Exploring the impact of broadband and technology on our lives, our businesses, and our communities.
San Francisco, Earthlink say WiFi failing
This article discusses the collapsing WiFi efforts in San Francisco, providing a real world data point that confirms what many of us have been saying for a long time: WiFi alone is not a complete solution for community broadband.
The deal between Earthlink and the city of San Franciso also confirms that there is no free lunch. Earthlink was going to build, own, and operate the free network on behalf of the City. The City part of the deal was to provide Earthlink with easements and access to city-owned light poles and other structures where the WiFi access points would be mounted. An Earthlink official who was asked about the effort said the project, ".... was not providing an acceptable rate of return." Earthlink's other free WiFi projects in Anaheim and Philadelphia are also struggling. The company expected to make money by selling faster wireless connections for a fee and by selling advertising provided by Google.
What we are seeing is that most people, when given a choice between mediocre wireless access and fee-based wireline services (e.g. fiber, DSL, cable), choose wireline services most of the time because the service quality is better.
Remember that this need not and should be an either/or debate: either our community does wireless or it does fiber. Communities need both, and should be planning and investing in properly structured public/private partnerships that really work. In the end, community investments in telecom infrastructure have to be linked to broader community and economic development goals. Few businesses are going to move to a community where the broadband "solution" is wireless only.
Technology News:
Community news and projects:
Europe jumps into the Space Economy
The European company (EADS) that builds the Ariane rockets used for commercial satellite launches has announced it has already completed the design for a combination jet/rocket plane that will provide tourists a brief ride into space.
The innovative design will use conventional jet engines to get the spacecraft off the ground, then use a rocket engine to take it to the fringes of space for a short ride. EADS plans to charge about $267,000 for a ticket for a ninety minute ride, and expects to make money from the venture with an estimated four to five thousand customers a year by 2020.
Technology News:
High efficiency solar cells
The Energy Economy continues to churn away quietly. While oil prices bounce around like a barrel full of superballs, research in hydrogen, solar, and other alternative energy sources is setting the stage for a dramatic shift in how we obtain and store energy. The latest development involves a dramatic increase in the efficiency of solar cells--some 60% better.
This is a huge increase, and coupled with better batteries, these solar cells could make small electric cars even more attractive. For commutes of just a few miles, a car with high efficiency solar cells on its roof might be able to stay charged just from the sun collected by sitting in the company parking lot during the day. Imagine if your gasoline bill for your daily commute was suddenly zero. Imagine if several million commuters saw their gas usage go to zero.
Electric cars are cheap and easy to make, and I predict that we will see one hundred or more electric car companies spring up in the next five to seven years. Most of them will not make it, but there will be lots of deals to be made as some grow, some get bought out, and others merge.
How would you like to have a car manufacturer in your community? If all you want to build is electric cars, you could start tomorrow.
Technology News:
If the FCC was in charge of roads
Here is an interesting article that talks about what life might be like if the Federal Communications Commission was in charge of highways. It is not a pretty picture. The upcoming auction of 700 Mhz spectrum formerly used by TV stations is not likely to benefit communities or smaller, independent service providers.
The FCC has the opportunity to change things in a way that could simultaneously lower prices for wireless services and create lots of new business opportunities. What's the rub? The incumbents would have to compete on a reasonably level playing field with new companies, without a structural monopoly advantage. And that really worries them.
Technology News:
Electric newspaper delivery
Even as the newspaper industry struggles with the transition to what some are calling the "viewspaper," meaning viewing the news on the Web, at least one local newspaper delivery person is changing the way newspapers are delivered. In my neighborhood, the guy that delivers the paper has abandoned his Jeep Cherokee for a small electric cart. It is a street legal, oversize golf cart with enough room and power to haul the driver and two hundred or so newspapers.
We are going to see many more all-electric vehicles in the next few years. For businesses that make mostly local deliveries (pizza, flowers, prescription drugs, etc.), all electric vehicles are a less expensive way to get products and services to customers. The purchase price of these electric utility vehicles is low relative to a full size van or panel truck, and they are inexpensive to operate. And as more and more electric utilities roll out power management that will enable lower differential pricing at night, the cost of charging them up overnight could also go down.
Technology News:
Facebook easy pickings for identity theft
A study by research firm Sophos indicates that Facebook users are very willing to give personal information to complete strangers. The firm set up a fake Facebook entry and then made "friend" requests to hundreds of other Facebook users. Most of them happily revealed enough personal information (family names, photos, etc) to make it easy to steal that person's identity, according to Sophos. Among the items Facebook users were willing to share was their full date of birth, which is used by many organizations to validate identity.
Knowledge Democracy:
Spa in Space
Galactic Suites, the space tourism venture, has a Web site with additional information about the space hotel it is building. Space-related businesses are already transforming the New Mexico economy, and states like Virginia and Texas are also beginning to reap benefits. Not every region will find a niche with space-related opportunities, but the success of New Mexico illustrates that boldness and determination pay when it comes to economic development.
Technology News:
Community news and projects:
Google: "We own your videos"
In yet another Google flop, the company has announced it is closing its video store. Some thing work, some things don't. No problem there. But customers who downloaded videos from the Google store received a letter from Google notifying them that the videos they had "purchased" were going up in smoke. The movies have DRM (Digital Rights Management) attached to them, and once the store is closed, the movies are no longer watchable.
Boing Boing has more on the fiasco. Google has offered the customers Google Checkout credit for the videos they purchased, but the credit is only good for sixty days. And some customers (probably most) may not even have a Checkout account (Checkout is the Google competitor to Paypal). So if you bought Google videos, you get limited store credit and have to find some company that takes Checkout payments (I can't recall ever having seen one).
It is an appalling way to treat customers, and especially so given that Google has billions in the bank, and could easily just write their movie customers a check. Google also breaks new ground by redefining the word "purchase" to mean "you purchase, we own."
Update (8/22/07)
Google has announced that it is giving all the video customers a cash refund, and it is letting them keep the Checkout credit it had already issued. The company has done the right thing; it is just too bad they did not think the refund process through a little more carefully.
Technology News:
Knowledge Democracy:
AT&T billing runs amok
iPhone users are starting to get bills from AT&T (which is really SBC), and the bills are apparently stupefyingly detailed. This article describes 52 page, double-sided bills that include detail on billing items that cost $0.00. Apparently one of the problems is that even if you have an "unlimited" data plan (for using the Web and email features of the iPhone, AT&T provides billing line items for every time you access the 'net, even if there is no charge for such access.
This is yet another example of IT departments run amok, along with accountants and bookkeepers who apparently lack common sense. Margins on cellphone accounts are already slim; it makes you wonder who is responsible at AT&T for looking at the cost of postage. How can the company afford to mail out a 52 page bill?
Technology News:
Video and TV may be reaching the tipping point
Competition is a wonderful thing. As NetFlix and Blockbuster battle each other over customers for mail-based DVD movies, Blockbuster has purchased a company called MovieLink to compete with the NetFlix movie download service. The acquisition is particularly interesting because MovieLink has license agreements with several major movie studios, which are worth a lot more than any technology and systems the company might have in place.
I still get blank stares from a lot of people when I tell them that TV is moving rapidly towards delivery over a broadband network, but I sat in a conference room yesterday at a relatively small independent phone company and watched the firm show off their IP-TV service, which they can deliver to some of their customers immediately via their ADSL2+ service. But even more interesting was the the fact they they mentioned they were planning to private label the IPTV service for other providers to deliver on fiber to the home networks.
You can't download movies or watch TV on any affordable wireless system, and even the new buzz wireless buzzphrase--"700 Mhz"--is not up to the task. It is video in all forms, and especially High Definition video, that is going to ensure that fiber to the home and to the business is going to be essential infrastructure for personal and business use.
Technology News:
Pages
