Wednesday, July 08, 2009
License to Lie
The Notice of Funds Availability (NOFA) [website here] for the $7.2 billion allocated for broadband by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act seems, on its face, to be a license to lie.
The NOFA defines broadband in terms of advertised speed (p. 18, lines 384-387):
The NOFA (pp. 22-23, lines 476-482) says
The answer to the obvious question is, No, there's no requirement in the NOFA that advertised speeds have any relationship to actual speeds -- or anything else.
Applicants for ARRA money are also encouraged to lie. The NOFA (p. 66, lines 1449-1451) says
We don't trust gasoline companies to certify that the gallon they pump into your tank is actually one gallon. Town officials do that. At a federal level, we have the National Bureau of Standards Institute of Standards & Technology (NIST) [thanks, Bob] to certify that a pint is a pound the world around. If the funds awarded under the ARRA depend so much on speed, why not put the NBS NIST to the task of developing metrics for actual performance, and couching qualification in those same terms.
The NOFA defines broadband in terms of advertised speed (p. 18, lines 384-387):
Broadband means providing two-way data transmission with advertised speeds of at least 768 kilobits per second (kbps) downstream and at least 200 kbps upstream to end users . . .The NOFA couches its definitions of "unserved" and "underserved" in terms of availability of the advertised-speed of so-called broadband.
The NOFA (pp. 22-23, lines 476-482) says
Specifically, a proposed funded service area may qualify as underserved for last mile projects if at least one of the following factors is met, though the presumption will be that more than one factor is present: 1. no more than 50 percent of the households in the proposed funded service area have access to facilities-based, terrestrial broadband service at greater than the minimum broadband transmission speed (set forth in the definition of broadband above); 2. no fixed or mobile broadband service provider advertises broadband transmission speeds of at least three megabits per second (“mbps”) downstream in the proposed funded service area; or 3. the rate of broadband subscribership for the proposed funded service area is 40 percent of households or less.So if you're an incumbent telco or cableco that doesn't want competition in your territory, you simply advertise that 3 megabit downloads and 200 kilobit uploads are available to all, and poof! all ARRA-funded competition disappears. No new equipment needed. Just run the ad.
The answer to the obvious question is, No, there's no requirement in the NOFA that advertised speeds have any relationship to actual speeds -- or anything else.
Applicants for ARRA money are also encouraged to lie. The NOFA (p. 66, lines 1449-1451) says
Applications will be scored for the extent to which the advertised speed for the network's highest offered speed tier exceeds the minimum speed requirement for broadband service (768 kbps downstream and 200 kbps upstream).In other words, if you are applying for ARRA funds to serve a place so godforsaken that no incumbent will even advertise that it already serves 50% of the population with 200 kilobit uploads, then it helps you win if you lie, i.e., if you advertise hyper-turbo-whizabits.
We don't trust gasoline companies to certify that the gallon they pump into your tank is actually one gallon. Town officials do that. At a federal level, we have the National Bureau of Standards Institute of Standards & Technology (NIST) [thanks, Bob] to certify that a pint is a pound the world around. If the funds awarded under the ARRA depend so much on speed, why not put the NBS NIST to the task of developing metrics for actual performance, and couching qualification in those same terms.
Technorati Tags: ARRA, ARRA Stimulus Act, Broadband, Cableco, GreatDepression2.0, Stupidity, Telco, USLosingLead
Comments:
Well, for starters, I'd consider referring to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), which is the current name for what used to be the National Bureau of Standards (NBS). Yeah, it's a nit, but given that the change happened, oh, 1988 (eons ago in Internet time), it really makes you look out of touch.
I think the "advertised" requirement depends on other laws -- in particular, the FTC's Truth In Advertising regs.
http://www.business.gov/business-law/advertising-law/truth-in-advertising/
http://www.business.gov/business-law/advertising-law/truth-in-advertising/
Our wireless ISP can give a customer pretty much any amount of unfiltered bandwidth he or she pays for. Our standard equipment goes up to 54 Mbps, and we can do more with special gear.
The catch is that backbone bandwidth in our area costs $100 per Mbps per month, wholesale. So while we can easily meet the ARRA requirements, the fact that the government hasn't acted to stop price gouging on "special" (AKA wholesale) access means that most customers won't take us up on it.
Instead, the majority will ask for more economical plans which allow us to charge lower prices for higher peak data rates, via oversale, limitations on duty cycle, etc. The advertised data rates on these services are higher, because by convention they are the burst rates.
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The catch is that backbone bandwidth in our area costs $100 per Mbps per month, wholesale. So while we can easily meet the ARRA requirements, the fact that the government hasn't acted to stop price gouging on "special" (AKA wholesale) access means that most customers won't take us up on it.
Instead, the majority will ask for more economical plans which allow us to charge lower prices for higher peak data rates, via oversale, limitations on duty cycle, etc. The advertised data rates on these services are higher, because by convention they are the burst rates.
# posted by 
: 7/09/2009 10:34 PM
: 7/09/2009 10:34 PM
