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Former FCC Chief Touts "Big Broadband"
Anonymous Coward writes "Reed Hundt has a vision about building a 10 to 100 Mbps network for every household in the U.S. He makes a great case for why it should be done and how we can pay for it.
What's interesting about this piece is that Hundt advocates a new approach to universal service. Instead of giving away broadcast spectrum (for HDTV) and maintaining (ancient, inflexible) phone lines, we should spend money on building out a next generation fiber network to every household, and run both HDTV and phone over that network. Then we can stop funding the phone network (which is pretty much maxed out anyway) and sell off the HDTV spectrum for 10s of billions of dollars."
It may sound like a good idea, but with so many politicians indentured to big media corporations, I have a hard time imagining that this will turn into anything other than ill-conceived pork-barrel spending.
The key task of the FCC should be to unwrite old rules and write a few new rules so as to create clear incentives for existing network operators and service providers to build a Big Broadband network. Regulation negatively influences Big Broadband business plans. Currently federal and state regulation causes consumers and taxpayers to pay staggering sums to sustain old networks when much less money could pay for the same services plus additional services and also for the cost of building Big Broadband to every home and business.
I live in the SF Bay Area and they placed fiber up and down most of the streets around me... LIKE THREE YEARS AGO. This seems to be a very slow procedure.
The telco lobbies will be swift and vengeful.
Goddamned Tom Selleck told me I would be able to watch any movie ever made anywhere, anytime. I should kick his ass!
And what about that moon city?!!! The moon belongs to America! And clean, cheap fusion power stations are only 10 years away!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
The FCC gives an excuse to the morality police to control content. I don't want the government or politicians going anywhere near my network. I'll just say no, thank you.
that has hidden and surprise costs written all over it. also, i ahve a feeling something like that wouldn't really get near to completion until my children are in highschool (i am as of yet unmarried).
xao
http://TheHillforum.hopto.org
Never mind. That was just some crazy bag lady unrolling yarn everywhere. And you thought it was hi-tech.
Where do I sign up??
There's a Mercedes gap too. I want one and can't afford one, but it's not government's job to do anything about it.
UTOPIA, which still has yet to make an entrance in Utah...will this ever come?
**It runs through my veins like radioactive rubber pants! Do not deny my veins!**
"Then we can stop funding the phone network (which is pretty much maxed out anyway) and sell off the HDTV spectrum for 10s of billions of dollars."
Thereby assuring that fast internet access is delivered over a single-point-of-regulation and allowing government licensure to determine how we get the internet for the next five decades.
And this is supposed to be a good idea?
--G
How much for the visible light part? If someone bought that part, could they sue you for seeing?
But I'd rather see this come from local communities. They could vote on who they outsource the labor to, how much they are willing to pay for, allow people who don't want to participate to "opt out," and also allow communities that want the Internet, but not the HDTV, to have it "their way."
Slashdot: Where people pretend to be twice as smart as they really are by behaving like children.
Even more opportunity for hax0rs to own Windoze systems and use them as warez pits.
Seriously though, I suspect our existing bandwidth would be quite capable if it wasn't for all the grabage traffic from Windoze boxen infected with virii. If you up the badwidth, you'll up the worms and the signal to moise ration will simply decrease until we still ahve the same amount of truly usuable bandwidth.
and create a HUMONGOUS monopoly which would have made Ma BELL look tiny... Cut one cable and if 9/11 happens again more then 10 miles away, you'll never know it....
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
Though this sounds like a perfect wet-dream for us all, there's far too much money riding on the current infastructure for this to happen.
Not to mention the political impetus of the anti-big-government crowd, and the rising budget defecits. I believe this prospect would be DOA in any legislature for many years.
Is a 10 to 100mbps network fast enough to carry a few dozen HDTV streams, two or three voice conversations, and still have enough bandwidth left over for the interweb to be considered broadband?
Would even a gigabit pipe to my home have enough bandwidth for all that?
Did the submitter misquote, or is this another career politician blowing words out his ass that he doesn't really understand?
Old folks are like that. I have one politician client who's convinced that the quarter of a T1 he shares with the rest of the county is "way fast".
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
And with one big network, that should make it easy to regulate, RIAA, MPAA, whomever else wants to restrict access
The post contains an exact quote from the article, nothing more
This is about as likely as GWB's gambit to grab techie votes by claiming to want to go back to the moon. After the election, he'll forget all about it, cut NASA's budget and strangle NASA to death. These bitches always spin these beuatiful castles in the air, and they never come through.
Jack Valenti just swalled a half a bottle of Pepto Bismol...
I'm sure they have invested tons of cash in their "delivery system".
If you can read this sig - the bitch fell off.
Take a look at this; http://100x100network.org/ The government is funding research to build and roll out such networks. My question is: where are the applications? The biggest driver for bandwidth I've seen so far has been KaZaa and the other P2P stuff. Nothing else seem to have spurred bandwidth demand otherwise. I mean, isn't that the only intensive stuff people run on DSL /Cable even now?
...that the best way to fund the current HDTV rollout was to force every consumer who buys a new 25"+ Television after 2004 to spend an extra $300 for the built-in (mandatory) terristrial HDTV tuner even though they may not want it or even need it? Thanks, but no thanks.
-- I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous
Besides the obvious civil liberties issues, the government does not have a good history of running networks. Just look at Amtrak.
Stuart Eichert
It's just a fact of life that certain things are cheaper to provide in the big city (e.g. comm infrastructure) and other things are cheaper to provide in the boonies (e.g. land). People make their choices accordingly.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
Hmm.
1. Government mandates what you can watch (ala v-Chip).
2. Government installs super-high-bandwidth pipes to every home in America.
3. Government mandates that your consumer electronics contain "monitoring equipment" to ensure that you are not harboring terrorists.
Too much government.
ONLY YOU CAN PREVENT BIG GOVERNMENT. Take action in your community. Compete with the government for provision of social services. Ween your weaker neighbors off of Government handouts! Support personal responsibility and individual freedoms!
My parents live in Northern Virginia, where you can get your phone line in the house replaced with cat6 wires. Basically you get a fancy connection point o the wall and a "smart" box (which is basically a router) in the basement.
The system works quite well, but when it came to home networking, we avoided it, because high-speed internet for us was cable (not using cat anything there) and then we went for a wireless router so that I/my father could easily use our laptops in the house.
Overall Nice idea, but with wireless networking becoming cheaper and cheaper, and is heading towards matching 100mps wired connection speeds, a more realistic thing to do would be to getting digital cable or dsl repeaters out in the world and let home users network however they please.
Don't mind me, I'm just naturally cynical.
That being said, I do believe that FTTP (Fiber to the Premises) is where we will eventually end up. THe question is, do we make that our goal now and move directly to achieve it, or do we wander around aimlessly in the broadband desert for forty years, waiting and suffering through every concievable combination of DSL, vDSL, Fixed wireless, satellite, cable, and carrier pigeon, before we get where we're going.
I prefer the direct route.
CHeers!
"The only good windmill is a tilted windmill."
Umm....NO, not enough bandwidth, but with fiber to the home, whats stopping you from making it 5 to 10 Gbps?? (see SONET)...
Why not just provide more spectrum for wireless and lets eliminate the mass of cables for a central source for maintenance and upgrades?
It is a good idea to provide that much bandwidth, but it really shouldn't be wasted on TV Signals. Why not add in a free open library of educational materials? Why not allow it to be used as a replacement for public schools where a student can watch a full video of a teacher without the distractions of a classroom environment?
My biggest issue is that we (Americans) should be more interested in wiring up a good portion of the population to high speed (Always ON) service before we worry about upgrading the network for more bandwidth. Every town over 1500 people should have a high speed connection instead.
HDTV is Less Imporant than 256k Up/Down FOR 90% POPULATION is my Motto.
Yes. Look at the Internet. A government guy, Al Gore, invented it. It never really took off. As Homer Simpson recently said "The internet? Is that thing still around?". No one's using it anymore. It's gone the way of CB Radio.
I know that some area codes are "reserved" but each area code is only 10 million numbers. Does anyone know why there is such a number crunch? I would wager that it is due to poor allocation of numbers rather than a shortage of unique identifiers. (For instance, I've heard rumors of making US phone numbers 11 digits - do we really need 100 billion domestic phone numbers?)
Do we have such poor resource management? (This is even worse than the IPv4 running out of space, which I know is due to allocation and because 2^32 is not even as large as the planet's population).
Comments? Questions?
"There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
But perhaps there are more important things to happen first. Too many people in the USA and Europe suffer from poverty. Internet is not their first need - food is, and clothing. And the 'next' poverty level means almost never having luxery at all - a broadband internet connection is not very useful if you can't afford a computer to connect it to.
And then I don't even mentoin Africa.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
{$Company Name} Business Plan:
Let's see....we'll lay a bunch of fiber, way beyond the current demand, because as soon as we turn it on people will come out of the woodwork to lease it!
I can think of a few companies that we can plug in here, Qwest comes to mind first though.
"Big Broadband can carry
full motion video, download pictures of Paris or Hilton Hotels or
Paris Hilton (whoever that is), and provide web page access that
feels like flipping pages of a magazine."
To wordy, just replace this sentence with "Big Broadband can carry lots of pr0n". People will get the idea.
In true /. tradition I did read the article (doesn't render in Netscape 4.7 on this machine) but what would I be gaining over my current cable connection that delivers ~10 HD channels, a couple hundred SD channels and a 2Mb connection?
These people look deep into my soul and assign me a number based on the order I joined.
I thought the article was interesting, but I have a couple of questions that the writer completely ignored.
First, as someone above mentioned, if the FCC were to regulate this in any way, would that mean that they could impose decency standards to the content delivered? I would hope not, but I can see the FCC trying to do it.
Second, would the services coming over the physical medium be purchased from the group that maintains the physical structure? Or would you be free to shop around? Would we have cable providers or would you order your channels directly (e.g. directly order HBO, comedy central, etc. seperately - a la carte)?
Third, what about tying in cellular phones? Basically like using VOIP and wireless access points. If you have the fiber everywhere, just add the access points to act as cell towers.
-dave
/., where "Apple and Google provide Iran with nukes" will be refuted with "But Microsoft is a convicted monopolist"
They dislike me? :) They can sense I was posting from a windows box.
**It runs through my veins like radioactive rubber pants! Do not deny my veins!**
Talk about old news... or maybe just good predicting - this was part of my networking class 10 years ago.
First, there was supposed to be FTTC (Fiber To The Curb) and then FTTH (Fiber To The Home) to replace the telephone network. FTTC has been partially implemented in some areas. The Cable company has moved on this much faster than the phone company, though. FTTC is basically fiber optic cable to a neighborhood, and POTS (Plain Old Telephone System for the acronym impared) from there to the home. The shorter distance to the digital switch (the fiber) allows faster connections on the local line - sorta how 56k modems required a certain distance to the CO(Central Office of the phone company) to get their speed boost - basically, the signal can only run at a certain speed for a certain distance before getting distorted and unusable.
FTTH would be great, but I'm not counting on it anytime soon - I saw the estimated cost years ago, and I could see why FTTC was deemed feasible and FTTH not.
It boils down to the reason why all broadband is run "over existing lines" -- cable, phone, home alarm (DSL), power grid. There's a whole lot of households out there.
It only cost me a one-time $23 investment for my UHF RadioShack antenna that delivers all the OTA HDTV programming I want from ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX, PBS. Why would I want to start paying a monthly fee again for some highly-regulated, monopolized system that will most assuredly introduce a whole new slew of security issues?
I've been pushing for this for years.
Some cities have done it already. It makes a lot of sense!
Goverment does the roads. Why can't they do the fibre to the home too? They regulate stuff a ton as it is, making the "private" phone/cable networks closer to belonging to the government anyway. (such as forcing the corps to reach people further out of the city---that is why everyone can have a phone)
They also force the telco to share it's phone lines with others.
These local corps are constantly fighting with the regulators to cheat us all the time. I bet you the cost of government corruption is half the crap spent on the greedy corps playing games. (not to mention the never ending lawsuits by the cities to make comcast abide by its contract.)
One thing though, don't let the gov run the network. Leave that to private companies. Just provide the fibre to the home.
All sorts of small business ISPs would spring up all over the place!
What would happen to all existing TELECOM companies?? Second, Cable(hybrid fiber-coax) using a new standard that is now being rolled out (DOCSIS 2.0) can push 10 Mbps in both directions, and by using digital compression, can squeeze enough HDTV down the pipe, an also have dedicated spectrum for voice traffic(be it VOIP or POTS modulated over COAX). So they can use their spectrum efficiently, keep all three services separate(as far as throughput goes) so that intense data trafic doesn't affect voice or video. SOUNDS LIKE A DECENT PLATFORM TO ME...... OH YEAH.....and they arent ran by BIG BROTHER....
Take a look at Tirel's posting history - he's a troll seeking to build up his karma.
Nope. If you count cable, it's definitely TV, which runs on the same pipe as your broadband. I don't mean that to be a smartass comment, because on the proposed network, they plan to carry a lot of HDTV. Read uphill a bit from your comment, and there's a guy wondering if gigabit would be enough to carry all that.
I don't know which of the two of you is right, though. ;)
i do not want this crap. they cant even run the existing networks witout strongarming me to pay overly priced, and over sold networks. fuck em
We need a public utility for the internet.
I would rather do it my self. and not rely on some GREEDY corporation.
No, that was Michael Powell, the current chairman.
To be clear, it's not an HDTV tuner that's required, but an ATSC tuner - a digital tuner, in other words.
Television broadcasters are on the air in many locations with digital signals that you can't receive with standard analog tuners. In order to reclaim the spectrum from the analog stations, it's necessary to reach a "critical mass" of digital tuners in the field.
Basically, it's the chicken/egg thing all over again.
It's very, very nice. We are supposed to get 10 Mbps symmetric, but typical speeds are a bit lower (something like 7-9). Granted that is somewhat confabulated by our use of WiFi at home as well. (Streaming full screen video to your laptop in bed... so what are YOU watching, eh?) Bandwidth-intensive applications were encouraged, last time I checked. Some TV stations are available as are movie downloads (real VoD!) and telephony.
Cost is similar to DSL or cable here and is around SEK 400/mo or about USD 55. (Current exchange rates make that look higher than it feels here.)
There is a similar service in Italy from Fastweb and in Iceland (I think by Reykjavik Energy).
Reed -
Please stop trying to spend my money.
Thanks,
-Matt
"...we should spend the money..."
Who is "we" here?
"...we...sell of the HDTV spectrum..."
Who is "we" here?
I'll wager the first one is the Joe Taxpayer, and the second is not, no matter how they spin it.
(Stolen sig) Remember: it's a "Microsoft virus", not an "email virus", a "Microsoft worm", not a "computer worm
Cable, phone and internet over the same line?
Does it come with a free carrier pigeon to contact tech support when there are problems?
Where are the internet stamps? You sound like an unknowledgeable fool who forgot to do his research before posting on slashdot. The best way to help people in poverty is to give them a way out, meaning an education which definately will include internet access, jobs which should come after they are educated, and welfare reform so they arent paid not to work.
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
Now imagine every household being connected to the Internet with a permanent broadband connection. Most people use unpatched Windoze boxes and don't get the idea that their infrastructure could do any damage to the Internet. With broadband access and powerful PCs, they don't even notice any abusive performance loss or bandwidth consumption. Not to speak of Windoze Media Center, which barely requires any IT knowledge to operate a PC.
So broadband access for every household might be a good idea, but only if infrastructure is safe enough (e. g. require routers/firewalls) and ISPs' abuse staff would be able to prevent trojaned customer boxes ASAP from polluting the Internet.
Sounds like Big Brother to me. 1984, anyone?
How clever!
My question is: where are the applications?
Porn. Seriously.
Big talk, that. I'll believe it when I see broadband in a mountain shack in N.C. or a house in King Salmon, Alaska.
Of course, by "every household" they mean "every household worth speaking of" to borrow a phrase from Tom Lehrer.
Taking care of public networks -- whether they are roads, water, power, telecomm, etc -- is exactly what local/regional governments should do (preferably with federal support). They have the necessary scope for the job, and unlike commercial interests they don't have disincentive to spend money on routine maintenance and expansion.
Let private enterprises compete fairly at the back end to provide whatever goods and services are sent down the pipes. Let government provide said pipes for all to use, unlike our current highly cutthroat but also highly inefficient networks.--pete
Maybe they don't do anything right now that needs the upstream, but guess what? That's at least in part because it would cost $$$$ to get that upstream! If the state would pay for T1s for the schools, I guarantee you plenty of teachers (and administrators) would find good uses for them--like, oh, maybe running a decent school website? Providing streaming feeds of sporting events? Or graduation? I bet the art departments would love it, at least those with classes dealing in video--they could put the students' projects up online so that everyone could enjoy them, rather than just those who care enough to go find where they kept the VHS of it and borrow it.
Granted, it is expensive. But acting like it's useless is a dangerous attitude for schools these days--just about any technology can find its full potential in schools, if the interest and money are there.
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
We can have 100 MB to the house, let comcrap manage it have it go down every few hours! Great idea!
Why should I be psyched about selling off spectrum. Shouldn't the spectrum (like all public resources) be licenced for the public good not sold in perpetuity to the greedy demonspawn that pass for "corporate leaders" in this country?
There are folks in Utah who are trying to do this, but Qwest is fighting them tooth and nail in the legislature, trying to kill the project.
The State of Michigan created about $1 billion in loan guarantees to bring broadband to every citizen. We have both urban (Detroit, Grand Rapids) and rural areas (the Upper Peninsula)
SBC gets the vast majority of that money.
There are innovative small business people using wireless links between grain towers to bring broadband to rural areas, and they don't get a dime.
Cellular data carriers are also not eligible.
This just makes the inefficient infrastructure of large carriers more cost competitive at taxpayers expense.
Michigan citizens would be better off if they were able to get direct subsidies for a portion of the most expensive basic broadband services. For example, allow me to get a subsidy of $25 on a $100 per month "basic" broadband bill, while my friend gets no subsidy on her $50 per month bill. I could either apply for the subsidy directly, or the carrier could collect it for me and subtract it from my bill with my written permission.
The world will not get better through technology. We must seek to be better people.
December 14, 2003
reed hundt on "big" broadband
A recent piece from Reed Hundt on his view of big and little broadband, regulation, services, etc. One may or may not agree with him, but it offers interesting commentary by someone who was clearly in the kitchen in the last decade. (thanks for the note Dwayne)
THE INEVITABILITY OF BIG BROADBAND
REED HUNDT
NEW AMERICA FOUNDATION
DECEMBER 10, 2003
Author's Acknowledgment: A form of this piece was originally written
by Professor Hundt for a colloquium at Harvard Business School in
April 2003, The Bandwidth Explosion: Living and Working in a
Broadband World, and will appear in a forthcoming book with the same
title. The author would like to thank Professor Stephen Bradley of
Harvard Business School. Still another form will appear in the Yale
Journal of Regulation, December 2003.
All new media, taught Marshall McLuhan, are destined to subsume and
extend all old media, and to use the old media as their content, much
like large fish filling their stomachs with small fish. The fish
metaphor belongs to me, not McLuhan, since he was rarely so dull in
his imagery.
The big fish of today is Big Broadband - access to the Web at 10 to
100 megabits per second for homes and 1 to 10 gigabits per second for
businesses. The small fish are broadcast, DSL, cable modem, and voice.
The questions are not whether Big Broadband will swallow the fish,
and perhaps the whole ocean, but how, when and by whom will the
swallowing be done? Who will create value and who will capture it?
How much capital will regulation and market failures cause to be
wasted in the process? Lastly, will we include all Americans in the
new medium, so as to create community and greater social value? And
if all Americans, rich and not rich, urban and rural, are eventually
weaved into the fabric of Big Broadband, will that happen at more or
less the same rate for all, or will Big Broadband be distributed like
the benefits of the Big Tax Cuts of 2001 - that is, on a trickle down
basis.
The answers to these questions will define not only Information and
Communications Technology ("ICT") policy, but also a major part of
America's domestic and economic policy.
Since the beginning of convergence, dated from about 1992 (plus or
minus a year), the battle to be the primary medium of at least the
next decade - the one we are in now - has raged among various
antipodal rivals: content vs. conduit, local vs. long distance,
wireless vs. wire, data vs. voice also sort of known as packet vs.
circuit, communications vs. computing, network vs. edge, and copper
vs. hfc (also known as telco vs. cable). Other, possibly lesser
dialectics include satellite vs. terrestrial and broadcast vs. cable.
Convergence describes then a clash of networks, businesses, and even
cultures.
As the convergence story evolves, a synthesis emerges. It is the next
generation network that can be discerned in the fog of the future.
Its lineaments are 10 to 100 megabits per second to the home, 1 to 10
gigabits a second to the enterprise, IP protocols, packets of course
but more edge-centric than switch-centric in terms of control,
wireless home and business LANs fanning out like peacocks' tails from
the edge of the wire network, fiber fairly far to the edge, computing
everywhere, software gluing the contraption together, and myriad
handheld or hand-carried devices connecting all the time anywhere to
the Net, the Web, the world's devices and users.
This is what I'm calling the Big Broadband network. In my shorthand
it is 10/100 at home, 1/10 at work, and wireless all around.
It is not L
When the power goes out in your house. You can still pick up the phone and call, assuming you have some phones that don't rely on house power. When the phone drops on the floor, it still works. The wires are in place in your home and to the switch.
There is a place for a stable tried and true technology for basic communication.
Although the internet seems very stable the local distribution systems are suseptible to network hanky panky that the current system is not.
The ability to listen in and record your conversations and transactions and internet queries would be enhanced. Now with the Patriot Act (actully a misnomer) there is a much higher probablility that your life will be scrutinized by those currently in power without your knowlege and more importantly without oversight or accountablilty. That is an extremely scary and dangerous thing.
I would imagine that the current power structure would love to have a central control of all communications you recieve, be able to monitor all communication you give. What a wonderful world. First the courts and then the media. 1984 where are you.
And I remember when the electro-magnetic spectrum was public domain albiet regulated. Now with legislation it is sold and owned and it is illegal for you to even listen to certain frequencies. Radio's can't be sold in the US if they can tune certain frequency bands. Who are these people?
Or maybe cableless since fiber isn't necessarily wire.
I want my laptop online no matter where I go (bus, train, airplane, local park, home, or office. If they make it cheap enough I won't bother with a home network anymore, even my desktop systems should connect to it. And of course the TV, game machine, PDA, and toaster will all connect to it. (Though I still haven't figured out why the toaster needs a net connection)
Reed Hundt has a vision about building a 10 to 100 Mbps network for every household in the U.S.
Wow, this thing will really smoke POTS.
Most people think simple-mindedly about Amtrak privitization.
... think, and most of the sloganeering is just plain wrong.
1) The value of Amtrak is in the *entire* network. Its either a national passenger railroad or its not. If you leave it to the states to fund, you'll get groups of commuter railroads.
2) If privitization were to occur, the Northeast corridor would be sold off.
hooray!
But that would leave the rest of the network which will never be profitable, much less cover its variable costs. So Congress will still be forced to subsidize roughly the same amount as they do to, but with a smaller, less useful network.
3) In a world where we spend $87B to prop up Iraq, it seems to me that it is a reasonable investment to spend $2B a year on our own infrastructure.
Amtrak is a much more complicated issue than most people... conservative or liberal
A 10mbps connection to every house is not bad. I live on long island and have a 10mbps connection to the internet already. if cable vision can do it the rest can do it
I'm sure 5 years ago you could have said it would be great to run 1.5mbps to every household and it would have sounded as great as this sounds, but the system would be nearly outdated already.
Bandwidth needs are still changing much too rapidly to invest in infrastructure this large.
Granted you can always make the argument saying that bandwidth needs will always be growing and at some point we would just need to build it. However, I still think the technology is much too young, a LOT of very rapid growth is still going to happen and I think it would be better to wait it out a bit longer.
I'd say they need to wait at LEASTS 10 more years before considering something of this scale.
I have fiber optic going into my house, which is managed by Eagle. Unfortunately, even after repeated attempts, I can't even get them to sell me any service!
I e-mailed the president of Eagle Broadband, and in presidential fasion he forwarded it to his VP of Sales. This guy asked me what the problem was and I told him all about my story, and I never heard back from them.
If they're the ones rolling out the bandwidth, they win- BIG. In a 100Mbit situation, you're looking at video on demand, VoIP, etc- all of which works in a manner much like what people really, really want. Bill it in some flat rate per block of bytes, give everyone a base free amount of bandwidth, and tell them to go play. The company that can manage all of this without going broke in the rollout and sets the billing properly, will win big.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Right.
And once we've all got bandwidth coming out of our frickin' ears thanks to a 100Mb connection to our home, who exactly is going to be prepared to spend 10s of billions on that part of the spectrum?
Because its not the TV companies (who will use the network). Nor 4G phones, as there are bound to be plenty of spare wi-fi sites around once no-one cares about how much bandwidth is being stolen by them.
The bubble seems to have burst on the 'selling your spectrum' bonanza, as it was only mobile phone companies doing this, and half of them are broke after getting carried away with 3G licenses and overvalued mergers.
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
The UTOPIA optical-fiber-to-home plan for Utah seems to be a sensible business plan for using public bonds to bring fiber to 18 cities, but it is (surprise) getting hammered by representatives from the local phone and cable companies, Qwest and Comcast. While their representatives don't seem to mind driving to legislative hearings on public roads, they do seem set against letting this project go ahead.
One of the two area papers, the nominally non-LDS, liberal-ish one that is dominant in the affected metro area, doesn't like UTOPIA either, and thus covers it from that perspective.
In another current, pressing theme, local politicians and newspapers fret over how to best bring high-paying high-tech (back) into the state.
Does anyone have good examples of good high speed networks that bring in or otherwise enable the formation and growth of new industry? I would like to have these to forward to the UTOPIA folks and key legislative offices. (Disclosure: I am an ECE prof. at a U in the UTOPIA footprint.) The Utah legislature is in session for another couple of weeks.
... as do many people. For 50 bucks a month too. Of course Japan is much smaller physically, but there's got to be some way to do it.
If they build it out but only allow 256 Kbit upstream, because any more would "interfere" with the other subscribers, it just won't be worth it.
By the taping of my glasses, something geeky this way passes
That no servers will be allowed and your upload speed is going to be capped and monitored. Remember that since big business would have its greedy little fingers all over this, all that speed is really just so that they can push spam, spyware, and ads to you more quickly. No way big business would let this come to pass if the ultimate goal was to actually empower joe consumer.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
How much will that spectrum really be worth when everyone is getting their TV, phone, and internet over fiber?
Viruses
What is the plural of penis and other latin looking words
And to quote the above article: 'Guessing the plural of a Latin word is one of those things where a little learning is a dangerous thing (but that's still "not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance," to quote Terry Pratchett'
And if 'a little learning' isn't the definition of the /. crowd, I don't know what is.
Our founding fathers removed the guys in charge. Be American. Vote incumbents out.
wait wait wait...
you trust the CABLE COMPANIES but you call the government "big brother"?!
To all the naysayers posting here, I'll quote the article which quotes "The Valley": You don't get it. You're a /. reader using the Internet at its best, but you don't get it.
"Big broadband" (as the article calls it) is the future. All the commotion we currently have about getting DSL or Cable modems or slow fixed wireless or sattelite broadband is just plain silly. The further commotion about VoIP over the current "Little Broadband" is even sillier.
OK, /.ers, I'm sure you can get this. I've seen quite a lot of new housing develpments constructed recently here in (formerly) rural Chester County PA. And I've seen tons being built in Las Vegas (consistantly one of the fastest growing cities in the US for the past few years). Can you believe in this day and age we're still pulling several ancient copper wire pairs (same exact technology as Mr. Bell himself used) to each new home built? Plus, we also pull a coax-cable? Plus, when the home owner runs into the horrible service and high rates of the local cable monopoly, they slap a satellite dish on their house? This is for *new* construction!
At this point in history, we should be pulling fiber to each new home built and just peeling off bandwidth for TV, HDTV, VoIP, Internet, etc.
Google. You'll find that it's already being done by "smart" communities -- and not just for new construction. Five cities in Utah I believe recently announced plans. Kutztown PA was a pioneer.
It's not a quesiton of "if" it should be done. We will fall further behind other countries like South Korea if we do not do it. Plus, as my little example and the article clearly point out, it's actually cost effective.
It's a question of when it will happen, and how.
There are tons of political and special interest issues to be dealt with. And how should it be regulated and managed?
I like the way it's currently happening. Local municipalities are installing the networks and managing them as local utilities. This eliminates "big Government" issues. It doesn't eliminate the inefficiencies of government vs. free business -- but the "last mile" element of providing connectivity is pretty much doomed to be dealt with as a regulated utility / monopoly of some sort, whether it's telephone, cable, power or even natural gas. Perhaps each municipality should go out to bid and let companies compete to construct the system and operate it for the first 10 years. The bids would include construction cost and also the absolutely guaranteed consumer rates (even if they are rates that include increases over the 10 year period). After the contract is up, companies bid on operating and maintaining the network for the next 10 years. The actual ownership of the network remains with the local municipality. Perhaps use a state PUC umbrella to govern and coordinate these things. but the PUC is so beholdin' to the utilities they supposedly regulate here in PA that I'm not too fond of this model.
Next, thanks to our FCC, the taxpayer has given about $70 billion of free spectrum to broadcasters and the consumer has been ordered to pay about $20 billion for over-the-air digital tuners for 200 million televisions over roughly five years. That's $90 billion out of pocket for taxpayers and consumers. It is not too late to redirect that money toward paying for the Big Broadband network. On that network broadcasters can get free high definition TV carriage. They have that on analog cable; they are inside satellite packages. Why not give them free access to the Big Broadband network. That should make broadcasters and TV households happy. In return we can get back the high definition spectrum, sell it, and use the proceeds to help pay for Big Broadband to high cost rural and poor homes. And we could even repeal what I call the "tuner tax." We are all tax-cutters in Washington now. Not gonna happen. The pentagon and executive branch as well as some congressmen will protest because of reasons of 'Homeland Security' Seriously. It is necessary for homeland security to maintain a distributed wireless communications system in times of emergency. In order to provide for the greatest possibility of success in this mission a variety of private and public broadcast sources must be encouraged. 'Big Broadband' will develop like and alongside cable tv as an addition to the wireless infrastructure. So they license the spectrum for free to encourage the broadcast medium, and have the citizens pay for the radios and televisions.
Cable modems show a similar trend, as cable companies hang more people on without adding more cable segments, routers, and fibre uplinks.
This is a marketing decision, not a technical one.
Who writes this bullshit? The "phone system" is definitely NOT "maxed out". In the 1990s, telcos put many, many miles of fiber in the ground, and in general increased the capacity of their switching stations. At the same time, research in fiber optics lead allowed them to increase the bandwidth of EXISTING cables.
.com booom), and now there isn't ENOUGH demand for it.
The long-haul telcos are sitting on far, far more bandwidth than they have consumers for. That's why the telco industry has been in a slump for years -- they invested tons of money in capacity (during the
Yes, we would all like to have 100Mb/s to the desktop. However, part of being an adult is realizing that wishing doesn't get you jack shit. Money does.
"Seems to work out ok. Only a pure Libritarian would think privatizing airports is necessary."
Seems the government just had $20B of bailouts to the airlines last year.
Maybe the model isn't so viable after all...
The local governments should own the infrastructure and lease it to the operator(s). When I was a Govt. employee we needed DS3 lines for 911 service.
The local ILEC who shall remain nameless to protect the guilty could/would not provide the DS3's because of "Lack of Facilities" this is a catchall phrase telling the customer that the ILEC cannot be bothered to make the CAPEX to provide the desired service.
Every rate case that came up the ILEC said the additional money would go into broadband or ISDN deploys where the money actually went was stock dividends and executive bonus packages.
Publicly operated roads,airports , waterworks and electric companies seem to work nicely. FedEx and UPS make a nice profit delivering packages over publicly operated standardized roads. You do not have to wait 12-18 months to get your water service "provisioned" do you?.
If we leave this to the ILEC's we will see the Big Bamboozle and Joe Ratepayer will be stuck with the Big Bill for Vaporware
Google is your friend.
I guarantee you plenty of teachers (and administrators) would find good uses for them--like, oh, maybe running a decent school website? Providing streaming feeds of sporting events? Or graduation? I bet the art departments would love it, at least those with classes dealing in video--they could put the students' projects up online so that everyone could enjoy them, rather than just those who care enough to go find where they kept the VHS of it and borrow it.
All of which have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with Reading, Writing, or Arithmetic.
Be great for the hax0rs who want better access to confidential student records, though.
And let's be honest with ourselves: Unless you're downloading Java or C# SDKs, there just ain't all that much on the internet that's worth diddly squat in the first place.
Umm yeah .... I have only had 1 service outage in 2 years, and I have video, voice and data through my cable Co. .. .. maybe you just need another cable CO.
...except in this case it's probably more like 90/10. If you really are wiring everyone, 90% of the cost will be sucked up by 10% of the installs, those out in the middle of nowhere. Then we're suddenly not as ubiquituous as we thought, and not really much better off in terms of coverage.
--(())
You'll probably laugh, but I never knew google had a hyperdictionary. Just goes to show how much attention I pay to what's on their screen.
I did try typing 'pork barrel' into google proper, but it just turned up a lot of places where it was used. I kind of got the idea it was something to do with crap spending by government, but just wondered what it really meant.. now I know!
One more step in the Americanisation of an old Brit..
*--BigMan--- Time flies like an arrow.. but personally I prefer a nice glass of wine!
A nation wide network implies nation-wide network administrators. Someone's going to have to run the damn thing, not to mention provide techinical support to Aunt Tillie ("What do you mean I need an ethernet card to connect to this? I've got a modem.") and other less loveable types ("What, I need a computer too?").
Not to mention that most network administrators are more arrogant openly than the average government employee or politician is in their secret little hearts. You really want to give some of them power on a national stage?
The idea has merits, but there's some nasty devils in the details.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
Reed Hunt was the FCC chair who issued the HDTV standard. If you ask me, he fell asleep at the hearings and when he woke up played cut and paste with all suggestions to create the HDTV 'standard'. This is why there are at least 5 different HDTV possibilities that I am aware of.
This man should not be allowed anywhere near broadband access implementation. Lobbying for large companies to give access to rural areas? fine, but keep him the hell away from any Internet standards, or I feel like we'd somehow end up with 6 incompatible TCP/IP stacks.
Beautiful,
Reed hunt still cracks me up.
The old wanna-be hippie should just retire already.
First he pushes broadcasters in to a half-baked HDTV scheme where the technology wasn't ready, now he wants to take all of the spectrum away from them. Yup, that's good for commerce. I mean really the SALE OF SPECTRUM by the US government has worked out so well to date, that its unsociable to consider reallocating anything until they purge the allocation of the public resources on any thing but a public benefit, revenue sharing basis.
Now, the RBOC's have geared up and are sitting on the fence about to spend BILLIONS and BILLIONS to roll out fiber to the home, inspire of all the neo socialist plasmatic regulations of his legacy, and he's proposing to ball that one up too.
Half the problem with broadband in the US is the regulations.
The other half of the problem is VC's who continue to invest in companies that don't have lucid business plans.
Now, the RBOC's have geared up and are sitting on the fence about to spend BILLIONS and BILLIONS to roll out fiber to the home, inspite of all the neo socialist spasmatic regulations of his legacy, and he's proposing to ball that one up too.
Half the problem with broad band in the US is the regulations.
The other half of the problem is VC's who continue to invest in companies that dont have lucid buisness plans.
Since Iowa's legislative leaders have decided that eduction doesn't pay (no lobbyists like the agriculture industry), the ICN is being dismantled and sold piecemeal.
Considering current state of telecommunications and channel capacity, how the F88k are they gonna get all that bandwidth to every household? I'm very sure that Verizon is not gonna fork over the dough to replace all there nasty phone lines that can't handle anything over 115k. Ahh, but I guess it all just comes back to politics.
Build a bigger road... and more people will drive on it. And they'll probably be driving alone, and further. This is a fundamental truth ignored by virtually every city planner in the country. Building more road won't automatically solve your problems. The fundamental value to plan for is convenience, aka time. Most people will commute for an hour to get to or from work - consequently, anywhere within an hour is fair game. Efficiency only comes into play when the traffic is already clogged.
Point being, you make these pipes, and people will blow the bandwidth on crap, at the expense of the important services. And they'll probably ruin it for their neighbors too. Unless the network is capable of giving everyone essential service simultaneously, and prioritizes leaf access to pipe bandwidth such that everyone can simultaneously get their essential cut, you'll see things like phone service cut off. Etc.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
So according to what you are saying there was NO "GREAT NORTHEAST BLACKOUT" last year... You are a moron if you think any state run public infrstructure is "Excellent". The power companies and the state Both suck, and were both at fault for the blackout, so there goes your theroy, try another...
MacOSX, because making *NIX better is a lot better than waiting for Micro$loth to fix Windows
Although the proposed funding model is... creative, to say the least I'm certain we'd be better off sticking to the tried and true methods for raising capital for large expenditures. Namely, standing in stopped traffic at a busy intersection requesting donations or by having "free" carwashes. Everyone please sign up at your local bulletin boards.
Newsflash, urban centers pay more in federal taxes than they get back. Stop your gloating. Additionally, if you honestly think it's feasible to suddenly have us all move out to the country you're a loon. Tell you what, come back here with some hard numbers, and research, showing how we can all live this idyllic life and i'll give you some credence. Until then you're just another elitist spouting off the virtues of wherever he happens to be. Solutions are elusive, esp. when it comes to massive paradigm shifts. I find it discouraging that you were upmodded so high.
Photos.
MichiganDan writes:
The Iowa Communications Network provides an interesting case study in ways that networks, concieved by politicians, can indeed be built without excessive pork attached.
This is absolutely incorrect. ICN has been a terrible failure, and is actually being prepared to be sold off to rid the state of Iowa of the nightmare. Here in Des Moines, it has become a third rail in the legislature for many years because of the increasing budget impact. It already takes much of the state's cigerette settlement as well as a large demand on the general budget. Worst of all, it's so poorly run and the fiber technology increasingly outdated that there is no end in sight, other than dumping it.
Some facts on the ICN disaster:
1. It's just about to be put on the block. See the ICN website for details on legislation being drafted to sell off the pieces of the ICN to whoever will bid on them.
2. It has been an administrative mess. ICN has had issues in the past several years with telecom fraud (they apparently weren't equipped to prevent toll fraud). Their IP service to schools has been so poor (due to budget issues, inefficiencies, competence challenges) that many schools have simply left, only to find faster service at lower costs from the private sector. My children's school has a T1 connection through ICN, but sees typically 50-80 kbps speeds on the ICN piece (as tested from their router - we had to look at why the classrooms were getting faster speeds on dialup). Upstream, the word is that ICN just hasn't purchased the necessary capacity to service what they have sold. This is further indication that they are not truly representing costs, even though they're terribly in the red.
3. The original design was a pork barrel benefit, which doomed the project out of the gates. I worked for a carrier that was asked to bid on the original RFP in the early 1990s. The RFP was puzzling - it appeared that it was intended to fail. Upon further inquiry, we learned that a coalition of incumbent telephone providers had manipulated the RFP design in a manner to ensure the project would fail. They expected they would end up with the network (built at taxpayer expense) in a few years. Given the present asset sale proposal, this may indeed be finally happening.
it *can* be done without the pork and failure.
ICN is nothing but pork and failure, unfortunately. Please, don't make our state's mistake in yours!
The current VOIP conversation at the FCC and in state commissions is as if government responded to Henry Ford's new invention of the automobile by discouraging the construction of roads, and instead taxing cars in order to subsidize canals and railroads. As a former government official I can only say: We can do better.
Henry Ford didn't invent the automobile, he perfected an assembly line and invented a type of transmission. If the US governments had taxed cars and subsidized public transport, we'd probably be better off, environmentally (no 2 ton SUVs ferrying a single person to work) and socially (people would interact with each other in public spaces, rather than spending hours every day as captive consumers for big radio).
That said, where's the Cowboy Neal audition?
-- Equity lord of the Trill Consortium
This is what they're trying to do in Utah with
Utah Telecommunications Open Infrastructure Agency
http://www.utopianet.org/
But the Ultra Mormons in Provo and St George are stonewalling the project.
I'm glad Reed Hundt has a clue. Too bad his successor, Michael Powell, has repeatedly missed the clue-train.
'He who has to break a thing to find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom.' -- Gandalf to Saruman
You are a moron if you think any state run public infrstructure is "Excellent". The power companies and the state Both suck, and were both at fault for the blackout, so there goes your theroy, try another...
Consider the Army.
Thank God it's a state-run monopoly -- otherwise we'd have civil war.
-kgj
-kgj
It's ill-conceived. He makes a lot of statements that are merely conjecture, and that completely sidestep reality. For example:
This network would be optimally efficient. It would be a platform for new innovative services, such as rich interactive gaming.
We already have rich, interactive gaming. And ironically, the more "rich" and "interactive," the more it will cost- not just a "buy once play as many times as you want," but "but once, and keep paying" a la Planetside, Everquest, the upcoming World of Warcraft, etc. Further, it's not going to be cheap to install and maintain the infrastructure necessary to support "rich" and "interactive" gaming- for either side. Even if you had a network that could handle whatever you throw at it, say, a stream of 10K vs the typical 5K for an online multiplayer game, it won't do any good if the indivdual's computer can't handle it.
It would greatly increase e-commerce, producing higher gdp.
Nice thought, but he says nothing about how this would actually happen.
It would create new jobs in the United States.
See above.
It would ensure broadcast penetration
at nearly 100%, local voice penetration at nearly 100%, and push Internet access at least to 90% if not 100%.
See above.
The other thing he neglects to mention is that a significant part of the cost of certain broadband services are derived from fees and taxes. That will not change merely because the method of delivery has changed. Another real downside is that as providers gain and weild more and more control over what travels across those wires, I see the potential that everything will be commoditized - down to the individual protocol.
download more MP3 files, more movies, more, more, more...
also, on the flip side, with EVERYONE having such good capacity there are more boxes to 0wn with more bandwidth and processing power to generate massive DDOS attacks... or any other somewhat interesting but useless and annoying network and bandwidth intensive activity someone sees fit to try.
joy.
Try prefacing a search term with define: in google; it gets me pretty good results. For instance:
Pork Barrel
--
lds
Read down toward the bottom at his specific proposals...one of them is a tax voucher, the money going to whatever Big Broadband (10mbps+) provider the consumer signs up with. I.e., an entirely decentralized, market-based proposal, no more a central chokepoint than we have now. He doesn't want a giant government project, just a market and regulatory structure that encourages fiber instead of HDTV spectrum and traditional voice.
Color me cynical, but I suspect we won't get true broadband (10Mbs to 100Mbs) to the home any time soon (by 2010 years, for under $50/month, in any reasonable US geographic region) for the following reasons:
1) The cable guys don't want to cannibalize or lose control of the distribution channel for TV/HDTV video which requires such bandwidths.
2) The telco guys don't want to cannibalize their business T1 sales.
3) The satellite guys can't provide that bandwidth on a bi-directional, many-to-many basis.
4) The wireless phone guys may get there someday, but it'll take a while to improve their network bandwidth 1000x to do this.
--LP
If you don't obtain a clear LOS then the service will choke and die the first time it rains.
On it right now. Connect to water tower 3 miles away. Can't even see it thru trees. Had service for year and a half. Lemme see uptime on home router:
uptime: 32d22h19m59s
Hmm. Not bad for a PPPoE connection. Pretty sure I updated firmware and rebooted my router 32 days ago, so it probably would have been much longer than that.
Rain? Never a problem. Fog? Couldn't see 10 feet this morning. No problem. Hail? Snow? Nada.
Don't know what WISP you're talking about but apparently they don't know how to run their tech. Sounds a lot like the phone company here. Rain? Lines fall apart. Can't pass 18 Kbps on a stupid modem. Static. And that's on a brand new line.
Like anything, it all depends on who's doing the job. A house built by idiots will fall apart, but that doesn't make all houses bad.
I have come to the same conclusion. Remember, Tivo is taking stats these days that indicate that people skip ads. In the limit consumers are going to bypass commercial advertisement or timeshift ads as to make the impression not useful (i.e. weekend sale ads).
The future to me is a micropayment pay as you go type deal with web selection of content. The providers will send the material to me on demand and I can keep a copy locally (maybe even I will schedule a week/month based of content). Tivo esque suggestions would always be free from the providers. (sounds like a star trek episode).
The advertising revenue would basically go away and would be surplanted by deals formed with the studios themselves and content providers. Some traditional avenues would still be there (product placement etc) I feel the 30second spot though is gone as we know it.
Hedley
Sounds like a nice (rather ambitious) idea. But living in a somewhat rural area, I'll take my grain of salt. I can see it coming along when cable TV, DSL, and decent cell phone service finally do.
When the cost gets out of control, I can just see the number crunchers saying "well, we can avoid $X by not running fiber all those miles to only serve a few people.
When the network goes down? It would seem to me that placing our two most important communications networks on the same system would wreak havoc if anything went down.
Imagine you're in an isolated midwestern town, if you're not already there. Now imagine that you have these services, and the town router decides to take a smoke break (ie, it crashes). Excepting for people with cell phones (if even they keep those on their own network too), you'll be cut off from any emergency services you need.
This is a bad, yet easily imaginable scenario. No, I think we should keep our phone and internet systems separate, or at least provide an independent backup system.
In the last 3 years i have lived in three states.
they range from:
Alaska- All schools have internet and the state has their own satellite system where in many remote native villages teachers in remote cities and even in other countries teach classes via the internet. Some of the websites made by kids in some of the Esquimo villages along the arctic coast are fantastic.
But near the cities the service is sporadic at best. You have wireless, dsl, cable modems, dial up etc but one neighborhood will have all of them and the next one you can put a message in a can and throw it at your neighbors house faster than a e mail message can get thru.
In the City I lived in (Fairbanks) one company decided that this area must be like all the other places in the US and laid fiber optic lines to the hospitals and army base etc and then decided that they were not going to bother with the consumers for a couple years. So those lines are unused.
Another company was set to serve the entire city but not the outlying areas. Until the asked the public to come to a roll out. Out of 250 people who signed up only 7 lived inside the city limits. All the people who wanted broadband and had the money for it lived in the richer communities outside the city. needless to say a little advanced market research would have saved them a fortune. They think they will never be able to make up for their losses inside the city.
South Dakota- Personally I think if they nuked South Dakota it would improve the looks and value of the place and single handly raise the US average IQ by 10 points. But they do have the best infrastructure Ive ever seen or heard of.
$29 a month for fiber optic or cabel modem. fast speeds, great service even in small tiny towns. The entire state is a local call even 450 miles away.TV, Internet and telephone service over one fiber optic line. Its almost a shame to waste it on the prairie half wits. Most of this is caused by the Govornor Janklow and fears that employers were bypassing the state due to the lack of internet and phone capabalities. also there is compitition by two companies. Black Hills Fibercom the power company and midco a cable tv outfit on the other end of the state. When ever one anounces a price cut or speed increases the other matchs it or outdoes them. If this had been the usual Government regulated market with only one company involved prices would be high and most people wouldnt have any service except in the largest cities.
Missouri- no cable modems or fiber optic. While they have DSL prices are high and in most areas its completely unavailable. I live one mile too far to get DSL and the local telephone company bought the frequencys needed to run wireless to prevent anyone else comeing in and selling internet service in the areas they refuse to connect to.
It always cheaper to bribe the government than to serve the consumers.
Better Uncle Sam than Comcast, in my opinion.
Of course, in the modern-day push to privatization, the most likely outcome of any such measure to "help" US citizens would be to fund billions of dollars of construction on the taxpayer's bill and then immediately turn control of it over to a profit-maximizing local monopoly to further soak money out of all the new utility's customers. (... Make that "consumers" -- customers are people you have to treat with dignity.)
I'd rather have the government in control of content over the private sector. The First Amendment allows for court challenges to the overreaching hand of the government as does the ability to vote-out egregious offenders. There's absolutely no recourse against people like Comcast who can do whatever they want to their network and tell you, "Like it or lump it."
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
It may support 10Mb both ways, but they certainly aren't going to give that to you upstream, unless you pay through the nose.
Contact Me (got tired of viruses emailing me).
No, but he proposed almost exactly what he's talking about here for the sale of spectrum to broadcasters.
Remember raking in all those millions (if not billions) of dollars that the government earned from selling spectrum for a pretty penny? Me neither. But that was the original plan: require a switch, but bill the money centers (the ad-selling broadcasters).
The broadcasters whined enough about unfair competition from cable that they were basically given the spectrum (except that they will have to give back the old VHF/UHF spectrum once it's freed).
Funny, it's exactly that money that was supposed to have subsidized the necessary converter boxes for older equipment. Instead, guess who's footing the $300/TV bill? Hmmm -- that would be us, the same taxpayers who owned the spectrum to begin with.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. I sure as hell wouldn't support his latest plan, even overlooking any other technical or ideological problems that one could have with it.
Ashland did that back in, what was it? 1993, I think.
The ISP, Cable, Phone -- they all use the Fiber network. Currently, my mother in law is getting 4MB download (as compared to the 384/384 max I have here in Beaverton, near Portland). I know that she is actually receiving that speed, because I ran DSL Reports on it a couple times.
I understand that World Wide Fiber's goal is to get fiber to ever end-user, but... they won't work directly with the consumer, they only work with the ISPs. So, while places like Verizon are telling me that they have NO intention of EVER upgrading the 26 gauge cable between me and th C.O., I could be using Fiber if they were willing.
Also, a friend of mine lived in Lake Oswego. AT&T had dropped a fiber line to the sidewalk next to his mailbox, but refused to give him ANY kind of internet access.
I think the real problem is that it is in the best interest of the phone company to NOT upgrade the system to fiber. It is going to either take a really unique ISP (like I am thinking of starting), or a local government (like Ashland) who is willing to put the effort out for the benefit of the people.
Malachi
http://www.google.com/profiles/malachid
Only recently has some morons (fcc) decided that broadband = fast. That couldn't be further from the truth. Simply put, broadband = multiple channels of analog signaling (frequency division multiplexing).
Chances are if we do get 10/100 access at home it won't be broadband. It will be baseband, which would be multiple channels of digital signaling (time division multiplexing).
-Nick
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
Good thing is technology is advancing and will innovate away from monopolies such as TWX and the phone companies. I'll bet if ten years ago someone would have told you people would no longer have home phones then you'd not have believed it.
Good idea wold be for Fed gov. to step in and require states counties, and cities to open up the right-of-way to EVERYONE and not just those few elite who are on the list with the politicians. I once consulted on a project to do this for a city in 1998. Well, the city officials had allowed the local energy monopoly to lay fiber as well as the ILEC but told us we'd have to pay them to lay the fiber and pay rent to them for it!
Do you realize how much taxes we pay on roads? $660/family. Every year. Surely a national fiber network could be really cheap but take a look at the mail system. Their fees are extreme compared to other delivery companies especially if you consider their volumes. I have no illusions that socializing technology would make it any better. Maybe it would not be $660/year but I'll bet my fast Internet bill in two years will be down to $250/year.
Expect Freedom.
I get worried whenever Internet access gets put into context with TV and voice delivery by the "wrong" people. To those people, uplink is how you transmit your requests for data to be shipped down. To those people, highly asymmetric links are just fine because they're all that anyone "needs," even good because it limits the bandwidth resources available to crackers and spammers.
The Internet was originally about end-to-end, and peer communication. Some peers were bigger, and had more connections than others, and were called servers. But in a more fundamental way, they were still peers.
Look at Wondershaper. It exists because cable (at least, don't know about DSL) ISPs have broken the end-to-end model. Cable ISPs "optimize" for download to the point that multiple streams have difficulty sharing the link. It's tweaked and tuned to become a 'broadcast on request' medium.
I have little hope for "Big Broadband" to be significantly better. That's in nobody's interest except us rabble.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Here at Iowa State University, we use the ICN for our primary net access. God does it suck. Always having problems. The ICN was great a few years back.... but its been poorly treated since then..
Fiber is the wrong way to go. Fiber is too expensive to build out an entire infrastructure for the country, and takes too long to deploy. Where I live, the phone lines are aerial because it's too difficult (read: expensive) to cut into rock to bury the lines. But running fiber over the poles would be a disaster the next time a hurricane came (Isabel downed probably 20 trees on the lines within a mile of my home.
Wireless is the future. 802.11g does up to 54Mbps per channel (for example). The technology to make wireless viable for everyone everywhere isn't there yet, but it will be soon. The capacity of cell networks increased dramatically with CDMA over TDMA, and 802.11g networks increase throughput considerably over 802.11b by moving to OFDM. It's much cheaper to build out towers and cell-sites and to do wireless (or even fiber) backbone links than to run it to every home in America.
FWIW, I have a dozen people with internet access on an 802.11b setup covering ~5 square miles - I can't even IMAGINE if I were to try and compete by running fiber instead - there's just no way. If the government REALLY wants 100Mbps to every home in America, they will make wireless easy (read: unregulated), viable (read: more spectrum) and cheap (read: free).
IMHO, HDTV should replace cable TV. With all those subchannels, there should be no shortage of things to watch. Cable OTOH tends to put the good shows on premium channels so you can pay even MORE. I think when people realize what HDTV actually has to offer, they'll start wondering why they pay that cable bill every month. Instead of thinking of ways for the public to pay MORE, they should think about how to get them paying LESS (then they'll have more money available for taxes :) Turning spectrum over to more pay-for-use services may not be going in the right direction.
Well, let's see, you can use the internet to Lot's of good Readin' and Ritin' in them downloads.
While we're on the subject of things web-ish: Know any mathematicians who write their webpages in MathML? Know any literati who read their Shakespeare in PDF?
The only competition the web has for "Greatest Dumbing-Down Device in the History of Mankind" is television itself.
Currently, when routing tables get screwed up, the appropriate netadmins are able to alert each other and figure out how to fix things...via the telephone. Once the entire POTS network is discarded, and everything runs VOIP, what's to be done when it breaks? I'm not so much concerned about a power outage in my home (I don't have a landline anyway; a cell phone is much more versatile, and costs about the same) - I'm much more concerned about a network outage that can't be fixed without the help of it already being fixed.
Yes, it's silly to run multiple physical networks to the same places. However, that makes things a lot easier to fix...
Given that I know of plenty of people who barely can get a telephone line, can't get "real" cable (ie, must use satellite) and occasionally even have to pay to have a power line drawn, I'm not sure this is feasible.
Leaving even 1% of the homes unserved would be, well, a disservice. So far -no- utility has managed to get 100% local availability. Remember that we're not just talking about removing HDTV, but also land-line telephones.
A great idea in concept, in practice it would cost at least as much as the money that the HDTV spectrum would bring in -and- would put most ISPs out of business.
It is more productive to voice thoughtful opinions (reply) than to judge (moderate) others.
Yes, I'll go switch cable companies right now! Oh wait, they're all monopolies. Never mind.
What really got me was not the issues you point out, but the fact that of "all this money" he claims to see as "available" for this conversion, very little of it really is .... most of that $400billion or so is going to have to be paid into the current system to keep it operating AT THE SAME TIME as the conversion is being made. We can't just turn off the current systems for five years, keep paying as if we are using them, and then turn on a brand new system. It just doesn't work that way....
Not yet, but if you'd have asked me 10 years ago how I called my mother on the phone, I'd certainly have left a computer out of my answer.
But that's my point - you're using your computer as a telephone, not as a display device for reading the Corpus of Aristotle.
Telephones, and their evil, bastard off-spring, Cell Phones, are the scourge of rational thought everywhere.
While I am always in favor of moving with technology, there is the isue of reliability of the new technology. I know when my cable goes out, or if I lose electricity, my phone works. Certainly it would be nice to have just one wire, but if it doesn't work reliably.
POTS work, and are far more reliable then your cable company, or even your electric company. I remember not to long ago, thousands of people losing their electricity for a week or more, yet they still have working POTS.
Like I would want phone service from my cable company, or my electric company, man would that suck.
(POTS is Plain Old Telephone Service, for those of you not in the know)
As I am reading this article, SureWest (formerly WinFirst) is running the fiber optic cable down the telephone poles outside my house here in Sacramento, CA, USA. It is going to be a month or two until service is available in my specific area, but I have read that they are using Cisco 4000 series equipment that allows 200Mbps full duplex fast-ethernet in each individual strand of fiber. And in the future, they will be able to upgrade to the Cisco 7000 series (or something close) equipment that will allow them to transfer 1Gbps in each individual strand of fiber. Mmm bandwidth. They need to do things like this not only in the US, but in more communities all over the world.
Seriously, no one cares about the pedantic electrical engineering definition of broadband. Languages change over time.
Let's take apart this blatant troll.
We already have rich, interactive gaming.
How can a comment not be a troll if it claims there's no way games could innovate if given fast connections? Trying to keep the game playable over a modem is one of the major bottlenecks in online gaming today.
"but once, and keep paying" a la Planetside, Everquest, the upcoming World of Warcraft, etc.
Those are MMORPGs. Everything in the genre charges a monthly fee. If you want to talk about increasing fees on games that don't charge more than once already, you should be talking about things like Xbox Live versus Battle.net.
a stream of 10K vs the typical 5K for an online multiplayer game, it won't do any good if the indivdual's computer can't handle it.
Any modern computer can handle a lot more than 10K. And by "modern" I mean built in the last 20 years. 10K is nothing, and nobody is going to get DOS'ed with a stream of 50K. Or is streaming video, with much higher speeds than that, impossible? It's up to the game designers to avoid drawing 50,000 high res models when you send 50K.
Nice thought, but he says nothing about how this would actually happen.
You could always take a look at countries like South Korea where high speed internet connections are more common. I agree this isn't likely to create many jobs other than temporary construction work, but if his vision came to pass we would see the near 100% penetration rates because by definition everyone would have a connection.
Another real downside is that as providers gain and weild more and more control over what travels across those wires
That is a real threat, but for this, it's better if the government builds the network-the corporations don't own the medium, so it's much harder for them to lock out competitors, abuse customers, and act like monopolies. The government would only have to grant another company another license to use the existing public infrastructure to increase competition. If we wait until private corporations build the fiber themselves, they have absolute control over it by default.
so, mods, please apply -1 Troll to the parent post.
just one example, sugar prices here are at least _twice_ what they are outside of the US. this is driving out candy manufacturers (not the wages, though that does not help either)
Now this is caused mostly by tariffs, not subsidies, but that is just one piece of the pie. subsidies, tarrifs etc, almost always do more harm than good. Especially those third world famers who would love to be able to sell their crops for a living, but can't cause the tarrifs or subsidies make it unprofitable.
Lastly, even our partly free trade economy ballances out stuff anyway. Subsidise wheat, wheat growing becomes more profitable, wheat growing land becomes more valuable, land and equipment and fertilizer prices go up, the increase in costs will take a big cut out of wheat profits. And the price of bread goes up for everybody, taking money that should have gone to other industries. Little gain for farmers, and lots of loss for others.
Best solution, cut all the subsidies, make all tariffs flat (same for all products) cut taxes and let people decide where the money needs to go. 9 times out of 10 (or better) this will result in a better allocation of capital and result in a wealthier nation than any subsidies could.
Hmmm... this turned into a bit of a rant. sorry....
The Constitution gives the federal government no ability to apropriate funds for roads. So when they wanted to built the federal highway system, they stuck it into a military bill, with the excuse that 'the military needs a better trans. system in case of war' Nowdays of course the courts just turn a blind eye to the problem, and mumble something about 'intrastate commerce' which has little to do with it.
So in short the highway system is military. They aren't really separate examples.
Winfirst facts -
* Founded in late 1999 by Jim Vaughn of FrontierVision.
* Funded in Series-A @ $1.2B (yes that is a B)
* Acquired franchise rights for the cities of:
Sacramento
Dallas
Austin
Houston
San Antonio
Portland
Seattle
San Diego
All of Los Angeles County
Relationships with:
Bechtel (construction)
Lucent (network infrastructure and custom NIUs for single mode fiber-to-the-home)
HP (data center and IT)
Sold to: Surewest Communications of Sacramento in 2002 for the whopping total of $12M.
I have the operational plan of this company memorized, since I built a large part of it, so if anyone wants to go do it again when the telecom market isn't about to bottom out, feel free to let me know.
-- http://www.criticalassets.com
Reed Hundt...isn't that the same guy who managed to auction off large expanses of spectrum to wireless carriers (who lost money in the deal, in the end)?
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
Did somebody just say 100 mbps Internet? Who cares how much it costs, what the impact on the environment is, and how many lives must be sacrificed to bring this to us. I mean we're talking about 100 mbps Internet for everbody here! 100 mbps!
It's funny, laugh!
"A policy for bringing all Americans
into the experience of using a computer on the Web can generate
economic and social benefits, as well as provide a significant
stimulus to the economy. We might even see a rise in general
happiness, since surveys show that those on internet are even
statistically more likely to be happy than those off the internet."
Why does this seem so bloody pathetic? I guess this is a "the grass is greener on the other side" syndrome.
I have talked to some of my friends who live in Tokyo and Seoul, and they get 10 mbs ethernet (cannot remember if it was fiber or not) to their home/apartment for around $10-$15/month (US equivalent).
Gee, I just love my QWEST 128/128 kbs dsl modem right now...
Here in Japan we have internet connectivity options like this: ADSL in 8/12/24/26/45Mbps (1 or 3MB upstream) ~$30-40US/month. FTTH 100Mbps up and down ~$50US/month PHS mobile 128kbps - mobile cards (PCMCIA/SD) that can be used in all major city areas....great for PDA's and notebooks. Also we have Voice over IP standard with YahooBB (bb.yahoo.co.jp) and some other ISP's. This allows us to call for free to anywhere in Japan if the other party is on the same VOIP network. Also, long distance calls to the US, for example, are very inexpensive (~3yen/min). We also have TV over IP here =). Also, ISP's DO NOT impose CAPPING or any ugliness of that sort. Japan is of course much smaller geographically than say the US but also the infrastructure here is purely digital and allows for very robust switching and routing. In the US/Canada, even if you had Fiber to every home, the network infrastructure could not support the traffic and routing...North America needs a serious clean house at the base level....they better get on it soon! ~3-4 years ago the Internet was not a big thing in Japan, not that many people really used it compared to now...the growth here has been phenominal.
I believe that the internet allows for the distribution of many millions of textbooks worth of valuable (as well as junk) information. It's up to the IT guys to makes sure that nobody is getting 'Paris Hilton' videos during recess. That's another issue altogether, but I don't think that the difficulties involved should preclude the expansion of technology, and working toward ubiquity of the technology by starting kids out on it young.
Look, the internet is great for ordering from eBay, or Amazon, or WineCommune. It's great for meeting kookie slut chicks at the various dating services. [I kinda doubt you'd want to meet your wife like that, but, as they say in /. land, YMMV.] And it's great for keeping up on the latest gossip: DrudgeReport, SlashDot, eRobertParker, you name it.
But being able to order an especially juicy book from Amazon doesn't mean you'll actually sit down and master the book, only that you know where to go to obtain a copy.
Unless you're the kind of kid who's gonna grow up to build the next Internet infrastructure [i.e. the kind of kid who would be interested in downloading a Java SDK, or a C# SDK, or some highly technical document like an RFC or an IEEE standard], then hanging out on the internet isn't a whole lot different than going to a cocktail party: Lots of chatter, precious little of substance.
If government has to get involved, let it subsidize dark fiber.
The only regulation should be that in any area, there must be at least two competing data service providers per local network - if there aren't two, no one gets to provide service. Let the companies figure out between them what cross subsidies they want to apply. They'll end up providing about the same bundle of services and pricing - but if ever there's a technology improvement, they'll have the incentive and access needed to compete and increase their market share.
Plan to let rural areas go wireless - far more efficient, though generally lower capability.
In fact, immediately eliminate universal access subsidies for rural areas. Wired phone rates will shoot up, and 95% of rural voice will go cell-based within a year. Cell-based data service will probably be widely available within the same year, derived from existing data over cell technologies.
Having eliminated that political barrier, it should be that much easier to implement the rest of the plan, and decide what, if any, subsidies should go to rural areas.
Reed M. Hundt's middle name is Michael... As in...
Reed Mike Hundt, no new taxes.
-George H. W. Bush
How can a comment not be a troll if it claims there's no way games could innovate if given fast connections?
Am I not seeing things here? I don't recall ever making such a comment. I might also point out your implication that just because somethins is innovative, it will magically be guaranteed success in the marketplace. Sorry, but that doesn't happen.
Trying to keep the game playable over a modem is one of the major bottlenecks in online gaming today.
There are constraints no matter what. Even if you get past the modem connections because everyone has higher bandwidth, you still need the infrastructure on the provider's side to support that increase in bandwidth, presumably, for the same number of players.
Any modern computer can handle a lot more than 10K. And by "modern" I mean built in the last 20 years. 10K is nothing
In and of itself, that's true. But the 5K stream for current games does something. It carries information telling the player's software what to do. If you increase the stream to 10K, you're piling on twice the amount of information that has to be processed in order to be of any use. That's quite a bit different than a raw 10K stream.
Those are MMORPGs. Everything in the genre charges a monthly fee. If you want to talk about increasing fees on games that don't charge more than once already, you should be talking about things like Xbox Live versus Battle.net.
If you want to limit your understanding to such a narrowly-defined scope, that's fine. I'm talking about revenue models.
I agree this isn't likely to create many jobs other than temporary construction work, but if his vision came to pass we would see the near 100% penetration rates because by definition everyone would have a connection.
And certainly, all of those glorious predictions would come to pass. NOT.
That is a real threat, but for this, it's better if the government builds the network-the corporations don't own the medium, so it's much harder for them to lock out competitors, abuse customers, and act like monopolies.
That option comes with its owns set of problems - especially with a government hurling itself further and further toward a surveillance/police state.
Who cares who ends up using the spectrum? Someone will find a use for it.
The important part is the new network. No longer are you limited to the number of stations you can have in a band or how many programs you can broadcast at the same time. Would you like to watch the conservative news or the liberal news tonight?
I agree witht the basic concept. Fiber and big bandwidth to every home and business ASAP would secure our global economic dominance for the next 50 years. However, he is missing out on a major source of savings to help pay for the infrastructure. Reducing the need to build new highways could be a major savings that could subsidize all or most of the cost. If we could take 20% of the traffic off our existing highway system by telecommuting (Hey, let's all work one day a week at home!), we would't need new roads. We would just have to maintain what we have. All the new road funding should more than pay for universal fiber access.
$300 for a tuner is bullshit. Maybe it costs that much extra if the development cost is spread over a few tens of thousand of sets. If it's spread across millions of sets (as it will be) the cost goes down a long way. Here in the UK an external digital STB (with its own case, power supply, remote, etc.) costs 50 ($90). The cost of the tuner itself must be a tiny fraction of that. Now I know you have a different digital system in the US but I doubt that it's so fundamentally different that it will require much more expensive electronics.
In the future I'd recommend spending a little more time looking at prices BEFORE you start theorizizing about market prices in the US. You'll find that the best prices on an "external" tuner are about $500 even at WalMart. Internal tuners add $300 to the cost of a set... Go check it out. Look at identical model televisions, ones that are "HDTV MONITORS" (Term for those w/o the built in tuner) and look at their identical counsins that are "HDTV TELEVISIONS" and the price difference is a MINIMUM of $300. So theorize all you want about prices in a country you don't live in, but your argument isn't with me it's with reality.
-- I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous
I meant that the price is unreasonable, not that it's incorrect.
To clarify further: pricing as a form of communication, and by pricing the feature of digital TV support at $300 the manufacturers are saying "digital TV is worth an extra $300 and costs a substantial fraction of that to produce". That implicit statement is what I was calling "bullshit".