Former FCC Chief Touts "Big Broadband" 417
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."
Doubtfull (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Doubtfull (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Doubtfull (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't worry, the government will decide that for you.
Re:Doubtfull (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Doubtfull (Score:3, Interesting)
> not living in a direct democracy. Our elected leaders DO decide a lot of things
> FOR us. How else do we explain the existence of the IRS?
Yes and no. It's like the UK. We have a Parliamentary Democracy. We elect members to Parliament, and they scurry around doing stuff.
Having said that, if the people really didn't like something, they're more than capable of forming a new party and voting it in. It's ignorance, and
Re:Doubtfull (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Doubtfull (Score:3, Funny)
Pardon me, while I adjust my tinfoil beanie!
Re:Doubtfull (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Doubtfull (Score:3, Insightful)
One GOOD outcome would be that if the dirty politicians were busy with the fiber network, they might be a little less involved with plain old broadcast TV, and stop forcing changes there.
Re:Doubtfull (Score:5, Insightful)
So, in a word, it *can* be done without the pork and failure. *Will* it is a different issue.
See:
Unfortunately not true (Score:5, Insightful)
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 [state.ia.us] 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!
Re:Doubtfull (Score:5, Interesting)
That being said, I think it's a good idea. There are many rural areas of the country where broadband could be useful, but it is not profitable to run or maintain a connection out there.
The old REA (Rural Electrification Administration) was highly successful in bringing telephone service and electricity to rural America. Something similar could be done for broadband.
If you were wondering about paying for it, that's simple: cut agricultural subsidies, especially for ethanol. Those are a massive waste of money, and cutting them while providing rural infrastructure would be at worst a wash for rural America, and at best a better deal.
Re:No matter how you look at it... (Score:4, Insightful)
This network would be optimally efficient. It would be a platform for new innovative services, such as rich interactive gaming.
We already have rich, interactive gaming. And ironically, the more "rich" and "interactive," the more it will cost- not just a "buy once play as many times as you want," but "but once, and keep paying" a la Planetside, Everquest, the upcoming World of Warcraft, etc. Further, it's not going to be cheap to install and maintain the infrastructure necessary to support "rich" and "interactive" gaming- for either side. Even if you had a network that could handle whatever you throw at it, say, a stream of 10K vs the typical 5K for an online multiplayer game, it won't do any good if the indivdual's computer can't handle it.
It would greatly increase e-commerce, producing higher gdp.
Nice thought, but he says nothing about how this would actually happen.
It would create new jobs in the United States.
See above.
It would ensure broadcast penetration
at nearly 100%, local voice penetration at nearly 100%, and push Internet access at least to 90% if not 100%.
See above.
The other thing he neglects to mention is that a significant part of the cost of certain broadband services are derived from fees and taxes. That will not change merely because the method of delivery has changed. Another real downside is that as providers gain and weild more and more control over what travels across those wires, I see the potential that everything will be commoditized - down to the individual protocol.
Re:No matter how you look at it... (Score:3, Insightful)
What really got me was not the issues you point out, but the fact that of "all this money" he claims to see as "available" for this conversion, very little of it really is .... most of that $400billion or so is going to have to be paid into the current system to keep it operating AT THE SAME TIME as the conversion is being made. We can't just turn off the current systems for five years, keep paying as if we are using them, and then turn on a brand new system. It just doesn't work that way....
Re:What about existing platforms that show potenti (Score:3, Insightful)
you trust the CABLE COMPANIES but you call the government "big brother"?!
Re:Doubtfull (Score:4, Informative)
WHEN? (Score:2)
That was yarn (Score:3, Funny)
Re:WHEN? (Score:4, Interesting)
It's overkill if you ask me. But they seem to be having a great time downloading from each other's computers and playing multiplayer games with no lag time.
Telcos (Score:3, Insightful)
Possibly not... (Score:3, Interesting)
Where's my flying car? (Score:5, Funny)
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!
Re:Where's my flying car? (Score:3, Funny)
I don't want a government network (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I don't want a government network (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I don't want a government network (Score:5, Insightful)
What city do you live in? I want to move there.
KFG
Re:I don't want a government network (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah - just look at DARPAnet for how badly governments can screw up when they try and set up networks ... oh, wait ...
(As a side issue, in the UK at the moment there's a particularly annoying British Telecom/Yahoo broadband advertisement in which "Mikey" and "Jimmy", two circa-1970 geeks, talk about their hopes for the "Internetwork". I'm finding it really difficult to think about the Internet historically without calling it the "Internetwork")
Lesser of two evils (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course, in the modern-day push to privatization, the most likely outcome of any such measure to "help" US citizens would be to fund billions of dollars of construction on the taxpayer's bill and then immediately turn control of it over to a profit-maximizing local monopoly to further soak money out of all the new utility's customers. (... Make that "consumers" -- customers are people you have to treat with dignity.)
I'd rather have the government in control
but..... (Score:3, Interesting)
Sign me up! (Score:4, Funny)
Where do I sign up??
Re:Sign me up! (Score:5, Interesting)
Since a few decades, more and more of such utilities have been turned into private enterprise. The result? Prices have not gone down a lot, and in some cases (railways), the physical infrastructure has suffered. The notable success of privatisation has been in the level and quality of service, something that state companies are notoriously bad at. So all in all, I do think privatisation has been a success.
I'm very much a believer in the free market, but I think that there is something to be said for state-run infrastructure: for example, a high-speed Internet network to every door. Let private enterprise provide the backbone networks, the services, and so on, but let a state-run company take care of the connection to each house. Our government should have done this with the old telephony network... paid-for by taxpayers, but now in the hands of the formerly state-run PTT, who wilfully and blatantly frustrate any attempt by other companies to enter in the voice telephony business, since that is still their own core business as well. Mark my words: if one company is offered the job of hooking up everyone to this fast Internet (or perhaps everyone in a particular region), you will see that they or a sister company will want to undertake offering the actual Internet service to customers as well... it will be in their own best business interests to thwart other companies offering competitive services.
Just like (Score:3, Informative)
A regulator's dream (Score:5, Interesting)
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
Re:A regulator's dream (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:A regulator's dream (Score:4, Funny)
Re:A regulator's dream (Score:5, Interesting)
I was part of the team that built the FCC auctions system, back in the "C" block days of the mid-1990s where we would set a new world record in auction "revenues" every few months. This was the initial cell phone stuff that gave us Sprint and the other early wireless providers. We talked about balancing the federal budget solely with FCC auctions revenues for years to come, FCC economists painted rosy pictures about the tsunami of revenue providers would make with all the new services this spectrum would allow, and made these companies think it was worth pledging billions of dollars in order to get their hands on that spectrum. They were heady days.
After these record breaking auctions, where fledgling companies would have to make humongous down payments on their licenses out of their seed capital, these companies built out their networks and started marketing to consumers. The only problem was that they couldn't possibly generate enough revenue to cover their FCC obligations, and they started to default or disappear altogether. Then there was the little matter of the FCC yanking back licenses without following the rules about defaults and auctioning off the defaulted licenses only to have the courts order that spectrum be restored to the appelants after it had been transferred to new licensees.
In the same way that AOL put the screws to the internet revolution with it's "fsck 'em" mentality of squeezing every last dollar from everyone they could mug, the FCC mugged the telecom/wireless industry for everything it could possibly extract and left the industry in the same ruin that AOL helped to create in the dot-com implosion. But this was government, with much bigger weapons to employ in it's greedy neo-capitalist slash-and-burn strategy.
So Reed Hundt wants to do the same with spectrum pledged to the broadcast media to entice them to roll out HDTV, and then squeeze every last dollar possible out of whoever might be interested in using that spectrum. Who's going to finance this? How many investors are eager to finance businesses that have as their only substantial asset an FCC license?
Be very wary of Reed Hundt prognosticating a windfall of billions, and suspicious of any company that thinks it's going to make a good return on investor's money used to buy spectrum at astronomical prices. There was no free money then, and there's certainly not going to be any free money with this same failed idea in the future.
Re:A regulator's dream (Score:3, Interesting)
Have you ever worked for a WISP? I have and let me tell you it's not a good last mile solution to the home user. It's only slightly better then DSL or Cable as a solution for business.
The business owner is more apt to let you put up that 50 foot mast to clear those trees -- or cut one of them down. The home user is going to freak if you suggest putting a 50 foot mast on his roof (
Buying parts of the spectrum? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Buying parts of the spectrum? (Score:4, Interesting)
Some college kids in Australia got an exclusive license to the 550nm spectral band, and had a few days of fun threatening to sue anyone making unauthorized use of it. Of course, the license was revoked in a hurry once the regulatory agency realized 550nm was the color "yellow".
On the right track... (Score:5, Interesting)
good idea (Score:3, Interesting)
Highly unlikely (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Highly unlikely (Score:4, Insightful)
Check out:
http://www.usccb.org/cchd/povertyusa/povame
Yeah, whatever (Score:5, Interesting)
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".
Re:Yeah, whatever (Score:4, Insightful)
On the other hand, if we rolled that out we'd have alot more decentralized fast networks and the internet could be about connected peers again instead of the consumer/producer model we've got now.
Re:Yeah, whatever (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Yeah, whatever (Score:4, Funny)
If I have 15 VCRs I can record 15 channels, why would I lose that ability on the ubersystem of the future?
Re:Yeah, whatever (Score:3, Insightful)
100mbps *is* enough for you. A couple of HDTV streams would take at most 10mbps (I'm sure it's a lot less than that, but let's give it the benefit of doubt). Voice conversations..puhleeze, I get crystal clear quality from Vonage running at 96Kbps either way. I could handle 30 of those comfor
Censorship (Score:5, Interesting)
We'll build it, but will they come? (Score:3, Interesting)
Nope (Score:3, Interesting)
Nope. If you count cable, it's definitely TV, which runs on the same pipe as your broadband. I don't mean that to be a smartass comment, because on the proposed network, they plan to carry a lot of HDTV. Read uphill a bit from your comment, and there's a guy wondering if gigabit would be enough to carry all that.
I don't know which of the two of you is right, though
Re:We'll build it, but will they come? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:We'll build it, but will they come? (Score:4, Insightful)
However, you're right that the ideas in this article would have much more merit if there were even *plans* for such services on the drawing board. Our current voice and cable networks are apparently "good enough" for the vast majority of users, and VOIP and TVOIP would not be that much better than current services to justify the cost of switching. Hunt is also neglecting the fairly large time during which *both* networks would have to be maintained; the old voice and cable networks couldn't be shut down until the new 100Mbps network approached their penetration levels, which would take years or decades.
Is Reed Hundt the same FCC chief who figured out.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Is Reed Hundt the same FCC chief who figured ou (Score:4, Informative)
To be clear, it's not an HDTV tuner that's required, but an ATSC tuner - a digital tuner, in other words.
Television broadcasters are on the air in many locations with digital signals that you can't receive with standard analog tuners. In order to reclaim the spectrum from the analog stations, it's necessary to reach a "critical mass" of digital tuners in the field.
Basically, it's the chicken/egg thing all over again.
Government run networks (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The government can't do networks. (Score:3, Interesting)
1984 -- how about 2024. (Score:2)
1. Government mandates what you can watch (ala v-Chip).
2. Government installs super-high-bandwidth pipes to every home in America.
3. Government mandates that your consumer electronics contain "monitoring equipment" to ensure that you are not harboring terrorists.
Too much government.
ONLY YOU CAN PREVENT BIG GOVERNMENT. Take action in your community. Compete with the government for provision of social services. Ween your weaker neighbors off of Government handouts! Support personal responsibilit
Its already being done in some areas... (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Its already being done in some areas... (Score:4, Insightful)
Let me guess.... (Score:4, Insightful)
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!
Why? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Why? (Score:3, Interesting)
The answer is simple, wireless will never be a viable solution for lots of people needing lots of bandwidth, end of story.
Don't believe the long winded philosophers, useable spectrum is scarce. If everyone in the country wants to connect to the tower ten miles away at 100 megabit speeds, it's just not gonna happen. There is too little spectrum. Cell phone reception is bad enough, internet, forget about it. My wireless router is almost worthless due to interference from my neighbor's cordless phones or hair
Maxed out? (Score:3, Interesting)
I know that some area codes are "reserved" but each area code is only 10 million numbers. Does anyone know why there is such a number crunch? I would wager that it is due to poor allocation of numbers rather than a shortage of unique identifiers. (For instance, I've heard rumors of making US phone numbers 11 digits - do we really need 100 billion domestic phone numbers?)
Do we have such poor resource management? (This is even worse than the IPv4 running out of space, which I know is due to allocation and because 2^32 is not even as large as the planet's population).
Comments? Questions?
Re:Maxed out? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Interesting idea, questions remain (Score:5, Insightful)
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
flashback to 10 years ago (Score:5, Informative)
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.
And how much is this going to cost us? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's being done elsewhere... (Score:5, Informative)
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).
"We"? (Score:3, Insightful)
Who is "we" here?
"...we...sell of the HDTV spectrum..."
Who is "we" here?
I'll wager the first one is the Joe Taxpayer, and the second is not, no matter how they spin it.
redundancy is good (Score:4, Insightful)
Does it come with a free carrier pigeon to contact tech support when there are problems?
No thoughts about security risks? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:No thoughts about security risks? (Score:3, Informative)
infrastructure is a good role for government (Score:5, Insightful)
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.If it aint broke. (Score:5, Interesting)
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?
It should be wireless (Score:3)
Or maybe cableless since fiber isn't necessarily wire.
I want my laptop online no matter where I go (bus, train, airplane, local park, home, or office. If they make it cheap enough I won't bother with a home network anymore, even my desktop systems should connect to it. And of course the TV, game machine, PDA, and toaster will all connect to it. (Though I still haven't figured out why the toaster needs a net connection)
and sell off the HDTV spectrum for 10s of billions (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Utopian troubles (Score:5, Informative)
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 [sltrib.com].
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 [utah.gov] is in session for another couple of weeks.
The bandwidth trend is down, not up (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Phone system is NOT maxed out (Score:3, Informative)
The long-haul telcos are sitting on far, far more bandwidth than they have consumers for. That's why the telco industry has been in a slump for years -- they invested tons of money in capacity (during the
Yes, we would all like to have 100Mb/s to the desktop. However, part of being an adult is realizing that wishing doesn't get you jack shit. Money does.
Color me cynical... (Score:3, Insightful)
1) The cable guys don't want to cannibalize or lose control of the distribution channel for TV/HDTV video which requires such bandwidths.
2) The telco guys don't want to cannibalize their business T1 sales.
3) The satellite guys can't provide that bandwidth on a bi-directional, many-to-many basis.
4) The wireless phone guys may get there someday, but it'll take a while to improve their network bandwidth 1000x to do this.
--LP
Learn the definition of BROADBAND!!! (Score:5, Informative)
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
Losing touch with end-to-end (Score:3, Insightful)
The Internet was originally about end-to-end, and peer communication. Some peers were bigger, and had more connections than others, and were called servers. But in a more fundamental way, they were still peers.
Look at Wondershaper. It exists because cable (at least, don't know about DSL) ISPs have broken the end-to-end model. Cable ISPs "optimize" for download to the point that multiple streams have difficulty sharing the link. It's tweaked and tuned to become a 'broadcast on request' medium.
I have little hope for "Big Broadband" to be significantly better. That's in nobody's interest except us rabble.
Re:fcc (Score:5, Interesting)
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?
City Mouse / Country Mouse (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:fcc (Score:5, Insightful)
A DSL or cable line would give them the same (downstream) bandwidth.. and they don't need the upstream..
Why do they do this?
Re:fcc (Score:4, Informative)
Re:fcc (Score:4, Informative)
Look at your NIU rack if you have HDSL2 lines and you'll see why it's cheeper - the telco side only uses one pair of copper now.
Re:fcc (Score:4, Interesting)
In the boonies this is especially important. In the mountains of Appalachia, for instance, it is not uncommon to have many remote elementary schools that might be seperated from the main office by 30 or 45 minutes on dangerous mountain roads.
They COULD pay someone to drive that distance a couple of times a week to teach a specialty class that is only taught once a week thereby risking their life (think coal trucks overloaded and running people off roads. It DOES happen) each trip subject to snow, ice, etc. OR they could pay that same person to teach it once from any location (whichever is closest) and stream it to all others on their handy T1 line (or better by this new proposal).
There are reasons to do it. That is a real life scenario that I was approached on a consulting basis for a feasibility study.
Re:fcc (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Computer as Cell Phone (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:fcc (Score:4, Insightful)
. .
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?
Uhhh... no. I actually pay quite a bit to have my internet and cable pumped into my house, and you're saying I should have to pay more so someone in podunk South Dakota can have broadband internet access? I mean, it's great that the schools can have a T1, but you choose to live in these places, why should I have to fund your internet?? I know people in suburban Boston who base their house-buying decisions on whether the area is broadband-connected or not. If it's not, it's a serious detraction. If you want to live in that area, you deal with the fact that there is no broadband.
Besides, it's not like the internet is not avaialble to these regions. There is still dialup, or even Satellite internet service. I'm sorry you live in the middle of nowhere and there's no infrastructure for broadband, but it's still a luxury in my eyes, not something that taxes and fees should be paying for. You say these fees benefit consumers, but from your example they're benefiting the small minority of consumers while the majority that are paying are left with no benefit at all.
Re:fcc (Score:3, Insightful)
Nay, regulations are often quite useful and can benefit consumers.
...Benefit *some* consumers, at the expense of others.
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.
State-imposed fe
Re:fcc (Score:5, Informative)
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 [kdlt.com], or the local news paper [argusleader.com] 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.
Yes, you're subsidized (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:fcc (Score:3, Insightful)
No offense, but I'd say that your quality of life is one of the benefits you weigh against having access to things like high-speed internet. Those who live in the city not only have to pay so that you can have access to such niceties, but they ALSO have to wrestle with higher crime rates, more noise, etc. Sounds like people in rural areas want to have their cake and eat it too.
Re:fcc (Score:3, Insightful)
Yup..I appreciate it. I think the few things Govt. should be responsible for is :Defense, Infrastructure, Education..etc. Things that are for the common good of all....and necessities.
However, I just don't see broadband connectivity, and HDTV or any TV at all as a necessity!! Nice to have...sure. Helpful..
Re:fcc (Score:4, Insightful)
The cost of living in those areas are substantially less than in the cities and major metropolitan areas. The problem isn't the idea of people in those rural areas having Internet access or digital cable, its the assumption they make that they should pay the same as I do. Thats's BS, because the cost to provide the service to them might be 10x what mine is. So charge them $400 for their broadband connection. They're paying $2000 a month less in mortgage cost than I am, so I have no sympathy for them. If they don't like that, then they ought to take a good hard look at cheaper delivery methods. Satellite TV, longer range wireless Internet access, wireless phone service are all technologies that are far cheaper to deliver than the equivalent wired technologies. Remove the subsidies for the build out of these rediculous physical infrastructures, and all of that stuff would rapidly come in to fill the void, and remove a enormous source of corporate welfare in this country.
Example: China has 3G wireless phone service and internet access throughout most of the countryside. Why? Because it costs too damn much to run wires everywhere. They were intelligent about it. I've seen it with my own eyes -- people most Americans would consider peasants with satellite TV, and high speed internet access via their cell phones living in cinder block houses with no windows.
People in the country shouldn't suffer from lack of access, the rest of us just shouldn't pay for it, thats all I'm saying. The world was a different place than it was in the early 20th century, these 100 year old concepts of how to bring technology to the rural areas are antiquated and holding us back.
Re:fcc (Score:3)
If my tax dollars pay for roads and education, thats the government taking my money and reaping the benefits of it. While I have a problem with that as well, especially considering the huge amount of
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