Rusin Ramblings III
April 17, 2009
The next filing I came across yesterday was from Comptel (www.comptel.org). Comptel is the last surviving industry association that allegedly represents competitive carriers on issues pertaining to competition and certain regulations inside the Beltway. There are many interesting thoughts in their filing, but I’ll discuss one in particular and one that is missing.
Comptel: “NTIA should afford grant applicants maximum flexibility in designing their networks and product offerings in ways that will be attractive to and affordable for customers. Therefore, regardless of how ‘broadband’ is otherwise defined, it should not be defined by reference to a minimum speed. Certainly, the Administration can and should consider speed as a factor (among others) when evaluating project applications, but speed should be the limitation on eligibility to apply for and receive funding in the first instance. If NTIA, nonetheless, decides to define broadband by a minimum speed, that speed should be no higher than 1.4mbps downstream and 768 kbps upstream.” (Editorial note: “no higher than 1.4mbps downstream and 768 kbps upstream” was not a typo.)
Let me first address the speed issue: Bandwidth is an economic enabler–locally, nationally and globally. Depending upon whose report you read when it comes to bandwidth speed, the US of A ranks around 15 or 17th globally. For an organization that allegedly represents competition, declaring broadband as perfectly acceptable at speeds no greater than 1.4 megabits as acceptable sure cuts out member eligibility for funding if you apply this rate to defining under-served and un-served.
By this definition, anyone that has a copper pair, cable copper coax or access to a satellite…is served!
Written by Dave Rusin - Telecom Executive
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