We’re doing an all day conference today on the FCC Broadband Deployment Workshop live blog today.

Wired broadband deployment workgroup

6:30 AM – Opening comments by participants.

FCC Broadband workshop

6:55 AM – Clearwire: Wireless can’t support the kind of throughput (network capacity – speed * duration) that wired networks can support, which requires usage caps on wireless.

7:01 AM – Top 3% use 55% of total wireless bandwidth, and they will not be satisfied with any amount of bandwidth.

7:04 AM – Spectrum alone doesn’t solve problem, because wireless is shared by hundreds of users.  Cell sites are using wired (including backhaul) and wireless as back haul.

7:19 AM – New installs are going to be fiber to the premise, but there is a big priority to upgrade DSL speeds on existing copper.  There’s a big demand to upgrade 1.5 Mbps DSL to 7 Mbps DSL.

7:20 AM – Verizon is doing only large scale fiber covering 18 million homes with a goal of 40% penetration.  Done at a cost of $2500 per home, not including customer acquisition costs.  Total cost is $4000 per customer whereas cable is $1000 per home.  These networks cost 4x more to build than what the market currently values it at.  Losing 5% to 6% of access lines every year.

7:24 AM – Moderator wants to know how much cable costs compared to fiber in a green field build.

7:25 AM – Most builds are not green field and it’s always cheaper to expand existing networks.  However, the costs to build each network are probably not all that different.

7:26 AM – Cable networks are mostly fiber (80%).  Only the last little bit is coax.  Hybrid fiber coax networks satisfies the demand.  Cable covers up to 99.9% of homes.  Today it costs $50,000 a mile.  Cost to build network is mostly labor costs.  Cable can cover less dense areas and currently hits 99.5% of homes.  Hybrid fiber/coax delivers full speed to all customers.

7:34 AM – iPlayer killed a lot of broadband networks when it first launched.  ISPs begged BBC to stop because you’re killing the Internet.  BBC replies no, we’re only killing inferior networks and we’ll just tell our customers to go elsewhere to get iPlayer.

7:45 AM – Fiber has cheaper operational maintenance costs.

7:50 AM – Broadband is a very broad term.  People who live in the Australian Outback (by choice) for example can only get Satellite.  We can’t build fiber out to a town with two people.

7:55 AM – The US has higher illiteracy rate than the OECD.  Broadband, with exception of future video entertainment, is of limited value to the illiterate.  There are some vey deep social impediments that decide the lack of the PC that drives the 30% to 35% of households that could have broadband and do not.

7:58 AM – What are the applications for 100 Mbps when business guy is content with 512 Kbps.  What does he actually fill that pipe with.

8:00 AM – We can use it for job search, education to the home.

8:14 AM – Can’t guarantee service on remote sites, because no way to control all the components.  If content is hosted locally, then better service can be guaranteed.

8:15 AM – Broadband providers are getting better at delivering advertised speeds.  Homes that want guaranteed throughput purchase business class service where the network is over provisioned.  Overbuilding networks when applications don’t require it adds another cost layer that, at least today, aren’t being asked for by customers.

8:22 AM – Moderator Rob Curtis wants to know if network demand will become more symmetric in the future.

8:24 AM – Content Delivery Networks mean that traffic will continue to be more asymmetric.  People will upload and generate content, but they will download and consume content more.

8:27 AM – Rob Curtis wondering if telemedicine, video conferencing, remote monitoring will mean change to more symmetric.

8:28 AM – Application providers will primarily design for asymmetric network.

8:30 AM – Network should support at least one or two video streams going upstream.

8:30 AM – Telepresence is already here, and it uses private networks and not public network.  HP uses private DS3s for their telepresence.

8:34 AM – Rural providers should create their own VoIP SIP network nationwide so that they’re just as big as the big boys and negotiate a real agreement for all their endpoints.

8:35 AM – Moderator: we’re running down on time.

8:38 AM – We’re finished with the wired broadband deployment work group, though a lot was said about wireless.  Wireless deployment work group coming up in 1:20 minutes at 1PM EST.

Wireless broadband deployment workgroup

10:00 AM Pacific – Start of session

10:03 AM – Stephen Bye (VP of cable company) Entering 3G business and looking at LTE.

10:06 AM – Jake MacLeod (Bechtel) touches on GPRS and its 5 Mbps capacity.

10:10 AM – Neville Ray (T-Mobile).  Says T-Mobile G1 customers are consuming 300+ megabytes per month driving extreme usage on network.  New spectrum is critical to performance, capacity, and media.  T-Mobile running HSPA today and they’ll start deploying HSPA+ (21 Mbps downlink).  LTE already trialed.

10:12 AM – Tom Sawanobori (Verizon) Currently using 3G EV-DO, going to nation’s first 4G LTE network.  Verizon’s 700 MHz will allow robust deployment of LTE.

10:16 AM – Ed Evans.  Wireless provider out of Oklahoma city.  Being a greenfield builder allowed them to start with HSPA at 14.4 Mbps per cell.  Purely data network and no circuit based voice.

10:18 AM – Rowland Shaw (Ericsson).  Shared slides below.

10:22AM – Scott Zimmer (Air Advantage).  We serve around 50 people per square mile, while state average is 175.  We’re doing everything the big boys are doing, like telemedicine for these little hospitals using our wireless network.  Important to state we use unlicensed frequency.  Started in 2002 and currently have 4500 customers.  We allow people to tellecommute and we allow students to take Advanced Placement courses.

10:25AM – Brian Ponte ( LEMKO) – We believe smartphone is a misnomer.  iPhone is really a computer with voice application.  (George Ou’s note, Voice is a separate embedded application not to be confused with something in app store.  Voice also uses circuit switching network and not VoIP.  VoIP isn’t scalable on current wireless networks because of random collision problem.)

10:29AM – Rob Curtis: How do we push wireless out to customers in areas with very poor density.

10:30AM – Scott Zimmer: We think Wireless can be the answer in the rural market.  In the rural markets we serve, we’re not as concerned about density.  Our concern is propagation as opposed to density.

10:33AM – Ed Evans: Our customers use between 2 to 3.5 GB a month.  We need more than 60 customers per cell site to make it economical.  We don’t deliver HDTV like FiOS, but we can deliver 8 Mbps (George Ou’s note – Much more shared though).

10:38Am – Scott Zimmer: We don’t try to compete with DSL and we go where they don’t go.

10:41AM – Less than 10% of cell towers have fiber back haul.

10:44AM – Microwave back haul won’t work for LTE tower because of capacity constraints.  Need fiber to the cell tower.

11:08AM – Stephen Bye: We have 20 to 32 MHz in each of our wireless markets.  On the cable side, we have a gigahertz.

George Ou – Note that each MHz on wireless is good for 0.5 when there’s lower signal levels to 7 Mbps when the signal is good and MIMO (where multiple radios and antennas on both sides) is used.  Each MHz on Coax Cable is probably good for a consistent 6 Mbps.

11:10AM – NIMBY (Not in my back yard) resistance against cell towers is a big problem.

11:13AM – Ed Evans: A lot of spectrum isn’t used because of poor spectrum policy.  Large carriers were forced to buy spectrum at 47 cents per pop covering City and rural areas.  We buy at 10 cents for rural areas and big carriers can’t resell to us at 10 cents when they paid 47 cents.

11:16AM – Question: Some places are limiting antenna height.  Is that a problem?

11:17Am – Ed Evans: Flat areas allow us to use lower antennas, but trees are a problem.

11:18AM – We need towers as high as possible in rural areas where population density is low.

11:19AM – Lower frequencies like 700 MHz propagate around trees better than 2.5 GHz.

11:20AM – Question about using whitespaces for broadband

11:21AM – Scott Zimmer: Antenna height is a big limiting factor

George Ou – Not to mention the fact that white spaces is more appropriate as a wireless local area network solution due to the low power levels which are necessary because everyone is sharing the same spectrum without a license.  It might be appropriate for replacing current unlicensed 802.11B solutions because of the better signal propagation, but that only works if equipment is common and cheap.

11:29 – Neville Ray: T-Mobile is using a lot of Wi-Fi offload (to save on licensed spectrum capacity).

11:30 – John Lebovitz question, what are the usable frequencies for fixed and mobile wireless

11:31 – Neville Ray: 750 MHz is great for the device and the network.  450 MHz is challenging because of the antenna needed.

11:39 – Ed Evans: We’re sticking with HSPA (assuming he means HSPA+) until there’s a compelling need to upgrade to LTE.  While LTE is only a module upgrade on the tower, it still involves changing out the client devices.

11:42 – Jake MacLeod: We have to deploy OFDM based LTE carefully because we need to know how to deal with any problems that will come up.

11:45 – Ed and Tom are not fans of network sharing because they put a lot of work into building their networks.

11:48 – Scott Zimmer not a fan of network sharing, even for his small unlicensed spectrum towers.

11:49 – Rob Curtis asks Zimmer what he wants to see as far as unlicensed spectrum policy.

11:49 – Scott Zimmer likes the 3650 MHz model, and wants FCC to monitor it (for spectrum etiquette)

11:51 – Neville Ray points out that network sharing does happen when common infrastructure is built.

11:57 – Brian Ponte points out that he can take his smart phone home but he can’t take his DSL with him on the road.  Won’t take out his laptop on the road because of the complexities of setting up SSIDs and paying for Wi-Fi when it’s easier to use his phone.

11:59 AM Pacific – Rob Curtis ends the session