Tag Archives: Verizon

Georgia Broadband Deployment Initiative 2019-04-26

Good about the Georgia Broadband Deployment Inititative (GBDI): wired and wireless, and they are actively doing something, including mapping.

[Map Phase 1]

Map Phase 1

See also interactive Phase 1 map.

Dubious: stakeholders are only “private telecom
and cable providers, local government, and electricity cooperatives”.

Where are universities, technical colleges, doctors and hospitals, local businesses, nonprofits, and the people?
Supposedly “Community partnership will be a central component”,
but where is the community in GBDI’s plans?
Where are the other stakeholders?
Where are the public hearings?

Maybe that’s farther along in their timeline: Continue reading →

Videos: Cell tower, cemetery, sewer, and radio tower @ ZBOA 2015-12-01



Videos of the

December 2015 ZBOA meeting.
The cemetery item got tabled and is
back on today’s agenda.

Here’s

a video playlist:



Videos: Cell tower, cemetery, sewer, and radio tower

Regular Session, Valdosta-Lowndes County Zoning Board of Appeals (ZBOA),

Video by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE),

Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 1 December 2015.

-jsq

Cell tower, cemetery, sewer, and radio tower @ ZBOA 2015-12-01

Two

ZBOA agenda items for tomorrow
are also on
the Planning Commission agenda for tonight:


the

Withlacoochee River Wastewater Treatment Plant
and the

radio tower
Snake Nation Press
for

WSNK-LP, Valdosta Community Radio.
Apparently both of these applicants want a variance from ZBOA
in addition to a conditional use permit.

Verizon wants

a variance in Hahira for a cell tower
and the Lucas Brothers want

a cemetery variance.


Valdosta-Lowndes County Zoning Board of Appeals

Continue reading →

Coverage: T vs. VZ for 4G LTE

How does

AT&T’s new local 4G LTE coverage compare to Sprint’s?


AT&T coverage map
and still rolling more out, said
Tony Adams in the Ledger-Inquirer,

Update: AT&T adds cell sites outside Columbus, launches yearly smartphone upgrade plan July 26,

AT&T has 4G in the Columbus market, but not the faster LTE. A check
of the firm’s coverage map shows virtually every other major metro
area in Georgia with LTE, while many smaller communities in the
state also have the top-of-the-line service.

Elsas, in a statement, said the company uses HSPA+ technology
locally and those 4G speeds “are incredibly fast — up to
four times faster than 3G.” But she also acknowledged there is
work to be done on adding spectrum, or capacity, to the Columbus
network.


Verizon coverage map (top)
“As far as LTE, there is currently a lack of available
spectrum in Columbus, and we are working hard to address
this,” the statement said. “In the meantime,

Verizon coverage map (bottom)
we continue
to invest in technology, strengthen our network and seek
opportunities to offer the best wireless experience possible in the
region.”

“Possible” of course includes Continue reading →

AT&T 4G LTE now in Valdosta @ VLCIA 2013-07-16

Verizon won’t be the only 4G LTE access in Valdosta anymore:
AT&T has turned theirs on.
It’s not clear how far out of town that extends (looks to me
like I still need to go stand by my west gate if I want on),
but at least it’s a start of competition, and maybe T will
get around to increasing
its coverage (see next post).
If

Softbank + Sprint + Clearwire comes here, as well,
maybe we’ll see something like a competitive market.
It’s not clear even that will be enough to get fast affordable
access everywhere in south Georgia.
For that, maybe our local elected and appointed officials
will continue with

the advocacy they started back in February.


Andrea Schruijer and the AT&T 4G LTE PR
As mentioned at the Industrial Authority yesterday evening by
Executive Director Andrea Schruijer (video to come), here’s
AT&T’s PR of 2 July 2013,

AT&T 4G LTE Available In Valdosta:
Customers to benefit from nation’s fastest 4G LTE network on the latest devices,

VALDOSTA, Ga., July 2, 2013 /PRNewswire/ — AT&T* has turned on
the nation’s fastest 4G LTE network** in Valdosta, bringing
customers the latest generation of wireless network technology.
Watch here to see several of the benefits AT&T 4G LTE provides,
including:

  • Faster speeds. LTE technology is capable of delivering mobile
    Internet speeds up to 10 times faster than 3G***. Customers can
    stream, download, upload and game faster than ever before.
  • Cool new
    devices. AT&T offers several LTE-compatible devices, including new
    AT&T 4G LTE smartphones and tablets.
  • Faster response time. LTE
    technology offers lower latency, or the processing time it takes to
    move data through a network, such as how long it takes to start
    downloading a webpage or file once you’ve sent the request. Lower
    latency helps to improve services like mobile gaming, two-way video
    calling and telemedicine.
  • More efficient use of spectrum. Wireless
    spectrum is a finite resource, and LTE uses spectrum more
    efficiently than other technologies, creating more space to carry
    data traffic and services and to deliver a better network
    experience.

“Wireless infrastructure investment is critical to Georgia’s future
and I am very pleased to see AT&T investing in Valdosta and Lowndes
County and bringing LTE service to our community,” said Andrea
Schruijer, Executive Director of the Valdosta-Lowndes County
Industrial Authority. “Advanced technology like LTE will help
stimulate our economy and provide new tools and services that we
need to compete for business.”

“We continue Continue reading →

I don’t want to say we don’t have broadband —Andrea Schruijer @ VLCIA 2013-02-19



Unfortunately, Andrea Schruijer made clear that much of what
had just been said at the

the Industrial Authority 19 February 2013
hadn’t been heard.

It’s not that we’re saying we don’t have broadband.
We have connectivity; that’s not the issue.
We have great partners that help us with that.

Well, local “leaders” need to learn to say it:
“we don’t have broadband!”
Many of the people of Lowndes County and even more in the surrounding
counties

can’t afford Internet access at all, as Idelle Dear told the Lowndes County
Commission.
And the “great partners” Ms. Schruijer bragged about will never provide
it for us without a lot of prodding, because AT&T and Verizon
and Sprint and Comcast and Mediacom don’t think anything outside the
Atlanta beltway has enough population density to bother with,
and even in Atlanta all people get is U.S.-style low-speed low-reliability
Internet connectivity that would never even be on sale in Japan or France
or Korea or Finland or even Estonia.



Tom Call illustrated my point when he

talked about a residential project
where a provider installed cable and claimed they were providing voice, TV, and Internet access, but then didn’t actually have the capacity for Internet
when people started using it.

Continue reading →

How to get fast Internet service —Susan Crawford

Susan Crawford has a plan

for getting us fast Internet access for jobs, community, education,
and health care.



Susan Crawford wrote for Wired 2 October 2012,

We Can’t All Be in Google’s Kansas: A Plan for Winning the Bandwidth
Race,
about how the incumbent telephone and cable companies that provide
our Internet access aren’t going to help:

They have no incentive to do so. Because they never enter one
another’s territories, they don’t face the competition that might
spur such expansion.

Instead, incumbent internet access providers such as Comcast and
Time Warner (for wired access) and AT&T and Verizon (for
complementary wireless access) are in “harvesting” mode.
They’re raising average revenue per user through special pricing for
planned “specialized services” and usage-based billing,
which allows the incumbents to constrain demand. The ecosystem these
companies have built is never under stress, because consumers do
their best to avoid heavy charges for using more data than they’re
supposed to. Where users have no expectation of abundance, there’s
no need to build fiber on the wired side of the business or build
small cells fed by fiber on the wireless side.

If the current internet access providers that dominate the American
telecommunications landscape could get away with it, they’d sell
nothing but specialized services and turn internet access into a
dirt road.

So what is her plan?

Continue reading →

Japan’s Softbank buys Sprint because CEO Son says U.S. networks too slow

U.S. car manufacturers decades ago milked profits out of poor technology
and got outcompeted by Japan on both quality and price.
The same thing is happening right now with fast Internet service.
We may not have to wait for Verizon and AT&T to get around
to offering

affordable fast 4G LTE Internet service:
Sprint may do it first, now that Japan’s Softbank is stepping in.

Roger Chang wrote for CNET News 15 October 2012,

Japan’s Softbank poised to supercharge Sprint network:
Softbank CEO complains that U.S. networks are too slow, and with his $20 billion bid for Sprint, he aims to do something about that.



Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son isn’t impressed with the high-speed
wireless networks in the United States.

“Everytime I come to the U.S., I say ‘Oh my God, the mobile phone
network is so slow,'” Son said during a conference call with
analysts today.

Now, Son is in a position to change things to his liking after
Softbank and Sprint Nextel agreed on a deal in which Softbank would
take a 70 percent stake in the U.S. carrier.

Sprint, which has struggled as a distant No. 3 carrier behind AT&T
and Verizon Wireless, could get a boost from the deal, in which
Softbank spends $12.1 billion to buy the controlling stake and
another $8 billion in investment into the company.

What’s he aiming at improving?

Continue reading →

4G LTE Internet services costs too much, can come down

More people would buy 4G LTE if the price was lower,
which we know is possible because it is 2 to 10 times lower in Europe.
And then a lot more people around here would have fast Internet service.

Kevin J. O’Brien wrote for the NYTimes 15 October 2012,

Americans Paying More for LTE Service


Vodafone LTE
A comparison by Wireless Intelligence, a unit of the GSM
Association, suggests that being in the biggest LTE market has not
brought low prices to U.S. consumers.

According to the study, Verizon Wireless, which is a joint venture
of Verizon and Vodafone, charges $7.50 for each gigabyte of data
downloaded over its LTE network. That is three times the European
average of $2.50 and more than 10 times what consumers pay in
Sweden, where a gigabyte costs as little as 63 cents.

Standard business practice:
sell a new service for as much as the market will bear,
and come down in price over time.
Except in the U.S. there isn’t much of a market,
with only 2 or 3 wireless carriers offering 4G LTE,
as the article notes:

Continue reading →

VZ 4G vs. AT&T DSL, Lowndes County, Georgia, 2012-09-08

It turns out you can’t yet buy

Verizon’s HomeFusion Broadband 4G wireless Internet service

in Georgia.
(You can buy it in Tennessee.)
However, in Georgia, you can buy one of several 4G LTE devices
that have most of the same capabilities.
For example, I have here a

Verizon Jetpack™ 4G LTE Mobile Hotspot MiFi©,
which is about the size of a pack of cards.
A few minutes ago I compared its speeds directly with AT&T 3Mbps DSL.
Here are the results.

The MiFi I’ve got is a slightly older model of the one pictured
above, because for years


AT&T DSL: 2.66Mbps down 0.31Mbps up

AT&T DSL

VZ 4G: 10.88Mbps down 7.14Mbps up

Verizon 4G

I’ve been using it and its predecessors
on road trips, for Skype, web browsing, blog posting, etc.
It’s also come in very handy as a

plan B home Internet access method
on the many occassions when AT&T’s DSL has flaked out.
Mostly I did not use it for uploading videos or watching them much,
because until recently it was relatively slow,
using

EVDO technology at about 1Mbps down and 0.7Mbps up.
Suddenly, the MiFi has gotten much much faster, ten times faster,
because Verizon has turned on their 4G LTE service in Lowndes County,
at least for mobile access.

The tables show results using

SpeakEasy Speedtest a few minutes ago.

Megabytes/sec Megabits/sec
down up down up
AT&T DSL 2.66Mbps 0.31Mbps 322KB/sec 38KB/sec
Verizon 4G 10.88Mbps 7.14Mbps 1360KB/sec 893KB/sec

Verizon’s 4G LTE is way faster,
as in

Continue reading →