Broadband

Here is a short, two page paper that defines the characteristics of a modern community broadband infrastructure designed specifically to encourage economic development and jobs creation. The overall approach is focused on public/private partnerships that creates new business and market opportunities for services providers so that local government telecom investments are not seen as "competing" with the private sector.

An interview with the new head of Qwest, Edward Mueller, has some surprising (or not so surprising) comments from the CEO. When asked about fiber to the neighborhood and fiber to the home, Mueller responded, "It's too expensive. We don't see the return."

There are still a lot of community leaders who doubt the importance of broadband, but one city official I spoke to earlier this week said they had a Fortune 500 company that told him the firm loses a million dollars an hour for every hour their Internet connection is down. This firm is urging the city to help get additional fiber cable paths in and out of the community so those kinds of outages can be avoided.

If you live in Paris and have the new 100 megabit fiber to the home service, it only takes about ten minutes to download a high quality version of a one hour TV show. Here in the U.S., the FCC has announced that more than 95% of the U.S. has broadband. The FCC defines "broadband" as "anything faster than 256 kilobits, or about 400 times slower than the current Parisian definition of broadband.

Two fiber cables on the floor of the Mediterranean were cut, causing huge disruptions in Internet service to the Mideast and Asia. A fisherman's anchor apparently snapped the two cables, which were the primary and backup links to a major Internet exchange point in Egypt.

The City of Danville, Virginia has a backlog of businesses waiting to get connected to its brand new open multi-service network (also sometimes called an open service provider network). Two service providers are offering business services on the network, and a local provider is delighted with being able to offer fiber services to its existing customers.

Galen Updike, with the State of Arizona, opened the Digital Cities Expo this morning, and told of speaking to a woman who was trying to run a business out of her rural home.

She said, "You know, I can do without public water--I can have my own well. I can do without public sewer--I can put in my own septic system. I can do without a paved road to my house. I can even do without electricity--I can generate my own. But without Internet access, my business will fail."

Bandwidth caps may finally get the light of day from broadband providers. The way we sell broadband is upside down from every other business. If you are an Internet service provider, you make the most money if your customer never uses your service. You make the least money if the customer uses your service a lot. This is why most of us have mediocre access to Internet-based services--selling broadband by the bucket is a lousy way to try to make a living if your customers expect you to refill the bucket a lot (and many customers do).

The community of Nuenen, Holland has great news for those interested in multi--service open networks. The community broadband project, which had hoped for a 35% take rate, has seen much, much better results:

"The 'pitch' in Nuenen is not about 'bandwidth' 'fibre' or anything techie. Nuenen has an elderly community, consequently Ons Net aimed to appeal to a 75 year old woman who does not own a computer nor used the internet," he explained.

Here is an article about how Northrop Grumman is moving jobs to small towns and cities. The company reports that labor savings can be more than 40%--a substantial amount that pays off year after year, and more than covers the initial cost of moving facilities. One of the locations cited is the small Virginia town of Lebanon. Lebanon is a small town located deep in the heart of the Blue Ridge mountains, a good 30 minute drive from the interstate.

Japan continues to rocket past the U.S. when it comes to fiber deployment. Japanese businesses and residents can get fiber broadband connections in more than a third of the country, compared to less than 2% of the U.S. Japanese broadband customers also pay much less; a 50 megabit fiber connection in Japan sells for under $30 a month.

The city of Minneapolis negotiated a deal with the wireless provider US Internet last year to provide a citywide wireless system. As part of that deal, the city is receiving about a half a million dollars a year for ten years. The funds will be used to support community portals for neighborhoods in the city. Planning for those portals is taking place right now. It is a great idea, but the city left a lot of money on the table.

Internet access providers in the UK are being challenged on their broadband speeds, which their customers claim are not as advertised. An independent study showed that 62% of customers were getting less than half the advertised bandwidth that their provider had promised.

Here at the office, I've been downloading a single file since 10 AM this morning. I'm writing this article at 5:30 PM. The file is not particularly large; it is six gigabytes, or about the size of one DVD. And the Design Nine offices are on a substantial network that supplies the entire business park. Trying to get this file on a DSL or cable connection would be even more painful.

This article talks about Japan's investment in broadband networks, including a nationwide fiber deployment with speeds of 100 megabits. The country has a built in advantage because of its small size; short distances between telephone switches and homes means DSL can run faster over existing copper cables--at speeds higher than is possible in most parts of the U.S. But the country regards copper as obsolete and sees DSL as a stopgap measure until fiber connections are ubiquitous.

There are many articles and commentary on the recent announcement by the Governor of Ohio to create a statewide broadband network. But it is not clear what the impact might actually be. If you read the Executive Order closely, what you see is that Ohio, in many ways, is just starting to catch up to other states.

Our local paper, the Roanoke Times, has a series of articles on broadband today. There is a nice chart on the front page of the paper comparing various connection speeds, starting with dial up and progressing to some of the incumbent fiber connections. But the chart tops out at 30 megabit fiber service, which is still well below what residents in other countries are getting today, and is also well below what some U.S. communities are planning for roll out in the next six to twelve months: 100 megabit fiber service.

Here is an interesting discussion from SlashDot. As Verizon brings fiber to a customer premise, they disconnect the copper phone line. This means it is no longer available for use by competitors, who can buy wholesale access to the line for voice and data services.

According to the latest international study on broadband use, the United States has fallen from 16th to 24th in number of households with broadband (53%). South Korea is the world leader, with more than 90% of homes connected. Japan, Germany, France, and the U.K are all well ahead of the U.S., so we cannot just dismiss South Korea's lead as simply a factor of household density.

FiOS is Verizon's fiber offering, which they are now rolling out in limited areas. According to this article from someone who signed up for FiOS TV and then dropped it, there may be some real limitations (note: scroll down the page a bit to the "FiOS TV" title).