Excitement in BTOP Land
August 13, 2009
As we approach the August 14th deadline for the first round of proposal submissions under the Federal Governments $7.2 billion Broadband Technology Opportunity Program (BTOP), excitement fills the air. It’s almost like the feeling that Chris Matthews of MSNBC had – a tingling running up your leg. With $1.6 billion to be allocated during Round 1, the submissions should make for some interesting reading.
I have found a few more oddities in the process that I’d like to share with commonsense America.
Before I start, have you noticed something that has been going on over the past 4-6 weeks? It is very pertinent to the BTOP process and how a proposal may be challenged after submission by an incumbent wire line or wireless carrier–or any carrier for that matter–anonymously, of course, and without due process.
There has been a flurry of press releases from all major wire lines–wireless and cable companies claiming to offer service speeds on an advertised basis in excess of 10, 20 or 50 megabits in some cases, some as high as 100 megabits. All sorts of new high-speed advertised services!
Keep the above in mind …..
According to the BTOP folks, a proposal receives points on 5 parts of a submission form. Each part gets 20 points, so the highest points a submission may receive is 100 points.
In one of the sections, based upon the USA’s definition of broadband of 768 kilobits, an initiator of a proposal has to go through all sorts of census data machinations and mapping in defining areas of a proposal that qualify as being unserved or under-served. Respectively, no service is un-served and under-served below the broadband service definition of 768 kilobits per second. It is plausible that a proposal may be eliminated at this stage by not meeting these criteria by supportable quantifiable analysis, though in a different section of scoring, if your proposal offers megabits or gigabits of broadband you can get extra points.
Think about this for a second. The two points contradict each other.
That said, a proposal may also be challenged for elimination – get this – if the advertised broadband speed by a provider in an area is greater than 3 megabits per second. Thus, all the recent announced advertised speeds greater than 3 megabits are dripping all over the place.
Think about it – not an installed speed of 3 megabits with 90% coverage, but an advertised speed greater than 3 megabits. Advertised! It gets better.
If a proposal gets rejected because some carrier did a press release and updated a tariff to a new advertised speed above 3 megabits the proposal submitted gets called into question of the quantifiable analysis of unserved and underserved per the rules, assuming you get a hearing on the matter; and guess where the burden of proof falls? Yes, on the company that submitted the proposal and quantified census research must prove that the advertised speeds are not available, limited, etc. Now, can someone out there in blog land please tell me where you are going to find such information? Think about this for a second – you are guilty of a quantifiable census analysis according to the BTOP rules as required if someone advertises a speed greater than 3 megabits across a region wire line or wireless. The burden should be exactly the opposite – a carrier or Cable Company advertised certain rates of speed greater than 3 megabits per second, especially the last 4-6 weeks, should prove the penetration rates on a map by actual sales via their billing records.
It gets better.
In the BTOP rules, with the definition of Broadband at 768 kilobits, there has been a sector excluded from consideration because they not only deliver at least 3 megabits of service but they can serve 100% of America today. Satellite companies as an industry group and platform are excluded from BTOP as a viable measurement for unserved and underserved. Why? Because the satellite broadcast companies by the Federal Governments own definition of broadband makes America 100% served at 3 megabits or above … how convenient. They not only advertise it today, they are doing it today. Why the discrimination against this sector? I can’t tell you why and I am surprised satellite carriers are sitting by idly.
The straight talk here is simple: it’s about politics, the beltway disconnect with reality and protecting the interests of campaign contributions even though America is woefully behind in broadband access and speeds overall. I filed my opinion at the start of the process calling for a minimum standard of 100 megabits as the definition of broadband with a goal of 1 gigabit within a decade with the global economy as a backdrop. According to “advertised” announcements recently, my 100 megabit broadband definition suggestion seems plausible and achievable.
Written by Dave Rusin - Telecom Executive
Posted by wbrache | Filed Under American telecom, Fiber bandwidth, Infrastructure and Bandwidth, Telecom Blogs, Telecom USA, Telecom bloggers, Telecom expense management, Telecom news, Telecommunications companies, Telecommunications industry, Telecommunications news
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Dave, My take is that this Obama character is nothing but smoke and mirrors. The important thing to him and his handlers is that he “said” he would provide 7BB to give all the unwashed broadband. He got his jollies, so to speak, when he said that. The 7BB simply is not going to be spent, but he got his mileage thru his words. The people will either forget or blame the providers, but obama, like the snake oil salesman, will be long gone to some other agenda item.