The background issue is whether satellite-based systems at around 200
Kb/s and high latency can be defined as "broadband." Since everyone in
America - including the Alaskans - has access to satellite services,
defining that level of service as broadband makes the rest of the
exercise academic: everyone is "served." There's no economic argument
for government subsidies to multiple firms in a market, of course.
It's more interesting considering that DirecTV is about to launch a new
satellite with a couple orders of magnitude more capacity than the
existing ones offer. I seem to recall their claiming that the service
would then improved to some respectable number of megabits/sec.
Satellite ISPs locate their ground stations in IXP-friendly locations,
so there aren't any worries about backhaul or fiber access costs.
But to your actual question, "under-served" is of course quite
subjective and cost is clearly part of it.
RB
Frank Bulk - iName.com wrote:
As one of the workshops discussed, does the definition of "underserved" and
"unserved" include the clause "for a reasonable price"?
If the price is unreasonable, do you think its government money well-spent
to subsidize bringing a competitor to a market that couldn't make it before?
Or are there perhaps other ways to deal with that pricing issue?
Frank
-----Original Message-----
From: William Herrin [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Wednesday, August 26, 2009 4:46 PM
To: Fred Baker
Cc: [email protected]
Subject: Re: FCCs RFC for the Definition of Broadband
<snip>
Really where they need the swift kick in the tail is in the product
tying where you can't buy a high speed connection to J. Random ISP,
you can only buy a high speed connection to monopoly provider's
in-house ISP. Which means you can only get commodity service since
monopoly provider isn't in the business of providing low-dollar custom
solutions. But it sounds like that's outside the scope of what
Congress has approved.
Regards,
Bill Herrin
--
Richard Bennett
Research Fellow
Information Technology and Innovation Foundation
Washington, DC
