[no subject]

Today, most of the town halls have public access wifi, and people drive up and sit in their cars and get their email that way. This isn't a solution.


On Feb 26, 2010, at 4:40 PM, James Jones wrote:

> The Massachusetts Broadband Institute is currently working a middle mile solution to help with some of the issues in western ma. Thing do sound promising.
> 
> 
> On 2/26/10 4:34 PM, Michael Sokolov wrote:
>> Daniel Senie<dts at senie.com>  wrote:
>> 
>>   
>>> Better than western Massachusetts, where there's just no connectivity at =
>>> all. Even dialup fails to function over crappy lines.
>>>     
>> Hmm.  Although I've never been to Western MA and hence have no idea what
>> the telecom situation is like over there, I'm certainly aware of quite a
>> few places in "first world USA" where DSL is still a fantasy, let alone
>> fiber.
>> 
>> As a local example, I have a friend in a rural area of Southern
>> California who can't get any kind of "high-speed Internet".  I've run a
>> prequal on her address and it tells me she is 31 kft from the CO.  The
>> CO in question has a Covad DSLAM in it, but at 31 kft those rural
>> residents' options are limited to either IDSL at 144 kbps (not much
>> point in that) or a T1 starting at ~$700/month.  The latter figure is
>> typically well out of range for the kind of people who live in such
>> places.
>> 
>> That got me thinking: ISDN/IDSL and T1 can be extended infinitely far
>> into the boondocks because those signal formats support repeaters.  What
>> I'm wondering is how can we do the same thing with SDSL - and I mean
>> politically rather than technically.  The technical part is easy: some
>> COs already have CLECs in them that serve G.shdsl (I've been told that
>> NEN does that) and for G.shdsl repeaters are part of the standard
>> (searching around shows a few vendors making them); in the case of
>> SDSL/2B1Q (Covad and DSL.net) there is no official support for repeaters
>> and hence no major vendors making such, but I can build such a repeater
>> unofficially.
>> 
>> The difficulty is with the political part, and that's where I'm seeking
>> the wisdom of this list.  How would one go about sticking a mid-span
>> repeater into an ILEC-owned 31 kft rural loop?  From what I understand
>> (someone please correct me if I'm wrong!), when a CLEC orders a loop
>> from an ILEC, if it's for a T1 or IDSL, the CLEC actually orders a T1 or
>> ISDN BRI transport from the ILEC rather than a dry pair, and any
>> mid-span repeaters or HDSLx converters or the like become the
>> responsibility of the ILEC rather than the CLEC, right?
>> 
>> So how could one extend this model to provide, say, repeatered G.shdsl
>> service to far-outlying rural subscribers?  Is there some political
>> process (PUC/FCC/etc) by which an ILEC could be forced to allow a third
>> party to stick a repeater in the middle of their loop?  Or would it have
>> to work by way of the ILEC providing a G.shdsl transport service to
>> CLECs, with the ILEC being responsible for the selection, procurement
>> and deployment of repeater hardware?  And what if the ILEC is not
>> interested in providing such a service - any PUC/FCC/etc political
>> process via which they could be forced to cooperate?
>> 
>> Things get even more complicated in those locations where the CO has a
>> Covad DSLAM in it serving out SDSL/2B1Q, but no other CLEC serving
>> G.shdsl.  Even if the ILEC were to provide a G.shdsl transport service
>> with repeaters, it wouldn't help with SDSL/2B1Q.  My idea involves
>> building a gadget in the form factor of a standard mid-span repeater
>> that would function as a converter from SDSL/2B1Q to G.shdsl: if the
>> loop calls for one mid-span repeater, stick this gadget in as if it
>> were that repeater; if the loop calls for 2 or more repeaters, use my
>> gadget as the first "repeater" and then standard G.shdsl repeaters
>> after it.  But of course this idea is totally dependent on the ability
>> of a third party to stick these devices in the middle of long rural
>> loops, perhaps in the place of loading coils which are likely present
>> on such loops.
>> 
>> Any ideas?
>> 
>> MS
>> 
>>