Douglas Meredith of JSI outlines eight concerns he has with the National Broadband Plan in this video interview filmed at the OPASTCO 2010 Conference. Citing FTTH Council figures, he suggests that the cost figures for getting to the “unserved” may not be as big investment as indicated in the plan. He recommends that the FCC look at the programs that have been successful in building telecom in rural areas and use those as a model for the unserved areas, while not forgetting that the existing high cost areas will continue to need support.
One outcome of the FCC's National Broadband Plan has been the uniting of the national associations in Washington that represent independent telcos. In this brief interview with Derrick Owens, Director of Government Affairs for the Western Telecom Alliance, discusses the importance of having a unified front as far as representing the viewpoints of the carriers that server rural America. Owens was on an insightful panel that discussed the FCC’s National Broadband Plan. Unfortunately, Chairman Julius Genachowski did not stay to listen to that panel.
The FCC's announcement last week of the Office of Native Affairs and Policy points to the increasing importance of ensuring that broadband networks are available to native homelands. In this video interview from the OPASTCO 2010 Summer Convention, Al Pedersen discusses fiber network that Sandwich Isles Communications created to serve the Hawaiian Home Lands. In this interview, he discusses some of the construction challenges Sandwich Isles Communcations faced, such as boring through lava, as well as unique permitting requirements and costs imposed by their distance from the mainland. Their creation of an undersea/land fiber optic network, which Pedersen describes as open access, stands to benefit all Hawaiians.
The world of voice, video, data, and overall communications has changed to a world of applications over IP. OPASTCO is keeping with the times and representing their members by transitioning to an IP Association. Watch this video to learn more.
Video made possible by OmniTel Communications, produced by ViodiTV, editing Roger Bindl, photos from NASA.org, and Creative Commons Music "I Dunno" By Grapes at ccMixter.org
A 25:1 ratio is what John Rose, president of OPASTCO, points out is the difference between what the National Broadband Plan calls for between urban and rural areas. The objective for 2020 is to have at least 100 million homes at 100 Mb/s. Rose points out that the other 15 to 30 million rural homes would have a different broadband standard of 4 Mb/s. Rose is concerned that this definition of broadband could relegate rural areas to the equivalent of a 60 Kb/s circuit in today’s terms.
The FCC did point out, in panels at the OPASTCO 2010 Summer Convention, that the four Mb/s goal is today’s number, it represents throughput and not peak and that this goal will change over time. The question is why didn’t the FCC explicitly state the objective for rural broadband for the year 2020 in the Natonal Broadband Report?
