My broadband experience in Europe, Asia, Latin America and the US By Esme Vos

My broadband experience in Europe, Asia, Latin America and the US
By Esme Vos
Aug 21 2013
<http://www.muniwireless.com/2013/08/21/broadband-experience-europe-asia-latin-america-the-us/>
This is an article about my experience with broadband service during my travels in Europe, Asia, Latin America and the United States and what I consider to be the important factors (often ignored by commentators) that determine the speed and price of broadband in different countries.
In recent weeks, I have read several articles claiming that broadband service is better in the US than in Europe; others claim it’s the other way around. Some insist that the fastest and cheapest broadband is in Asian cities such as Singapore. The situation in the real world is more complicated than what these articles would have you believe. Even within a country, the speed and price of broadband service differ dramatically.
(1) In my experience, both in Europe and the US, the dividing line between lousy and amazing broadband is urban (dense) versus suburban/rural.
In the San Francisco Bay Area, my broadband experience has been vastly different from that of my friends who reside just outside San Francisco. From 2008-2011 I was living in an apartment building a few blocks from downtown San Francisco. This building was served (and continues to be served) by an ISP called Webpass. It provided me with the best wired broadband service I have every had. It was faster than what I currently have in Paris, which is fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) service (promising 100 Mbps downstream and upstream, but delivering barely 35 Mbps downstream). Webpass San Francisco consistently provided me with speeds of 60 to 70 Mbps downstream and 70 to 80 Mbps upstream for $45 per month (they are now charging $50 per month). You cannot get broadband speeds like this just south of San Francisco in the suburbs for $50 per month. Unfortunately Webpass serves buildings in the urban core; they don’t do suburbs. In a community called Redwood Shores (where Oracle’s headquarters are located and which is halfway between San Francisco and Silicon Valley), the best deal for broadband is Comcast, a cable company, where you can get 25 Mbps downstream/5 Mbps upstream (actual speed) for about $35. The most expensive Comcast package — 105 Mbps downstream and 20 Mbps upstream (advertised speeds) — costs over $115. You would think that the areas south of San Francisco where a lot of startups and tech people live, would have broadband service as good and cheap as that in San Francisco, but that’s not the case.
As I’ve observed, population density is an extremely important factor when one is in the business of delivering wired broadband. It’s the difference between being cash-flow positive or going bankrupt. That is why rural areas don’t have many high-speed broadband options and suffer from poor broadband connections, both in Europe and the United States, unless these are subsidised by the local or national government. Of course density alone is not a determining factor but it’s critical. Therefore, to say that broadband service in Europe is better than in the US (or vice-versa) is inaccurate. It depends on where you live.
(2) Another factor that determines the quality of the broadband connection (especially FTTH) seems trivial but is of critical importance: the nature of actual connection from the street into the building and into the apartment.
In Paris, I have a FTTH connection from Orange (France Telecom) that should theoretically give me 100 Mbps symmetrical speed. Shortly after FTTH service was turned on in our building, I was getting only 20-30 Mbps downstream so I called a technician from Orange to come to the apartment to check my connection. Apart from the stress of having to communicate with the technician in French, I was heartbroken to find out that the previous technician who had installed the FTTH box in the apartment (while I was away), had placed it in the kitchen close to the service door that leads to the rear of the building. This is far from the living room and as a result, the FTTH box has to be connected to a wireless repeater and it is from this wireless repeater that I am getting my broadband connection. Had the FTTH box been placed in the living room, my broadband speed would have been much better, according to the technician. Indeed, he moved the wireless repeater next to the door of the kitchen closer to the living room and behold, I started getting 30 to 40 Mbps downstream. But if I close the door, the speed drops down again. The apartment building was built between 1910 and 1930 in theHaussmannien style which means thick walls, kitchens separate from dining and living areas and lots of volume (high ceilings). The thickness of the walls means good sound insulation, but poor wireless transmission. After the technician departed, I inspected the connection from the kitchen to the stairwell and into the street. It looked very 19th century. Details, details. Alas, they all matter when it comes to the quality of your broadband experience.
[snip]

The ConnectED scheme: Proposed new $5 per year cellphone tax could be used to bring more U.S. schools online

The ConnectED scheme
Unwilling to ask Congress for extra funds to pay for high-speed Internet connections in schools, President Obama is instead looking to tack yet another charge on cellphones through the Federal Communications Commission. The new program, called ConnectED, would expand an existing school-wiring effort and cost each cellphone user about $5 a year, said White House officials.
President Obama’s plan to bring high-speed Internet connectivity to 99 percent of America’s school students. The five year scheme was revealed back in June and at the time, there was vague talk about raising taxes on phone bills to help pay for the initiative – except it wasn’t clear whether this was fixed or phones, or when such a tax would be implemented, if at all.
That question has been answered today, and it’s cellphone users who will be paying. White House officials, quoted in the New York Post, say each phone user will end up paying about $5 extra per year on their bill, or around $0.40 each month. It’s unlikely to break the bank, but it’s enough to notice.
The FCC is considering completely reworking the E-Rate. The goal will be to reach President Obama’s goal of providing 100 Mpbs-1 Gbps of bandwidth to schools serving 99 percent of students, and to provide wireless access inside schools. Allocating funding based on enrollment is one proposal, but the FCC is also considering cutting the top discount level, eliminating telephone service from the program, expanding eligibility of fiber leases, etc.
To see a brief list of the changes that the FCC is considering
For those with more time, here is the full Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM)
It’s worth reading the comments of Commissioners Rosenworcel and Pai at the end of the NPRM, as they lay out very different visions of what the reform should look like. And the FCC really does read the comments. I think comments from school districts are especially powerful. It’s pretty easy to file comments online; here are the FCC’s instructions: http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs//userManual/ecfsmanual.jsp FYI, E-Rate comments should be filed in Docket 02-6.
Comments were due September 16, 2013.

E-RATE WASTE & FRAUD

The Criminal N.S.A.

By JENNIFER STISA GRANICK and CHRISTOPHER JON SPRIGMAN
June 27, 2013
Jennifer Stisa Granick is the director of civil liberties at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society. Christopher Jon Sprigman is a professor at the University of Virginia School of Law.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/28/opinion/the-criminal-nsa.html
THE twin revelations that telecom carriers have been secretly giving the National Security Agency information about Americans’ phone calls, and that the N.S.A. has been capturing e-mail and other private communications from Internet companies as part of a secret program called Prism, have not enraged most Americans. Lulled, perhaps, by the Obama administration’s claims that these “modest encroachments on privacy” were approved by Congress and by federal judges, public opinion quickly migrated from shock to “meh.”
It didn’t help that Congressional watchdogs — with a few exceptions, like Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky — have accepted the White House’s claims of legality. The leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, and Saxby Chambliss, Republican of Georgia, have called the surveillance legal. So have liberal-leaning commentators like Hendrik Hertzberg and David Ignatius.
This view is wrong — and not only, or even mainly, because of the privacy issues raised by the American Civil Liberties Union and other critics. The two programs violate both the letter and the spirit of federal law. No statute explicitly authorizes mass surveillance. Through a series of legal contortions, the Obama administration has argued that Congress, since 9/11, intended to implicitly authorize mass surveillance. But this strategy mostly consists of wordplay, fear-mongering and a highly selective reading of the law. Americans deserve better from the White House — and from President Obama, who has seemingly forgotten the constitutional law he once taught.
The administration has defended each of the two secret programs. Let’s examine them in turn. <snip>

[ECP] Educational CyberPlayGround: K12 Newsletters – NASA

Guidance for Education and Public Outreach Activities Under Sequestration

NASA has taken the first steps in addressing the mandatory spending cuts called for in the Budget Control Act of 2011. The law mandates a series of indiscriminate and significant across-the-board spending reductions totaling $1.2 trillion over 10 years.
As a result, NASA has been forced to implement a number of new cost-saving measures, policies, and reviews in order to minimize impacts to the mission-critical activities of the Agency. Guidance regarding conferences, travel, and training that reflect the new fiscal reality in which the agency must operate has been provided.
For specific guidance as it relates to public outreach and engagement activities please reference the following webpage.
http://www.nasa.gov/offices/education/about/sequestration-NASA-education-guidance.html

Check out the following NASA opportunities for the education community. Full descriptions are listed below.

Continue reading “[ECP] Educational CyberPlayGround: K12 Newsletters – NASA”