Everybody can’t wait for the winter to pass into spring. We need green leaves, more sunshine and a bright view of the future.
In telecoms we can observe the new life pushing hard against the winter.
Last week NLKabel released with much ado a report made by Deloitte.
The hired guns shoplifted selectively from a report by Tim Poulus and repeated the well-known mantra of NLKabel:
- The market in the Netherlands is doing great in broadband, why interfere?
- Cable can upgrade almost indefinitely and deliver anything that is asked (and behold, the demand matches the supply)
- There is more than enough competition, so hands off
I don’t want to repeat all international reports from Berkman or the OECD showing that we delude ourselves on our broadband position as far as really high speeds go (let alone mobile broadband).
The most interesting dilemma the report writers faced was how to claim on one hand that cable can deliver anything fiber can deliver, and on the other to prove there is plenty of competition for cable (without fiber).
Because if there is no real competition for cable the argument for intervening because there is a market failure is a no-brainer. If cable, which has been proven to be near impossible to open up for competitors is a defacto monopolist in its capabilities there is a pressing need for a viable open alternative, aka open acces dark fiber networks.
They don’t succeed.
VDSL is hyped up to 150 MBps capability, which is bogus. The fact that this capability has to be divided between upstream, downstream and IP-TV bandwidth is carefully neglected.
LTE is pushed as the third alternative. Even politicians not owning an Iphone should know by now that wireless data is heavily constrained. You sell a smart phone that actually delivers on the promise of mobile access and kaboom, the networks buckle under the strain.
We need better infrastructure to get ahead.
The best metaphor is T-Fords and highways. The T-Ford gave everybody access to a new exiting form of mobility with great impact on our wealth. But without the extensive investment in new roads and highways we would not have had a market for fast, cheap, safe, luxurious cars that take us fast and reliable to the beaches at our whim.
In broadband we all have the T-Ford, now we need a much better road system to get to the next level.
Google understands this, so we learned yesterday. Get 50.000 to 500.00 users with near unlimited access (1 GBps) and show 2 things:
- the real economics of fibre deployment (high investment upfront, very low marginal costs off adding bandwidth) to politicians
- the creativity developers have once there is enough capacity and market (see the Iphone and the Android market space)
And in Zeewolde (NL) today the commercial delivery of 200/200 MBps over fibre will be announced. We are still trailing Hong Kong (1 GBps), but the gap is closing.
Spring is coming.
