I wish lawmakers took the time to view that lecture. Maybe they would come to understand the problem then – barring a few exceptions it seems that most high up in government do not have the faintest clue that broadband policy in the US is fundamentally broken.

It’s pretty bad when a big honcho from the FCC publicly states that he is not interested in returning to a competitive broadband landscape by reinstituting unbundling because it would result in lengthy legal battles with the big telcos. Can you say regulatory capture?

An article in the Financial Times quotes leadership from those three companies saying that Google is getting a “free ride” pushing YouTube traffic to their respective customers “because they do not pay anything”.

This is not a new argument of course – SBC has claimed the same thing in the US way back in 2005. Other than generate a general disgust for SBC, not much has come from that claim.

Statements like these show these CEOs do not understand the basic principles of internet peering. Worse, they also indicate a basic dishonesty – they must realize that *their own customers* already pay for that bandwidth.

It’s time the big telcos realize that the world has changed. Their companies are not phone companies anymore, they are telecommunications companies trending towards pure data companies. They are in the business of providing internet access. That means ‘dumb pipes’.

If they do not like that, they should go find something else to do. Of course their government granted monopolies should then be taken away. And the lavish subsidies they received for network buildouts should be paid back and given to other organizations who *do* understand how the internet works.

Maybe then we wouldn’t see such ignorant and dishonest statements in the press.

That’s way, way, way faster than anything commonly considered ‘broadband’ in the US. It’s on par with speeds residential users can get in parts of the most advanced broadband nation in the world – Japan. If you dig statistics and want to see how pathetic the broadband situation is in the US, the OECD has a ton of numbers on this topic.

Google is going to build this as an open access network. That means they will own the fiber but they will share access to that fiber with many ISPs. Users will be able to sign up for service with an ISP of their choice, which will then presumably handle all billling and pay Google a share of proceeds for the use of the fiber.

DSL used to be operated in a similar way in the US. That changed when our regulators and legislators rolled over and allowed incumbent telephone companies (Verizon and co) to kill off most of the companies they had to share phone lines with. The incumbents did that largely by pricing the alternative ISPs (CLECs) out of business: they charge them higher wholesale prices than what they charge their own DSL end users.

The difference with other countries is stark. The countries where open access is mandated by law and heavily regulated so that the company that ‘owns’ the cable can not abuse its position tend to have far higher availability of high-speed connections, at a fraction of the cost per megabit that is common in the US.

So, assuming that Google does the right thing with this new fiber (as in, does not undercut or sabotage competitor ISPs that share its fiber), and/or regulators and legislators get the guts and sense to actually enforce open access on all access networks, this announcement is really good news for broadband competition.

Google’s looking for state, county and city officials who want their communities to participate in this project. Google’s also asking non-officials to nominate their communties.

Now, if they could be convinced to put that fiber in the ground in Somerville, MA…

TDS did appeal in the end, and thankfully lost. This is a win for municipal internet rollouts all across the US. It will hopefully make those greedy telcos think twice about trying to stop municipalities from providing their constituents with proper internet access.

A TDS spokesman said the decision “endangers the appropriate relationship between municipalities and private enterprise”. Presumably he means the relationship where municipalities have to allow private telcos like TDS to charge citizens an arm and a leg for sub-par broadband service, because there is no competition. To which I say – good riddance!

Construction starts in 2 weeks, and the first customers should be hooked up sometime this fall.

The two people appointed are Susan Crawford and Kevin Werbach.

They ‘get it’ – they understand that the US is a broadband backwater, that the current telecom policies only work to fatten the bank accounts of the big telecom players, and that high speed internet access is just like water, sewage, and electricity: it’s a utility, and should be treated as such.

I have high hopes for the FCC under the new administration. If they are going to set up rules that will actually advance broadband penetration and foster competition, the US could finally see some real innovation in telecom land. Who knows – we might get cheap, fast and unencumbered broadband after all. This will of course take years, but things in the US can change quickly if there is (political) will…

Some concrete steps I would take (not in any particular order):

* Set up policies to encourage customer-owned last mile

* Split up the big telcos and cable companies in an infrastructure and a services company each. The infrastructure companies will roll out and maintain the physical local access networks, and charge ISPs for access to them – but there will be no preferential treatment for any of them, and pricing and service levels will be heavily regulated and monitored to avoid abuse. Basically, this is a return to the unbundling of the local loops as it used to exist in the US for copper telephone wire, before Verizon and co pushed the CLECs out of business by lobbying for bad laws and pricing them out of the market. Of course the same rules need to apply to the cable networks, and to the fiber networks that are being rolled out. Unbundling is very much alive in large parts of Europe, and it works well there.

* Make it easier to roll out infrastructure. There needs to be a much more uniform legal framework for access to utility poles and digging up road to install new networks. Right now most of these rules are set at the municipality level, and the legal patchwork that results is very difficult and expensive to navigate.

* Encourage the installation of utility pipes or tunnels which can have new wiring blown through them much more cheaply, without digging up the roads every time. Germany has been doing this for decades – why can’t we?

* Get back those $200 billion in subsidies and tax breaks that were handed out to the big telcos for rolling out a next generation network – which they never did. That money needs to come back, with interest. The federal government can certainly use it right now.

* Enforce network neutrality. It’s very simple – the network needs to be stupid, the endpoints smart. That’s how you foster innovation. And as to the “the pipes will clog – people won’t be able to watch tv on the internet – the sky will fall!” fallacy: there is a very simple solution to that problem. Fatter pipes. If we had real broadband here (100Mbit+ to the home) and properly designed networks (bring down overcommits to a more reasonable level), this would not be a problem. Would it cost money to roll these networks out and keep upgrading them? Sure. But equipment cost would come down quickly as purchase volume goes up and mass production kicks in, that’s basic market economics… And sane government policies can help here, too.

Some background: citizens of Monticello approved in a referendum a plan to roll out a city-owned fiber network to provide cheap and fast internet access.

Immediately after the referendum the city was sued by Bridgewater, the local incumbent telco. Bridgewater and its parent TDS telecom challenged the city’s right to fund a fiber network with municipal bonds, citing ‘concern about wasteful spending’.

That was of course a pretext – what they did not want was competition. Thankfully Bridgewater lost the suit today, but they may have stalled the city enough to ‘win’ in the end anyway. Right after it filed suit – not coincidentally – Bridgewater started a fiber rollout of its own in Monticello. While the city could not spend bond money to build out the network and thus had to stall the rollout to residential neighborhoods, Bridgewater has already laid 20 out of a planned 100 miles of fiber.

So – now the city-owned network will have to compete with the Bridgewater network – and the latter can subsidize its network with income from neighboring communities.

On the upside – Bridgewater needs to make money, unlike the city. Those fat profit margines need to come from somewhere. And if I were a resident of Monticello, I know I wouldn’t be willing to give them any money, not after pulling this kind of stunt. Also, as the Ars article says, this decision is a ‘big green light’ for other communities in Minnesota that want to roll out their own network.

This kind of telco behavior makes me angry. If the telcos spent half the money they waste on anti-competitive behavior and lawsuits on actually upgrading and building out modern networks, this country wouldn’t be the overpriced broadband backwater it is. I hope many more cities start rolling out their own fiber infrastructure. It’s time for more competition – that’s the only way we are going to get decent and affordable broadband in the US of A.

Google’s launching Free the airwaves – a campaign to make people aware of the FCC’s pending decision that could alter the broadband landscape significantly. If the FCC turns the ‘whitespace’ into an unlicensed band the US might finally be able to escape it’s third-world, backwater broadband status. We need more competition!

From the article: A private company has recently completed a project to string dark fiber from a colocation facility under the Ottawa City Hall to a neighborhood of 400 older, upper-middle-class homes.

The idea is to sell the fiber to the home-owners. The larger the uptake, the lower the cost of the fiber will be since the bulk of the run is shared between all home owners. They estimate a cost of $2700 (Canadian $, I assume) if there is an uptake of 10%. If 50% of all homes sign up, the cost could be as low as $1000, and it can be paid with a lump sum or in installments.

The colocation facility is carrier-neutral, allowing the home owners to sign up with any ISP that has a presence there. A fiber management company will look after the fiber for a small fee, similar to how condo associations are often organized.

This is a really great idea. It puts the whole last mile problem on its head, and puts power in the hands of the home owners. Best of all – local communities can start doing this without having to wait for any state-wide or national laws.

I think things are going to change in broadband-land.