Joan Engebretson

Schools and libraries nationwide should be able to get gigabit connectivity to their service provider’s central office for an average of $750 per gigabit per month, said Evan Maxwell, CEO of Education SuperHighway, at a Federal Communications Commission workshop about E-rate modernization.

The E-rate program is part of the Universal Service program, which covers some of the costs of broadband connectivity for schools and libraries. The target speed for connectivity from the central office to the Internet should be three dollars per megabit per month -- a substantial decrease from the average $22 paid today, Maxwell said.

Education SuperHighway is a research and advocacy group that aims to improve broadband connectivity to the nation’s schools. Maxwell based his comment on research conducted by Education SuperHighway, which has been collecting cost and speed data from schools nationwide.

“We know these prices are possible,” Maxwell said, noting that the top half of schools pay an average of just under $600 per gigabit per month for local connectivity. “Every school with over 100 kids should get fiber,” added Maxwell. He added, however, that the nation will have to subsidize deployment where deployment would not otherwise be commercially feasible.

Verizon plans to offer an in-home router that will support Wi-Fi connectivity at speeds up to 300 Mbps beginning this summer, said Verizon Chief Financial Officer Fran Shammo.

The device supporting Verizon 300 Mbps Wi-Fi is proprietary, Shammo said, and is expected to drive increases in subscriber broadband speeds as end users consume more bandwidth within the home.

Verizon also plans to phase out set-top boxes, Shammo said. Beginning this summer, the company will provide video customers with a single video media server per home and will distribute video content in IP format.

“We will deliver everything through IP to FiOS,” said Shammo. Customers “won’t need a set-top box,” he said. “For televisions that are not IP capable, we will have an attachment.”

The new approach will cut installation time 50%, Shammo said. Installers will attach the media server to the optical network terminal and won’t have to test coaxial cables, he noted.

Windstream isn’t satisfied with how AT&T has proposed to handle wholesale customers in its proposal for TDM-to-IP transition trials and is asking the Federal Communications Commission to establish rules to govern this aspect of the IP transition.

Windstream, an AT&T wholesale customer, wants the FCC to require AT&T to continue to offer high-capacity circuits including IP equivalents to DS-1 and DS-3 special access circuits -- a requirement that isn’t likely to sit well with AT&T.

In its proposal for the TDM-to-IP trials, AT&T said it would discontinue certain TDM-based offerings but would continue to make copper loops available to other network operators. The company noted, however, that it would not provide electronics, instead expecting the other carriers to provide those electronics -- and what Windstream is asking would require AT&T to provide electronics.

“In the post-IP world, competitors still will need equivalent access to last-mile facilities and services to continue offering business services to millions of customers,” argues Windstream in a letter sent to the FCC.

[Commentary] Netflix and Entropy Economics have issued dueling network diagrams aimed at supporting opposing points of view on paid peering -- an issue that has been hotly debated since Netflix signed a paid peering deal with Comcast earlier this year.

Yet the diagrams have a striking similarity when it comes to showing how Netflix connects to Comcast. It’s possible that by keeping up the pressure about traffic exchange, Netflix is hoping to pressure regulators into imposing some sort of obligations on Comcast and Time Warner Cable as a condition of approval of Comcast’s acquisition of Time Warner Cable.

Now that Charter is involved in that deal as well, it may not be exempt either. And conditions written into merger approvals sometimes have a way of gaining traction beyond the merged companies.

Regulators should tread carefully before imposing any major new traffic exchange requirements. Considering the complexity of the issue and how quickly practices change, it’s difficult even to determine what those requirements might be. The true cost of interconnection is dependent on a wide range of factors. And only the network operators know and understand the dollar values underlying these factors.

[Commentary] AT&T is trying a new approach toward the over-the-top video opportunity, announcing that it has created a joint venture with media company The Chernin Group to focus on over the top (OTT) video.

The companies said they would jointly invest $500 million in the venture with the goal of “investing in advertising and subscription VOD channels as well as streaming services.” OTT is both an opportunity for and a threat to the nation’s largest pay TV providers -- including AT&T, Verizon and cable companies such as Comcast and Time Warner Cable.

OTT video offerings such as Netflix and Amazon Prime threaten the pay TV providers’ subscription and VOD revenues. But Netflix and Amazon Prime don’t have their own networks -- and those networks could become increasingly important as TV Everywhere gains in popularity, giving consumers the ability to watch video on a variety of devices. And as that happens, companies such as AT&T and Verizon that have mobile as well as landline broadband networks may have an edge.

Based on the press release announcing the AT&T/ Chernin Group venture, the venture partners appear set on capitalizing on that edge.

Three in 10 US adults do not use the Internet at home -- and getting them online will be considerably more challenging than connecting the first seven, notes a paper released from NTCA -- The Rural Broadband Association.

But the effort would be worthwhile, argues author and NTCA economist Rick Schadelbauer in the paper titled “Conquering the Challenges of Broadband Adoption.” In the paper Schadelbauer also makes a case for why he believes smartphones are not a suitable replacement for landline broadband services.

The 30% of US adults who are not currently connected at home is comprised of roughly equal measures of people who use the Internet somewhere else and those who do not use it at all, according to Schadelbauer. It would be particularly challenging to get the latter group online because a Pew Research Center survey found that 92% of those people said they had no interest in getting online. Others likely do not connect because they cannot afford it or because it is not available to them.

AT&T took the unusual step late last night of announcing that it is “in advanced discussions” to bring a gigabit network to parts of the Triangle and Piedmont Triad regions of North Carolina.

Normally companies like AT&T wait until a deal is iron-clad before announcing it. The unusual announcement illustrates just how competitive the gigabit business is becoming -- in the right markets, at least. Austin, Texas for example now has three network operators offering or planning to offer gigabit service and a fourth that has increased its broadband speeds to 300 Mbps.

And in North Carolina, a local news outlet reported that eight service providers are negotiating with North Carolina Next-Generation Network (NCNGN) about the gigabit network. One of these appears to be Google Fiber, which early 2014 mentioned Raleigh-Durham (NC) and Charlotte (NC) as two of the nine communities where it was considering building gigabit networks.

More than half of senior citizens (56%) would find it “very hard” to give up the Internet, according to new research from Older Americans Technology Services (OATS) and New York Law School.

Perhaps surprisingly the Internet was the only communications means or device cited as “very hard” to give up by more than half of survey respondents. Slightly less than half of respondents said they would find it “very hard” to give up cable TV (47%), their cellphone (45%) or their landline phone (45%).

“Broadband clearly brings the world to senior citizens,” said John Horrigan, a senior advisor for the Advanced Communications Law and Policy Institute (ACLP) at New York Law School. “Without question it is helping seniors be more engaged with others. . . They clearly value being on line.”

The OATS and New York Law School research was based on a telephone survey of 1200 Americans aged 65 or older, including 780 broadband users and 420 who don’t use broadband.

Although most are not known outside their local -- primarily rural -- communities, small cable companies offer advanced communications services to 14% of US homes, according to a report issued from the American Cable Association.

The ACA advocates for more than 800 small cable company members, who have an average 36% market share in their serving areas according to the ACA. Understanding the role that ACA members play in offering video, data and voice services in rural areas is important at a time when policymakers are in the process of transforming today’s voice-focused Universal Service program to a Connect America Fund focused on broadband. Somewhat less than half (43%) of ACA members are small telecommunications companies that have cable operations. A slightly higher percentage (44%) is comprised of traditional cable operators, while 13% are municipalities or other types of organizations.

Long-distance service providers that have been complaining about rural call completion reporting requirements may find that task simplified now that vendors have stepped in to address that need.

At least one major network operator has invested in a third-party product that automates rural call completion reporting. Analytics provider TEOCO announced that an unnamed tier one service provider has purchased its Rural Call Completion Analytics Solution. And in an interview TEOCO Executive Director Derek Canfield said the company has other customers for the product as well.

TEOCO’s rural call completion offering is available as an optional module for the company’s Analytics Platform or as an outsourced service. At least one other vendor has an offering that automates rural call completion reporting, but Canfield said TEOCO’s offering is unique in that it also provides root cause analytics.

“Clients have the ability to look at call completion along dimensions such as wholesale customers, vendors they may choose in routing [calls], or their own network equipment,” said Canfield.