Tag Archives: ADSL2+

Not Just Copper: Is CenturyLink slowly withdrawing from the residential wireline market entirely?

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CenturyLinkAlmost all of our broadband heartburn comes from uncompetitive markets. Even in areas with at least two wireline competitors (which is only about 95% of the urbanized Wasatch Front), you’re usually stuck picking between faster speeds from Comcast and cheaper speeds from CenturyLink. I’ve already written that it’s looking like CenturyLink is going to let copper die without a replacement, but it’s entirely possible they just want to get out of the residential market entirely. This would be a nightmare for competitive choice in our state.

Do you remember the last time CenturyLink upgraded their ADSL2+ product? I do; it was 2009. The year before, they stopped doing FTTN deployments entirely, occasionally lighting a new FTTN node here or there. Most of the Wasatch Front is still limited to 7Mbps ADSL with real-world performance usually coming in much less than that. I know people in Sandy that struggle to squeeze 3Mbps out of that aging copper. It makes CenturyLink’s claims of doing their own gigabit fiber seem pretty hollow and underscores that their main purpose in deploying FTTN may have been to try clubbing competitors in the kneecaps.

Just look at how CenturyLink has been not responding to competitive threats. In Provo, Comcast very quickly pushed their system to its absolute limits with a 250Mbps/50Mbps tier that price-matches Google. What did CenturyLink do? Nothing. They haven’t uttered a single word about doing any kind of upgrades in Provo at all. Who can blame them? It would cost them tens of millions of dollars to go after a customer base that hates them. The ROI would be so far out as to be disastrous. It’s noteworthy that the only places CenturyLink has announced doing FTTH have been duopoly markets, places with a more-or-less captive customer base. Given their non-response to Veracity rolling their own ADSL2+ using CenturyLink cabinets, this isn’t too surprising.

At the same time, CenturyLink has been chasing down deals to build fiber to cell towers and focusing heavily on their business services through acquisitions like Savvis. These premium services command much greater profit margins and more stable user bases than residential markets, plus they can easily convince businesses to pay the full cost of installing the latest technology. Even when the fiber to cell towers goes into residential areas, CenturyLink has been noncommittal about using it to upgrade DSL users to better speeds or technologies. It seems very strange to not want to use the investment to upgrade other services. I’d usually say they just don’t have the money, but they just approved spending $1B on a stock buyback program, money that would deploy gigabit fiber to as many as 1M homes and businesses.

This all paints a very disturbing picture for the future of telecommunications where open access systems like UTOPIA aren’t or won’t be available: Comcast will be the only real ISP for most users, and cities who go with Google Fiber will be right back into the “fast vs cheap” duopoly they hate so much right now. This is one of the many reasons why I’ve been so sour on both Provo and Salt Lake City for going with Google instead of fixing the underlying anticompetitive problems in the telecommunications space. Why would you expect Google to be any better than Comcast when they no longer really have to work for your business?

Is CenturyLink About to Ditch Copper?

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CenturyLinkIt’s no small secret that Verizon has been working really, really hard to ditch copper access lines. In areas where they haven’t rolled out FIOS, they’re letting older copper plants rot on the vine, ceding the wired space in those communities to the local cable companies. In areas of New York where Hurricane Sandy wiped out the copper plant, they’re flat-out refusing to rebuild any landlines, instead offering a high-margin fixed wireless service.

AT&T hasn’t been too much better. Their anemic speeds on FTTN constantly lag behind their cable counterparts. Like Verizon, most of their money comes from wireless operations, so that’s where their efforts have been focused. In fact, when was the last time you heard anything about U-Verse in the news?

It seems to me that CenturyLink is ready to follow suit. They recently announced that they would be building fiber to 19-20K cell towers in their service areas. I can’t say I blame them. This is a highly profitable business, one that I wish UTOPIA or its providers could crack. Given the slow and steady loss of both landlines and broadband customers (the latter due to a lack of network upgrades), I’m sure they’re looking at whatever boosts the bottom line.

You’ll note, however, that upgrading DSL users to ADSL2+, their FTTN solution, is a footnote. Their CFO and SVP more-or-less states it outright:

“We try to design the routes to bring fiber to the towers to where they can serve other needs that we have to in terms of providing fiber closer to business customers and closer to residential customers to provide some of the higher bandwidth services,” Ewing said.

That’s right: CenturyLink is stating rather plainly that their main concern is to get fiber to those cell towers, then, if it’s “feasible” (read: dirt cheap), you can have the leftover table scraps. Cable companies (and most other phone companies) have posted subscriber gains in broadband, yet CenturyLink, who hasn’t upgraded speeds past 40Mbps since 2009, is losing thousands of customers per quarter. Odds are good that any areas getting this fiber will just now be moving off of vanilla DSL to the same 40Mbps speed (or lower) that they’ve been pushing for the last four years. When Comcast is pushing 105Mbps and UTOPIA and Google Fiber are doing gigabit, how is it anything but a giant middle finger to current and potential customers?

CenturyLink is choosing to let copper customers loose for the same reasons that Verizon and AT&T are: it’s expensive to provide service, and they can make the same or more money from wireless (albeit on different ends) with lower costs and a lot less competition. The copper network has paid for itself many times over, so writing it off as it continues to degrade is no big deal. The money they invest in cell towers has a much better ROI than investing in wireline services, so what limited funds they have will be going there.

This isn’t just a problem for CenturyLink customers. As they slowly back away from consumers and shift their core business to wholesale transport for other businesses, most users in Utah will be left with just the cable company, Comcast, to fill the void. With only a single wireline provider in most of the state, speeds will stagnate, prices will rise, and service will worsen. When there’s no incentive to compete, why would you?

Veracity Deploying ADSL2+ in Downtown Salt Lake City

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Not content to roll out ADSL2+ in American Fork, Veracity has announced that its ADSL2+ product is going to start landing in downtown Salt Lake City (warning: press release, superlatives ahead). There’s no information on pricing or speeds, but I would anticipate that both will be highly competitive. The initial footprint is supposed to cover 10,000 homes and businesses, though it’s not entirely clear which neighborhoods will see the service or when. It’s not UTOPIA, and it’s not fiber-to-the-home, but it’s definitely an improvement over the staid duopoly offerings currently in Salt Lake.

After much searching, Qwest finds the right shade of lipstick for the pig

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In quite the surprise announcement today, Qwest announced that its efforts to dress the company up for sale over the last decade have finally paid off. CenturyLink, the result of a merger between ILECs CenturyTel and Embarq, is buying the company in an all-stock transaction. This comes not even a year after the merger that created CenturyLink, one in which CenturyTel purchased Embarq.

What remains to be seen is if this will improve Qwest’s long-ailing fortunes and legendary reputation for horrible customer service. I used to be a customer of Sprint Local in Las Vegas before it was spun off into Embarq and was always impressed with the service quality. The only reason I discontinued service was because Vonage was offering a very compelling feature set at a  more attractive price. I don’t know how much of Embarq has rubbed off on CenturyTel (or even what CenturyTel’s reputation is), but any amount of it would help.

That said, I wonder if the new company will have the billions of dollars required to update badly-neglected infrastructure. It’s no secret that Qwest carries a very heavy debt load and hasn’t exactly been speedy with the rollout of ADSL2+ services. They also have no wireless or video revenues to cross-subsidize construction… and neither does CenturyLink. As land lines continue to death spiral and cable turns up the DOCSIS 3.0 heat, I’m left wondering how the new company will fare too much better than the old one.

Good luck, guys. You need as much of it as you can get.

Qwest Thinking VDSL2, Could Be Too Little, Too Late

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The biggest black eye in Qwest’s attempt to bring their broadband offerings into the 21st century has been the abysmal 896Kbps upload speeds, even when using ADSL2+ and FTTN. According to some insider posts at DSLReports, that may change. According to the tipster, Qwest is looking at VDSL2 with plans to bump the upload speeds to 5Mbps with a new top tier pushing 40Mbps/20Mbps. Even so, it’s not enough to catch up to UTOPIA or even Comcast.

The real question is if Qwest can afford any kind of widespread deployment. Since the company couldn’t unload its long-haul operations for anywhere near the asking price, Qwest is where it always has been: too deep in debt, too cash poor, and hemmoraging landline customers to VoIP, cable, and wireless carriers. They halted the current ADSL2+ installs citing that the winter weather was preventing them from continuing the build, but we all know it’s cash flow issues. Like a lot of analysts, I think Qwest is going to continue to wither until they find a cash-rich investor looking for a fixer-upper.

And if Qwest is more-or-less at a standstill, what are the odds of Comcast dropping DOCSIS 3.0 tiers in Utah? Pretty slim unless you live in Provo or a UTOPIA city where fiber is prodding them forward. It’s no secret that Comcast has, to date, focused network upgrades most heavily on areas where Verizon’s FIOS is the king of speed. As half of the duopoly crumbles, you can expect more of the same from Comcast: ho-hum speeds, mediocre pricing, and lackluster customer service (their Twitter damage control unit customer service team notwithstanding).

Broadband Bytes: December 13-19, 2008

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I think 2009 is going to end up being the year of broadband. Advocates are very well-organized and the new administration is putting a lot of post-election emphasis on telecom policy, an issue that’s typicaly given only election-cycle lip service.

The Need for Speed: Comcast Plans to Up Speeds, Qwest Putting FTTN on Ice

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As a sure sign that the souring economy is causing broadband issues, Qwest is planning to ramp down deployment of their FTTN-based ASDL2+ service. While one of their supplies cites the coming winter weather as the reason for the slow-down, but analysts are reading between the lines that plunging landline subscriptions paired with a slowing economy means rough rides ahead for telcos. AT&T is also seeing some effects of slowing subscriber demand. It’s good news for ISPs, though: the wholesale price of bandwidth continues to drop and consumers are more willing to drop cable TV than high-speed Internet, especially as Comcast continues to raise rates.

Meanwhile, details of Comcast’s new DOCSIS 3.0 deployments is coming to light and, while good news for current subscribers or those switching from DSL, it’s hardly competitive with offerings from UTOPIA. In addition to a 50Mbps/5Mbps tier at $150/mo, Comcast plans to upgrade current subscribers to 12Mbps/2Mbps at $42.95/mo and offer a 22Mbps/5Mbps tier at $62.95/mo to compete with a similar offering from Verizon. Compare that to a 15Mbps/15Mbps plan at $40/mo or 50Mbps/50Mbps for $55/mo from either MSTAR or XMission. Just be thankful you aren’t a SureWest customer. They charge around $192/mo for a 50Mbps connection.