Coming Soon to a Cell Tower Near You…

Network congestion! It’s one likely outcome from all the sleek new smart phones and touch screen tablets introduced (or rumored) at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, when consumers, so equipped, venture online en masse.

Actually, this looks like a job for fiber – providing wireless backhaul – as it appears that available spectrum is on its way to becoming the new “unobtainium.” But wireless carriers know this, and they are addressing this problem in wireline fashion. During a Q&A session in a Federal Communications Commission staff workshop on Future Fiber Architectures (held in November, as part of the National Broadband Plan), Verizon’s CTO estimated that 40% of the company’s cell towers are fed by fiber.

MIT’s David Patrick Reed (presenting at the same workshop) called this “air power” – “where most wireless will be very localized, very dense (homes, buildings, campuses)” – which, incidentally, resembles the fiber-to-the-premises architectures described by Verizon’s CTO during his presentation.

What’s forcing all this? The answer is rapidly escalating demands for bandwidth, particularly while on the move, and carriers have no choice but to respond, or face consumer revolt. Further complicating their task is a newly announced price war.

While tablets garnered lots of attention at CES, I was intrigued by Intel’s announcement introducing new digital signage technology, at both that show and at the National Retail Federation show this past week. Basically, it’s another tablet, of sorts, a networked kiosk with touch screen capability intended to bring benefits associated with the online experience (including advertising) to brick-and-mortar stores.

While this contains a certain irony, people have a tendency of gluing their eyeballs to moving objects on bright shiny screens, and I would not be surprised if stores so equipped with these new interactive digital signs sold more inventory than those without.  For this to work, though, both the displays and the transfers of data must be ultra-efficient. If not, it’s another data (and power) hog, just not portable.

FCC Workshops Wind Down

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission’s month-long series of staff workshops addressing the National Broadband Plan (NBP) is drawing to a close, and it has been a fascinating series. The 19 workshops will assist the agency in making the appropriate determinations in its report to Congress, required as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, or Stimulus Act, within one year of enactment of the legislation (February 17, 2010). The panels are intended to supplement the record in this NBP Notice of Inquiry, which itself is voluminous. And therein lies the challenge for the agency.

 The NBP docket is well populated by industry representatives and by the public, inasmuch as it will serve as a marker for what actions the FCC intends to take, or is prevented by limits on its authority from taking, to increase broadband deployment and adoption in the U.S. This is a tall order: the U.S. is ranked somewhere in the bottom half of the top 20 in broadband deployment in international rankings, which may vary in their benchmark criteria, but the point is that the U.S. is nowhere near a vaunted position of leadership on this critical infrastructure must-have to be competitive in an information-based economy.

 Other countries understand their position relative to the world broadband leaders, usually considered to be Japan and Korea, in terms of both deployment speeds (92.8 Mbps and 80.8 Mbps, respectively, according to the OECD) and adoption penetration, and act accordingly: Australia concludes that it must deploy fiber (to 90% of its population), as a national initiative (or should I say “imperative”).  Meanwhile, in China and elsewhere in Asia, fiber deployment continues to push the envelope, so to speak, in both scope and speed of services enabled by the technology.

 The FCC’s NBP is not the only action surrounding broadband in the U.S. The Departments of Agriculture and Commerce are wading through the first round of 2,200 applications for broadband grants and loan guarantees. The first installment of this program, authorized by the Stimulus Act, was an unqualified success, as indicated by the healthy program oversubscription rate, as Agriculture’s Rural Utilities Service Administrator Jonathan Adelstein (and former FCC commissioner) and Larry Strickling from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (of Commerce) testified before a House subcommittee last week.

FCC Broadband Workshops

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has launched an intensive, month-long series of staff workshops that will be used to build the record to develop its Notice of Inquiry into “A National Broadband Plan for Our Future.” Details about the workshops are available on the Web site specifically created to provide information about progress on the plan, www.broadband.gov.

In addition to providing contact information for the workshop leader, the Web site provides a brief synopsis of issues to be discussed in each workshop and also invites members of the public to suggest additional points that may be covered.

The workshop on Wednesday morning, Aug. 12, explored Wired Deployment and featured an impressive panel that addressed such issues as what steps the FCC might take to spur broadband deployment. There was extensive discussion over customer take rates and service combinations chosen in given locales, population densities in both rural areas and urban centers, and other challenges carriers face in making CapEx decisions in deploying fiber, coax cable, and electronics and in what mix. 

Increasing adoption rates emerged as a critical point, particularly among segments of the population that do not own computers, lack computer skills or that face literacy hurdles. This may discourage their accessing the Internet, which currently is dominated by word-based content.

Increasing speeds provoked a discussion of upload and download symmetries, which have not only changed over the past several years but also depend upon whether the end user served is a business or residence. This appears to present a shifting target by its very subjective nature, and it also sets the stage for additional, future limitations. 

The workshops are intended to produce an inclusive and exhaustive examination of critical points that will assist the Commission in creating the U.S. National Broadband Plan, which the FCC is required to complete, by statute, by Feb. 17, 2010 – within one year following the enactment of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, or “Stimulus Act.” 

The Stimulus Act also directed the U.S. Federal Government to provide U.S. $7.2 billion in grants, loans and loan guarantees for broadband infrastructure deployment and adoption plans by the U.S. Departments of Agriculture and Commerce. As the money is dispersed, comprehensive maps will be constructed to show where broadband facilities are in fact deployed.

The result of these wide-ranging and coordinated efforts will be revealed over time, but it is safe to say that they represent an ambitious effort to meet the challenges faced in leading the 21^st Century information-based economy, which will require continuing investments in technology, rapid innovation, and the integration of intelligence with infrastructure.

Broadband Details Released

Major developments over the past 10 days mark an important series of waypoints in the U.S. Administration’s ambitious, multi-faceted broadband strategy. 

These include (1) providing limited waivers of country-of-origin rules for certain categories of infrastructure equipment purchased with Stimulus Act funds (so-called “Buy America” provisions), (2) releasing the Notice of Funds Availability (“NOFA”) by the granting agencies (U.S. Departments of Agriculture and Commerce) announcing applications guidelines for $4 billion (out of $7.2 billion total) for broadband deployment and adoption proposals, (3) holding the first of a series of public workshops on the applications process provided by officials from the two departments, and (4) convening the first U.S. Federal Communications Commission meeting under new FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, at which agency officials unveiled details in the framework underpinning the FCC’s National Broadband Plan.

So let’s try to make some sense of all that information. First and foremost, the FCC’s plan contemplates a degree of public engagement and involvement that will be unprecedented, given the powers of information dispersal and sense of immediacy fostered by the Internet. To this extent, the FCC has launched a new website to facilitate the flow of information, and which is now available in beta form.

Second, and as a glance at the broadband plan framework will show, operation of both the “short-term” plan – dispersing the broadband Stimulus Act funds – and the “long-term” plan – creating a National Broadband Plan for the U.S. – are required by statute to be completed under tight, fixed deadlines. For example, the FCC is required to create its broadband plan within one year of enactment of the Stimulus Act, on Feb. 10, 2010, which does not provide a great deal of time for so complex an undertaking.

A third consideration involves the information flow, which comes in waves yet must be managed.  The level of coordination that is required for various government agencies to provide accurate and timely information to potential stimulus fund applicants and interested stakeholders is simply immense. A former colleague from Y2K days reminded me, at Tuesday’s applications workshop, how complicated the Y2K process was. By comparison, he said, the process of managing information on stimulus funds is “off the charts” more complicated. I couldn’t agree more.

All of which is to say that keeping up with this flow becomes its own full-time job, and fortunately there are good sources of information about the interplay of these new developments and policies in the making, such as the following portal: 

www.broadbandusa.gov

OneChip’s Value Proposition

In all-fiber access networks, the transceiver is central to both the cost and performance, and typically has offered low levels of integration. The transceiver converts electronic signals to photonics in the service provider network and then back again at or near the customer premise. Until now, transceivers typically have been assembled from multiple, discrete parts that must be put together by hand – this requires a steady pair of hands – which drives up their price and limits their performance.

So OneChip set out to fully integrate the transceiver and all of its active AND passive functions on, well, one Indium Phosphide-based chip. OneChip’s unique Photonic Integrated Circuit (PIC)-based transceivers can be assembled, tested and manufactured using automated processes and standard machines – in contrast to other optical component providers, which rely on conventional technology and manual assembly processes. OneChip’s breakthrough approach and technology translate into high performance, yield, reliability and quality – meaning fewer headaches, and lower costs for system providers and service providers, so they can meet growing business and consumer demands for high-bandwidth services such as voice, data, and video.

OneChip is following the logic that system providers and carriers have to scale their deployments of higher bandwidth solutions for businesses and consumers, which requires technical solutions to meet these challenges. The backdrop for this, of course, is that countries around the world increasingly view deployment and adoption of high-capacity broadband services as integral to their economic development and their citizens’ social well being.

Here is a short video showing more about OneChip’s unique approach and technology.

The All-Fiber Network

Government policy makers around the world may be grappling with the worst financial downturn in decades, but they also have an opportunity to prepare for a future that will be very much influenced by technology.  To compete in the 21^st century’s digital economy, citizens everywhere will have to be involved and informed in both an individual and collective sense. 

In a June 8, 2009 filing with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the Fiber-to-the-Home Council (the “Council”) told the U.S. telecommunications regulator that the agency has the rare opportunity to set broadband development goals that will expand “social and economic horizons and provide enormous benefits for all Americans.”

The filing continues: “the Council submits that all-fiber access networks are the ideal medium for such transmissions now and, because of the ease by which they can be upgraded, in the future.” The transmissions cited are those “speeds of at least 100 Megabits per second (Mbps) bidirectionally.”

To achieve this goal, the Council proposes the FCC adopt policies to provide “tax incentives for most areas that do not have access to 100 Mbps networks, grants for unserved and underserved areas, the removal of pubic barriers to deployment, and grants for education, training and awareness to stimulate demand.”

In addition to funding broadband grant programs in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, or “Stimulus Act,” Congress directed the FCC to develop a National Broadband Plan within one year of enactment. The FCC is seeking public comment on a wide array of policies and initiatives in connection with this requirement, which prompted the Council’s filing. 

The Council notes that a similar discussion over the widespread deployment of fiber technologies has been underway for some time in Australia. The Australian government proposes spending $31 billion USD to deploy all-fiber to 90% of the homes and businesses within 8 years, recognizing all-fiber’s unrivaled capacity for supporting new applications and services today and in the future.

Policy makers face the challenge of striking the right balance between private investment and government incentives to promote broadband deployment and adoption. Broadband networks around the world are in constant need of infrastructure upgrades, driven by rising business and consumer demands for bandwidth-hungry applications and services.