they're only covering a portion of the city. That's a bloody joke.
One such major improvement that is being rolled out by carriers around the world over the next 2 years is Vectoring which will allow existing connections able to attain 25Mbps service to now be able to attain 75/100 Mbps service.
I agree vectoring is interesting what you neglected to mention is that all vectored DLSAMs need to be under the same management so it does not work well when ILECs and CLECS serve out of the same CO. In my case my phone and ADSL is supplied by a CLEC. There are two CLECs that collocate out of our Central Office. That being said even when DSLAM are managed by multiple entities vectoring should still help but it is not the magic bullet to higher speed.
Using VDSL2 Bonding which utilizes 2 pair that can be raised to 150/200Mbps. Alcatel-Lucent is working on Phantom Mode which when used in conjunction with Bonding can further raise that upwards of 300Mbps.
Bonding is actually pretty interesting for carriers that are not loop poor. There was a big build out during the heyday of dialup so many carriers have excess loop capacity. In our case at one time we had three phone lines and a SDSL connection. Today we are down to a single voice/ADSL connection. However loop bonding is relatively expensive (multiple loops, DSLAM, modems) but is better than nothing.
As long as we are navel gazing getting rid of ATM would yield a quick 11 % increase in effective ADSL speed.
You don't feed VDSL2 directly from the CO. That's why you build VRADs close to the customer.
The problem is 1) VRADs are expensive, 2) you need a lot of them, 3) they need backup power, 4)suburban NIMBY complaints, 5) you are still limited by copper.
Trust me I'd love to see fibre everywhere but it is not realistic. Even Verizon with their FiOS did a pretty poor job at it.
That is the real question how long will we live with a band-aid approach to broadband and when will we migrate to a purpose built high-speed network?
TY, well said....my additional 2cents...they need to be killing 2 birds with one stone as far as I'm concerned and laying cable vaults across the country for easy access and upgrades to facilitate a minimum of fiber and a new underground power grid (that's a whole nother topic ...Fiber is simply the only solution for data needs and growth...100 Terrabits per sec recently on fiber? Copper people? Really? You really think we won't be pushing that kind of data relatively soon? lol ...I've amassed a Terrabyte of music, would have been laughed at for even using the term "terra" ten years ago.
Please provide a source that contradicts him beyond you claiming it is wrong.
And dont even mention VDSL2 or some other crap variance of DSL which is so distance limited to begin with you would have to run fiber quite deep just to offer it.
the thing is once you run the fiber the costs for 1Gbps over 100Mbps are trivial
Who said anything about fibre? You don't need fibre to get 100Mbps - 200Mbps service to most people. Having fibre everywhere is the most ideal situation but it isn't going to happen.
but in the long run we will hit another brick wall with copper.. delaying upgrades will cost more in the long run but agree 100mbps - 200mbps should be a standard for us in the USA no exception.. with out countrys blowin past us at 1gbps this shouldn't be to hard for the cable co's to deal with
but in the long run we will hit another brick wall with copper.. delaying upgrades will cost more in the long run but agree 100mbps - 200mbps should be a standard for us in the USA no exception.. with out countrys blowin past us at 1gbps this shouldn't be to hard for the cable co's to deal with
I'm not denying that. Anyway, the cable co's have to go fibre too. DOCSIS is just a short term option.
100 - 200Mbps and the destruction of caps on wire-line broadband. I'm lucky to have escaped it so far with Verizon FiOS. But the trend stifles innovation. their are much more effective congestion based throttling approaches, that are much more effective at battling congestion.
I'm not thrilled about Wireless caps either, but in that arena I can't argue with the current spectrum and technology limitations, wireless internet will always need to be controlled in some way, though I think the caps are artificially low.
But the trend stifles innovation. their are much more effective congestion based throttling approaches, that are much more effective at battling congestion.
I'm not thrilled about Wireless caps either, but in that arena I can't argue with the current spectrum and technology limitations, wireless internet will always need to be controlled in some way, though I think the caps are artificially low.
There wouldn't be any congestion if they proactively upgraded the network instead of waiting until the nodes/backhaul are at 99% and then upgrading. The carriers are dragging their feet as much as possible.
The caps are artificially low so it can be a cash cow. Wireless carriers are making a shit load of profit. Wireline is bad enough for the consumer in that regard, wireless is 10x worse.
Notice it doesn't say the price has to be reasonable. I can already get 1Gbps, but it would cost me thousands monthly. So I guess my state already counts.
FCC has been soooo out of touch with America for so long their ignorance should not surprise me. But it still does.
My telco is providing 100 Gbps to Paris and London but it can't mange to give rural America a reliable phone after they killed POTS and replaced it with a digital service.
in all 50 states (even if it is in only 1 city--because that will happen anyway).
How about just getting 1 mbps to everyone in all 50 states? ...for something less than $20/mo? or maybe even "free" like Google's other option (5 mbps, just pay for the install)? (In other words, how about doing something that's actually hard to do*? ...something actually useful to at least someone? you know, like for those who can't get anything but dial-up ...if that?)
*Of course, doing anything at all is harder than simply saying "let's do this" ...which is about the extent of this "plan".
I don't know of a lot of ISPs that are not lifting a finger. I see telcos pushing out faster DSL all the time and cable companies pushing up their speeds on a regular basis. I see tons of fiber going in for new construction and being fed to neighborhoods to boost existing speeds. Heck I even see ftth going in on dirt, not gravel, roads.
Frontier has gone the other way. The service here was 3mbps but they oversold the service and backed it down the 1mbps. It isn't often that the full 1 mbps is seen. It is more like .25-.5 mbps with pings late at night around 100-500 ms and daytime/evening around 1000-1700 ms. Secure sites are impossible to use most of the time.
The only people who need 1 Gbps are institutions with servers or a lot of computers on the premises (such as a call center, hospital/medical center, or a high school).
For most residential users like myself, I only need the 50/10 plan through Comcast.
It is split between several computers, tablets, and gaming consoles.
For most residential users, 1 Gbps is overkill (like using a tractor trailer to bring home a week's worth of groceries).
You don't need it because you don't have it. Look beyond your feet! If we had 1Gbps service you would see remote cloud, family, or "group" LANs forming. Ie: I would swap hobby nature video files we all take (often around 1+ gig size) with many of my relatives and it would be as if they were connected to my local LAN. Right now my only option is to send them snail mail or compress them to crap quality. Just because monopolies don't allow it to exist doesn't mean people wouldn't find new life transforming ways to benefit from it. I'm sure when the first cars were offered many people said "No one ever NEEDS to go as fast as 20 mph!" "What a huge waste!"
What's the point of having a gigabit connection if you are faced with the same monopoly which dictates your choice of data, voice, and video?
The real issue isn't just gigabit -- it's a gigabit connection with open access to all service providers at reasonable wholesale rates. That would open up a true marketplace of digital services and has the potential to revolutionize the way services are delivered.
The marketplace really does drive down cost and improve service, we just need a way to make it work for us in the telecom area.
Fire this Douche! What happened to companies like Earthlink...10 years ago you could get dsl for fractions of the price of any big corp crap company and it typically worked better too! Where did they all go? If the trend had continued, you'd probably be able to get a 10M connection for about 10 bucks right now...I can't even FIND an advertisement of ANY sort on the net for such type companies or deals any more...MY options? Centurylink or Comcast...YEAH...F'em'both!
Fire this Douche! What happened to companies like Earthlink...10 years ago you could get dsl for fractions of the price of any big corp crap company and it typically worked better too! Where did they all go? If the trend had continued, you'd probably be able to get a 10M connection for about 10 bucks right now...I can't even FIND an advertisement of ANY sort on the net for such type companies or deals any more...MY options? Centurylink or Comcast...YEAH...F'em'both!
Earthlink is still in business, and they still sell DSL, as well as cable in some franchises. The latter was the result of a merger settlement, the former is just traditional wholesale.
What happened was Earthlink never invested in plant, they're just reselling someone else's network, so they don't have much say in the product beyond their current contract. Meanwhile, the companies that DID pay for the copper lowered their prices, offered faster services, and the cable industry did as well, so firms like EL became increasingly irrelevant - though we still use them occasionally.
We actually had DSL service for under $10/month for two years - but I doubt that price-point was sustainable; copper maintenance requires union guys with bucket trucks - and someone has to replenish the N2 bottles.
There are still CLECs (competitive local exchange carriers) out there. I just switched my DSL and phone from the ILEC (incumbent local exchange carrier) FairPoint to an ILEC G4 Communications. Much faster DSL at a significantly lower price.
But as elray mentioned to be competitive requires companies collocate equipment at the Phone Company Central Office and rent customer copper pair (UNE) unbundled network element. Most alternate DSL provides are simply reselling phone company DSL. As far as I know there is no unbundling of the Cable Network so that is not an option for Cable.
Long term I don't know how this will play out as the ILECs convert from copper to fiber but that is many years down the road.