Joan Engebretson

FCC Business Data Services Decision Could Determine Viability of Rural 5G

The impact of the impending Federal Communications Commission business data services (BDS) decision could be critical for rural wireless carriers, argued Raul Katz, president of telecommunication policy consulting firm Telecom Advisory Services, LLC, at a Washington DC event. The BDS decision will impact carriers’ ability to provide sufficient network capacity and to deploy next-generation 5G wireless services, said Katz, who based his remarks on a Telecom Advisory Services study on the impact of rural wireless carrier backhaul costs on network investment.

The Federal Communications Commission is considering whether to impose price controls on BDS providers in areas that the commission previously deemed to be competitive, but which BDS purchasers say are not competitive. BDS purchasers include business and government users of data services, including schools and libraries, as well as carriers and others. The FCC business data services decision could call for decreasing BDS pricing in markets where costs have increased since the markets were deregulated. Backhaul costs will become even more critical for 5G, which will use high-frequency spectrum that can support higher bandwidth but less range in comparison with today’s technology. In surveying rural wireless carriers for the Telecom Advisory Services study, Katz noted that “every carrier said 5G is nowhere near our short-term or long-term plans because backhaul is so expensive."

Three FCC Rural Broadband Experiment Awardees Rejected Over Letters of Credit

An Federal Communications Commission order denies petitions from three entities that were provisionally awarded funding in the FCC Rural Broadband Experiment program because the awardees were unable to obtain satisfactory letters of credit — a decision that does not bode well for other provisional awardees that have experienced difficulties obtaining letters of credit meeting the FCC’s strict requirements. T

he Rural Broadband Experiments program had a one-time budget of $100 million to cover some of the costs of bringing broadband to rural areas where broadband is not available today or is available only at low speeds. The program was crafted to gain information to help the FCC establish rules for the Connect America Fund reverse auction, which will award a considerably larger amount of funding to help cover the cost of bringing broadband to more unserved areas.

FCC Releases Preliminary List of Census Blocks for Connect America Fund Auction

On August 11, the Federal Communications Commission released a preliminary list of census blocks eligible for the Connect America Fund auction. That auction will award funding to help cover the cost of bringing service to areas that cannot get broadband today or can only get low-speed broadband. The list also includes an estimate of the maximum amount of funding that will be available for each census block based on an FCC-developed cost model.

The Connect America Fund auction will use a competitive bidding process to award funding, with funding for a group of census blocks or census tracts going to the service provider that offers to provide service for the lowest level of support. The preliminary list is based on the most recent data collected from Form 477 as of June 30, 2015. All broadband service providers are required to file Form 477, which collects data about where service is available at various speeds. Service providers have until the end of this month to advise the commission if they have deployed broadband at speeds of 10 Mbps downstream/ 1 Mbps upstream in any of the target census blocks since the Form 477 data was collected. Based on this data, the FCC will eliminate some locations from the Connect America Fund auction target list. In order to be eliminated, the newly served locations also must have a minimum usage allowance of 150 gigabytes at a price meeting the commission’s current reasonable comparability benchmark and must have a latency not exceeding 100 ms.

CenturyLink Broadband Roadmap: Funding Shifting From the Cloud

CenturyLink has set a goal of bringing broadband service supporting speeds of at least 40 Mbps to 50% of its base by the end of 2018, said Tony Davis, head of investor relations for CenturyLink. Although CenturyLink has done some fiber-to-the-home deployments to support speeds as high as 1 Gbps, CenturyLink broadband plans will rely largely on upgrading existing copper loops using a mixture of bonding and vectoring, depending on a customer’s distance from a fiber connection. The company also expects to use G.fast technology to serve multi-dwelling units. Meeting its goals will require CenturyLink to spend a higher percentage of its budget on the network than in the past. To free up the funding, the company expects to take a “capital-light” approach toward investment in the cloud, IT services and managed hosting, Davis said. The company also is looking at selling some of its data centers – an increasingly common move among the larger telcos – but if it were to do so, it would lease space from the new owner to support its existing hosting business, according to Davis.

AT&T Fixed Wireless Planned for CAF-Funded Rural Areas

AT&T plans to deploy fixed wireless technology to meet Connect America Fund broadband deployment requirements, said AT&T President of Technology Operations Bill Smith.

The company will use the technology in areas where it is “uneconomical to build wireline” said Smith of AT&T fixed wireless plans in a question and answer session at Pacific Crest Global Technology Leadership Forum. The AT&T fixed wireless deployments apparently will use licensed spectrum, as Smith noted that the company typically buys spectrum covering geographic areas that include rural areas and that in rural areas, the spectrum is “somewhat underutilized.” Smith expects the AT&T fixed wireless service to support speeds of 10 Mbps downstream and 1 Mbps upstream. That’s the minimum speed that Connect America Fund dollars will support. There are “few applications that can’t be supported,” at those speeds, Smith said.

Verizon Connect America Fund Auction Ideas: Declined States, Least Costly Locations Should Get Priority

Although Verizon to date has declined to accept funding through the Connect America Fund (CAF) program to bring broadband to unserved parts of its local service territory, the company may be having a change of heart. Comments filed by Verizon with the Federal Communications Commission suggest the carrier may be interested in bidding in the CAF reverse auction, which will award funding for areas where an incumbent price cap carrier declined funding. Although the FCC is hoping to fund some CAF deployments at gigabit speeds, Verizon cites some sobering data suggesting that should be a relatively limited option. Verizon notes that as many as 750,000 locations could be eligible for the CAF reverse auction. Of those, about 450,000 are in high-cost areas of price cap territories where the incumbent declined funding. The other 300,000 are “extremely high cost” locations scattered across all price cap territories.

According to Verizon, the FCC cost model shows that subsidies of well over $600 million per year would be required to bring broadband to all 750,000 locations, but the budget for the CAF reverse auction is only $215 million annually. With this in mind, Verizon CAF auction ideas include prioritizing bids for baseline service above those for above-baseline and gigabit service in order to “maximize the number of homes and businesses that obtain at least the baseline level of broadband from the auction.” In some cases, high-latency options such as satellite broadband may be less costly to deliver than lower-latency terrestrial wired or wireless options. But Verizon stops short of asking the FCC to stretch funding by prioritizing high-latency services. Instead, the carrier argues that all terrestrial options should be prioritized over high-latency options. “End users in competitive bidding-supported areas should not be relegated to lesser services,” Verizon argues.

$4.8 Billion Verizon Yahoo Purchase Shows Carrier Determined Not To Be a “Dumb Pipe”

On the long-debated question of whether or not it’s OK for communications service providers to operate as “dumb pipes,” Verizon clearly believes the answer is “no.”

Verizon sees great value in the ability of its wireless network to gain knowledge about customers, including location-based information, and to use that information to customize advertising and content offerings, with customer consent. In the last two years or so the company has made a range of moves to support this strategy. Some industry observers see substantial challenges for Verizon as it pursues a mobile strategy, however. And Verizon’s mobile content strategy has drawn criticism from those who believe the company’s investment in company’s such as AOL and Yahoo detracts from its ability to invest in its network infrastructure, particularly on the landline side of its business. Those critics tend to believe that it’s fine for service providers to pursue a dumb pipe strategy – as long as they deliver the highest quality and highest capacity pipes possible. It could be years before we know whether Verizon has made the right choices on the dumb-versus- smart-pipe question.

Verizon 5G Spec Finalized, Suggesting Strong Interest in Fixed Wireless Deployments

Verizon’s announcement that the company has completed a specification for ultra-high-bandwidth 5G wireless is the latest example of the company’s increasingly wireless focus. The Verizon 5G spec was completed in advance of industry fifth-generation wireless standards efforts, raising the question of what is driving Verizon to push this technology so aggressively and so soon. It’s important to remember that in its initial incarnation, 5G will be a fixed wireless technology. And as Verizon’s announcement indicates, the company has been testing the technology for fixed deployments.

“Propagation and penetration testing across residential single and multi-dwelling units built in field locations has validated the feasibility of millimeter wave systems,” the company said. It would appear that Verizon sees 5G as the fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) alternative it has been missing for boosting residential broadband bandwidth. In late May, Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam said that using 5G for fixed wireless may offer enough of a business case alone to justify the carrier’s investment in 5G and that any profits from 5G mobile would be “gravy.”In the announcement, Verizon notes that the Verizon 5G spec “provides guidelines to test and validate crucial 5G technical components” and that it “allows industry partners such as chipset vendors, network vendors and mobile operators to develop interoperable solutions and contribute to pre-standard testing and fabrication.”

Microsoft: Africa TV White Spaces Broadband Network is World’s Largest

Microsoft and Adaptrum have partnered with MyDigitalBridge Foundation to conduct a trial of a TV white spaces broadband network in Namibia. It is the world’s largest TVWS deployment measured by geography.

The network is intended as a blueprint for countrywide broadband Internet connectivity.

The Africa network covers more than 9400 square kilometers and is providing speeds between 5 Mbps and 10 Mbps over distances of 8 km to 12 km, the partners said. Twenty-eight schools now have Internet connectivity using the network.

AT&T, T-Mobile Make New Strikes in Wireless Price War

The wireless price war continues. AT&T joined in on the fighting through its Cricket Wireless business, offering customers a $100 bill credit through October 18 for T-Mobile and Sprint customers who port a number to Cricket.

And now T-Mobile said it would quadruple the monthly data allotment for customers on the company’s Simple Starter plan for an additional five dollars a month. Customers who previously received 500 megabytes of LTE data will now get 2 gigabytes for the extra five dollars.

ViaSat “Virtually” Eliminates Satellite Broadband Caps

ViaSat announced it will begin offering what it calls “virtually unlimited” satellite broadband service. The service will be available immediately to new customers in Florida and will also be available in some other limited markets, but the company anticipates expanding service moving forward.

The “virtually unlimited” offering, which will carry the name “Freedom,” gives customers unlimited lower-speed bandwidth and at least 150 gigabytes of data for the higher-bandwidth services, which Farr said should be plenty for most customers. And even customers who exceed that level will not be throttled back immediately -- and possibly not at all.

Cincinnati Bell Gigabit Service Launching Soon

Cincinnati Bell has joined the roster of network operators who have announced plans to offer broadband at speeds up to 1 Gbps. Service will be available beginning September 8. The gigabit service will be known as Fioptics Gigabit Internet. The existing fiber-to-the-home infrastructure in Cincinnati supports the company’s triple play of high-speed Internet, voice and video service.

FCC Pursues More Unlicensed Wi-Fi Spectrum But Open Issues Remain

With unlicensed Wi-Fi spectrum becoming increasingly crowded, equipment manufacturers and service providers are pushing to make more spectrum available on an unlicensed basis -- and while substantial progress has been made on that front, more work remains, according to investor research firm Bernstein.

Associated partner Paul Margie at DC law firm Harris, Wiltshire & Grannis shed light on several open issues – including how much unlicensed spectrum is likely to be made available through the voluntary TV broadcast spectrum auction in the 600 MHz band, the three-tier plan that the FCC has proposed for unlicensed spectrum in the 3.5 GHz band, and Globalstar’s proposal for a private Wi-Fi network in the 2.4 GHz band. As Margie explained, those are three of the four bands -- including the 5 GHz band -- where additional spectrum could be made available to support Wi-Fi or similar offerings.

C Spire Gigabit Network Efforts Hope to Create ‘Silicon South’

An announcement from ADTRAN touts the efforts of C Spire to create a new “Silicon South” economy in Mississippi through gigabit connectivity. The release also notes that ADTRAN is supplying fiber-to-the-home equipment to C Spire to support its gigabit deployment.

Stankey: AT&T Fixed Wireless Broadband Will Use Fallow Spectrum

AT&T Group President and Chief Strategy Officer John Stankey offered additional details about the fixed wireless broadband offering that the company previously agreed to make available in some rural areas if the company’s plan to purchase DirecTV is approved by regulators.

Stankey revealed AT&T’s plans to deploy the service in areas where the company has fallow licensed spectrum and that the service is expected to support sustained peak data rates of 10-20 Mbps. AT&T envisions its fixed wireless offering being sold as part of a double play that would also include DirecTV video service, thereby helping to minimize churn.

About 25% of the people in the areas that AT&T would target for the service currently have no terrestrial broadband offering, while 30% or less have only low-speed DSL, Stankey said.

Sprint/T-Mobile Deal Off: What Does it Mean for the Industry?

There doesn’t seem to be much consensus about what Sprint’s decision to drop its plan to purchase T-Mobile means for the companies and for the industry in general.

While some industry observers expect both companies to focus on internal growth and/or to consider alternative merger-and-acquisition options, others say this is a posturing move and the companies will take another go at merging after the next election, when they hope to find a regulatory environment more open to such a deal.

CEO: Startup Rural Broadband Services Corporation Has Big Plans

A startup company known as Rural Broadband Services Corporation has big plans for rural Tahlequah, Oklahoma -- plans that RBSC CEO Roy Choates hopes he will be able to repeat in other rural communities that lack high-speed broadband connectivity.

“We have a philosophy called ‘shared infrastructure,’” said Choates. “In rural America you don’t need two or three different companies building a fiber network.”

For example, he said he expects to supply connectivity to support utility company smart grid deployments, eliminating the need for the utility to deploy its own fiber. He also believes broadband will be key to important rural initiatives such as telemedicine, distance learning and the ConnectED program that aims to bring high-speed Internet to the nation’s schools.

Comcast IPv6 Milestone Reached

Comcast on July 22 announced that its broadband network is fully deployed to support IPv6 dual stack connectivity. Comcast has surpassed 30 percent IPv6 deployment overall, according to July 2014 launch measurements by the Internet Society.

AT&T has crossed the 20 percent mark and Time Warner Cable the 10 percent IPv6 deployment level. Verizon Wireless’s IPv6 deployment, the Internet Society reported, reached 53.55 percent. Comcast expects its IPv6 penetration to reach nearly 50 percent by the end of 2014.

Time Warner Cable Los Angeles Gigabit Network Plans

Time Warner Cable issued touted the gigabit network it proposes to deploy in the city of Los Angeles. The company’s proposal came in the form of a response to a request for information (RFI) issued last year by the City of Los Angeles a network operator to build a gigabit network throughout the city at the operator’s own expense.

TWC’s response includes:

  • Detailed information on TWC network upgrades that are already underway that will deliver up to 300 Mbps to all of the company’s customers by the end of 2014
  • Details about the company’s transformation to an all-digital network in LA
  • A catalog of TWC’s current fiber-based broadband and Ethernet solutions that already serve businesses and anchor institutions in the community with multi-gigabit connections
  • Details on TWC’s continuing deployment of public Wi-Fi hotspots that are free to the majority of TWC broadband customers

Verizon 100 Gbps Switched Ethernet Access Trial Completed

Verizon said that it successfully tested a 100 Gbps switched Ethernet access link using a network interface device from Canoga Perkins.

Previously the carrier had done “extensive testing in a lab,” but “it was important to validate [this] in the field,” said Vin Alesi, Verizon director of regional Ethernet product technology. Deployments of 100 Gbps Ethernet are becoming increasingly common in carrier backbone networks and even in some metro networks, but 100 Gbps speeds haven’t been widely available as switched access links, if at all.

FCC Proposes Model-Based CAF for Rate-of-Return Carriers

The Federal Communications Commission wants rate-of-return (ROR) telecommunications companies to transition to model-based support as the current voice-focused high-cost Universal Service Fund (USF) is phased out and converted to a broadband-focused Connect America Fund program.

Small rural ROR companies now receive USF support based on how their actual costs compare to nationwide averages, but critics argue that today’s system does not provide an incentive for telecommunications companies to deploy network infrastructure in the most efficient manner. The CAF program for larger price cap carriers is already slated to use a cost model to calculate support levels.

C Spire Home Automation and Security to Launch in Gigabit Markets

C Spire plans to offer home automation, security and monitoring to customers who purchase the gigabit service that the company is in the process of deploying in parts of Mississippi.

The offering, called C Spire Home, will use Lynx equipment from Honeywell and will be installed by licensed security technicians that C Spire will be hiring, a C Spire spokesman said. Monitoring will be handled by a third-party central station, the spokesman said.

Customers purchasing C Spire Home will have the ability to check in on and control their home system remotely using a smartphone. That capability has had a major impact in the home control and security market, making such systems more attractive to end users and significantly increasing demand.

And that trend has caught the attention of telecommunications and cable companies, many of whom have launched home control and security offerings in recent years.

NTCA Finds Fast Rural School Broadband

It appears that the rural-rural broadband gap applies to schools as well as the broader Internet marketplace. That seems the best explanation for two substantially different measurements of average school bandwidth in surveys conducted by NTCA -- The Rural Broadband Association and EducationSuperHighway, an advocacy organization focused on bringing better broadband to the nation’s schools.

The NTCA released the results from a survey of its rural telecom service provider members which found that schools served by those companies, on average, purchase broadband connections delivering 65 Mbps downstream and 13 Mbps upstream. But EducationSuperHighway, which surveyed schools nationwide, found a median bandwidth of 33 Mbps.

These results might seem surprising, considering that broadband is generally available more broadly and at higher speeds in metro areas than in rural areas because it is less costly to deploy broadband in metro areas. That phenomenon is known as the rural-urban gap. But FCC researchers also have noted a rural-rural gap: Rural areas served by small independent telcos generally have better broadband availability and higher speeds than rural areas where the incumbent local carrier is one of the nation’s larger carriers such as AT&T or Verizon.

Level3 Wants FCC to Impose ISP Interconnection Requirements

Level3 Communications wants the Federal Communications Commission to impose interconnection requirements on Internet service providers -- a move the company said is necessary to “fully protect the free and open Internet.”

The company recommends three specific ISP interconnection requirements. Mooney said Level3 already has similar arrangements with several ISPs and “the solution is good for everyone.”

Level3’s proposed ISP interconnection requirements include:

  1. If a content provider or a network operator providing connectivity for the content provider delivers content into the ISP’s local market closest to the location of the ISP’s customer requesting the content, the ISP should be required to deliver the traffic to its customer without charging an interconnection fee -- provided that the content provider delivers a certain amount of traffic in the aggregate to the ISP.
  2. The ISP would be able to select the interconnection location but selections would have to be “reasonable.” For example, each location would have to serve a minimum number of the ISP’s customers and the location would have to be served by several different metro transport service providers to ensure that the ISP has competitive choices.
  3. If interconnection capacity becomes congested at any interconnection location, it would have to be promptly augmented.