Exploring the impact of broadband and technology on our lives, our businesses, and our communities.
Health applications are going to be the killer app
In the nineties, as the Internet became more popular, there was a long-running and often tedious discussion of what the "killer app" was going to be that would make everyone get Internet access. I always thought the whole discussion was a waste of time, because it was obvious to me that at that time, email WAS the killer app. People signed up for Internet access because they recognized the value of email for business use, personal use, or both.
There is a similar discussion underway for broadband and particularly broadband over fiber (i.e. fiber to the home). I think it will be health services and applications. The Internet has already begun to disrupt the way health services are delivered, but we have barely begun to see what is possible. Today, services like Fitnet provide personalized interactive work out sessions, along with related products like the Nike collaboration with Apple that tracks runners and joggers. Apple watchers suspect that the company is going to roll out sophisticated new apps for both iPhones and Macs.
Other companies are preparing to offer doctor visits via HD webcam-enabled software, and if companies like Apple lower the cost of sensors that monitor your health (e.g. blood oxygen levels, heart rate, blood sugar and insulin levels) we could see significant changes in the way health care is provided.
The most potential is for improvements in the management of chronic health problems like diabetes and heart disease, where the ability of low cost sensor to provide hourly and daily monitoring of key information could lead to early diagnosis and better treatment.
Most of these services are going to require a broadband connection, and cutting out just one $80 copay for a doctor visit per month will easily cover the cost of a fiber connection to the residence. Communities with aging populations and/or are desirable retirement locations will want fiber everywhere to deliver health care services where they are needed.
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Showdown and slowdown in Kansas over muni broadband
An old friend of mine once remarked, "In Texas, we have the best laws money can buy." Apparently, folks in Kansas can make the same statement, as a blatantly anti-muni broadband bill was introduced in the legislature last week. The bill was so stringent that it would have made the Kansas City/Google deal impossible, which is a good example of a public/private partnership that brings a lot of benefit to the residents and businesses of the city.
But the Internet exploded, and the bill has been tabled for the time being." You do have to give Kansas Senator Julia Lynn some credit for honesty, as she remarked, ""I visited with industry representatives, and they have agreed to spend some time gathering input before we move forward with a public hearing," she said."
At least she is not shy about admitting that the incumbents are telling her what to do, rather than the citizens that she supposedly represents.
These kinds of bills are going to continue to pop up, because the incumbents have been successful in states like North Carolina, where a slightly less stringent bill was passed about three years ago.
I remain an optimist in spite of these attacks on communities, because there are ways to get Gigabit networks into communities even if the state legislature has made it difficult to do so. Over at WideOpen Networks, we're already well on the way to solving this problem for good.
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Net Neutrality court decision: No telling how this will turn out
A couple of weeks ago, a U.S. Appeals Court told the FCC that their net neutrality rule was invalid. This has caused a huge debate among broadband industry folks about what comes next. The court ruling hinges on the way the FCC categorizes services like TV, phone, and Internet as either a "telecommunications service" or an "information service." To make things even more complicated, the FCC definition of "common carrier" also factors into the rules.
I have read at least two dozen opinions about what all this means, and I have yet to see even one address what I think is the core problem: the FCC is trying to make rules about Internet use based on two definitions (information service, telecommunications service) developed decades ago when cable TV was based on a technology completely different from voice telephone service.
When we can deliver literally hundreds of services from competing providers over a single fiber strand to a customer, why are we trying to make rules based on outmoded and antiquated service classifications.
I have always been a contrarian with respect to net neutrality; despite protests from the incumbents over the FCC's net neutrality rules, I have always thought the incumbents were the biggest beneficiary of net neutrality, as it makes it more difficult to build a business case for a competitive network in a community. There is going to be some pain associated with migrating away from the current de facto incumbent monopolies that exist in most communities today. Better to get it over with sooner rather than later, and get more businesses and residents connected to a truly competitive fiber network, rather than trying to prop up the incumbents.
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Blackphone is a response to the NSA data capture
The Blackphone is a smartphone based on the Android OS, but with additional layers of security and encryption, giving Blackphone users secure use of email, messaging, and voice telephony.
It maybe that Snowden's leak of NSA data collection may turn out to have a silver lining, as we may see a market for these kinds of devices develop much faster than anyone would have thought.
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FCC net neutrality rules overturned....the Internet is not going to fill with tollgates
This CNet article is one of the best summaries of the foofaraw over the FCC net neutrality reversal.
I have always been a contrarian on this issue. The big fear is that if the incumbents are free to charge differential pricing for different kinds of content, content will get more expensive. The classic example, which is used in the article, is that Comcast or Verizon will charge subscribers $10 a month more to access Netflix or Youtube because those services use so much bandwidth.
My response is "So? They are running a business. They should be able to charge whatever they want. If they price their service too high, a truly open market will introduce competition and they will a) lose customers, or b) lower prices."
Now this is where some people will start grumbling about incumbent use of public right of way and the obligation of right of way users to be "fair."
If Comcast raises their prices on their old-fashioned copper infrastructure, it might create the right market conditions for a new company to lay fiber...in the right of way...and provide a better service at lower cost. Net Neutrality, as currently conceived, benefits the incumbents more than it hurts them by discouraging "true" pricing and thereby limiting competition. I suspect that the incumbents find it useful street theatre to complain about net neutrality but actually like it. It keeps the riff-raff start ups out of their markets.
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Google buys Nest for $3.2 billion
Google has purchased Nest, a maker of innovative thermostats and smoke detectors. The purchase is apparently for $3.2 billion.....which seems like an awful lot of money for a niche manufacturer of a niche product: "smart" thermostats. One has to wonder what Google has in mind for the technology it has just bought.
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WiFi sensors are tracking where you go
An article in the Wall Street Journal details a new business in Toronto that has placed WiFi sensors in major shopping and nightlife districts of the city. The sensors grab WiFi data from passing smartphones and builds profiles of what people are doing and where they are going. The data is sold to local businesses, who also allow the sensors to be placed inside their businesses. It is an interesting innovation, but has some troubling prospects for privacy. As we carry around our smartphones, tablets, and laptops, the MAC addresses in each of them provide a unique identifier for this kind of data collection. Once this kind of data is known to exist, it can be subpoenaed for civil and criminal investigations. And the government could use it as part of an investigation into your habits and whereabouts.
Maybe an Indiegogo-funded Faraday cage wallet for smartphones would be a good idea.
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The Internet is making us anxious
A new study suggests that being "connected" all the time takes a toll on our psyche. An experiment with hundreds of college students suggests that some cellphone users experience high levels of anxiety and lower academic performance because they cannot put the phone down.
I see this in some meetings, where younger people are obsessively playing with their phones while most folks over forty are more engaged in the meeting and paying more attention to what is actually happening in the room.
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Palm Coast FiberNET providing big benefits
MuniNetworks reports on the success of the City of Palm Coast's FiberNET project. The all fiber City-owned network is operated as a multi-service, multi-provider open network, and is delivering substantial savings to both public and private entities and businesses connected to the network. The project is in the black, and FiberNET is expected to pay back all of the initial City investment in less than six years. Design Nine provided the network design, the financial planning, and the project management for the City of Palm Coast.
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Microsoft moving agressively to encrypt customer data
My hat is off to Microsoft for their extremely aggressive efforts to encrypt customer data. In the wake of the Snowden leaks that revealed NSA collecting data from companies like Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Google, Yahoo!, and others, Microsoft has correctly recognized the serious impact that data collection could have on the company's bottom line, both in the U.S. and abroad.
Like most companies providing Internet-based services, the marketplace is global, and international customers are not going to be particularly happy that the NSA is collecting their email, text messages, and documents. Here is a snippet of what is being done, directly from Microsoft:
In light of these allegations, we’ve decided to take immediate and coordinated action in three areas:
- We are expanding encryption across our services.
- We are reinforcing legal protections for our customers’ data.
- We are enhancing the transparency of our software code, making it easier for customers to reassure themselves that our products do not contain back doors.
I never bought into the idea that these companies were actively cooperating with the NSA. It's just too easy to capture data streams from, say, a Microsoft data center somewhere else in the network.
There was a time when heavy encryption was processor-intensive and therefore expensive to do, but processing power is so cheap now it can be added without much cost or effort, and in the future, we will see nearly every personal and business communication that traverses the public Internet will be encrypted. It's just good business.
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