On Rad's Radar? - broadband Archives

One Deal And One Bullhorn

2013-05-09T19:36:31Z

UNSI has been in the news lately. It was originally American Broadband, reselling DSL nationally. Then it changed its name to United Network Services, Inc. and became a facilities-based carrier, with 18 Points of Presence (PoPs) and interconnections (and NNIs) to over 150 carriers in the US (including cable, DSL, wireless, CLEC and ILEC). "UNSi's partners are able to leverage the relationships with these carriers, paired with the cost savings and convenience of working with a single partner, under one invoice."

In 2012, UNSi acquired IPNetzone, a nationwide MPLS network provider, adding an advanced backbone network to capabilities. They partnered up with their Derby Capital teammate RapidScale. Yesterday, they decided to acquire Airband in an all stock merger. The combined entity will be named UNSI and generate about $60M in revenue. This will add fixed wireless and Hosted PBX to the service offerings. The biggest competitors UNSI faces are EarthLink, MegaPath, Masergy and AireSpring which all play the same game - MPLS and HPBX.

The bullhorn is the re-emerging noise around tw telecom being acquired. A few months ago CenturyLink's stock took a hit when their bankers floated the balloon that C-Link would buy twt. C-Link is sitting on a boatload of debt - $20.6 Billion. To buy twt would only add to the debt. It would hamper C-Link from its integration of Savvis-Qwest-Embarq and its plans to "leverage those synergies".

Now the bankers are floating the Level3 will buy twt balloon AGAIN - for like the 3rd time. How??? I get why - take a fiber player off the table and add revenue. But how?

Level3 is NOT the sum of its parts - parts which include, most recently, Global Crossing. Level3 is horrible at integration. Maybe all telcos are because the Ma Bell umbrella is still a bunch of silos, but come on, integration is not what they do well. And synergies have never been realized from this - or quite frankly most any telecom merger.

I have an idea for Level3: fire the top guys that have been there since they bought WilTel -- all of them. Hire from OUTSIDE the telecom world for a new CEO and a new President. Level3 has all the assets in place to be doing far better than they are. In baseball terms, they are the Yankees with Bucky Dent or Ralph Houk managing. (Sprint, too , btw).

You know how you get out of debt? You sell stuff!!! Then you deploy stuff. Then you keep it running. POOF!! That thing you see is called revenue which will eventually get you to profit if you stop selling on price alone.

Apparently L3 quietly bought a San Fran based fiber provider.

Florida Broadband Litigation Woes

2013-04-24T04:52:14Z

"Florida Rural Broadband Alliance, LLC (FRBA) is a regional collaboration of local governments, community activists and economic development agencies from rural and economically disadvantaged communities located throughout 15 counties within Florida's Northwest Rural Area of Critical Economic Concern (NWRACEC) and the South Central Rural Area of Critical Economic Concern (SCRACEC)," reads the website for FRBA.

It continues, "The FRBA project will build a new Middle Mile broadband infrastructure, which will link together providers of vital public sector commercial services with private sector non-profit entities for the first time in these two struggling regions of Florida. At this time, only 39 percent of the FRBA region has broadband service. ...At the end of the 3-year build out period, FRBA's project will deliver up to 1,000 times the existing capacity within the coverage area. Doing so will create jobs."

FRBA received a $24 million dollar BTOP broadband stimulus grant in 2010. [Details about the grant are in this case study and on the NTIA site.]Unfortuantely, three years later there isn't anything but lawsuits, federal investigations and accusations.

The investigation into FRBA started in September of 2011. The Columbia County Observer has been steadily reporting on the problem. The real problem: that these rural counties didn't get broadband due to problems large enough to bring the NTIA in and halt payments. This action only precipitated some of the engineering firms to not get paid. One of those firms, Rapid Systems, has been in a court battle with FRBA.

I don't have all these details yet but FRBA, the North Florida Broadband Authority (NFBA) and the GSG, a management firm employed by both authorities were mixed up in the whole grant mess. The Ripoff Report has some serious allegations and isn't far off from the what I have heard. Somewhere along the way $30M was spent by the NFBA - but no paying customers are on that middle mile network that is not completed. Full disclosure: I have consulted with Rapid Systems, the GSG and the NFBA in the past.

It seems like a soap opera with a wrongful termination lawsuit aginst NFBA and now Rapid Systems' litigation against FRBA for $25M!

It will be something I keep my eye on. When the BTOP and BIP programs were launched, many figured the money would not be as productive as the government hoped. These aren't shovel ready projects. They took time to hand out, spin up, and get moving -- but by then how much of the money actually built anything? There is waste and fraud in every billion dollar program. At least this one was investigated early and clamped down on.

Replacing Copper With Gold

2013-02-13T08:34:43Z

CenturyLink is in a race against time, according to both analyst Jeff Kagan and the Star Tribune. It isn't just the number 3 ILEC in the country experiencing a declining revenue stream from legacy copper. Fairpoint, Frontier, Windstream and many IOC's are all suffering revenue losses from landline replacement. Customers are switching to cellular or some form of VoIP - like cable voice or a Vonage like service.

This leaves the LECs with a big dilemma: How do you organically replace declining copper revenues? And how do you do that quickly to offset the landline decline that has been occurring for the last 3 years?

For some IOC's, it is a matter of adding new services over the copper, like these services, building some wireless services for wi-fi roaming, or adding cloud services, like hosted email, data backup and the like.

In some markets, carriers are using broadband (xDSL) and TV to counter landline losses - hoping that they can replace old revenue with new revenue. Wireline revenue is also highly profitable.

Windstream, TDS and CenturyLink have CLEC operations that bring in revenue out-of-region with business services - telecom, cloud, Hosted PBX and data center.

Will these carriers be able to sustain their business (including servicing a heavy debt load) with this replacement revenue? That is the question.

CenturyLink cut its dividend in order to start buying back stock and paying down debt. The stock took a 22% hit! Analysts talk about how the dividend for C-Link and Wind are the only reason people hold the stock. And we saw what happened when the dividend was cut. These companies are now dancing in the same that Level3 has been for some time.

Captive Audience: The Telecom Industry & Monopoly Power

2012-12-31T19:53:50Z

Susan Crawford is a telecom lawyer, professor and activist (among other things). Her book about the last ten years of the telecom industry is out by Yale Press, titled "Captive Audience: The Telecom Industry and Monopoly Power in the New Gilded Age". She recaps the book in this hour long video.

Topics she discusses include a short history of telecom; the lack of competition; the politics of the Duopoly; and the resulting Digital Divide.

It's About Stats and Studies

2012-12-04T16:34:50Z

Here is a collection of some stats and studies for your reading pleasure.

(1)

Mary Meeker's 2012 Presentation On The State Of The Web is a good read despite being heavily mobile. She spends quite a few slides pointing out how SO many industries have been disrupted side-swiped by technology, especially Internet enabled apps.

(2)

"The worldwide Ethernet switch market, which had grown in large part due to the adoption of 10 Gigabit Ethernet technology in the data center, contracted in the third quarter, with revenue dropping 4.4 percent, according to analysts with IDC." [eweek]

(3)

Survey Finds 'Death of the Landline' as Most Disruptive Force to US-based Communication Services. I would have to agree. That copper plant impacts a lot of telecom.

(4)

"According to a recent market study made by Infonetics Research, the third quarter of 2012 saw a few positive changes in the leading business PBX telephony systems. Cisco was found to be the leading PBX business phone system vendor (for the 5th straight quarter), followed closely behind by Avaya." [source]

"the high roller in the Unified Comminications (UC) market is Mcrosoft, with a rise in revenues of approximately 40% over second quarter profits." You have to read it carefully. It's just about revenue growth. Diane Myers continues: “UC applications have been a real sweet spot. The demand for tools that aid employee productivity and flexibility is fueling growth in this segment, and Microsoft’s Lync has been the primary beneficiary, enjoying over 40% sequential growth in the third quarter.”

"Revenue is declining at a faster rate than shipments: for the first time, the average revenue per PBX line slipped below $200." This is globally in the whole IP-PBX space.

(5)

Frost & Sullivan's new report "North American VoIP Access and SIP Trunking Services Market 2012: Broader Market Acceptance Drives Robust Growth" to their offering. This couldn't be more obvious. SIP Trunking and VoIP are growing. No kidding. The PSTN is closing and copper is clipping. Cable Voice is all VoIP, even the PRI's. Try to buy a TDM PRI sometime, Frost & Sullivan. Oh, and there was consolidation in this space in 2011. See what I mean?

(6)

Garrett Smith on the video conferencing market.

(7)

Lastly, a beautiful infographic from GigaOm on the state of the US Broadband market!

The $14 Billion Dollar Announcement

2012-12-03T18:09:34Z

While I don't agree with everything that Bruce writes here about AT&T's $14 Billion network spend in the next 3 years, there were a few take aways.

The big one is that the ILEC's have been getting rate hikes for years to pay for fiber that most customers are not receiving. FiOS is where it is - and that's the end of that project. U-Verse is fiber to the node and that isn't deployed everywhere either.

Mike Powell, former FCC Chair and now CEO of NCTA, has often gotten in woefully wrong in presenting the state of telecom. You can talk about top speeds all day long, but that isn't what the Majority of US addresses have access to nor is it the top speed broadband even remotely affordable for consumers - and even some small businesses (at $300 per month). The average US broadband speed is 6.6 Mbps. And if you don't bundle that broadband, it costs a lot.

Despite the promises and the rate hikes, telcos have invested $249 per person on average for broadband per year. Consumers spend on average $529 on broadband annually. At a retail job at $10 per hour that is one week's pay. Unsustainable!

62% of Americans buy broadband. That is all. Period. The market is flat.

Verizon and AT&T have a plan to disconnect the copper plant. VZ has already done so in the shade of Storm Sandy at the battery Park CO. All the CLEC customers out of the CO are out of luck, time and competition.

Telcos are basically unregulated at the state level - and the FCC is useless when it comes to enforcement and competition.

The point that everyone misses is this: our economy in America is service based. It is broadband fueled too - ask Apple or Amazon or Google.

Without cheap, fast Internet everywhere, what happens to that economy?

Clipping copper is detrimental to not only the CLEC's but to the majority of small businesses in the US. Ethernet-over-copper is quick to deploy and gives a great MB for the buck. EoC is the last stand against the cableco becoming the ILEC and the ILEC becoming irrelevant. (I laugh when the stock pickers only point to the dividend as if that was somehow any indication if a telco will tank or not.)

Promises from the RBOCs - Verizon and AT&T - for rate hikes or mergers have largely gone unenforced. The $14B announcement was just PR - spin. Nothing either company does is good for the economy, it is just good for them - for now.

How will Cloud services take off if the broadband is too expensive, unreliable or unavailable?

How will the Internet-centric economy stay competitive in that same environment? How does any of that withstand broadband caps and metering? How do corporations have more tele-workers in that same scenario?

What's Happening?

2012-08-24T20:34:01Z

Broadview Networks filed bankruptcy, albeit a pre-packaged debt reduction plan.

CenturyLink and Mediacom join the broadband cap club. Mediacom has a low end cap of 150 GB. Ouch! For cable companies, metering and caps are about preserving the TV money, but telcos should be cap free.

Are you a Start-up? Pitch your company at StartupCamp in Austin!

President's Club contests are popping up. Microcorp has recruited 6 carriers - M5, Level3, Comcast, EarthLink, Cbeyond, ACC Business - to help Agents qualify for the trip. WTG just announced their first President's Club destination: Puerto Rico. And Telepacific has a President's Club, too.

FCC's 8th Broadband Progress Report is out. About 30% of the US population does not purchase fixed line broadband - but they may get broadband at work or via 3G. Only 6% are stranded on dial-up, so I am having a hard time swallowing all the money that CenturyLink, Frontier and Fairpoint are getting in federal funds to build out - at approximately $775 per user!!

EarthLink's customer profile according to Mike Toplisek: "In large part, they would fit into the range of five employees up to 1,000 employees. Probably 95% of that customer base fits in that size."

The Economist has an article about OTT (over-the-top) VoIP apps and their effect on mobile operators.

The FCC approved the sale of SpectrumCo spectrum to VZW. There were a few restrictions on the joint marketing venture between the two.

FCC Suspends Special Access Rules, Will Collect Data To Modernize Them.

Data Tsunami

2012-08-08T18:36:08Z

Cisco's blog writes that we are in a data tsunami due to broadband Internet demand from consumers and their devices. Holy Hype, Batman! This is the same hype that Cisco's Global Consumer Internet Traffic Forecast started in 2009 with the Exabyte Tsunami. I get it: buy more Cisco gear.

It is behind that hype - and in the blog - that the Duopoly justifies metering, throttling and caps. It's kind of a load of bull to hide their flat ARPU. When you consider that VZ DSL costs about $30 and Road Runner cable service is $60 in Tampa Bay, I think that there is plenty of profit on the cable side. Caps, metering and throttling are for finite resources like satellite and cellular. Cellular reminds me of the auto industry: zero to 60 in WOW! But actually do that and you get a ticket. Why talk about 10MB up and down if you don't want people to use it?

Cisco talks about how bottled water pricing can be a model for broadband pricing. Two reasons that doesn't work: Branding and competition. In broadband, there is no competition. None. And What brand? FiOS? Lightning?

Short marketing lesson: if you keep changing the rules (pricing plans) for your customers, you deflower your brand. Change rates while diluting support - or having low support scores - makes your customers mad. Luckily, though, in many areas, you are the only choice. Ah, the monopoly.

So often the messaging is mixed. Watch video on your phone. Watch TV from anywhere in your house on your iPad. So video is front and center in ads but then punish the user for using it???

And has data really gone up? With video, probably. Shouldn't the Duopoly have expected that and planned accordingly? "Poor planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine."

Some stats:

Telogical Systems on slide 24 shows broadband standard rates increased by almost $1 in 2010. From 2010 to 2012 pricing stayed about the same, which is the problem for consumers who would like to see shrinking pricing and for ISP's who want to see more money.

"5 out of the 7 top ISPs already have, or will soon have, data usage caps," Telogical.

Lot of hype over data usage but I have been streaming the Olympics all week without too many buffering delays. So it isn't really a capacity issue. It's a Wall Street/stock price/debt issue.

What does caps, throttling, and metering do to cloud usage?

Snarky News Bits

2012-08-06T17:38:31Z

Just so many things to comment on in telecom, but just do not have the time to hit each one. So here are some snarky news bits.

The VZW-SpectrumCo deal in for "tough remedy", Reuters is reporting. Yeah, conditions that will never be enforced. Public Knowledge is pounding on the FCC about Comcast caps, declaring that the caps violate the merger agreement with NBCU. Will any action occur? Probably not. The issue with the spectrum deal is the joint venture. "Anti-trust regulators have sought strict limits on controversial side deals." We'll see how that goes. I hear that VZW stores are already marketing cable deals.

VZW is also in the news because the FCC forced them to allow tethering apps on Android phones. VZW says that they never blocked apps or functions on any smartphones. CNET has a long FAQ about what the tethering settlement means to the end user.

Fake AT&T Bills Direct Users to Blackhole, Zeus.

How "Toggle" Worked Its Way Through AT&T's Innovation Pipeline And Into Cell Phones.

AT&T plunked down $650M for Nextwave Wireless - well, really for the spectrum, hoping that the FCC will allow its use for LTE despite its proximity to satellite spectrum. Didn't Lightsquared just go down this path?

Nashville is lucky enough to be the trail market for Comcast's metering plan. "Comcast Starts Billing Bandwidth Hogs, But Exempts Its Own VOD Apps". In other words, Netflix goes towards usage but not anything from Comcast servers. The pipe for on-demand is probably a separate channel. The meter is on the Internet pipe. Also, VOD is part of the TV service and is On-Net. Netflix is off-net. Why meter? Increase ARPU and save your TV franchise.

Comcast Hits 300MB

2012-07-25T19:34:32Z

Comcast rolled out Xfinity Platinum service with speeds of 305Mbps down and 65Mbps up for about $295. It was designed to compete with VZ Quantum FiOS, which is 300Mbps down, 65Mbps up, and $205 per month in the Northeast. Xfinity Platinum will include free Xfinity Signature Support (27/4 tech support and a personal consultant), a secure wireless gateway, and the Constant Guard Security Suite.

In some areas Comcast is doubling the speed for its existing tiers. This will make selling T1's - and in some cases Metro Ethernet - very challenging for agents and sales folks. 300x65 is less than $300 - a T1 is a measly 1.5x1.5 for $300-$600. Talking about "Dedicated bandwidth" will only work if the cable system (or FiOS) in that area experiences congestion and/or outages.

Even if the customer only had throughput of 100x15 for that $300, a 10x10 Metro E costs three times that. Certainly, business class, SLA and other factors can be contributing to the negotiation, but it is getting more difficult.

Broadband has cannibalized DIA (dedicated Internet access) offerings. No wonder all the talk is about MPLS and private cloud; these services have not commoditized YET. Coming soon though.

You Can't Win on Price

2012-07-24T20:11:10Z

Another call today about a cable company stealing the deal because they are giving away the network. You can not compete on price!

The RBOC's have ceded the sub-$500 wireline market to the cablecos. VZ wants to clip the copper, which would destroy the DSL market - what there is it of it.

So stop trying! Selling means providing Value. It means offering a package of servcies that is so attractive to the prospect that they will buy it despite it costing 25% more.

Clearly, straight transport or transit comes down to commodity pricing, but when it is a bundle of services, you have to out market the cablecos. You have to Out SELL them. If not, you clearly suck at selling or don't understand your job. Offering transport or transit at the low price is order taking, not selling.

Want to learn how to Compete? Go here and purchase the MP3.

Various Tidbits

2012-07-11T16:40:49Z

Two of my pals work at Counterpath. It went on NASDAQ today. Congrats! "CounterPath Corporation (OTCBB: CPAH) (TSX-V: CCV), an award-winning provider of desktop and mobile VoIP software products and solutions, today announced that its common stock will commence trading on the NASDAQ Capital Market on July 11, 2012. The stock will continue to trade under the symbol "CPAH" on the NASDAQ Capital Market and under the symbol "CCV" on the TSX Venture Exchange." Counterpath is a Vancouver, BC, Canada, company. Big VoIP/tech hub there.

CenturyLink wants more than the 30% of the $300M USF reform fund called Connect America. In fact, they want to overbuild on existing WISP's with that money. WISPA Opposes the new federal Subsidies for CenturyLink. Personally, I don't think that any LEC or MSO should receive federal funds. If we had the best broadband in the world, I would say okay - that's worth the money. We don't. They spend more than $300M in lobbbying per year!! Spend that money on broadband. Plus there are small businesses called Wireless ISP's already in that market that C-Link is going to spend tax dollars to put out of business! That's the Corporate Way!

MegaPath has the largest Ethernet over Copper footprint in the US. There are 600 Central Offices with ADTRAN Total Access 5000 gear to provide facilities-based EoC up to 20 MB.

Data Centers are growing. That was actually a headline yesterday. No kidding!

Health Care: What HIPAA Means for Data Centers. My understanding is that transport isn't a worry - and there is no such thing as HIPAA compliant transport! It is all about the storage, security and handling of the medical records - physical or electronic. That also means data centers have to be secure and tracking visitors, in case one gets access to a storage device. BTW, it is HIPAA, not HIPPA. How can you even say you are compliant if you get the acronymn wrong?!

Dell Voice is offered in Canada as a competitor to Vonage Mobile. Dell Voice is now on Blackberry, just in time for their corporate jet auction.

XO introduces a purple logo and a new XO Partner Program.

I remember all the WinTel articles about the Intel-Microsoft alliance dominating tech in the 90s. Today, not so much.

Voice Carrier wasn't thinking when it named itself. Branding rule number 1: if they can't find you in search, you don't exist. Didn't you learn anything from Xerox or Kleenex?

"Today services like Dropbox give people access to their work anywhere, any time, on any device, and users love it. (52% of our survey respondents said Dropbox is used in their organizations. Only 12% of IT departments are supporting it.)" How Mobile Consumer Devices Drive Cloud Applications in Enterprise IT.

Are you like a dog with a bone about anything?

All About Low Price

2012-07-04T17:10:52Z

I write about Low Price a lot.

While reading a trade journal, it got me thinking again about why this industry sells on price.

My thoughts:

You go low price because you either don't want to take the effort to sell or you suck at sales. [That's snarky but probably true.] I know there I times I don't feel like actually going through the whole sales process - discovery, questioning, needs analysis, probing - just to find out that the prospect is only concerned with price. It is annoying.

If you are a transactional agent (or a veteran T1 slinger) and you offer up 3 or more quotes, you are not selling. You are taking orders. There is nothing wrong with that. It IS how the telecom industry has acted since LDDS began discoounting long distance services back in 1983. But let's call it what it is.

Times they are a-changing.

If you just ask the customer for his bill or what he wants quoted or what he already has quotes for, you are order taking. There isn't a lot of value in that. Or a lot of commission.

I could see if you did that, then vacuumed up the rest of his telecom spend, but that's not what happens.

At the least, you could ask a couple of simple questions, like:

Are you looking for the cheapest? Or are there other factors at play?
Do you know the difference between broadband and dedicated Internet?

If you wanted to be a daredevil, you could ask these questions:

Are you worried about downtime or outages?
How important is reliability?
What does an Internet outage cost your business oer hour?
Do customers still order by phone? What would a dial-tone outage cost your company?

Remember that the prospect doesn't know telecom - that's your job - and it is your job to educate them about what they are asking for (versus what they need or want).

In managing salespeople, I sometimes think low price is about the thrill of the hunt - hunting for ink - on the way to the goal of Quota. In some cases, it is about reluctance to rejection as in "if I put forth a sales effort and don't win..."

Let's face it, offering the lowest price is faster. It takes some time to prepare to ask questions. As pricing is dropping, it takes more sales to make a living. Who is going to expend the extra time? It is easier to keep searching for the cheaper carrier.

It wouldn't hurt the Hunters to do some farming. By that I mean, upsell or cross-sell to your current client base in order to make:

the customer stickier to your business;
more commission/revenue;
yourself more valuable to the customer's business.

Even IDT todays makes its $1.2 Billion in revenue from a myriad of service offerings. It isn't all just LD revenue.

One last fact: the low price customers are also the biggest pain in the butt, which costs you time (time=money).

What's Up With Private Line?

2012-07-03T00:14:58Z

"Private lines are leased point-to-point circuits, which are used for a variety of applications including connecting enterprise locations and backhauling cell towers to mobile switching centers," according to Insight Research.

"The $39 billion US private line services market is expected to show modest 2.3 percent annual growth over the next five years, as demand for higher bandwidth private lines offsets the shift of lower bandwidth private lines to packet-based services, says a market analysis study from Insight Research."

I have no idea how that will happen, unless they also include Ethernet, which the ILEC's do NOT.

AT&T and Windstream won a special access docket at the FCC, but without a vote. The FCC chair says that Special Access Reform is due to be reviewed. AT&T is not done. They have Petitions to Discontinue Private Line Dedicated Entrance Facilities in 27 Markets in at the FCC. According to Comptel, "These are facilities offered at bandwidths of OC-3, -12, -48, and -192, which AT&T contends are being replaced in the market by Ethernet services. According to the Public Notice, AT&T says that alternative services are available from AT&T and other carriers. Existing customers will continue to be served through April 2017." Everything is moving Ethernet.

In the broadband world, CenturyLink is looking to bury the Wireless ISP with federal funds because fixed wireless broadband is expensive, metered and unreliable. Hmmm. I just don't think taxpayers' money should be used to compete against small businesses that serve areas that ILEC's chose NOT to spend money - their own money any how.

You want to raise Special Access - okay. CLEC's have to pay what the landlords will charge. When ILEC's don't want to spend their own money to expand broadband, they shouldn't get federal freebies to do so.

Enough on the rant. How wil Private Line grow if the most of the business is going to MPLS and multi-point services?

Crazy News Today

2012-06-14T18:23:34Z

Nokia To Slash 10,000 Jobs, Shut Several Manufacturing Sites.

Report: Microsoft Negotiating To Buy Yammer For $1 Billion-Plus! Can you say Bubble? Yammer is a private social network for business execs. I get invited to a private social network for business execs every month. Who has time to spend on yet another social site? I have blogs, RSS, email, twitter, FB, LinkedIn and news to read and stay current on.

Analysts that cover telecom should actually know something about telecom. In this article about Windstream expanding into Las Vegas, the writer goofs a lot and drops some buzz words like cloud but misses the mark by this much! One big gaff: Cox is the cableco in Vegas, not Comcast. The only way VZ competes in Vegas is in MPLS and wireless. If anything, the analyst should have just said, "Hey, WIND is slashing 400 managers! Big win for stock holders!" And expansion into Vegas for cloud doesn't require infrastructure or a CO build out, but whatever.

Federal money for broadband - "More than half that money is going to Frontier and CenturyLink, which have until July 24 to tell the FCC what they would do with the money," according to this article. WOW! $90M for C-Link and $72M for Frontier out of the federal silo of $300M. Not for nothing, but these companies should have rolled out Broadband at 4MBx1MB speeds just as conditions for mergers! Instead I get to pay for it - and they get to reap the revenue.