Summary
1. The FCC “Report on a Rural Broadband Strategy” inevitably gets into the “network openness” madness. 2. On a positive note, its discussion of “middle mile” connectivity is an important and often ignored consideration. 3. However, the one critical aspect of the actual workings of the Internet does not appear to be addressed in the document.
Analysis
In fact, the entire industry needs to be reminded every so often about the realities of the Internet. There are people with a lot of thoughts on it, but few truly understand how it really operates. In the technology section, the FCC report talks about various network factors such as distance, topography, survivability, and scalability. Yet, there is nothing about what is happening in the Internet itself that determines the actual speeds.
A service provider can provide a rate test that proves a certain amount of bandwidth is going from the network to the home. Nevertheless, whether it is 1 megabit or 100 megabits being offered in the last mile, the source of the information being transmitted cannot be left out of the equation. The network speed can be meaningless when an application is run off of a server in a distant part of the world.
For more information on the rural telco space, please see the issue in our Independent Telco Tactics Monthly, “Advancing Independent Telco Boom.” The report can be purchased directly from GLG.
