Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ...hope this doesn't offend anyone...seems to be pretty straightforward reporting with minimal opinion
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703961104575226583645448758.html Josh Luthman Office: 937-552-2340 Direct: 937-552-2343 1100 Wayne St Suite 1337 Troy, OH 45373 “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” --- Winston Churchill On Thu, May 6, 2010 at 10:21 AM, Jeff Broadwick jeffl...@comcast.net wrote: New U.S. Push to Regulate Internet Access By AMY SCHATZ WASHINGTON-In a move that will stoke a battle over the future of the Internet, the federal government plans to propose regulating broadband lines under decades-old rules designed for traditional phone networks. The decision, by Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski, is likely to trigger a vigorous lobbying battle, arraying big phone and cable companies and their allies on Capitol Hill against Silicon Valley giants and consumer advocates. Breaking a deadlock within his agency, Mr. Genachowski is expected Thursday to outline his plan for regulating broadband lines. He wants to adopt net neutrality rules that require Internet providers like Comcast Corp. and ATT Inc. to treat all traffic equally, and not to slow or block access to websites. The decision has been eagerly awaited since a federal appeals court ruling last month cast doubt on the FCC's authority over broadband lines, throwing into question Mr. Genachowski's proposal to set new rules for how Internet traffic is managed. The court ruled the FCC had overstepped when it cited Comcast in 2008 for slowing some customers' Internet traffic. In a nod to such concerns, the FCC said in a statement that Mr. Genachowski wouldn't apply the full brunt of existing phone regulations to Internet lines and that he would set meaningful boundaries to guard against regulatory overreach. Some senior Democratic lawmakers provided Mr. Genachowski with political cover for his decision Wednesday, suggesting they wouldn't be opposed to the FCC taking the re-regulation route towards net neutrality protections. The Commission should consider all viable options, wrote Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D, W.V.), chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, and Rep. Henry Waxman (D, Calif.), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, in a letter. At stake is how far the FCC can go to dictate the way Internet providers manage traffic on their multibillion-dollar networks. For the past decade or so, the FCC has maintained a mostly hands-off approach to Internet regulation. Internet giants like Google Inc., Amazon.com Inc. and eBay Inc., which want to offer more Web video and other high-bandwidth services, have called for stronger action by the FCC to assure free access to websites. Cable and telecommunications executives have warned that using land-line phone rules to govern their management of Internet traffic would lead them to cut billions of capital expenditure for their networks, slash jobs and go to court to fight the rules. Consumer groups hailed the decision Wednesday, an abrupt change from recent days, when they'd bombarded the FCC chairman with emails and phone calls imploring him to fight phone and cable companies lobbyists. On the surface it looks like a win for Internet companies, said Rebecca Arbogast, an analyst with Stifel Nicolaus. A lot will depend on the details of how this gets implemented. Mr. Genachowski's proposal will have to go through a modified inquiry and rule-making process that will likely take months of public comment. But Ms. Arbogast said the rule is likely to be passed since it has the support of the two other Democratic commissioners. President Barack Obama vowed during his campaign to support regulation to promote so-called net neutrality, and received significant campaign contributions from Silicon Valley. Mr. Genachowski, a Harvard Law School buddy of the president, proposed new net neutrality rules as his first major action as FCC chairman. Telecom executives say privately that limits on their ability to change pricing would make it harder to convince shareholders that the returns from spending billions of dollars on improving a network are worth the cost. Carriers fear further regulation could handcuff their ability to cope with the growing demand put on their networks by the explosion in Internet and wireless data traffic. In particular, they worry that the FCC will require them to share their networks with rivals at government-regulated rates. Mike McCurry, former press secretary for President Bill Clinton and co-chair of the Arts + Labs Coalition, an industry group representing technology companies, telecom companies and content providers, said the FCC needs to assert some authority to back up the general net neutrality principles it outlined in 2005. The question is how heavy a hand will the regulatory touch be, he said. We don't know yet, so the devil is in the details. The network operators have to be able to
Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ...hope this doesn't offendanyone...seems to be pretty straightforward reporting withminimal opinion
Opinion: It won't be good. Also, the financial reform currently contains a provision that requires ANY contract that can be construed as credit extended to your customer be approved by an as yet not created federal agency. ++ Neofast, Inc, Making internet easy 541-969-8200 509-386-4589 ++ WISPA Wants You! Join today! http://signup.wispa.org/ WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/
Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ
But THEY are going to get one, and I doubt you or I will see that change during our lifetime. Scottie -- Original Message -- From: Butch Evans but...@butchevans.com Date: Tue, 16 Mar 2010 21:42:57 -0500 On Tue, 2010-03-16 at 13:29 -0600, Scottie Arnett wrote: If they are giving them some form of subsidy to build these networks, then I think we should have access to use it too. This is the wrong way to view it, though. I'm not looking to argue the point, but want to address this in a slightly different way. Let's take an area called ruralville, us. In Ruralville, there is a population of 1000 citizens who earn an average of $22k/year. If there were no high speed options in ruralville, would YOU build a network there? I know I would. Especially if I carried the backhaul in from a larger network. Would you require someone else to pay for the gear, or could you make the numbers work for that area? I know I could make the numbers work. NOW...the question is: If it is feasible to make it work without a subsidy, WHY SHOULD ANYONE GET ONE FOR THAT AREA? In my mind, it's not about if they get one, I want one, too. It is more along the line of if I don't NEED one, neither do they. -- * Butch Evans * Professional Network Consultation* * http://www.butchevans.com/* Network Engineering * * http://store.wispgear.net/* Wired or Wireless Networks * * http://blog.butchevans.com/ * ImageStream, Mikrotik and MORE! * --- [This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus] Wireless High Speed Broadband service from Info-Ed, Inc. as low as $30.00/mth. Check out www.info-ed.com/wireless.html for information. WISPA Wants You! Join today! http://signup.wispa.org/ WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/
Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ
Finally someone in the major press willing to call a spade a spade. marlon - Original Message - From: Jeff Broadwick jeffl...@comcast.net To: 'WISPA General List' wireless@wispa.org Sent: Monday, March 15, 2010 1:29 PM Subject: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ REVIEW OUTLOOK MARCH 15, 2010 Broadband Trojan Horse The FCC has a new plan but doesn't want a vote. Health care isn't the only policy arena in which the Obama Administration aims to ram through controversial new rules. The Federal Communications Commission is set to unveil a national broadband plan opposed by industry and without any of the five commissioners voting on it. Last year, Congress directed the FCC to develop a plan to make high-speed Internet available to more people. But given that 95% of Americans already have access to some form of broadband-and 94% can choose from at least four wireless carriers-rapid broadband deployment is already occurring without new government mandates. Since 1998, the FCC has classified broadband as an information service subject to less regulation than traditional telecom services. The Supreme Court's Brand X decision in 2005 validated that classification, and the upshot has been more investment, innovation and competition among Internet service providers, all to the benefit of consumers. In 2009 alone, broadband providers spent nearly $60 billion on their networks. Absent any evidence of market failure, the best course for the FCC is to report back to Congress that a broadband industrial policy is unnecessary. Instead, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski is moving to increase the reach of his agency and expand government control of the Web. Among other things, he wants broadband services reclassified so the FCC can more heavily regulate them. The national broadband plan, to be unveiled tomorrow, will call for using the federal Universal Service Fund to subsidize broadband deployment. The USF currently subsidizes phone service in rural areas, and Mr. Genachowski knows that current law prevents it from being used to subsidize broadband unless broadband is reclassified as a telecom service. Congress ought to be wary of letting the FCC expand its jurisdiction through back doors like this. Mr. Genachowski wants more control over broadband providers so that he can implement net neutrality rules that would dictate how ATT, Verizon and other Internet service providers manage their networks. To date, Congress has given the FCC no such authority. Nor has the agency had success in court. Based on oral arguments last month, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals is almost certain to rule against the FCC in a case involving Comcast's network management. At the urging of liberal advocacy groups like Free Press and Public Knowledge, Mr. Genachowski also wants to use the national broadband plan as a vehicle for returning to the bad old 1990s era of open access regulations. He recommends forcing major broadband providers like Time Warner Cable and Qwest to share their high-speed networks with smaller competitors at federally set rates. We can't think of a better way to reduce capital investment and slow the build-out of high-speed networks. Mr. Genachowski's proposals are meeting resistance from telecom companies and fellow commissioners, which is reason enough to put his broadband plan to an agency vote. Instead, the chairman is urging his colleagues to sign a general statement that endorses the goals of the plan and ignores the details. Instead of risking a split vote among the five regulators on approving the plan, reports National Journal, Genachowski is seeking consensus on a joint statement, which sources said would provide him with some political cover for the controversies that are certain to be triggered by some of the plan's recommendations. The FCC chairman and his staff have spent the better part of a year preparing a major report while keeping his colleagues largely in the dark. What happened to the Obama Administration's promise to be open and transparent? Copyright 2009 Dow Jones Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved Regards, Jeff Jeff Broadwick Sales Manager, ImageStream 800-813-5123 x106 (US/Can) +1 574-935-8484 x106 (Int'l) +1 574-935-8488 (Fax) WISPA Wants You! Join today! http://signup.wispa.org/ WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/ WISPA Wants You! Join today! http://signup.wispa.org/ WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org
Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ
Good point, Butch. Well said. Tom DeReggi RapidDSL Wireless, Inc IntAirNet- Fixed Wireless Broadband - Original Message - From: Butch Evans but...@butchevans.com To: sarn...@info-ed.com; WISPA General List wireless@wispa.org Sent: Tuesday, March 16, 2010 10:42 PM Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ On Tue, 2010-03-16 at 13:29 -0600, Scottie Arnett wrote: If they are giving them some form of subsidy to build these networks, then I think we should have access to use it too. This is the wrong way to view it, though. I'm not looking to argue the point, but want to address this in a slightly different way. Let's take an area called ruralville, us. In Ruralville, there is a population of 1000 citizens who earn an average of $22k/year. If there were no high speed options in ruralville, would YOU build a network there? I know I would. Especially if I carried the backhaul in from a larger network. Would you require someone else to pay for the gear, or could you make the numbers work for that area? I know I could make the numbers work. NOW...the question is: If it is feasible to make it work without a subsidy, WHY SHOULD ANYONE GET ONE FOR THAT AREA? In my mind, it's not about if they get one, I want one, too. It is more along the line of if I don't NEED one, neither do they. -- * Butch Evans * Professional Network Consultation* * http://www.butchevans.com/* Network Engineering * * http://store.wispgear.net/* Wired or Wireless Networks * * http://blog.butchevans.com/ * ImageStream, Mikrotik and MORE! * WISPA Wants You! Join today! http://signup.wispa.org/ WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/ WISPA Wants You! Join today! http://signup.wispa.org/ WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/
Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ
Wow Mark. For once I can actually state that I agree with your statements. Thank You, Brian Webster -Original Message- From: wireless-boun...@wispa.org [mailto:wireless-boun...@wispa.org] On Behalf Of MDK Sent: Tuesday, March 16, 2010 1:54 AM To: sarn...@info-ed.com; WISPA General List Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ Scottie, the problem is nothing at all to do with open access.This open access has the effect of fixing the type of access. Once you build a network, and a third party mandates you share it at prices they set, no more networks will be built. The prices will be fixed, the technology will be fixed, and nobody in that system will move anywhere. Why should they? Profit is guaranteed, forever, even if subsidy is required to support it. You have to have multiple last miles for there to be ANY competition in technological advancement. And one has to be able to build their own network and use it to best advantage without interference... or why build?If you don't believe me... Just agree to the following statement: I agree to build a network, then allow MDK to use it at a price set by people who want the public to think they're being given something at rich people's expense, and I will maintain, update, and continue to upgrade capacity, while everyone who uses my network abuses it to the maximum possible amount, while doing everything to undercut my price. I also agree that if I charge enough that I can undercut the other users, that I will continue to share at ever lower prices, so that the appearance of a monopoly will not become apparent. Yes, we have a duopoly, sort of, with cable and dsl being at an uneasy truce, but fix the prices on both, and both will halt, exactly where they are, and no further advancement will occur in EITHER industry.Why should they? Any effort to get ahead in the game simply results in your piece of the pie being confiscated and given to those who put no investment into it. Once the pipe has been defined in price, size, and technology, it simply becomes fixed.Which is why telephone service took more than a half century to advance from rotary dial to DTMF. Once we blew apart the official monopoly and allowed competition for every mile, the actual obsolescence of voice over copper became obvious in a very short period of time. You want to see REAL advancement happen?Have the FCC and Congress reduce regulatory barriers to all forms of telecommunication - from spectrum shortages, to monopoly status for various types of providers, to rules about availability of public real estate, and the repeal of at least 90% of the completely useless and pointless regulations out there. We don't need Congress or some pointy-heads at the FCC to write us a plan. it will be asininely stupid as the old Soviet Union plans to modernize the USSR.Beaurocrats are and always will be utterly incompetent at deciding such future directions. Have them repeal 99% of the income tax, OSHA, and other rules (keeping the .5% that are useful), remove the barriers to competition that exist at both federal and state levels, and give us some tools to fight the local ones, and then run for cover, because we'll be charging into the future like tigers chasing prey. Once we start setting prices by some beaurocrat, and using regulators to decide fair cost or fair price of something, that's basically... the end.They will never admit to their failures and from that point on, the game is: If it succeeds and makes a profit, tax it. If taxing it doesn't fix it, tax it some more. Once you've killed it with stupidity, then subsidize it forever to make your plan look like a success. I want no part of such things, and how DARE you people think it's a good idea to force it upon the people, and upon us... with our own money used against us, of all things. ++ Neofast, Inc, Making internet easy 541-969-8200 509-386-4589 ++ -- From: Scottie Arnett sarn...@info-ed.com Sent: Monday, March 15, 2010 10:28 PM To: WISPA General List wireless@wispa.org Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ Did they even give the open access a chance even back then? This was the start for the end of the dial-up ISP's. Do they not remember the end of line sharing in the early 2000's? The throw-off of what the big players did not think would ever succeed, being dial-up and what may come afterward? No, they were making big money even off that. Then they looked forward for once and saw that the future was not as bright as they had thought. NOW, they want it all, and still do! I will say again, let's go back to the Computer Inquires Acts and force these big players to go by the books...no cross subsidizing, an Enforcement Bureau at the FCC that can't be paid off, etc If they think we can not build
Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ
Ok, I see you guy's points. I was looking at it from the point if the gov't is going to keep giving the big guys tax breaks, USF, and whatever else, it is like I am competing against my/our own money. If they are giving them some form of subsidy to build these networks, then I think we should have access to use it too. Scottie -- Original Message -- From: Brian Webster bwebs...@wirelessmapping.com Reply-To: bwebs...@wirelessmapping.com, WISPA General List wireless@wispa.org Date: Tue, 16 Mar 2010 08:17:26 -0400 Wow Mark. For once I can actually state that I agree with your statements. Thank You, Brian Webster -Original Message- From: wireless-boun...@wispa.org [mailto:wireless-boun...@wispa.org] On Behalf Of MDK Sent: Tuesday, March 16, 2010 1:54 AM To: sarn...@info-ed.com; WISPA General List Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ Scottie, the problem is nothing at all to do with open access.This open access has the effect of fixing the type of access. Once you build a network, and a third party mandates you share it at prices they set, no more networks will be built. The prices will be fixed, the technology will be fixed, and nobody in that system will move anywhere. Why should they? Profit is guaranteed, forever, even if subsidy is required to support it. You have to have multiple last miles for there to be ANY competition in technological advancement. And one has to be able to build their own network and use it to best advantage without interference... or why build?If you don't believe me... Just agree to the following statement: I agree to build a network, then allow MDK to use it at a price set by people who want the public to think they're being given something at rich people's expense, and I will maintain, update, and continue to upgrade capacity, while everyone who uses my network abuses it to the maximum possible amount, while doing everything to undercut my price. I also agree that if I charge enough that I can undercut the other users, that I will continue to share at ever lower prices, so that the appearance of a monopoly will not become apparent. Yes, we have a duopoly, sort of, with cable and dsl being at an uneasy truce, but fix the prices on both, and both will halt, exactly where they are, and no further advancement will occur in EITHER industry.Why should they? Any effort to get ahead in the game simply results in your piece of the pie being confiscated and given to those who put no investment into it. Once the pipe has been defined in price, size, and technology, it simply becomes fixed.Which is why telephone service took more than a half century to advance from rotary dial to DTMF. Once we blew apart the official monopoly and allowed competition for every mile, the actual obsolescence of voice over copper became obvious in a very short period of time. You want to see REAL advancement happen?Have the FCC and Congress reduce regulatory barriers to all forms of telecommunication - from spectrum shortages, to monopoly status for various types of providers, to rules about availability of public real estate, and the repeal of at least 90% of the completely useless and pointless regulations out there. We don't need Congress or some pointy-heads at the FCC to write us a plan. it will be asininely stupid as the old Soviet Union plans to modernize the USSR.Beaurocrats are and always will be utterly incompetent at deciding such future directions. Have them repeal 99% of the income tax, OSHA, and other rules (keeping the .5% that are useful), remove the barriers to competition that exist at both federal and state levels, and give us some tools to fight the local ones, and then run for cover, because we'll be charging into the future like tigers chasing prey. Once we start setting prices by some beaurocrat, and using regulators to decide fair cost or fair price of something, that's basically... the end.They will never admit to their failures and from that point on, the game is: If it succeeds and makes a profit, tax it. If taxing it doesn't fix it, tax it some more. Once you've killed it with stupidity, then subsidize it forever to make your plan look like a success. I want no part of such things, and how DARE you people think it's a good idea to force it upon the people, and upon us... with our own money used against us, of all things. ++ Neofast, Inc, Making internet easy 541-969-8200 509-386-4589 ++ -- From: Scottie Arnett sarn...@info-ed.com Sent: Monday, March 15, 2010 10:28 PM To: WISPA General List wireless@wispa.org Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ Did they even give the open access a chance even back then? This was the start for the end of the dial-up ISP's. Do they not remember the end of line
Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ
On Tue, 2010-03-16 at 13:29 -0600, Scottie Arnett wrote: If they are giving them some form of subsidy to build these networks, then I think we should have access to use it too. This is the wrong way to view it, though. I'm not looking to argue the point, but want to address this in a slightly different way. Let's take an area called ruralville, us. In Ruralville, there is a population of 1000 citizens who earn an average of $22k/year. If there were no high speed options in ruralville, would YOU build a network there? I know I would. Especially if I carried the backhaul in from a larger network. Would you require someone else to pay for the gear, or could you make the numbers work for that area? I know I could make the numbers work. NOW...the question is: If it is feasible to make it work without a subsidy, WHY SHOULD ANYONE GET ONE FOR THAT AREA? In my mind, it's not about if they get one, I want one, too. It is more along the line of if I don't NEED one, neither do they. -- * Butch Evans * Professional Network Consultation* * http://www.butchevans.com/* Network Engineering * * http://store.wispgear.net/* Wired or Wireless Networks * * http://blog.butchevans.com/ * ImageStream, Mikrotik and MORE! * WISPA Wants You! Join today! http://signup.wispa.org/ WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/
Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ
Either way you put it suggests that capitalism is being destroyed. On 3/16/10, Butch Evans but...@butchevans.com wrote: On Tue, 2010-03-16 at 13:29 -0600, Scottie Arnett wrote: If they are giving them some form of subsidy to build these networks, then I think we should have access to use it too. This is the wrong way to view it, though. I'm not looking to argue the point, but want to address this in a slightly different way. Let's take an area called ruralville, us. In Ruralville, there is a population of 1000 citizens who earn an average of $22k/year. If there were no high speed options in ruralville, would YOU build a network there? I know I would. Especially if I carried the backhaul in from a larger network. Would you require someone else to pay for the gear, or could you make the numbers work for that area? I know I could make the numbers work. NOW...the question is: If it is feasible to make it work without a subsidy, WHY SHOULD ANYONE GET ONE FOR THAT AREA? In my mind, it's not about if they get one, I want one, too. It is more along the line of if I don't NEED one, neither do they. -- * Butch Evans * Professional Network Consultation* * http://www.butchevans.com/* Network Engineering * * http://store.wispgear.net/* Wired or Wireless Networks * * http://blog.butchevans.com/ * ImageStream, Mikrotik and MORE! * WISPA Wants You! Join today! http://signup.wispa.org/ WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/ -- Josh Luthman Office: 937-552-2340 Direct: 937-552-2343 1100 Wayne St Suite 1337 Troy, OH 45373 “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” --- Winston Churchill WISPA Wants You! Join today! http://signup.wispa.org/ WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/
Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ
It's those damn communists. They're on the march again. Quick, man the barricades! Wait, I'm wrong. It's ATT and Verizon. They're on the march again. Quick, open the gates to the City. Jeff Broadwick wrote: REVIEW OUTLOOK MARCH 15, 2010 Broadband Trojan Horse The FCC has a new plan but doesn't want a vote. Health care isn't the only policy arena in which the Obama Administration aims to ram through controversial new rules. The Federal Communications Commission is set to unveil a national broadband plan opposed by industry and without any of the five commissioners voting on it. Last year, Congress directed the FCC to develop a plan to make high-speed Internet available to more people. But given that 95% of Americans already have access to some form of broadband-and 94% can choose from at least four wireless carriers-rapid broadband deployment is already occurring without new government mandates. Since 1998, the FCC has classified broadband as an information service subject to less regulation than traditional telecom services. The Supreme Court's Brand X decision in 2005 validated that classification, and the upshot has been more investment, innovation and competition among Internet service providers, all to the benefit of consumers. In 2009 alone, broadband providers spent nearly $60 billion on their networks. Absent any evidence of market failure, the best course for the FCC is to report back to Congress that a broadband industrial policy is unnecessary. Instead, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski is moving to increase the reach of his agency and expand government control of the Web. Among other things, he wants broadband services reclassified so the FCC can more heavily regulate them. The national broadband plan, to be unveiled tomorrow, will call for using the federal Universal Service Fund to subsidize broadband deployment. The USF currently subsidizes phone service in rural areas, and Mr. Genachowski knows that current law prevents it from being used to subsidize broadband unless broadband is reclassified as a telecom service. Congress ought to be wary of letting the FCC expand its jurisdiction through back doors like this. Mr. Genachowski wants more control over broadband providers so that he can implement net neutrality rules that would dictate how ATT, Verizon and other Internet service providers manage their networks. To date, Congress has given the FCC no such authority. Nor has the agency had success in court. Based on oral arguments last month, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals is almost certain to rule against the FCC in a case involving Comcast's network management. At the urging of liberal advocacy groups like Free Press and Public Knowledge, Mr. Genachowski also wants to use the national broadband plan as a vehicle for returning to the bad old 1990s era of open access regulations. He recommends forcing major broadband providers like Time Warner Cable and Qwest to share their high-speed networks with smaller competitors at federally set rates. We can't think of a better way to reduce capital investment and slow the build-out of high-speed networks. Mr. Genachowski's proposals are meeting resistance from telecom companies and fellow commissioners, which is reason enough to put his broadband plan to an agency vote. Instead, the chairman is urging his colleagues to sign a general statement that endorses the goals of the plan and ignores the details. Instead of risking a split vote among the five regulators on approving the plan, reports National Journal, Genachowski is seeking consensus on a joint statement, which sources said would provide him with some political cover for the controversies that are certain to be triggered by some of the plan's recommendations. The FCC chairman and his staff have spent the better part of a year preparing a major report while keeping his colleagues largely in the dark. What happened to the Obama Administration's promise to be open and transparent? Copyright 2009 Dow Jones Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved Regards, Jeff Jeff Broadwick Sales Manager, ImageStream 800-813-5123 x106 (US/Can) +1 574-935-8484 x106 (Int'l) +1 574-935-8488 (Fax) WISPA Wants You! Join today! http://signup.wispa.org/ WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/ -- Jack Unger - President, Ask-Wi.Com, Inc. Network Design - Technical Training - Technical Writing Serving the Broadband Wireless, Networking and Telecom Communities since 1993 www.ask-wi.com 818-227-4220 jun...@ask-wi.com WISPA Wants You! Join
Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ
A misplaced personal opinion rant: The new United States, where everything is written and reported as us vs the nefarious them, where everything is a conspiracy. As if the sensationalist, yellow dog journalistic title, Broadband Trojan Horse wasn't a big enough clue, I knew this article would be an alarmist screed by the first sentence, which uses the word ram and controversial and Obama in the same sentence. For Christ's sake I am so tired of the relentless fear-mongering. If I were to believe all this junk I'd be running into Iranian Revolutionary Guards teamed together with Bolsheviks around every corner. Writers like live in opposite world in my opinion. The ones actually doing any crazy things are the riled up lunatics who see boogeymen and socialists under every leaf. Just yesterday the Texas School Board pulled Thomas Jefferson (a Diest) from the textbooks in favor of John Calvin, among many other politically and backwardly revisionist changes. One of the Board Members, advising on the subject of Economics, did not even know who Milton Friedman was. Yeah, tell me what the real threats to our country are today... Last night I watched the first installment of Hank's new Pacific mini-series, an American master piece like Band of Brothers and Saving Private Ryan. I followed that with a late night watching Apollo 13. As I lay down to sleep, I reflected on what we have become as a people since those days of great national unity, though not without challenges of course, but at least unified toward some greater common goal and ideal. I wonder if the wedge-driving nature of how we conduct our national dialogue and get our, uhem, news today is only capable of further subverting our common interests and repeling each other. Misplaced personal opinion rant off. Patrick Leary A veteran An American, like many of you -Original Message- From: wireless-boun...@wispa.org [mailto:wireless-boun...@wispa.org] On Behalf Of Jeff Broadwick Sent: Monday, March 15, 2010 1:30 PM To: 'WISPA General List' Subject: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ REVIEW OUTLOOK MARCH 15, 2010 Broadband Trojan Horse The FCC has a new plan but doesn't want a vote. Health care isn't the only policy arena in which the Obama Administration aims to ram through controversial new rules. The Federal Communications Commission is set to unveil a national broadband plan opposed by industry and without any of the five commissioners voting on it. Last year, Congress directed the FCC to develop a plan to make high-speed Internet available to more people. But given that 95% of Americans already have access to some form of broadband-and 94% can choose from at least four wireless carriers-rapid broadband deployment is already occurring without new government mandates. Since 1998, the FCC has classified broadband as an information service subject to less regulation than traditional telecom services. The Supreme Court's Brand X decision in 2005 validated that classification, and the upshot has been more investment, innovation and competition among Internet service providers, all to the benefit of consumers. In 2009 alone, broadband providers spent nearly $60 billion on their networks. Absent any evidence of market failure, the best course for the FCC is to report back to Congress that a broadband industrial policy is unnecessary. Instead, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski is moving to increase the reach of his agency and expand government control of the Web. Among other things, he wants broadband services reclassified so the FCC can more heavily regulate them. The national broadband plan, to be unveiled tomorrow, will call for using the federal Universal Service Fund to subsidize broadband deployment. The USF currently subsidizes phone service in rural areas, and Mr. Genachowski knows that current law prevents it from being used to subsidize broadband unless broadband is reclassified as a telecom service. Congress ought to be wary of letting the FCC expand its jurisdiction through back doors like this. Mr. Genachowski wants more control over broadband providers so that he can implement net neutrality rules that would dictate how ATT, Verizon and other Internet service providers manage their networks. To date, Congress has given the FCC no such authority. Nor has the agency had success in court. Based on oral arguments last month, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals is almost certain to rule against the FCC in a case involving Comcast's network management. At the urging of liberal advocacy groups like Free Press and Public Knowledge, Mr. Genachowski also wants to use the national broadband plan as a vehicle for returning to the bad old 1990s era of open access regulations. He recommends forcing major broadband providers like Time Warner Cable and Qwest to share their high-speed networks with smaller competitors at federally set rates. We can't think of a better way to reduce capital investment and slow the build-out of high-speed networks. Mr.
Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ
Wow, Jack and Patrick. I respect the two of you as much as any two people in this industry. Has the day come when posting an article about broadband, from a respected national newspaper, warrants this sort of a response on list? I wasn't trying to throw a bomb...I don't really have a firm opinion on this particular matter. I thought that the List members would be interested in the article. End of story. There are many different points of view on this List. I respect that and I can respectfully disagree with just about anyone. I really try to keep my personal political opinions confined to Facebook. If the day has come that one cannot make this sort of post, then maybe it's time for me to drop off of the List. Regards, Jeff Jeff Broadwick ImageStream 800-813-5123 x106 (US/Can) +1 574-935-8484 x106 (Int'l) -Original Message- From: wireless-boun...@wispa.org [mailto:wireless-boun...@wispa.org] On Behalf Of Jack Unger Sent: Monday, March 15, 2010 4:46 PM To: WISPA General List Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ It's those damn communists. They're on the march again. Quick, man the barricades! Wait, I'm wrong. It's ATT and Verizon. They're on the march again. Quick, open the gates to the City. Jeff Broadwick wrote: REVIEW OUTLOOK MARCH 15, 2010 Broadband Trojan Horse The FCC has a new plan but doesn't want a vote. Health care isn't the only policy arena in which the Obama Administration aims to ram through controversial new rules. The Federal Communications Commission is set to unveil a national broadband plan opposed by industry and without any of the five commissioners voting on it. Last year, Congress directed the FCC to develop a plan to make high-speed Internet available to more people. But given that 95% of Americans already have access to some form of broadband-and 94% can choose from at least four wireless carriers-rapid broadband deployment is already occurring without new government mandates. Since 1998, the FCC has classified broadband as an information service subject to less regulation than traditional telecom services. The Supreme Court's Brand X decision in 2005 validated that classification, and the upshot has been more investment, innovation and competition among Internet service providers, all to the benefit of consumers. In 2009 alone, broadband providers spent nearly $60 billion on their networks. Absent any evidence of market failure, the best course for the FCC is to report back to Congress that a broadband industrial policy is unnecessary. Instead, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski is moving to increase the reach of his agency and expand government control of the Web. Among other things, he wants broadband services reclassified so the FCC can more heavily regulate them. The national broadband plan, to be unveiled tomorrow, will call for using the federal Universal Service Fund to subsidize broadband deployment. The USF currently subsidizes phone service in rural areas, and Mr. Genachowski knows that current law prevents it from being used to subsidize broadband unless broadband is reclassified as a telecom service. Congress ought to be wary of letting the FCC expand its jurisdiction through back doors like this. Mr. Genachowski wants more control over broadband providers so that he can implement net neutrality rules that would dictate how ATT, Verizon and other Internet service providers manage their networks. To date, Congress has given the FCC no such authority. Nor has the agency had success in court. Based on oral arguments last month, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals is almost certain to rule against the FCC in a case involving Comcast's network management. At the urging of liberal advocacy groups like Free Press and Public Knowledge, Mr. Genachowski also wants to use the national broadband plan as a vehicle for returning to the bad old 1990s era of open access regulations. He recommends forcing major broadband providers like Time Warner Cable and Qwest to share their high-speed networks with smaller competitors at federally set rates. We can't think of a better way to reduce capital investment and slow the build-out of high-speed networks. Mr. Genachowski's proposals are meeting resistance from telecom companies and fellow commissioners, which is reason enough to put his broadband plan to an agency vote. Instead, the chairman is urging his colleagues to sign a general statement that endorses the goals of the plan and ignores the details. Instead of risking a split vote among the five regulators on approving the plan, reports National Journal, Genachowski is seeking consensus on a joint statement, which sources said would provide him with some political cover for the controversies that are certain to be triggered by some of the plan's recommendations. The FCC chairman and his staff have spent the better part of a year preparing a major report
Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ
Hi Jeff, Mine was not a return bomb to you Jeff, just a general comment about the state of our society. To be sure though it was not a news article, it was an opinion piece and one, in my opinion, laden with the codes du jour intended to drive people apart into one camp against the other. About broadband, the author would assert no national policy is needed (which translates as him saying keep the government off my broadband), but any one with an ability to look cross borders and analyze the sorry state of our broadband relative to most other industrialized societies will recognize we do need a national plan. We need targets and brave goals, not this tepid duopoly we have now. Writers like this are not helpful. Not every national effort is some socialist, communist, nazi, Islamic, fascist plot to enslave patriotic, hard-working Americans, sometimes it is just an attemp to form a rational, coherent and necessary national initiative to further prevent Americans from sliding down into number 20 (or worse) in yet another measurable aspect of Americans' quality of life. Getting tired of the chest-beating, dillusional We're America, we're number 1!! Really? In what are we number one in any more? (I know a few things, but they are not metrics to proud of.) Americans need to genuinely start working together to solve very real and very darned serious problems. Find our shared interests and work from there. We need to end this tribal garbage that's reared up before we end up like the Baltic republics circa early 1990's. Patrick -Original Message- From: wireless-boun...@wispa.org [mailto:wireless-boun...@wispa.org] On Behalf Of Jeff Broadwick Sent: Monday, March 15, 2010 2:52 PM To: 'WISPA General List' Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ Wow, Jack and Patrick. I respect the two of you as much as any two people in this industry. Has the day come when posting an article about broadband, from a respected national newspaper, warrants this sort of a response on list? I wasn't trying to throw a bomb...I don't really have a firm opinion on this particular matter. I thought that the List members would be interested in the article. End of story. There are many different points of view on this List. I respect that and I can respectfully disagree with just about anyone. I really try to keep my personal political opinions confined to Facebook. If the day has come that one cannot make this sort of post, then maybe it's time for me to drop off of the List. Regards, Jeff Jeff Broadwick ImageStream 800-813-5123 x106 (US/Can) +1 574-935-8484 x106 (Int'l) -Original Message- From: wireless-boun...@wispa.org [mailto:wireless-boun...@wispa.org] On Behalf Of Jack Unger Sent: Monday, March 15, 2010 4:46 PM To: WISPA General List Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ It's those damn communists. They're on the march again. Quick, man the barricades! Wait, I'm wrong. It's ATT and Verizon. They're on the march again. Quick, open the gates to the City. Jeff Broadwick wrote: REVIEW OUTLOOK MARCH 15, 2010 Broadband Trojan Horse The FCC has a new plan but doesn't want a vote. Health care isn't the only policy arena in which the Obama Administration aims to ram through controversial new rules. The Federal Communications Commission is set to unveil a national broadband plan opposed by industry and without any of the five commissioners voting on it. Last year, Congress directed the FCC to develop a plan to make high-speed Internet available to more people. But given that 95% of Americans already have access to some form of broadband-and 94% can choose from at least four wireless carriers-rapid broadband deployment is already occurring without new government mandates. Since 1998, the FCC has classified broadband as an information service subject to less regulation than traditional telecom services. The Supreme Court's Brand X decision in 2005 validated that classification, and the upshot has been more investment, innovation and competition among Internet service providers, all to the benefit of consumers. In 2009 alone, broadband providers spent nearly $60 billion on their networks. Absent any evidence of market failure, the best course for the FCC is to report back to Congress that a broadband industrial policy is unnecessary. Instead, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski is moving to increase the reach of his agency and expand government control of the Web. Among other things, he wants broadband services reclassified so the FCC can more heavily regulate them. The national broadband plan, to be unveiled tomorrow, will call for using the federal Universal Service Fund to subsidize broadband deployment. The USF currently subsidizes phone service in rural areas, and Mr. Genachowski knows that current law prevents it from being used to subsidize broadband unless broadband is reclassified as a telecom service. Congress ought to be wary of letting
Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ
Sorry, meant that offlist to Jeff. Thread is over, for me. Sorry for the list pollution. Patrick -Original Message- From: wireless-boun...@wispa.org [mailto:wireless-boun...@wispa.org] On Behalf Of Patrick Leary Sent: Monday, March 15, 2010 3:37 PM To: WISPA General List Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ Hi Jeff, Mine was not a return bomb to you Jeff, just a general comment about the state of our society. To be sure though it was not a news article, it was an opinion piece and one, in my opinion, laden with the codes du jour intended to drive people apart into one camp against the other. About broadband, the author would assert no national policy is needed (which translates as him saying keep the government off my broadband), but any one with an ability to look cross borders and analyze the sorry state of our broadband relative to most other industrialized societies will recognize we do need a national plan. We need targets and brave goals, not this tepid duopoly we have now. Writers like this are not helpful. Not every national effort is some socialist, communist, nazi, Islamic, fascist plot to enslave patriotic, hard-working Americans, sometimes it is just an attemp to form a rational, coherent and necessary national initiative to further prevent Americans from sliding down into number 20 (or worse) in yet another measurable aspect of Americans' quality of life. Getting tired of the chest-beating, dillusional We're America, we're number 1!! Really? In what are we number one in any more? (I know a few things, but they are not metrics to proud of.) Americans need to genuinely start working together to solve very real and very darned serious problems. Find our shared interests and work from there. We need to end this tribal garbage that's reared up before we end up like the Baltic republics circa early 1990's. Patrick -Original Message- From: wireless-boun...@wispa.org [mailto:wireless-boun...@wispa.org] On Behalf Of Jeff Broadwick Sent: Monday, March 15, 2010 2:52 PM To: 'WISPA General List' Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ Wow, Jack and Patrick. I respect the two of you as much as any two people in this industry. Has the day come when posting an article about broadband, from a respected national newspaper, warrants this sort of a response on list? I wasn't trying to throw a bomb...I don't really have a firm opinion on this particular matter. I thought that the List members would be interested in the article. End of story. There are many different points of view on this List. I respect that and I can respectfully disagree with just about anyone. I really try to keep my personal political opinions confined to Facebook. If the day has come that one cannot make this sort of post, then maybe it's time for me to drop off of the List. Regards, Jeff Jeff Broadwick ImageStream 800-813-5123 x106 (US/Can) +1 574-935-8484 x106 (Int'l) -Original Message- From: wireless-boun...@wispa.org [mailto:wireless-boun...@wispa.org] On Behalf Of Jack Unger Sent: Monday, March 15, 2010 4:46 PM To: WISPA General List Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ It's those damn communists. They're on the march again. Quick, man the barricades! Wait, I'm wrong. It's ATT and Verizon. They're on the march again. Quick, open the gates to the City. Jeff Broadwick wrote: REVIEW OUTLOOK MARCH 15, 2010 Broadband Trojan Horse The FCC has a new plan but doesn't want a vote. Health care isn't the only policy arena in which the Obama Administration aims to ram through controversial new rules. The Federal Communications Commission is set to unveil a national broadband plan opposed by industry and without any of the five commissioners voting on it. Last year, Congress directed the FCC to develop a plan to make high-speed Internet available to more people. But given that 95% of Americans already have access to some form of broadband-and 94% can choose from at least four wireless carriers-rapid broadband deployment is already occurring without new government mandates. Since 1998, the FCC has classified broadband as an information service subject to less regulation than traditional telecom services. The Supreme Court's Brand X decision in 2005 validated that classification, and the upshot has been more investment, innovation and competition among Internet service providers, all to the benefit of consumers. In 2009 alone, broadband providers spent nearly $60 billion on their networks. Absent any evidence of market failure, the best course for the FCC is to report back to Congress that a broadband industrial policy is unnecessary. Instead, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski is moving to increase the reach of his agency and expand government control of the Web. Among other things, he wants broadband services reclassified so the FCC can more heavily regulate them. The national broadband plan, to be unveiled tomorrow, will call for using
Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ
Do not feed the trolls :) On Mon, Mar 15, 2010 at 4:45 PM, Jack Unger jun...@ask-wi.com wrote: It's those damn communists. They're on the march again. Quick, man the barricades! Wait, I'm wrong. It's ATT and Verizon. They're on the march again. Quick, open the gates to the City. Jeff Broadwick wrote: REVIEW OUTLOOK MARCH 15, 2010 Broadband Trojan Horse The FCC has a new plan but doesn't want a vote. Health care isn't the only policy arena in which the Obama Administration aims to ram through controversial new rules. The Federal Communications Commission is set to unveil a national broadband plan opposed by industry and without any of the five commissioners voting on it. Last year, Congress directed the FCC to develop a plan to make high-speed Internet available to more people. But given that 95% of Americans already have access to some form of broadband-and 94% can choose from at least four wireless carriers-rapid broadband deployment is already occurring without new government mandates. Since 1998, the FCC has classified broadband as an information service subject to less regulation than traditional telecom services. The Supreme Court's Brand X decision in 2005 validated that classification, and the upshot has been more investment, innovation and competition among Internet service providers, all to the benefit of consumers. In 2009 alone, broadband providers spent nearly $60 billion on their networks. Absent any evidence of market failure, the best course for the FCC is to report back to Congress that a broadband industrial policy is unnecessary. Instead, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski is moving to increase the reach of his agency and expand government control of the Web. Among other things, he wants broadband services reclassified so the FCC can more heavily regulate them. The national broadband plan, to be unveiled tomorrow, will call for using the federal Universal Service Fund to subsidize broadband deployment. The USF currently subsidizes phone service in rural areas, and Mr. Genachowski knows that current law prevents it from being used to subsidize broadband unless broadband is reclassified as a telecom service. Congress ought to be wary of letting the FCC expand its jurisdiction through back doors like this. Mr. Genachowski wants more control over broadband providers so that he can implement net neutrality rules that would dictate how ATT, Verizon and other Internet service providers manage their networks. To date, Congress has given the FCC no such authority. Nor has the agency had success in court. Based on oral arguments last month, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals is almost certain to rule against the FCC in a case involving Comcast's network management. At the urging of liberal advocacy groups like Free Press and Public Knowledge, Mr. Genachowski also wants to use the national broadband plan as a vehicle for returning to the bad old 1990s era of open access regulations. He recommends forcing major broadband providers like Time Warner Cable and Qwest to share their high-speed networks with smaller competitors at federally set rates. We can't think of a better way to reduce capital investment and slow the build-out of high-speed networks. Mr. Genachowski's proposals are meeting resistance from telecom companies and fellow commissioners, which is reason enough to put his broadband plan to an agency vote. Instead, the chairman is urging his colleagues to sign a general statement that endorses the goals of the plan and ignores the details. Instead of risking a split vote among the five regulators on approving the plan, reports National Journal, Genachowski is seeking consensus on a joint statement, which sources said would provide him with some political cover for the controversies that are certain to be triggered by some of the plan's recommendations. The FCC chairman and his staff have spent the better part of a year preparing a major report while keeping his colleagues largely in the dark. What happened to the Obama Administration's promise to be open and transparent? Copyright 2009 Dow Jones Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved Regards, Jeff Jeff Broadwick Sales Manager, ImageStream 800-813-5123 x106 (US/Can) +1 574-935-8484 x106 (Int'l) +1 574-935-8488 (Fax) WISPA Wants You! Join today! http://signup.wispa.org/ WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/ -- Jack Unger - President, Ask-Wi.Com, Inc. Network Design - Technical Training - Technical Writing Serving the Broadband Wireless, Networking and Telecom Communities since 1993 www.ask-wi.com 818-227-4220 jun...@ask-wi.com
Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ
Hi Patrick, I'm sorry. My note was more directed at my good friend Jack than at you. :-) I'm not a fan of the government's intervention in the marketplace. I know you've been frustrated too. $7 billion approved for broadband buildout a year ago and they are just now getting the money out. I said from the get-go that if they are going to do it, they should have made up a 3 or 4 part formula using current subscribers, area covered, population covered, and what you could cover extra with more money. Hand Scriv, Mac, Matt, etc. a check and say bring me the receipts! We'd have had that money working within a month. Would there have been fraud? Sure! There will be fraud with this program, despite all their efforts. This process has been too long and too ham handed. I HOPE that something good will come out of it, but I'm not convinced that it will. Ultimately, I think most will go to the LECs/RBOCs/CableCos/Etc. and precious little to our industry. I hope I'm wrong. Regards, Jeff Jeff Broadwick ImageStream 800-813-5123 x106 (US/Can) +1 574-935-8484 x106 (Int'l) -Original Message- From: wireless-boun...@wispa.org [mailto:wireless-boun...@wispa.org] On Behalf Of Patrick Leary Sent: Monday, March 15, 2010 6:37 PM To: WISPA General List Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ Hi Jeff, Mine was not a return bomb to you Jeff, just a general comment about the state of our society. To be sure though it was not a news article, it was an opinion piece and one, in my opinion, laden with the codes du jour intended to drive people apart into one camp against the other. About broadband, the author would assert no national policy is needed (which translates as him saying keep the government off my broadband), but any one with an ability to look cross borders and analyze the sorry state of our broadband relative to most other industrialized societies will recognize we do need a national plan. We need targets and brave goals, not this tepid duopoly we have now. Writers like this are not helpful. Not every national effort is some socialist, communist, nazi, Islamic, fascist plot to enslave patriotic, hard-working Americans, sometimes it is just an attemp to form a rational, coherent and necessary national initiative to further prevent Americans from sliding down into number 20 (or worse) in yet another measurable aspect of Americans' quality of life. Getting tired of the chest-beating, dillusional We're America, we're number 1!! Really? In what are we number one in any more? (I know a few things, but they are not metrics to proud of.) Americans need to genuinely start working together to solve very real and very darned serious problems. Find our shared interests and work from there. We need to end this tribal garbage that's reared up before we end up like the Baltic republics circa early 1990's. Patrick -Original Message- From: wireless-boun...@wispa.org [mailto:wireless-boun...@wispa.org] On Behalf Of Jeff Broadwick Sent: Monday, March 15, 2010 2:52 PM To: 'WISPA General List' Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ Wow, Jack and Patrick. I respect the two of you as much as any two people in this industry. Has the day come when posting an article about broadband, from a respected national newspaper, warrants this sort of a response on list? I wasn't trying to throw a bomb...I don't really have a firm opinion on this particular matter. I thought that the List members would be interested in the article. End of story. There are many different points of view on this List. I respect that and I can respectfully disagree with just about anyone. I really try to keep my personal political opinions confined to Facebook. If the day has come that one cannot make this sort of post, then maybe it's time for me to drop off of the List. Regards, Jeff Jeff Broadwick ImageStream 800-813-5123 x106 (US/Can) +1 574-935-8484 x106 (Int'l) -Original Message- From: wireless-boun...@wispa.org [mailto:wireless-boun...@wispa.org] On Behalf Of Jack Unger Sent: Monday, March 15, 2010 4:46 PM To: WISPA General List Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ It's those damn communists. They're on the march again. Quick, man the barricades! Wait, I'm wrong. It's ATT and Verizon. They're on the march again. Quick, open the gates to the City. Jeff Broadwick wrote: REVIEW OUTLOOK MARCH 15, 2010 Broadband Trojan Horse The FCC has a new plan but doesn't want a vote. Health care isn't the only policy arena in which the Obama Administration aims to ram through controversial new rules. The Federal Communications Commission is set to unveil a national broadband plan opposed by industry and without any of the five commissioners voting on it. Last year, Congress directed the FCC to develop a plan to make high-speed Internet available to more people. But given that 95% of Americans already have access to some form of broadband-and 94% can choose from at least four wireless
Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ
DANG IT! Now it's my turn to apologize for putting this onlist! Sorry folks, just 3 friends trying to hash something out. Regards, Jeff Jeff Broadwick ImageStream 800-813-5123 x106 (US/Can) +1 574-935-8484 x106 (Int'l) -Original Message- From: wireless-boun...@wispa.org [mailto:wireless-boun...@wispa.org] On Behalf Of Jeff Broadwick Sent: Monday, March 15, 2010 9:16 PM To: 'WISPA General List' Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ Hi Patrick, I'm sorry. My note was more directed at my good friend Jack than at you. :-) I'm not a fan of the government's intervention in the marketplace. I know you've been frustrated too. $7 billion approved for broadband buildout a year ago and they are just now getting the money out. I said from the get-go that if they are going to do it, they should have made up a 3 or 4 part formula using current subscribers, area covered, population covered, and what you could cover extra with more money. Hand Scriv, Mac, Matt, etc. a check and say bring me the receipts! We'd have had that money working within a month. Would there have been fraud? Sure! There will be fraud with this program, despite all their efforts. This process has been too long and too ham handed. I HOPE that something good will come out of it, but I'm not convinced that it will. Ultimately, I think most will go to the LECs/RBOCs/CableCos/Etc. and precious little to our industry. I hope I'm wrong. Regards, Jeff Jeff Broadwick ImageStream 800-813-5123 x106 (US/Can) +1 574-935-8484 x106 (Int'l) -Original Message- From: wireless-boun...@wispa.org [mailto:wireless-boun...@wispa.org] On Behalf Of Patrick Leary Sent: Monday, March 15, 2010 6:37 PM To: WISPA General List Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ Hi Jeff, Mine was not a return bomb to you Jeff, just a general comment about the state of our society. To be sure though it was not a news article, it was an opinion piece and one, in my opinion, laden with the codes du jour intended to drive people apart into one camp against the other. About broadband, the author would assert no national policy is needed (which translates as him saying keep the government off my broadband), but any one with an ability to look cross borders and analyze the sorry state of our broadband relative to most other industrialized societies will recognize we do need a national plan. We need targets and brave goals, not this tepid duopoly we have now. Writers like this are not helpful. Not every national effort is some socialist, communist, nazi, Islamic, fascist plot to enslave patriotic, hard-working Americans, sometimes it is just an attemp to form a rational, coherent and necessary national initiative to further prevent Americans from sliding down into number 20 (or worse) in yet another measurable aspect of Americans' quality of life. Getting tired of the chest-beating, dillusional We're America, we're number 1!! Really? In what are we number one in any more? (I know a few things, but they are not metrics to proud of.) Americans need to genuinely start working together to solve very real and very darned serious problems. Find our shared interests and work from there. We need to end this tribal garbage that's reared up before we end up like the Baltic republics circa early 1990's. Patrick -Original Message- From: wireless-boun...@wispa.org [mailto:wireless-boun...@wispa.org] On Behalf Of Jeff Broadwick Sent: Monday, March 15, 2010 2:52 PM To: 'WISPA General List' Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ Wow, Jack and Patrick. I respect the two of you as much as any two people in this industry. Has the day come when posting an article about broadband, from a respected national newspaper, warrants this sort of a response on list? I wasn't trying to throw a bomb...I don't really have a firm opinion on this particular matter. I thought that the List members would be interested in the article. End of story. There are many different points of view on this List. I respect that and I can respectfully disagree with just about anyone. I really try to keep my personal political opinions confined to Facebook. If the day has come that one cannot make this sort of post, then maybe it's time for me to drop off of the List. Regards, Jeff Jeff Broadwick ImageStream 800-813-5123 x106 (US/Can) +1 574-935-8484 x106 (Int'l) -Original Message- From: wireless-boun...@wispa.org [mailto:wireless-boun...@wispa.org] On Behalf Of Jack Unger Sent: Monday, March 15, 2010 4:46 PM To: WISPA General List Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ It's those damn communists. They're on the march again. Quick, man the barricades! Wait, I'm wrong. It's ATT and Verizon. They're on the march again. Quick, open the gates to the City. Jeff Broadwick wrote: REVIEW OUTLOOK MARCH 15, 2010 Broadband Trojan Horse The FCC has a new plan but doesn't want a vote. Health care isn't the only policy arena in which the Obama
Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ
The only good statement out of this which may deserve Merit to us WISP is: At the urging of liberal advocacy groups like Free Press and Public Knowledge, Mr. Genachowski also wants to use the national broadband plan as a vehicle for returning to the bad old 1990s era of open access regulations. He recommends forcing major broadband providers like Time Warner Cable and Qwest to share their high-speed networks with smaller competitors at federally set rates. We can't think of a better way to reduce capital investment and slow the build-out of high-speed networks. Did they even give the open access a chance even back then? This was the start for the end of the dial-up ISP's. Do they not remember the end of line sharing in the early 2000's? The throw-off of what the big players did not think would ever succeed, being dial-up and what may come afterward? No, they were making big money even off that. Then they looked forward for once and saw that the future was not as bright as they had thought. NOW, they want it all, and still do! I will say again, let's go back to the Computer Inquires Acts and force these big players to go by the books...no cross subsidizing, an Enforcement Bureau at the FCC that can't be paid off, etc If they think we can not build our own networks out of what they have built(with gov't help), then us WISP have been building out networks that the big guys will not serve for almost 2 decades. The article claims that open access slows buildouts and innovation. WTF? I know that we can prove that different. I have built networks out in the middle of BFE, and many of you have in much larger population areas! The big guys have not because they can't see a return in the next 10 years...that seems to happen when you have to bury fiber or copper into the middle of nowhere, without USF funds, or other gov't incentives. Being bent over in BFE, Scottie -- Original Message -- From: Jeff Broadwick jeffl...@comcast.net Reply-To: WISPA General List wireless@wispa.org Date: Mon, 15 Mar 2010 17:51:48 -0400 Wow, Jack and Patrick. I respect the two of you as much as any two people in this industry. Has the day come when posting an article about broadband, from a respected national newspaper, warrants this sort of a response on list? I wasn't trying to throw a bomb...I don't really have a firm opinion on this particular matter. I thought that the List members would be interested in the article. End of story. There are many different points of view on this List. I respect that and I can respectfully disagree with just about anyone. I really try to keep my personal political opinions confined to Facebook. If the day has come that one cannot make this sort of post, then maybe it's time for me to drop off of the List. Regards, Jeff Jeff Broadwick ImageStream 800-813-5123 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 800-813-5123 end_of_the_skype_highlighting x106 (US/Can) +1 574-935-8484 x106 (Int'l) -Original Message- From: wireless-boun...@wispa.org [mailto:wireless-boun...@wispa.org] On Behalf Of Jack Unger Sent: Monday, March 15, 2010 4:46 PM To: WISPA General List Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ It's those damn communists. They're on the march again. Quick, man the barricades! Wait, I'm wrong. It's ATT and Verizon. They're on the march again. Quick, open the gates to the City. Jeff Broadwick wrote: REVIEW OUTLOOK MARCH 15, 2010 Broadband Trojan Horse The FCC has a new plan but doesn't want a vote. Health care isn't the only policy arena in which the Obama Administration aims to ram through controversial new rules. The Federal Communications Commission is set to unveil a national broadband plan opposed by industry and without any of the five commissioners voting on it. Last year, Congress directed the FCC to develop a plan to make high-speed Internet available to more people. But given that 95% of Americans already have access to some form of broadband-and 94% can choose from at least four wireless carriers-rapid broadband deployment is already occurring without new government mandates. Since 1998, the FCC has classified broadband as an information service subject to less regulation than traditional telecom services. The Supreme Court's Brand X decision in 2005 validated that classification, and the upshot has been more investment, innovation and competition among Internet service providers, all to the benefit of consumers. In 2009 alone, broadband providers spent nearly $60 billion on their networks. Absent any evidence of market failure, the best course for the FCC is to report back to Congress that a broadband industrial policy is unnecessary. Instead, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski is moving to increase the reach of his agency and expand government control of the Web. Among other things, he wants broadband services reclassified so the FCC can
Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ
There really is very little difference between these tyrants and the Iranian Mullahs. Both need to be deposed instantly tried for their crimes against humanity. ++ Neofast, Inc, Making internet easy 541-969-8200 509-386-4589 ++ -- From: Patrick Leary ple...@apertonet.com Sent: Monday, March 15, 2010 2:19 PM To: WISPA General List wireless@wispa.org Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ A misplaced personal opinion rant: The new United States, where everything is written and reported as us vs the nefarious them, where everything is a conspiracy. As if the sensationalist, yellow dog journalistic title, Broadband Trojan Horse wasn't a big enough clue, I knew this article would be an alarmist screed by the first sentence, which uses the word ram and controversial and Obama in the same sentence. For Christ's sake I am so tired of the relentless fear-mongering. If I were to believe all this junk I'd be running into Iranian Revolutionary Guards teamed together with Bolsheviks around every corner. Writers like live in opposite world in my opinion. The ones actually doing any crazy things are the riled up lunatics who see boogeymen and socialists under every leaf. Just yesterday the Texas School Board pulled Thomas Jefferson (a Diest) from the textbooks in favor of John Calvin, among many other politically and backwardly revisionist changes. One of the Board Members, advising on the subject of Economics, did not even know who Milton Friedman was. Yeah, tell me what the real threats to our country are today... Last night I watched the first installment of Hank's new Pacific mini-series, an American master piece like Band of Brothers and Saving Private Ryan. I followed that with a late night watching Apollo 13. As I lay down to sleep, I reflected on what we have become as a people since those days of great national unity, though not without challenges of course, but at least unified toward some greater common goal and ideal. I wonder if the wedge-driving nature of how we conduct our national dialogue and get our, uhem, news today is only capable of further subverting our common interests and repeling each other. Misplaced personal opinion rant off. Patrick Leary A veteran An American, like many of you -Original Message- From: wireless-boun...@wispa.org [mailto:wireless-boun...@wispa.org] On Behalf Of Jeff Broadwick Sent: Monday, March 15, 2010 1:30 PM To: 'WISPA General List' Subject: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ REVIEW OUTLOOK MARCH 15, 2010 Broadband Trojan Horse The FCC has a new plan but doesn't want a vote. Health care isn't the only policy arena in which the Obama Administration aims to ram through controversial new rules. The Federal Communications Commission is set to unveil a national broadband plan opposed by industry and without any of the five commissioners voting on it. Last year, Congress directed the FCC to develop a plan to make high-speed Internet available to more people. But given that 95% of Americans already have access to some form of broadband-and 94% can choose from at least four wireless carriers-rapid broadband deployment is already occurring without new government mandates. Since 1998, the FCC has classified broadband as an information service subject to less regulation than traditional telecom services. The Supreme Court's Brand X decision in 2005 validated that classification, and the upshot has been more investment, innovation and competition among Internet service providers, all to the benefit of consumers. In 2009 alone, broadband providers spent nearly $60 billion on their networks. Absent any evidence of market failure, the best course for the FCC is to report back to Congress that a broadband industrial policy is unnecessary. Instead, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski is moving to increase the reach of his agency and expand government control of the Web. Among other things, he wants broadband services reclassified so the FCC can more heavily regulate them. The national broadband plan, to be unveiled tomorrow, will call for using the federal Universal Service Fund to subsidize broadband deployment. The USF currently subsidizes phone service in rural areas, and Mr. Genachowski knows that current law prevents it from being used to subsidize broadband unless broadband is reclassified as a telecom service. Congress ought to be wary of letting the FCC expand its jurisdiction through back doors like this. Mr. Genachowski wants more control over broadband providers so that he can implement net neutrality rules that would dictate how ATT, Verizon and other Internet service providers manage their networks. To date, Congress has given the FCC no such authority. Nor has the agency had success in court. Based on oral arguments last month, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals is almost certain
Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ
Scottie, the problem is nothing at all to do with open access.This open access has the effect of fixing the type of access. Once you build a network, and a third party mandates you share it at prices they set, no more networks will be built. The prices will be fixed, the technology will be fixed, and nobody in that system will move anywhere. Why should they? Profit is guaranteed, forever, even if subsidy is required to support it. You have to have multiple last miles for there to be ANY competition in technological advancement. And one has to be able to build their own network and use it to best advantage without interference... or why build?If you don't believe me... Just agree to the following statement: I agree to build a network, then allow MDK to use it at a price set by people who want the public to think they're being given something at rich people's expense, and I will maintain, update, and continue to upgrade capacity, while everyone who uses my network abuses it to the maximum possible amount, while doing everything to undercut my price. I also agree that if I charge enough that I can undercut the other users, that I will continue to share at ever lower prices, so that the appearance of a monopoly will not become apparent. Yes, we have a duopoly, sort of, with cable and dsl being at an uneasy truce, but fix the prices on both, and both will halt, exactly where they are, and no further advancement will occur in EITHER industry.Why should they? Any effort to get ahead in the game simply results in your piece of the pie being confiscated and given to those who put no investment into it. Once the pipe has been defined in price, size, and technology, it simply becomes fixed.Which is why telephone service took more than a half century to advance from rotary dial to DTMF. Once we blew apart the official monopoly and allowed competition for every mile, the actual obsolescence of voice over copper became obvious in a very short period of time. You want to see REAL advancement happen?Have the FCC and Congress reduce regulatory barriers to all forms of telecommunication - from spectrum shortages, to monopoly status for various types of providers, to rules about availability of public real estate, and the repeal of at least 90% of the completely useless and pointless regulations out there. We don't need Congress or some pointy-heads at the FCC to write us a plan. it will be asininely stupid as the old Soviet Union plans to modernize the USSR.Beaurocrats are and always will be utterly incompetent at deciding such future directions. Have them repeal 99% of the income tax, OSHA, and other rules (keeping the .5% that are useful), remove the barriers to competition that exist at both federal and state levels, and give us some tools to fight the local ones, and then run for cover, because we'll be charging into the future like tigers chasing prey. Once we start setting prices by some beaurocrat, and using regulators to decide fair cost or fair price of something, that's basically... the end.They will never admit to their failures and from that point on, the game is: If it succeeds and makes a profit, tax it. If taxing it doesn't fix it, tax it some more. Once you've killed it with stupidity, then subsidize it forever to make your plan look like a success. I want no part of such things, and how DARE you people think it's a good idea to force it upon the people, and upon us... with our own money used against us, of all things. ++ Neofast, Inc, Making internet easy 541-969-8200 509-386-4589 ++ -- From: Scottie Arnett sarn...@info-ed.com Sent: Monday, March 15, 2010 10:28 PM To: WISPA General List wireless@wispa.org Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ Did they even give the open access a chance even back then? This was the start for the end of the dial-up ISP's. Do they not remember the end of line sharing in the early 2000's? The throw-off of what the big players did not think would ever succeed, being dial-up and what may come afterward? No, they were making big money even off that. Then they looked forward for once and saw that the future was not as bright as they had thought. NOW, they want it all, and still do! I will say again, let's go back to the Computer Inquires Acts and force these big players to go by the books...no cross subsidizing, an Enforcement Bureau at the FCC that can't be paid off, etc If they think we can not build our own networks out of what they have built(with gov't help), then us WISP have been building out networks that the big guys will not serve for almost 2 decades. The article claims that open access slows buildouts and innovation. WTF? I know that we can prove that different. I have built networks out in the middle of BFE
Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ
WE collectively NEED handouts from the taxpayers? Like hell we do. All we need is some guts and a willingness to actually risk a bit for what we actually believe in. I think you meant DO WE collectively NEED handouts from the taxpayers? like hell we do not need them. Sent via the WebMail system at avolve.net WISPA Wants You! Join today! http://signup.wispa.org/ WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/
Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ
You're not wrong, Rick. But we live in a land with so incredibly much wealth, privilege, and opportunity, that there's actually very little that politicians can actually DO. There's so little wrong to correct that everything they can make a noise about, they blow into a crisis, when it's no crisis at all.We've allowed them to blow up every minor issue into some kind of crisis, to make people with wealth beyond imagining for much of the world's population, think that they're somehow helpless victims of this land of wealth and ease.And we've been so gullible in letting them control more and more, we HAVE almost ruined our country. Go watch some video of Haiti, find pictures of what's happened there... And I do not in any way believe you can come back and tell me we have ANY crisis in this country. We have difficulties, rather MINOR ones by comparison at that, here, but there is no crisis of any kind. Watch this: http://video.foxnews.com/v/3972193/haitians-helping-haitians?playlist_id=87249 THESE people have a crisis, and darnit, they're putting US to shame with their optimism, can-do attitude, and willingness to pull together in and of themselves, rather than depend on their government. Dangit, I have LIVED far beyond the end of the power lines, where there was no phone, and running water was when you ran and got it, and our house was 3 rooms and a path. And I don't consider that time of my life to be deprived of anything, nor was I disadvantaged, even though it was some of my grade school years. Is internet or broadband or a lack of it a big factor? Heck no. It is a FACTOR, and we should work towards improving things. WE collectively NEED handouts from the taxpayers? Like hell we do. All we need is some guts and a willingness to actually risk a bit for what we actually believe in.We already have a hell of a lot, all that's really lacking is our own individual initiative, courage, and willingness to do something.I point no fingers here at anyone else, I have been quite proficient in my own faults, as far as that's concerned. But someone's got to say it.We gotta learn to stop making excuses and just go out and do. -- From: RickG rgunder...@gmail.com Sent: Friday, January 22, 2010 9:31 AM To: spie...@avolve.net; WISPA General List wireless@wispa.org Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ That is my point. Over my lifetime, I've done a lot of moving and traveling. What I find is that some areas are not as progressive as others - and they want it that way. Why do the Feds think they know whats best for these areas? Dont the locals know whats best for themselves? If the majority in these areas dont want broadband access so be it. If the minority in these areas wants it, then they need to change the minds of the majority, figure out a way to get it there, or move. Where is my thinking wrong here? -RickG WISPA Wants You! Join today! http://signup.wispa.org/ WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/
Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ
Under/un-served areas unfortunately doesn't guarantee any take rate or even clients being able to or wanting to make payment. So your own money would be best in those situations rather than stimulus for sure. Marlon K. Schafer wrote: You've got an area with 25k households close by and you don't have anything in there? No one else has anything there either? That's 2.5 times MORE than my ENTIRE COUNTY has in it! Man I could be making a lot more money if I lived nearly anywhere else! marlon - Original Message - From: Chuck Bartosch ch...@clarityconnect.com To: WISPA General List wireless@wispa.org Sent: Thursday, January 21, 2010 11:04 AM Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ In my 3 county area that I was developing an application for, there were 25,000 households without access to service and in one of those counties I was only covering the lower half of the unserved areas of the county. (And one partially unserved town in the County I live in was counting on a different provider to include them in their application, but that provider chose not to include them for one reason or another). It's very easy for me to believe the 24 million number since I'm in upstate NY. What was particularly interesting to me is that in the detailed census block studies I did, you would often see half of a census block (geographical half) had service and the other did not. 2/3rds of the houses in the census block were on the covered side, but it's very difficult to see how the other third would ever get service since it doesn't fit cable's density plan but isn't enough to justify anyone else building out to them either. Chuck On Jan 21, 2010, at 11:08 AM, Marlon K. Schafer wrote: I think so. 24 million just seems to be such a large number when you take into account the well known underreporting of our industry segment (and perhaps others?). It's hard to imagine that all of our hard work thus far has left so many homes untouched. At a lowly 40% take rate and $20 per month per account that's $288,000,000 in MONTHLY revenue left sitting idle. It just makes no sense to me. I can't get my arms around the idea that we've left that many homes with no options. I can see 24 million households with no service. I just can't see that many with no access to service. Heck, I have people that still have dialup internet even though they are within spitting distance of a tower. Do they count as one of the 24 million? laters, marlon - Original Message - From: Chuck Bartosch ch...@clarityconnect.com To: WISPA General List wireless@wispa.org Sent: Thursday, January 21, 2010 3:06 AM Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ So, the salient points are, as I understand it (correct me if I'm wrong): (1) Brian's numbers are 24 million currently HAVE NO ACCESS TO SERVICE. His number DOES NOT INCLUDE the number who have access but have chosen not to subscribe. (2) You haven't seen the underlying data yourself because much of it is private data that you didn't purchase yourself. You get to see the analysis from it because Brian HAS purchased it and combined it with publicly available data. Chuck On Jan 20, 2010, at 11:46 PM, Marlon K. Schafer wrote: Heya Brian, That's the take I had on this. That the number of households services was based on the 477 data. I didn't see any other data sets that would give an indication of the number of actually services households. If the study is based only on the consumers reported via the 477 it's likely to be quite inaccurate. People in government etc. are often quite amazed at the number of customers that I service out here. And I'm just one of a great many companies offering services in the area. I'm trying to get a handle on what additional sources of fact based information are out there. It's important to know what the real number is and yours seems very high to me. I don't think it'll be helpful in the long term if we have a number that gets blown out of the water in the upcoming census. marlon - Original Message - From: Brian Webster bwebs...@wirelessmapping.com To: WISPA General List wireless@wispa.org Sent: Wednesday, January 20, 2010 8:00 PM Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ Marlon, Read this take rate brief I wrote with one of the data companies I work with. It will take you about 10 minutes. It goes in to specific detail of how the study was conducted and the sources of the data. It was written for the 10 minute managers of the world. The key to being able to come up with the numbers was having the data at the census block level in the first place. Prior to July of this year there were no sources that I am aware of. The only information drawn from the form 477 is the total number of residential subscribers by state. The number of households without access
Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ
That is my point. Over my lifetime, I've done a lot of moving and traveling. What I find is that some areas are not as progressive as others - and they want it that way. Why do the Feds think they know whats best for these areas? Dont the locals know whats best for themselves? If the majority in these areas dont want broadband access so be it. If the minority in these areas wants it, then they need to change the minds of the majority, figure out a way to get it there, or move. Where is my thinking wrong here? -RickG On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 8:16 AM, Stuart Pierce spie...@avolve.net wrote: Under/un-served areas unfortunately doesn't guarantee any take rate or even clients being able to or wanting to make payment. So your own money would be best in those situations rather than stimulus for sure. Marlon K. Schafer wrote: You've got an area with 25k households close by and you don't have anything in there? No one else has anything there either? That's 2.5 times MORE than my ENTIRE COUNTY has in it! Man I could be making a lot more money if I lived nearly anywhere else! marlon - Original Message - From: Chuck Bartosch ch...@clarityconnect.com To: WISPA General List wireless@wispa.org Sent: Thursday, January 21, 2010 11:04 AM Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ In my 3 county area that I was developing an application for, there were 25,000 households without access to service and in one of those counties I was only covering the lower half of the unserved areas of the county. (And one partially unserved town in the County I live in was counting on a different provider to include them in their application, but that provider chose not to include them for one reason or another). It's very easy for me to believe the 24 million number since I'm in upstate NY. What was particularly interesting to me is that in the detailed census block studies I did, you would often see half of a census block (geographical half) had service and the other did not. 2/3rds of the houses in the census block were on the covered side, but it's very difficult to see how the other third would ever get service since it doesn't fit cable's density plan but isn't enough to justify anyone else building out to them either. Chuck On Jan 21, 2010, at 11:08 AM, Marlon K. Schafer wrote: I think so. 24 million just seems to be such a large number when you take into account the well known underreporting of our industry segment (and perhaps others?). It's hard to imagine that all of our hard work thus far has left so many homes untouched. At a lowly 40% take rate and $20 per month per account that's $288,000,000 in MONTHLY revenue left sitting idle. It just makes no sense to me. I can't get my arms around the idea that we've left that many homes with no options. I can see 24 million households with no service. I just can't see that many with no access to service. Heck, I have people that still have dialup internet even though they are within spitting distance of a tower. Do they count as one of the 24 million? laters, marlon - Original Message - From: Chuck Bartosch ch...@clarityconnect.com To: WISPA General List wireless@wispa.org Sent: Thursday, January 21, 2010 3:06 AM Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ So, the salient points are, as I understand it (correct me if I'm wrong): (1) Brian's numbers are 24 million currently HAVE NO ACCESS TO SERVICE. His number DOES NOT INCLUDE the number who have access but have chosen not to subscribe. (2) You haven't seen the underlying data yourself because much of it is private data that you didn't purchase yourself. You get to see the analysis from it because Brian HAS purchased it and combined it with publicly available data. Chuck On Jan 20, 2010, at 11:46 PM, Marlon K. Schafer wrote: Heya Brian, That's the take I had on this. That the number of households services was based on the 477 data. I didn't see any other data sets that would give an indication of the number of actually services households. If the study is based only on the consumers reported via the 477 it's likely to be quite inaccurate. People in government etc. are often quite amazed at the number of customers that I service out here. And I'm just one of a great many companies offering services in the area. I'm trying to get a handle on what additional sources of fact based information are out there. It's important to know what the real number is and yours seems very high to me. I don't think it'll be helpful in the long term if we have a number that gets blown out of the water in the upcoming census. marlon - Original Message - From: Brian Webster bwebs...@wirelessmapping.com To: WISPA General List wireless@wispa.org Sent: Wednesday, January 20
Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ
Yep! and quit spending our money to get it there, if it even registered on the radar. I could go further about all the $$$ they give to rural telco's, but that's another matter. Scott -- Original Message -- From: RickG rgunder...@gmail.com Reply-To: WISPA General List wireless@wispa.org Date: Fri, 22 Jan 2010 12:31:37 -0500 That is my point. Over my lifetime, I've done a lot of moving and traveling. What I find is that some areas are not as progressive as others - and they want it that way. Why do the Feds think they know whats best for these areas? Dont the locals know whats best for themselves? If the majority in these areas dont want broadband access so be it. If the minority in these areas wants it, then they need to change the minds of the majority, figure out a way to get it there, or move. Where is my thinking wrong here? -RickG On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 8:16 AM, Stuart Pierce spie...@avolve.net wrote: Under/un-served areas unfortunately doesn't guarantee any take rate or even clients being able to or wanting to make payment. So your own money would be best in those situations rather than stimulus for sure. Marlon K. Schafer wrote: You've got an area with 25k households close by and you don't have anything in there? No one else has anything there either? That's 2.5 times MORE than my ENTIRE COUNTY has in it! Man I could be making a lot more money if I lived nearly anywhere else! marlon - Original Message - From: Chuck Bartosch ch...@clarityconnect.com To: WISPA General List wireless@wispa.org Sent: Thursday, January 21, 2010 11:04 AM Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ In my 3 county area that I was developing an application for, there were 25,000 households without access to service and in one of those counties I was only covering the lower half of the unserved areas of the county. (And one partially unserved town in the County I live in was counting on a different provider to include them in their application, but that provider chose not to include them for one reason or another). It's very easy for me to believe the 24 million number since I'm in upstate NY. What was particularly interesting to me is that in the detailed census block studies I did, you would often see half of a census block (geographical half) had service and the other did not. 2/3rds of the houses in the census block were on the covered side, but it's very difficult to see how the other third would ever get service since it doesn't fit cable's density plan but isn't enough to justify anyone else building out to them either. Chuck On Jan 21, 2010, at 11:08 AM, Marlon K. Schafer wrote: I think so. 24 million just seems to be such a large number when you take into account the well known underreporting of our industry segment (and perhaps others?). It's hard to imagine that all of our hard work thus far has left so many homes untouched. At a lowly 40% take rate and $20 per month per account that's $288,000,000 in MONTHLY revenue left sitting idle. It just makes no sense to me. I can't get my arms around the idea that we've left that many homes with no options. I can see 24 million households with no service. I just can't see that many with no access to service. Heck, I have people that still have dialup internet even though they are within spitting distance of a tower. Do they count as one of the 24 million? laters, marlon - Original Message - From: Chuck Bartosch ch...@clarityconnect.com To: WISPA General List wireless@wispa.org Sent: Thursday, January 21, 2010 3:06 AM Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ So, the salient points are, as I understand it (correct me if I'm wrong): (1) Brian's numbers are 24 million currently HAVE NO ACCESS TO SERVICE. His number DOES NOT INCLUDE the number who have access but have chosen not to subscribe. (2) You haven't seen the underlying data yourself because much of it is private data that you didn't purchase yourself. You get to see the analysis from it because Brian HAS purchased it and combined it with publicly available data. Chuck On Jan 20, 2010, at 11:46 PM, Marlon K. Schafer wrote: Heya Brian, That's the take I had on this. That the number of households services was based on the 477 data. I didn't see any other data sets that would give an indication of the number of actually services households. If the study is based only on the consumers reported via the 477 it's likely to be quite inaccurate. People in government etc. are often quite amazed at the number of customers that I service out here. And I'm just one of a great many companies offering services in the area. I'm trying to get a handle on what additional sources of fact based information are out there. It's important
Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ
So, the salient points are, as I understand it (correct me if I'm wrong): (1) Brian's numbers are 24 million currently HAVE NO ACCESS TO SERVICE. His number DOES NOT INCLUDE the number who have access but have chosen not to subscribe. (2) You haven't seen the underlying data yourself because much of it is private data that you didn't purchase yourself. You get to see the analysis from it because Brian HAS purchased it and combined it with publicly available data. Chuck On Jan 20, 2010, at 11:46 PM, Marlon K. Schafer wrote: Heya Brian, That's the take I had on this. That the number of households services was based on the 477 data. I didn't see any other data sets that would give an indication of the number of actually services households. If the study is based only on the consumers reported via the 477 it's likely to be quite inaccurate. People in government etc. are often quite amazed at the number of customers that I service out here. And I'm just one of a great many companies offering services in the area. I'm trying to get a handle on what additional sources of fact based information are out there. It's important to know what the real number is and yours seems very high to me. I don't think it'll be helpful in the long term if we have a number that gets blown out of the water in the upcoming census. marlon - Original Message - From: Brian Webster bwebs...@wirelessmapping.com To: WISPA General List wireless@wispa.org Sent: Wednesday, January 20, 2010 8:00 PM Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ Marlon, Read this take rate brief I wrote with one of the data companies I work with. It will take you about 10 minutes. It goes in to specific detail of how the study was conducted and the sources of the data. It was written for the 10 minute managers of the world. The key to being able to come up with the numbers was having the data at the census block level in the first place. Prior to July of this year there were no sources that I am aware of. The only information drawn from the form 477 is the total number of residential subscribers by state. The number of households without access to broadband has no relationship to the 477 data. That should be spelled out in the report. Thank You, Brian Webster -Original Message- From: wireless-boun...@wispa.org [mailto:wireless-boun...@wispa.org]on Behalf Of Marlon K. Schafer Sent: Wednesday, January 20, 2010 8:32 PM To: WISPA General List Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ OK, as I understand that the report is based upon the 477 data? marlon - Original Message - From: Jack Unger To: WISPA General List Sent: Wednesday, January 20, 2010 9:41 AM Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ Marlon, See the attached report. Go to Table 2 on page 11. Look at the last cell in the lower, right-hand corner. jack Marlon K. Schafer wrote: I still don't buy that number in the first place. I wish I knew more about how Brian came up with it. What % of rural households does that work out to be? marlon - Original Message - From: Jack Unger jun...@ask-wi.com To: WISPA General List wireless@wispa.org Sent: Wednesday, January 20, 2010 8:27 AM Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ Sorry but this article (accidentally or intentionally) misses or (more likely) ignores the point that 24 or more million occupied American households have no access to broadband. The WSJ is merely a mouthpiece (especially now that Rupurt Murdoch owns it) for the telcos. jack Jeff Broadwick wrote: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870365210457465250160837655 2.ht ml?mod=WSJ_Opinion_AboveLEFTTop * REVIEW OUTLOOK * JANUARY 20, 2010 A 'National Broadband Plan' One more solution in search of a problem. The Federal Communications Commission recently told Congress that it will miss a February deadline for delivering a national broadband plan and requested a one-month extension. If it keeps missing deadlines, nearly everyone in the U.S. might soon have high-speed Internet. As part of last year's stimulus package, Congress asked the FCC for a plan to ensure that everybody in the country has access to broadband. That's a worthy goal, but the idea of a government plan is based on a false presumption that the spread of broadband is stalled. The reality is that broadband adoption continues apace, as does the quality and speed of Internet connections. Between 2000 and 2008, residential broadband subscribers grew to 80 million from five million, according to a study by Bret Swanson of Entropy Economics. Broadband penetration among active Internet users at home is 94%, and nearly 99% of U.S. workers connect to the Internet with broadband. A typical cable modem today is 10 times faster than a decade ago. Wireless bandwidth growth per capita has been no less impressive, showing a 500-fold
Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ
Actually, from where I'm sitting, it seems like roll-outs have slowed dramatically as people are waiting to see who gets government funding. I've heard Patrick Leary say much the same thing from the radio side. Anyone else seeing this phenomena? Regards, Jeff Jeff Broadwick ImageStream 800-813-5123 x106 (US/Can) +1 574-935-8484 x106 (Int'l) -Original Message- From: wireless-boun...@wispa.org [mailto:wireless-boun...@wispa.org] On Behalf Of RickG Sent: Wednesday, January 20, 2010 10:49 PM To: WISPA General List Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ Right: The Technology Policy Institute notes that at the current rates of broadband adoption the U.S. is behind the leaders only by a number of months, and all wealthy OECD countries will reach a saturation point within the next few years. Now, how many here are updating their business models to compete with the government? -RickG On Wed, Jan 20, 2010 at 12:34 PM, Jeff Broadwick jeffl...@comcast.netwrote: I don't think it ignores that, it is suggesting that the private sector is in the process of closing that gap, without government investment and/or intervention. I don't believe that it is arguable that coverage is increasing...that's the net effect of the whole WISP industry. Regards, Jeff Jeff Broadwick ImageStream 800-813-5123 x106 (US/Can) +1 574-935-8484 x106 (Int'l) -Original Message- From: wireless-boun...@wispa.org [mailto:wireless-boun...@wispa.org] On Behalf Of Jack Unger Sent: Wednesday, January 20, 2010 11:28 AM To: WISPA General List Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ Sorry but this article (accidentally or intentionally) misses or (more likely) ignores the point that 24 or more million occupied American households have no access to broadband. The WSJ is merely a mouthpiece (especially now that Rupurt Murdoch owns it) for the telcos. jack Jeff Broadwick wrote: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB100014240527487036521045746525016083 76 552.ht ml?mod=WSJ_Opinion_AboveLEFTTop * REVIEW OUTLOOK * JANUARY 20, 2010 A 'National Broadband Plan' One more solution in search of a problem. The Federal Communications Commission recently told Congress that it will miss a February deadline for delivering a national broadband plan and requested a one-month extension. If it keeps missing deadlines, nearly everyone in the U.S. might soon have high-speed Internet. As part of last year's stimulus package, Congress asked the FCC for a plan to ensure that everybody in the country has access to broadband. That's a worthy goal, but the idea of a government plan is based on a false presumption that the spread of broadband is stalled. The reality is that broadband adoption continues apace, as does the quality and speed of Internet connections. Between 2000 and 2008, residential broadband subscribers grew to 80 million from five million, according to a study by Bret Swanson of Entropy Economics. Broadband penetration among active Internet users at home is 94%, and nearly 99% of U.S. workers connect to the Internet with broadband. A typical cable modem today is 10 times faster than a decade ago. Wireless bandwidth growth per capita has been no less impressive, showing a 500-fold increase since 2000. Meanwhile, U.S. information and communications technology investment in 2008 alone totalled $455 billion, or 22% of all U.S. capital investment. Nominal capital investment in telecom between 2000 and 2008 was more than $3.5 trillion. Those who favor more government control of the Internet ignore this private progress and point to international rankings. According to OECD estimates, the U.S. ranks 15th in the world in broadband penetration per capita. But because household sizes differ from country to country, and the U.S. has relatively large households, the per capita figures can be misleading. A better way to gauge wired broadband connections is per household, not per person. By that measure the U.S. ranks somewhere between 8th and 10th. Such comparisons will soon be moot in any case because broadband penetration is growing rapidly in all OECD countries. The Technology Policy Institute notes that at the current rates of broadband adoption the U.S. is behind the leaders only by a number of months, and all wealthy OECD countries will reach a saturation point within the next few years. Even the Obama Justice Department seems to reject the broadband market failure thesis. In any industry subject to significant technological change, it is important that the evaluation of competition be forward-looking rather than based on static definitions of products and services, said the Antitrust Division in a January 4 filing to the FCC. In the case of broadband services, it's clear that the market is shifting generally in the direction of faster
Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ
I think so. 24 million just seems to be such a large number when you take into account the well known underreporting of our industry segment (and perhaps others?). It's hard to imagine that all of our hard work thus far has left so many homes untouched. At a lowly 40% take rate and $20 per month per account that's $288,000,000 in MONTHLY revenue left sitting idle. It just makes no sense to me. I can't get my arms around the idea that we've left that many homes with no options. I can see 24 million households with no service. I just can't see that many with no access to service. Heck, I have people that still have dialup internet even though they are within spitting distance of a tower. Do they count as one of the 24 million? laters, marlon - Original Message - From: Chuck Bartosch ch...@clarityconnect.com To: WISPA General List wireless@wispa.org Sent: Thursday, January 21, 2010 3:06 AM Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ So, the salient points are, as I understand it (correct me if I'm wrong): (1) Brian's numbers are 24 million currently HAVE NO ACCESS TO SERVICE. His number DOES NOT INCLUDE the number who have access but have chosen not to subscribe. (2) You haven't seen the underlying data yourself because much of it is private data that you didn't purchase yourself. You get to see the analysis from it because Brian HAS purchased it and combined it with publicly available data. Chuck On Jan 20, 2010, at 11:46 PM, Marlon K. Schafer wrote: Heya Brian, That's the take I had on this. That the number of households services was based on the 477 data. I didn't see any other data sets that would give an indication of the number of actually services households. If the study is based only on the consumers reported via the 477 it's likely to be quite inaccurate. People in government etc. are often quite amazed at the number of customers that I service out here. And I'm just one of a great many companies offering services in the area. I'm trying to get a handle on what additional sources of fact based information are out there. It's important to know what the real number is and yours seems very high to me. I don't think it'll be helpful in the long term if we have a number that gets blown out of the water in the upcoming census. marlon - Original Message - From: Brian Webster bwebs...@wirelessmapping.com To: WISPA General List wireless@wispa.org Sent: Wednesday, January 20, 2010 8:00 PM Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ Marlon, Read this take rate brief I wrote with one of the data companies I work with. It will take you about 10 minutes. It goes in to specific detail of how the study was conducted and the sources of the data. It was written for the 10 minute managers of the world. The key to being able to come up with the numbers was having the data at the census block level in the first place. Prior to July of this year there were no sources that I am aware of. The only information drawn from the form 477 is the total number of residential subscribers by state. The number of households without access to broadband has no relationship to the 477 data. That should be spelled out in the report. Thank You, Brian Webster -Original Message- From: wireless-boun...@wispa.org [mailto:wireless-boun...@wispa.org]on Behalf Of Marlon K. Schafer Sent: Wednesday, January 20, 2010 8:32 PM To: WISPA General List Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ OK, as I understand that the report is based upon the 477 data? marlon - Original Message - From: Jack Unger To: WISPA General List Sent: Wednesday, January 20, 2010 9:41 AM Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ Marlon, See the attached report. Go to Table 2 on page 11. Look at the last cell in the lower, right-hand corner. jack Marlon K. Schafer wrote: I still don't buy that number in the first place. I wish I knew more about how Brian came up with it. What % of rural households does that work out to be? marlon - Original Message - From: Jack Unger jun...@ask-wi.com To: WISPA General List wireless@wispa.org Sent: Wednesday, January 20, 2010 8:27 AM Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ Sorry but this article (accidentally or intentionally) misses or (more likely) ignores the point that 24 or more million occupied American households have no access to broadband. The WSJ is merely a mouthpiece (especially now that Rupurt Murdoch owns it) for the telcos. jack Jeff Broadwick wrote: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870365210457465250160837655 2.ht ml?mod=WSJ_Opinion_AboveLEFTTop * REVIEW OUTLOOK * JANUARY 20, 2010 A 'National Broadband Plan' One more solution in search of a problem. The Federal Communications Commission recently told Congress that it will miss a February deadline for delivering a national broadband plan and requested a one
Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ
Our rollouts have slowed but only because demand has dropped off. Those that want broadband have it. OR, they are in VERY expensive to service areas. Places where the current grant programs make absolutely no sense. An example is one I just put in. There is a valley that has just 7 homes in it. I drove all over the area looking for a way to hit more people from one spot. No can do, so 7 homes are all that's possible. On top of that there is NO infrastructure at the only viable transmit site. No power, nothing but sagebrush and rocks. I didn't even see any deer tracks up there! 6 of the home owners got together and put up the $4,000 needed for a solar system, mounting structure, repeater equipment and client radios. We billed them an install fee to match and we'll maintain ownership of the repeater site (customers own cpe) so it'll be our bill to take care of it from here on out. We now have 6 subs at that location, not sure when or if the 7th will come online. If we'd have had to fund that initial outlay it would work out to just short of $9 per month per sub for 5 years. That's longer than the equipment is likely to be in place (I tend to upgrade my ap's every 2 to 3 years just to stay current). And $9 is within a couple of bucks of my net revenue per sub. It pencils out for the people at the location though, $9 per month is still LESS than the difference in cost between my service and inferior service from any of the satellite companies. Run the numbers out 10 years and they were very much money ahead. But, they would be counted as unserved until now. And, unfortunately, for good reason. In this case the consumer took it upon themselves to fix their problem. Well and truly the American way of doing things. A private team effort between them and the supplier. Win win. Those are the kinds of grants we need right now. $3000 to $30,000 levels with VERY light paperwork requirements. I guess the cool part of this whole thing is that I've got nearly 100% take rates with 100% coverage rates for the area! grin There is ONE house JUST around the corner yet, not sure how to take care of them but I'll figure it out. H, cool new product? Self enclosed 16 hour standby time solar repeater. $1000 or less with dual n connectors and swappable between 2.4 gig and 5 gig radios. Get to work guys. laters, marlon - Original Message - From: Jeff Broadwick jeffl...@comcast.net To: 'WISPA General List' wireless@wispa.org Sent: Thursday, January 21, 2010 5:10 AM Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ Actually, from where I'm sitting, it seems like roll-outs have slowed dramatically as people are waiting to see who gets government funding. I've heard Patrick Leary say much the same thing from the radio side. Anyone else seeing this phenomena? Regards, Jeff Jeff Broadwick ImageStream 800-813-5123 x106 (US/Can) +1 574-935-8484 x106 (Int'l) -Original Message- From: wireless-boun...@wispa.org [mailto:wireless-boun...@wispa.org] On Behalf Of RickG Sent: Wednesday, January 20, 2010 10:49 PM To: WISPA General List Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ Right: The Technology Policy Institute notes that at the current rates of broadband adoption the U.S. is behind the leaders only by a number of months, and all wealthy OECD countries will reach a saturation point within the next few years. Now, how many here are updating their business models to compete with the government? -RickG On Wed, Jan 20, 2010 at 12:34 PM, Jeff Broadwick jeffl...@comcast.netwrote: I don't think it ignores that, it is suggesting that the private sector is in the process of closing that gap, without government investment and/or intervention. I don't believe that it is arguable that coverage is increasing...that's the net effect of the whole WISP industry. Regards, Jeff Jeff Broadwick ImageStream 800-813-5123 x106 (US/Can) +1 574-935-8484 x106 (Int'l) -Original Message- From: wireless-boun...@wispa.org [mailto:wireless-boun...@wispa.org] On Behalf Of Jack Unger Sent: Wednesday, January 20, 2010 11:28 AM To: WISPA General List Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ Sorry but this article (accidentally or intentionally) misses or (more likely) ignores the point that 24 or more million occupied American households have no access to broadband. The WSJ is merely a mouthpiece (especially now that Rupurt Murdoch owns it) for the telcos. jack Jeff Broadwick wrote: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB100014240527487036521045746525016083 76 552.ht ml?mod=WSJ_Opinion_AboveLEFTTop * REVIEW OUTLOOK * JANUARY 20, 2010 A 'National Broadband Plan' One more solution in search of a problem. The Federal Communications Commission recently told Congress that it will miss a February deadline for delivering a national broadband plan and requested a one-month extension. If it keeps
Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ
The cable co and telco and I generally deploy where people say yeah, we'll pay for it. There IS a relationship - a weak one - between not available and don't want it or won't pay for it. That was my take in the first place.And then there's the I haven't gotten there yet number. It seems that number shrinks steadily... -- From: Mike Hammett wispawirel...@ics-il.net Sent: Wednesday, January 20, 2010 10:22 PM To: WISPA General List wireless@wispa.org Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ I won't comment on the first parts. ;-) The rest is completely true, other than Brian is talking about 24 million households can't get it in the first place vs. 24 million households that don't want it that you (and others on the list) took it to mean. - Mike Hammett Intelligent Computing Solutions http://www.ics-il.com -- From: MDK rea...@muddyfrogwater.us Sent: Wednesday, January 20, 2010 10:58 PM To: WISPA General List wireless@wispa.org Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ Is that directly off the pages of the Democrat National Committee Blast Fax talking points of the day? Shame on you, Jack. There's easily 24 million households THAT DO NOT WANT OR WILL NOT PAY FOR broadband. I have some areas where I cover 100% of the households, nobody else does, and yet, I can only get 60 percent of them to subscribe. The rest? Too expensive (even 25.50/mo is 'too much') or we don't even have a computer is still something I hear semi regularly. I don't think my demographics are specifically average... but they're not THAT far off the norm. In the last 2 years I've lost 5 customers to cable and dsl. 1 to another provider (was glad to see them go), but that's less than the number who have moved or died. I think we've seen nearly the limits of cable and dsl expansion where I am. And they've covered a good 75% of the population, even as rural as we are.The WSJ article is dead on right, from what I can tell. My growth is now the niche areas that aren't high on the cable or dsl deployment priority, yet I'm seeing the want for broadband to be under 80%, even in affluent areas. Since our install costs are now as low as free, depending on location, we're seeing signficant not heavy user adoption. Now, the growth of actual data moved... The percentage increase every month is near or at double digits. -- From: Jack Unger jun...@ask-wi.com Sent: Wednesday, January 20, 2010 8:27 AM To: WISPA General List wireless@wispa.org Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ Sorry but this article (accidentally or intentionally) misses or (more likely) ignores the point that 24 or more million occupied American households have no access to broadband. The WSJ is merely a mouthpiece (especially now that Rupurt Murdoch owns it) for the telcos. jack Jeff Broadwick wrote: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703652104574652501608376552.ht ml?mod=WSJ_Opinion_AboveLEFTTop * REVIEW OUTLOOK * JANUARY 20, 2010 A 'National Broadband Plan' One more solution in search of a problem. The Federal Communications Commission recently told Congress that it will miss a February deadline for delivering a national broadband plan and requested a one-month extension. If it keeps missing deadlines, nearly everyone in the U.S. might soon have high-speed Internet. As part of last year's stimulus package, Congress asked the FCC for a plan to ensure that everybody in the country has access to broadband. That's a worthy goal, but the idea of a government plan is based on a false presumption that the spread of broadband is stalled. The reality is that broadband adoption continues apace, as does the quality and speed of Internet connections. Between 2000 and 2008, residential broadband subscribers grew to 80 million from five million, according to a study by Bret Swanson of Entropy Economics. Broadband penetration among active Internet users at home is 94%, and nearly 99% of U.S. workers connect to the Internet with broadband. A typical cable modem today is 10 times faster than a decade ago. Wireless bandwidth growth per capita has been no less impressive, showing a 500-fold increase since 2000. Meanwhile, U.S. information and communications technology investment in 2008 alone totalled $455 billion, or 22% of all U.S. capital investment. Nominal capital investment in telecom between 2000 and 2008 was more than $3.5 trillion. Those who favor more government control of the Internet ignore this private progress and point to international rankings. According to OECD estimates, the U.S. ranks 15th in the world in broadband penetration per capita. But because household sizes differ from country to country, and the U.S. has relatively large households, the per capita
Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ
That would seem to be rational and logical as an observation, prediction, and explanation. -- From: Jeff Broadwick jeffl...@comcast.net Sent: Thursday, January 21, 2010 5:10 AM To: 'WISPA General List' wireless@wispa.org Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ Actually, from where I'm sitting, it seems like roll-outs have slowed dramatically as people are waiting to see who gets government funding. I've heard Patrick Leary say much the same thing from the radio side. Anyone else seeing this phenomena? Regards, Jeff Jeff Broadwick ImageStream 800-813-5123 x106 (US/Can) +1 574-935-8484 x106 (Int'l) -Original Message- From: wireless-boun...@wispa.org [mailto:wireless-boun...@wispa.org] On Behalf Of RickG Sent: Wednesday, January 20, 2010 10:49 PM To: WISPA General List Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ Right: The Technology Policy Institute notes that at the current rates of broadband adoption the U.S. is behind the leaders only by a number of months, and all wealthy OECD countries will reach a saturation point within the next few years. Now, how many here are updating their business models to compete with the government? -RickG On Wed, Jan 20, 2010 at 12:34 PM, Jeff Broadwick jeffl...@comcast.netwrote: I don't think it ignores that, it is suggesting that the private sector is in the process of closing that gap, without government investment and/or intervention. I don't believe that it is arguable that coverage is increasing...that's the net effect of the whole WISP industry. Regards, Jeff Jeff Broadwick ImageStream 800-813-5123 x106 (US/Can) +1 574-935-8484 x106 (Int'l) -Original Message- From: wireless-boun...@wispa.org [mailto:wireless-boun...@wispa.org] On Behalf Of Jack Unger Sent: Wednesday, January 20, 2010 11:28 AM To: WISPA General List Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ Sorry but this article (accidentally or intentionally) misses or (more likely) ignores the point that 24 or more million occupied American households have no access to broadband. The WSJ is merely a mouthpiece (especially now that Rupurt Murdoch owns it) for the telcos. jack Jeff Broadwick wrote: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB100014240527487036521045746525016083 76 552.ht ml?mod=WSJ_Opinion_AboveLEFTTop * REVIEW OUTLOOK * JANUARY 20, 2010 A 'National Broadband Plan' One more solution in search of a problem. The Federal Communications Commission recently told Congress that it will miss a February deadline for delivering a national broadband plan and requested a one-month extension. If it keeps missing deadlines, nearly everyone in the U.S. might soon have high-speed Internet. As part of last year's stimulus package, Congress asked the FCC for a plan to ensure that everybody in the country has access to broadband. That's a worthy goal, but the idea of a government plan is based on a false presumption that the spread of broadband is stalled. The reality is that broadband adoption continues apace, as does the quality and speed of Internet connections. Between 2000 and 2008, residential broadband subscribers grew to 80 million from five million, according to a study by Bret Swanson of Entropy Economics. Broadband penetration among active Internet users at home is 94%, and nearly 99% of U.S. workers connect to the Internet with broadband. A typical cable modem today is 10 times faster than a decade ago. Wireless bandwidth growth per capita has been no less impressive, showing a 500-fold increase since 2000. Meanwhile, U.S. information and communications technology investment in 2008 alone totalled $455 billion, or 22% of all U.S. capital investment. Nominal capital investment in telecom between 2000 and 2008 was more than $3.5 trillion. Those who favor more government control of the Internet ignore this private progress and point to international rankings. According to OECD estimates, the U.S. ranks 15th in the world in broadband penetration per capita. But because household sizes differ from country to country, and the U.S. has relatively large households, the per capita figures can be misleading. A better way to gauge wired broadband connections is per household, not per person. By that measure the U.S. ranks somewhere between 8th and 10th. Such comparisons will soon be moot in any case because broadband penetration is growing rapidly in all OECD countries. The Technology Policy Institute notes that at the current rates of broadband adoption the U.S. is behind the leaders only by a number of months, and all wealthy OECD countries will reach a saturation point within the next few years. Even the Obama Justice Department seems to reject the broadband market failure thesis. In any industry subject to significant technological change, it is important
Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ
interestingly enough, mine has picked up of late. I think it's the reduced install cost that's driven that. I also had a small time competitor just walk way from his network and I'm scrambling big time trying to fill the gap... but I haven't the money to put up the infrastructure... We're talking about backhauls and access points for 3 and 5 and 15 and 2 and so customers. That means finding new sites, new equipment, and it's ALL up in the mountains, where it's normally snowed in this time of year, but clear at the moment, so time is our biggest enemy. Not to mention irate folks who just got dependent... If I'd known all this... I'd not just have invested most of our saved up cash in that fancy new backhaul to our main site so we can now get near ethernet speed feed to our largest network segment.Then again, I need the bandwidth to add those folks... -- From: Marlon K. Schafer o...@odessaoffice.com Sent: Thursday, January 21, 2010 8:21 AM To: WISPA General List wireless@wispa.org Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ Our rollouts have slowed but only because demand has dropped off. Those that want broadband have it. OR, they are in VERY expensive to service areas. Places where the current grant programs make absolutely no sense. An example is one I just put in. There is a valley that has just 7 homes in it. I drove all over the area looking for a way to hit more people from one spot. No can do, so 7 homes are all that's possible. On top of that there is NO infrastructure at the only viable transmit site. No power, nothing but sagebrush and rocks. I didn't even see any deer tracks up there! 6 of the home owners got together and put up the $4,000 needed for a solar system, mounting structure, repeater equipment and client radios. We billed them an install fee to match and we'll maintain ownership of the repeater site (customers own cpe) so it'll be our bill to take care of it from here on out. We now have 6 subs at that location, not sure when or if the 7th will come online. If we'd have had to fund that initial outlay it would work out to just short of $9 per month per sub for 5 years. That's longer than the equipment is likely to be in place (I tend to upgrade my ap's every 2 to 3 years just to stay current). And $9 is within a couple of bucks of my net revenue per sub. It pencils out for the people at the location though, $9 per month is still LESS than the difference in cost between my service and inferior service from any of the satellite companies. Run the numbers out 10 years and they were very much money ahead. But, they would be counted as unserved until now. And, unfortunately, for good reason. In this case the consumer took it upon themselves to fix their problem. Well and truly the American way of doing things. A private team effort between them and the supplier. Win win. Those are the kinds of grants we need right now. $3000 to $30,000 levels with VERY light paperwork requirements. I guess the cool part of this whole thing is that I've got nearly 100% take rates with 100% coverage rates for the area! grin There is ONE house JUST around the corner yet, not sure how to take care of them but I'll figure it out. H, cool new product? Self enclosed 16 hour standby time solar repeater. $1000 or less with dual n connectors and swappable between 2.4 gig and 5 gig radios. Get to work guys. laters, marlon - Original Message - From: Jeff Broadwick jeffl...@comcast.net To: 'WISPA General List' wireless@wispa.org Sent: Thursday, January 21, 2010 5:10 AM Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ Actually, from where I'm sitting, it seems like roll-outs have slowed dramatically as people are waiting to see who gets government funding. I've heard Patrick Leary say much the same thing from the radio side. Anyone else seeing this phenomena? Regards, Jeff Jeff Broadwick ImageStream 800-813-5123 x106 (US/Can) +1 574-935-8484 x106 (Int'l) -Original Message- From: wireless-boun...@wispa.org [mailto:wireless-boun...@wispa.org] On Behalf Of RickG Sent: Wednesday, January 20, 2010 10:49 PM To: WISPA General List Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ Right: The Technology Policy Institute notes that at the current rates of broadband adoption the U.S. is behind the leaders only by a number of months, and all wealthy OECD countries will reach a saturation point within the next few years. Now, how many here are updating their business models to compete with the government? -RickG On Wed, Jan 20, 2010 at 12:34 PM, Jeff Broadwick jeffl...@comcast.netwrote: I don't think it ignores that, it is suggesting that the private sector is in the process of closing that gap, without government investment and/or intervention. I don't believe that it is arguable that coverage is increasing
Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ
In my 3 county area that I was developing an application for, there were 25,000 households without access to service and in one of those counties I was only covering the lower half of the unserved areas of the county. (And one partially unserved town in the County I live in was counting on a different provider to include them in their application, but that provider chose not to include them for one reason or another). It's very easy for me to believe the 24 million number since I'm in upstate NY. What was particularly interesting to me is that in the detailed census block studies I did, you would often see half of a census block (geographical half) had service and the other did not. 2/3rds of the houses in the census block were on the covered side, but it's very difficult to see how the other third would ever get service since it doesn't fit cable's density plan but isn't enough to justify anyone else building out to them either. Chuck On Jan 21, 2010, at 11:08 AM, Marlon K. Schafer wrote: I think so. 24 million just seems to be such a large number when you take into account the well known underreporting of our industry segment (and perhaps others?). It's hard to imagine that all of our hard work thus far has left so many homes untouched. At a lowly 40% take rate and $20 per month per account that's $288,000,000 in MONTHLY revenue left sitting idle. It just makes no sense to me. I can't get my arms around the idea that we've left that many homes with no options. I can see 24 million households with no service. I just can't see that many with no access to service. Heck, I have people that still have dialup internet even though they are within spitting distance of a tower. Do they count as one of the 24 million? laters, marlon - Original Message - From: Chuck Bartosch ch...@clarityconnect.com To: WISPA General List wireless@wispa.org Sent: Thursday, January 21, 2010 3:06 AM Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ So, the salient points are, as I understand it (correct me if I'm wrong): (1) Brian's numbers are 24 million currently HAVE NO ACCESS TO SERVICE. His number DOES NOT INCLUDE the number who have access but have chosen not to subscribe. (2) You haven't seen the underlying data yourself because much of it is private data that you didn't purchase yourself. You get to see the analysis from it because Brian HAS purchased it and combined it with publicly available data. Chuck On Jan 20, 2010, at 11:46 PM, Marlon K. Schafer wrote: Heya Brian, That's the take I had on this. That the number of households services was based on the 477 data. I didn't see any other data sets that would give an indication of the number of actually services households. If the study is based only on the consumers reported via the 477 it's likely to be quite inaccurate. People in government etc. are often quite amazed at the number of customers that I service out here. And I'm just one of a great many companies offering services in the area. I'm trying to get a handle on what additional sources of fact based information are out there. It's important to know what the real number is and yours seems very high to me. I don't think it'll be helpful in the long term if we have a number that gets blown out of the water in the upcoming census. marlon - Original Message - From: Brian Webster bwebs...@wirelessmapping.com To: WISPA General List wireless@wispa.org Sent: Wednesday, January 20, 2010 8:00 PM Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ Marlon, Read this take rate brief I wrote with one of the data companies I work with. It will take you about 10 minutes. It goes in to specific detail of how the study was conducted and the sources of the data. It was written for the 10 minute managers of the world. The key to being able to come up with the numbers was having the data at the census block level in the first place. Prior to July of this year there were no sources that I am aware of. The only information drawn from the form 477 is the total number of residential subscribers by state. The number of households without access to broadband has no relationship to the 477 data. That should be spelled out in the report. Thank You, Brian Webster -Original Message- From: wireless-boun...@wispa.org [mailto:wireless-boun...@wispa.org]on Behalf Of Marlon K. Schafer Sent: Wednesday, January 20, 2010 8:32 PM To: WISPA General List Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ OK, as I understand that the report is based upon the 477 data? marlon - Original Message - From: Jack Unger To: WISPA General List Sent: Wednesday, January 20, 2010 9:41 AM Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ Marlon, See the attached report. Go to Table 2 on page 11. Look at the last cell in the lower, right-hand corner. jack Marlon K. Schafer wrote
Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ
But anywhere else I don't think your LMR-Antenna would work as well... Travis Microserv Marlon K. Schafer wrote: You've got an area with 25k households close by and you don't have anything in there? No one else has anything there either? That's 2.5 times MORE than my ENTIRE COUNTY has in it! Man I could be making a lot more money if I lived nearly anywhere else! marlon - Original Message - From: Chuck Bartosch ch...@clarityconnect.com To: WISPA General List wireless@wispa.org Sent: Thursday, January 21, 2010 11:04 AM Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ In my 3 county area that I was developing an application for, there were 25,000 households without access to service and in one of those counties I was only covering the lower half of the unserved areas of the county. (And one partially unserved town in the County I live in was counting on a different provider to include them in their application, but that provider chose not to include them for one reason or another). It's very easy for me to believe the 24 million number since I'm in upstate NY. What was particularly interesting to me is that in the detailed census block studies I did, you would often see half of a census block (geographical half) had service and the other did not. 2/3rds of the houses in the census block were on the covered side, but it's very difficult to see how the other third would ever get service since it doesn't fit cable's density plan but isn't enough to justify anyone else building out to them either. Chuck On Jan 21, 2010, at 11:08 AM, Marlon K. Schafer wrote: I think so. 24 million just seems to be such a large number when you take into account the well known underreporting of our industry segment (and perhaps others?). It's hard to imagine that all of our hard work thus far has left so many homes untouched. At a lowly 40% take rate and $20 per month per account that's $288,000,000 in MONTHLY revenue left sitting idle. It just makes no sense to me. I can't get my arms around the idea that we've left that many homes with no options. I can see 24 million households with no service. I just can't see that many with no access to service. Heck, I have people that still have dialup internet even though they are within spitting distance of a tower. Do they count as one of the 24 million? laters, marlon - Original Message - From: Chuck Bartosch ch...@clarityconnect.com To: WISPA General List wireless@wispa.org Sent: Thursday, January 21, 2010 3:06 AM Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ So, the salient points are, as I understand it (correct me if I'm wrong): (1) Brian's numbers are 24 million currently HAVE NO ACCESS TO SERVICE. His number DOES NOT INCLUDE the number who have access but have chosen not to subscribe. (2) You haven't seen the underlying data yourself because much of it is private data that you didn't purchase yourself. You get to see the analysis from it because Brian HAS purchased it and combined it with publicly available data. Chuck On Jan 20, 2010, at 11:46 PM, Marlon K. Schafer wrote: Heya Brian, That's the take I had on this. That the number of households services was based on the 477 data. I didn't see any other data sets that would give an indication of the number of actually services households. If the study is based only on the consumers reported via the 477 it's likely to be quite inaccurate. People in government etc. are often quite amazed at the number of customers that I service out here. And I'm just one of a great many companies offering services in the area. I'm trying to get a handle on what additional sources of fact based information are out there. It's important to know what the real number is and yours seems very high to me. I don't think it'll be helpful in the long term if we have a number that gets blown out of the water in the upcoming census. marlon - Original Message - From: Brian Webster bwebs...@wirelessmapping.com To: WISPA General List wireless@wispa.org Sent: Wednesday, January 20, 2010 8:00 PM Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ Marlon, Read this take rate brief I wrote with one of the data companies I work with. It will take you about 10 minutes. It goes in to specific detail of how the study was conducted and the sources of the data. It was written for the 10 minute managers of the world. The key to being able to come up with the numbers was having the data at the census block level in the first place. Prior to July of this year there were no sources that I am aware of. The only information drawn from the form 477 is the total number of residential subscribers by state. The number of households without access to broadband has no relationship to the 477 data. That should be spelled out in the report. Thank You, Brian Webster
Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ
Until you have to deal with the trees and mountains he has too :-) Thank You, Brian Webster -Original Message- From: wireless-boun...@wispa.org [mailto:wireless-boun...@wispa.org]on Behalf Of Marlon K. Schafer Sent: Thursday, January 21, 2010 4:54 PM To: WISPA General List Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ You've got an area with 25k households close by and you don't have anything in there? No one else has anything there either? That's 2.5 times MORE than my ENTIRE COUNTY has in it! Man I could be making a lot more money if I lived nearly anywhere else! marlon - Original Message - From: Chuck Bartosch ch...@clarityconnect.com To: WISPA General List wireless@wispa.org Sent: Thursday, January 21, 2010 11:04 AM Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ In my 3 county area that I was developing an application for, there were 25,000 households without access to service and in one of those counties I was only covering the lower half of the unserved areas of the county. (And one partially unserved town in the County I live in was counting on a different provider to include them in their application, but that provider chose not to include them for one reason or another). It's very easy for me to believe the 24 million number since I'm in upstate NY. What was particularly interesting to me is that in the detailed census block studies I did, you would often see half of a census block (geographical half) had service and the other did not. 2/3rds of the houses in the census block were on the covered side, but it's very difficult to see how the other third would ever get service since it doesn't fit cable's density plan but isn't enough to justify anyone else building out to them either. Chuck On Jan 21, 2010, at 11:08 AM, Marlon K. Schafer wrote: I think so. 24 million just seems to be such a large number when you take into account the well known underreporting of our industry segment (and perhaps others?). It's hard to imagine that all of our hard work thus far has left so many homes untouched. At a lowly 40% take rate and $20 per month per account that's $288,000,000 in MONTHLY revenue left sitting idle. It just makes no sense to me. I can't get my arms around the idea that we've left that many homes with no options. I can see 24 million households with no service. I just can't see that many with no access to service. Heck, I have people that still have dialup internet even though they are within spitting distance of a tower. Do they count as one of the 24 million? laters, marlon - Original Message - From: Chuck Bartosch ch...@clarityconnect.com To: WISPA General List wireless@wispa.org Sent: Thursday, January 21, 2010 3:06 AM Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ So, the salient points are, as I understand it (correct me if I'm wrong): (1) Brian's numbers are 24 million currently HAVE NO ACCESS TO SERVICE. His number DOES NOT INCLUDE the number who have access but have chosen not to subscribe. (2) You haven't seen the underlying data yourself because much of it is private data that you didn't purchase yourself. You get to see the analysis from it because Brian HAS purchased it and combined it with publicly available data. Chuck On Jan 20, 2010, at 11:46 PM, Marlon K. Schafer wrote: Heya Brian, That's the take I had on this. That the number of households services was based on the 477 data. I didn't see any other data sets that would give an indication of the number of actually services households. If the study is based only on the consumers reported via the 477 it's likely to be quite inaccurate. People in government etc. are often quite amazed at the number of customers that I service out here. And I'm just one of a great many companies offering services in the area. I'm trying to get a handle on what additional sources of fact based information are out there. It's important to know what the real number is and yours seems very high to me. I don't think it'll be helpful in the long term if we have a number that gets blown out of the water in the upcoming census. marlon - Original Message - From: Brian Webster bwebs...@wirelessmapping.com To: WISPA General List wireless@wispa.org Sent: Wednesday, January 20, 2010 8:00 PM Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ Marlon, Read this take rate brief I wrote with one of the data companies I work with. It will take you about 10 minutes. It goes in to specific detail of how the study was conducted and the sources of the data. It was written for the 10 minute managers of the world. The key to being able to come up with the numbers was having the data at the census block level in the first place. Prior to July of this year there were no sources that I am aware of. The only information drawn from the form 477 is the total number of residential subscribers by state. The number of households without access
Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ
Grin. Mountains or valleys, 2' of dirt is just as bad as 20,000' of dirt in this game! Tough nut to crack, that's for sure. marlon - Original Message - From: Brian Webster bwebs...@wirelessmapping.com To: WISPA General List wireless@wispa.org Sent: Thursday, January 21, 2010 2:13 PM Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ Until you have to deal with the trees and mountains he has too :-) Thank You, Brian Webster -Original Message- From: wireless-boun...@wispa.org [mailto:wireless-boun...@wispa.org]on Behalf Of Marlon K. Schafer Sent: Thursday, January 21, 2010 4:54 PM To: WISPA General List Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ You've got an area with 25k households close by and you don't have anything in there? No one else has anything there either? That's 2.5 times MORE than my ENTIRE COUNTY has in it! Man I could be making a lot more money if I lived nearly anywhere else! marlon - Original Message - From: Chuck Bartosch ch...@clarityconnect.com To: WISPA General List wireless@wispa.org Sent: Thursday, January 21, 2010 11:04 AM Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ In my 3 county area that I was developing an application for, there were 25,000 households without access to service and in one of those counties I was only covering the lower half of the unserved areas of the county. (And one partially unserved town in the County I live in was counting on a different provider to include them in their application, but that provider chose not to include them for one reason or another). It's very easy for me to believe the 24 million number since I'm in upstate NY. What was particularly interesting to me is that in the detailed census block studies I did, you would often see half of a census block (geographical half) had service and the other did not. 2/3rds of the houses in the census block were on the covered side, but it's very difficult to see how the other third would ever get service since it doesn't fit cable's density plan but isn't enough to justify anyone else building out to them either. Chuck On Jan 21, 2010, at 11:08 AM, Marlon K. Schafer wrote: I think so. 24 million just seems to be such a large number when you take into account the well known underreporting of our industry segment (and perhaps others?). It's hard to imagine that all of our hard work thus far has left so many homes untouched. At a lowly 40% take rate and $20 per month per account that's $288,000,000 in MONTHLY revenue left sitting idle. It just makes no sense to me. I can't get my arms around the idea that we've left that many homes with no options. I can see 24 million households with no service. I just can't see that many with no access to service. Heck, I have people that still have dialup internet even though they are within spitting distance of a tower. Do they count as one of the 24 million? laters, marlon - Original Message - From: Chuck Bartosch ch...@clarityconnect.com To: WISPA General List wireless@wispa.org Sent: Thursday, January 21, 2010 3:06 AM Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ So, the salient points are, as I understand it (correct me if I'm wrong): (1) Brian's numbers are 24 million currently HAVE NO ACCESS TO SERVICE. His number DOES NOT INCLUDE the number who have access but have chosen not to subscribe. (2) You haven't seen the underlying data yourself because much of it is private data that you didn't purchase yourself. You get to see the analysis from it because Brian HAS purchased it and combined it with publicly available data. Chuck On Jan 20, 2010, at 11:46 PM, Marlon K. Schafer wrote: Heya Brian, That's the take I had on this. That the number of households services was based on the 477 data. I didn't see any other data sets that would give an indication of the number of actually services households. If the study is based only on the consumers reported via the 477 it's likely to be quite inaccurate. People in government etc. are often quite amazed at the number of customers that I service out here. And I'm just one of a great many companies offering services in the area. I'm trying to get a handle on what additional sources of fact based information are out there. It's important to know what the real number is and yours seems very high to me. I don't think it'll be helpful in the long term if we have a number that gets blown out of the water in the upcoming census. marlon - Original Message - From: Brian Webster bwebs...@wirelessmapping.com To: WISPA General List wireless@wispa.org Sent: Wednesday, January 20, 2010 8:00 PM Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ Marlon, Read this take rate brief I wrote with one of the data companies I work with. It will take you about 10 minutes. It goes in to specific detail of how the study was conducted and the sources of the data. It was written
Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ
Yes, I enjoyed it a few years back. Still waiting on the new one! Jack? -RickG On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 12:59 AM, Josh Luthman j...@imaginenetworksllc.comwrote: Jack wrote and published a book... Josh Luthman Office: 937-552-2340 Direct: 937-552-2343 1100 Wayne St Suite 1337 Troy, OH 45373 The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources. --- Albert Einstein On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 12:54 AM, Jack Unger jun...@ask-wi.com wrote: I refuse to feed the troll. I refuse to feed the troll. I refuse to feed the troll. I refuse to feed the troll. I refuse to feed the troll. MDK wrote: Is that directly off the pages of the Democrat National Committee Blast Fax talking points of the day? Shame on you, Jack. There's easily 24 million households THAT DO NOT WANT OR WILL NOT PAY FOR broadband. I have some areas where I cover 100% of the households, nobody else does, and yet, I can only get 60 percent of them to subscribe. The rest? Too expensive (even 25.50/mo is 'too much') or we don't even have a computer is still something I hear semi regularly. I don't think my demographics are specifically average... but they're not THAT far off the norm. In the last 2 years I've lost 5 customers to cable and dsl. 1 to another provider (was glad to see them go), but that's less than the number who have moved or died. I think we've seen nearly the limits of cable and dsl expansion where I am. And they've covered a good 75% of the population, even as rural as we are.The WSJ article is dead on right, from what I can tell. My growth is now the niche areas that aren't high on the cable or dsl deployment priority, yet I'm seeing the want for broadband to be under 80%, even in affluent areas. Since our install costs are now as low as free, depending on location, we're seeing signficant not heavy user adoption. Now, the growth of actual data moved... The percentage increase every month is near or at double digits. -- From: Jack Unger jun...@ask-wi.com jun...@ask-wi.com Sent: Wednesday, January 20, 2010 8:27 AM To: WISPA General List wireless@wispa.org wireless@wispa.org Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ Sorry but this article (accidentally or intentionally) misses or (more likely) ignores the point that 24 or more million occupied American households have no access to broadband. The WSJ is merely a mouthpiece (especially now that Rupurt Murdoch owns it) for the telcos. jack Jeff Broadwick wrote: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703652104574652501608376552.ht ml?mod=WSJ_Opinion_AboveLEFTTop * REVIEW OUTLOOK * JANUARY 20, 2010 A 'National Broadband Plan' One more solution in search of a problem. The Federal Communications Commission recently told Congress that it will miss a February deadline for delivering a national broadband plan and requested a one-month extension. If it keeps missing deadlines, nearly everyone in the U.S. might soon have high-speed Internet. As part of last year's stimulus package, Congress asked the FCC for a plan to ensure that everybody in the country has access to broadband. That's a worthy goal, but the idea of a government plan is based on a false presumption that the spread of broadband is stalled. The reality is that broadband adoption continues apace, as does the quality and speed of Internet connections. Between 2000 and 2008, residential broadband subscribers grew to 80 million from five million, according to a study by Bret Swanson of Entropy Economics. Broadband penetration among active Internet users at home is 94%, and nearly 99% of U.S. workers connect to the Internet with broadband. A typical cable modem today is 10 times faster than a decade ago. Wireless bandwidth growth per capita has been no less impressive, showing a 500-fold increase since 2000. Meanwhile, U.S. information and communications technology investment in 2008 alone totalled $455 billion, or 22% of all U.S. capital investment. Nominal capital investment in telecom between 2000 and 2008 was more than $3.5 trillion. Those who favor more government control of the Internet ignore this private progress and point to international rankings. According to OECD estimates, the U.S. ranks 15th in the world in broadband penetration per capita. But because household sizes differ from country to country, and the U.S. has relatively large households, the per capita figures can be misleading. A better way to gauge wired broadband connections is per household, not per person. By that measure the U.S. ranks somewhere between 8th and 10th. Such comparisons will soon be moot in any case because broadband penetration is growing rapidly in all OECD countries. The Technology Policy Institute notes
Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ
I've picked up since before Christmas. From what I can tell most are taking college classes from home. -RickG On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 8:10 AM, Jeff Broadwick jeffl...@comcast.netwrote: Actually, from where I'm sitting, it seems like roll-outs have slowed dramatically as people are waiting to see who gets government funding. I've heard Patrick Leary say much the same thing from the radio side. Anyone else seeing this phenomena? Regards, Jeff Jeff Broadwick ImageStream 800-813-5123 x106 (US/Can) +1 574-935-8484 x106 (Int'l) -Original Message- From: wireless-boun...@wispa.org [mailto:wireless-boun...@wispa.org] On Behalf Of RickG Sent: Wednesday, January 20, 2010 10:49 PM To: WISPA General List Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ Right: The Technology Policy Institute notes that at the current rates of broadband adoption the U.S. is behind the leaders only by a number of months, and all wealthy OECD countries will reach a saturation point within the next few years. Now, how many here are updating their business models to compete with the government? -RickG On Wed, Jan 20, 2010 at 12:34 PM, Jeff Broadwick jeffl...@comcast.netwrote: I don't think it ignores that, it is suggesting that the private sector is in the process of closing that gap, without government investment and/or intervention. I don't believe that it is arguable that coverage is increasing...that's the net effect of the whole WISP industry. Regards, Jeff Jeff Broadwick ImageStream 800-813-5123 x106 (US/Can) +1 574-935-8484 x106 (Int'l) -Original Message- From: wireless-boun...@wispa.org [mailto:wireless-boun...@wispa.org] On Behalf Of Jack Unger Sent: Wednesday, January 20, 2010 11:28 AM To: WISPA General List Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ Sorry but this article (accidentally or intentionally) misses or (more likely) ignores the point that 24 or more million occupied American households have no access to broadband. The WSJ is merely a mouthpiece (especially now that Rupurt Murdoch owns it) for the telcos. jack Jeff Broadwick wrote: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB100014240527487036521045746525016083 76 552.ht ml?mod=WSJ_Opinion_AboveLEFTTop * REVIEW OUTLOOK * JANUARY 20, 2010 A 'National Broadband Plan' One more solution in search of a problem. The Federal Communications Commission recently told Congress that it will miss a February deadline for delivering a national broadband plan and requested a one-month extension. If it keeps missing deadlines, nearly everyone in the U.S. might soon have high-speed Internet. As part of last year's stimulus package, Congress asked the FCC for a plan to ensure that everybody in the country has access to broadband. That's a worthy goal, but the idea of a government plan is based on a false presumption that the spread of broadband is stalled. The reality is that broadband adoption continues apace, as does the quality and speed of Internet connections. Between 2000 and 2008, residential broadband subscribers grew to 80 million from five million, according to a study by Bret Swanson of Entropy Economics. Broadband penetration among active Internet users at home is 94%, and nearly 99% of U.S. workers connect to the Internet with broadband. A typical cable modem today is 10 times faster than a decade ago. Wireless bandwidth growth per capita has been no less impressive, showing a 500-fold increase since 2000. Meanwhile, U.S. information and communications technology investment in 2008 alone totalled $455 billion, or 22% of all U.S. capital investment. Nominal capital investment in telecom between 2000 and 2008 was more than $3.5 trillion. Those who favor more government control of the Internet ignore this private progress and point to international rankings. According to OECD estimates, the U.S. ranks 15th in the world in broadband penetration per capita. But because household sizes differ from country to country, and the U.S. has relatively large households, the per capita figures can be misleading. A better way to gauge wired broadband connections is per household, not per person. By that measure the U.S. ranks somewhere between 8th and 10th. Such comparisons will soon be moot in any case because broadband penetration is growing rapidly in all OECD countries. The Technology Policy Institute notes that at the current rates of broadband adoption the U.S. is behind the leaders only by a number of months, and all wealthy OECD countries will reach a saturation point within the next few years. Even the Obama Justice Department seems to reject the broadband market failure thesis. In any industry subject to significant technological change, it is important that the evaluation of competition
Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ
There are a lot of counties in eastern Kentucky that have way too many mountains trees for me. They've begged for us to come out there but I'm not up to that task! -RickG On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 11:08 AM, Marlon K. Schafer o...@odessaoffice.comwrote: I think so. 24 million just seems to be such a large number when you take into account the well known underreporting of our industry segment (and perhaps others?). It's hard to imagine that all of our hard work thus far has left so many homes untouched. At a lowly 40% take rate and $20 per month per account that's $288,000,000 in MONTHLY revenue left sitting idle. It just makes no sense to me. I can't get my arms around the idea that we've left that many homes with no options. I can see 24 million households with no service. I just can't see that many with no access to service. Heck, I have people that still have dialup internet even though they are within spitting distance of a tower. Do they count as one of the 24 million? laters, marlon - Original Message - From: Chuck Bartosch ch...@clarityconnect.com To: WISPA General List wireless@wispa.org Sent: Thursday, January 21, 2010 3:06 AM Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ So, the salient points are, as I understand it (correct me if I'm wrong): (1) Brian's numbers are 24 million currently HAVE NO ACCESS TO SERVICE. His number DOES NOT INCLUDE the number who have access but have chosen not to subscribe. (2) You haven't seen the underlying data yourself because much of it is private data that you didn't purchase yourself. You get to see the analysis from it because Brian HAS purchased it and combined it with publicly available data. Chuck On Jan 20, 2010, at 11:46 PM, Marlon K. Schafer wrote: Heya Brian, That's the take I had on this. That the number of households services was based on the 477 data. I didn't see any other data sets that would give an indication of the number of actually services households. If the study is based only on the consumers reported via the 477 it's likely to be quite inaccurate. People in government etc. are often quite amazed at the number of customers that I service out here. And I'm just one of a great many companies offering services in the area. I'm trying to get a handle on what additional sources of fact based information are out there. It's important to know what the real number is and yours seems very high to me. I don't think it'll be helpful in the long term if we have a number that gets blown out of the water in the upcoming census. marlon - Original Message - From: Brian Webster bwebs...@wirelessmapping.com To: WISPA General List wireless@wispa.org Sent: Wednesday, January 20, 2010 8:00 PM Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ Marlon, Read this take rate brief I wrote with one of the data companies I work with. It will take you about 10 minutes. It goes in to specific detail of how the study was conducted and the sources of the data. It was written for the 10 minute managers of the world. The key to being able to come up with the numbers was having the data at the census block level in the first place. Prior to July of this year there were no sources that I am aware of. The only information drawn from the form 477 is the total number of residential subscribers by state. The number of households without access to broadband has no relationship to the 477 data. That should be spelled out in the report. Thank You, Brian Webster -Original Message- From: wireless-boun...@wispa.org [mailto:wireless-boun...@wispa.org]on Behalf Of Marlon K. Schafer Sent: Wednesday, January 20, 2010 8:32 PM To: WISPA General List Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ OK, as I understand that the report is based upon the 477 data? marlon - Original Message - From: Jack Unger To: WISPA General List Sent: Wednesday, January 20, 2010 9:41 AM Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ Marlon, See the attached report. Go to Table 2 on page 11. Look at the last cell in the lower, right-hand corner. jack Marlon K. Schafer wrote: I still don't buy that number in the first place. I wish I knew more about how Brian came up with it. What % of rural households does that work out to be? marlon - Original Message - From: Jack Unger jun...@ask-wi.com To: WISPA General List wireless@wispa.org Sent: Wednesday, January 20, 2010 8:27 AM Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ Sorry but this article (accidentally or intentionally) misses or (more likely) ignores the point that 24 or more million occupied American households have no access to broadband. The WSJ is merely a mouthpiece (especially now that Rupurt Murdoch owns it) for the telcos. jack Jeff Broadwick wrote: http
Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ
I think my new "book" will actually be online training videos. RickG wrote: Yes, I enjoyed it a few years back. Still waiting on the new one! Jack? -RickG On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 12:59 AM, Josh Luthman j...@imaginenetworksllc.comwrote: Jack wrote and published a book... Josh Luthman Office: 937-552-2340 Direct: 937-552-2343 1100 Wayne St Suite 1337 Troy, OH 45373 "The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources." --- Albert Einstein On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 12:54 AM, Jack Unger jun...@ask-wi.com wrote: I refuse to feed the troll. I refuse to feed the troll. I refuse to feed the troll. I refuse to feed the troll. I refuse to feed the troll. MDK wrote: Is that directly off the pages of the Democrat National Committee "Blast Fax" talking points of the day? Shame on you, Jack. There's easily 24 million households THAT DO NOT WANT OR WILL NOT PAY FOR broadband. I have some areas where I cover 100% of the households, nobody else does, and yet, I can only get 60 percent of them to subscribe. The rest? Too expensive (even 25.50/mo is 'too much') or "we don't even have a computer" is still something I hear semi regularly. I don't think my demographics are specifically average... but they're not THAT far off the norm. In the last 2 years I've lost 5 customers to cable and dsl. 1 to another provider (was glad to see them go), but that's less than the number who have moved or died. I think we've seen nearly the limits of cable and dsl expansion where I am. And they've covered a good 75% of the population, even as rural as we are.The WSJ article is dead on right, from what I can tell. My growth is now the niche areas that aren't high on the cable or dsl deployment priority, yet I'm seeing the "want" for broadband to be under 80%, even in affluent areas. Since our install costs are now as low as "free", depending on location, we're seeing signficant "not heavy user" adoption. Now, the growth of actual data moved... The percentage increase every month is near or at double digits. -- From: "Jack Unger" jun...@ask-wi.com jun...@ask-wi.com Sent: Wednesday, January 20, 2010 8:27 AM To: "WISPA General List" wireless@wispa.org wireless@wispa.org Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ Sorry but this article (accidentally or intentionally) misses or (more likely) ignores the point that 24 or more million occupied American households have no access to broadband. The WSJ is merely a mouthpiece (especially now that Rupurt Murdoch owns it) for the telcos. jack Jeff Broadwick wrote: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703652104574652501608376552.ht ml?mod=WSJ_Opinion_AboveLEFTTop * REVIEW OUTLOOK * JANUARY 20, 2010 A 'National Broadband Plan' One more solution in search of a problem. The Federal Communications Commission recently told Congress that it will miss a February deadline for delivering a "national broadband plan" and requested a one-month extension. If it keeps missing deadlines, nearly everyone in the U.S. might soon have high-speed Internet. As part of last year's stimulus package, Congress asked the FCC for a plan to ensure that everybody in the country has access to broadband. That's a worthy goal, but the idea of a government plan is based on a false presumption that the spread of broadband is stalled. The reality is that broadband adoption continues apace, as does the quality and speed of Internet connections. Between 2000 and 2008, residential broadband subscribers grew to 80 million from five million, according to a study by Bret Swanson of Entropy Economics. Broadband penetration among active Internet users at home is 94%, and nearly 99% of U.S. workers connect to the Internet with broadband. A typical cable modem today is 10 times faster than a decade ago. Wireless bandwidth growth per capita has been no less impressive, showing a 500-fold increase since 2000. Meanwhile, U.S. information and communications technology investment in 2008 alone totalled $455 billion, or 22% of all U.S. capital investment. Nominal capital investment in telecom between 2000 and 2008 was more than $3.5 trillion. Those who favor more government control of the Internet ignore this private progress and point to international rankings. According to OECD estimates, the U.S. ranks 15th in the world in broadband penetration per capita. But because household sizes differ from country to country, and the U.S. has relatively large households, the per capita figures can be misleading. A better way to gauge wired broadband connections is per household, not per person. By that measure th
Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ
The counties out here are apparently a lot bigger than your counties. One of the counties we have service in (but not one of the counties I was looking at for this grant) is 18% bigger than the State of Rhode Island. Chuck On Jan 21, 2010, at 4:54 PM, Marlon K. Schafer wrote: You've got an area with 25k households close by and you don't have anything in there? No one else has anything there either? That's 2.5 times MORE than my ENTIRE COUNTY has in it! Man I could be making a lot more money if I lived nearly anywhere else! marlon - Original Message - From: Chuck Bartosch ch...@clarityconnect.com To: WISPA General List wireless@wispa.org Sent: Thursday, January 21, 2010 11:04 AM Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ In my 3 county area that I was developing an application for, there were 25,000 households without access to service and in one of those counties I was only covering the lower half of the unserved areas of the county. (And one partially unserved town in the County I live in was counting on a different provider to include them in their application, but that provider chose not to include them for one reason or another). It's very easy for me to believe the 24 million number since I'm in upstate NY. What was particularly interesting to me is that in the detailed census block studies I did, you would often see half of a census block (geographical half) had service and the other did not. 2/3rds of the houses in the census block were on the covered side, but it's very difficult to see how the other third would ever get service since it doesn't fit cable's density plan but isn't enough to justify anyone else building out to them either. Chuck On Jan 21, 2010, at 11:08 AM, Marlon K. Schafer wrote: I think so. 24 million just seems to be such a large number when you take into account the well known underreporting of our industry segment (and perhaps others?). It's hard to imagine that all of our hard work thus far has left so many homes untouched. At a lowly 40% take rate and $20 per month per account that's $288,000,000 in MONTHLY revenue left sitting idle. It just makes no sense to me. I can't get my arms around the idea that we've left that many homes with no options. I can see 24 million households with no service. I just can't see that many with no access to service. Heck, I have people that still have dialup internet even though they are within spitting distance of a tower. Do they count as one of the 24 million? laters, marlon - Original Message - From: Chuck Bartosch ch...@clarityconnect.com To: WISPA General List wireless@wispa.org Sent: Thursday, January 21, 2010 3:06 AM Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ So, the salient points are, as I understand it (correct me if I'm wrong): (1) Brian's numbers are 24 million currently HAVE NO ACCESS TO SERVICE. His number DOES NOT INCLUDE the number who have access but have chosen not to subscribe. (2) You haven't seen the underlying data yourself because much of it is private data that you didn't purchase yourself. You get to see the analysis from it because Brian HAS purchased it and combined it with publicly available data. Chuck On Jan 20, 2010, at 11:46 PM, Marlon K. Schafer wrote: Heya Brian, That's the take I had on this. That the number of households services was based on the 477 data. I didn't see any other data sets that would give an indication of the number of actually services households. If the study is based only on the consumers reported via the 477 it's likely to be quite inaccurate. People in government etc. are often quite amazed at the number of customers that I service out here. And I'm just one of a great many companies offering services in the area. I'm trying to get a handle on what additional sources of fact based information are out there. It's important to know what the real number is and yours seems very high to me. I don't think it'll be helpful in the long term if we have a number that gets blown out of the water in the upcoming census. marlon - Original Message - From: Brian Webster bwebs...@wirelessmapping.com To: WISPA General List wireless@wispa.org Sent: Wednesday, January 20, 2010 8:00 PM Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ Marlon, Read this take rate brief I wrote with one of the data companies I work with. It will take you about 10 minutes. It goes in to specific detail of how the study was conducted and the sources of the data. It was written for the 10 minute managers of the world. The key to being able to come up with the numbers was having the data at the census block level in the first place. Prior to July of this year there were no sources that I am aware of. The only information drawn from the form 477 is the total number of residential subscribers by state. The number
Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ
Sorry but this article (accidentally or intentionally) misses or (more likely) ignores the point that 24 or more million occupied American households have no access to broadband. The WSJ is merely a mouthpiece (especially now that Rupurt Murdoch owns it) for the telcos. jack Jeff Broadwick wrote: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703652104574652501608376552.ht ml?mod=WSJ_Opinion_AboveLEFTTop * REVIEW OUTLOOK * JANUARY 20, 2010 A 'National Broadband Plan' One more solution in search of a problem. The Federal Communications Commission recently told Congress that it will miss a February deadline for delivering a national broadband plan and requested a one-month extension. If it keeps missing deadlines, nearly everyone in the U.S. might soon have high-speed Internet. As part of last year's stimulus package, Congress asked the FCC for a plan to ensure that everybody in the country has access to broadband. That's a worthy goal, but the idea of a government plan is based on a false presumption that the spread of broadband is stalled. The reality is that broadband adoption continues apace, as does the quality and speed of Internet connections. Between 2000 and 2008, residential broadband subscribers grew to 80 million from five million, according to a study by Bret Swanson of Entropy Economics. Broadband penetration among active Internet users at home is 94%, and nearly 99% of U.S. workers connect to the Internet with broadband. A typical cable modem today is 10 times faster than a decade ago. Wireless bandwidth growth per capita has been no less impressive, showing a 500-fold increase since 2000. Meanwhile, U.S. information and communications technology investment in 2008 alone totalled $455 billion, or 22% of all U.S. capital investment. Nominal capital investment in telecom between 2000 and 2008 was more than $3.5 trillion. Those who favor more government control of the Internet ignore this private progress and point to international rankings. According to OECD estimates, the U.S. ranks 15th in the world in broadband penetration per capita. But because household sizes differ from country to country, and the U.S. has relatively large households, the per capita figures can be misleading. A better way to gauge wired broadband connections is per household, not per person. By that measure the U.S. ranks somewhere between 8th and 10th. Such comparisons will soon be moot in any case because broadband penetration is growing rapidly in all OECD countries. The Technology Policy Institute notes that at the current rates of broadband adoption the U.S. is behind the leaders only by a number of months, and all wealthy OECD countries will reach a saturation point within the next few years. Even the Obama Justice Department seems to reject the broadband market failure thesis. In any industry subject to significant technological change, it is important that the evaluation of competition be forward-looking rather than based on static definitions of products and services, said the Antitrust Division in a January 4 filing to the FCC. In the case of broadband services, it's clear that the market is shifting generally in the direction of faster speeds and additional mobility. Justice concludes that while enacting some form of regulation to prevent certain providers from exercising monopoly control may be tempting . . . care must be taken to avoid stifling the infrastructure investments needed to expand broadband access. No matter, the default position of the Obama Administration is that little useful happens without government, so the FCC is busy planning. Chairman Julius Genachowski is sympathetic to net neutrality regulations that would prevent Internet service providers from using differentiated pricing to manage Web traffic. Liberal interest groups like Public Knowledge and Harvard's Berkman Center for the Internet and Society are urging the agency to reinstitute open access mandates that would force cable operators and phone companies to share their infrastructure with rivals at government-set prices. The irony is that the private investment and innovation of recent years have occurred in the wake of the FCC rolling back similar rules that held back telecom in the 1990s. Consumers continue to have access to more and more broadband services, while Google, YouTube, iTunes, Facebook and Netflix originated in the U.S. Doesn't the Obama Administration have enough to do than mess with a part of the U.S. economy that is working well? Regards, Jeff Jeff Broadwick Sales Manager, ImageStream 800-813-5123 x106 (US/Can) +1 574-935-8484 x106 (Int'l) +1 574-935-8488 (Fax) WISPA Wants You! Join today! http://signup.wispa.org/ WISPA
Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ
I still don't buy that number in the first place. I wish I knew more about how Brian came up with it. What % of rural households does that work out to be? marlon - Original Message - From: Jack Unger jun...@ask-wi.com To: WISPA General List wireless@wispa.org Sent: Wednesday, January 20, 2010 8:27 AM Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ Sorry but this article (accidentally or intentionally) misses or (more likely) ignores the point that 24 or more million occupied American households have no access to broadband. The WSJ is merely a mouthpiece (especially now that Rupurt Murdoch owns it) for the telcos. jack Jeff Broadwick wrote: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703652104574652501608376552.ht ml?mod=WSJ_Opinion_AboveLEFTTop * REVIEW OUTLOOK * JANUARY 20, 2010 A 'National Broadband Plan' One more solution in search of a problem. The Federal Communications Commission recently told Congress that it will miss a February deadline for delivering a national broadband plan and requested a one-month extension. If it keeps missing deadlines, nearly everyone in the U.S. might soon have high-speed Internet. As part of last year's stimulus package, Congress asked the FCC for a plan to ensure that everybody in the country has access to broadband. That's a worthy goal, but the idea of a government plan is based on a false presumption that the spread of broadband is stalled. The reality is that broadband adoption continues apace, as does the quality and speed of Internet connections. Between 2000 and 2008, residential broadband subscribers grew to 80 million from five million, according to a study by Bret Swanson of Entropy Economics. Broadband penetration among active Internet users at home is 94%, and nearly 99% of U.S. workers connect to the Internet with broadband. A typical cable modem today is 10 times faster than a decade ago. Wireless bandwidth growth per capita has been no less impressive, showing a 500-fold increase since 2000. Meanwhile, U.S. information and communications technology investment in 2008 alone totalled $455 billion, or 22% of all U.S. capital investment. Nominal capital investment in telecom between 2000 and 2008 was more than $3.5 trillion. Those who favor more government control of the Internet ignore this private progress and point to international rankings. According to OECD estimates, the U.S. ranks 15th in the world in broadband penetration per capita. But because household sizes differ from country to country, and the U.S. has relatively large households, the per capita figures can be misleading. A better way to gauge wired broadband connections is per household, not per person. By that measure the U.S. ranks somewhere between 8th and 10th. Such comparisons will soon be moot in any case because broadband penetration is growing rapidly in all OECD countries. The Technology Policy Institute notes that at the current rates of broadband adoption the U.S. is behind the leaders only by a number of months, and all wealthy OECD countries will reach a saturation point within the next few years. Even the Obama Justice Department seems to reject the broadband market failure thesis. In any industry subject to significant technological change, it is important that the evaluation of competition be forward-looking rather than based on static definitions of products and services, said the Antitrust Division in a January 4 filing to the FCC. In the case of broadband services, it's clear that the market is shifting generally in the direction of faster speeds and additional mobility. Justice concludes that while enacting some form of regulation to prevent certain providers from exercising monopoly control may be tempting . . . care must be taken to avoid stifling the infrastructure investments needed to expand broadband access. No matter, the default position of the Obama Administration is that little useful happens without government, so the FCC is busy planning. Chairman Julius Genachowski is sympathetic to net neutrality regulations that would prevent Internet service providers from using differentiated pricing to manage Web traffic. Liberal interest groups like Public Knowledge and Harvard's Berkman Center for the Internet and Society are urging the agency to reinstitute open access mandates that would force cable operators and phone companies to share their infrastructure with rivals at government-set prices. The irony is that the private investment and innovation of recent years have occurred in the wake of the FCC rolling back similar rules that held back telecom in the 1990s. Consumers continue to have access to more and more broadband services, while Google, YouTube, iTunes, Facebook and Netflix originated in the U.S. Doesn't the Obama Administration have enough to do than mess with a part of the U.S. economy that is working well
Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ
We have no one but ourselves to blame for that one. - Mike Hammett Intelligent Computing Solutions http://www.ics-il.com -- From: Jack Unger jun...@ask-wi.com Sent: Wednesday, January 20, 2010 10:27 AM To: WISPA General List wireless@wispa.org Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ Sorry but this article (accidentally or intentionally) misses or (more likely) ignores the point that 24 or more million occupied American households have no access to broadband. The WSJ is merely a mouthpiece (especially now that Rupurt Murdoch owns it) for the telcos. jack Jeff Broadwick wrote: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703652104574652501608376552.ht ml?mod=WSJ_Opinion_AboveLEFTTop * REVIEW OUTLOOK * JANUARY 20, 2010 A 'National Broadband Plan' One more solution in search of a problem. The Federal Communications Commission recently told Congress that it will miss a February deadline for delivering a national broadband plan and requested a one-month extension. If it keeps missing deadlines, nearly everyone in the U.S. might soon have high-speed Internet. As part of last year's stimulus package, Congress asked the FCC for a plan to ensure that everybody in the country has access to broadband. That's a worthy goal, but the idea of a government plan is based on a false presumption that the spread of broadband is stalled. The reality is that broadband adoption continues apace, as does the quality and speed of Internet connections. Between 2000 and 2008, residential broadband subscribers grew to 80 million from five million, according to a study by Bret Swanson of Entropy Economics. Broadband penetration among active Internet users at home is 94%, and nearly 99% of U.S. workers connect to the Internet with broadband. A typical cable modem today is 10 times faster than a decade ago. Wireless bandwidth growth per capita has been no less impressive, showing a 500-fold increase since 2000. Meanwhile, U.S. information and communications technology investment in 2008 alone totalled $455 billion, or 22% of all U.S. capital investment. Nominal capital investment in telecom between 2000 and 2008 was more than $3.5 trillion. Those who favor more government control of the Internet ignore this private progress and point to international rankings. According to OECD estimates, the U.S. ranks 15th in the world in broadband penetration per capita. But because household sizes differ from country to country, and the U.S. has relatively large households, the per capita figures can be misleading. A better way to gauge wired broadband connections is per household, not per person. By that measure the U.S. ranks somewhere between 8th and 10th. Such comparisons will soon be moot in any case because broadband penetration is growing rapidly in all OECD countries. The Technology Policy Institute notes that at the current rates of broadband adoption the U.S. is behind the leaders only by a number of months, and all wealthy OECD countries will reach a saturation point within the next few years. Even the Obama Justice Department seems to reject the broadband market failure thesis. In any industry subject to significant technological change, it is important that the evaluation of competition be forward-looking rather than based on static definitions of products and services, said the Antitrust Division in a January 4 filing to the FCC. In the case of broadband services, it's clear that the market is shifting generally in the direction of faster speeds and additional mobility. Justice concludes that while enacting some form of regulation to prevent certain providers from exercising monopoly control may be tempting . . . care must be taken to avoid stifling the infrastructure investments needed to expand broadband access. No matter, the default position of the Obama Administration is that little useful happens without government, so the FCC is busy planning. Chairman Julius Genachowski is sympathetic to net neutrality regulations that would prevent Internet service providers from using differentiated pricing to manage Web traffic. Liberal interest groups like Public Knowledge and Harvard's Berkman Center for the Internet and Society are urging the agency to reinstitute open access mandates that would force cable operators and phone companies to share their infrastructure with rivals at government-set prices. The irony is that the private investment and innovation of recent years have occurred in the wake of the FCC rolling back similar rules that held back telecom in the 1990s. Consumers continue to have access to more and more broadband services, while Google, YouTube, iTunes, Facebook and Netflix originated in the U.S. Doesn't the Obama Administration have enough to do than mess with a part of the U.S. economy that is working well? Regards
Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ
Good point Mike Hammett wrote: We have no one but ourselves to blame for that one. - Mike Hammett Intelligent Computing Solutions http://www.ics-il.com -- From: "Jack Unger" jun...@ask-wi.com Sent: Wednesday, January 20, 2010 10:27 AM To: "WISPA General List" wireless@wispa.org Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ Sorry but this article (accidentally or intentionally) misses or (more likely) ignores the point that 24 or more million occupied American households have no access to broadband. The WSJ is merely a mouthpiece (especially now that Rupurt Murdoch owns it) for the telcos. jack Jeff Broadwick wrote: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703652104574652501608376552.ht ml?mod=WSJ_Opinion_AboveLEFTTop * REVIEW OUTLOOK * JANUARY 20, 2010 A 'National Broadband Plan' One more solution in search of a problem. The Federal Communications Commission recently told Congress that it will miss a February deadline for delivering a "national broadband plan" and requested a one-month extension. If it keeps missing deadlines, nearly everyone in the U.S. might soon have high-speed Internet. As part of last year's stimulus package, Congress asked the FCC for a plan to ensure that everybody in the country has access to broadband. That's a worthy goal, but the idea of a government plan is based on a false presumption that the spread of broadband is stalled. The reality is that broadband adoption continues apace, as does the quality and speed of Internet connections. Between 2000 and 2008, residential broadband subscribers grew to 80 million from five million, according to a study by Bret Swanson of Entropy Economics. Broadband penetration among active Internet users at home is 94%, and nearly 99% of U.S. workers connect to the Internet with broadband. A typical cable modem today is 10 times faster than a decade ago. Wireless bandwidth growth per capita has been no less impressive, showing a 500-fold increase since 2000. Meanwhile, U.S. information and communications technology investment in 2008 alone totalled $455 billion, or 22% of all U.S. capital investment. Nominal capital investment in telecom between 2000 and 2008 was more than $3.5 trillion. Those who favor more government control of the Internet ignore this private progress and point to international rankings. According to OECD estimates, the U.S. ranks 15th in the world in broadband penetration per capita. But because household sizes differ from country to country, and the U.S. has relatively large households, the per capita figures can be misleading. A better way to gauge wired broadband connections is per household, not per person. By that measure the U.S. ranks somewhere between 8th and 10th. Such comparisons will soon be moot in any case because broadband penetration is growing rapidly in all OECD countries. The Technology Policy Institute notes that "at the current rates of broadband adoption the U.S. is behind the leaders only by a number of months, and all wealthy OECD countries will reach a saturation point within the next few years." Even the Obama Justice Department seems to reject the broadband market failure thesis. "In any industry subject to significant technological change, it is important that the evaluation of competition be forward-looking rather than based on static definitions of products and services," said the Antitrust Division in a January 4 filing to the FCC. "In the case of broadband services, it's clear that the market is shifting generally in the direction of faster speeds and additional mobility." Justice concludes that while "enacting some form of regulation to prevent certain providers from exercising monopoly control may be tempting . . . care must be taken to avoid stifling the infrastructure investments needed to expand broadband access." No matter, the default position of the Obama Administration is that little useful happens without government, so the FCC is busy planning. Chairman Julius Genachowski is sympathetic to net neutrality regulations that would prevent Internet service providers from using differentiated pricing to manage Web traffic. Liberal interest groups like Public Knowledge and Harvard's Berkman Center for the Internet and Society are urging the agency to reinstitute "open access" mandates that would force cable operators and phone companies to share their infrastructure with rivals at government-set prices. The irony is that the private investment and innovation of recent years have occurred in the wake of the FCC rolling back similar rules that held back telecom in the 1990s. Consumers continue to have access to more and more broadband services, while Google, YouTube, iTunes, Facebook and Netflix originated in the U.S. Doesn't the Obama Administration have enough to do than mess wit
Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ
I don't think it ignores that, it is suggesting that the private sector is in the process of closing that gap, without government investment and/or intervention. I don't believe that it is arguable that coverage is increasing...that's the net effect of the whole WISP industry. Regards, Jeff Jeff Broadwick ImageStream 800-813-5123 x106 (US/Can) +1 574-935-8484 x106 (Int'l) -Original Message- From: wireless-boun...@wispa.org [mailto:wireless-boun...@wispa.org] On Behalf Of Jack Unger Sent: Wednesday, January 20, 2010 11:28 AM To: WISPA General List Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ Sorry but this article (accidentally or intentionally) misses or (more likely) ignores the point that 24 or more million occupied American households have no access to broadband. The WSJ is merely a mouthpiece (especially now that Rupurt Murdoch owns it) for the telcos. jack Jeff Broadwick wrote: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703652104574652501608376 552.ht ml?mod=WSJ_Opinion_AboveLEFTTop * REVIEW OUTLOOK * JANUARY 20, 2010 A 'National Broadband Plan' One more solution in search of a problem. The Federal Communications Commission recently told Congress that it will miss a February deadline for delivering a national broadband plan and requested a one-month extension. If it keeps missing deadlines, nearly everyone in the U.S. might soon have high-speed Internet. As part of last year's stimulus package, Congress asked the FCC for a plan to ensure that everybody in the country has access to broadband. That's a worthy goal, but the idea of a government plan is based on a false presumption that the spread of broadband is stalled. The reality is that broadband adoption continues apace, as does the quality and speed of Internet connections. Between 2000 and 2008, residential broadband subscribers grew to 80 million from five million, according to a study by Bret Swanson of Entropy Economics. Broadband penetration among active Internet users at home is 94%, and nearly 99% of U.S. workers connect to the Internet with broadband. A typical cable modem today is 10 times faster than a decade ago. Wireless bandwidth growth per capita has been no less impressive, showing a 500-fold increase since 2000. Meanwhile, U.S. information and communications technology investment in 2008 alone totalled $455 billion, or 22% of all U.S. capital investment. Nominal capital investment in telecom between 2000 and 2008 was more than $3.5 trillion. Those who favor more government control of the Internet ignore this private progress and point to international rankings. According to OECD estimates, the U.S. ranks 15th in the world in broadband penetration per capita. But because household sizes differ from country to country, and the U.S. has relatively large households, the per capita figures can be misleading. A better way to gauge wired broadband connections is per household, not per person. By that measure the U.S. ranks somewhere between 8th and 10th. Such comparisons will soon be moot in any case because broadband penetration is growing rapidly in all OECD countries. The Technology Policy Institute notes that at the current rates of broadband adoption the U.S. is behind the leaders only by a number of months, and all wealthy OECD countries will reach a saturation point within the next few years. Even the Obama Justice Department seems to reject the broadband market failure thesis. In any industry subject to significant technological change, it is important that the evaluation of competition be forward-looking rather than based on static definitions of products and services, said the Antitrust Division in a January 4 filing to the FCC. In the case of broadband services, it's clear that the market is shifting generally in the direction of faster speeds and additional mobility. Justice concludes that while enacting some form of regulation to prevent certain providers from exercising monopoly control may be tempting . . . care must be taken to avoid stifling the infrastructure investments needed to expand broadband access. No matter, the default position of the Obama Administration is that little useful happens without government, so the FCC is busy planning. Chairman Julius Genachowski is sympathetic to net neutrality regulations that would prevent Internet service providers from using differentiated pricing to manage Web traffic. Liberal interest groups like Public Knowledge and Harvard's Berkman Center for the Internet and Society are urging the agency to reinstitute open access mandates that would force cable operators and phone companies to share their infrastructure with rivals at government-set prices. The irony is that the private investment and innovation of recent years have occurred in the wake of the FCC rolling back similar rules that held back telecom in the 1990s. Consumers
Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ
Sure coverage is "increasing" but that's just a distraction. The issue is that the current level of home broadband Internet access is way too low and millions of people are deprived of Internet access at home (or in a home-based business). The article is nothing more than a thinly-veiled hit piece for the telcos. Without saying so, the article argues for keeping millions living in the past, without having the benefits of the Internet to improve their lives. This is as clear as the nose on my face. (No, a picture is NOT attached) :) jack Jeff Broadwick wrote: I don't think it ignores that, it is suggesting that the private sector is in the process of closing that gap, without government "investment" and/or intervention. I don't believe that it is arguable that coverage is increasing...that's the net effect of the whole WISP industry. Regards, Jeff Jeff Broadwick ImageStream 800-813-5123 x106 (US/Can) +1 574-935-8484 x106 (Int'l) -Original Message- From: wireless-boun...@wispa.org [mailto:wireless-boun...@wispa.org] On Behalf Of Jack Unger Sent: Wednesday, January 20, 2010 11:28 AM To: WISPA General List Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ Sorry but this article (accidentally or intentionally) misses or (more likely) ignores the point that 24 or more million occupied American households have no access to broadband. The WSJ is merely a mouthpiece (especially now that Rupurt Murdoch owns it) for the telcos. jack Jeff Broadwick wrote: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703652104574652501608376 552.ht ml?mod=WSJ_Opinion_AboveLEFTTop * REVIEW OUTLOOK * JANUARY 20, 2010 A 'National Broadband Plan' One more solution in search of a problem. The Federal Communications Commission recently told Congress that it will miss a February deadline for delivering a "national broadband plan" and requested a one-month extension. If it keeps missing deadlines, nearly everyone in the U.S. might soon have high-speed Internet. As part of last year's stimulus package, Congress asked the FCC for a plan to ensure that everybody in the country has access to broadband. That's a worthy goal, but the idea of a government plan is based on a false presumption that the spread of broadband is stalled. The reality is that broadband adoption continues apace, as does the quality and speed of Internet connections. Between 2000 and 2008, residential broadband subscribers grew to 80 million from five million, according to a study by Bret Swanson of Entropy Economics. Broadband penetration among active Internet users at home is 94%, and nearly 99% of U.S. workers connect to the Internet with broadband. A typical cable modem today is 10 times faster than a decade ago. Wireless bandwidth growth per capita has been no less impressive, showing a 500-fold increase since 2000. Meanwhile, U.S. information and communications technology investment in 2008 alone totalled $455 billion, or 22% of all U.S. capital investment. Nominal capital investment in telecom between 2000 and 2008 was more than $3.5 trillion. Those who favor more government control of the Internet ignore this private progress and point to international rankings. According to OECD estimates, the U.S. ranks 15th in the world in broadband penetration per capita. But because household sizes differ from country to country, and the U.S. has relatively large households, the per capita figures can be misleading. A better way to gauge wired broadband connections is per household, not per person. By that measure the U.S. ranks somewhere between 8th and 10th. Such comparisons will soon be moot in any case because broadband penetration is growing rapidly in all OECD countries. The Technology Policy Institute notes that "at the current rates of broadband adoption the U.S. is behind the leaders only by a number of months, and all wealthy OECD countries will reach a saturation point within the next few years." Even the Obama Justice Department seems to reject the broadband market failure thesis. "In any industry subject to significant technological change, it is important that the evaluation of competition be forward-looking rather than based on static definitions of products and services," said the Antitrust Division in a January 4 filing to the FCC. "In the case of broadband services, it's clear that the market is shifting generally in the direction of faster speeds and additional mobility." Justice concludes that while "enacting some form of regulation to prevent certain providers from exercising monopoly control may be tempting . . . care must be taken to avoid stifling the infrastructure investments needed to expand broadband access." No matter, the default position of the Obama Administration is that little useful hap
Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ
I suppose you could look at it that way, but I didn't read that in there at all. Regards, Jeff Jeff Broadwick ImageStream 800-813-5123 x106 (US/Can) +1 574-935-8484 x106 (Int'l) _ From: wireless-boun...@wispa.org [mailto:wireless-boun...@wispa.org] On Behalf Of Jack Unger Sent: Wednesday, January 20, 2010 1:17 PM To: WISPA General List Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ Sure coverage is increasing but that's just a distraction. The issue is that the current level of home broadband Internet access is way too low and millions of people are deprived of Internet access at home (or in a home-based business). The article is nothing more than a thinly-veiled hit piece for the telcos. Without saying so, the article argues for keeping millions living in the past, without having the benefits of the Internet to improve their lives. This is as clear as the nose on my face. (No, a picture is NOT attached) :) jack Jeff Broadwick wrote: I don't think it ignores that, it is suggesting that the private sector is in the process of closing that gap, without government investment and/or intervention. I don't believe that it is arguable that coverage is increasing...that's the net effect of the whole WISP industry. Regards, Jeff Jeff Broadwick ImageStream 800-813-5123 x106 (US/Can) +1 574-935-8484 x106 (Int'l) -Original Message- From: wireless-boun...@wispa.org [mailto:wireless-boun...@wispa.org] On Behalf Of Jack Unger Sent: Wednesday, January 20, 2010 11:28 AM To: WISPA General List Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ Sorry but this article (accidentally or intentionally) misses or (more likely) ignores the point that 24 or more million occupied American households have no access to broadband. The WSJ is merely a mouthpiece (especially now that Rupurt Murdoch owns it) for the telcos. jack Jeff Broadwick wrote: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703652104574652501608376 552.ht ml?mod=WSJ_Opinion_AboveLEFTTop * REVIEW OUTLOOK * JANUARY 20, 2010 A 'National Broadband Plan' One more solution in search of a problem. The Federal Communications Commission recently told Congress that it will miss a February deadline for delivering a national broadband plan and requested a one-month extension. If it keeps missing deadlines, nearly everyone in the U.S. might soon have high-speed Internet. As part of last year's stimulus package, Congress asked the FCC for a plan to ensure that everybody in the country has access to broadband. That's a worthy goal, but the idea of a government plan is based on a false presumption that the spread of broadband is stalled. The reality is that broadband adoption continues apace, as does the quality and speed of Internet connections. Between 2000 and 2008, residential broadband subscribers grew to 80 million from five million, according to a study by Bret Swanson of Entropy Economics. Broadband penetration among active Internet users at home is 94%, and nearly 99% of U.S. workers connect to the Internet with broadband. A typical cable modem today is 10 times faster than a decade ago. Wireless bandwidth growth per capita has been no less impressive, showing a 500-fold increase since 2000. Meanwhile, U.S. information and communications technology investment in 2008 alone totalled $455 billion, or 22% of all U.S. capital investment. Nominal capital investment in telecom between 2000 and 2008 was more than $3.5 trillion. Those who favor more government control of the Internet ignore this private progress and point to international rankings. According to OECD estimates, the U.S. ranks 15th in the world in broadband penetration per capita. But because household sizes differ from country to country, and the U.S. has relatively large households, the per capita figures can be misleading. A better way to gauge wired broadband connections is per household, not per person. By that measure the U.S. ranks somewhere between 8th and 10th. Such comparisons will soon be moot in any case because broadband penetration is growing rapidly in all OECD countries. The Technology Policy Institute notes that at the current rates of broadband adoption the U.S. is behind the leaders only by a number of months, and all wealthy OECD countries will reach a saturation point within the next few years. Even the Obama Justice Department seems to reject the broadband market failure thesis. In any industry subject to significant technological change, it is important that the evaluation of competition be forward-looking rather than based on static definitions of products and services, said the Antitrust Division in a January 4 filing to the FCC. In the case of broadband services, it's clear that the market is shifting generally in the direction of faster speeds and additional mobility
Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ
http://www.wispa.org/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/Jack.JPG :-p - Mike Hammett Intelligent Computing Solutions http://www.ics-il.com From: Jack Unger Sent: Wednesday, January 20, 2010 12:16 PM To: WISPA General List Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ Sure coverage is increasing but that's just a distraction. The issue is that the current level of home broadband Internet access is way too low and millions of people are deprived of Internet access at home (or in a home-based business). The article is nothing more than a thinly-veiled hit piece for the telcos. Without saying so, the article argues for keeping millions living in the past, without having the benefits of the Internet to improve their lives. This is as clear as the nose on my face. (No, a picture is NOT attached) :) jack Jeff Broadwick wrote: I don't think it ignores that, it is suggesting that the private sector is in the process of closing that gap, without government investment and/or intervention. I don't believe that it is arguable that coverage is increasing...that's the net effect of the whole WISP industry. Regards, Jeff Jeff Broadwick ImageStream 800-813-5123 x106 (US/Can) +1 574-935-8484 x106 (Int'l) -Original Message- From: wireless-boun...@wispa.org [mailto:wireless-boun...@wispa.org] On Behalf Of Jack Unger Sent: Wednesday, January 20, 2010 11:28 AM To: WISPA General List Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ Sorry but this article (accidentally or intentionally) misses or (more likely) ignores the point that 24 or more million occupied American households have no access to broadband. The WSJ is merely a mouthpiece (especially now that Rupurt Murdoch owns it) for the telcos. jack Jeff Broadwick wrote: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703652104574652501608376 552.ht ml?mod=WSJ_Opinion_AboveLEFTTop * REVIEW OUTLOOK * JANUARY 20, 2010 A 'National Broadband Plan' One more solution in search of a problem. The Federal Communications Commission recently told Congress that it will miss a February deadline for delivering a national broadband plan and requested a one-month extension. If it keeps missing deadlines, nearly everyone in the U.S. might soon have high-speed Internet. As part of last year's stimulus package, Congress asked the FCC for a plan to ensure that everybody in the country has access to broadband. That's a worthy goal, but the idea of a government plan is based on a false presumption that the spread of broadband is stalled. The reality is that broadband adoption continues apace, as does the quality and speed of Internet connections. Between 2000 and 2008, residential broadband subscribers grew to 80 million from five million, according to a study by Bret Swanson of Entropy Economics. Broadband penetration among active Internet users at home is 94%, and nearly 99% of U.S. workers connect to the Internet with broadband. A typical cable modem today is 10 times faster than a decade ago. Wireless bandwidth growth per capita has been no less impressive, showing a 500-fold increase since 2000. Meanwhile, U.S. information and communications technology investment in 2008 alone totalled $455 billion, or 22% of all U.S. capital investment. Nominal capital investment in telecom between 2000 and 2008 was more than $3.5 trillion. Those who favor more government control of the Internet ignore this private progress and point to international rankings. According to OECD estimates, the U.S. ranks 15th in the world in broadband penetration per capita. But because household sizes differ from country to country, and the U.S. has relatively large households, the per capita figures can be misleading. A better way to gauge wired broadband connections is per household, not per person. By that measure the U.S. ranks somewhere between 8th and 10th. Such comparisons will soon be moot in any case because broadband penetration is growing rapidly in all OECD countries. The Technology Policy Institute notes that at the current rates of broadband adoption the U.S. is behind the leaders only by a number of months, and all wealthy OECD countries will reach a saturation point within the next few years. Even the Obama Justice Department seems to reject the broadband market failure thesis. In any industry subject to significant technological change, it is important that the evaluation of competition be forward-looking rather than based on static definitions of products and services, said the Antitrust Division in a January 4 filing to the FCC. In the case of broadband services, it's clear that the market is shifting generally in the direction of faster speeds and additional mobility. Justice concludes that while enacting some form of regulation to prevent certain providers from exercising monopoly control may be tempting . . . care must be taken to avoid stifling the infrastructure investments needed to expand
Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ
Thanks Mike. Now you can see what I mean !!! Mike Hammett wrote: http://www.wispa.org/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/Jack.JPG :-p - Mike Hammett Intelligent Computing Solutions http://www.ics-il.com From: Jack Unger Sent: Wednesday, January 20, 2010 12:16 PM To: WISPA General List Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ Sure coverage is increasing but that's just a distraction. The issue is that the current level of home broadband Internet access is way too low and millions of people are deprived of Internet access at home (or in a home-based business). The article is nothing more than a thinly-veiled hit piece for the telcos. Without saying so, the article argues for keeping millions living in the past, without having the benefits of the Internet to improve their lives. This is as clear as the nose on my face. (No, a picture is NOT attached) :) jack Jeff Broadwick wrote: I don't think it ignores that, it is suggesting that the private sector is in the process of closing that gap, without government investment and/or intervention. I don't believe that it is arguable that coverage is increasing...that's the net effect of the whole WISP industry. Regards, Jeff Jeff Broadwick ImageStream 800-813-5123 x106 (US/Can) +1 574-935-8484 x106 (Int'l) -Original Message- From: wireless-boun...@wispa.org [mailto:wireless-boun...@wispa.org] On Behalf Of Jack Unger Sent: Wednesday, January 20, 2010 11:28 AM To: WISPA General List Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ Sorry but this article (accidentally or intentionally) misses or (more likely) ignores the point that 24 or more million occupied American households have no access to broadband. The WSJ is merely a mouthpiece (especially now that Rupurt Murdoch owns it) for the telcos. jack Jeff Broadwick wrote: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703652104574652501608376 552.ht ml?mod=WSJ_Opinion_AboveLEFTTop * REVIEW OUTLOOK * JANUARY 20, 2010 A 'National Broadband Plan' One more solution in search of a problem. The Federal Communications Commission recently told Congress that it will miss a February deadline for delivering a national broadband plan and requested a one-month extension. If it keeps missing deadlines, nearly everyone in the U.S. might soon have high-speed Internet. As part of last year's stimulus package, Congress asked the FCC for a plan to ensure that everybody in the country has access to broadband. That's a worthy goal, but the idea of a government plan is based on a false presumption that the spread of broadband is stalled. The reality is that broadband adoption continues apace, as does the quality and speed of Internet connections. Between 2000 and 2008, residential broadband subscribers grew to 80 million from five million, according to a study by Bret Swanson of Entropy Economics. Broadband penetration among active Internet users at home is 94%, and nearly 99% of U.S. workers connect to the Internet with broadband. A typical cable modem today is 10 times faster than a decade ago. Wireless bandwidth growth per capita has been no less impressive, showing a 500-fold increase since 2000. Meanwhile, U.S. information and communications technology investment in 2008 alone totalled $455 billion, or 22% of all U.S. capital investment. Nominal capital investment in telecom between 2000 and 2008 was more than $3.5 trillion. Those who favor more government control of the Internet ignore this private progress and point to international rankings. According to OECD estimates, the U.S. ranks 15th in the world in broadband penetration per capita. But because household sizes differ from country to country, and the U.S. has relatively large households, the per capita figures can be misleading. A better way to gauge wired broadband connections is per household, not per person. By that measure the U.S. ranks somewhere between 8th and 10th. Such comparisons will soon be moot in any case because broadband penetration is growing rapidly in all OECD countries. The Technology Policy Institute notes that at the current rates of broadband adoption the U.S. is behind the leaders only by a number of months, and all wealthy OECD countries will reach a saturation point within the next few years. Even the Obama Justice Department seems to reject the broadband market failure thesis. In any industry subject to significant technological change, it is important that the evaluation of competition be forward-looking rather than based on static definitions of products and services, said the Antitrust Division in a January 4 filing to the FCC. In the case of broadband services, it's clear that the market is shifting generally in the direction of faster speeds and additional mobility. Justice concludes that while enacting some form of regulation to prevent certain
Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ
OK, as I understand that the report is based upon the 477 data? marlon - Original Message - From: Jack Unger To: WISPA General List Sent: Wednesday, January 20, 2010 9:41 AM Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ Marlon, See the attached report. Go to Table 2 on page 11. Look at the last cell in the lower, right-hand corner. jack Marlon K. Schafer wrote: I still don't buy that number in the first place. I wish I knew more about how Brian came up with it. What % of rural households does that work out to be? marlon - Original Message - From: Jack Unger jun...@ask-wi.com To: WISPA General List wireless@wispa.org Sent: Wednesday, January 20, 2010 8:27 AM Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ Sorry but this article (accidentally or intentionally) misses or (more likely) ignores the point that 24 or more million occupied American households have no access to broadband. The WSJ is merely a mouthpiece (especially now that Rupurt Murdoch owns it) for the telcos. jack Jeff Broadwick wrote: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703652104574652501608376552.ht ml?mod=WSJ_Opinion_AboveLEFTTop * REVIEW OUTLOOK * JANUARY 20, 2010 A 'National Broadband Plan' One more solution in search of a problem. The Federal Communications Commission recently told Congress that it will miss a February deadline for delivering a national broadband plan and requested a one-month extension. If it keeps missing deadlines, nearly everyone in the U.S. might soon have high-speed Internet. As part of last year's stimulus package, Congress asked the FCC for a plan to ensure that everybody in the country has access to broadband. That's a worthy goal, but the idea of a government plan is based on a false presumption that the spread of broadband is stalled. The reality is that broadband adoption continues apace, as does the quality and speed of Internet connections. Between 2000 and 2008, residential broadband subscribers grew to 80 million from five million, according to a study by Bret Swanson of Entropy Economics. Broadband penetration among active Internet users at home is 94%, and nearly 99% of U.S. workers connect to the Internet with broadband. A typical cable modem today is 10 times faster than a decade ago. Wireless bandwidth growth per capita has been no less impressive, showing a 500-fold increase since 2000. Meanwhile, U.S. information and communications technology investment in 2008 alone totalled $455 billion, or 22% of all U.S. capital investment. Nominal capital investment in telecom between 2000 and 2008 was more than $3.5 trillion. Those who favor more government control of the Internet ignore this private progress and point to international rankings. According to OECD estimates, the U.S. ranks 15th in the world in broadband penetration per capita. But because household sizes differ from country to country, and the U.S. has relatively large households, the per capita figures can be misleading. A better way to gauge wired broadband connections is per household, not per person. By that measure the U.S. ranks somewhere between 8th and 10th. Such comparisons will soon be moot in any case because broadband penetration is growing rapidly in all OECD countries. The Technology Policy Institute notes that at the current rates of broadband adoption the U.S. is behind the leaders only by a number of months, and all wealthy OECD countries will reach a saturation point within the next few years. Even the Obama Justice Department seems to reject the broadband market failure thesis. In any industry subject to significant technological change, it is important that the evaluation of competition be forward-looking rather than based on static definitions of products and services, said the Antitrust Division in a January 4 filing to the FCC. In the case of broadband services, it's clear that the market is shifting generally in the direction of faster speeds and additional mobility. Justice concludes that while enacting some form of regulation to prevent certain providers from exercising monopoly control may be tempting . . . care must be taken to avoid stifling the infrastructure investments needed to expand broadband access. No matter, the default position of the Obama Administration is that little useful happens without government, so the FCC is busy planning. Chairman Julius Genachowski is sympathetic to net neutrality regulations that would prevent Internet service providers from using differentiated pricing to manage Web traffic. Liberal interest groups like Public Knowledge and Harvard's Berkman Center for the Internet and Society are urging the agency to reinstitute open access mandates that would force cable operators and phone companies to share their infrastructure with rivals at government-set prices. The irony is that the private investment and innovation of recent years have occurred in the wake of the FCC rolling back similar
Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ
Nice teddy bear! - Original Message - From: Mike Hammett wispawirel...@ics-il.net To: WISPA General List wireless@wispa.org Sent: Wednesday, January 20, 2010 11:10 AM Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ http://www.wispa.org/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/Jack.JPG :-p WISPA Wants You! Join today! http://signup.wispa.org/ WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/
Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ
Thanks! I feel real affectionate towards the little guy. That's why I keep him here, real close by me for 18 hours every day. Here's here right now and he just said "Hi Marlon". BTW, he's wearing his Studebaker hat again. jack Marlon K. Schafer wrote: Nice teddy bear! - Original Message - From: "Mike Hammett" wispawirel...@ics-il.net To: "WISPA General List" wireless@wispa.org Sent: Wednesday, January 20, 2010 11:10 AM Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ http://www.wispa.org/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/Jack.JPG :-p WISPA Wants You! Join today! http://signup.wispa.org/ WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/ -- Jack Unger - President, Ask-Wi.Com, Inc. Network Design - Technical Writing - Technical Training Serving the Broadband Wireless, Networking and Telecom Communities Since 1993 www.ask-wi.com 818-227-4220 jun...@ask-wi.com WISPA Wants You! Join today! http://signup.wispa.org/ WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/
Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ
Right: The Technology Policy Institute notes that at the current rates of broadband adoption the U.S. is behind the leaders only by a number of months, and all wealthy OECD countries will reach a saturation point within the next few years. Now, how many here are updating their business models to compete with the government? -RickG On Wed, Jan 20, 2010 at 12:34 PM, Jeff Broadwick jeffl...@comcast.netwrote: I don't think it ignores that, it is suggesting that the private sector is in the process of closing that gap, without government investment and/or intervention. I don't believe that it is arguable that coverage is increasing...that's the net effect of the whole WISP industry. Regards, Jeff Jeff Broadwick ImageStream 800-813-5123 x106 (US/Can) +1 574-935-8484 x106 (Int'l) -Original Message- From: wireless-boun...@wispa.org [mailto:wireless-boun...@wispa.org] On Behalf Of Jack Unger Sent: Wednesday, January 20, 2010 11:28 AM To: WISPA General List Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ Sorry but this article (accidentally or intentionally) misses or (more likely) ignores the point that 24 or more million occupied American households have no access to broadband. The WSJ is merely a mouthpiece (especially now that Rupurt Murdoch owns it) for the telcos. jack Jeff Broadwick wrote: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703652104574652501608376 552.ht ml?mod=WSJ_Opinion_AboveLEFTTop * REVIEW OUTLOOK * JANUARY 20, 2010 A 'National Broadband Plan' One more solution in search of a problem. The Federal Communications Commission recently told Congress that it will miss a February deadline for delivering a national broadband plan and requested a one-month extension. If it keeps missing deadlines, nearly everyone in the U.S. might soon have high-speed Internet. As part of last year's stimulus package, Congress asked the FCC for a plan to ensure that everybody in the country has access to broadband. That's a worthy goal, but the idea of a government plan is based on a false presumption that the spread of broadband is stalled. The reality is that broadband adoption continues apace, as does the quality and speed of Internet connections. Between 2000 and 2008, residential broadband subscribers grew to 80 million from five million, according to a study by Bret Swanson of Entropy Economics. Broadband penetration among active Internet users at home is 94%, and nearly 99% of U.S. workers connect to the Internet with broadband. A typical cable modem today is 10 times faster than a decade ago. Wireless bandwidth growth per capita has been no less impressive, showing a 500-fold increase since 2000. Meanwhile, U.S. information and communications technology investment in 2008 alone totalled $455 billion, or 22% of all U.S. capital investment. Nominal capital investment in telecom between 2000 and 2008 was more than $3.5 trillion. Those who favor more government control of the Internet ignore this private progress and point to international rankings. According to OECD estimates, the U.S. ranks 15th in the world in broadband penetration per capita. But because household sizes differ from country to country, and the U.S. has relatively large households, the per capita figures can be misleading. A better way to gauge wired broadband connections is per household, not per person. By that measure the U.S. ranks somewhere between 8th and 10th. Such comparisons will soon be moot in any case because broadband penetration is growing rapidly in all OECD countries. The Technology Policy Institute notes that at the current rates of broadband adoption the U.S. is behind the leaders only by a number of months, and all wealthy OECD countries will reach a saturation point within the next few years. Even the Obama Justice Department seems to reject the broadband market failure thesis. In any industry subject to significant technological change, it is important that the evaluation of competition be forward-looking rather than based on static definitions of products and services, said the Antitrust Division in a January 4 filing to the FCC. In the case of broadband services, it's clear that the market is shifting generally in the direction of faster speeds and additional mobility. Justice concludes that while enacting some form of regulation to prevent certain providers from exercising monopoly control may be tempting . . . care must be taken to avoid stifling the infrastructure investments needed to expand broadband access. No matter, the default position of the Obama Administration is that little useful happens without government, so the FCC is busy planning. Chairman Julius Genachowski is sympathetic to net neutrality regulations that would prevent Internet service providers from using differentiated pricing to manage Web traffic. Liberal
Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ
Forgive me if I'm reading the report wrong but isnt deprived a strong word considering the take rate according to the report is only 75%? My take rate here is only about 20% of the LOS customers. Most people here either dont want it or cant afford it. So, why waste resources building out to them? -RickG On Wed, Jan 20, 2010 at 1:16 PM, Jack Unger jun...@ask-wi.com wrote: Sure coverage is increasing but that's just a distraction. The issue is that the current level of home broadband Internet access is way too low and millions of people are deprived of Internet access at home (or in a home-based business). The article is nothing more than a thinly-veiled hit piece for the telcos. Without saying so, the article argues for keeping millions living in the past, without having the benefits of the Internet to improve their lives. This is as clear as the nose on my face. (No, a picture is NOT attached) :) jack Jeff Broadwick wrote: I don't think it ignores that, it is suggesting that the private sector is in the process of closing that gap, without government investment and/or intervention. I don't believe that it is arguable that coverage is increasing...that's the net effect of the whole WISP industry. Regards, Jeff Jeff Broadwick ImageStream 800-813-5123 x106 (US/Can) +1 574-935-8484 x106 (Int'l) -Original Message- From: wireless-boun...@wispa.org [mailto:wireless-boun...@wispa.org wireless-boun...@wispa.org] On Behalf Of Jack Unger Sent: Wednesday, January 20, 2010 11:28 AM To: WISPA General List Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ Sorry but this article (accidentally or intentionally) misses or (more likely) ignores the point that 24 or more million occupied American households have no access to broadband. The WSJ is merely a mouthpiece (especially now that Rupurt Murdoch owns it) for the telcos. jack Jeff Broadwick wrote: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703652104574652501608376552.ht ml?mod=WSJ_Opinion_AboveLEFTTop * REVIEW OUTLOOK * JANUARY 20, 2010 A 'National Broadband Plan' One more solution in search of a problem. The Federal Communications Commission recently told Congress that it will miss a February deadline for delivering a national broadband plan and requested a one-month extension. If it keeps missing deadlines, nearly everyone in the U.S. might soon have high-speed Internet. As part of last year's stimulus package, Congress asked the FCC for a plan to ensure that everybody in the country has access to broadband. That's a worthy goal, but the idea of a government plan is based on a false presumption that the spread of broadband is stalled. The reality is that broadband adoption continues apace, as does the quality and speed of Internet connections. Between 2000 and 2008, residential broadband subscribers grew to 80 million from five million, according to a study by Bret Swanson of Entropy Economics. Broadband penetration among active Internet users at home is 94%, and nearly 99% of U.S. workers connect to the Internet with broadband. A typical cable modem today is 10 times faster than a decade ago. Wireless bandwidth growth per capita has been no less impressive, showing a 500-fold increase since 2000. Meanwhile, U.S. information and communications technology investment in 2008 alone totalled $455 billion, or 22% of all U.S. capital investment. Nominal capital investment in telecom between 2000 and 2008 was more than $3.5 trillion. Those who favor more government control of the Internet ignore this private progress and point to international rankings. According to OECD estimates, the U.S. ranks 15th in the world in broadband penetration per capita. But because household sizes differ from country to country, and the U.S. has relatively large households, the per capita figures can be misleading. A better way to gauge wired broadband connections is per household, not per person. By that measure the U.S. ranks somewhere between 8th and 10th. Such comparisons will soon be moot in any case because broadband penetration is growing rapidly in all OECD countries. The Technology Policy Institute notes that at the current rates of broadband adoption the U.S. is behind the leaders only by a number of months, and all wealthy OECD countries will reach a saturation point within the next few years. Even the Obama Justice Department seems to reject the broadband market failure thesis. In any industry subject to significant technological change, it is important that the evaluation of competition be forward-looking rather than based on static definitions of products and services, said the Antitrust Division in a January 4 filing to the FCC. In the case of broadband services, it's clear that the market is shifting generally in the direction of faster speeds and additional mobility. Justice concludes that while enacting some form
Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ
Is that before or after the book? On Wed, Jan 20, 2010 at 2:10 PM, Mike Hammett wispawirel...@ics-il.netwrote: http://www.wispa.org/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/Jack.JPG :-p - Mike Hammett Intelligent Computing Solutions http://www.ics-il.com From: Jack Unger Sent: Wednesday, January 20, 2010 12:16 PM To: WISPA General List Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ Sure coverage is increasing but that's just a distraction. The issue is that the current level of home broadband Internet access is way too low and millions of people are deprived of Internet access at home (or in a home-based business). The article is nothing more than a thinly-veiled hit piece for the telcos. Without saying so, the article argues for keeping millions living in the past, without having the benefits of the Internet to improve their lives. This is as clear as the nose on my face. (No, a picture is NOT attached) :) jack Jeff Broadwick wrote: I don't think it ignores that, it is suggesting that the private sector is in the process of closing that gap, without government investment and/or intervention. I don't believe that it is arguable that coverage is increasing...that's the net effect of the whole WISP industry. Regards, Jeff Jeff Broadwick ImageStream 800-813-5123 x106 (US/Can) +1 574-935-8484 x106 (Int'l) -Original Message- From: wireless-boun...@wispa.org [mailto:wireless-boun...@wispa.org] On Behalf Of Jack Unger Sent: Wednesday, January 20, 2010 11:28 AM To: WISPA General List Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ Sorry but this article (accidentally or intentionally) misses or (more likely) ignores the point that 24 or more million occupied American households have no access to broadband. The WSJ is merely a mouthpiece (especially now that Rupurt Murdoch owns it) for the telcos. jack Jeff Broadwick wrote: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703652104574652501608376 552.ht ml?mod=WSJ_Opinion_AboveLEFTTop * REVIEW OUTLOOK * JANUARY 20, 2010 A 'National Broadband Plan' One more solution in search of a problem. The Federal Communications Commission recently told Congress that it will miss a February deadline for delivering a national broadband plan and requested a one-month extension. If it keeps missing deadlines, nearly everyone in the U.S. might soon have high-speed Internet. As part of last year's stimulus package, Congress asked the FCC for a plan to ensure that everybody in the country has access to broadband. That's a worthy goal, but the idea of a government plan is based on a false presumption that the spread of broadband is stalled. The reality is that broadband adoption continues apace, as does the quality and speed of Internet connections. Between 2000 and 2008, residential broadband subscribers grew to 80 million from five million, according to a study by Bret Swanson of Entropy Economics. Broadband penetration among active Internet users at home is 94%, and nearly 99% of U.S. workers connect to the Internet with broadband. A typical cable modem today is 10 times faster than a decade ago. Wireless bandwidth growth per capita has been no less impressive, showing a 500-fold increase since 2000. Meanwhile, U.S. information and communications technology investment in 2008 alone totalled $455 billion, or 22% of all U.S. capital investment. Nominal capital investment in telecom between 2000 and 2008 was more than $3.5 trillion. Those who favor more government control of the Internet ignore this private progress and point to international rankings. According to OECD estimates, the U.S. ranks 15th in the world in broadband penetration per capita. But because household sizes differ from country to country, and the U.S. has relatively large households, the per capita figures can be misleading. A better way to gauge wired broadband connections is per household, not per person. By that measure the U.S. ranks somewhere between 8th and 10th. Such comparisons will soon be moot in any case because broadband penetration is growing rapidly in all OECD countries. The Technology Policy Institute notes that at the current rates of broadband adoption the U.S. is behind the leaders only by a number of months, and all wealthy OECD countries will reach a saturation point within the next few years. Even the Obama Justice Department seems to reject the broadband market failure thesis. In any industry subject to significant technological change, it is important that the evaluation of competition be forward-looking rather than based on static definitions of products and services, said the Antitrust Division in a January 4 filing to the FCC. In the case of broadband services, it's clear that the market is shifting generally in the direction of faster speeds and additional mobility. Justice concludes that while enacting some form of regulation to prevent certain
Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ
Brian, nice job btw. -RickG On Wed, Jan 20, 2010 at 11:00 PM, Brian Webster bwebs...@wirelessmapping.com wrote: Marlon, Read this take rate brief I wrote with one of the data companies I work with. It will take you about 10 minutes. It goes in to specific detail of how the study was conducted and the sources of the data. It was written for the 10 minute managers of the world. The key to being able to come up with the numbers was having the data at the census block level in the first place. Prior to July of this year there were no sources that I am aware of. The only information drawn from the form 477 is the total number of residential subscribers by state. The number of households without access to broadband has no relationship to the 477 data. That should be spelled out in the report. Thank You, Brian Webster -Original Message- From: wireless-boun...@wispa.org [mailto:wireless-boun...@wispa.org]on Behalf Of Marlon K. Schafer Sent: Wednesday, January 20, 2010 8:32 PM To: WISPA General List Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ OK, as I understand that the report is based upon the 477 data? marlon - Original Message - From: Jack Unger To: WISPA General List Sent: Wednesday, January 20, 2010 9:41 AM Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ Marlon, See the attached report. Go to Table 2 on page 11. Look at the last cell in the lower, right-hand corner. jack Marlon K. Schafer wrote: I still don't buy that number in the first place. I wish I knew more about how Brian came up with it. What % of rural households does that work out to be? marlon - Original Message - From: Jack Unger jun...@ask-wi.com To: WISPA General List wireless@wispa.org Sent: Wednesday, January 20, 2010 8:27 AM Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ Sorry but this article (accidentally or intentionally) misses or (more likely) ignores the point that 24 or more million occupied American households have no access to broadband. The WSJ is merely a mouthpiece (especially now that Rupurt Murdoch owns it) for the telcos. jack Jeff Broadwick wrote: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870365210457465250160837655 2.ht ml?mod=WSJ_Opinion_AboveLEFTTop * REVIEW OUTLOOK * JANUARY 20, 2010 A 'National Broadband Plan' One more solution in search of a problem. The Federal Communications Commission recently told Congress that it will miss a February deadline for delivering a national broadband plan and requested a one-month extension. If it keeps missing deadlines, nearly everyone in the U.S. might soon have high-speed Internet. As part of last year's stimulus package, Congress asked the FCC for a plan to ensure that everybody in the country has access to broadband. That's a worthy goal, but the idea of a government plan is based on a false presumption that the spread of broadband is stalled. The reality is that broadband adoption continues apace, as does the quality and speed of Internet connections. Between 2000 and 2008, residential broadband subscribers grew to 80 million from five million, according to a study by Bret Swanson of Entropy Economics. Broadband penetration among active Internet users at home is 94%, and nearly 99% of U.S. workers connect to the Internet with broadband. A typical cable modem today is 10 times faster than a decade ago. Wireless bandwidth growth per capita has been no less impressive, showing a 500-fold increase since 2000. Meanwhile, U.S. information and communications technology investment in 2008 alone totalled $455 billion, or 22% of all U.S. capital investment. Nominal capital investment in telecom between 2000 and 2008 was more than $3.5 trillion. Those who favor more government control of the Internet ignore this private progress and point to international rankings. According to OECD estimates, the U.S. ranks 15th in the world in broadband penetration per capita. But because household sizes differ from country to country, and the U.S. has relatively large households, the per capita figures can be misleading. A better way to gauge wired broadband connections is per household, not per person. By that measure the U.S. ranks somewhere between 8th and 10th. Such comparisons will soon be moot in any case because broadband penetration is growing rapidly in all OECD countries. The Technology Policy Institute notes that at the current rates of broadband adoption the U.S. is behind the leaders only by a number of months, and all wealthy OECD countries will reach a saturation point within the next few years. Even the Obama Justice Department seems to reject the broadband market failure thesis. In any industry subject to significant technological change, it is important that the evaluation of competition be forward-looking rather than based on static definitions of products and services, said the Antitrust Division in a January 4 filing
Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ
Heya Brian, That's the take I had on this. That the number of households services was based on the 477 data. I didn't see any other data sets that would give an indication of the number of actually services households. If the study is based only on the consumers reported via the 477 it's likely to be quite inaccurate. People in government etc. are often quite amazed at the number of customers that I service out here. And I'm just one of a great many companies offering services in the area. I'm trying to get a handle on what additional sources of fact based information are out there. It's important to know what the real number is and yours seems very high to me. I don't think it'll be helpful in the long term if we have a number that gets blown out of the water in the upcoming census. marlon - Original Message - From: Brian Webster bwebs...@wirelessmapping.com To: WISPA General List wireless@wispa.org Sent: Wednesday, January 20, 2010 8:00 PM Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ Marlon, Read this take rate brief I wrote with one of the data companies I work with. It will take you about 10 minutes. It goes in to specific detail of how the study was conducted and the sources of the data. It was written for the 10 minute managers of the world. The key to being able to come up with the numbers was having the data at the census block level in the first place. Prior to July of this year there were no sources that I am aware of. The only information drawn from the form 477 is the total number of residential subscribers by state. The number of households without access to broadband has no relationship to the 477 data. That should be spelled out in the report. Thank You, Brian Webster -Original Message- From: wireless-boun...@wispa.org [mailto:wireless-boun...@wispa.org]on Behalf Of Marlon K. Schafer Sent: Wednesday, January 20, 2010 8:32 PM To: WISPA General List Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ OK, as I understand that the report is based upon the 477 data? marlon - Original Message - From: Jack Unger To: WISPA General List Sent: Wednesday, January 20, 2010 9:41 AM Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ Marlon, See the attached report. Go to Table 2 on page 11. Look at the last cell in the lower, right-hand corner. jack Marlon K. Schafer wrote: I still don't buy that number in the first place. I wish I knew more about how Brian came up with it. What % of rural households does that work out to be? marlon - Original Message - From: Jack Unger jun...@ask-wi.com To: WISPA General List wireless@wispa.org Sent: Wednesday, January 20, 2010 8:27 AM Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ Sorry but this article (accidentally or intentionally) misses or (more likely) ignores the point that 24 or more million occupied American households have no access to broadband. The WSJ is merely a mouthpiece (especially now that Rupurt Murdoch owns it) for the telcos. jack Jeff Broadwick wrote: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870365210457465250160837655 2.ht ml?mod=WSJ_Opinion_AboveLEFTTop * REVIEW OUTLOOK * JANUARY 20, 2010 A 'National Broadband Plan' One more solution in search of a problem. The Federal Communications Commission recently told Congress that it will miss a February deadline for delivering a national broadband plan and requested a one-month extension. If it keeps missing deadlines, nearly everyone in the U.S. might soon have high-speed Internet. As part of last year's stimulus package, Congress asked the FCC for a plan to ensure that everybody in the country has access to broadband. That's a worthy goal, but the idea of a government plan is based on a false presumption that the spread of broadband is stalled. The reality is that broadband adoption continues apace, as does the quality and speed of Internet connections. Between 2000 and 2008, residential broadband subscribers grew to 80 million from five million, according to a study by Bret Swanson of Entropy Economics. Broadband penetration among active Internet users at home is 94%, and nearly 99% of U.S. workers connect to the Internet with broadband. A typical cable modem today is 10 times faster than a decade ago. Wireless bandwidth growth per capita has been no less impressive, showing a 500-fold increase since 2000. Meanwhile, U.S. information and communications technology investment in 2008 alone totalled $455 billion, or 22% of all U.S. capital investment. Nominal capital investment in telecom between 2000 and 2008 was more than $3.5 trillion. Those who favor more government control of the Internet ignore this private progress and point to international rankings. According to OECD estimates, the U.S. ranks 15th in the world in broadband penetration per capita. But because household sizes differ from country to country, and the U.S. has relatively
Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ
Is that directly off the pages of the Democrat National Committee Blast Fax talking points of the day? Shame on you, Jack. There's easily 24 million households THAT DO NOT WANT OR WILL NOT PAY FOR broadband. I have some areas where I cover 100% of the households, nobody else does, and yet, I can only get 60 percent of them to subscribe. The rest?Too expensive (even 25.50/mo is 'too much') or we don't even have a computer is still something I hear semi regularly. I don't think my demographics are specifically average... but they're not THAT far off the norm. In the last 2 years I've lost 5 customers to cable and dsl. 1 to another provider (was glad to see them go), but that's less than the number who have moved or died. I think we've seen nearly the limits of cable and dsl expansion where I am. And they've covered a good 75% of the population, even as rural as we are.The WSJ article is dead on right, from what I can tell. My growth is now the niche areas that aren't high on the cable or dsl deployment priority, yet I'm seeing the want for broadband to be under 80%, even in affluent areas. Since our install costs are now as low as free, depending on location, we're seeing signficant not heavy user adoption. Now, the growth of actual data moved... The percentage increase every month is near or at double digits. -- From: Jack Unger jun...@ask-wi.com Sent: Wednesday, January 20, 2010 8:27 AM To: WISPA General List wireless@wispa.org Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ Sorry but this article (accidentally or intentionally) misses or (more likely) ignores the point that 24 or more million occupied American households have no access to broadband. The WSJ is merely a mouthpiece (especially now that Rupurt Murdoch owns it) for the telcos. jack Jeff Broadwick wrote: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703652104574652501608376552.ht ml?mod=WSJ_Opinion_AboveLEFTTop * REVIEW OUTLOOK * JANUARY 20, 2010 A 'National Broadband Plan' One more solution in search of a problem. The Federal Communications Commission recently told Congress that it will miss a February deadline for delivering a national broadband plan and requested a one-month extension. If it keeps missing deadlines, nearly everyone in the U.S. might soon have high-speed Internet. As part of last year's stimulus package, Congress asked the FCC for a plan to ensure that everybody in the country has access to broadband. That's a worthy goal, but the idea of a government plan is based on a false presumption that the spread of broadband is stalled. The reality is that broadband adoption continues apace, as does the quality and speed of Internet connections. Between 2000 and 2008, residential broadband subscribers grew to 80 million from five million, according to a study by Bret Swanson of Entropy Economics. Broadband penetration among active Internet users at home is 94%, and nearly 99% of U.S. workers connect to the Internet with broadband. A typical cable modem today is 10 times faster than a decade ago. Wireless bandwidth growth per capita has been no less impressive, showing a 500-fold increase since 2000. Meanwhile, U.S. information and communications technology investment in 2008 alone totalled $455 billion, or 22% of all U.S. capital investment. Nominal capital investment in telecom between 2000 and 2008 was more than $3.5 trillion. Those who favor more government control of the Internet ignore this private progress and point to international rankings. According to OECD estimates, the U.S. ranks 15th in the world in broadband penetration per capita. But because household sizes differ from country to country, and the U.S. has relatively large households, the per capita figures can be misleading. A better way to gauge wired broadband connections is per household, not per person. By that measure the U.S. ranks somewhere between 8th and 10th. Such comparisons will soon be moot in any case because broadband penetration is growing rapidly in all OECD countries. The Technology Policy Institute notes that at the current rates of broadband adoption the U.S. is behind the leaders only by a number of months, and all wealthy OECD countries will reach a saturation point within the next few years. Even the Obama Justice Department seems to reject the broadband market failure thesis. In any industry subject to significant technological change, it is important that the evaluation of competition be forward-looking rather than based on static definitions of products and services, said the Antitrust Division in a January 4 filing to the FCC. In the case of broadband services, it's clear that the market is shifting generally in the direction of faster speeds and additional mobility. Justice concludes that while enacting some form of regulation to prevent certain providers
Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ
Marlon, You are not reading the report. The census block consumer reported data is NOT FROM THE 477 DATA. This is information compiled from various large marketing companies around the US and gets tabulated every 60 days. The version I used was from the first two quarters of 2009 so it is very fresh. If you know WHERE the broadband activity is reported and you know how many active households there are in each census block, you also know the number of households that DON'T have access to broadband by simply adding up the household counts in the blocks without reported broadband. The household counts are established by the number of active addresses in the block for the same period and are not projections from the 2000 census numbers. We are NOT talking about the number of households that don't subscribe where broadband is available when speaking about the number of households without ACCESS to broadband. One only has to total the households in the census blocks that do not report any broadband activity to figure out the number not served. The reason there has never been a report like this before is because there has never been a company that compiled the marketing data at the census block level prior to July. Thank You, Brian Webster -Original Message- From: Marlon K. Schafer [mailto:o...@odessaoffice.com] Sent: Wednesday, January 20, 2010 11:46 PM To: bwebs...@wirelessmapping.com; WISPA General List Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ Heya Brian, That's the take I had on this. That the number of households services was based on the 477 data. I didn't see any other data sets that would give an indication of the number of actually services households. If the study is based only on the consumers reported via the 477 it's likely to be quite inaccurate. People in government etc. are often quite amazed at the number of customers that I service out here. And I'm just one of a great many companies offering services in the area. I'm trying to get a handle on what additional sources of fact based information are out there. It's important to know what the real number is and yours seems very high to me. I don't think it'll be helpful in the long term if we have a number that gets blown out of the water in the upcoming census. marlon - Original Message - From: Brian Webster bwebs...@wirelessmapping.com To: WISPA General List wireless@wispa.org Sent: Wednesday, January 20, 2010 8:00 PM Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ Marlon, Read this take rate brief I wrote with one of the data companies I work with. It will take you about 10 minutes. It goes in to specific detail of how the study was conducted and the sources of the data. It was written for the 10 minute managers of the world. The key to being able to come up with the numbers was having the data at the census block level in the first place. Prior to July of this year there were no sources that I am aware of. The only information drawn from the form 477 is the total number of residential subscribers by state. The number of households without access to broadband has no relationship to the 477 data. That should be spelled out in the report. Thank You, Brian Webster -Original Message- From: wireless-boun...@wispa.org [mailto:wireless-boun...@wispa.org]on Behalf Of Marlon K. Schafer Sent: Wednesday, January 20, 2010 8:32 PM To: WISPA General List Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ OK, as I understand that the report is based upon the 477 data? marlon - Original Message - From: Jack Unger To: WISPA General List Sent: Wednesday, January 20, 2010 9:41 AM Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ Marlon, See the attached report. Go to Table 2 on page 11. Look at the last cell in the lower, right-hand corner. jack Marlon K. Schafer wrote: I still don't buy that number in the first place. I wish I knew more about how Brian came up with it. What % of rural households does that work out to be? marlon - Original Message - From: Jack Unger jun...@ask-wi.com To: WISPA General List wireless@wispa.org Sent: Wednesday, January 20, 2010 8:27 AM Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ Sorry but this article (accidentally or intentionally) misses or (more likely) ignores the point that 24 or more million occupied American households have no access to broadband. The WSJ is merely a mouthpiece (especially now that Rupurt Murdoch owns it) for the telcos. jack Jeff Broadwick wrote: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870365210457465250160837655 2.ht ml?mod=WSJ_Opinion_AboveLEFTTop * REVIEW OUTLOOK * JANUARY 20, 2010 A 'National Broadband Plan' One more solution in search of a problem. The Federal Communications Commission recently told Congress that it will miss a February deadline for delivering a national broadband plan and requested a one-month extension. If it keeps missing deadlines, nearly
Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ
I knew Mark would chime in :) Per my last post, my experience is the same. The broadband debate reminds me a lot of the healthcare debate. Everybody wants it but nobody wants to pay for it. I'm still waiting for my free electicity, natural gas, water, sewer, television, etc, etc. The bottom line is that ISP's (or any private business for that matter) are in business to provide a service while making a few bucks (hopefully). The only thing the government can and will do is become an obstacle in that process. But we digress to a topic heavily discussed several weeks ago and before that. -RickG On Wed, Jan 20, 2010 at 11:58 PM, MDK rea...@muddyfrogwater.us wrote: Is that directly off the pages of the Democrat National Committee Blast Fax talking points of the day? Shame on you, Jack. There's easily 24 million households THAT DO NOT WANT OR WILL NOT PAY FOR broadband. I have some areas where I cover 100% of the households, nobody else does, and yet, I can only get 60 percent of them to subscribe. The rest?Too expensive (even 25.50/mo is 'too much') or we don't even have a computer is still something I hear semi regularly. I don't think my demographics are specifically average... but they're not THAT far off the norm. In the last 2 years I've lost 5 customers to cable and dsl. 1 to another provider (was glad to see them go), but that's less than the number who have moved or died. I think we've seen nearly the limits of cable and dsl expansion where I am. And they've covered a good 75% of the population, even as rural as we are.The WSJ article is dead on right, from what I can tell. My growth is now the niche areas that aren't high on the cable or dsl deployment priority, yet I'm seeing the want for broadband to be under 80%, even in affluent areas. Since our install costs are now as low as free, depending on location, we're seeing signficant not heavy user adoption. Now, the growth of actual data moved... The percentage increase every month is near or at double digits. -- From: Jack Unger jun...@ask-wi.com Sent: Wednesday, January 20, 2010 8:27 AM To: WISPA General List wireless@wispa.org Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ Sorry but this article (accidentally or intentionally) misses or (more likely) ignores the point that 24 or more million occupied American households have no access to broadband. The WSJ is merely a mouthpiece (especially now that Rupurt Murdoch owns it) for the telcos. jack Jeff Broadwick wrote: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703652104574652501608376552.ht ml?mod=WSJ_Opinion_AboveLEFTTop * REVIEW OUTLOOK * JANUARY 20, 2010 A 'National Broadband Plan' One more solution in search of a problem. The Federal Communications Commission recently told Congress that it will miss a February deadline for delivering a national broadband plan and requested a one-month extension. If it keeps missing deadlines, nearly everyone in the U.S. might soon have high-speed Internet. As part of last year's stimulus package, Congress asked the FCC for a plan to ensure that everybody in the country has access to broadband. That's a worthy goal, but the idea of a government plan is based on a false presumption that the spread of broadband is stalled. The reality is that broadband adoption continues apace, as does the quality and speed of Internet connections. Between 2000 and 2008, residential broadband subscribers grew to 80 million from five million, according to a study by Bret Swanson of Entropy Economics. Broadband penetration among active Internet users at home is 94%, and nearly 99% of U.S. workers connect to the Internet with broadband. A typical cable modem today is 10 times faster than a decade ago. Wireless bandwidth growth per capita has been no less impressive, showing a 500-fold increase since 2000. Meanwhile, U.S. information and communications technology investment in 2008 alone totalled $455 billion, or 22% of all U.S. capital investment. Nominal capital investment in telecom between 2000 and 2008 was more than $3.5 trillion. Those who favor more government control of the Internet ignore this private progress and point to international rankings. According to OECD estimates, the U.S. ranks 15th in the world in broadband penetration per capita. But because household sizes differ from country to country, and the U.S. has relatively large households, the per capita figures can be misleading. A better way to gauge wired broadband connections is per household, not per person. By that measure the U.S. ranks somewhere between 8th and 10th. Such comparisons will soon be moot in any case because broadband penetration is growing rapidly in all OECD countries. The Technology Policy Institute notes that at the current rates of broadband adoption
Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ
I refuse to feed the troll. I refuse to feed the troll. I refuse to feed the troll. I refuse to feed the troll. I refuse to feed the troll. MDK wrote: Is that directly off the pages of the Democrat National Committee "Blast Fax" talking points of the day? Shame on you, Jack. There's easily 24 million households THAT DO NOT WANT OR WILL NOT PAY FOR broadband. I have some areas where I cover 100% of the households, nobody else does, and yet, I can only get 60 percent of them to subscribe. The rest?Too expensive (even 25.50/mo is 'too much') or "we don't even have a computer" is still something I hear semi regularly. I don't think my demographics are specifically average... but they're not THAT far off the norm. In the last 2 years I've lost 5 customers to cable and dsl. 1 to another provider (was glad to see them go), but that's less than the number who have moved or died. I think we've seen nearly the limits of cable and dsl expansion where I am. And they've covered a good 75% of the population, even as rural as we are.The WSJ article is dead on right, from what I can tell. My growth is now the niche areas that aren't high on the cable or dsl deployment priority, yet I'm seeing the "want" for broadband to be under 80%, even in affluent areas. Since our install costs are now as low as "free", depending on location, we're seeing signficant "not heavy user" adoption. Now, the growth of actual data moved... The percentage increase every month is near or at double digits. -- From: "Jack Unger" jun...@ask-wi.com Sent: Wednesday, January 20, 2010 8:27 AM To: "WISPA General List" wireless@wispa.org Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ Sorry but this article (accidentally or intentionally) misses or (more likely) ignores the point that 24 or more million occupied American households have no access to broadband. The WSJ is merely a mouthpiece (especially now that Rupurt Murdoch owns it) for the telcos. jack Jeff Broadwick wrote: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703652104574652501608376552.ht ml?mod=WSJ_Opinion_AboveLEFTTop * REVIEW OUTLOOK * JANUARY 20, 2010 A 'National Broadband Plan' One more solution in search of a problem. The Federal Communications Commission recently told Congress that it will miss a February deadline for delivering a "national broadband plan" and requested a one-month extension. If it keeps missing deadlines, nearly everyone in the U.S. might soon have high-speed Internet. As part of last year's stimulus package, Congress asked the FCC for a plan to ensure that everybody in the country has access to broadband. That's a worthy goal, but the idea of a government plan is based on a false presumption that the spread of broadband is stalled. The reality is that broadband adoption continues apace, as does the quality and speed of Internet connections. Between 2000 and 2008, residential broadband subscribers grew to 80 million from five million, according to a study by Bret Swanson of Entropy Economics. Broadband penetration among active Internet users at home is 94%, and nearly 99% of U.S. workers connect to the Internet with broadband. A typical cable modem today is 10 times faster than a decade ago. Wireless bandwidth growth per capita has been no less impressive, showing a 500-fold increase since 2000. Meanwhile, U.S. information and communications technology investment in 2008 alone totalled $455 billion, or 22% of all U.S. capital investment. Nominal capital investment in telecom between 2000 and 2008 was more than $3.5 trillion. Those who favor more government control of the Internet ignore this private progress and point to international rankings. According to OECD estimates, the U.S. ranks 15th in the world in broadband penetration per capita. But because household sizes differ from country to country, and the U.S. has relatively large households, the per capita figures can be misleading. A better way to gauge wired broadband connections is per household, not per person. By that measure the U.S. ranks somewhere between 8th and 10th. Such comparisons will soon be moot in any case because broadband penetration is growing rapidly in all OECD countries. The Technology Policy Institute notes that "at the current rates of broadband adoption the U.S. is behind the leaders only by a number of months, and all wealthy OECD countries will reach a saturation point within the next few years." Even the Obama Justice Department seems to reject the broadband market failure thesis. "In any industry subject to significant technological change, it is important that the evaluation of competition be forward-looking rather than based on static definitions of products and services," said the Antitrust Division in a January 4 fili
Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ
Jack wrote and published a book... Josh Luthman Office: 937-552-2340 Direct: 937-552-2343 1100 Wayne St Suite 1337 Troy, OH 45373 The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources. --- Albert Einstein On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 12:54 AM, Jack Unger jun...@ask-wi.com wrote: I refuse to feed the troll. I refuse to feed the troll. I refuse to feed the troll. I refuse to feed the troll. I refuse to feed the troll. MDK wrote: Is that directly off the pages of the Democrat National Committee Blast Fax talking points of the day? Shame on you, Jack. There's easily 24 million households THAT DO NOT WANT OR WILL NOT PAY FOR broadband. I have some areas where I cover 100% of the households, nobody else does, and yet, I can only get 60 percent of them to subscribe. The rest?Too expensive (even 25.50/mo is 'too much') or we don't even have a computer is still something I hear semi regularly. I don't think my demographics are specifically average... but they're not THAT far off the norm. In the last 2 years I've lost 5 customers to cable and dsl. 1 to another provider (was glad to see them go), but that's less than the number who have moved or died. I think we've seen nearly the limits of cable and dsl expansion where I am. And they've covered a good 75% of the population, even as rural as we are.The WSJ article is dead on right, from what I can tell. My growth is now the niche areas that aren't high on the cable or dsl deployment priority, yet I'm seeing the want for broadband to be under 80%, even in affluent areas. Since our install costs are now as low as free, depending on location, we're seeing signficant not heavy user adoption. Now, the growth of actual data moved... The percentage increase every month is near or at double digits. -- From: Jack Unger jun...@ask-wi.com jun...@ask-wi.com Sent: Wednesday, January 20, 2010 8:27 AM To: WISPA General List wireless@wispa.org wireless@wispa.org Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ Sorry but this article (accidentally or intentionally) misses or (more likely) ignores the point that 24 or more million occupied American households have no access to broadband. The WSJ is merely a mouthpiece (especially now that Rupurt Murdoch owns it) for the telcos. jack Jeff Broadwick wrote: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703652104574652501608376552.ht ml?mod=WSJ_Opinion_AboveLEFTTop * REVIEW OUTLOOK * JANUARY 20, 2010 A 'National Broadband Plan' One more solution in search of a problem. The Federal Communications Commission recently told Congress that it will miss a February deadline for delivering a national broadband plan and requested a one-month extension. If it keeps missing deadlines, nearly everyone in the U.S. might soon have high-speed Internet. As part of last year's stimulus package, Congress asked the FCC for a plan to ensure that everybody in the country has access to broadband. That's a worthy goal, but the idea of a government plan is based on a false presumption that the spread of broadband is stalled. The reality is that broadband adoption continues apace, as does the quality and speed of Internet connections. Between 2000 and 2008, residential broadband subscribers grew to 80 million from five million, according to a study by Bret Swanson of Entropy Economics. Broadband penetration among active Internet users at home is 94%, and nearly 99% of U.S. workers connect to the Internet with broadband. A typical cable modem today is 10 times faster than a decade ago. Wireless bandwidth growth per capita has been no less impressive, showing a 500-fold increase since 2000. Meanwhile, U.S. information and communications technology investment in 2008 alone totalled $455 billion, or 22% of all U.S. capital investment. Nominal capital investment in telecom between 2000 and 2008 was more than $3.5 trillion. Those who favor more government control of the Internet ignore this private progress and point to international rankings. According to OECD estimates, the U.S. ranks 15th in the world in broadband penetration per capita. But because household sizes differ from country to country, and the U.S. has relatively large households, the per capita figures can be misleading. A better way to gauge wired broadband connections is per household, not per person. By that measure the U.S. ranks somewhere between 8th and 10th. Such comparisons will soon be moot in any case because broadband penetration is growing rapidly in all OECD countries. The Technology Policy Institute notes that at the current rates of broadband adoption the U.S. is behind the leaders only by a number of months, and all wealthy OECD countries will reach a saturation point within the next few years. Even the Obama Justice Department seems to reject the broadband market failure thesis. In any industry
Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ
I won't comment on the first parts. ;-) The rest is completely true, other than Brian is talking about 24 million households can't get it in the first place vs. 24 million households that don't want it that you (and others on the list) took it to mean. - Mike Hammett Intelligent Computing Solutions http://www.ics-il.com -- From: MDK rea...@muddyfrogwater.us Sent: Wednesday, January 20, 2010 10:58 PM To: WISPA General List wireless@wispa.org Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ Is that directly off the pages of the Democrat National Committee Blast Fax talking points of the day? Shame on you, Jack. There's easily 24 million households THAT DO NOT WANT OR WILL NOT PAY FOR broadband. I have some areas where I cover 100% of the households, nobody else does, and yet, I can only get 60 percent of them to subscribe. The rest? Too expensive (even 25.50/mo is 'too much') or we don't even have a computer is still something I hear semi regularly. I don't think my demographics are specifically average... but they're not THAT far off the norm. In the last 2 years I've lost 5 customers to cable and dsl. 1 to another provider (was glad to see them go), but that's less than the number who have moved or died. I think we've seen nearly the limits of cable and dsl expansion where I am. And they've covered a good 75% of the population, even as rural as we are.The WSJ article is dead on right, from what I can tell. My growth is now the niche areas that aren't high on the cable or dsl deployment priority, yet I'm seeing the want for broadband to be under 80%, even in affluent areas. Since our install costs are now as low as free, depending on location, we're seeing signficant not heavy user adoption. Now, the growth of actual data moved... The percentage increase every month is near or at double digits. -- From: Jack Unger jun...@ask-wi.com Sent: Wednesday, January 20, 2010 8:27 AM To: WISPA General List wireless@wispa.org Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ Sorry but this article (accidentally or intentionally) misses or (more likely) ignores the point that 24 or more million occupied American households have no access to broadband. The WSJ is merely a mouthpiece (especially now that Rupurt Murdoch owns it) for the telcos. jack Jeff Broadwick wrote: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703652104574652501608376552.ht ml?mod=WSJ_Opinion_AboveLEFTTop * REVIEW OUTLOOK * JANUARY 20, 2010 A 'National Broadband Plan' One more solution in search of a problem. The Federal Communications Commission recently told Congress that it will miss a February deadline for delivering a national broadband plan and requested a one-month extension. If it keeps missing deadlines, nearly everyone in the U.S. might soon have high-speed Internet. As part of last year's stimulus package, Congress asked the FCC for a plan to ensure that everybody in the country has access to broadband. That's a worthy goal, but the idea of a government plan is based on a false presumption that the spread of broadband is stalled. The reality is that broadband adoption continues apace, as does the quality and speed of Internet connections. Between 2000 and 2008, residential broadband subscribers grew to 80 million from five million, according to a study by Bret Swanson of Entropy Economics. Broadband penetration among active Internet users at home is 94%, and nearly 99% of U.S. workers connect to the Internet with broadband. A typical cable modem today is 10 times faster than a decade ago. Wireless bandwidth growth per capita has been no less impressive, showing a 500-fold increase since 2000. Meanwhile, U.S. information and communications technology investment in 2008 alone totalled $455 billion, or 22% of all U.S. capital investment. Nominal capital investment in telecom between 2000 and 2008 was more than $3.5 trillion. Those who favor more government control of the Internet ignore this private progress and point to international rankings. According to OECD estimates, the U.S. ranks 15th in the world in broadband penetration per capita. But because household sizes differ from country to country, and the U.S. has relatively large households, the per capita figures can be misleading. A better way to gauge wired broadband connections is per household, not per person. By that measure the U.S. ranks somewhere between 8th and 10th. Such comparisons will soon be moot in any case because broadband penetration is growing rapidly in all OECD countries. The Technology Policy Institute notes that at the current rates of broadband adoption the U.S. is behind the leaders only by a number of months, and all wealthy OECD countries will reach a saturation point within the next few years. Even the Obama Justice
Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ
I'd like to ponit out that the article leaves out some information, and it leaves you with a false impression because of it. It made note of the price of broadband being cheaper in Japan and other places. That's true, but much of the infrastructure was funded by tax dollars, instead of the customers of the ISP's. I believe if this were properly acounted for, internet would be cheapest in the US, and more everywhere else. It's not the price, it's the COST that matters, and cost must include the publicly financed portions of the equation. Everyone pays for that, not everyone uses it, and that cost is rarely factored in these articles. That leaves a false impression of it being cheap, which it is not and has not ever been. insert witty tagline here - Original Message - From: Jeff Broadwick jeffl...@comcast.net To: 'WISPA General List' wireless@wispa.org Sent: Monday, February 02, 2009 8:38 AM Subject: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ Congress Approves Broadband to Nowhere Why the U.S. lags in Internet speed. * By L. GORDON CROVITZ In Japan, wireless technology works so well that teenagers draft novels on their cellphones. People in Hong Kong take it for granted that they can check their BlackBerrys from underground in the city's subway cars. Even in France, consumers have more choices for broadband service than in the U.S. The Internet may have been developed in the U.S., but the country now ranks 15th in the world for broadband penetration. For those who do have access to broadband, the average speed is a crawl, moving bits at a speed roughly one-tenth that of top-ranked Japan. This means a movie that can be downloaded in a couple of seconds in Japan takes half an hour in the U.S. The BMW 7 series comes equipped with Internet access in Germany, but not in the U.S. The Opinion Journal Widget Download Opinion Journal's widget and link to the most important editorials and op-eds of the day from your blog or Web page. So those of us otherwise wary of how wisely the stimulus package will be spent were happy to suspend disbelief when Congress invited ideas on how to upgrade broadband. Maybe there are shovel-ready programs to bring broadband to communities that private providers have not yet reached, and to upgrade the speed of accessing the Web. These goals sound like the digital-era version of Eisenhower's interstate highway projects, this time bringing Americans as consumers and businesspeople closer together on a faster information highway. But broadband, once thought to be in line for $100 billion as part of the stimulus legislation, ended up a low priority, set to get well under $10 billion in the package of over $800 billion. This is a reminder that even with a new president whose platform focused on technology, and even with the fully open spigot of a stimulus bill, technology gets built by private capital and initiative and not by government. The relatively small appropriation is not for want of trying. A partial list of the lobbying groups involved in the process is a reminder of how Washington's return to industrial policy requires lobbying by all: the Information Technology Industry Council, Telecommunications Industry Association, National Cable Telecommunications Association, Fiber-to-the-Home Council, National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors, National Telecommunications Cooperative Association, Independent Telephone and Telecommunications Alliance and Organization for the Promotion and Advancement of Small Telecommunications Companies. The result was a relatively paltry $6 billion for broadband in the House bill and $9 billion in the Senate, with each bill micromanaging the spending differently. The bills include different standards, speeds and other requirements for providers that would use the public funds. This may balance competing interests among cable, telecom and local phone companies, but it doesn't address the underlying problems of too few providers delivering too few options to consumers. Techies may be surprised by how these funds would be dispersed. The House would give the Department of Agriculture's Rural Utilities Service control over half the grants and the Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration control of the other half. Tax credits would have been a faster way to make a difference than government agencies dividing spoils across the country. The House bill also calls for open access. This phrase can include hugely controversial topics such as net neutrality, which in its most radical version would bar providers from charging different amounts for different kinds of broadband content. Now that video, conferencing and other heavy-bandwidth applications are growing in popularity, price needs to be one tool for allocating scarce resources. Analysts at
Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ
Most of the innuendos and descriptions were ill-defined making the conclusion flawed but it makes a good story yet pretty bad information. First, I'm in San Antonio and if I drive IH-10 to El Paso, I see nothing for 1,000 kilometers and I'm still in Texas. How do you compare that with the cheek-to-jowl population in Asian countries? Deployment problems are entirely different. Second, I get about 1Mbps on my Nokia browser virtually anywhere I've been in the country on ATT's 3G MediaNet and it costs me $19.95 a month. I get that on my laptop using the same phone as a modem. ATT makes money from this. Third, I've got plain old RoadRunner at home and get nearly 20Mbps which is nothing compared to what Comcast and others are rolling out but, with typical latency to various sources, it is rarely the limitation. I could have low-end DSL for $14.95 a month at home if price were a consideration. Both providers make money on this service. Geeze, WSJ, get the information right. . . . j o n a t h a n -Original Message- From: wireless-boun...@wispa.org [mailto:wireless-boun...@wispa.org] On Behalf Of rea...@muddyfrogwater.us Sent: Monday, February 02, 2009 1:30 PM To: WISPA General List Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ I'd like to ponit out that the article leaves out some information, and it leaves you with a false impression because of it. It made note of the price of broadband being cheaper in Japan and other places. That's true, but much of the infrastructure was funded by tax dollars, instead of the customers of the ISP's. I believe if this were properly acounted for, internet would be cheapest in the US, and more everywhere else. It's not the price, it's the COST that matters, and cost must include the publicly financed portions of the equation. Everyone pays for that, not everyone uses it, and that cost is rarely factored in these articles. That leaves a false impression of it being cheap, which it is not and has not ever been. insert witty tagline here - Original Message - From: Jeff Broadwick jeffl...@comcast.net To: 'WISPA General List' wireless@wispa.org Sent: Monday, February 02, 2009 8:38 AM Subject: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ Congress Approves Broadband to Nowhere Why the U.S. lags in Internet speed. * By L. GORDON CROVITZ In Japan, wireless technology works so well that teenagers draft novels on their cellphones. People in Hong Kong take it for granted that they can check their BlackBerrys from underground in the city's subway cars. Even in France, consumers have more choices for broadband service than in the U.S. The Internet may have been developed in the U.S., but the country now ranks 15th in the world for broadband penetration. For those who do have access to broadband, the average speed is a crawl, moving bits at a speed roughly one-tenth that of top-ranked Japan. This means a movie that can be downloaded in a couple of seconds in Japan takes half an hour in the U.S. The BMW 7 series comes equipped with Internet access in Germany, but not in the U.S. The Opinion Journal Widget Download Opinion Journal's widget and link to the most important editorials and op-eds of the day from your blog or Web page. So those of us otherwise wary of how wisely the stimulus package will be spent were happy to suspend disbelief when Congress invited ideas on how to upgrade broadband. Maybe there are shovel-ready programs to bring broadband to communities that private providers have not yet reached, and to upgrade the speed of accessing the Web. These goals sound like the digital-era version of Eisenhower's interstate highway projects, this time bringing Americans as consumers and businesspeople closer together on a faster information highway. But broadband, once thought to be in line for $100 billion as part of the stimulus legislation, ended up a low priority, set to get well under $10 billion in the package of over $800 billion. This is a reminder that even with a new president whose platform focused on technology, and even with the fully open spigot of a stimulus bill, technology gets built by private capital and initiative and not by government. The relatively small appropriation is not for want of trying. A partial list of the lobbying groups involved in the process is a reminder of how Washington's return to industrial policy requires lobbying by all: the Information Technology Industry Council, Telecommunications Industry Association, National Cable Telecommunications Association, Fiber-to-the-Home Council, National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors, National Telecommunications Cooperative Association, Independent Telephone and Telecommunications Alliance and Organization for the Promotion and Advancement of Small Telecommunications Companies. The result was a relatively paltry $6 billion for broadband in the House
Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ
It is also seems to be citing that way over used and mostly irrelevant OECD statistics. http://www.ultra-high-speed-mn.org/CM/MeetingAgendasandMinutes/MeetingAgendasandMinutes54.asp Had a presentation and there are links to a power point and very extensive study on the OECD numbers by Scott Wallsten a Berkly grad working with http://www.techpolicyinstitute.org/ . In the end when all counties have 100% penetration due to household size the US will be ranted around 18th in the world. But it just sells papers to have the US look bad I guess. Anthony Will Broadband Corp. rea...@muddyfrogwater.us wrote: I'd like to ponit out that the article leaves out some information, and it leaves you with a false impression because of it. It made note of the price of broadband being cheaper in Japan and other places. That's true, but much of the infrastructure was funded by tax dollars, instead of the customers of the ISP's. I believe if this were properly acounted for, internet would be cheapest in the US, and more everywhere else. It's not the price, it's the COST that matters, and cost must include the publicly financed portions of the equation. Everyone pays for that, not everyone uses it, and that cost is rarely factored in these articles. That leaves a false impression of it being cheap, which it is not and has not ever been. insert witty tagline here - Original Message - From: Jeff Broadwick jeffl...@comcast.net To: 'WISPA General List' wireless@wispa.org Sent: Monday, February 02, 2009 8:38 AM Subject: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ Congress Approves Broadband to Nowhere Why the U.S. lags in Internet speed. * By L. GORDON CROVITZ In Japan, wireless technology works so well that teenagers draft novels on their cellphones. People in Hong Kong take it for granted that they can check their BlackBerrys from underground in the city's subway cars. Even in France, consumers have more choices for broadband service than in the U.S. The Internet may have been developed in the U.S., but the country now ranks 15th in the world for broadband penetration. For those who do have access to broadband, the average speed is a crawl, moving bits at a speed roughly one-tenth that of top-ranked Japan. This means a movie that can be downloaded in a couple of seconds in Japan takes half an hour in the U.S. The BMW 7 series comes equipped with Internet access in Germany, but not in the U.S. The Opinion Journal Widget Download Opinion Journal's widget and link to the most important editorials and op-eds of the day from your blog or Web page. So those of us otherwise wary of how wisely the stimulus package will be spent were happy to suspend disbelief when Congress invited ideas on how to upgrade broadband. Maybe there are shovel-ready programs to bring broadband to communities that private providers have not yet reached, and to upgrade the speed of accessing the Web. These goals sound like the digital-era version of Eisenhower's interstate highway projects, this time bringing Americans as consumers and businesspeople closer together on a faster information highway. But broadband, once thought to be in line for $100 billion as part of the stimulus legislation, ended up a low priority, set to get well under $10 billion in the package of over $800 billion. This is a reminder that even with a new president whose platform focused on technology, and even with the fully open spigot of a stimulus bill, technology gets built by private capital and initiative and not by government. The relatively small appropriation is not for want of trying. A partial list of the lobbying groups involved in the process is a reminder of how Washington's return to industrial policy requires lobbying by all: the Information Technology Industry Council, Telecommunications Industry Association, National Cable Telecommunications Association, Fiber-to-the-Home Council, National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors, National Telecommunications Cooperative Association, Independent Telephone and Telecommunications Alliance and Organization for the Promotion and Advancement of Small Telecommunications Companies. The result was a relatively paltry $6 billion for broadband in the House bill and $9 billion in the Senate, with each bill micromanaging the spending differently. The bills include different standards, speeds and other requirements for providers that would use the public funds. This may balance competing interests among cable, telecom and local phone companies, but it doesn't address the underlying problems of too few providers delivering too few options to consumers. Techies may be surprised by how these funds would be dispersed. The House would give the Department of Agriculture's Rural Utilities Service control over half the grants and the Commerce
Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ
Agreed, I don't like the international comparisons because they are apples/oranges. It's not fair to compare a small country with a lot of people to the vast expanse of the US. There really isn't another developed country to compare to with the challenges we face for broadband deployment. There is also a question of who's numbers do you believe. Additionally, those blazing speeds tend to end at the nation's border. If you are downloading from a site in-country great, out of country, not so great. The reason I posted the article was for the info on the stimulus package and it's broadband component. Jeff -Original Message- From: wireless-boun...@wispa.org [mailto:wireless-boun...@wispa.org] On Behalf Of Jonathan Schmidt Sent: Monday, February 02, 2009 2:52 PM To: 'WISPA General List' Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ Most of the innuendos and descriptions were ill-defined making the conclusion flawed but it makes a good story yet pretty bad information. First, I'm in San Antonio and if I drive IH-10 to El Paso, I see nothing for 1,000 kilometers and I'm still in Texas. How do you compare that with the cheek-to-jowl population in Asian countries? Deployment problems are entirely different. Second, I get about 1Mbps on my Nokia browser virtually anywhere I've been in the country on ATT's 3G MediaNet and it costs me $19.95 a month. I get that on my laptop using the same phone as a modem. ATT makes money from this. Third, I've got plain old RoadRunner at home and get nearly 20Mbps which is nothing compared to what Comcast and others are rolling out but, with typical latency to various sources, it is rarely the limitation. I could have low-end DSL for $14.95 a month at home if price were a consideration. Both providers make money on this service. Geeze, WSJ, get the information right. . . . j o n a t h a n -Original Message- From: wireless-boun...@wispa.org [mailto:wireless-boun...@wispa.org] On Behalf Of rea...@muddyfrogwater.us Sent: Monday, February 02, 2009 1:30 PM To: WISPA General List Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ I'd like to ponit out that the article leaves out some information, and it leaves you with a false impression because of it. It made note of the price of broadband being cheaper in Japan and other places. That's true, but much of the infrastructure was funded by tax dollars, instead of the customers of the ISP's. I believe if this were properly acounted for, internet would be cheapest in the US, and more everywhere else. It's not the price, it's the COST that matters, and cost must include the publicly financed portions of the equation. Everyone pays for that, not everyone uses it, and that cost is rarely factored in these articles. That leaves a false impression of it being cheap, which it is not and has not ever been. insert witty tagline here - Original Message - From: Jeff Broadwick jeffl...@comcast.net To: 'WISPA General List' wireless@wispa.org Sent: Monday, February 02, 2009 8:38 AM Subject: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ Congress Approves Broadband to Nowhere Why the U.S. lags in Internet speed. * By L. GORDON CROVITZ In Japan, wireless technology works so well that teenagers draft novels on their cellphones. People in Hong Kong take it for granted that they can check their BlackBerrys from underground in the city's subway cars. Even in France, consumers have more choices for broadband service than in the U.S. The Internet may have been developed in the U.S., but the country now ranks 15th in the world for broadband penetration. For those who do have access to broadband, the average speed is a crawl, moving bits at a speed roughly one-tenth that of top-ranked Japan. This means a movie that can be downloaded in a couple of seconds in Japan takes half an hour in the U.S. The BMW 7 series comes equipped with Internet access in Germany, but not in the U.S. The Opinion Journal Widget Download Opinion Journal's widget and link to the most important editorials and op-eds of the day from your blog or Web page. So those of us otherwise wary of how wisely the stimulus package will be spent were happy to suspend disbelief when Congress invited ideas on how to upgrade broadband. Maybe there are shovel-ready programs to bring broadband to communities that private providers have not yet reached, and to upgrade the speed of accessing the Web. These goals sound like the digital-era version of Eisenhower's interstate highway projects, this time bringing Americans as consumers and businesspeople closer together on a faster information highway. But broadband, once thought to be in line for $100 billion as part of the stimulus legislation, ended up a low priority, set to get well under $10 billion in the package of over $800 billion. This is a reminder that even with a new president whose platform focused on technology, and even
Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ
Jeff, it doesn't have to be in-country...although a few thousand miles does add latency that a 300 mile-wide country doesn't have. By the way, that's our East coast to West coast problem. Akamai provides nearly-modem-limit downloads for things like upgrades...for participants. Other than that, unless the provider has their own video servers on their fiber backbone, 20Mbps is sufficient for any server across the USA. This is certainly a subject to consider when contemplating the complexities of New Neutrality, by the way. . . . J o n a t h a n -Original Message- From: wireless-boun...@wispa.org [mailto:wireless-boun...@wispa.org] On Behalf Of Jeff Broadwick Sent: Monday, February 02, 2009 2:28 PM To: 'WISPA General List' Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ Agreed, I don't like the international comparisons because they are apples/oranges. It's not fair to compare a small country with a lot of people to the vast expanse of the US. There really isn't another developed country to compare to with the challenges we face for broadband deployment. There is also a question of who's numbers do you believe. Additionally, those blazing speeds tend to end at the nation's border. If you are downloading from a site in-country great, out of country, not so great. The reason I posted the article was for the info on the stimulus package and it's broadband component. Jeff -Original Message- From: wireless-boun...@wispa.org [mailto:wireless-boun...@wispa.org] On Behalf Of Jonathan Schmidt Sent: Monday, February 02, 2009 2:52 PM To: 'WISPA General List' Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ Most of the innuendos and descriptions were ill-defined making the conclusion flawed but it makes a good story yet pretty bad information. First, I'm in San Antonio and if I drive IH-10 to El Paso, I see nothing for 1,000 kilometers and I'm still in Texas. How do you compare that with the cheek-to-jowl population in Asian countries? Deployment problems are entirely different. Second, I get about 1Mbps on my Nokia browser virtually anywhere I've been in the country on ATT's 3G MediaNet and it costs me $19.95 a month. I get that on my laptop using the same phone as a modem. ATT makes money from this. Third, I've got plain old RoadRunner at home and get nearly 20Mbps which is nothing compared to what Comcast and others are rolling out but, with typical latency to various sources, it is rarely the limitation. I could have low-end DSL for $14.95 a month at home if price were a consideration. Both providers make money on this service. Geeze, WSJ, get the information right. . . . j o n a t h a n -Original Message- From: wireless-boun...@wispa.org [mailto:wireless-boun...@wispa.org] On Behalf Of rea...@muddyfrogwater.us Sent: Monday, February 02, 2009 1:30 PM To: WISPA General List Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ I'd like to ponit out that the article leaves out some information, and it leaves you with a false impression because of it. It made note of the price of broadband being cheaper in Japan and other places. That's true, but much of the infrastructure was funded by tax dollars, instead of the customers of the ISP's. I believe if this were properly acounted for, internet would be cheapest in the US, and more everywhere else. It's not the price, it's the COST that matters, and cost must include the publicly financed portions of the equation. Everyone pays for that, not everyone uses it, and that cost is rarely factored in these articles. That leaves a false impression of it being cheap, which it is not and has not ever been. insert witty tagline here - Original Message - From: Jeff Broadwick jeffl...@comcast.net To: 'WISPA General List' wireless@wispa.org Sent: Monday, February 02, 2009 8:38 AM Subject: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ Congress Approves Broadband to Nowhere Why the U.S. lags in Internet speed. * By L. GORDON CROVITZ In Japan, wireless technology works so well that teenagers draft novels on their cellphones. People in Hong Kong take it for granted that they can check their BlackBerrys from underground in the city's subway cars. Even in France, consumers have more choices for broadband service than in the U.S. The Internet may have been developed in the U.S., but the country now ranks 15th in the world for broadband penetration. For those who do have access to broadband, the average speed is a crawl, moving bits at a speed roughly one-tenth that of top-ranked Japan. This means a movie that can be downloaded in a couple of seconds in Japan takes half an hour in the U.S. The BMW 7 series comes equipped with Internet access in Germany, but not in the U.S. The Opinion Journal Widget Download Opinion Journal's widget and link to the most important editorials and op-eds of the day from your blog or Web page. So those of us otherwise wary of how wisely
Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ
It's far less expensive to run 100 megabit to 10M people in a highly urban setting like Japan than 5 megabit to rural America. That's no excuse why Chicago and New York don't have 100 megabits everywhere for $30, though. Yes, many countries do heavily subsidize broadband. - Mike Hammett Intelligent Computing Solutions http://www.ics-il.com -- From: rea...@muddyfrogwater.us Sent: Monday, February 02, 2009 1:30 PM To: WISPA General List wireless@wispa.org Subject: Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ I'd like to ponit out that the article leaves out some information, and it leaves you with a false impression because of it. It made note of the price of broadband being cheaper in Japan and other places. That's true, but much of the infrastructure was funded by tax dollars, instead of the customers of the ISP's. I believe if this were properly acounted for, internet would be cheapest in the US, and more everywhere else. It's not the price, it's the COST that matters, and cost must include the publicly financed portions of the equation. Everyone pays for that, not everyone uses it, and that cost is rarely factored in these articles. That leaves a false impression of it being cheap, which it is not and has not ever been. insert witty tagline here - Original Message - From: Jeff Broadwick jeffl...@comcast.net To: 'WISPA General List' wireless@wispa.org Sent: Monday, February 02, 2009 8:38 AM Subject: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ Congress Approves Broadband to Nowhere Why the U.S. lags in Internet speed. * By L. GORDON CROVITZ In Japan, wireless technology works so well that teenagers draft novels on their cellphones. People in Hong Kong take it for granted that they can check their BlackBerrys from underground in the city's subway cars. Even in France, consumers have more choices for broadband service than in the U.S. The Internet may have been developed in the U.S., but the country now ranks 15th in the world for broadband penetration. For those who do have access to broadband, the average speed is a crawl, moving bits at a speed roughly one-tenth that of top-ranked Japan. This means a movie that can be downloaded in a couple of seconds in Japan takes half an hour in the U.S. The BMW 7 series comes equipped with Internet access in Germany, but not in the U.S. The Opinion Journal Widget Download Opinion Journal's widget and link to the most important editorials and op-eds of the day from your blog or Web page. So those of us otherwise wary of how wisely the stimulus package will be spent were happy to suspend disbelief when Congress invited ideas on how to upgrade broadband. Maybe there are shovel-ready programs to bring broadband to communities that private providers have not yet reached, and to upgrade the speed of accessing the Web. These goals sound like the digital-era version of Eisenhower's interstate highway projects, this time bringing Americans as consumers and businesspeople closer together on a faster information highway. But broadband, once thought to be in line for $100 billion as part of the stimulus legislation, ended up a low priority, set to get well under $10 billion in the package of over $800 billion. This is a reminder that even with a new president whose platform focused on technology, and even with the fully open spigot of a stimulus bill, technology gets built by private capital and initiative and not by government. The relatively small appropriation is not for want of trying. A partial list of the lobbying groups involved in the process is a reminder of how Washington's return to industrial policy requires lobbying by all: the Information Technology Industry Council, Telecommunications Industry Association, National Cable Telecommunications Association, Fiber-to-the-Home Council, National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors, National Telecommunications Cooperative Association, Independent Telephone and Telecommunications Alliance and Organization for the Promotion and Advancement of Small Telecommunications Companies. The result was a relatively paltry $6 billion for broadband in the House bill and $9 billion in the Senate, with each bill micromanaging the spending differently. The bills include different standards, speeds and other requirements for providers that would use the public funds. This may balance competing interests among cable, telecom and local phone companies, but it doesn't address the underlying problems of too few providers delivering too few options to consumers. Techies may be surprised by how these funds would be dispersed. The House would give the Department of Agriculture's Rural Utilities Service control over half the grants and the Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration control
Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ
Hello, I do not know about you, but I am kind of glad the US government and the BIG guys can not get it right. With the money they have wasted we should have at least had 1 mb if not 10mb to everyone in the us, man, woman and child. This is where we come in. Because the could not we looked at the opportunity and said we could and did. Hats off to all of us that live, breath and hopefully not die for this stuff every day. Keep up the good work and it will pay off. -Original Message- From: wireless-boun...@wispa.org [mailto:wireless-boun...@wispa.org] On Behalf Of Jeff Broadwick Sent: Monday, February 02, 2009 10:39 AM To: 'WISPA General List' Subject: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ Congress Approves Broadband to Nowhere Why the U.S. lags in Internet speed. * By L. GORDON CROVITZ In Japan, wireless technology works so well that teenagers draft novels on their cellphones. People in Hong Kong take it for granted that they can check their BlackBerrys from underground in the city's subway cars. Even in France, consumers have more choices for broadband service than in the U.S. The Internet may have been developed in the U.S., but the country now ranks 15th in the world for broadband penetration. For those who do have access to broadband, the average speed is a crawl, moving bits at a speed roughly one-tenth that of top-ranked Japan. This means a movie that can be downloaded in a couple of seconds in Japan takes half an hour in the U.S. The BMW 7 series comes equipped with Internet access in Germany, but not in the U.S. The Opinion Journal Widget Download Opinion Journal's widget and link to the most important editorials and op-eds of the day from your blog or Web page. So those of us otherwise wary of how wisely the stimulus package will be spent were happy to suspend disbelief when Congress invited ideas on how to upgrade broadband. Maybe there are shovel-ready programs to bring broadband to communities that private providers have not yet reached, and to upgrade the speed of accessing the Web. These goals sound like the digital-era version of Eisenhower's interstate highway projects, this time bringing Americans as consumers and businesspeople closer together on a faster information highway. But broadband, once thought to be in line for $100 billion as part of the stimulus legislation, ended up a low priority, set to get well under $10 billion in the package of over $800 billion. This is a reminder that even with a new president whose platform focused on technology, and even with the fully open spigot of a stimulus bill, technology gets built by private capital and initiative and not by government. The relatively small appropriation is not for want of trying. A partial list of the lobbying groups involved in the process is a reminder of how Washington's return to industrial policy requires lobbying by all: the Information Technology Industry Council, Telecommunications Industry Association, National Cable Telecommunications Association, Fiber-to-the-Home Council, National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors, National Telecommunications Cooperative Association, Independent Telephone and Telecommunications Alliance and Organization for the Promotion and Advancement of Small Telecommunications Companies. The result was a relatively paltry $6 billion for broadband in the House bill and $9 billion in the Senate, with each bill micromanaging the spending differently. The bills include different standards, speeds and other requirements for providers that would use the public funds. This may balance competing interests among cable, telecom and local phone companies, but it doesn't address the underlying problems of too few providers delivering too few options to consumers. Techies may be surprised by how these funds would be dispersed. The House would give the Department of Agriculture's Rural Utilities Service control over half the grants and the Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration control of the other half. Tax credits would have been a faster way to make a difference than government agencies dividing spoils across the country. The House bill also calls for open access. This phrase can include hugely controversial topics such as net neutrality, which in its most radical version would bar providers from charging different amounts for different kinds of broadband content. Now that video, conferencing and other heavy-bandwidth applications are growing in popularity, price needs to be one tool for allocating scarce resources. Analysts at Medley Global Advisors warn that if these provisions remain in the bill, it will keep most broadband providers out of the applicant pool for the funds intended specifically for them. In Today's Opinion Journal More fundamentally, nothing in the legislation would address the key reason that the U.S. lags so far behind other countries. This is that there is an
Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ
What this author so quickly forgets is, Spectrum is to serve the public interest not the treasury's pocket. And the Public pays more, when the providers pay more for spectrum. The auctiioon clearly will be a victory, if it means more than one or tow big companies get a peice. Tom DeReggi RapidDSL Wireless, Inc IntAirNet- Fixed Wireless Broadband - Original Message - From: Jeff Broadwick [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: 'WISPA General List' wireless@wispa.org Sent: Thursday, February 07, 2008 1:48 PM Subject: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ REVIEW OUTLOOK Purblind Auction February 7, 2008; Page A18 The Federal Communications Commission is bragging about its latest wireless auction, with total bids of more than $19 billion after two weeks. But dig beneath those numbers and the picture is less rosy. This wireless spectrum is on the market because of the transition to digital television broadcast. As of February 17, 2009, TVs without digital tuners or cable or satellite hook-ups will go dark, and a big swath of the airwaves will be free for other uses. This spectrum can transmit data over long distances and penetrates walls much better than most current wireless phone spectrum. [Kevin Martin] But FCC Chairman Kevin Martin wasn't content to sell this real estate to the highest bidder. Instead, he embarked on a central-planning experiment, setting aside the two biggest blocks for special uses. The FCC's procedures require blind, confidential bidding, so there is much about the auction that we won't know until it wraps up. But it already seems clear that Mr. Martin's rules have damaged the value of otherwise choice spectrum and are harming the overall auction. For example, the FCC restricted the single biggest spectrum license for a public-private public safety partnership. The idea was that someone would buy it to create a nationwide network for first responders -- fire and police departments and the like -- with secondary use as a commercial wireless network. But the main lobbyist for that spectrum, former FCC Chairman Reed Hundt's Frontline Wireless, closed up shop before the auction began. So far, this so-called D block of spectrum has attracted exactly one bid in 40 rounds, and that bid is less than $500 million -- well below the FCC's $1.3 billion reserve price. The FCC designated the next-biggest block -- the C block -- for open access at the urging of Google, among others. The C block is not only large, but it divides the country into eight large regional groups, with the possibility of bidding on all eight as a package. It should be a top prize. But it only passed its $4.6 billion reserve price late last week, and the reason is almost certainly the FCC's open access rule. That rule requires whoever wins to open the network to all compatible phones or software. If you're spending billions on spectrum and billions more building the network, the fact that the feds might force you to share your network means greater investment risk. The bidding bears this out. Of the $19 billion bid so far, nearly three-quarters has gone toward the smaller bits of spectrum in the A, B and E blocks. Building a national network by cobbling together hundreds of these bits is inefficient and risky, and it doesn't serve consumers, who would get faster service and more flexibility from the larger blocks. But there's more. The FCC made these small blocks to encourage start-ups and new entrants to bid for a piece of the next-generation wireless pie. If the conditions placed on the C and D blocks are driving the big established players into the smaller auctions, then the new, little guys may well be playing in the same sandbox with the big, bad incumbents. The FCC's previous experiments with rigging auctions also flopped; witness the NextWave bankruptcy, which tied up billions of dollars of spectrum for years. Mr. Martin will claim victory in the auction no matter what happens. But what we'll never know is how much would have been bid -- and thus how much more the Treasury would have received -- if Mr. Martin had auctioned this spectrum without his favors for special interests attached. Jeff Broadwick Sales Manager, ImageStream 800-813-5123 x106 (US/Can) +1 574-935-8484 x106 (Int'l) +1 574-935-8488 (Fax) WISPA Wants You! Join today! http://signup.wispa.org/ WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/ WISPA Wants You! Join today! http://signup.wispa.org/ WISPA
Re: [WISPA] From Today's WSJ
Jeff, Who wrote this? One fact worth noting is the wireless number. It mostly means cellular. Cellular is not a third competitor. - Peter Jeff Broadwick wrote: Note the Wireless portion of the growth from last year: REVIEW OUTLOOK Broadband Breakout February 16, 2007; Page A14 I love the free market, but the fact is more concentration means less competition, and these markets are less free than they should be. And this Commission is about regulation -- regulators. I always worry a little when I hear regulators shy away from regulation talk. -- Senator Byron Dorgan (D., North Dakota) addressing members of the Federal Communications Commission at a recent hearing. If you're wondering where the new Democratic majority in Congress is inclined to steer telecom policy, look no further than Mr. Dorgan's comment above. Note how he pays lip service to free markets while ultimately favoring more regulation for its own sake. But more regulation is the last thing today's telecom industry needs, at least if empirical evidence is any indication. As FCC Chairman Kevin Martin reported at a Senate hearing earlier this month, the industry is now taking risks in a way it hasn't since the tech bubble burst six years ago. In 2006, the SP 500 telecommunications sector was the strongest performing sector, up 32% over the previous year, said Mr. Martin. Markets and companies are investing again, job creation in the industry is high, and in almost all cases, vigorous competition -- resulting from free-market deregulatory policies -- has provided the consumer with more, better and cheaper services to choose from. Much of this growth has been fueled by increased broadband deployment, which makes high-speed Internet services possible. The latest government data show that broadband connections increased by 26% in the first six months of 2006 and by 52% for the full year ending in June 2006. Also noteworthy, notes telecom analyst Scott Cleland of the Precursor Group, is that of the 11 million broadband additions in the first half of last year, 15% were cable modems, 23% were digital-subscriber lines (DSL) and 58% were of the wireless variety. Between June 2005 and June 2006, wireless broadband subscriptions grew to 11 million from 380,000. This gives the lie to claims that some sort of cable/DSL duopoly has hampered competition among broadband providers and limited consumer options. That's the charge of those who want network neutrality rules that would allow the government to dictate what companies like Verizon and ATT can charge users of their networks. But the reality is that the telecom industry has taken advantage of this deregulatory environment to provide consumers with more choices at lower prices. Verizon's capital investments since 2000 exceed $100 billion, and such competitors as Cingular, T-Mobile and Sprint are following suit. So are the cable companies. It's also worth noting that the deregulatory telecom policies pushed by Mr. Martin and his immediate predecessor, Michael Powell, have accompanied a wave of mergers -- SBC/ATT, Sprint/Nextel, Verizon/MCI, ATT/BellSouth. Most of these marriages were opposed by consumer groups and other fans of regulation on the grounds that they would lead to fewer choices and higher costs. In fact, these combinations have created economies of scale, and customers are clearly better off. The result has been more high-speed connections, along with greater economic productivity, but also an array of new services. The popular video-sharing Web site YouTube is barely two years old. And it wouldn't exist today but for the fact that there's enough broadband capacity to allow millions of people to view videos over the Web. Increased broadband demand has also been good news for Internet hardware companies like Cisco and Juniper, where annual sales are up by nearly 50%. A Journal report this week notes that North American telecom companies are projected to spend $70 billion on new infrastructure this year, which is up 67% from 2003. And prices are falling, by the way. Between February 2004 and December 2005, the average monthly cost for home broadband fell nearly 8%. For DSL subscribers, it fell nearly 20%. Which means that consumers are benefiting from new services and different pricing packages, as well as getting better deals. The one sure way to stop these trends is by bogging down industry players with regulations or price controls that raise the risk that these mammoth investments will never pay off. Yet that seems to be the goal of Senator Dorgan and other Democrats such as Representative Ed Markey, another Net neutrality cheerleader, who is planning his own hearings. Consumers will end up paying for such policies in fewer choices and higher prices. URL for this article: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB117159640486710826.html Jeff Broadwick Sales Manager, ImageStream 800-813-5123 x106 (US/Can) +1 574-935-8484 x106 (Int'l) +1 574-935-8488
