community broadband networks

CenturyLink is a massive telephone company struggling to remain relevant as we transition to mobile phones and require connections much faster than DSL delivers. Though the Omaha gigabit announcement may seem to be a monumental shift for this company, it actually is not. It is a blip on the radar - an important blip but a blip nonetheless.

The Omaha pilot does not represent a sudden change of CenturyLink strategy or capacity. Part of West Omaha has a unique history that prompted this investment. The vast majority of communities in CenturyLink territory still have no hope for upgrades beyond the basic DSL they offer today. Sadly, this already-outdated technology will only fall further behind in coming years.

First, if you missed it, CenturyLink has announced a 1 Gbps pilot project in Omaha, Nebraska. This is considerably more newsworthy that AT&T's toothless fiber-to-the-press-release response to Austin's Google Fiber.

CenturyLink is a massive corporation in a tough spot. It operates in 38 states and in each one, subscribers are fleeing slow DSL for faster networks and moving from landlines to wireless devices. CenturyLink does not have enough revenue for the upgrades most communities need.

CenturyLink deserves some praise for this gigabit trial because it recognizes the need to upgrade old networks to offer faster, more reliable connections. And it is symmetrical, offering the same upload speeds as downstream whereas the Verizon FiOS network tends to prioritize downstream at the expense of up.

For years, CenturyLink has told communities that basic DSL is just fine. We'll probably still hear that talking point in many communities from CenturyLink's government affairs staff. But this project is an admission that America needs better networks.

Why Omaha?

The only source we saw reporting on the special circumstances of how Omaha was chosen for this project was Telecompetitor with "CenturyLink enters the gigabit era:"

CenturyLink spokesperson Stephanie Meisse tells Telecompetitor the 48,000 customers who will be eligible for the gigabit network were previously served by pre-DOCSIS hybrid fiber coax that needed upgrading. CenturyLink is upgrading that network to Gigabit Passive Optical Network (GPON) technology to facilitate up to 1 Gig speeds. The gigabit deployment will not cover all of CenturyLink’s Omaha footprint — it will only be available, for now at least, to west Omaha, where the legacy hybrid-fiber coax network was deployed.

Before Qwest was taken over by CenturyLink, it had created a pilot project in this area called Qwest Choice TV and OnLine where it offered triple play services -- adding cable television to its DSL and telephone suite. This approach only got as far as Phoenix, Denver, and Omaha in the old Qwest areas.

To be clear, the Omaha trial is pretty limited. 48,000 households is substantial, but only represents 12% of the metro. And a specific demographic slice according to Phil Dampier at Stop the Cap:

Only around 12% of metropolitan Omaha will have access to the experimental fiber service, primarily those living in West Omaha. The network will bypass residents that live further east. The boundaries of the forthcoming fiber network are notable: West Omaha comprises mostly affluent middle and upper class professionals and is one of the wealthiest areas in the metropolitan region. Winning a right to offer service on a limited basis within Omaha is an important consideration for telecom companies like CenturyLink.

The gigabit price is pretty reasonable, in the way that only a few massive operators can make it: $80/month when bundled and $150/month for standalone.

One unanswered question in all of this is whether the gigabit service comes with data caps, as noted by Karl Bode at Broadband Reports:

The company confirmed to me last March that they impose a 150 GB for 1.5 Mbps service plans, and a 300 GB cap for anything faster. The company also boots excessive users off of their network.

Any expectation that CenturyLink will make more investments of this nature soon are mistaken. They even candidly admit that they will have to evaluate this pilot project before considering expansion. That evaluation would happen in 2014, at the earliest. If they were to expand it, it will take another few years before they get going. In the meantime, the vast majority of CenturyLink customers will be stuck on DSL.

Let's take a look at CenturyLink's capital investment strategy. This is where we get a better sense of the companies true priorities. Thanks to Seeking Alpha, we can read the transcript of the Q4 2012 Earnings Call from mid February.

The call reveals that CenturyLink has placed a major emphasis on getting fiber to wireless towers (a cash cow) and connecting large enterprise customers with cloud services. Neither of these approaches do anything to improve residential or small business Internet access in communties. But they are a very sensible place for a firm to maximize its revenues.

Stewart Ewing, CFO, stated:

Capital expenditures are expected to range from $2.8 billion to $3 billion driven by spending in our key growth areas, data hosting will spend $325 million to $375 million, HSI [High Speed Internet] expansion and HSI capacity will spend between $350 million and $375 million, and our Fiber-to-the-tower will continue to spend about $250 million to $300 million in this area, our Prism TV with the launch of the Phoenix and one other market, we expect to spend $100 million to $150 million.

Of the 38 states it serves, CenturyLink has announced two metro areas that are getting substantial upgrades in 2013. The first is Phoenix with a VDSL product like AT&T's U-Verse. This is faster than standard DSL but barely competitive with cable's DOCSIS 3 standard. And households even within the city get wildly different speed due to the way distance degrades the VDSL signal.

Omaha is the second -- where 12% of the metro will be upgraded to a next-generation network. If I had to put money on the next metro to get meaningful investment, it would have to be Denver because it is the third (and final) former Qwest territory community getting the television product.

CenturyLink is putting $350 million into expanding high speed Internet generally, but separately (from what we can tell) it is spending between $100-$150 million on improve Internet access in just two markets. Of those two, only 12% of Omaha is covered and the VDSL in Phoenix is barely competitive with existing cable. That should give you a sense of the scale of CenturyLink's investment dilemma: High costs and limited dollars.

Put another way, Chattanooga's EPB spent approximately $300 million over three years to deliver FTTH to 170,000 households across its 600 square mile territory. Yet another way: If CenturyLink dumped its entire 2013 capital expenditure budget into FTTH for Minneapolis and Saint Paul, it would be insufficient to bring FTTH to everyone. CenturyLink operates in 38 states.

CenturyLink just doesn't have the money to upgrade most of its communities. Will it in future years? That is a question that Phil Cusick of JPMorgan asked: "Okay. And, so we should look at CapEx as being essentially flat for the next few years?"

CFO Stewart Ewing response:

That's our thinking now. Pretty flat, we could bring it down some, cut it off a little bit depending on. It's really based on the success of these new initiatives, I mean, what we think we can drive in terms of revenue and margins going forward.

CenturyLink is not dumb or evil, it just has different priorities for investment than what communities need. The sooner local governments understand this, the better. Heck, CenturyLink itself has made this point in Minnesota:

We’re a public company. We have shareholders. We have rules and commitments. If you’re smaller, the shareholders are the owners. There’s more flexibility – especially if owners/shareholders are local.

Minnesota Public Radio summed it up:

Noting that CenturyLink wants every customer it can find, Ring pointed out that the company nonetheless needs a return on investment that satisfies shareholders and meets the demands of larger commitments and fiduciary responsibilities.

The lesson is clear. Omaha is a outlier, don't count on CenturyLink to invest in better connections for your community.

And finally, I could not resist but note Julius Genachowski's final hurrah: One of the last acts of former Chairman Genachowski was to rush out a press release praising this limited pilot, though the former Chairman has ignored much more impressive citywide announcements of gigabit availability in other communities including Wilson, North Carolina; Clarksville, Tennessee; Tullahoma, Tennessee; and even a small company doing an apartment complext in Albuquerque, New Mexico: CityLink Fiber.

The federal government remains clueless in this regard, blinding by the lobbying glitz of powerful industries. The big cable and telephone companies will not solve our Internet connectivity problems. Communities are wise to depend on themselves.

Stay updated on developments by following this tag.

The Georgia General Assembly is considering another bill to limit investment in telecommunications networks in the state, an odd proposition when just about everyone agrees states need as much investment in these networks as possible.

House Bill 282, the "Municipal Broadband Investment Act," purports to limit the ability of public entities to invest only in "unserved" areas. But as usual, the devil is in the details. This bill will be discussed on Wednesday, Feb 13 at 4:00 EST in the Telecom Subcommittee of the House Energy, Utilities & Telecommunications committee (Committee roster here).

We strongly encourage Georgians to write to members of this committee and explain that these decisions should be made at the local level, not by the state. Communities each face unique circumstances regarding the need for telecommunications investment and they can be trusted to make informed decisions after weighing the available evidence.

Many local governments have invested in modest networks to connect local businesses, but such investments will be prohibited in Georgia if residents in the area are already served with a connection of at least 1.5 Mbps in one direction. This baseline is far lower standard than the FCC's definition of "basic" broadband: 4 Mbps down and 1 Mbps up. Setting a low baseline hurts communities but rewards carriers that have refused to invest in modern networks.

This bill poses a dramatic threat to the ability of local governments to encourage economic development and provide the environment necessary for the private sector to create the jobs every community needs. See our fact sheet on how public broadband investments have created jobs.

Supporters of this bill will claim that it only restricts investment to areas that are most needing it. This argument is not only flat wrong, it comes mostly from those most interested in preventing, not encouraging, investment.

The bill will effectively prohibit any community investment because the cost of collecting the data and making the case that areas are unserved is prohibitive, particularly when the bar for what constitutes being unserved is set unrealistically low. The cost of collecting data at the census block level is high and communities are extremely unlikely to spend the necessary sums when there is no guarantee they will be able to take action on it.

Additionally, requiring a network to operate only in unserved areas is akin to requiring a health insurance plan to only accept terminally ill patients. A network requires a mix of densities and households in order to be sustainable. Should any community build a network under these circumstances, however unlikely, such a network would almost certainly require ongoing subsidization, which would then be used as evidence for why such a network should never have been built. Heads they win, tails we lose.

This bill is much sneakier than last year's broadside attack on community networks. Rather than aggressively challenging community broadband, this approach appears to be more reasonable, even as it creates the same result: greatly limiting the authority of communities to decide for themselves whether an investment is appropriate for encouraging economic development.

We understand that Windstream is the main lobbyist pushing this bill forward in an attempt to protect the networks they have refused to upgrade to modern standards. Windstream is just one of several large telecommunications companies that does not have the capacity to invest in the next-generation networks demanded in the 21st century economy. For instance, see this recent story from Missouri about Windstream:

“People feel they are paying for a service they are not getting,” Rep. Fitzwater told Windstream. “I get emails every day, letters, telephone calls. McAllister Software is a major employer, employing around 140 people. They are vital to the local economy, and they need internet service. There were about 45 hours last year that they had to shut their doors because they had no internet. There are other businesses in town that are affected by internet speeds. The other day there was a water main break and school was closed; some of the businesses had to shut down because of reduced internet speeds because the kids were online playing games.”

Even as Windstream cannot provide the necessary speeds, they are pushing a bill to make it harder for others to step in and provide the necessary services. This is why the bill uses a 1.5 Mbps standard, DSL often provides that below-basic level of service but does not support common applications or business needs.

In short, this is a bill that will only hurt the residents and businesses of Georgia, taking away one of the only methods a community can ensure it is ready for the digital economy.

AT&T and others regularly woo their regulators and policymakers with promises to built increase investments or expand networks in return for deregulation or merger approval. A recent Gerry Smith Huffington Post article examines a familiar pattern of broken promises made by telcos, what has developed into a chronic wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am attitude by these massive corporations.

We actually have a name for this, Kushnick's Law: "A regulated company will always renege on promises to provide public benefits tomorrow in exchange for regulatory and financial benefits today." 

Smith revisits promises made back in 2006 when AT&T merged with BellSouth. AT&T promised to roll out broadband to every customer in its territory by 2007. Tell that to Cedric Wiggins from rural Mississippi. From the article:

But five years after that deadline, Wiggins, 26, is still waiting. Inside his trailer, his only affordable Internet option is a sluggish dial-up modem that takes five minutes to load the online job listing sites he has visited since being laid-off as a truck driver in May. Every few months, he calls AT&T to ask when he will receive a faster connection. The answer never changes.

“They said they don’t offer it in my area right now,” he said. “There’s nothing I can do.”

Smith found that promises made to gain merger approval are traditionally broken and/or so weakly constructed that the players can comply with little or no effort. Empty promises continue to be accepted by the feds and conveniently forgotten, except people like Wiggins.

No one knows the pattern better than those on the inside:

“We have a problem at the commission, historically, with following-up on merger conditions,” said Michael Copps, who served on the FCC from 2001 to 2011, and who voted to approve the AT&T-BellSouth merger. “A lot of these conditions that get attached are not that great, and they are not always really enforced.”

AT&T tells Smith it kept its promise, but would not respond when pressed for details about where it had expanded. Self reporting is accepted from the FCC on merger conditions, putting the burden on the public to demonstrate noncompliance -- though most of the public is rarely even aware that such promises were made.

Promises are often littered with loopholes. From the article:

AT&T committed to provide Internet service at minimum speeds that were hardly faster than dial-up, they say, while pledging to deliver “alternative technologies,” including satellite Internet, through as much as 15 percent of its territory. And at the time, satellite Internet was already available through nearly all of BellSouth’s turf, making AT&T’s commitment “utterly meaningless,” said Dave Burstein, editor of the telecom industry publication DSL Prime.

Smith also looks into a 2009 promise made by CenturyLink in order to get approval to buy Ebarq in the South and Midwest. CenturyLink promised to bring wired Internet access to 90% of the population within three years but 87% of those customers already had it. Meeting that commitment was almost meaningless. 

But we cannot simply leave the blame at the feet of the FCC or other agencies. Smith details how the gigantic AT&T/BellSouth merger almost fell through, but for the efforts of AT&T's lobbyists. FCC Commissioners received a letter signed by 29 members of Congress - all but two had each received significant contributions from AT&T and BellSouth PACs and PAC employees over three election cycles, according to InfluenceExplorer.com.

When the deal was finally approved, expectations were high:

AT&T had made “real, tangible, and important broadband commitments” and there would be “no exceptions for sparsely populated areas,” Copps said at the time.

AT&T’s commitment “will only further encourage the deployment and adoption of broadband networks into yet unserved or underserved areas,” Chairman Kevin J. Martin and Commissioner Deborah Taylor Tate said back then.

The 2006 CEO, Ed Whitacre, doubled his salary to $31 million, stock price almost doubled, and $5 billion in dividends went out to investors. The following year, stock went up another 16% and the company paid another $8.7 billion in dividends. Clearly, AT&T reaped the rewards for making promises, but it is equally clear that they also reaped rewards for breaking promises. Even 2006 backers of the deal now realize AT&T has not lived up to its commitment:

“It gives me heartburn,” said Tyrone Ellis, who as chairman of Mississippi’s public utilities committee in 2006 wrote to the FCC to urge approval of the deal, citing the promise of rural broadband throughout AT&T’s territory. “They didn’t follow through. But I don’t have the power to force their hand. The FCC does.”

Meanwhile in Mississippi, Wiggins and his neighbors sit on the unfortunate side of the digital divide. Looking for a full time position, paying bills, conducting business, public safety, and the ability to communicate with loved ones are all hampered by the lack of anything beyond dial-up or expensive satellite.

For years now, the FCC and other agencies have allowed harmful consolidation while failing to attach meaningful conditions. We just examined how Comcast gamed the FCC to take over NBC -- the public gained practically nothing in allowing a massive company even more market power. 

The problem with such massive companies is not just that they can squash competition and raise prices with impunity. Their scale and dominance allows them to shape how the entire industry is regulated by the public. They buy legislation in DC and state capitals with near-impunity. They slow innovation, harming the economy. 

Communities are smart to depend on themselves for essential infrastruture, not promises from distant mega-corporations. 

If you are a current or potential Verizon customer, by now you know that you no longer have the option to order stand alone DSL. When the business decision became public knowledge in April, DSL Reports.com looked into the apparent step backward and found existing customers were grandfathered in but:

However, if you disconnect and reconnect, or move to a new address -- you'll have to add voice service. Users are also being told that if they make any changes to their existing DSL service (increase/decrease speed) they'll also be forced to add local phone service. One customer was actually told that he needed to call every six months just to ensure they didn't change his plan and auto-enroll him in voice service.

By alienating customers from DSL, Verizon can begin shifting more customers to its LTE service, which is more expensive. Susie Madrak, from Crooks and Liars, speculated on possible repercussions for rural America:

Rural areas could see the biggest impact from the shift, as Verizon pulls DSL and instead sells those users LTE services with at a high price point ($15 per gigabyte overages). Verizon then hopes to sell those users cap-gobbling video services via their upcoming Redbox streaming video joint venture. Expect there to be plenty of gaps where rural users suddenly lose landline and DSL connectivity but can't get LTE. With Verizon and AT&T having killed off regulatory oversight in most states -- you can expect nothing to be done about it, despite both companies having been given billions in subsidies over the years to get those users online.

The belief is that current DSL customers who don't want (or can't afford) the switch to the LTE service will move to Verizon's cable competition. Normally, losing customers to the competition is to be avoided, but when your new marketing partners ARE the competition, it's no big deal.

Recall that Verizon entered into an agreement with Time Warner Cable, Cox, Bright House (collectively SpectrumCo) to a purchase spectrum. A related agreement, wherein Verizon and the cable companies cross-market each others' services, received approval from FCC and the DOJ. The deal appears inevitable, regardless of concerns from consumer groups, economic and telecommunications policy leaders, and labor.

Madrak makes another critical observation: Verizon Wireless is a non union company, while Verizon Wireline employees belong the the Communicatons Workers of America (CWA).

The CWA has engaged Maryland Senators Barbara Milkulski and Benjamin Cardin to press the FCC and DOJ to move carefully. The pair recent sent a letter to both agencies citing major job loss concerns from CWA and lack of competition concerns from consitutents. From the letter [pdf]:

Our concern is that we are turning former competitors into business allies, that may be violating the concept of open and fair competition.We also are very concerned… [that] it appears to limit Verizon’s incentive to invest in its all fiber FiOS network, potentially depriving consumers of the competitive alternative to cable, broadband and, video services. What this means is that you...could be impacting [72,000] middle class jobs.

Eliminating unions and forcing DSL customers to switch to a more expensive service translates into even more profits for Verizon. How will this strategy affect the broadband situation in America? Madrak summed it up in her coverage:

It's all a very ingenious play by Verizon, though it will have a massive competitive and connectivity impact on the U.S. broadband market that will be studied for decades. What's most amazing is that nobody (analysts, regulators or the press) seems to have really noticed what Verizon's up to: turning a massive swath of the country from a marginally-competitive duopoly with union labor, into an even less competitive and more expensive cable and telco un-unionized cooperative monopoly.

Absent action from communities, the future will be one with less competition to deliver broadband services, not more. Community networks can create jobs, competition, and savings -- a far better alternative than watching Verizon's plans come to fruition.