Exploring the impact of broadband and technology on our lives, our businesses, and our communities.
Ownership has advantages
Even as some municipal wireless projects are falling apart, many other communities are still pursuing the risky "direct to vendor" approach. Instead of identifying broader community goals and needs first and then selecting systems and technology that support those goals, community leaders are going straight to a vendor and letting the vendor specify what the community should buy.
These "solutions" are typically expensive wireless systems, offered to the community in some kind of bundled business deal. There are two common approaches. The first is that the local government buys an expensive wireless system, usually with a combination of public safety wireless and data wireless (WiFi) for residential and business use. The second model is that the wireless firm builds the network but obtains a lucrative long term contract from the local government for public safety wireless and usually some WiFi services for government agencies.
There are two problems with this direct to vendor model. The first is that what a single vendor offers may or may not be well aligned with the long term community and economic development goals of the town or county. As an example, wireless (WiFi) is not a business class service and does little to help with economic development.
The second problem is that the vendor ends up deciding the economic future of the community, not the community itself. It is as if water and sewer were managed privately, and the water and sewer vendor gets to decide when and where water and sewer lines will be be upgraded or added. If the company decides it is not profitable to make such upgrades, the community is out of luck if said upgrades are needed to retain existing businesses or to attract new ones.
Local leaders are handing the keys to their community's economic future to a third party; they are doing so in part because they don't feel competent to make technology decisions. But the solution is to educate local leaders on how to make wise decisions, rather than avoiding them altogether. In fact, communitywide fiber and wireless systems are less expensive and less complicated than your average community sewer system.
Design Nine provides seminars designed specifically for community leaders and economic developers, and provides technology advice for communities that is technology neutral.
Technology News:
Why we need more bandwidth
Here at the office, I've been downloading a single file since 10 AM this morning. I'm writing this article at 5:30 PM. The file is not particularly large; it is six gigabytes, or about the size of one DVD. And the Design Nine offices are on a substantial network that supplies the entire business park. Trying to get this file on a DSL or cable connection would be even more painful. Economic developers who are interested in the newly emerging work from home opportunities have to start thinking about bandwidth strategically, as this type of problem is going to become commonplace without a radically different approach to solving the bandwidth problem (hint: think open services networks).
Technology News:
Long commutes could be good news for smaller towns and cities
USA Today's front page article on long commutes could be good news for smaller towns and cities that are focused on enhancing quality of life. Commutes in big cities are now beginning at 5 AM so that commuters can reduce the amount of time spent on the road.
This is not a new phenomenon. Even in the early and mid eighties, commuting in the New York and New Jersey area encouraged this kind of strategy. If I left for work at 6:30 AM, I could be at work by 7 AM. If I left at 7, the commute took an hour. If I left at 7:30, I would be lucky to get to work by nine. The traffic was one of the reasons I left AT&T and moved to Blacksburg.
More communities are beginning to understand the quality of life issues and are beginning to re-orient their economic development strategies to adjust. But other regions, believing that unrestricted growth is a good thing because it increases the tax base, are allowing the hands-off approach to development to turn formerly pristine rural roads into traffic-clogged mini-versions of urban roadways. Low density zoning in rural areas (also known as sprawl) tends to put more cars on narrow country roads never designed for the higher traffic flows created by rural subdivisions, and the traffic can get bad quickly.
Work at home jobs have the potential to get cars off the road, but that means communities have to have high quality, affordable broadband in neighborhoods and rural areas. Work at home jobs are turning suburbs and rural communities into business districts, but to leverage that economic growth takes thoughtful planning.
Technology News:
FaceBook turns search on
USA Today reports (page 3B) that FaceBook is planning to allow search engines to index the site. This means that what people thought was not searchable may become public, depending upon the rules FaceBook sets up for crawling by the search engines. At a minimum, FaceBook will allow indexing of names and photos unless users choose to opt out.
FaceBook users are already up in arms. The opt out option requires users to do something to keep their information off search engines, and privacy advocates generally prefer opt in strategy that don't require users to remember to select a specific setting.
Knowledge Democracy:
Quality of life continues to influence relocation
This article from the New York Times (registration required, link may disappear) is an excellent discussion of how quality of life is, more and more, driving relocation decisions not just of businesses but of workers, especially younger workers.
Everywhere I go, smaller towns and communities are worried that young people are not staying and living in their communities, but at the same time, many of these communities are not making the kinds of investments that are going to attract young people. This article identifies some of the things workers looking for a better quality of life want.
Hat to Stuart Mease.
Technology News:
Let's just grow some oil
An ugly, smelly weed called jatropha may be another piece of the energy puzzle. According to a Slashdot article, the weed produces a seed that can have up to 40% oil content, which can be easily converted to a biofuel for diesel engines. Jatropha apparently grows easily, requires little water or fertilizer, and can be grown on marginal lands that would not support energy intensive crops like corn and soybeans.
Technology News:
YAWDS: Yet Another Wireless Disaster Story
Yet another muni WiFi project has foundered on the rocks of NoBusinessModel. WiFi vendors don't mind overselling the benefits of free WiFi, because their business model usually involves getting the local government to take all the risk. In some cases, local governments are putting up hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars for WiFi systems that have yet to prove themselves.
In other cases, the service provider may put up most of the equipment, but gets an exclusive franchise, meaning no competition and no service alternatives. The companies that thought free WiFi could be supported by ads are finding out that that is a tough business to be in.
Waukesha, Wisconsin can be added to the list ever growing list of cities that have had a wireless service provider pull out because there was no money in free WiFi. Chicago, San Francisco, Philadelphia, and Houston have all had to pull back on wireless plans recently. St. Cloud, Florida has been trying to give away free WiFi service to residents with little success; residents have complained that the wireless system is slow and unreliable compared to fee-based copper systems (DSL and cable).
Wireless services have a place in every community. We all want our wireless devices (phones, iPhones, PDAs, etc.) to work wherever we are. But wireless by itself is an incomplete solution. With countries like Japan rapidly building out 100 megabit fiber systems, having only low speed wireless is not going to help a community's economic development future.
Technology News:
Community news and projects:
Japan rolls out fiber and new applications
This article talks about Japan's investment in broadband networks, including a nationwide fiber deployment with speeds of 100 megabits. The country has a built in advantage because of its small size; short distances between telephone switches and homes means DSL can run faster over existing copper cables--at speeds higher than is possible in most parts of the U.S. But the country regards copper as obsolete and sees DSL as a stopgap measure until fiber connections are ubiquitous.
As the 100 megabit connections become more common, new applications no one ever thought of are being rolled out. One example cited is using the high speed fiber to examine tissue samples remotely. Patients not near pathologists can now get a better diagnosis because the network can transmit very high quality images quickly, enabling doctors at remote facilities to make more accurate examinations.
Technology News:
Community news and projects:
Fastest Vista laptop is a Mac
In a strange twist, PC World has found that a MacBook Pro 17" laptop runs Windows Vista faster than all the other Windows laptops it has tested.
Technology News:
What the iPhone price drop really means
The 'net is abuzz with discussions about the dramatic price cuts announced yesterday by Apple. The price of the pricey iPhone was cut by $200, and Apple also introduced an new iPod, called the iPod Touch, which is an iPhone without the phone function.
Much of the discussion on the price drop has focused on some kind of marketing problem that Apple may have, and this largely negative article on CNet is a good example of the usual "Apple is in trouble" drum beating by technology writers. For some reason, an awful lot of tech writers love to predict the imminent demise of Apple, even though the company has been hugely successful for many years now.
What has not been talked about much is something that Steve Jobs mentioned briefly during the product announcement--current iPhone owners are getting new features and functions on their iPhones.
To really understand where Apple is going with the iPhone and the iPod, you have to look closely at how Apple is managing support for iPhone users. When was the last time your cellphone got a software upgrade and new features? Never, for most of us. Cellphones have been marketed as disposable; it works for both cellular providers and cellphone manufacturers. To get new features on a cellphone, customers are forced into upgrading service contracts and/or buying a new phone. Everyone wins except the user.
Apple is headed in a different direction with the iPhone. Instead of forcing customers to replace their iPhone with a new model to get new features, Apple is going to provide its iPhone customers with easy and virtually automatic software upgrades that add new features to existing phones.
Over time, this strategy will change the entire cellular industry in the U.S. so that it is better aligned with the rest of the world, where consumers can buy any phone they want and use it with any cellular provider they want. Apple is going to break the unhealthy monopoly in place in the cellular industry, and we will all be the winners.
Technology News:
Pages
