| 18 Months, No Improvements in U.S. Broadband Deployment |
| Tuesday, 05 July 2011 13:58 |
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June, 2011. Columbia University CITI is publishing the second edition of Broadband in America, the 20 months later, the good news is that prediction continues on track. 50-100 megabit DOCSIS 3.0 cable will soon reach 90%. 5+ megabit LTE looks likely to be at 94% in 2013-4 and 97-98% in 2016 or so, whether of not AT&T/T-Mobile is approved. FiOS and other fiber is now at 21M homes passed. 10-25 megabit FTTN/DSL is at about 30M. Combined, telcos are bring 10 megabits+ to about half the country. During the last 18 months, the U.S. has developed a broadband plan and begun spending $7B on broadband from the stimulus. FCC Chairman Julius has set "affordable broadband" as his highest priority. The results: no effect. "The updated forecast included in this Second Report has not significantly changed," 5-10% will only have second rate choices without better policy.
· The report is 176 pages of detail about U.S. broadband deployment and what will be. The first edition (October 2009):http://bit.ly/qIVpNb Second Edition (June 2011): http://bit.ly/nPbVoa Bob Atkinson, Ivy Young and team did solid work. The broadband service providers expected to be able to serve about 95% of U.S. homes with at least a low speed of wired broadband service and they expected to offer to about 90% of homes advertised speeds of 50 mbps downstream. Service providers expected to provide many homes with access to these higher speeds by 2011‐2012. Another conclusion was that wireless broadband serviceproviders expected to offer wireless internet access at advertised speeds ranging up to 12 mbps downstream (but more likely 5 mbps or less due to capacity sharing) to about 94% of thepopulation by 2013. The First Report also concluded that, in addition to several wirelessbroadband choices, the majority of American homes will have the choice of two wiredbroadband services. Upstream speeds for wired and wireless services will generally be significantly lower than downstream. The updated information included in this Second Report continues to support all of these expectations. Another principal conclusion drawn in the First Report was that a significant number of U.S. homes, perhaps five to ten million (which represent 4.5 to 9 percent of households), will have significantly inferior choices in broadband: |
| Last Updated on Tuesday, 05 July 2011 19:08 |
most careful independent survey of U.S. broadband ever produced. The first edition was prepared at the request of the Broadband Plan and extensively quoted by Blair Levin and team. The conclusion in October 2009 (below) was that about 95% of the U.S. would soon have high speed wired and LTE wireless connections available, whether or not the government did anything for broadband.