Exploring the impact of broadband and technology on our lives, our businesses, and our communities.
Wireless wars: Confusing the customer
This article illustrates perfectly everything that is wrong with wireless broadband, and in particular with cellular wireless. As Verizon rolls out the iPhone on its older and slower CDMA network, it is also taking a page from the AT&T playbook of three years ago. At that time, AT&T touted its "superfast" 3G network for the iPhone, even though it was not widely available at the time; most early iPhone users found themselves accessing AT&T's slower Edge network, which is closer in performance to Verizon's CDMA network.
So today, Verizon is touting its "superfast" LTE network for the iPhone, even though it is not widely available. And of course, all these "superfast" speeds being touted are modified with the infamous "...up to...," meaning you won't get anything like the advertised speed, because lots of other cellphone users will be trying to access the same radio on the same celltower. So if LTE offers speeds "up to" 12 megabits/second, and you and nineteen other people happen to be accessing the same radio on the same cell tower, what you really get, on average, is something like 600 kilobits/second. Not at all bad for casual data use on a cellphone, but you won't be streaming a Netflix movie over that connection. And if some is trying to stream a Netflix movie over that radio on that tower, expect your speed to be more like dial up.
The cellular voice/data wireless network is an amazing technological tour de force, and its continued expansion and availability are critical to supporting our desire for ubiquitous mobile access. You can argue about the cost, but it works amazing well. But it is not a replacement for fiber connectivity to the home and business. In some areas, particularly some rural areas that need four to six years to get fiber to most residents, cellular wireless will be an important interim option to get folks off dial up. But communities that have fiber will have an important economic development and jobs development tool that communities betting on wireless won't have.
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An honest speed test
Virginia Tech has an excellent speed test. Try it and see how your connection rates.
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Verizon now has the iPhone. Ho-hum.
Everyone else on the InterTubes is writing about the release of the Verizon iPhone, but I'm having a hard time working up much enthusiasm. Here's why:
- Despite some early network capacity problems, my AT&T service has been excellent. I travel all over the country, including a lot of rural areas and big cities, and my AT&T iPhone works virtually everywhere. I get the fast 3G service almost everywhere. AT&T really has spent a lot of money upgrading their network, and it shows.
- The AT&T network is GSM, unlike Verizon's CDMA network. The GSM network is able to handle voice and data traffic on the phone simultaneously, while the CDMA network can't do that. Is it a big deal? Maybe not, but I often put my phone on speaker while I check mail or look up something on the Web. Can't do that with the Verizon iPhone. And GSM phones work almost everywhere in the world. I know a lot of people don't care about that.
- Why spend the money? Switching from AT&T to Verizon means getting a new phone, because of the differences between GSM and CDMA. Unless you have a fairly old AT&T contract, a switcher can expect to spend between $100 and $200 in penalties and will also have to pay for a new phone. For basically the same service. Now I do know at least one person who lives in an area where there is no AT&T service, and I know there are more, but these folks are switchers, they are brand new customers--a big difference.
Verizon is offering one thing you can't get from AT&T right now, which is the ability use your Verizon iPhone as a mini WiFi hotspot for up to 5 other devices. But there is a gotcha--while you are doing that, you can't make calls. And I suspect AT&T will finally allow tethering with less fuss, so that you can use your phone as a mobile modem for your laptop. The hotspot is not a big deal, as I can do that from my laptop.
I also expect AT&T to moderate some of their service plans to help keep customers. Competition is good--I'm glad Verizon has the iPhone now, as it will help keep AT&T more customer-focused. And remember: Apple offered the iPhone to Verizon first, and Verizon turned them down. Let's hope that whoever made that decision is repairing cellphones in Afghanistan.
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New Hampshire governor stresses importance of broadband
It is still rare to have a politician address the issue of broadband in any sensible way, but incoming Governor John Lynch just set the bar a little higher by noting that ubiquitous access to "big" broadband is essential to jobs growth and economic development. Here is what he has to say.
Today, however, infrastructure is more than roads and bridges. Our companies and citizens need access to high-speed Internet to compete in this economy. Through the federal stimulus, we are leveraging more than $66 million in federal and private funds to build an expanded broadband highway for New Hampshire. A project that will support 700 jobs, improve communications, and make it easier to connect all parts of our state to high-speed and affordable broadband. Let us build the information highway of the 21st century. Let us bring affordable broadband to all of New Hampshire.
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Shopping and the death of search
Some of my Christmas shopping included trying to evaluate some items via the Web. The purchases were just large enough to justify trying to read some reviews and pick the "best" rated item. But I found the effort trying at best.
We have all been bombarded with these "work from home" advertisements. Many of these schemes involve setting up link farms peppered with (mostly) Google ads and a few links to legitimate sites. Enough people have bought into this scam to the point that they are now cluttering up search engine results. And based on my experience, I actually think the search engines are promoting the rank of these sites precisely because they carry ads. So the effect is that legitimate sites that carry genuinely useful information are crowded out by link farm sites with useless information, a few mostly useless links, and lots of ads.
Search engines are not a free service. We pay by giving up some of our privacy, and we pay by clicking on ads. Search engines still deliver good value, but they may be debasing their own currency.
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Is the Scuderi engine a game-changer?
The Scuderi Group have announced a new internal combustion engine that sure looks like a game changer. At this point, I can guess some of you have already started to yawn, as a whole host of "game changing" internal combustion engine designs over the past thirty years have made than claim (can anyone spell "adiabatic?").
But the Scuderi split cycle engine design is the result of more than twenty U.S. patents, and for engine buffs, the detailed descriptions of the engine, how it works, and why it works is jaw-dropping.
- How about a 1 mm clearance between the cylinder and the cylinder head?
- How about outward opening valves?
- How about compression ratios of 75:1 with internal cylinder pressures of up to 1,885 psi?
- How about fuel injectors that push the fuel in at pressures up to 3,000 psi?
- The Scuderi engine fires After Top Dead Center, which has always been considered a bad/difficult thing to do.
- The engine uses a split cycle configuration, which means it can store waste energy as compressed air to inject into the next firing cycle, increasing overall efficiency.
This short list of innovations does not do the engine justice, but think about a car with a Scuderi engine. My four door sedan, which has a 1.8 liter engine, would shed several hundred pounds of weight and handle very nicely with a smaller Scuderi engine, and would likely go from 32 mpg on the highway to something over 50 mpg. With gas prices passing $3 a gallon and headed towards $4/gallon, squeezing more mileage out of fossil fuels is going to be very attractive. The Scuderi engine can burn gas, diesel, propane, natural gas, and almost any kind of biofuel and renewable fuel. It will be interesting to see how long it takes for a major car manufacturer to bring a Scuderi-powered vehicle to market.
Scuderi, Volkswagen, and other manufacturers that are focused on high efficiency internal combustion engines are going to make life very difficult for the hybrid and electric car market. The hybrids, with their expensive batteries and complicated drive trains, are not price competitive with high efficiency internal combustion vehicles. And it is a myth that the hybrids are "zero emission." You have to charge the batteries with some kind of electric power, and in the U.S., it is probably coal.
Finally, and I have been ranting about this for years, we simply don't have an electric distribution grid that can handle charging large numbers of electric vehicles. It requires a massive investment in new Smart Grid technology, including fiber broadband infrastructure to every premise, to make this work well. We need and want Smart Grid for other kinds of energy conservation reasons, but I'm betting Scuderi engines are going to be more common than hybrid vehicles over the next ten years.
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Digital magazine subscriptions: going up or going down?
Here is a report that tablet devices like the iPad are not delivering the predicted online magazine subscriptions. I have been saying for some time that these new devices have the potential to save the ailing magazine and newspaper industries. But I think it is too soon to say that data from essentially just one or two publishers is a trend.
Note that I used the word "potential" when talking about this. The publishers could easily screw up this opportunity to save themselves. The article talks about the big drop in online sales of Wired magazine. But here is the problem. A lot of magazines have decided that declining attention spans means that a magazine should look like a Web site--filled with short, fluffy news items. You have to plow through dozens of pages of trivia before getting to two or three mildly interesting articles. Why pay for that?
A second problem is the cost of subscriptions. Publishers are still struggling with how to wean their operations off the relatively high revenue of ads plus subscriptions to a much lower revenue stream online (but note that distribution costs approach zero). So many digital magazine and newspaper subscriptions cost nearly as much as the paper version, which makes no sense at all.
I suspect the successful digital publishers of tomorrow will be start-ups--firms that start with a business model tailored for tablet devices. Many of the old line publishing firms are going to go the way of buggy whip manufacturers.
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Isle of Jersey to get Gigabit to the home
The tiny Isle of Jersey will be getting Gigabit fiber to the home as part of an initiative by the incumbent Jersey Telecom to replace all copper-based services with fiber over the next five years. Maybe some U.S. incumbents should make a trip to Jersey (in the English Channel just off the coast of France) to learn how to construct a business case that allows dumping 100 year old copper technology for something a little newer.
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Demystifying what appears to be a conundrum
Bob Frankston, who is smart enough to know why X.400 never worked the way the policy wonks thought it would, has an excellent and very readable short paper called Demystifying Networking that is one of the best overviews I have read on broadband, where we came from, and where we want to go. Take a few minutes and read it in its entirety.
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More on Burlington Telecom (BT)
The always excellent Muni Networks has an article that sheds additional light on Burlington Telecom. The article includes a response from Tim Nulty, who helped start the BT venture.
Nulty sheds some light on the early take rate targets; BT had financial plan pegged to meeting take rate projections, and the network was meeting those take rates. The financial pro formas Nulty was using shows that BT was on track not only to cover operating expenses but to begin paying back the borrowed funds. But inexplicably, after Nulty left, the marketing effort that was in place and was meeting take rate targets was dropped. Predictably, the number of new customers being added also dropped, and at that point, the project began sliding downhill financially.
This is Nulty's side of the story, and there are still several other points of view. But Nulty's explanation rings true and sheds some light on what may have happened. A good marketing effort is critical, and it has to be sustained over time. Community networks that take a field of dreams approach to marketing, "If we build it and then just sit back and wait for customers" will have trouble meeting financial targets, just as any other business.
Community-owned telecom infrastructure cannot be treated like sidewalks--you build and let it sit for thirty years. Governing boards and senior staff have to have a solid business plan and demonstrated experience managing substantial business enterprises. A community broadband network cannot be treated like a typical nonprofit-- which typically have a narrow mission and no paying customers.
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