Okay. So the FCC finally pulled together its hopeful plan for a future that we’ll almost certainly never see. 100 Mbps in 100 million homes within ten years? Sounds great! Why do we need it? And who’s going to pay for it?
Caveat
In all fairness, I’m not the guy who’s going to categorically take sides with the large telecoms operators when it comes to regulation. Nor am I the person who’ll jump onto the bandwagon of Internet freedom and network neutrality. When it comes to these topics, I’m a realist who’s witnessed the break-up and re-assembly of AT&T under various guises of “competition” and “deregulation.”
Putting things in perspective, I have lived in major urban areas, but now I live in a place where the formerly-incumbent RBOC put some shiny paint on the OSS and pawned aging copper infrastructure on a smaller, and potentially less wise, telephone company from North Carolina. My daily experience with telecommunications is vastly different than what I read about in reports from doe-eyed reporters writing from New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Silicon Valley.
1) Internet Access
I live two hundred feet from the CO and use an ISP that delivers DSL service over an unbundled loop that has it’s own share of finger-pointing and service disruption whenever the incumbent decides to unplug my port — the last time was a two-week long service outage. My other alternatives include a similar service from the incumbent as well as cable modem service from Time Warner Cable.
2) Broadcast Television
In my town, digital terrestrial television (DTT) signals are spotty to say the least. According to the CEA’s horrendously-confusing antenna selector,
I need an amplified outdoor antenna in order to receive television over the air in a post-digital transition world. I still can’t figure out why the “red” antenna isn’t the most powerful one in the CEA guide…or why the CEA’s approach to color doesn’t put violet between blue and red on the wheel. Never mind about the antenna selector guide, because none of the products available actually have the CEA’s wheel on them, furthering confusion and frustration. My local BestBuy has several DTT antennas in the store, and most of the boxes have been opened and taped shut more than once — I can only conclude that they’ve been returned a few times.
Evidently, BestBuy didn’t get the memo from the CEA, and their DTT category manager never thought (especially when dedicating an entire end cap to DTT antennas) to stock the appropriate antennas for the geography where the store was located. The passive indoor antennas look great in the package, and they might work in downtown Boston, but they are absolutely useless here.
If I stand just right, I can get three channels at once in my house. But I spend a lot of time moving the antenna, losing signal, rescanning, and then giving up for something available on DVD or the Netflix Instant Player. At various times of the day and with the right weather conditions, I can receive five different digital stations broadcasting eleven different channels, but I never get all at once…or any with any predictability. Perhaps this summer I’ll climb up onto my roof to install an outdoor, amplified antenna.
3) Wireless
We do have cellular service in our town, though data connectivity is at EDGE and 1xRTT speeds. During the summer, when the trees are covered with leaves and traffic on the highway is filled with tourists, AT&T’s signal at my house drops calls pretty regularly. T-Mobile is better. Verizon and Sprint are okay by most accounts.
In the future, I doubt we’ll see 4G anytime soon, and I don’t know what services we’ll get in the AWS or 700 MHz spectrum.
And I’ve lived through — first hand, and professionally — the 1996 Telecommunications Act in all its glory, including the flameout of unbundled network elements (UNE) and the demise of the competitive local exchange carrier (CLEC) business.
With that said, the National Broadband Plan in all its 376 pages of glory is a useless, hopeless stinking pile of excrement. It’s the sort of document that bright people convince themselves is a good idea. It’s a set of ideas with no central premise. It’s an omnibus program with little calculation about how it will actually be implemented.
It’s as if the FCC assembled a team of people who collectively forgot ever major regulatory happening since 1934. Then they got these people together with some PowerPoint slides…and went on a retreat where they talked about ideas without any focus at all. Then, they put together the most convincing-looking report they could, and they sent it around for review after review. By the time it was done, there was nothing to it. Lots of pages, no substance.
What’s The Goal?
I understand the high-minded goal of 100-squared. But is the goal universal access to broadband connectivity? Is it high speed broadband connectivity? Or is it the development of a new communications infrastructure for telephony, data applications, video and multimedia?
Because each goal will have a very different construct. The first (universal access) will focus on extending broadband connectivity to rural areas and to places where broadband services just aren’t available at a reasonable price that most consumers can afford. The second would build on the first, adding in higher speed services in more densely populated areas.
The third is one that would topple the existing telecoms and Pay TV business models, creating a huge regulatory crater with its own repercussions. If we get rid of cable operators and telephone companies, who’s going to operate these networks? And who will pay for them?
Perhaps the confusion is that the FCC is proposing all three objectives at once. This doesn’t make much sense, because we’re a large nation with many remote areas. We can’t be South Korea, and we probably shouldn’t expect to be.
What’s The Governing Principle?
In order to implement an objective, there needs to be an enforcement mechanism in place. Because the FCC is spanning multiple regulatory models (common carrier, wireless, broadband, media, and local cable company charters), there is no underlying principle in place. Perhaps this needs to come from Congress. But I don’t see how the FCC is proposing to build the future and to make it happen.
As far as I can tell, the FCC is hoping (praying perhaps?) that competition from 4G wireless (a pipe dream?) will spur competition across the board. It’s deus ex machina at best: a god intervening from above to suddenly suspend physical and business rules just in time to make everything happen as planned.
What We’re Going To Get
This plan may play well in D.C. and in populous suburbs, but I can’t say that my rural town will see 100 Mbps service in 80% of households by 2020. Come by in a decade, and we’ll still be standing by the windows trying to get a better signal when the leaves come in.