Am I the only person who cannot get more than 26,400 bps out of a 56 k modem class performance? The best I have ever seen out of my U.S. Robotics modem, upgraded to the v.90 56k standard, is about 26,400 bits per second. This was also true at our old house, near Seattle, Washington and remains true at the house we moved to in Spokane, Washington.

Because I do a lot of work over the Internet from a home office, I decided to look in to getting  a faster connection.  With much recent publicity about the rapid deployment of fast data services, in my area no less, I decided to investigate the possible solutions and contrary to the press release hype, not one of them actually exists here. 
 

Spokane County has a population around 400,000 and the City of Spokane is one the 4 largest cities in Washington. Our local city government scandals make the front page of the Wall Street Journal, suggesting we must be sufficiently metropolitan to deserve modern telecommunications services. The Journal’s lead story for January 8th is the scandal ridden downtown redevelopment “public-private” partnership that, apparently like many such projects, assigns the risk to the taxpaying public and the potential gains to the private developer.

56k Modems?

Having ruled out 56 k modems, I looked into other options. Our phone company, U.S. West, advertises both DSL (high-speed data service over conventional copper wire phone lines) and ISDN (64 kbps and 128 kbps) services in our community.  TCI has put out press releases announcing TCI @Home cable modem Internet service in Spokane. Sounds promising, right? Guess again … 
 

Cable Modems?

The email said that the network would be deployed  “street by street”, which seemed like code words for "years". TCI has missed numerous deadlines on their Seattle area network and now says it will be another 9 months, at least, before they have their system up and running.  My confidence in TCI is lacking, especially after they bought the small cable provider we used to have, near Seattle, and signal and service quality went into the noise. It took a letter to the President of TCI, the FCC, the County's Cable Systems Bureau, and the manager of the local TCI office,  just to get them to come out and fix the broken video distribution amplifier serviing our neighborhood that had been defective for 8 weeks. Three weeks later, it broke again ...

While cable modem service exists in a few “islands” across the country, I suspect it will be years before much of the country has the infrastructure in place to provide cable modem service.

U.S. West DSL Service?

U.S. West ISDN Service?

DirecPC?

From previous experience, I know that DirecPC assigns a static IP address to your PC. Normally, this is not too much trouble – except that most SMTP mail servers insist that your IP address be assigned by your local ISP, not someone else. The result is that your outbound mail won’t be sendable through your local ISP’s SMTP server. (One work around, of course, is to sign up with DirecPC’s ISP or another provider that does not restrict access to the SMTP server. Unfortunately, my ISP restricts access to their SMTP server). Since I knew this, I called up the technical  staff at my local ISP to discuss possible work-arounds, and ended up learning something interesting about ISDN…
 

U.S. West Does Not Want to Install ISDN

In other words, you generally cannot get ISDN service in Spokane. Now you know why U.S. West is often referred to in their service area as U.S. Worst. 
 

So Broadband Residential Internet Service is a Myth?

• My U.S. West phone line is not capable of 56 kbps modem service and never will be, and maxes out at 28,800 bps at best.
• Cable modem service, which is claimed to exist, is not available and there is no estimate for deployment. 
• ISDN service is not available either, contrary to the U.S. West’s claims to provide ISDN service.
• DSL modem service, contrary to the advertisements in the local paper, is not available  and the telephone company has no idea if or how they will ever deploy DSL service here.

A few people I know actually have high-speed connections. I know a few people in the Seattle area who managed to get DSL service. In one case, it took U.S. West 4 months to get it working at the customer’s house – and now his regular phones all have a background hiss on the line caused by the DSL service. I know someone near Boston who has cable modem service. But fast Internet service is rolling outwards in little islands of connectivity.  Factors in the slow deployment include the newness of the technology, upgrade costs, arrogant phone companies, incompetent cable companies and an absolute disastrous mess of government regulations and regulatory agencies. 
 

Regulation and Regulatory Agencies I don’t fault the regulatory agencies – very much. Their staffs are working hard but under impossible conditions. Basically, our system of government, especially at the agency level is one of government of, by and for special interests. In my recent dealing with the WUTC, there were about 100 public comments filed with the Commission. Of those, my comments (and this second set of comments) were the only well-researched comments of a consumer who was supposed to be protected by the rules. Approximately 90 of the comments were from moving companies, their trade association or their law firms. The result is rules and regulations that ostensibly are there to protect the consumer but end up being written by the industry itself to protect competitors from competition. The same problems exist at the FCC and the state commissions that regulate local telephone and cable company activities. And the result is a regulatory framework that is used by the entrenched monopolies to stifle competition and delay making infrastructure investments.

No One Technology Will Suffice

In one large trial of DSL services to residential homes, it was determined that roughly one out of three persons who signed up for the trial could not be served. DSL is basically modulating an RF signal onto the copper wires of the phone network. One form of DSL puts the carrier at 1.3 Mhz – for AM radi o fans, that is 1300 khz on the AM radio dial. And yes, the signal leaks. Both ways. That means, according to one press report, that ADSL (asymmetric DSL) can not be used within about 1/2 mile of an AM broadcast station. Further, certain conditions on the physical line may exclude DSL service entirely. In addition, there are compatibility problems between T-1 service (a form of DSL) and DSL. If there is a single T-1 service in the bundle of copper wires, then no one can get DSL service due to problems with signal bleeds between the wires.

This week, U.S. West announced that it would spend $3 billion on infrastructure improvements so that it can provide new data services to up to 50% of its customers. Sounds like it will take several years just to reach the 50% level. And its my guess that this means only that DSL service might be available for up to 50% of their customers – the actual number who’s lines will be capable of providing DSL service is likely to be considerably less.
 

MMDS

“Wireless cable TV” providers (also known as MMDS providers) use spectrum near 2.1 GHz and 2.6 GHz to deliver analog TV signals. Some of these are upgrading to digital technology  and providing either one-way fast Internet (like DirecPC) or two-way fast data service. But these too are few and far between. The MMDS industry achieved a dubious distinction when various fraudulent investment schemes were used to fund some fly-by-night operators a few years back. Today, with the advent of small satellite TV dish receivers, their major market opportunity (wireless cable in rural areas) has been swallowed up. Some are repositioning to offer both local TV via MMDS and acting as satellite DBS resellers. Others are trying to reposition their businesses into wireless Internet providers. However, their tainted financial history and the high dollar losses they’ve sustained have made funding hard to find – and without funding, many of the MMDS providers may collapse and never get new networks off the ground. This is too bad because they have the technical  capability, and low infrastructure costs, to quickly establish high speed wireless Internet services to homes and small businesses.

Yet, as noted with DSL, MMDS and the other wireless services cannot serve 100% of their potential  customers either. Hills, buildings, and even trees, can interfere with signals such that not all customers can receive a reliable microwave signal.
 

LMDS

WinStar

There are hints that other DBS satellite providers, such as the DISH Network, will eventually offer satellite-based Internet service too.
 

My Solution? 

I'm getting the idea that the retailers think that cable modems are going to sell well. Spokane is a market where TCI will only sell the modem through local retailers, not rent the modem. For TCI this is a good move (if they actually deliver service) since it gets the retailers to push TCI @Home. And on a shelf space basis, cable modems are a lot more profitable than large DirecPC boxes. So the result is that DirecPC is going to get squished out of the local retail channel. Meanwhile, cable modem service is not actually available and the competitors have been driven from the market.

The bottom line is that for most people in the U.S. (and our telecommunications infrastructure is quite advanced), it will be a long wait before fast Internet service is available. No one technology is up to meeting the challenges of providing fast service to everyone within an area. Wireless solutions don’t work for everyone – many customers will be blocked from the line-of-sight signal path needed to see the wireless transmission site. DSL and cable modems won’t work for all customers either. Its going to take a mix of technologies in each area before everyone will have a chance at fast access. And I predict that for most of us, it will be a long wait before sufficient alternatives are in place so that high speed access will truly be available to all customers in an area. 

Customers in small towns have it even worse. Telecommunications monopolies are not providing service even to the business customers in town. Unfortunately, the vaporware network installations in some neighborhoods within some cities will likely convince many that the local communications monopolies are doing a great job when in reality, they have set up only token service.

In the meantime, be prepared for marketing types bearing false promises of fast Internet access just around the corner  for a long time to come. 

And that's my opinion. I'll change my opinion when I see genuine solutions being offered, not just more vacuous marketing hype.

Ed Mitchell, KF7VY
http://hamradio-online.com