Verizon ends fiber optic rollout, chooses instead to partner with cable TV

Well, the great idea of auctioning off spectrum to create more competition in wireless services seems to be going by the wayside. Verizon, who had made a big push to provide fiber optic based internet service + cable TV (FIOS) to many homes on the East Coast, seems to have stopped that altogether (too costly, it seems), and instead has been making partnership deals with existing cable TV companies who own the rights to currently unused wireless spectrum. Verizon gets the spectrum rights (for money), making it an even stronger dominating market force, and through partnership agreements it gets access to more homes. The downside? Cable TV companies are giving up on wireless, which may have been a pipe dream to begin with, and consumers will continue to have limited choices for fixed line internet access. Continued expansion of fiber to the home, also, appears to go by the wayside.

See the Op Ed piece here: Verizon's Worrisome Cable Deals.

Broadband Blindness Now Up!

I'm happy to announce that the final cut of "Broadband Blindness" is now finished and streaming now on Sactoast.com. Due to the large file size, I've broken it into three parts. This documentary features interviews with Carol Anne Ogdin (Interbahn, Placerville), John Paul (SpiralNet, Nevada City), Fred Pilot (Camino Fiber Cooperative, Camino), Tara Thronson (Valley Vision, Sacramento), Thomas Beamish (UC Davis, Davis), and Michael Morris (CPUC, San Francisco). Go to the "Digital Divide" page to view Parts 2 and 3.

Urban Winemaking Part 3

Part 3 in our Urban Winemaking series will be online later today. In this episode, we visit Sacramento's Spoto Wines and talk with Stuart Spoto about the pressing process and what goes into making his high-end, Oakville (Napa County) vintage reds.

Broadband Blindness Rough Cut Complete!

Now that the rough cut of Broadband Blindness is complete, I'm soliciting feedback from a number of people before I do the final edits and release it to the public. This has been a very rewarding project, and I couldn't have done it without the generous support of my executive producers and other amazing supporters who donated through Kickstarter.

update on Broadband Blindness

I had opportunity to enlist the help of a professional photographer (Dale Crandall Bear) to film the host sequences where I introduce the problem and talk about the key issues.

Working with another cameraman is incredibly rewarding, but it also requires a higher level of documentation and formalization of the film concept, flow, and scenes. That meant having to put together a complete storyboard and shot list for Dale, scouting locations for each shoot, and finally writing out my lines on cue cards.

We filmed and finished those sequences two days ago (Sunday), and now I am deep in the editing cave putting everything together. Thanks for your patience. Everything is moving along, albeit delayed. Attached are some photos of the storyboard and two of the shots.

FCC changes Universal Service Fund, but how much will it help?

This means nothing to most of you, so here's the bottom line: the $$ extra charges on your telephone bill that until now subsidized rural telephone service will soon go toward expanding internet service to more than 600,000 Americans. It will be called the "Connect America Fund" and will be capped at $4.5 billion.

One major problem I see in the FCC's plan, which estimates that $24 billion will be needed to extend broadband to 7 million Americans, is the FCC's  over-reliance on 4G cellular network deployments. Most of us have 3G now on our cell phones, and that service is painfully slow in many populated areas like San Francisco and New York City -- so much so that AT&T employees have advised me to force my iPhone to use the older, slower Edge network for browsing and E-mail. The problem isn't with 3G per se; it's with how carriers build their networks. High speed mobile internet service is expensive to operate, and carriers consider average traffic per user and aggregate busy hour traffic (the busiest hour of the day) when they equip their base stations with capacity.

The problem comes when the average traffic per user exceeds the forecast, as is what happened when the iPhone hit the market. The iPhone let people eat up much more capacity than the network was designed for. The base station radio had to either refuse additional customers or throttle down capacity for its existing users. Imagine what happens when those users are connecting their home computers to the same cellular network.

Then, there is the backhaul problem. Even if the radio base station can handle the additional traffic load, the lines connecting the base station to the nearest network hub quickly run out of capacity. Most base stations today have extremely limited backhaul capacity (most are copper T1s) rather than high capacity fiber optic lines. When you go to rural areas, the situation is even more extreme. Fiber optics are practically non-existent. And since cellular networks are sized for mobile devices, which demand less bandwidth than home computers, once you connect a bunch of rural home computers to a cellular network, chances are it will run out of capacity rather quickly.

Without MAJOR investment in backhaul improvements and significant capacity added to 4G base stations - most of which would undoubtedly fail to generate positive net present value - 4G network deployment will unlikely fill the need of rural residents who don't currently have access to internet service.

Urban Winemaking Part 2: James Blake Wines now online

In Part 2, we visit James Blake Wines in suburban Sacramento and learn why it's important to pick grapes early and how weather plays such an important role during harvest season. Watch winemaker James Scheller talk about what goes into their award-winning Cabernets, Merlots, Nebbiolos and Zinfandels.