Exploring the impact of broadband and technology on our lives, our businesses, and our communities.
Why communities need to take control
Here is an interesting discussion from SlashDot. As Verizon brings fiber to a customer premise, they disconnect the copper phone line. This means it is no longer available for use by competitors, who can buy wholesale access to the line for voice and data services.
I am not reporting this to beat up on Verizon. Now, if I was running Verizon, I would probably do this too. It makes no sense to continue to have the cost and expense of maintaining antiquated copper infrastructure just so that your competitors can try to sell services to your customers. But it does illustrate the need for communities to take telecom infrastructure needs seriously. If you leave it entirely to the private sector, your residents and customers get only what private network operators are willing to provide. For businesses, this may not match what they need or what they can afford.
Do you want to hand over your economic development future to a third party? If the answer is "No," then your community or region has to at least begin to look seriously at alternatives, like building digital road systems that any company, including incumbents like Verizon, can use to deliver services.
Technology News:
Early iPhone reports
By all reports, the iPhone is already a success. Apple has not released complete sales numbers, but analysts who were predicting initial sales of 200,000 phones are estimating that between 500,000 and 700,000 phones have been sold. Virtually every Apple and AT&T store sold out of initial supplies in three days, and online orders are now being filled and delivered in as little as two days.
The biggest complaints have not been with the phone itself, but with AT&T. Activation has been slow and/or clumsy for some users, and the AT&T network has not been coping well with the influx of new users, most of whom have apparently purchased the data service. And why wouldn't you? The most appealing features of the phone, from user reports, are the email and Web browser software.
Users are saying it is the first phone they have owned that actually has usable (as in regular use) email and Web access. AT&T is reportedly investing large sums into upgrading their network, so cellphone-related problems are likely to diminish over time. It is a shrewd move for AT&T is the company can provide decent service, as the phone give AT&T something that no other cellular provider has. It is likely that Apple will eventually do deals with other providers, but AT&T probably has at least a two year exclusive deal.
Speculation is rampant about what is next, including an iPod with the touch screen of the iPhone, Internet access via WiFi, but no phone function. This would be very popular, and probably could be sold for under $400, or even around $300. The current iPhone does not have the capability to do VoIP (Voice over IP) phone calls, but all the technology is already in place to provide that. It's just a matter of Apple turning it on. It is easy to imagine an iPhone that only does VoIP (i.e. no cellular service), along with email and Web access.
That iPhone--VoIP enabled--at an attractive price, could upend the entire cellular industry. As more places offer some kind of WiFi service, it would become easier and easier to replace cellular with VoIP on the iPhone, and as younger people rely more and more on IP services like text messaging and chat, voice calls are becoming less important.
Apple, once again, has introduced a disruptor device. Look for lots of imitations in the months to come, creating competition and lower prices.
Technology News:
Broadband does not replace the basics
Affordable, high capacity broadband does not replace the basics. Roanoke has a small regional airport with the second highest landing fees in the country; lousy, overpriced coffee; poor food service; and extremely high ticket prices. That's not a formula for attracting businesses to the Roanoke and New River Valley regions.
With the focus on broadband, it may be easy to forget that the in the global Knowledge Economy, we still have to travel. When HD quality business videoconference systems like HP's Halo Studio are commonplace, we may see a slight reduction in travel, but what is more likely is that HD conference systems will replace telephone conference calls, not face to face meetings.
Skeptics of the importance of broadband should take a look at the off the shelf HD conference systems already being sold. It takes anywhere from twenty to forty megabits of bandwidth just to have a single two way meeting, and you have to add another ten to twenty megabits of bandwidth for each additional location. Try that with DSL, cable modem, or wireless (Hint: it won't work).
Communities and regions that can show they understand the full range of business needs--affordable aire travel options, affordable broadband, affordable, high quality office space, and the right mix of business services have a winning combination.
Technology News:
Electricity and economic development
If I was an economic developer in any state but California, I would be preparing a new marketing strategy that includes touting my region's reliable and affordable electric power. And I would be talking to my local electric utility about making sure every business park in my region has redundant electric feeds from two different substations.
If you missed it, California is having electric supply woes again in the midst of a heat wave. This is bad for California businesses that use lots of electricity (many high tech firms, among others), but good for other regions of the country that have done a better job of providing for electric needs.
Not sure what the electric situation is in your region? It's time to put that on the short list of essential infrastructure, along with broadband. Expect relocating companies to be asking lots of questions about both.
Technology News:
Does your state have the slowest broadband?
It is every economic developer's nightmare. On the front page of today's USA Today (no link online), there is a list of the five states with the slowest broadband in the country. Who wants to be on that list?
In Australia, slow broadband has been recognized as a major economic development issue. Officials there have said that slow broadband hinders the ability of commercial, manufacturing, and agricultural businesses to be fully integrated into international supply chains. In other words, if your businesses don't have the right kind of affordable broadband services available to them, they are going to lose business.
Technology News:
Community news and projects:
iPhone and the Web
The hype over the iPhone is reaching the boiling point as the release of the new gadget is now just a week away. Speculation over still unknown features, frustration over the price, and the lure of the touch screen interface that no one really knows much about is fueling the furor.
The most important feature of the new phone is not likely to be the touch interface, but the Web browser. Based on Apple's Safari Web browser, the iPhone will have arguably have the best mobile Web browser available. Many other portable devices have a Web browser, but most of them are wretched. The Treo, a popular phone/PDA choice for business people, has a dreadful Web browser. How bad is it? It is so bad that I just never bother to use it, period. It renders pages badly, is nearly impossible to navigate, and crashes constantly. When the Web browser crashes, it usually completely locks the phone up, too.
So a phone with a really good, usable Web browser has a lot going for it. As more and more stuff is available via the Web, the browser is going to be one of the three or four most important applications on a mobile phone, with the others, in order of importance, the phone function, the address book, and the calendar.
In an interesting twist, Apple has stated that developers who want to write new applications for the iPhone should do so using the built in development environment that comes with the Web browser. Some developers are groaning, as this approach puts some limits on what can be done, but many things can be done well using this approach.
I suspect the iPhone, like the iPod, is going to force a sea change in the mobile phone business, and two years from now, mobile phones will all look a lot more like the iPhone.
Technology News:
Wireless is slow
Wireless Internet access does not have to be slow, but it often is. I'm at the beach this week, and the access point is about thirty feet away, right at the edge of the property, but the speed of the paid service ($28/week, much higher than in hotels and other venues) is abysmal.
Wireless is often oversold by providers, who don't provision adequate backhaul and/or try to cram too many users on each access point.
Design Nine just completed a preliminary design for a large mixed rural/city region, with both fiber and wireless service as part of the network. As usual, the cost of well-engineered wireless access points in rural areas on a per subscriber basis (with sensible subscription rates/access point, not inflated rates) gets very close to the cost of taking fiber to the same subscribers.
And the advantage of fiber, aside from much higher performance, is the ability of fiber, in an open service network architecture, to deliver not just Internet access, but a whole variety of services (hundreds) from dozens of providers. The triple play broadband model is broken financially, and nothing is going to fix it. The solution is to move to a new business model, the Layer 3 open services approach, that truly unleashes competition and innovation.
Technology News:
Are Google ads worth it?
ebay pulled all its ads from Google because Google is trying to compete with eBay's PayPal with a Google-branded payment system. However, that is not the story. The story is what happened after the ads were pulled: Nothing. Traffic to eBay dropped only a tiny amount, and eBay probably had a net gain because they saved money by not paying for Google ads.
I have been saying for this for several years: Google ads, for many businesses, are not worth the high prices Google charges. And this new information may hasten a time when Google is just one among many online venues for ad dollars.
There is also widespread chatter about a NY Times report that online purchases are slowing, which is to be expected. Rather than it being the end of the world, it will finally force companies that have been soaring financially on the Internet newbie phenomenon to finally adopt real fiscal management and grow up. We are NOT going to be buying everything online, and that should be good news for small and medium sized retailers who have struggled in recent years to compete against online giants like Amazon, whose business model seems to be "We'll sell anything."
I had a discussion recently with a young person recently who was complaining about not being able to find a particular clothing store, and asked her if the company had an online store. She quickly replied that she did not like buying clothes online, as it was too hard to judge fit and quality. Bingo! Online sales for the past several years have been buoyed in part by people trying it out. As they find out what works and does not work with respect to buying online, many kinds of sales (like clothing) are going to start shifting back to bricks and mortar.
Technology News:
Scramjet test in Oz
A Mach 10 (ten times the speed of sound) test of a scramjet took place in Australia, where a rocket carried the scramjet into near space, then ignited the scramjet to return to earth. Scramjets are special jet engines that work at very high speeds and at high altitudes, and research has continued on them for decades with mixed success. A successful and reliable scramjet design would allow travel between London and Sydney, Australia in as little as two hours.
Technology News:
Community news and projects:
U.S. continues to fall behind in broadband
According to the latest international study on broadband use, the United States has fallen from 16th to 24th in number of households with broadband (53%). South Korea is the world leader, with more than 90% of homes connected. Japan, Germany, France, and the U.K are all well ahead of the U.S., so we cannot just dismiss South Korea's lead as simply a factor of household density.
Unfortunately, the U.S. also has the most expensive broadband at the lowest speeds. While it is true that the size of the U.S. makes broadband deployment a bigger challenge than in many other countries, the real problem is outdated business models for telecom services. The incumbent providers have stubbornly resisted reforming or changing their business models for telecom, which has led to very slow deployment, and a rather circular red herring argument about broadband.
The argument goes something like this: "There is no money in broadband. So we cannot afford to invest in high performance fiber and wireless systems." The circular part is "we would invest if there was money in broadband, but there is not any so we can't." The red herring part is blaming "broadband" when in fact that has nothing to do with the problem. A correct statement of the problem would be, "Our current business model stinks, so we have no money to invest in better networks."
That would be honest, and would lead naturally to a sensible discussion about changing business models. But there are some local governments that are not waiting. Expect to see new open services networks emerging from local government and regional projects in the next year or two that will have viable business models. These new business models will help create enormous new community and economic development by offering businesses high performance networks with a wide variety of service offerings from many providers, not just one or two.
These open service network projects have the right business model and will transform the local economies that make telecom essential public infrastructure.
Technology News:
Community news and projects:
Pages
