The City of Norfolk owns a lot of fiber optic cable that is hung from power poles.
I could see where a private company could lease some of this fiber and then deploys WiFi nodes along this route to cover the city. Some of the new WiFi technology is going well beyond 300 feet reach.
I like the Grand Rapids idea that WiFi is a recruitment tool. The City's
emphasis 8 years ago to get broadband implemented has been a tremendous benefit. Now we need to continue getting higher bandwidth capacity to the last mile.
As I drove through Nebraska, Iowa, and Missouri, especially Iowa, where I noticed
that their economic development seemed to revolve around a larger manufacturing
employer. While listening to Devil in the White City (Chicago's 1893 World Fair)
book on tape I couldn't help recognize how we can use communications technology
to transform our previous economic development model towards an knowledge based
entrepreneurs economic model.
"The law of accelerating returns is fundamentally an economic theory. Contemporary economic theory and policy are based on outdated models that emphasize energy costs, commodity prices, and capital investment in plant and equipment as key driving factors, while largely overlooking computational capacity, memory, bandwidth, the size of technology, intellectual property, knowledge, and other increasingly vital (and increasingly increasing) constituents that are driving economy." Ray Kurzweil, The Singularity Is Near, pg. 96, (bolding is my annotation, MDH)
This enabling technology can once again help us repopulate the rural area by
providing entrepreneurs a knowledge enabling capability similar to land and the
agricultural expansion/settlement at the turn of century. Instead of using our hands and families we now can use our minds as entrepreneurs to the betterment of
our families and communities.
Mark
-----Original Message-----
From: Larry Wenzl
Sent: Monday, May 15, 2006 10:29 PM
To: Hall, Mark
Subject: Grand Rapids going to wireless broadband
Mark,
Here's an interesting link to Grand Rapids who is recently is looking at putting in a wireless broadband service for their 45 square miles.
Intel To Invest Over $1 Billion For Emerging Markets Internet
By Agence France-Presse
Intel said May 2 it plans to invest more than one billion dollars over the
next five years to speed access to technology and education for people in
the developing world. The objectives of the World Ahead Program are to
extend broadband Internet access to the world's next billion users while
training 10 million more teachers on the use of technology in education,
the biggest maker of computer chips said.
"Decades of providing technology in growing volume and at decreasing costs
have driven great gains for developing nations, communities and people
worldwide, but there is still much to do," said Paul Otellini, Intel's
president and chief executive officer.
Intel's past investments have included programs in 52 countries to make it
easier for people to purchase or lease PCs. In 2005, according to the
company, 8.5 million PCs were included in these efforts.
Copyright Agence France-Presse, 2006
-----Original Message-----
From: Larry Wenzl
Sent: Monday, May 15, 2006 10:14 PM
To: Hall, Mark
Subject: NPR - WIMAX, Mesh Networks and small cities
Broadening the Reach of Broadband
by Joel Rose, WHYY
Fiber-optic cable can carry many times as much data as traditional copper wiring. iStock
Morning Edition, May 15, 2006 ยท Starting in the 1990s, telecommunications companies spent billions of dollars laying fiber-optic cable all over the country. That investment created an ultra-fast information superhighway, says Blair Levin, a media analyst at Stifel Nicolaus. But he says it's carrying only a fraction of the traffic it was built to handle.
"We have a great eight-lane freeway where the on-ramps and off-ramps are kind of like dirt," Levin says. "No matter how good the highway is, there's always a backup caused by the fact the on-ramps and off-ramps aren't up to the speeds of the highway itself. "
Levin says there is still a gap at the most expensive part of the network: the last mile between the Internet and the consumer. He says those on-ramps have gotten better in the last decade, as cable and DSL modems have replaced slower dial-up connections. Now, a host of new technologies are promising to make those on-ramps even faster.
At Verizon, "We are fiber all the way from the network to the customer," says spokesman Eric Rabe. "The advantage that gives us is that as the explosion of data speeds and requirements takes place, we have the capacity to take that all the way to the customer."
Fiber-optic cable can carry many times as much data as traditional copper wiring. But it's expensive to deploy, and prone to costly delays. Verizon says it spent $1 billion last year alone building its FiOS network. With so much money involved, Wall Street investors are eager to see the payoff.
But Verizon's Rabe says that will come a few years down the road, as consumers demand bigger and bigger pipes to deliver their digital entertainment.
"As consumers use the Internet, they use video that requires more and more bandwidth. And we're now developing networks that are far faster than anything we've had in the past, because of that demand."
But there is concern among local governments that not everyone is going to be served by high-speed fiber-optic networks. Analyst Levin says local officials are worried that Verizon's FiOS and similar services will only be available in the most affluent neighborhoods.
"What the municipalities want is the ability to tell the phone companies that they have to build out to the entire area," Levin says. "The fear is on the part of the municipalities is that projects like FiOS, the way they're building it, they're only really building out to 50 percent of homes."
Levin says Wall Street is also wary of fiber-optic networks because they may wind up facing competition from emerging wireless technologies such as WIMAX, a wireless technology that promises to deliver broadband over great distances.
"If WIMAX technology -- a technology a lot of folks are talking actually works -- you can put an antenna on a tower downtown and the whole downtown is connected with very fast broadband," he says.
For now, WIMAX remains relatively untested in the wild. But a technology called Wi-Fi is already widely available. Wi-Fi uses a number of smaller antennas, called "nodes," to build a mesh network. Wi-Fi is slightly slower than cable or DSL, but its lower cost makes it popular with cities that want to offer affordable wireless service to their residents.
"The cities I've talked to don't believe there are enough choices," Cole Reinwand, a vice president at Earthlink, says. "Or that broadband availability is there yet. Reports suggest there's universal coverage available, but some of the poorer neighborhoods haven't been built out, DSL and cable are not available. "
Earthlink has signed a contract with Philadelphia to build the city's Wi-Fi network, and will join with Google to do the same in San Francisco.
Smaller towns are diving in, too. Paul Leonard is the manager of Upper Dublin Township, a suburb of Philadelphia, says he recently discovered through happenstance that there's a major fiber-optic cable running just yards from his office.
"We could conceivably run fiber down there, tap into that," he says, "And suddenly, our library which is downstairs, or the police station is on a network that's much, much more powerful than the little pipeline that we buy now from Verizon or Comcast. "
He says the township could potentially offer that fast wireless service to its citizens, too. Leonard says the United States once ranked fourth in the world in broadband penetration. Today it's fallen out of the top ten. Leonard says he'd like to see a national policy that promotes wider access. But he says even that won't let local leaders off the hook.
"Every community needs to have a technology plan. We're developing ours. Because if we don't, the kids in China or Brazil or Bangalore could eat our lunch."
Just as new wireless and fiber networks are beginning to compete with existing broadband offerings, another player may be poised to enter the U.S. market: satellite television. Blair Levin says DirecTV and Dish Network -- which already sell digital TV signals -- could soon offer broadband, too.
"The satellite guys don't want to be stuck just selling video," Levin says. "So they want to have a broadband offering so they can sell consumers a competitive product. "
That means satellite TV providers could join a growing list of companies and cities offering to carry data over the last mile to your front door.
Comments (0)
You don't have permission to comment on this page.