Technology Futures

A lengthy discussion on SlashDot highlights a new tactic by Amazon. The book distribution giant is trying to muscle out other print on demand services by forcing authors who use print on demand to use Amazon's print on demand (POD) service or else--the "else" being Amazon won't list their book.

Amazon has every right to do this, but it will be interesting to see if this works in their benefit or not. It would appear that with this new approach, Amazon wants to be both book distributor and book publisher. The two are not necessarily compatible, and it is not clear to me that this heavy-handed tactic will work.

Authors who use POD are either "vanity" authors without any identifiable audience or have some valuable information with an identified niche audience. In both cases, marketing will be up to the author; Amazon is not going to be able to add any value here, so the author can just as easily use some other POD service. In the end, book buyers who have made a buying decision by landing on the author's Web site or through some other route are going to click on a link to make the purchase. Most buyers won't care if the link goes to Amazon or to some other POD service.

An Australian wireless ISP who has operated a WiMax network for more than a year unleashed a blistering attack on the protocol, calling it a "disaster" and that it "failed miserably." Unfortunately, the article provides little detail on exactly what frequencies were used (WiMax is a catch all term for the protocol, which can use several different chunks of frequency spectrum). The interesting thing about the comments is that the firm is planning to deploy more traditional WiFi as part of their wireless network. This article illustrates that wireless systems are not a panacea, and that they have to designed and engineered carefully to get good performance.

The City of Seattle, which selected the open access, open services model as a general direction for its municipal broadband effort last year, is planning to issue an RFP to actually select a fiber to the home vendor. City officials continue to be dismayed with the service offerings from the incumbent telephone and cable companies.

Christopher Mitchel of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance has written an article in the current issue of Broadband Properties. It is an excellent analysis of municipal and community broadband that presents a compelling argument that only integrated wireless andfiber community/municipal networks are going to be able to support the kinds of applications and services needed, especially services needed to support businesses and economic development.

Here is a key quote:

Those who expect a future without wires are sadly mistaken. Existing wireless networks are perfectly adequate for voice, email, or Internet surfing, but their limitations preclude high quality videophone applications and other bandwidth-intensive applications."

Mitchell argues, as I and others have, that wireless is a necessary component of any community or municipal broadband effort, but that wireless will evolve (as it already is doing) into primarily a conduit for mobile access to services. Fiber will be required in virtually all residences and businesses because video in all its forms will need the very high capacity that fiber offers.

Read the whole thing; it is well worth printing out and distributing to others who are interested in community broadband.