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Universal Broadband Access
meehawl writes: "Wall Street Journal has this on proposed new Government regulation and tax breaks to encourage Universal Broadband Access. This idea appears to be gaining ground. Whether this becomes a public good (Universal Service, the Interstates, the USPS) or just another corporate welfare program (or perhaps a mixture of both?) remains to be seen." Another submitter sent in an interesting story about broadband in France.
In 1994, I wrote a short 'white paper' making it clear that it would be vital for the government to fund the deployment of broadband as the private sector could NEVER achieve it. I have been proven correct. 8 years later, the ratio of connection speed increase - vs - speed of our computers themselves is way off the mark. The government of Germany and the US both invested heavily in the construction of a national highway system and it has done wonders for their economies, well, so would such an investment in universal broadband. We're currently in a mess, with net surfers all connected at different speeds, using various entry points (PC, Mac, Linux, Interactive TV etc etc) making the creation of quality high bandwidth content a nightmare as the 'market' is too small. I shall have to dig out my white paper if I still have it. In those days, I was using Mosaic on a 28.8 dialup connection. Today, I'm using version 5.0 browsers on a 500Kbaud cable modem. However, that is still FAR too slow and a waste of my 500 Mhz Apple G4 Powerbook processing power. I want real-time full screen DVD quality video on demand anywhere anytime. And I'll pay for it. No more jerky 1/8" screen streams please.
O'WONDERWe're working on it.
The only way I think this can possibly succeed is to discard the traditional "Central Office" mentality of telecom providers. If this is to be a public network, (ala state sponsored, socialist, German and/or Euro-style), it will be imperative to keep it out of the hands of a few large corporations. This means decentralization; a home by home public network. Give a gigantic tax credit to those homeowners who "host" a switch, and have their neighbors' wires come to their home to be routed to other neighbors or neighborhoods. Of course utilize encryption, but anyone with privacy concerns should learn to trust their neighbors more. Geeze, you'd rather have a huge, above-the-law corporation in charge of keeping your data secure or your buddy down the street. Of course, this would be a great thing for neighborhoods, also. Allowing a nieghborhood email service, file sharing, and whathaveyou would bring about a whole new era in living. Post complaints about behavior anonymously, welcome newcomers, it'll be the 50's all over again. Maybe people will stop being so afraid of each other that they will come out and talk, and crime rates will drop, everyone will be happier. Wow. Utopia. Oh, and since it's socialist, and supported monetarily by the government, it's free! Or the government can just give huge amounts of money to these huge corporations and let them spend half of it on administration, the execs pocket another 1/4, and the whole thing just gets done half assed enough that they will eventually give up, keep all the stuff they bought, and use it to roll out their own expensive service. Sweet. Well, that's America for you. Why do things the easy friendly way when you can allow some rich power to control your life?
Cool! Amazing Toys.
We all know telecoms (most clecs, and ilecs (some ilecs are pritty cool though) just want money, and lots of it. Thats why the cost of a t1 is still so high, so some technican gets fired when the loop alarm is on for a few days. Speaking of loop alarm, I hope BTI is firing people monday. Anyway. Broadband would be cheaper w/o goverment regs, and if telecoms were more willing to sell t1 lines chaper. Seriously, I would put a t1 into my house, I would consolidate my phone line onto one channel, and use the rest for data. I know one of the nearby ilecs (i have sprint, sprint sucks) is doing what they call dsl, but its really a multiplexed voice line in their words. In other words, they are rolling out t1 lines to homes. Makes perfect sence, High bandwidth, high quality, cheap since they are the incumbent local exchange.
The problem with new goverment regs is that it would just make broadband more expensive. I wouldnt mind getting together with a few friends and buying a few dslpipes to make my own dsl network, or setting up a few long distance 802.11b network, but all that stuff would get even more regulated. I mean honestly, Some Phone companies (local exchanges) will not do alarm circuits any more. I have buddies in one city that used to use them to quietly do point-to-point t1 lines inside the same exchange area.
The clear solution is for the consumer to dish ou the cash and build their own infastructure, any which way they please, but cheap t1 loops would be VERY nice.
Excuse my stupidity, but how would a 100Mb/s connection for everyone help the economy? What in heavens name do you need that for? Watching movies? How does that help the economy (other than the MPAA, RIAA and the rest of them, since we're not going to get all that content for free)? Watching movies is nice, but I already have something for that (TV, VCR, DVD).
Don't tell me you need 100Mb/s for browsing. Downloading big files, sure, but how often do you do that? And why isn't 1.5 Mb/s fast enough for that? Again, watching movies in real-time over an ultrafast connection would be cool, but why is that a national priority?
MSN 8: Now Microsoft even has bugs in their ad campaigns.
It will not be corperations and communications companies bringing broadband access to the masses in rural or small towns. it will be the gurella wireless network builders. I have seen towns in northern michigan completely ignored by telcoms and cable for broadband access. Wireless, 802.11 wireless can give users broadband. Unfortunately there's a problem.. T1 broadband costs $1000-$1500 plus access fees in these rural areas. farmers and rural people will not pay $300.00 a month for access, and the group or company setting up the wireless access cant afford to charge less unless they get 200 customers or more.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
It won't make surfing the web any faster for these people. We'll experience the same phenomenon as with hardware/software. As the hardware gets faster, the software gets more bloated; as connections improve, there'll be more flash crap, stupid sounds, etc. You think X10 ads are annoying now? Wait 'till they start SPEAKING at you.
The previous has been a secret message to my comrades.
If the view is that "Broadband will Save the World Economy", then its a reasonable question to ask: "How will this happen?".
A few articles down from this one on slashdot is a piece that details how the entertainment industry is claiming to be at risk from what is essentially broadband.
Sine both have powerful money interests behind them, there is clearly an agenda that the Internet will become the "commercial" Internet. Worse, I believe draconian copy protection and content protection will be mandated by law. Follow along:
1) Broadband will be subsidized by the US Government. This subsidy will naturally favor existing broadband providers, which at this point amounts to Comcast and TW/AOL.
2) Because of this subsidy, and the lure of high-speed access, smaller and regional ISP will have no alternative and will become ghetoized. I'll bet that most of them will fold within 2 years.
3) At the same time, content providers (TW/AOL, Disney, etc.) and their lobbiest (RIAA, MPAA) will begin a serious push to get hardware and software protection mandatory within the US.
4) Congress will agree, not because they think it is a good idea, but because they fear they'll push a broadband infrastructure and get no benefit.
5) Richard's Stallman's nightmare vision will very quickly become a reality as all types of content providers push congress to mandate the type of draconian laws (DMCA) that have been created to protect special and narrow interests.
6) Private web servers will quickly become a thing of the past, since all content providers do not allow you to run your own server.
7) My guess will be a call to "license" web servers on the same grounds that we "license" radio and TV stations....."Bandwidth belongs to the public, why should anyone be allowed to run a web site without proper government controls....it only makes sense so they don't interefere with 'legitimate' web sites".
8) And I don't even think I'm painting a worst-case scenario here. I think this is likely within a few years.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Consider the small, non-corporate sites that can't manage the traffic throughput, versus the big, highly-connected sites. Which ones win under this scenario? Already we see major "independents" like K5 and Adequacy, creaking along, trying to keep up with the tides. Let's hope the phrase "All connected up but with nowhere to surf" isn't the watchword of the next decade...