Fast Net News, DSL Prime, DOCSIS Report

Congressman Serrano Low Speed Lifeline "Absolutely Unacceptable"
"Is it acceptable that the proposed lifeline broadband program only offer low speeds," I asked Jose Serrano, pointing our the cable and AT&T sponsored plan runs at a tenth the regular speed. "Absolutely not!" the Congressman replied. "Our students need the highest speed possible." NCTA, the cable association, calls their plan "Adoption Plus" or "A+" but it only offers the lowest tier of service, too slow for ordinary TV quality More at http://bit.ly/a4eGXm

The Basics: By 2013, 90% covered 50 meg by land, 95% 5 meg wireless
To me, that means the broadband plan should be about availability for the last 5-10% and focus on affordability for the 90%. From the Columbia CITI study to the FCC, the crucial conclusion.
“By 2013-4, broadband service providers expect to be able to serve about 95%2 of U.S. homes with at least a low speed of wired broadband service and they expect to offer to about 90% of homes advertised speeds of 50 mbps downstream.3 Service providers expect to provide many homes with access to these higher speeds by 2011-2012.4 Wireless broadband service providers expect to offer wireless 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 the population by 2013. ... a significant number of U.S. homes, perhaps five to ten million (which represent 4.5 to 9 percent of households)5, will have significantly inferior choices in broadband: most of these homes will have wireless or wired service broadband available only at speeds substantially lower than the speeds available to the rest of the country.

Save Half on Broadband Subsidies: Don't Pay Retail for a Million Lines
If  the government buys 500,000 broadband connections through the USF Lifeline program, they can and should get a “wholesale” price. The carriers would sacrifice some margin but will still be very profitable because of the volume. Broadband is a high fixed cost, low marginal cost business. That means additional customers, such as those added through a lifeline subsidy for the poor, have high margins.

Plugging in some numbers, there's a sensible compromise around the point where a subsidy would serve twice as many homes. Consider if a regular broadband price is $20/month (AT&T & Verizon's current low end price) and a goal for the customer to pay $5/month on top of their phone bill. more http://bit.ly/280HH4

AT&T, Verizon, Qwest: 82% of DSL “Unserved”
There's a bombshell buried on FCC broadband slide 47: three companies are responsible for the bulk of the problem. People gasped in D.C. when I said the Bells had been treating much of rural America “like the Romans treated the Sabine Women” but even I didn't realize the percentage was that high. Bell rural coverage is often 50-60%, far lower than other U.S. rural carriers or the rural coverage of any Western European telco.

Any U.S. broadband program will therefore fail  badly  unless there's a strategy to reach the homes unserved in Bell territory. Working with the companies is ideal, but if they won't co-operate Larry, Jonathan, and Blair need to find an alternative. more http://bit.ly/c9gReR

Adelstein's Courage: Losing Face, Saving Public Money
Things went horribly wrong with the first round of the U.S. stimulus. Amazingly few proposals came in that would reach the unserved at reasonable cost or create jobs effectively, the primary goals. The normal government response - including the past history of RUS - would be to give out the money anyway, put lipstick on the pig, and hope no one notices. At NTIA, the grants announced are mostly misdirected, and at least one smells like fraud. Congress was already roasting RUS for how long they were taking to spend the stimulus money, putting on pressure to "do something." Jonathan wisely resisted. Adelstein decided instead to take the heat for the delay and reboot. http://bit.ly/c0l2DI

$150 Billion Woman with the $400 Billion Problem
Carol Mattey is in charge of ICC/USF for the broadband plan, which runs over $15B/year or $150B for the decade. She's very sharp, her colleagues tell me, but she'd need the wisdom of Solomon to equitably split this baby. If you combine the goals of the plan and the strong expectations of powerful carriers she'll need another $250B or so. While the FCC since at least 2002 having been reporting cuts are inevitable, Qwest CEO Ed Mueller just told investors he expects a big increase. A top lobbyist just told me the Verizon and AT&T alone expect about $2B/year more. (It's buried in technicalities like “non-rural” exemption and “statewide cost averaging.) ...

A Bronx Tale: The Amazing, Unknown Free Wireless One million New Yorkers can get free wifi through 187 access points across Harlem, the South Bronx, and Brooklyn in the neighborhoods that need it most. If your WiFi can see smartnetnyc, urbanwifitv or smartnetnych, you should be able to register on the splash page that comes up. When I visited them Saturday, 392 users had logged in by 1:30, although until now they have had zero publicity. http://bit.ly/5hJbaY