Exploring the impact of broadband and technology on our lives, our businesses, and our communities.
Community broadband, the rural economy, and commuting
The sharp increases in gas and diesel fuel are raising the cost of commuting. Even if fuel prices recede (as they did after the '73 oil crunch), it seems likely that we will never see $2 gas again, and it may be that $3 gas becomes the new normal.
While the cost of fuel affects everyone to some extent, rural communities may be at most risk. Many workers in rural towns drive long distances to work, and a doubling of the cost of such drives may make it too expensive to make those commutes for a $12 or $14 per hour job.
Like the Chinese ideogram that can be read both as "danger" and "opportunity," the fuel crisis may, over the long term, be an opportunity for some rural towns, and could be the end of others. If it is too expensive to drive long distances to work, some workers and families may move closer to the work, further reducing the viability of some rural communities that are already struggling with long, slow declines in population.
But some businesses may decide to move closer to workers, and rural communities with the right economic development strategy to attract such businesses may have an edge--if they have good quality of life, attractive and vibrant downtowns, and .... broadband.
Community broadband projects can have a double impact. Properly designed community networks that extend affordable broadband into residential neighborhoods and along rural roads can bring new kinds of work from home opportunities to a rural workforce--getting them off the road completely and eliminating long commutes entirely. Fiber in business and industrial parks can attract businesses, which won't even consider some communities unless fiber services are available.
Rural communities will have to respond to the fuel increases with well thought out, long term strategies to help reduce commuting costs for their residents. Those that don't will see more workers and families moving away--reluctantly, but leaving nonetheless.
Technology News:
Fuel surcharges as a hidden cost of doing business
Look for "fuel surcharges" to rapidly increase the cost of certain kinds of services. Our last Fedex bill included a $10 fuel surcharge on top of the normal $48 delivery charge for a single package. It's hard to imagine, given the volume of packages that Fedex handles, that every package now requires a 20% surcharge.
Technology News:
Tempe muni wireless falls short
Tempe, Arizona's foray into community and municipal wireless has not worked out as expected. Like many other communities that have tried the same thing and have also failed, Tempe tried to avoid spending any money. They simply granted an untested wireless firm access to city lightpoles and structures for wireless equipment. The private firm had to bear the entire cost of build out. The wireless system was also not seen as reliable as a wired system, and the wireless firm has not been able to attract many subscribers.
The lesson learned is that there is no free lunch for community broadband. Communities that spend very little are getting very little in return, and if all of the risk is left in the private sector, the private sector won't come or won't stay long. Another lesson is that building out without a solid business plan to attract customers is also a non-starter. The right approach is to target underserved areas and/or to be able to offer innovative services that are not already available from other providers.
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Video is eating up Internet capacity
A senior AT&T official has indicated that video is eating up Internet capacity at a rapid rate, and predicted that in three years, the demand for video in all forms, especially HD video, will put enormous strains on the Internet and Internet access providers like AT&T. Here is the key quote:
Video will be 80 percent of all traffic by 2010, up from 30 percent today,"
Communities that are not making plans now to invest in telecom infrastructure will find attracting and retaining businesses far more difficult, as business relocation will be increasingly driven by the availability of affordable broadband services.
Technology News:
GPS not an autopilot
When I tell people that I don't use a GPS device in my car, they are often shocked. The seem to assume that anybody who has a day job in the telecom business should be using the popular devices routinely.
This article demonstrates perfectly what happens when blind faith in technology replaces common sense. A bus driver, staring perhaps a bit too much at the GPS on his dash, sheared off the top of a tour bus by trying to drive through a low tunnel, apparently because the route was displayed on his GPS. Fortunately, the occupants of the bus received only minor injuries. It could have been much worse.
Technology News:
BitTorrent use up 24%
The use of BitTorrent, a peer to peer file sharing service, is up 24% in the past four months. Like the big jump in YouTube traffic in December, some it may be related to the writer's strike. The lack of anything new on that old-fashioned TV thingy in the rec room apparently had people headed in droves to the Internet for some mindless entertainment. And of course, the Internet has plenty of mindless entertainment. Sadly, almost any random 2 minute video clip on YouTube is funnier than most half hour TV comedies.
What's coming? I think it is now safe to say that TV is over. It will be a long slow decline, but the writer's strike created the tipping point that economists always look for. The Internet access providers can monkey around with traffic management to try to discourage the use of services like BitTorrent, but that's just silly over the long term. Imagine any other business saying, in effect, "We're glad you love our product. Please stop using it." That's what the Internet providers and the entertainment industry are doing with their lawsuits, "Internet toll booths," and traffic manipulation.
The solution is to start building networks that are focused on delivering services--any services, including things like BitTorrent--rather than just blindly delivering bandwidth by the bucket. That model doesn't work. If it did, we'd all have a fiber connection by now.
Technology News:
All your email is spam
A new study indicates that 92% of all email sent in the first quarter of 2008 was spam. In other words, all of us, users and service providers alike, are spending a fortune to haul worthless and contemptible spam traffic across the Internet.
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Myka, BitTorrent, and the slow death of TV
There is lots of video on the Internet, but you don't always want to watch it in a little window on your computer. If you have ever tried to play a YouTube video clip with three or four people peering over your shoulder, all trying to see the tiny picture and listen to the tinny sound, you know what I mean.
This new device, called a Myka, is just one of a new generation of devices that takes IP-based video, movies, and TV clips and puts them on your TV (bigger, better picture and better sound) without a lot of fuss.
The device looks suspiciously like an AppleTV box, which is no accident--the AppleTV pioneered the Internet-direct-to-TV device marketplace. But the Myka simply takes BitTorrent streams, stores them on a hard drive in the Myka box, and then gives you an easy way to play them on your TV.
This is the kind of box that makes Comcast and Verizon network managers lie awake at night in a cold sweat. As more and more people simply skip TV altogether for the convenience of Internet-delivered video of all kinds, the old copper-based DSL and cable modem networks are groaning under the strain. These networks were all designed for the old, rub two sticks together Internet, where most people did nothing but email and a little light Web surfing. Video increases demand on these networks by a factor of 100 or more, meaning they just don't have enough bandwidth if everyone decides to watch the YouTube dog on a skateboard video at the same time. It's why places like Danville and Galax are building digital roads made of fiber. It is the new community broadband--digital roadways to every home and business.
Technology News:
Wireless requires a business plan
"Free wireless" is beginning to look a lot like "free lunch" -- it may not be possible. The City of Hartford, Connecticut embarked two years ago on an ambitious plan to provide free wireless service to large portions of the city. After two years and $800,000, there is little to show.
The Hartford project appears to be having difficulties similar to other early community wireless efforts: unjustified optimism about the ability of wireless signals to penetrate apartment and office buildings filled with steel reinforcement, and the lack of a business plan that provides for long term sustainability of the system.
In some quarters, there have been pronouncements that private sector wireless is not working (i.e. public/private partnerships), and that the only way to go is an all muni free or very low fee system. But it is not the nature of the partnership that is the core issue--it is the nature of the business model, which can be public, private, or a public/private partnership. Any of those can work and work well with the right business model.
Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Community broadband and community wireless projects are going to be very important to the economic future of many U.S. towns and cities, but it is not who owns it that determines success, it is whether or not the owners have a sustainable business plan.
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Undersea cables were cut by improper anchoring
The undersea fiber cables that were cut a couple of months ago were the subject of numerous conspiracy theories, but satellite photos have revealed the culprits--cargo ships that were anchored in the wrong place. Sometimes Occam's Razor (the simplest explanation is the likeliest one) is exactly right.
The object lesson for communities is to plan for cable outages by making sure local networks have redundant cable paths. Sometimes this is quite expensive to do when just getting started with community telecom investments, so an alternative to a second fiber cable is a high capacity wireless link that can handle local traffic (perhaps with somewhat less throughput) while repairs are made.
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