SBC surges to the forefront of integrated digital services provision

Consider these recent developments:

On October 14th (adopted)/October 18th (released), the FCC authorized the "unbundling" of FTTC (fiber-to-the-curb, also known at FTTN, or fiber-to-the-node), making it economically desirable for incumbent telcos (Baby Bells, RBOCs) to deploy fiber optic networks directly into neighborhoods.

On Oct. 26, 2004, the day it received final approval of the deal from the FCC, Cingular Wireless (which is 60% owned by SBC) "completed its previously announced merger with AT&T Wireless Services Inc., creating the nation's biggest wireless carrier with the largest digital voice and data network in the country."

On November 11th, SBC announced that, taking advantage of the new regulatory climate adopted by the FCC on October 14th and announced by it on October 28th, it would spend $4 billion "to deploy fiber optics closer to customers and build an advanced, IP-based (Internet Protocol) network capable of delivering a rich array of integrated next-generation television, data and voice services substantially beyond what is available from today's telephone, cable or satellite TV providers."

The first article to appear on the new Etopia Media Photopia™ ("place of photon-based communications") web site featured an interview with an SBC spokesperson discussing the implementation of this advanced IP-based network, under the name "Project Lightspeed."

Microsoft joins the party

On November 17th, SBC announced that it was partnering with Microsoft, the Redmond, Washington-based software giant, to "provide next-generation television services using the new Microsoft® TV Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) Edition software platform."

According to Microsoft's press release on the deal, "The SBC IPTV deal with Microsoft, valued in excess of $400 million over 10 years, is the first of its kind for any U.S.-based telecommunications provider."

Running Microsoft's IPTV software over its enhanced, fiber-based broadband delivery system to18 million new customers by the end of 2007 will allow SBC to provide at least that many people with access to virtually-unlimited amounts of scheduled and pay-per-view server-based video programming, and charge them for it. To see an SBC-generated Flash demo of SBC IPTV's functionality, click here.

A programming strategy to ride on top of the IPTV protocol riding on top of the fiber broadband network has not been announced, according to an SBC spokesperson, but the company had already, on November 8th, announced the appointment of Dan York "to lead the company's video content strategy and acquisition for SBC's entertainment services." Mr. York, the company said, "is coming to SBC from iN DEMAND Networks, LLC, the world's leading video-on-demand and pay-per-view company, where he was senior vice president of programming and development, responsible for the company's programming relationships with the Hollywood studios, cable networks and major event and specials providers such as Home Box Office and Showtime," adding that "SBC companies are working to provide millions of customers a new choice in entertainment video."

Yahoo! too

Then, the day after announcing its IPTV deal with Microsoft, SBC announced that it would be deepening its cooperative relationship with Yahoo!, in order to "to extend the SBC Yahoo! customer experience beyond the PC to home television and audio systems, Cingular wireless phones, SBC FreedomLink Wi-Fi and SBC Home Networking equipment."

Photopia's second article was an interview with an SBC spokesperson about this deal. Discussed in that conversation were some of the ways an integrated broadband cellular and/or VoIP telephony handset could be used to monitor and control a home-based appliance (HVAC, security, refrigerator, home entertainment center) wireless local area network. Imaginative early and late adopters of this "FutureNet" will no doubt be able to think of additional ways to put it to good use.

Don't forget what started it all: voice-at-a-distance ("telephony")

Also on the Voice-over-IP front, SBC on November 17th announced that it would offer an enhanced means of connecting VoIP systems with its publicly-switched telephone network (PSTN), the platform for "plain old telephone service" (POTS), setting off some concerns, which were immediately addressed by SBC, and taken note of by Michael Powell, chairman of the FCC, who said it would be considered in the context of several other, on-going FCC efforts in the area of "issues related to the charges applicable to VoIP services."

Another party is heard from

Meanwhile, as SBC put together the pieces to offer seamless integration of wireless and fiber-optic broadband Internet services, the electric utility industry, similarly empowered by an FCC decision setting standards for, and ostensibly resolving the issue of radio interference from, purveyors of yet-another means of providing almost universal ubiquitous broadband Internet connectivity, "broadband over power lines," set out to get its share of this market.

Broadband over power lines (BPL) holds the promise of delivering fast Internet connections through every electric socket in every office and every home in the United States. Spearheading this effort is the United Power Line Council, committed to "Driving the Development of Broadband Over Power Line Solutions for Electric Utilities and Their Partners." Another new Etopia Media web site, Broadband over Power Line World™ will be covering this sector of the broadband industry, starting with the first article posted there, "Introduction to Broadband over Power Line".

Municipalities are not sitting idly by

All of this fiber-optic and broadband-over-power-line activity is taking place at the same time that cities from New York to Los Angeles, from Philadelphia to Chaska, Minnesota, are moving rapidly forward to study and, presumably, to deploy, their own muni-broadband wireless networks.

Rivals telcos and cable companies unite to fight their common enemy

But wait. It seems that in Pennsylvania, where the City of Philadelphia is leading the way towards such networks, the phone companies and the cable companies, rather than welcoming another mode of competitive broadband Internet connectivity, are trying to put Philadelphia's planned municipal broadband wireless network out of business before it can even be built. Read about this by clicking here.

You can listen to an interview with Dianah Neff, Philadelphia's Chief Information Officer, by clicking here. You can access other articles on Etopia Media's Broadband Wireless Access World™ by clicking here.

For more details about the possible roll-out of a municipal broadband wireless network in Los Angeles, on the new Etopia Media Unwired LA™ web site, click here.

How will all the separate parts mesh?

The basic architecture that will probably be used to unwire Los Angeles is that employed in mesh networks. A leading mesh networking company, MeshNetworks, was acquired by electronics pioneer Motorola on November 16th, during the same time period when SBC was consolidating its position by announcing "Project Lightspeed" and signing deals with Microsoft and Yahoo!

A year ago, Berkeley, CA-based Zensys, "a leading provider of wireless networking technology for control and status reading applications," signed an agreement with Intel to collaborate on the creation of a seamless system for wireless control of home appliances, using the Universal Plug-n-Play (UPnP) specification supported by Intel. The Zensys Z-Wave™ technology is "an RF based, two-way; mesh network, communications protocol that enables everyday devices to be controlled and monitored wirelessly."

Mesh technology can be implemented, as above, on the scale of a single-family residence, or on a metro-level scale, for providing broadband wireless access throughout an entire city. The decentralized mesh architecture, which reflects the same fail-safe structure of the Internet itself, is also under consideration as a means of unwiring entire countries, especially ones with currently underdeveloped telecommunications infrastructures, as can be seen in an article published earlier this year entitled "Wireless Mesh Networking," which appeared on the O'Reilly Wireless DevCenter web site.

The telco-cable argument against municipal broadband networks

So, as progressive municipalities (and possibly underdeveloped countries) try to provide their citizens with low-cost universal ubiquitous broadband wireless access, telcos and cable companies, long at each others' throats technologically, commercially, and politically, now unite to fight against their common foe: cheap, utility-like broadband access.

The basic argument leveled by the telco-cable combine against the idea of municipal ownership of broadband wireless networks is enunciated clearly by Verizon spokesperson Eric Rabe, in a November 23rd article in the Wall Street Journal:

"If we put that money at risk, and here comes government to compete against us, with advantages that government has -- not paying taxes, access to capital at good rates ... that severely limits the opportunity and limits our interest in taking the risk."

Given that Verizon's fellow telco, SBC has just committed $4 billion dollars to build out fiber-optic broadband plant in its service area; that SBC's partner in this project, Microsoft, recently announced a plan whereby it would pay out $75 billion dollars to its stockholders; and that almost all the U.S. states and many major U.S. cities are, for all practical purposes, bankrupt, Verizon's spokesperson must be speaking ironically here, when he warns against the threat posed by entities fiscally paralyzed by the ascendancy of the low tax/no regulation philosophy that has already been sufficient to unleash its telco competitor and to which it itself adheres, vigorously advocates, and only ignores when it comes to receiving massive financial subsidies and guarantees of monopoly control from the very jurisdictions it is now robustly attacking for daring to consider public investment in the technology sectors these private companies so tenaciously covet.

The usual suspects mount an end-run around the looming monopoly architecture

Meanwhile, a grass-roots movement to provide community-based and/or municipally-owned broadband (and even over-the-air-neighborhood-level television stations) is emerging to counter the trend toward monopoly control of the new technologies and their convergence and integration.

Berkeley, California

"For folks who wish to engage in Low Power TV Broadcasting, an all day introductory workshop on Low Power TV Broadcasting will be held on Saturday, December 4 from 10 AM to 5 PM.

"Contact Free Radio Berkeley for further information.
510-625-0314
xmtrman@pacbell.net
http://www.freeradio.org
Mailing address: 1442A Walnut St., Suite 406, Berkeley, CA 94709
Shop location: 2311 Adeline, Unit P, Oakland, 94607 (at West Grand)"

Tri-Cities, Illinois

The "Fiber for our Future" group ("Citizens of Batavia, Geneva, and St. Charles Illinois in support of Municipal Broadband for our Communities") confronted a concrete example of a telco-cable anti-municipal network alliance in their campaign to bring muni-broadband to their area through a public referendum in 2003. They lost.

To see a video of the July 7, 2004, open forum entitled "Why Municipal Broadband Is Good For The Tri-Cities" that supporters of the Tri-Cities Municipal Broadband campaign put on at Batavia City Hall, click here. To see an ad from Tri-Cities Municipal Broadband campaign opponents, paid for by SBC, click here.

Palo Alto, California

Municipal broadband advocates in Batavia, Geneva, and St. Charles, Illinois, refer their site visitors to sites of similar efforts in what they refer to as "Sisters in Arms" around the U.S. One such sister-in-arms is Palo Alto, California, in the heart of Silicon Valley, where citizens organized as the Palo Alto Fiber Network were, as late as September 22nd of this year, still trying to move forward towards their goal of providing FTTH for everyone in that community, this project having been something "which we have been talking about and studying for ten years."

Lompoc, California

The Palo Alto FTTH site, in turn, makes copious mention of similar efforts in Lompoc, California, near Vandenberg Air Force Base, to bring in a municipal broadband wireless network there. The Lompoc City Council, on September 21, 2004, approved a contract to install such a city-wide system, with a scheduled completion date of December 31, 2004.

Lafayette, Louisiana

See also "Living in the Future," from the Internet2 consortium and "Lafayette Louisiana Debates Dominion Over Telecommunications and Entertainment," where the same issue that arose in Illinois' Tri-Cities and is now coming to the fore in Philadelphia—namely, who will control the broadband fiber-wireless amalgamated Internet/VoIP/entertainment networks of the future in these places—is discussed in detail.

Under whose auspices will the Wired/Unwired City of Tomorrow be built and operated?

The hobgoblin of government-against-private enterprise (bolstered by large government subsidies and/or government-guaranteed monopolies) that is being brought forward by the telco-cable alliance with as much energy and cunning as must have gone into creating SBC's grand unified set of alliances as documented a long time ago in this article, was raised by SBC's predecessor organization, Pacific Bell, when it collaborated with City Cable Partners, an organization of local private investors headed by Walter Hewlett, who would later lead an abortive effort to stop the company his father William co-founded from merging with Compaq.

City Cable Partners had been generated out of the dialectical process that began when a small band of Palo Altans, including this reporter, formed the Cable Communications Co-operative of Palo Alto, Inc. ("Cable Co-op") in the early 1980s. The Cable Co-op's goal, not unlike that of today's Palo Alto Fiber Network, was to create a state-of-the-art network to empower, educate, and entertain the local citizenry, this empowerment, education, and entertainment to be under the control of the community co-operative itself.

The goal, then as now, was to create the best and most powerful possible communications network "of the people, by the people, and for the people." When mysterious shenanigans involving public misrepresentations came to light at that time, the courageous and forward-looking Palo Alto City Council gave the nod to Cable Co-op as their choice to build and operate the Wired City of the Future there on the mid-Peninsula.

Chronically undercapitalized, Cable Co-op nevertheless soldiered on bravely until the late 1990's, when it was bought out by AT&T Cable, which eventually sold itself to Comcast, which recently (2003) collaborated with SBC in defeating a modern-day version of yesterday's Palo Alto's Cable Co-op ("Fiber for our Future" from the "Land of Lincoln"), in its effort to establish a community-based, state-of-the-art municipally-owned telecommunications network.

Comcast now provides cable service to Palo Altans, and AT&T Wireless has just been sold (see above) to Cingular, 60% owned by SBC, which may now be in a position to offer, after the recent de-regulation of such services by the FCC, through its $4 billion FTTH/FTTC/FTTN service-area-wide optical fiber deployment, the same technological advances that the citizens of Palo Alto and environs had been "been talking about and studying for ten years."

Except that now the system will be in private hands and citizens of Palo Alto who want to use it will need to become paying customers of a monopoly provider rather than the stewards and owners of a community-owned cooperative enterprise committed to the common good, as well as to providing local households and individuals with the best possible telecommunications options and entertainment choices, within a structure wherein all the users are also the owners.

Enhancing the power of already-unprecedentedly-powerful multi-media networks on the road ahead

Given that the technology implemented by BitTorrent can provide "limitless scalability for a fixed cost" for the mass distribution of large files (i.e., streaming and downloadable video) using an architectural eerily similar to that found in wireless mesh networks as well as in the Internet itself (i.e., radically decentralized with no single point of failure), can be synergized with the universal ubiquitous broadband networks discussed in this article to create a condition of "bandwidth to burn" and a model and determinant of individual and local control at odds with the centralized alternative, it should come as no surprise to partisans of either preference when the fight over who will control these networks becomes a central focus of local, national, and global interest in the coming months and years.