Slashdot Mirror
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."
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!**
The post contains an exact quote from the article, nothing more
The number allocation scheme might not be maxed out yet, but the physical network that can carry those calls is getting close to it.
Heck, there are still times when I can't get a cell phone or a land line call to go thru because I get the dreaded 'all ciruits are busy' message.
CMDRTACO CHECK YOUR EMAIL!
You are correct in part, however when you're buying bandwidth at the state level, for the entire state system you can get decent prices from the telco's. :) shhh though, that's our little secret.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
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.
So you're against the military? The federal highway system? What about all those other programs that your tax dollars have gone to over the years that have benefited you either directly or indirectly?
By what you're saying, though... do you think people should just leave small towns and farms in a mass exodus? You should spend some time out here and see the quality of life. I've got an hour commute each day where my average speed is 65 mph! I do this because I live in a nice small town of 6200 people where nothing happens. Take a look at a local telivison stations web site, or the local news paper of Sioux Falls, the biggest city in the state. What do you see? Very little in terms of violence or conflict often times. Big news here is when our former governor and congressmen does something stupid and gets himself convicted of manslaughter.
I grew up in the Minneapolis area of Minnesota and deliberately moved out here for college and have stayed afterwards to get away from over crowdedness, traffic, and many of the other less then fun aspects of big city life.
If you think we are devoid of culture you only show your ignorance to some of the original cultures on this continent.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
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).
I think they are talking about the amount of bandwidth available on the phone system. There's only so much you can get out of the copper phone line.
Yeah, high $$ for now, but order 100 million OC-3's , and watch that price fall by different manufacturers wanting their piece of the pie....
It seems to me that part of the problem is that small websites can't afford to provide high-bandwidth services. At US$1 per gigabyte transferred (at least this is the case for the small and unrepresentative number of hosting providers I have looked at), there is virtually no way a hobbyist could afford to provide broadband content to any significant number of people. The obvious solution would then be to have visitors contribute something to the site, but as of yet there is no viable micropayment system.
Once everyone has upstream bandwidth in the tens of megabits, and their OS isn't vulnerable to so many worms out of the box (I've seen an XP box get infected within 10 minutes after install, without adding any software that didn't come with XP) there will be growth in devices and software that enable the average user to create broadband content. Then there will be a compelling reason for everyone to have broadband. Sort of a chicken and egg situation.
If the bandwidth piggybacks on pipes meant for HDTV, we'd avoid this catch completely, because there would be a compelling non-Internet reason to have that 100Mbit in every home.
Another issue is that in the current legal climate there is significant incentive not to give the average user a lot of bandwidth, because it enables sharing of files that ??AA has rights to, and they have considerable political power and a penchant for litigation. This holds back growth of general connectivity, impeding the development of better applications for it. So the problem I have with ??AA, "starving artists" notwithstanding, is that they are holding back the United States as a developer and consumer of technology in general, and thus doing a lot of damage to the economy well outside their intended scope.
Links...
The program.
accountability and goals
Google search
Windows XP's upcoming service pack will enable ICF by default, and Lookout Express is becoming more secure (as stupid "features" are patched away) all the time. Frankly the lack of a firewall and the use of lookout are the two biggest ways that this shit seems to spread, they really ought to cut down considerably. Meanwhile people just aren't used to having to think about this, network security for the home user has been only a minor issue until recently, because broadband has only received wide adoption recently.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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.
Also, in many areas, T1 prices are about half of that now, mostly due to implimentation of HDSL2 signaling.
Look at your NIU rack if you have HDSL2 lines and you'll see why it's cheeper - the telco side only uses one pair of copper now.
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.
The US has a program to ensure that people have enough to eat. The name of the program is Food Stamps...
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.
"pork barrel" spending is another name for wasted government money. It is an epithet used to cast FUD over whatever is being targeted. Commonly used in reference to NASA, military spending, members of Congress getting federal funding for their home states, etc. etc.
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.
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.
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
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..
Symmetric and Asymmetric DSL are two different technologies. The SDSL that's floating around here is incompatible with normal phone use on the same line, while ADSL is not. The modems are different, and so is most probably the equipment for the telcos.
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.