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.