Maggie Wilderotter's "High Speed" Fantasies

Frontier Communications CEO Maggie Wilderotter wrote this week the company’s network improvements and expanded broadband has moved West Virginia from the bottom five states in the country to the top five.

In an Op-Ed editorial published in the Charleston Gazette Tuesday, Wilderotter likened Frontier’s broadband improvement to the 1960s moon program.  Customers in West Virginia living with Frontier broadband can relate — to the 1960s anyway.

Where did Wilderotter get her information?  Perhaps from Frontier’s own Dan Waldo, who made the same claim last summer in an interview with MetroNews Talkline.  At the time he said it, West Virginia was ranked 47th in the country for broadband access.  It now ranks even lower today — 53rd by the federal government’s national broadband map (the federal government also ranks U.S. territories and possessions.)  In fact, West Virginia is in dead last place among U.S. states.  Only Guam, American Samoa, and the U.S. Virgin Islands are worse.

This chart ranks the percentage of customers within a state receiving a minimum of 3Mbps download speeds and upload rates of at least 768kbps. (Source: National Broadband Speed Map/National Telecommunications and Information Administration and the Federal Communications Commission )

The Center for Public Integrity is slightly more generous.  It ranked West Virginia 46th in broadband subscriptions.

Even Ookla, which analyzes millions of speed tests, tanked West Virginia, noting the average download speed is among the lowest of all 50 states at just 8Mbps, and that number seems high because it includes the state’s largest cable operators — the providers that actually deliver substantial broadband speeds.

Frontier’s contribution to West Virginia’s broadband improvement effort is measurable and noteworthy, at least for rural residents who can’t get broadband service any other way.  But many customers living with Frontier sure wish they could.

The company is expanding slow speed DSL service (1-3Mbps) to an increasing number of rural homes, but it does not come cheap.  On a megabit by megabit basis, all of the state’s cable providers deliver better value — more speed for the buck, when examining the actual “out the door price” that includes taxes, modem rental fees, and surcharges.  Frontier charges all of the above.

While Frontier delivers an average speed of 2.41Mbps in West Virginia, Comcast delivers more than 13Mbps.  Among wired providers, Frontier remains in last place.  Ookla shows some minor improvements in broadband speed, perhaps attributable to the network upgrades Wilderotter wrote about, but every other wired provider in the state performs better than Frontier’s DSL.  Who did worse?  Sprint’s 3G/4G wireless network and Wildblue, a satellite Internet Service Provider.

Average download speed performance of ISPs within West Virginia. (Source: Ookla; Graph Period: October 2009 - April 2012)

Wilderotter:

Broadband connectivity throughout all of America can be the thread that unites us all and helps pull our nation up again. Over the past two years in West Virginia, Frontier has worked with the state to bring broadband to thousands of residents and businesses. We have invested in a fiber backbone infrastructure that connects cities, libraries, schools, hospitals and government service facilities. The network improvements and the access to broadband have moved West Virginia from the bottom five states in the country to the top five. Economic development has picked up, and entrepreneurship is alive and well. Frontier is focused on taking this model to the other rural areas we serve throughout the United States.

Frontier’s efforts to expand broadband in a state its predecessor Verizon underserved for years is admirable and the company has indeed expanded service to areas that never had access before.  But as broadband rankings illustrate, Frontier’s incremental efforts are being overshadowed by more dramatic service and technology improvements in other states — the primary reason West Virginia is actually ranking worse than ever.  Frontier is not fooling anyone promoting its institutional fiber broadband networks ordinary West Virginians cannot access from their homes or businesses.  Our own readers tell us the company has repeatedly missed deployment schedules, broken promises, reduced speeds, and suffers from a woefully oversold network that slows to an intolerable crawl during peak usage periods.

Getting West Virginia among the top-five broadband states will require:

• Major investments in fiber optics into neighborhoods and homes.  All of the highest ranked states receive fiber to the home and/or fiber to the neighborhood service in larger cities, and faster DSL than what Frontier routinely sells West Virginians;
• An upgrade of the state’s broadband backbone to better manage increasing Internet usage during peak usage periods;
• Additional penetration of competing technologies into more rural areas.  Cable and fiber broadband deliver the fastest speeds, but most rural areas are bypassed.  Frontier will need to deploy faster and better service to dramatically improve the state’s broadband ranking.

“Somehow in the last 100 years, every time there is a problem of getting more spectrum, there is a technology that comes along that solves that problem. Every two and a half years, every spectrum crisis has gotten solved, and that’s going to keep happening. We already know today what the solutions are for the next 50 years.” — Martin Cooper, inventor of the portable cell phone

Despite the fear-mongering by North America’s wireless phone companies that a spectrum crisis is at hand — one that threatens the viability of wireless communications across the continent, some of the most prominent industry veterans dispute the public policy agenda of phone companies like AT&T, Verizon, Bell, and Rogers.

Martin Cooper ought to know.  He invented the portable cell phone, and remains involved in the wireless industry today.  Cooper shrugs off cries of spectrum shortages as a problem well-managed by technological innovation.  In fact, he’s credited for Cooper’s Law: The ability to transmit different radio communications at one time and in the same place has grown with the same pace since Guglielmo Marconi’s first transmissions in 1895. The number of such communications being theoretically possible has doubled every 30 months, from then, for 104 years.

National Public Radio looks back at the earliest car phones, which weighed 80 pounds and operated with vacuum tubes. Innovation, improved technology, and lower pricing turned an invention for the rich and powerful into a device more than 300,000,000 North Americans own and use today. (April 2012) (3 minutes)
You must remain on this page to hear the clip, or you can download the clip and listen later.

A traditional car phone from the 1960s.

The earliest cell phones have been around since the 1940s.  St. Louis was the first city in the United States to get Mobile Telephone Service (MTS).  It worked on three analog radio channels and required an operator to make calls on the customer’s behalf. By 1964, direct dialing from car phones became possible with Improved Mobile Telephone Service (IMTS), which also increased the number of radio channels available for calls.

In the 1970s, popular television shows frequently showed high-flyers and private detectives with traditional looking phones installed in their cars.  But the service was obscenely expensive.  The equipment set customers back $2-4,000 or was leased for around $120 a month.  Local calls ran $0.70-1.20 per minute.  That was when a nice home was priced at $27,000, a new car was under $4,000, gas was $0.55/gallon, and a first run movie ticket was priced at $1.75.

With many cities maintaining fewer than a dozen radio channels for the service, only a handful of customers could make or receive calls at a time.  The first “spectrum crisis” arrived by the late 1970s, when car phones became the status symbol of the rich and powerful (the middle class had pagers). Customers found they couldn’t make or receive calls because the frequencies were all tied up.  Some cities even rationed service by maintaining waiting lists, not allowing new customers to have the technology until an existing one dropped their account.

Instead of demanding deregulation and warning of wireless doomsday, the wireless industry innovated its way out of the era of MTS altogether, switching instead to a “cellular” approach developed in part by the Bell System.

[flv width=”412″ height=”330″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/ATT Testing the First Public Cell Phone Network.flv[/flv]

In the 1970s, when the first cell phone “spectrum crisis” erupted, the Bell System innovated its way out the the dilemma without running to Congress demanding sweeping deregulation.  This documentary, produced by the Bell System, explores AMPS — analog cell phone service, and how it transformed Chicago’s mobile telephone landscape back in 1979.  (9 minutes)

“Arguing that the nation could run out of spectrum is like saying it was going to run out of a color.” David P. Reed, one of the original architects of the Internet

Instead of one caller tying up a single IMTS radio frequency capable of reaching across an entire city, the Bell System deployed lower-powered transmitters in a series of hexagonal “cells.”  Each cell only served callers within a much smaller geographic area.  As a customer traveled between cells, the system would hand the call off to the next cell in turn and so on — all transparently to the caller.  Because of the reduced coverage area, cell towers in a city could operate on the same frequencies without creating interference problems, opening up the system to many more customers and more calls.

Inventor Martin Cooper holds one of the first portable mobile phones

In Chicago, Bell’s IMTS system only supported around a dozen callers at the same time. In 1977, the phone company built a test cellular network it dubbed “AMPS,” for Advanced Mobile Phone System.  AMPS technology was familiar to many early cell phone users.  It was more popularly known as “analog” service, and while it could still only handle one conversation at a time on each frequency, the system supported better call handling and many more users than earlier wireless phone technology.  By 1979, Bell had 1,300 customers using their test system in Chicago.

AMPS considerably eased the “spectrum crunch” earlier systems found challenging, and subsequent upgrades to digital technology dramatically increased the number of calls each tower could handle and allowed providers to slash pricing, which fueled the spectacular growth of the wireless marketplace.

Yesterday it was voice call congestion, today it is a “tidal wave” of wireless data.  But inventors like Cooper believe the solution is the same: engineering innovation.

“Somehow in the last 100 years, every time there is a problem of getting more spectrum, there is a technology that comes along that solves that problem,” Cooper told the New York Times. “Every two and a half years, every spectrum crisis has gotten solved, and that’s going to keep happening. We already know today what the solutions are for the next 50 years.”

Cooper believes in the cellular approach to wireless communications.  Dividing up today’s geographic cells into even smaller cells could vastly expand network capacity just like AMPS did for Windy City residents in the late 1970s. Using especially directional antennas focused on different service areas, placing new cell towers, innovating further with tiny neighborhood antennas mounted on telephone poles, or building out Wi-Fi networks can all manage the data capacity “crisis” says Cooper.

New technology also allows cell signals to co-exist, even on the same or adjacent frequencies, without creating interference problems. All it takes is a willingness to invest in the technology and deploy it across signal-congested urban areas.

Unfortunately, network engineers are not often responsible for the business decisions or public policy agendas of the nation’s largest wireless companies who are using the “spectrum crisis” to argue for increased deregulation and demanding additional radio spectrum which, in some cases, could be locked up by companies to make sure nobody else can use them.

[flv width=”600″ height=”358″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/NY Times Mobile Carriers Warn of Spectrum Crisis.flv[/flv]

The New York Times offers this easy-to-follow primer on wireless spectrum and why it matters (or not) in the current climate of explosive growth in mobile data traffic.  (3 minutes)

“Their primary interest is not necessarily in making spectrum available, or in making wireless performance better. They want to make money.” — David S. Isenberg, veteran researcher, AT&T Labs

Innovation, not wholesale deregulation, allowed the Bell System to solve the spectrum crisis of the 1970s by creating today's "cell system" that can re-use radio frequencies in adjacent areas to handle more wireless traffic.

Spectrum auctions bring billions to federal coffers, but actually deliver a hidden tax to cell phone customers who ultimately pay for the winning bids priced into their monthly bills.  It also makes it prohibitively expensive for a new player to enter the market.  Already facing enormous network construction costs, any new entrant would then face the crushing prospect of outbidding AT&T, Verizon Wireless, Bell or Rogers for the frequencies essential for operation.

As the New York Times writes:

When a company gets the license for a band of radio waves, it has the exclusive rights to use it. Once a company owns it, competitors can’t have it.

Mr. Reed said the carriers haven’t advocated for the newer technologies because they want to retain their monopolies.

Cooper advocates a new regulatory approach at the Federal Communications Commission — one that mandates wireless phone companies start using today’s technology to amplify their networks.

Cooper points to one example: the smart antenna.

Smart antennas direct cell towers to focus their transmission energy towards the specific devices connected to it.  If a customer was using their phone from the southern end of the cell tower’s coverage area, why direct signal energy to the north, where it gets wasted?  New LTE networks support smart antenna technology, but carriers have generally avoided investing in upgrading towers to support the new technology, expected to be commonplace inside new wireless devices within two years.

T-Mobile calls these technology solutions “Band-Aids” that won’t address the company’s demand for more frequencies to manage its network.  But that kind of thinking applied to the mobile phone world of the 1970s would have maintained the exorbitantly expensive IMTS technology discarded decades ago, since replaced by innovation that made more efficient use of the spectrum already on hand.  That innovation also transformed wireless phones from a tool (or toy) for the very wealthy to an affordable success story that now threatens the traditional wired phone network in ways the Bell System could have never envisioned.

[flv width=”412″ height=”330″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Its a Whole New System.flv[/flv]

It’s A Whole New System: AT&T and other wireless phone companies might want to learn the lesson the Bell System was trying to teach their employees back in 1979: Meet Change With Change.  This company-produced video implores the phone company to do more than the same old thing.  No, this video is not “PM Magazine.”  It is about innovation and actually listening to what customers want. With apologies to Mama Cass Elliot, there was indeed a New World Coming — the breakup of the Bell System just five years later.  Don’t miss the diabetic-coma-inducing, sugary-sweet jingle at the end.  Then reach for a can of Tab.  (10 minutes)

The home of Atlantic Canada’s largest hot air balloon festival is getting more than hot air from broadband providers promising better broadband in New Brunswick.  Bell Aliant announced this month it will spend $2 million to expand its FibreOp fiber to the home service to 3,000 homes and businesses in the town of Sussex.

“Access to the FibreOP network represents a tremendous growth opportunity for Sussex, and has huge potential to connect businesses and families,” said Andre LeBlanc, vice president of Residential Products for Bell Aliant. “We are excited to continue our expansion in New Brunswick, and to offer the best TV and Internet to our customers in the Sussex area.”

Bell Aliant’s FibreOp delivers broadband speeds up to 250/30Mbps and is marketed without data caps — a rarity from large providers in Canada.

The company was the first in Canada to cover an entire city with fiber-to-the-home and by the end of 2012, will have invested approximately half a billion dollars to extend it to approximately 650,000 homes and businesses in its territory. FibreOP builds are complete in Greater Saint John including Quispamsis, Rothesay, Grand Bay/Westfield, as well as Bathurst, Fredericton, Miramichi, and Moncton, including Riverview, Dieppe and Shediac. Customers in parts of Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland & Labrador also enjoy fiber to the home service.

While Bell Canada owns a controlling stake in Bell Aliant, it allows the Atlantic Canada phone company to operate under its own branding and supports their aggressive fiber upgrade project across the relatively rural eastern provinces.  Even more remarkably, while Bell is one of Canada’s strongest proponents for usage-based billing and caps on broadband usage by its customers, Bell Aliant competes with cable operators by advertising the fact it delivers unlimited, flat rate service.  Bell Aliant is aggressively expanding fiber to the home service in Atlantic Canada while Bell relies on its less-advanced fiber to the neighborhood service Fibe TV in more populated and prosperous cities in Ontario and Quebec.

That is counter-intuitive to other providers who eschew fiber upgrades in rural communities, suggesting the cost to wire smaller towns is too high for the proportionately lower number of potential customers.  That does not seem to bother Bell Aliant, who considers fiber to the home its best weapon to confront landline cord-cutters.

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/What is FibreOP.flv[/flv]

Bell Aliant introduces Atlantic Canada to its FibreOp fiber to the home service, delivering unlimited fiber-fast broadband.  No Internet Overcharging schemes here.  (2 minutes)

Found more new customers than AT&T

If you are among the handful of people with an Android phone or tablet running Android v.4 (also known as ‘Ice Cream Sandwich’), Time Warner Cable’s latest version of its TWC TV for Android app introduces live streaming video.

Available as of 3pm ET this afternoon from the Google Play store, TWC TV for Android finally brings streaming video to an app that used to only allow Android owners to browse an online program guide and remotely manage their DVR boxes.  Time Warner Cable originally introduced its TV Everywhere streamed video service on Apple’s iPad.

But the company’s decision to limit streamed video only to the latest Android devices running Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) is a major disappointment and will leave a lot of Android owners with a hobbled app.

“It’s currently the only version of the Android OS that allows us the security and stability necessary to distribute video over our private network,” claims Time Warner Cable’s Jeff Simmermon. “But it’s up to the device manufacturer and the sometimes the data carrier when or if ICS will be deployed to a particular device.”

Simmermon suggested the iOS platform developed by Apple was easier to contend with because one company developed the operating system and the devices on which it operates.

If you upgrade to the latest version of TWC TV for Android running on a non-ICS phone, a notification warns that live streamed video remains unavailable to you, leaving the app about as useful as its earlier version, which is to say not very.  Simmermon also warns the upgrade is not available to “rooted” devices.

Smartphones purchased within the last year are likely to receive eventual upgrades to ICS, although exactly when depends on your wireless carrier.  Older phones may or may not receive upgrades.  As a general rule, the older the device, the less likely the manufacturer will be willing to keep upgrading it.

Hastings vents on his Facebook page.

As Stop the Cap! has warned Netflix for years, Internet Overcharging schemes like usage caps, usage-based billing, and speed throttles represent an end run around Net Neutrality. If a provider cannot openly discriminate against the competition, slapping usage limits on them (while exempting favored services from that cap) can eventually accomplish the same thing.

Netflix founder Reed Hastings is finally getting the message after a frustrating weekend watching his Comcast usage allowance bleed away while streaming video.  He shared his views on his Facebook page:

Comcast [is] no longer following net neutrality principles.

Comcast should apply caps equally, or not at all.

I spent the weekend enjoying four good internet video apps on my Xbox: Netflix, HBO GO, Xfinity, and Hulu.

When I watch video on my Xbox from three of these four apps, it counts against my Comcast internet cap. When I watch through Comcast’s Xfinity app, however, it does not count against my Comcast internet cap.

For example, if I watch last night’s SNL episode on my Xbox through the Hulu app, it eats up about one gigabyte of my cap, but if I watch that same episode through the Xfinity Xbox app, it doesn’t use up my cap at all.

The same device, the same IP address, the same wifi, the same internet connection, but totally different cap treatment.

In what way is this neutral?

Comcast says it is “neutral” by framing its own Xbox-streamed video as a “set top box replacement,” even though the video that flows to the Xbox console travels down the same last-mile network Comcast says it needs to “protect” with its 250GB monthly usage cap.

Comcast doesn’t actually need a 250GB usage cap, particularly after the company upgraded its broadband facilities to DOCSIS 3 technology.  That vast improvement in capacity at a comparatively low cost (easily recouped by the company’s latest round of rate increases) should be shared with customers.  Instead of “applying caps equally,” Comcast should abandon them altogether.

[Thanks to Earl, one of our regular readers, for sharing the story.]