Fast Net News, DSL Prime, DOCSIS Report

 Grahame Lynch and team do some of the world's best telecom reporting and have posted the first issue of their new magazine. An interview with Equinix CTO Lane Patterson notes “Our customers are using 10G ports like they are going out of style,” creating demand for 100G as soon as the products ship. Tony Chan looks at the “wholesale-only” model of LightSquared LTE. Bob Fonow points out the hypocrisy of the U.S. blocking Huawei from selling in the U.S. a decade after demanding the Chinese buy $billions of gear from Lucent. Grahame tears into the economic claims of Australia's NBN; I come out in favor of the NBN (a great Internet is ultimately worth it) but point out “Why the NBN’s payoff will be slow.” Independent scholars – Shane Greenstein, Raul Katz, Jed Kolko – have torn apart the claims of huge job and economic benefits from improving broadband. Julius Genachowski needs to stop referencing discredited company-paid propaganda on job creation.

    Reverse auctions yield big savings ... sometimes is my second article in the issue, recounting how open auctions brought DSLAM prices to $US30 to 50 per port while much larger Verizon and AT&T were paying $50-70 – often for the same Alcatel equipment.

More recently, Wei Leiping of China Telecom recently disclosed their supplier auctions brought the price down to $US100 a line for GPON, far lower than the same vendors charge European and American customers. “Sometimes” refers to several failed reverse auctions for universal service. Reverse auctions require a number of interested and competitive bidders, often lacking in extreme rural areas. Blair Levin has an important paper on the U.S. path to Universal Broadband at http://bit.ly/9yOyD7 but I think he needs a Plan B if the auctions he recommends fail to bring down the cost. If no one other than the local telco can effectively bid – often the case, I fear – than auctions could raise instead of lowering subsidies.

    It's a handsome publication, free to download at http://www.commsday.com/commsday/files/commsdaymagoctnov.pdf Check it out.