Month: September 2014

FirstNet, Sam Ginn, a thing of the past — or is it?

/ drmikemyers / Leave a comment
I want to address the recent article by Greg Gordon, dated September 24th 2014, entitled, “Emergency communications agency finds ways to hire friends, skirt competitive bidding”. First I have to say Mr. Gordon captured the empirical facts of the progress to date, but looking too close at the evidence can generate thoughts of crucifixion. In reality what we have here is a failure to communicate, plus an eager board and Chair that really wanted to show the Federal Government how business is done in the commercial wireless world. As I spoke about in a much earlier blog posting, can we blame those that were only doing what they were asked to do with what knowledge they have? Sam Ginn was a carrier-based leader that traditionally focused on a subscriber-based model of cellular service…. he was not an infrastructure specialist or market driver, which inherently takes a special breed.
The fact is the NTIA and the Department of Commerce was more to blame for this monstrosity than anybody else. Call it lack of understanding, or a reluctance to commit to something they did not fully support, more planning should have been put together with more consultation on how a business would be created around the Act before they entrusted their plans with the cream of the crop of the commercial carrier industry. We can’t just write and execute a law and expect the company to just miraculously appear. There is some blame for Sam Ginn, but we can’t put all the blame on him. What about the carriers and their lobbying effort? What about Public Safety’s influence? What about me?
As I stated from the beginning, the business model that the NTIA was driving towards, which by the way was fed to them by the commercial carriers (this is why we need transparency), was based on the notion that all they had to do was connect to the carriers to make it happen, using existing assets that were already there, and commercializing the D-Block spectrum under the control of the carriers. That could not have been more off course and further from the truth.
The carriers operate with a subscriber model. FirstNet needs to operate from an infrastructure based service level agreement framework, kind of like a Utility. The difference being is that the primary business for generating revenue with a carrier is based on handsets, a business that is shrinking everyday due to commoditization and consolidation, which is also driving the carriers more towards content services rather than access.
FirstNet’s business model has to be based on infrastructure and the capability to generate revenue through a multitude of long-term service level agreements. The reason being is that their primary customers, the vertical industries, are long-term and infrastructure based, i.e. they build an LMR and leave it alone. Granted, if a State decides to go with the Public Private Partnership model I developed, then there are a lot of other opportunities for both FirstNet, the State and the Nation.
The fact is the NTIA and the Department of Commerce engaged a Tiger that is used to creating a large commercial carrier industry, what do they expect they are going to get? If it were me I would have went with those that understood the difference between a subscriber based commercial carrier and a infrastructure type leader, someone that is used to putting in the pipes, or the electrical distribution grids. We were so enthralled with the technology that someone lost track of the idea that the technology only makes up less than 7% of the actual program. Why have 7% of a large program take on the risk and lead the implementation of the solution?
But, all of this is past us now. The new leadership within FirstNet is encouraging. The fact is Ms. Swenson gets it. She wholeheartedly understands that you just can’t try and replicate a business model. Every business is different and should be treated as so. One of the most painful things when doing your own business is writing your business plan. Anyone that has experienced it knows that there isn’t just one way to write a business model, you have to re-write it every time for the next person because everyone likes to see and read different things — and you have to do it because they hold the keys to your success. Nobody has the same tastes. 
As of today, I still have not seen that business model from FirstNet, I don’t care if there was a 400-page business plan put together by consultants who weren’t vetted. I just want to see the business model so we can put it into the public forum for all to see. If the business plan isn’t any good, or if its outstanding, the Public will let you know – granted you can’t please everyone – but you can get a sense of what battles you have to fight when moving forward. What I saw from Sam Ginn was his fight to get buy-in for a business model that only a select few knew about. As I stated before, if you don’t separate yourself personally from where this needs to go, then you will always feed the fire of resentment, mistrust or alternative agendas, especially when so much money is at stake. You put blood in the water and the frenzy will start.  
I think the current path that FirstNet is now taking by advertising its RFI out onto the street, so that we can involve everyone in creating the business model, is the right path. As I’ve found during my last 10-years of research on this very topic, the fact is there is only one way this can go – Public Private Partnership. Somebody involved with putting the Act together understood that, else why would they have put it in there? Lack of clarification in the Act opened the door to many different interpretations as to what a Public Private Partnership is – and still does. The fact is, and I have raised this issue before, the adoption of a Public Private Partnership framework has never been done in the telecommunications or the broadband industries. I spent 10 years researching the topic with a massive meta-data search as the basis for scripting my dissertation. It has never been done before within North America. That is why I put in the long-hours to develop the model, because I knew this would mean something someday to someone.
The datum suggest that the construct of the Public Private Partnership is typical for vertical industries, such as transportation, utilities, etc.. The variables of those Public Private Partnerships are based on infrastructure, but they are not inclusive of the monetary potential that the D-Block spectrum and the monetization of its use bestows. This monetization and revenue potential impacts the overall framework of executing a successful Public Private Partnership, but, if not executed and developed properly you can also do a lot of damage, especially when it comes to State structures, procurement and services based on critical and essential Public Safety Infrastructure.    
In an effort to deliver the right solution for the success of FirstNet I have taken all my blood, sweat, tears, anxiety, stress and all my money into this effort so that others can safely and smartly build the Nations largest telecommunications job ever. To help facilitate those objectives I’ve put together a non-traditional company called AdvancingTelecom LLC. It is a Federally approved company and has been registered with SAM (Services Administration) under GSA as a Veteran with Disability Small Business. The purpose of this entity is to just consult and educate FirstNet, the States, the consultants, and the commercial businesses about the model and how to best deploy it for the build-out of the Public Safety Broadband Network. This company is not designed to conquer the market when it comes to broadband implementations.  AdvancingTelecom’s primary purpose is to store the Intellectual Property and knowledge that has been invested over the last 10-years so that it can funneled to the right organizations in order to allow those entities to correctly implement their own program based on their own needs. What better approach than to do it with the actual Author!
If your intentions are to sell gear; if your intentions are to perform construction services; if your desire is to run the operations of wireless company; if your intention is to just get buy-in and use of your own communication assets; or if your intentions are to be one of the Private Equity players, then I can help. Everyone needs to know where he or she fits in, and believe me there is plenty of opportunity to be had for everyone. But remember, I’m not doing this for free.
I have provided an enormous amount of content over the last 2-years; and I know there are those that want to duplicate it and call it their own; but be weary, there is a lot more at stake than just some lawsuit on Intellectual Property Rights, you may put an entire State’s economic engine, and its Public Safety needs, in jeopardy if the model is not installed correctly and balanced appropriately. Don’t know about you, but if I were the Program Lead for this, I wouldn’t dare try and risk such a thing; especially if it has my name attached to it when it fails.  
In the end, let go of the past, we are where we are and FirstNet, under the leadership of Sue Swenson, is heading in the right direction; now lets just see if anyone is listening.
But then again…everyone just sees me as….
Just some guy and a blog…

FirstNet – Public Safety Broadband the architecture of Broadband America? Kill two birds with one stone.

/ drmikemyers / Leave a comment
This is what you do when you are searching for your next gig…you blog.
In a recent article entitled “US telcos shy away from broadband definition benchmark boost“, 
Summary: Two of the United States’ largest telecommunications companies, AT&T and Verizon, are shying away from the government’s move to boost its definition of what constitutes broadband from 4Mbps to 10Mbps. (By Leon Spencer | September 9, 2014)
It’s an interesting yet natural occurrence to understand that the carriers are moving away from the notion of 10Mbps because of one underlying need: infrastructure. What I’m talking about is that the existing infrastructure is dated and antiquated towards a role of providing service with lesser-known technologies than what exists today.  The fact is today’s technology, more specifically LTE, is designed at twice the amount of coverage than the “old” 3G type services.

Typical designs of past 3G services were focused on roughly 3km circle fixed from the center of a tower (depends on terrain) of which was to reach an optimal bandwidth of 1-3 Mbps – thus the 4 Mbps reference. For LTE the design is at 6-8 miles for optimal bandwidth coverage of 1Gbps (first generation LTE at roughly 890 Mbps) within the sweet zone, yet can still reach upwards of 30 miles at yet 1 Mpbs – thus the 10 Mbps requirement. LTE Advanced, and the radio designs coming out today, are even twice that coverage area and three times the bandwidth to the sweet spot; so naturally what this means is that we cover more than twice the area and with way more bandwidth functionality, thus less than half of the capital required in the past to build it. But why are the carriers not seeing an ability to build out more if it is cheaper today than yesterday?
The fact is that the voice services of the past are next to nothing now days, thus the carriers are driven towards becoming a commodity of access to the same customer base of subscribers of which is the meat for all their bottom-line revenue — but things are changing and they know it. The carriers have all eaten a bad case of Fugu, the Puffer Fish, which has paralyzed them with lethal amounts of the poison tetrodotoxin. Given the size of these carriers today, they find themselves inundated, or paralyzed, with old existing infrastructures of assets that are irrelevant to todays current market, thus the sell off and the re-organization around services and content. (reference “Crown Castle Announces $4.85 Billion AT&T Tower Transaction”) The real question is will they survive? Can they relinquish all those assets in time? Is the subscriber based business model so entrenched that there is no way out? The carriers aren’t alone.
The cable industry is also in the same boat, but even worse. In a recent article dated September 09, 2014, “Broadband policy history reflects unusual bipartisanship”(By Stuart N. Brotman of the Hill) it is evident that the cable industry is facing similar yet even more archaic rules of a business model that is also based on connectivity and subscriptions. One thing that the cable industry has over the carriers is that they have been in the content delivery business since the 70’s. Content and services has always been the real moneymaker for the cable industry and the physical network of assets was just a means to an end – why else would you direct bury a coax or fiber cable? But, maintenance on any type of hard asset in the field is a cost burden on the bottom line. The answer to the cable industry, or I should say content industry, is to carpe diem the streaming content delivery platforms, such as NetFlix or even the Aereo model. Me personally I don’t even pay for traditional cable television type services anymore, which saves me about $150 – $200 a month. I am much more willing to pay a small monthly charge of $8 bucks for unlimited programs, and being that I don’t watch that much TV anyway, it still pleases the kiddos. The point is even the cable industry (what we term the MSOs) are held back by owning their own “old” infrastructure which detracts from their overall revenue base.
Even the fiber optic industry with players like AboveNet, Level 3, or WindStream are even seeing the abandonment of old infrastructure and the move towards services as the viable alternative. In a recent article entitled “Windstream to Spin Off Some Assets Into Publicly Traded REIT” (by Lance Turner on Tuesday, Jul. 29), one can testify that the move by WindStream is a direct play to relinquish their assets and to move more towards the commissioning of content and services. I applaud WindStream for making this move. It is a very smart move to make especially given the expansion of programs like the Public Safety Broadband Network, or FirstNet.
“Incredible change happens in your life when you decide to take control of what you do have power over instead of craving control over what you don’t.” (Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free)
The fact is that with all the talk about the FCC, broadband as a utility, and the reclassification of the cable industry, we are in the midst of the commoditization of the access model and the revitalization of the content delivery solutions that were the driving force of the telecom bust back in 2000. No I’m not saying we are in another bubble, in fact just the opposite, what was lacking in the past was the infrastructure of applications that we have today. With the advent of the “App Store” we now have more data driven applications than ever before. Had such an infrastructure been in place before the build-up of the 2000 telecom bubble we may have seen a whole different outcome, essentially it’s business 101 – demand drives services. 
As is the issue today, we are still held back by the archaic architectures of long ago. Just a little side note: the exact hype of a network build-out is happening, or has happened, in the SMART Grid industry. As I have written about many times in the past, the fact is the Public Safety Broadband Network is the catalyst to building a true “utility” version of telecommunications infrastructure to deliver the content and services market that the carriers, the cable MSOs and the fiber players are all striving for. There is only one way to delivery such an infrastructure of assets and that is by using the traditional concept of the off-vertical industries such as, the transportation and large scale construction industry use of the Public Private Partnership methodology – this is the basis for The Myers Model®.
But I’m….
Just some guy and a blog….

FirstNet: FCC — "Your either at the table or your on the menu". Why all this fuss about Broadband when the answer is staring you in the face?

/ drmikemyers / Leave a comment
Just read the following blurb on the web entitled: “FCC’s Tom Wheeler Admits There Isn’t Really Broadband Competition”. This article got me thinking about FirstNet and the FCC and all this talk about no competition and the renaming of broadband as a utility – what does it matter? One side is talking about infrastructure; another side is talking about broadband speeds; and then there are those that just want it to get so complex that nobody understands it.
The fact is that the broadband market of yesteryear is on its way out. Carriers don’t want to carry their own assets because it detracts from their bottom line, which, by the way, is shrinking every time someone announces a new pricing strategy of $45 per month for unlimited services – all you have to do is sign a two year agreement first. Seems we have a lot of that going around.
The paradigm shift is into content and services all managed through the cloud. Voice services are still an essential part, but I don’t know about you, I haven’t paid for landline phone service in years, yet I still have a desktop phone. How does a carrier compete with that? Well they move to wireless voice and data all while selling you a $600 smartphone.  Now, along with my desktop phone, I can make calls with a half-dozen different phone lines all from my Smartphone, and still not pay a dime for the service. The fact is voice used to be the driver, now data is. The entire infrastructure of assets has become commoditized to the point that it already resembles a utility, so if the carriers are trying to get rid of their burdening assets to increase their margins, then why not grasp hold of it and actually create that utility infrastructure? The main reason why they don’t want to reclassify broadband as a utility is because of the isolated and protected market positions of the incumbents. I say if the Utility can make a business case, and wants to own the infrastructure of assets, then why not let them? Sometimes you get what you ask for.
The Utilities are not aligned with the commercial broadband market, they are aligned with Power, but why would they think renaming and owning the infrastructure is a good thing — when in fact it’s a bad thing. If you rename broadband as a Utility then you own it — with all those burdensome assets that the carriers are trying to pawn off. If your business plan isn’t solid, then all you will be doing is flushing a lot of cash the drain, cash that could be better spent on Load-Sharing or Microphasers. Have you ever tried to get a budget for communications within a Utility? Trust me you are not on the top of the totem pole when it comes to the Utility Boards. 
The perfect setup for establishing a statewide broadband solution within a State is through the FirstNet Public Safety Broadband rollout. Build the infrastructure like a power distribution network; only stay focused on broadband as your business, and commit to prioritized service levels, i.e. Priority 1 Public Safety; Priority 2 Infrastructure entities, like the Utilities; and Priority 3 traffic for commercial services. In the end this network will be much better, why? The reason being is that true broadband envelops wireline (Fiber) and wireless (4G LTE). Of course there are a host of other technologies for backhauling and last-mile access, but what if we could build an infrastructure that could be hardened and standardized across the board for an all-encompassing solution of broadband access for everyone, then an infrastructure of communications would emerge that opens up a new market place for services, a true market place.
Imagine being a local or regional carrier (or Utility) who is boxed-in and suffocated by the big-players in the market. This isn’t real competition, as was highlighted in the article, this is what we refer to as bullying or strong-arming. What if the local Telco could access a truly hardened and secure infrastructure of assets that penetrates every square inch of the State? Not spend a dime on capital to build anything and yet, with the passing of a fiber optic cable, access every constituent within the State? Overnight that little local carrier could have a much larger market than the big carriers who are weighted down with entrenched infrastructure that only targets the metro markets. It’s a pure profit play for the small guys, and the big guys if they decide to play as well; where as none of the assets have to be carried by anyone in the commercial space anymore freeing us from the binds that holds us. But there is only one real way to get there from here. The way forward is through a Public Private Partnership solution – The Myers Model® in fact.  
As of today we have the trial State taking the leap of faith in the Public Private Partnership (P3) solution, and I can safely say they will not be disappointed. The P3 solution, in fact, is the only way to balance the needs of all that partake, while at the same time leveling the playing field for market competition. A provider is not bound by the infrastructure they own. Delivering content and services for each an every Telco, or service provider, will be based on simplistic Managed Virtual Networks, much like you see today. Companies like Google, Straighttalk, or NetFlix can now access more broadband users throughout the Nation, the Myers Model® incorporates just such a solution.

As a recent friend said, “your either at the table or your on the menu and about to be carved up for the main meal.”

All this talk about the FCC, the carrier competition landscape, broadband becoming a utility and any other issue becomes moot. The answer to broadband to every American in the Nation, rural, suburban, or urban is through the Public Safety Broadband Network using The Myers Model® P3.
But who am I other than….
Just some guy and a blog…