For a company whose U-Verse fiber to the node broadband service has consistently under-performed in the battle against cable, AT&T executives were very confident in future U-Verse speed claims while speaking at their developer conference this week at CES. AT&T recently announced that they'd be expanding their U-Verse footprint from 24.5 million homes to 33 million, though the company used some
fuzzy math to make the expansion seem much larger than it was.
The company has also suggested some existing U-Verse customers would be getting speeds "up to 75 Mbps" this year. Speaking at CES, Senior Executive Vice President of AT&T Technology and Network Operations (and former CTO) John Donovan offered some more detail on the speed upgrades.
"With our plant technology advancements, 90 percent of our U-verse customer locations will have the capability to receive what we project to be 75 Mbps -- and 75 percent will have the capability to receive up to 100 Mbps,' insisted Donovan. "Almost 80 percent of the IP DSLAM customer locations will have the capability to receive 45 Mbps, with about half of those having the capability to receive up to 75 Mbps."
Donovan's predictions seem optimistic. To obtain anywhere close to these kinds of speeds users will need to have quality copper lines, be in a position to use bonded lines, and enjoy shorter loop lengths (around 2,000 feet or less from the VRAD). Suggesting that 80-90% of U-Verse customers will meet that criteria seems like a Yoga-grade stretch.
FCC boss Julius Genachowski has been busy lately paying lip service to Silicon Valley, most recently telling a bunch of Silicon Valley conference attendees that
caps were something we should be "concerned" about, after telling cable companies just a few months earlier he thought caps and overages are
nifty and innovative. Speaking again to Silicon Valley folks yesterday at a
speech at Vox Media headquarters, Genachowski hashed out his muddy position a little further, again insisting he was "concerned" about caps -- sort of -- maybe:
(Growing usage) presents challenges for broadband providers in managing the growing loads on their networks while earning returns to drive capital investment in network upgrades and expansion.
Scott Cleland is a policy consultant paid by incumbent ISPs to sell his client's unfiltered Kool-Aid to reporters and politicians, and is frequently called to Washington as an "objective" industry analyst, despite his obvious role as little more than a paid parrot. You might recall that when we last saw Scott Cleland, he was busily
beating up on Google for not investing in broadband infrastructure, despite billions spent on global fiber runs and storage capacity.
With LightSquared
all but dead after being denied a necessary FCC spectrum condition waiver, LightSquared CEO Sanjiv Ahuja recently
got out while the getting was good -- and Sprint is poised to untangle itself from the mess that is LightSquared. Sprint, who had struck a deal to use some of LightSquared's spectrum, had given the company two deal extensions to deal with their regulatory headaches caused by GPS interference. With LightSquared being unable to convince regulators they had an adequate plan to deal with that interference, Sprint now plans to officially
kill the deal next week, according to anonymous sources.
