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October 13, 2005
Dave Burstein on post-Katrina communications, universal service, net freedom and user control of video on the net (the other VON):
I've always been a big fan of Dave Burstein. It reassures me when we are on the same page on an issue. I also find it thought-provoking even when we might diverge. He always finds an interesting angle. I have not spent too much time in my blog focusing on universal service issues and implications. Dave has. Here is some of Dave's coverage post Katrina, in which he considers universal service issues, the role of wireless and the role of IP:
From DSL Prime:
After Katrina:
"The City of New Orleans, starting this weekend, will start to breathe
again," is great to hear from their mayor, but FCC Commissioner Adelstein is
being more realistic. “It was devastation like nothing I have ever seen
before, and hope never to see again. The horrifying images we have seen in
the media over the past couple of weeks were no preparation. Seeing the
destruction and personal loss up close, it is worse than I could have ever
imagined.” (emphasis added)
Rebuilding New Orleans deserves the best thinking in our industry,
supporting Bill Smith and others in building the best network. Some
decisions are easy. If you're ripping up the streets anyway, “Just go ahead
and install fiber" and IP, AT&T's Hossein Eslambolchi tells Leslie Cauley at
USA Today. Wireless towers need bigger batteries. Government radios should
be able to talk on the same frequency. If Cannes and Kyoto are getting 100
megabit, so should New Orleans.
The most horrifying part of the Katrina saga was the deaths because no
one thought to send buses to evacuate the people who didn't have cars. There
have been times in my life I didn't have bus fare either. Thousands of lives
were saved by wired and wireless phones. Some lives, possibly many, were
lost because others couldn't afford a phone. That tells us we need to find a
way to get inexpensive phones to nearly everyone. Instead, BellSouth is
beginning a campaign to raise phone rates, Jessica Zufolo reports. Duane
Ackerman's preacher should remind him of the obligation of Christians to the
poor.
One key way the FCC chairman can save lives is by making sure basic
phone service remains affordable. Only political indifference prevents a
basic cellphone from being available for $10 a month or so, the price in
many countries. BellSouth CFO Ron Dykes has explained wireless networks are
expensive to build but have a very low marginal cost, allowing users to be
added at little cost. The wired network is similar, with the marginal
subscribers at basic rate adding relatively little to the network cost. That
should include a basic DSL service as well - BT is proving that IP voice and
data are cheaper to operate than the traditional network can handle just
data.
After Katrina, two facts stand out and call for forceful action. I'll be
leading a VON session with a few good ideas After Katrina Wednesday at 4:30
- Working telephones save lives - if people can afford to have them.
The high priority policy implication is to keep basic rates low and no one
cut off from emergency services. Verizon and Sprint this week began a 60%
rise in the cost of basic telephony in hurricane-prone Florida, and the FCC
did nothing. Nada. The AT&T/SBC and Verizon/MCI deals are likely to be
approved without eliminating the surcharge they've added to every phone even
if the user makes virtually no long distance calls.
- Redundancy creates reliability. Only a Vonage VOIP line connected
the Mayor of New Orleans and the U.S. President when BellSouth went down.
The cheapest and hence easiest new network to add is wireless. This should
start ASAP, whether it's a municipal build, a public-private partnership, an
out of territory Bell, or Clear Wire as provider. Include a few batteries,
of course, but make it happen. Finance it out of the public safety budget,
or even better, out of the E-Rate. Eliminate the cartel rules on E-Rate
funding that keep out wireless competition.
From Charles Hall in Baton Rouge:
Universal service - wired and wireless - saves lives
“As the flood waters rose, many people were saved because they were able to
use their mobile to call for help, many from their homes' attics and roofs.
It would seem obvious that communities in area likely to be hit by
destructive forces - earthquakes on the West Coast, tornadoes in the
Midwest, terrorists in the major cities - should go wireless broadband as
soon as practical. There would at least be a chance that Internet access and
its communications capabilities would be available - instant messaging and
VoIP, for example. There is no reason in 2005 that every family should not
have affordable high-speed Internet access, especially in an emergency.
With regards to communications, it became immediately obvious that cell
phones are superior to landlines in any such disaster area. Every phone and
cable TV line in the impacted area went down almost as soon as Katrina
struck. Cell phones became the only way to communicate - no email of course
without a phone or cable TV line. Mobile phone service took its hits as
backup batteries ran down and the network stayed overloaded for days. The
loss of electricity also means people can't recharge their batteries.”
Hall, whose Online Reporter is one of the most useful in telecom, had
power restored to his home in Baton Rouge fairly quickly and no major
damage. He's been spending much of his time since Katrina as a volunteer.
***
When Dave and I are on the same page, focusing on the same subject, he still manages to find a compelling perspective that adds to my own thinking:
Should Ed Whitacre and Brian Roberts choose your TV viewing?
Freedom to access content of your choice under attack Cisco, Dell, Amazon and Google just had a major failure in D.C. on what they call the key issue. Last year, under pressure from Mike Powell to protect open access, SBC was very clear. “SBC does not plan to give meaningful preference (in terms of bandwidth allocation) to any particular video service or video content provider. ... We don't plan to limit access from computers or give bandwidth preference to content.” Now, in the language of the Barton bill is a buried provision that allow the carriers to effectively block video that competes with them. Some very bad reporting missed that implication of the exceptions based on QOS and network limits, which are being deployed in a way that will clobber competitive video. The result is far less effective than what SBC had already promised last year. More depth next issue, but I hope my readers at the key tech companies get to work on this one, fast. There's a lot of rhetoric coming from D.C. that is simply false when you read the bills and understand what they imply. I hope it's just that the lobbyists don't understand the issues, not that the tech community so ineffectual. Craig Mundie, this is the big one.
Bill Safire - this is the guts of the next media concentration debate. One telco reports 80% of their programming comes from just 6 companies. Time to wave the flag. I'll have more depth next issue.
--
You can subcribe to Dave's DSL Prime by visiting: http://www.dslprime.com
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Posted by jeff on October 13, 2005 08:35 PM | Permalink
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Comments
Why not start a special cell phone service where the CALLER pays for the airtime? You could give away cheap cell phones to the poor.
To make outgoing calls, you pre-pay in amounts of $10 by buying a card (sold almost everwhere) and entering the "magic" number on it.
If you just use the phone for incoming calls, or emergency outgoing calls, $10 should last a year.
It would be best to make the numbers have a special prefix so that you would know in advance that you are calling one of these phones and don't get a big bill as a surprise.
You could even equip them with a gps, so that if a user called 911 their location would be displayed.
GPS is unreliable indoors so some sort of last position seen memory would be needed.
This is nothing new BTW, it's the standard for most of the world outisde of North America.
Geoff.
Posted by: Geoff Mendelson at October 14, 2005 04:02 AM