January 12, 2009 11:20 AM We Shouldn't Base Broadband Subsidies on Speed
By Geoff Daily App-Rising.com January 12, 2009 11:20 AM TrackBack URL for this entry: http://72.47.239.92/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/1318 A common theme I've been hearing on the Hill is that broadband subsidies should be based on speed requirements rather than technologies. The idea is that Congress shouldn't be picking technology winners but instead setting minimum levels of access and letting the market decide which technologies to use to get there. While I can see how politically this provides a lot of cover, in terms of what's the best policy for America, I think going down this road is a mistake. My first argument against this is how are you going to determine who's actually delivering what they promise? Are we going to allow broadband providers to qualify for support who advertise high speeds but don't actually deliver them? Already at today's broadband speeds this is a major problem. I rarely get the 10Mbps Comcast has sold me, especially when lots of people in my apartment building are online. And even with some cable companies moving to DOCSIS 3.0, which enables them to sell 50Mbps packages, these speeds are far from guaranteed. Even worse is that I've heard from many people that the network management practices of broadband providers are trending towards ever higher over-subscription rates, meaning more and more customers sharing smaller pipes onto the Internet despite being promised higher advertised speeds. So if we're going to subsidize based on speed we need to have a clear and strong set of regulatory guidelines that are enforced on an ongoing basis about what advertised speeds actually mean in terms of the actual throughput realized by consumers. But this can get very messy very quickly, and it will undoubtedly require a lot of administrative overhead. Alongside these issues is how do we make sure these top-end speeds are offered at affordable prices? What good is mandating 50/10 networks if that service costs $500 a month to subscribe to? And yet even if broadband providers want to offer these speeds at lower prices they often can't due to the prohibitively high cost of backhaul access. So how are we going to resolve this issue? Another problem with mandating the speeds broadband providers must offer is what if no one wants to buy those speeds in a given market? Why is government making decisions that are better left up to the marketplace to decide? While ultimately I think everyone's going to want the biggest pipe they can get, the market isn't there yet. So unless a 50/10 service can be offered for the same or less than a 5/1 service is today, there aren't going to be that many consumers signing up for it. What's arguably more important than Internet speeds is that any last-mile broadband access infrastructure being put in place has the in-network capacity to scale indefinitely to meet demand and that that in-network capacity is open to all applications developers to deliver high bandwidth applications. Access to the Internet should only be one consideration in terms of the kinds of broadband networks we're supporting. Additionally, how can we not mandate symmetrical speeds? The biggest bottleneck in broadband networks is the upstream capacity. Why? Because broadband providers didn't see the Internet as a two-way medium. Yet there are as many reasons for users to be sending as receiving data, so if we're trying to spur the deployment of next-generation broadband it would be irresponsible to not guarantee that consumers will be able to contribute as much as they consume. And we also need to realize that whatever speeds we mandate today will be too slow tomorrow. So we need infrastructure to be put in place that can quickly and easily scale to meet whatever demand for bandwidth materializes in the future. We can't assume that just because infrastructure can deliver 50/10 today that it'll be able to turn up the spigot in the future. The only technology that works for is fiber. With fiber you just swap out the electronics at either end and you can scale up indefinitely. With everything else you're going to have to go back and lay new fiber lines. But we shouldn't be putting ourselves in a position where we're going to have to rip up roads every 5 years to keep up with the growing demand for bandwidth. If we just put in fiber now, then we won't have to dig into the ground to put in new infrastructure for at least 100 years. No copper or wireless broadband infrastructure can say the same thing. The simple fact is that the rest of the world has already decided that the infrastructure that's going to form the foundation of 21st century economies are full fiber networks. China, Japan, South Korea, Sweden, and beyond: they're all picking a technological horse because there's no question that not only is fiber the best, it's the only one that we know today can not just deliver Mbps but easily Gbps to every home. If we allow ourselves to buy into the idea that all broadband is created equal, and that all we need is infrastructure that can live up to today's demands without being prepared to handle tomorrow's, then we're setting ourselves on a road that will cement our lagging international broadband rankings in stone for future generations until we finally come around to recognizing that fiber is our future. The only question left for us to answer is: do we want to achieve that future now before the rest of the world leaves us behind, or do we want to continue muddling through convinced that today's broadband is good enough to secure our future in the global economy. -- ================================ George Antunes, Political Science Dept University of Houston; Houston, TX 77204 Voice: 713-743-3923 Fax: 713-743-3927 Mail: antunes at uh dot edu *********************************** * POST TO [email protected] * *********************************** Medianews mailing list [email protected] http://lists.etskywarn.net/mailman/listinfo/medianews
