From The Online Reporter
- Fiber Closer to the Home to Enable VDSL2 Vectoring
- The John Deere Policy: Higher-Speed LTE for Great Swaths of Rural America
- Is the FCC Helping or Hurting?
The CES seminar “New Marketplace Structures in Competition” was entirely a telco view of the broadband world. No cablecos were on the panel. The moderator was Walter McCormick, president & CEO of the telcos’ lobbying group, USTelecom. The panelists were:
-Jeff Brueggeman, AT&T’s VP for global public policy and deputy chief privacy officer
-Matt Beal, CenturyLink’s CTO & SVP, corporate strategy and product development that had previously spearheaded British Telecom’s move to an all-IP network and is now doing the same at CenturyLink. CenturyLink’s rapid growth is primarily due to its acquisitions of the one-time Baby Bell Qwest and of Embarq, which had been Sprint’s wireline division.
-Director of Communications Liberty & Innovation Project, Fred Campbell.
-Nicholas Degani, wireline legal advisor to FCC commissioner Pai McCormick said the big change impacting telcos’ wireline business is that more homes now have wireless phones than wireline ones.
Beal said the one thing CenturyLink and its acquisitions had in common was broadband.
AT&T’s Brueggeman said the company recently announced a major new broadband project that consisted of:
- Expanding coverage of its LTE service to an area that has 350 million people by the end of 2014.
- Expansion of high-speed wireline broadband to 75% of its wireline footprint. Speeds to each of those households would be 50- to 100 Mbps, depending on a number of factors such as distance to the fiber connection. After the seminar, Brueggeman told The Online Reporter that AT&T would use bonding and VDSL2 Vectoring to achieve those speeds.
- Deploy fiber to one million MDUs.
He said the plan had been filed with the FCC for it to consider because the current FCC regulations need to be adapted to IP networks. The FCC should do away with outdated rules that were originally meant for wireline phone companies, he said.
After the seminar we asked McCormick whether the FCC regulates cablecos, who like the telcos also provide phone, broadband and TV, the same as they do telcos. “No,” he said. We asked him what the difference is between a cableco and a telco and he said, “None.”
Campbell said during the seminar that advances in regulatory policies are not advancing as fast as the technologies are. The FCC, he said, is for the most part still operating under the 1996 Telecommunications Act, which was enacted 16 years ago. He said that what’s needed are more “investment friendly” government policies. Broadband, he said, is about personalization and choice, and differentiation — so telcos need policies that encourage personalization and choice. Wired networks are here to stay, he said, and they need more backhaul and more fiber. He said AT&T has proposed that some homes in rural areas be served by wireless broadband.
Telcos, he said, now face competition from cablecos,
wireless operators [the two biggest US wireless operators
are the two biggest wireline telcos] and broadband-based
telephony [VoIP].
McCormick said the telephone industry has gone from a monopoly and a highly regulated industry to one where there are lots of competitors, but telcos are still highly regulated. He asked the two telco executives, “Who are the competitors?” CenturyLink’s Beal said it’s not black and white, but it’s the cablecos and the cellcos.
[It’s understandable he would say the cable TV companies who are faster than anything the telcos offer, except in areas where a telco offers all-fiber. However, saying cellcos might be true for CenturyLink, which does not offer a cellular service, but not to AT&T, which is the US’ second largest telco. Although you could say AT&T wireline competes against wireless from Verizon, T-Mobile and Sprint, competition and that’s sure to increase as LTE speeds and capacity increase. Verizon was showing in its booth an LTE broadband modem that connects to a dish that’s outside the house and provides 12 to 15 Mbps Wi-Fi within the home. We also saw in another company’s private suite a prototype of an even smaller LTE modem that provides even faster broadband speeds.]
AT&T’s Brueggeman said the competition is intense — so much so that it has only one-third of the residential copper wire telephone subscribers as it used to. He mentioned the cablecos and broadband-based Skype as competitors.
McCormick, the telcos’ very effective spokeperson, asked,
“Does broadband subsume all other forms of communications?
What are the roles and responsibilities for the FCC and
Congress?”
The FCC’s Degani, the peoples’ spokesperson, said Congress has given the FCC some “forbearances” [they talk like that in the government] that provide the FCC the ability to adapt to some situations, but there are some places the FCC cannot go, leftovers from the 1998 Telecommunications Act. It is often hard and difficult to figure out what to do, he said. There’s a task force working on finding the answers to, “What are the right solutions?”
McCormick asked what the policy would be for rural areas.
AT&T’s Brueggeman then said something that some analysts outside of AT&T have suspected but had never heard confirmed by AT&T. He said AT&T realized it had two choices with its wireline operations: divest it completely or invest in it with “next-generation” wireline technologies. The rural market needs broadband, he said, and AT&T has shown it by putting its LTE broadband technology into John Deere tractors.
CenturyLink’s Beal said the need for universal broadband is great so as not to create a digital divide. He said 92% of CenturyLink’s footprint is served by wireline broadband. It needs technology innovation and new business models [he did not say what that might be, perhaps government funding] because “It won’t be every house that gets fiber.”
Campbell said telcos should do wireless first, even if it ended up being wireline because 60% of the roads are unpaved.
McCormick asked, “How can the FCC keep up with the pace of change?”
Degani said the FCC hasn’t done it yet but has a task
force working on it. The marketplace is changing rapidly, he
said.
McCormick said the FCC has provided three good things:
- National Broadband Plan
- Changes to the Universal Service policy
- Transition Task Force, for which he said he has high hopes
A Wells Fargo analyst in the audience asked, “What about the reclassification of broadband to common carrier status?”
Brueggeman said it would slow innovation and AT&T is optimistic that it will not happen.
Beal said it would be a shock to the cablecos.
Another attendee asked why the telcos can’t do unregulated fiber like Google is dong [in the two Kansas Cities]. Campbell said it’s because Google does not provide phone service there. [Of course Google’s broadband is used for VoIP telephony, which is not regulated, but which competes with the telcos and cablecos’ telephone service.]
Degani said the Googles of the world don’t have to follow the telcos’ rules. He pointed out that the telcos not only have to follow one set of rules laid down by the FCC, but also with 53 other sets of rules that are handed down by states and local authorities.
Some of our conclusions:
- AT&T and CenturyLink will deploy VDSL2 bonding and vectoring to get their wireline speeds up to the 50-100 Mbps range. That is enough to compete against the cablecos for most consumer accounts for several years.
- The telcos will have to deploy fiber closer to the home to deploy VDSL2 bonding and vectoring. That may mean they are within reach, or nearly within reach, of the next big DSL technology called G.Fast, due out in two to three years, maybe four, with promised speeds in the 500 Mbps to 1Gbps range.
- We still don’t know what Verizon’s plans are for the 40% of the homes in its footprint that are not going to get FiOS — despite having asked them several times.
- Based on information from the seminar and other meets we had with other companies at CES, AT&T and Verizon’s Verizon Wireless are accelerating plans to offer LTE broadband speeds much higher than the current 15 to 25 Mbps — in fact, they are eyeing 50 Mbps and higher via LTE. Once they have that capability in place, they will push LTE broadband with a fixed LTE/Wi-Fi modem for use in homes, especially in areas where the cablecos don’t operate. Satellite broadband services such as Hughes Networks and ViaSat will be threatened because they are currently stuck in the range of 12 to 15 Mbps down and 1 to 3 Mbps up.
....
For the complete article go to www.onlinereporter.com
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- Fiber Closer to the Home to Enable VDSL2 Vectoring
- The John Deere Policy: Higher-Speed LTE for Great Swaths of Rural America
- Is the FCC Helping or Hurting?
The CES seminar “New Marketplace Structures in Competition” was entirely a telco view of the broadband world. No cablecos were on the panel. The moderator was Walter McCormick, president & CEO of the telcos’ lobbying group, USTelecom. The panelists were:
-Jeff Brueggeman, AT&T’s VP for global public policy and deputy chief privacy officer
-Matt Beal, CenturyLink’s CTO & SVP, corporate strategy and product development that had previously spearheaded British Telecom’s move to an all-IP network and is now doing the same at CenturyLink. CenturyLink’s rapid growth is primarily due to its acquisitions of the one-time Baby Bell Qwest and of Embarq, which had been Sprint’s wireline division.
-Director of Communications Liberty & Innovation Project, Fred Campbell.
-Nicholas Degani, wireline legal advisor to FCC commissioner Pai McCormick said the big change impacting telcos’ wireline business is that more homes now have wireless phones than wireline ones.
Beal said the one thing CenturyLink and its acquisitions had in common was broadband.
AT&T’s Brueggeman said the company recently announced a major new broadband project that consisted of:
- Expanding coverage of its LTE service to an area that has 350 million people by the end of 2014.
- Expansion of high-speed wireline broadband to 75% of its wireline footprint. Speeds to each of those households would be 50- to 100 Mbps, depending on a number of factors such as distance to the fiber connection. After the seminar, Brueggeman told The Online Reporter that AT&T would use bonding and VDSL2 Vectoring to achieve those speeds.
- Deploy fiber to one million MDUs.
He said the plan had been filed with the FCC for it to consider because the current FCC regulations need to be adapted to IP networks. The FCC should do away with outdated rules that were originally meant for wireline phone companies, he said.
After the seminar we asked McCormick whether the FCC regulates cablecos, who like the telcos also provide phone, broadband and TV, the same as they do telcos. “No,” he said. We asked him what the difference is between a cableco and a telco and he said, “None.”
Campbell said during the seminar that advances in regulatory policies are not advancing as fast as the technologies are. The FCC, he said, is for the most part still operating under the 1996 Telecommunications Act, which was enacted 16 years ago. He said that what’s needed are more “investment friendly” government policies. Broadband, he said, is about personalization and choice, and differentiation — so telcos need policies that encourage personalization and choice. Wired networks are here to stay, he said, and they need more backhaul and more fiber. He said AT&T has proposed that some homes in rural areas be served by wireless broadband.
Competitors
McCormick said the telephone industry has gone from a monopoly and a highly regulated industry to one where there are lots of competitors, but telcos are still highly regulated. He asked the two telco executives, “Who are the competitors?” CenturyLink’s Beal said it’s not black and white, but it’s the cablecos and the cellcos.
[It’s understandable he would say the cable TV companies who are faster than anything the telcos offer, except in areas where a telco offers all-fiber. However, saying cellcos might be true for CenturyLink, which does not offer a cellular service, but not to AT&T, which is the US’ second largest telco. Although you could say AT&T wireline competes against wireless from Verizon, T-Mobile and Sprint, competition and that’s sure to increase as LTE speeds and capacity increase. Verizon was showing in its booth an LTE broadband modem that connects to a dish that’s outside the house and provides 12 to 15 Mbps Wi-Fi within the home. We also saw in another company’s private suite a prototype of an even smaller LTE modem that provides even faster broadband speeds.]
AT&T’s Brueggeman said the competition is intense — so much so that it has only one-third of the residential copper wire telephone subscribers as it used to. He mentioned the cablecos and broadband-based Skype as competitors.
The John
Deere Policy
The FCC’s Degani, the peoples’ spokesperson, said Congress has given the FCC some “forbearances” [they talk like that in the government] that provide the FCC the ability to adapt to some situations, but there are some places the FCC cannot go, leftovers from the 1998 Telecommunications Act. It is often hard and difficult to figure out what to do, he said. There’s a task force working on finding the answers to, “What are the right solutions?”
McCormick asked what the policy would be for rural areas.
AT&T’s Brueggeman then said something that some analysts outside of AT&T have suspected but had never heard confirmed by AT&T. He said AT&T realized it had two choices with its wireline operations: divest it completely or invest in it with “next-generation” wireline technologies. The rural market needs broadband, he said, and AT&T has shown it by putting its LTE broadband technology into John Deere tractors.
CenturyLink’s Beal said the need for universal broadband is great so as not to create a digital divide. He said 92% of CenturyLink’s footprint is served by wireline broadband. It needs technology innovation and new business models [he did not say what that might be, perhaps government funding] because “It won’t be every house that gets fiber.”
Campbell said telcos should do wireless first, even if it ended up being wireline because 60% of the roads are unpaved.
McCormick asked, “How can the FCC keep up with the pace of change?”
The FCC
McCormick said the FCC has provided three good things:
- National Broadband Plan
- Changes to the Universal Service policy
- Transition Task Force, for which he said he has high hopes
A Wells Fargo analyst in the audience asked, “What about the reclassification of broadband to common carrier status?”
Brueggeman said it would slow innovation and AT&T is optimistic that it will not happen.
Beal said it would be a shock to the cablecos.
Another attendee asked why the telcos can’t do unregulated fiber like Google is dong [in the two Kansas Cities]. Campbell said it’s because Google does not provide phone service there. [Of course Google’s broadband is used for VoIP telephony, which is not regulated, but which competes with the telcos and cablecos’ telephone service.]
Degani said the Googles of the world don’t have to follow the telcos’ rules. He pointed out that the telcos not only have to follow one set of rules laid down by the FCC, but also with 53 other sets of rules that are handed down by states and local authorities.
And...
- AT&T and CenturyLink will deploy VDSL2 bonding and vectoring to get their wireline speeds up to the 50-100 Mbps range. That is enough to compete against the cablecos for most consumer accounts for several years.
- The telcos will have to deploy fiber closer to the home to deploy VDSL2 bonding and vectoring. That may mean they are within reach, or nearly within reach, of the next big DSL technology called G.Fast, due out in two to three years, maybe four, with promised speeds in the 500 Mbps to 1Gbps range.
- We still don’t know what Verizon’s plans are for the 40% of the homes in its footprint that are not going to get FiOS — despite having asked them several times.
- Based on information from the seminar and other meets we had with other companies at CES, AT&T and Verizon’s Verizon Wireless are accelerating plans to offer LTE broadband speeds much higher than the current 15 to 25 Mbps — in fact, they are eyeing 50 Mbps and higher via LTE. Once they have that capability in place, they will push LTE broadband with a fixed LTE/Wi-Fi modem for use in homes, especially in areas where the cablecos don’t operate. Satellite broadband services such as Hughes Networks and ViaSat will be threatened because they are currently stuck in the range of 12 to 15 Mbps down and 1 to 3 Mbps up.
....
For the complete article go to www.onlinereporter.com
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