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Chicago Proposes MAN (Metropolitan Area Network)
stumble writes: "This article lacks many details, but the idea is that Chicago wants to bring broadband to the masses and is accepting proposals to design and build a Metropolitan Area Network (MAN): 'The project, called CivicNet, is aimed at bringing a broadband network with integrated data, voice and video capabilities to every nook and cranny of Chicago over the next 10 years.'"
While I think it's great to see networking treated as a public utility, that seems like an awfully long time for a single deployment project. Unless they're planning to update their technologies over time, I don't imagine the last few people getting hooked up in 2012 will find today's broadband networking all that interesting. Would you really want your city to be rolling out 1992-era network technology this year? Of course, that's less true for really low-income families; if it's a choice between today's speeds and no connectivity at all, it's a no-brainer. And it's also perhaps the case that 10 years is the maximum time limit in the RFP; maybe bidders will propose to get the job done a lot faster. Should be an interesting one to watch, in any case, and I expect other cities will follow suit as more and more government functions migrate to the Web. In fact, it won't surprise me to see attempts to force Web-friendly cities into providing public net infrastructure; if the only way you can access a particular city service is via the city Web site, then one could make the case that the city needs to make sure all its citizens can get at the city Web site. I bet someone will file a suit to that effect at some point.
Just like the Atomic Bomb, the space program, and the Rural Electrification Project, right?
This is the nature of public utilities -- they are forced to install infrastructure everywhere, even in the unprofitable areas, in order to secure a monopoly franchise. But broadband is not going to be a regulated monopoly utility.
So what will this become, if anything? A city-promoted push to install broadband in profitable areas. The problem is, that broadband is already in most of those areas. So unless the city is going to cough up some money to fund building infrastructure that won't pay for itself, this probably won't go anywhere.
Incidentally, this only highlights how the process of widenening the gap between the haves and the have-nots occurs. The poor areas don't even have access to good technology, so it's harder to acquire skills in that technology, making it harder to break out of poverty, which means they stay poor, and continue to not have access to new technology, and so on.
Robotiq.com is heavily tested on animals
Well, it's a start, but as soon as governments can proove that they can hire and keep qualified, intelligent and committed people, they could do something like this even cheaper, considering that they wouldn't have to worry about making a profit. Companies do a shoddy job anyways; anyone who owns a broadband connection from a private firm knows that the whole 'the private sector has to garauntee higher services levels' argument is bullshit. Cap this with the fact that they wouldn't have to turn a profit if they built and managed most of it themselves (just the pipes mind you .. there are tons of companies that could provide the email and webspace and all that extra crap lots of people won't even use thanks to hotmail etc), and I think you'd end up with a dynamite broadband infrastructure.
It's a shame no one likes the taxes and governments anymore tho, as I realize that it'll be a cold day in the next ice age before the pendulum starts swinging back to this mentality.
"Old man yells at systemd"
That's why we they should be using fiber. Fiber is very nicely scaleable, start with 10mbit because it's cheap then you can scale to 10gigabit by just changing the routers on either end of you cables. (and of course 10gigabit/s isn't the ultimate maximum, Nortel/JDS Uniphase and all those guys are upping the max all the time.)
This could be good or bad:
This sort of public network will help create an awareness among users about their own privacy and will encourage users to educate themselves about good computing practices, including using encrypted protocols for everything. The cryptosystems available for free to the public today (like RSA) are excellent, and people will learn to use them once they get burned. It will help to improve the security of network implementations on consumer operating systems and spurr competition among software companies; commercial network software will no longer be acceptable to the consumer if it does not exhibit the security excellence that open source network software does.
This will undoubtedly lead to the end of a way of thinking: that physical barriers are not adequate to ensure network privacy. Moreover, I think you will se companies and individuals use VPNs to replace the separation they once had with the outside world.
Thanks for reading.
How long before the government controls the PAYLOAD of your packets as well as their source and destination? And where in the Constitution does it say that "cities shall be in the communications business" ?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Being from Calif, I can tell you how bad things get when the government oversees the utilities. Look they've screwed up the spectrum market, the phone market(no local competition), the gas market, the electiricty market(nearly ran it into bankruptcy), even the trash(no competition) and sewage (overspills) and transportation(gridlock) markets. PLEEEEEASE do not let them screw up the internet anymore than they already have.
Also, who'se to say that if they oversee connectivity into every home, that they also wont start regulating inappropiate content. NO. We all know the political pressures they're under. Lets just avoid the whole problem and not go there. Were not talking about enlightened researchers anymore like with ARPANET, no it would be run by purebread bureauocrats. God only knows how they'd screw it up. Since we can do it without the gov, we would be raving lunatics to put our balls in their hands. no no no and no!