“Rural Telecoms Suck”–a Q and A with Dave
April 10, 2009
Hello Dave,
I think we should look at un-served as regions without fiber facilities at all who rely on Directv, Echostar, Wildblue and the likes for service and under-served as regions with fiber assets run by the rural telecom monopolies. The satellite dream has come a long way since the days of teledisc with Terrastar, ICO Global, MSV etc. deploying assets and spending billions in such an incestuous financial manor knowing that they will go belly up before they can attain customers and a revenue stream so they can buy each others assets for pennies on the dollar that they may one day soon end up to be useful. I agree that we, in the fiber business, have a responsibility to make sure that congress stay’s ahead of the technology curve and understands that government funds should ONLY be deployed to build out infrastructure to support a minimum of 50-100Mbps. I like the idea of a National CTO or will it just be one more bureaucrat?
The MSO’s are so deeply rooted in the FCC that it makes it difficult to allow for competition when the origin and delivery of content is drastically shifting off their networks and technologies from Fujitsu and Ericson must scare the hell out of them. Hulu, YouTube, Mega Video, Nextflix and so many others are delivering content to viewers and taking away eye balls and advertising dollars by IPTV viewers on their own networks. So what do the MSO’s do? Rate limit your broadband and charge extra for transfer. Makes me sick!! They certainly have an interest to lobby against competition in the IP broadband space in their markets when improving their own broadband services inherently hurts the cable TV business more and more. I say deliver 120 or 300 Mbps on an LTE wireless platform or bring me 500Mbps on a copper pair! Everyone needs fiber. I am going to love delivering that kind of traffic for those carriers to the exchanges on my fiber network and the traffic just grows and grows.
How many of our tax dollars have been wasted by building a two lane highway when the population demand required six lanes? How do we get the message out? 2Mbps is not enough… I sometimes have 4 TV’s at the same time running internet movies or TV shows while me , my wife and the kids are checking email on lap tops all on the broadband internet connection. Luckily, I have FIOS but what about most of America? Rural Telecoms suck, Satellite spectrums won’t cut it and more competition is needed everywhere.
Todd
Dear Todd:
Thanks for posting.
What we have in America is primarily a broadband duopoly that is setting the pace, rate and change of “high-speed” access. This was comfortably done through the Communications Act of 1996. The biggest problem I had with the Act back then was not setting a sunset provision on the UNE components of the legislation. So many type 2 pseudo competitors were created–mostly paper tigers. Many went bankrupt.
What I mean by a sunset provision is simple clarity. Clarity is what financial investors like to have, but seldom get from the government.
In my world, I would have regulated UNE-x and Special Access for 5-years to jump start competition. After 5 years, I would have lifted regulations whereby the Bells can price-to market but are not allowed to deny last mile service or access. After 10 years, I would let the Bells do whatever they wanted to do with their copper. This would have caused participants to behave differently and knowing that in 5-years the rental game is an open market game, there would have been more rational investment into fiber optic infrastructure. We are living with the byproduct today of not having such provisions resulting in carriers recently telling the FCC that 1.5 megabits is broadband because the vast amount of CLECs are stuck on ILEC type 2 kit.
I was just reading in the Wall Street Journal today, that by February 2010 the FCC will shape a new broadband policy. It will be interesting to watch as an all Democrat controlled administration tares into the duopoly while recognizing that they need to get something passed before the 2010 mid-term elections. My suspicions, given the economy, spending and exposition of the deficits that the Republicans will probably gain control of the Senate as a result of the 2010 elections.
I tried working with the FCC once…once. That was enough for me. Reality, commonsense, experience and basic teleconomics do not enter the vortex known as the inside the Beltway.
Facilities competition — it does not happen over night and is extremely capital intensive. That is the reality – monopoly franchises that had decades to dig in will not be displaced over night. It has been 13 years since CA 1996…we have fallen behind in the world.
Maybe this time the FCC will call me.
I tried working with the FCC once … once.
Dave
Written by Dave Rusin - Telecom Executive
Posted by wbrache | Filed Under American telecom, Telecom Blogs, Telecom USA, Telecom bloggers, Telecom broadband, Telecom news, Telecommunications companies, Telecommunications industry, Telecommunications news
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