Martin: Outdated USF Must Focus on Broadband

Martin didn’t go as far as advocating USF subsidies for broadband deployment. But he now frequently equates USF reform to a need for encouraging broadband deployment, said observers. Reverse auctions may be a way to “move away from subsidizing voice and instead subsidize broadband in rural areas,” Martin said in answer to a question.

One FCC goal is to “facilitate video competition and local franchising may be inhibiting” that goal, Martin said, urging more competition “on the video side.” Without adequate competition, “consumers have seen video prices double over the past ten years.” So facilitating video competition not only gives consumers choices but can lower cable prices, he added.

Martin stressed broadband deployment as numerous speakers described a changed world of telecommunications convergence driven by ever-more sophisticated, speedy broadband networks. Telecom is moving to Internet-based services where “customers call the shots,” said AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson in one of his first speeches since taking over the company. The Internet is becoming part of most services and convergent services like the iPhone are “pretty amazing stuff,” he said.

Social networking is driving phenomenal growth in network loads, said Cisco CEO John Chambers at the same Tues. session. Telecom’s future is one of “collaboration,” with intelligence in both networks and terminals, he said, declaring that “broadband has finally taken hold” and it’s imperative that its capacity continue to grow. Chambers described an imminent future in which a particular song will be able to follow a listener from vehicle to handheld device to residence, there transferring to a music video on TV, without missing a beat. Baseball game tickets will be ordered on a handheld device that can be scanned at the gate in lieu of a paper ticket. “The network becomes the platform,” Chambers said: “You do not know or care if the content is live, stored on a set top box or on the network.”

“Convergence… enhances the quality of life,” said BT Group Technology Officer Matt Bross on a later panel: “The innovation genie is out of the bottle.” The old Bell system of the 1970s featured a smart network and a dumb devices at home, said Pieter Poll, Qwest’s chief technology officer. Then the Internet transformed the relationship into a dumb network and intelligent devices hooked to it, he said. Now, it’s turned around again, with intelligence in both the network and home, a more “symbiotic” relationship, Poll said. To understand what’s happening in telecommunications, “you have to envision a smart network ending at devices in peoples’ homes,” he said: “The challenge will be taking the complexity out of building networks. The home network is the last frontier but I don’t own the home network. The question is how to get some control over bandwidth in the homes, how to manage it.” -- Edie Herman

NXTcomm Notebook

Technology executives from Verizon and AT&T took different views on the future of TV consumption at a keynote panel Tuesday. Most TV viewing will be done on a time- shifted basis, said Chris Rice, AT&T executive vice president-network planning and engineering. “I think the vast majority of content will shift to time shifted viewing,” he said: “IPTV enables use to customize the experience to each viewer… Time shifted viewing comes much more into play with IPTV than with other platforms.” There’s plenty of programming viewers will still want to watch in real time, said Verizon Chief Technology Officer Mark Wegleitner: “The pendulum may move over toward VoD,” but viewers will still tune into live sports, news and their favorite prime time shows.