Why "Net Neutraliity" is a Bad Idea

If no Internet service provider can give preference to any streams or protocols, it is not possible to create a service a user actually does want: the ability to give preference to voice streams when on a Skype call or conference, when watching a webcast or a movie.

It is understandable that some advocates worry about ISPs giving preference to their own streams over others. News: they already do. It's called "cable TV." The issue is whether an end user can prioritize certain protocols at certain times, to optimize their own experience.

Strict net neutrality, which allows no prioritization, or minimal traffic shaping to maintain overall user experience when a very small number of users are straining a network, also will prohibit any other "user friendly" forms of prioritization.

http://venturebeat.com/2009/03/23/netflix-were-not-slowing-our-streamsyet/

Seattle Weighing Own FTTH Build?

The city of Seattle seems t be pondering building and perhaps even operating its own fiber to the home network. Planners think such a network, offering speeds of perhaps 25 Mbps, might ultimately get 24 percent market share.

That certainly is within the realm of possibility, though lots of executives with experience in the overbuilder business, where a network competes against both a telco and a cable company, might point out that the business case is tough without the ability to offer both voice and video services.

A full FTTH network with on-going revenues from access alone might be very difficult.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2004293823_brier20.html

Mobile Access Less Strategic, Vodafone, Telefonica Signal

Telefónica and Vodafone have confirmed wide-ranging plans to share mobile network assets--starting with tower sites--across Europe.

As part of the collaboration, Telefónica and Vodafone also are actively exploring opportunities to cooperate in related areas such as the provision of transmission services, which would extend sharing to radio capacity as well. The companies will share mobile network assets in four European markets where both have operations - Germany, Spain, Ireland and the UK - while discussions are ongoing to extend the agreement to a fifth market, the Czech Republic.

The joint building of new sites and or consolidation of existing 2G and 3G tower sites, with one site housing the equipment of both companies where previously two would have been used, is expected to lead to a significant reduction in the total number of towers in operation.

The move also suggests a perception of where value lies. Towers are deemed not to be strategic, though required, and radio resources, though likewise required, might not offer much end-user value either. That tends not to be as true for more-expensive wired infrastructure, where most executives with the ability to do so tend to prefer exclusive use of their own facilities, essentially forcing would-be competitors to undertake their own expensive construction projects.

The proof point here is what has happened in markets where robust wired network wholesale access has been enforced. In such markets, incumbents tend to lose huge chunks of market share while end user prices fall dramatically. As good as that is for consumers, it is problematic for service providers.

For that reason, regulators are being much more cautious about extending current rules for copper access to new optical access, taking care to ensure that investment opportunities are attractive enough to fund such networks.

http://www.vodafone.com/start/media_relations/news/group_press_releases/2009/telefonica_and_vodafone.html

How Much More Can be Wrung from DSL?

Ericsson engineers have demonstrated in the lab a way to bond together six unshielded copper wire pairs to push 500 Mbps about 500 meters. The technique is promising for the same reason all such technology developments are: they suggest it is possible to wring yet more performance out of a widely-deployed infrastructure that has some real-world performance limitations.

That doesn't mean the lab performance easily can be ported to a real-world environment. For starters, lab tests are not encumbered by all the messy real-world complications. Real-world access plant faces hazards such as squirrels, moisture ingress, corrosion and electromagnetic interference from other services that might be running inside the same cable bundle.

The other practical limitation is that most consumer locations might not have six available spare pairs to use. On the other hand, as fewer people use landlines, there theoretically are more unused pairs to tap. It's a messy process, though, and likely would require installing new drop cables and resplicing the drops to the distribution wiring. That sort of heavy craft work isn't so interesting for any service provider that might contemplate trying to introduce such a service.

On the other hand, in some urban markets in countries with dense housing, copper drops might be short enough that something could be practical, perhaps not delivering 500 Mbps, but still providing enough bandwidth to be quite interesting.

As often is the case, spot deployment seems more promising. Mobile tower backhaul, for example, could benefit, as the upside from deploying a relatively short length of new cable, when a suitable fiber node is available, could be quite helpful. Some enterprise locations also could benefit, much as these locations now do for "Ethernet-over-copper" technologies.

In the consumer market, at least in the United States, where loop lengths generally are longer than in Europe, bonding two pairs is much more practical. As always is the case when trying to market a service to the consumer market, varigated real-world physical constraints are important. Two pairs is typical. In some cases four pairs might be fairly standard. But four pairs might not generally be available everywhere in a region or city.

No question, any developments that increase DSL bandwidth are helpful. How helpful really "depends" on a variety of messy details.

Big Gains Seen for SIP Trunking, Ethernet

Nemertes Research says 53 percent of respondents to a recent survey are evaluating, deploying or planning to deploy SIP trunking to reduce access costs and take advantage of new services for in-bound and out-bound call routing.

In addition, 62 percent are using, or planning to use, Ethernet as a WAN connectivity technology to reduce bandwidth costs, with 85 percent planning to increase Ethernet usage.

Cox Aims SIP Trunking at 20-99 Employee Segment

Cox Business will be rolling out SIP trunking later this year, aiming at the 20 to 99 employee organization, after introducing its hosted IP PBX service.

http://voip.biz-news.com/news/en_US/2009/03/19/0001/cox-business-to-roll-out-sip-trunking-later-this-year

Broadband Stimulus: Too Much Optimism About What Can Be Done

Hype is running far ahead of what can be done even when all of the broadband stimulus funds are awarded and projects deployed. Broadband access is a hugely capital-intensive process, especially for the last couple of percent of locations that are so remote, in areas so thinly settled, that nearly all the cost must be recovered from such a small number of potential customers.

Physics and demography, not lack of will, are the key problems. In an urban area, some forms of broadband can be deployed for less than $2,000 a location, and often for as little as $1,000 a location.

In remote areas, serving one location can cost $10,000 to $50,000. You can build your own spreadsheet to figure out how long it would take to break even on that sort of investment, when the customer is expected to pay $40 to $50 a month. Don't forget the cost of interest on borrowed money, operating costs, maintenance and repairs, as well as the need, at some point, to replace the entire infrastructure because of age.

There likely will be some incremental benefits. But the "problem" of access in rural areas, or the quite-different problem of "under-used" broadband, will not be solved. Not by a long shot.

http://ow.ly/1dPd

Small Businesses Increase Web Spending, Shift Ad Spending

The smallest U.S. businesses have average annual sales of $212,000 and spend just $5,671 per year on advertising, typically in the yellow pages or on direct mail ads or on coupons, say analysts at Borrell Associates. But where small businesses used to spend four percent of their budgets online three years ago, they now are investing 11 percent of their advertising that way.

And there's a shift of thinking occurring as well. SMB executives are blurring the lines between what’s advertising and what’s not. They consider whatever they spend on their own Web sites to be “advertising,” though in actuality that spending is a technology, design and telecommunications expense, Borrell Associates notes.

When marketing professionals were asked in which media they intended to spend more money this year, two thirds of them said “my own Web site.”

SMBs are less receptive to buying banner ads (now accounting for 54 percent of their online spending, but declining) in favor of search-engine advertising, online directory listings, and streaming video. And they are diverting money toward something that feels to them like advertising, but in reality is technology-supported marketing: Web site design, search engine optimization and customer databases, Borrell Associates says.

Effective Broadband Stimulus? Give it to Libraries

As this article from the New York Times suggests, libraries are where people go to use resources they do not want to, or cannot pay for. If you have been to your local library recently, and if your local library has PCs and Internet access, you see the same pattern: people who cannot afford broadband at home, or who do not own PCs, use the public libraries.

It would be hard to name any single institution, anywhere more ideally suited to provide high-speed broadband access to people who cannot afford PCs or recurring service charges.

It would be nearly criminal if libraries are not key beneficiaries of "broadband stimulus" funding.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/15/nyregion/long-island/15libraryli.html?_r=5

Commissioner Adelstein to Head RUS

Jonathan Adelstein, a two-term commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission, has been nominated by the White House to head the Agriculture Department's Rural Utilities Service, the agency that will be disbursing $2.5 billion in grants, loans or loan guarantees to further rural broadband deployment.

Keeping $7 billion in "Broadband Stimulus" in Perspective

AT&T is going to invest $17 billion to $18 billion in 2009. Verizon will invest somewhere between $16 billion and $17 billion. The U.S. cable industry spent about $14 billion in 2008. It is reasonable to expect cable companies to spend less than that in 2009. Add possibly $11 billion by all other U.S. telcos other than At&T and Verizon, for a total of about $59 billion in capital investment in 2009.

The point is that cable companies, AT&T and Verizon alone will spend about $48 billion in 2009, compared to perhaps $3.6 billion in combined National Telecommunications and Information Administration and Agriculture Department Rural Utilities Service "broadband stimulus" funds in 2009.

Just keep that in mind when gauging how much can be done, even adding $7 billion in "broadband stimulus" funds over two years. There are lots of needs. But something on the order of $3.5 billion a year for two years is not going to produce as much change as you might think.

The reason some potential broadband customers in America do not now have access to wired facilities is simply that it is so costly to build those facilities.

How Long to Disburse "Broadband Stimulus" $, Really?

The Congressional Budget Office’s original assessment of the House version of what ultimately became the The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 was that it would take as long as seven years for the National Telecommunications and Information Administration to disburse $2.825 billion. 

NTIA currently distributes $17 million, so CBO obviously extrapolated from the workload in making its assessment. Of course, NTIA now has the taks of allocating nearly $5 billion. The statute, nevertheless, requires spending of all that amount by the end of 2010. You can make your own assessment of how thoughtful the disbursement process will be. 

Optimum Lightpath to Turn Up First Business Hosted VoIP Customer April 1

Optimum Lightpath is going live with hosted IP telephony services on April 1, a source says. Optimum will not sell to customers with fewer than 35 seats to support, as sister company CableVision Systems will be handling business customers up to about that range. The company is taking a really smart approach to pricing and packaging.

It has worked out agreements with one or more value-added resellers in its market to provide local area network assessments and remediation, installation and other support services. But those agreements are structured in a way that Optimum Lightpath can price its services on a really-simple per-seat-per month price, including any necessary LAN remediation. The whole idea is to simply pricing so that a 50-seat, 75-seat, 125-seat or perhaps 300 seats, for example, service can be sold at one uniform price, anywhere, anytime, without having to custom source assessment and remediation services every single time a new customer is to be added.

Think about that entails: VAR partners essentially have to agree, in advance, to a flat-fee payment for assessment or remediation services. In some cases, the partner will reap huge margin, because a given customer network is rock solid for voice. In other cases, the partner might actually lose money on a given job, because lots of work must be done to ready the LAN for voice services (essentially, creating a new voice virtual LAN). The idea is that, over a year's time, margins are healthy enough for a VAR to undertake the work on a flat-fee basis.

The hope that Optimum Lightpath is going to have robust sales obviously is enough of a carrot to entice one or more VAR partners to take the deal. For Optimum Lightpath, the advantages are equally great. It creates a simple and uniform per-set pricing model that is repeatable. It eliminates the extra charges that otherwise might be necessary if LAN assessments and remediation, installation and configuration, customer premises qualification and selection are "extra."

One would think Optimum Lightpath is going to do quite well with this sort of approach. Though some other providers also price per-seat, per-month, those prices do not typically include the virtual guarantee that customers "don't have worry about whether your LAN is ready now," how to source installation and configuration services, or the chores of figuring out which phones actually work with the hosted service.

Though supporting a service all the way to the desktop would not have been Lightpath's first choice, it seems to have realized that its "go to market" strategy must include lots of service elements and support that go beyond the router, if a hosted, business IP telephony service is to address key buyer concerns about simplicity and clarity of total costs. This is a big deal.

No Signs of Video Substitution, Says Viacom

Viacom CEO Phillippe Dauman gets paid "by the subscriber" by distributors who carry Viacom programming, and he says his company is not seeing lower subscription rates, even if some observers think consumers are not, or might, abandon their cable or multi-channel video subscriptions in favor of online alternatives

"We're not seeing it," he says. "We know what the subscriber base is out there, because we receive affiliate fees based on subscribers. And the subscriber base is growing."

Just What We don"t Need: More Broadband Talk, Less Action

The broadband stimulus program, most of you would assume, is designed to get more people more broadband, not to study whether some potential users need broadband, or where those people are. Indeed, part of the broadband stimulus funding already is earmarked for mapping exercises. But that isn't going to prevent some applicants from "studying" rather than building.

The ConnectMe Authority, a Maine state agency, is planning to apply for federal economic stimulus money to pay for a study of the state's high-speed Internet network, AP reports.

Of all the things the need to be done, one would think yet another study is about the last thing we need. How about actually providing more broadband? http://tech.yahoo.com/news/ap/20090319/ap_on_hi_te/me_broadband_assessment