Exploring the impact of broadband and technology on our lives, our businesses, and our communities.
Cordless phone makes VoIP easy
This new Skype-compatible VoIP phone is cordless, which fixes a limitation that has always made Skype and other Internet phone services clumsy--you had to be tethered to your computer. With this phone, a little widget plugs into a USB port and you can wander around the house or office with the cordless handset. As more phones like this become available, it will drive even higher use of VoIP.
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Competition works
This CNet article describes how telephone and cable companies are responding to competition with better customer service. As cable companies roll out voice services and telephone companies are slowly rolling out TV service, we are getting a glimpse of what happens when these companies have to worry about keeping their customers--they treat them better.
But a duopoly also tends to lead to cartel-like pricing, where service may be slightly better but you don't see much movement in prices. With just two firms, there is little reason for either firm to cut prices very much or to try to do things differently. That is one reason why you see a lot of low ball "introductory pricing" for DSL and cable modem services, but never see any permanent price cuts. The phone companies still have a much smaller broadband marketshare, so DSL tends to be about $10 cheaper than cable modem service in most markets--consumers won't bother to switch at all if the savings are less than that.
But prices for all services--voice, video, and data--could be much less expensive if all those services were carried over an Open Service Provider Network (OSPN) using an Open Service Architecture (OSA) system. Then and only then do things really get interesting, because now instead of two providers for a service, you are much more likely to have four or more, making cartel pricing much more difficult.
The future of broadband is Open Service Provider Networks. They work--you get more services at much lower cost. The OSPN concept started in Europe, but once we get a couple of communities in the U.S. with OSPN systems, it will be hard to imagine doing it any other way. Oh, and one more thing.....OSPN networks make communitywide broadband systems financially viable over the long term. Design Nine is the only broadband architecture firm in the U.S. that specializes in the design and implementation of OSPN systems; call us if you want help with your community fiber and wireless projects.
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Wireless won't work for HD TV
This article discusses Intel's belief that wireless networks in the home are inadequate for high definition television. The highly touted 802.11g, with a theoretical maximum bandwidth will only deliver about 22 megabits under the best of conditions in an in-home network, and performance could be much worse. In other words, it will barely handle a single channel of HD TV--as long as you or any one in the family is not doing anything else on the network.
Community wireless projects that rely entirely on WiFi are going to be similarly disappointed, as that bandwidth now has to be shared among several households. WiFi and its variants don't work well going through walls, and the wireless systems that experience poor reception because of interference operate much more slowly.
What does Intel recommend? The firm suggests wiring your house with Ethernet cable designed to support the very efficient Gigabit Ethernet standard (Cat 5e or Cat 6 cable, which is very inexpensive).
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Real life, or something like it
David Strom has a great article about the challenges of keeping up with all our gadgets and communications channels. I have to agree with him...we have so many ways to communicate....email, phone, cellphone, instant messaging, SMS, blogs, RSS, the Web, Skype and other free VoIP services that it is hard to get any work done.
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Dell drops out of MP3 player market
Dell has dropped out of the MP3 music player market as another casualty of the iPod juggernaut. The iPod has, as I predicted, become a platform, because it does much more than play music.
With the very first iPod model, Apple established an external interface that allowed third party manufacturers to make add-on gadgets, like a BMW or a stereo with an iPod plug. No other manufacturer has been able to establish a similar third party add-on market, and the iPod add-on market is conservatively valued at over half a billion dollars in annual sales. It would be much more than that if you counted automobiles as an "add-on."
Apple has also consistently increased the functionality of the iPod with its ability to store notes, calendar items, play games, store and view pictures, and store and play videos. No other manufacturer has come close. With the sneaker interface that communicates wirelessly with an iPod to show exercise stats, Apple has raised the bar even higher, and the somewhat indulgent sneaker-net only hints at what will likely be a flood of new wireless devices that use the iPod as the interface. Many pundits predict that the external wireless widget that now plugs into the bottom of an iPod to add the wireless functionality will appear as an internal feature in the next revision of the iPod, and that would be my guess as well. Once that happens, it will make it much easier and less expensive to design and sell iPod wireless gadgets.
If Apple ever comes out with an iPod cellphone, expect to hear a collective shriek of despair from cellphone makers all over the world.
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The gold of the Knowledge Economy
The gold of the Knowledge Economy is dark fiber. Those that have it have something of great value. Those that don't are in trouble. It is really a currency of sorts, but much better than gold. Gold's value fluctuates up and down, but fiber's value will continue to go up indefinitely. How? As the network electronics that light dark fiber improve, you can expect to be able to continually increase the capacity of dark fiber strands, creating value each time.
We are already well into a transition away from single wavelength fiber use, where you need two fibers to complete a circuit--one fiber transmits down to a home or business connection, and one fiber transmits back up in the other direction. You can already buy off the shelf equipment that puts two wavelengths on a single fiber, with each wavelength providing one half of the circuit; this technique is called wave division multiplexing. But DWDM (Dense Wave Division Multiplexing) equipment that puts dozens of wavelengths on a single fiber is already in use on long haul, high capacity fiber routes. And eventually, fiber to the home and business will also be DWDM-based, increasing the capacity of a single fiber by orders of magnitude--try that with gold.
As bandwidth hungry applications are beginning to choke current copper-based systems, fiber is finally coming into its own, and I have been getting calls lately asking about how to price dark fiber. The simple answer is, you don't. Dark, unlit fiber is a core asset of any network, and you absolutely don't want to sign long term leases handing over dark fiber on your network to some third party. Once you do, you are foregoing the revenue potential of that fiber permanently (or at least as long as the lease, which are often twenty years or more).
If you have dark fiber and are getting requests to buy or lease it, you probably don't want to do that. Instead, you want to sell bandwidth, because you can always "make" more bandwidth by upgrading your network electronics. Once you give the fiber away, you lose that capacity.
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Cheap easy video is changing politics
YouTube is beginning to change politics, as the rising new Internet service is making it easy for anyone to make video available. Short video clips with political messages are chipping away at another Old Media monopoly, the political ad. Back in the old days, as far back as a year ago, you had to have a big budget to produce and air a political ad. Limited time spots for such ads on broadcast and cable TV made them expensive.
But like other upstarts like online auctions and blogging, cheap video distribution is rewriting the rules. Industry old-timers are criticizing this new competition; while it is true it is easy to put a false and/or misleading political video on YouTube, that is hardly a new phenomenon. It's easy to find Old Media examples of wretched excess in political ads dating back a hundred years or more. Politics in the 1800s was a bare knuckles fist fight compared to the relatively sedate mudslinging that goes on today.
When the powerbrokers who have the most to lose start shooting the messenger (YouTube and its innumerable imitators), you know there is something to it.
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Knowledge Democracy:
Public safety project has to fight Verizon
A consortium of communities in Michigan figured out that building their own fiber network would save them millions in taxpayer funds, but if you read the article, you get the distinct impression that Verizon believes the purpose of government is to ensure that Verizon never has any competition.
Apparently, Verizon believes government should never try to save money and never try to do things differently if there is any impact on Verizon's bottom line.
The clue that something is amiss is the huge costs savings the local governments gain from building an entirely new network--an expensive undertaking. Verizon, in many areas of the country, has chosen not to invest in new infrastructure, effectively forcing communities and businesses to continue to pay high prices for old, 19th century copper technology.
Done right, community fiber systems can not only save taxpayer dollars but also be a huge boon for businesses, who could get access to less expensive voice and data services from competitive providers.
In the studies that Design Nine has been doing for communities, when you look at the forty year expected life of fiber, the multi-million dollar cost of a fiber system is a fraction (typically less than 5%) of what business and government will pay for telecom over that same time period. And it's a lot less expensive than water and sewer projects, which communities build and manage routinely.
Who do you want deciding the economic future of your community? You, or Verizon?
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Population: 351 (and fiber)
Here is a story about a woman who the the Director of R&D for a high tech multimedia firm. She lives in Winthrop, Washington, and sleeps in a teepee. Now I know many of you will probably stop reading right there, but this article highlights a growing trend and the power of fiber to change rural communities. From the article, here is a description of Winthrop:
It's more than three hours by car to the nearest freeway exit, two hours to movie theaters and shopping malls. It's a place where, as late as 2001, folks in certain canyons were struggling to get phone service. Four hours from Seattle, a century-wide gap in telecommunications.
No more. These days, fiber-optic cables run like a river down the valley. Microwave towers beam data from peak to peak.
Jokingly, I ask Evans if she can get streaming video in her teepee.
Seriously, she replies, "Of course! . . . Six megabits per second."
Another interesting nugget in the article is the fact that call centers that moved overseas are already coming back. Where are they going? To rural communities WITH FIBER. Rural communities offer workers with excellent work ethics, stable wages, and low cost of doing business. But these days, call centers need the lowest possible telecommunications costs, and they also need to be able to hook a call center into their worldwide VoIP phone systems. Fiber delivers. And it should be a cautionary warning to communities that are hitching their wagon to wireless while thinking that all their broadband problems are solved. Wireless does not provide the bandwidth, security, or reliability that businesses want and need for mission critical services like VoIP.
Farther down in the story, a company in Winthrop had to pay $400,000 out of pocket to get access to fiber for their business because there was no community infrastructure. It's a wonder the firm stayed at all. What kept the firm in tiny Winthrop? Quality of life.
It's a twofer: Rural communities that have the right quality of life and fiber have a bright future. It is important to note the emphasis on the RIGHT quality of life. Every community thinks it has great quality of life, but the amenities, services, schools, and recreational opportunities have to appeal to the kind of people you want to attract to the community, not just folks that have lived in your town all their lives. And there is often a disconnect between the two groups and just what constitutes quality of life. Take a look at the Open for Business handout Design Nine has in its Resources section.
Read the whole article; it is worth the time.
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Integrated voice, mouse, and keyboard
Logitech has introduced an integrated desk set: it is a completely wireless keyboard with wireless mouse, wireless headset, and wireless speakerphone. It is a neat design, but I remain wary of Bluetooth accesories, especially wireless headsets. Although Bluetooth is a low power system, I have never liked the idea of gigahertz radio frequencies going directly into my brain all day long. Ditto with cellphones and cordless phones. They all use frequency ranges similar to microwave ovens, which we use to COOK things. What is interesting about this is that Logitech has tried to provide a better solution for the emerging "electronic desktop." I would like to see a corded version as well, but the concept is excellent--make all these devices work better together with less effort.
All these wireless devices may be perfectly safe, but we really don't know, and the wireless manufacturers don't really want to know. I have been following this since the early eighties, and the few researchers that study these issues have consistently been able to show, for more than thirty years, that this range of frequencies do create measurable effects at the cellular level. The problem is that we do not really know whether this is a problem or not. Until we do, I will continue to use a corded phone and mouse at my desk and a wired headset for my cellphone.
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