The cost to deliver a gigabyte of data over mobile networks has plummeted 88% in the last five years, yet U.S. consumers are still paying an average of four times more than the rest of the world and twice the price that Europeans pay for average, comparable mobile plans.

The average cost to deliver mobile data has dropped to around $1/GB, thanks to network upgrades including Massive MIMO, carrier aggregation, the wide use of 4G LTE and the gradual introduction of 5G technology. As a result, mobile pricing has dropped significantly in competitive market areas. In much of Europe, a mobile plan with a generous allowance of mobile data and a bundle of texting and voice calls now costs around $15 a month, largely due to market competition. In Luxembourg and Australia, two companies sell generous data, calling and texting plans for under $10 a month. Iliad, a mobile provider in Italy, offers a plan with unlimited calling/texting and a 50 GB data allowance, including hotspot service, for $9.60 a month.

Despite the increased pressure on pricing, U.S. consumers are still paying some of the highest prices in the world, especially when dealing with two dominant carriers — AT&T and Verizon. Broadband and mobile analyst Dave Burstein noted an increasing pricing gap between the U.S. and Western Europe that widened starting in 2018.

“U.S. prices are now twice the Europeans and four times the world average,” Burstein noted. “Prices continue to fall rapidly except in the U.S., [which has remained] almost flat the last three years.”

Burstein also noted Verizon and AT&T have both estimated wireless data costs decline 40% per year in cost per bit. But most consumers are not benefiting from the dramatic cost declines as wireless companies stubbornly refuse to reset rates. The pressure for further price reductions has also been reduced with the recent merger of Sprint and T-Mobile, which had been largely responsible for forcing AT&T and Verizon to offer more generous plans or reduce rates.

Some of the most significant mobile competition has come from cable operators, which offer plans that resell access to the established 4G networks of Verizon (Charter, Comcast) and T-Mobile/Sprint (Altice USA). While AT&T and Verizon focus on high value customers and increasingly market costly “unlimited” family data plans, cable operators have offered consumers more simplified pricing focused on value for money, including per gigabyte plans and a basic unlimited data offer. Recently, Comcast’s XFINITY Mobile introduced its own family plan pricing, which can further reduce the price for multiple lines billed together and poses a more direct threat to Verizon.

Some researchers believe that marketing mobile plans by focusing on price and data allowances will be a dead end for wireless companies hoping to deliver regular increases in the amount of revenue collected from each subscriber. If competition does pressure companies to increase data allowances and reduce pricing, companies will need to find new revenue sources to deliver the financial results their investors demand each quarter.

“With many consumers picking price plans that fit their budget first and their data usage requirements second, operators need to educate users away from high-volume, low-cost plans and the idea that 150GB is meaningfully better than 100GB,” said Josie Sephton, director of Teligen. “We are in a data pricing merry-go-round that needs to be reset.”

Phil Kendall, director of the Service Provider Group and author of a report on mobile pricing suggests operators cannot provoke upgrades to higher cost plans with higher data allowances alone.

“Operators need ‘more for more’ pricing that offers revenue uplift through better experiences and richer content rather than through more data,” Kendall said.

In a major victory for net roots groups, President Barack Obama today announced his support for the strongest possible Net Neutrality protections, asking the Federal Communications Commission to quickly reclassify broadband as a “telecommunications service” subject to oversight and consumer protection regulatory policies that would prohibit paid fast lanes, the blocking or degrading of websites for financial reasons, and more transparency in how Internet Service Providers handle traffic.

“For almost a century, our law has recognized that companies who connect you to the world have special obligations not to exploit the monopoly they enjoy over access in and out of your home or business,” said the president. “That is why a phone call from a customer of one phone company can reliably reach a customer of a different one, and why you will not be penalized solely for calling someone who is using another provider. It is common sense that the same philosophy should guide any service that is based on the transmission of information — whether a phone call, or a packet of data.”

“’Net neutrality’ has been built into the fabric of the Internet since its creation — but it is also a principle that we cannot take for granted,” President Obama added. “We cannot allow Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to restrict the best access or to pick winners and losers in the online marketplace for services and ideas. That is why today, I am asking the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to answer the call of almost four million public comments, and implement the strongest possible rules to protect Net Neutrality.”

The president’s call will likely force FCC chairman Thomas Wheeler to abandon efforts to reclassify only certain types of Internet traffic under Title 2 regulations while leaving consumers vulnerable to paid fast lanes and other traffic monetizing schemes. Wheeler was rumored to be working on a limited Net Neutrality plan that would protect large online video content distributors like Netflix and Amazon from unfair compensation deals with ISPs. The plan would have given the FCC authority to review agreements between your Internet provider and some of the net’s biggest traffic generators.

President Obama’s statement goes beyond Wheeler’s tolerance for “individualized, differentiated arrangements” that could let cable and phone companies offer compensated “preferred partnership” deals with websites and applications, granting them special treatment or exemptions from speed throttles or usage caps not available to others.

The president’s four principles for a free and open Internet represent “common-sense steps that reflect the Internet you and I use every day, and that some ISPs already observe:”

• No blocking. If a consumer requests access to a website or service, and the content is legal, your ISP should not be permitted to block it. That way, every player — not just those commercially affiliated with an ISP — gets a fair shot at your business;
• No throttling. Nor should ISPs be able to intentionally slow down some content or speed up others — through a process often called “throttling” — based on the type of service or your ISP’s preferences;
• Increased transparency. The connection between consumers and ISPs — the so-called “last mile” — is not the only place some sites might get special treatment. So, I am also asking the FCC to make full use of the transparency authorities the court recently upheld, and if necessary to apply net neutrality rules to points of interconnection between the ISP and the rest of the Internet;
• No paid prioritization. Simply put: No service should be stuck in a “slow lane” because it does not pay a fee. That kind of gatekeeping would undermine the level playing field essential to the Internet’s growth. So, as I have before, I am asking for an explicit ban on paid prioritization and any other restriction that has a similar effect.

The president also expressed a desire to see the same rules applied to mobile networks. That is a significant departure from the policies of the FCC under Wheeler’s predecessor Julius Genachowski, who served as chairman during the Obama Administration’s first term in office. His Net Neutrality policies exempted wireless carriers.

“The rules also have to reflect the way people use the Internet today, which increasingly means on a mobile device,” said the president. “I believe the FCC should make these rules fully applicable to mobile broadband as well, while recognizing the special challenges that come with managing wireless networks.”

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/111014_NetNeutrality_Final.mp4[/flv]

President Barack Obama recorded this message supporting strong Net Neutrality protections for the Internet. (1:56)

Republicans in Congress and large telecommunications companies both immediately pounced on the president’s Net Neutrality plans.

Cruz

“Net Neutrality is Obamacare for the Internet,” tweeted Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) “The Internet should not operate at the speed of government.”

Cruz’s spokeswoman,  Amanda Carpenter, added that Net Neutrality would place the government “in charge of determining pricing, terms of service, and what products can be delivered. Sound like Obamacare much?”

The National Cable and Telecommunications Association expressed surprise over the president’s strong public support for Net Neutrality action.

“We are stunned the President would abandon the longstanding, bipartisan policy of lightly regulating the Internet and call for extreme Title II regulation,” the NCTA wrote. “The cable industry strongly supports an open Internet, is building an open internet, and strongly believes that over-regulating the fastest growing technology in our history will not advance the cause of Internet freedom. There is no dispute about the propriety of transparency rules and bans on discrimination and blocking. But this tectonic shift in national policy, should it be adopted, would create devastating results.”

“Heavily regulating the Internet will lead to slower Internet growth, higher prices for consumers, and the threat of excessive intervention by the government in the working of the Internet,” stated the NCTA release. “This will also have severe and profound implications internationally, as the United States loses the high ground in arguing against greater control of the Internet by foreign governments. There is no substantive justification for this overreach, and no acknowledgment that it is unlawful to prohibit paid prioritization under Title II. We will fight vigorously against efforts to impose this backwards policy.”

A new research report issued by Time Warner Cable concludes cell phone companies like AT&T and Verizon Wireless cannot meet the future data demands of customers over their 4G LTE wireless networks without punitive usage caps and high fees to deter usage, even with new spectrum becoming available for the wireless industry’s use.

The report, authored by Michael Calabrese of the New America Foundation, finds an answer to this problem in Wi-Fi, which can offload wireless traffic and deliver wireless service customers already prefer:

There is simply not enough exclusively licensed spectrum to meet the rapidly rising demand for wireless data, to sustain a competitive market, and to keep prices at an affordable level.

Major mobile carriers are increasingly coming to grips with this reality. The Wireless Broadband Alliance, a global industry group, reports that Wi-Fi offloading has become an industry standard as “18 of the world’s top 20 largest telcos by revenue have now publicly committed to investing in deploying their own Wi-Fi Hotspot networks.” The industry is shifting steadily toward what it calls heterogeneous networks (HetNets)—i.e., a combination of licensed and unlicensed infrastructure—in order to meet their customers’ insatiable demand for data while keeping costs down.

Alcatel-Lucent forecasts an increase of “87 times [the current] daily traffic on wireless networks” over the next five years, with 50 percent of that traffic on cellular networks “while the remaining 50 percent will be offloaded to Wi-Fi.”

Cisco’s own studies back Calabrese’s findings on consumer preference towards Wi-Fi.

“Given a choice, more than 80 percent of tablet, laptop, and eReader owners would either prefer Wi-Fi to mobile access, or have no preference,” Cisco concluded. “And, just over half of smartphone owners would prefer to use Wi-Fi, or are ambivalent about the two access networks.”

The Cisco surveys found users are choosing Wi-Fi over mobile connectivity for reasons of cost, “because it doesn’t impose data-usage caps or reduce their mobile data plan quotas.” But the primary reason for choosing Wi-Fi “is that respondents find it much faster than mobile networks.” And since Wi-Fi traffic travels over increasingly upgraded wireline networks, that speed differential may only increase as more and more homes, businesses and retail outlets upgrade to fiber optic or other high-speed connections of 100Mbps or more.

America’s largest wireless carriers have fallen far behind offering Wi-Fi services to customers compared to their overseas colleagues:

• AT&T: More than 32,000 Wi-Fi hotspots are available at partnered retail businesses, restaurants, and high-traffic areas like stadiums and major tourist destinations;
• Verizon Wireless: Verizon has an insignificant Wi-Fi presence, with a small number of unadvertised hotspots in selected venues like airports and convention centers;
• Japan’s NTT DOCOMO: Up to 150,000 hotspots, up from only 8,400 in 2o12.
• China Mobile: More than 2 million hotspots are up and running carrying 70 percent of the company’s data traffic.
• France’s Free Mobile: More than 4 million residential hotspots are available through Free’s parent – Iliad.

Comcast could soon be the nation’s largest Wi-Fi hotspot provider.

Calabrese argues it is important for the United States to set aside significant spectrum for unlicensed wireless networks like Wi-Fi to meet future wireless demands. Currently, some Republican members of Congress are opposed to significant spectrum set asides they feel could best be monetized for private use through the spectrum auction process.

It is no coincidence that Calabrese’s findings would be released by Time Warner Cable which itself is growing a Wi-Fi presence in certain cities where it provides cable service.

The wireless carriers’ collective lack of interest in an aggressive nationwide Wi-Fi deployment may have provided a strategic opening for cable operators to fill that gap with Wi-Fi networks of their own. Cable operators consider them a useful tool to retain customer loyalty — access is typically free and unlimited for current customers.

This summer, Comcast announced a “neighborhood hotspot initiative” that will turn millions of customer cable Internet connections into shared Wi-Fi hotspots using a dual-use wireless home gateway. The equipment will offer two separate Wi-Fi signals — one intended for the customer and the other open for use by any Comcast customers in the neighborhood. The cable company will provision extra bandwidth for the open Wi-Fi network to ease concerns that guest users could theoretically slow down a customer’s own Wi-Fi channel. In a relatively short period, Comcast could become the nation’s biggest Wi-Fi network offering more than 20 million hotspots hosted by the company’s own broadband customers.

Calabrese points to the future of seamless transitions between wired, wireless 4G and Wi-Fi network access without dropping calls or data connections. Many customers won’t even know the difference.

The author recommends the FCC think about reserving space for new unlicensed “citizens band” frequencies dedicated for public and private Wi-Fi networks:

• The FCC should reorganize the UHF TV band to ensure the availability of at least 30 to 40MHz of unlicensed spectrum in every media market, perhaps including Channel 37 (now reserved for radio astronomy) and eliminating two dedicated channels reserved for wireless microphones;
• Open the grossly underutilized 3.5–3.7GHz federal band for unlicensed small cell antennas delivering a ‘Citizens Broadband Service.’ This band is now mostly used for offshore naval radar, allowing both services to co-exist without mutual interference;
• Expand unlicensed access to the 5GHz band by allocating the 5.35–5.47 and 5.85–5.925GHz bands providing contiguous, very wide channels useful for the 802.11ac Wi-Fi standard that can support very high-speed wireless services.

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/XFINITY Wireless Gateway Powers Connected Home Summer 2013.flv[/flv]

Comcast talks about their new X3 Wireless Gateway which is capable of providing two separate Wi-Fi networks, one for the customer and another for the neighborhood. (2 minutes)

A Verizon Wireless upgrade that was supposed to fix bugs and introduce multi-screen, multi-window multitasking and new camera and image-related features to the popular Samsung Galaxy S3 instead has killed the phone’s 4G performance and dramatically decreased battery life. There are also reports some Verizon Wireless customers are finding themselves auto-enrolled in an unwanted caller ID with name add-on feature ($2.99/month) that leaves the phone connected to 3G or 4G service even when using Wi-Fi.

It was not an auspicious moment for Big Red, never fast with phone updates, particularly when Sprint customers earlier received a similar upgrade with no ill-effects.

Your editor spent two days last week attempting to mitigate Verizon’s mistakes, including several hours inside multiple Verizon Wireless store locations and talking to their national customer support center. In the end, it resulted in not one, but two factory refurbished phone exchanges and a $20 service credit for data service effectively disabled by a firmware upgrade.

This nightmare has a name: JZO54K.I535VRBMD3 — a software update so plagued with bugs, Verizon reportedly pulled it over the weekend after customers complained it ruined 4G wireless data service, along with the phone’s performance. The 128MB update has been available for about a week for those regularly checking their phones for software updates, and some customers began being prompted to install it last Friday.

So how can you tell if you are affected? Choose Settings -> About Device and check the “Build Number” visible at the bottom of the screen. If it ends in VRBMD3, you may be impacted. Not every customer is reporting problems, which may mean some phones are not affected or the performance degradation has been dismissed as a temporary reception problem or has only subtly affected low-bandwidth applications and has gone unnoticed.

Symptoms

1. Your wireless data signal strength meter on the phone suddenly shows much poorer reception than before the update;
2. Your battery life has declined significantly and the battery is very warm to the touch;
3. You have trouble loading web pages or accessing multimedia content with long buffering pauses or sudden loss of reception in places where signals used to be adequate;
4. Messaging services seem unstable with frequent disconnects;
5. Your phone drops from 4G to 3G service and stays connected at 3G (or less) speeds until you reset the phone;
6. Using “Speed Test” apps result in “Network Communication Issue” errors or extremely long test times with very high ping rates, very slow/inconsistent download speeds, and trouble measuring upload speeds;
7. You find icons for both Wi-Fi and 3G or 4G wireless service at the top of your phone at the same time;
8. You suddenly find your account billed for Caller ID plus Name service at $2.99 a month, despite not requesting this service.

Phillip “Verizon turned my 4G phone into a 1G phone” Dampier

The more of these symptoms you experience, the greater the chance Verizon’s update for the S3 has temporarily left your phone a shadow of its former self.

Verizon officially recognized the wireless connectivity problem May 31 when it released an internal bulletin acknowledging the software update is responsible. The company claims it has since stopped sending it out to S3 owners (we have not been able to confirm this ourselves).

Verizon blames Samsung for the defective update. Samsung blames Verizon, telling customers software upgrades are vetted, approved, and distributed exclusively by Verizon. Customers are left over a barrel until one or both companies assume responsibility and issue corrected firmware, which could take weeks.

Verizon Wireless’ technical support told Stop the Cap! the phone’s firmware is at the heart of the problem, and although it can sometimes get phones to be more tolerant of the software update, no number of factory resets, SIM card refreshes or replacements, or settings changes will fully correct the problem. Many customers can expect continued degraded 4G performance comparable to 3G speeds (or much worse) either because of slowed performance or an unstable connection until a fix is available.

The problem with multiple icons for both Wi-Fi and 3G or 4G service has to do with a single new app Verizon has forced on their customers. “Caller ID plus Name” was added to your app list in the latest update and is responsible for the dual data connections and reported instances of customers being auto-enrolled and billed for the service, even if they never specifically ran the app.

Bloatware is bad enough, but badly performing forced apps are worse. You can permanently disable the offending app and solve the double icon problem with this simple fix:

Enter Settings -> Application Manager, and select the “All” applications tab along the top. Find “Caller ID plus Name” in the list, select it, and you will see a button to “disable” the app. This may not resolve the problem of the app auto-enrolling you for a paid feature that costs $2.99 a month, so watch your bill.

Trouble

Affected customers with degraded service have several options:

1. If your phone is still under warranty, and most Galaxy S3 phones are, you can request a free handset replacement. Since Verizon created the problem, ask for a free shipping upgrade to overnight FedEx delivery. Your refurbished phone will arrive without a battery, SIM card, or back cover. Use the ones included with your original phone and your replacement handset should automatically activate. Immediately after powering up, your phone will offer a series of two or three Verizon firmware updates that you can defer. Until it can be verified Verizon has stopped pushing the defective update to customers, we recommend you avoid performing these firmware updates. If you don’t, and Verizon pushes the defective update to your replacement phone, it will likely perform no better than your original;
2. Request service credit for degraded/lost data service. Remember to also request credit, if applicable, for any Mobile Hotspot option, GPS travel, or other Verizon add-on that depends on a stable data network connection;
3. Indicate your displeasure that Verizon did not more thoroughly test the update before pushing it on customers.

Here are the suggested fixes Verizon may attempt on your phone, but we do not believe they correct the underlying problem — only updated software will:

• Removing the battery and “Refreshing/replacing the SIM card” may help refresh roaming rules or possibly correct a corrupted SIM card. Some customers reported this helped them get back data service they completely lost after the update, so it might help in certain cases, but probably will not correct the unstable 4G connection;
• Clearing the cache and cookies from the web browser is unlikely to have any effect on this problem;
• Changing the Mobile Networks setting to/from “Global” to “LTE/CDMA.” A few customers reported they got back some data service after toggling these options. The default on the Samsung Galaxy S3 running firmware from last fall was (and still remains) Global. We suspect the switch toggles the radio off and on, forcing a reconnect, which can bring back a 4G connection after the phone downshifts to 3G. But we don’t believe this will correct the speed/stability problem;
• A “factory reset” is frankly a waste of time. This will leave your phone with the same defective firmware. If you had symptoms before, you will likely still have them after resetting your phone.

If you are reluctant to part with your phone and avail yourself of any option other than requesting a service credit while Samsung and Verizon point fingers over who is responsible and and when a fix will arrive, you can make life with your phone a bit easier with these tips:

1. Stay on Wi-Fi when possible. Wi-Fi data performance was not affected by this software update;
2. Expect 30-40% reduced battery life. We suspect this (and the hot battery) is caused by the phone trying to deal with unstable 4G service, as if it was in a fringe reception zone. Keep a charger handy;
3. Try and get your phone to downshift to 3G by finding a weak reception spot (like a basement) and hope the phone drops (and remains) on 3G until it is rebooted. It appears 3G data speeds are not affected by the software bug;
4. Expect problems when using high bandwidth applications on Verizon’s LTE 4G service. We found video next to impossible to view on 4G, but audio streaming did seem to perform at lower bit rates.

Expect web browsing on 4G to be problematic on complex web pages, which may load incompletely. Try and do your browsing on mobile versions of websites or wait until you can find Wi-Fi.

Phillip Dampier

The Wall Street Journal’s not-living-in-the-real-world editorial page strikes again.

The commentary pages have always been the weakest part of the Journal, primarily because they screech pro-corporate talking points in contrast to the more balanced reporting in the rest of the newspaper.

Mr. Holman W. Jenkins, Jr. decided to distort broadband reality (again) in yesterday’s edition with a glowing commentary on how wonderful broadband providers are in his piece, “Springtime for Broadband.” The only thing missing was a border in fine print labeled, “Sponsored by Verizon, AT&T, and your cable company.”

While your Internet bill is being hiked at the same time your provider is slapping usage limits on your connection, Jenkins dismisses consumer-fueled complaints about broadband price gouging, assaulting Net Neutrality, and overall poor customer service as part of Washington’s “broadband policy circus.”

Charges fly hourly that Google or some other company is guilty of gross insult to net neutrality (that sacred principle nobody can define). Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden has introduced legislation to regulate data caps and Internet pricing. Law professor Susan Crawford, until recently a White House technology adviser, clearly craves to be America’s next go-to talking head on broadband. Lately she’s been everywhere calling for a crackdown on the competing “monopolists” who supply Internet access.

How dare they complain, decries Jenkins in a robust defense of the 21st century version of the railway robber barons.

Comfortably playing patty cake with provider-fed talking points from the industry echo chamber, Jenkins is ready for battle, facts or not.

But wireless providers have invested big money to deploy high-speed mobile networks, and fixed and mobile are inevitably beginning to compete. The latest evidence: Australia recently predicted that up to 30% of households will go the all-wireless route and won’t be customers for its vaunted national broadband project.

Jenkins

Not exactly. The basis for this 30% figure is the National Broadband Network’s own business plan, which warns –if– the company raised prices to a maximum theoretical level, up to 30 percent of its customers would rely on wireless instead… by the year 2039. That is 26 years from now. You have nothing better to do in the meantime, right?

In fact, conservative critics of the fiber network, some defending the big wireless cell phone industry in Australia, have suggested fiber optics is a big waste of money because “wireless is the future.”

That old chestnut again.

“Now you can present a bulletin without touching a typewriter … it’s just there on the computer system, you don’t need a reel to reel tape recorder. I’ve got a touchscreen in front of me. Back then I had a big cartridge deck,” said Ray Hadley on 2GB radio. “Can you imagine the advances in technology in the next 26 years? I can’t. I can’t comprehend it. By the time they finish the NBN, it could be superseded by something we don’t even know about.”

NBN Myths, a website set up to tackle the disinformation campaign from political and industry opponents has one simple fact to convey: “Despite what you may have read from certain clueless commentators, there is not a single country or telecommunications company anywhere in the world that is attempting to replace fixed networks with wireless in urban areas, or even planning to do so in the future.”

Which would you rather have?

Even Telstra, the biggest telecom company in Australia scoffs at such a notion, noting a growing number of its customers have both wired and wireless service, and they do not depend on one over the other.

Research firm Telsyte found that 85 per cent of Australians want speeds of 50Mbps or higher, speeds impossible for wireless to offer. In fact, when the NBN fiber network became available to Australians, almost half the current users as of October last year had chosen an even-faster 100Mbps plan option. But Australians also want mobile broadband, and they are signing up for that as well.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics notes the number of mobile broadband Internet connections also grew by around 40% in Australia between 2009 and 2010. But here is the Achilles heel of wireless: it cannot deliver the same speeds or capacity, and providers charge high prices and deliver low usage caps. As a result, the wireless industry has pulled off a coup: they earn enormous revenues from networks they have successfully rationed. The total amount of data downloaded over Australia’s wireless networks actually fell on a per user basis, despite the growth in customers.

Much of Jenkins’ commentary is spoon-fed by the industry-funded Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, which produces industry-sponsored studies designed to tell America all is well in our broadband duopoly.

In the latest federal survey, the average broadband speed in America is up to 15.6 megabits per second, from 14.3 a year earlier. Nearly half of customers who six months ago made do with one megabit or less have now moved up to higher speeds. Since 2009, the U.S. has gone from 22nd fastest Internet to the eighth fastest.

The 15.6Mbps figure comes from the Federal Communications Commission. The statistics about our global speed ranking come from Akamai’s voluntary speed test program. Other studies rate America much lower. More importantly, while providers in the U.S. try to squeeze out more performance from their copper networks, other countries are laying speedier fiber networks that are destined to once again leapfrog over the United States. Most charge less for their broadband connections as well.

Jenkins also quotes the ITIF which touts 20 million miles of fiber were laid in America last year. But the ITIF, when pressed, will admit the majority of that fiber was “middle mile” connections, institutional or business network fiber you cannot access, or fiber to cell towers. Fiber to the home expansion has stalled, primarily because Verizon has suspended expansion of its FiOS network to new areas after Wall Street loudly complained about the cost.

Jenkins argues that if we leave providers alone and stop criticizing their growing prices, declining competition, and fat profits, the marketplace will suddenly decide to invest in network upgrades yet again.

“The day may come when even Verizon, which visibly soured on its $23 billion FiOS bet, rediscovers an urge to invest in fixed broadband infrastructure to meet growing consumer lust for hi-def services,” writes Jenkins.

Would Wall Street rather see providers invest in network upgrades or return profits to shareholders? Investment expansion in the broadband industry comes when a company senses if they do not spend the money, their business will be swept away by others that will. Cable broadband threatens telephone company DSL, so AT&T cherry-picked communities for investment in its half-measure U-verse fiber to the neighborhood network. Google Fiber, should it choose to expand, will be an even bigger threat to both cable and phone companies. Municipal fiber to the home networks upset the incumbent players so much, they spend millions of ratepayer dollars in efforts to legislate them out of existence.

Jenkins’ view that giving the industry carte blanche to do and charge as it pleases to stimulate a better broadband future is as fanciful as NBN critics in Australia suggesting fiber upgrades should be canceled in favor of waiting 20+ years for improved wireless to come along.

He even approves of Internet Overcharging schemes like usage caps and consumption billing, calling it proper price discrimination in a “fiercely competitive” environment to defray a network’s fixed costs.

Do you think there is fierce competition for your broadband dollar?

Broadband’s fixed costs are so low and predictable, it literally calls out consumption pricing as just the latest overreach for enhanced profits. As Suddenlink’s CEO himself admitted, the era of big expensive cable upgrades are over. Incremental upgrades are cheap, the costs to offer broadband are declining, so it is time to reap the profits.

Jenkins closes with one recommendation we can agree with: “A low-tech way to stir up broadband competition would be to relax the regulatory obstacles to the actual physical provision of broadband.”

We can start by scrapping all the state laws the industry lobbied to enact that prohibit community-owned broadband competition. If big cable and phone companies won’t provide communities with the quality of broadband service they need to compete for 21st century jobs, let those communities do it themselves.