Hal Singer, managing director and principal of Navigant Economics, is among those calling for widespread deregulation of COLR rules for operators.See this CIO magazine article for more.

"So what requirements for copper-replacement 4G or fiber broadband service levels, if any, would you want to see from FCC?

Or should it be left entirely to AT&T and Verizon?"

The requirement for everyone to receive phone service for the rate cap should not be removed.  How it is delivered should be up to the carrier.  The requirements should not change, just the way it is done.

In terms of broadband, I think this should be a COLR/USF service.  My opinion is that this should be delivered any way desired with an escalating minimum bandwidth over time.  I think the only question is whether a OTT video solution should be universal.  Again, I don't really care how as long it is done.

seven

So what requirements for copper-replacement 4G or fiber broadband service levels, if any, would you want to see from FCC?

Or should it be left entirely to AT&T and Verizon?

Hey Seven,

Thanks for input...extremely valuable.

JG

e2mbcorp,

First off, you are wrong about a whole bunch of the lines which are connected to street cabinets with DLCs and remote DSLAMs.

The US architecture basically has 12Kft loops for POTS and you can go put whatever you want for electronics on them, those loops are still limited by the frequency and power carrying capability of the wires.  There is a limit for power transmitted by the FCC to not interfere with other services.  If you look at a rate versus reach curve, you will see a dramatic drop off at the longer distances.  That is because the copper plant acts like a low pass filter that starts dramatically attenuating the high end of the frequency spectrum.  DSL chipsets pack about as many bits per system using OFDM (which the modern VDSL and ADSL variants use) as can be managed.

One of the big misunderstandings of the US copper plant is its oversubscription.  For example, you likely have 4 pairs terminating at the NID on the side of your house.  These do not go all the way back to the CO (if you are CO fed).  What happens is there are 2 OutSide Plant crossconnects and there are more like 1.2 pairs per dwelling in the aggregate.  This allows phone companies to give extra lines to those who pay for them, but not overbuild (and a 20% take rate of second lines is a traditional metric - probably down now from that).

Let's use Telco TV using IP video as an example of what you are talking about.  U-verse and even older IP video topologies use Switched Digital Video with IGMP (differnent systems use different IGMP variants) to control channel changes.  This allows these systems to select what channels go down what wires, because they are limited.  What has happened with U-verse is that they are now locating the DSL lines around 2.5Kft from the home to get more bandwidth out of the copper pairs (again take a look at a rate versus reach chart for VDSL2).  Older services used longer reach so had considerably less bandwidth per pair.

I have seen many recommendations to take over the entire copper plant which has a massive amount of regulatory issues.  You can not decide as a phone company to NOT offer tariffed services.  Because of that, there are actual new installs of horrible things like 4 wire leased line services as well as really old stuff like dry pairs.  So, any service you create has to live within the deployment restrictions of the copper plant as it is today.  Which DSL is the best at dragging every bit per second out of the pairs as can be done.  Many of the things that people talk about (the Assia folks and Vectoring) do not double the bandwidth per pair.  They talk about optimizing to get very close to the Nyquist limit.

seven

Correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding is that POTS is the CO switch driven service that runs on the copper plant.  And while the twisted pairs that connect to that switch could never carry the 5Gb coax speed, it remains to be seen how much of the old copper wire speed could actually be achieved if the CO switch could be converted into a "dumb" hub, and if the copper pairs could be repurposed to build a distributed IP switch network that is controlled by the edge devices that attach to it.  That's what was meant by mirroring a cable TV architecture which is controlled by set top boxes (DOCSIS modems) at the edge which are attached to broadcast hubs.  However, in this case, the high performance MAC could provision synchronous and asynchronous flows simultaneously, and giving TCP/IP a much better road to run on than could ever be afforded by DSLAMs.  This would allow for a theoretically infinite number of channels and users at a low fixed overhead, with the only limitation being the physical bandwidth.  As to the SNR, if the copper is clean enough for DSL, I'd imagine it's good enough for DSL on steroids...because if not, then it just seems a shame to have all that copper in the ground be of no use.  Bottom line: it would be very cool if instead of 4G killing the copper plant, an elegant network protocol could resurrect it.

e2mbcorp,

This whole thread is about POTS not video or broadband.  But there are many ethernet and HDLC based DSL variants that do not use ATM.  You completely miss the challenge of copying a cable architecture.  The copper plant can not have the bandwidth of a cable plant, especially in these circumstances.  The SNR is not good enough.

seven

The matter isn't if 4G can kill copper.  The matter is is 4G can move the big needle of media consumption away from the set top box...and until 4G can run on top of a broadcast architecture with a migration path for legacy devices, the answer is: unlikely.

What copper needs is a layer 2 protocol upgrade so that TCP/IP can be carried natively and without asynchronous hardware.  Once middle hardware in the form of switch routers can be eliminated, then the copper signaling (and wireless 4G for that matter) will mirror a cable/sat TV network architecture.  Further, where there is already perfectly good copper in the ground which can still carry voltage, there will be no reason to run fiber to the home.

So all we need is a near-perfect universal MAC that requires little to no change at layer 2.5 or above.  At this point, it's a fully drawn spec that could serve terrestrial or wireless...but we need engineers for C code (with knowledge of deeply embedded systems and some assembly language for debugging). 

Interested?

Dan,

Carol didn't mention it but some of the small carriers that are not muni owned have done CLECing like that in ajoining RBOC properties.  The challenge is that nobody wants to pick up COLR responsibility.

I disagree with Carol in part of her statement.  The FCC can force things.  It has chosen not to.  The way to do it is quite simple.  Make Broadband (with minimum bandwidths TBD) a Universal Service as the responsibility of the COLR.  Let it be delivered any way desired but make it available.  I agree that incentives will not get there...but the stick instead of the carrot will.

Now what I read in Dan's story (and maybe it is my reading) was not the abandonment of COLR responsibility but a choice in how it is delivered.  Here is what I can say, there is one (yes 1) company that is still working on Digital Loop Carriers that have RBOC approval and it is HQed in Chicago and starts with the letter T.  Alcatel has completely closed up the Litespan shop and the rest of the approved products are gone (No more SLC5 or AccessNode).  I assumed this was a move to allow the companies the idea of NOT getting another DLC approved just in case the plug is pulled on that last pair of products (the old Marconi DLC is still technically approved in the fBLS territories).  Given that the last RBOC DLC RFP was issued by Bell Atlantic that ought to give you some idea of the age of the technology involved.  Ever try to source new (stress on the new) 5E or DMS100 Line bays?  Imagine what happens when housing really starts moving again.

seven

Smaller carriers have already done a better job of providing broadband to rural areas than the big guys - that's why the bulk of ConnectAmerica funds were targeting AT&T, Verizon and the big guys, at least in the first round. Because under the FCC's Broadband Plan, only those areas without broadband were to receive funding -- that was considered the most efficient way to use federal dollars to boost broadband penetration.

But the CA first round funds only pay $755 per home passed to deliver broadband and the carriers say that's not enough. So they are willing to walk away rather than accept the funding and the responsibility of providing service.

What Verizon and AT&T are doing is what they always do - putting their investors first. Funding wireline broadband in rural areas just isn't good business for reasons that brookseven points out. And no amount of policy manipulation by the FCC is likely to change that.

This is a battle that will likely be fought at the state level. Verizon is already fighting it there, as Dan's story points out, and winning. There is major change yet to come, but the wheels are definitely in motion.