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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.'"
One day, a corporation will bring a CAT5 line into your house, plug it in to a router, and then you will plug all your PCs into that router. Infinite bandwith!
:).
But the MAN idea sounds excellent. I hope all cities establish this system. Can they be allocated their own TLD? They practically give them out anyway
The Metropolitan Area Network: One step closer to a networked world. And cheap broadband!
Everything is mainstream now.
The big dig is turning out to be an amazing disaster. The plan was great - reroute all traffic and city planning problems underground, with very little trouble for the commuter and a more beautiful city above ground. Its the largest public works project ever.
Unfortunately, because you're dealing with politicians and contracters, both of whom love to lie to get money, the city is losing a bunch of money and the project is in terrible debt. All because of that old problem: if you ask voters whether giving out ponies to everyone is a good idea, they say "yes!", without realizing that it'll actually cost the government money.
I see this as the way the net is going to go. It's too much like the road and highway system rather than the electrical system or TV delivery system like cable or DSS
People go 'to and fro' on the internet and don't necessarily turn to one provider for the majority of the service like they do for other utilities. Sure you can use pay-routes to get online, (ISP's) just as you can use toll-roads and turnpikes. The most-used routes to get online will probably be supported via tax dollars in the near to medium future.
This has up and down sides. The up side is that public ownership of the internet will mean that it will be subject to more stringent quality controls and pricing regulation. The down-side is that any public resource is inevitably over-used and abused. It will also be more subject to content regulation if it's truly perceived as a 'community' resource.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
I'm surprised that no one has yet mentioned the privacy concerns that could easily evolve from this. The article didn't seem to mention what sort of Terms of Service, if any, the city has considered.
My Blog: http://nic.dreamhost.com/
...except that the first time someone's kid gets routed to animalsex.com or some such, they're going to sue the city. So the city's going to have to install porn filters, and do age verification, and all the other crap that schools and libraries have to put up with in order to even offer desktop-based internet access, at which point it probably won't even be worthwhile.
Not to mention having to provide tech support for an entire metropolitan area...
Or the fact that the people that can afford computers or laptops with 802.11 cards can probably afford decent DSL access anyhow.
More power to 'em if they can pull it off, but there's reasons why Ricochet didn't do so well...
The problem with these 'Over a period of x years' projects is that by the time everyone has it, there'll be another 'next big thing' or people will be needing more bandwidth for hungry apps. 10 years ago, I was on like, 14.4kbps. If they installed some sort of hypothetical 14.4kbps dedicated line to everyone's home then it'd be sorely out of date by now. If they just did it within, say, a year or 2 but 10? Any reply on this would be good.
Mod me down, fine with me, it's my real karma I try to keep up.
check out www.smartcapital.ca for info on Ottawa's plans. I also hear that Toronto is considering something similar.
Imagine there were a municipal dark fiber network that every house and office building were connected to just like they are connected to the sewers and power grid! The home/business owner could then at their convenience connect a fiber optic router/hub and connect to whomever they like within the city/country! For instance, you could connect your fiber channel to one of the 2-5 ISPs in the city and pay for a gateway to the Internet, (probably capped to some reasonable bandwidth) or you could connect directly to your buddy's house or your other branch office at full speed!
You would be able to use 1 fiber strand, or 1 optical "channel", you could use the cheapest 10mbit fiber router or pay the big bucks for gigabit hardware! Or you could use several channels to connect to several different places at once, one 10mbit link to your ISP, one 1000mbit link to your branch office, and another 10mbit link to your home office!
it's a freaking GREAT idea!
I just wish it'd arrive sooner here in Ottawa!
I'm tired of "broad"-band, I want ethernet speeds to as much of the world as possible.
Here in Ottawa the need to provide affordable service to poor and rural areas is very much taken into consideration. Just like when Bell Canada deployed the national phone system; whoever gets contracted to build our fiber lines will be required to build-out to Everyone, not just the profitable areas.
Liquid(TJ) writes:
Why would you assume that in the future people will choose to move to RF instead of wired connectivity?
Is the future somehow going to magically eliminate the problem of interference, the security concerns, the waste of omnidirectional broadcasting, the concerns about the side-effects of pumping radio waves into the environment?
I agree that it is unlikely that ten years from now we will be using copper wires. But, barring the development of stable wormholes or quantum tunneling or other such 'magic', I'm pretty damn sure the connectivity will be via some physical link, perhaps a vastly improved fiberoptic.
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
Civicnet will not be, contrary to what some commentators here have written, a city utility. The analogy that Doug Powers and other personnel have been using is that of a mall, with the city being an anchor tenant. In other words, since the success of a mall depends to some degree on the number of large square footage spaces being rented, the city with its $25M-$30M annual telecom expenses is in effect an anchor tenant renter of 'space'(reread capacity). One consortium or telecom company will be the owner of the Civicnet 'mall', and the city will just be another tenant, albeit an important tenant.
The problems here are manifold, starting with the question of whether the companies who are on the RFP(request for proposal) short list will be able to get the up front capital to build out the network. Then, with an expected time to complete of 10 years, it is questionable as to whether in the intervening time they will be able to service the debt they incur to finance the buildout and at the same time show a path to profitability.
If the issue is getting real broadband to underserved areas of Chicago, there are technologies today which can do that in less than one year, as many of the people here know.