Posted 11/10/09 at 07:27:03 AM by Paul Lilly

Sprint feels awfully confident in Clearwire's WiMax 4G technology, enough so to pump another $1 billion into it, Combined with a $500 million investment from Comcast, Intel, Time Warner, and Bright House, that brings the latest round of funding to $1.5 billion, reports the Wall Street Journal.

As if billion dollar investments needed any additional intrigue, what makes this one so interesting (and risky) is that Clearwire and Sprint are the only two U.S. carriers putting faith in WiMax to usher in 4G wireless broadband. Verizon and AT&T, who happen to be the two biggest heavyweights, are banking on rival technology LTE for their 4G networks.

The gamble is huge for Sprint. Should Clearwire burn through its cash, which the company has been known to do, it will be up to Sprint to invest even more if it's to keep majority control. Sounds simple enough, except that Sprint's net debt was already approaching $16 billion at the end of last quarter.

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Posted 11/03/09 at 08:30:54 AM by Paul Lilly

Following up its first WiMax deployment in Baltimore in September of last year, Sprint on Monday launched WiMax service in Chicago and Dallas-Fort Worth. This in addition to the three markets being served in North Carolina.

And Sprint isn't even close to be finished. By the time 2009 comes to an end, the wireless provider says it will roll out WiMax in Honolulu, Seattle, San Antonio, and Austin, Texas.

"Sprint continues to lead the charge in rolling out wireless 4G in cities across America and the momentum continues to build," Todd Rowley, vice president of Sprint 4G, said in a statement. "Our aggressive expansion of Sprint 4G will include many new devices and capabilities that create increased performance and productivity while enhancing personal lifestyles on the go."

Looking ahead to next year, Sprint expects to launch service in several more markets, including Boston, Houston, New York, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C.

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Posted 10/28/09 at 03:32:23 PM by Bart Salisbury

There’s a definite object lesson here, but I’m not sure what it is. It could be that competition is a good thing. It also could be that monopolies don’t take kindly to threats to their turf. What is obvious, however, is if you need your local cable provider to do something you got to be prepared to poke them in the eye (preferably with a sharp stick).

The suburban hamlet of Monticello, Minnesota, just outside of Minneapolis, had a hankering for fiber optic cable for all its residents. The town approached it’s regional telco, TDS Telecommunications, with the request and was rebuffed. TDS didn’t see the need to make such an investment in Monticello now or any time in the foreseeable future. In response, the citizens of Monticello passed a referendum to build their own fiber optic system, which would compete with TDS’s cable service to the town.

That didn’t sit well with TDS, which promptly sued Monticello. Minnesota law sides with the city in this case, and as the lawsuit progressed through the courts the city kept winning. TDS’s intent wasn’t to block Monticello’s efforts, only to delay them. While the lawsuit was underway the city was prevented from starting construction. TDS, however, wasn’t, and began to install its own fiber optic system. When completed, TDS crowed about the technological improvements it rendered in Monticello, saying “TDS is working incredibly hard to deliver the faster speeds customers want.”

And it didn’t end there.

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Posted 10/21/09 at 04:55:08 PM by Bart Salisbury

It makes sense: you pay for what you eat. But if a restaurant offers an all-you-can-eat buffet, then decides you’re eating too much and should be charged more, it doesn’t go over too well. It seems something similar is afoot with Internet providers: the promise of the all-you-can-eat buffet is cutting a bit too deeply into their bottom-lines, and now they think you should pay more.

The problem is one of expectations. Internet providers set up unlimited access as a method to attract people onto the Internet. And it worked. The Internet not only became populated, it began to offer a wealth of services that changed the nature of the retail marketplace, and is on the verge of doing the same for the media industry. Unfortunately, as the opportunities to be online expand, so to did our appetite for bandwidth. Meeting those demands has become something of a problem for Internet providers.

Because the federal government won’t allow Internet providers to differentiate traffic that moves over its hardware: porn and The New York Times must be treated with equal deference, Internet providers must find other ways of limiting the use they encouraged. "A flat-rate, infinitely expandable service is unachievable," Dick Lynch, chief technology officer of Verizon Communications Inc. (So to is a flat-rate, infinitely expandable brick of cheese.)

Earlier this year some Internet providers put monthly caps on usage. Comcast, for example, said no more than 250 Gbs a month. Comcast says this only impacts a small number of high-usage customers. AT&T, in Beaumont, Texas and Reno, Nevada, is offering tiered-pricing structures, with penalties for going over your monthly allotment.

More radical are plans by some, AT&T and Time Warner Cable, Inc. for instance, involve a return to usage-base pricing: you pay for what you eat. The problem with this approach is customers don’t like it. They really, really don’t like it. So much so that Time Warner was forced to shut down a pilot metered Internet program last year. Further, online businesses won't be thrilled. It could put a serious crimp into online browsing, leading to a downturn in Internet business. And Netflix probably won’t be too keen on the idea, with all it has invested in streaming video.

No resolutions as yet, but it seems certain that something is bound to happen. Maybe not metered usage, but something that involves taking more money out of our wallets is a given.

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Posted 10/16/09 at 08:31:33 PM by Ryan Whitwam

The broadband infrastructure of the United States is a little on the poor side when compared to some other nations. According to a new FCC report, the best way to fix that is to open up broadband access and increase competition.  The FCC hasn’t considered requiring open access to broadband facilities since 2002. The principal of ‘open access’ says telecoms, like cable companies, should allow access to their physical infrastructure for competing businesses that don’t own infrastructure. Telephone carriers (i.e. DSL) are required to do this, cable providers are not.

The study was quoted as saying, “The lowest prices and highest speeds are almost always offered by firms in markets where, in addition to an incumbent telephone company and a cable company, there are also competitors who entered the market, and built their presence, through use of open access facilities.” The US is also expected to use stimulus finds to increase access to broadband.

The 232-page report estimates that building out the US infrastructure would cost at least $20 billion, and as much as $350 billion. The wide disparity in cost is the result of uncertainty as to what speed should be offered. The report says one-third of Americans have broadband access at home but do not subscribe, and 4% have no access at all.

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Posted 10/15/09 at 10:14:29 AM by Pulkit Chandna

The Finnish Ministry of Transport and Communications has decided to make broadband access a legal right of every Finn. Recognizing broadband access as a legal right may seem relatively easier for an affluent European country with a population of only 5.5 million.

But that is not enough to belittle its courage in setting a precedent for other countries of the world. The Finnish government hopes to implement its latest edict beginning July 2010. Initially, every Finn will have the right to a one-megabit broadband connection. Finland had previously vowed to legally guarantee access to a 100 Mb broadband connection by the end of 2015.

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Posted 09/29/09 at 11:34:58 PM by Pulkit Chandna

You can now curse your ISP with even more conviction. A task force set up by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has revealed that actual broadband speeds are slower than promised speeds by as much as 50% to 80%.

Although the task force didn’t name any decent ways to express dissent, it is suggested that indignant consumers learn the art of protesting from the true masters of the art: the Palestinians, who have pioneered some of the most effective and economical techniques, including stone pelting and the fabled catch-and-hurl-back-teargas-grenade technique.

Coming back to the subject of broadband access, the task force is busy preparing a report on ways to enhance broadband penetration in rural and urban areas. The panel will submit its final report to Congress in February. It said in an interim report that anywhere between $20 and $350 billion might be needed for installing necessary wireless and landline infrastructure. Its estimate depends on the internet speed.

“This speaks to consumer empowerment. And if you are advertising one speed but delivering another, that takes power away. Consumers can't make accurate decisions based on quality of service from one provider off another,” Joel Kelsey, an analyst at Consumers Union, told the Washington Post.

The panel said in its report that while nearly 2/3 of Americans are wallowing in broadband bliss and 1/3 have access but haven’t subscribed, 4% have no access whatsoever. The panel also expects smartphones to march ahead of blander phones by 2011.

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Posted 09/29/09 at 08:37:09 PM by Ryan Whitwam

Verizon’s Chief Technology Officer, Dick Lynch, had some tough words for you heavy downloaders out there. He claimed that in the future, all internet access will be sold based on the amount of data a customer wants to consume. Lynch claims that so-called metered broadband is the only way forward. “We’re going to have to consider pricing structures that allow us to sell packages of bytes, and at the end of the day the concept of a flat-rate infinitely expandable service is unachievable,” said Lynch.

The Verizon CTO further explained that the model would likely be similar to the current model of wireless carriers, and not a specific price per gigabyte used. Verizon has previously decided against instituting caps on their FiOS service, but this could be an indication that all the uncapped internet goodness is about to end.

His statements were made as part of a larger discussion of Network Neutrality. Lynch specifically talked about the rise of high bandwidth applications and services. He said that some services “will not be happy on the public Internet.” Lynch speculated some other method of delivery for these services may be needed.

We’re used to hearing the outcry when a broadband provider tries to institute caps. Does the Internet-using population have the stomach for metered access? Let us know in the comments.

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