The United States has a goal of 100Mbps ubiquitous broadband service by 2020.  Hong Kong residents already have access to speeds up to 1Gbps, leaving many unimpressed with the American broadband goals established in the FCC’s National Broadband Plan.

City Telecom CEO William Yeung called out the current state of American broadband, noting many Americans are still stuck with megabit speeds in the single digits, while 100+ megabit access is widely available across most of Hong Kong from fiber optic networks.

Yeung thinks 100Mbps service will be considered slow by the time 2020 rolls around, noting an insatiable demand for enhanced broadband speeds.

Google’s Think Big With a Gig project underlines Yeung’s beliefs as hundreds of American communities clamor to be among those chosen for a demonstration project that will deliver up to 1Gbps speed to homes and businesses on an all-fiber network.

Yeung rejects the notion that wiring Hong Kong was a natural for super-fast fiber optic broadband just because of its dense population, reducing potential costs.

“I think it’s a matter of short term vs. long term thinking,” Yeung told Bloomberg News.

According to Yeung, American broadband providers are afraid constructing super-fast broadband lanes threaten to cannibalize their existing revenue streams, especially from cable television.  That’s because Americans could end up dropping their cable packages in favor of watching everything online.  Yeung also thinks Wall Street is preoccupied with short-term Return on Investment, making it difficult to upgrade to fiber service despite the enormous potential long term revenue, even in rural areas.

For Yeung, it’s all about marketing the benefits of fiber.  His company, City Telecom, is busily signing new subscribers despite the fact the island already enjoys near-universal broadband access.  Offering faster speeds and better service will drive customers to switch providers, Yeung believes.

[flv width=”640″ height=”500″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Bloomberg Yeung Says Hong Kong Broadband 10 Years Ahead of U.S 3-19-10.flv[/flv]

Bloomberg News talked with City Telecom CEO William Yeung about fiber-optic broadband and the fact Hong Kong is well ahead of the United States on broadband speed and service.  (4 minutes)

[flv width=”600″ height=”500″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/City Telecom Promo.flv[/flv]

City Telecom’s HKBN service has a history of running bizarre advertising.  One recent example is included here, along with a short promotional video touting the company’s accomplishments in constructing an all-fiber network.  (4 minutes)

American Salt Company's salt pile in Hampton Corners, just south of Rochester, N.Y.

Faithful Stop the Cap! reader Lance dropped us a note this afternoon alerting us that Syracuse is the latest Time Warner Cable city getting the benefits of increased speed from Time Warner Cable’s DOCSIS 3 Wideband upgrade.

While those in the Salt City can now sign up for 50Mbps broadband service, Time Warner Cable tells residents of the Flower City to go pound salt — there are no upgrades for you!

Why?

Thank Frontier Communications anemic (read that barely-existent) competition against Time Warner Cable in Rochester.  While the rest of upstate New York is being wired for fiber-to-the-home service from Verizon, Frontier Communications is relying on decade-old DSL service… indefinitely.  For residents like myself, that topped out at a whopping 3.1Mbps. That fails the FCC’s newly-proposed minimum speed to even be considered “broadband.”

Buffalo has been Wideband ready since early this month, and New York City launched service last year.

The Rochester Democrat & Chronicle must have noticed nearby cities were getting speed increases, but Rochester was not, so they contacted Time Warner Cable to find out why:

While those DOCSIS 3.0 products — called Wideband and Road Runner Extreme — are being made available in Buffalo and Syracuse, the company “has just begun its national launch of this product across its entire footprint, but with no additional locations determined at this time,” said spokesman Jeff Unaitis.

The company, however, does plan to roll out a wireless broadband product for the Rochester market before the end of 2010, he said.

(*) - As long as you don't live in Rochester, N.Y.

That’s the nice way of saying Rochester isn’t getting the speed increases because there is no competitive reason to provide it.  With Rochester left off the upgrade list, and no real incentive to run to Frontier (which can’t beat Road Runner’s existing speeds), this community falls behind the rest of the state in broadband speed.

To think last April Time Warner Cable was promising dramatically upgraded service, if the community agreed to accept their Internet Overcharging usage-based billing scheme.  Apparently no other upstate city was required to commit to ripoff pricing, and speed upgrades came anyway.  The fact Rochester is bypassed this year proves our contention their pricing experiment came to Rochester only because they faced no real competitive threat from Frontier then, and they still do not today.

As for the wireless product coming to Rochester, that will come courtesy of rebranded Clearwire service, which has had very mixed reviews.  Time Warner Cable and Comcast are both major investors in Clearwire, and are using their service to provide a wireless add-on.  It won’t come cheap, however, if North Carolina’s pricing also applies here:

• Road Runner Mobile 4G National Elite gives unlimited access to both Time Warner Cable’s 4G Mobile Network and a national 3G network (Sprint, presumably), for use when traveling.
  o $79.95 per month for Road Runner Standard or Turbo customers.
• Road Runner Mobile 4G Elite gives customers unlimited access to the Time Warner Cable 4G Mobile Network.
  o $49.95 per month for Road Runner Standard or Turbo customers.
• Road Runner Mobile 4G Choice gives light users 2GB of service on the Time Warner Cable 4G network each month.
  o Available for $39.95 per month to customers of at least one other Time Warner Cable service.  Additional $5 off if you have a  bundled service package.

As for Wideband pricing, Syracuse residents should expect to pay:

• 30/5Mbps: $25 more than standard Road Runner service;
• 50/5Mbps: $99 per month, but ask about promotional pricing, which may be available.

In Syracuse, Road Runner speed now matches Verizon FiOS on the downstream side, although Verizon can deliver better upload speed at 20Mbps.  Formerly, Road Runner maxed out at 15Mbps in central New York.

About 30 percent of the central New York division of Time Warner Cable is now Wideband-ready, including the entire city of Syracuse.  By October, the company expects to have the faster service available in 70 percent of the central New York area.

Richardson County, Nebraska

Richardson County, Nebraska is classic rural Americana.  Fixed at the very southeastern tip of Nebraska, the county’s gently rolling countryside offers a break from the relentless flat prairies in nearby Kansas. Agriculture, cattle and hog farming are important to the local economy.  Large farms grow corn, alfalfa, and wheat, but the area’s 170 growing days also support a significant apple crop as well. Towns within the county range from the tiny Barada, population 28 up to the county seat — Falls City, population 4,671.

With a climate than can deliver temperatures well under zero in the winter and into the triple digits in the summer, tourism isn’t this part of Nebraska’s strength.  But its location, culture, and cost of living are for those who live there.

Originally founded in 1857, Falls City served as a major transit point for escaping slaves caught up in the Kansas-Nebraska Act controversy, one of the many disputes that eventually led to the Civil War.  Like most small towns of the time, growth came with the arrival of the railroads.  First, the Atchison & Nebraska Railroad in 1871 and then the Missouri Pacific in 1882.

The population peaked in 1950 at 6,200, but the town has held its own thanks to the self-sufficiency of its residents and local government.

Falls City is a unique community among thousands of small communities across the heartland and beyond.

The local economic development team promote Falls City’s possibilities as a strategic transit and shipping center.  Regionally, Richardson County is just an hour or two away from Kansas City, Missouri, Topeka, Kansas, and Omaha and Lincoln, Nebraska.  Centrally located, the area offers two day shipping possibilities to most points of the country.

The municipal government owns and operates the local water, gas, electric and waste treatment facilities, which charge rates lower than other communities in Nebraska.  Time Warner Cable’s Nebraska division offers service in most parts of town, and the local, family-owned Southeast Nebraska Communications (SNC) started providing phone service in Falls City, Rulo, Stella, Shubert, Verdon and Salem, as early as 1906.

SNC, which was founded by Edwin H. Towle, began with an attitude of innovation — providing the best, most modern service possible for southeastern Nebraska.  Simply providing “good enough for rural residents” service typical among larger providers was never a part of the company’s philosophy.  The company grew through its innovation, and today leverages all it can out of its copper cable network.  The spirit of innovation that began with Edwin continues today at SNC through family member Dorothy J. Towle, who serves as president of the company.

Towle and other company officials recognize the days of copper wire phone networks remaining relevant in today’s telecommunications marketplace are seriously numbered.

SNC made a decision remarkable for a phone company of its size — it was going to rewire Falls City for fiber optics, straight to the home, at no additional charge to residents and area businesses.

Last July, it stunned the community with the news southeastern Nebraska would have access at speeds cities ten times larger could only dream about.

SNC is investing between $8-10 million in the project, which will reach most city residents by its completion in 2011.  The company is constructing the network with capital improvement funds they’ve conservatively saved year after year, and believes it’s a great investment because of future revenue possibilities fiber optics can bring.  This isn’t a company that worries about pumping up stock prices, boosting dividend payouts, or lavishing executives with enormous pay and benefit packages.  SNC employees live and work in the community and want to enjoy the fruits of their labor.

Operations Manager Ray Joy told the Journal Star the new system will be capable of offering 1,000Mbps to a house.  Right now, SNC offers DSL service at 3-7Mbps.

The company is still working out precisely what speeds it will offer residential and business customers, but they will be far better than what is possible from aging copper wiring.  Best of all, it’s future proof, which SNC believes will save them plenty in the long run.  Upgrading fiber networks just takes a different type of laser — no rewiring required.

SNC first considered wireless technology to serve the community, but rejected it because of insufficient bandwidth capacity.  Fiber’s expandability the choice much easier for the company.

Of the 460 cities and villages in Nebraska, only 11 currently have fiber to the home, and Falls City will be the largest in the state.

Falls City Economic Development and Growth Enterprise, the local economic development team, hopes to promote Falls City’s fiber as perfect for new digital economy businesses, creating new high-paying jobs for area residents.

Current entrepreneurs who live in Falls City are already convinced.

SNC's Management and Employees

Karissa Watson, owner of Kissa’s Kreations, a Web and graphic design service, told the newspaper she is looking forward to the conversion.

“From what I understand, it will be 20 times faster, but I also think the quality will be better because it’s a dedicated versus a shared service,” she said.

Watson wants faster service in order to increase her efficiency.  Slower broadband speeds can cause long waits for businesses moving data back and forth.

Watson and other Falls City residents are being kept informed about the progress of the project in quarterly newsletters sent by the company.  A contracting firm, RVW, Inc. of Columbus, Nebraska is doing the work.  Their technicians are personally visiting every home and business owner before digging begins in a neighborhood, and remain available to address any concerns residents have after work is complete.

SNC markets themselves as locally owned and operated, which is why personal contact with customers is critically important to the company’s success.  Newsletters allude to their nearest competitor, Time Warner Cable, as not exactly being local.  SNC touts their local customer care office, staffed by area residents, local call centers that are answered by “real people,” and a service staff that can often respond to service outages on the same day.

“Unlike some companies, we don’t play games with low teaser rates that go up later,” sums up the company’s marketing attitude.

SNC’s fiber upgrade also could eventually protect them from Time Warner Cable’s relentless drive towards product bundling, which can cost the telephone company landline business.  The cable company can also beat SNC’s broadband speeds on the copper wire network.  With an upgrade, SNC could eventually offer customers a cable-TV alternative, taking the competition back to the nation’s second largest cable operator.

Although 75 percent of the six million Americans served by fiber-to-the-home projects are Verizon FiOS customers, there is considerable growth in fiber deployment among small mom and pop and municipally-owned phone companies.  That’s remarkable because they lack the economy of scale and financial resources larger telephone companies enjoy.  But those small phone companies aren’t caught up in debt, endless mergers and acquisitions, stock price games, and ludicrous compensation for a handful of executives.  For customers of Qwest, Frontier, Windstream, and CenturyLink, fiber remains an elusive dream.

The Journal Star covered several other phone companies with fiber projects in Nebraska:

Cambridge, in southwest Nebraska, also has FTTH technology to serve a population of just more than 1,000.

“We’re very excited,” said Cambridge Economic Development Director Adela Taylor, who called it the “infrastructure of the future.”

She said the fiber optic system was the initiative of the local telephone company, which has been very pro-active over the years in bringing the newest technology to the town. She noted that Cambridge was one of the first towns to have Internet service back in 1993, as a pilot project.

Three River Telco in Lynch is in the midst of a three-year project to install FTTH technology. The company serves about 1, 250 customers in Lynch, Verdel, Springview, Johnstown and Naper in north-central Nebraska.

General Manager Neil Classen said Three River received a $19 million federal loan from the Rural Utilities Service to replace its copper wire system with fiber optics. The company wanted to provide the latest services to customers, including transmitting television signals via Internet protocols.

Classen said the fiber optic system will provide customers with a more reliable communications system and a lot more bandwidth than the existing copper wire network. He said the price tag could be less because fiber optic technology has improved and become more cost-effective.

Fiber dreams are Gone With the Windstream

Windstream serves several Nebraska communities, and for those customers, the news is less exciting.  Windstream has limited itself to installing small amounts of fiber in new subdivisions.

Brad Hedrick, Windstream vice president of operations for Nebraska and Missouri, said installing fiber optics is an extremely expensive proposition and Windstream has no plans to connect every home and business as Falls City is doing.

But he told the newspaper if the federal government wants to kick in federal funds to help small communities convert, Windstream will consider it.

Windstream cannot deliver fiber to the home to their customers, despite $2.997 billion in revenues for 2009.  But a family-owned phone company in Falls City, a telephone company in Cambridge serving 1,000 residents, and Three River Telco in Lynch all can.

The Federal Communications Commission wants to know how fast your broadband connection is.  The federal agency is now offering consumers and businesses a chance to test broadband speeds to raise awareness about broadband.  But the test results also help illustrate the wide variation between speeds promised by providers and those actually experienced by customers.

The FCC wants to collect this information because broadband providers have often refused to provide it themselves, citing customer privacy or an unwillingness to release potentially useful information to competitors.  By asking visitors to supply their street address and general location, the agency can at least develop anecdotal information about the range of speeds Americans experience.

However, the agency is likely to discover wide variations in the accuracy of the results based not on what service providers deliver, but instead what the speed test itself reports.

The FCC is relying on two speed test providers, randomly assigned to those taking the test.

• Measurement Lab (M-Lab), which provides researchers with Internet measurement tools on a collaborative basis, and
• Ookla, a private company that provides web-based network diagnostic applications.

Stop the Cap! used both providers to conduct three individual speed tests from Broadband.gov.  There were dramatic differences in results.  M-Lab consistently reported far slower speeds than Ookla.  Ookla’s results were closest to the advertised speeds from our broadband provider — Time Warner Cable.

This speed test result from M-Lab was the closest to the average of all three speed tests conducted with this service

Ookla's speed test came closest to achieving the marketed speeds for Rochester, New York Time Warner Cable Road Runner Turbo customers. The download speeds reported also include the effects of "PowerBoost," a temporary burst of additional downstream speed.

Both speed test providers rely on different regional servers to deliver potentially more accurate speed test results, less impacted by the additional “hops” traffic must take when traveling outside of a nearby region.  But considering the enormous disparity between the two tests, these real-world results may not actually represent reality.

Which test comes closest to the actual speeds available here?  Ookla.  But even then, your results may vary.  Ookla provides speed tests for both Time Warner Cable and Frontier Communications, our local phone company.  The downstream speeds reported were widely different, despite both test servers being located within a 50 mile radius.

Time Warner Cable's speed test application is also provided by Ookla. (This result comes from a server in nearby Syracuse -- the Rochester location was not working properly)

Ookla's speed test for Frontier Communications delivered dramatically different results for downstream speeds

The FCC seems to acknowledge the potential disparity in results on their disclaimer page:

Please note that the Consumer Broadband Test in its current software based form may not be an accurate representation of connection quality provided by your broadband provider. The results can be impacted by a range of factors — for instance, the test can vary based on the geographical distance of the user from the testing server, end-user hardware, network congestion, and time of day. However, this application can provide a helpful indicator in comparing consumers’ relative broadband connection quality and in understanding the performance metrics of broadband connections.

What results do you get from Broadband.gov’s provided speed tests?  Share your findings in our comment section.

[Stop the Cap! will be closely following Google’s experimental gigabit fiber-optic broadband network.  We’ll be bringing regular updates about the communities applying, the strategies they are using to attract Google’s attention, what the competition thinks, and the impact of the project on American broadband.]

Columbia, Missouri is excited about the prospect of being chosen as a test city for Google gigabit broadband.

It’s just one of tens of communities seeking to apply for Google’s new experimental fiber to the home network delivering super fast broadband to residents and businesses.

Columbia is the fifth largest city in the state, with 100,000 residents who call the heart of mid-Missouri home.  Columbia is a classic college town, supporting the University of Missouri.  It’s uniquely known as one of the most-educated communities in the country, with over half of its residents holding college degrees.  Columbia residents are quick to embrace new technology, and this drive to adopt the latest and the greatest has fueled interest in Google’s fiber network.

Columbia’s Regional Economic Development, Inc. (REDI), promoting local business and economic development, has been coordinating what to do next.  They’ve been joined by ComoFiber, which is working to generate public interest in the project and help devise a strategy to win Google’s attention.

Columbia, Missouri

Mike Brooks, from REDI, said the city has seen a great deal of interest from the community to apply for Google’s plan.

Last week, both groups met to educate the public and start identifying why Columbia poses an attractive place for Google’s project.

Some believe Columbia would be the ideal city to build such a network.  ComoFiber explains:

The reasons are numerous, but the biggest reason is really quite simple: Columbia is on the knife’s edge: the sweet spot between big, highly-developed cities and small, under-served towns.

The reason this is so important is because it’s easy to see why Google might want to deploy its fiber in either a big city or a small town, but it’s equally easy to see why they wouldn’t. The big cities have high-tech industry, universities, highly educated populae and other capabilities that allow them to produce the kind of applications and creative products that Google wants to research. On the other hand, major cities already have a great deal of fiber infrastructure, and their broadband prices are generally reasonable. So really, they’re already enabled; adding marginally-faster service to those markets won’t be the kind of sea-change that the plan is designed to study.

ComoFiber compiled a list of strengths from both the “big city” and “small town” perspective:

Columbia/Boone County, Missouri

Columbia as Big City:

1. Multiple colleges and universities, including world-class research facilities.
2. A major life sciences epicenter. Life-science is perhaps the most data-intensive industry in the world.
3. A highly-educated, technically-skilled populace. Thirteenth-most educated in America, to be exact.
4. Many high-tech small businesses, including Internet-centric outfits such as Newsy.
5. Several major hospitals and health care businesses, including some at the forefront of technological advancement.
6. Small-business incubators run in cooperation with universities and the city.
7. The world’s foremost journalism school and the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute, which houses a state-of-the-art Technology Testing Center.
8. Several existing Internet service providers who can take advantage of this new open network.
9. Excellent data backhaul capability due to our position on the I-70 corridor.
10. With over 100,000 people, the population is high enough to meet Google’s goal for project scale.

Columbia as Small Town:

1. Sub-par broadband performance with high prices.
2. Very little existing fiber-to-the-home infrastructure.
3. High tariffed rates for enterprise-class data products (T1, DS3, etc.)
4. Midrange population density should be a good microcosm for suburbia nationwide.
5. Smaller building development (no high-rises) makes infrastructure deployment simpler.
6. ”The District” contains the kind of mom-and-pop small-town businesses that can innovate unencumbered by corporate imperatives.
7. Frequently listed in “best places to live” compilations, such as that of Money Magazine.
8. Location in the heart of middle America sends a powerful symbolic message.
9. Low cost of living will be nice for the employees Google will need to move in.
10. With only a bit over 100,000 people, the population is low enough not to dwarf Google’s goal for scale.

The incumbent cable operator, Mediacom, can’t understand why there is such excitement over Google’s fiber project.

“Google is going to be in select markets, and it’s kind of a test that they’re rolling out,” Mediacom director of operations Bryan Gann told KOMU-TV in Columbia. “It may be limited to some commercial applications in the beginning.”

Mediacom is Columbia's incumbent cable company

Mediacom doesn’t think most residents have any need for super fast broadband.

“I think when you get up to those higher speeds that fast, it’s a select group that would even be interested in it going at that speed,” Gann said.

Despite that remark, Gann quickly added Mediacom was already providing the fastest broadband access in town.  In early February, Mediacom boosted its top broadband speed to 50Mbps, and Gann says the company already has plans to boost that speed to 100Mbps in the future.

“We’re already supposed to go to 100, so we can press on the accelerator anytime we want to,” Gann said.

When a new fiber-based competitor threatens to arrive in town, most cable companies downplay the competitive threat.  Mediacom was no exception.

Gann told KOMU Mediacom was used to competition in broadband service and doesn’t see Google Fiber as a threat.

“With the technology that the cable industry put into Columbia, we’re ready to increase our speed to match competition,” Gann said.

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/KOMU Columbia Faster Internet May Reach Mid-Missouri 2-16-10.flv[/flv]
KOMU-TV talks about Columbia’s prospects as a chosen city for Google’s new fiber-to-the-home experiment. (2/16/10 – 1 minute)