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Data confirms "digital redlining" of rural black south

Black South 230DC pols and uninformed reporters claim the U.S. has a major problem of broadband "unserved." Actually, the best available figure is that all but 5% were covered in 2019, At least half of the remainder are funded for fiber under RDOF. There aren't many "unserved" to reach and the White House is lying about the extent of the problem. 

But a study by Dominique Harrison of the Joint Center convinced me to look closely at select areas. She estimated that 26% of those in the Black Rural South have no decent connection choices.  

37% of rural homes in Arkansas were unserved (25/3) in 2019, per the FCC. So were 35% of Louisiana rural homes and 27% of Alabama. Non-Sothern rural areas were 91% covered.

The numbers confirm that digital redlining is a reality.

5G Base stations $13,000 in China

China 5G bidMost carriers don't order 200,000 5G base stations so will pay more, but that's the actual price for the joint procurement of China Telecom and China Unicom. The 200,000-300,000 cells the two jointly are upgrading are probably more than the entire rest of the world will add. The second Chinese network, jointly built by China Mobile and China Broadcast, is growing even faster. 

Huawei and ZTE will probably split 90% of the order, with Ericsson, Nokia, and perhaps CICT/Datang getting the rest. Ericsson was so worried they'd lose their share - traditionally 10% - that CEO Börje Ekholm actually threatened to move out of Sweden is the country blocked Huawei. (He didn't.)

The price of state-of-the-art commercial base stations is now so low the new Open RAN companies will find it hard to survive. Altiostar (owned by the Japanese) and Mavenir (de facto controlled by Koch) are charging much more because they don't have the volume. Some fantasists in DC think O-RAN will result in US lead in 5G. But Indian giants (Jio-Radisys & Bharti-Tata) will soon be much larger. Ericsson, Samsung, and especially Nokia are opening up.

Since the first 5G equipment hit the market in 2019, it's been clear to the industry that 5G would be similar in cost to 4G. Except for the US midband, 5G networks are being built without a rise in capex. (The analysts and reporters still saying otherwise should find another line of work.)  

Goldman Sachs: Fiber = "Material value creation"

Euro FTTH 230Telcos are massively upgrading DSL to fiber, generally with minimal government support. Spain is 88% covered, France 73%. AT&T has 15 million homes passed and is adding 12 million more. British Telekom and Deutsche Telekom assert they are building as fast as possible (a politician's truth.) 52% of Europe is fibered, as you can see on the chart from the FTTH Council Europe, at left and larger below.

 Fiber is good business for telcos except in areas that are very expensive to build. Brett Feldman of Goldman Sachs has initiated coverage of Frontier, with a buy. 

Frontier Communications Parent Inc. (FYBR): Fiber expansion creates opportunity for material value creation; Initiate at Buy with a $42 price target 6 July 2021 | 

Read more ...

Half of Europe fibered

Euro FTTH 230

Much of Europe has a 40% take rate, far more than even most industry pros realize. (Larger chart & pr below.) iDate, working for the Fibre to the Home Council Europe, finds 183 million homes passed. Subscribers are growing at 17% per year.

France and Spain are the standouts among large countries. France has covered 2/3rds of the nation. Italy, Germany, and the UK are far behind, but that;s changing.

France added 2.787.000 new FTTH/B subscriptions, whereas Russia came second adding 1.681.000 new FTTH/B
subscribers. Spain rounds out the top 3 with 1.436.000 new FTTH/B subscribers.

Russia was long the leader because many buildings have fiber to the basement. 

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Ericsson, Nokia oppose TRIPS waiver on Covid

Ekholm Viktor OrbanThe NY Times reported TIA, the DC association that speaks for Ericsson, Nokia, and others, opposed the TRIPS waiver that would allow poorer countries to make mRNA and other Covid vaccines. The right thing to do was clear to most of us, if only to protect people in rich countries from a rapidly mutating RNA virus. Trade rules allow governments to override patents in an emergency. If Covid isn't an emergency, I can't imagine what would be. Public Citizen explained

 More than 100 nations led by South Africa are proposing a temporary, emergency waiver of these WTO Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPS) rules, so governments and manufacturers worldwide can ramp up production of the vaccines, treatments and tests necessary to end the pandemic.  

CEO David Stehlin and the Telecommunications Industry Association signed on to a drug company letter opposing the TRIPS waiver to Biden while he was considering the US position on TRIPS. I'm sure Stehlin would never take such a position over the objection of his Board Members. 

Barbara Baffer & Maria Eriksson of Ericsson are on the board. So are Deepti Arora & Brian Hendricks of Nokia, as well as Jeff Campbell of Cisco.

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Ericsson paying Nokia $96M in bribery damages

Vestberg becoming Verizon CEOEricsson paid $billion to the US for 17 years of bribery in at least 5 countries. (Below.) Ericsson was different from other companies; it got caught. It's ironic that Nokia is collecting almost $100 million. Nokia's Alcatel branch was responsible for a huge multinational bribery scandal, including the President of El Salvador. ZTE has been implicated in the Philippines and probably other countries. Cisco is relatively clean and avoided prosecution in a Russian scandal. Samsung's CEO went to jail. Huawei has been very rarely accused, although there was an incident in Algeria. 

Huawei was competing with Ericsson in far more countries than Nokia. It would presumably be entitled to substantially more compensation. Other companies should also be entitled. 

Few of the implicated managers have suffered. The sums involved were large enough that most senior people at the company surely knew. The most prominent was Hans Vestberg, who rose through the ranks to CEO. He was pushed out for disappointing financial results, not corruption.

 The Verizon board had no qualms about making Vestberg the CEO.

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100+ Mbps Mbps cable ** upstream ** ready to take off

Salmon swimming upstream 230Faster cable upstreams are in field tests and ready to deploy widely within a year. Because there is little construction, a large cableco can be mostly upgraded in 2-3 years. The cost should be about $200/home, a very small fraction of the cost of running fiber.

Cablecos need to choose between dedicating 85 MHz or 204 MHz to the new upstream. 85 MHz provides 440 Mbps shared and 204 MHz provides 1.4 Gbps shared. Sharing works very well in cable. Either choice will generally support 100 Mbps upstream for almost all users most of the time.

CommScope CTO Tom Cloonan believes that the upstream improvement will, "Allow the operators to move very deep into the future without issue for a long time because that gives them a lot of extra bandwidth capacity for the upstream." The proponents of the new infrastructure plan agree. Some want to specify 100/100. Others believe government should subsidize up to 100/20. (Cable downstream across most of the US is already 900 Mbps down. That could be inexpensively doubled if customers demanded it.)

DOCSIS 4.0 triples the possible bandwidth, to 684 MHz.

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Adtran: "Highest product bookings for any quarter in our history"

Adtran 10G 230The fiber boom, led by England, Germany, France, Spain, 4M at AT&T, and US regionals, is leading to remarkable results at suppliers. Adtran CEO Tom Stanton warns, "Supply chain constraints do present risk in the near-term or midterm. We continue to see lead times extend and expect that this will continue for some time into the future. "

Construction companies are raising prices, in some cases withdrawing bids and resubmitting at a higher figure. Government projects have to plan a 3-5 year ramp or waste an enormous amount of taxpayer money. The word is starting to get around Washington that spending more than $5-10 billion the next three years will be a very bad mistake. 

Adtran seeing demand for 10 Gbps fiber symmetric units. Some of the smaller regional carriers have made 10G their standard. The price is so close to the GPPON price they are going 10G in hopes of future demand. Adtran also has an order for 10G from a big cable company for backhaul. 

Read more ...

More Articles ...

  1. LoRaWAN gains traction for in-building & campus
  2. India giant Jio, slower but profitable growth Q1
  3. Verizon CTO: We have massive overcapacity
  4. China Mobile 5G era: Profits Q1 up 2.3%, prices flat, traffic +37%
  5. $1 average worldwide cost/gig; 35% traffic growth 2020; US 4X world
  6. 4G NB-IoT reading meters in India
  7. $152 Realme 5G Q2i
  8. Robin Mersh passes Broadband Forum on
  9. 5G tested peaks: 707/79 Mid-band, 3294/210 mmWave
  10. 5G China Price: $201-$262, sometimes $154
  11. G.Network raises £1bn to fibre London
  12. $300 5G OnePlus Nord N10 T-Mobile. The 5G explosion moves west.
  13. Farooq Khan and Jerry Pi's 2011! paper on 5G
  14. Broadcom's Wi-Fi 6E at 6 GHz is here
  15. Are 20% of Comcast Gigabit Homes Actually Not Gigabit?
  16. 5.5G Comes After 5G. 6G is a decade away
  17. 5 US Net Giants $7,000,000,000,000 Trillion
  18. Verizon's 25-50 ms "Mobile Edge" runs at 4G latency
  19. Carmakers' discredited spectrum claim
  20. Realme 5G again on sale for US$150
  21. Glenn Wellbrock of Verizon: 5 Questions
  22. Telefonica Brazil passes AT&T, Verizon with 16M FTTH homes passed
  23. In six weeks, wireless could reach 30%-60% of students without a connection
  24. AT&T killing DSL (Dave in USA Today)
  25. ASSIA Equipe Work-From-Home Manager
  26. Realme 5G down to $145
  27. Qualcomm 4 kilometer mmWave not close to Ted's 11 kilometers in 2016
  28. Marvell: 5 nm 20-40% better
  29. $400 TCL REVLL 5G at T-Mobile: Here comes 5G in the USA
  30. Zain Saudi Arabia: 5G 248 Mbps, ping 17 ms
  31. 5G Worldwide: Saudi first, USA last
  32. Sao Paulo 10T busiest Internet exchange; Traffic falling despite COVID
  33. Saankhya 5G SDR-based 5G RU for 2021
  34. GM V2X & 5G in China in 2022
  35. Korea's very high speed claims
  36. 5G Phones $199-260
  37. Coolpad $199 5G phone with Unisoc Ziguang Zhanrui Chinese chip
  38. US cable and especially telcos fail miserably on adding new customers
  39. Rakuten virtualized 4G now covers quarter of Japan
  40. Germany confirms: 4G faster than 5G

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