Exploring the impact of broadband and technology on our lives, our businesses, and our communities.
The Balkanization of telecom
In a discussion on LinkedIn, Michael Elling wrote, "Supply follows demand not the other way around." Exactly. I've been making this argument for years. Too many communities get tied up debating how to improve backhaul in and out of the community when they should be pumping intra-community demand by adding shared infrastructure and driving up demand. That local demand will attract investment to build more capacity to the community. It's not a guaranteed strategy in all cases, but it's already happening all over the country--but not in a good way.
The problem right now, and Blacksburg is an excellent example, is that we are seeing micro-monopolies developing as fiber providers target low hanging fruit in a community, sign up unsuspecting businesses and institutions onto long term contracts, then use the contracts to finance a fiber build. Presto...wherever that fiber goes, the odds of any other fiber provider adding more fiber is driven close to zero. So instead of having the community under the thumb of one monopoly provider, we now have portions of the community divided up, each under the thumb of smaller providers, each provider fat and happy in their own little monopoly zone.
Shared infrastructure mitigates this once and for all.
Technology News:
Frontier signs on the City of Eagan open access network
Frontier Communications has signed a master network agreement with the City of Eagan, making Frontier the first service provider on the City's AccessEagan fiber network. Design Nine has worked closely with the City over the past several years to help plan, design, build, and manage the high performance network. Eagan is now a "Gigabit City," with a Gigabit standard fiber connection on the network. The nearly seventeen miles of Metro Ethernet, carrier class fiber passes thousands of businesses, including companies like Blue Cross and Delta.
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Community news and projects:
The Creative Class is flunking out
Robert Bell of the Intelligent Community Foundation has a must read article on how the Creative Class (Richard Florida's brainchild) is not delivering the results many cities were expecting. To the extent that a city is able to recruit Creative Class residents and workers, those upscale residents tend to displace blue collar workers and raise the cost of living in the area, which cancels out some or all of the positive effects. Bell points out that technology can make cities more efficient, but that the real potential for technology to have transformational effects is in rural areas. I agree, and the digital divide in the U.S. has been and still is largely between urban/suburban areas with generally available moderate broadband speeds, and rural areas with no or grossly inadequate broadband.
Technology News:
FCC can enforce cell tower site approvals
The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the FCC can enforce "reasonable" approval times for cell tower site applications, meaning that local governments can't stall applications. The FCC has wanted 90 day and 150 day deadlines for approval of cell tower site applications. As I read the article, it does not mean all tower site applications have to be approved by local government, but the local government has to approve or reject the application within the FCC "reasonable time" definition.
Technology News:
Google+ fixes and misses
Google+ was recently updated with an improved interface, but this article points out that Google+ still has a big problem with the way it handles your identify. Currently, Google ties your Google+ account to a single Google email account, which is not the way most of the other big social network sites do it--they typically let you assign a primary email account, have secondary accounts, and don't force you to sign in or use your email address as your userid.
As Facebook has slowly ruined what little interface consistency it had, I'd really like to see Google+ become a viable alternative, particularly for business use--Facebook is wretched in that regard. But Google+ still has some growing up to do.
Technology News:
Knowledge Democracy:
"Now is no time to claim we can't get real Internet...."
Chris Mitchell at MuniNetworks has a great point, and one I've argued for a long time: If most houses in America already have two cables (electric and phone), how is it that it is just too darn hard to run a third tiny cable, much smaller than an electric cable, to most homes? And from the business side, if the phone company and the electric company can make money from providing one service on their respective cables, how is it that the incumbents claim they can't make money from a cable that can deliver several services to a home or business? Something is not quite right with that argument--and we know, as we do financial and business plans for multi-service networks all the time...there is plenty of money for broadband. It's just a matter of knowing how to put the business plan together....and picking the right business plan.
Technology News:
Death of TV: Part XXXVIII: The Zero TV households
All is coming to pass as I have predicted...this is my 38th posting about the Death of TV, and the mainstream media is finally beginning to notice. The San Francisco Chronicle has an article about what is being called "Zero TV" households, meaning that there is neither a cable TV nor a satellite TV subscription at that address. Instead, as I've been writing about for years, people are watching "TV" on their Internet feed instead, using services like Hulu and Netflix to get access to far more content than is available on the traditional cable/satellite feeds, and in a much more convenient fashion.
For communities stuck with "little broadband," the math is pretty grim. With several computers, tablets, and smartphones in the average home, every single device is now a "TV," and so you have to think about the aggregate bandwidth needed to deliver good quality video to several devices in the home at the same time. This eliminates DSL completely, despite the every present claims that DSL/copper twisted pair will get faster "Real Soon Now." It is possible to push 20 or 30 megabits over copper twisted pair, but the unspoken assumption is that you are a relatively short distance from the DSLAM and you have brand new, very high quality copper cable connecting you to that switch. But that's not the case in most rural areas of the U.S. still stuck with DSL. Their copper cable is often decades old.
Wireless broadband is also problematic. Despite the grand claims for 4G/5G/6G/UmpteenG cellular data, the bandwidth caps make it prohibitively expensive to sit at home and watch TV over your cellular data connection. Fixed point broadband wireless (i.w. WiFi, WiMax, etc.) requires line of site, which is difficult and/or expensive in most areas of the country. While fixed point wireless is going to be a very important bridge technology in many rural areas, fiber is and will remain the goal for the U.S.
Skeptics who claim it is too expensive to run fiber to most homes and businesses forget that A) it was possible to run telephone and electric service to homes and businesses decades ago and that was the old One Service--One Cable business model; B) the new fiber cable can deliver many services simultaneously, which changes the business model and makes it financially viable.
The cable and telephone companies have chosen not to compete; instead they are going to state legislatures to get laws passed forbidding municipal and county networks from getting started.
But don't worry...to paraphrase Yoda from Star Wars..."There is...another way." Restrictive legislation is nothing but a speed bump, and it's nothing to worry about....even in North Carolina.
http://www.sfgate.com/business/technology/article/Broadcasters-worry-about-Zero-TV-homes-4415896.php
Newsletter:
What Good are Libraries?
An interesting article reporting on Lou Zacharilla's comments from his attendance at a conference on the future of libraries. Zacharilla is the co-founder of the Intelligent Community Forum. Zacharilla noted that....
a 2012 survey of more than 7,000 libraries in the U.S. revealed that key library services now include computer training, electronic job search skills, how to access online databases and how to deal with e-government. In addition, in more than 60 percent of communities, libraries are the only source of free public access to computers, according to the survey.
Technology News:
Still time to register for Broadband Communities Summit 2013
Broadband Communities Summit ’13 covers the top broadband issues – with outstanding content and top-notch speakers.
There is a new track on Revenue Opportunities that includes a session on Telemedicine, and one on Revenue Opportunities for Networks that will demonstrate how generate the cash flow needed to make networks financially successful.
Design Nine will be there as an exhibitor--stop by and say hello, and I am speaking in a couple of sessions. Last year's conference was terrific--the Broadband Communities folks really work hard to deliver solid content at every session; this is not just a lot of corporate sales presentations.
Hotel rooms are still available at the conference price until Friday--don't wait.
Technology News:
More privacy concerns with Google Glass
The Telegraph has another article on the privacy issues surrounding Google Glass. The problem is that Google Glass will be sending every single interaction that the wearer has to Google, and that data will be added to the massive dossiers that Google already maintains on Internet users. Google has been very quiet about what they intend to do with the massive data streams that will be generated by Google Glass wearers.
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