Technology Futures

If there was one thing everyone was talking about at the annual Rural Telecommunications Congress conference, it was open service provider networks. My talk discussed why they work financially (demand aggregation, across a whole community or an entire region, really pays dividends--literally). But vendors were also talking OSPN systems, and it is great to see systems coming into the marketplace that have been designed specifically for communitywide broadband use.

There are some basic priniciples that define a true open access system:

• The ability to have multiple service providers offering services, with more than one provider in each category (e.g. three Internet access providers, three TV providers, four VoIP providers, and so on), with each provider using their own IP address space on the network.
• The ability to automatically provision services end to end on the network. This means customers subscribe via a Web interface, and that seconds after ordering, the service is available in that home or business--no human intervention required. This is extremely important, as it is the only way these networks scale up efficiently to serve tens of thousands of customers.
• The ability to support more than the old-fashioned "triple play" of voice, video, and data. An open access network should be able to support dozens of services, including electric meter reading, network back up services, specialized gaming services, telemedicine and telehealth services, video on demand, and much more.
• The ability to simply and easily change or adjust service parameters like bandwidth to meet changing customer demand. Bandwidth for a particular service should be something that can be adjusted via a point and click interface, giving a service, as just one example, any level of bandwidth between 10 kilobits and 100 megabits. Additonally, service variables like Quality of Service (QoS) should also be adjustable simply and easily, based on demand.

It is an exciting time for communities. We finally have the broadband systems to compete in the global economy, and not only that, we now know how to build and pay for them.

The magazine Killer App has a must read article on how fiber infrastructure has turned the rust belt economy of Wales (abandoned coal mines and steel mills) into a global powerhouse. The key: a steady investment in fiber over a period of years turned into a magnet for Knowledge Economy businesses looking for a reliable workforce, reasonable cost of living, and affordable broadband.

Oh, and there was one more thing. Wales had excellent electrical power because of the former demands of the steel mills. The region was able to attract large data centers because Wales had an unbeatable one-two punch: world class fiber infrastructure AND reliable electric power.

Finally, Wales has adopted an open access model, meaning they did not try to create a new government monopoly on telecom services. Instead, they are encouraging competition among service providers to ensure a rich variety of services that can meet any business need as well as keeping prices low (because of competition).

This is an article you may want to print out and send to every local elected official and economic developer--especially those that think telecom is somebody else's problem. It is an excellent case study of a region that pulled its economy out of a nose dive and successfully created economic prosperity.

I am attending the Rural Telecommunications Congress Annual Conference, and as usual, it is loaded with excellent speakers. The opening keynote was presented by two representatives of the EAST (Environmental and Spatial Technologies) education program. EAST may be the most innovative approach to K12 education in the country. Typically offered as a year long class in high school, EAST students are presented with real community problems and issues and are told to solve them.

To help them do this, a typical EAST classroom has $700,000 in hardware and software, purchased from participating vendors for about ten cents on the dollar. EAST students are given no training on any of these systems, because it is literally impossible to train teachers to be competent in such a wide array of systems. Instead, EAST students are expected to figure out how to use the systems themselves and to work together to use them as part of the class projects.

And indeed, it is expectations that sets the EAST program apart. Students are not given an option to drift along through the class. Instead, EAST sets high expectations in terms of time, commitment, and effort from day one. The EAST classroom more closely resembles a business work place, and has the kinds of software and systems used by businesses. The program focuses on students being in charge of their own learning and growth. EAST teachers are facilitators and managers. EAST teachers don't regard students as empty vessels into which to pour measured chunks of memorized "knowledge."

An EAST project described in the talk involved going out into rural Arkansas and conducting a door to door survey of households to assess broadband availability. Students then created sophisticated GIS maps to show the actual patterns of broadband availability and use, as opposed to the FCC method of simply saying a zip code area has broadband if an incumbent can deliver service to a single subscriber.

EAST programs are in 225 schools in five states, but the program started in Arkansas, where more than 145 schools use the EAST program. After hearing about EAST, I have only one question: "Why doesn't every school in America have an EAST program?"

Network Computing has a short article with a headline that touts, "City governments are offering metro wireless services with speeds and latency that can't be beat." Sounds interesting, right? But if you read all the way to the end, where the article discusses the fabled WiMax, which will supposedly solve all the world's broadband problems, you find out that WiMax's multimegabit speeds drop to "1 to 2 megabits only at the outer edges."

So WiMax looks a lot like DSL--great if you live near an access point, but the farther away you are, the less you get from it, until even DSL or a cable modem connection is going to provide better and more consistent throughput. You have to read the fine print when looking at vendor promises.

I strongly encourage communities to invest in wireless, but only as part of an integrated strategy that includes both fiber and wireless, with wireless designed primarily for mobile uses. Over the long term, wireless can be more expensive than fiber when you look at the total life cycle costs, and if you are trying to design a system that pays for itself over time, it is difficult to do that with wireless by itself. An integrated fiber/wireless design, on the other hand, can actually return money to the community for other community and economic development uses. Design Nine specializes in helping communities and regions design and build such systems. Give us a call or drop us a note if you would like more information.