Rural North Carolina has been a battle ground between local residents who have pro actively worked to improve their internet connections and duopoly controlled state politicians who have blatantly tried to stop them. At least in Salisbury, it looks like to locals won. They managed to do it without help from federal stimulus or the masses of political blowhards who are supposed to work in the interest of the individual.

The lesson: Forget the empty promises from Washington and the State houses. Time to act locally.

For the record, I think municipal broadband should be the Third Pipe of last resort, but in a duopoly world it’s a necessary evil.

The broadband duopoly exists only with the help of government - local state and federal. By locking down right of ways, the telco and cable giants have been able to maintain a low investment enterprise with declining costs while routinely raising prices to consumers. When municipalities try to use their right of ways to provide better service, the duopoly always invests in lobbying rather than trying to compete.

There are plentiful pols who are all too willing to carry the duopoly’s water. Fortunately, one case to thwart  muni alternatives in North Caraolina has been defeated:

Indeed it has. North Carolina Senator David Hoyle’s (D-GA) now-defeated amendment (S-1209) was cosmetically titled “An Act to Ensure That A Local Government That Competes with Private Companies in Providing Communication Services Has The Support Of Its Citizens.” But advocates of city/county backed high speed Internet projects just knew it as the Municipal-Broadband Must Die Die Die bill.

Hoyle’s proposal would have banned any Tar Heel state city or county from contracting to “purchase, or finance or refinance” any kind of property to set up an “external communications system.” The law defined the latter as anything that “provides broadband service or other Internet access service, cable service, telecommunications service, video programming service, or a combination of these services.” (Ars Technica)

I hope NC voters will have enough common sense to send Senator Hoyle on permanent vacation from his law making duties when his term expires.

With the lack of will in Washington and most state houses to open the market for competitive broadband, the time for muni networks is here. These networks should not be the last alternative, but hopefully the one that will beak the duopoly strangle hold.  Around the world broadband is moving from copper to fiber at break neck speed at falling prices. World Class Broadband isn’t delivered in electrons any more, it comes in photons. It’s time to join the race and leap ahead or stand on the sidelines with our duopoly and watch the rest of the world race by.

We’ve listened as duopoly CEO’s have repeatedly stated the we don’t need more speed and that we’re hogging scarce bandwidth. We’ve seen a new FCC broadband plan that is nothing more than a massive power grab by that agency that insures no competition for the duopoly. If you believe these people, then I’m a lone lunatic in the blogosphere who is suffering from a delusion of low bandwidth paralysis.

But I’m not alone. Google announce plans to offer a tiny sliver of American society ultra high speed broadband as a part of a test. Response has been overwhelming and extremely competitive:

Since we announced our plans to build experimental, ultra high-speed broadband networks, the response from communities and individuals has been tremendous and creative. With just a few hours left before our submission deadline, we’ve received more than 600 community responses to our request for information (RFI), and more than 190,000 responses from individuals (we’ll post an update with the final numbers later tonight). We’ve seen cities rename themselves, great YouTube videos, public rallies and hundreds of grassroots Facebook groups come to life, all with the goal of bringing ultra high-speed broadband to their communities. (Google Blog)

Why are there so many other broadband crazies out there? Not only will this new network make downloads and uploads nearly instant, it will enable boundless new opportunity. That means new higher paying jobs, better education, and a much more level playing field for all to take advantage of the opportunities this kind of speed enables. This will not be reported on the evening news. With ultra fast broadband, the evening news is history.

While the big carriers continue to scale back fiber deployment,  the smaller independent telcos are pushing speeds higher over new fiber networks. How can this be done without the massive economies of  scale? It’s never been cheaper, and costs continue to decline. Consider the case of a rural telco with 9000 subscribers delivering 60/30 MBPS connections. That’s something we can only dream about here in AT&T’s Dallas-Fort Worth DSL ghetto.

At the end of 2009, Canby had brought Fiber to the Home-based services to about 1,000 homes-a major milestone given the fact that the ILEC has only 11, 000 access lines and 9,000 customers.

Since it pulled out its higher speed fiber products out of National Exchange Carrier Association (NECA) it has been able to offer a number of speed tiers under its Fiber Optic Zone (FOZ) brand, including on the high end a 60/30 Mbps service in addition to a 40/20 Mbps and 20/10 Mbps service tier. Alternatively, other telephone cooperatives are restricted to offering 3-5 Mbps broadband services.  Keith Galitz, Canby Telcom’s President, said that as it rolls out its GPON-based fiber network, its biggest challenge is keeping apace of bandwidth demand. “It was only a year and a half ago that we introduced 10 Mbps on our fiber network,” Galitz explained. “That’s how fast this thing is moving where the demand is there.” (Fierce Telecom)

I believe the small telco is the model for a better broadband future. With large protected territories, and laws written to squash competition, the large telcos and cable operators have no incentive to offer more bandwidth at a fair price. It’s not from lack of capital. It’s how the capital is used. The smaller independents tend to stay focused on their home markets instead of investing in acquisitions, wireless and pay TV.  They also tend to employ locals and are more responsive to local market needs. I’m not suggesting that we divide cities into a patchwork of small monopolies, but rather open the infrastructure to allow for small providers to enter urban markets as competitors.

Verizon has quietly scaled back its aggressive fiber deployment in favor of DSL over tired old twisty pair. The take rate for the company’s premium priced FiOS service has slowed. While I have not been able to find a break down by service, I’m certain the slowest products are pay TV and voice.

We have been repeatedly told that bigger pipes and direct fiber connections are impossible in America because of far flung population. Never mind the fact that the cost if installing a fiber or twisted pair loop to a residence are nearly identical. John Timmer of ARS Technica provides a current update contrasting fiber service in Hong Kong vs New York City. Both are extremely dense population centers. Both are outrageously expensive. Both have archaic laws regulating new construction and public utilities with plenty of red tape to slow the process.  I’ll even bet the New York city fathers will insist that Hong Kong’s infrastructure is more primitive and its government more corrupt. So why is it that the average Hong Kong resident has a 100MBPS direct fiber connection available at a price lower than Verizon’s cheapest DSL offering? And how can it be that a great many New Yorkers can’t even get FiOS at any price?

Hong Kong Broadband Network announced the initial results of its “Awesome Speed. For Everyone.” sales, which offer a symmetric 100Mbps fiber connection for the hefty price of US$13 a month. In the two months it has been offering it, customer growth has tripled compared to the earlier months of 2009. Clearly, the company has found it relatively easy to roll out or purchase fiber in Hong Kong’s dense urban environment, and is attempting to recoup its investment in infrastructure by attracting lots of people to its service using low prices.

To get half that download speed (and one-fifth the upload) with Verizon costs $140 a month, assuming you bundle it with local phone service. It also requires a one-year commitment, and Verizon has recently raised the early termination fees so that anyone quitting ahead of that year will now owe the company $360. These would suggest that the company plans on recouping its costs through fewer customers that pay far more. (ARS Technica)

My belief is that the Verizon suits do not see access as a serious business. The entire FiOS business model is based on selling subscribers a “triple play”. More consumers want access without overpriced VoIP service and pay TV. If you only want access, Verizon’s suits think DSL is all you deserve.  If we had real competition over the last mile (equal access to the copper infrastructure), Verizon would have to deploy fiber to have a shot at continuing to charge a premium price.

Here’s another lab measurement that will probably make it to the real world, but it does give us some idea of what is possible if the marketplace were competitive enough to motivate providers to offer more.

Verizon yesterday said it tested a fiber technology in its labs and a customer home that delivered 10 Gbps downstream over its FiOS network and 2.4 Gbps in upload speeds. The technology, called XG-PON, delivers insanely fast speeds and is part of Verizon’s efforts to make its $23 billion investment in fiber grow with the demand for better broadband.

If you read our blog in mid-November, you already knew about this, but we didn’t have details on the standard Verizon was using. The XG-PON standard won’t actually become official until mid-2010. The current Verizon technology is GPON which delivers 2.5 Gbps downstream and 1.2 Gbps upstream. Currently Verizon splits those speeds among about 30 homes. Brian Whitton, executive director of access technologies at Verizon, who originally told us about these tests, explained what people might do with such blazing web connections, which mostly involves better video technologies.

My guess is that we will be seeing Gigabit connections showing up in consumers homes at reasonable prices in the next couple of years. That will be terrific for those living in Japan, Korea, and some European countries.  As for the US, don;t look for much to change as long as our regulators belong to the duopoly.

No one is really sure what the limits of fiber optic capacity are.   One thing is certain: With a little investment there’s no scarcity of available bandwidth on existing infrastructure.

Alcatel-Lucent today said that scientists at Bell Labs have set an optical transmission record that could deliver data about 10 times faster than current undersea cables,  resulting in speeds of more than 100 Petabits per second.kilometer.  A petawhat? This translates to the equivalent of about 100 million Gigabits per second.kilometer or sending about 400 DVDs per second over 7,000 kilometers, roughly the distance between Paris and Chicago. (Gigaom)

One of the big costs in fiber deployment the need for a signal boost every 15 -19 miles. Researchers in Australia have just doubled that distance using new laser technology. This extended reach will benefit but urban and rural broadband customers by extending the reach in rural areas and reducing the number of CO’s needed in urban areas. Don’t care if you get a fiber connection? Fiber is still the most efficient and reliable back haul technology. Doubling it’s unsimplified distance may challenge microwave in cost with far greater reliability.

The researchers have developed a method to boost the distance that gigabit passive optical networks (GPON), like those used by Verizon’s FiOS network, to provide high bit rates over long distances. Lee says that the roughly 19 miles that GPON networks are capable of reaching now would still leave many rural locations in Victoria without coverage. He and his team have conducted experiments using a device called a Raman amplifier to send signals over 37 miles.

The amplifier is a powerful laser that is installed in the central office of a network provider and feeds the optical signal that carries information with energy as it heads out over fiber optic cables. The laser is able to increase the reach of the broadband signal by a factor of close to ten times.

In experiments, the team of researchers was able to build a mock system with a signal transmitter, simulated splitter, and a receiver at the other end. The experimental setup was able to transmit error free data at a speed of 2.5Gb/s over single mode fiber 37 miles long. (Daily Tech)

Incumbent carriers rejoice! That very same fiber you buried decades ago is a getting ready to handle the burden of your next expansion. If anyone wants to lay a new pipe to an under served area, fewer strands will get the job done. While the main cost of new fiber is the process on implementing it, this gain in raw pipe size for a single strand is a potential game changer for many carrier business models.

Researchers from Australia, Denmark, and China have combined efforts to show the feasibility of terabit-per-second Ethernet over fiber-optic cables. The solution involves a photonic chip that uses laser light for switching signals, and a form of the exotic material type, chalcogenide.

The groups’ combined efforts are documented in a paper in the February 16, 2009, issue of Optics Express, which details a demonstration of 640 Gbps networking and the extension of the same approach to terabit-per-second speeds. (See “Breakthrough switching speed with an all-optical chalcogenide glass chip: 640 Gbit/s Demultiplexing,” Leif Oxenløwe et al, Optics Express, Vol. 17, Issue 4.) (Ars Technica)

It’s likely the glass strand will continue to be the transmission medium of choice as its limits continue to blow by any competing technology. It’s time to get out the shovels and start digging!

While the big purveyors of connectivity continue to do the foot dragging tango instead of upgrading, more UK communities are home brewing their own broadband.  If you read Third Pipe often, it will be no new revelation that fiber is cheaper to install than any other public utility connection, and on par with twisted pair or coax.

A report on the state of broadband in the UK by the Communications Consumer Panel managed to map over 40 local broadband projects, many out in the sticks in rural areas where the likes of Virgin and BT are but legend and myth.

The projects run the gamut from schemes laying down fibre for just 30 homes, to more ambitious, elaborate community efforts planning to connect 550,000 homes.

The report’s author, Roger Darlington, noted he was surprised at the sheer number of do-it-yourself broadband projects, but noted the phenomenon “reflects a certain amount of frustration that people are not seeing super-fast broadband rolled out as fast as they would like”. In other words, people want super fast broadband… super fast. (The Inquirer)

Instead of marching on Washington with picks and shovels, perhaps we should all stay home and spend the money on networks we own and control, using the picks and shovels to build them. The only thing worse than surrendering control of our connectivity to a duopoly is surrendering it to beltway bureaucrats.