10's of millions of Americans have only second rate Internet because our regulators have no courage. The US Broadband Plan found 44/100ths of 1% have truly brutal costs, $10,000 or much more per home. Everyone assumed the last 1% would be served by satellite, although we couldn't say that for political reasons. But all the others poorly served are a failure of the politicians. In the US, that's 5-10 million homes who have no decent offering. Almost half the country has at most one decent choice, the cableco.  

The situation is the same or worse in countries like Germany, where DT offers only lousy service to about 20%. In Germany and the US, the most important reason for the lack of service is the possibility of getting government money, not high costs. In 2008, it became clear the government would pay for rural deployments in the US. Promptly, the telcos essentially cancelled their previous plans to cover most of the poorly and unserved homes. They weren't stupid; if the government was going to pay for it, why spend the money? Result: the prospect of subsidies actually resulted in fewer unserved connected. Really.

Shame on the Regulators

By Doug Dawson

It's clear that even before the turn of this century that the big telcos largely walked away from maintaining and improving residential service. The evidence for this is the huge numbers of neighborhoods that are stuck with older copper technologies that haven't been upgraded. The telcos made huge profits over the decades in these neighborhoods and ideally should not have been allowed to walk away from their customers In the Cities. Many neighborhoods in urban areas still have first or second-generation DSL over copper with fastest speeds of 3 Mbps or 6 Mbps. That technology had a shelf-life of perhaps seven years and is now at least fifteen years old.

Telco CEOs worldwide are discovering something they should have learned in kindergarten: Share everything.  One network is cheaper than two. Two are cheaper than the 4-7 usually needed for competition to work its magic. In China, the government has directed the telcos to work together to reduce the cost of 5G. When the Minister speaks, the telcos listen.

This is a worldwide trend. Vodafone is cooperating with Telecom Italia and UK's Telefonica O2. In Rwanda, the government has only allowed a single 4G network, wholesale only. The result: one of the poorest countries in the world better 4G coverage than many European nations.  

China Unicom CEO Wang Xiaochu Wang Xiaochu hopes for a deal with the new 4th operator, China Broadcast. He's also talking to China Mobile & Telecom.

• Strive for network “co-build co-share" & synergy to speed up 5G deployment

• "Co-build co-share" could deliver material savings in CAPEX, tower usage fee, network maintenance expense & power charge

• Customer could experience seamless service upgrade without replacing SIM & mobile number for 5G service

• Resources sharing could allow customers to enjoy compelling experience & raise subscriber quality 

Verizon and T-Mobile believe 5G speeds are not necessary in many of the districts in which poorer people live. The pink areas in the Manhattan map at left are where T-Mobile is offering its 5G. The darker, more purple areas, are not served with T-Mobile's generally excellent 5G. The upper part of Manhattan, mostly purple, includes Harlem and the mostly Latino Washington Heights. The Brooklyn area on the lower right also shows many areas not covered. (Much but not all of the pink are fairly commercial or wealthy areas. I do not think T-Mobile specifically intended to exclude people of colour, but that seems to be the practical effect.

Verizon Consumer CEO Ronan Dunne is blunt. More than half of Verizon customers will get 4G speeds, 70% to 90% slower than the other half getting the gigabit 5G.

So we've taken a very clear view that we want to have both a coverage strategy and a capability strategy. And a very large majority of the volume of data that we carry on our networks goes to large, dense urban environments. So from a population point of view, it'll be significantly less than half of the customers. But from a data traffic point of view, it's significantly more than half. So when it comes to the ability to use 5G as a significant capacity enhancement, there's more of an opportunity to leverage that in the urban areas. Secondly, from a use cases point of view, while we can deploy, and we will deploy a 5G nationwide offering, the lower down the spectrum tiers you go, the more that will approximate to a good 4G service. ...

Millimetre wave gives you between 1- and 2-gig download speeds. The mid-bands and lowers are giving you in the low hundreds. So it's already very clear, the distinction between the 2." 

Guess who will get the slow stuff.

Outside of China, very few governments would expect a saving in spectrum costs would mostly go to investment. Corporations have other priorities, including advertising and executive salaries. Stockholders come above everything at most companies.

Rarely would even 1/3rd of the saving go to capital spending. The U.S. under Trump had a massive tax cut, worth literally billions to Verizon and AT&T. Verizon actually cut investment. AT&T's increase in capex was far lower than the tax saving. Investment levels in telecom are primarily based on technical improvements and competitive need. Only a modest amount of an increased profit will go to capital spending. 

Thomas Noren, Ericsson's respected chief of 5G, should not have said, "Operators need to be allocated spectrum on friendly terms. It needs to be allocated, not for the benefit of the taxman, but for the benefit of building out and supporting the network," unless he had a plan to make sure it would be spent on "building out and supporting the network." Noren can be expected to echo the ideas of customers spending billions with Ericsson. 

"It's a time of worry, a time of fear," Tim Berners-Lee said on 10 Dec. Vint Cerf chimed in with, "We may be building a fragile, brittle future ...What happens when we fail?" I believe that on balance the Internet is a good thing; ten years ago, I never imagined that would be questioned. Now, TIMBL is less sure. "We've got to get to where the internet is a net benefit to humanity."

Tim and Vint convened a remarkable Our People-Centered Digital Future Event. At the event, David Bray and Hu-manity introduced a "Data-Focused Magna Carta." 

We wish to speak directly to all organizations both public and private to ensure they agree with the statements expressed in this Data-Focused Magna Carta. Given everyone has the right to legally own their inherent human data as property and we need organizations to be good data stewards. We seek to obtain the certainty that our personal data is respected and not used without our choice, consent and authorization. Everyone has the right based upon the following promises:

(1) Data of an individual will only be used if that person gives explicit permission for the intended purpose.

In 1995, 77-year-old Nelson Mandela electrified ITU Geneva predicting, "in the 21st century, the capacity to communicate will almost certainly be a key human right. ... Justice and equity demand that we find ways of overcoming the division between the information rich and the information poor. If more than half the world is denied access to the means of communication, the people of developing countries will not be fully part of the modern world." Journalist and former rocket scientist Lee Goldberg tells me he will never forget that day. 

ITU Secretary-General Houlin Zhao reminded ITU Telecom World 2018 in Durban that Mandela's dream has not been fulfilled. Four or five billion people cannot afford the Internet. The technology is ready; Reliance Jio is making a profit selling gigabytes of 4G to 250 million Indians for about US$4.

One easy way to make a difference is to join me on ITU Focus Group 2030, working towards 6G. Some of the work is about carrying holograms and sub-millisecond latency. There also is a proposal to continue to enhance mobile broadband by making sure standards include ways to deliver affordable broadband to everyone. Sign up in minutes at http://bit.ly/6Gfuture, lower right corner. Email me for help daveb@dslprime.com. 

Click through for Mandela's words. They remain crucial 23 years later

Pai, O'Reilly, and the telco lobbyists proclaim the new FCC rules will result in far more 5G small cells deployed. They are wrong, as any conscientious reporter could have discovered. The new rules by some estimates will move US$2 billion from the cities to the telco bottom lines. (I think that's a high estimate but haven't looked closely.)

Some cities have ridiculous rules that should be changed, but the industry has long proven they can almost always be dealt with. The primary result will be lower charges to the telcos. Most of the savings will go to shareholders rather than increased investment, per Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg.

I knew the promised construction boom was hogwash because the companies were telling Wall Street they would keep capital spending roughly flat. They won't be spending much on more small cells. This was confirmed by CEO Jay Brown of Crown Castle, with the largest deployment of small cells in the U.S. 

I wouldn't look at that and assume that we're going to see a material change in our 18 to 24 month deployment cycle. In fact, we don't believe that will result.

Brown has 30,000 small cell sites deployed and 30,000 more contracted for. They are designed to serve two or three customers, but he's having a hard time finding more than one in many places. Verizon and the other telcos have been cutting drastically the number of small cells they will need. 

Ericsson is negotiating how much to pay for corruption while Vestberg was CFO (2007-2009) and CEO (2010-2016) of the Swedish company.  The company said the fines were likely "material," which for a US$24 billion (sales) company sounds like billions. 50 people have been fired. 

Vestberg so far is doing an excellent job at Verizon so the Board will probably not fire him. The payoffs while he was at Ericsson made international news in 2015, so the Verizon board knew this was coming when they hired him. The stock market also is ignoring the news of the likely fine; Ericsson is up 5% today.

It is highly unlikely that Vestberg, a highly involved manager, didn't know what was going on.