Technology Futures

Speculation has been raging for weeks that Apple will announce some kind of phone/iPod device tomorrow at the start of the MacWorld conference. You have to take Apple speculation with a grain of salt, since so many writers tend to have some kind of agenda with Apple. Just weeks before Christmas, journalists were writing excitedly that the famed iPod and the iTunes Store were in steep decline, citing suspect data that supposedly showed iTunes sales had dropped drastically.

Two days after Christmas, the media was full of stories about how the iTunes store buckled under the load as millions of iPod owners and iTunes gift card recipients tried to buy music. In the run up to Christmas, iPod accessories like chargers and cases outsold rival MP3 players on Amazon.

So tomorrow we may (or may not) see another Apple device that could, um, upset the apple cart. An Apple-branded phone with iPod and iTunes integration would be popular, but would be competing on a very crowded field. However, some analysts believe Apple may introduce something entirely different: a handheld pocket computer running the full OS X operating system that also doubles as a phone and an iPod. There is not much hard data to support that, but it is the kind of device that would change everything, just as the iMac and the iPod did. Tomorrow may be an interesting day.

GM may be poised to pull an electric rabbit out of its hat that could save the company. The car manufacturer has provided a preview of the Chevrolet Volt, an electric hybrid that has a good chance of beating the Japanese electric hybrids at their own game. GM has done something that is blindingly obvious, but for some reason has been avoided entirely by the Japanese carmakers: make an all electric drive train.

Hybrids like the popular Prius have both a gas engine and an electric motor, and either device can transmit power to the wheels. This improves performance somewhat. But it makes the car much more complex, with a dual power input drive train, and the complexity makes the cars pricey. But GM picked a much simpler design. The Volt has an electric motor to drive the wheels, and a gas engine that only charges the batteries. So the car has fewer parts, less weight (good for mileage and performance), and should be much less expensive. The car can go about forty miles on batteries alone, and according to GM, half the country has a daily commute of less than twenty miles, so a single charge can get you to work and back. If you do need to drive further, the electric generator kicks in to charge the batteries while you drive, extending car range to about 600 miles, at 50 miles to the gallon, according to GM.

You can also plug the car in the wall at night and charge the batteries that way, which might be less expensive if gas prices climb again.

This car could be a big winner for GM, and the Volt could end up being nearly everyone's second or third car. What would be really smart is if the company offered a stripped down version that lends itself to being modified by hot rodders--bigger electric motors, high powered batteries, "hot rod" computer chips, big sound systems, and all the other mods that would harken back to the nineteen fifties when it was a rite of passage to soup up a basic GM automobile.

Update: Reader Ed D. has provided another link with some pictures of the car.

Getting fiber to the premise (FTTP) is always a challenge. In many communities, there is not space available on aging telephone poles, or the incumbents try to charge exorbitant make-ready fees to hang a thin fiber cable. Trenching is an alternative, but that can be more expensive and disruptive. CableRunner now offers an interesting alternative, which is to use existing sewer and stormwater drain infrastructure to run fiber through neighborhoods and into homes.

CableRunner's highly automated technology to mount fiber cables and junction boxes to the sides of sewer and drain pipes was pioneered in Vienna, Austria, where they have been doing this successfully for fifteen years. Vienna has a major project underway right now to provide fiber to every home and business in the city, and many of the cable routes are through existing infrastructure. Paris is also beginning to do the same thing

And there is one more thing. Vienna's project is an Open Service Provider Network (OSPN) that will offer the city's residents and businesses a wide choice of services with multiple providers in most service categories. It is just one more reminder of the global competition today: a city taking fiber to every home and business using an open access model. Vienna's goal is to be the best connected city in the world.

What is your community's telecommunications goals?

Arguably, there are way too many college football bowl games. If you just don't have time to watch them all over the next three or four days, don't worry. You can watch them via the Internet. All of the bowl games are going to be available on the iTunes Store and other online media stores within 24 hours of each game's finish. It is one more sign that cable and satellite TV as we know it are nearly dead. It also indicates that we are going to need a whole lot more bandwidth than we have right now.