Exploring the impact of broadband and technology on our lives, our businesses, and our communities.
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.
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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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iPhone is the best mobile Web browser
A new study of mobile Web browsers shows that the iPhone has captured the top spot, beating all other mobile phones and PDAs. The iPhone and the WiFi only iPod Touch not only have extraordinarily sharp and clear screens, they have big screens, and the touch interface makes browsing easy. Overall, the iPhone has a mix of features that makes it a very compelling device.
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WiMax and wireless need fiber
This article provides another example of the "no free lunch" principle as it applies to community wireless. Sprint is having trouble rolling out its WiMax service offering because of backhaul costs (you need fiber to the towers to provide adequate bandwidth) and subscribers are getting about 4 megabits of bandwidth--exactly what I was hearing years ago from knowledgeable wireless experts.
WiMax is an excellent set of technologies that will eventually replace most WiFi, but wireless is only a partial solution for community broadband.
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E-voting costs 866% more
A study by a watchdog e-voting group in Maryland called SaveOurVotes found that in that state, the switch to electronic voting machines raised the cost of elections by 866%.
But wait, there's more! The counties are still paying off a $67 million dollar loan needed to purchase the machines, even though the machines were found to have serious security flaws and have had to abandoned in favor of the older and more secure optical scanning equipment--which is much less expensive.
The only good thing about this story is that the state did eventually do the right thing and revert to a more secure voting system. But the taxpayers still have to pick up the tab for a lot of bad decisions.
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Find your spot
Find Your Spot is an online relocation service that helps business owners and prospective employees find a place to live that matches personal preferences like the weather, arts & culture, recreation, education, the cost of living, health care, and the local economy.
Here is a key quote from the FAQ portion of the site:
Thanks to advances in technology and the economy, more people than ever are choosing where to live based on the factors that really matter to them — the weather, schools, recreational activities, cost of living, and general quality of life.
Notice that they are saying job seekers and relocating businesses are interested in personal and life style factors, not the availability of water and sewer in the industrial park. A community that is offered as a pick is going to be much more likely to get someone to move there if that community has a lively community portal, lots of recently updated community and civic Web sites, and attractive government, Chamber, and economic development Web sites.
Who in your community is responsible for the long term strategy of ensuring the community or region looks great on the Web? What specific activities are they doing regularly to ensure a job searcher or a relocating business thinks, "This community looks like a great place to live and to work?"
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Best small places to live and to work
In a just released Forbes survey, Blacksburg, Virginia is ranked tenth in the nation as one of the best small places to live and to work. If you live in a small community, it is worth spending some time reviewing the Forbes study. Of the nine factors they use to rank communities, four of the nine are related directly to quality of life. These factors are Culture and Leisure, Crime Rate, Educational Attainment, and Cost of Living.
Among the other factors, Cost of Doing Business is one that any community can work on quickly. Our work at Design Nine takes us to small communities throughout the United States, and one of the most glaring problems I see over and over again is the lack of good "Class A" office space in smaller towns and regions. Too many communities are still trying to bring retail back to Main Street, when they should be rehabbing storefronts and second floor space for small businesses and entrepreneurs.
When Norton, Virginia rehabbed an old downtown hotel for high tech start ups, including affordable fiber to the building, Main Street blossomed as the office workers in the building shopped and ate downtown. The spacious lobby of the building regularly hosts community dinners, weddings, and special events, so the investment does double duty--how many weddings have been held in the typical industrial park incubator building?
The biggest mistake a small community can make these days is to put too much emphasis on business and industrial parks far from traditional downtowns--by making modest investments in high quality office space in traditional downtowns, you get a much bigger community and economic development impact. And as always, fiber has to be part of the mix.
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The first iPhone competitor
Sprint is touting a new Samsung phone that is very similar to the iPhone. One of the most notable differences is that the new phone runs on Sprint's EVDO data network, giving it email and Web access speeds 4-5 times faster than AT&T's EDGE data network. Apple has always maintained that it used the slower network to provide better battery life. But this new phone is a good thing; competition always brings lower prices and more features, and this will force Apple and AT&T to get a more capable iPhone to market. Perhaps more importantly, it may force AT&T to improve both its voice and its data networks. The most common complaint I hear from iPhone users is that the AT&T network has poor coverage.
If you have not had a chance to try out an iPhone, stop in an Apple or AT&T store to take a look, especially at the Web and email features. The iPhone is truly revolutionary, and is just the first of an entirely new kind of mobile device that most of us will have within five years.
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Is YouTube the new TV?
Recently, when we have had people over to house for dinner or when at someone else's home, I notice that a common topic of discussion is what is showing on YouTube. Everyone has a story about some usually goofy thing they saw recently on the video site. Anecdotally, several people have shared that they often just spend a little time in the evening goofing off on YouTube. This is usually followed by the admission they don't turn on the TV much anymore.
Communities who think that DSL and wireless services are adequate with respect to bandwidth are going to be very disappointed, as neither technology is capable of delivering large amounts of video to thousands or ten of thousands of residential customers, no matter what you read about the amazing abilities of WiMax to bring world peace, solve human aging, and deliver massive bandwidth to everyone at the same time. WiMax is a terrific technology that is much better than WiFi, but the amount of actual bandwidth that WiMax will actually be able to deliver to residential and business users is not going to support heavy IP-TV use (i.e. YouTube, movies on demand, TV show downloads, etc.). WiMax has the capability of reaching more premises by virtue of being able to get a signal over longer distances than WiFi. But as you extend the reach of a wireless signal, you also spread the amount of usable bandwidth over a larger number of subscribers, in most cases. This means the amount of per subscriber bandwidth may not increase significantly.
Wireless is part of a complete solution, but fiber is needed alongside it to meet the fast-growing video demands of residences and businesses.
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