Exploring the impact of broadband and technology on our lives, our businesses, and our communities.
Do the phone companies owe us $200 billion?
A new book alleges that the phone companies owe every household in America $2000, or about $200 billion in total. Just released (disclaimer: I have not had a chance to read it yet), the book is already creating a lot of discussion online.
The dollar figures allegedly come from calculations the author has performed by looking at the increases in phone and broadband costs over the past decade and comparing them to what the phone companies promised to do in the mid-nineties.
As someone who worked for AT&T in the early eighties, both before and after the break up, I tend to be skeptical of phone company conspiracy theories. I saw so much bad management I have a hard time visualizing the kind of diabolical master plans some people want to see--a lot of it is just plain myopia and lack of vision.
But there is no denying some of the author's key allegations, because they have been rigorously documented by many sources--we rank 16th in the world for broadband deployment, and have some of the slowest, most expensive broadband in the world, by a wide margin.
Technology News:
Music players may cause hearing loss
An iPod user has filed a federal lawsuit against Apple alleging that the popular music players cause hearing damage. The suit claims that Apple knows the volume can be set too high--so high that it causes permanent damage.
But I believe the real culprit are the "earbud" style earphones that come with some iPods but are also widely available from other vendors, and they work with any CD or MP3 player. Earbuds fit directly in the ear canal, rather than over the entire ear. They not only block exterior noise, but also channel the sound directly into the ear canal.
It does not really matter what the earbuds are connected to, they are a recipe for disaster, as they have the effect of concentrating the sound energy in a very small space. As little as an hour of over-exposure to loud sound can cause permanent hearing damage.
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How Google may fail
I worded the title of this article carefully; I used "may," not "will." Google may end up as de facto owner of the world's information, and I could be wrong. Time will tell.
Google's early success came by doing something well that no one else was doing--searching the Web. Google studied the behavior of early search engines like Alta Vista, and came up with better search algorithms. Everybody liked Google because it did something no one else could do--produce relevant search results.
Google then introduced ads linked to searches--again, a new idea and a new service no one else was doing. They did the world a great favor by proving that ads on the Web worked. So far, so good.
But somewhere along the way, Google, I think, has lost its way. Consider the warning signs:
- Google says it won't give the Feds search phrases to aid the fight against child pornography. As awful as child pornography is, I think turning search phrases over the government is stepping on a banana peel at the top of a steep hill. But barely a week after this principled stance by Google, the company lamely claims that cooperating with the Chinese Communist government to censor the Chinese version of Google is okay. Whatever self-delusional reasoning Google used on itself, they sold out a billion people to make a buck, and worse, proved that the company is internally inconsistent.
- For the last couple of years, Google has been rolling out new services like email and news, the better to extend its grip on advertising. But to make some of these things work, the company is relying on taking content from others, packaging it in new ways, and selling ads--with no revenue sharing with the content holders. This is a nice way to create a lot of enemies very quickly.Newspapers are roaring mad at the company for this tactic, and book publishers and authors are apoplectic at Google's scheme to scan every book in the world and make the results searchable--again, with ads plastered on every page delivered and no revenue sharing with the content owners.
- Google's value dropped $20 billion yesterday as expenses outran revenue. How could this happen? Google is spending hundreds of millions of dollars to build a complete, nationwide network completely separate from the current distributed Internet structure--in effect, creating a walled garden where every service is a Google-branded "free" service that runs quicker and faster than services on the "old" Internet. But this is going to make ISPs madder than heck, and could lead to routing wars, where parts of the Internet become inaccessible.
- Finally, Google's search algorithms stink, in the sense that as the Internet has grown, they don't work like they used to. Other companies have developed alternate search approaches that work better (but they lack market visibility). Google may fast become the GM of the Internet, with stuffy, dull cars that a lot of people still buy but that no one really likes very much--nearly every Google search returns hundreds of thousands if not millions of search results--how stupid is that? And after all this time and all the money they have, they can't make search work better? Their eye is off the ball as they try to build all these other empires.
Google is not going away, but the company has moved away from its core competency, and that's always dangerous.
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Knowledge Democracy:
Free broadband, pay for service
Add AT&T to the growing list of broadband access providers who are making noises about charging for access to their broadband networks (and customers).
I have been insisting for some years that video would break the back of the current broadband business model. You simply can't dump video onto a network designed for low bandwidth services like email and the Web and expect things to stay the same. Current network fees are modeled with an assumption that users do mostly email and Web surfing. Watching or downloading TV shows and movies requires every bandwidth provider between the content provider and the content watcher to cough up enough bandwidth to deliver the service--even if they are not getting paid.
Where will all this end? I think it will turn out well, but to get there, we will have to endure some very ugly times. The end goal is to have broadband connections cost nothing at all, but we will pay for services we receive, like telephone service and watching movies. This ties bandwidth directly to the cost of delivering the service, which the current model does not do. Part of the ugliness in the meantime will come from cable and DSL providers who will try to build "walled gardens" around their networks and deny their customers access to certain services and services providers. It's a completely idiotic response, as it will only anger customers and over the long term, diminish revenue. But that's the way they think, having grown up in an analog systems world where the technology itself defines the walled garden.
Part of the solution is for communities to invest in a community-owned and managed infrastructure open to any service provider willing to pay to deliver services. That severs the old, analog relationship between infrastructure and service, which the Internet does not care about.
Technology News:
U.S. broadband: "Slowest, most expensive in the world"
With a hat tip to Chris Miller, this article underscores the seriousness of the broadband crisis in the United States. We're paying more than anybody else in the developed world for "broadband," while getting a lot less, performance-wise (50 to 100 times slower in most cases).
Other countries with better broadband using it to supercharge economic development; Ireland was a basket case twenty years ago, and in part, due to their investments in broadband, it is the hottest country in Europe for jobs and business, as just one example. In Asia, fast, affordable broadband is driving opportunity everywhere. It's not accident that India is stealing jobs from the U.S.; the only reason they can do that is broadband--lots of it, at affordable prices.
Meanwhile, in this country, too many economic developers are missing the obvious. If companies are willing to outsource to India, with all the attendant costs and disadvantages of working at such a distance, export/import issues, and language issues, why not outsource within the United States, where much of the baggage associated with offshoring disappears.
But in too many areas of the country, we are not investing in broadband and our leaders still do not see the connection between broadband and economic development. This article is particularly important because it reviews the history of electric power deployment. Seventy years ago, local, state, and Federal government began to invest in municipal electric services because the private sector was leaving great swaths of the country underserved. A great wailing and gnashing of teeth ensued, with the private electric industry claiming it was the end of Western Civilization, or something close to it.
Universal access to affordable electric service was an economic development issue then, and today, universal access to affordable, fast broadband is an economic development issue. The good news is that public broadband investments can be made in a way that not only do NOT compete with the private sector, those investments can open new markets and help create new private sector jobs.
We can all win if this done right, and step one is to re-read the history of technology deployment in U.S. communities. We've been here before.
Technology News:
iPods are now corporate training tools
Your first reaction to the headline may be skepticism--iPods as a training tool? It may sound like a sly way to buy upper management a new toy, but it is nothing like that. A restaurant chain has thrown away its DVD-based training videos in favor of iPod playlists--short 30 to 60 second video clips that show an employee exactly how to do just one thing. According to the company, it allows the employees to train at their workstation, where they can watch how to do something and then do it immediately.
The old way was to sit passively in front of a TV in the break room, away from the workplace, where they may forget much of what they watched by the time they get back to their workstation.
If you are thinking, "That sounds far-fetched," you may need to think again. It is quick and easy to produce video clips for the iPod--less work than mastering a DVD. And you can update and change individual segments easily, without the bother of having to remaster an entire DVD. And of course, young people are familiar with the iPod and know how to use it.
Economic Developers: Are you offering a short course to your local businesses on how to use the iPod for business?
Technology News:
New superfast WiFi system clobbers older WiFi
The whole Internet wireless system marketplace has become increasingly complex and confusing. This short article from the Register points to several other articles that discuss the new MIMO (Multiple Input, Multiple Output) wireless gear. MIMO systems, which use multiple antennas at each end, promise speeds as high as 100 megabits per second, so in theory they could replace fiber as a first mile option for services like IP television.
But physics, poor design, and market share strategies make it likely that these new wireless systems will never be a complete substitute for a fiber connection. I am technology neutral--I believe we will have and will want both fiber and wireless connections. Communities need to plan for both. But this article should give pause to anyone who thinks that you can just stick up a few wireless antennas and believe you have solved all your community's broadband problems.
The new systems created serious interference with older WiFi systems, rendering them almost useless. Certain kinds of encryption, when turned on, cut throughput of the systems by 30%. Vendors are also fighting over who is implementing "true MIMO," suggesting that a compatibiility nightmare is looming, where one vendor's "MIMO" equipment won't work with "MIMO" equipment made by another vendor.
It is also yet another example of why you cannot just take the word of a vendor when considering broadband options. Vendors want to sell you what they have, not what you may need. It is particularly risky to accept vendor offers to provide "free" broadband system design (Disclaimer: Design Nine provides broadband planning services).
Technology News:
Skype phones take off
Skype continues to expand its grip on the Internet voice telephony marketplace by providing technical specs that describe how to build a phone with Skype software built in. MSNBC has an article that describes a whole slew of new Skype phones. The new handsets untether Skype calls from a computer handset.
The new gadgets include a phone that works like a conventional cordless phone (so you can receive calls in other parts of the home or office, away from the computer), a phone that lets you switch between conventional POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) calls and Skype calls, and a completely self-contained Skype phone that works wherever WiFi service is available (no computer needed at all).
As our options expand, the complexity of our communications systems expands as well. But these phones are a step in the right direction.
Technology News:
Cleveland gets connected
I had the good fortune to hear Mark Ansboury, the COO of One Cleveland, talk about what he and other leaders in Cleveland have been doing to build what is probably the best planned community broadband infrastructure in the country.
The project has leveraged an initial contribution of dark fiber into a regional Gigabit Ethernet network that connects schools, government offices, museums and arts venues, social service agencies, and healthcare facilities. One Cleveland does not provide any services to individual homes and does not provide any services to businesses. The project feels that is best left to the private sector.
Ansboury had an interesting statistic that did not surprise me but caught other people in the room off-guard--Adelphia's commercial business in the area has increased by 60% since the start of the project. The goal of One Cleveland is to make the broadband pie bigger, and it appears to be working very well.
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St. Louis builds an MSAP
For years, I've recommended that communities and regions build MSAPs (Multimedia Service Access Points). From our experiences operating one in Blacksburg as far back as 1999, we found that these local data exchange points save everyone in the community money. St. Louis is building a regional MSAP, which I call an RNAP, or Regional Network Access Point.
The Internet was originally designed to connect local networks that were generally far apart, so there was little need for local data exchange points. But as the Internet has grown, a lot of local traffic now gets carried across large parts of the country just to reach the other side of town. An MSAP reduces or eliminates that totally unnecessary and expensive transit route.
It's not expensive, especially if you already have a community or regional public colocation facility. Internet access providers and other large Internet users (e.g. local government, schools, colleges, hospitals) run a connection to the MSAP and adjust their network routing rules. Once you have at least two MSAP users, all traffic between those two networks stays local instead of being hauled, typically, to bigger cities and often to Washington, D.C. and/or San Francisco.
MSAPs not only save broadband costs, they improve network performance, often by an order of magnitude or more. This is particularly important for local, high performance services like file sharing, healthcare applications, and videoconferencing.
MSAPs work best when they are managed by a neutral third party, like a community broadband project.
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