U.S. FCC Broadband Definition and Blog

The U.S. FCC is requesting comments on how to define what broadband is. It breaks the definition down into three categories:

• Form, Characteristics, and Performance Indicators
• Thresholds – typically minimums
• Updates that address the fact that a static definition will fail to address changing needs and habits

This part of the FCC's efforts to create a national broadband plan by February 17, 2010.

The FCC has started a blog called BlogBand discussing its broadband activities.

It appears that the FCC is putting needed attention on broadband in the U.S. It is about time. Broadband in the U.S. is behind leading European and Asian countries by every measure.

Wireleine Woes

The New York Times published and article discussing if the U.S. wireline telcos will need a bailout to rescue its copper based access business. It pointed out that AT&T lost 12 percent of its access lines in 2008 and Verizon lost 10 percent. The article paints a pictures that the wireline business in the U.S. is headed toward bankruptcy.

I have been tracking U.S. switched access lines at my website from 1991 through 2007. The FCC has stopped tracking switched access lines, so that one of its most interesting pieces of data will no longer be updated.

It is clear that copper is being replaced by the cable companies coax, by wireless technologies, and by the telco's own fiber services. The more aggressively that they deploy fiber, the better off they will be in the long run.

U.S. Delay in Analog Sunset

The U.S. will delay the completion of the conversion to digital broadcasting from February 17, 2009 to June 12, 2009. This will allow stations to continue their analog broadcasts until that date. There are more than 1,000 stations that have permission from the FCC to shut off their analog broadcasts on February 17. Nearly all stations will have to do it by June 12.

This shows what a mess the cessation of analog TV broadcasting can be. Frankly, I don't think it will be much better on June 12. This move is going to cause problems for a lot of people who have not prepared for themselves. I doubt three more months will change much.

This will delay the availability of 700 MHz spectrum for mobile applications. I expect that Verizon will use this as an opportunity to move its LTE trial to 2010 and commercial deployment to 2011.

Creating a Competitive Fiber Market

Last week I posted an article about how Swisscom will support competitors in its FTTH deployment. Swisscom will deploy four fibers to each home and reserve one for itself and make the other three available to competitors. It pointed out that the cost of providing four fibers is only slightly higher than providing a single fiber.

This significantly helps Swisscom's business case because it will generate revenue from every FTTH home that it deploys. This will provide it with a return on the investment that it is making on deploying these fibers. Swisscom will also accept investment or trade fiber connections with its competitors that deploy their own fiber networks.

A similar facility sharing approach has been adopted in France and is likely to be adopted broadly in Europe.

Japan is taking another approach. NTT is deploying all of the fiber; however NTT East and West (the two incumbents in Japan) can offer only the fiber connection. The subscriber gets the Internet service from an ISP. NTT operates two of these ISPs itself (OCN and Plala), but has to treat other ISPs on an equal basis. KDI and Softbank are major ISPs that use NTT fibers along with a number of smaller ISPs.

The U.S. FCC has given up on creating a competitive environment with FCC. It traded exclusive use of the fiber for the commitment to deploy fiber services. I think this was a bad bargain. Both Europe and Japan have shown that better approaches are available.

White Space: Taking the Internet Back to the Future?

The FCC decision this week to open up the TV "white spaces" to unlicensed wireless services has great potential to break the hammer lock that the cable and Telcos have on the consumer Internet business today.

Ten years or so ago, before the advent of cable modem and DSL services, there where hundreds, if not thousands, of ISPs providing dial up consumer Internet access. There were a few large ones such as Prodigy and AOL along with many, many small providers. It was easy and inexpensive to set up a dial up ISP service. Get a T1 line and attach a dial up mux, and you were in business.

The advent of broadband services brought this to an end. The cable modem and DSL services had the ISP service bundled in with them. This gave the cable companies and the Telcos a strong strategic advantage. AOL continues to exist, but is a shadow of its former self. EarthLink provides Internet services on top of Telco DSL services, but has a very small share of the market. Almost all broadband Internet users subscribe to cable or Telco Broadband services.

The white spaces spectrum is the UHF TV spectrum that is not being used to broadcast TV content. There is generally 100 MHz of vacant spectrum that can be used for white spaces applications in the major metro areas. There is 200 MHz or more of vacant spectrum in more rural locations. This is enough to support several ISPs that want to offer services.

WiMAX and LTE 4G technologies can support wireless broadband data services that will provide a 1 to 5 Mbps. This will compete well with broadband cable and DSL services. These wireless services will share the conveniences of mobile voice service that have made them popular. These white spaces services have the potential to dominate the low end of the broadband data market. People will like their personal nature and their go anywhere convenience.

This will drive the cable companies to DOCSIS 3.o and the Telcos to fiber, which will give us all that still want them much higher performance on our home broadband services. Enabling start ups to compete will be a good thing for all of us consumers.

U.S. FCC Approves White Spaces Unlicensed Spectrum

The FCC adopted rules to allow wireless devices to operate in unused broadcast television spectrum, commonly referred to as television “white spaces”. These rules will allow for the use of unlicensed devices in the unused spectrum to provide broadband data and other services for consumers and businesses.

These rules represent a first step to and include safeguards to protect incumbent services against interference. Devices must include a geolocation capability and provisions to access over the Internet a data base of the incumbent services, such as full power and low power TV stations and cable system headends, in addition to spectrum sensing technology. The data base will tell the white space device what spectrum may be used at that location.

The locations where wireless microphones are used, such as sporting venues and event and production facilities, can be registered in the data base and will be protected in the same way as other services. The Commission also has required that devices include the ability to listen to the airwaves to sense wireless microphones as an additional measure of protection for these devices.

All white space devices are subject to equipment certification by the FCC Laboratory. The FCC will permit certification of devices that do not include the geolocation and data base access capabilities, and instead rely solely on spectrum sensing to avoid causing harmful interference, subject to a much more rigorous approval process.

The FCC will oversee and monitor the introduction of TV white space devices and will promptly remove any equipment found to be causing harmful interference. The FCC will explore whether higher powered unlicensed operations might be permitted in TV white spaces in rural areas.

This ruling potentially has major ramifications. It makes it much easier and much less expensive to set up a wireless service. It is not necessary to win spectrum in an expensive auction. A service provider only needs to purchase appropriate equipment.

There is a large amount of white spaces spectrum that is available. It is possible for multiple service providers to operate without interfering with each other, even in dense metropolitan areas. Spectrum sensing will prevent them from interfering with each other.

It is likely that these services will have a major effect on ADSL services. It is likely that a white spaces wireless data service will be very competitive with a 3 Mbps ADSL service. This will drive the wireline carriers to fiber technologies.

U.S. FCC Approves Sprint/Clearwire WiMAX Network

The U.S. FCC approved the transfer of control of licenses held by Sprint and the the existing Clearwire to the new Clearwire joint venture formed by the two companies. This action is expected to facilitate the build out of a nation wide WiMAX network by the new joint venture.

This action clears the way for Clearwire to deploy its WiMAX service in the U.S. in 2009. This will be the first major 4G network in the U.S. and is an important test case for WiMAX and for broadband wireless services.