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:herrin-nanog@dirtside.com] Sent: Wednesday, August 26, 2009 4:46 PM To: Fred Baker Cc: nanog@nanog.org Subject: Re: FCCs RFC for the Definition of Broadband
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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