Include DOCSIS in Gigabit Plans?

The European Commission, pushing a goal of gigabit internet access by 2025, tends to focus exclusively on fiber to home as the mechanism.

Not surprisingly, Liberty Global argues a “range of technologies” will be required, and should be backed.  

So argues Communications Chambers, a communications and media consultancy firm, which also argues a broad range of technologies, including fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP), DOCSIS, G.fast and high-speed cellular access (particularly 5G) will be required to deliver a minimum 100 Mbps to all households and at least 1 Gbps to users such as schools and large businesses.

Liberty Global has an obvious stake in the outcome, as well as the policies intended to further the goal.

Not surprisingly, Liberty Global argues that hybrid fiber coax DOCSIS networks could deliver gigabit broadband by 2017 and at a lower cost than using FTTP, as obviously has been the case in the United States, the United Kingdom and some other markets.

In part, the argument seeks to dampen financial support that could be given to rivals, or perhaps, more optimistically, lead to funds being made available to support HFC upgrades, not just fiber to premises deployments or 5G.

Order of Magnitude Increase in Mobile Data Between 2016 and 2022

By the end of 2022  there will be 8.9 billion mobile subscriptions in use, Ericsson predicts.  Mobile broadband subscriptions will reach eight billion, accounting for 90 percent of all mobile subscriptions.

The number of unique mobile subscribers is estimated to reach 6.1 billion by the end of 2022.

Monthly data traffic per smartphone continues to increase in all regions. North America has the highest usage, with 5.1 GB per month per active smartphone expected by the end of 2016. In 2022, North America will still be the region with the highest monthly usage (25 GB), but other regions will be catching up.

That represents an increase of almost 40 percent since the end of 2015.

Total mobile data traffic is expected to rise at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of around 45 percent In the future. Between 2016 and 2022, smartphone traffic is expected to increase by 10 times and total mobile traffic for all devices by eight times. By the end of this period, more than 90 percent of mobile data traffic will come from smartphones.

source: Ericsson

source: Ericsson

Why Telecom and Internet App Cultures are So Different

Those of you who have spent any appreciable amount of time in and around both the telecom and application industries recognize there are cultural differences between practitioners in both types of industries, beyond any differences in age, gender, educational attainment or any of the other “protected class” categories human resources people deal with.

There are good reasons for those differences. The fundamental business models that drive each industry are quite distinct, and in some ways polar opposites. Ubiquitous access and mobile networks are capital intensive and based on use of “scarce” licensed spectrum resources. Internet-based application businesses are asset light and based on abundance (nearly zero costs to product an incremental unit).

And though the direction of change in the access business is towards more abundance, retail access facilities remain relatively expensive and capital intensive, where it comes to scaling operations. “Web scale” providers also have to make heavy capital investments upfront, but the cost of supplying incremental units of supply is quite low.

In fact, it would not be incorrect to say that whole Internet application business model is based on abundance: universal access by anyone, on any device, from anywhere, for any reason, at any time.

In other words, to a great extent, application business models are based on Moore’s Law, and the abundance Moore’s Law brings to computing. As with coding, resources are so abundant (compute cycles and memory) that resources can be “wasted.”

Rarely are access network professionals so casual about “wasting” resources. In fact, much effort goes into finding ways to minimize the need for additional investment in capability.

source: MIT Sloan Review

Cable Dominates U.S. Internet Access at Higher Speeds

One reason a perhaps-growing number of observers believe U.S. cable TV companies will continue to dominate the fixed network internet access market is their domination of accounts sold at higher speeds. In mid-2015, for example, Comcast had about 41 percent share of accounts operating at speeds faster than 50 Mbps. Verizon, along among U.S. telcos, had 11 percent of such accounts. Cable companies as a whole had 88 percent of accounts offering service at 50 Mbps or faster. All telcos collectively had 12 percent share of such accounts.

source: Free Press

What Will New FCC Do?

Though it is hazardous to make too many predictions even before the U.S. Federal Communications Commission is reformed under President Donald Trump, it is safe to presume that a "lighter" touch on regulation  and likely a better chance for merger approvals could be in the offing. Just how much change is possible remains the issue.

Economist Jeff Eisenach and former Sprint Corp. lobbyist Mark Jamison now lead the Trump administration transition team to oversee hiring and policy for the FCC, and both are opponents of robust interpretations of network neutrality.

It is not yet clear how the new FCC will view existing rules such as Title II common carrier rules for internet access services, but it is likely the new Commission will not agree with that framework for internet access.

What is less clear is the type of network neutrality policies the FCC might consider. The present FCC had embraced “strong” forms of neutrality. The next FCC might opt for “modest” forms of neutrality. That might include the “no blocking of lawful apps” stances, or perhaps equal treatment of providers and apps within classes, but not a strict prohibition on optional access services that feature higher quality of service.

It is possible--in fact likely--that “best effort only” access (one functional definition of network neutrality) for consumer internet access would be retained, although various forms of managed services, zero rating and perhaps other packaging practices would be allowed to proceed, as well.

As it is lawful for an application provider to use content delivery services that actually do act to speed the delivery of some packets, but not all, it is possible optional tiers of service that include quality of service mechanisms might be allowed.

Still, the Commission might wait for Congressional direction on that matter.

SIP Market Still Fragmented

A survey of about 560 enterprise or business communications professionals shows that the Session Initiation Protocol market remains fragmented. Some 57 percent of respondents using SIP say they use an MPLS (quality managed) connection, while 50 percent use internet (unmanaged) connections. About 18 percent use a metro Ethernet connection.

That raises a key question. Traditionally, many argue that “managed” access is required to maintain quality or security. It appears that half the users are willingness to take those risks Also, with the coming shift to software-defined connections (SD-WAN), there might be a shift further in the direction of “unmanaged” connections, where more reliance is placed on edge devices to route packets across networks to optimize availability, load, delay and jitter performance.

Avaya (42 percent) and Cisco (37 percent) are the leading IP PBX suppliers.

On a related front, buyers report their suppliers of hosted communications are quite diverse.

U.K. to Fund Up to 2 Million Small Provider High Speed Internet Access Lines?

Even if BT is expected to supply most of the wholesale  fiber to home or “superfast” connections used by retail internet service providers, the U.K. government seems set to award funds to smaller independent ISPs in the next round of funding, representing coverage of perhaps two million households. The funds should amount to £400m.

The Broadband Delivery UK organization, dedicated to funding rural high speed access, already has been funding pilot projects using satellite (Avanti and Satellite Internet) fixed wireless (Airwave, Quickline and AB Internet)and hybrid networks using fiber and fixed wireless (Call Flow and Cybermoor).

Some smaller suppliers, including Gigaclear and Call Flow, already have gotten funding for commercial rollouts.

There are 27 million U.K. households, so the new funding for smaller providers potentially could reach about seven percent of U.K. households. Virgin Media, operating its own facilities, probably has about 20 percent share of the U.K. fixed network internet access market. If other smaller providers are able to reach seven percent of U.K. households, and sign up perhaps half of those locations, then facilities-based fixed network providers might have something in excess of 23.5 percent share of the terrestrial internet access market.

source: Point Topic, 2013 data

source: Financial Times