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rtphokie writes "In an article covering bringing wireless and high speed internet connectivity several rural counties near Fredericksburg, VA, a county commissioner comments that transportation issues were once considered the top issue in economic development discussion, now it's the lack of high-speed Internet." Reader Darmok0685 writes "UGO has an interesting feature that explores the future of broadband, with in-depth sections that explore such technologies as Broadband Over Power Lines, WiMax, Fiber to the Home, Stratellite, and ADSL2/ADSL2+. It delves into the pros and cons, as well as giving backgrounds on each."
the company that was routing internet over the magnetic filed around power lines (not through the power lines)?
Is that really a news source these days?
I just want fiber in my house for under $1000...
I think one thing this article highlights is that government intervention is needed if we (the US) are serious about upgrading our broadband infrastructure.
There are companies that will gladly place
poles along the roadway and string whatever
cable you want. copper, fiber, etc.
You can simply create your own Central Office.
I see the problem keeping the costs low if you
use fiber to the premise. Can you imagine someone
handing you an SC fiber connector? What shall these mere humans plug it into? Voice, tv, and internet should come out of that pipe. Hicks will be able to afford all that new gear?
anyway, i wish them luck. I would probably instal
copper, knowing I could keep costs low and make use of all the cheap hardware: customer premise as well as CO.
"Of course we need broadband, but the technology moves so fast that we might end up with a system that nobody wants" Risavi said.
:
So lets not invest in it... heh.
Conclusions for every 'future broadband' tech from The Future of Broadband Article
The final word on Broadband Over Power Lines
BPL has been given a bad wrap by many news sources. At this stage, it is really impossible to tell whether the interference complaints are legit for the actual technology as a whole, or whether they are based purely on BPL networks that were not researched or planned well enough before deployment - some reports even suggest false claims have been made to try and derail the deployment of BPL by pro-radio enthusiasts. With most information about BPL being very dated, it is hard to say what we can expect. There is nothing we can do but sit back and hope this technology can become sturdy enough for widespread deployment, because the potential is almost unmatched.
The final word on WiMax
Wireless Broadband has already taken a huge step forward worldwide. Here in Australia, for example, Sydney is facing almost complete coverage in the near future from various companies adopting various technologies with DSL-like speeds and prices. However, none of the current systems seem economically viable for widespread coverage. Although true field tests have not yet confirmed the on-paper features, with backing from companies like Intel, it is hard to imagine WiMax not making a huge impact. Look out for its retail release sometime in 2005.
The final word on Fiber To the Home
Whilst FTTH is by far the most impressive and feature-filled technology on display here, the likeliness of it ever reaching a wide audience isn't very high, at least not in the near future. Many leading Telco's around the world have decided to merge into a pure IP network in the near future for data and voice, which will fuel the expansion of FTTH. However, FTTH is very much viewed as a technology for new estates and areas, not necessarily current establishments. For the lucky few who will be able to use FTTH in the near future, you can probably expect Telephone, Broadband, TV and other services delivered by a conventional high-speed connection directly to your doorstop. But for the worldwide broadband scene, I wouldn't get your hopes up. It will be a very long time before this makes any sort of widespread impact if any at all.
The final word on Stratellite
Probably the most "far out there" concept in this roundup, Stratellite is actually much closer to reality than what you may think. Sanswire insists it will extensively trial a real air ship in January 2005 after successfully demonstrating the technology in 2004. This is a promising technology that could combine the best of Satellite and wired Internet - fast with low latency and hugely widespread, at least in theory. Whilst it is still unclear how exactly a floating broadband hub could haul its data back down to earth wirelessly with acceptable bandwidth (keeping in mind its potential ability to serve millions of people at a time), rest assured this is a prime candidate for tomorrow's broadband world. Whether or not it will get the industry support required, however, is yet to be seen.
The final word on ADSL2
Is it too little too late for DSL? Only time will tell just how efficient ADSL2 will be at offering a better service to a wider range of customers. The impression given is that ADSL2 is really more of an add-on to the current ADSL, rather than a completely new revolution. Whilst it sounds li
Eureka Science News - automatically updated
"In an article covering bringing wireless and high speed internet connectivity several rural counties near Fredericksburg, VA, a county commissioner comments that transportation issues were once considered the top issue in economic development discussion, now it's the lack of high-speed Internet."
And here, I thought good water, and sanitation was important? Shows what I know.
If most of the populace is still trying to suck their bandwidth through a dial-up straw.
I hope someone on high wakes up and realizes that a fast broadband infrastructure has the potential to reduce energy consumption more than any other technology out there.
"I just want fiber in my house for under $1000..."
Oh vegtables are much cheaper than that.
What's high speed internet in the states. Seriously. In Sweden it's 10MBit to 100Mbit. Anything lower is ridiculous and not even worth considering.
Free Flat Screen HERE!
The current problem with satellites is that because of the distance involved and the use of radio waves (substantially slower than the speed of light communications we get with cables) the latency is horrible. But stratellites stand a good chance of becoming a permanent and useful part of the Internet and its backbone, particularly transatlantic/transpacific communications. Good stuff.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
I've found it to be rather useful, allowing me to work (and play games [globalcombat.com]) at the airport, for example.
Heard of books? Or magazines? Or just thinking to yourself? Why people have this need to be online 24/7 is beyond me. The world ain't going to cave in if you're not there to respond to an email.
Yeah, I know I'm posting this to slashdot. But still, do you really need to play games while at the airport?
The article has an interesting comparison between transportation and wireless access as economic development issues. Are the two really that similar?
A highway does enable more commerce to and from an area. Are there studies that demonstrate that broadband access results in economic growth even in rural areas?
I'm laughing at clouds.
I'll grant that using geostationary satellites results in high latency, but the problem is distance, not that radio waves are slower than the speed of light.
In fact, because of the dielectric in cables, signals are significantly slower (although only about 5% IIRC) in cable than in the atmosphere or free space.
6 years ago, cable internet was rare and DSL still wasn't available in many urban areas. The 56/53k modem standard was new.
6 years from now, most people in urban areas will get 1+Mbps connectivity through their existing phone lines or through cable TV, much as they to today. The main difference will be a higher maximum bandwidth along with lower-costs for today's 0.5-5Mbps bandwidth.
I'm guessing 10-30% of the population will have access to and pay for "very high bandwidth" of > 30Mbps for internet with the balance for other services, probably through fiber-to-the-curb or fiber-to-the-street, shared by a few dozen subscribers at most. These customers will mostly be "converged" customers, with voice, data, television, and who knows what else riding on the fiber.
Amost all semi-rural areas and non-DSL-equipped urban areas that aren't well-connected today will have SOME option for 1+Mbps connectivity besides satellite. Whether this is airship, "wi-max," extended-distance DSL, or something else, I don't know.
There will always be areas that are "too expensive to reach" by land or even by 30-mile-range radio signals. These customers will likely be stuck with satellite or (gasp!) dialup unless something better or cheaper comes along.
How fast do you need to watch a DVD movie in real time? 9GB=72Gb, 2 hours=7200 seconds, that's about 10Mbps. Double that to be on the safe side.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
What needs to happen is that ISPs need to wake up and smell the roses, ala Speakeasy. Allow the user, who is paying for all this anyway, to have port 80 open, to run servers, to have static IPs and the rest.
At least offer this as a "power user" option through cable and DSL providers. That way, people can actually create websites that are not fed by those banner ad driven hosts.
And yes, I know how many people probably are not up to the challenge of setting up firewalls and routing tables and whatever else it takes to do all this stuff, hell, I'm not able to really do it either. But, it would be nice to have the option to do it. I can manage apache well enough.
As it is, most "broadband" users here in the states are crippled with restrictive TOS/AUPs and upload bandwidths of around 256k. Hello? That's broadband?
As I understand it, people pay for upload. If that's the case, then consumers should be highly pissed at what they are paying. But, I guess most consumers really are amazed that they can download entire albums in ninety minutes, assuming that they find someone sharing it out at that rate.
Hmm, well so much for this not very thought out rant. I hope you all can make sense of it.
sig not found
10 years ago almost nobody had broadband access. It takes time to build an infrastructure, whether through government intervention or market forces. I'm sure with in a few years broad band will be as pervasive as cable tv, due to market demand.
Just for some context about Northern Neck read:
2 62002/sentenced
http://fredericksburg.com/News/FLS/2002/082002/08
Nice place.
Its funny, I live in Fredericksburg Va and work for a computer shop that tried our damned hardest to offer excellent DSL service to a number of these rural areas. In many cases we found the technology is in the ground and users can in fact get DSL, but Verizon is not willing to "flip the switch" unless there is a huge demand in the particular area. We successfully offered DSL through Verizons lines on our bandwidth for over a year to these people without a problem. All of a sudden Verizon started undercutting us (ie selling to the USER cheaper than they would sell to us) in order to muscle us off their lines so they could take over the market in the area. On top of that any sort of tech support we would need from Verizon concerning their lines would get shrugged to the side and we would end up with understandably angry customers at us, although we had no way to solve the issues. We eventually pulled out of the market all together and went back to just repair/custom builds. The fucked up part is a lot of people that are still in smaller areas ended up getting their service disconnected when we pulled out and now Verizon is telling them that it is technically impossible to carry DSL to their homes even though they had it just a few weeks ago. I happen to be one of those customers, but luckily can get a cable modem...which by the way is half the price.
Moral of the story is a lot of rural places CAN get broadband, but the recourses that can carry it aren't fessing up to honest answers about it.
adventure-today.com
Wireless has inherent penalties, security, contention, and perhaps most of all the battery life of portable devices with little enough to spare to power wireless circuitry. Wired is perfect for everything that is non mobile, it is secure, it doesn't have a power problem, and best of all it knocks everything else put together into a cocked hat when it comes to sheer bandwidth AND latency. This isn't an article or issue about the various technologies, it is an article about money men trying to carve out markets, they don;t want to play with fibre because the world's littered with dark fibre that companies spent fortunes installing and can't sell, because the "last mile" doesn't exist. In my considered opinion wireless of whatever form is not a solution for the last mile problem, there is only one harmonius solution to that, and that is wired, whether it be copper or fibre. Clearly under the current market conditions in places like the ISA and UK nobody wants to invest in that, except of course the cable television companies, who have a ready business model for installing last mile cable bandwidth to every home sufficient for several hundred telly channels, and so are correctly placed for the "unexpected" demand from those customers for ever faster internet. Speaking from here in the south west of the UK where 1 Uk pound currently = 1 dollar 88 cents american, I have a choice at home between BT ADSL of 512/256 for about 30 pounds per moth, but with MANY people being capped, and TW cable, offering 512/128 or 1.5/256 (my pick) for 30 quid a month or 3.0/256 for a tenner more. Unlike BT, TW can not only offer me a telephone service, but also television, and it's a real small step from an internet connected computer at home to an internet connected SOHO LAN to an internet connected everything including MythTV time shifting and advert editing complete home entertainment system that will also play movies and mp3's downloaded over said connection. The ONLY other solutions I can see for wireless is point to point, eg two sites on opposite sides of a river / road / valley / whatever where installing a wired solution would be prohibitive and involve several outside agencies and contractors, or you could just link the two by wireless, in either the radio spectrum or using laser modulation. FWIW I have been a member of the UK fixed wireless committee for several years, I've seen more life i n roadkill, wireless last mile is dot com mania, nowt more. end
http://slashdot.org/~GuyFawkes/journal
The max speed is around 75Gbps.. this is why companies such as towerstream who are using WiMax can offer Gigabit connections non LOS within 10 miles of a tower.. cheaper than the telco's.
something for you slashdotters to consider
Here's something for you to consider: find a better forum for your ideas other than replying to a post about broadband usage. What on earth does your post have to do with that?
"I would say the analogy doesn't hold too well. Except for some web based small businesses, I can't see how broadband can give economic growth."
I can see B2C and B2B working in a rural area. I would suggest artistic endeavours(1), but since that's going to be strangled in it's crib (see all previous copyright stories for an explanation), it's going to have to be small to medium physical goods that can be manufactured on a local machine shop level.
"On the other hand, the local pr0n shops will tank within three months!"
Nope! Because people like their porn to be "in hand", so to speak.
(1) The same for anything information related, because (say it with me) "all information wants to be free".
Broadband in power-lines, eh? I guess that would kill cable-internet piracy (or at least strongly discourage it)...
...I mean, you couldn't just go outside and split the wire when your neighbor wasn't looking, you would...uh...be electrocuted in the process. :-/
My parents live in Virginia's Shenandoah valley, and they just this week ordered DSL. For what they're paying for 384k/128k, I get 3m/768k here in California. But there's just one local ISP, that's also the phone company and cable company.
I'm not sure exactly what the deal is, but apparently years ago they merged a number of smaller telcos and all of the subscribers got stock in the resulting company, and now they've got a vested interest in keeping out competition. Or so I've heard. In any case, if you want broadband in that area, you either deal with them, or get satellite.
"Why? Exactly what problem does broadband solve that not having it is such a problem?"
Not getting First Post.
Actually for all the Robin Hoods out there. It makes it easier to crow about the demise of the RIAA/MPAA/Book publishers/Girl Scouts.
Oh, and it means P2P will work better.
... and my parents still live there. WiFi may be the best best because the phone infrastructure in many of these rural areas is still horrible. When it rains, the phone lines get crackly.
CATV was installed in the the mid 80's and hasn't had much done to it since then so it's probably not up handling broadband.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
DSL is the winner. As phone companies have invested so much money in the copper, the possibly can't just overrun this by fiber.
I live in Fredericksburg - I pay $79/mo for 128/768 DSL from a company that is basically just reselling Verizon. Verizon refuses to sell it to me direct. And I won't ever give a dime of my money to Adelphia, so I won't consider the cable modem option.
:)
That said, the DSL service is rock solid - and tech support is great. When I call and say I've pinged and trace routed and the router at IP whatever is timing out, they believe me. They don't ask if I've rebooted my PC yet
"Businesses move in because land is cheap, and they can do business just as effectively as if they were in New York or Philadelphia. People move in because housing is cheap and they can telecommute to their jobs three days a week. The schools benefit from all kids and parents able to be online, allowing them to check progress through a school portal."
Problem is. there's only certain types of businesses that fit the broadband model being advocated here.
Unfortunately if it can be done over broadband here, it can be done overseas with the additional benifits that aren't available here.
Maybe we need to start fixing the "other" problem before we start on universal broadband.
Having recently moved into a rural area from a densely populated area, I checked into all the options for getting any kind of broadband.
Wireless DSL was looking good until we found out that the location of the broadcasting tower and where we were had an electrical substation smack in the middle of line of site. No dice for that. Can't get through. WAAAAyyy too noisy.
So this past month, I took the plunge and purchased DIRECWAY satellite service. The cost is outragious (I had cable access before in the city), $1000 to get the dish/sat transponder/sat modem and to have Hughes flip the damn switch, another $350 to get the dish installed, and a measely $100 a month to have the service. For 2 years mind you, that's how long the required length of contract is. They never mention that part until you listen to the agreement recording to confirm your purchase.
The Fair Access Policy (such as it is) is even worse. I purchased the middle tier plan - 500meg download in 4 hours (sliding window). Now when I was on cable up in the city, online was my only entertainment, and I used it, quite heavily. The cable company never complained and the particular subnet I was on didn't have a lot of active nodes. But this FAP for the sat system is annoying the holy hell out of me. Heck, the available download speed from the service is 900mbps. That means I can blow the FAP in roughly 10 minutes (math mavens don't crucify me).
If you exceed the FAP, the download speed is clamped to 24kbps. It takes about 8 hours to reset. I've got a courtesy Hughes gonad squeezer making sure that I'm a good little boy.
So all in all, I payed nearly 2000$ for always on dialup service with higher latency. (*balloons* *confetti*)
I'm moving as soon as I can muster it.
How about Incentives instead. I live deep in the rural back country of Utah. I have 768kDSL for $35/month.
Why? Out state govt had the foresight to offer massive tax incentives for the rural phone companies to upgrage their infrastructures and get broadband into rural Utah. This was done in part to help stimulate the rural economies out here, which are primarily based in agriculture and tourism. However, now with broadband available in just about every little town over 700 people, we are seeing a great many other industries pop up.
Utah continues to develop rural technology businesses through their SmartSite program http://smartsites.utah.gov/ and have graciously provided my little upstart company with over $10,000 in grants and equipment, only because I am a geek working to create more geek jobs in rural Utah.
I don't believe that we need more government, just turn those funds into incentive programs instead of red tape nightmares.
I live in a very remote town of 975 in Rural Utah. The next town of 10,000 people is 60 mile north. Grand Jct is 110 miles east.
Our state was very proactive in creating incentives for rural phone service providers. We now have broadband in 85% of the hick towns out here.
And what are we doing? Many are telecommunting to companies located in big cities. Others have started their own businesses based around internet services. Call centers pop up in every small town - better than outsourcing to India! Medical Coding is a huge part of Utah's economic development plan.
Personally, I do web development and graphic arts. I am very pleased that I don't have to fedex my proofs and that I can upload to my printer a 200 meg file in minutes.
Broadband is a very important part of bringing rural locations into the modern economy.
I think I'd like to add something to this discussion. I am from Stafford, Va, which is directly beside Fredericksburg. I even worked on that very site that is linked to for this article.
Things like this have been talked about in the area for quite a long time. Fredericksburg City, IIRC, has stated many times that they have wanted to get broadband and internet access around the area to attract as much business as possible. Of course, none of these things have ever happened. While this may actually happen I'll be waiting to see how long it actually works out and who uses it. Many people around the Fredericksburg area have access to broadband from a number of places. Verizon of course is one. I'm not sure how well they stack up. Cable from Cox, and I must add, this particular Cox network has had some of the best reliability I have ever experience from a Cable system. Then... there is Adelphia. Now it must be stated. This is bar none the absolute worst adelphia system ever. Worst I tell you. Luckily I am not a customer, but I have had to deal with many and know many personally. If the cable modem is on for 6hrs a day, they consider that a win. It really is true that their cable modems may be out more than 50% of the time in a month. This I think is leading some people away from broadband in the area, businesses too. Much of the population is not "computer savvy" as the rest. I know several have turned back to dial-up just because it "works" and won't give other forms of broadband a chance. I believe this may be a major hurdle for the service.
Onto something a little different. I think I may want to explain something about Fredericksburg. It is not rural. Much of is has been assimilated into the greater Northern Virginia Metropolitan Area. if you don't believe me and are from NoVa, go take a look at route 1 in Stafford county and tell me that interchange they are building wasn't drawn up by the same coked out monkey that did most of your roads? While much of the county of Stafford, Spotsy, and the City are no longer rural. There are parts, particularly right near where I lived. Giant subdivions put up behind my house just recently, along with a subdivision with big lots and for $2 million dollar homes. Directly after that though the county turns into the "ruralest" of rural areas. This little section of Stafford County is called White Oak. It's where the cable doesn't run, where sewer doesn't run either. This is a rural area without broadband of DSL. The problem is that this area is quite small as a part of Stafford. I'm sure a good number of people that live out there would love broadband. I'm sure a great number wouldn't give two hoots about it either. It's just a wait and see thing for the mix of the area.
Hah, come to Australia.. then you'll know what bad broadband pricing is. I pay $59/m for a 256/64k adsl connection.. Damn this country is slow.
2010 is only 6 years down the road.
We might see what you describe 6 years after that.
My grandchildren's grandchildren will have very-real-virtual-reality via neural interface if they want to pay for it.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
"Broadband Over Power Lines, WiMax, Fiber to the Home, Stratellite, and ADSL2/ADSL2+." how about getting some real choices for the city dwellers that make up a larger part of the population before we worry about the "last mile"...
All the torrents you could want.
Whilst FTTH is by far the most impressive and feature-filled technology on display here, the likeliness of it ever reaching a wide audience isn't very high, at least not in the near future.
i cant for the life of me understand how the challenges faced by widespread fiber to the home/curb is any different than those faced by the cable industry in the late 70s... i mean, it was a crazy idea... i can just see someone trying to convince investors that it was going to be worthwhile to run miles and miles and miles of coax all over the place, right to a customer's home, FOR FREE to anyone and everyone who wanted it... im sure everyone said it was nuts, it would be too expensive, too difficult, too time consuming, too much red tape on right of ways etc, too complicated to build the infrastructure, yadda yadda yadda...
im also sure the same folks are feeling kinda stupid today, because it DID work, in a big way... and the best part was, the entire infrastructure was PRIVATELY OWNED, it wasnt a utility, and the owners could pretty much do whatever the damn well pleased with it...
i have to believe that there would be similar advantages to a company ballsey enough to take it upon themselves to do the same thing with fiber... just eat the initial cost of building the physical infrastructure in return for controlling it in the future once it has become ubiquitous...
i dunno, its entirely possible i dont understand all the issues involved, it just seems like there would be a strong parallel between the infacy of cable tv services and fiber to the home...
It's the politics that leave the last "country mile" of fiber dark. For instance, here is a CNET story of a Texas misappropriation of agricultural $ub$idie$ earmarked for getting internet to farm communities that instead is bringing broadband to slightly exurban millionaire homes where the closest thing to farming is the maintenance of putting greens and fairways.
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
True, but only a small percentage needs to switch for this to pay for itself, both monetarily and environmentally. Even if only the people at the peak of rush hour are targetted for it, think of the savings....
Of course, I wouldn't be happy just leaving it there. Part of a long term effort is to find out what's keeping the rest of them tied to their office and to build the software (e.g. rich collaboration, better internet security, stronger privacy protections) or business-school pedagogy (or whatever) needed to change that.
"As disinclined as I am to feed the trolls ..."
As disinclined as I am to feeding the ignorant...
"Sixty years ago, sure, those were serious issues in economic development. Now, sanitation and water are not top issues, because in most of the developed world, they are solved problems. "
The thing you and others forget is the problem of declining infrastructure Usually caused by neglect and budget shortfalls. You can't just stick this stuff in the ground and hope for the best. Also our water sources are being polluted. That puts pressure on the remaining water sources, and means greater effort has to be put forth to clean up the dirty ones. Also concerning infrastructure, for older cities they're outgrowing them. Storm drains are overflowing, dumping sewage into the water supply.
...or did anyone else misread this as "Broadband Tits"???
(drooling at the idea...)