[Info-vax] US Broadband (was: Re: A possible platform for VMS?)

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2015-03-02 14:45:08 +0000, Jan-Erik Soderholm said:

> I just looked up Sweden and all but a few *very* low populated areas in 
> the far north has 10 Mb/s or better to over 90% of households.
> 
> The governements goal is that at least 90% of all housholds and 
> business will have 100 Mb/s via fiber at year 2020.

In my experience, United States broadband speeds and coverage are not 
particularly comparable to that of countries that consider broadband to 
be a competitive advantage or to be a regional or national priority, 
nor does the United States presently classify nor regulate nor 
encourage broadband coverage similarly to that of telephone and 
electrical services; as basic services.  The US government holds 
central the regulatory authority for broadband.  The US only recently 
decided to reclassify broadband providers as what are called common 
carrier (though AFAIK, the details of that FCC decision and the new 
regulations have not yet been published), and the US generally remains 
committed to private carriers and to private broadband infrastructure 
funding as the appropriate path forward for broadband coverage, and 
(with a different recent FCC decision) to the possibility of 
public-private and municipal broadband for those localities that wish 
to vote on and fund and build that.

This funding model of course means that broadband carriers add coverage 
only where that's likely to be most profitable and the investment most 
quickly recouped, and the industry trends and profits have also been 
leading to consolidations and to mergers among carriers — for the 
potential merger of Time Warner Cable with Comcast, for instance.  It 
also means that there is quite often duplicated and competing 
infrastructure in populated areas, and no infrastructure and no 
coverage in others.  As for optical coverage, it's also been reported 
that a major wireline and wireless carrier Verizon is ending their 
optical network build-out 
<http://arstechnica.com/business/2015/01/verizon-nears-the-end-of-fios-builds/> 
and concentrating their investments on wireless infrastructure.

The regional wireline incumbent telco carrier has met the planned 85% 
broadband coverage of the state back around December 2010.  The carrier 
likely met 95% coverage back in April 2013, though that's with 75% 
broadband coverage of their rural exchange customers; for what the 
telco carrier refers to has UNE Zone 3 exchanges.  Those exchanges are 
for some parts of suburbs and the more rural areas.   Those coverage 
percentages are also based on a much lower bandwidth definition for 
broadband coverage than is now in common use, too.  These build-outs 
are slow and very expensive, and wireline subscriptions are in decline, 
as folks move over to cellular communications.   Further complicating 
the upgrades and increasing the expenses, most of the regional 
broadband coverage is (still) on copper wiring, and at ADSL speeds that 
are sometimes hardware limited to 3 Mbps / 768 Kbps, or similar speeds. 
  More than a few nearby folks have no cable and no ADSL available, and 
are connecting on wireless or satellite links, where those signals can 
propagate.  For some of these folks, the dial-up modem speeds they can 
achieve are exceptionally low, due in no small part to the distances 
and the state of the copper wiring involved, and some of those folks 
also have no cellular coverage.

As for addressing and funding these build-outs, the policies of the US 
presently seek to ensure a market for privatized and profitable 
broadband providers, and — outside of a few local municipalities and 
local governments — neither the federal government nor state 
governments are seeking ubiquitous or publicly-funded broadband 
build-outs.  Wireline and wireless build-outs are proceeding in the US, 
but slowly — chunks of state highways in this area have spotty or no 
cellular coverage, for instance — and without the benefits (and issues, 
of course) that national coordination and national build-out plans can 
involve.

There's also that the population distribution in the US tends to 
differs from that of Sweden and of most of Europe, and that the US is a 
very large and — in many areas — comparatively empty country.   To 
borrow an old networking joke, broadband coverage around the US can 
variously involve FedEx, which has rotten latency but massive bandwidth.

Outside of the population centers and particularly outside of the areas 
deploying Google Fiber or equivalent, or with progressive telcos and 
carriers as incumbents — US broadband is not particularly comparable 
with what I've experienced in other countries.

But yes, having 100 Mbps fiber coverage for 90% of the local region 
would be nice, but that's just not happening anytime soon; not in this 
region.



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