Sean Buckley

Frontier may be a supporter of the Federal Communications Commission's Connect America Fund phase II, but, like others, it's concerned that the regulator's proposal to raise the broadband speed obligations from 4 to 10 Mbps is not a realistic proposition unless it alters the funding model.

"Any proposal to raise the CAF Phase II minimum speed obligations of broadband used for CAF Phase II from 4 Mbps download/1 Mbps upload to 10 Mbps download without any increase in funding or other change in terms is not economically feasible," wrote Kathleen Abernathy, executive vice president of External Affairs for Frontier, in a recent FCC filing. "The FCC's own USF budget does not provide adequate funding for a 10 Mbps ubiquitous deployment."

Instead of requiring 10 Mbps, Frontier said the FCC could enable service providers to extend broadband services to rural markets without having to deliver 10 Mbps to every location. It added that while a large percentage could get 10 Mbps, others could get at least 6 Mbps, and the most remote customers could get up to 4 Mbps.

Frontier Communications is ready to serve rural school districts with its own last mile services but says the Federal Communications Commission should not extend funding to other competitors to overbuild where they already provide service.

In an FCC filing, Frontier said that the regulator should take advantage of the fact that Frontier and other incumbent local exchange carriers (ILECs) serving "rural areas have already deployed fiber deep into rural America."

"The FCC should not waste scarce E-rate funding to overbuild existing middle-mile fiber when companies like Frontier have already invested the intensive capital necessary to provide it," wrote Frontier in an FCC filing. "Instead, the Commission should focus its efforts on determining how the existing fiber facilities that Frontier and other ILECs have in place today can bring the desired services to all schools and libraries, including those in rural areas."

Copper wire retirement may be a concern for competitive providers, but AT&T, CenturyLink and Frontier said that they are still finding value in telecom's ubiquitous access medium.

The telecommunications companies don't envision a wholesale replacement of their copper facilities, but rather would like to have the flexibility to retire them if there's a reason to do so. While CenturyLink is upgrading its network to IP and adding fiber, it sees copper retirement and the IP transition as a two-part issue. It says that the IP transition should have three common characteristics: a state-by-state interconnection model, redundancy and flexibility.

Bill Cheek, president of Wholesale Markets Group for CenturyLink said that while he does not see a day where the company would retire all of its copper facilities, it wants "to have flexibility if we need to retire the copper because we don't want to be mandated to maintain two networks since the economics don't work."

If CenturyLink were to face a similar natural disaster like Verizon did with Hurricane Sandy in New Jersey, it would replace the damaged copper with fiber. Similarly, AT&T does not expect a wholesale change out of copper but sees using it in different ways for new consumer and business applications. To AT&T, the retirement of TDM services does not mean it is going to take out copper. Instead, the service provider will still require copper for some its key services such as its fiber to the node (FTTN)-based U-verse service, central office (CO)-based IP DSL service and Ethernet over Copper for businesses.