The Broadband Scam

 Tech Dirt has an interesting piece describing the problems with the Government and funding of broadband. They commence:

As we've noted, the recent infrastructure bill will deliver a record $65 billion to be spent on improving lagging U.S. broadband access. Roughly $42 billion will be used specifically to expand broadband coverage, mostly via state grants doled out by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA). By any measure this is a good thing, and the investment should result in significant improvements in patchy, expensive U.S. broadband access. 

Now I recall quite well the last broadband expenditure under Obama. The "shovel ready" projects which often were nothing more than road signs. Billions spent and it is often impossible to find out what was accomplished.  Specifically in my opinion and in my experience I have seen hundreds of millions just spent and the results are insignificant if anything at all.

The above article starts with several key points:

1. Where is broadband needed? Frankly we do not know. There is a lot of anecdotal information, some poor kid sitting in the rain or snow, outside a library trying to do their homework. Is broadband needed there or is it just access. Somehow the kid has a laptop, somehow the kid knows how to use it, and fundamentally the kid is motivated. Also for some reason the kid can't seem to get to the library when it is open.

2. How will the States allocate the billions? States and Government in general do not have the faintest clue as to what needs to be done. These are either political hacks or career government employees. Deployment of broadband demands experience in technology, installation and operations, none of which is a talent in any of the state folks. So how is it distributed? Politics and friends of the court. What does that mean, 2009 all over again.

3. Is broadband access the solution? Hardly. We have argued for decades since I taught the first Multimedia Communications course at MIT in the late 1980s that multimedia communications is a complex process. Just having access is at most the first step. A laptop, software, etc all are demanded.

4. What are the barriers to entry besides incompetent government? The Tech Dirt article notes:

But these state mapping efforts are hugely inconsistent. Maine, for example, has done a good job developing crowdsourced mapping data through the state's Connect Maine initiative. But for every state like Maine there are four states that have absolutely no idea what broadband reality looks like, in large part because their state legislatures and regulators are in the back pocket of regional monopolies like AT&T and Comcast. Both companies have a long track record of fighting broadband mapping improvements (something the Post oddly doesn't mention). In part because a more accurate look at U.S. broadband competition and coverage gaps would only drive policy efforts to actually do something about it. But also because these companies have spent the better part of a generation hoovering up billions in broadband subsidies for networks they then notoriously only half deliver.

I could not agree more. The monopolists want their monopoly. In my opinion and in my experience they often achieve this by aligning with the towns who somehow believe this will get them more. I have done battle with many of these monopolists and the cost is insurmountable. Yet the towns who provide their franchises appear to do nothing to ameliorate the problem. These ISPs cannot operate without a franchise yet somehow that lever is applied only against the new entrants.

5. Just what do we mean by broadband? That is a good question. Must we have fiber to the home, a costly deal. Must we have high speed 5G wireless with billions of tiny cells all connected by fiber? Doubtful. It depends on what you want to use it for. That is the fundamental problem.

 Now consider what will happen in this broadband give away. The money will be allocated by NTIA. NTIA is a bunch of Government bureaucrats who have no business experience. The money then will go to states, most likely on a politically driven basis. Namely most likely in my opinion to buy votes not to meet some unmet capability. Then the states, even less competent that the Feds will dole out the money in some truly political manner. 

Finally there will never be any auditing to ensure that to funds were properly spent. I had seen this the last round of these give aways. Hundreds of millions just "spent" with no transparency and with no truly productive effect.

Broadband Today

 I often express my distinct disadvantage of experience. From satellites, to cable to wireless to fiber and the list goes on. But the current Infrastructure Bill goes way beyond anything I could ever have dreamed of. It is a takeover by the Government, of all of the essential telecommunications for the next fifty years. Consider the following two new definitions from pp 2093-2094 of the Bill:

(10) Digital equity.— The term ‘‘digital equity’’ means the condition in which individuals and communities have the information technology capacity that is needed for full participation in the society
and economy of the united States.

(11) Digital inclusion.— The term ‘‘digital inclusion’’—

(A) means the activities that are necessary to ensure that all individuals in the united States have access to, and the use of, affordable information and communication technologies, such as—
(i) reliable fixed and wireless broadband internet service;
(ii) internet-enabled devices that meet the needs of the user; and
(iii) applications and online content designed to enable and encourage self-sufficiency, participation, and collaboration;
and

(B) includes—
(i) obtaining access to digital literacy training;
(ii) the provision of quality technical support; and
(iii) obtaining basic awareness of measures to ensure online privacy and cybersecurity.

(12) Digital literacy.— The term ‘‘digital literacy’’ means the skills associated with using technology to enable users to find, evaluate, organize, create, and communicate information.

The Bill empowers the US Government to fund, manage, oversee, direct, fine, and imprison any who violate their interpretations direct of otherwise. Just read these definitions then try to read through the thousands of pages where such Federal empowerment occurs.

I recall quite well the Obama era "Shovel Ready" programs whereby billions were spent on broadband infrastructure. Take one state, to be un-named, where some $200 million was given to build such an infrastructure, Well, no some eleven years later I still wonder what happened. Yet the oversight by the Feds seems clueless. 

Yet this Bill dictates the means and methods for societal control. It is the basis for Propaganda enforcement. Pity.

NOTE: See Keller and Heckman for additional info.

NYC Broadband?

I have tried to keep away from broadband since it is becoming a closed system with minimal innovation. Yes, I know, 5G and all that stuff. Imaging little antennas all over broadcasting RF at frequencies which could fry your eyeballs out. But I guess that is when tin hats become useful.

Now along come NYC proposing broadband for all getting folks to put fiber everywhere. As Ars Technica states:

The plan, announced by Mayor Bill de Blasio and Chief Technology Officer John Paul Farmer yesterday, says New York City "will prioritize and optimize 'open-access' or 'neutral-host' infrastructure, which can be shared by multiple operators to lower costs, increase competition, minimize physical disruption to the city, and incentivize private-sector investments to reach and serve customers." New York City wants to ensure universal access to both wired and mobile Internet, with a fiber network that offers home Internet and provides bandwidth to mobile services.... The city itself "will invest in new infrastructure that can be shared by multiple broadband operators," the plan says. In addition to the city's own "seed investments," New York said it "will leverage public-private partnerships to install, operate, and maintain the infrastructure." The plan estimates that building the needed infrastructure throughout the city would cost $2.1 billion. There's already a lot of fiber conduit in Manhattan and in the Bronx, so much of the construction could be done by pulling fiber cables through existing underground conduits. Aerial fiber installations would also be used heavily.

OK, now just what does this mean? $2.1 billion means just what? You see, just fiber on a pole is $50K per mile, buried is $100K, and you can do the math. Perhaps half of Staten Island? Then we get to Brooklyn, these costs go up an order of magnitude, then to Manhattan!

Then think the Subway system! You want the folks running the Subway, Sanitation, etc running a high tech infrastructure. People who cannot be fired, who have zero technical expertise.

This must be some election scam. 

Now This is Socialism!

Again for those not knowing, my grandmother was head of the New York Socialist Party in the early 1900s and actually ran for Congress when Debs ran for President and ran for New York Treasurer in 1922. So I have first hand knowledge of Socialists. One of the things they pushed for was Government control of utilities, water etc. Kind of happened.

Now also the Government controls trains and bridges. If you think that is good try Amtrak or NJ Transit or the NY Subway! It makes the third world look great! NJ Transit is a classic example, all westbound trains have been cancelled for today! Just an example.

Now some Academic proposes in the NY Times that a "Trump" proposal for takeover of all 5G should occur. This non technical academic notes:

The concept, promoted by Republican operatives such as Newt Gingrich and Karl Rove, is for a network supporting fifth-generation (5G) wireless technology to operate on a wholesale basis. Carriers such as AT&T, Comcast and Verizon could buy capacity. So could anyone else: Apple, Amazon, Walmart, Uber or small operators serving rural areas. No company could use exclusive control over spectrum to block competition. Last year, a leaked National Security Council presentation called for nationalization of 5G networks to improve cybersecurity and better compete against China. The proposal was ignominiously killed and its author left the White House. The Trump re-election campaign’s proposal wisely dropped the government takeover. It shifted the focus to wholesale access, which could be overseen by an independent nonprofit organization, like the independent system operators that manage electricity markets. 

This is Socialism pure and simple.  Imagine the nations communications infrastructure controlled by politicians, worse than New Jersey and the trains, worse than the New York City subway! This is truly the most idiotic proposal I have ever seen! Truly moronic. You see I was also the COO of NYNEX Mobile, now Verizon Wireless. So unlike the dreamy academic I actually have some knowledge. I have built networks in over twenty countries, so perhaps unlike the characters at the White House bemoaning the would be Socialists they have become the enemy they fear!

The want to nationalize bandwidth! They want Government employees to run a network. Are they truly out of their minds! 

Let us hope this dies a quiet death and please let the academics go back and warp our children's minds. That is damage enough!

The Distinct Disadvantage of Experience

In my experience and in my opinion, Academic lawyers generally have never done anything real, especially with regard to the operations and technology of a broadband fiber system. Like walk a town and do a pole count. Like try and get a pole attachment agreement. Like scheduling fiber pulls across front laws and then dealing with the blow-back from home owners. Like trying to sell fiber to the home. Like managing a fiber data network. Like trying to raise funding for what "you" want to do.

Unfortunately and fortunately I have been in all of those spots. So I have a basis upon which to opine. In contrast the academic attorneys most likely would not in my opinion be accepted as an expert witness. The Daubert rule most likely would knock them out. Hearsay does not an expert make.

Now in Backchannel one of these folks states:

We do need fiber, everywhere. But we’re talking about basic infrastructure when we talk about fiber. And it is not in any private company’s short-term interest to make that basic fiber infrastructure — which amounts to a substantial upgrade to the last-century copper and cable lines with which Americans are now stuck — available to everyone at a reasonable price. Google’s retreat is all about the bottom line. It wanted an unrealistic rate of return on basic infrastructure. It wanted to see rapid cost declines per subscriber, like the Moore’s Law changes in productivity that have taken place when digital technologists squeeze costs from other legacy businesses.

Now in my opinion and in my experience there a mass of less than correct statements in the above. First we do NOT need fiber everywhere. I have argued elsewhere that wireless, especially 5G, will very effectively compete with fiber. Secondly fiber is very very expensive. Been there done that. Why the costs? Duh! Politics. Pole attachments, rights of way, franchises, local boards, and on and on. If one has ever tried this then one can see what happens. 

So when I see articles of this type I am amazed that they continue. That at no point do they ever ask; what really happened. Google was in my opinion wrong from the start. I think I know what may have happened, but all too often it is egos and too much money.  

What Took So Long?

In a report by Tech Dirt they note:

Back in August a report emerged claiming that Google Fiber executives were having some second thoughts about this whole "building a nationwide fiber network from the ground up" thing. More specifically, the report suggested that some executives were disappointed with the slow pace of digging fiber trenches, and were becoming bullish on the idea of using next-gen wireless to supplement fiber after acquiring fixed wireless provider Webpass. As such, the report said the company was pondering some staff reductions, some executive changes, and a bit of a pivot. Fast forward to this week when Access CEO Craig Barrett posted a cheery but ambiguous blog post not only formally announcing most of these changes, but his own resignation as CEO. According to Barrett, Google will continue to serve and expand Google Fiber's existing markets (Austin, Atlanta, Charlotte, Kansas City, Nashville, Provo, Salt Lake City, and The Triangle in North Carolina), and will also build out previously-announced but not yet started efforts in Huntsville, Alabama; San Antonio, Texas; Louisville, Kentucky; and Irvine, California. 

I love the new Valley words; pivot, disrupt, etc.  We have argued for a decade that fiber is too costly and rant with delays and that wireless is the way to go. Yes a decade, ten years, 10% of a century, 1% of a millennium. So much for those bright minds at Google. Perhaps the fact of life has finally hit them in the head.

Now for wireless. You need a license. Lots of them actually. So where do they get them?  Acquisitions, but costly one.

Fiber, Wireless and Google

Some decade ago I mentioned to some top folks at Google that fiber to the home was a long and unfruitful hill to climb. Wireless would be the game of the future and those with a license will have a head start. Google bought into Meraki, a mesh WiFi system, and then proceeded to plow ahead with fiber just as we got out. And yes, let Cisco buy Meraki. Between the Franchise and pole attachments, and the massive delays of build outs we have no way we can see that an overbuild of fiber will work. Add to that the new advantages of wireless and well, only big egos with no insight would go forward.

Now it appears as if Google is heading towards wireless but at the 70-80 GHz band. Ooops, another mistake. As Wired notes:

The spectrum in question—the 70/80 Ghz band—is used by Webpass, the San Francisco broadband company now owned by Google Fiber (the acquisition closed today). Webpass uses this band to beam an Internet signal to the roofs of apartment buildings and condos, before stringing cables into living rooms. Google wants FCC rules that would allow it to use such technology on a much larger scale. Google Fiber is as a separate company under the umbrella operation called Alphabet, and according to some reports it is under pressure to cut costs—even as it expands its high-speed Internet service and pushes entrenched companies like Verizon and AT&T toward similar services. A faster Internet is good for Google.

What should be good for Google is growing positive cash flow.This adventure may not be one.

FCC 600 MHz Spectrum Auction

Watching the Kentucky Derby is worth the time. Nice clothes, good horses, and the outcome is generally uncertain. The race is a simple thing. A bunch of fast horses, good riders, and round track. The first across wins. Simple.

In contrast the FCC auctions are now one of the most bizzare systems ever. Let those academics loose and you get backward and forwards low and high and so forth. Imagine a Kentucky Derby where you run backwards the first time around, then the top ten horses run forward, but only after three months. Oh yes and the riders may change mid stream and even the horse may be replaced by a camel if it is Thursday.

The current FCC 600 MHz auction is worth a watch. The players are the big guys are their surrogates. You see, we condemn the Russian oligarchs but we have our own, the incumbents. Thus even Google does really play here. This is despite their long awakening to the problems with fiber.

It is worth watching this facade, a tax collection process of tens of billions into the Government coffers spent even before it is collected, many times over.

It's Amazing to See People Learn Things

As a follower of the CATV and Telco critic on Backchannel I was amazed to see that she has finally grasped an element of reality, namely pole attachments. There are lots of hidden costs in building fiber and competing with the incumbents. Franchise is one, and a costly one. Pole attachments is another. To get that fiber from point A to point B you have to get some right of way. Been that way for centuries, it relates to property law, an old English concept that one would assume a lawyer would have some understanding of.

You see you have no right to the poles, you have to negotiate, with the Telco or Power company. You have to do pole counts, rights of way negotiations etc.

Our young newcomer to reality notes:

But many cities don’t control their own poles. In some areas, poles are controlled by utilities, or even telecom companies. Anyone hoping to string fiber in those places faces two nightmarish, indefinite periods of delay and uncontrolled costs: first getting an agreement in place with the pole owners, and then getting the poles physically ready for a new wire. We’ll call these steps Swamp One and Swamp Two.

Well that really is NOT new. Towns make money from the poles, however they are owned by third parties. So how can they "control" something they have no property right to? First year law school anyone?

She continues:

Swamp One: Attachment. At the moment, the FCC gives regulatory assistance (“pole attachment rights”) in negotiations with utility pole owners only to cable TV providers, companies selling internet access, and phone companies. The FCC’s assistance comes in the form of mandatory deadlines and set formulas for calculating fees to be paid to the pole owner.

 For anyone in the real world who had done this the process is rant with delays. And as an old colleague once said to me; "Delay is the deadliest form of denial" They do not say no, they just kick the can down the street! And Google thought they would change this world? Told them no fifteen years ago, but I guess if you have a big ego and lots of money then Newton's law do not apply to you!

She continues:

Swamp Two: Make-Ready. Even if a city wrestles into place an agreement with pole-owners that allows it to string fiber on their poles, or uses a company that has pole attachment help from the FCC, there’s still a gruesome, unpredictable process left to get the pole ready for a new attachment.

 This is just a corollary to the first problem. First get a pole attachment agreement and second wait.

This is a prime example of why wireless is the way to go. But this person seems to just want to attack the mountain hoping somehow that it will collapse and she can get herself and all her minions to the promised land. Fat chance!

Spectrum

The FCC is auctioning off 126 MHz in the 600 MHz band. As noted in my recent critique to that attorney who seems to be technically clueless in my opinion, 600 MHz bends around corners! And 126 MHz at 100 bps/Hz and a reuse factor of 10-50 in a multibeam environment one gets a phenomenal capacity, in basements!

As noted in Telegeography:

According to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the 600MHz Broadcast Television Spectrum Incentive Auction (‘Auction 1002’), which commenced on 16 August, has generated bids worth USD10.588 billion after five rounds of bidding. Round six is scheduled to commence today (Friday 19 August). As expected, spectrum allocations covering New York and Los Angeles have attracted the highest bids thus far, followed by the likes of Chicago, San Francisco, Baltimore-Washington, DC and Philadelphia. Interest in smaller markets has already began to wane, however, sources have noted. The current Auction 1002 ‘Forward Auction’ was preceded by a ‘Reverse Auction’ between the FCC and the TV broadcasters that held the 600MHz spectrum. This process saw the ‘clearing cost’ for 126MHz of spectrum established at USD86.423 billion, seriously exceeding analyst expectations. If that figure is not met in the Forward Auction, the FCC will reduce the amount of spectrum it will free up and resume bidding with TV broadcasters in a second stage of the Reverse Auction.

 The FCC has a rather obscure auction process, backward and forward, but as of now it has topped $11 billion.

Fierce Wireless states:

The generic license blocks offered in the initial stage during the forward auction under this band plan will consist of a total of 4030 "Category 1" blocks (zero to 15 percent impairment) and a total of 18 "Category 2" blocks (greater than 15 percent and up to 50 percent impairment). The FCC said approximately 97 percent of the blocks offered for the forward auction will be "Category 1" blocks, and 99 percent of the "Category 1" blocks will be zero percent impaired. These figures likely will cheer wireless carriers and other auction bidders since unimpaired spectrum can be used more quickly.

 This can be a game changing play. Watch the process.

More Thoughts on Wireless

Wireless can work in amazing ways. Just consider the above. In classic cellular world we would have say 6 beams, over 360 degrees, or six 60 degree beams. Each beam would be say 20 MHz of a 40 MHz spectrum available, and each adjacent beam would have a different 20 MHz, alternating. Thus using a classic QPSK system say for even 3G we have 1 bps/Hz and in 40 MHz we have say 120 Mbps capacity. Now for 5G, we have OFDM and we have multi beam antennas. Here we have 20 beams, and 100 bps/Hz. due to OFDM and higher EIRP per beam, and we get 40 Bbps per 40 MHz!

That is only half the tale. The other half is that the data, say video, is being compressed at higher and higher amounts.

Thus as we expand capacity we are compressing content! There are of course even more ways to manipulate this process.

In a Nature article the author makes the following statement:

The most advanced commercial networks are now on 4G, which was introduced in the late 2000s to provide smartphones with broadband speeds of up to 100 megabits per second, and is now spreading fast. But to meet demand expected by the 2020s, say industry experts, wireless providers will have to start deploying fifth-generation (5G) technology that is at least 100 times faster, with top speeds measured in tens of billions of bits per second.The 5G signals will also need to be shared much more widely than is currently feasible, says Rahim Tafazolli, head of the Institute for Communication Systems at the University of Surrey in Guildford, UK. “The target is how can we support a million devices per square kilometre,” he says — enough to accommodate a burgeoning 'Internet of Things' that will range from networked household appliances to energy-control and medical-monitoring systems, and autonomous vehicles (see 'Bottleneck engineering').

Well given the simplistic example above the tools to do this are readily available. They have been known for several decades already, only now can silicon do this. The author continues:

MIMO is already used in Wi-Fi and 4G networks. But the small size of smartphones currently limits them to no more than four antennas each, and the same number on base stations. So a key goal of 5G research is to squeeze more antennas onto both. Big wireless companies have demonstrated MIMO with very high antenna counts in the lab and at trade shows. At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, in February, equipment-maker Ericsson ran live indoor demonstrations of a multiuser massive MIMO system, using a 512-element antenna to transmit 25 gigabits per second between a pair of terminals, one stationary and the other moving on rails. The system is one-quarter of the way to the 100-gigabit 5G target, and it transmits at 15 gigahertz, part of the high-frequency band planned for 5G. Japanese wireless operator NTT DoCoMo is working with Ericsson to test the equipment outdoors, and Korea Telecom is planning to demonstrate 5G services when South Korea hosts the next Winter Olympics, in 2018.

As noted above the MIMO function can be at the cell site not at the end user device. Thus the above argument is a straw man at best. At worst it may be a gross misrepresentation.

On comment on this article states:

Unfortunately, this article is unsound and should be withdrawn. Currently and for many years, congestion on the Internet backbone and most local broadband in the developed world is extremely rare. They are almost never a bottleneck, especially the backbone. While traffic has gone up, as noted, Moore's Law has brought down the cost of carrying bits at about the same rate. This has been established by, among others, ..... As ... notes, the only evidence of congestion in the article (except local like a convention center) is a failure of HBO to meet demand. This is almost certainly because HBO didn't buy enough capacity, not that the Internet couldn't handle the volume. I hate denigrating the work of another writer in these tough times, but this one is so misleading it should be retracted to get errors out of the public discussion

The above is in my opinion spot on. Perhaps Nature should stick to genes and molecules and leave the engineering to those who do or have done it for a living.

Wireless v Fiber

There have been some recent moves in expanding wireless. Fiber is still fiber. Let us examine the differences and try to explain to some people what the facts are.

Recently in Backchannel[1] one of the writers, a lawyer I believe by calling, has made statements which in my opinion and my experience are not just wrong, they a truly outright apparent fabrications based on nothing that is in my opinion acceptable to those with even a modicum of competence.

Let me first restate some bona fides. Besides a PhD in EECS from MIT in communications, I then added some fifty years of design and deployment experience in wireless and fiber. One need look no further than a list of hundreds of papers on the topic. I have built out fiber in about twenty countries and frankly found the US the most difficult due to Franchise rules and pole attachment regulations. The incumbents in the US have a permanent barrier to entry for any new entrant. Put that aside for the moment.

Let us first compare fiber and wireless.

I. Fiber

Fiber has substantial capacity. Yet it requires many hurdles and costs an excessive amount per subscriber in capital. Let me list the hurdles:

1. Franchises: In every town and state there are Franchise requirements. You just can't build out a fiber system. You must get permission. The problem; twofold. First towns have Selectmen or the like who generally are clueless, often supported by Cable Companies, and willing to spends months if not years negotiating a Franchise. This adds thousands of dollars to the cost per subscriber and is all too often not realized.

2. Pole attachments: If you get a Franchise, then you have to get pole rights or other rights of way. You cannot start the negotiations until you have a franchise so it is sequential and the incumbents who owns the poles is in no hurry to get to the end.

3. Build Out: The laying of fiber has negative economies of scale. Even assuming the fiber is free, which it is not, the labor costs are always increasing and the delays are ever expanding. What may have cost $50,000 per mile five years ago is now $75,000.

4. Drops: Assuming you have achieved the above then you must get to the subscriber. That is the drop. It generally must be buried and if say you are in New England the rocks etc. will drive the costs to extreme levels.

5. Capital: The Capital per Sub can readily exceed $5,000 which is quite excessive. If the above were non-existent then one could do it for almost a tenth but the above are real. Our lawyer friend seems to be ignorant of these facts.

II. Wireless

Wireless is a totally different tale. First the key difference is the lack of infrastructure. You do not need a Franchise; you need a license but if you already have it so be it. Here are the advantages of wireless:

1. Ever Scalaeble Technology: The introduction of 4G with OFDM allowed the bits per second per Hz to go from 1 to 10. For 5G we see that using multiple beam antennas we can go from 10 times to 100 times! That means each user can get well in excess of 10 Gbps.

2. Capital is Incremental: Unlike fiber and even more so unlike a satellite system, wireless capital per subscriber and be deployed incrementally. I demonstrated that twenty-five years ago! Again we did it. Fiber requires a build of infrastructure. Wireless builds as we follow the customers.

3. Technology Changes in Short Time Periods: Cable TV converters are an average of 10-15 years old. They seem never to be replaced or upgraded. A wireless device is upgraded every 18 to 24 months! Thus the customer can follow the technology curve. As one upgrades cell sites using software defined modems and the like, then technology is always at the leading edge and the capital to the infrastructure provider is low.

4. Distributed Systems Can Evolve: As we build out systems we can do so in a distributed manner. WiFi can be integrated with backbone wireless and mesh networks are readily available.

We have argued again and again that the Google fiber builds were fruitless. Now we see they want to build out wireless. Is Google seeing the light? Not really, they needed licenses. If there is however a sharable band then perhaps they can execute this strategy.

Now for what in my opinion are the falsehoods of this lawyer:

Statement 1 is:

One way to increase the information-carrying capacity of a wireless network is to encode data on those wobbling frequencies more efficiently. The standards you’ve heard about — CDMA, 3G, LTE — they’re all about jamming more data into each unit (hertz) of spectrum. A new 5G set of standards will do the same thing, in an even fancier way: the antennas for very, very high frequencies can be so tiny that you can put 8 or 16 of them into a handset or base station and then have them all work together in an array to create a beam of data. Tons and tons of data can be carried on those aggregated beams. Transmission beams in an array can be steered in milliseconds to point to an individual user. You couldn’t do this kind of thing at lower frequencies, because many antennas would need, say, three feet of space — and you can’t fit that into a handset.

Yes, you can use small antennas at the lower frequencies. Ever hear of Ham radio? I have a 140 MHz hand held set, I can create a beam from a set of small antenna. Ever hear of WiFi, even 802.11n uses MIMO, many antennae. The above statement is just wrong. But even more so, the real antennas are beam-formers at the base station! I did this in 1992, and filed it with the FCC for my Pioneer Preference. We developed it jointly with MIT Lincoln Lab. The military has done this for decades. The statement as presented is just wrong, totally wrong!

She continues:

Until there’s a standard, carriers that want to be able to reach global markets won’t be anxious to make devices that will work in just a few places. They want to be able to use the same frequencies everywhere. Current phones and other widely-used private-sector communications devices have radios that transmit and receive only frequencies below 6 GHz, and the very, very high frequency spectrum that the FCC recently said it would open up for 5G purposes is all above 24 GHz. So we have a huge legacy replacement problem that will take a while to overcome and requires a standard to fix. All of this takes years.

Now back in 1990-92 I was COO of what is now Verizon Wireless. I worked with Qualcomm to introduce CDMA. We worried about turning the ship, from analog to digital, but it worked, seamlessly. Frankly I would suggest that the customer never noticed. Why? Simply because the replacement time for handsets is about 2 years! Thus with such a short replacement time the turnaround is painless. It did not and does not "take years". I did it! Good Lord, look at the facts!

She continues:

Again, wireless and fiber are complementary. Carriers know this. People call the cables between cell towers and central network offices “backhaul,” and when Verizon launched its 4G LTE network in the US covering 93% of the population it needed about 30,000 towers, each one of which had to have a fiber connection. But for a high-frequency 5G spectrum to cover that same population, you’d need to reach many millions of towers and base stations with fiber. Remember, you need to be very close to base stations to pick up and transmit these ginormous amounts of data across high-frequency airwaves. We’re going to have to have fiber interconnection points right next to houses and office buildings, and in many places fiber running inside those buildings. And to reach indoor areas with reliable high capacity, you’ll need multiple antennas inside rooms that can beam signals towards you from multiple angles (to avoid the “people as bags of water” problem).

The back-haul has always been with us. We actually used wireless for many of them but alas fiber can work as well and it can be shared with multiple carriers as are the cell towers.  I agree that with the ultra-high bands proposed for the new releases they are of short distance. Worse they do not work in humid environments, tried that one folks. So using the higher bands may not be really good to use and why then does one assume millions of towers! That is just in my opinion a stupid idea! One may then have an evolving multi-tiered network, with micro and nano cell nodes at customer premises as we have WiFi today.

Also 5G is a technological change, and evolution. One can use the old bands but with the new technology. One can get 100 bps/Hz and with a few hundred MHz and adaptive beam formed antennas one gets Gbps links to local users on demand.

It is my opinion that this lawyer has put forth a straw man that does not in any manner reflect reality. Indeed, no one is proposing building millions of towers. Engineers just are not that, shall we say, stupid. I cannot perhaps say the same for those technologically impaired.

---

[1] https://backchannel.com/the-next-generation-of-wireless-5g-is-all-hype-1790239b8ca8#.huar3weoz

Rain, Rain, Go Away!

The FCC today assigned new bandwidth for alleged 5G and shared usage.

They state:

The new rules open up almost 11 GHz of spectrum for flexible use wireless broadband – 3.85 GHz of licensed spectrum and 7 GHz of unlicensed spectrum. With the adoption of these rules, the U.S. is be the first country in the world to open high-band spectrum for 5G networks and technologies, creating a runway for U.S. companies to launch the technologies that will harness 5G’s fiber-fast capabilities.

Then the details are:

1.Licensed use in the 28 GHz, 37 GHz and 39 GHz bands: Makes available 3.85 GHz of licensed, flexible use spectrum, which is more than four times the amount of flexible use spectrum the FCC has licensed to date. 

• Provides consistent block sizes (200 MHz), license areas (Partial Economic Areas), technical rules, and operability across the exclusively licensed portion of the 37 GHz band and the 39 GHz band to make 2.4 GHz of spectrum available.
• Provides two 425 MHz blocks for the 28 GHz band on a county basis and operability across the band.

 2. Unlicensed use in the 64-71 GHz band: Makes available 7 GHz of unlicensed spectrum which, when combined with the existing high-band unlicensed spectrum (57-64 GHz), doubles the amount of high-band unlicensed spectrum to 14 GHz of contiguous unlicensed spectrum (57-71 GHz). These 14 GHz will be 15 times as much as all unlicensed Wi-Fi spectrum in lower bands.

3. Shared access in the 37-37.6 GHz band: Makes available 600 MHz of spectrum for dynamic shared access between different commercial users, and commercial and federal users.

Anyone who has ever worked these bands should know that moisture is a real killer! Especially at the 64-71 GHz bands. This is point to point only and absorption is severe. There is no diffraction and no multi-path survives.

Why not just move to IR? I did that twenty plus years ago. But that worked well in the desert, not too well in New York and not at all in Bangkok.

Keep Making Those Buggy Whips

There is some lawyer who I had critiqued a while back for her lack of technical acumen. Lawyers often have that problem, even some who have technical backgrounds. After all they are lawyers.

As she states in Backchannel:

Fiber is the best — the only  — alternative, and it could win subscribers in areas where cable exists. But we’re not building these networks. Verizon sold its FiOS lines in California, Texas, and Florida, and AT&T’s GigaPower fiber plans are (with small exceptions, where the company feels the pressure of genuine competition) mostly “fiber to the press release.” AT&T is most likely to continue playing defense by further squeezing the capacity of its existing copper lines, which means that only densely packed apartment buildings that are very close to AT&T’s central offices will see the advantage of the company’s work on its copper connections, as signals can’t travel very far over copper. (By contrast, signals can go for dozens of miles over fiber without being boosted.) And despite all the hype, Google Fiber is predicted to reach no more than 10 million homes over the next few years — although Google’s recently announced plans to consider Chicago and Los Angeles may change that part of the picture.Some of the problem with building fiber networks is that the needs of these profit-grabbing companies diverge from the public good, which requires long-term investments where the gains accrue to the economy in general.

Now to the facts. 

1. No, fiber is not the only alternative. In fact it is the last.

2. 4G allows 10 bps/Hz and with hundreds of KHz available that is lots of Gbps deliverable by wireless.

3. Data rates for video are dropping like bricks so the demand for bandwidth per user is dropping.

4. 5G adds adaptive antennas and increases the bps/Hz another factor of ten.

5. Wireless is relative cheap and the infrastructure is already there.

6. Mobile is taking over. You cannot drag a fiber around with you! I have tried.

The list goes on. She totally misses the point. The problem with fiber is not greedy companies, it is that is NOT the technical solution. But then again she has apparently never examined this issue.

What I find with her followers, read the comments, is a religious fervor of the socialist, devoid of facts and replete with belief. I remember well, my grandmother headed the Socialist Party in New York.

How long will we have to hear these specious arguments? Why is Verizon delaying an aggressive move in wireless? Well, the answer, it is still the phone company!

And oh by the way, CATV companies do not use copper pairs.

Broadband on Copper?

There is a lot of copper wire around which has provided the old telephone service we know and understand. I still have a classic old copper based phone, use it in the office all the time, good quality voice and secure, unless there is some Government tap. But that is another story.

Now people have been eschewing copper as being too slow but Shannon's Theorem really does not say that and I recall meetings at the old Bellcore some 30 years ago where they discussed Mbps speeds. Now BT in the UK has Gbps speeds.

Total Telecom reports:

BT on Tuesday came out fighting in favour of copper, revealing it has reached connection speeds topping 5 Gbps using XG.fast technology. The tests were carried out in partnership with Alcatel-Lucent at the U.K. incumbent's Adastral Park R&D centre in Suffolk. It achieved aggregate speeds of 5.6 Gbps over 35 metres of BT cable, a new record for full-duplex data transmission over a standard single line, according to the telco. At more than 100 metres, the speed dropped substantially, albeit to a still impressive 1.8 Gbps. BT said this is significant because most U.K. homes are within 100 metres of their nearest distribution point.

 Theoretically one can use this existing infrastructure with a wireless backbone to get those Gbps speeds to homes out in the "no where" lands. You do not need the millions that New York is proposing, you can do it now with what is there. Just get the consumer to buy the modem!

How to Spend Money, Ours!

It was not enough for the FEDs under the Stimulus to dump billions into broadband, with questionable results at best, but now NY State appears to be jumping in as well with State Taxpayer money.

The New Yrok Broadband plan will, it appears, give away some $500 million to build out broadband. They state:

Governor Cuomo has launched the largest and most ambitious investment in statewide broadband deployment in the country. Through the creation of the $500 million New NY Broadband Program, the State of New York will incentivize broadband provide rs to expand and upgrade networks to ensure that they reach all underserved and unserved communities in the State . The Program is designed to ensure that every New Yorker has access to high - speed Internet . The Program will be implemented by the end of 2018.

They also do address wireless which we believe is the only solution to such areas as rural New York State. BUT, who has the license? You just can't do wireless, you need a license, and most have been given out already. Any why 25 Mbps and 100 Mbps. I am always amazed at why someone who decides to live in the wilderness need our taxpayer money for 100 Mbps access when they most likely do not have indoor toilets!

Perhaps a state voter referendum would help here.

Verizon and Fiber

I am always amazed by some people who seem to miss the point, a simple technical and economic fact. Namely that wireless is getting better and better and fiber is just plain expensive, especially in New York. Verizon is slowly becoming a wireless carrier. I saw that in the late 80s and early 90s when I was the COO of the wireless company. I pushed CDMA and Qualcomm over AT&T soon to be Lucent and soon to be dead. Good choice. I saw wireless as a growing capacity and in the past 10 years we have seen with LTE and 4th generation (4G) some of that dream come true and with the 5th generation (5G) on the way this is a reality along with expanded WiFi.

Now just how much capacity do we need? Good question. But 25 Mbps is real good for most things. 1 Gbps is great if you have massive imaging data and real time needs. Not every home is going real time multi patient multi location functional MRI analyses.

Then along comes the lawyers, with some chip on their shoulders. One in particular has a desire to get that 100 Gbps service for what appears to be free. Publishing in Backchannel she states:

But I have a suggestion. Here’s a plan for New York City, one that has the potential to be a win for everyone concerned: Cut a different deal with Verizon. Make Verizon into the operator of a passive, neutral fiber network that (as in Seoul and Stockholm) is connected to every single home and business. Release Verizon from the shackles of serving customers and acquiring programming. Let other ISPs emerge that will actually have the relationships with customers (who will probably be pretty happy never to negotiate Verizon’s voice mail again). Set a reasonable price for provision of wholesale fiber access that Verizon must charge to any ISP.

 This is like demanding we have Ford provide a million horses and carriages to be certain that everyone can have a ride in old technology any time they want.

Fiber has a niche market. That niche deems it quite valuable whereas most people can and should be served by an amalgam of wireless services. 

It is real tough when you just can't seem to understand the basic technology and you demand the world fit your view. Add on top the demand that you tell people how to allocate their resources. I think someone tried that. It was the old 5 Year Plan. It did not work then and will not now.

Broadband and Politics

In a recent article in Backchannel an attorney whose opinions in my opinion lack any insight into fundamental technical and operational factors opines on broadband in NH. Some ten years ago I spent a few years trying to do broadband in over 20 towns in New Hampshire. I have a home in New Hampshire and I got to know every street in these towns. All one has to do is examine some cases we presented on our web site. We did years of work examining every street and every market. More than likely we got to know the state better than most Presidential candidates. From Nashua to Colebrook.

Now the author states:

Why? Because New Hampshire, our nation’s 42nd most populous state, has lousy connectivity. The FCC defines high-speed Internet access to be 25 Mbps down/3 Mbps up these days, and more than a third of the rural population in New Hampshire (most of which votes Republican, by the way) can’t buy that kind of connection at any price. Fewer than one out of every six urban New Hampshire residents can buy that connection even if they want it: the wire just doesn’t exist in their town.

Why the poor connectivity. All you have to do is look at the paper I wrote after the attempt to build out fiber. I stated: 

This paper presents one of the most significant costs of implementing a broadband service but at the same time one of the least analyzed component in that process, franchising. Simply stated, for a town as small as a few thousand households, the time it takes to obtain a franchise under the best of circumstances is often well in excess of one year and the amount of labor includes often two or more people dedicated to that effort plus other costs such as legal, engineering and other costs. If the incumbent decides to fight, the process may take longer. The municipalities always want to increase their returns so the process becomes an escalation of demands and delays. For towns of say 2,000 households, as the author demonstrates by specific ca se studies, costs of $400,000 to $500,000 are not unrealistic. This means readily an additional cost of $250 per HH or at 25% penetration, $1,000 per HH. In contrast the capital required to deliver broadband in such a community is $1,500 per HH. Thus the franchise costs are approaching the capital costs per HH in many communities. This clearly becomes a dramatic if hidden element but also becomes a real but avoidable barrier to entry for any and all new broadband entrants. This paper details these costs and others and makes suggestions to remedy them.

 Namely, the towns themselves, in my experience and my opinion, were one of the greatest road blocks. Add to that was the influence the cable companies had in trying to stop any fiber build.

Overall the piece fails in my opinion to understand the complexity of New Hampshire politics. The towns may want fiber but the way they go about it is the most significant obstacle. It would really help to understand the record and not make statements which serve a political agenda.

Unfortunately I have the distinct disadvantage of experience. Politics does not.

Where's The Franchise?

Google announced a massive expansion of fiber to the home. As the Washington Post announces:

After months of speculation, Google confirmed Tuesday that its ultra-fast Internet service will soon be coming to four more cities — Atlanta; Charlotte, N.C.; Nashville, Tenn.; and Raleigh-Durham, N.C. Those regions, along with more than a dozen cities in their immediate vicinity, will be the latest to benefit from high-speed Internet provided by the search giant. Google Fiber already sells Internet service with download speeds of up to 1 gigabit per second — roughly 100 times faster than the national average — for $70 a month in other cities such as Provo, Utah. Google had been considering expanding to as many as nine metropolitan areas. In a blog post Tuesday, Google said it was still in talks with five of those cities — Phoenix, Portland, Salt Lake City, San Antonio and San Jose — and would decide whether to expand into those regions later this year. Construction in the four cities the company named Tuesday will begin in a few months, according to Google.

The questions are:

1. Does Google have to get Franchises and pole attachment agreements in all of these places or is there some "deal" that goes around that and if so why? This is a total of 12 major cities. In my almost 40 years of experience getting a Franchise especially with an incumbent is a long and costly process. Avoiding one is a miracle, namely very few miracles really happen, if any.

2.  At the same time Google is buying in to wireless. As we have argued wireless is much less expensive, requires no franchise, is already enabled by customers and has near equal capacity. So why waste billions on fiber? Do the shareholders care?

3. What is the Google strategy and what are its goals? It appears that they can afford to play many games. But to what end? They can control the distribution channel but then what?

And We Keep Making More Lawyers!

The current debate on broadband seems to be between lobbyists and lawyers. It is akin to a discussion on how to treat a cancer patient that is held between the mortician and the witch doctor. Not very beneficial to the patient, or customer.

Let me give an example. There is some lawyer whose book I reviewed a while back who is at it again. Bemoaning broadband. But she may have learned something, not too much, but something.

She states: 

“Who needs fiber? Mobile wireless is the future.” This is like saying that because we have airplanes we don’t need airports. A wireless signal is just the last 50 feet of a wire; wireless and wired connections are complementary. A 20 Mbps local wireless connection — between your handset and a cell tower, say — is no good if the wire running from the tower to the core network (the “backhaul”) doesn’t have enough capacity to carry that number of bits or is having latency issues. When that wire is a fiber optic line, it can carry an enormous amount of information. To haul all our mobile wireless data back from us to the Internet, particularly when we’re uploading a ton of data, we’ll need fiber deep into the places we live, work and entertain ourselves. Fiber, the glass tubes themselves, is cheaper to maintain than copper and can be easily upgraded. And without a major change in policy in the U.S. we’re not going to have it — even as other countries take it for granted and start building the new uses and new societies that are based on ubiquitous, vanishingly cheap communications.

In reality as we have demonstrated, wireless has superb capacity. Using 4G we get 10 bps/Hz and with 20 MHz that is 200 Mbps. Not bad. 5G raises that another factor of 10. She kinda now accepts that. In her book it was missing so perhaps someone got to her. In my opinion she seemed a bit clueless. Yet we all are entitled to our opinions. But as to the backhaul, what does she think is there, copper wires. Almost all of the backhaul is fiber, it is cheaper and easier to maintain not to mention the greater bandwidth. That she recognized and so did the telcos, two decades ago. 

Now she does have a point about cable. Imagine, if you will, the cable interface. Designed almost two decades ago, still the same. A big clumsy box, when Google and Amazon have USB chips! The wireless companies have iPhones and Androids, changed out at least every year! Does anyone ever remember a cable box being upgraded? And you pay $10 per month per box!

That should be her argument, not bemoaning wireless.

Oh and by the way, that 20 Mbps is only the beginning, and the telcos want your revenue so they will make certain they can carry it, at zero marginal costs to them! That should be the concern, not digging up my lawn for a fiber connection!