Technology Futures

Stockholm's Stokab may be the oldest open fiber system in the world, and a recent study covering nearly twenty years of operations shows that the network has delivered over two billion dollars in economic benefit.

Fred Pilot, who writes the excellent Eldo Telecom blog, has started a terrific new site called Work Anywhere Nation. Fred has already posted some very useful stuff on the site, and his notion of "Work Anywhere" ought to be the slogan of every rural town and community in America.

There is some moderately coarse language in this article, but it is worth reading if you are interested in economic and community development. What caught my eye is how successful Chattanooga has been in re-inventing itself as the "Gig City." Three years ago, it is hard to imagine that the creative class in places like New York and Los Angeles could even tell you what state Chattanooga was in, but today, it has become the place for the young and restless to move to.

I see two things driving bandwidth demand in the business sector: VPNs and videoconferencing.

So I just ran across a word I had never seen before: phablet. It was in this article about a new Android phone that is allegedly going to be released soon by HTC. You can see from the picture that it is much bigger than current smartphones, but not quite as big as "mini" tablets. I don't know how you could lug this thing around; my pants and jacket pockets just are not that big.

"When Toilets Attack" would make a great name for a B-grade movie, but this is a true story. We hear constantly now about "the Internet of Things," and Cisco is promoting this idea among many other companies. It's the idea that we will have many devices in our homes and businesses that are IP-addressable (and hence the need for IPv6, but that's another story). A Japanese toilet has an accompanying Android app that lets you "control" toilet functions like flushing, bidet faucet, and odor control fans, among other options.

This Chicago Business article demonstrates perfectly why communities need to be able to offer affordable Gigabit access in residential homes and apartments. If you want young people, business from home entrepreneurs, and work from home employees (almost everyone works part time from home now), Gigabit services gets you noticed.

Wired reports that Google has changed its position on net neutrality. The search giant has apparently told the FCC that it may not allow residential customers on its Google Fiber networks to attach servers to their home fiber connection. The company is suggesting that instead, customers that want to run a server will be encouraged to purchase a "business class" service that costs more.

This short article from Fiber to the Home Council pretty much tells you everything you need to know about why communities need Gigabit broadband. In a survey of 2000 households in North America, 70% of those under 35 years of age are using over the top (OTT) video services like Netflix and Hulu, just two of the rapidly proliferating companies providing OTT video.

Fred Pilot excerpts two key points from a speech by Milo Medin, the head of the Google fiber initiative.

Here is a great article on how to manage people working remotely. This article has very specific and useful tips on what you need to do, what software tools you should use, and provides links to some of the recommended tools. We have been using this approach very successfully for years, and the two most important things we have found are:

The Square Stand converts an iPad into a full-featured cash register and credit card scanner. The cash register business started dying in the eighties, and I've been to the site of the National Cash Register company in Dayton, Ohio. The massive complex that built cash registers for most of the twentieth century is mostly gone. Where huge warehouses and assembly lines stood, the University of Dayton marching band (the Pride of Dayton) now rehearses their half time routines.

Facebook and LinkedIn now appear to be exchanging subscriber information, as I just received a Facebook email suggesting that I friend two business associates. The only way Facebook could know I have any relationship with these people is if Facebook had access to LinkedIn subscribers. I only use Facebook for close family and a few friends, so Facebook could not have made the connection with these people (one of whom is in Asia) by doing a second and third degree of separation search.

Long time readers will recognize a running joke in the title of this post. Here is a very brief note indicating that fiber is being aggressively deployed in Russia. Meanwhile, in the U.S., we're being told:

I like to distinguish between "little broadband" (i.e. DSL and cable modem) and "big broadband." What's the difference? "Little broadband" is typically able to consistently deliver only a few megabits per second down. In Blacksburg, as one example, DSL download speed is advertised as 1 megabit. The cable company here sells 20 meg and 30 meg packages, which work pretty well if there are not too many of your neighbors online at the same time. Performance degrades noticeably after 3 PM, when schools let out and kids come home and hit the computer, their tablets, and their smartphones.

Read this short but detailed discussion of the space problem for start-ups and entrepreneurs by Melissa Thompson. Finding the right office space at an affordable price is a huge issue for small, entrepreneurial businesses. Many of them start in the home, but if they grow beyond a couple of employees, they will usually be looking for office space, and in my experience, many local and regional economic development organizations are not well prepared to help with this.