Rusin Ramblings IV
April 20, 2009
Just for fun…
A few excerpts from my reading pile last week:
“The Tasmanian Government today announced that Tasmania will be the launch state for the Commonwealth’s new super fast National Broadband Network.”
“The Tasmanian Government, in conjunction with Aurora Energy, will construct a fibre to the premises (FTTP) network which will deliver speeds of 100 Megabits per second.”
“The FTTP network will also extend to all hospitals and almost 90 percent of schools.”
“The Tasmanian Government will construct a wireless network and the Australian Government’s National Broadband Network satellite solution will service the remainder of the state with speeds of 12 megabit per second or more.”
“This announcement means Tasmanians will begin benefiting from broadband speeds up to 100 times faster than currently available … “
What is it that Tasmania knows that we don’t? The Tasmania project is an extension of a recent Australian government announcement to deliver a minimum 100 megabits per second to 90% of Australian residents and businesses within eight years through public/private partnerships. Moreover, the 10% that is not economical to reach by FTTP will be addressed wirelessly.
Combine the above with Japan averaging 100 megabits per second and South Korea recently announcing a 5 year program to go from an average of 100 megabits per second to 1 gigabit per second leaves me scratching my head with Comptel. (A reminder: “… that speed should be no higher than 1.4mbps downstream and 768 kbps upstream.”)
Lastly, understanding some of the Federal Government history relative to the RUS loans and the duopoly and oligopolies I identified previously:. Why wouldn’t Comptel seek to have the same eligibility criteria applied to NTIA funds as they are with the RUS? That criterion is simple: if a carrier has a (line) market share of 2% or greater, that carrier is not eligible for government project funds. At least to me, the 2% market share screen fosters competition and funding eligibility to smaller non-ILEC, non-cable companies that make up the lions share of Comptel membership.
Maybe I am missing something…
Anyhow, I will once again leave you with one simple thought in defining and expanding “broadband” in the scheme of things: What is good for America is what needs to be done first, not what is in the interests of someone’s business model or lobbyists protecting duopoly/oligopoly competition.
So, what’s good for America?
I would like to hear your thoughts.
Written by Dave Rusin - Telecom Executive
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