Cincinnati Bell is an island in the middle of a sea of AT&T — offering over 258,000 southwestern Ohio residents and businesses access to a fiber to the home network that has kept customer disconnects down and broadband speeds up.

Now the phone company says it is ready for any speed increases on tap from competitor Time Warner Cable and has the capacity to bring gigabit speeds to Cincinnati as soon as enough customers ask. But first it has to expand its footprint.

The company has plans to bring Fioptics to 35 percent of Cincinnati by the end of this year, according to Leigh Fox, chief technology officer for Cincinnati Bell. The company has successfully upgraded its fiber network to offer 53,000 more homes a fiber alternative to Time Warner Cable during the first nine months of this year. At least 29 percent of Cincinnati residents have cut Time Warner Cable’s cord at least once, trying the fiber to the home service.

Cincinnati Bell wants a 50-70 percent penetration rate in the city, defined as the percentage of customers who have subscribed at least once.

“I am pretty confident on returns and we do have to hit a certain metric,” said Fox. “As an example, we just built out my neighborhood over the summer where in the first two weeks we had 23 percent penetration and after a month we had 43 percent penetration.”

Unlike AT&T which confines U-verse to larger population areas, Cincinnati Bell is continuing to invest in traditional ADSL/2+ service for the nearly half million customers throughout its service area that cannot get Fioptics service yet. The company claims the majority of these customers can now buy 10Mbps or faster DSL service, making Cincinnati Bell competitive with Time Warner Cable across the region. Higher, stable speeds are the phone company’s best defense against DSL disconnects. Most cable broadband growth comes at the expense of telephone company DSL customers leave behind.

Currently, the majority of Cincinnati Bell’s “non-techie” fiber customers are satisfied with 20Mbps service. Time Warner Cable is planning to offer up to 100Mbps in the near future, but Fox noted Fioptics has the capability to exceed those speeds ten times over, and said if enough customers want 1Gbps speed, Cincinnati Bell will offer it.

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Dr. John Cioffi, the “Father of DSL” doesn’t think much of fiber to the home service, suggesting it is a waste of money and delivers budget-busting losses to providers. He has the ear of the man in charge of overseeing Australia’s National Broadband Network, Communications Minister John Turnbull. Turnbull’s public statements imply he supports Cioffi’s approach – a hybrid fiber-copper network similar to AT&T U-verse.

By adopting cheaper VDSL technology, Cioffi claims providers can avoid the “$800 unrecoverable loss per customer Verizon FiOS has experienced” bringing fiber to the home. He also claims fiber to the home service isn’t as robust as fiber proponents claim, with flimsy, easy-to-break fiber cables and loads of service calls commonplace among some European providers.

Few media interviews, including this one with ABC Television, bother to fully disclose how Cioffi has a big dog in the broadband technology fight. Cioffi founded ASSIA, Inc., a firm that markets products and services to DSL providers. ASSIA is backed by investments from AT&T, its first customer, and a handful of overseas telephone companies. Cioffi estimates ASSIA software is used to manage 90 percent of existing DSL accounts in the United States and is a fundamental part of AT&T’s efforts to increase U-verse speeds. Dismantling DSL in favor of fiber could have a marked impact on ASSIA’s profits. (8:47)

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Australia’s new Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull talks with Dr. John Cioffi about the differences between VDSL and fiber technologies. Cioffi bashes one form of fiber to the home service dubbed “GPON” because it shares infrastructure. Cioffi claims fiber speeds drop to 20Mbps when a few dozen people share a GPON connection. When in Paris, Cioffi claims his shared fiber connection maxed out at 2.5Mbps while ADSL still ran at 6Mbps. (3:52)

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Unsurprisingly, Cioffi claims his company’s software is essential for a good vectored VDSL user experience. Cioffi also claims VDSL can easily beat GPON fiber broadband speeds, a very controversial claim. In Cioffi’s view, even Wi-Fi can perform better than fiber. Finally, Cioffi claims Google is spending $8,000 per customer to deploy its fiber to the home network, when VDSL can do the job for much less money. (2:58)

An independent cell phone provider in Idaho has found a unique niche to innovate beyond offering traditional cell phone service by launching unlimited 20Mbps home broadband Internet access over its wireless 4G LTE network.

Syringa Wireless of Pocatello has launched a pilot LTE home fixed broadband trial that comes free for the first year if customers agree to buy the necessary equipment — a $300 wireless router. The service promises up to 20Mbps service, which represents a major improvement in communities where broadband speeds consistently rank among the slowest in the nation.

The pilot trial is open to residents in Rexburg, Ammon, Blackfoot, Chubbuck, Pocatello, Rupert, Burley, and Filer — all in Idaho. The company encourages those interested to sign up for the trial before the end of November.

Another innovation from Syringa is the company’s free “Family-Friendly Internet” option for residential, church, and business customers. It filters the Internet to block adult websites and claims not to slow down Internet connections.

Syringa’s fixed wireless broadband puts the company in a stronger position for a Wireless Internet Service Provider (WISP), because it is able to also market traditional cell phone service for its rural customer base. Syringa still sells unlimited smartphone data plans and has a roaming agreement with a major national carrier for cell phone users traveling outside of Syringa’s home service area.

Many independent cell phone providers are struggling to survive because they are unable to sell the most popular new smartphones until they have been available at larger carriers for several months. A fixed wireless broadband service may diversify Syringa sufficiently to withstand any challenges from larger operators.

Founded in 2006, Syringa Wireless is Idaho’s only fully integrated wireless provider, offering cell phone service including data, text messaging, and shared minutes, with preset and unlimited options. Both local and national plans are available, with and without contract. The company also has custom plans for business users and offers service at local stores in southern and eastern Idaho.

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KPVI in Pocatello talks with Scott Dike, general manager of Syringa Wireless, about the company’s new fixed wireless broadband service for Idaho. (4:44)

Cord-cutting is a real, measurable phenomena and is especially common among those under 30 who don’t care about traditional cable television service.

Those are the views of Verizon’s chief financial officer Fran Shammo, speaking this week at the Wells Fargo 2013 Tech, Media & Telecom Conference in New York.

Shammo told investors Verizon FiOS subscriber numbers showed the company has an excellent position in the broadband market because it is the only national provider other than Google offering fiber-to-the-home service.

Verizon TV customers are regularly encouraged to upgrade to 50Mbps Quantum service with a push of a button on their remote control.

“Broadband is absolutely key,” said Shammo. “Most of our customers are taking our 50Mbps [FiOS Quantum] or higher speed and part of that is because you need that speed inside the home [to support] your wireless devices that run off of Wi-Fi. If you’re running hot water with five people, you are eventually going to slow down the hot water and it is going to run cold. The same thing happens when you are running five wireless devices over your Wi-Fi network.”

Shammo said as more online video becomes available people will gradually shift more of their viewing time away from traditional television.

“We’re also seeing fewer people taking [our cable television] product,” said Shammo. “They really want the broadband speed and if you look at the demographics, those 30 and below don’t care if they have linear TV. They are looking at getting their content through other means.”

Shammo said he doesn’t necessarily have a problem with that because heavy online viewing will stimulate upgrades to faster Verizon FiOS Internet speeds.

“We invested in FiOS for broadband and for television and we think we have a superior product,” said Shammo. “But we’re smart enough to realize that the ecosystem will eventually change and people are bringing content in over-the-top. We want to make sure we have the fastest — the best broadband […] and we believe we have the best linear TV product but we know that over the top video is going to become more popular.”

Moffett

Wall Street is worried the cable industry will not be able to report major subscriber gains going forward because just about every middle/upper-income customer that wants broadband within cable’s footprint already has the service from either the phone or cable company.

Cable analyst Craig Moffett from MoffettNathanson Research predicts singing up the last 20% of Americans who don’t subscribe to broadband service will be challenging. As of today, 73% have the service, up 2.5% from last year. An increasingly anemic growth rate is a sign the marketplace is getting saturated, with only low-income Americans underrepresented, primarily because they can’t afford the asking price. Most of the rest don’t own or want computers or Internet access or live in a rural area where the service is unavailable.

Under these circumstances, it is no surprise broadband providers are reporting lower new customer gains. Time Warner Cable and Cablevision actually lost broadband customers in the third quarter, mostly to Verizon FiOS. For the last five years, the cable industry has picked up most of its broadband customers from phone companies offering only DSL service.

“To be sure cable is still taking share [from telco DSL] but it is doing so at a much more modest pace,” Moffett said.

The industry’s best chance for new subscriber growth appears to be bundling computers or tablets with an entry-level broadband offering targeting the poor.

Although cable companies are not supplying free PCs just yet, many are introducing relatively slow, budget-priced broadband tiers to attract lower-income subscribers.

Time Warner Cable introduced a $14.95 2/1Mbps broadband tier this month the company hopes will attract price-sensitive customers, especially those now subscribed to low-speed DSL.

Comcast has Internet Essentials, a $10 slow speed broadband service for families with children enrolled in the federal student lunch program. It is also rolling out a “prepaid Internet service” directly targeting low-income customers. Prepaid customers pay $69.95 for an activation kit containing a DOCSIS 3 modem and a month of broadband service. Renewals are priced at $15 for a week or $45 for a month for 3Mbps service with a 768kbps upload rate.

Most other cable providers offer entry-level broadband speeds, but usually only as a retention tool. Even if the industry custom-targets low-speed tiers to low-income homes, many customers may never make it past the cable industry’s credit check procedure. Comcast’s prepaid offering avoids that problem.