Big Telecom, What they say, what they do, and who is affordably connected?

I’m out of touch as to what the infrastructure presently is for Southern NM and broadband needs. With various mobile connectivity now, who has affordable broadband here, and who doesn’t?

This story, is about the merging of Baby Bells into present day ATT and Verizon, and the agreements to provide broadband that were made to get approval of mergers…many of which weren’t carried out…. and there’s been little response or enforcement by FCC.

Although PSA made a conscious choice to presently focus on cloud services and not “infrastructure” per se, because of needs to “not do everything”…we will still need to have a good read on who has affordable broadband that might be using our services. And who doesn’t. And what the trends are.

Last we “heard” there were the initiatives to provide much less expensive broadband to families that qualify for school lunch, if they met certain conditions. Don’t know how far that penetrated the actual needs out there.

Big question is whether wireless/ mobile will cover most service areas, that previous “wired” was thought too costly to do in DAC.

As you know, there are really three distinct questions: 1) What speed constitutes adequate “broadband” service? 2) Is the Service “available” in the locale and 3) What price, for what service is “affordable” to the entire populace?

The speed required is a function of the service one wants to consume. If you just want to do e-mail, the old dial-up modem (56Kbps) really want’t impossible. If you want to peruse websites with pictures and graphics, however, more is needed and if you want good quality video, you need a lot more.

The FCC decided that 3 Mbps down and 1 Mbps up (really 768 Kbps) was “Broadband”, but they made a number of exceptions that allowed for lesser service – ant least for some period of time. The “Internet” service that AT&T and others committewd to in their mergers was 1 – 1.5 Mbps and 384 Kbps up – which does not meet the current definition of “Broadband”.

None of these services are really adequate for video on a large screen – you really want at least 6 Mbps. And keep in mind, this is for a single service. Countries like Korea, Finland and Japan consider Broadband to be i the 25 – 100 Mbps range.

“Available” means that you can get it if you can pay the price (any price). For wireline service, that means is there a Cable company with digital plant or is there a Telco with DSL service. We understand that cable is not everywhere, but by and large telehone is. The problem is that DSL service is distance limited,(typically less that 1/4 or 1/2 of a mile from the active electronics – that’s the rub in rural areas.

Wireless (Cellular and Satellite) provide services that may cover additional users, but are typically low speed and high cost. I assert that cellular data service will NEVER be affordable for many New Mexico users – even if they do scrape up the money to pay for it.

Today, the only 4 G service in southern NM is Verizon and it barely covers the city limits – it is spotty at best at my house. So you get 3 G service w

Looks like you got hit by the Diigo trimbot which cuts off posts after a random length… but what is surprising to me is that your abstract is about what it would have been a year or more ago, seems to me. I was hoping that things would have leaped ahead while I wasn’t looking.

One thing I noticed that did happen while I wasn’t looking…that I thought was pretty cool is Talkathon…which allows mobile tablets/ phones to connect without using cellular minutes to make phone calls. Just reading about that today, as I expect to get a iPad for Christmas, and wondered if I could use it for internet phone service. Apparently so. Still reading up to see if there’s a catch 22.

John, I presume you are referring to “Talkatone” – which is built on Google Talk/Gooble Voice, but not at all sure what it offers that Skype does not except for the incoming phone number. I have and use both infrequently. Voice is cheap and pretty easy to provide, although there are still limitation in quality based on the underlying quality of the internet/cellular data service. BTW, Karen and I have done Skype video on our Android Phones to Computers (Mac an PC) and Apple and Android tablets – it works!