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DSL Prime: West Virginia Broadband Unlike Tasmania, West Virginia, an area of natural beauty and difficult geography, may get its broadband program right.
West Virginia's Smart Subsidy Law Not throwing money where it isn't needed sounds logical, but virtually every proposal like this spends most of the money where carriers can be profitable without a grant. The cost will be a fraction of what the state currently expects to spend. I'm strongly in favor of universal service, but believe the best way to deliver it is to cut out giveaways to companies that don't need them. It's generally easy to figure out if a subsidy makes sense. I'm working on a more detailed writeup, but generally any group of 20 to 30 homes within 16,000 feet of fiber is profitable DSL territory. 12 Port DSLAMs the size of a book go almost anywhere and pay for themselves in less than a year. In most of the developed world, small clusters like that are already covered. Britain is around 99 percent even in the Scottish islands, and France over 95 percent. Both Verizon and SBC in 2000 said places like that would be covered. West Virginia is particularly poorly served, because Verizon decided to sell their West Virginia lines and stopped installing DSL equipment several years ago. No subsidy if:
Subsidies need to be spent on the most affordable solution, not on a costplus basis. Homes 15,000 to 25,000 feet from fiber can be served with a $200 repeater, easily installed, as hundreds of rural telcos prove. 40 percent of the cost of the repeater + installation is about $150 and would cover the majority of homes which can't get service today. There are also inexpensive upgrades for many remote terminals. Similar small sums would allow the handful of analog cable systems to go digital (3 percent of the U.S.) or cover other inexpensive "best practices" operators have developed around the world. For example, most lines between 15,000 and 20,000 feet actually can be offered 1 Mbps. The standard was designed to cover almost everyone within 18,000 feet, and ADSL2 improved upon that five years ago. BT tested all their lines years ago, and discovered that bringing in the tester dramatically increases coverage. Connect Kentucky found fixed wireless could fill some of the remaining gaps, although West Virginia is pretty hilly. A strong argument can be made that no subsidy, broadband or voice, should go to obsolete copper networks. Higher quality networksfiber or perhaps DOCSIS 3.0cost much less to operate and offer the customer more. Time to bring the 21st Century everywhere.
For the record: I did a short briefing with Move Networks and may be doing some additional work for them.
Copyright 2008 Dave Burstein. "The power of the printing press belongs solely to those who own the
presses" The Internet is the cheapest printing press ever invented.
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