Yes there is a check box, that has been the problem with sharing the data. The FCC was even sued for a FOIA release of the From 477 data by The Center for Public Integrity in 2007. They were not required to release the information.
Thank You, Brian Webster -----Original Message----- From: Ken Hohhof [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Tuesday, February 16, 2010 12:33 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [WISPA Members] [Motorola II] WISP's are killing themselves!!!!- New FCC form 477 report is out, not looking good for Fixed Wireless Well, I can see how that's a problem. Is there actually a checkbox where you choose to protect or not protect your data? I don't remember that. But I haven't done the March 1 submission yet. If that's the case, and they are prohibited from sharing the data with other government entities doing broadband mapping, I don't have a solution for that. From: Brian Webster Sent: Tuesday, February 16, 2010 11:22 AM To: Ken Hohhof ; [email protected] Subject: RE: [WISPA Members] [Motorola II] WISP's are killing themselves!!!!- New FCC form 477 report is out, not looking good for Fixed Wireless The biggest problem with not providing the 477 data to the state or making it available to those seeking grants, is the fact that people who file the data have checked the box that requires the FCC to protect it under NDA (Marlon do you remember this issue? As I recall you were one of the cheerleaders on that topic). The WISP's were the ones insisting that that option be available before they would file. Now the same industry it bitching about the fact that the data is not being distributed...can't have it both ways. The FCC has shared the data with NTIA and RUS and those agencies are protecting that same NDA. Those agencies are using the data to cross reference grant applications and challenges. Thank You, Brian Webster -----Original Message----- From: Ken Hohhof [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Tuesday, February 16, 2010 12:03 PM To: [email protected]; [email protected] Subject: Re: [WISPA Members] [Motorola II] WISP's are killing themselves!!!!- New FCC form 477 report is out,not looking good for Fixed Wireless Brian, this thread leaves me puzzled about a few things. 1) Why are we so worried about the US "falling behind" the rest of the world in broadband, while the fact that China is leaving us in the dust in high speed rail generates a mere yawn? (same with solar and wind power ... technology, manufacturing, and deployment) 2) Does anyone really believe this is about high speed pipes for telemedicine, or kids doing their homework? What is the national security issue with making sure every house is wired for 4 simultaneous streams of on-demand high definition 3D entertainment? Are we afraid of falling behind the Chinese in the couch potato race? 3) This is a census year. Why is the census not being used to get this data directly from end users? Think of the questions you could ask, not just about what speeds people have, but why they don't have higher speeds. (unavailable? too expensive? not needed? don't even have a computer? only use the Internet for texting and tweeting from their cellphone?) 4) Any other statistical survey would correct for known measurement errors. For example, by checking a sample of the data against independently obtained data known to be accurate. Or correcting for known measurement inaccuracies. Like if you know that only 10% of Amish households have phones while 90% of the general population does, you might want to multiply the Amish responses in a phone survey by 9. So if they know only 50% of WISPs are submitting Form 477, wouldn't it make sense to multiply the numbers by 2? It wouldn't be perfect, but it would be more accurate than making decisions based on clearly wrong data. 5) Why is a fortune in stimulus money being handed out in state mapping grants, for a one-time measurement, and for results that won't be available in time for the broadband plan next month? 6) Why is no one cross referencing Form 477 data to state mapping projects? I look at the Connect Illinois map, and it clearly does not include some of the biggest WISPs in my area, for example T6 Broadband. Yet those WISPs are in the dropdown box for Form 477, so evidently they submitted Form 477 data. If they have a bunch of customers in a certain census tract, apparently they have coverage in that census tract. Would it not make sense for the state map to include this data, even if the WISPs chose not to give Connected Nation a spreadsheet of all their APs to independently generate a coverage map? I mean, come on guys, decisions are being made on the basis of data that someone can easily demonstrate is very wrong. It's like saying my sister doesn't exist and making decisions based on her non-existence, just because she didn't send me a Christmas card. 7) If insufficient broadband speed is such a monumental problem, why is it proving so difficult to obtain the data to back it up? I think maybe we're obsessing too much about the people who can only get 3M DSL or 6M WiMAX or 10M cable, but to prove whose dick is bigger we want them to get 100M or 1000M because we heard on TV that everybody in Hong Kong has that. So far the free market has done a pretty good job of getting those people faster and faster speeds. And if we're trying to determine who CAN'T get broadband, we're going about it backwards by having providers tell us everyone who CAN and then seeing who got left out. I'll tell you how to quickly identify all the unserved areas in the country. Get a list of street addresses from Hughesnet of all their customers. Anywhere you have a concentration of Hughesnet dishes, clearly those people have no other choice. It's like someone announced, hey everybody who can't get high speed Internet, stick a big ugly dish on your roof so we can identify you easily from space. From: Brian Webster Sent: Monday, February 15, 2010 2:37 PM To: [email protected] ; WISPA List ; WISPA Board ; memb...@wispa. org Subject: Re: [WISPA Members] [Motorola II] WISP's are killing themselves!!!!- New FCC form 477 report is out,not looking good for Fixed Wireless As many of you know I participated on a panel last week with 2 FCC staffers. Here is the text of an email I just sent to them: Paul and John; I just reviewed the latest form 477 report. I am dismayed by the results for the fixed wireless industry. I cannot believe, and I am sure you don't either that there was a 39.6% decline in subscribers over 6 months when there were 112 more operators reporting. The only conclusion I can draw is that fixed wireless operators who reported in the past using the zip code method, did not file when they were required to report by census tract. Many of those operators must have had a large customer base. As I mentioned on the panel, I have assisted some WISP's file their 477 reports by mapping their customer databases and assigning the proper tract data to each record. In talking with most of them, it became apparent that the FCC did not provide an adequate tool to help those people file. While it is possible to look up a single address and get the tract data, there were no provisions to allow for a bulk upload and query to assign this information. Many of the 20 or so WISP's I helped had databases of 1,200 to 1,400 records. That would be a very time consuming process to do one at a time. Most small WISP's do not have the GIS skills or tools to deal with this issue that major carriers already have on staff. Zip codes were easy because it was already part of the information they had on hand. If possible there should be a tool to address this issue which should increase the reporting numbers from those who had participated in the past. Thank You, Brian Webster 214 Eggleston Hill Rd. Cooperstown, NY 13326 (607) 643-4055 Office (607) 435-3988 Mobile (208) 692-1898 Fax Skype: Radiowebst www.wirelessmapping.com -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]]on Behalf Of Peter Kranz Sent: Monday, February 15, 2010 1:50 PM To: [email protected] Subject: RE: [Motorola II] WISP's are killing themselves!!!! - New FCC form 477 report is out, not looking good for Fixed Wireless Maybe they can keep making this report harder and harder to fill out so we all just stop doing it.. That report is a huge waste of my staffs time. And based on the underlying edits and validations you can tell their system computes the census tracks internally to verify it matches the one you provide. The system should accept data in a way that is simple for a WISP to provide and derive the census tracks, etc.. maybe then more people would provide the data. Peter Kranz Founder/CEO - UnwiredLtd www.UnwiredLtd.com Desk: 510-868-1614 x100 Mobile: 510-207-0000 [email protected] From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Chuck McCown Sent: Monday, February 15, 2010 10:41 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [Motorola II] WISP's are killing themselves!!!! - New FCC form 477 report is out, not looking good for Fixed Wireless Brian, Could you find a list of the fixed wireless companies so we can all verify we are on the list? From: Brian Webster Sent: Monday, February 15, 2010 11:36 AM To: WISPA List ; memb...@wispa. org ; WISPA Board ; Motorla List Beehive Subject: [Motorola II] WISP's are killing themselves!!!! - New FCC form 477 report is out, not looking good for Fixed Wireless The latest FCC report on form 477 broadband data is out (http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-296239A1.pdf). While I don't see a whole lot of useful data in it, I do see where WISP's are killing themselves and the industry, why? a.. In the periods prior to the December 2008 report, fixed wireless has shown a steady increase in subscribers. The last reporting period the number of subscribers dropped from 808,000 to 488,000!!! That's a 39.6% drop in the actual data that had been previously reported. Know I know that most of the problem is the fact they now require census tract reporting rather than zip codes, but dropping like this does not help the industry as a whole. b.. Because of the low number of reported subscribers, the reporting by technology portions of the report does not even earn fixed wireless a spot on the charts in it's own category. It's lumped in with the 1.4% total of all other technologies compared to the rest of the broadband industry. Hell Satellite has their own category with .9%. c.. The total number of fixed wireless providers reporting is 617. That means there are a huge number of WISP's not filing form 477 and those that didn't report must have a large number of subscribers. The previous period where fixed wireless had 808,000 subscribers had only 505 WISP's report! Matt Larsen and the WISP directory have around 1,800 WISP's registered. I've heard other estimates between 2,000 and over 4,000. Only 617 fixed wireless operators reporting is not helping the cause at all. d.. The National broadband plan is being formulated as we speak, looking at those statistics it appears the WISP industry is in a serious decline and that as a total percentage of broadband provided to consumers nationally, they make no significant difference. If you were a government policy maker, would you even pay attention to WISP's. I certainly would not. They have to make decisions based on data and that benefit the majority of the country. WISP's have thumbed their noses at providing this data for years. I think it is really going to bite them in the butt now. Fiber to the home is coming liking it or not. USF reform is coming like it or not. USF reform is going to subsidize broadband to the very markets wireless serves more economically today. Removing that advantage is going to put the WISP industry in serious trouble. The manufacturers are killing themselves as well. In their quest to just sell radios, they have missed the importance of keeping the industry healthy. If the WISP's cannot compete and/or show that they are a significant option to the overall broadband infrastructure in the US, how will they continue to sell product. If anyone knows the true number of WISP's out there it is the manufacturers. They should be leading the charge with groups like WISPA to make sure ALL WISP's stand up and get counted. How hard would it be to stuff each shipment with educational material on the importance of filing form 477? The current FCC is very open minded but the results of this type of report force them to make decisions that benefit the most people. 488,000 is a very small portion of over 129 million homes. All I can say is ouch........ Thank You, Brian Webster ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- _______________________________________________ WISPA Membership Mailing List ----------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- WISPA Wants You! Join today! http://signup.wispa.org/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- WISPA Wireless List: [email protected] Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/
