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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.
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.
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.
"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.
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.
Nay, regulations are often quite useful and can benefit consumers.
Ever look at some of your cable or cell bills and see as what I think is called the "Universal Access Fee"? Ever wonder where these 'fees's go?
Here in South Dakota, we've got a few big cities (by SD standards) and lots of small ones. Even in some of the medium cities, there is little financial incentive to build out broadband networks to consumers. Such fees go into a pool to provide the needed incentives to network operators to expand their broadband networks out to those who otherwise might be cut off.
As an example of this, since 2000 I believe, South Dakota has had at least a T1 running into each and every public elementary, middle and high school in the state.
I've got friends on farms who surf the net using cable or high-speed wireless, all made possible through such service fees and regulations.
Isn't one of the benefits of the internet it's access to everyone? Shouldn't we help bring such access to all of those in our country who otherwise might be cut off from it and who are willing to pay for it?
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
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
...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
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."
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.
A DSL or cable line would give them the same (downstream) bandwidth.. and they don't need the upstream..
Why do they do this?
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
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"
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.
Conversely, the UK system was based on *centres* of population. So a small market town gets as many numbers as a medium-sized city. This is why UK phone numbers have had to be rehashed a couple of times. We were very close to running out of numbers in London, Reading, Leicester, Bristol etc.
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
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?
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
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).
Cable, phone and internet over the same line?
Does it come with a free carrier pigeon to contact tech support when there are problems?
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.
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.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?
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.
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.
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!
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