[opendtv] Re: Chairman Pai Statement on fiber-purchase deal between Verizon and Corning
- From: Craig Birkmaier <brewmastercraig@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 19 Apr 2017 09:20:20 -0400
On Apr 18, 2017, at 8:16 PM, Manfredi, Albert E <albert.e.manfredi@xxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
According to Chairman Pai, Verizon made this deal with Corning, to buy
annually 12.4M miles of fiber cable, in order to build out the 5G network.
Presumably, this is for the backhaul required. It does show that deep pockets
are still needed, even if fixed wireless broadband is being deployed.
Guess that depends on how much geography you want to cover. As Verizon already
has a nationwide cellular footprint, the logical takeaway here is that they
plan to extend their cellular footprint to deliver fixed broadband. This may
still require working with local government to procure right-of-ways, but may
not require new local franchise agreements to overbuild cable competitors.
As for deep pockets...
Our local utility, GRU, as I described recently, loves to reach deep into our
pockets to fund their near monopoly control of utilities in our county. One can
easily imaging GRU expanding their fiber network so they can use 5G for the
last 200 yards to compete with Cox, AT&T, Verizon, et al for residential
broadband.
So it seems to me, one possibility of a huge increase in broadband service
competition, with wireless, would be if the owners of these vast backhaul
networks were to "rent out" their backhaul to competing 5G "last mile"
services.
This level of competition already exists in many areas, especially in regional
interconnects. A good example is Century Link, which started out as a backhaul
network company. They now offer VOIP and Broadband in 10 Florida cities. They
have partnered with AT&T to offer DirecTV to complete their triple play bundles.
It's theoretically possible, but it's a bit like the idea of the telcos
allowing competing DSL ISPs to use the telcos' voice grade twisted pair
networks, back in the late 1990s and early 2000s. It became such a
disincentive for the telcos that cable broadband got a leg up on DSL, for
several years. Cable had no such sharing rules placed on them.
The telcos did not "allow" competing ISPs to use their networks. As they were
Title II regulated common carriers the FCC forced the telcos to open up their
networks. Ultimately this decision was reversed after numerous lawsuits, and
strong evidence that the FCCs decision was unworkable, as the telcos could slow
walk efforts by competitors to use their networks.
I would not look for such a decision by the FCC under this administration.
The other possibility might be wireless backhaul networks, for competing
wireless broadband ISPs, also using unlicensed spectrum way up in the 10s of
GHz. But such backhaul networks would themselves need a whole lot of closely
spaced towers.
Really?
How far can a signal in the 10s of GHz travel Bert. At 5GHz we are talking
about 200 yards. Add enough power and cells to create such a backhaul network,
and we could just put our food outside to cook...
;-)
Anyway, it seems that Verizon is following its plan to use the FiOS backhaul
infrastructure also for 5G service.
"Seems?"
They have already announced this and are conducting trials...
Regards
Craig
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