SDN Works! Adtran demo

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Published: 16 August 2016 16 August 2016

SDN is object oriented programming brought to telco networks. Adtran showed an impressive but still early version at their press event. Named Mosaic, it is already managing G.fast at trials in 65 telcos. The 40 gig NG-PON2 units Verizon is testing also run under Mosaic. From a single console controlling more than a dozen pieces of equipment, Adtran showed they can run "Configure, Deploy and Activate" on any of the boxes, not all of which are made by Adtran. 

Their Huntsville SDN demo was along a long wall. To the left of the picture was an 8086 type of Linux PC, about $5,000 worth, running ONOS and Adtran's Mosaic software suite. Underneath it were off the shelf boxes, 48x10G switches, 32x100G switches, and 16x10G PON OLTs. To the right of the monitor was an Adtran box running SHDSL; a 16 port G.fast box, 2 x 10 gig OLTs, 2 G.fast CPE, a carrier Ethernet unit, and gateways connected to the 10 gig PON. The switches were leaf and spine, from an obscure vendor in a white box.

The controller could have been a thousand miles away in the cloud.

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Breakthrough claimed for 10 gigabit tunable lasers

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Published: 14 August 2016 14 August 2016

90% cheaper, Adtran believes. NG-PON2 is a high-end design that can use several frequencies for system performance up to 40 gigabits. Verizon intends to deploy to business customers in 2017 and presumably soon for advanced wireless backhaul, including the 5G build for Boston. Unfortunately, tunable lasers for the multiple frequencies are brutally expensive, as much as $1,000.

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Tony Werner: In 12 months, Comcast will offer a gigabit coast-to-coast

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Published: 03 August 2016 03 August 2016

"Gigabit without a backhoe. ... We don't have to dig up the streets and can go incredibly fast. You're going to see us go coast-to-coast in the next 12 months," Comcast CTO Tony Werner tells Amy Maclean in a short but important interview. I'm told there are unannounced Comcast deployments of DOCSIS 3.1 in Chicago and California, as well as the large public trial in Atlanta. I'm guessing that Comcast has already upgraded the CMTS for millions of lines, ready to turn on large systems when they believe everything is ready. (That's consistent with what manufacturers are shipping but I don't have confirmation.)

Cable supplier Arris expects substantial sales of DOCSIS 3.1 modems starting early next year, which is consistent with Tony's prediction. Note that the high speeds are likely to be download only. Upload looks mostly to be 90% slower.

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Hedge fund billionaire Paulson backing Chicago AT&T competitor Layer3

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Published: 31 July 2016 31 July 2016

Drahi's Altice also is financing Layer3. They are offering a 4K set top with up to three terabytes, apparently designed to connect wirelessly to a simple network interface device. That avoids needing to wire in the home, which Fran Shammo says is often the largest cost in a Fios connection. They are about to launch in a Chicago neighborhood and are also hiring installers in Alexandria, Virginia. 

Cable tech legend Dave Fellows and partner Jeff Binder have raised $100M, hoping that Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T have loads of unhappy customers who will switch.  Paulson is a gambler who made $4B betting that triple-A rated mortgage bonds would default in 2008.

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Verizon earnings didn't cover the dividend

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Published: 29 July 2016 29 July 2016

Takeaways: The strike contributed but fundamental problems remain. They have been cutting capex since 2007 and they no longer have a major edge in quality. VZ is and will be a very profitable company, but maybe not worth $200B. Wireless data growth is way down (< 40%) as I've been forecasting for several years. 5G Highband will start rolling for fixed wireless in 2018, but probably slowly. It will not add to earnings until well into next decade. The CFO forecasts very slow revenue growth. McAdam thinks best quality, video and IoT growth, and large content revenue will solve these problems. I raise doubts. 

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3M fiber, 19M LTE June adds: China Mobile's broadband mensis mirabilis

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Published: 25 July 2016 25 July 2016

China is now 1/3rd of the broadband Internet. Over 240M are now connected by fiber home. The 3M added by CM in June was more than the entire rest of the world. It surpassed the previously monthly record, 2.65M at CM in March. China Telecom added 590,000, China Unicom 250,000, and China Mobile 3,189,000, for a total net gain over 4M.  

China Telecom's landline broadband total is 118M, Unicom 74M and Mobile 66M. Add about 20M for the smaller operators and the total is 278M. That's more than the EU 28 (166M) combined with the U.S. (103M). Nearly all are on fiber home or fiber/DSL. In two years, almost 100M have shifted from pure DSL to fiber.

LTE in China in July reached 600M LTE subscriptions.

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AT&T fiber taking on other telcos

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Published: 22 July 2016 22 July 2016

Windstream, Fairpoint watch out. T plans 3M lines of fiber to the premises (including G.fast) each of the next four years, expecting to get to 20-25% of their territory. Some of them will be "out of territory," including some of the ~2M homes they have reached with fiber already. I can't recall either AT&T (almost half the U.S.) or Verizon (about a quarter) expanding this way in the last decade. 

AT&T, France Telecom, and Telefonica have discovered that fiber costs are down in favorable locations. Google Kansas City has proven fiber can be profitable, including pulling many customers from AT&T. Fiber in some places can be run for < $500/home; in others, the cost is $4,000-$5,000. It's a great business if you can cherry pick areas with low costs and weak competition.

That's exactly what AT&T is doing,

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Unbundling obsolete in the age of vectoring: an inconvenient truth

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Published: 15 June 2016 15 June 2016

Sharon White can raise Internet speeds across Britain by 100 megabits with smart policy.  British Telecom, Vodafone, Sky, and TalkTalk would all benefit if White gets this one right. More important, the Brits get a much better Internet. The only losers would be John Malone's cableco and the now outdated policy for sharing of the binder. (BT has promised 10M lines of G.fast at speeds of 200-800 megabits. My examples here are from Britain, but other countries will face similar issues.)

Competition doesn't have to die. It does have to move from the cable to the exchange. Unbundling was a great idea in 2000 and is the main reason European broadband is 30-70% cheaper than American and Canadian. The 25 or 50 twisted pairs that run together from the exchange could be split between several carriers and performance was unaffected.

Future competition will require BT's local loop monopoly to hand off to others at the local exchange at the right price. The "right price" would include a profit proportionate to the investment. BT would be welcome to recover costs plus a profit; regulated prices would prevent exploitation of the monopoly.

That was the near-ubiquitous model for unbundling until recently. Currently in the EU, monopolies are being allowed to charge far more, after Kroes and Richards were blinded by a lobbying campaign brilliantly orchestrated by Luigi Gambardella.

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