As cable companies continue to increase the cost of broadband service, and as telcom monopolies are strengthened by changes in FCC policy, it is now absolutely clear what the broadband endgame will be in the US: wireless. Think of a city where every single street light is a node in a mesh (for an example, see meshnetworks), and thus where the cloud of the internet sits on the street like the fog in San Francisco. For almost nothing, cities could provide IP light, as cities provide street lights. Neutral, end-to-end, fast, and cheap. (Apologies for this uncharacteristically optimistic post. Just a preview of the moot.)
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Meta
Yeah, but what wireless technology can get you 100 mbs? (Not that there’s 100 mbs is very useful…)
Unfortunately, open municipal wireless networks are exactly what the feds don’t want. Why not? Not easily snoopable! Thus, they are couched as “invitiations to hackers and terrorists” and they’ve threatened legislation to bar such open networks if they become popular. Not to mention what they say about warchalkers…
I live in Brookings, SD. There is one liquor store, one local telco, one garbage service provider, one taxi service, one bus service (for handicapped people only, really), and one cable service. All of this is kept under extremely tight control by the city. The service for many of the thing above is extremely shitty. Where I moved from in South Dakota had 5 mbit cable internet for $30. Here, it’s 1.5 mbit cable internet for $40. And this is magnitudes more densely populated than the rest of the state. Plus bandwidth restrictions, high ‘install’ fees, and very poor reliability. The consumer is getting screwed Big Time.
I’m suffering with a 14.4 kbit connection on my cell phone as I write this, but I don’t have to deal with the city to do it. It took me all of 30 seconds to set it up.
Wireless is the answer. Not only because it’s hard to confine with rules and minutia, but because here in South Dakota it’s the only way to affordably cover the Last Mile and not. from a consumer point of view, get it in the rear during the process.
I believe OCN, one of the ISPs here in Tokyo was actually *encouraging* their customers to open their wireless to passers-by, as a part of their “FreeSpot” program. (I’m hazy on the details.)
The way I heard it, they were thumbing their noses at NTT’s “HotSpot” program, a similar paid service.
It’s kind of a neat “customer as Infrastructure” idea, I think.
My husband works as the network administrator for a wireless isp in Canada. Of course, when I heard about it 2 years ago when he got the job, I was very surprised that such a thing exists. Within that time, their customer base has more than doubled and they have coverage from the Niagra area all the way to Mississauga.
Wireless isn’t exactly cheap, since they have to make deals to get towers (such as on top of large apartment buildings, where the park a box and omnis) and buy the actual equipment to broadcast. That’s why they target small to medium businesses at $300 a month. And of course, that pays for more than just internet. They get a firewall and can host their own mail/web servers on their connection, etc.
We use their wireless at home, with him being an employee and all. It’s great, 10x better than cable service here.
Note that Bell Canada is launching a pilot program in three cities (Toronto, Montreal, & Ottawa) and several airports, whereby pay phone booths are reconfigured as wifi hotpots. The service will be free for the duration of the program.
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/12/11/1628257&mode=thread&tid=95
Just a couple of follow ups:
Speakeasy Networks, the nation’s largest independent DSL provider, actually encourages subscribers to use their bandwith for wireless networks. They even provide tech support to help you do it!
Apple today announced new laptops with 802.11g compatibility. It is supposed to transfer at 54 mbs, but with a range of only 50 yards.
This is the point of community wireless networking, but have you thought of a legal formulation that would work for this?
Community wireless agreements are useful, but something that stands up legally would be great.
We’ve been working on the Pico Peering Agreement here:
http://www.picopeer.net. But I’m not sure it would stand up legally.
What it all boils down to is that it is hard to make money if you have competitors. It is much easier if you have some means of being able to say ‘my way or the highway’, rather than ‘my way or my competitor’s way, right next door’.
That’s what the cable companies want, that’s what the Baby Bells want.
More about Broadband. Good Reading:
Broadband: What’s The Holdup?
The U.S. trails in the digital stakes. And catching up won’t happen overnight. But AccessMedia could change everything.
When the news hit that Comcast (CMCSK ) CEO Brian L. Roberts was trying to buy the Walt Disney Co. (DIS ), it became clear that the media industry is in for some big changes. After all, one of the main reasons for doing a deal, Roberts argued, was to deploy Comcast’s cable pipes for the digital delivery of everything from ABC newscasts to cartoons and video games over the Internet — a goal Disney Chairman Michael Eisner has long espoused. There’s just one problem: U.S. broadband transmission speeds are still way too slow to offer most of the kinds of cutting-edge digital delivery over the Internet that Roberts envisions.
In fact, the U.S. lags far behind global leaders such as Korea and Japan, where broadband is far faster and cheaper, thanks to more focused national policy, less cumbersome regulation, and more densely populated regions. For a little more than $50 a month, consumers in Korea can purchase a 20-megabit-per-second Internet connection. That’s 10 to 40 times faster than a typical U.S. connection. In Korea, people use the service to watch TV in a window of their Web browser while they work on a memo in their word processor. Their access to movies and games on demand grows by the day. Such online services are available to few consumers in the U.S., where a 3-megabit connection costs about $45.
U.S. cable and telecommunications companies are working to close the transmission speed gap with other countries, but it will probably take years to catch up and cost billions of dollars. Here’s a look at some of the key issues:
What’s the current state of broadband in the U.S.?
Broadband is available to 89% of all U.S. households, but only 18% subscribe, according to the latest data from Point Topic, a London broadband research company. The phone companies sell digital subscriber line (DSL) connections for less than $30 a month. Their typical speed is about 500k to 1 megabit, which is fast enough to surf the Web, download music, swap photos, and download brief video clips.
Cable companies offer cable modems with peak speeds of 3 megabits for $40 to $45 a month. That makes viewing video and swapping photos a little more manageable but is still far too sluggish for speedy downloading of movies.
How does that compare to other industrial nations?
The world’s broadband leader is South Korea, where 73% of households subscribe to high-speed Internet. Most Koreans pay $27 a month for a connection speed of up to 3 megabits. But a few thousand choose to pay $52 a month for a 20-megabit advanced DSL connection, which is much faster and cheaper than anything available to Americans. Japanese can get some of the fastest and cheapest broadband service in the world — up to 26 megs for about $30 a month, using souped-up DSL. Europe’s speeds and penetration are similar to those in the U.S.
Why are speeds faster in Korea and Japan?
This is less about technological prowess and more about policy. For one thing, Japan and Korea made the deployment of such services a national priority. What’s more, the Korean government deregulated what had been a monopolistic phone system and opened the market to competition. That set off a race among providers to wire up the nation. Moreover, they weren’t hamstrung by the regulations found in the U.S. All of the above led to the deployment of faster DSL and even a limited rollout of fiber-to-the-home. Finally, Korea is more densely populated than the U.S., cramming 48 million people into an area about the size of Indiana. Koreans tend to live in big apartment buildings located near phone company facilities, making it much easier and cheaper to deploy high-speed broadband.
Why has the U.S. fallen behind?
It’s partly a chicken-and-egg problem. While the telcos have experimented with faster DSL service in recent years, it has yet to catch on with consumers. Why? Because there aren’t enough applications, such as online movies and games, that require higher speeds. The same holds true for the cable companies.
Then there are the telco regs. The Bells argue that archaic rules designed for traditional phone services, rather than the Internet, discouraged them from providing faster DSL. In the past, the Bells were required to share their DSL lines with rivals at government-mandated prices. And while the Federal Communications Commission lifted those regulations in 2003, the Bells complain that the rules are ambiguous because a different set of overlapping regulations still requires them to share their lines.
Internet industry expert and film industry veteran Nolan Quan says �the world of entertainment is currently undergoing a major shift that will depend on faster Internet delivery to the home. As the major studios prepare to use Internet delivered entertainment content through delivery systems like MovieLink, a new company, AccessMedia, is launching a new and unique delivery system.� Quan continues, �much like Akamai has a large network of tens of thousands of computer servers located throughout the US and the world, AccessMedia uses it own patent pending peering network to cost effectively deliver media rich content anywhere in the world at costs that has been as low as 3% of current costs. This network takes advantage of tens of thousands of super node computer servers and millions of smaller node computers beyond that.� AccessMedia is currently building a mega network with plans to have more than 20 million nodes by the end of 2004. While broadband delivery is critical to the success of companies like MovieLink, AccessMedia relies on a reservation system more like NetFlix to order movies and other content, and can deliver its content over longer periods of time without impacting consumer satisfaction. In addition, AccessMedia has seemingly limitless content, not just movies. It has signed contracts with content providers like CinemaNow, StreamWaves, AudioLunchBox and NetBroadcaster. It is also in discussions with every major studio for direct delivery of their movies, music and games.
How can the U.S. government help advance broadband speeds?
More deregulation is the key. FCC Chairman Michael K. Powell aims to classify both the phone companies’ DSL and cable operators’ cable-modem operations as “information services.” That would enable them to avoid additional regulations associated with old-fashioned telecom and cable services. But a federal court decision against such a policy is holding up FCC decision-making on this front. In an attempt to make content providers less leery of putting their wares on the Internet, Powell has tried to force Hollywood studios, cable operators, and consumer-electronics makers to agree on standards to protect the distribution of digital content over cable and broadcast, but it’s a tough slog.
What’s the future of broadband?
Widespread deployment of the kinds of speeds required to carry HDTV, for example, won’t be here for years. Walt Megura, general manager of Nortel Networks Ltd.’s (NT ) broadband networks unit, says Internet connections running at speeds of 10 to 20 megs won’t become available to most consumers for at least three to six years.
In the meantime, U.S. providers are only just beginning to roll out services that will match the speeds currently available in South Korea and Japan. Verizon Communications (VZ ) plans to offer 10- to 20-megabit fiber-optic connections to a scant 1 million customers this year. SBC Communications Inc. (SBC ) already offers a 6-megabit connection for $199 a month that’s aimed at businesses.
What sorts of services will be available once 20-meg speeds appear?
Broadband proponents argue that an investment in infrastructure leads to all sorts of new applications. Again, Korea is the model. The broadband leader’s online digital content market, which includes gaming, music, and video, has increased 61% annually for six years. It reached $4.6 billion in 2002, the last year for which figures are available.
A similar effect seems to be taking hold in the U.S. Disney’s ESPN network has a product called ESPN motion, which will make high-quality video clips available online. The same technology is also being used by Disney’s ABC News unit for online distribution of news. And future versions of Apple Computer Inc.’s (AAPL ) iPod, which has driven the digital distribution of music into the mainstream, are likely to do the same for video as the quality of underlying networks improves. It’s just too much information to cram onto a regular DSL or cable-modem service. In short, a new era in the evolution of broadband is approaching — one that Brian Roberts was clearly counting on when he made his audacious bid for Disney. But it won’t happen overnight.
By Steve Rosenbush in New York, with Catherine Yang in Washington, Ronald Grover in Los Angles, Moon Ihlwan in Seoul, and Andy Reinhardt in Paris