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Click here for the older news stories below
I'll bring over the archives as soon as practical, but for now here they click above
DSL Prime, the voice of an Internet community
- Highlights of the new FCC
- 30 Choices and profiles
- Obama's Dems are the Dems of Old
- $20B stakes In ICC struggle and nobody knows
- Some Obama bits
- Industry Republicans under Obama
- Cohen, Obama, and the lobbyists
This is the Obama FCC issue. Tech next time
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http://www.fastnetnews.com/dslprime for the industry stories
http://www.fastnetnews.com/policy for the rules
http://www.fastnetnews.com/home brings it together
“The country’s broke” NYT "To all Americans , I say that the next four years are going to be difficult and challenging years for us all.... a supreme national effort will be needed in the years ahead.” JFK “The shrinking economy is straining the efforts of food banks to feed the hungry.”
Barack Obama will be the best President of my lifetime and I'm not young. I'll be at the inauguration with tears of joy in my eyes if I can find any way to get tickets. However, my reporting will continue to see him whole. He's surrounded by great people, but some are politicians who have made compromises. The likely FCC chair is brilliant, but may be hindered by ten year old ideas that won't work after so much competition has been destroyed.
The story on Obama's FCC at http://www.fastnetnews.com/policy/56-us-and-canada-telecom-policy/555-obama-policy-the-combined-article 8,000 words, 90 hours research, more to come
The 30 Top Candidates
Everything is rumors now and the real discussions are still to come. One near-certainty is most are in the 15 year Democratic mainstream.
- Any of the crowd of brilliant, honest and hardworking people who have actively supported Obama in public . Many came together more than a decade ago while working under Reed Hundt at the FCC, and have remained close since that time. Don Gips and Julius Genachowski from that era are on the "transition team" choosing Obama's appointees. Blair Levin is the frontrunner. Bill Kennard is said to support Larry Strickling.
- Michael Copps or Jonathan Adelstein, respected current commissioners
- Women, Afro-Americans, Latinos and a Native American. Obama's staff is likely to be the most diverse in U.S. history. Jessica Rosenworcel has strong D.C. respect, Mignon Clyburn is Business Week's choice, Kathy Brown, Jessica Zufolo, and Susan Crawford have my respect. Susan Ness is close to Hillary Clinton. Julia Johnson has pulled out. Male prospects of color include John Muleta, Broderick Johnson, Dewayne Hendricks, Joe Garcia, and Danny Sepulveda.
- Any of a half-dozen academic stars who have transformed how we think about the Internet and see the fallacies in the old regulatory battles. Larry Lessig, Tim Wu, Yochai Benkler, Susan Crawford, Eli Noam, Phil Weiser, and Jonathan Askin are first-rate.
- A senior technology or finance expert, my personal choice. I don't know whether Bill Smith, Dick Green, Niel Ransom, Ron Dykes, John Hodulik, Dan Reingold, or Frank Governali are interested, but they exemplify the skills needed. I placed Robert Pepper here rather than with his policy colleagues, although he's part of that group. He has gone beyond policy to a professional level understanding of technology, finance, and lessons from around the world. Because of those skills I would place him above any of his extraordinary peers.
The 30 profiles http://www.fastnetnews.com/policy/56-us-and-canada-telecom-policy/560-obama-policy30-profiles
The New Dems Are Like the Old Dems
The folks coming in are liberal Democrats like Hundt (senior on the transition team,) Kennard, Copps, Adelstein, and Obama himself. Those I know are very smart, hardworking, ethical and effective. The policies will be similar to what the Democrats in the minority have been championing for the last eight years: more direct attention to consumer interests as opposed to “incentives for carriers,” deregulation when it makes sense rather than as religion, opposition to media concentration, and protection of the open Internet. Results instead of hope.
Change will probably be slow. What's done cannot be easily undone; the last ten years have cut competition in many areas. Often it will be unrealistic to restore strong competition in less than a decade without wildly unlikely moves like a second breakup of AT&T. Many of these people were enormously successful in the 1990's, but will need to do some profound rethinking because many of their favorite approaches won't work 15 years later.
Better policy makes a difference, although less than policymakers think. On $200B in Bell sales, I would guess that 2-3% more went to profit because of Powell-Martin policies than if the Democrats had made the decisions. That $4-6B is a plausible estimate of the “political risk” faced from the regime change. Both companies would remain among the most profitable in the world. (more policy at end)
*** Web Video: Making It Great, Getting It Noticed. Jennie Bourne and Dave Burstein. If you work with video, I'll guarantee you'll find the book useful. If you order it from Amazon http://www.amazon.com/Taking-Your-Video-Web-Getting/dp/0321552962/, and don't think it worthwhile, send it to us and we'll promptly send you back the $26.39 Amazon is charging.
Martin wanted to end a bad system of Intercarrier Compensation. Universal service would prop up the small rurals. Consumers would pay $3-4B more, some coming back on lower LD. Verizon and AT&T killed the proposal because they didn't want to give up the $B/year windfall built in. They thought that would slip through. Martin asked everyone what concessions would get the deal through, and the key answer was “make sure consumers come out whole.” The bells wouldn't accept that, so Copps and Adelstein refused to pass the deal. Four of the five commissioners wrote they want to vote on Dec 15th, but insiders think it will wait for the Democrats to take over. Martin's proposal does reform a system rife with abuse and ripoffs, which does much too little for the poor and rural it supposedly serves. There are dozens of sensible changes built into the bill.
More delay probably is a mistake for the bells and the Democratic commissioners. The Bells will have to cut a deal with Copps, Adelstein and someone new of similar ideas, so there's every reason to do so right away. Tauke and Cicconi have won nearly every battle for years, but they just lost the election. Their refusal to negotiate makes sense if and only if they think whoever replaces Martin will be more amenable. That's unlikely, although I don't know if Tauke and Cicconi have made that clear to Ivan and Randall, who make the decision.
Copps and Adelstein also have a reason to deal. This one will inevitably hurt some parties that will spend $millions to fight it. King Solomon couldn't find a way to keep everyone happy, and companies like CenturyTel are preparing major campaigns. That kind of fight is not what the Democratics want, a good reason to get this settled while Martin is Chair.
The small rurals got a deal; the big ones would be clobbered... much more http://www.fastnetnews.com/policy/56-us-and-canada-telecom-policy/567-icc-usf-unknown-20b
*** Conexant Systems is proud to announce ZTE Corporation has chosen Conexant’s CX95516 and CX95524
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“Conexant’s technology enabled us to develop a high-performance DSLAM with improved impulse noise protection, which is essential to the delivery of high-quality IPTVover-DSL services,” said Mr. Xu Ming, general manager of ZTE’s Fixed Network division. “Conexant’s CO solutions also allowed us to develop the industry’s lowest power DSLAM,
and meet our customers increasing demand for more power-efficient and environmentally conscious solutions.” (ad)
Some Obama bits you may not know
- He discussed rural broadband in the debates, and has been strong on Net Neutrality. The Net neutrality debate was partially won in the U.S. a while back. AT&T backed away from the CEO's “They are not going to use my pipes” and Verizon seconded the pullback. The Comcast decision puts some of the power of the FCC behind enforcement. That will prevent the most egregious attempts to control the net, although some crucial battles are still underway. Now, AT&T and Time Warner Cable are trying to circumvent policy rules with ridiculously low caps that have no economic justification and are clearly anti-competitive. AT&T still is trying to keep total control on wireless, however.
- Obama's victory was narrow and absolutely did not reflect a major shift by American voters. His vote total, 53%, is only a few points above Gore or Kerry. Only one in 25 voters shifted to the Democrats, remarkably little. The London Times suggests that's a remarkably poor showing for the opposition during the worst economic crisis in generations. The U.S. has a “winner tales all” system, less supportive of minority rights, so Obama's party has great latitude for the next few years.
- Race played an important role in the campaign, Adam Nossiter of the Times reports from Vernon Alabama, where over 90% of the whites voted against Obama.
*** Infineon Announces World’s First DSL CPE Solution Supporting Concurrent Erasure Decoding and Retransmission for High Quality IPTV
The enhancements to ADSL2+ and VDSL2 solutions for customer premise equipment (CPE) optimize support for such applications as IPTV (Internet Protocol Television) and provide the best possible quality of service (QoS) across a wide range of deployment conditions. The Infineon IPTV over DSL feature package includes innovative features such as predictive error decoding (Erasure Decoding) and Gamma Layer Retransmission for xDSL CPE solutions. It allows the optimization of real time services, such as IPTV, VoIP or Internet gaming with settings for minimum delay and maximum error protection to guarantee the best possible user experience. Furthermore an embedded Packet Processing Engine enables wire speed routing throughput for all packet sizes. http://www.infineon.com/cms/en/corporate/press/news/releases/2008/INFCOM200807-080.html (ad)
Industry Republicans Under Obama
Walt McCormick at the telecom association could easily lose his job. So could Kyle McSlarrow for the cablecos, Grant Seiffert for the manufacturers, David Rehr at the broadcasters, and Bruce Mehlman of the Technology CEO Council. They are highly partisan Republicans, several part of Republican “K Street Project” to take over the trade associations and their enormous pools of funds. Except for TIA, these jobs pay millions and they went to Republicans ... Tom Tauke at Verizon and Jim Cicconi at AT&T are both heavy-duty Republican operatives in a town turned blue. ... Tauke's around retirement age and might gracefully ease out. Cicconi's style is very intense it will be hard for him change.
These guys are good. Full story http://www.fastnetnews.com/policy/56-us-and-canada-telecom-policy/566-industry-republicans-under-obama
Cohen, Obama, and the Lobbyists
David Cohen, who supervises Comcast's lobbying wants a major federal job, after running a $6.2M Obama dinner. Bill Daley, Obama's national finance chief and trusted advisor, was SBC's chief lobbyist for several years. Henry Rivera, from uber-lobbyist Wiley, Rein was expected to run the FCC transition. The Obama transition expected praise for avoiding “registered lobbyists.”I'm sure they know most D.C. lobbyists aren't required to register. Full story http://www.fastnetnews.com/policy/56-us-and-canada-telecom-policy/556-cohen-obama-and-lobbyists
Some other recent stories
Christopher Yoo has cogent arguments against net neutrality
http://www.fastnetnews.com/dslprimelist/42-dsl-us-canada/400-net-neutralitys-eloquent-opponent
British Telecom and AT&T don't have the feared congestion
http://www.fastnetnews.com/dslprimelist/41-dsl-europe/507-bt-no-congestion-problem
http://www.fastnetnews.com/dslprimelist/42-dsl-us-canada/499-att-our-network-can-handle-the-traffic
Carlos Slim's legacy could be an affordable Internet for all Mexicans
http://www.fastnetnews.com/policy/56-us-and-canada-telecom-policy/454-carlos-slims-patriotic-choice
In Japan, people will pay for 100 meg
http://www.fastnetnews.com/testinghome/47-docsis-deployments/126-jcom-cable-100-megabit-downloads-60
AT&T chooses Hollywood over AT&T customers
http://www.fastnetnews.com/policy/56-us-and-canada-telecom-policy/474-open-wide-the-prison-door-for-netizens
The deal the rurals demanded: pay us for every lost customer
http://www.fastnetnews.com/dslprimelist/42-dsl-us-canada/482-rural-demand-pay-us-for-not-serving-customers
10 million femtos across the U.S.
http://www.fastnetnews.com/a-wireless-cloud/61-wireless/424-atat-five-or-tem-million-femtos-across-the-us
DSL Prime September 15, 2008 The voice of an Internet Community
New Zealand DSL Up 45K on Price Cuts Telecom retail share up from 35% to 56%
U.S., Canada: Q2 DSL Worst Quarter Ever
Verizon "Giving away 6 months of DSL Free" on one year contract.
Bell Canada decreases without fiber competition, Verizon DSL severely down
89-100% DSL at 352 Rural U.S. Telcos
Aware's DSL Chip Warning
Qwest rate request
Briefs Enck, Fawn Johnson at Dow Jones D.C., Verizon/AT&T, Brian Bergstein, Kyle McSlarrow, Brian A. Hinman of Verizon, Sprint, Qwest, Cogent, Clearwire and especially FairPoint
August 1, 2008
- Bulgaria: Doubling Broadband By Better Counting
- 320K LAN building connections, 162K DSL, 91K cable
- AT&T: Poor People Canceling DSL
- A Silly Suit on Centillium's Way Out
- 20% Drop in p2p on AT&T Backbone YouTube, Hulu, etc. twice as high
- Frontier “Two Movies a Month” Cap
- Clear Disclosure Basics
- On the Comcast Ruling
- Bell Canada: Facts Please Their Filing
- Briefs: Verizon-Alltel, BT 338,000, Infineon
July 16, 2008
* British Telecom's Year Old "News": Fibre to New Builds, DSL From Remotes Elsewhere
* Last year's plan confirmed, delayed, and more expensive
* U.S. Q2 Far Down DSL down at Verizon, almost down at AT&T Q2 U.S. pricing up
* Goodbye, Centillium Remarkable achievements, tough competitors, Japan's declining DSL
* The "Red Queen" Explains "National Broadcom Policy" AT&T, Comcast and Verizon join for subsidy push
* What, another price increase? New Jersey doubles Verizon's basic rate
* corrections: It's Bruce Mehlman, and the Bells don't really spend more on lobbying than equipment
* briefs: Angelina Jolie shows what an ad should be, Infineon has new software, BSNL plans $B of WiMAX, Thanks Wes for catching my error, Broadcom GPON and Alcatel win, Jesse Jackson/Bob Knowling
June 26
* Bell Canada: Minimal Congestion, Easily solved
* Find Bottleneck. Fix. Cable Upstream, UK Backhaul, Terabyte Users
* 30 Euro 100/50 Fiber, 70 Nation Calling, 100+ TV Channels, Powerline Home Connection
* OECD Numbers: End 2007 Figures Correct, Over-Emphasized Differences between countries often small
* U.S. Q1 Numbers
* Policy: Who's a lobbyist?.
* Briefs: CenturyTel stock jump evidence of bubble, Comcast and AT&T femtocells, Verizon and AT&T conceding heart of NN, CableLabs standard open, GigaOm, AT&T is leaving San Antonio, Victor Godinez, Paul Lacouture. Tim Poulus, Paul Reynolds
June 19, 2008
- Apparent Error in DSL Prime. Time Warner Cable CEO Glenn Britt denies that Time Warner Cable New York is for sale. I believe his denial and have withdrawn the item.
- Dick Green: Cable and DSL Can Be Friends Suggests working together
- NYC Cisco: ?p2p Flat in North America Some experiencing major growth
- Cut HD Spectrum in Half: A Modest Proposal
- Power of Universal Broadband “I'm Only 15 and I Don't Want to Die Now”
- 1.3M sign to impeach President Lee-Myung Bak on the “venomous” Net
- Farewell, DSL Forum It's now the Broadband Forum
- Did Alcatel Have a DSL Disaster? Is Huawei the New #1?
- Canada: If you really want competition, simply require it.
- U.K.: Ed Richards insisted on as least four competitors before deregulating BT in an exchange.
- Infineon Comms Division Under Bauer
- Briefs: 25 solid megabits coming at AT&T, Telco service getting worse, Hodulik moves Bells $3B, Conexant Sales higher, NXTComm disappointing, AT&T in India, Telkom South Africa, Bezeq DSL slowdown, India mobile only 8M in month, ?Ben Verwaayen for Alcatel, Charlie Hoffman out at Covad, Martin Thunman replaced at PacketFront, Try Eugene Roman's Canadian wine, Bell Canada cuts capex 25% before network problems, Vuze falsely accuses AT&T, AT&T's Cicconi does not believe video would consume all the net's bandwidth in two years, Verizon FIOS may get slow, Kevin Walsh's new Zeugma
May 26, 2008
Canadian Throttling Decision
Samueli Legal Papers
May 8, 2008
- p2p Down to 20-25% of Traffic, US and UK Bandwidth cost rapidly dropping in UK
- DSL Down in Taiwan Joins Japan in the shift to fiber. Is Verizon next?
- Clearwire May Find Home Customers Anton's Contrary View Will 5-10% turn off their data landline?
- Tasmanian DSL Shut Down Blamed on High Backhaul Costs Telstra charges 6x regular rates
- West Virginia's Smart Subsidy Law If enforced: minimal subsidy, only where needed
- Four is Not Enough For Ideal Competition
- Editorial: Just Say Nein to Deutsche Telekom-Sprint
- Briefs: Cyworld sales down, Telecom New Zealand margin over 80%, 500 units of Cisco TelePresence, declining dollar, AT&T has raised prices $20, 10GiGE adapters “Inexpensive, Powerful and Blindingly Fast,” Ed Eckert ATIS Award, 20% growth for Ciena, Qwest record line loss
- 992 new ADSL lines in Nizwa, Oman
- Madness of Crowds on Wall Street: 24 Months From Now Doesn't Exist
- Arthur Clarke's Three Laws and Broadband History
- How We Won Freedom for WiFi: Deregulation that creates competition
- Open Range: $267M U.S. Rural Loan for Wimax Bill Beans' history
- Briefs: TDC Denmark cutbacks, Infineon may have the iPhone contract, DT's silliness, U.S. Wireless prices are mostly up, Chunghwa price cuts, Verizon backhaul, John Batelle's Searchblog, Total Telecom goes free, Brian Santo, Al Gore and John Chambers are new friends, Nicholas Sarkozy's brother Oliver and Numericable, Jaynie Studenmund, Vindu Goel to the NY Times, TI/Infineon TI interoperability labs, PE in trouble, Bell Canada underinvesting, why split Motorola?, Sprint is too cheap
March 8, 2008
- Trouble in Kennard's Hawaiian Paradise DSL subs actually fall
- Bell Canada Takeover Hanging in the Wind Teachers Fund pushing ahead
- Seven Terabits, 10,000 Kilometers, $300M Pacific Fiber Cost to Google: $1-4 per megabit per month
- Cable Capex “Freefall”
- Is the economy dying like DSL CLECs in 2001? Enormous Risk, True Recession Fears.
- Martin Won't Agree to Go Tate, Adelstein stuck in D.C. election year politics
- Reliable Sources, D.C.
- Briefs: Workers can only be fired for cause, Has Verizon decided the open access battle is lost?, No Blu-rays from China, Saul Hansell, Sandvine, Joe Weizenbaum died, David Gross and Gary Shapiro, Dave Weinberger
February 26, 2008
* 2007 Traffic Growth Rate: Early Data Shows No Increase Comcast right on trend, Plusnet flat, BSkyB could change the U.K. market
* ECI DSLAM Division for sale
* O Tempora O Mores: ZTE In Philippine Broadband Scandal $130M alleged in bribes, over 30%
* Verizon, AT&T: We Don't Use or Need Traffic Management honoring promise not to degrade
* Comcast Case: Please Begin With Facts Million dollar attorneys making too many mistakes
* Briefs: Ikanos new chip, Dan Artusi, Om Malik, China reorg, Broadcasting & Cable, Ted Hearn, hedge fund crisis, ?buying opportunity at Alcatel, Ivan's back, Alan Lefkof, Jayant Kadamdi, Howard Stringer of Sony, Verizon No traffic shaping confirmed, Kevin Martin surprises people, Amit M. Schejter
January 18, 2008
* AT&T, Verizon: Up So High They Look Down Very Far
* The $20B AT&T price drop wasn't irrational
* Sprint, Level 3, Regional U.S. telcos
* Centillium: Japan Was Not Enough Ikanos grabs pioneer for $12M
* Huawei rescinds 7,000 resignations
* Firestorm Over Time Warner Caps
* 190 write the NY Times in protest
* Verizon Taking Manhattan
* Staten Island, too. But the Bronx ...
January 4, 2008
*I Failed my President and Other Stories
* Kevin Martin's only honest statement
* Mistakes I've discovered
* I was wrong
* Alcatel: DSM at Least a 25% Improvement
* Third level in 2009-2010
* Upzide: New Chipmaker Promising Full DSM
* Plans to sample chips late 2008
* Confronting the Increasing Noise Problem
* Help requests up 18%
* Free.fr: European Traffic Has More Upstream and p2p
* Cisco CRS1 Extremely Powerful
* U.S. Averages 4.8 meg Downstream, Europe 3.7
* John Papandriopoulos Will Not Make DSL 100 Times faster
* Solid work on improving DSM Briefs: Alcatel-Lucent, Sandvine, Hanaro, Calix, Heise Online, Paul Davidson at USA Today, Silicon Alley Insider, J.H. Snider, Keith McMahon, Centillium
October 24, 2007
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