Qwests new CEO just may get it. Recently outlining his 5 point plan for the company’s future, he’s the only duopoly CEO so far who seems committed to investing in access for the quality of access. Consumers and businesses will like this.

His plan included five key areas:

- Continue to offer customers simplified, integrated solutions, such as its price-for-life high-speed Internet offering.

- Deepen current partnerships and forge new ones. Qwest has more than 600,000 video subscribers through reselling DirecTV satellite-TV service.

- Increase broadband capacity to residential and business customers. As previously announced, Qwest will spend $300 million next year on an Internet project that will give 1.5 million homes speeds of up to 20 megabits per second.

- Drive productivity and cost efficiency.

- Balance investment and profitable growth with return to shareholders. The company announced an 8 cent per share quarterly dividend last week, its first in six years.

As expected, the announcement didn’t include plans for a broad video rollout. (from the Denver Post)

Conventional Third Pipe wisdom says Qwest has the best strategy for long term profitability out of all of the duopoly players. Putting the capital into the pipes rather than trying to be in the cable TV business will make Wall Street happy, eventually.

With France in the lead, thanks to local loop unbundling, European broadband continues to blow past the US in terms of available speed and declining cost at an accelerating pace. While market penetration is low, most of those who have access have more than a single provider competing for their business.

Competition among European telecoms has led to significantly decreased consumer bandwidth cost. In the UK, headline speeds of 8 Mbps are available for less than $20 per month — or even for free if bundled — from some operators, compared with $80 in 2004. Over the past several years, service providers have maintained the same price level while providing much higher connection speed. (from Ecommerce Times)

With no accurate data on penetration, and low service levels at high cost, the US is far from being a leader in the connected world. The FCC is more fascinated with regulating competition in the dying broadcast media, subscription video and POTS services than they are in ensuring healthy competition in access. We’re in a new age where it’s not about access providers supplying services, it’s about access suppliers supplying access. You can’t get that without healthy competition in access. We need an FCC who gets it.

Well hang up that POTS phone! Lucky St Louis residents can now have their DSL without th ephone line and associated charges. With pervasive wireless and cheap to free VOIP who needs it? I’ve long resented havoing to pay AT&T fro a phone line that is not used in order to have access to DSL service.

quoting STL Today: AT&T calls its new naked service “DSL Direct.” The company says consumers in Missouri and Illinois can sign up now. The price for the “Express” plan is $23.99 per month (it’s $19.99 if you also subscribe to an AT&T landline). The monthly price for the faster “Pro” plan is $28.99 (compared to $24.99 with a landline).

AT&T offered “naked” in Chicago and two other markets this summer. Customers liked it, and the company says it’s rolling it out in all its 22 states.

But you should know two things:

First, if you wait until January, you can get the $23.99 service for less than $20.

That’s because AT&T reluctantly agreed to offer that price to win approval from the Federal Communications Commission earlier this year to buy BellSouth.

“The merger conditions say that we will offer stand-alone (service) for $20 or less — and we will,” AT&T spokesman Andy Shaw says.

The cheaper rate coming next month, he adds, will even carry the same DSL Direct name.

Second, Shaw says that if you want DSL Direct, go to one of the company’s numerous retail stores. “They’ll hook you up,” he says. “They are knowledgeable.”

Qwest has an interesting history. Before merging with US West and all of the skullduggery worth of an Enron, the company was in the backbone and access business. Original chairman Phillip Anschutz creatively utilized his extensive railroad right of ways to build a long haul fiber optic network. The company usually resolved performance problems by trowing more bandwidth at them as opposed to looking for a way to constrain specific uses of bandwidth (if you own lots of fiber, it’s actually a cheaper way to solve performance problems). The company was also a pioneer in using VOIP for its long distance and business voice services. The US West deal was originally touted as a way to break through the deadlocked last mile to consumers. When the merger was complete, the company degenerated a Telco business with some extra fiber.

Judging from statements made by new CEO, Ed Mueller, the company may be returning to its roots.

The company is not looking to buy a cellphone company, even though the wireless business is generating plenty of cash for its much larger peers, AT&T and Verizon Communications. “We don’t have wireless assets, and we’re not going to go acquire wireless assets,” Mueller said.

Qwest is not going to pursue a broad video play, either. “We’re not committing to a Verizon or AT&T whole video rollout,” Mueller said. “We’re not becoming a TV provider.”

Qwest will detail its expected returns for the additional $200 million the company plans to spend next year to boost broadband speeds. Those details may include which markets will see the investments, with denser cities likely to be at the top of the list.

Down the road, Qwest may look to partner with third-party companies to offer high-bandwidth applications and content, such as video-on-demand, to leverage the faster speeds. (from the Denver Post)

Anyone possessing any common sense would not start a new company to provide premium content services and legacy wireless as the means to support an internet access utility. Bundled video and legacy wireless are businesses that may have already peaked, and are certain to be in decline as lower cost, more open internet based services displace them. Looking ahead 5 years, Qwest may be at the top of the heap in the telco race by building what the market actually wants: a big open pipe.

Don’t get me wrong I love the Register! They poke fun at the upper crust of the IT industry, which is richly deserved. Even when they are having fun they present a kernel of truth. Then sometimes they lay a bomb. But that’s the nature of being a comic, you can’t hit every joke out of the theatre.

Here’s the problem with the analysis:

• All sorts of dark fiber is lying around major metropolitan centers of the US. Most of it going unused. Most was laid during the 99-00 time frame of Internet Gold Rush I. Tapped we’re talking TB of capacity.
• AT&T and Verizon are betting billions on the rollout of FTTH. Depending on what you want you can get 100mb/1Gb/20Gb from them now. Verizon just finished a test of 100Gbs over the same residential fiber. And folks that does not even consider doing color frequency based multiplexing over the same fiber.
• DSL is slowly being bumped in speed both here and on the other side of the pond. Read the bottom of the article. BT is increasing bandwidth as needed. Technology is not the limitied factor right now. Price points are.
• Now if we want we could open up the MBone network on the internet backbone. We would have to tariff it so that the interbackbone providers can assure scaling of the service. But even here there is an existing infrastructure that could be applied to the problem. Akami might need to participate in that cash stream. But with the right arrangements they too can scale up. With appropriate forward caching of content long haul data can be managed.

There is plenty of intervening technology and resources yet untapped. Let’s not press the panic button yet, ok?