<html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body dir="auto"><div>Barrack</div><div id="AppleMailSignature"><br></div><div id="AppleMailSignature">Interesting. It would really be interesting to hear from the folks at USF. They have taken quite a beating from this forum. Maybe a good idea to listen to them and get a feel of where they are at and what sort of challenges they face.</div><div id="AppleMailSignature"><br><div><span style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.294118); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.231373);"><b>Ali Hussein</b></span></div><div><span style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.294118); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.231373);"><b>Principal</b></span></div><div><b style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Hussein & Associates</b></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: medium; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; ">+254 0713 601113 / 0770906375</div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: medium; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; "><br></div><div><p style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Twitter: @AliHKassim</span></p><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><font></font></span><p style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Skype: abu-jomo</span></p><p style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">LinkedIn: <a href="http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim" target="_blank">http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim</a></span></p><font><br></font></div><div><span style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); "><br></span></div><div>"Discovery consists in seeing what everyone else has seen and thinking what no one else has thought". ~ Albert Szent-Györgyi</div><div><span style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.294118); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.231373);"><br></span></div>Sent from my iPad</div><div><br>On 13 Apr 2016, at 10:46 AM, Barrack Otieno via kictanet <<a href="mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke">kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke</a>> wrote:<br><br></div><blockquote type="cite"><div><span>Listers,</span><br><span></span><br><span>In light of Walu's write up on Universal Access, this might provide an</span><br><span>interesting comparison.</span><br><span></span><br><span>Thank you</span><br><span></span><br><span>Best Regards</span><br><span></span><br><span>---------- Forwarded message ----------</span><br><span>From: Dave Burstein <<a href="mailto:daveb@dslprime.com">daveb@dslprime.com</a>></span><br><span>Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2016 02:48:29 -0400</span><br><span>Subject: [Internet Policy] Universal service fund in the U.S. has</span><br><span>failed badly. Despite $billions, U.S. has close to the worst coverage</span><br><span>in the developed world.</span><br><span>To: Richard Hill <<a href="mailto:rhill@hill-a.ch">rhill@hill-a.ch</a>>, "<a href="mailto:internetpolicy@elists.isoc.org">internetpolicy@elists.isoc.org</a>"</span><br><span><<a href="mailto:internetpolicy@elists.isoc.org">internetpolicy@elists.isoc.org</a>>, Alejandro Pisanty</span><br><span><<a href="mailto:apisanty@gmail.com">apisanty@gmail.com</a>></span><br><span></span><br><span>Folks</span><br><span></span><br><span>I changed the subject to avoid getting entangled in the debate about the</span><br><span>particular report and focus on the issue of achieving access. Based on the</span><br><span>U.S. experience, I believe USF funding is inefficient at best.</span><br><span></span><br><span>The U.S. has about 5M homes that can't get landline broadband despite $7B</span><br><span>in our stimulus and billions more over the years in Universal Service</span><br><span>money. (FCC data) That's 7-10X the unserved rate in much of Western</span><br><span>Europe.The greater land area is only a partial explanation. See the work of</span><br><span>Professors Rosston and Hazlett as well as Scott Wallsten, who was chief</span><br><span>economist of our broadband plan. I did two workshops for our Broadband Plan.</span><br><span></span><br><span>I don't have depth on the issues in other countries but what I know</span><br><span>suggests USF isn't performing well most places. I believe the Kurth</span><br><span>Solution, named after the German regulator, is strongly preferable.</span><br><span></span><br><span>Unserved rural areas by their nature are scattered and have limited local</span><br><span>infrastructure. In most places, only the incumbent has the local facilities</span><br><span>and backhaul required to serve the area at competitive cost. This became</span><br><span>obvious when almost none of the applications for our broadband stimulus</span><br><span>were from new entrants looking to connect the unserved, although that was</span><br><span>the primary goal of the funding.</span><br><span></span><br><span>The result was that the local phone company could and did claim their costs</span><br><span>were far higher than they needed to be. Add on the political power of the</span><br><span>phone companies (regulatory capture) and the system is spending what I</span><br><span>estimate is easily twice what an efficient subsidy would be. (Limited hard</span><br><span>data.)</span><br><span></span><br><span>Kurth in Germany covered most of the "white spaces on the map" at a much</span><br><span>lower cost. In a spectrum auction, the carriers were required to cover</span><br><span>white spaces before they use the spectrum in the big cities. While the</span><br><span>companies could reduce their bids, WIK Consulting told me the impact was</span><br><span>very small.</span><br><span></span><br><span>Vodafone and Deutsche Telekom, spending their own money covered those small</span><br><span>towns rapidly and what I believe was far less than any USF subsidy would</span><br><span>have been. LTE speeds are now 50-100 megabits, enough for most purposes.</span><br><span>The caps on the rural wireless were much too low but technology is rapidly</span><br><span>improving that. Today's LTE gear has 3-4X the capacity of the earlier</span><br><span>systems, mostly through carrier aggregation. More advanced MIMO and MU MIMO</span><br><span>are likely to deliver 10X the current capacity in the next few years,</span><br><span>according to leading wireless experts such as Stanford's Paulraj. That will</span><br><span>allow raising the cap to perhaps 100-150 gigabytes/month, probably with</span><br><span>unlimited access nights and mornings.</span><br><span></span><br><span>Portugal and others are working with a similar system.</span><br><span>----------------------------------</span><br><span>Unless you have a plan to educate the regulator and enforce reasonable</span><br><span>pricing in USF, I think the plans are somewhere between overly expensive or</span><br><span>ridiculous. The U.S. couldn't do it despite major efforts since the</span><br><span>Broadband plan.</span><br><span></span><br><span>The "Kurth Solution" - indirect competitive bidding as part of the spectrum</span><br><span>auction, seems to work well. It's not the only alternative.</span><br><span></span><br><span>Australia is building a National Broadband Network for everyone.</span><br><span>Unfortunately, the cost has gotten out of hand, as so often happens with</span><br><span>government projects.</span><br><span></span><br><span>India may have a better idea; the government is extending fiber to 10's of</span><br><span>thousands of small towns with the expectation private or cooperative</span><br><span>efforts can deploy the last mile. The backhaul costs are often the largest</span><br><span>expense in rural service. They require so much capital few but the largest</span><br><span>companies can finance backhaul.</span><br><span></span><br><span>With mobile phones and WiFi gear now under $50, local businesses or munis</span><br><span>can connect to that fiber and serve the area with a small investment. This</span><br><span>is very promising, although political entanglement has drastically slowed</span><br><span>construction. Some government projects work well (China), others we know</span><br><span>are unsuccessful.</span><br><span>-------------------------------</span><br><span></span><br><span>Satellite has become much more attractive than before. Mark Dankberg,</span><br><span>Viasat CEO, told our broadband plan today's satellites have an order of</span><br><span>magnitude more capacity and reduce latency by half. (They haven't solved</span><br><span>the 22,000 mile distance but improving the routers and caching apparently</span><br><span>makes a huge difference.) No politician would admit it, but the assumption</span><br><span>in the U.S. plan was satellite for the last 1%.</span><br><span></span><br><span>All current Universal access programs may have become obsolete on December</span><br><span>21, The Falcon 9 successfully launched a constellation of 11 Orbcomm-OG2</span><br><span>second-generation Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites. The first stage</span><br><span>returned to Cape Canaveral successfully, which Elon Musk's company says</span><br><span>will reduce costs by about 30%. The first two sea landings failed but April</span><br><span>8, 2016, Falcon 9 Flight 23 successfully landed a 1st stage booster on</span><br><span>drone ship Of Course I Still Love You.</span><br><span></span><br><span>Low Orbit satellites solve the latency problem but still have a way to go.</span><br><span>Small, inexpensive tracking antennas need to be developed. An engineer I</span><br><span>respect has studied the problems and expects LEO sats will be the way to go</span><br><span>in a few years.</span><br><span></span><br><span>Facebook's drones will probably never be cost-effective just serving</span><br><span>extreme rural areas, I believe; I'm anticipating they will need urban</span><br><span>customers to cover the costs. Their engineers may be good but the head of</span><br><span>the project didn't know the facts on the ground. I haven't researched it</span><br><span>but I expect the rapidly dropping costs of LTE will be much less than the</span><br><span>drone network. I would guess the same about Google's balloons but the team</span><br><span>seems far more knowledgeable.</span><br><span></span><br><span>I've bcc'd this to the experts mentioned. I hope they and any others catch</span><br><span>any mistakes I have.</span><br><span></span><br><span>The above is only about access. I'm very encouraged by the new U.S.</span><br><span>Broadband Lifeline, a $9.25/month subsidy for the poor where networks are</span><br><span>already in place. Broadband networks are a classic case of high fixed</span><br><span>costs/low marginal costs. The marginal cost of adding a customer to an</span><br><span>existing large broadband network in America or Europe is $4-8/month.</span><br><span></span><br><span>Dave Burstein</span><br><span></span><br><span>Editor, Fast Net News, Net Policy News and DSL Prime</span><br><span>Author with Jennie Bourne DSL (Wiley) and Web Video: Making It Great,</span><br><span>Getting It Noticed (Peachpit)</span><br><span></span><br><span></span><br><span></span><br><span>-- </span><br><span>Barrack O. Otieno</span><br><span>+254721325277</span><br><span>+254733206359</span><br><span>Skype: barrack.otieno</span><br><span></span><br><span>_______________________________________________</span><br><span>kictanet mailing list</span><br><span><a href="mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke">kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke</a></span><br><span><a href="https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet">https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet</a></span><br><span></span><br><span>Unsubscribe or change your options at <a href="https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/info%40alyhussein.com">https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/info%40alyhussein.com</a></span><br><span></span><br><span>The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. 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