Sean Buckley

CenturyLink revealed in its semi-annual broadband deployment report to the Federal Communications Commission that 51 percent of the living units in its more populated legacy Qwest territory can get 40 Mbps or higher. But rural areas overwhelmingly get much slower speeds, showing the disparity between different markets.

In the rural sections of CenturyLink’s legacy Qwest footprint, only 21.9 percent of households can get access to a 40 Mbps copper-based service. The disparity is due to the challenge of deploying copper-based broadband. Despite advances like VDSL2 and vectoring, CenturyLink is stymied by the physical limitations of copper plant that require electronics to be placed closer to each customer. The service provider saw similar variations between rural and non-rural markets for its 12 Mbps and 5 Mbps service. CenturyLink’s 12 Mbps service availability non-rural markets was 71 percent, a figure that drops to 47.6 percent in rural markets. Likewise, the 5 Mbps tier was available to nearly 80 percent of living units in non-rural Qwest markets, while only 61.3 percent could get the same service. Finally, the 1.5 Mbps service fared a bit better with service noted to be available in 95.6 percent of non-rural markets and 83 percent in rural markets. Regardless of the differences in the availability of copper-based broadband service speeds, CenturyLink is making progress across all of its markets to make higher speeds available to more customers.

Shentel may not be the size of its larger incumbent local exchange carrier compatriots, but the service provider is being no less aggressive in pursuing dark fiber deals with school districts and wireless operators in its largely rural territory. What’s helping Shentel get the attention of wholesale and retail customers is a fiber network that currently consists of nearly 5,000 route miles of fiber throughout Virginia, West Virginia and parts of Maryland. Ed McKay, SVP of engineering and planning for Shentel, said that the fiber network is being used to satisfy external and internal needs. One of those needs is being able to backhaul traffic on its growing wireless network. The telecommunication company has built fiber to over 240 of its own cell sites and it has 60 more in construction. “We’re using it to not only go after fiber customers, but also to reduce our operational costs,” McKay said. “We’re interconnecting our cable networks and providing backhaul to our own cell sites.”

CenturyLink and Education Networks of America are suing the state of Idaho for $37 million over claims that it broke the terms of their broadband agreement, one that includes expanding their fiber network to support a state broadband project for local schools. This suit follows a decision made by Idaho Attorney General Lawrence Wasden demanding the two companies repay the millions of dollars that the state had paid them for services.

CenturyLink and Education Networks of America said in a Salt Lake Tribune article that the contract was void due to missteps taken by the state. The pair said they want to be paid for the work they did. Additionally, the two companies said they want to be compensated for the investment they made to meet the future terms of the contract, including the extension of fiber facilities to hard to reach rural areas. In its lawsuit, CenturyLink officials said that state officials -- including Gov CL "Butch" Otter (R-ID) and other legislative leaders -- told them that Idaho should pay for the network services the telecommunication company provided to them. Although state lawmakers proposed an $8 million settlement, Idaho will have to pay out a larger amount of money for the troubled state broadband plan. The project, which was launched in 2008, aimed to provide one broadband network for all schools across the state. To date, Idaho taxpayers have paid over $29 million for the project.

AT&T claims that Google Fiber’s call for a one-touch-make-ready ordinance to streamline the process of stringing fiber on poles in Nashville (TN) could compromise the telecommunication company's own facilities because Google often provides incorrect information about where it is looking to attach its facilities. A proposed ordinance would allow Google Fiber to move existing Comcast and AT&T cables itself on utility poles owned by Nashville Electric Services (NES). This would circumvent the old make-ready rules that require Google Fiber to notify NES of the need to make space for its cables, only to have NES contact AT&T and Comcast to execute the actual work. Instead of waiting to see when AT&T’s union workforce is available, Google Fiber would be able to choose its own contractors.

Google Fiber has established a nationwide contract with AT&T to attach its facilities to the poles the telco owns. However, AT&T looks at each attachment process city by city. Joelle Phillips, president of AT&T Tennessee, said that while it is not concerned about Google Fiber’s ability to find experienced contractors to conduct the make ready work, the relatively new service provider continues to submit incorrect information about the poles. “Let’s assume they hire the very best contractors, if they give those engineering plans that we get in our application to that contractor I know that’s work that’s going to be done all over again,” Phillips said. “I am seeing many of those that have errors in them that would be corrected so it’s really not so much that they would hire bad contractors but that they might give them bad instructions.” After filing an application, AT&T does a field survey to make sure the pole matches the engineering drawings they have done.

Google Fiber's move to delay certain fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) builds may have sparked concern from industry pundits that the service provider is turning its back on fiber, but these moves actually allow it to consider a new strategy: sharing dark fiber networks. Besides using millimeter wave wireless as a way to scale its network reach, leasing dark fiber from a host of other providers or even local municipalities that have laid fiber for their own internal use, is a palatable solution to scale its network.

“Given the large capital requirements and above outlined challenges of fiber network builds, we believe that companies are increasingly utilizing shared dark fiber as a way to achieve better economics on planned expansions,” said Barlays in a research report. Google Fiber indicated its desire to seek out alternatives after a recent report emerged that the service provider’s planned buildouts of 1 Gbps in San Jose (CA), Mountain View (CA), and Palo Alto (CA) are on hold. While leveraging millimeter wireless is a less expensive alternative to wireline internet service, the service provider can also tap into a bevy of dark fiber networks being built in a number of US cities. Google Fiber purchased Webpass, a competitive provider that provides Ethernet-based services to businesses using a mix of fiber and broadband wireless technologies to deliver broadband services to businesses and residential customers.

[SOURCE: Fierce, AUTHOR: Sean Buckley]
AT&T is going to start offering broadband internet services for $10 a month to eligible low-income families in Illinois through its "Access from AT&T" in areas where the telco offers wireline internet service. Eligible customers will also be able to get Wi-Fi services to support their laptop or smart phone inside the home. Additionally, participating customers will be able to get access to thousands of AT&T Wi-Fi hot spots outside of the home. The $10 offer, which will be available through April of 2020, is a condition of AT&T’s acquisition of DirecTV in 2015. Participants won’t have to pay extra for service installation or activation.

Frontier Communications suffered a setback in signing new broadband subscribers during the second quarter due to issues with integrating the Verizon properties it purchased in April, but the company could turn things around with a plan to extend higher speeds over its existing copper network to more of its customer base. CEO Dan McCarthy said that Frontier plans to upgrade its copper plant to provide up to 50 Mbps-capable or higher speeds to additional homes. This included its existing markets and those it entered through the Verizon acquisition where FiOS is not currently available. Specifically, Frontier will upgrade customers from 7 Mbps to 50 Mbps and 100 Mbps.

Being a copper-based technology, the availability of specific speeds will depend on the condition of the copper loops and the distance between where customers reside and the nearest central office (CO) or remote terminal (RT) cabinet. “We have also continued to execute our broadband network upgrade program in both existing and new markets,” McCarthy said “This program will result in the expansion of 50 megabits or higher broadband capability to 2 million homes over the next year.” By extending higher speed services outside of the FiOS FTTH market, McCarthy said that it will be able to more effectively compete with cable providers like Charter Communications and Comcast -- two cable companies that can already deliver speeds of 100 Mbps and above.

AT&T has taken another step to sate the appetite of its broadband customers by once again increasing the monthly usage allowances for its U-verse and GigaPower broadband plans. U-verse customers that are on plans with speed tiers up to and including 300 Mps will see a monthly allowance of 1 terabyte (TB) of data.

What this means is that for customers that subscribe to Internet speeds below 12 Mbps, the new plans triple their current amount of data. Likewise, customers with internet speeds ranging from 12 Mbps to 75 Mbps will see their current allowance double. Meanwhile, AT&T GigaPower customers will receive unlimited home Internet data. As an added bonus, U-verse internet and DIRECTV or U-verse can pay for services on a single bill. Customers that subscribe to the 1 Gbps speed tier on the AT&T GigaPower network will automatically get unlimited home internet data at no additional charge. AT&T customers can also sign up for unlimited home internet data for $30 more a month.

Frontier's woes in West Virginia have come to a new head as competitive provider Citynet is suing Frontier over abusing $40.5 million in federal stimulus funds to build a broadband network that would lock out competitors in the state. In the lawsuit, Citynet accuses Frontier of double-billing, claiming that it falsified records and charged excess fees not authorized by the federal grant that funded the telco's broadband expansion project it completed in 2014.

West Virginia Homeland Security Chief Jimmy Gianato, Chief Technology Officer Gale Given, and former Commerce Secretary Kelly Goes have also been named in the suit. Citynet claims these three state leaders willingly participated in a scheme to abuse government funds. The lawsuit was originally filed in 2014 and Citynet recently updated the suit when the U.S. Justice Department said it would not weigh in. At issue is a $126.3 million federal stimulus broadband grant awarded to West Virginia in 2010. This grant was aimed at providing broadband internet to 1,064 public facilities -- including a mix of schools, libraries, health clinics, courthouses and state police detachments.

AT&T has asked the Federal Communications Commission for permission to discontinue its BellSouth Analog Voice Grade Private Line services in Carbon Hill (AL) and in Kings Point (FL) a -- two markets where the telecommunication company has been conducting IP transition tests. After AT&T gets necessary regulatory approval, the service provider said in an FCC filing that it would stop offering the service in its IP-Trial wire centers on or after October 14, 2016.

The BellSouth Analog Voice Grade Private Line services are legacy TDM-based services that provide an analog channel for the transmission of asynchronous, or synchronous serial data at rates of up to 19.2, 50.0, or 230.4 Kbps. AT&T also offers optional arrangements for this service at 18.74 or 40.08 Kbps. In wording that is similar to other requests AT&T has made to discontinue services in its BellSouth territory, the provider said in its filing that "The public convenience and necessity will not be adversely affected by the discontinuance of this service because there is no demand in the Trial Wire Centers for this service, and AT&T has other products available to serve low capacity data needs." AT&T currently offers a number of IP-based replacement services that provide much higher transmission speeds over its copper and fiber-based infrastructure. Among the other choices customers have in these markets are AT&T Switched Ethernet 2.0 Mbps (ASE 2.0) service and AT&T Business DSL Internet service (IPDSL) services.