Re: [WISPA] FCC releases USF/ICC Order, rules on subsidizing ILECs
Scottie, I have the same issue here in Indiana with one exchange in particular. I have been in contact with the Indiana Utility Regulatory Committee. They are in process of helping us. They could not understand why we could port and have access to all other exchanges in the same rate center but not that one. Steve Barnes General Manager PCS-WIN / RC-WiFi -Original Message- From: wireless-boun...@wispa.org [mailto:wireless-boun...@wispa.org] On Behalf Of Scottie Arnett Sent: Tuesday, November 22, 2011 12:58 AM To: WISPA General List Subject: Re: [WISPA] FCC releases USF/ICC Order, rules on subsidizing ILECs We just happen to fall into one of those 3.65Ghz protected areas! But I have heard that the local telco has something going on there too! Scottie Arnett President Info-Ed, Inc. Electronics and More 931-243-2101 sarn...@info-ed.com - Original Message - From: Fred Goldstein fgoldst...@ionary.com To: WISPA General List wireless@wispa.org Sent: Monday, November 21, 2011 10:38 PM Subject: Re: [WISPA] FCC releases USF/ICC Order, rules on subsidizing ILECs At 11/21/2011 11:18 PM, Scottie Arnett wrote: Re-reading your posts brings me to another question.has any VOIP carriers ever used cellular carriers numbers? Is it even possible? First, wrt the Livingston exchange, 931-397 and 931-403 belong to US Cellular; the latter is pooled (they're using the 7's). Nextel has -871, pooled (using 6 and 7). Oddly, US Cellular but not S-N says it subtends a Gaineborough tandem, which is Twin Lakes, but most Twin Lakes exchanges subtend Nashville. As to VoIP via cellular numbers, well, its sort of odd, but it might be possible. The new rules may actually say something about this -- there was a VoIP company affiliated with a wireless company that was, uh, alleged to have been laundering its LD calls via the cellular company in order to get the lower termination rates. They deny it of course... but that may have been addressed in the intercarrier rules. I haven't gotten through it all yet. (It's freakin' huge.) I actually had a client that was a wireless company whose business included lots and lots of modems, way back when, so it's not unprecedented to have, uh, incidental non-wireless traffic go through a wirless feed. And heck, put up one 3.65 GHz base station (if it's allowed there) and declare it CMRS, and you're a cellco too! There's one lawyer I know who sort of specializes in this sort of thing. Scottie Arnett President Info-Ed, Inc. Electronics and More 931-243-2101 sarn...@info-ed.com - Original Message - From: Scottie Arnett sarn...@info-ed.com To: WISPA General List wireless@wispa.org Sent: Monday, November 21, 2011 10:14 PM Subject: Re: [WISPA] FCC releases USF/ICC Order, rules on subsidizing ILECs Please explain about the Livingston exchange!!! I have been trying to break this barrier for almost 12 years. Scottie Arnett President Info-Ed, Inc. Electronics and More 931-243-2101 sarn...@info-ed.com - Original Message - From: Fred Goldstein fgoldst...@ionary.com To: WISPA General List wireless@wispa.org Sent: Monday, November 21, 2011 9:08 PM Subject: Re: [WISPA] FCC releases USF/ICC Order, rules on subsidizing ILECs At 11/21/2011 09:29 PM, you wrote: The only other telcos/cellcos here that have local numbers are US Cellular and Verizon. None of the big VOIP carriers do, such as Vonage/Packet8/take your pick. They have NO Clec's here either. I like to think of that as a challenge. ;-) The good news is that they use the Nashville tandem, not their own, so the traffic exchange can be indirect. But it's true that there are no CLECs with numbers in TLTC's area. Powertel, US Cellular, VZW and Sprint Nextel are the only other carriers there, all mobile. No Celina numbers, either, if it matters. But Livingston has pooled prefix codes available. -- Fred Goldsteink1io fgoldstein at ionary.com ionary Consulting http://www.ionary.com/ +1 617 795 2701 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/ WISPA
Re: [WISPA] FCC releases USF/ICC Order, rules on subsidizing ILECs
The FCC just had to have a date, and was nice enough to not close it too early. This also gives WISPs time to do some more construction and have it included. Thats one way to look at it. (And probably the more productive way, recognizing the timeline to protect opportunity.) The whole-state rule applies to the big ILECs. If they say no, the rules for the auction aren't written yet, and may work on a smaller basis. I think that's one of the things to discuss in the FNPRM Comments, which are due 24 January. But why would big ILEC's say, no ? Isn't this process pressuring the ILECs to say yes. Giving the ILECs a second chance to get another free ride, now for broadband? If ILEC took subsidee for Voice in past, why would they not do the same for Data? Small ILECs might say no, because they might not have the funding or resources to take on a super large project even with subsidee. But Big Telco surely has the finances. We can use ATT as an example, who is advertising to cover all of America in 5 years, anyway. Do you think there is any chance that the big telco might say no in some states, I dont want USF? It has happened in the past, to some extent. I can give the example of Verizon pulling out of a low profit analog market, and letting a smaller LEC take over such as either Century tel or Frontier (forget which LEC, and which Eastern state).. Back then it made sense with Verizon focusing on FIOS preferring to bypass regulation, that FIOS allowed them. But would that same justification still be there, when USF subsidees are there to compensate? If the location is served on the National Broadband Map, or if the ILEC *knows* it's served by an unsubsidized competitor, it's off limits .. Again, only unserved areas will get support, though an ILEC can use support to build common plant in an area that is more than 50% unserved. Also, regarding those to comments in your original Email... I think the risk here is the same that it was with ARRA. Whats the definition of unserved, and but more importantly what is the definition of area, and what is the protest proof process, and is WISP's coverage large enough to qualify an area as served? And will gerrymandering allow a recipient to get around it? Obviously, the National MAP, that documents all reported coverage from all carriers will help quite a bit. But I'm still concerned that many WISP's coverage will be to small of a take rate or area, to be proportional enough to mark an area as served. I can tell you that in my rural markets, it would be near impossible to get over 50% coverage, even if I served everyhome that I had coverage to. Lets use a hypothetical example of the average member WISP having 1000 subs. There are not many areas that have less than 2000 potential subs. I can tell you from community connect grant research, looking at census data, it was tough finding areas that gained maximum points of under 500 households. Did it say anything in the rules, to define what an eligible size area is? Both for identifying served and unserved, not just USF qualification? Wondering if NTIA/USDA is going to help identify preferred qualifying area on the broadband map? I dont think it will be as simple as looking for blank spots. IS there currently a map of ILEC coverage area of Voice, that can be overlaid to the broadband map? A question likely to develop for WISPs is What are the safest places to invest in expanding coverage, meaning less likely to get overbuilt with subsidized competition? The very Suburban/Urban and very Rural are becomming most likely for subsidee and harsh competition. Some where in the middle, such as barely rural, may be safer? Tom DeReggi RapidDSL Wireless, Inc IntAirNet- Fixed Wireless Broadband - Original Message - From: Fred Goldstein fgoldst...@ionary.com To: WISPA General List wireless@wispa.org Sent: Monday, November 21, 2011 9:08 PM Subject: Re: [WISPA] FCC releases USF/ICC Order, rules on subsidizing ILECs At 11/21/2011 08:04 PM, you wrote: Yes agreed, its not nearly as bad as it could have been. But I still say ARRGGG! Price Cap Carriers will be offered $775 per line to add 4/1 broadband serivce to unserved areas Thats much better for WISPs than if they agreed to pay our competitors greater than $10,000 per sub for FIOS like Fiber. WISPs atleast have a chance to compete against 4/1 services, and ILEC reimbursement now inline with what it would cost a WISP to deploy, and not to much more.. Note that this is incremental $775, a subsidy to add to their capital budget, not the total investment. Of course big ILECs tend to be wasteful spenders. So this might be a good time to make sure the mappers are aware of your service areas, or to think about short-term service expansion. yeah, you gotta love help that says WISPs Go hurry up and build a network at your cost quickly, we wont pay you, but if you dont build quick, we'll pay
Re: [WISPA] FCC releases USF/ICC Order, rules on subsidizing ILECs
Is there any provision in the document for reducing funding in the future as areas get overbuilt? Or are we really looking at a 6-8month land grab? On 11/21/11 7:04 PM, Tom DeReggi wrote: Yes agreed, its not nearly as bad as it could have been. But I still say ARRGGG! Price Cap Carriers will be offered $775 per line to add 4/1 broadband serivce to unserved areas Thats much better for WISPs than if they agreed to pay our competitors greater than $10,000 per sub for FIOS like Fiber. WISPs atleast have a chance to compete against 4/1 services, and ILEC reimbursement now inline with what it would cost a WISP to deploy, and not to much more.. So this might be a good time to make sure the mappers are aware of your service areas, or to think about short-term service expansion. yeah, you gotta love help that says WISPs Go hurry up and build a network at your cost quickly, we wont pay you, but if you dont build quick, we'll pay your competitor instead. (Sarcasm) The date by which you must be on the map isn't set yet, but it's presumably in 1H2012. Well, that is good, that they are looking at mapping for disqualification. Also good that not all WISPs reported their coverage in the past. The rules are good incentive for rural WISPs to report now. Those rules may not have ever made it into the FCC rules, without the insight that it would be incentive to get reamining WISPs to report. If WISPs had already reported, why would the FCC have needed to include consideration and incentive in the new rules? Phase II starts in 2013. For this, Price Cap Carriers will be offered support based on a cost model that the FCC will create in 2012. Once the model is complete, the ILEC will decide if it wants to take that support for its territory on a state-by-state (all of a state or nothing) basis. Thats the bad part Only a select few monopoly like companies can afford to do complete State wide deployment, even when subsidized. So basically, the FCC is saying Time to force the Monopolies to serve ALL Americans, and leave no unserved areas left for the competitive property. Rather than fix the problem, the FCC is trying to secure that the remaining 25% of America will have subsidized competitors to private investment. There is no longer a consideration for the best party to serve a specific area. Preferrence is given to the big boy. no different than Auctions, where only the most fortunate and dominant player can win. The biggest flaw in telecom policy is the concept of Serving everyone or no one. Its the founation for every monopoly cable franchise type agreement, and now being replicated into CAF. Forcing acceptance on a complete state-by-state basis in my opinion is a major loss for the industry. Because the mind set hasn't changed from old telecom. They are still thinking state regulation and utility electricity, where there is only ONE primary provider per state. Although, I will admit, these funds are targeted to UNSERVED areas, so atleast they aren't giving the whole state away. Just the least desirable part of the state for wireline to serve. They are saying. WISPs, if you can serve someone new this year, great, go for it, its your last chance, before we give the market to someone else. A separate Extremely High Cost fund will allocate up to $100M/year for locations too costly (by the model) to serve via the standard subsidy. This will be separately bid, and it's assumed that fixed wireless and satellite will be the mostly likely technologies. So this could allow some subsidies to rustic-but-Bell-area WISPs. Yes, that may be good for WISPs. Or, better positioned ILECs to become WISPs. So on balance, the FCC has done a lot less harm to the rural WISP community than it could have, while still encouraging ILECs to deploy more broadband via subsidies. I fully agree with your conclusion. Realistically, that could be considered a victory, for Rural WISPs. With that said, I would have preferred the FCC to have the balls to name the new program what it really was... They could have called it the CAIF - Connect America to ILECs fund. or KCC-CAF - Kill Competiton and Choice, but Connect America Fund.. The interesting part will be to see how many RURAL ILECs will choose to accept $768 per sub, to build out to all remaining Americans in their state. What else will be interesting will be to see if, the RBOC fund recipients really do what they are obligated to do afterwords. I think it is an ambitious plan to try to get the remaining American's some form of broadband, which outcome would likely be good, I just cant say I agree with the method. Tom DeReggi RapidDSL Wireless, Inc IntAirNet- Fixed Wireless Broadband - Original Message - From: Fred R. Goldstein fgoldst...@ionary.com To: WISPA General List wireless@wispa.org Sent: Monday, November 21, 2011 6:02 PM Subject: [WISPA]
Re: [WISPA] FCC releases USF/ICC Order, rules on subsidizing ILECs
At 11/22/2011 11:22 AM, Tom DeReggi wrote: The FCC just had to have a date, and was nice enough to not close it too early. This also gives WISPs time to do some more construction and have it included. Thats one way to look at it. (And probably the more productive way, recognizing the timeline to protect opportunity.) The whole-state rule applies to the big ILECs. If they say no, the rules for the auction aren't written yet, and may work on a smaller basis. I think that's one of the things to discuss in the FNPRM Comments, which are due 24 January. But why would big ILEC's say, no ? Isn't this process pressuring the ILECs to say yes. Giving the ILECs a second chance to get another free ride, now for broadband? If ILEC took subsidee for Voice in past, why would they not do the same for Data? The big ILECs we're talking about (Price Cap Carriers) do not take a lot of subsidies. ATT gets a decent bunch for Mississippi, and a few dribs and drabs come in elsewhere, but they're net payers, not takers. The smaller Price Cap Carriers (Frontier, Windstream, etc.) take relatively more. So it's likely that the biggest ILECs (ATT, VZ) will look at each state and decide on a course of action. They could take the $775/line for any number of lines in Phase 1, and decide which states warrant statewide Phase 2 election. But it will probably be on a very careful financial analysis, based on how much they think they'll get vs. how much it'll cost. Remember, both VZ and ATT are basically disinvesting from wireline, emphasizing their mobile subsidiaries, so a little subsidy money might not move them. The smaller PCCs, I'm guessing, are more likely to sign on, as they're basically subsidy whores to begin with. Small ILECs might say no, because they might not have the funding or resources to take on a super large project even with subsidee. But Big Telco surely has the finances. We can use ATT as an example, who is advertising to cover all of America in 5 years, anyway. Do you think there is any chance that the big telco might say no in some states, I dont want USF? Sure, they'll turn it down to emphasize wireless instead. More profitable right now. VZ has been unloading rural territory and ATT might start to do so. Frontier, Windstream, CLQ and the other rural chains are buyers. It has happened in the past, to some extent. I can give the example of Verizon pulling out of a low profit analog market, and letting a smaller LEC take over such as either Century tel or Frontier (forget which LEC, and which Eastern state).. Back then it made sense with Verizon focusing on FIOS preferring to bypass regulation, that FIOS allowed them. But would that same justification still be there, when USF subsidees are there to compensate? VZ has pulled out of a *lot* of states, including all of ME, NH, VT, WV, OR, WA, HI, AL, MO, KY, AZ, NM, ID, IL, IN, OH, WI, MI, AK and I forget if they had any others. They've kept only three ex-GTE states (and not all of Texas). CAF is capped. Phase 1 is $775/line. Phase 2 has dollar caps to be divided among recipients. Phase 3 will be bid, so even if they take Phase 2, there's no guarantee of future funding in Phase 3. That's a risk. The FCC assumption is that up-front subsidies will leave it profitable in the long term. If the location is served on the National Broadband Map, or if the ILEC *knows* it's served by an unsubsidized competitor, it's off limits .. Again, only unserved areas will get support, though an ILEC can use support to build common plant in an area that is more than 50% unserved. Also, regarding those to comments in your original Email... I think the risk here is the same that it was with ARRA. Whats the definition of unserved, and but more importantly what is the definition of area, and what is the protest proof process, and is WISP's coverage large enough to qualify an area as served? And will gerrymandering allow a recipient to get around it? Obviously, the National MAP, that documents all reported coverage from all carriers will help quite a bit. But I'm still concerned that many WISP's coverage will be to small of a take rate or area, to be proportional enough to mark an area as served. I can tell you that in my rural markets, it would be near impossible to get over 50% coverage, even if I served everyhome that I had coverage to. Lets use a hypothetical example of the average member WISP having 1000 subs. There are not many areas that have less than 2000 potential subs. I can tell you from community connect grant research, looking at census data, it was tough finding areas that gained maximum points of under 500 households. The Phase 1 and 2 subsidies will be based on Census Blocks. That's the smallest geographic area that the federal government knows about or has maps of. So if you can cover all of a block, you put it on the map, and subscribers there cannot be counted towards CAF subsidies.
Re: [WISPA] FCC releases USF/ICC Order, rules on subsidizing ILECs
At 11/22/2011 11:53 AM, Sam Tetherow wrote: Is there any provision in the document for reducing funding in the future as areas get overbuilt? Or are we really looking at a 6-8month land grab? Good question. I see two land grabs, actually, Phase 1 and 2, both in 2012, but potentially a few months apart. Otherwise, Phase 3 rules aren't firm yet. Once Phase 2 is awarded, it's there for five years. Phase 3 is likely to have another unsubsidized-competitor test around 2017. Probably to discuss in the FNPRM, which has a lot of questions I haven't all read yet. -- Fred Goldsteink1io fgoldstein at ionary.com ionary Consulting http://www.ionary.com/ +1 617 795 2701 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] Open Range communications
Open range is now looking to sell equipment - focusing first on the equipment on the towers, then the other stuff. Please let him know you got this info from me. They are really looking to deal. Contact, Chris (Open Range Restructuring Officer) Chris LeWand Senior Managing Director | Corporate Finance F T I 303.689.8839 direct 720.253.3060 mobile chris.lew...@fticonsulting.com 1001 17th Street, Suite 1100 Denver, CO 80202 Don't take your organs to heaven, heaven knows we need them down here! Be an organ donor, sign your donor card today. 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] carrier grade label on WiFi products
Every vendor now uses the term carrier grade WiFi, and I'm curious what others think that means. To me, it's something like... high level --features that help increase ARPU --features that let it be operationalized easily lower level --ruggedized --interface to existing provisioning systems --easily maintainable Future things will include (I think) --ability to interface with 3G/4G systems for offload (EAP-SIM, EAP-AKA) --seamless roaming in and out of different RAN zones What do others think here? 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] Canopy 900 WTB
Does anyone have any used canopy 900 ap's for sale? If so hit me offload please. Thank you John Buwa Michiana Wireless,Inc 574-233-7170 Sent from my iPhone 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/
