The Telecommunications Challenge Changing Technologies and Evolving Policies: Report of a Symposium (2006) / Chapter Skim
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Pages 77-116
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From page 77... ...
Discussion by the previous panel of the United States' slipping behind in penetration rates for "something called, quote, broadband," he said, had failed to acknowledge that what qualified as broadband had been changing as well. Some of the countries that were pulling ahead of the United States in penetration rates were also offering higher quality, faster broadband connections.
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From page 78... ...
In 1999 and 2000, the Bureau of Labor Statistics had sponsored a survey sampling U.S. 50 45 40 35 30 Population 25 of 20 15 Percent 10 5 0 20 17 1819 15 16 13 14 June 2000 11 12 10 9 8 7 of Providers 6 December 2003 5 Number 4 13 0 FIGURE 20 99 percent of population now has at least 1 provider in their Zip Code: Population-weighted distribution of Zip Codes by number of broadband providers.
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From page 79... ...
broadband penetration, competition over four years: Distribution of Zip Codes by number of broadband providers. NOTE: FCC numbers have been corrected to reflect undercounting of rural Zip Codes with zero providers; corrections probably somewhat overestimate zip codes with zero providers.
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From page 80... ...
Further, he postulated that a majority in the information technology industries would substantially agree on what the "radiant future" should look like, remarking that, in a few sectors, this future had already been reached. United States Lagging in Broadband Penetration Dr.
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From page 81... ...
THE BROADBAND OPPORTUNITY: WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE? 81 Global Telephone DSL Subscribers DSL per 100 phone Ranking Country lines 31 December 2003 lines 31 December 2001/02 31 December 2003 2003 (ITU)
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From page 82... ...
broadband connections provided by the cable telephone system was relatively low. In the second place, even in the residential market the percentage of connections provided by the cable system had been holding roughly constant, as had the cable system's growth rate in respect not only to connections but also to bandwidth levels.
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From page 83... ...
Purely for purposes of illustration, he posited the use of T-1 service, whose price/performance, he pointed out, had improved very slowly if at all over the previous several years. If two T-1 lines were required for point-topoint connections between two personal computers, over a three- or four-year period the total costs of using that service would be completely dominated by bandwidth costs.
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From page 84... ...
There was no question that broadband infrastructure was having a significant effect on the way industry was growing in China and Southeast Asia. While India had traditionally been far, far behind in telecommunications infrastructure and was still far behind both the rest of Asia and the United States, even it was gaining rapidly: Although from a very, very low base, the number of broadband connections in India was going up quite rapidly, on the order of 300 percent per year.
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From page 85... ...
What had begun to undermine the potential benefits of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 in a significant way was the series of mergers among Regional Bell Operating Companies that had effectively halved their number to four.3 "That consolidation was unopposed by the FCC and by the Justice Department," Dr. Ferguson observed, commenting: "That, I think in retrospect, was a major mistake." A great deal of litigation had followed, and there had "not been much effort by the federal government and/or the FCC- 3While consolidation among RBOCs may have eliminated a source of potential competition, the issue of whether it eliminated actual competition and whether potential competition was likely or unlikely to begin with remains to be resolved.
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From page 86... ...
Resuming the session after the lunch break, Dr. Flamm introduced Mark Wegleitner, the chief technology officer of Verizon, as the only one among the
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From page 87... ...
One was in the capital investment required to build a network and the multiplier effect that could be expected to have on growth, jobs, and innovation. Obviously, however, the investment was not an end in itself; the second dimension, at least as envisioned by Verizon, was the stimulation to the economy, as well as the social good, that would come of having a broadband network available.
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From page 88... ...
88 THE TELECOMMUNICATIONS CHALLENGE cations he had listed would come a great deal of complexity, and it was complexity that, in the world of networking, drove broadband. But while it was certain that more bandwidth would be needed over the coming two to ten years, no one could predict with great accuracy how much.
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From page 89... ...
The requirements for services offered customers would be for such quality and scope that only the interconnection of networks could provide it. Because Verizon customers would need to talk to customers of Time Warner, Comcast, or whomever else might be a provider for individual users of the network, a means of reliable interconnection would have to be available.
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From page 90... ...
90 THE TELECOMMUNICATIONS CHALLENGE Technical, Financial, Regulatory Changes Three sorts of changes were needed to make this work. The first was technical: There were standards for particular communications protocols that needed to be taken further.
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From page 91... ...
. Concern over inequality in infrastructure and access had prompted him to participate a decade earlier in forming the Global Information Infrastructure Commission, an organization whose relevance had only increased with time, since it was no longer developing nations alone that had such problems.
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From page 92... ...
92 THE TELECOMMUNICATIONS CHALLENGE Broadband Subscribers per 100 inhabitants, 1 January 2004 FIGURE 25 U.S. continues to lose ground on broadband penetration.
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From page 93... ...
Thompson recalled that his former company, LCI International, and Bell Atlantic had agreed in 1996 on the existence of "unbundled network elements." Through the telephone companies' leasing out their local plant at reasonable prices, access would be made available to all, and the telcos' embedded plant would not become stranded investment. But this agreement had "lasted about as long as it took the signatures to dry on the page," and nearly a decade 4Current speeds are determined by the nature of competition as well as by the copper architecture of legacy telecommunications systems.
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From page 94... ...
94 THE TELECOMMUNICATIONS CHALLENGE Current Copper wire based cable modem and DSL "broadband" technologies choke information transfer Info Superhighway Desktop/Laptop ~1-3 Mbps Asymmetrical 1-5 Gbps Cable Modem/ 1-3 Gbps DSL Symmetrical in last mile Symmetrical Internal transfer speed desktop/laptop computer IXC and Metropolitan Fiber with today's hard drive network transmission speed per optical wavelength Access remains the weak link FIGURE 26 Why aren't current services good enough? SOURCE: Paul Green, FTTH Council Consultant.
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From page 95... ...
. Telephone companies had networks, while cable companies had head-ends with capacity to connect to both residences and schools.
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From page 96... ...
96 THE TELECOMMUNICATIONS CHALLENGE 1,000 Mbps This is Ultra -High Broadband 100 Mbps 26 Mbps 13 Mbps 56 kbps Dial -up DSL/Cable VDSL 10BaseT Gigabit Modem Modem Ethernet Ethernet FIGURE 28 Beyond the interim solution: What is the solution for "big" broadband? Cable Telephone company company Headend Central Office Businesses Government Schools Institutions Residences FIGURE 29 Current industry model: If you want to compete, bring your own network.
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From page 97... ...
The company was "very rapidly" pursuing a strategy that began with establishing "not a central office serving a small community but a central facility serving as a hub for a community of economic interests." The hub would then provide access to a non-profit public-private partnership that would serve as a utility, lighting the fiber but not providing any service on that fiber except those municipal services that the town or community chose to provide. The network would be open to any and all service providers with an IP basis -- be they telephone companies, cable companies, a Microsoft, or somebody wanting to provide films or games.
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From page 98... ...
98 THE TELECOMMUNICATIONS CHALLENGE described would not only be open to all service providers, it would be used by all under the same terms and at the same prices. The community would control the network assets through a non-profit, to which iTown would provide professional management services.
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From page 99... ...
Lippke said he would identify within the domain of wireless what he called "real wireless broadband" and state what its current status was, what challenges it faced, and where it was going. He might offer some projections for its future as well.
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From page 100... ...
To date, wireless broadband had been successful in the T-1 and fractional DS3 replacement businesses; in both rural and urban areas, it had been able to compete very strongly on both cost and speed of delivery. The general goal for these providers was to have, say, 10-Mbps service turned up within 72 hours of a
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From page 101... ...
THE BROADBAND OPPORTUNITY: WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE? 101 contract's being signed.
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From page 102... ...
"WiMAX truly is a silver bullet that can lead to sort of surprise attack with wide-area wireless broadband," he said, adding that he rarely gives standards such accolades.
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From page 103... ...
U.S. CABLE: BRINGING THE BITS HOME Mike LaJoie Time Warner Cable Thanking Dr.
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From page 104... ...
To illustrate his notion of convergence, Mr. LaJoie pointed to the way business had evolved at Time Warner Cable (TWC)
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From page 105... ...
This investment had enabled Time Warner Cable to deploy with unprecedented rapidity a variety of enhanced consumer services, including high-speed data (HSD) and high-definition television (HDTV)
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From page 106... ...
106 THE TELECOMMUNICATIONS CHALLENGE video industry in particular. "More outlets for the delivery of these products to consumers will bring nothing but more investment and a richer set of services," he explained, because "investment in network infrastructure is the key thing that enables all of this." Contesting the opinion of previous speakers, he said the pressure would be on to open these networks to all comers, but he added: "Performance needs to be maintained." No model for additional revenue was in existence "for those who want[ed]
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From page 107... ...
Flamm began by recalling that more than one panelist had spoken of observing a tendency to dismantle some of the opening up of the local loop -- for instance, the unbundled network elements that had been a centerpiece of the 1996 Telecommunications Reform Act. He then solicited all the panelists' expectations for future developments: Was unbundling network elements as the vehicle for opening up the Net "essentially dead -- and just put flowers on its grave, and move on to something else -- or [was it]
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From page 108... ...
Second, the point of the process, as he understood it, was to encourage facilities-based bypass: The facilities -- in the case under discussion, copper loop -- had been made available so that CLECs might establish some traction in the market, but the ultimate goal had been to spawn competition at the facilities level. This, he stated, "really did not materialize." While there had been continued effort to work the use of the unbundled element as a business, in the end many such business models had simply failed.
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From page 109... ...
He called their viability "a testament to the fact that there are effective models out there for making sure that new companies, and new communication products and services, can be devised separate from who owns the network." This was "one of the beauties of the public Internet," which promised even richer and higher-bandwidth versions of such companies with further growth and the advent of Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6)
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From page 110... ...
LaJoie's comment that Time Warner Cable's business was delivering content and that it was thus not involved in owning copyright, Dr. Ferguson declared that TWC's corporate parent was "very definitely concerned with copyright" as owner of Warner Communications, of Warner Bros.
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From page 111... ...
During discussions of the use of the embedded network and of who should pay for it, there was a "very great hue and cry on Capitol Hill" that came back to the FCC, which established "enhanced services." These services -- the use of the TCP/IP protocol and of telex on the backbone, as it was being employed at the time for TWX and other functions -- carried no fees for access to the public switched network. And the Internet service providers of ten years later, when the Net was taking shape, still paid nothing for access despite a "huge outpouring of objections from every one of the incumbent telephone companies." In fact, even in 2004 an ISP's access to the public switched network was without cost.
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From page 112... ...
"But, unfortunately, the telephone companies are frequently their largest customers -- sometimes the cable companies are as well -- and both are politically powerful, so they have to be careful about how they proceed." He pronounced himself as "not terribly optimistic" that this would become a political issue soon. Addressing the status of municipal networks, Dr.
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From page 113... ...
13 ranking in broadband penetration. First, whereas outside the United States the caller paid for a cell phone call, in this country the recipient was responsible for the charges incurred by the caller.
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From page 114... ...
Ferguson said he disagreed for a number of reasons. First, even if it were true that geography, population density, or other considerations made a difference with regard to broadband penetration, they did not explain growth rates.
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From page 115... ...
A similar network was online in New Jersey. RBOCs' Consolidation: Legal, Economic Perspectives Mr.
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From page 116... ...
When Mr. LaJoie objected that the cable companies spent far less, Dr.
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