Chattanooga claims fastest internet in U.S.

By John D. Sutter, CNN September 13, 2010 4:23 p.m. EDT | Filed under: Innovation

The move by the city of Chattanooga, Tennessee, comes at a time when the United States is focused on broadband speeds.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Chattanooga, Tennessee, boasts fastest internet speed in U.S., calls it investment in future
• Residential customers can order internet speeds of 1 gigabit per second
• The speed comes with a cost, though: $350 per month

(CNN) — If you want the fastest internet connection in America, it may be wise to skip Silicon Valley and New York. Instead, look to southern Tennessee.

The unlikely city of Chattanooga says it began offering one-gigabit-per-second internet upload and download speeds Monday, a rate it says is the fastest in the United States — and 250 times the average internet speed in the nation.

The city says the move is an investment in the future.

“It’s like any other leading technology, people will invent ways to use it,” said Ron Littlefield, mayor of the city of 170,000. “And having it here will bring those inventive minds to focus in Chattanooga.”

The faster speeds won’t come cheap, however. EPB, the city-owned power company offering the one-gig speeds, will charge about $350 per month for the ultra-fast service.

Harold DePriest, CEO of EPB, said the company is not sure how to price the service since such download and upload rates are unprecedented in the U.S.

“It’s a pretty big monthly bill. And a gig is a pretty big speed,” he said. “We really don’t quite know how to price it. Nobody else has done a gig in this country, and that means we don’t know exactly how much it will cost us to offer it.”

The faster broadband internet speeds mostly will appeal to business owners, although they are available to residents as well, DePriest said.

Chattanooga’s mayor says he won’t pay for the higher speeds in his home.

“I don’t think I need one gig right now,” he said. “I’d need it for about five minutes and I could download the entire text of the Library of Congress [in that time] and that would be enough. I already have the 30-megabit [per second] service and it’s lightning fast.”

He added: “I do believe there are doctors and engineers and people in the entertainment business and others that will need it and utilize it.”

The mayor’s connection speed costs less than $60 per month.

Chattanooga’s announcement comes at a time when the United States is focused on broadband speeds. The Federal Communication Commission in March announced a plan to try to speed up U.S. internet connections, which reports say are woefully slower than those in some other countries.

That plan would put 100-megabit-per-second connections in 100 million American homes by 2020. Those speeds would be a 10th as fast as those reportedly offered in Chattanooga as of Monday.

The tech giant Google also has thrown itself into the issue. In February, the Mountain View, California, company announced a program called Google Fiber for Communities, which aims to bring internet connections on par with those in Chattanooga to one or more municipalities.

In a blog post about that program, Google product managers Minnie Ingersoll and James Kelly list some of the benefits of faster internet connections, which Google sees as a booster of economic development.

“Imagine sitting in a rural health clinic, streaming three-dimensional medical imaging over the Web and discussing a unique condition with a specialist in New York. Or downloading a high-definition, full-length feature film in less than five minutes. Or collaborating with classmates around the world while watching live 3-D video of a university lecture,” the Google employees wrote. “Universal, ultra high-speed Internet access will make all this and more possible.”

The search-engine company asked mayors to send in applications to the program, and Google said it will choose a location or locations for the project later this year.

Several mayors pulled wild publicity stunts to grab Google’s attention. The mayor of Topeka, Kansas, for instance, temporarily changed the name of his city to Google, Kansas.

Chattanooga didn’t participate in the hoopla because its plans for an upgrade were already under way at the time, said Littlefield, the city’s mayor.

Verizon also has tested one-gig broadband connections.

DePriest, of the power company in Chattanooga, said the one-gig speeds became available on Monday to 100,000 of his company’s 170,000 customers.

The faster speeds will be available to everyone in the company’s coverage area, which includes rural areas around the city and extends into north Georgia, by the end of the year, he said.

The quicker connections are achieved primarily by stringing high-speed, fiber-optic cable directly into homes and businesses. Most cities connect homes to a fiber optic network with copper wires, which slow the transmission speed, DePriest said.

When asked why Chattanooga was the first in the U.S. to offer such speeds to residential customers, DePriest said, “Maybe we’re the only ones silly enough to do it.”

He added, “The technology has been around a while to put together a system that would consistently deliver a gig, but the financial option has not been there for a lot of companies.”

The city was already in the middle of upgrading its power grid and internet infrastructure, in part with the help of a $111 million grant from the Department of Energy, DePriest said.

Beefing up the city’s broadband speeds at the same time, he said, presented “a fairly minimal additional cost to us.”

“As far as we know, it is by far the fastest in the U.S. and among the fastest in the world,” he said.

FCC to open vacant TV airwaves for ‘super Wi-Fi’

Last Updated: September 13. 2010 10:42AM

Joelle Tessler / Associated Press

Washington — A new flavor of Wi-Fi, with longer range and wall-piercing power, could show up in wireless gadgets a year from now if the Federal Communications Commission works out the last details of new spectrum rules that have been long in the making.

Nearly two years ago, the FCC voted to open up the airwaves between broadcast TV channels — so-called “white spaces” — for wireless broadband connections that would work like Wi-Fi on steroids. But wrangling over key technical details, including concerns about interference with TV signals and wireless microphones, has prevented exploitation of these spaces.

On Sept. 23, the FCC plans to vote on rules meant to resolve those issues. FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski predicts electronics makers will jump at this “super Wi-Fi” technology, as the agency calls it, and make it just as popular as conventional Wi-Fi.

“We’re hoping history will repeat itself,” Genachowski said. “White spaces are a big deal for consumers and for investment and innovation.”

The commission’s plan would make white spaces available for free, without specific permission, just as it already does for Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.

Last year’s transition from analog to digital television broadcasting freed up enough spectrum to make this possible, but the plan faced serious opposition from television broadcasters worried that their signals could be disrupted. Wireless microphone manufacturers and users — including churches, theatres, karaoke bars and all types of performers — also raised concerns about interference.

To address these issues, the FCC has been working with broadcasters and white-spaces proponents to map TV channels across the country. The current FCC plan would require installers to configure white-spaces devices to use a frequency that’s vacant in their area — a white space. Alternatively, the devices themselves could figure out their location using such technologies as GPS; a database would then help the devices figure out the right frequencies for their area.

In addition, the agency hopes to set aside at least two channels for minor users of wireless microphones. And it plans to put big wireless microphone users, such as Broadway theaters and sports leagues, in the database, so devices would know to avoid their airwaves.

The upcoming FCC vote is a welcome development for some of the country’s biggest technology companies, including Google Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Dell Inc. The tech industry hopes that white-spaces networks will create a multibillion market for advanced wireless devices, including laptops, set-top boxes and smart phones.

“We’ve all been chomping at the bit in the tech community … to get going with white spaces,” said Richard Whitt, Google’s Washington-based counsel for telecommunications and media. “These are highly valuable, open, unused airwaves.”

If all goes according to plan, Liam Quinn, chief technology officer for client business at Dell, expects to see “proof of concept” products at the Consumer Electronics Show in January, followed by early products in about a year and mass production a year after that.

White spaces are particularly well suited to providing broadband, tech companies say, because they can penetrate walls, have plenty of network capacity and are able to cover large areas. According to Quinn, the signals can travel several miles and deliver Internet speeds ranging from 15 to 20 megabits per second — as fast as a cable modem.

Technology companies envision all sorts of uses for white spaces: providing emergency services in disaster zones and creating home wireless networks that can send video between television sets and computers, to name just a few possibilities.

Wilmington, N.C., one of a handful of U.S. communities testing the technology, is using white-spaces connections to send live video feeds from traffic and surveillance cameras.

The city’s network also gathers real-time data from a sensor in a remote part of the local watershed to monitor water quality and levels. Previously, Wilmington Mayor Bill Saffo said, the city had to send a worker out in a boat once a month to collect the data, as the city’s Wi-Fi network could not reach the sensor.

“There are a million and one possibilities for this spectrum,” Saffo said.

Neeraj Srivastava, a vice president at a Florida company called Spectrum Bridge Inc., noted that white-spaces networks could be used to bring high-speed Internet access to remote corners of the country where the phone and cable companies don’t offer landline broadband. That’s a high priority for the FCC.

Indeed, Spectrum Bridge, which helped build the Wilmington network, also helped build a test system in rural Claudeville, Va., a community that had only dial-up Internet and costly satellite-based broadband service before.

For now, it remains unclear whether the FCC’s plan for dealing with interference will go far enough for the broadcast industry, which wants the FCC to require that white-spaces devices include spectrum-sensing technology that can detect when airwaves are already being used. The FCC left that requirement out amid opposition from the tech industry.

“This is still a work in progress,” said David Donovan, head of the Association for Maximum Service Television, which handles technical issues facing broadcasters. “But we’re trying to make it work.”

For every 1 iPhone, you can run 4 BlackBerrys on a typical network so it’s clear who is to blame?!

By Kelly Riddell and Amy Thomson

March 8 (Bloomberg) — IPhone users coping with jams on AT&T Inc.’s network may get some relief from an unexpected quarter: cable companies.

Time Warner Cable Inc., the biggest pay-television provider in New York City, is pitching phone companies including AT&T and Verizon Wireless on a service that uses its underground cables to carry mobile calls and Web downloads — easing the congestion spurred by data-hungry users of smartphones like the iPhone.

The service, known in the industry as wireless backhaul, has become Time Warner Cable’s fastest-growing business after revenue tripled last year, said Craig Collins, senior vice president of business services. Across the cable industry, sales from wireless carriers may reach about $3.6 billion in 2012, according to researcher GeoResults Inc.

“Backhaul is a growth play that we are pursuing aggressively,” Collins said. “These mobile players want to get the bandwidth they need at a cost-effective price and our structure allows them to get that pretty seamlessly.”

U.S. smartphone use has grown almost 700 percent in four years, according to the U.S. Federal Communications Commission. Mobile-data volume is more than doubling annually as people use devices like the iPhone, BlackBerry and Google Inc.’s new Nexus One to send photos, watch videos and surf the Web. When networks jam, consumers face dropped calls and may find they can’t access Web pages or TV, analysts said.

“Backhaul is the first line of defense in addressing the capacity pressures on wireless networks,” said Craig Moffett, a Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. analyst in New York who has followed the telecommunications industry for more than two decades.

Cable Efforts

Apple’s iPhone eats twice the capacity of other smartphones, straining AT&T’s network, according to Bernstein. Network clogs are particularly heavy in major cities and AT&T wireless chief Ralph de la Vega mentioned in December that New York and San Francisco are particular trouble spots.

Time Warner Cable has backhaul lines in place to serve New York, and Comcast is the major cable company in the Bay Area. Philadelphia-based Comcast, the largest U.S. cable operator, expects backhaul to become a $1 billion business over time, according to a Feb. 3 conference call.

Charlie Douglas, a Comcast spokesman, declined to comment. AT&T spokesman Michael Coe declined to comment on its backhaul providers. Comcast rose 13 cents to $17.56 at 4 p.m. New York time in Nasdaq Stock Market trading. Time Warner Cable gained 71 cents to $49 on the New York Stock Exchange.

Into Cable

While Time Warner Cable declined to specify if AT&T, the lone U.S. carrier for the iPhone, is a customer, the New York- based cable company says it wants to sign carriers large and small. Chief Executive Officer Glenn Britt alluded to AT&T’s extra iPhone traffic in a December conference call.

“They want to get that into a cable as fast as they can,” Britt said, referring to overloads. His company began leasing backhaul in 2008 and posted $26 million in sales last year, less than 1 percent of the company’s total sales. Collins declined to give a forecast for 2010.

When mobile-phone calls are made, a signal is sent over radio waves to an antenna, usually mounted on a rooftop or cell tower. The backhaul system pulls the signal from the antenna into the carrier’s wired network. During periods of high usage, carriers can add capacity by adding lines to their own backhaul pipes or leasing others.

Not a Cure

Backhaul alone can’t solve the crunch. While leasing extra lines helps once mobile signals enter the physical network, there still can be congestion when the signal is in the air, traveling from tower to tower. To that end, carriers have urged the FCC to allocate more airwaves that carry calls and data requests before they reach the antenna.

Carriers may be reluctant to use cable backhaul because it’s relatively new, with limited connectivity to cell sites. Phone companies provide some backhaul to other carriers as well, leasing lines in some cities. Plus, they may not want to give too much business to cable companies, their rivals in TV and high-speed Internet access for homes and businesses.

“Cable companies will be tasked with serving what is a direct competitor, and as they look at their own cellular operations, there’s bound to be some complications,” said Ian Olgeirson, an industry analyst with SNL Kagan.

Cox Pioneers

Still, using cable pipes is probably more cost effective for mobile carriers than adding more backhaul lines to their own networks, said Andrew Fuertes, a senior analyst at Visant Strategies based in New York.

Backhaul leasing prices vary for each carrier depending on the city and can range from a few hundred dollars to more than $1,000 a month for each cell tower. The prices are reasonable and cheaper than carriers investing billions to build out networks themselves, Fuertes said.

“Wireless backhaul is a critical, critical component to our overall service,” said Tony Melone, chief technology officer at Verizon Wireless. “Given the backhaul needs of wireless carriers, there’s a lot more interest from companies to try to meet that need.”

Cox Communications Inc., the third largest U.S. cable company, pioneered backhaul for the industry, selling unused capacity to carriers more than a decade ago. The business wasn’t significant then as fewer people used mobile devices and Web- accessing smartphones didn’t exist.

Cox inked $100 million in contracts last year. Backhaul is “a very healthy and fast-growing business,” said Phil Meeks, a vice president at the closely held Atlanta-based company.