Space X Gets $886 Million From FCC To Put Very Small Dent In U.S. Broadband Gaps

from the baby-steps dept

For a country that likes to talk about "being number one" a lot, that's sure not reflected in the United States' broadband networks, or the broadband maps we use to determine which areas lack adequate broadband or competition (resulting in high prices and poor service). While the U.S. government doesn't genuinely know who has broadband and who doesn't (in part thanks to telecom lobbyists who have fought more accurate mapping to obfuscate monopolization) the best estimates we do have aren't pretty.

An estimated 42 million Americans (double FCC claims) still don't have any broadband whatsoever, despite 30 years of industry subsidization. Another 83 million Americans live under a broadband monopoly, usually Comcast. Tens of millions more Americans live under a duopoly where their only choice is again either Comcast, or some regional phone company that can't be bothered to upgrade its aging DSL lines because it's not profitable enough, quickly enough for Wall Street's liking.

Enter Space X's Starlink, which is promising to cover the night sky in a constellation of low orbit satellites capable of delivering fairly decent broadband, pretty much anywhere. Early beta impressions have been promising, delivering speeds upwards of 100 Mbps for $100 per month (plus a $500 up front hardware fee). It's very promising tech, if you ignore the night sky pollution the technology creates (which Musk promised wouldn't occur) that's hampering scientists and researchers.

It's promising enough that the FCC this week doled out $886 million in subsidies from the agency's Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF), to deliver broadband to 642,925 rural homes and businesses in 35 states. It's part of a total $9.2 billion in new funding being thrown at an industry that doesn't have a particularly good track record on actually spending this kind of money responsibly. It's not entirely clear why Musk's wealthy business empire needed the extra taxpayer help, or what Starlink exactly intends to do with the money (since it didn't want to tell the press):

"FCC funding can be used in different ways depending on the type of broadband service. Cable companies like Charter and other wireline providers generally use the money to expand their networks into new areas that don't already have broadband. But with Starlink, SpaceX could theoretically provide service to all of rural America once it has launched enough satellites, even without FCC funding.

One possibility is that SpaceX could use the FCC money to lower prices in the 642,925 funded locations, but the FCC announcement didn't say whether that's what SpaceX will do. We asked SpaceX and the FCC for more details and will update this article if we get any answers."

Consumer groups have looked at the Starlink bid more closely and have found that Musk's company exploited a very broken FCC bidding system to obtain money for projects in many urban, affluent areas that don't actually make a lot of sense for a fund designed to help shore up access to low-income and rural communities:

"By bidding for subsidies assigned to dense urban areas, Musk's firm and others were able to get potentially hundreds of millions in subsidies meant for people and businesses in rural areas that would never see broadband deployment without the government's help."

Again, a company run by one of the wealthiest men on the planet exploited a broken FCC system to get taxpayer/ratepayer money that could have gone to actual areas in need. Instead, the company got nearly a billion by promising to service a handful of properties near airports and luxury golf courses it never intended to target anyway. Kind of ironic for a guy who has recently been whining about moving to Texas for (at least in part) unfair taxation reasons.

To be clear, Starlink will be damn near revolutionary for Americans stuck without any service at all. It will also be a huge step up for users stuck on older, expensive, slow, and capped traditional satellite systems. But those expecting Starlink to be a nationwide game changer will likely be disappointed. The $600 first month cost is too steep for the countless Americans who don't have broadband because it's too heavily monopolized and therefore expensive. Musk himself has also made it clear the service simply won't have the capacity to offer service in parts of the U.S. with any significant population density.

In other words: it's not going to seriously challenge the real reason U.S. broadband is so insufferably mediocre and expensive: the regional monopolies enjoyed by telecom giants, and the ocean of folks they pay to keep it that way.

While an improvement over traditional satellite, Starlink also isn't a serious replacement for fiber. It's still not clear what kind of odd, post-net neutrality network management and throttling practices the company will engage in once its networks are fully loaded. If America could be bothered to actually do a serious audit of the state and federal subsidies given the telecom industry over the last 30 years, you'd find taxpayers likely already paid for fiber to every home in America several times over. Instead, those billions went toward a rotating selection of routinely half completed networks and a whole lot of fraud.

That's not to say subsidization doesn't have its role and very clear benefits in shoring up access when done right. But as we keep pointing out, more subsidies can't fix regulatory capture. They can't fix a Congress in bed with telecom lobbyists. They can't fix U.S. broadband policy that has, for twenty years now, basically been dictated by the biggest and most powerful sector monopolies. So while it's absolutely good that Starlink is taking steps to shore up access, those expecting a total sector revolution at the hands of Elon Musk probably shouldn't hold their breath.

Filed Under: broadband, competition, fcc, rdof, rural digital opportunity fund, satellite
Companies: spacex, starlink

Somehow, 5G Paranoia Is Only Getting Dumber

from the protect-me-from-myself dept

We've made it repeatedly clear that 5G now exists in some kind of alternate reality, untethered from this complicated mortal plane. One one side, you've got telecom giants, hardware vendors, and some politicians busy pretending that 5G is a revolutionary game changer, something you just sprinkle around to create near Utopian smart cities, smart vehicles, and miracle cancer cures. On the other side, you've got an international cabal of conspiracy theorists with a head full of pudding, who think 5G gives them COVID or is a diabolical deep state, mind-surveillance tool.

Of course 5G is neither of those things. It's a pretty modest evolution for existing wireless standards. One that's technically less dangerous than existing cellular networks, according to actual experts. And while it will offer faster speeds eventually, U.S. implementation of 5G is spotty and slow (in some cases slower than 4G), resulting in some fairly underwhelming first impressions. It's worth neither the hype nor the fear expended on it so far.

That's not stopping the 5G conspiracy theorists. Earlier this year, folks began burning down 5G cell towers and even hiding razor blades on utility polls in the mistaken belief that 5G spreads COVID, controls minds, or is part of a new diabolical surveillance effort by the "deep state." (If you think any of these claims are true, your head has been filled with gibberish by charlatans and you need a time out).

More recently, scammers selling micro faraday cages for your router have popped up to target the gullible, promising to block the harmful impact of 5G. The products themselves are hysterical in their innate stupidity, actively blocking all wireless signals emitting from wireless routers, at prices that make no coherent sense:

Judging from the overwhelmingly positive Amazon reviews, folks really don't seem to understand they'd be better off just, you know, not buying a wireless router and settling for a traditional (and much cheaper) fixed line router:

Again, 5G exists in this really kind of amazing alternative reality where it's either some amazing technological revolution that's going to change everything, or it's part of some diabolical plot to kill or monitor people who watch too much YouTube. The reality, that 5G is a semi-important but kind of dull evolution of existing technology, rarely makes an appearance.

Filed Under: 5g, conspiracies

Ajit Pai's FCC Does Something Good, Frees Wireless Spectrum The Auto Industry Had Done Little With

from the stopped-clocks,-twice-a-day dept

While we've had no shortage of criticism for Ajit Pai's facts-optional, relentless ass kissing of entrenched telecom monopolies, or his wholesale demolition of U.S. consumer protection, his agency has done a good job bringing more wireless spectrum to market. Doing so wasn't particularly controversial, since everybody, consumers to big carriers alike, benefit from having access to more spectrum -- especially valuable middleband spectrum of great use in 5G deployments. Still, it's complicated and warrants kudos in an era when government often can't tie its own shoes correctly.

Last week, the FCC quietly voted unanimously to add 45MHz of spectrum to Wi-Fi to public access, taking it away from an auto industry public safety initiative that failed to materialize over the last 20 years. Spectrum in the 5.850GHz to 5.925GHz range for several decades had been set aside for something called Dedicated Short Range Communications (DSRC), a vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communications system that was supposed to warn drivers of traffic dangers. But decades in, 99.9943% of cars still don't have the technology, and many experts had argued this spectrum was better used elsewhere.

Because this spectrum aids his industry BFFs, Pai was keen on moving forward in ensuring this spectrum could be put to better use. Both consumer groups and telecom policy and lobbying groups agreed with the decision, which hasn't happened all that often in the last four years. Public Knowledge counsel Harold Feld, who probably knows more about U.S. spectrum policy than anybody alive, had this to say of the move:

"The addition of 45 MHz of unlicensed spectrum will create a WiFi channel capable of supporting WiFi 6. This will enable wireless providers to dramatically increase the speed and reliability of rural broadband. It will dramatically increase the power of public hotspots and mobile hotspots on which many low-income families rely for access to school and work during the pandemic. Because this relies on already existing technology, the expansion and change to WiFi 6 can happen relatively quickly through software upgrades once the rules become effective."

DSRC services now have to vacate the lower 45MHz within one year. The FCC also set aside around 30MHz for a newer vehicle safety technology dubbed Cellular Vehicle-to-Everything (C-V2X), which the FCC claims will serve the same function using less overall precious spectrum.

The decision wasn't entirely without controversy. The Department of Transit wasn't thrilled, arguing that DSRC tech still could have been useful, that 30 MHz wasn't enough for C-V2X to work ("there is sufficient evidence to demonstrate that 30 MHz will suffice to support a safety-driven ecosystem like the one in which DOT and other stakeholders have invested."). The auto industry (which had been accused of "spectrum squatting") understandably opposed the ruling via its various policy organizations. Other critics like Senator Maria Cantwell argued the FCC had been told to pause all controversial decisions during the transition, which is custom.

Still, you'd be hard pressed to find an issue where this FCC and consumer groups align, so progress is progress, even if not everybody's happy with the outcome. Of course, this doesn't make up for Pai's long history of demolishing U.S. consumer protection on behalf of telecom monopolies in fits of lies and rank hypocrisy, but it's still nice to see (most) folks agree on one of his last major decisions as agency boss.

Filed Under: ajit pai, auto industry, dsrc, fcc, mobile, spectrum, wifi

Colorado Voters Continue To Peck Away At State Law Restricting Community Broadband

from the build-it-and-they-will-come dept

We've long mentioned how incumbent ISPs like AT&T and Comcast have spent millions of dollars quite literally buying shitty, protectionist laws in around twenty states that either ban or heavily hamstring towns and cities from building their own broadband networks. In some cases these laws ban municipalities from even engaging in public/private partnerships. It's a scenario where ISPs get to have their cake and eat it too; they often refuse to upgrade their networks in under-served areas (particularly true among telcos offering DSL), but also get to write shitty laws preventing these under-served towns from doing anything about it.

This dance of dysfunction has been particularly interesting in Colorado, however. While lobbyists for Comcast and CenturyLink managed to convince state leaders to pass such a law (SB 152) in 2005, the legislation contains a provision that lets individual Colorado towns and cities ignore the measure with a simple referendum. With frustration mounting over sub-standard broadband and awful customer service, more than 100 towns and cities have done so thus far. And that was before a pandemic highlighted the urgent importance of broadband for public safety.

The trend continued this month, when the vast majority of Colorado voters (82%) voted to opt out of the state law restricting community broadband. According to the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, several other communities voted along the same lines, and more than 140 Colorado communities have done the same in the fifteen years since the Colorado law was passed:

"Two other Colorado communities – Berthoud and Englewood – also voted in favor of similar ballot questions, asking voters if they want to opt out of SB 152. In Berthoud, 77.3% of voters cast ballots in support of the question. In Englewood, the opt-out question passed with 79.4% of voters in favor, which will allow the city to provide Wi-Fi service in city facilities.

In the 15 years since SB 152 was passed 140 Colorado communities have opted out with resultant networks like Longmont’s NextLight as an example of a municipal Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) success story."

While incumbent ISPs (and the regulators and lawmakers paid to love them) routinely claim community broadband is some kind of inevitable taxpayer boondoggle or nefarious affront to free speech, that's simply never been true. Such efforts are an organic response to market failure and the lack of competition in countless markets across the United States. And data has repeatedly indicated that such projects tend to offer faster speeds and better customer service at lower, more transparent prices than incumbent cable and phone giants.

Such networks aren't some kind of magic panacea, but they can often drive apathetic monopolies toward actually giving a damn, resulting in upgrades that wouldn't materialize otherwise. And despite many nonsensical political narratives about community broadband being "socialism run amok," such networks have broad bipartisan public support, and are most frequently built in Conservative areas.

Despite a lot of whining among entrenched incumbents and their army of policy voices, there's a pretty easy way to thwart such projects: start offering better, faster, cheaper broadband service. But because that's not profitable enough, quickly enough for Wall Street, the sector instead spends its time buying lawmakers and anti-competitive laws. In Colorado's case, Centurylink and other backers of SB 152 likely rue the day they included an opt-out clause.

Filed Under: broadband, colorado, competition, municipal broadband

There Is No 'Race To 5G.' And The U.S. Wouldn't Be Winning Even If There Was

from the hype-over-substance dept

Data continues to indicate that despite ridiculous oodles of hype, U.S. 5G networks aren't much to write home about. According to a recent study by OpenSignal, the U.S. ranked dead last in terms of 5G speeds in a 14-country comparison, largely due to our failure to make mid-band spectrum available for public use. Other reports have repeatedly shown that many initial 5G networks are actually slower than existing 4G networks. Not a great look given the months of DC rhetoric about how the U.S. is in an urgent "race to 5G." In reality, it's less of a race and more of a drunken stumble.

While carriers (usually falsely) advertise massive 5G coverage and reality bending improvements at the hands of 5G, consumers' first impression continues to be of the underwhelming variety:

"Millions of people are experiencing 5G for the first time this month. And I imagine they're asking: Is that all there is? 5G hit a new level of success in the US in October with the launch of the first 5G iPhones and Verizon's "nationwide" 5G. But the vast majority of Americans are currently getting a 4G-like, slow 5G experience that doesn't reflect the lofty promises we've been hearing for the past few years."

With smartphone innovation and sales plateauing, wireless carriers and handset vendors alike have been eager to portray 5G as less of a modest evolution and more of a revolution. Claims of 5G all but curing cancer have been common, as have claims that the technology will quickly usher forth the smart cars and smarter cities of tomorrow. 5G hype has also been used to spur network hardware sales, and has also proven useful to goose national security worries by folks eager to heighten tensions with China and boost subsidization of entrenched telecom giants.

But again, if it's a race, the U.S. sure as hell isn't winning it:

And this is just overall speed we're talking about. News outlets, network data nerds, and lawmakers alike routinely fail to discuss price. U.S. consumers already pay some of the highest prices in the developed world for mobile data, a trend that shows no sign of slowing down with 5G. Especially given our recent decisions to all but lobotomize FCC regulators, eliminate net neutrality (which helped control efforts to further nickel and dime U.S. users), and our utter obsession with rubber stamping competition-killing sector consolidation. The race to lower prices (the top request in most consumer surveys) is utterly nonexistent.

There really is no race to 5G. It's a giant pile of lobbyist nonsense. Users in China aren't impacted by whether users in Australia or the UK have access to marginally faster networks. And our broadband coverage maps here in the States are so terrible (often by design), the idea that the U.S. could even accurately measure who's "winning" the deployment race is laughable in and of itself.

5G absolutely will ultimately deliver better speeds, lower latency, and more reliable networks over the next five years. But again, it's more of a slow, steady evolution than some type of magical, game-changing revolution. But modest evolution doesn't sell smartphones and network hardware, so here we are.

Filed Under: 5g, race to 5g

The Trump Swamp Fights Itself Over Multi-Billion Dollar No-Bid Spectrum Grab

from the ouroboros-of-corruption dept

What does it look like when Trump's swamp devours itself? Look no closer than a battle between Peter Thiel backed Rivada Networks and incumbent telecom giants AT&T and Verizon.

Last week, anonymous "senior administration officials" told CNN that Rivada was lining up to grab potentially tens of billions in extremely valuable middle band spectrum via a no bid contract. The sources told the outlet that Rivada, which is financially and politically backed by Trump/GOP allies like Karl Rove, Newt Gingrich, and Thiel, is pushing to bypass the normal FCC approval process to gain access to a massive windfall:

"informed sources tell CNN that the White House is unquestionably pressuring the Pentagon to approve what would likely be, in the words of one senior administration official, "the biggest handoff of economic power to a single entity in history," and to do so without full examination of the impact on national security and without a competitive bidding process."

To be clear, Rivada's idea isn't necessarily bad. The company wants to share middle-band spectrum currently held by the Department of Defense to offer a wholesale 5G network. Rivada lost a bid to build the country's first emergency wireless network to AT&T, then sued (and lost). It has, quite correctly, been pointing out in recent years that the existing spectrum auction process tends to favor giants like AT&T and Verizon, something CEO Declan Ganley talked about again last week in a post at Morning Consult:

"The wireless industry is dominated by three big players. They buy up almost all the spectrum, they build networks where it suits them and don’t where it doesn’t. The FCC’s spectrum-auction process, which began as a great way to discover the highest and best use of a scarce resource, has been captured by the big carriers, and now serves merely to divide the spoils among the current winners. New entry into wireless via FCC auction is all but impossible."

While this is sometimes correct (smaller players still do occasionally nab decent swaths of spectrum at auction), Rivada's decision to use guys like Karl Rove to try and hotwire Trump corruption to directly obtain a massive spectrum handout is possibly worse than the corruption its complaining about. So on one side you've got Karl Rove, Peter Thiel, and Newt Gingrich, and on the other you've got telecom operators like AT&T and Verizon, and the lawmakers paid to love them. Companies that are no stranger to Trump handouts and are immensely politically powerful because they're effectively bone grafted to our intelligence apparatus.

To scuttle Rivada's chances, it appears that AT&T and Verizon lobbyists have been making the rounds among gullible and patriotic natsec lawmakers, trying to claim that Rivada's DOD spectrum sharing plan is some type of some attempt to "nationalize" the nation's 5G networks (damn socialists!). While some dusty corners of the Trump administration simply discussed the idea of a nationalized 5G network, it was never likely here in the U.S. And Rivada has argued (probably correctly) the term has been used by incumbent lobbyists to undermine the company's efforts in DC and in the press:

"One challenge Rivada has faced in getting its story out is that the influence of big-money lobbyists is just the water in which Washingtonians swim. When 19 senators sign a letter against nationalization — a measure opposed by multibillion-dollar multinationals — in a matter of hours, and introduce legislation opposing it within days, that’s business as usual. No one can see the strings. But a story about a entrepreneurial company with a big idea is somehow easy to recast as something nefarious, given enough PR pros and money."

The problem, again, is it's hard to portray yourself as the good guy in this equation when Peter Thiel, Karl Rove and Newt Gingrich are your primary pitchman in a quest to bypass existing processes -- and an open competitive bidding process (that while certainly skewed to favor deeper pockets, does include smaller competitors). It's just one of many examples of the Trump swamp fighting itself, despite nobody in the equation genuinely holding the high moral ground.

Filed Under: 5g, donald trump, fcc, karl rove newt gingrich, lobbyists, nationalizing 5g, no-bid contract, peter thiel, spectrum
Companies: at&t, rivada networks, verizon

We're Already Hyping 6G When 5G Hasn't Even Finished Disappointing Us Yet

from the this-one-goes-to-11 dept

It was the technology that was supposed to change the world. According to carriers, not only was fifth-generation wireless (5G) supposed to bring about the "fourth industrial revolution," it was supposed to revolutionize everything from smart cities to cancer treatment. According to conspiracy theorists and internet imbeciles, 5G is responsible for everything from COVID-19 to your migraines.

Unfortunately for both sets of folks, data continues to indicate that 5G is nowhere near that interesting.

A number of recent studies have already shown that U.S. 5G is notably slower than most overseas deployments (thanks in part to government's failure to make more mid-band spectrum available for public use). Several other studies have shown that initial deployments in many cases are actually slower than existing 4G networks. That's before you get to the fact that U.S. consumers already pay more for wireless than a long list of developed nations, something likely to get worse in the wake of mindless industry consolidation.

While 5G is important, and will improve over time, it's pretty clear that the technology is more of a modest evolution than a revolution, and 5G hype overkill (largely driven by a desperate desire to rekindle lagging smartphone sales) is a far cry from reality.

That's not stopping us from already hyping 6G, though. As carriers begin the fairly mundane process of building the standards framework for the next next-generation standard, the familiar promises of near-magical capabilities are already starting to emerge. Just ask Mazin Gilbert, AT&T's VP of network analytics and automation, who appears to have learned absolutely nothing the last few years, and is already equating 6G to The Matrix:

"Gilbert added that 6G might even support science fiction-type services, specifically calling out the 1999 movie "The Matrix," where the character Trinity learned how to fly a helicopter in minutes. "This is what we see our lives going to be like," he said.

It's worth noting that several of these kinds of use cases have long been touted for 5G, and now appear to be migrating into the 6G discussion as well."

At the same standards meeting, Karri Kuoppamaki, VP of technology development and strategy for T-Mobile US, at least tried to temper enthusiasm, urging his industry colleagues to avoid over-hyping 6G in the same way 5G was:

Kuoppamaki made one clear plea to the thousands of registrants to the event: "It's OK to get excited about 6G, but we have to get excited the right way," he said, warning that the industry should not fall victim to the "shiny objects syndrome." On 6G, "we should focus on getting it right," he said, rather than rushing a new technology to market that doesn't necessarily provide any clear benefits or new or improved use cases.

What carriers like AT&T didn't quite seem to realize, is that while they thought they were just sparking a new wave of handset upgrades by over-hyping 5G, misrepresenting what the standard can do and where it's available (remember, AT&T still uses fake phone icons to pretend 4G is 5G), only creates unrealistic expectations for consumers. As a result, the end user winds up associating what really are useful (if sometimes modest) improvements and standards with bluster and bullshit, the exact opposite of what they were going for.

Filed Under: 5g, 6g, hype, overhype, wireless
Companies: at&t