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.

Comments

Croatia

[Jormundgard]

In Croatia there are these kiosks all over Zagreb that provide free internet access to everyone, although the keyboard is touchscreen so is a little annoying. They're provided by the Croatian telecom, HT. I don't think they're broadband, but they seem popular with all ages. I could see such a thing becoming popular in other countries, and using broadband.

Re:Croatia

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude! We're behind Croatia now?
This dotcom bust is worse than I feared! :(

Move over Mom and Pop!

[IHateLinuxUsers]

Make way for the new and improved Government, powered by AOL. Now you can get all your news straight from the source, with no chance of contrary ideas clouding your judgement! Be the first to experience China style censorship at the hands of American style corporations with the new AOL Government version 2.0

Big Big Loader!
bigspender540@hotmail.com

Has Someone Gone Mad?

[xanadu-xtroot.com]

From the article:

"It is critically important for the United States to adopt a national broadband policy that encourages investment in new broadband infrastructure, applications and services -- particularly new last mile broadband facilities," said Craig Barrett, CEO of Intel Corporation. "Regulatory policies should encourage all companies to deploy these expensive and risky facilities."

Unless I'm reading something wrong here, is this guy encourging companies to hurry up and try like crazy to go belly up?!? He says straigt out deploy these expensive and risky facilities. He SAYS they are risky AND expensive, but in the same breath thinks EVERY company should do it for the last mile connections.

WTF?

Re:Has Someone Gone Mad?

[s390]

...said Craig Barrett, CEO of Intel Corporation. "Regulatory policies should encourage all companies to deploy these expensive and risky facilities."

"Unless I'm reading something wrong here, is this guy encourging companies to hurry up and try like crazy to go belly up?!?"

Likely taken out of context or Mr. Barrett simply misspoke. What he probably wishes he'd said would be more along the lines of: "Regulatory policies should encourage companies to make the necessary investments in new facilities." But it does seem like somewhat of a Freudian slip though, admittedly ("Hey, we'd be crazy to underwrite this ourselves, but please encourage these other companies to build this expensive and risky infrastructure so we can profit from it if it happens to work to our advantage.")

The basic problem is the travesty of political campaign finance in this country, which basically creates incentives for politicians to waffle around trying to figure out who's going to pay them the most to sell their votes or, ideally, how they can get every opposing special interest to pay them a lot before they get around figuring out how they're going to screw the public with the most profitable (for the politicians) endgame playout. You can see this in the article, which mentions that the White House alone has held over a hundred meetings with interested parties (i.e., potential campaign contributors and their lobbyists) trying to figure out how best to structure public broadband rollout.

OK, let's dispose of this political corruption problem first. (There might be some increased interest in this soon as the Enron bankruptcy scandal unfurls, laying bare how pervasive their influence-buying was for energy deregulation.) The campaign finance answer is really very simple, since the major cost of political campaigns is media buys: require the media (internet, TV, radio, and print media) to provide 20% of their advertising to legitimate political candidates, allocated equitably without charge during the campaign seasons. To get the media to go along, give them a tax credit equal to their opportunity cost for the "free" political advertising, times their marginal corporate tax rate. Voila! Public campaign financing without the corruption of the current back-room, bag-man lobbyist practices. And it would cost no more than the current system, where political lobbying costs are passed on to public in the form of higher prices for everything from electricity and natural gas to phone bills and groceries. (The previous FCC Chairman had actually suggested this, but Colin Powell's boy Michael doesn't seem to have the balls to piss off the regulated media, er... his likely future employers.)

Once we get the political corruption inherent in the current lobbying/campaign-finance system cleared up, then and only then will the politicos get their heads on straight about how to move forward for the good of the public rather than their presently myopic and self-serving focus on getting reelected and amply lining their own vest pockets.

Broadband internet access is now at about the point basic telephone service was 75 years ago - moderately affluent people in cities have it, others in rural areas don't. As a parallel, the rollout of broadband service to everyone who wants it (which eventually will be almost everyone) will look a lot like the provision of basic telephone service. It's going to take some public policy to make this happen. And the mix of technologies and companies involved is much more complicated now than it was with telephone services. It's going be complicated, but I'm sure some fair public utility policies can be devised to make it happen. But we need to make it happen rather quickly, if we are to maintain our economic competitiveness.

Neighborhood Ethernet

[inKubus]

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?

Re:Neighborhood Ethernet

[alen]

Hey stupid, the government gets money from the tax payers. They would have to substantially raise your taxes to pay for this. And everyone elses. And who would run it? IT people don't come cheap. More taxes again.

Re:Neighborhood Ethernet

[s390]

Move to Europe and then come back and tell us about how great a government Post-Telecom utility was to deal with, in your experience. BT in the UK can't find its ass with both hands for broadband, their "watchdog" Oftel is asleep at the switch, and UK politicians are too busy passing electronic privacy invasion (internal security) laws to even notice. Do you want more of this?

Re:Neighborhood Ethernet

[arkanes]

Something to remember about trusting a big faceless corp with your info vrs. your neighbor: A big, faceless corp deals with thousands and thousands of accounts, and nobody at that corp cares about you specifically, and even if a given person did, they'd have a hard time picking your specific data out of the noise. Your neighbor, on the other hand, is alot more likely to be curious about your personal habits, and won't have nearly as much data coming through to look at and make sense of.

Goverment Regulation and The Urge for Money

[LWolenczak]

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.

Re:Goverment Regulation and The Urge for Money

[ImaLamer]

I agree, give us cheap T1, and let me do the work.

I'll get a few old machines, load up linux, and I can easily supply my neighbors with access. My two closest neighbors [on both sides] pay $40 a piece for their ISP. I also pay $40. So that's $120/month.

Our network can be setup with minimal hardware costs, in all reality. A few pentiums [I, One] and a gang of NICs. Hell, I'd even let them run what ever service they want. No need for load-balancing servers, etc.

I mean, how hard is it? It isn't hard at all. I signed up for a local dial-up service once and the tech support was done by ONE guy, the owner. I was like the 10th customer, and was invited to the NOC after calling him for help with an e-mail problem [someone I didn't know mailed me decent and two other games and it was #1 in the box!~200MB over 33.6]. He ran all MS servers, but it was pretty light. For two days I kinda worked there [so I could play quake on his T1:-)] and there actually wasn't much to it.

That was waaay before I got into linux and now I know I can do the same thing he did. Even more. The only thing I didn't understand was the phone lines. He used portmasters, I think. His T1 was run through a pipe right to the NOC from the local bell [you can see inside their center through it]. But being that we would be using a T1 and ethernet, any PC can connect to the service.

Hell, we could run the ethernet over a barbed wire! We already have a fence.

The guy is out of business now because another ISP became _huge_ at the same time.

Re:Goverment Regulation and The Urge for Money

[LWolenczak]

I'm reminded of stories of uses of arcnet.......

100 Mbits/sec ?

[cheezehead]

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?

Re:100 Mbits/sec ?

[ImaLamer]

why is that a national priority?

Because silly, the MPAA, RIAA says so. Didn't you learn anything in High School gov't class? Business runs the politics of this nation. Because cash runs the nation.

Seriously though, if the content holders put up the campaign money politicians have no problem walking all over the telco's.

What do we need 100Mb/s for? Movies, TV and Music, just like you said. People don't want to watch something for 20 seconds and then see 'buffering' watch for 20 and then see 'buff..

Educational material [propaganda?] could be served up. Instead of the President trying to get on the network, you can simply click "President" and bam!

But you are right again about 1.5 Mb/s being fast 'enough'. But the problem is the word 'enough'. Everyone seems to have this attitude that 'you don't need this' or that is fast 'enough'... but why?

Why not push it to the limit? I mean, VoIP while watching DVD quality streamed media and getting debian ISO's at once would be nice. It could eliminate legacy POTS, maybe even cable. But then again, I've got HBO on Demand and I can watch that and get 1.5Mbit at the same time... so that makes me wonder.

Broadband access.

[Lumpy]

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.

Re:Broadband access.

[LWolenczak]

A t1 is not broadband, and here is why. A t1 is in most cases, primarly intended, or atleast was intended to mostly carry phone calls between COs and Businesses. So the FCC decided that T1 lines had to be up 90% of the time, or the ilec gets fined. That is why a t1 line so expensive, because they HAVE to keep it up. Phone companies start firing people when a t1 loop goes down. With a broadband user, it dosent really matter if the line is down for a few days, the phone company is just going to assign it a repair ticket, and process the next ticket, but if a t1 goes down, they are normally at your door within an hour ready to fix it. I had a phone line that was down for two weeks once... My father worked his way up Sprint's Corperate Tree to the compaints office of the President of sprint. The technican who showed up about an hour latter had the fear of god in him. Plus, the complaint office called my dad back on the other line, and told him that the technican, dave i think, would be there in 15 minutes to fix it. When you pay for a t1, you pay for uptime, you don't pay for bandwidth, but with broadband, all you pay for is bandwidth.

Re:[DELETED]

[ImaLamer]

this is actually funny... OT, but funny.

Hey, I'm at karma cap, I need a desire to post.

Re:Slashdot is evil

[ImaLamer]

Please Boycott evil slashdot and try other sites!

Please, do boycott. Start with yourself. Set an example.

[yes, i'm burning Karma, I need a desire to contribute]

Simple Way to Encourage Broadband

[Boss, Pointy Haired]

Make it known how easy it is to get colossal amounts of pr0n.

That would sell it for millions of males all over the world, and end the problems of cable companies and telcos sinking under the weight of their debts.

I reckon the vast majority of existing and potential net users think the only way to get pr0n is from a web site using their credit card, and most people aren't really up for that. They've never heard of usenet, and many of those who have won't be aware of the amount of pr0n at their fingertips.

Trouble is, the cable co's and telcos can't really push this since a) it might damage their reputation - particularly if they want to be seen as providers of entertainment for all the family, and b) most pr0n in the multimedia newsgroups are rip offs of copyrighted material.

All it needs is an cable co or telco with sufficiently low moral fibre, a good legal department, an advertising campaign and some help screens.

Problem solved.

I think.

When everyone has broadband . . .

[The FooMiester]

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.

For the love of God...

[saberworks]

...please don't turn broadband internet access into the shambles that is the "modern" telephone system. People think Microsoft is a monopoly, but I'll tell you what, Qwest is the monopoly in this area. Most (if not all?) areas have a single telephone company that services everyone, so basically, if you have a problem with the company, you have absolutely no choice but to deal with their crap.

For instance, Qwest promised me 7cents a minute long distance, but when the bill came, it was $800 - they were charging me 25cents a minute because of a computer operator error on their part.

At the time I was working solely online, and I used the telephone lines to access the internet for my job - so guess, what? If I didn't pay them $800, they were going to switch off my phone (and thus completely removing my livelihood). Even after 6 months straight of talking to them on the phone once a week, they never gave me a credit. I was promised, at least a dozen times, that my account would be credited - but it never was. Turns out the "Customer Service Representatives" just put in a request for credit, and these secret guys in the back (that they wouldn't let me talk to, no matter how I begged) were in charge of actually issuing it. Well apparently they didn't agree with the CSR that kept promising me credits.

Anyway, I didn't mean for this to turn into a rant about Qwest, but the point is, don't give us this local monopoly crap that we have to deal with for phone, electricity, etc. Soon as we have that, we'll have them supporting only one operating system, overcharging, giving us crap "privacy policies" like Qwest's new one (they should call that an "anti-privacy policy").

Great new term for Users!

[ArcSecond]

"Internautes" = Internauts. I like it. Not so much "surfing" as an epic sea voyage. With sirens and cyclopses and a golden fleecing at the end of it all...

Solving The Last Mile Problem

[cybrpnk]

The real key to universal broadband is the so-called last mile - the connection to the home and thru the home into the computer there. Whatever solution you come up with will have to be duplicated tens of millions of times, just like it has been for telephone jacks and electrical outlets. A company in my hometown, Time Domain, is about to get licensed by the FCC for a revolutionary new type of wireless technology that may very well be the key to solving the last mile problem. You can read coverage about them from USA Today, The Economist, US News & World Report, Business Week, and The New York Times.

The kicker to this...

[tkrotchko]

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.

Re:One hundred million nodes....

[RedX]

...with AOLOS at the end of each one. What a vision. *vomits*

Funny, I always thought the dream of most Slashdotters was to have Red Hat Linux everywhere.

Major nits.

[wowbagger]

First, do you really want to trust any article that uses the term "Megabites" prominently in the headline?

Second, do you REALLY want the US goverment to provide you with Internet service? Consider: in the 1970's the US goverment decided that 55MPH was the law. Since they owned the funds to pay for the roads, their word was law. I always wondered what would have happened if a rich state had said "FUCK OFF! I CAN'T DRIVE 55!" and kept the limits, and accepted the loss of the federal highway funds.

Do you really want the US government to be able to say "No Naptser, No Porn, and DAMN SURE NO .ISO's!"

What I wouldn't mind would be something along the lines of the REA from the early 1900's. The government provided low-interest guaranteed loans to businesses to provide electrical power to rural areas. The catch - YOU WILL PAY THIS LOAN BACK! No Chapter 11, no Chapter 13. Fail to pay it back, and we nationalize your company.

EVERY REA COMPANY PAID ITS LOANS BACK AHEAD OF SCHEDULE.

A concrete example (for the blockheads out there ;):
A friend of mine lives in a small town. The cable TV company there is also a phone company (but not in that town), and they don't do DOCSIS, they do DSL (great for me - they are MY telephone company). So cable modems are right out.

The phone company in his town is Sprint. They aren't interested in DSL, they want to do wireless and they aren't ready to deploy that in his town. So, right now he has 2 phone lines and runs bonded PPP to get a measly 112kbps.

He's a networking guy - he could set up his own ISP and run DSL if he could get the seed money to do so. What if he could get a RNA (Rural 'Netification Act) loan to do so?

Re:Major nits.

[Brian Stretch]

First, if you're going to insist on a REA-type federal approach, at least insist that a hard time limit be imposed on the agency. The REA hung around until 1994, and even then was assimilated into a similar government agency. Bureaucracies don't ever put themselves out of work.

Second, does it really take that much money to get started? And that cost is continuously dropping, especially with the help of open source projects. Isn't it likely that this problem can be solved within the next several years without government intervention? I'll bet on private initiative and creativity (hmm, solar powered WiFi relays anyone?) to get the job done.

Besides, if taxes weren't so damn high more individuals would be able to finance such initiatives. It would be far easier to bootstrap ventures if, say, we didn't have 1-1/2 months per year of labor confiscated by the Socialist Security system.

Small Claims?

[mcrbids]

Take the phone company to small claims court!

You don't need a lawyer, they do. Small claims courts are simple and don't allow most of the legal mumbo-jumbo that applies in "big" courts.

It'll cost them at least half of that $800 just to ship a lawyer into town to defend the case - meaning they probably won't.

Don't ask for anything but the filing fees (typically around $50) and your $800.

You're almost guaranteed victory if you can reasonably substantiate your claims! Include paperwork, times, dates, who saids, etc.

-Ben

...they'll run junkbuster

[dmoen]

I have broadband. I live in Canada, and in my town, there is fierce competion between broadband providers.

I also run junkbuster, which speeds up page loading, and I don't have to look at X10 ads. You can too. Check out www.junkbuster.org.

Doug Moen.

Just Do It

[dmoen]

If you want a co-op ISP in your neighbourhood, then just go ahead and set one up. You don't need government handouts or new laws. Just do it.

There are lots of co-ops where I live (Waterloo Ontario). We have a co-op bank, a co-op grocery store, a co-op bike repair shop, etc. We used to have an internet co-op which offered fast 24x7 internet access to its members, but it fell apart when cheap broadband came to town a few years ago. There are quite a few 802.11 co-ops in existence (although not here, that I've heard). The point is, if you want it, then get together with some friends and organize it.

Doug Moen.

Corporate welfare without a doubt

[Tony Shepps]

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...

Forget "ultra-wideband" for the "last mile"

[Animats]

Widespread use of impulse transmission at high enough power to go miles is not going to happen. It would interfere with too much. "Ultra-wideband" means "interferes with everything if it has enough power". These systems have to be severely limited in power to be tolerable. If we see this, it will be for very short range applications.

This is really just spread spectrum, with more spread. There's way too much hype from the impulse radio people. There was major hype from LLNL about "micropower impulse radar", which turned out to be a dud - other RF sources interfered with it too much.

Re:Forget "ultra-wideband" for the "last mile"

[cybrpnk]

Hmmm....Actually Livermore was using Time Domain technology with the microwave impulse radar, as discussed here. Also, I wouldn't envison a high powered spread spectrum transmitter reaching miles of range as tthe solution to this problem...more like a bunch of low powered ones where A can pass on to B which can pass on to C and so forth...

Redneck Bandwidth Measurements

[alexburke]

Ambitious Goal of 100 Megabites to 100 Million
Homes & Small Businesses by 2010

I could understand if a small backwoods town printed something like that, but TechNet?

Come on...

Re:100 Mbits/sec ?-Bigger is better.

[ImaLamer]

I like to watch gorillas!

rtsp://63.237.143.140/encoder/d-zoone.rm [real players :(]

Sometimes you can watch the camera focus. That is pretty cool considering you are getting the feed faster than the camera can adjust.

Real cool in full screen.