Technology Futures

Pete Ashdown, writing in The Salt Lake Tribune, discusses the reasoning behind community-owned broadband, in the context of the Utopia project, one of the country's biggest community broadband efforts. Here is a key portion of the article:

These interests go against broad long-term goals that infrastructure serves — facilitating economic exchange and the general welfare. If every airline was required to build their own airport and every shipping company needed their own road, America would be on par with Somalia as an economic force.

Fiber optics technology has vast capacity that allows multiple service providers of Internet, television and telephone to provide service to homes and businesses. UTOPIA and other open fiber optic networks throughout the world have demonstrated that this model provides a level playing field for competition, which in turn drives down prices for the customer and motivates quality service.

If your home is connected with UTOPIA fiber, you can choose from a variety of providers. If you are connected with Qwest ADSL2, you can choose from Qwest. If you are connected with Comcast cable, you can choose from Comcast. If either of these two companies raises its rates unexpectedly or gives you lousy service, your options are slim to nil for switching.

Utopia and other open access projects like (e.g. nDanville, The Wired Road, Palm Coast FiberNET, and others) are driving down the cost of telecom for residents, businesses, and institutions in their service areas, and service providers--especially smaller ones--are signing up to offer services. Some pundits insist that the open access model is "unproven," but their recommendation is to stick with what has NOT worked--the traditional retail triple play model. Community-owned retail triple play creates a one time decrease in telecom costs but lacks the choice and competition among providers that provides steady decreases in the cost of services and a steady increase in the kind and type of services that go far beyond the triple play of voice, TV, and Internet.

DefenseTech reports that a virus has been found in some SCADA systems. SCADA (Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition) is the software used for managing electric power grids, water and sewer systems, and other utilities. So far, the infections have been found in utility departments in the Far East, where the SCADA computers are older and not well maintained. What is worrisome is that someone, or some organization, is targeting SCADA systems. There is a reason why the U.S. military is beefing up spending on cyberwar and cybersecurity; the risk to the U.S. economy if there was a widespread failure of utility systems because of a concerted virus attack would be enormous.

Libraries have a bright future, particularly in small and medium–sized communities. As the Knowledge Economy continues to change the way business is conducted, both locally and globally, libraries can play an essential economic development role as well as enhance community and civic life. Indeed, by changing and adapting their role and mission slightly, libraries could enter a “Golden Age,” where the venerable institution plays a more central role in the community, with a commensurate increase in funding.

The traditional role of libraries is not going away. We still need access to books, but just as important, we need access to online resources as well. For more than a decade, libraries have provided free public access to the Internet, often at much higher speeds than are typically available from homes and some businesses. Even though access to the Internet is much more common than it was ten years ago, many libraries are expanding the number of Internet workstations because of steady demand for access. Just as libraries treat books as a shared resource that lowers the cost of access, libraries can subscribe to specialized commercial databases like Lexis/Nexis, legal databases, commercial databases, and other kinds of specialized information. The access to those specialized resources is then available to everyone in the community. Libraries can also share access to specialized local information as well, like GIS databases maintained by local governments. Citizens usually cannot afford the specialized software needed to make full use of such information, but a GIS workstation in the library makes that available to all.

As the cost of travel continues to increase, videoconferencing will play an increasingly important role as a way to participate in meetings without the expense of travel. The library can provision a conference room for video meetings; the space would be available to local leaders, citizens, and to business people. Business use of the facility would be based on payment of a modest fee, creating a new revenue stream for the library that would help offset the cost of support and maintenance.

Libraries have an important economic development role to play. Small businesses and entrepreneurial start–ups continue to create a large majority of jobs, and these smaller companies can benefit greatly from library–provided services, including reference desk services, access to online databases, use of “business quality” meeting rooms at the library for client meetings, and use of the videoconference equipment for business and client meetings. Some of these services, like meeting rooms and videoconference facilities, can be provided to businesses for a fee, creating new streams of revenue to support the expanded library mission.

Opportunities abound for libraries. The question is, "Will they adapt and change to take on new and important roles that will help promote improved use and adoption of broadband?"

Note: This article has been cross-posted at Broadband for America.

Here is a short note from an entrepreneur and venture capitalist in Florida who really gets the importance of broadband. He lists four critical reasons why broadband is important.

• Businesses can't survive without affordable, high capacity broadband.
• Broadband is now essential to K12 schools and higher education.
• Healthcare providers are now often the biggest users of broadband in a community, so lack of affordable, high performance broadband increases the cost of healthcare and limits delivery of healthcare services.
• Broadband is good for the environment. Energy conservation, preservation of the environment (e.g. storm and run off water monitoring, water quality, etc.), and energy management requires monitoring and connectivity.

Here is a question for community leaders and planners: Look at the four categories listed above and ask this question: "Do we want a large telephone or cable company making the decision about what kind of infrastructure is available in our community for business, health care, education, and the environment?"