A bunch of folks have been sending over Business Insider's coverage of a Goldman Sachs Report concerning Google Fiber, and how much it would cost to roll it out nationwide. The estimate from BI, which is what lots of people are quoting, is that it would cost $140 billion. From the quote presented in the article, it's not clear if the Goldman Sachs report actually uses that number of not. The only number actually quoted is that it would cost about $70 billion to cover less than half, so I don't know if the BI reporter is just extrapolating in a manner that seems ridiculous (if covering half the country is $70 billion, that does not mean covering the other half is also $70 billion -- it doesn't work that way):

Building out the infrastructure will be expensive. In his September 17 report Still Bullish on Cable, although not blind to the risks, Goldman Sachs Telco analyst Jason Armstrong noted that if Google devoted 25% of its $4.5bn annual capex to this project, it could equip 830K homes per year, or 0.7% of US households. As such, even a 50mn household build out, which would represent less than half of all US homes, could cost as much as $70bn. We note that Jason Armstrong estimates Verizon has spent roughly $15bn to date building out its FiOS fiber network covering an area of approximately 17mn homes.

Of course, even if we accept this number to be true -- even though that seems unlikely to be the case -- it seems to miss the point. Google has been pretty clear all along that the goal of the Google Fiber project was not to turn Google into a national broadband competitor, but to drive others to really up their game by showing what's possible: super cheap, super fast broadband with friendly customer service.

And, while Google shied away from its initial promise to have its network open for other services to compete, it still seems like that might be a better way to offer such a broadband. That is, rather than dumping the expense entirely on one company, imagine if it were split up among a bunch of companies (or even individuals), with a promise of openness and competition at the service level, rather than at the infrastructure level. In effect, this is what is happening down in Australia, via government fiat, in which it's building out a national fiber network, with plans to have it open for competition at the service level. That way, the costs of the infrastructure are spread out, but it opens up massive new opportunities for service providers if they provide good service.

The problem -- and the reason such a thing is unlikely to move forward -- is, once again, this insistence by companies that there's more value in owning the pipe entirely, and keeping it locked up and scarce, even if it means less overall efficiency and less overall opportunity. A long term view would recognize that investing in the best network possible, but sharing those costs, and then letting the real competition happen at the service level, would benefit everyone. Instead, we end up with fighting over slow, limited and fragmented networks. It's too bad.

There's been a lot of discussion lately about how far the US has fallen behind other countries when it comes to high speed broadband. And many are taking it for granted that high speed broadband is important to economic growth and viability. Yet Tim Worstall, over at Forbes, argues that "High Speed Broadband Doesn't Matter A Darn" because a UK study showed that people don't use super high speeds. He quotes a report (pdf) from Booz & Co.

But speed in itself is not enough to encourage usage. Ofcom (an independent regulatory authority for U.K. communications industries) has noted that in 2011 superfast coverage of the U.K. was at 60 percent, but only 6.6 percent of all connections were taking advantage of the top speeds. This suggests that focusing on availability is no guarantee of deriving full benefit from the investment.

Worstall then uses this to argue that speed isn't an issue and we shouldn't invest in faster broadband:

As should be obvious, it’s not the speed of the internet that produces the economic growth. It’s the people using the internet that does. And if only 6.6% of the traffic is using the speeds we already have then there really isn’t much of a case for throwing billions at making it all faster. So that, presumably, only 6.6% of the traffic will use that higher speed.

In fact, given the low numbers even bothering to use current speeds I’d say this is a very good argument for not spending a lot of money to roll out high speed broadband everywhere. The most important reason quite possibly being that I rather doubt that broadband is going to be the technology of choice for much longer.

This reasoning is faulty on many, many levels. First off, if you look at the full Booz report, almost every conclusion is exactly the opposite of what Worstall suggests. He seems to take that one paragraph out of context, and assume that because only a small percentage of people were taking advantage of "top speeds" it means that there's no real demand for it and no economic benefit.

That's making a big assumption. He's right that "it's not the speed of the internet that produces the economic growth," and that it's the people, but he ignores that part of what brings in those people are the services online -- and new, better and more useful services are quite frequently enabled by higher speeds. It's almost hard to imagine how much more can be done online as speeds pick up. A decade ago, the idea of so much video online was crazy. And yet, here we are.

Second, the fact that only a small percentage of people are using full broadband capabilities is meaningless. That's a snapshot, not a look at the trend. What happens is that as more services offer up useful features that increase the number of things you can do with broadband, more people will use it. The last thing you want to do is get caught waiting -- and then suddenly have all your users pissed off that the broadband can't handle the latest and greatest applications and use cases.

Faster broadband doesn't immediately get soaked up, but it does lead to greater investment in bandwidth-intensive services, and that will increase usage and expand the economy. Taking one quote out of context and then looking at a snapshot rather than a trend is not a particularly compelling reason to pull out on key infrastructure investment at a time when it's needed most.

That didn't take long. Google's move into the fiber business has already irritated the incumbents (Time Warner Cable and AT&T). Faced with a faster, cheaper rival, the two companies (at this point, mainly Time Warner) are complaining that the incentives provided to Google are "unfair."

In order to create the infrastructure for the cable and gigabit internet service, Google was given everything from free fiber, government employees, buildings, and discounted services; an agreement that a Time Warner Cable spokesman feels puts them "at a competitive advantage compared with not just us but also the other competitors in the field."

Time Warner's spokesman seems to misunderstand what the word "incentive" means. When cities attempt to lure businesses they want, they offer concessions, grants, tax breaks, etc. It's assumed that the incumbent businesses have grabbed substantial marketshare and, therefore, don't need to be given incentives to do anything more than stay. If Time Warner is upset that its new competition was given this in exchange for selecting Kansas City, it can't blame anyone else for its failure to offer better services. It certainly was in the position to do so, but it never occurred to the incumbent(s) to make any great leaps in service and speed until it was "unfairly" forced to do so.

This complaining about being forced to offer a competitive service is nauseating enough. But this sentence tops it:

He continued by stating, "We're happy to compete with Google, but we'd just like an even playing field."

No, TWC. That is absolutely the last thing you want. TWC has never been interested in "level playing fields" or "competition." In fact, it loathes competition (and innovation) so much that it's currently the target of an anti-trust investigation for its attempts to neutralize Netflix and Hulu by obtaining programming at lower prices than online providers are charged (among other things).

Hell, TWC has a long and storied history of doing whatever possible to block a level playing field even to the point of writing legislation to keep out competitors.

Time Warner is only interested in a "level playing field" if it means that everyone else has to come down to its level, rather than improving or innovating. In fact, TWC is so worried about Google's offerings actually leveling the playing field and providing real competition that it's offering rewards to city employees for information on Google's fiber rollout.

Time Warner has set up a phone hotline and an email address that will award three gift cards a week for employees that "[share] tips, rumors, and rumblings about Google Construction or launch activity..."

Still, TWC wants its undeserved place on the "gravy train," and has reached a "parity agreement" with Kansas City, MO.

In exchange for the incentives, the cities are requesting that the companies improve their community services to be on par with Google's efforts, which have resulted in free internet connections in hundreds of locations chosen by the government... The WSJ cites an unnamed source that claims Time Warner Cable has improved its service's speed and performance in the area in return for discounts that mirror Google's, as well as a partial refund of city fees that the company paid earlier this year.

"Improved speed and performance," eh? One wonders (loudly and angrily) what the hell was keeping TWC from improving speed and performance over the last several years? Perhaps it was the lack of a serious competitor and one of those famous "level" playing fields that tilts at a 45-degree tilt toward the incumbent provider. As it stands now, Google's fastest offering (up to 1 Gbps) is 950 Mbps faster than TWC's fastest offering.

Google's entrance into the broadband market should be a wake-up call for providers all over the US. Once this service is available, they'll no longer be able to get away with minimal, incremental improvements and never ending price increases. As soon as consumers have a chance to switch, they will, especially when the old school clings to things like binding arbitration agreements (a bad company's best friend) and metered broadband, rather than meeting customer expectations or improving infrastructure. 

For many years, we've talked about why metered and capped broadband is bad for innovation. Beyond the fact that it introduces serious mental transaction costs ("do I really want to watch that video, or will I hit my broadband cap?"), it creates the exact wrong incentives for broadband companies. They have incentives to keep the caps low and to not invest in infrastructure improvements. Of course, as with the net neutrality fight, the appearance of meters and caps are really a symptom of a larger problem, not the problem itself. The real problem: a serious lack of competition. Meters and caps don't do anything that a user wants. Quite the opposite. They only serve the needs of the broadband provider. If there were real competition, then broadband providers wouldn't be able to get away with caps and meters, because customers would quickly move elsewhere, and companies that focused on not limiting users would be winners in the marketplace.

Over at Broadband Reports, they've been chronicling FCC boss Julius Genachowski's constant flip-flopping on whether or not broadband caps are good or bad. Tellingly, it seems to depend, in part, on what audience he's speaking to.

FCC boss Julius Genachowski has been busy lately paying lip service to Silicon Valley, most recently telling a bunch of Silicon Valley conference attendees that caps were something we should be "concerned" about, after telling cable companies just a few months earlier he thought caps and overages are nifty and innovative. Speaking again to Silicon Valley folks yesterday at a speech at Vox Media headquarters, Genachowski hashed out his muddy position a little further, again insisting he was "concerned" about caps -- sort of -- maybe

As the article makes clear, beyond tailoring his remarks to his audience, Genachowski seems to be discussing things as if we were in a world where there was real competition, where meters and caps were used to offer lower prices, where the meters actually worked, where money from these activities goes into greater broadband investment and where such things were needed to make broadband profitable. The problem: exactly none of those things appear to be true. It's kind of tough to make competent policy when all of your assumptions are basically wrong. More from Broadband Reports:

One, caps (and especially usage fees) are not technically or economically necessary whatsoever. Flat-rate broadband is perfectly profitable and despite doomsday prognostications designed to scare regulators (it apparently worked), most networks consistently keep pace with demand thanks to dropping bandwidth and hardware prices and improved engineering. Ten years of ISP earnings reports are proof the flat-rate pricing model is sustainable.

Two, they're not being imposed in a "competitive market"; they're just price hikes on already-expensive service, designed to protect TV revenues from Internet video -- and they're made possible specifically because of limited wireline competition, a problem the FCC refuses to seriously tackle. Most modern, well-managed wired broadband networks don't see much congestion. Caps and overages are an executive and investor pipe dream; an entirely new unnecessary fee system layered on top of what is already some of the most expensive broadband service in the developed world (OECD data).

Genachowski appears to have swallowed the lie that money gleaned from overages goes back into the network; yet CAPEX and wired network investment is dropping like a stone for most incumbents, and most of the cash gleaned goes into the pockets of CEOs and investors. While that's the public corporation's primary objective, pretending that caps are helping to create the networks of tomorrow is not supported by the facts. If the money from overage fees actually went back into the network, Canada would have some of the most advanced residential broadband networks in the world. Go ask our Canadian forum users exactly what caps have done to improve the quality of their services.

These things are important if we're going to actually get broadband policy right. The FCC has often seemed way too timid in recognizing that what the telcos tell them is often a complete fabrication. Given how that's been the case for decades, you'd think sooner or later someone would pick up on it and use it to try to fix things, rather than kowtowing to their latest talking points.

This is hardly a new thing, but it's nice to see it getting more attention. There's a new book, The Fine Print: How Big Companies Use 'Plain English' to Rob You Blind, by reporter David Cay Johnston that points out that regulatory capture and a lack of competition are why we have crappy, expensive internet (and mobile phone service). Among the points he raises, summarized over at Yahoo's Daily Ticker, are the following:

• Americans pay four times as much as the French for an Internet triple-play package—phone, cable TV and Internet—at an average of $160 per month versus $38 per month.
• The French get global free calling and worldwide live television. Their Internet is also 10 times faster at downloading information and 20 times faster uploading it.
• America has gone from #1 in Internet speed (when we invented it) to 29th in the world and falling.
• Bulgaria is among the countries with faster Internet service.
• Americans pay 38 times as much as the Japanese for Internet data.

Of course, we've seen most of this before, and we've heard all the excuses, about how we're more spread out. But, in the long run, the facts remain: we're piss poor at the internet, and that's a pretty big problem when the internet has become so important to so many people's lives and jobs. Johnston highlights the key problems:

"The telecos got the rules changed while we weren't watching," says Johnston in the accompanying interview. Basically, the phone and cable companies lobbied Washington to change laws and regulations to favor their businesses over their customers.

And remember the so-called "Information Superhighway"?

Over the course of the last 20 years, nearly $500 billion has been collected by the telecom companies to (allegedly) bring America into the 21st century with an "Information Superhighway," says Johnston. That works out to $3,000 per household to have access to high-speed Internet.

But America did not get what it was promised and much of the country will never get fiber optic lines...

Indeed, this is nothing new. We've been writing about this for about a decade now. It's also why we're uncomfortable with net neutrality laws, even if we believe the concept of net neutrality is quite important. We've seen how the telcos are very, very, very good at working the system to their advantage.

The only real answer to our problems is to encourage more significant competition. The question that's reasonable to ask is where that competition should be. It's not at all clear that it needs to be at the infrastructure level -- since that can be redundant. However, as Australia is now doing, you could invest heavily in a core fiber network that brings tremendous high speed access everywhere... and then let service providers compete at the service level, rather than the infrastructure level. Yet there appears to be little appetite for such things in the US these days. Rather, you have the big telcos and cable companies creating their own little controlled markets, with crappy service and inflated prices... while the rest of the world does much, much better. We've been able to get away with it in the short term, but over time, the lack of good broadband in the US is going to hurt us economically.

Most of the time, it seems our "representatives" in Washington simply don't care what their constituents want. The DC thought process is that constituents are not to be trusted, much less listened to. Of course, all bets are off during election cycles. Suddenly, everyone cares.

Karl Bode at DSLReports has been following the FCC's "National Broadband Plan" since the first draft was made public back in March. He noted then that an additional $1-5 was to be added to existing customers' monthly bills in order to help fund the USF (Universal Service Fund) and expand broadband coverage.

Now, after asking for public comment and realizing that election season is in full swing, the FCC, along with pretty much everyone in both parties is pointing fingers at each other for daring to hit the poor consumer with yet another tax, all while insisting that they weren't the ones who proposed it. It seems this "proposal" magically appeared without anyone's support, if you believe the sudden backtracking from, well, everyone.

Neil Grace, a spokesman for Chairman Julius Genachowski, said the commission only made the proposal “following the urging of Republican Commissioners and members of Congress."

"The Chairman remains unconvinced that including broadband is the right approach,” he said. Robert McDowell, the only Republican on the commission when the proposal was floated earlier this year, flatly rejected that he ever supported the idea. "I have never suggested taxing broadband Internet access," he told The Hill.

The Hill's Technology Blog has a few more details, including this bit of interesting bit of skepticism from McDowell, who is first in line to head the FCC if there's a party shift this November :

McDowell said he is skeptical that the FCC even has the legal authority to tax Internet service.

So, if I'm reading this right, no one on the FCC supports this proposal that the FCC put forth and is now considering, even though no one wants it. Got it.

Of course, this wasn't the only suggestion the FCC considered, but the others weren't much better.

In April, the FCC suggested a number of ideas for reforming the fund's contribution system, including adding a fee to broadband Internet service. The commission also sought comments on taxing text messages, as well as levying a flat fee on each phone line, instead of the current system, which is based on a portion of the revenue from interstate phone calls.

Between now and November, this plan will have no support from previously interested politicians. An FCC official has referred to the idea as "politically toxic." Once the elections are over, though, it will probably be placed right back on the table.

The "internet tax" does have some support, though.

A number of companies, including AT&T, Sprint and Google, expressed support for a broadband tax in comments filed with the FCC.

Now, there's a good reason for these companies to support the funding of the UCF through these fees. For starters, this gets passed along to the customers so it's no money out of their pocket. (And it appears on the bill as a below-the-line charge, in order to allow both the government and the phone company to avoid calling it a "tax.") Even better, the UCF has become a loosely-regulated "slush fund" which dumps collected "fees" directly back into the pockets of the same companies collecting it in the first place.

What started as a program with important goals (making sure rural farmers can make phone calls and ensuring the poorest among us can dial 911) turned into an unaccountable corporate slush fund. Today USF is an $8 billion annual program, nearly quadrupling in size since its inception, with the bulk of that increase going to landline and wireless phone companies.

Maybe this massive growth would be no concern if USF were a model program with a sterling reputation for efficiency. But it’s not. One recent study found that 59 cents of every USF dollar raised for rural networks was spent on administrative expenses and general overhead. A 2010 audit of the rural USF program found that one out of every four dollars sent to participating phone companies was an “overpayment,” with nearly a billion dollars unaccounted for.

The corporate supporters of this plan to "expand the USF contributions base" have no constituency to worry about and have boldly stated that they'd love to have additional fees levied, presumably for noble reasons, like providing 911 service for rural farmers or helping lower income individuals acquire broadband services.

AT&T says that “retail mass market broadband Internet access should be included” in the FCC’s tax, and Google “strongly supports expanding the USF contribution base to include broadband Internet access services,” even as it begs the FCC to exempt Google’s own voice telephony services from the USF tax.

Conveniently ignoring the fact that adding additional fees does nothing to encourage broadband adoption by the low income population, the companies who stand to benefit the most from having more money dumped into a big cash pool are also first in line to make generous offers with other peoples' cash. The government is always more than happy to "pick up the check" on grandiose gestures, but at least every two-to-four years they remember whose wallet they're actually using. But these companies, with a hand stuck in both your back pocket AND the till don't have a periodic attack of conscience. This "broadband tax" will return to the table again and again as long as lobbyists still roam D.C.

Google officially announced the details of its fiber service in Kansas City today. If you don't remember, after doing a nationwide search, Google chose Kansas City (both the Kansas and the Missouri ones) as a sort of testbed. For years, we've pointed out that the real problem in broadband is the lack of competition. It's that lack of competition that leads companies like Verizon to stop investing in fiber networks, and companies like Comcast to only offer serious broadband where its competing with fiber. Competition is the key, and sadly, it's lacking in most places.

The Google setup was intriguing in that it was a true new entrant in the market, and one that seemed to acknowledge that what was most important wasn't appeasing the short term thinking on Wall Street that pushes against faster speeds and more innovation (too expensive!). Instead, it was going to see what it could do to increase speeds and decrease limits -- and now we've seen a glimpse of what that looks like with the official details -- many of which probably have the traditional broadband players quite annoyed.

First up, there's an oddity: to actually do the last bits of the buildout, Google is asking residents to sign up, and the neighborhoods with the greatest interest will get the finished buildout first (which makes sense). Then there are two bits that are somewhat disruptive: first, you can get broadband for free, if you take the package that gives you speeds up to 5 Mbps. That may not seem that high, but as Google points out, that's about the average speed out there (and, frankly, it's more than twice the speed of the broadband I get at my house, smack dab in the middle of Silicon Valley). You do have to pay for the installation, which is $300 (either upfront or in twelve monthly installments at $25). Then it's free service for at least the next seven years.

The second disruptive bit is that the full 1 Gbps offering only costs $70 per month (or $120 per month if you include TV) -- way lower than most competing offerings -- and the 1 Gbps is symmetrical meaning upstream and downstream. Broadband providers have long assumed that people are content consumers more than they are content creators, and thus they stressed the downstream bandwidth, while limiting upstream. Google seems to be making the bet that people can make use of that bandwidth in the other direction as well, and that should be quite interesting to see.

In some ways, this reminds me (a bit) of when Google launched Gmail and offered everyone 1 gig of storage. At the time, most competing services were in the range of 10 megs of storage before you had to pay. Google basically changed that market overnight -- so much so that many people thought it was an April Fools joke (it was launched on April 1). That won't happen here, obviously, because the service is just limited to Kansas City, but it still is setting the bar for what's possible.

There is one serious disappointment here, however. When Google announced this project, it had promised that it would allow competing services on its network. As we wrote about at the time, a Google VP said:

"We (sic) definitely inviting the Comcasts, the AT&T service providers to work with us on our network, and to provide their service offering on top of our pipe -- we're definitely planning on doing that. Our general attitude has been that there's plenty of room for innovation right now in the broadband space, and it's great what the cable companies are doing, upgrading to DOCSIS 3.0, but no one company has a monopoly on innovation. We're looking for other service providers to be able to come in and offer their service on top of our network so that residents have a choice when they open up their accounts. They get the connection from us, and then they have a choice as to who they subscribe to."

A few months ago there were some rumors making the rounds that Google had moved away from this plan -- and there was no mention of it in today's announcement at all. That doesn't mean Google won't eventually go there -- and it's possible that no other service provider wanted to "legitimize" Google's service this way, but it definitely would be nicer if Google also used this testbed to prove that there's value in competition at the service level, rather than just at the infrastructure level.

Either way, people living in Kansas City should be pretty damn happy right now...

Karl Bode has an interesting story explaining how Verizon is willfully pushing its DSL customers over to cable broadband "competitors." It's worth reading the whole thing, but the short version is that Verizon wants desperately out of the DSL business. Now, some of that is to drive people to its popular FiOS fiber service. However, the company has basically stopped expanding FiOS entirely. The fact that most of the competition is gone couldn't possibly have anything to do with that, right? But the bigger vision appears to be to push people over to the company's wireless solution, LTE. Bode suggests a few reasons for this, with a big one being that LTE is much more expensive, and has relatively low caps and high overage rates. In other words, it makes a lot more money for Verizon, but is much more limiting for users (there's also the bit about how it switches from a "unionized" business to a non-unionized one).

In other words, Verizon will cut off copper in FiOS markets first (which makes sense given the lower maintenance costs of fiber). They'll then leave users in DSL-only markets un-upgraded, forcing them to buy a costly landline so that remaining on Verizon DSL becomes less attractive. Those customers will flee to the same cable companies Verizon just signed a massive new partnership with, with Verizon planning to sell those users more expensive LTE connection later. Verizon will continue to "compete" in FiOS areas for now, if you call winking and nodding when it's time to raise prices competition.

Rural areas could see the biggest impact from the shift, as Verizon pulls DSL and instead sells those users LTE services with at a high price point ($15 per gigabyte overages). Verizon then hopes to sell those users cap-gobbling video services via their upcoming Redbox streaming video joint venture. Expect there to be plenty of gaps where rural users suddenly lose landline and DSL connectivity but can't get LTE. With Verizon and AT&T having killed off regulatory oversight in most states -- you can expect nothing to be done about it, despite both companies having been given billions in subsidies over the years to get those users online.

The entire amazing transition becomes clearer still when looking at Verizon's quarterly earnings posted yesterday. The company added a whopping 3.2 million LTE users during the second quarter, a record for the telco. In contrast, thanks to a frozen FiOS expansion (with the exception of franchise obligations in urban markets) and their disdain for DSL, Verizon managed to add just a net 2,000 broadband users in the quarter, despite adding 134,000 FiOS users. Verizon CFO Fran Shammo gave several excuses during yesterday's conference call ranging from the economy to aardvarks -- but the reality is that DSL users are fleeing in droves, and Verizon wants them to.

Now, there is something reasonable about a company actually being willing to cannibalize its own older offerings with something more modern. But a key warning sign that something is wrong is that they're not moving customers to something that's better and cheaper -- which is what you normally see in a truly competitive, innovative market. Instead, they're moving them to a more limited, more expensive offering. That's what you tend to see when there's not nearly enough competition in the market, and a few established players whose customers have little choice.

We recently wrote about some concerns by Vint Cerf and others that the FCC was considering a proposal to move some of their network diagnostics efforts -- which are a really good thing -- from the open M-Labs solution to proprietary servers run by the telcos. As we noted, the telcos denied that this was happening -- and Henning Schulzrinne, the CTO of the FCC, showed up in our comments to strongly deny that such a proposal existed.

Yesterday, Vint Cerf distributed an open letter regarding concerns about the Measuring Broadband America measurement infrastructure. We share the objectives of the letter writers that “Open data and an independent, transparent measurement framework must be the cornerstones of any scientifically credible broadband Internet access measurement program.” Unfortunately, the letter claims: “Specifically, that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is considering a proposal to replace the Measurement Lab server infrastructure with closed infrastructure, run by the participating Internet service providers (ISPs) whose own speeds are being measured.” This is false.

The FCC is not considering replacing the Measurement Labs infrastructure. As part of a consensus-based discussion in the Measurement Collaborative, a group of public interest, research and ISP representatives, we have discussed how to enhance the existing measurement infrastructure to ensure the validity of the measurement data. Any such enhancements would be implemented solely to provide additional resiliency for the measurement infrastructure, not to replace existing infrastructure. Any data gathered would be subject to the same standards of data access and openness.

It turns out his claim that "this is false" is... well... false. Attached below, we have the proposal that supposedly doesn't exist. To be fair, this is just a proposal, and the FCC need not accept it. But to claim that there is no proposal to replace M-Labs infrastructure seems to be false. Also, the proposal certainly doesn't wipe out M-Labs servers, but it does clearly allow for the substitution of "ANOther server" in place of the M-Labs offering, as well as increasing the role for the telcos own servers. Given how the telcos have generally acted towards open information and data sharing concerning network data, you can see why supporters of M-Labs would be quite reasonably concerned. In fact, the relationship between everyone involved in these kinds of measurements appears to have gone through some rocky periods over the last few years, such that supporters of M-Lab are reasonably worried that there's a concerted effort to gradually move them out of the process.

The FCC has been working with M-Lab to measure basic network diagnostics using an open source solution, providing public information about internet network performance. This seems like a good thing... though you can see why not everyone would like data public about the performance of their networks. Over the weekend, a warning went up that the telcos are pushing the FCC to stop using M-Lab and switch to their own ISP-managed diagnostics tools. Vint Cerf is raising the alarm about this:

Recently, the FCC measurement program has backed sharply away from their commitment to transparency, apparently at the bidding of the telcos in the program. The program is now proposing to replace the M-Lab platform with only ISP-managed servers. This effectively replaces transparency with a closed platform in which the ISPs -- whose performance this program purports to measure -- are in control of the measurements. This closed platform would provide the official US statistics on broadband performance. I view this as scientifically unacceptable.

For the health of the Internet, and for the future of credible data-based policy, the research community must push back against this move.

The FCC keeps insisting that it's committed to openness -- but all too frequently seems to give in to telco demands. So this warning is concerning.

For what it's worth, the telcos are claiming that Cerf is overreacting. In a response to his call for action, Verizon's David Young responded that there's nothing to see here, and that M-Lab and the telco efforts have co-existed and can continue to co-exist going forward.

Vint breathlessly suggests that the FCC is now backing away from this openness "at the bidding of the telcos" and claims the program is proposing to replace the M-Lab platform with only ISP-managed servers. THIS IS FALSE. ISPs have made no such request of the FCC nor has the FCC proposed to eliminate use of M-Lab’s servers.

What has been proposed is that, in addition to continuing to use the data collected via the M-Lab servers, the FCC and SamKnows may also rely on the ISP provided servers that have been in use since the beginning of the project. These ISP-provided servers meet the specifications required by SamKnows as do the M-Labs servers. In fact, it was only because of the presence of these non-M-Lab, ISP-donated servers, that SamKnows was able to identify problems with an M-Lab server that was affecting the results of the tests being conducted. M-Labs did not identify this server problem on their own. It was only fixed when SamKnows brought the issue to their attention. By the way, this problem forced the FCC to abandon a month's worth of test data, extend the formal test period and delay production of their report. Later, another M-Lab server location had transit problems that again affected results. This was the second M-Labs-related server problem in two months and once again, it was SamKnows, using the ISP-provided servers as a reference who identified the problem and brought it to M-Labs attention.

As with many such disputes, the reality may be somewhere in between the two claims here. It seems like Cerf's fear is that by establishing the telcos' servers on equal footing with the M-Labs' open setup, it opens the door to replacing the M-Labs' efforts and then potentially locking up the data. Young is correct that the openness is mainly due to FCC policy at this point, but that policy is dependent on the current leadership of the FCC, which could change. At the very least, it would be nice to see a stated commitment to keeping the information open on an ongoing basis, so that there isn't any need to worry going forward.