AT&T does not expect to see much initial growth of FirstNet, the government-sponsored first responder wireless network built by AT&T with $6 billion in taxpayer dollars.

FirstNet relies on AT&T’s wireless network, bolstered by taxpayer-financed upgrades that will prioritize public safety users during emergencies, but allow any AT&T customer to use the enhanced network the rest of the time. FirstNet has just 110,000 subscribers as of this summer — about a year after launch. AT&T will be expanding FirstNet over the next four years, adding new cell towers, frequencies and bandwidth.

First envisioned after the events of Sept. 11, 2001, the network was designed to allow interoperability between all types of first responders, including law enforcement, fire departments, and ambulance crews. A major complaint after 9/11 was that different public safety agencies could not communicate with each other on the ground because of incompatible radio equipment. FirstNet allows agencies to deploy voice communications and data services on site, without the risk of congestion that occurs on publicly-available cell towers. All FirstNet users are given priority access, and during emergencies, the network will not allow public users to use FirstNet’s network resources.

Seventeen years later, the network is finally launching, but that is proving to be just the first hurdle. To use FirstNet, public safety agencies have to adopt AT&T as their communications provider, sign new contracts, and usually buy new equipment. A surprisingly large number of agencies are balking at changing providers, either because they dislike AT&T, its coverage, the cost, or require a rigorous bidding and procurement process.

AT&T FirstNet rate plans

Rural departments often favor Verizon Wireless, perceived to have better 4G LTE coverage and better performance in rural areas than AT&T. Ray Lehr, formerly with the Baltimore City Fire Department, is now a paid consultant for FirstNet, and admitted AT&T’s rural coverage isn’t as robust as it will be five years from now.

“Over the next five years, they have to have up to 99 percent rural coverage,” Lehr said. “There’s no reason why another carrier would do that. It just doesn’t make sense.”

For a lot of rural departments, there are coverage gaps with every wireless carrier and places where there is no coverage from any carrier. Those departments rely primarily on their existing radios for fireground communications and talking with dispatchers.

AT&T is relying on federal dollars to expand FirstNet in places where its own investment dollars are likely not being spent. AT&T also separately receives taxpayer support to build rural fixed wireless networks for consumers out of reach of traditional DSL and cable broadband.

Wall Street, which would ordinarily attack rural investment with no significant return on investment, has had little reaction to AT&T FirstNet, primarily because AT&T will be reimbursed by taxpayers for much of the construction costs, even though AT&T and its retail customers will benefit from the increased coverage and capacity FirstNet will offer most of the time.

“Investors aren’t expecting much, other than the reimbursement for the capital expenditure required to deploy the network,” Jonathan Chaplin, an analyst at New Street Research, told Communications Daily (sub. req’d.). “If public safety usage is low and AT&T can use the capacity for their core mobile users, that is probably fine.”

Other analysts agree, noting AT&T will get all the benefits offering government-paid FirstNet capacity to its retail customers, with none of the risk of losses if first responders do not flock to the new network, because it was not built with AT&T’s money.

Murphy

Every Minnesota resident would receive access to high-speed internet service under a new proposal that would fund broadband expansion with sales tax revenue earned from out-of-state internet purchases.

The Connect MN plan, backed by the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (DFL) candidate for governor Erin Murphy, would offer rural and underserved Minnesotans 100/20 Mbps broadband service by 2026. To pay for the expansion program, Murphy proposes to invest $100 million annually in Minnesota’s Broadband Development Grant Program, which would provide funding to public and private providers to incentivize expansion into areas currently unprofitable to serve.

“For too long, we have talked about the importance of broadband at the Capitol without the investment needed to address the scope of the challenge,” said Murphy. “When I am Governor, we will move forward with a strategic plan that will connect every Minnesotan with the high-speed internet they need to succeed.”

Funding for the broadband expansion would come from new sales tax collections on out-of-state online purchases that have largely gone uncollected in the past. With the recent Supreme Court decision, South Dakota v. Wayfair, out-of-state retailers would be compelled to collect Minnesota’s sales tax when shipping items to a Minnesota address and remit the proceeds to the state government. The U.S. Government Accountability Office estimates more uniform collection of sales tax on out-of-state purchases will collect an extra $132-206 million for Minnesota annually. Dedicating much of that money to improve broadband service in the state could result in extending service to 550,000 unserved households — more than 26% of the state — within eight years.

Colored sections show areas lacking at least 25/3 Mbps broadband.

That level of investment would put Minnesota in the same league as New York, where in 2015 Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced a $500 million investment by the state in rural broadband expansion in an effort to achieve statewide broadband access by 2018. Cuomo’s plan is still under construction, and has been criticized for missing its end goal of universal coverage, with about 1-2% of state residents left with the option of satellite-delivered internet access.

Murphy’s plan would dramatically expand on her predecessor’s own broadband initiatives. Incumbent Gov. Mark Dayton’s (DFL) 2018 plan proposed to invest $30 million and reach 11,000 homes and businesses. Since taking office, Gov. Dayton claims to have secured enough funding to expand broadband access to 33,852 households, 5,189 businesses, and 300 community institutions in Greater Minnesota since taking office in 2011. Reaching the half million still unserved homes would take decades at current funding levels.

Murphy’s proposal also goes far beyond rural broadband expansion programs in other states. Tennessee currently offers a $45 million investment in rural broadband over three years — with less than $30 million specifically designated for rural broadband hookups. In West Virginia, a state ranked 43rd in wired broadband by the FCC’s 2018 Broadband Deployment Report, less than $2 million was available this year for rural broadband expansion, combining available funds from a Community Development Block Grant program with leftover money originally set aside for water and sewer projects.

Murphy claims universal access to broadband spurs innovation and drives economic development, education, healthcare and quality of life. One study indicates that a community will see a $10 return on investment for every $1 invested in broadband.

“This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to make progress on an issue holding back too many Minnesotans in communities all over the state,” said Murphy. “It’s a critical step in ensuring that everyone in Minnesota can build a bright future for themselves and their families.”

Rep. Stefanik

Waiting for broadband companies to wire rural America could take forever, so a new bipartisan bill would reward motivated businesses and neighborhoods with refundable tax credits if they cover the costs of connecting to nearby providers themselves.

The Broadband for All Act (copy not yet available) would create a new tax credit of up to 75% for groups of two or more homeowners or businesses who agree to cover the cost of infrastructure to extend broadband service from any available provider to their homes and businesses. The bill was jointly introduced by Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) and Derek Kilmer (D-Wash.), who both serve rural districts where broadband availability has been a challenge for years.

Rep. Kilmer

In practice, many unserved Americans live within a mile or two of a service provider, unserved because their homes and businesses failed to offer a suitable Return On Investment (ROI) to wire for service. Would-be cable customers are often quoted prices of $15,000-30,000 to extend service into their neighborhoods — a price too high for most. The new bill would reduce the sting of such upfront costs by offering tax credits to help offset the expense. But it is still a lot of money, and the bill would likely benefit those with deeper pockets the most.

The tax refund would apply to any available technology, so each group can choose the best option that bridges the “last-mile” gap between their homes and businesses and the existing broadband service network.

A copy of the bill was not yet available. If the bill does not disqualify municipal or public broadband providers, it could prove useful in areas where public broadband construction is underway. Many of those projects carry significant up front connection fees to help defray network construction costs. If such costs were largely covered by tax credits, it could provide a significant boost to broadband uptake in rural communities.

The next standard for cable broadband is due around 2025.

Just as the cable industry is widely introducing gigabit download speed supported by DOCSIS 3.1 technology, cable engineers are working on a way to boost upload and download speeds to as high as 60 Gbps (60,000 Mbps) starting as soon as 2025.

According to a new article in Light Reading, DOCSIS 4.0 (or DOCSIS.Next) represents a transformational leap of cable broadband technology. Jeff Finklestein, Cox Communications’ executive director of advanced technology, claims the next major broadband update will be able to use at least 3 GHz of RF spectrum available on existing coaxial cable for high-speed internet. That is more than twice the 1.2 GHz that being used by some cable systems for today’s DOCSIS 3.1 (and the 1.8 GHz that will be needed to support DOCSIS 3.1 FD, which will allow operators to dramatically boost upload speeds by 2020.)

Designed for the next decade, DOCSIS 4.0 will support 30/30 Gbps speed (or 60/60 Gbps if an operator is willing to dedicate up to 6 GHz for broadband). Today’s coaxial cable networks can use up to 10 GHz of RF spectrum in all, with some compromises and allowances to deal with possible signal ingress and other types of interference.

By the time DOCSIS 4.0 arrives, many cable operators will not mind delivering the majority of their available spectrum to broadband, because most are expected to eventually deliver a single broadband stream that collectively supports IPTV, digital phone, and broadband service.

Finklestein

To make the next generation of cable broadband possible, cable systems will likely need to reduce the amount of copper coaxial cable in their networks and push fiber optics deeper into neighborhoods. The more optical fiber the better — the technology is not hampered by coaxial cable’s limitations and degradation.

Engineers are also likely to shift away from DOCSIS 3.1’s orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) modulation and use advanced wave form technology instead.

While engineers are excited about the project, some suspect DOCSIS 4.0 may be a tougher sell for cable industry executives, asked to invest in another transformational broadband upgrade less than ten years after DOCSIS 3.1 was introduced. Many cable operators using older cable network plants will have to spend millions on overhauls and upgrades, and there is some question about whether that kind of additional investment in a Hybrid Fiber Coax (HFC) network platform makes sense. Altice certainly does not believe so, and in 2016 elected to scrap Cablevision/Optimum’s HFC network and replace it with fiber to the home service.

As cable companies push fiber deeper into their networks, the cost of taking fiber the rest of the way to customer homes and businesses is coming down as well.

The cable industry has generally dismissed fiber to the home service as an extravagant and expensive technology to deploy, arguing cable’s HFC networks can deliver the broadband speeds that are commercially in demand today, while working on upgrades like DOCSIS 4.0 to meet consumer and business demands tomorrow, without the cost of tearing up streets to lay optical fiber.