Homes and businesses across Singapore are rapidly being wired with fiber to the home broadband service as part of the country’s Next Generation Nationwide Broadband Network.

Under the Intelligent National 2015 Master Plan, the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA) has specified fiber broadband as the only technology capable of meeting the country’s requirement that all homes, offices, and schools have a minimum capacity of 1 Gigabit per second broadband no later than 2015.

Government officials have declared Gigabit broadband “a national priority” to keep Singapore a world leader in high tech business, medical care, and innovative education.  The country considers older broadband standards, including ADSL, cable broadband, and wireless service inadequate or outdated, and began installing fiber optic cables in 2009.

Singapore’s advanced fiber network is a public-private partnership between four partners – Axia NetMedia (Axia), Singapore Telecommunications (SingTel), Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) and SP Telecommunications (SPT).  Government policy has helped reduce red tape and the country’s largest telecommunications companies are working together to build a single fiber platform on which various services can deliver what they call “a richer broadband experience with more choices at more affordable prices.”

Residents and businesses are being encouraged to participate with incentives like free installation, which represents a savings of $300 or more over regular installation costs.  A third-party company, OpenNet, has been contracted to handle wiring, installation, and maintenance of the fiber network.

Once installed, customers can choose any provider they like to establish service.  One of the country’s largest — SingTel, is already selling access at speeds currently up to 150Mbps:

Once the country’s fiber network is firmly established across the entire country, speeds will be increased.  Singapore has solved the domestic broadband speed problem, but like other countries in and around the South Pacific, international capacity remains constrained, and so are broadband speeds for international destinations.  But several undersea fiber projects are expected to vastly expand capacity within five years, allowing providers to eventually lift speed caps.

While many of Singapore’s residents live in multi-dwelling units like apartments and condominiums, many others live in individual homes.  Singapore decided fiber access must be ubiquitous, so coverage will extend to all types of buildings.

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/OpenNet Overview Singapore 5-2011.flv[/flv]

This video contains an overview of Singapore’s fiber network, how it will be installed, what services it brings, and how it is being marketed across the country.  (14 minutes)

Phillip Dampier

Stop the Cap! reader Angela sent us a print-out, by mail, of a recent guest editorial published by the online news site, the Lincoln Tribune.  White, who is 89 and lives in North Carolina was irritated by the piece, written by Kinston, N.C. mayor B.J. Murphy.

“B.J., who was all of 29 when he was elected in 2009, is the first Republican mayor in Kinston since Reconstruction, and after writing pro-cable company nonsense like he did in that [online] paper, he better be the last,” White wrote.  “My mother and father grew up with the same kind of monopoly these cable companies have today, only then it was the damn railroads.  How we ended up electing a mayor who wants us back in that era is beyond me.”

What caught my attention early on skimming the mayor’s views was a single passage early on in his piece:

Municipal broadband, also known as Government Owned Broadband Networks (GONs) is quickly becoming our state’s new enterprise service of choice for cities and towns.

Really?  GONs?  Now I’ve been editing Stop the Cap! since mid-2008, and we’ve covered North Carolina’s broadband landscape extensively, and this is the first time I’ve ever seen community-owned broadband referred to as “Government Owned Broadband Networks.”  A quick Google search reveals why: it’s a loaded term conjured up by corporate-funded, dollar-a-holler groups that oppose public involvement in broadband.  People don’t like “government” they surmise, so let’s relabel these networks accordingly.  Besides, bin Laden is dead and we can’t use him.

In this case, the acronym ‘GONs’ doesn’t even make sense — shouldn’t it be GOBN?  But that wouldn’t sound as demagogic as “gones,” would it?

Your cable dollars pay for consultants who cook up these silly labels, which are not even accurate.  Community-owned broadband need not be a “government-owned” enterprise it all.  Some are public-private partnerships, others are co-ops or run on a not-for-profit basis independent of government.  What they do have in common is the ability to offer better broadband than the “take it or leave it” service many cable and phone companies provide, if they deliver it at all.

After getting past the pretzel-twisted acronym, it’s clear Mayor Murphy is no fan of community broadband.

I believe we should refrain from the temptation to compete with private communications providers on services and infrastructure that we are not equipped to properly manage.

Kinston, N.C.

Who is “we” exactly?  The city of Kinston?  Mayor Murphy must not believe in the talents and abilities of his employees.  Is Mayor Murphy confessing he is in the ironic position of attacking local government while also being an integral part of it?

Most of Murphy’s editorial is a rehash of talking points already delivered by dollar-a-holler groups like the Heartland Institute or something called the Coalition for the New Economy.  The hypocrisy of both “small government” groups calling for more government regulation on certain broadband providers while exempting their corporate friends and backers is lost on them.

Murphy suggests municipal utilities are not well run, and the locals evidently complain regularly about the one serving Kinston.  Are the complaints about service in other towns about companies like Duke Energy and CP&L — private providers — any fewer in number?  Who exactly loves their local gas and electric company?

Murphy concedes “many cities and towns throughout the years have seen voids in service or infrastructure, not easily duplicated by the private sector.  Those areas of service tend to be water, sewer, and sometimes electricity.”

Our rural grandparents lived that life, waiting for electricity and telephone service that private companies refused to provide because it was simply not profitable enough for them to do so.  In fact, NC Public Power was created precisely because private companies wouldn’t deliver electric service in rural North Carolina.  Just 30 years ago, the state allowed municipal construction of generating plants because there were fears private companies lacked the resources to handle the growth in electricity demand.  The Three Musketeers: Mayor Murphy, the Heartland Institute, and the “Coalition” would prefer cities go dark waiting for private capital to show up?  And at what rate of return would they demand from a state in desperate circumstances?  Imagine the complaints rolling in over that.

And so it goes with rural broadband — a service still not reliably available throughout rural communities in Murphy’s state and 49 others.  The problem of rural North Carolina’s pervasive lack of consistent service is so bad, the Golden LEAF Foundation targeted rural broadband development in 69 North Carolina counties, most lacking more than the slowest speed DSL.  Lenoir County, which includes Kinston is not among them.  Perhaps Murphy’s myopic views apply in his local community, but they certainly don’t in large parts of the rest of the state.  Nobody is forcing the mayor to build Kinston a broadband network.  It would be nice if he didn’t advocate away that right for other less fortunate areas.

Golden LEAF Broadband Project (click to enlarge)

Golden LEAF’s initiative, which is just one of several projects in the state, has garnered more than 130 letters of support including approximately 70 from state, county and municipal officials and 12 from middle-mile and last-mile service providers interested in using the fiber network to reach consumers and small businesses.  Part of the project is being funded by federal tax dollars.  Many of the providers eager to connect to that network are private companies, who seem to have no problem hopping on board a fiber backbone paid for, in part, by taxpayer dollars.

Other projects are community fiber to the home networks, designed to support high bandwidth requirements of the digital, knowledge-based economy.  These community providers didn’t appear out of nowhere.  Communities built these networks after incumbent providers refused upgrade requests, repeatedly.  Some communities even open up their existing municipal fiber networks to residential use.

The hue and cry among those opposing community broadband usually begins when these new providers start selling service to the public.  Private providers don’t complain when public networks provide service only to schools, health care facilities, and public buildings.  But when anyone can sign up, the complaints rage from corporate-funded dollar-a-holler groups, the companies themselves, and certain politicians, some who take campaign contributions from the other two.  The talking points are remarkably similar.  Too similar.

Murphy

Mayor Murphy makes an unfortunate comparison in his editorial — to those railroads which made Angela’s hair stand on end.

“His only experience with that monopoly and the barons who ran it came from his American History class and he wasn’t paying attention,” she says.

Government better serves the people by creating the framework for private business to thrive, not by actually owning or competing with private, tax-paying businesses.  Rarely, if ever, will one see two railroad tracks side by side owned by different companies.  Yet, that is what would happen with broadband service in many communities. In many cases, GONs would essentially use taxpayer dollars to build Internet infrastructure on top of that which has already been put in place by private providers.

Uh…

Is the mayor actually promoting a monopoly for broadband?  I suggest the mayor read our earlier piece about the historical plight of Danville, Virginia — a community on the border with North Carolina.  He will learn that those one-railroad-towns desperately wanted a second or third railway serving their community, if only to escape the horrible and expensive service monopolies and duopolies provided in places without sufficient competition.  It took decades to break the railway monopolies up, and consumers and businesses overpaid millions of dollars to robber barons who fixed prices and the type of service communities would receive.  That kind of control could make or break the economy of a town or city.  So it will be with broadband.

Of course, the mayor could suggest we liberalize access to existing broadband infrastructure and allow competitors to sell services on every available network, or allow a community to build one giant fiber optic pipeline on which every provider can deliver service, but we know what his free market friends would say about that.

Boiled down, Murphy’s arguments come from a position of already having access to the broadband resources he needs, wants, and can afford.  That’s a classic example of “I have mine, too bad you don’t have yours”-politics.

That seals the fate of rural North Carolina to an indefinite future of never getting broadband service.

While AT&T is placing limits on their broadband customers, the people of Lithuania are celebrating news that the part-state-owned telephone company — Teo LT — is increasing broadband speeds for their customers at no additional charge.

Effective May 16th, Internet speeds of up to 300Mbps will be available from the phone company ISP – Zebra.

Teo LT has installed fiber to the home service for nearly half of Lithuania’s million-plus households, and expects to serve the majority of the Baltic nation with fiber within the next decade.  Much of the rest of the country gets DSL service.

With the speed upgrade, Lithuanians will be able to access foreign websites at the same speeds as international websites.

Lithuania is one of three Baltic states north of Poland, formerly annexed as part of the Soviet Union.

Currently, Lithuania considers its lowest quality light user plan 10/10Mbps, which it sells for a paltry $14.72 a month, for unlimited access.  But international websites used to arrive at much slower speeds under this plan — 1Mbps.  That’s why many Lithuanians chose higher speed offerings.  Now, for around $55 a month, they’ll receive 40/40Mbps service, potentially less when bundled with other products.

Lithuania sees fiber optics as their path to broadband prosperity, and seeks to retire copper wire DSL circuits as quickly as possible.  The company’s fiber network now reaches 86 percent of the capital city Vilnius, 95 percent of Klaipeda, 75 percent of Kaunas, and more than 50 percent of Panevėžys and Šiauliai.  The company, with its Swedish-owned partner Telia Sonera, has invested more than $140 million in building the network, designed to replace the country’s old copper wire telephone infrastructure now deemed obsolete.

Lithuania, formerly a Soviet Socialist Republic, declared its independence from the USSR in March, 1990 — the first Soviet Republic to do so.  Today, the country is a member of NATO and the European Union.  Lithuania has a long history of recognizing the importance of infrastructure tied to economic development, and has an extensive and modern transport system.  The country is treating broadband development much as they would treat roads and railways — as a long term investment.

The administration of President Dalia Grybauskaitė sees Lithuania’s future as a knowledge-based economy, and has restructured away from heavy industry and simple agriculture towards biotechnology and information technology businesses.

With the renewed telecommunications infrastructure, IBM built a major research center inside the country and last year Lithuania opened its first solar cell plant.  Lithuanians culturally are increasingly turning away from their former Russian occupiers and looking west, especially towards western Europe, Scandanavia and the United States.  At least one-third of Lithuanians have learned English a second language, according to a Eurobarometer survey conducted in 2005.

Commercial providers and their pals in the legislature will go to any length — even lie — to protect their cozy duopoly, charging high rates for poor quality service.

That fact of life has been proven once again in the state of Tennessee, where an effort to expand EPB Fiber — a community owned fiber network — to nearby communities outside of Chattanooga, was killed thanks to a lobbying blitzkrieg by Big Telecom interests.

The “Broadband Infrastructure for Regional Economic Development Act of 2011,” supported by chief sponsor House Majority Leader Gerald McCormick, (R-Chattanooga), is dead after telecom industry lobbyists unleashed a full court press to stop the legislation from passing into Tennessee law.

The bill would have permitted EPB and five other municipal electric services that have or are developing broadband infrastructure to expand service up to 30 miles outside of their service area, where appropriate, to meet the needs of businesses or consumers.

With the legislation, EPB could bring its 1 gigabit fiber broadband service to Bradley County, home to a future Amazon.com distribution center.  Amazon already operates a huge warehouse in Hamilton County, where it was able to obtain EPB’s super-fast broadband service.  According to Harold DePriest, EPB President and CEO, Chattanooga’s fiber network is helping sell the city as a high-tech mecca for business, where broadband connectivity is never a problem.

DePriest says EPB’s network has been a proven job-creator, and Amazon.com’s ongoing expansion in the region is just one example.

Chattanooga residents and businesses now have the fastest broadband service in the southern United States, at prices often far less than what the competition charges.  Expanding EPB’s success to other parts of Tennessee represents a major threat to the likes of Comcast and AT&T, the state’s dominant telecom companies.

EPB provides municipal power, broadband, television, and telephone service for residents in Chattanooga, Tennessee

Lobbyists fought the bill off with some whopper tall tales about the “horrors” of community broadband.

Some Republican lawmakers friendly to Comcast and AT&T’s point of view have bent their philosophical positions on government and regulation into logic pretzels.  One has even called for EPB to be regulated by Tennessee’s Regulatory Authority, a body many state Republicans feel is about as helpful as a tax increase.

Despite that, there was Rep. Curry Todd (R-Collierville) at a recent hearing telling fellow lawmakers EPB and other community providers should be regulated by the TRA to protect ratepayers from the “loss of tremendous amounts of money coming out of taxpayers’ pockets.”

Does Todd think Comcast and AT&T should also be regulated?  Of course not.  Nobody should protect consumers from AT&T’s and Comcast’s relentless rate hikes.  Todd cannot even get his facts straight.

After 19 months, EPB has 25,500 customers — far ahead of its projections, and is well ahead of its financial plan, according to DePriest.  So much for being a “financial failure.”

Rep. Curry Todd has trouble with the facts, but has no problem counting campaign contributions amounting to more than $12,000 from Comcast, AT&T, the state cable lobby and other telecom companies

On cue, the same cable industry that tried to sue EPB Fiber out of existence is now comparing the Chattanooga fiber network to Memphis Networx, a disastrous effort by that city to build a public-private wholesale fiber optic network only business and institutions could directly access.  It’s hard to earn critical revenue from consumers when you run a wholesale network.  Even harder when you build it just before the dot.com crash.

EPB sells its service directly to business and consumers, so it gets to keep the revenue it earns, paying back bondholders and delivering earning power.

Stop the Cap! reader John Lenoir notes some of the local tea party groups are also being encouraged to oppose EPB’s efforts to expand.

“Just as Americans for (Corporate) Prosperity is lying about North Carolina’s community broadband, these corporate front groups are also engaged in demagoguery over EPB in Tennessee,” Lenoir says.  “In addition to the usual claims EPB represents ‘socialism,’ the locals are also being told EPB wants to use their fiber network to run smart meters, which some of these people suspect are spying on them or will tell people when they can and can’t use their electric appliances.”

Lenoir in unimpressed with the telecom industry arguments.

“AT&T’s opposition is downright laughable, considering this company raised its rates on U-verse and will slap usage limits on every broadband customer in a few weeks,” Lenoir adds.  “We thank God EPB is here because it means we can tell AT&T to stick their usage limits and Comcast can take their overpriced (and usage limited) broadband somewhere else.”

Lenoir thinks EPB should embarrass both AT&T and Comcast, but since neither company feels any shame in his view, it’s more about business reality.

“Why do business with AT&T or Comcast and their gouging ways when you can sign up for something far better and support the local community,” Lenoir asks.

AT&T spokesman Chris Walker complains that the phone company is somehow faced with an unlevel playing field in Tennessee, despite the legislature’s repeated acquiescence to nearly every AT&T-sponsored deregulatory initiative brought before it.  The company wants a “level playing-field” statute like the very-provider-friendly (it should be — it was written by them) one currently before the North Carolina state Senate.

Comcast questions whether anyone needs 1 gigabit service, but the cable company’s Chattanooga vice president and general manager Jim Weigert told the Times Free Press it could deliver 1 gigabit service… to business customers… assuming any asked.

DePriest questions that, noting Comcast tops out its broadband service at 105Mbps, and only for downstream speeds.  Comcast upload speeds top out at 5Mbps.  EPB can deliver the same upstream and downstream speeds to customers and do it today.

Qatar

The kingdom of Qatar announced broadband is of urgent importance, and has unveiled plans to deliver fiber-to-the-home broadband, phone and television service to 95 percent of the country by the end of 2015.

Under the auspices of a newly formed public-private venture, the Qatar National Broadband Network Company will construct the near-universal fiber network, extending it to every business and home it can reach.  On that network, private providers, including Qtel and Vodafone, will market their products and services to government, business, and consumers.

“The Qatar National Broadband Network represents a bold step forward in Qatar’s drive to be a leading knowledge economy. Ubiquitous access to a high-speed network is essential to business development, economic growth, innovation and enhanced government services for our citizens. This network will do more than connect Qatar to the world; it will truly help enrich the lives of those who live here,” said Dr. Hessa Al-Jaber, who leads broadband development matters inside the kingdom.

The project is specifically designed to address Qatar’s current broadband marketplace — slow and expensive.  Qtel markets its landline customers up to 8Mbps DSL at prices that can exceed $100 a month, but few customers actually achieve 8Mbps results.  The project would largely replace the kingdom’s copper-based phone network.

“A lot of Qatari citizens don’t use fixed line DSL and prefer the country’s mobile broadband networks which can be cheaper and even faster than DSL,” Abdul Al-Attiyah, who lives in Doha, tells Stop the Cap! “This fiber network will bring 100Mbps service to just about everyone at prices a fraction of what we pay for DSL today.”

Al-Attiyah recently had the opportunity to communicate with the kingdom’s telecommunications ministry on the issue of bandwidth caps.

“I asked them if there were any plans to allow providers to limit how much broadband service Qataris could use, because we have caps on mobile broadband today, and I was assured there was never any point to limit use on a limitless capacity fiber network,” Al-Attiyah says.

“Fiber is also a far better solution than wireless broadband because of congestion issues,” he adds.

Qatar is a small country — about the size of the state of Connecticut, and is located on a peninsula adjacent to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.  Thanks to significant oil and gas revenues, the kingdom enjoys the highest G.D.P. in the world, and will soon be one of the leaders in broadband as well.