Exploring the impact of broadband and technology on our lives, our businesses, and our communities.
Jumbo shrimp and "online privacy"
Privacy online is the same kind of oxymoron as "jumbo shrimp," meaning you should take the phrase with a grain of salt. The recent Miss America flap is a perfect illustration of the perils of taking online privacy for granted. Miss America had marked some photos on her Facebook page "private," but some people were able to access them anyway. The embarrassing pictures almost caused her to lose her crown.
As these problems come to light, we are finding out that there a lot of people, young and old, who are not taking the time to understand the implications of "being online," especially when it comes to "free" services. I am astounded regularly when I see businesses using free services for everything from email to word processing. They are happily putting company secrets, business contacts, and produce information in the hands of a third party that the business cannot and does not control.
Economic developers: Your local businesses still need a lot of help sorting out these issues, and it is in the best interest of the health of the local economy that businesses are blindsided by relying too heavily on online services that appear to be "free." It is still true: There is no such thing as a free lunch.
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Knowledge Democracy:
The iPod is a Mac
An article on a fairly obscure tech blog provides details about the iPod that have been suspected for a long time but never confirmed. The iPod is a Macintosh. Apparently, the iPod has always been powered by Apple's OS X operating system (a smaller version, obviously, with fewer features). Over all this time, Apple has declined to provide any technical details of what software powers the iPod.
What this means is interesting. It means that the iPhone is not some entirely new device, but a direct descendant of the very first iPod. It also means that there are 100 million more Macintoshes loose in the world than anyone imagined. Apple has already done what Microsoft has been trying to do for a long time with the WinCE mobile platform; Apple already has a huge installed base of "computers" (i.e. mobile devices) now running music players and phones. Cars can't be far behind.
Technology News:
A new look for the site
As you can see, we have updated the site. Please drop me a note (info -at- designnine.com) if you have any problems.
Thanks,
Andrew
Why communities need to take control
Here is an interesting discussion from SlashDot. As Verizon brings fiber to a customer premise, they disconnect the copper phone line. This means it is no longer available for use by competitors, who can buy wholesale access to the line for voice and data services.
I am not reporting this to beat up on Verizon. Now, if I was running Verizon, I would probably do this too. It makes no sense to continue to have the cost and expense of maintaining antiquated copper infrastructure just so that your competitors can try to sell services to your customers. But it does illustrate the need for communities to take telecom infrastructure needs seriously. If you leave it entirely to the private sector, your residents and customers get only what private network operators are willing to provide. For businesses, this may not match what they need or what they can afford.
Do you want to hand over your economic development future to a third party? If the answer is "No," then your community or region has to at least begin to look seriously at alternatives, like building digital road systems that any company, including incumbents like Verizon, can use to deliver services.
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Early iPhone reports
By all reports, the iPhone is already a success. Apple has not released complete sales numbers, but analysts who were predicting initial sales of 200,000 phones are estimating that between 500,000 and 700,000 phones have been sold. Virtually every Apple and AT&T store sold out of initial supplies in three days, and online orders are now being filled and delivered in as little as two days.
The biggest complaints have not been with the phone itself, but with AT&T. Activation has been slow and/or clumsy for some users, and the AT&T network has not been coping well with the influx of new users, most of whom have apparently purchased the data service. And why wouldn't you? The most appealing features of the phone, from user reports, are the email and Web browser software.
Users are saying it is the first phone they have owned that actually has usable (as in regular use) email and Web access. AT&T is reportedly investing large sums into upgrading their network, so cellphone-related problems are likely to diminish over time. It is a shrewd move for AT&T is the company can provide decent service, as the phone give AT&T something that no other cellular provider has. It is likely that Apple will eventually do deals with other providers, but AT&T probably has at least a two year exclusive deal.
Speculation is rampant about what is next, including an iPod with the touch screen of the iPhone, Internet access via WiFi, but no phone function. This would be very popular, and probably could be sold for under $400, or even around $300. The current iPhone does not have the capability to do VoIP (Voice over IP) phone calls, but all the technology is already in place to provide that. It's just a matter of Apple turning it on. It is easy to imagine an iPhone that only does VoIP (i.e. no cellular service), along with email and Web access.
That iPhone--VoIP enabled--at an attractive price, could upend the entire cellular industry. As more places offer some kind of WiFi service, it would become easier and easier to replace cellular with VoIP on the iPhone, and as younger people rely more and more on IP services like text messaging and chat, voice calls are becoming less important.
Apple, once again, has introduced a disruptor device. Look for lots of imitations in the months to come, creating competition and lower prices.
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Broadband does not replace the basics
Affordable, high capacity broadband does not replace the basics. Roanoke has a small regional airport with the second highest landing fees in the country; lousy, overpriced coffee; poor food service; and extremely high ticket prices. That's not a formula for attracting businesses to the Roanoke and New River Valley regions.
With the focus on broadband, it may be easy to forget that the in the global Knowledge Economy, we still have to travel. When HD quality business videoconference systems like HP's Halo Studio are commonplace, we may see a slight reduction in travel, but what is more likely is that HD conference systems will replace telephone conference calls, not face to face meetings.
Skeptics of the importance of broadband should take a look at the off the shelf HD conference systems already being sold. It takes anywhere from twenty to forty megabits of bandwidth just to have a single two way meeting, and you have to add another ten to twenty megabits of bandwidth for each additional location. Try that with DSL, cable modem, or wireless (Hint: it won't work).
Communities and regions that can show they understand the full range of business needs--affordable aire travel options, affordable broadband, affordable, high quality office space, and the right mix of business services have a winning combination.
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Electricity and economic development
If I was an economic developer in any state but California, I would be preparing a new marketing strategy that includes touting my region's reliable and affordable electric power. And I would be talking to my local electric utility about making sure every business park in my region has redundant electric feeds from two different substations.
If you missed it, California is having electric supply woes again in the midst of a heat wave. This is bad for California businesses that use lots of electricity (many high tech firms, among others), but good for other regions of the country that have done a better job of providing for electric needs.
Not sure what the electric situation is in your region? It's time to put that on the short list of essential infrastructure, along with broadband. Expect relocating companies to be asking lots of questions about both.
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Does your state have the slowest broadband?
It is every economic developer's nightmare. On the front page of today's USA Today (no link online), there is a list of the five states with the slowest broadband in the country. Who wants to be on that list?
In Australia, slow broadband has been recognized as a major economic development issue. Officials there have said that slow broadband hinders the ability of commercial, manufacturing, and agricultural businesses to be fully integrated into international supply chains. In other words, if your businesses don't have the right kind of affordable broadband services available to them, they are going to lose business.
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Community news and projects:
iPhone and the Web
The hype over the iPhone is reaching the boiling point as the release of the new gadget is now just a week away. Speculation over still unknown features, frustration over the price, and the lure of the touch screen interface that no one really knows much about is fueling the furor.
The most important feature of the new phone is not likely to be the touch interface, but the Web browser. Based on Apple's Safari Web browser, the iPhone will have arguably have the best mobile Web browser available. Many other portable devices have a Web browser, but most of them are wretched. The Treo, a popular phone/PDA choice for business people, has a dreadful Web browser. How bad is it? It is so bad that I just never bother to use it, period. It renders pages badly, is nearly impossible to navigate, and crashes constantly. When the Web browser crashes, it usually completely locks the phone up, too.
So a phone with a really good, usable Web browser has a lot going for it. As more and more stuff is available via the Web, the browser is going to be one of the three or four most important applications on a mobile phone, with the others, in order of importance, the phone function, the address book, and the calendar.
In an interesting twist, Apple has stated that developers who want to write new applications for the iPhone should do so using the built in development environment that comes with the Web browser. Some developers are groaning, as this approach puts some limits on what can be done, but many things can be done well using this approach.
I suspect the iPhone, like the iPod, is going to force a sea change in the mobile phone business, and two years from now, mobile phones will all look a lot more like the iPhone.
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Wireless is slow
Wireless Internet access does not have to be slow, but it often is. I'm at the beach this week, and the access point is about thirty feet away, right at the edge of the property, but the speed of the paid service ($28/week, much higher than in hotels and other venues) is abysmal.
Wireless is often oversold by providers, who don't provision adequate backhaul and/or try to cram too many users on each access point.
Design Nine just completed a preliminary design for a large mixed rural/city region, with both fiber and wireless service as part of the network. As usual, the cost of well-engineered wireless access points in rural areas on a per subscriber basis (with sensible subscription rates/access point, not inflated rates) gets very close to the cost of taking fiber to the same subscribers.
And the advantage of fiber, aside from much higher performance, is the ability of fiber, in an open service network architecture, to deliver not just Internet access, but a whole variety of services (hundreds) from dozens of providers. The triple play broadband model is broken financially, and nothing is going to fix it. The solution is to move to a new business model, the Layer 3 open services approach, that truly unleashes competition and innovation.
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