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  The country considers older broadband standards, including ADSL, cable broadband, and wireless service inadequate or outdated, and began installing fiber optic cables in 2009.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 'Not Picking Up What Moffett Puts Down' Dampier

Tech, business, and even a few mainstream media outlets have been booking Sanford Bernstein’s Craig Moffett as an independent observer of all-things-broadband, without revealing he literally has a vested interest in boosting profits for the telecommunications industry.

The latest of Moffett’s heavily-slanted ideas appeared over the weekend on ZDNet, where Larry Dignan’s Between the Lines column used one of Bernstein’s “research notes” to provoke readers into a discussion about Internet Overcharging:

Metered broadband access is inevitable and may even be good for adoption of speedy Internet access.

That’s the argument from Bernstein analyst Craig Moffett in a research note. Moffett sets the scene:

• The FCC’s open Internet push allows for metered broadband.
• AT&T has introduced usage caps across its wireline business. DSL customers are limited to 150 GB of monthly consumption. U-Verse subscribers get 250 GB, or the same as Comcast. Users will be charged an extra $10 a month if they exceed the cap and it’s $10 per 50 GB after that.
• AT&T has already introduced tiered wireless plans.
• Time Warner Cable has a few usage based pricing pilots underway.

Moffett

Nowhere in Dignan’s column does he disclose Moffett is a paid Wall Street analyst working for the interests of investor clients of Sanford Bernstein who want to maximize the value of their telecommunications stocks.  Moffett’s long history of statements about industry pricing reflect those interests, which are often very different from those of most consumers.  Moffett’s world view: anything that brings in more revenue is good for shareholders (rate hikes, metered billing), anything that drives down shareholder value is not (infrastructure upgrades, pricing cuts, customer defections).

On that basis, Moffett has been called a “cable stock fluffer” by our friends at Broadband Reports for his relentlessly pro-cable industry commentary, even while ridiculing transformational projects like Verizon’s FiOS fiber to the home network for being “too expensive” and not delivering enough return on shareholder investment.  Consumer Reports delivers the opposite view: high marks for Verizon FiOS, mediocre to lousy marks for most of the nation’s cable operators.

While there is nothing inherently wrong with Moffett doing his job on behalf of his paying clients, using his views outside of that context — particularly when those interests go undisclosed — is journalistic malpractice.

Oh, and Time Warner Cable abandoned their usage-based pricing pilots in 2009 after customers declared war on the cable company.  Those darn customers, ruining the industry’s plans!

The rest of Moffett’s research note doesn’t get much better in the “true facts”-department:

The goal of moving to usage based pricing is not to undermine competition from Netflix (or anyone else… although it certainly wouldn’t be good news for Internet video). And it is most decidedly not to simply “raise prices for broadband” as Public Knowledge or New America would have it (although it might well do precisely that, too). Instead, it is nothing less than to re-align the entire business model of today’s infrastructure providers with the next generation of communications… so that broadband providers might stop fighting against the tide and embrace it instead.

With usage based pricing, broadband providers, and Cable operators in particular, can create an “iso-profit” curve, where the amount they make from a physical connection is about the same whether someone uses that connection for linear video or, alternatively, web video. The goal is not to stifle competition, but instead to create indifference not just to the end state of video by-pass, but indeed for all points along the way. The adoption of usage based pricing would be transformational to the debate for Cable operators, inasmuch as it would essentially indemnify them against all potential outcomes.

Moffett represents his interests, not yours.

Yet some of Moffett’s earlier statements would seem to argue with himself.

For instance, back in March Moffett was making plenty of noise about AT&T’s caps precisely targeting video providers like Netflix:

Moffett believes usage caps have everything to do with stopping the torrent of online video.  He notes AT&T’s caps are set high enough to target AT&T customers who use their connections to watch a considerable amount of video programming online.

“Only video can drive that kind of usage,” Moffett writes.

Moffett has repeatedly predicted any challenge to pay television models from online video will be met with pricing plans that eliminate or reduce the threat:

“[I]f consumption patterns change such that web video begins to substitute for linear video, then the terrestrial broadband operators will simply adopt pricing plans that preserve the economics of their physical infrastructure,” Moffett said. “Of course, any move to preserve their own economics has far-ranging implications. Any move towards usage-based pricing doesn’t just affect the returns of the operators, it also affects the demand of end users (the ‘feedback loop’).”

The only thing usage-based pricing indemnifies is the industry’s confrontation with revenue-eroding cable-TV cord-cutting.  And Moffett knows this, although he would probably give rave reviews to bringing similar usage-based-billing to cable television packages, which would charge you for every show you watched on top of your monthly bill.

These pricing models, already firmly rooted in Canada, have done nothing to bring the “next generation of communications” to our neighbors to the north.  Indeed, Canada’s ranking in broadband continues its decline as large cable and phone companies pocket the profits instead of committing to wholesale upgrades of their networks to deliver the kind of service increasingly common in Europe and Asia.

But the real laugh out loud moment comes last: Moffett’s prediction that AT&T’s usage pricing will increase broadband adoption.  Perhaps that’s true if you prefer telecommunications companies abuse you, but as we’ve documented over the past three years, these pricing schemes never save anyone money — they just increase the price of your service while decreasing the value of it.

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.

Telefonos de Mexico is known as Telmex, the country's largest telecommunications provider.

Mexico’s largest phone company Telefonos de Mexico SAB is not about to allow themselves to be outgunned by upstart competitors like mobile-phone carrier Grupo Iusacell SA, which is installing fiber to the home broadband service in up to 40 cities offering 100Mbps speeds.  Now they are working on a fiber to the home network of their own, planned to reach up to one million Mexicans by the end of this year.

Mexico’s broadband expansion is coming on all fronts.  Cablevision (no relation to the U.S. company with the same name) is delivering cable broadband service to an increasing number of cities.  But news that consumers will soon have the choice of not one, but two fiber to the home networks has the country buzzing with excitement.

“Fiber-to-the-home is the best technology that exists,” Martin Lara, an analyst at Corp. Actinver SAB in Mexico City told Bloomberg News. “It’s going to be good for the consumer.”

The broadband speeds in Mexico will rapidly exceed those in the United States if the two fiber providers end up in a speed and pricing war .  For now, Telefonos plans on offering packages of 10, 20 and 50Mbps to subscribers.  That may increase to 100Mbps if competitors make an issue about maximum available speeds.  That’s quite a change from traditional DSL packages from Telefonos, which range from 1-5Mbps in most areas.

Upstart Iusacell is Mexico's third largest cell phone provider, but it has big plans for fiber-to-the-home service.

Iusacell, mostly known for its cell phone service, is building its own quad-play of wired fiber broadband, television, and telephone service — wireless and wired.  It’s Totalplay package risks Telefonos’ decades of dominance in the Mexican telecommunications marketplace, so the phone company is investing to compete.  The company’s Telmex landline customers are switching to wireless just like customers in the United States and Canada, so developing an attractive multi-element package is critical to keeping customers.

Mexico’s telecommunications laws are different from those in the United States.  Mexico’s dominant phone company has traditionally been prohibited from offering video services to their customers — a policy designed to protect cable providers and other competitors from heavyweight competition.  Those policies are likely to be revisited as a result of competitive fiber initiatives.  Additionally, Mexican providers have not been required to wire entire communities as part of operating agreements, and many don’t.  Instead, most cable and fiber providers build in lucrative neighborhoods where higher income residents live, often leaving poorer neighborhoods unwired. Foreign investment is also common in Mexico, with American and British companies joining Mexican super-billionaire Carlos Slim in financing and/or building out the advanced networks.

Mexico’s decision to adopt the latest fiber technology straight to customer homes increases questions about why American providers are mostly unwilling to do the same.

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.