To Have Or To Have Not

Once this sunk in, the big telcos put their heads together (separately) and came up with “extreme makeover network edition” projects.  Verizon was first to announce its FiOS program aimed at installing fiber all the way from the CO to the customers’ premises.  By the end of 2008, Verizon had spent billions installing new fiber cables in thousands of suburban neighborhoods and hooked up about 3 million FiOS customers.

AT&T decided to extend fiber only part way to its customers, to new broadband “nodes”, and to reuse its existing copper distribution with a new souped-up DSL:  VDSL2.  AT&T reasoned that it could roll out multi-media broadband much faster and for much less than building new fiber distribution.  By the end of 2008, AT&T had spent billions (albeit fewer billions than Verizon) installing new fiber feeder cables and thousands of U-verse nodes in suburban neighborhoods, and hooked up about 1 million U-verse customers.

But here’s the problem: These expensive, and rather grandiose, programs reach only about half of the big telcos’ customers, most of them in the suburban neighborhoods that surround large cities.  Customers in these chosen areas are the broadband “haves”.  But, if you live in the inner city, in a small town, or in a rural area, and your local telco is Verizon or AT&T, your broadband destiny is to be a “have not”.

The ARRA puts $7.2 billion to work to alter the broadband landscape in the “have not” regions.  A lot of it is going to go toward building modern, multi-media broadband infrastructure in inner cities, small towns and rural areas that have been neglected, abandoned or sold by the big telcos.

It’s about time. And, it’s money well spent.