Broadband Blog » FCC

MetroPCS Interested In Lightsquared LTE Network – Assuming The Network Actually Gets Built

Abhishek — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 15:45:49 +0000

The Lightsquared hybrid satellite/LTE network being built by Nokia and Harbinger Capital Partners could shake up the competitive landscape by offering new players wholesale access to an entirely new LTE network. However, the project is facing several obstacles including funding and interference concerns with GPS. The company just cleared several hurdles by getting the FCC to ease a few constrictive spectrum conditions, and by launching a satellite to be used to fill in rural coverage. Lightsquared says they’ve signed at least two carrier deals already, with other talks ongoing.

One of those interested carriers is MetroPCS, whose discount almost-LTE service could certainly use the added help. MetroPCS says they’re absolutely interested, assuming the LTE network ever actually gets built. Assuming Lightsquared gets funding, builds the network, survives a likely political and PR assault by AT&T and Verizon and navigates GPS interference concerns, MetroPCS would still have to deal with a few more technical hurdles, including handset compatibility:

“If they can get funding and if they can get the network built, it’s a wonderful option for us,” said MetroPCS CFO Braxton Carter, speaking at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecom conference. There are a number of stumbling blocks to an LTE agreement between MetroPCS and LightSquared, however–mainly, handsets that would work across both operators’ LTE networks would have to support their separate, relatively obscure spectrum bands.

There’s still a significant amount of doubt in the industry about whether Lightsquared, the joint effort of a cash-strapped also ran satellite outfit and a former junk bond salesman, ever actually gets built.
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FCC To Take A Look At Retransmission Rules – Though Changes Aren’t Expected To Do Much

Abhishek — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 12:05:06 +0000

Last year retransmission disputes between broadcasters and cable operators grew to an entirely new level of annoying as the two sides fought over programming costs. Consumers stuck in the middle of such fights not only were bombarded with annoying efforts to get them on one side or the other, but they also missed significant programming events (including NFL football and the World Series), and briefly even had their access to Hulu disrupted.

Historically the FCC hasn’t intervened in these fights, suggesting they’re simply business disputes. But as consumers are finding themselves under the wheels of these disputes at an increasing frequency, the agency today launched a proceeding to re-evaulate current retransmission rules (pdf) that govern fee negotiations between broadcasters and pay-TV providers. They agency says they’re looking for comments in proposals that would:

• Provide more guidance to the negotiating parties on good-faith negotiation requirements
• Improve notice to consumers in advance of possible service disruptions caused by impasses in retransmission consent negotiations; and
• Eliminate the Commission s network non-duplication and syndicated exclusivity rules, which provide a means for parties to enforce certain exclusive contractual rights to network or syndicated programming through the Commission rather than through the courts.

Note that the proposals don’t involve the FCC actually stepping in and preventing carriers from pulling the programming plug on paying customers, or providing refunds to impacted customers — because companies would yell at the FCC for daring to involve themselves in private business transactions, despite the negative impact on users. Instead, like most things the FCC does, the rules will be more timid and focus on simply giving users a heads up ahead of the next service blackout. Consumer groups like Free Press and Public Knowledge were underwhelmed, arguing that the reforms won’t do much to actually help paying consumers.
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Congress Introduces Two Spectrum Auction Bills – To Deal With Spectrum ‘Crisis’ That May, May Not Exist

Abhishek — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 11:50:11 +0000

We’ve talked a lot about how the FCC is kicking and screaming about how there’s a “spectrum crisis” in the States, without really acknowledging that the fact that there’s limited spectrum is because the wealthiest companies tend to squat on the public resource. An FCC insider recently called the entire idea of a crisis “manufactured,” but that hasn’t stopped FCC boss Julius Genachowski from making fixing the supposed crisis his top priority. Genachowski’s solution to free up spectrum is using voluntary incentive auctions, and as such Congress has introduced two new incentive auction bills:

The legislators (Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Rep. Olympia Snowe (R-Me)) said Wednesday that special interests should not be driving spectrum policy. That could include broadcasters trying to protect their turf, or wireless companies trying to expand their spectrum holdings, or arguably even the FCC, whose special interest is in getting broadband deployed as swiftly and elegantly as possible. An inventory and incentive auctions are two things broadcasters have been pushing for, including in meetings on Capitol Hill this week as part of an annual lobbying fly-in.

Broadcasters still aren’t entirely thrilled by incentive auctions, given they fear the government’s version of “voluntary” could be a little less than voluntary. Of course if lawmakers really didn’t want special interests driving spectrum policy, they could pass “use it or lose it” spectrum rules that would limit squatting. They could also finally pass a law calling for an inventory of available spectrum, something that most everybody supports yet for some reason continues to fail in legislative form every time it’s introduced.
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Thursday Morning Links -

Abhishek — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 11:01:40 +0000

Study: Mandated interoperability, data roaming in 700 MHz key to saving rural jobs fiercebroadbandwireless.com
Cable TV In Pursuit Of Mobility nytimes.com
China Telecom to build world’s largest fiber optic network People’s Daily Online
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Solving The Slowdown: Ways To Reduce Wireless Network Latency cable360.net
Apple Launches iPad 2 apple.com
Rhapsody, Spotify headed for showdown westword.com
Gmail missing e-mails, login problems, continue into fourth day latimes.com
Beijing to track citizens with their cell phones thenextweb.com

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UK Still Looking To Kill ‘Up To’ Broadband Marketing Lingo – While In U.S. Some ISPs Have Already Done So Voluntarily

Abhishek — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 18:24:51 +0000

Every year like clockwork (2009, 2010) European regulator Ofcom issues a study noting that UK customers get about half the broadband speeds advertised, and that they’re looking to crack down on the dubious “up to” marketing lingo used in most broadband advertisements. Right on cue for 2011, The Guardian cites a new Ofcom report that, surprise, surprise, claims UK residents get average broadband speed of 6.2 Mbps, less than half average advertised speed of 13.8 Mbps. And how is that effort to get UK companies to improve the way they market broadband speeds? It’s still apparently underway, and wouldn’t you know it, Ofcom hopes to kill the “up to” lingo someday soon:

Ofcom is pushing for a change in the way internet providers, including BT, Sky and O2, advertise “up to” broadband speeds, which most customers are unable to receive. Its findings will feed into a consultation now underway by the Advertising Standards Authority’s committee of advertising practice (CAP) and broadcast committee of adverting practice (BCAP) into how broadband speeds are advertised. That is expected to report in the next three months.

We eargerly look forward to next year’s Ofcom study indicating users get half of what they pay for and that Ofcom is planning to crack down on “up to” marketing. Here in the States the FCC has claimed users also only get a fraction of their advertised speeds. The FCC proposed requiring ISPs to advertise speed tiers based on average connection performance estimates for peak and off peak speeds, though that push appears to have disappeared. Anticipating regulatory action on this front, some ISPs here in the States like Verizon have voluntarily eliminated the “up to” phrase and list possible service speed ranges instead.
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Response to comments

Abhishek — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 18:20:22 +0000

I have been having a very interesting exchange of ideas with Mathew Carley who is the owner of Hayai Broadband. He needs no introduction on the forums and I owe a lot of good deal to him. However, I must defend the user’s perspective and a blog post follows.

He writes:

1. FUP is not illegal, and there is nothing legally wrong with what any ISP is doing when it wants to keep it’s network under control – it is perhaps unethical to advertise a broadband plan as “unlimited” and apply an FUP. I prefer (and use) the term flat-rate, which refers to pricing, not usage.

TRAI, the regulator defines Broadband as “always on with a speed of 256kbps”. They have supported this definition that has been taken from ITU web site. The whole point here, from an end user’s perspective is that the definition has remained static. I think the FCC definition has also remained stuck here. However, the push for “faster speeds” has mainly come from academia and the realization among the telcos that serving content through their dumb pipes can be very lucrative, net neutrality be damned.

All the more they ALSO realize that it pays in the long run to get the customers hooked on to “speeds” AND “content” and then make money out of “traffic shaping” and the works.

Yet, if you look at the pdf from ITU (opens up a link in your pdf viewer), do check out the page 19 (under pricing) where it clearly states the success of South Korea broadband has been because of “flat rate”.

Here BSNL (others and your probably included) have different tiers with a “limit”. Now this limit can be argued. As I had mentioned that majority of your users would be content with social networking / email you would hardly see the “abuse” of network. However, BSNL is a public service. Which means that the network effectively belongs to public and for arguments sake has no say in the way it overlords it. Thats my opinion.

You would be owning the fiber and its for you to come out with what ever plan/ideas you wish to.

As far as TRAI is concerned, it does NOT mention the word “fair usage policy” which is again in contravention to license terms (as all the ISP’s are regulated by TRAI/DoT) and hence ILLEGAL. So you are right too except that it sugar coats the bitter pill.

Many sites – even many India-centric sites, are hosted abroad. This is where the “strain on the networks” usually comes in.

Yes, I know it. Koreans have much of it hosted inside the country because they are not too comfortable with English. Duh. We are among the largest speaking country in the world by the way; still it is not a huge net market.

3) BSNL only has an International cable between India and Sri Lanka – it doesn’t have any going anywhere else. It buys almost all of it’s bandwidth from VSNL – 65% from VSNL/Tata India, 14% from GlobeInternet (a subsidiary of Tata in North America), with the rest from a small assortment of other ISPs both domestic and foreign through it’s various arrangements.

Thanks for letting me know this. I am waiting for official confirmation including the break up of prices.

4. We can safely assume that they’re anticipating about 300GB of usage on their FTTH plans, at Rs10/GB. Cheaper than what I can get it for, but they’ll already be getting the volume discounts I’m aiming for.

Network usage varies WILDLY. I cannot nail even an “AVERAGE USE” but well, it can possibly be predicted once the metrics are clear, the amount of traffic flowing in your fiber and the works.

7. If you’re an ADSL customer, 768kbit/s is pretty much all you’ll get out of a DSL line anyway, unless you’re really close to your DSLAM. ADSL2+ is meant to go up to 3.5mbit/s upload speed, but in NZ I’m 300m away from my cabinet on fairly decent quality lines, and I barely hit 900kbit/s. Since the default upload speed they provide I think is 256kbit/s and you purchase more upload in 256kbit/s increments, this probably is to cover their ass so as to prevent people from trying to buy 1 or 2mbit/s upload and then getting about 768k.

Thanks! The wording on the web site sounded as a “limit” without mentioning the technical reason. Let them confess in writing that it it still is ADSL and then I can question them as to why it is taking delay in introducing ADSL 2. I can file as many as RTI’s I want!

@operamaniac Right of way and civil works costs a fortune. I mean that quite literally – about 75-80% of our laying of fiber to homes goes towards these two things: the fiber and equipment to run the network are negligable costs by comparison, and since it can be crores per kilometer, it won’t take many kms of fiber for us to reach 1,000 crores.

The sad fact. It is the job of municipalities to lay down fat ducts throughout and just offer it to the end users. Simple. Far sightedness is not a virtue in this country. It comes at a premium from those who are NOT in this country.

Interestingly here’s something from Wikipedia entry for ‘Internet in Japan’. It says and I quote:

Operators struggle to maintain enough bandwidth to allow maximum usage of the service by customers. Even the largest operators have capacities in the region of tens of gigabits while customers with gigabit FTTH services (or higher) may number in the thousands. This problem is further compounded by limits caused by internal router bandwidth. Estimates of traffic based on data collected in May 2007 by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications set total network usage at approximately 720 Gbit/s combined. The report further states that by May 2008, total traffic will exceed 1 Tbit/s.

Woooo. But then these are 2008-09 figures. Similarly the ITU report that I alluded above is 2003. Much has changed in past 7 years; we are still stuck in the kbps and well….. Time to change the tune, the gears and tracks.

@ Operamaniac a.k.a. my dear web master. 3G is not in my radar right now. In fact, I wanted to ask them as to how they have utilized the USO fund and what is the state of broadband connections in the rural areas. I know for sure that they are spending disproportionately on 3G services and neglecting the land line when it should be reverse. Lets see how they react. At least it would be a basis for seeking legal remedy or anyone who wants to file a Public Interest Litigation.

Cheers!!

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Broadband in India:Laggards and urgency for speeds

Abhishek — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 07:34:48 +0000

I am quoting extensively from editorial in Scientific American. There is urgency in the lay press to spur on the debate on a wider scale to have “faster speeds”. We are fucking stuck up with the SAME 256kbps over the past few years WITHOUT any relief.

It could also be argued that it doesn’t apply to us but I’d argue that US and India are part of the same league as far as the issues are concerned. There is only a bit of difference; FCC is more responsive to criticism and at least is seen to “ACT”. Our dear regulator TRAI fails to even acknowledge the emails and act on rational decisions.

Any way, here’s what the rational arguments have to say about it: (emphasis mine)

“The average U.S. household has to pay an exorbitant amount of money for an Internet connection that the rest of the industrial world would find mediocre….The consequences are far worse than having to wait a few extra seconds for a movie to load. Because broadband connections are the railroads of the 21st century—essential infrastructure required to transmit products (these days, in the form of information) from seller to buyer—our creaky Internet makes it harder for U.S. entrepreneurs to compete in global markets>.”

The editorial goes on to say:

The same is not true in Japan, Britain and the rest of the rich world….You can choose from multiple companies, each of which has to compete on price and service. The only exceptions to this policy in the whole of the 32-nation Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development are the U.S., Mexico and the Slovak Republic, although the Slovaks have recently begun to open up their lines.

The slow speeds not only hurt our competitiveness but in the long run lowers the GDP as well. The biggest issue here is to “re-define” the speeds to ATLEAST 2mbps as the “minimum standard”. However, I see a potential rebellion from the cohorts of Tatas, Reliance and the crap companies like Beam/Shyam/Sify etc who provide the proverbial last mile link to the premises.

It is next to impossible to get to admit it but once the consumer awareness comes perhaps then we might see such editorials in our mainstream press too.

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Pirates rejoice!

Abhishek — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 18:18:26 +0000

Piracy, in strictest sense of the term, is defined as “copyright violation”. It is strictly the realm of law to define the various provisions and it’s literal meaning. The purpose of this post is not to go in the legalese but to define the reason behind this “growing phenomenon”: Broadband.

I remember the days of pathetic 56 kbps access on the telephone modem. The dial up access was atrociously expensive, the lines faced frequent disconnections and the overall experience was laced with frustrations. I writhed my hands in despair when I heard about Napster allowing unrestricted exchange of music residing on the hard drives. While I don’t condone this (for legal reasons) but it allowed unrestricted exchange of music one never knew ever existed! Napster died a horrible death due to unrelenting legal challenges by MPAA.

MPAA is a quasi union to protect the interests of the content creators. US has been a test bed of the way this contentious issue has evolved over the years. The MPAA has garnered a lot of bad press from the people who fuel the peer to peer networks. There has been a dissent generated from the ISP’s who claim that this kind of traffic chokes their network and cite FUD campaigns to announce the imminent breakdown of Internet; that the bandwidth would soon run out with the kind of content that is being shared.

In the Web 2.0 arena, interestingly, none of the players are making serious money but follow the basic “Christy” method of “harvesting of souls“. Content is created to dumb down the masses in name of entertainment and people hooked on to the “opium of masses” (based on the loose misrepresentation of Marx). Frankly, content creation involves mega budgets and creators look for perpetual “evergreening” of “copyright” in order to milk whatever is worth it.

In this scenario, it is a double pronged attack on the people who share something that is inaccessible or content that has been blocked because of complex copyright issues. For example, a movie having a theatrical release in US quickly goes through it’s DVD sales and then released “worldwide”. Peer to peer networks (Torrents or it’s variants) has changed the game altogether. The moment a DVD is released, it is “ripped” and uploaded for all. The “seeders” abound for the “leechers” and the cycle continues.

The speeds are an issue worldwide. Primarily, the governments have encouraged faster speeds by tax breaks and other incentives to promote digital lifestyles and the positive spinoffs from that. Asian countries like Singapore, South Korea and Japan have lead the way. Recently, Australia announced it”s grand plan to push rural broadband impetus. US has had an acrimonious debate about the role of FCC (their version of TRAI) and the paltry definition of broadband access at 256kbps. Despite the intensive lobbying, nothing really has come out of it.

Piracy has kept pace with the “increasing” speeds so as to say. Legislation has not kept pace with the attempts to thwart this growth. Europe has seen some activity which led to confiscation of Pirate Bay servers and as a result the public rose in revolt against this “misstep” and formed a “Pirate party”. Interestingly, it even managed to win at the hustings and got a seat in the parliament.

I feel that “rooting” out the piracy is impossible. If Governments find means to thwart Internet access or even “slow down speeds”, there are people to bypass these issues in the name of unfettered access.

I don’t endorse piracy in the present form (to be on the right side of law) but there is an inherent need for people to share. This basic impulse cannot be wished away for times to come.

Broadband is going to change the equations in the way we connect. I don’t have any teary eyed dreams of a “global connected village” though but it’s a good feeling that resources can be shared by one and all.

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Obama’s change

Abhishek — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 04:35:32 +0000

I was never impressed by American democracy; although it remains a land of milk gold and honey (and for some oversexed women), I disgress. In the same vein, it wasn’t a tectonic shift when the first African American (with a muslim middle name) got elected to their presidency. Atleast for me. It only goes to prove the truth about packaging. If you buy the well sold package, you’d end up in a honey trap.

In the same vein, all eyes are on the announcement for the new FCC chairperson. Why should that matter? For more than one reason, the Broadband scence in US is almost similar to India. We have telcos who are full of sloth, greedy and have a pathetic service to boot. Although, the customers get Mbps speeds, they are constrained by the download limits and the services are damned expensive.

Companies like Google are betting up on opening up the airwaves; they bought huge swathes of spectrum recently in order to run free Wifi services. There is a lot of advocacy for the “community groups”- the traditional conservative middle America full of gun totting rednecks who have never been exposed to the outside world throughout their lives. There is a strong grassroots movement to fund the opening up of the “last mile” access and literally open up the world for them.

I cannot fathom the same movement to open up the airwaves here. Neither I see any degree of urgency here. Despite the headquarters of the telecom exchanges here, we are still to see a large part of Delhi getting lit up by optic fibre reaching the customers.

It would be interesting to catch up with the “american model” of broadband access for Indian scenario. Although, the customers there in US are very vocal about the quality of services that they get here, most of the people would rather accept the status quo and let the telecom companies and the cable providers to screw them royally. Much of the times, the customer are without any choice.

I would be all out for a dedicated free service like WiMax which is community funded. It would be impossible to shut out the freeloaders who would switch on their torrents to dowload porn but in a given society, there are enough rotten apples. But then, this should not deter us from accepting the reality and not do anything about it.

It also means the change in computing habits; to invest for WiMax recievers and wiring the whole thing to make it work for the populace. It’s about change and till the time we dont realise the gravity of situaton to be in the “dark”, we’d be doomed for the demands of knowledge based economy.

I am seriously hoping for a change in the Government and appointment of someone who realises the importance of free and fair Internet access.

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US and India similarities.

Abhishek — Thu, 20 Oct 2005 02:57:19 +0000

I came across this story via Salon You might have to wait for an advertisement to load up before you can access content. But worth it.

This post compares the BB vis-a-vis the “developed nations” who didn’t have the likes of BSNL. The post is about freeing up American Broadband and make it affordable. The telecom companies are playing a spoiler and in all probability cartelised their services.

We have been a late starter- nevertheless floundering. First with a flawed policy and now the Director Planning BSNL claims that you need a Pentium 4 PC to run broadband! Such preposterous claims and I find the future of the Broadband nipped in the bud.

Anyway, I quote from the Salon article:

Next time you sit down to pay your cable-modem or DSL bill, consider this: Most Japanese consumers can get an Internet connection that’s 16 times faster than the typical American DSL line for a mere $22 per month.

Across the globe, it’s the same story. In France, DSL service that is 10 times faster than the typical United States connection; 100 TV channels and unlimited telephone service cost only $38 per month. In South Korea, super-fast connections are common for less than $30 per month.

Further:

While other countries are taking advantage of the technological, business and education opportunities of the broadband era, America ( here India) remains lost in transition.

Simple answer to the perplexing problem:

These nations all have something the U.S. (India) lacks: a national broadband policy, one that actively encourages competition among providers, leading to lower consumer prices and better service.

US’s regulatory body FCC defines broadband as:

A “high-speed” connection as one capable of transmitting data at a rate of 200 kbps (kilobits, or a thousand bits, per second) in one direction — about four times the speed of dial-up.

So, their definition is worse than that of TRAI! Rejoice!

Comparing what the speeds mean ( Salon is “bitching” about the fact that they can’t download high definition video- we as Indian subscribers have just 1 GB limit) even as we struggle with “slightly- faster- than-dialup”narrow band!

The typical download speed of a DSL connection in the U.S. is 1.5 Mbps, while the average cable-modem connection downloads at 3 Mbps. These connections are adequate for streaming low- to standard-quality video, but are far too slow for applications like high-definition video. Furthermore, they pale in comparison to what is being offered in Japan, where consumers can download high-definition movies in less than five minutes.

How unbundling the local loop helps:

Most of the countries surpassing the U.S. in broadband speed and availability have “open access” rules governing both their cable and DSL industries. Open access rules require the owner of a network to allow its competitors access to the network at wholesale prices. These rules usually apply to networks that are “natural monopolies” like telephone systems and railroads, and in order to ensure innovation among competitors, these provisions usually do not apply to newly built infrastructure. Ultimately, open access benefits consumers by creating competition that leads to lower prices and new innovative services. You can credit open access with the drop in long-distance rates seen in the 1990s.

What is the alternative to this impasse?

The most promising alternative to the cable-DSL duopoly is Community Internet — universal, affordable high-speed broadband service provided by cities and towns or community groups.

Further:

Hundreds of places……are now viewing broadband as a public service, no different from water, gas or electricity.They are building Community Internet and municipal broadband projects to bring high-speed Internet to areas overcharged or underserved by the cable and DSL companies.

What is community service?

“…a few places receive broadband over power lines, or fiber laid directly to homes, the majority of Community Internet projects utilize “Wi-Fi” technology to create “hot-spot” zones of broadband coverage or, in many cases, build a “mesh network” to blanket an entire city.”

Can this be a viable service model in India?

Nations such as Canada and South Korea long ago realized the importance of public broadband, and incorporated municipal systems into their overall broadband strategies.

How Community networks would change the face of Internet access:

If wireless networks were able to operate on lower-frequency spectrum — such as the region used by over-the-air television stations — the infrastructure costs would be much lower, potentially allowing Community Internet networks to offer extremely fast connections for as little as $10 per month.

Note that Wifi spectrum in the 2.4 Ghz band has recently been de licensed. However, we haven’t seen a surge of the hotspots so far.

Ultimately, it’s all about asserting your rights. Instead of twitching and twidling our thumbs, we ought to make some effort. I tried to make some effort but it came to a naught I can’t do it alone and obviously need your help to make India a truly Broadband India- not at the mercy of whims and fancies of incompetent idiots.

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