You can hear the pride in Nina Totenberg’s voice. Totenberg has been introducing NPR’s wall-to-wall coverage of Supreme Court nominee’s Judge Samuel Alito confirmation hearings all week.Her pride is well grounded…only NPR could provide that kind of coverage…and make Supreme Court legal issues interesting and relevant.
But there’s no denying it…the hearing is boring. I usually tune out.Today it droned on in the background and I found myself imagining a mashup with trance soundtrack and Google Video clips mixed over the testimony.
It could be an art form. An entertainment medium. An economic force.
But it probably won’t happen. A 10Mbps service for $20/month ain’t gonna happen here. Incumbents have too many legacy issues. Cheap broadband isn’t coming to U.S. homes. Get used to it.
Portland is not buying it.
The Oregonian reports that even as they prepare to blanket Portland with a wireless Internet cloud, city officials also are looking to the possibility of rewiring the town in fiber.
It could provide hyper-fast Internet access and an alternative to cable television in homes and businesses throughout Portland. If built, the fiber-optic network would bring a new tier of Web access to Portland and fulfill a dream long nurtured by city officials to increase competition for Internet access and cable TV service.
The project, conceived in the city’s cable and franchise office, has the backing of Commissioner Dan Saltzman. He said this week that he hopes a private contractor will step in and finance the network if the city clears the way — although he wouldn’t rule out Portland’s footing the bill and he points to a city-backed study that suggests the project could ultimately pay for itself.Skeptics point to an uneven history of municipal telecom ventures and question whether faster Internet should be among the city’s top priorities. And the project’s $470 million price tag — more than the estimated cost of a Major League Baseball stadium in Portland — could prove too steep for either a private company or the city.
“It’s an ill-advised idea,” said Brant Wolf of the Oregon Telecommunications Association, an industry group. “I just don’t know why the city of Portland would invest that kind of money” — though he added that his organization wouldn’t object if the city finds a private partner to pay for it.Despite the obstacles, Saltzman said, the network is worth pursuing, because Portland needs super-fast Web access to keep up with other technologically reliant communities.“We want to make sure the city is competitive for both our citizens and businesses. This is really going to meet the needs of some of our tech-savvy citizens,” said Commissioner Saltzman.
The city-backed fiber network would operate as a wholesaler, selling access to private companies, which could offer their own packages of cable and Internet service.
Cable overbuilders are being reconsidered. The annual NATOA (National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors) conference discussed interconnected I-Nets to help emergency response functions (health and medical services, fire, police, etc.) work together. It’s easier with IP. The National League of Cities is also supportive.
In its new report, Fiber To The Premises in The United States (above), KMI Research forecasts that the total FTTP market for equipment, cable, and apparatus will reach $3.2 billion in 2009.
How can Korea’s KT, Hong Kong Broadband Network, Taiwan’s Chunghwa Telecom and Japan’s Softbank BB deliver ten times the speed of U.S. telcos at less cost? Because they installed next generation fiber infrastructure. It’s not unlike Comcast’s regional fiber backbone which uses the Cisco CRS-1 Carrier Routing System, Nortel’s Edge 6500 and Level 3′s optical backbone. Ciena’s CN 4200 platform performs many of the functions of a present day MPLS switch or edge router and allows a carrier to software-provision a range of services or enable end-users to self-provision services.In FRANCE you get 20 megabits/s for $36/mo (about 1/10th our fees). Stockholm’s one-gigabit service is $120/month. Japan charges an average of $41.00 for a 100Mbps connection. Japan’s Softbank BB uses Cisco Catalyst 6500 switches under the “Yahoo! BB” brand name. South Korea’s government spent $24 billion building a national high-speed backbone network.
X-rays could be sent affordably between buildings. The National Digital Medical Archive stores digital mammography images, associated demographic and clinical data. Glimmerglass switches 10GigE so terabyte data bases can be centralized/localized. Hood River, 40 miles up the river, attracted Google with their municipal fiber system.
But Verizon and BellSouth want to create new “gateway” fees that risk destroying the equal access culture of the Internet. And they are lobbying for legislative protection.
“Equal Access” – Not“In 2000, the city of Portland, Ore., tried to force AT&T to open up its cable lines as a condition of a merger with cable operator Tele-Communications. That effort was shot down by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, but the court left a door open for ISPs, ruling that cable transmissions had elements of both information and telecommunications services.  Not everyone agreed. In 2002, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission ruled that cable transmissions were strictly an information service, protecting operators from having to share their lines. But independent ISP Brand X figured the 9th Circuit decision was a chance to keep in the game. “We decided we ought to appeal this thing,” said Brand X’s Pickrell. “If this is a telecom service, you should have common carrier rights.”
The company sued the FCC, and the 9th Circuit came down on their side, ruling that only Congress and the Supreme Court could reverse its decision and reclassify cable as an information service. But the FCC appealed–and in March, the Supreme Court heard arguments from both sides.
In a 6-3 decision led by Justice Thomas, the court overturned the federal court decision that would force cable companies to share their infrastructure. The Supreme Court ruled that cable could be a “closed garden”. The Supreme Court upheld the original FCC ruling and cleared the way for the FCC to give Telco-run DSL the same status. Locking out broadband competitors is now the law of the land.
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Growing numbers of municipalities are beginning to think about broadband service and Municipal Broadband Network Organizations are proliferating. Research firm Yankee Group estimates that more than $500 million will be invested in wireless broadband networks in 300 communities, and that the municipal broadband market could yield $200 million in annual public service revenue by 2008.
It costs between $300 and $500 per home to provide a broadband cable or DSL connection to a residential neighbourhood. In contrast, the cost to provide a WiMax broadband connection could be as low as $50 or $80 per home. With 25 Mbps per each of 3 sectors and a 10-1 oversubsription, a $25K tower might feed 750 people at 1 Mbps. That’s not VOD speed, of course, but it could make a competitive triple play.
Astroturf lobby organizatons like New Millennium Research Group, use Ashland Fiber as an example of a “failed municipal project“. But residents can get 3 to 5 megabit data services for $20/month with three ISPs competing for their business. Another six ISPs serve businesses.
Ashland Fiber is also tied into Ashland Unwired (above) which provides WiFi “cloud” coverage throughout the community. Ashland was one of the first cities in the United States to explore the concept of an “unwired community”.
OneCleveland is a non-profit organization that provides broadband networking to educational, governmental, research, arts, healthcare and nonprofit organizations across Northeast Ohio. It delivers broadband, wired and wireless, without the municipality deploying a network directly.
Subscribers to OneCleveland, like Case Western University, offer Wi-Fi services to their users. Case manages the entire wireless network using CiscoWorks Monitoring software. Art and engineering students are collaborating to develop text, video, audio, and speech recognition applicatons. So far, Cleveland has added some 4,000 hotspots in various parts of the city.
The Wireless Athens Georgia Zone uses seven BelAir200 units to form a wireless network throughout 24 blocks of downtown Athens. The Wireless Athens Project, one of the first “city clouds”, is also one of the best. That’s because students at the University of Georgia are developing innovative software applications.
Utah’s UTOPIA (right), serves Salt Lake City and 17 other cities across the state of Utah with a publicly-owned, fiber telecommunications network that will reach nearly 250,000 homes and 35,000 business, representing a population of about 724,000.UTOPIA is a publicly owned fiber network (news) managed by a privately held company, DynamicCity. The Open Service Provider Network (OSPN), as a wholesaler, leases the infrastucture, which was funded using bonds, to retail broadband service providers. Six years after the ultra high-speed fiber network was first conceived by the city fathers of Provo, Utah’s second largest city is rolling out triple-play to residents and businesses.
China is expected to have 57 million broadband subscribers, compared to 54 million in the United States by 2007. The U.S. is a broadband laggart.
It’s survival.
Municipal Networks Are Becoming Self-Aware. Big telecom and cable companies are slaming the door on community wireless, using their lobbying clout in state capitals to pre-empt local control, preserve higher prices and preclude competition, says FreePress.Net. “Will the Texas legislature knowingly pass a bill that may harm their constituents,” asks David Deans.
- Verizon helped write legislation that banned city efforts such as Philadelphia’s Wireless Zone, to assist in providing wireless “zones”.
- BellSouth and Qwest attempted to push for severe restrictions on municipal broadband service, in Louisiana and Utah. Those bills ended in compromise, in some cases with existing plans being allowed to continue but new plans limited.
- After 11 attempts in four years, SBC finally got laws passed in Wisconsin last July that restricted the development of municipal broadband.
- A fiber ring in North Kansas City, Mo., serving businesses and law enforcement used the city’s casino revenue for funding. Time Warner Cable sued the city.
- Broadband Report’s interview with Ed Hodges on Chicago’s municipal Fiber experience has the harsh reality. It’s political warfare. Telcos blanketed the media with lies, say Chicago muni fiber supporters.
It’s funny that state legislators complain when tax money is used to build out infrastructure that actually helps residents and businesses get online and benefit from e-commerce, and attract businesses to move in. But the same politicians don’t mind when cities spend hundreds of millions of dollars building out sports stadiums in the name of economic development.
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Will the Pennsylvania legislation impact state-sponsored broadband initiatives and Regional Fiber Backbones? Michigan, North Carolina, Utah and Kentucky, to name a few, have Broadband Authorities that make ubiquitous broadband a priority.
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Many frequencies in the high UHF spectrum are used for translators, distributing big city television, state-wide, such as the Rural Oregon Wireless Television, OPAN and Oregon WIN (in my neck of the woods). They take a satellite (or microwave) feed and put out a 10 watt UHF signal. Translators may be replaced by satellite. The National ITFS Association (Instructional Fixed providers) share the 2.5-2.7 GHz band with commercial (MMDS) providers. The National Exchange Carrier Association Agency (NECA) administers the Universal Service Fund.
RAINS enables governments, schools and other organizations to share sensitive information over pagers, cellphones or PDAs. GovTech Magazine says the European public sector, has strongly embraced open source, embracing collaborative projects and support them with public money rather than let the marketplace decide which products will survive and prosper. Europe’s strong support for open source means that innovation is often taking place overseas, not here in America.
The Open Source Development Lab, Government Open Code Collaborative and the Center for Digital Government would like to change that.
Portland’s Vision Project is envisioning the future. How will your community compete?
Related DailyWireless stories include; Duopoly Laws, Brand X Decision, Cable vs Digital Cities: Championship Fight, Cable Show, Brand X, Grokster in Court, The Brand X Case, Community Fiber Nets, The Free Paris Cloud, IPTV: Is It Soup Yet?, Oregon Fiber for Google, Cities Get Virtual, Regional Roaming Round-up, BelAir + Lucent, Philly’s Fight, Verizon Blocking Philly Cloud?, the Philadelphia Cloud, Low Income Housing Connection, Digital Divide Solutions, SBC Fiber Plans, Taipei Unwired, Unwired Countries, High Noon for City Clouds, Highway Patrol, New York City’s Next Big Thing, LA’s Wireless Cloud, Political Clouds & the Write Spot, D.C. Hotspots, Treasure of Rio Rancho, Telecom Gets Grid, Unlicensed Spectrum: The Sum of All Fears, FCC Opens 3.5 GHz Band, Telephony’s Guide to WiMax, Realistic WiMax Range/Speed Projections?and Public Service Roaming.
