FCC Broadband Proposal: too little, too late, too timid

Sorry, it's absolutely nothing like the densities in South Korea and similar places.

Seoul has a density of 44,000 people per square mile, San Jose is less than 6,000. San Francisco is less than 7,000. NYC is around 27,000.

There are two sides to this problem: Situations where companies (or other organizations) own dark fiber but aren't willing to lease it, but also situations where dark fiber is available for lease but prospective users aren't willing to lease, even for backhaul purposes.

We have a neighborhood where AT&T could install Uverse with some local trenching, then lease currently dark fiber owned by a municipal system to complete the connection to their central facility several miles away.

Sorry, says AT&T -- we won't go into any situation where we don't _own_ the entire fiber setup, all the way from the customer to our central facility.

Hmmm -- wonder why that's their policy?

"III. Even if the Checklist Permitted the Commission To Require Access to Dark Fiber or Line Sharing, It Would Not Be in the Public Interest To Do So. AT&T also explained in its initial comments that, even if the Commission could read the competitive checklist to require access to dark fiber or line sharing, it should not do so. Mandatory unbundling provides a powerful disincentive for competitive LECs to invest in and deploy their own facilities, thereby undermining the goal of the Act to ?encourage the innovation and investment that come from facilities-based competition.?

There are also isolated areas in the middle of cities where there's no broadband. They're easy to find. Just look on the rooftops for HughesNet or Wild Blue satellite dishes. For example, right next to UCSC, which has excellent connectivity, is the community of Cave Gulch with about 40 residences straddling Empire Grade. The fiber for AT&T goes up Empire grade. Comcast cable/fiber stops at the University. So, there's no DSL and no cable. I know of several other communities with similar isolated areas of no broadband[1]. My guess is that the numbers are not huge, but still significant. Oddly, as the FCC keeps waving the mantra of connectivity to RURAL areas, none of these qualify as genuinely rural, and will therefore be served last.

It's most likely going to follow the model of rural electrification in the 1950's. The government subsidized the power companies to provide power to unprofitable rural areas. I expect the broadband plan to degenerate into much the same thing. Whether that will provide more or better service is debatable, but it will certainly add some taxes to the existing services, that can be either stolen or redirected, such as the FCC's Universal Service Fund, E-Rate, and 911 PSAP funding.

[1] My favorite irony is that some of the major fiber runs in SCZ County go through farm areas, or along the coast, that have no broadband service. The DWDM fiber bundle goes right through these areas (because Caltrans won't allow cable runs on the freeways).

Density is the difference. Its easy to justify running fiber when the

Tell that to those farmers that are leasing the right of way to AT&T and Comcast, but can't get DSL or cable. See map at:

Some of the fiber run in the Moss Landing area has no DSL service. The part that does has it via UCSC/UCMB which lease some of the fiber. Same problem between Santa Cruz and Davenport. AT&T and Comcast fiber go right by numerous homes and farms, but no service. Running the fiber and providing RT (remote terminal) pedestals are quite different.

Even San Jose has nowhere near the population density of Seoul.

--=20 John Richards

Federally managed SLA's (Service Level Agreements) for consumers?

I can't wait for the tin foil hat crowd to suggest that they add a warning label to the sticker. "Exposure to RF might be hazardous to your health". Bring on the ammendments. It probably won't happen, but if it does, you probably won't recognize the final version.

Hmmm... they forgot about latency, MOS score, and suitability for VoIP. Yet, that's the justification for switching the Universal Service Fund from POTS service to data service.

A non-speeding ticket for surfing too slow?

Actually, that poses an interesting problem. If the consumer doesn't get their FCC mandated minimum allowable performance because of some kind of upstream failure, can the consumers ISP pass the fines on to the upstream providers?

So the "capitol of Silicon Valley", ground zero for high-tech, can't support anything resembling decent Internet connectivity? That's really rich! The prices we pay for such laughable connectivity are truly amazing.

I'm still not getting this. We pay many times what people in countries with *real* Internet service for laughably bad Internet service. Where is the hidden money coming from and going to?

John Higdon wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@news.announcetech.com:

'Real' internet service ?

Yeah, the 10 mbps d/l speeds I get aren't any better than 56k dial-up.

Sure, and 20 years ago 9600 baud was considered good. So what? New technologies, like streaming IPTV, require more bandwidth. I sincerely doubt John's comments were a personal dig at your service (I'd love

10Mbps; I'm still at a nominal 7Mbps).

Steve

Where on earth do you get 10mbps speeds? But yes, it does pale compared to the 100 mbps that my friends in Japan get...and pay less for it.

Nuenen in the Netherlands has a pop den of 1742/sq mile and they've all [90%] got fibre:

Eindhoven is next. I'm sure you God-fearing capitalists will abhor the idea of a co-operative building a broadband network, but hey, your loss!

Iceland is very well connected. I never knew that Iceland was a highly dense country.

Government interference through various subsidies hides the true cost of providing such service. It boils down to a willingness by everyone to = pay=20 higher taxes in order to get more cradle-to-grave services. Most = Americans=20 are unwilling to pay higher taxes.

--=20 John Richards

We have too much of the Internet in this country handled by huge corporations that are also content providers. They have a vested interest in keeping consumer Internet access crippled. After all, they don't want people streaming in program material from competing content providers over *their* wires, as David Whitaker, former CEO of SBC put it.

It may be that "government interference" may be the only way we get anything at all at any kind of affordable price to the user. I'm not putting a lot of faith in Comcast or AT&T.

60% of the population lives in one city which occupies 300 square miles (think 30 by 10 miles).

The country is basically bankrupt