Subject: Re: [gaia] [ciresearchers] FW: [1st-mile-nm] Guffey, CO

From: "Walter@PCB" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 4 Nov 2014 17:13:37 +0200

Hi Michael and everyone,

Michael, thanks for circulating this discussion, and everyone for
responding. I have some reservations about too much publicity, perhaps
misplaced, but I think the decision-making culture in South Africa today
does not like publicity - in fact, we are trying to control this also
through worrying national policy developments. I hope I am wrong but this is
the reason for limiting my response to those helpful colleagues that
responded directly.

Let me respond to some of the issues raised, especially by Fred.

The first explanation I must give is that I strongly believe that connecting
rural and other marginalised communities is not a technological challenge
whatsoever. We did this in the old POTS days with party line wired systems,
leaped on the technological bandwagon with technological tricks like carrier
derived party lines (up to 20 party lines on each of up to 18 carrier
channels like South Africa's SOR 18), individually metred party lines with
privacy developed in early Zimbabwe, MARS wireless systems that formed the
basis for Botswana's rural connectivity like SRT's offerings of the 1980s,
added main line drop/insert multiple line carrier systems, etc. All this
shows my age perhaps, but what has changed today? Why the big rural (and
poor urban) challenges when so many technological choices exist?

We all know that if we wanted to, we could extend DSL type services to tens
of kilometres on any form of copper loop using very low cost inline
repeaters/regenerators with serious drop/insert possibilities, and any mix
of wireless technologies including satellite and even 2/3G. There are
existing copper loops in very poor communities providing fixed line POTS
service to small businesses - what can we do with broadband on these
existing lines that do not require costly civil works? I must ask why
Nokia/Siemens' "Village Connection" failed so dismally, or even Steve's Mesh
Potato and/or Meraka's rural Wi-Fi Mesh, or worse still, Telkom's rural WLL
all failed? Those familiar with the South African scenario can suggest
simple answers, which don't address my feeling that collectively (that
includes us, the politicians and big business) we don't really want to
connect the information have-nots, much easier to pay lip services or to
tinker on the edges. We have enough combinations of technologies to connect
anyone anywhere, and cost-effectively too, if we want to enough.

Enough of the rant - thanks for listening... Now to points raised by Fred:

1.       What I intended by "scalable successful BoP networks" was to
describe any network architectures, or combinations thereof, that can scale
nationally to service the Bottom of the Pyramid market. The world is awash
with small successful pilot projects to prove this or that technology, or
great potential initiatives like Steve's Mesh Potato that offer great
possibilities, but remain in tiny enclaves while politicians write rousing
speeches about rural connectivity, and big business quietly sabotages such
initiatives to protect their bottom lines. Stories where the vast swathe of
obstacles have been overcome is what I am looking for, they can support the
argument for sanity very strongly (Einstein: insanity is doing the same
things over and over again and expecting different results);

2.       I agree and disagree with Fred on broadband power lines: I agree
that PLCs, BPL,s or any other acronym used to describe power lines as the
basic broadband  transport platform have promised much more than they could
deliver. There is one power line opportunity that does work, but has not
been used for the purpose we are discussing - fibre optic lines constructed
on existing overhead power lines of any voltage feeding or just passing
remote communities with a connectable POP. Fantastic opportunities to
backhaul any form of local wireless access. Apparently the management
challenges concerning this opportunity (who owns the infrastructure - power
utilities of ICT providers?) have trashed the whole idea;

3.       I will skip the opportunity to comment on South Africa's spectrum
issues, competition, liberalization, monopolies and small businesses. This
cold unemotional communication medium will not accurately transmit the
weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth that responds best to this
observation;

4.       We have a growing and invaluable community of wireless ISPs - the
WAPA group that I admire greatly, but they fail on scalability as defined
above. MBMS applications on any broadband wireless infrastructure, including
LTE, supported by decent backhaul, offers tremendous opportunities to
converge all broadcast and telecom (if we must fragment our industry) for
the benefit of marginalised communities. We need to invent BoP focussed
WISPS for Africa (please, no more acronyms like WISPS4RD..);

5.         Ubiquiti, MikroTik, Cambium seem to provide the answers to my
question, but I cannot offer them as successful examples to decision-makers
without knowing the details of their network architectures, business models,
and socioeconomic objectives, which must all be fine-tuned for the local
environment. The Guffey case is very interesting, from the perspective of
the barriers imposed by the original arrangements, and the opportunities
presented by the innovative new. Details would help greatly. Yet another
example I am trying to get details of is the Kansas City Rosedale Ridge
civil society development. This will help our troubled seriously
marginalized urban enclaves, those which host most of the 13 million South
Africans who try to live on ZAR 6 (US$ 0.5) per day, as identified by Oxfam
in its latest report on inequality in South Africa. Some resort to other
means of feeding their families, which generally generate great discomfort
in the other segments of the population;

6.       "If the government of South Africa were cooperative about both
spectrum and the right to provide service without jumping through hoops,
then the technology is ready": That indeed is the reason for this inquiry,
that and the desire to find easy ways for those that already hold vast
blocks of spectrum to think of ways of integrating the BoP communities into
their market plans, a change of heart and bottom lines. The technology has
been, is, and will always be ready. The human/political/commercial factors
are what we are trying to influence for good.

7.       Concerning the 450 MHz spectrum band I referred to in my original
communication, this arose because it could be made available fairly quickly
by our state regulator, and is of little interest to our dominant operators.
The idea I have proposed is to assign this to multiple small new entrants
which focus on remote rural communities in the first instance, use LTE TDD
as P2P and P2MP backhaul connections to enable spectrum reuse, and any small
cell technology in meshed or direct arrangements in the target areas. There
is more than enough equipment in the global market to make this possible.
The challenge is to convince the powers that be to release the spectrum for
that purpose, then to assign it to small business entrepreneurs, and help
them to develop the required competencies to deliver the services.

Thanks again everyone, I sincerely hope you will continue to help to build a
picture of what is possible through real living examples.

Kind regards,

Walter.

From: michael gurstein [mailto:[email-masked]] 
Sent: 03 November 2014 06:03 PM
To: Walter@PCB
Subject: FW: [ciresearchers] FW: [1st-mile-nm] Guffey, CO

Hi Walter,

I sent your request to several lists.. the CI list, a list of more or less
academic techies (Gaia) and a (private) list of very senior policy/tech
folks . which this one is from..

M

On Behalf Of Fred Goldstein
Sent: Monday, November 03, 2014 6:46 AM
Subject: Re: FW: [ciresearchers] FW: [1st-mile-nm] Guffey, CO

I'm not sure what he's referring to by "scalable successful BoP networks".
Broadband on Power?  That's failed technology, a frankly bad idea that
hasn't worked well and at best offered only limited capacity for a very
short distance.  A fundamental problem is that power lines aren't designed
as high-frequency transmission lines; they're optimized for 50-60 Hz, and
also act as antennas at higher frequencies.

South Africa however poses its own challenges, based on regulatory problems.
While the spectrum has been somewhat harmonized with other countries, it
still seems to have rules that protect incumbent monopolists against
competition, preventing small business from entering the ISP market.  If
this has been liberalized, however, then the technology exists. 

Wireless ISPs cover a large share of the rural American land mass.  They can
be built much more cheaply than mobile networks, though competitive LTE
equipment markets are reducing the gap, to a merely smaller number of orders
of magnitude. And of course LTE generally requires exclusively-licensed
spectrum, while WISP gear is designed to share the unlicensed bands. The one
thing that makes it difficult is forest, as trees block microwave signals.
The most promising technology for that is  TV White Space, which uses
470-700 MHz frequencies. The WISP business is thus bigger in the farm,
prairie and desert areas.

Ubiquiti (California-based) is the dominant player in the US market.  Their
product line is very broad and priced very well.  They have full FCC
approvals, including the very difficult Dynamic Frequency Selection - Radar
Detection (DFS) needed for the 5.25-5.725 GHz sub-bands.  But not on
everything; they've been trying to get their new lineup approved since
February and their Taiwan-based compliance department is having a hell of a
time with it.  EU approval is apparently easier. 

MikroTik (Latvia-based) is probably the leader in world markets. They make
very good cheap routers and firewalls; I use their SOHO APs at home and in
the office.  They have, however, largely given up trying to get past the FCC
on 5 GHz.  They have no DFS approvals, and have not even submitted anything
for easy ISM-band approval since July, including some new products.  The
rest of the world is their oyster; the US is just a small piece they can put
aside.  They under-price Ubiquiti.

Cambium (Chicago-based), spun off from Motorola, has new stuff priced to
compete with Ubiquiti, vs. their old Motorola pricing (order of magnitude
higher). It lacks the WiFi compatibility of Ubiquiti and MikroTik (they use
proprietary schemes among their own gear but can connect to WiFi devices if
you want) but has other useful features (mainly GPS sync).  I am not so
comfortable with Altai, a Chinese shop whose gear strikes me as obsolete and
overpriced (what WiFi was in the last decade).

Guffey is a difficult case.  Its incumbent telephone service apparently
comes from CLQwest in Cripple Creek, 28 miles away.  They're a Price Cap
Carrier, which means they don't get subsidies based on cost, and are allowed
to just maximize profit.  Hence they ignore remote places like Guffey, which
under the old rate-of-return rules were cross-subidized.  Hartsel is 27
(road) miles the other way, but an easier microwave shot if you relay from a
nearby peak. So apparently South Park Tel in Hartsel is making the shot.  I
would have thought it would go into the Universal Service Fund subsidy base,
but (I checked the disbursements) their USF money has gone way down lately
under the new rules, and the reverse auction for subsidies to serve unserved
Price Cap Carrier areas hasn't happened yet. So I don't see how they can
make money on this.  Perhaps South Park Tel is not building it the usual
high-cost ILEC way, and is trying to do it the low-cost WISP way.

If the government of South Africa were cooperative about both spectrum and
the right to provide service without jumping through hoops, then the
technology is ready.

On 11/3/2014 8:26 AM, Brough Turner wrote:

Hi Walter,

I can't point you directly at BoP success stories, but I can suggest where
you might find people who can help. Look at the vendors who sell relevant
equipment and at their customer bases. The big names from my perspective are
Ubiquiti Networks and MikroTik, but that's because those two have bothered
to get some of the more complex US type-approvals for their equipment. You
should also look at Altai Technologies, Bitlomat and Deliberant who sell
globally but not much in the US.

Look at these vendors for case studies and white papers, but more
importantly look at their customer bases (e.g. look at their on-line forums
and register for their support networks). Here you will find community
networkers, entrepreneurs and others who are using this low-cost wireless
technology to build networks in all sorts of places around the globe.

I am currently using such technology to successfully compete with Verizon
and Comcast in downtown Boston, i.e. nowhere near the bottom of the pyramid,
but others on the email lists I frequent are building Internet access
networks in rural areas around the world, including specifically both urban
and rural areas in Africa.

Also, despite claims of excess interference at 2.4 & 5 GHz, with directional
antennas this equipment can be used in urban areas. We (netBlazr Inc.) are
doing so very successfully. When you are getting bandwidth to remote areas,
there is less or no interference.

Finally, this is not super complex stuff, but it's also not consumer
technology. If you don't have or can't afford professionals, you will need
to find enthusiasts and geeks to install and maintain the network. But any
bright motivated kid can learn this stuff.

Thanks,
Brough Turner

Founder & CTO, netBlazr Inc.

Mobile: +1 617 285-0433   Skype: brough

Website <http://broughturner.com/>  | Google+
<https://plus.google.com/102447512447094746687/posts?hl=en>  | Twitter
<https://twitter.com/#%21/brough>  | LinkedIn
<http://www.linkedin.com/in/broughturner>  | Facebook
<http://www.facebook.com/brough.turner>  | Blog
<http://blogs.broughturner.com/>  | netBlazr Inc. <http://www.netblazr.com/>

On Sun, Nov 2, 2014 at 12:16 PM, michael gurstein <[email-masked]>
wrote:

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Walter@PCB <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, Nov 2, 2014 at 1:38 AM
Subject: RE: [ciresearchers] FW: [1st-mile-nm] Guffey, CO
To: Richard Lowenberg <[email-masked]>, michael gurstein
<[email-masked]>

Hi Michael and Richard, 

Thanks for your support. Any technical literature on scalable successful BoP
networks would be most helpful. I am also trying to find the detailed
network architecture and business plans of Kansas City's Rosedale Ridge
Wi-Fi network - I think practical examples are more likely to trigger the
interest needed for large scale development, for now interest is dominated
by bottom lines and big tenders. Sadly, South Africa's innovation remains
small scale unless the "Big 3" (MTN, Telkom, Vodacom) take an interest, and
usually end up blowing all social development opportunities in the process.
.

Regards,

Walter.

-- 
 Fred R. Goldstein      k1io     fred "at" interisle.net
 Interisle Consulting Group 
 +1 617 795 2701

---
This email is free from viruses and malware because avast! Antivirus protection is active.
http://www.avast.com