Created by - Orhan Ergun
Carrier Ethernet is an attempt to expand Ethernet beyond the borders of Local Area Network (LAN), into the Wide Area Networks (WAN). With Carrier Ethernet, customer sites are connected through the Wide Area Network. Carriers have connected the customers with ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode) and Frame Relay interfaces in the past. (User to Network Interface/UNI). Carrier Ethernet is not about the Ethernet within the Local Area Networks. Driver of Carrier Ethernet is; since Ethernet is the de-facto protocol on the Local Area Network, why not to use Ethernet everywhere, and not only within LAN. When any other Wide Area Network protocol is used such as ATM, customer Ethernet frame is encapsulated into another protocol. This reduces the overall efficiency of customer service, consumes more network bandwidth, makes troubleshooting harder and many other drawbacks. Carrier Ethernet is also known as Carrier Class Ethernet and Carrier Grade Ethernet. Another reason for Carrier Ethernet is; Ethernet interfaces and the devices are cheaper compare to the other technologies. This result cheaper service to the customers. CARRIER ETHERNET REQUIREMENTS Traditional Ethernet lacks many features which are required to transport critical services, time sensitive applications and voice services. These are: Traffic Engineering Bandwidth Guarantee Quality of Service OAM Decoupling of Providing and Customer Networks Resilience, High Availability, Fast Convergence Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF) is a standard body which defines the Carrier Ethernet, its services and all the extensions. CARRIER ETHERNET SERVICE TYPES MEF has been defined three service types for Carrier Ethernet: E-LINE (Point-to-Point) E-LAN (Multipoint-to-Multipoint) E-TREE (Hub and Spoke) E-LINE, E-LAN and E-TREE are the MEF terms. They are used as below in the IETF standards. They are exactly the same things. E-LINE = VPWS E-LAN = VPLS E-TREE = VPMS Very important point in Carrier Ethernet is Service Provider transport protocol doesn’t have to be Ethernet. If it is Ethernet, then the solution is called Carrier Ethernet Transport. So in this case, Customer’s Ethernet frame is carried over Provider’s Ethernet infrastructure with the Resiliency, OAM, Bandwidth guarantee, Traffic Engineering, QoS and other Carrier Ethernet feature supports. ETHERNET over NON-ETHERNET TRANSPORT As I stated above, Customer Ethernet service can be carried over Non-Ethernet Service Provider transport infrastructure, so different technologies can be used. These are: SONET/SDH Ethernet over MPLS (E-LINE, E-LAN , E-TREE) MPLS-TP (MPLS Transport Profile) PBB-TE (Provider Backbone Bridge – Traffic Engineering) Synchronous Ethernet OTN (Optical Transport Network) This is not the full list but the common ones. Still many networks uses SONET/SDH as a transport mechanism. Recently there are many debates in the Carrier community around MPLS-TP, OTN and Ethernet. I will cover the pros and cons of these technologies in the separate articles. In this high level overview post, I just wanted to introduce you the Carrier Ethernet, definition , service types and how Customer Ethernet frames are carried over the Non-Ethernet carrier backbone. Carrier Ethernet and the transport technologies are still evolving. Some standards are completed and others are still being developed.
Published - Tue, 16 Mar 2021
Created by - Orhan Ergun
Isn't OSI (Open Systems Interconnection) seven layers?Yes it is. In the standard, seven layers have been defined. Just let's remember the seven layers of OSI. Layer 7: The application layer.Layer 6: The presentation layer.Layer 5: The session layer.Layer 4: The transport layer.Layer 3: The network layer.Layer 2: The data-link layer.Layer 1: The physical layer. If you are working in transport networking, you already know that Layer 0 is the photonics layer, more specifically, DWDM is considered as the Layer 0 of the OSI layers. DWDM – Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing is an Optical Transmission technology. DWDM allows you to transmit multiple wavelengths on a single fiber, as the name suggests it utilizes wave division multiplexing. DWDM can be deployed in ultra-long haul, long-haul, regional, and metro areas. DWDM also uses amplification to reach long distances and can be an expensive technology to deploy. On the other hand CWDM which is a metro technology multiplexing a maximum of 8 wavelengths per fiber and does not require amplification i.e. much cheaper than DWDM WDM is used to transport SDH/Ethernet/IP between regions or cities or to aggregate traffic where large bandwidth is required The reason, SONET/SDH can be a client of DWDM but not vice versa. Which mean, SONET/SDH signals can be carried over DWDM but DWDM cannot be carried over SONET/SDH or any other transport mechanism. It is photonic layer.To have a great understanding of SP Networks, you can check my new published: Service Provider Networks Design Book
Published - Tue, 26 Nov 2019
Created by - Orhan Ergun
Submarine networks carry over 99% of the world's Intercontinental electronic communications traffic. There is misconception that Satellites carry data from continent to continent. If we ask anyone in the world, 95% of people give answer as satellites carry international traffic. This is absolutely wrong. The Internet, International communication & Cloud Networking. Without submarine cable systems, we cannot imagine all these above. In this article, I would like to brief about Risk Management in Submarine systems. Submarine cable project itself is very risky as it includes million dollars investment for consortium partners or private owner. There are two types of risks. Physical risks Business risks Physical risks involve manmade risks as well natural risks. What are the Manmade Risks of Submarine Cable System ? Manmade risks includes ship anchors dragging one or multiple cables, cable attack by Pirates, cable terrorism or even competitors trying to break your cable by hiring local pirates and fishing damage. Faults on the submarine system are disruptive, and repairs are time consuming and expensive. It may take minimum 1 to 1.5 months' time for repair, depends on climate conditions and marine cable ship availability. How we can protect submarine cable from Manmade Risks? The segments most at risk are those at the landing points, close to the sea shore and those in water that is less than 300m in depth. Cable protection can be done using Automatic Identification system (AIS). A Web based monitoring system protect submarine assets such as electricity cables, telecoms cables, and oil and gas pipelines, creating automatic warnings & alarms if an asset could be at risk due to shipping activity. All marine activities can be monitored 24*7 remotely at Network Operation Centre. I remember the incident happened in March 2013, it was a nightmare for me where I had to wake up 24hrs working on restoration of our services went down due multiple subsea cable cut. Multiple subsea cables experienced cable cuts at Egypt Mediterranean sea includes TE North cable owned by Telecom Egypt ( Tata, Telecom Egypt & SEACOM traffic on it ), Europe India Gateway cable (EIG ) and SEA-ME-WE-4. This resulted in 40% of Asia traffic went down (Entire Pakistan is isolated from rest of world ) . As per Egyptian authorities say they have arrested three scuba divers trying to cut through an undersea internet cable. Automatic Identification System ( AIS ) could have saved this. What are Natural Risks in Submarine cable systems? Natural risks includes Shark attacks, mud slides, undersea earthquakes, current abrasion , Tsunamis and Cyclones which are unpredictable and can strike any cable anytime irrespective of the history of such occurrences. The biggest risk to any cable is bad planning, bad cable design and bad installation methods. Cables that are not designed for the seabed they cross and then the seabed itself with shifting sands, bed rock etc offer no protection. A badly designed cable with minimal protection is a huge risk. The when you get people who have no history of cable design and installation getting into the business, then they are asking for trouble. What are the Business Risks? Normally, subsea capacity is purchased as IRUs (Indefeasible Rights of Use) or leased ( say less than 5 years) by customers like content providers, service providers , etc. They will pay O&M charges for the capacity on yearly basis. Suppose, if IRU customers do not pay O&M charges due financial crisis or go on bankrupt. This is biggest risk for private owned cable. In that case, the private cable will go bankrupt as has happened multiple times. There are also chances, all customers of the private cable decide to abandon the cable . In case of consortium, let us say there is only one submarine cable landing in particular country owned by some provider. There are the landing party owner & capacity owner. They decide not to sell backhaul capacity to their competitors? It will be a monopoly then. We can mitigate this by having multiple cables, multiple consortium partners and by open access cable systems . Open access cable system allows any licensed operator in particular country can purchase the capacity. Conclusion Risk cannot, of course, be completely avoided, but there are practices to minimize it. Risk Management is going to be the key differentiator between successful and failed submarine cables in the future. In our next article, we will discuss about Submarine Cable landing stations & risk management at Submarine cable station.
Published - Tue, 26 Nov 2019
Created by - Orhan Ergun
I will explain the faster connectivity option and some of the use cases for each, deployment considerations a bit in this post. Why latency is important for some special businesses? Have you heard about HFT (High Frequency Trading) ?If you like the discussion points, after reading the post, share your comment, let me know it so I can write more on this subject. To have a great understanding of SP Networks, you can check my new published SP Networks Design and Perspective Book. Microwave which is also known as Radio links have been used by many companies for decades. Most of the Mobile (Cellular) networks use microwave to connect their cell towers to their backhaul networks. Formobile operators, a reason using microwave is not the speed which microwave provides. It is used to connect their remote sites, because microwave is a faster and cheaper deployment option compare to fiber. (Reliability and security is a different aspect which we will not discuss in this post). When more capacity (bandwidth) is required, fiber becomes more economical. Actual cost of fiber deployments is laboring cost. Digging a trench and laying the fiber, getting the required permissions from the land owners and from the municipalities. You have to dig a trench that's hundreds (or thousands) of kilometers long, or lease access to ducts that have already been laid by infrastructure companies. Geography of the land is very important for the fiber deployments. For example, when faced with a mountain or river, do you go straight across at great expense, or do you make a diversion to the nearest bridge or tunnel? Combine all of these factors and you'll understand why most of the world's terrestrial fibre networks are deployed alongside existing roads and railways. Make sense? Let's go back to our initial question. Microwave or Fiber, which one is faster ? In other words, which one has lower latency. (More bandwidth means more people can send a data at the same but faster means lower latency) A radio signal travelling through air at just under the speed of light (299,700km per second). Through a glass or plastic fiber, where light has to bounce along the refractive index rather than travel in a straight line, the speed of light is reduced to around 200,000km/s. This fact is known by transport network engineers but not by the most of the network engineers. Why this is important? Let's say we have two building which have a 200km distance between. With microwave (radio signal through air) latency between the two buildings would be 1,064 millisecond or 1,064 microsecond With fiber, a latency between the buildings would be 1,594 millisecond or 1,594 microsecond. Yes, microwave is 50% faster than fiber. But really, is 500 microsecond difference is required ? Yes, in fact for some business it is a lot. Have you ever heard HFT (High Frequency Trading)? I will not explain the details of HFT networks in this post but I promise I will do that too, you can remind me if I don't But let me tell you a bit why even 500 microsecond would be very important for them. In HFT business end to end latency is called tick-to-trade latency. Tick is market data and trade is a buy/sell or any other type of order (Tick data flows from the stock exchanges to the HFT company , trade data flows from the HFT to stock exchanges) And whole business rely on having a faster network than any other company in the market. Having an information from the exchanges, carrying it through the network to your servers, processing it and taking an action based on algo (Algorithm but in HFT environment there are tons of jargon) all happen under less than a 100 microsends. In fact some HFT vendors claim that they provide tick-to-trade latency as less than 50 microseconds. Transport medium such as microwave and fiber contributes to the propagation and serialization delays. Propagation delay is what I explained above, how long it would take to carry data between point A and B. Microwave is winner in our comparison. Serialization delay means, how long it would take to place a data into a wire from the networking device. It is known fact 10G fiber has much lower serialization delay than 1G fiber. To be more precise, for 128- byte data 1G (Gigabit Ethernet) serialization delay is 1 microsecond, 10G serialization delay is 0.1 microsecond. It seems that this is not a large difference but you should consider that the delay would be accumulated at every port. In general, companies that desire to deploy low-latency infrastructures would implement 10 Gigabit Ethernet wherever possible. Especially in the HFT (High Frequency Trading) business.
Published - Tue, 26 Nov 2019
Created by - Orhan Ergun
If you are working in operator domain or a network engineer who wants to learn what is colocation, what is POP (Point of Presence), how POPs are physically connected, POP terminology, understand meetme room and carrier hotel, this post is for you. POP locations can be located in the Datacenter or in very small buildings , meetme room and the carrier hotel is placed in the datacenter. Colocation is provided by the datacenters. But there are other details which you should be aware. I explained these details in the below video. This video is one of the 20 topics from the network interconnection module of Service Provider Design Workshop. You can take this workshop and watch the on demand 10+hours service provider technology videos right away. If you are not a subscriber yet, you should subscribe to youtube channel right now.
Published - Tue, 26 Nov 2019
Created by - Orhan Ergun
Route where you can , switch where you must. If you are from networking background most probably you heard this many times. But is it true or like anything else, does it depend on the situation and other parameters ? Yes, you are right, it depends. When you hear a quote , at least in networking , are you asking yourself the reason ? Are you questioning ? Why opposite is not true, can it be ? I do. You should do. Best way to learn is to ask correct questions and one of the way of asking correct questioning is to look for the opposite idea. So , instead of ‘ Route where you can , switch where you must ‘ , what if I tell you ‘ Route where you must , switch where you can ‘ is true as well. In layer 2 or 3, we always concern about failure domains. We recommend you to keep failure domains. Don't keep so many hosts in Vlan , Don't extend Vlans between the Datacenters unless you have to. In classical layer 2 switching, Broadcast , Unknown Unicast and Multicast (BUM) traffic is flooded in layer 2 domain, because destination MAC address is not known. This mechanism is called fail open. Since there is no TTL in Ethernet, switching loop can occur (Thus Spanning Tree, RPR , G.8032 is used). Or broadcast storm can meltdown the entire network. Also, layer 2 MAC addresses can not be summarized that's why it increases the resource usage on the Ethernet switches. But if layer 2 is designed correctly, we limit the impact of these problems. Using correct control plane to prevent loop, broadcast storm control , ARP proxy to limit the ARP and many other tool we use today in our networks. So, Layer 2 switching with Ethernet switches can create switching loop because it is fail open, broadcast storm can occur. Also, all hosts in the same Layer 2 network have to process the broadcast packets and number of MAC addressing become a problem in large layer 2 network , because MAC addresses can not be summarized. It looks all bad , and since none of these are happening in Layer 3 routing , ‘ Route where you can , switch where you must ‘. And whenever you see this , you believe. I will explain why this is not always true , or at least always shouldn't be the reason for you to choose routing , instead of switching. But before, let me remind you couple other networking quotes, so you understand the importance of questioning. Hopefully There are many other quotes today in networking , such as ; ‘ Dual Stack Where you can, tunnel where you must ‘. Of course this is not entirely correct and I explained why it is not always correct in ‘ Is dual-stack best approach for Ipv6 deployment ‘. Or you might hear, in order to optimize capacity usage, use MPLS Traffic Engineering. This is not always too. I explained it in ‘ Why should you place less emphasis on MPLS Traffic Engineering ‘ Let's continue on ‘ Route where you can, switch where you must ‘ discussion. As I explained above , it is true from the many aspects. But when it comes to cost, sending traffic between two points in the network, lower layers is cheaper than higher layers in the OSI. So Layer 0 (Optical Layer) is cheaper than Layer 1, Layer 1 cheaper than Layer 2 , Layer 2 is cheaper than Layer 3. Which mean, DWDM is cheaper than OTN , OTN switching is cheaper than Ethernet Switching , Ethernet Switching is cheaper than IP routing. So, if I say ‘ Switch where you can, route where you must ‘ . Is it always true ? Of course not, as I explained above, opposite can be true as well. It depends on ‘ Who is asking the question ‘ (is it by the transmission engineers or network engineers) and the tradeoffs (In this case , cost vs. failure impact). There is no absolute true or wrong in networking and don't discuss with anyone who don't understand you.
Published - Fri, 08 Nov 2019
Created by - Orhan Ergun
I missed writing , missed writing a post lot on the website specifically !. Because I know you are reading right now and wonder where I have been. I just checked and seen that my last post was on October 26. More than 2 months , I didn’t share anything on the website. I wanted to come here and share something , technical or social , but believe me guys November and December 2017 was so busy from my side. One of the activity which took my time during this period was Telecom Operator design training which I did in Kenya/Nairobi on November. Safaricom Kenya – Incumbent Telecom Operator/Internet Service Provider. It was 5 days training and IP/MPLS Backbone planners , Transport network engineers, mobile access and core engineers , fix and mobile wireless service engineers (They have very good fiber penetration in the country) many people attended this training. Most of the topics were from my CCDE training blueprint but after couple discussions with their lead engineers, we removed CCDE Practical scenarios and couple other topics , as they won’t attend CCDE exam , but added other technologies which they are considering to implement and some of those technologies is already in trial. For the confidentiality, I cannot tell you what was those newly added topics to my training curriculum, but I just wanted to say that, I adjusted the training agenda based on their needs. Overall, we spent more than 40 hours and more than 20 hours of the training was just related with their end to end network design. They have many different services , FTTx, 2G, 3G, LTE , Metro Ethernet , VPN Services , Satellite and so on. They are the biggest in Kenya in terms of number of customers. I already planned couple other Telecom Design training in 2018 and will update about those trainings and the feedback of the attendees. Now, it is time to share some feedback from Safaricom Kenya attendees. Note : If you would like to bring me for an Onsite training to your company, to talk about your company’s design please contact with [email protected] , they arrange technical discussions with me for the customized training. Andrew Masila – Architecture and Service at Safaricom Limited Your class was very useful and served as a valuable addition to my experience in telecommunications, architectures, quality of experience and content delivery networks. I will definitely use the knowledge acquired to make more sound business decisions and investment as well optimize operations in my organizational unit with a fit for purpose network. Most important is the approach in understanding exactly why a certain option has been chosen. Jackson Mutie – Packet Core Engineer at Safaricom It was nice to be your student and enjoyed the MPLS TE technology and network design principles sections. The network is about to evolve in design so I hope to be able to reach out to you and discuss various design and architecture options. Kind Regards, Jackson Stephen Njoroge Njuguna – Subject Matter Expert – Transport Network at Safaricom Your training was quite relevant and practical, since we were able to relate the theory covered to actual scenarios on our network and identify areas of improvement. Thanks also for your encouragement to start the CCDE journey and making it look achievable. Silas Kimathi Borona – Senior Network Planning Engineer I attended Orhan Ergun CCDE course and I must say it was remarkable . It was well illustrated ,kin on current and advanced technologies .He surpassed my expectation i.e. Quality , Depth of Knowledge, Well-structured online Resources and Quizzes . Intriguing eye-Opener!
Published - Fri, 08 Nov 2019
Created by - Orhan Ergun
Wireless ISPs also known as WISP mostly use unlicensed frequency spectrum. Frequency spectrum is the most critical asset for the Mobile and Wireless networks and it is sold in auctions for 100s of millions of dollars. Frequency spectrum is managed by the governments and governments in general, sell frequency spectrum in auctions. And some frequencies are really expensive, I am talking about 100s of millions of dollars. But frequency spectrum is so important ? Why it is a problem with Wireless Internet Service Providers ? What is Wireless Internet Service Provider in the first place ? I explain all these questions during my Telecom Training but I wanted to share below post with you. Below you will find a very nice write up from one of the founding members of the Wireless Internet Service Providers Association (WISPA). Although it is written for the U.S government, situation is the same in every country for the Wireless Internet Service Providers. Congress – Stop Selling Our Airwaves! by John Scrivner Do you have little or no access to broadband (high speed) Internet? Then forward this note to your Congressman to get this fixed. Broadband is something most Americans take for granted. That is unless they live in remote rural areas where cable modems and DSL are rarely available. For rural Americans real access to broadband is limited at best and often is non-existent. Thousands of small companies called WISPs (Wireless Internet Service Providers) have been working for over a decade to bring people broadband in the harder to reach areas of the United States. Thousands of United States WISPs use radio airwaves , also known as spectrum, to transmit broadband through the air from central locations to customers throughout rural parts of America. WISPs are usually started up by a local person with technical knowledge who is an entrepreneur and has decided to take on the effort to bring broadband to their neighborhood, their town or even their whole county. WISPs transmit from existing small towers, water towers, tall building roofs, grain silos, whatever it takes to deliver broadband through the air. They fund their operations using all they have, they borrow against all assets they own, they spend all their savings. There is at least one WISP who was a family farmer and actually “sold the farm” to build the WISP he started in rural Indiana. WISPs are a growing part of our economy employing tens of thousands of Americans to help them serve broadband to rural America. WISPs work against many obstacles to build broadband into areas where the population is so small that a business case would not normally work. By being frugal and doing much of the work themselves WISPs have found a way to make this a thriving business by solving the “digital divide” for their neighbors while earning a good living and often hiring others in their area to help them. There is one obstacle that all WISPs face that is not only preventing millions of Americans from having access to broadband now but is threatening to kill their industry completely. SPECTRUM AUCTIONS ARE KILLING WISPS AND ARE PREVENTING AMERICANS FROM HAVING BROADBAND. There is a dirty little secret hidden in plain sight in the United States. If big businesses were bribing the government to prevent competing small businesses from having access to government owned assets and reserving these assets for themselves one would think we would see people calling to have these people tried for corruption. Instead we are seeing it happening regularly with practically nobody giving it a second thought. It may be a much more formal and open process than bribes but the net effect of Spectrum Auctions is exactly the same. Big Businesses are the only winners of these spectrum auctions and WISPs are left with no access to good spectrum. Spectrum is to a WISP what good land is to a farmer. Without good land a farmer would not be able to deliver much food to market. At this time there is no practical way for a WISP to reach all homes and businesses within what should be the coverage area of their tower locations. The reason is that WISPs have ZERO access to good quality spectrum. WISPs have to use uinlicensed spectrum which has no protections against interference. It is shared by other users of the frequencies. This spectrum is only barely usable for the delivery of broadband when there are trees or other obsructions blocking clear line of sight to the WISP tower locations. Low power restrictions, noise and higher frequencies of the unlicensed spectrum mean that only a portion of potential customers can be served within WISP tower locations. Depsite these limitations WISPs have built their entire business on using these unlicesned frequencies to bring broadband to where it never was before. If WISPs had access to good spectrum then they would be able to build higher quality wireless broadband which would be available to all rural Americans. Plentiful access to good quality spectrum would also mean that prices would lower as more people per tower would be buying the service which would allow for a better return on investment for each tower built. Spectrum Auctions happen now because Congress tells the FCC they have to sell off the all-important spectrum licenses at auction as opposed to allowing WISPs and others to pay for licenses with monthly fees or register them for free if they prove they are serving the public good with broadband. Congress and the FCC tell the public that auctions are good because they raise billions of dollars in auction revenues. If Spectrum Auctions are so good for America then why do we still have large areas where services are not available after 20 years of selling off spectrum to the highest bidder? Why are we selling off the airwaves to the highest bidders and then turning around and giving away tax money for people to build broadband (aka broadband stimulus and USDA grants)? I have a novel idea for Congress and the FCC. Stop selling off the airwaves to big business and stop paying us to build broadband. Let’s just cut to the chase and get the spectrum out to the people who need it. Let’s stop pretending that selling off spectrum is the in America’s best interest. It is quite the opposite. On the surface raising money from spectrum acutions looks like the government is being responsible but auctions are causing great harm. To put this into perspective please imagine for a moment that a US “Farm and Crop Commission” (FCC for short) suddenly held property rights to all farm ground outside of the big cities in the United States. The only exceptions would be ground that was rocky or otherwise was not capable of real agriculture. Now imagine that Congress tells the FCC that the only access to this ground by family farmers or anyone else would be to buy it at auction. Now imagine that only a small portion of all the farm ground is made available at auction once every 5 to 10 years. Now imagine that the smallest parcel of ground would be millions of acres in 12 county wide sized blocks of ground with no ability to buy smaller parcels. Next the FCC sets minimum auction price for a parcel of the ground at $5 Million dollars. There would be ZERO chance of a single farmer having access to even 1 acre of good quality farm ground in this scenario. How many family farmers do you think would survive trying to grow crops on the few rocky outcroppings on hillsides with no property rights of any kind? How much do you think food would cost if there were only 5 mega-farmers in the United States who grew all the food? Do you think we could get enough food to live if we only had 5 farmers who held a monopoly position on the only farm ground available to be farmed in the United States? To a WISP and to all American citizens, spectrum is just like farm land and broadband is just like food. This is a travesty. I think once you really read the FCC / farm land metaphor above and understand what is going on then you will understand why the number one obstacle to Americans having access to cheap and plentiful broadband across the entire country is that WISPs (aka your broadband family farmers) are being deinied access to good quality spectrum under reasonable terms. WISPs do not expect a free ride. WISPs will pay good money for access to good spectrum. WISPs will pay license fees over time or raise enough money to buy a license for each tower as they build these locations. What we CANNOT do is pay millions or billions of dollars for access to good quality spectrum and try to compete at these spectrum auctions with the likes of at&t, Verzon, Sprint, etc.. We will lose every time in that scenario. So we need Congress to act now today. We need them to tell the FCC to give us access to unused spectrum now. The auctions need to end now. The way to simulate the economy and give everyone broadband is one simple solution and it does not cost us a penny. We need to make spectrum available for broadband use in the US for free. Once a WISP, cable company, phone company, municipality or other organization uses this spectrum to serve up broadband to a significant portion of an area the FCC needs to grant an exclusive license to the entitiy serving the broadband at that location. Think of it as homesteading. In the past the US needed to grow into the land westward so they allowed people free access to land if they settled it and lived on it and made it their own. That is how we quickly expanded our great country. We need to do the same thing now with broadband. We need to let people homestead the spectrum to grow our access to broadband. Spectrum Homesteading will do just that.Congress – we plead with you now – stop auctioning off our spectrum and let us homestead it now. Pass a Spectrum Homesteading Act and let the free market flourish in building broadband access to 100{ea8372c0850978052e20c0d53be15bc420c794e9b9b32f0ee9dfe0056552e01e} of Americans without a single penny of government subsidies.
Published - Fri, 08 Nov 2019