While the FCC busily tries to take greater control of the Internet, it’s important to remember that is is the agency most responsible for creating the broadband duopoly in the first place. The US backbone continues to expand and it remains the envy of the world. Unfortunately, the unwashed masses who pay for duopoly internet connections continue to be shackled to outdated, artificially scarce last mile bandwidth. We have been sold out by our elected elites and the bureaucrats they oversee. Even Russia has more last mile competition and it is getting continued improvement as a result. In fact the average Russian just edged past the average American in real world bandwidth. Don’t believe me? Look at the graph.

It’s time to take control of our broadband and do it locally. The feds who got us into this mess to begin with are only going to ask for more control and more money. As long as so much control remains centered in Washington DC, nothing will improve unless you’re a telco or cable guy.

With the FCC’s broadband baseline set at a paltry 4MBPS, Europe’s recently announced 30MBPS standard should be sounding alarms.  There’s much more to the story than just the minimum acceptable broadband speed arbitrarily set by bureaucrats. The back story is competition and the role it plays.

European broadband has been lead by healthy competition in the most unlikely of places like France and the UK. That open market that includes last mile line sharing for  competition has raised the standard urban connections to some of the world’s most robust at some of the world’s lowest prices. Competition has forced the old school telcos to upgrade infrastructure and streamline operations. New networks cost considerably less to run. And ….. we hear no whining about the need to recover investment in decades old infrastructure.

With the sea change that has made free and accessible information and media the fuel of economic development critical to economic security, broadband competition should be a top priority. At the risk of bending Third Pipe editorial policy on political posts, I have a question for the Obama administration: While you are so eager to emulate all failed aspects of European socialism, why do you shy away from emulating what the Europeans are doing well?

The grand master plan for European broadband is out, and one target leaves the United States in the digital dust—a goal of 30 Mbps “or above” for all Europeans by 2020. So says the European Commission’s Digital Agenda for Europe, which also wants 50 percent of EU households subscribed to links of 100Mbps or more by that year.

….Needless to say, Europe isn’t jealously comparing itself to the United States, high-speed Internet-wise. Here our supposedly bold and fearless Federal Communications Commission thinks it’s cool by setting a pokey universal broadband goal of 4Mbps, sans fiber, which the agency says costs too much. (ARS Technica)

Right now, finding open access Wifi may be easier in the UK than it is here on  the other side of the pond.  From businesses like the famous Wimpy to educational institutions public places often offer a public connection.

Unfortunately, it appears that American politicians aren’t the only ones who have been bought by the telecom and entertainment industries. A new law proposed for the UK would end public Wifi to “protect copyrighted material”.

The U.K. government will not exempt universities, libraries, and small businesses providing open Wi-Fi services from its Digital Economy Bill copyright crackdown, according to official advice released earlier this week.

This would leave many organizations open to the same penalties for copyright infringement as individual subscribers, potentially including disconnection from the Internet, leading legal experts to say it will become impossible for small businesses and the like to offer Wi-Fi access. (Cnet)

Anyone who has actually used a shared public Wifi connection knows that the idea of downloading a movie from it is laughable, and and uploading one impossible. I think that this is more about forcing people to pay for access away from home than protecting copyright.

… Of lawyering — Know your facts before you make your case. Which pretty much sinks the Australian Internet censorship law. –

South Australia’s thin-skinned candy-ass politicians passed a law prohibiting any anonymous political commentary on blogs (but not “real” news-sources) prior to elections on penalty of a fine of AU$1250. Defending the measure, South Australia’s Attorney General, Michael Atkinson claimed that a poster on AdelaideNow, Aaron Fornarino, was a fictional construct created by his political opponents to smear him. Turns out that Mr Fornarino lives just down the street from Atkinson’s office. Humiliated, Atkinson rescinded the censorship law: “From the feedback we’ve received through AdelaideNow, the blogging generation believes that the law supported by all MPs and all political parties is unduly restrictive. I have listened. I will immediately after the election move to repeal the law retrospectively… It may be humiliating for me, but that’s politics in a democracy and I’ll take my lumps.”

The major foopah? Atkinson, the regional AG made the claim that the person posting on an Internet site lambasting him was not a real person but fictitious, made up by the opposition party. Problem? Yeah, the person exists and there are pictures to prove it. Much to Atkinson’s credit, he will move for repeal of the law after the major embarrassment.

Linky.

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.

Nor is it traffic that can be ignored. US readership is growing 7x faster than domestic readership on most UK sites. —

We’ve often written about how UK newspaper sites get a healthy number of visitors from the US, mainly via Drudge Report referrals (see Neil Thurman’s academic study). Now web measurer Hitwise says traffic to Brit news sites from across the pond is growing nearly seven times as fast as that domestically. (To view a breakdown chart, click here.)

Analyst Robin Goad says Drudge is still the biggest aggregation referrer to UK news sites (bringing 10.6 percent of visits in August), followed by Google (NSDQ: GOOG) News (5.3 percent). But Google search is still the big traffic giver (13.5 percent); email’s a big referrer, too.

I don’t even have to guess either. UK papers have remained competitive unlike their US cousins. The rationale is content and editorial position. The UK landscape is such a paper takes a stand. They are either Conservative or Labor. None of this panty waist stuff of toned liberal tripe with a resident neo-conservative thrown in for ‘balance’. Papers in the UK revel in their differences. When they get a chance they even tweak the oppositions nose in it for good measure. It keeps the readers coming back for more.

Which goes to show that being brazen but fair pays (cue Glenn Beck) and that PC attempts at balance are a nonstarter. There is an old saying. What’s the quickest way for a lawyer to increase his income in a one horse town? Invite another lawyer to open an office across the street! By all appearances it goes for papers too.

Linky.

In spite of all of the hand wringing we get from our duopoly about how local loop unbundling would destroy the internet business, it seems to be working miracles in the UK. Connection speeds are up and prices are down. More competitors means more opportunities for employment as the business grows. Even the once threatened BT seems to be investing at a faster pace…. and it’s still far from bankrupt.

In September 2005 a process known as “local loop unbundling” (LLU) started in the UK. The process, instigated by the regulator, required BT to allow competing companies to install their own equipment in BT telephone exchanges.

This meant providers did not have to sell on BT’s wholesale broadband service and could therefore offer very competitive prices. The result has been nothing short of extraordinary.

Losing a bundle
There are now over 6 million “unbundled” phone lines with about 30 different companies providing broadband services to households and businesses in the UK.

“In just four years, unbundling has gone from a flicker on the dial to a major competitive force in telecoms,” said Ofcom chief executive Ed Richards. “This has delivered the dual benefits of driving up broadband take-up and driving down prices.”

The downward pressure on broadband prices has enormous: in September 2005, the average cost of broadband over a copper home phone line was £23.30 a month, today it is only £13.61 for an equivalent service.

This is a whopping 42% reduction and directly results from the competition unleashed by the LLU process. (MSN)

While our American telecom and cable companies have invested heavily in buying each other up and ventured into  unrelated businesses, their European counterparts have stuck largely to their core business. It should come as no surprise that the old country is now claiming supremacy over the new world.

Europe is the “world leader in broadband Internet,” said the “Digital Competitiveness Report: Main achievements of the i2010 strategy 2005-2009.” The report discusses the successes of the EU’s i2010 strategy, a five-year plan that ends this year and that was designed to “unlock the benefits of the information society for European growth and jobs,” according to a press release.

Europe leads in mobile penetration too, with subscribers representing 119 percent of its population. “This makes Europe the world leader in mobile penetration, as the rates in the US and Japan are around 80 percent,” the report said. (Internet News)

As the federal government continues to be bought off by the duopoly, we should come to expect more of this as long as we are willing to accept the status quo. When the over regulated and grossly inefficient EU can leap frog the free wheeling founder of the internet so easily without even a good fight, it’s a national tragedy. I suspect that there has been an advantage to the players in each nation being different. Here, the dupoly has taken over at the national level and it is still in charge.

Make no mistake about it! While the faces put in place by President Obama are new, and the retoric is much more promising, very little real action is being taken to improve anything.

Add Africa to the Third Pipe world. A new undersea cable could make broadband possible for a billion people. Many are well educated and knowledge work ready. This could be their enabler to a more productive life. Greater educational opportunities will be possible for all.  Broadband will also enable tremendous new opportunities for commerce. Properly used, broadband can  elevate the less well off from poverty faster and more effectively that all of the aid and charity the world can muster.

A 13,700-kilometre (8,500-mile) undersea fibre-optic cable to provide high-speed Internet access on Africa’s Indian Ocean coast went live on Thursday, its operator said.

“Today is a historic day for Africa and marks the dawn of a new era for communications between the continent and the rest of the world,” chief executive of SEA Cable System, Brian Herlihy, said in a statement.

Connections linking Johannesburg, Nairobi and Kampala with the coastal landing stations have already been established, the company said, while final links to Kigali and Addis Ababa are underway. (Yahoo)

BT is bringing call centre jobs back to Blighty from India.

The move was revealed in an answer to a shareholder at BT’s annual general meeting yesterday.

Ian Livingstone, chief executive at the telco, was asked, to huge applause, when he would close the firm’s Indian call centres.

In response he said he would move about 2,000 jobs back to Blighty. The telco employs about 5,500 customer service staff in India and could eventually shift as many as 2,750, back to the UK.

Looks like as the global economy teeters the outsourcing price shift is occurring too. Outsourcing to India was very favorable when MBA’s could be had for $4/hr. Well those days are over. Couple that with changing tax rules, concerns about IP security and cultural differences, if you can’t work out a 33% disparity then it is probably not worth the move.

So what is to happen long term? Call center and mid management functions will probably come back to the host countries. Specialized skills will probably remain where they are. Engineers familiar with FPGA has almost become an Indian specialty not many in the US know how to program them.

The wheel turns again.

Linky.