Technology Futures

VPNs, or Virtual Private Networks, are fast becoming a major issue with respect to broadband. A VPN is a way for a remote user (e.g. from home, traveling) to be connected to the corporate or business network as if he or she was in the office. It gives the home-based worker or business traveler complete access to all the documents and services he or she would normally have sitting at their desk.

But here's the rub: VPNs work best over high performance, well-designed broadband networks. I'm on vacation right now, and have to connect through a wireless signal. The VPN barely works. I can connect, but transferring files is painfully slow, and I keep getting time outs.

As more and more people start working from home part time to avoid the high cost of driving, community broadband efforts will begin hearing more and more about VPNs. If we are going to save energy, community broadband networks have to support business class connectivity and bandwidth. Neighborhoods are going to be business districts in the Energy Economy.

Chicago ComEd electric power customers may end up paying an extra $3 per month to help fund a Smart Grid data network that will allow ComEd to better control power use and to speed diagnosis and identification of power outages.

That's a lot of money when you think about extending across millions of customers for many years. A better approach would be for the community to build a high performance, service-oriented broadband network and sign up the electric company to use that network to do its power management. Instead of building two networks, build just one and use it for many different kinds of services and applications, instead of just Internet access.

Spend less and get more--not a difficult concept, but few places are thinking about converging networks and electric service needs. Once stand out exception is Danville, Virginia, where the city electric utility has already started doing that with its nDanville network. Joe King, the Assistant City Manager for Utilities, recognized this was a better way to do things years ago (Design Nine provides services to the nDanville project).

Telehealth services are the sleeper when putting together a business model for community broadband projects. Telehealth services, which will be focused primarily towards the elderly but will also provide additional mobility and freedom for those with chronic health conditions, will have a substantial positive impact on the financial health of a community or municipal open services, open access broadband network.

Companies like Steeplechase Networks are on the cutting edge of these kinds of consumer services, and Steeplechase is actively seeking out open, multi-service networks for their telehealth and telemedicine services.

Comcast, which has been criticized of late for apparently trying to throttle peer to peer (P2P) file sharing traffic, seems to be shifting focus by investing in a P2P business start up. This is a good sign. As I and others have argued for a long time, we need to shift away from the "bucket of bits" model of broadband and move toward a service-oriented business and network model. P2P file sharing is just another service. It is not inherently bad, and in fact, can be used very efficiently to move large files (like TV programs and movies) around various parts of the Internet.

While some of the content providers simply want to outlaw P2P software because it is sometimes mis-used, that's also silly. It would be equivalent to outlawing cars because they are sometimes used to commit bank robberies. P2P, as a service, has real value, and if used to deliver licensed and legitimate content, it can be a service that people are willing to pay for. But the key is to have networks designed to deliver services, not just a bucket of bits. And that means changing not just the technology that manages network (relatively straightforward), but also changing the business models of broadband companies--that is also straightforward, if the company culture is willing to change--that is the tougher challenge.