Fast Net News, DSL Prime, DOCSIS Report

The last 2-5%: Obama promised to bring broadband to all Americans, a good thing. There are about 5% of homes that can only get satellite, and these have been a prime focus for Stagg Newman, Rob Curtis, and Jim Stegeman. Early on, they (and the broadband stimulus people) discovered very few of them were in towns or areas of even a few hundred homes, natural for a new build of broadband. Most are 6 her, 20 there, and sometimes 3 on an island. there's no public information about what the plan will propose. I'd guess 1% or so will be offered the new 5-10 megabit satellite service. Where cable TV but not broadband is available, that's a cheap upgrade especially if the plan solves the backhaul ripoffs (below). Wireless will play a large role, although I don't know whether they will clear the 100 MHz or more of spectrum that would be ideal in rural areas for broadband. Look for a thoughtful move, probably tied into USF funding.

Open set top boxes: Verizon has been talking about this since 2003 but done nothing, and D.C. hasn't even been thinking about it. Put a gigE connection and a decent browser on the set top, and suddenly I can watch everything over the net. Add a USB port for expanison and ideally Linux like the Sony Playstation and the possibilities are remarkable. Cable quietly has been demonstrated that the program protection can be downloaded and done in software. That's an important breakthru, promised for many tears as part of Tru2way, etc, that should allow people to buy/build their own set top with capabilities far beyond what the company includes. Cable isn't very resistant, because customers buying their own set tops saves them a great deal of capex.

"Extending outage reporting to broadband service providers:" Good for reliability and requiring reporting identifies problems and possibly persuades teh companies to reduce them.

Ending the huge backhaul ripoffs. Bandwidth costs $5-15/megabit in most of the developed world, but rural carriers often report paying $100 & $200 even when fiber is in place and the cost of delivering that bandwidth is only a little higher than in cities. By one of the broadband plan, this is as much as 1/3rd of the problem for extreme rural carriers. The impact varies widely. For some it's the most important problem; others are lucky enough to be near a major switch point, have an efficient state coop, etc. It turns out overbuilding the existing fiber isn't the solution, because it would be brutally expensive and in most of the extreme rural areas there are so few customers even covering the opex would be tough.

. This can be very narrowly tailored,perhaps with a rebuttable presumption of market failure if local costs are more than three times the national average. Only a few percent of the country would be affected, but these are critical places for extending broadband. This turns out to be politically practical, because the backhaul costs in a few percent of the country are a fraction of the dollars involved in "apecial access" to city office buildings. It can easily be squeezed into that. http://fastnetnews.com/dslprime/42-d/2363-backhaul-3rd-of-the-problem-actually-solvable I don't know if this made the last draft, but it's so clearly true to the planning team it would be a bad mistake if it didn't/

"Ensure survivability of critical infrastructure." In particular, as half the population drops landlines it becomes critical that wireless continues working in emergencies. Most cell sites have severely limited batteries and no generators. CTIA, to their shame, is fighting the FCC in court to prevent sensible requirements. After Katrina, we all know how critical keeping the lines live can be.

"Require participating institutions to meet outcomes-based performance measures" Right on.This will immediately kill most of the "demand stimulus" programs because the results simply haven't been there. I wish it were otherwise, but most accomplish little.

"Address networks’ preparedness to deal with pandemics or incidents of high network stress/overload" To save what's comparatively pennies, many networks simply don't have sufficient reserve capacity. We're seeing that now as modest success selling iPhones is causing major problems for AT&T. They are exaggerrated but real. At least since 2003, SBC/AT&T top tech people have been warning management they are cutting capex too far. Most years, it's actually below depreciation.

All the old time engineers are afraid the cutbacks in reliability the last decade is inviting disaster. "Commercial data networks are not ubiquitous or universally reliable during emergencies" is important.

"Creating a nationwide interoperable broadband wireless public safety network" Carlos Kirjner of the plan did the post-mortem on the communications during 9/11. The belief in New York was that lives were lost because the police and fire departments had trouble communicating. This should be a no-brainer, but hasn't happened. I pay particular attention to the word "nationwide". One of the biggest gaps in broadband coverage is the last 2-3% where there are no cell towers. Erecting towers with backhaul for public safety purposes can also provide broadband wireless for the last few %.

"Improve program efficiency" Between 40% and 90% of the money in ICC/USF is wasted or corporate welfare, depending on whose figures you believe. This has all been under a veil of secrecy at USAC, NECA, and state regulators. I believe that you could save enough to give 10 megabits to all the poor in the U.S. by cutting waste, but I can't get the solid information to be sure