Variabilidad de los morfotipos e infección crónica

In Abilene, the telecommunications infrastructure is in place, however maybe not as ubiquitously throughout the city as needed. There are still some limitations on where broadband services are available and wireless coverage is reported to be spotty in some areas. The fiber backbone infrastructure is quite robust and offers the capacity needed for advanced data and broadband services. Competition is present in Abilene in all basic areas of telecommunications infrastructure, affording choices for the end users and competitive pricing and packaging.

As expected, in the rural areas outside of Abilene, specifically the study areas analyzed earlier in the report, the telecommunications infrastructure is not nearly as robust. There is very limited, if no competition in all areas of telecommunications infrastructure and often the actual infrastructure is not advanced enough or in place to support some emerging basic components of telecom infrastructure, namely broadband access, high speed data services and fiber backbone access.

Telephone Service

All of the study areas have basic voice services available to them, including local, national and international voice services and value added voice services such as Caller ID, Call Waiting and Voicemail. However, Abilene is the only study area that has advanced calling features such as voice VPN, Centrex and 800 services. Competition in fixed voice only occurs in the City of Abilene as well, with the CLEC in most cases interconnecting and reselling SBC lines.

The demand for advanced voice services is very limited or non-existent in rural areas, which is the primary reason why rural ILECs do not provide those services. Competition is also rare in rural areas due to the cost of providing service in such geographically expansive areas. However, in some rural markets, we are witnessing a new trend - “overbuilding” – which could stimulate competition for telecommunication services. Overbuilding occurs when a second telephone company (other than the incumbent) builds a second telephone network by deploying a second set of phone lines (“over” the existing lines). Typically the new lines are fed via optical fiber and are capable of providing more robust services, including video/cable and Internet access, than the existing carrier can with their older plant.

In many rural areas, there are basic problems with voice telecommunications –these include poor service quality, poor problem resolution and unavailability of enhanced calling features and services. The distances between towns also cause problems,

decreasing the size of the local calling area and increasing the proportion of long distance calls charges assessed. The use of LATA divisions in the study areas is also causing some issues with cost of calls made.

The concept of LATAs (Local Access Transport Area) was introduced in the 1984 AT&T Divesture agreement. In that agreement, telephone calls within a LATA were to be

handled by local exchange carriers (LECs, e.g. SBC and Verizon) and calls between LATAs were to be handled by Interexchange Carriers (IXCs – long distance carriers such as AT&T, MCI, and Sprint at the time). Since that time, cellular carriers and others have blurred the distinction by providing such features as free long distance, and some LECs are now allowed to offer long distance services. However, the LATA concept still underlies much of the local telephone system and its rate structure and impacts some of the study areas as some counties are a part of two and in some cases three LATAs. The study area includes all of the Abilene LATA and parts of 5 other LATAs (Lubbock, Wichita Falls, Dallas, San Angelo, and Midland). Unfortunately, LATA boundaries cause problems, sometimes requiring that calls to even nearby towns be routed through a long distance carrier and therefore more expensive. It was also reported that in some areas “911 service is not well coordinated.” We hypothesize that this is due to LATA boundary issues.

The larger providers (SBC, Verizon, and Valor) seem to have most of the service problems, primarily due to their older, less modern and often neglected plant. The smaller, rural telephone companies (Alenco Communications, Brazos Telephone Cooperative, Cap Rock Telephone Cooperative, Coleman County Telephone

Cooperative, Comanche County Telephone Company, Santa Rosa Telephone Coop, Taylor Telephone Coop, and Wes-Tex Telephone Cooperative) enjoy a better reputation for service and often have instituted better upgrades and maintenance to their outside plant and network than the larger carriers.

This analysis also found that, throughout the study area, prices are generally higher than urban, big-city prices for basic phone service, even with the Universal Service Fund subsidy, which often dramatically decreases the operating costs of rural phone

companies. The local calling areas are often not proportionate to the actual county or community area which increases the cost of the call due to the need to use and

Interexchange Carrier for long distance calling to neighboring towns.

Cellular Service

There are many local/regional and national cellular carriers in Abilene and the

surrounding study area. The number of carriers in Abilene is highest (6) and most study areas have two, if not more, wireless carriers in the area. As in most areas across the United States, the perception of wireless service is mixed-- as it is in Abilene and the rest of the study areas. Most wireless companies have holes or “brown spots” in their

coverage—unfortunately mostly in rural areas, again to the geographic expanse and low density ratios of those areas. For rural mobile phone service, regional or local services may provide better service coverage than nationwide carriers who are focused on a much larger serving area and metro areas. The study area has three regional mobile players, the largest being Texas Cellular and Mid-Texas Cellular—ventures of some of the local rural ILECs in the area.

Broadband Infrastructure and Services

Broadband services—including cable modem access, DSL and wireless/satellite systems are only available in a few of communities in the study area. The City of Abilene, due to its density and high percentage of businesses, has the best broadband availability in the study area and even has competing service providers and competing technologies. In the rural areas, DSL is limited and cable modem access almost non-existent. The high costs of providing basic voice services in rural areas are miniscule compared to the cost and infrastructure needed to provide DSL services. Many locations or lines may not ever be DSL capable due to loop length requirements, and it is not economically viable to lay fiber to the digital loop carriers and install other DSL equipment. This immense cost is what keeps ILECs from providing DSL services and most report that the current demand is not nearly enough to break even on the cost of providing the service or have had to resort to passing off the cost in the monthly fees, higher than the industry standards. In some of the study areas, communities may have to look to alternative technologies such as satellite for broadband or clearly demonstrate to their voice provider that there is enough demand to pay for the service.

Satellite video services are very common in rural areas and cable companies often only provide services in the larger or more populous areas in rural counties. The cable companies in the study area, except for the City of Abilene, were generally lagging behind the state of the art cable infrastructures that could support high speed cable modem access. Some cable companies have recently upgraded or digitalized their plant for better video services--- which could be a stepping stone to high speed internet services

Cable modem service is only available in Abilene and east of Abilene (Eastland,

Breckenridge). Some cable companies have upgraded their outside plant, but have yet to offer more services. We hypothesize that this is because of competition from satellite and Wi-Fi Internet (high-speed wireless) and the difficulty of bringing in more channels or backhauling Internet traffic due to the lack of robust fiber backbone access.

High-Speed Data Connectivity

In all study areas (focusing on the larger communities or towns), T1s as the basic data service, is available from the local telephone company. Communities in the study area were recent recipients of TIF grants which have been used to "wire" schools, libraries, and other public venues. Due to the cost of telecommunications infrastructure in rural areas, T1s are very expensive and sometimes difficult to provision.

More advanced and less costly high-speed data services such as frame relay and ATM are available through multiple providers in Abilene and through AT&T in Sweetwater and Brownwood. The low density of medium to large businesses in other communities in the study area is an impediment to influencing the local phone companies to provide such services.

Fiber Backbone

Fiber backbone is becoming a very basic, but often missing key to broadband and data services—especially in rural areas. The largest impediment to better and faster Internet access outside of Abilene is the lack of fiber availability. In many cases, fiber is routed through or past rural areas, but there is no physical access or points of presence in which to connect to it. In the study area, the fiber points of presence (POPs) are concentrated in Abilene but also are available in Sweetwater and Brownwood. Some communities are using TIF Grants to develop their own county fiber networks and most of the rural ILECs in the study are members of the Texas Lone Star Network which has a point of presence in Abilene. This lack of additional POPs throughout the study area is an inhibitor to broadband development due to the high cost of backhauling internet traffic to Abilene or another larger city in the area (Wichita Falls, San Angelo or Lubbock.)