From what I've read, they may well get higher bandwidth out to the town centers on fiber. There has been little discussion of how to distribute from there. I suppose Verizon, the only company offering anything out there, will take advantage and use the fiber to improve speeds in the centers of towns. But there's no CATV in most of the hill towns, and unless MBI intends to stretch fiber out to the neighborhoods, I remain skeptical. Today, most of the town halls have public access wifi, and people drive up and sit in their cars and get their email that way. This isn't a solution. On Feb 26, 2010, at 4:40 PM, James Jones wrote:

The Massachusetts Broadband Institute is currently working a middle mile solution to help with some of the issues in western ma. Thing do sound promising.

On 2/26/10 4:34 PM, Michael Sokolov wrote:

...

Daniel Senie<dts@senie.com> wrote:

...

Better than western Massachusetts, where there's just no connectivity at = all. Even dialup fails to function over crappy lines.

Hmm. Although I've never been to Western MA and hence have no idea what the telecom situation is like over there, I'm certainly aware of quite a few places in "first world USA" where DSL is still a fantasy, let alone fiber.

As a local example, I have a friend in a rural area of Southern California who can't get any kind of "high-speed Internet". I've run a prequal on her address and it tells me she is 31 kft from the CO. The CO in question has a Covad DSLAM in it, but at 31 kft those rural residents' options are limited to either IDSL at 144 kbps (not much point in that) or a T1 starting at ~$700/month. The latter figure is typically well out of range for the kind of people who live in such places.

That got me thinking: ISDN/IDSL and T1 can be extended infinitely far into the boondocks because those signal formats support repeaters. What I'm wondering is how can we do the same thing with SDSL - and I mean politically rather than technically. The technical part is easy: some COs already have CLECs in them that serve G.shdsl (I've been told that NEN does that) and for G.shdsl repeaters are part of the standard (searching around shows a few vendors making them); in the case of SDSL/2B1Q (Covad and DSL.net) there is no official support for repeaters and hence no major vendors making such, but I can build such a repeater unofficially.

The difficulty is with the political part, and that's where I'm seeking the wisdom of this list. How would one go about sticking a mid-span repeater into an ILEC-owned 31 kft rural loop? From what I understand (someone please correct me if I'm wrong!), when a CLEC orders a loop from an ILEC, if it's for a T1 or IDSL, the CLEC actually orders a T1 or ISDN BRI transport from the ILEC rather than a dry pair, and any mid-span repeaters or HDSLx converters or the like become the responsibility of the ILEC rather than the CLEC, right?

So how could one extend this model to provide, say, repeatered G.shdsl service to far-outlying rural subscribers? Is there some political process (PUC/FCC/etc) by which an ILEC could be forced to allow a third party to stick a repeater in the middle of their loop? Or would it have to work by way of the ILEC providing a G.shdsl transport service to CLECs, with the ILEC being responsible for the selection, procurement and deployment of repeater hardware? And what if the ILEC is not interested in providing such a service - any PUC/FCC/etc political process via which they could be forced to cooperate?

Things get even more complicated in those locations where the CO has a Covad DSLAM in it serving out SDSL/2B1Q, but no other CLEC serving G.shdsl. Even if the ILEC were to provide a G.shdsl transport service with repeaters, it wouldn't help with SDSL/2B1Q. My idea involves building a gadget in the form factor of a standard mid-span repeater that would function as a converter from SDSL/2B1Q to G.shdsl: if the loop calls for one mid-span repeater, stick this gadget in as if it were that repeater; if the loop calls for 2 or more repeaters, use my gadget as the first "repeater" and then standard G.shdsl repeaters after it. But of course this idea is totally dependent on the ability of a third party to stick these devices in the middle of long rural loops, perhaps in the place of loading coils which are likely present on such loops.

Any ideas?

MS

Hopefully someone will bother to cover the rural areas with cell service eventually. Much of western Massachusetts (by which I mean the Berkshires, more than I mean the Pioneer Valley) is not covered by cell service. Where there is cell service, most cell sites have only minimal data speeds. Vermont is far worse, as is much of Maine. If there were 3G cellular, it'd be a big step up. But I expect the inner cities will all be running LTE for years before more rural areas even get voice service. On Feb 26, 2010, at 6:04 PM, Haney, Wilson wrote:

As we all know it's expensive building out any landline network. Rural areas just get over looked.

Check out this tech coming out of Motorola and to a Verizon/ATT tower near you soon.

100 Mbps possible off cellular signals. Looks like they will throttle it to 20 Mbps and less though.

http://business.motorola.com/experiencelte/lte-depth.html

http://news.techworld.com/networking/3203498/motorola-predicts-20mbps-downlo...

WPH

-----Original Message----- From: Crooks, Sam [mailto:Sam.Crooks@experian.com] Sent: Friday, February 26, 2010 4:51 PM To: Michael Sokolov; nanog@nanog.org Subject: RE: Locations with no good Internet (was ISP in Johannesburg)

I had good luck getting my dad some form of broadband access in rural Oregon using a 3g router (Cradlepoint), a Wilson Electronics signal amp (model 811211), and an outdoor mount high gain antenna. It's not great, but considering the alternatives (33.6k dialup for $60/mo or satellite broadband for $150-$200/mo) it wasn't a bad deal for my dad when you consider that the dialup ISP + dedicated POTS line cost about as much as the 5GB 3G data plan does.

Speed is somewhere between dialup and Uverse or FIOS. I get the sense that it is somewhere in the range of 256 - 512 kbps with high latency (Dad's not one for much in the way of network performance testing).

...

-----Original Message----- From: Michael Sokolov [mailto:msokolov@ivan.Harhan.ORG] Sent: Friday, February 26, 2010 3:35 PM To: nanog@nanog.org Subject: Locations with no good Internet (was ISP in Johannesburg)

Daniel Senie <dts@senie.com> wrote:

...

Better than western Massachusetts, where there's just no connectivity at = all. Even dialup fails to function over crappy lines.

Hmm. Although I've never been to Western MA and hence have no idea what the telecom situation is like over there, I'm certainly aware of quite a few places in "first world USA" where DSL is still a fantasy, let alone fiber.

As a local example, I have a friend in a rural area of Southern California who can't get any kind of "high-speed Internet". I've run a prequal on her address and it tells me she is 31 kft from the CO. The CO in question has a Covad DSLAM in it, but at 31 kft those rural residents' options are limited to either IDSL at 144 kbps (not much point in that) or a T1 starting at ~$700/month. The latter figure is typically well out of range for the kind of people who live in such places.

That got me thinking: ISDN/IDSL and T1 can be extended infinitely far into the boondocks because those signal formats support repeaters. What I'm wondering is how can we do the same thing with SDSL - and I mean politically rather than technically. The technical part is easy: some COs already have CLECs in them that serve G.shdsl (I've been told that NEN does that) and for G.shdsl repeaters are part of the standard (searching around shows a few vendors making them); in the case of SDSL/2B1Q (Covad and DSL.net) there is no official support for repeaters and hence no major vendors making such, but I can build such a repeater unofficially.

The difficulty is with the political part, and that's where I'm seeking the wisdom of this list. How would one go about sticking a mid-span repeater into an ILEC-owned 31 kft rural loop? From what I understand (someone please correct me if I'm wrong!), when a CLEC orders a loop from an ILEC, if it's for a T1 or IDSL, the CLEC actually orders a T1 or ISDN BRI transport from the ILEC rather than a dry pair, and any mid-span repeaters or HDSLx converters or the like become the responsibility of the ILEC rather than the CLEC, right?

So how could one extend this model to provide, say, repeatered G.shdsl service to far-outlying rural subscribers? Is there some political process (PUC/FCC/etc) by which an ILEC could be forced to allow a third party to stick a repeater in the middle of their loop? Or would it have to work by way of the ILEC providing a G.shdsl transport service to CLECs, with the ILEC being responsible for the selection, procurement and deployment of repeater hardware? And what if the ILEC is not interested in providing such a service - any PUC/FCC/etc political process via which they could be forced to cooperate?

Things get even more complicated in those locations where the CO has a Covad DSLAM in it serving out SDSL/2B1Q, but no other CLEC serving G.shdsl. Even if the ILEC were to provide a G.shdsl transport service with repeaters, it wouldn't help with SDSL/2B1Q. My idea involves building a gadget in the form factor of a standard mid-span repeater that would function as a converter from SDSL/2B1Q to G.shdsl: if the loop calls for one mid-span repeater, stick this gadget in as if it were that repeater; if the loop calls for 2 or more repeaters, use my gadget as the first "repeater" and then standard G.shdsl repeaters after it. But of course this idea is totally dependent on the ability of a third party to stick these devices in the middle of long rural loops, perhaps in the place of loading coils which are likely present on such loops.

Any ideas?

MS

How do you think we feel in Alaska. Until mid last year, most cellular BTS were backhauled via DS1. Only Within the last 12 months have we (insert obligatory "I work for a GSM and CDMA cellular provider serving most of Alaska") even migrated from Local copper to fiber or air interfaces (ds1/ds3 microwave). I've always been curious as to why the people who aren't being served with "broadband" type of services haven't made a larger fuss about this. The idea of running a copper pair to a home should have died long ago, IMHO. As an RF Engineer, I see everyone turning to fiber and dry loops when it's just not necessary or even cost effective. Put up the *LICENSED* loop and call it a day.. Or a 5.8 RAD shot when you feel like rolling the deice. Either way, cellular isn't the drop dead answer to solving a sparsely covered area. About 95% of my state is not covered by cellular, but we've had no problems deploying the largest cellular (rural obviously) provider in the United States - just look up. It's not as expensive as you would think. //warren Warren Bailey GCI Communication Corp. RF Network Engineering 907.868.5911 office 907.903.5410 mobile -----Original Message----- From: Daniel Senie [mailto:dts@senie.com] Sent: Friday, February 26, 2010 3:21 PM To: NANOG list Subject: Re: Locations with no good Internet (was ISP in Johannesburg) Hopefully someone will bother to cover the rural areas with cell service eventually. Much of western Massachusetts (by which I mean the Berkshires, more than I mean the Pioneer Valley) is not covered by cell service. Where there is cell service, most cell sites have only minimal data speeds. Vermont is far worse, as is much of Maine. If there were 3G cellular, it'd be a big step up. But I expect the inner cities will all be running LTE for years before more rural areas even get voice service. On Feb 26, 2010, at 6:04 PM, Haney, Wilson wrote:

As we all know it's expensive building out any landline network. Rural areas just get over looked.

Check out this tech coming out of Motorola and to a Verizon/ATT tower near you soon.

100 Mbps possible off cellular signals. Looks like they will throttle it to 20 Mbps and less though.

http://business.motorola.com/experiencelte/lte-depth.html

http://news.techworld.com/networking/3203498/motorola-predicts-20mbps- download-speed-with-future-lte-networks/

WPH

-----Original Message----- From: Crooks, Sam [mailto:Sam.Crooks@experian.com] Sent: Friday, February 26, 2010 4:51 PM To: Michael Sokolov; nanog@nanog.org Subject: RE: Locations with no good Internet (was ISP in Johannesburg)

I had good luck getting my dad some form of broadband access in rural Oregon using a 3g router (Cradlepoint), a Wilson Electronics signal amp (model 811211), and an outdoor mount high gain antenna. It's not great, but considering the alternatives (33.6k dialup for $60/mo or satellite broadband for $150-$200/mo) it wasn't a bad deal for my dad when you consider that the dialup ISP + dedicated POTS line cost about

as much as the 5GB 3G data plan does.

Speed is somewhere between dialup and Uverse or FIOS. I get the sense that it is somewhere in the range of 256 - 512 kbps with high latency (Dad's not one for much in the way of network performance testing).

...

-----Original Message----- From: Michael Sokolov [mailto:msokolov@ivan.Harhan.ORG] Sent: Friday, February 26, 2010 3:35 PM To: nanog@nanog.org Subject: Locations with no good Internet (was ISP in Johannesburg)

Daniel Senie <dts@senie.com> wrote:

...

Better than western Massachusetts, where there's just no connectivity at = all. Even dialup fails to function over crappy lines.

Hmm. Although I've never been to Western MA and hence have no idea what the telecom situation is like over there, I'm certainly aware of

...

quite a few places in "first world USA" where DSL is still a fantasy,

...

let alone fiber.

As a local example, I have a friend in a rural area of Southern California who can't get any kind of "high-speed Internet". I've run a prequal on her address and it tells me she is 31 kft from the CO. The CO in question has a Covad DSLAM in it, but at 31 kft those rural

...

residents' options are limited to either IDSL at 144 kbps (not much point in that) or a T1 starting at ~$700/month. The latter figure is

...

typically well out of range for the kind of people who live in such places.

That got me thinking: ISDN/IDSL and T1 can be extended infinitely far

...

into the boondocks because those signal formats support repeaters. What I'm wondering is how can we do the same thing with SDSL - and I mean politically rather than technically. The technical part is easy: some COs already have CLECs in them that serve G.shdsl (I've been told that NEN does that) and for G.shdsl repeaters are part of the standard (searching around shows a few vendors making them); in the case of SDSL/2B1Q (Covad and DSL.net) there is no official support for repeaters and hence no major vendors making such, but I can build

...

such a repeater unofficially.

The difficulty is with the political part, and that's where I'm seeking the wisdom of this list. How would one go about sticking a mid-span repeater into an ILEC-owned 31 kft rural loop? From what I understand (someone please correct me if I'm wrong!), when a CLEC orders a loop from an ILEC, if it's for a T1 or IDSL, the CLEC actually orders a T1 or ISDN BRI transport from the ILEC rather than a dry pair, and any mid-span repeaters or HDSLx converters or the like become the responsibility of the ILEC rather than the CLEC, right?

So how could one extend this model to provide, say, repeatered G.shdsl service to far-outlying rural subscribers? Is there some political process (PUC/FCC/etc) by which an ILEC could be forced to allow a third party to stick a repeater in the middle of their loop? Or would it have to work by way of the ILEC providing a G.shdsl transport service

...

to CLECs, with the ILEC being responsible for the selection, procurement and deployment of repeater hardware? And what if the ILEC is not interested in providing such a service - any PUC/FCC/etc political process via which they could be forced to cooperate?

Things get even more complicated in those locations where the CO has a Covad DSLAM in it serving out SDSL/2B1Q, but no other CLEC serving G.shdsl. Even if the ILEC were to provide a G.shdsl transport service with repeaters, it wouldn't help with SDSL/2B1Q. My idea involves building a gadget in the form factor of a standard mid-span repeater that would function as a converter from SDSL/2B1Q to G.shdsl: if the loop calls for one mid-span repeater, stick this gadget in as if it were that repeater; if the loop calls for 2 or more repeaters, use my gadget as the first "repeater" and then standard G.shdsl repeaters after it. But of course this idea is totally dependent on the ability of a third party to stick these devices in the middle of long rural loops, perhaps in the place of loading coils which are likely present on such loops.

Any ideas?

MS

On Fri, Feb 26, 2010 at 5:10 PM, Paul Bosworth <pbosworth@gmail.com> wrote:

I think a lot of people often forget that ISPs are actually businesses trying to turn a profit.

There are alternatives though, if the need exists and folks are able: http://www.rric.net/ -- Brandon Galbraith Mobile: 630.400.6992 FNAL: 630.840.2141

On 02/26/2010 03:10 PM, Paul Bosworth wrote:

I think a lot of people often forget that ISPs are actually businesses trying to turn a profit.

Bearing in mind that the facilities that exist in much of the rural united states are actually there because we collectively payed for them rather than simply: waiting for the right set of economic incentives to exist or leaving people to suffer. It not unlikely in some cases that the economic incentive for universal service may never exist may never exist in some reasons which doesn't mean that we shouldn't do something about it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rural_Electrification_Administration#History

At my last job we built out a fiber to the home ILEC in relatively rural Louisiana. This means that we had quite a number of customers that didn't meet the density requirements for deployment. Using made-up numbers for the sake of discussion, lets assume that a customer provides $1/month for service. If you can place deployment in a highly-dense area you'll make a lot more of those $1's per month with that investment. When you start deploying further to the edge you really slide into the "we're not even breaking even on this" market. Obviously anyone that has a job for profit knows that this is a no-no.

As telcos deploy high-density technologies (fiber, metroE, etc) they can pull the legacy technology (xDSL, T1, etc) and push that to the edge. Unfortunately the edge is always going to get the hand-me-downs but it's better than nothing. My wife is from a tiny town in central PA (the vortex between Pittsburgh and Philly) and her parents have had dialup until last year, when the local telco finally pushed DSL to their location. They only draw 1.5meg but it's better than the 56k they were paying for.

As they say in vegas, "It's just business, baby."

On Fri, Feb 26, 2010 at 5:51 PM, Crooks, Sam <Sam.Crooks@experian.com>wrote:

...

I had good luck getting my dad some form of broadband access in rural Oregon using a 3g router (Cradlepoint), a Wilson Electronics signal amp (model 811211), and an outdoor mount high gain antenna. It's not great, but considering the alternatives (33.6k dialup for $60/mo or satellite broadband for $150-$200/mo) it wasn't a bad deal for my dad when you consider that the dialup ISP + dedicated POTS line cost about as much as the 5GB 3G data plan does.

Speed is somewhere between dialup and Uverse or FIOS. I get the sense that it is somewhere in the range of 256 - 512 kbps with high latency (Dad's not one for much in the way of network performance testing).

...

-----Original Message----- From: Michael Sokolov [mailto:msokolov@ivan.Harhan.ORG] Sent: Friday, February 26, 2010 3:35 PM To: nanog@nanog.org Subject: Locations with no good Internet (was ISP in Johannesburg)

Daniel Senie <dts@senie.com> wrote:

...

Better than western Massachusetts, where there's just no connectivity at = all. Even dialup fails to function over crappy lines.

Hmm. Although I've never been to Western MA and hence have no idea what the telecom situation is like over there, I'm certainly aware of quite a few places in "first world USA" where DSL is still a fantasy, let alone fiber.

As a local example, I have a friend in a rural area of Southern California who can't get any kind of "high-speed Internet". I've run a prequal on her address and it tells me she is 31 kft from the CO. The CO in question has a Covad DSLAM in it, but at 31 kft those rural residents' options are limited to either IDSL at 144 kbps (not much point in that) or a T1 starting at ~$700/month. The latter figure is typically well out of range for the kind of people who live in such places.

That got me thinking: ISDN/IDSL and T1 can be extended infinitely far into the boondocks because those signal formats support repeaters. What I'm wondering is how can we do the same thing with SDSL - and I mean politically rather than technically. The technical part is easy: some COs already have CLECs in them that serve G.shdsl (I've been told that NEN does that) and for G.shdsl repeaters are part of the standard (searching around shows a few vendors making them); in the case of SDSL/2B1Q (Covad and DSL.net) there is no official support for repeaters and hence no major vendors making such, but I can build such a repeater unofficially.

The difficulty is with the political part, and that's where I'm seeking the wisdom of this list. How would one go about sticking a mid-span repeater into an ILEC-owned 31 kft rural loop? From what I understand (someone please correct me if I'm wrong!), when a CLEC orders a loop from an ILEC, if it's for a T1 or IDSL, the CLEC actually orders a T1 or ISDN BRI transport from the ILEC rather than a dry pair, and any mid-span repeaters or HDSLx converters or the like become the responsibility of the ILEC rather than the CLEC, right?

So how could one extend this model to provide, say, repeatered G.shdsl service to far-outlying rural subscribers? Is there some political process (PUC/FCC/etc) by which an ILEC could be forced to allow a third party to stick a repeater in the middle of their loop? Or would it have to work by way of the ILEC providing a G.shdsl transport service to CLECs, with the ILEC being responsible for the selection, procurement and deployment of repeater hardware? And what if the ILEC is not interested in providing such a service - any PUC/FCC/etc political process via which they could be forced to cooperate?

Things get even more complicated in those locations where the CO has a Covad DSLAM in it serving out SDSL/2B1Q, but no other CLEC serving G.shdsl. Even if the ILEC were to provide a G.shdsl transport service with repeaters, it wouldn't help with SDSL/2B1Q. My idea involves building a gadget in the form factor of a standard mid-span repeater that would function as a converter from SDSL/2B1Q to G.shdsl: if the loop calls for one mid-span repeater, stick this gadget in as if it were that repeater; if the loop calls for 2 or more repeaters, use my gadget as the first "repeater" and then standard G.shdsl repeaters after it. But of course this idea is totally dependent on the ability of a third party to stick these devices in the middle of long rural loops, perhaps in the place of loading coils which are likely present on such loops.

Any ideas?

MS