While much FCC policy has been inward looking, refusing to treat the world as a laboratory in which alternate polcies are tested, some failing and some succeeding. Both failures and successes provide useful lessons.

Two representatives of successes were present, Herman Wagter of citynet.nl in Amsterdam and Johan Henæs Norwegian equipment maker INS Communications.

Lessons from Europe

Wagter pointed out that up to 90 percent of the U.S. populations lives in areas that are at least as densely populated as Europe, and therefore that the same economics of density that favors high speed deployments there should favor high speed deployments in the urban and suburban areas of the U.S.

Wagter also pointed out that middle mile deployments can be repurposed to other customer while last mile deployments can serve only the one home to which they connect. This makes middle mile projects safer to build, in theory.

Finally, Wagter said that fiber would be a good stimulus project because it delivers jobs. “10 percent of the cost of a fiber project is the fiber, 10 percent is the equipment, and 80 percent is the labor (although labor costs decrease in rural areas).”

In his experience, it costs about 900 Euros to connect each home, far lower than the $3,000 estimate common in the U.S.

Henæs said that a lesson learned in Europe is that nobody can predict what broadband will be used for. The fiber builders expected to deliver a specific set of services but could not imagine apps like YouTube.

He agreed with Wagter that fiber builds should be open. “Fiber builds should not only support FTTH,” he said. They should also support wireless backhaul, business-to-business service, and enable the consolidation of COs. I would add that fixed wireless, not just cellular, should be part of any fiber middle mile project.

Benoit Felten, Yanke Group’s fiber analyst, contributed to the global perspective by showing the panel where 100 Mbps service is available — and the three places in the world where 1 Gbps service is available (Japan, South Korea, and Hong Kong). He predicted that in the future, 1 Gbps service will be available across the world.

Of course 100 Mbps service is available in the U.S., from Cablevision, but it is asymmetrical and not widely available — and it costs more than the same service anywhere else in the world.

Lessons from the U.S.

Tim Nulty, project director of the Eastern Vermont Community Fiber Network said that fiber could be deployed nationwide across the U.S. now.

He pointed out that the Universal Service Fund (USF) spends about $7 billion each year — equivalent to the broadband stimulus. “With it, we could wire the entire rural America, 40 million people,” he said (I think he was excluding Alaska).

He said (and Felten backs me up on this extraordinary quote) that anywhere where you can get 10 subscribers per mile, you can build fiber. At 20 people per mile, each fiber node supports 6,000 to 8,000 subscribers. At 10 per mile, each node supports about 30,000 pepople.

He added that if you build fiber properly, the network is transparent to the technology you hang on it. He said that EC Fiber is able to upgrade.

Joanne Hovis, of NATOA, said that there are 57 municipal FTTP networks in the U.S., mostly in rural areas, plus countless county networks that serve the government and educational and utility providers.

Craig Settles tweeted a link to 10 profiles of community fiber networks.

The lesson from the U.S. is this: it is possible to build fiber anywhere (except maybe Alaska).

John Cioffi, the DSL professor, noted that many fiber deployments use DSL for the last mile, and that fiber deployments are small compared to the number of customers served by DSL.

David Reed of MIT said that Wi-Fi MIMO (802.11n) is far superior to 4G cellular. I agree that for the past decade, cellular interests have unfairly presented themselves as the sole providers of wireless broadband, when cheaper, easier to deploy systems were available and are still available — and the cheaper fixed wireless systems are also better.

“Wireless is much more than just a third pipe,” said Reed.

Reed also made a complex point about personal mobility. He said that he believes the application of the future will be the “amulet” by which he meant the applications that use your identity — your contacts, you location, you activities.

Fiber’s business model should be the support of local wireless networks, according to Reed.

Merit Network is the innovative group behind opencalea and other open source projects that have been helpful to ISPs and small businesses. Merit’s $42 million project, $18 million grant, $18 million loan, and the rest contributed (partly in kind), consists of almost one thousand mile of 72-strand fiber. Merit is working with several local partners in different areas of the state. Merit’s application came with 70 letters of support and Merit notes that it has a history of bringing diverse organizations together. I strongly support Merit’s application, one of the projects the governor recommended.

The Beaver Island project is interesting. TDS Telecom has a number of ILEC applications across the U.S., many of which (it’s difficult to tell) could be requests for the funding of infrastructure that TDS might build anyway. Beaver Island is an exception. All TDS projects use DSL, and although DSL delivers neither the fastest nor the cheapest broadband (that would be fiber and wireless, respectively), DSL will have a legitimate role to play in some locations.

Beaver Island is located in Lake Michigan, west of the state and east of Green Bay. It is very remote and was once the home of a splinter Mormon cult. The number of households served was redacted, so I cannot tell whether or not the project is economical in terms of cost per connection, but given the geography of this remote location, I feel it deserves inclusion in the stimulus, and so does Granholm.

All of this is excellent work, work that some governors have chosen not to undertake.

The governor recommended four infrastructure projects from two radically different providers. Frontirr Communications is the state’s ILEC after purchsing the copper lines from Verizon, but the company faces numerous challenges as detailed in its most recent SEC filing.

The other two projects from from GWI, an independent ISP that is one of the best in the U.S. and is run by Fletcher Kittredge, formerly of BBN and Harvard University. His tech knoweldge is complimented by many at GWI including his head of marketing, Rick Preti. In 2004, Kittredge talked very honestly to me about Lucent equipment and in 2005, the company rolled out a VoIP service that was far ahead of its time.

GWI proposed two very different projects: an ambitious fiber middle mile project that would help almost the entire state and a local project for one of the beautiful small islands off Maine’s coast, Chebeague Island.

Both of GWI’s projects are excellent.

Also recommended by the governor were the state library system’s public computer center project and a WiMAX sustainable broadband initiative from independent ISP Axiom Technologies. The latter submitted a fascinating education application to serve a county where the overall poverty rate is just over 20 percent and is nearly 30 percent for children. The project will help improve farming, deliver telehealth, support business broadband, and measure the project’s effectiveness through a partnership with the University of Maine.

I think this last part is important — most of the sustainable broadband adoption or education programs have little provision for measuring their own success.

Two applications were rejected by the state of Maine. USA Webhost, the letter says, did not prove that its project was sustainable and did not prove that its infrastructure project would connect to the internet.

I strongly applaud the state of main for rejecting an application from a cellular provider on the grounds that cellular service does not meet the state’s definition of broadband. Vanu Coverage Company of Cambridge, Mass. submitted three applications worth $41 million — almost equal to all of the 7 recommended by the state — to deliver PCS cellular service. I agree that PCS cellular service is not broadband.
]]> http://net-statistics.net/wordpress/2009/11/maine-stimulus-gwi-frontie/feed/ 1 http://net-statistics.net/wordpress/2009/10/arizona-governor-brewer-btop-one/ http://net-statistics.net/wordpress/2009/10/arizona-governor-brewer-btop-one/#comments Fri, 30 Oct 2009 18:57:57 +0000 Alex http://net-statistics.net/wordpress/?p=142 Arizona Governor Jan Brewer (D) divded her 21 recommendations into three levels: Exeptional, Outstanding, and Deserving.

I could not find the letter on a government site but obtained it through the StimuluatingBroadband blog people — Pratt Networks — here.

The only Exceptional middle mile project in the letter in the Navajo Tribal Utility Authority, a roughly $34 million project, half grant and half loan, mixing fiber, microwave, and wireless. No objections to it! Looks like a good project.

There are two Outstanding middle projects. There’s little data in the federal database on the Triplet Mountain project.

But there is a reasonable amount on PacTex. It’s a fiber run across the state that would cost about $140 million and is run by ex-AT&T executives. I’d like to know more about where the fiber runs from and to and whether this fiber run is simply an investment that AT&T should have made anyway in the past — there are numerous investments that AT&T should have made but chose not to in order to better reward its CEO at the time.

There are three Exceptional last mile projects.

Smith Bagley is a roughly $10.5 millon project to serve “Navajo, Hopi, and White Mountain Apache Tribal lands as well as rural non-tribal lands.” While the coverage area is deserving, the technology is cellular (3GPP). There is, as I read it, no open network commitment.

TowerStream I filed applications across the U.S. and it’s surprising that the governor recommended their application in Phoenix. Phoenix is the site of numerous failed wireless trials but it was chosen because it is an ideal location for the provision of wireless service. Much of the city is in a sort of bowl, so there are natural heights that enable the cheap placement of wireless infrastructure.

The third is WeCom for WiMAX in Kingman, AZ. There’s little data on the project and it seems fine as long as the principals are qualified.

Castillo Technologies filed 15 applications and gets two Deserving ratings in the letter. NPG Cable of St. Louis, MO, which filed 3 applications in AZ gets two Deserving ratings in the letter. I wonder whether “Deserving” ratings will be treated as recommendations or not.

Wi-VOD, which filed two applications totalling about $20 million grant / $30 million loan gets an Outstanding recommendation.

The letter’s Public Computer Center recommendations seem reasonable. The application of the state library system, for about $1.25 million to upgrade public computers in 84 libraries, seems particularly good and deserves its Exceptional rating.

In what I call the education category and what the government calls Sustainable Broadband, there are some odd decisions.

The Tohono O’odham Utility Authority gets an Exceptional rating, but the application is a small addition to a middle mile project and a last mile project neither of which are mentioned in the letter.

Three quirky projects get Deserving ratings:

Broadband for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, a $140 million project to bring broadband to 66,000 households for two years that is supported by Vint Cerf.

WildBlue’s $15 million project for the state of Arizona — I don’t like satellite for the stimulus except in small and exceptional cases.

The third is a national project that’s based in Arizona, so I understand why that state’s governor would recommend it. CHC-TV LLC proposes a $35 million project to deliver education nationally. I believe it would make sense for the federal government to negotiate with CHC-TV for a pilot project at 1/50 the cost for the state of Arizona alone.

I also like MCNC — and so may ISPs — as this looks like infrastructure that will be truly open for competition.

The governor made some tough choices with regard to public computer center applications — I don’t know the cities involved and cannot really say what should be done here.

In the sustainable broadband adoption area of the stimulus, I’ve seen some very flaky and strange proposals, but the one endorsed by Purdue, McDowell County Schools, looks very good to me.

One point in its favor is that it described specific equipment that will be deployed to schools: Cisco Aironet Access Points and Wireless Controllers. In addition, it will deploy 1,300 laptops to schools. Thus, the $3 million project will deliver tangible hardware and not just training or other things whose cost and value are difficult to measure such as software.

I was surprised to see a BPL project in the list, the French Broad Electric Membership Corporation, but the anchor institutions the project proposes to cover are excellent and the speeds, if realized, are impressive: 1 Mbps symmetric for $49.95 per month and the same for business at $129.95 per month.

I am not surprised to find the governor ignoring projects covering all 50 states, and also projects that cover a large number of states. These projects range from satellite broadband from Huges or EchoStar to education by the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.

h/t Stimulating Broadband

In Missouri, governor Jay Nixon (D) has chosen, in his letter to the federal government, one project, Show-Me Technologies, which will partner with the state to deliver fiber to areas that will lower broadband costs for state institutions.

That angers Victoria Proffer. She suspects that the state pretended to have an open request for information process but that Show-Me Technologies had in fact won the race before it was run.

The project that the governor endorsed is run by a subsidiary of an energy company and promises that the energy company will pay enough in subscription fees to connect electrical substations to keep the project running.

The Show-Me project also promised to be open access and to build towers for WISPs. We’ll see if that happens — and whether they let Proffer’s company offer service there.

Other recommendations in the governor’s letter

The governor’s letter recommends several companies I don’t know. One of them filed 20 applications — which I believe is a sign of poor due diligence — but is a legitimate company. Boonville, MO-based GlenMartin is an equipment company that was founded in 1918 and now makes towers. It plans to cover the rural areas of the state through fixed wireless broadband.

I interviewed Brian Becker of SEMO.net (SouthEast Missouri.net) in 2003. His local million dollar project in self-described “Ashcroft country” also made the list. Congratulations, Brian!
]]> http://net-statistics.net/wordpress/2009/10/missouri-jay-nixon-show-me-proffer/feed/ 0 http://net-statistics.net/wordpress/2009/10/illinois-governors-stimulus-letter-is-nearly-perfect/ http://net-statistics.net/wordpress/2009/10/illinois-governors-stimulus-letter-is-nearly-perfect/#comments Sun, 25 Oct 2009 15:34:40 +0000 Alex http://net-statistics.net/wordpress/?p=120 The broadband stimulus is supposed to be a transparent process, with input from experts and from communities at every step. One key representative is the state’s governor. Illinois governor Pat Quinn (D), Blagojevich’s replacement, released his letter concerning the broadband stimulus here.

The letter recommends some of the most expensive proposals. Central Management Services, which manages a fiber network serving over 8,000 schools, is requesting $120 million to upgrade the network to serve 69 counties with 3,838 anchor institutions. It’s a massive project.

The City of Rockford requested $70 million for another massive fiber middle mile project.

Clearwire asked for $30 million to support a $62 million project. Parts of the summary were redacted.

The governor even supports an applicant from out of state (though Evansville IN is not too far away): Norlight Communications. The company is applying for $22 million for a massive middle mile fiber project. I interviewed the company’s president seven years ago and was very impressed. This conservatively-managed company has an interesting profit sharing scheme and is doing many things right that bigger companies are constantly getting wrong.

The letter also recommends some large “sustainable broadband adoption” projects. Across the U.S., these vary widely, from projects in public housing to telemedicine to training for young people and seniors. I find them difficult to judge. The federal government has to hope that the states will pick established entities that will do what they claim they can do in their grant applications. Of the four projects recommended by the governor, two are from the University of Illinois, which seems to me to be the kind of trustworthy non-profit that the stimulus act is designed to fund.

But the letter ignores some of the smaller grant applications, such as those from the cities of Lincoln and Quincy. It’s a sad fact that the state reviews are likely to privilege the larger projects, as they will cover a greater land area and bring in the support of a larger number of state and federal representatives.

The letter does recommend one public computer center application for $100,000 submitted by the Zion-Benton Public Library District of Zion, IL. I hope that these small applications, which appear to be easy to judge and worthy of funding, will survive a process that seems geared to favor larger plans. According to Wikipedia, the population of city of Zion is young and nearly half non-white but is not poor. Its ballpark, built by Kevin Costner, will open in 2010.

Too many people assume that the place is wealthy and well-served, Art Gaylord, vice chairman of the project and director of information services at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, told me. “The Cape suffers from the impression that it’s the summer playground for the rich and that it’s full of tourists with money. The reality is that although those people do come out here, there’s also a year round population of about 250,000 (it rises to three or four times that in the summer).”

The project got its start about three years ago when a tree branch took out phone service on a large portion of the Cape, including 911 service, Gaylord said. The community already had concerns about the reliability and price of phone and internet service.

Talk to your state

So they decided to fix the problem themselves, and began the project even before the stimulus was announced.

Gaylord said that the group started as three or four people who formed a 501(c)3 charitable organization to explore the possibilities. Chief among them was OpenCape president and the prime initiator of the project, Dan Gallagher, CIO of Cape Cod Community College.

As there were no competing projects, the towns, the public safety organizations, and educational institutions all signed on. One of the co-founders had been the president of the Cape Cod Tech Council, a group for small businesses.

OpenCape has been talking to the State of Massachusetts for some time, but the state is particularly interested in a project in the western portion of Massachusetts, so OpenCape does not expect to be first in line, but would love to be second if the opportunity arises, Gaylord said.

The states will be publishing their reviews of stimulus projects at the end of this week, and Gaylord said he hopes for good news then.

Involve stakeholders

In addition to the small business group, the Cape Cod Tech Council, the OpenCape project involves numerous other stakeholders.

The stimulus act defines key institutions, known as “anchor institutions” in Title VI, section 6001, paragraph (b) 3 in this way:

schools, libraries, medical and healthcare providers, community colleges and other institutions of higher education, and other community support organizations and entities … organizations and agencies that provide outreach, access, equipment, and support services to facilitate greater use of broadband service by low-income, unemployed, aged, and otherwise vulnerable populations; and job-creating strategic facilities located within a State-designated economic zone, Economic Development District designated by the Department of Commerce, Renewal Community or Empowerment Zone designated by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, or Enterprise Community designated by the Department of Agriculture

Paragraph (b) 4 adds public safety agencies.

OpenCape involves schools, universities, libraries, hospitals, local governent, the Cape Cod Police Chiefs Association, as well as individual consumers. Elected representatives of the area at all levels of government have also been supportive.

“All of the CIOs of the regional hospitals have been supportive of the effort,” said Gaylord.

Gaylord said that when working with local government, he enjoyed talking IT department to IT department (but then, since he’s an IT guy, that would naturally be his preference).

Another thing he said that OpenCape did right was “we made an effort throughout the process to be geographically inclusive in the area. We have people from up and down the Cape and out to Plymouth.”

Get started early

It started with a single public meeting. “The first thing that told us we were on the right track was when we held a meeting to see who would show up and over 100 people showed up. That showed us there was real interest.”

As the project progressed, members identified key stakeholders went to work.

“Writing the grant application was more work than you imagine,” said Gaylord, who has written grant proposals before. “I’ve done a bunch of proposals in my career to the NSF, NASA, Defence Department — but this particular application for this project took more effort than all of the rest combined.”

Find an ISP partner

The project initially called for a wireless microwave backbone but with stimulus funds, OpenCape has decided to “do it right”, Gaylord said.

OpenCape needed a partner to build and manage the fiber. OpenCape selected its ISP partner through an open RFI process (.pdf press release) and RCN, the competitive cable provider, won the bid by demonstrating both eagerness to be involved and competance in building and managing fiber networks.

In retrospect, Gaylord said he’s pleased to have an ISP involved. “One criticism of the broadband stimulus was how can you trust millions of dollars to a board of amateurs. How will a couple of academics and a doctor know how to run a network.”

Of course, the institution whose network Gaylord runs can at times be one of the most data-intensive in the nation — the criticism might not be valid, but Gaylord understood that it could be perceived as valid by those who did not know the Cape and the WHOI.

RCN brings two fiber paths, one to Providence, Rhode Island, and one to Boston, and it bring more to the project too. “RCN brought us a whole lot of expertise that we did not have, especially on some of the practical questions. We had not planned initially to go into the telco COs, but they said we have to do that because that’s where everybody connects now, and that we cannot run fiber to every small business. In addition, COs have emergency backup power and strong buildings.”

RCN also knew the telco-grade equipment. While Gaylord and others knew all about LAN gear, they had not purchased carrier class routers or optical switcing gear.

The 501(c)3 will own the network, and RCN will pay to operate it for 25 years,. OpenCape will get 40 percent of the fiber and no one ISP will be allowed to have over 20 percent of any segment of the network.

OpenCape is the sort of project the stimulus was designed to encourage, and anyone who wants to build a similar community project should start now.

The fact is that on both coasts there are large cities and also small towns that sit next to the fattest pipes in the world but which have no access to them. The stimulus should help change that.