the following is fiction... but could it happen? =========
Dateline, Washington DC, August 11, 2010 Ed Duerkson, National Small Business Monthly Today, just in time to boost her presidental aspirations, Senator Clinton and the rest of the Senate voted in the Universal Information Rights bill. "This sweeping legislation is the most important act to pass Congress since the passage of the Civil Rights Acts in the sixties. Defining access to information as a right, just like the right to vote and the right to free speech will revolutionize our society." As a regular writer of this column and having followed this story for a few years, I think it's time to recap just how we got to where we are. Researching the history of internet providers has been a fascinating study. The earliest access to what was a closed system started back in the middle 90's, when a few ISP's started allowing modem access to what was a very academia oriented network. Time online was expensive, but everything online was free. And not a regulation in sight. By the late 90's, dialup was common, and faster internet connections were becoming sought after, and DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) technology was slowly rolled out in urban areas by most telephone companies, which allowed the dramatically faster - but slow by today's standards - access of at first a fraction of a megabit, and then growing to several megabit speeds. Of course, all access previous to common DSL was all by small business. Then, the phone companies saw the light and began thier own internet access offerings. They owned DSL for the most part, and moved into the wholesale, or commodity, dialup business. Striking down the telecommunications act by the courts a few years later gave them a leg up on gaining market share. Most of this market share seemed to be at the expense of ISP's. By the middle of this last decade, DSL was available to well more than half of the population - and with the advent of commodity priced equipment, it rapidly spread to around 80%. Cable was hot, as well, providing 'net access to large areas and bundled with tv and eventually, VOIP offerings. Then, fiber slowly began to be deployed. With good speeds, and a permanence of presence, fiber finally began to penetrate urban areas. But with high costs of deployment, somewhat costly maintenance, fiber was relatlively expensive for residential use. So, you say, what happened to those areas NOT covered by DSL and fiber? Some had nothing other than dialup. Wireless providers grew expansively in the early and middle part of the decade. No license costs, almost no regulation, and the advent of inexpensive and relatively fast wireless equipment and technologies made wireless a bright star. It, too, however, had moderate infrastructure costs, and it did not cover everywhere. Satellite was a somewhat less than stellar, but very universally available version of broadband. Performance issues kept it from being much besides the "last available alternative". >From a small business advocacy perspective, Wireless was the key. Anyone could get into the business, the cost of deployment varied dramatically from a couple normal paychecks, to millions of dollars, and so it became a bright star for small business, in the communications sector. How this changed? Well, that's a subject of debate. Some say it was inevitable "maturing". I disagree. Many industries "mature" and leave a vibrant mix of both small and large operators. In this case, it was a case of regulation and some interesting moves by industry and politics. First, regulators moved to regulate Internet services. WISP's began to lobby the FCC for spectrum, the kind required to offer near universal services. They won this battle. Almost. They won, with late 2006 rule by the FCC that granted sub 1Ghz spectrum for the provision of broadband services. With over 150Mhz of spectrum available, the industry was ecstatic. But with an intenst lobbying by a coalition of telephone companies, cellular companies, and equipment manufacturers - with the lead operators of each being Verizon, SBC, Motorola, and joined by Microsoft and a group of WiMax producers and even the ARRL, intense pressure and the specter of a lot of lawsuits prompted the FCC to reverse its decision, and that spectrum space was changed to "licensed" and sold at auction. This seems to be the key. Lobbying produced results and WISP's gained the ability to tap USF funds to provide internet and VOIP phone service to rural areas. In fact, a few actually bought out a couple small areas from independent phone companies and a short lived moved by larger phone companies to divest themselves from small money-losing areas. These were relatively successful initially. But with this move, new regulations came into existence. WISP's could no longer offer any other service than an internet connection, or else they were classified as and subject to full telecommunications regulations. Those that did found themselves required to sell access to thier network to thier competition. One particular happening, for instance, was when Qwest won the right to use the independent network's last mile to offer bandwidth. After arguing for almost 3 years that independents were entitled to be given access to the last mile at a discount equal to 50% of the retail price of the services offered by the owners of the network. Qwest then offered a $5 package that included unlimited VOIP and long distance AND internet access to residential customers. Small operators could not afford to build out universally if they offered anything other than net access only. And then USF funds became restricted to only universal access providers. Almost without exception, this ended the operations of multiple-service WISP's. This brings us to today. The last two years have been an intense effort by Microsoft, SBC, and others, by a newly formed consortium of politicians, academics, social activists, and industry players like Motorola and Alvarion, known as "Universal Knowledge Access" or "UKA", to define internet access as a universal service - requiring provision to every business and residence in the country. With the passage of this bill, internet access has become the telephone access of the last century. Only those who can provide it universally are allowed to operate. Basically, each state will have a framework of regulations, almost mirroring that which defined telephone services up until now. The FCC has federal oversight and is expected to handle any regulatory issues. In about three months, the FCC and each state will start a registration process, where each provider will define the territory it covers, and will have approximately 18 months to reach every address within the registered area. Rates for access will be set by the same tarriff mechanism that sets rates within each state for telephone company services. USF funds will continue to be available to subsidize rural buildouts. James Hart, president of WISPA, who had been influential and forceful in Washington DC revealed to me in a phone conversation, that he and WISPA were expecting the closure or sale of about 99% of its member's businesses. WISPA had been initially supportive of the UKA goals, but the universal service requirments killed all support. But it was too late. >From a small business perspective... Internet access by small business had a 17 year life. Not even long enough to retire from. And now its gone. Will it be deregulated in the future? Maybe. But don't look for it too soon. The specific regulatory processes taking place to provide universal service actually don't plan on reaching universal access for nearly 10 years. Any plans to disrupt that will definitely face insurmountable political opposition. RIP Internet Service Providers 1995 - 2011 "We loved them well" Next month, in my column on industry trends, we're going to look at evolution of operating system diversity in the marketplace, and how the imposition and retraction of legally mandated information file formats affected OS and application development. We'll also examine the suprising rise of small players over the last two years in the operating system market. ============== I honestly am beginning to question my move into the WISP business... seems there's hardly a soul out there that sees danger in jumping on the "regulate me and give me money" bandwagon... North East Oregon Fastnet, LLC 509-593-4061 personal correspondence to: mark at neofast dot net sales inquiries to: purchasing at neofast dot net Fast Internet, NO WIRES! ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- - -- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/
