Technology Futures

Barnes and Noble is about to release an ebook reader called Nook. The bookseller and publisher wants to compete with the Amazon Kindle and the Sony Reader. It is easy to find people who say they love their Kindle, but I remain skeptical. I do think that within a few years, we will reading many more books using some kind of reader device, but I think the long-rumored Apple tablet is likely to crush these dedicated devices.

One of the arguments for dedicated book readers is that it is no different than lugging around a paperback--which I do all the time when I travel. But a paperback can be handled roughly--I don't have to worry about cracking the screen of a paperback, it never runs out of battery life, and it requires no charger. Once you have an ebook reader, you have to think constantly about charging it, loading the books on it, handling carefully, and even losing it--lose a paperback, and you are out $10. Lose or misplace your ereader, and you are out hundreds of dollars, and the hassle of replacing all the books stored on it.

A tablet device the size of the Nook or the Kindle that also does email, Web browsing, and handles light office tasks is going to be much more popular than adding another electronic device to your life.

Jeff Daily at App Rising reports that Utopia, the big community-owned fiber project in Utah, is having substantial success getting homeowners to pay for the fiber coming to their homes--to the tune of $3,000 per home. This may sound like a lot of money, but the market value of a residential home with fiber increases by $5,000 to $7,000, according to a Render study.

Homeowners routinely spend $5,000 or $10,000 or more on home renovations like kitchen makeovers and bathroom upgrades, and they rarely see even a 1 for 1 return on the investment. Brigham City, Utah is also building fiber to the home, and they are using a model I have long advocated--a pass by and tap fee. Brigham City has created a special assessment area and is charging property owners a fair portion of the fiber network, just as cities and counties do routinely with water and sewer pass by and tap fees. As citizens and businesses begin to read about the advantages of community-owned fiber (lower prices, more choice), it will become easier for these projects to start with user-based financing from day one.

Spain has decided that broadband is a "right," and is going to beginning legislating price and speed for bandwidth services. In the short term, this may get more affordable broadband to some rural areas of Spain, but in the long term, this kind of legislation tends to discourage innovation and competition.

In the U.S., it is tempting to look at rural areas the lack of broadband alternatives and think that legislation is needed, but there are options, like having local and regional governments make investments in broadband infrastructure and make it available to the private sector, which creates true competition. And this is already working and creating jobs in places like Danville, Virginia and Galax, Virginia. In both communities, open access fiber networks are creating private sector jobs and attracting new businesses to the downtown areas where fiber is available.

If you ever wondered how the "free" video channels on the Intertubes could make any money, it is becoming apparent that the plan all along was to turn them into TV, complete with ads. And you can't turn the ads off. The stop button on the players does not work while the ads play.

It's not really surprising--someone has to pay for the bandwidth to deliver video. But with the emergence of ad-supported online video, it is another nail in the coffin of old-fashioned analog TV. The cable companies, in the early and middle years of this decade, bet many billions that they would be able to maintain control of their TV monopoly, but they are being squeezed because their business model for delivering Internet is broken--no matter how much bandwidth a cable customer uses watching online video instead of old-fashioned "TV," the cable company does not make a cent more. And even the newer cable systems, because they used an antiquated shared bandwidth model, can't keep upping the amount of bandwidth indefinitely without degrading their TV service.

They could quickly and easily dig themselves out of this hole by changing their business model to an open access, service-oriented architecture, but so far, they seem to prefer trying to hold on to their monopoly instead.