Streetcorner signup in Korea
Can Americans dream about a day when they get a 100-megabit-per-second broadband connection, delivered over fiber? FTTH Council, says yes, and is pushing the US government to adopt a 100 Megabit Nation policy. The Council says that we have the technology, and the carriers (and cable providers) have the networks to make it all a reality – with a little pressure from Washington D.C.
The FTTH Council’s recommendation included the goal of extending, through both private and public sector initiatives, affordable next-generation broadband to a majority of Americans by 2010, with universal availability by 2015.
The Council wants Congress and the President to act fast on this – otherwise we will be stuck in the slow lane, of sub-10 megabit per second speeds. Every day we twiddle our thumbs, we lose some of the edge when it comes to developing clever ways to use the bandwidth. My simple argument is that what x86 was to the PC era, bandwidth is to the broadband era. The more bandwidth we have, the more innovative ways we will find to use it, thus creating another cycle of innovation.
I’m almost [but, not quite] old enough to recall when the equation of public and private interests included a segment dedicated to providing for the needs of the American public. But, I only started voting in 1949!
The frustrating part of this Post by Om Malik is the number of comments he received from geeks in another countries – who already are well on the way to access to this level of broadband.
I agree with the context of the message but coming form the only “institute” that can actually achieve this is a bit suspicious
fiber to the home sounds like they have their pocket book more in mind than they have the consumers
also what happened to all the money given to the telcos to upgrade our systems back in the nineties
also what happened to all the money given to the telcos to upgrade our systems back in the nineties
They took the money and we got zip. That is about par for the course in America now days.
What a lot of people still fail to understand is that getting a 100Mb link to your house is one thing but unless you like to transfer big files to and from your neighbor what you really want is a reasonable amount of INTERNET bandwidth. Heck, I’d stay with my current 6-8Mb cable modem service if I could pull data that fast off the Internet. The problem is that carriers have oversubscribed their networks to the point that, in some cases, dialup is just or almost as fast. The current bottleneck is NOT in the last mile.
Ben – there isn’t a cableco in the US that can’t push 100mbps to your home – right now! No one needs anything more than off-the-shelf hardware – and a boot up the arse.
Their business model projects the most gradual possible growth in capacity, playing corporate vs. small business vs. home consumers off against each other – with the FCC and the rest of the Stoopnagles in DC playing along.
One of the telling points that Om makes in his point is the wave of hardware and software that would follow-on after this upgrade. No different from what followed with Internet access in the first place.
The US government should help develop the deployment of high-speed connectivity throughout the US much like they funded the construction of the highway system.
Unfortunately, we have a leadership that prefers to first rebuild other nations (after we bomb them) and leave the building of the American communications infrastructure, well , for later.
Geeks in Korea & Thailand & etc can say whatever they want – the countries they live in are VERY small by American standards – and that means that the networks that service those countries are also very small & compact – aka easier to administrate, easier to upgrade. Also, a large percentage of the user base lives within megalopolis style cities… do the math…
Administration, maintenance? Dude, have any idea what’s required to keep fibre up and running? You don’t even have to clean the windshield.
As #6 alluded to comparing Thailand, Korea, Japan, and Taiwan to the U.S. is not exactly applicable. If one looks at the population density figures the true cost starts to emerge. One can make a case that wiring major metro areas could, perhaps should, be done, but for some cities & towns this type of broadband is not economically feasible. The problem comes with economies of scale, and it cost for some regions of the U.S. may require $150+ a month for subscription fees to make the venture profitable. I think another reason is that ISPs may have to increase the cost for subscription quite a bit, and this could get them into trouble with local/state government, as “violating” consumer rights. If AT&T offered 4x the speed for 2x the cost, I’d be game but I don’t think a lot of other consumers would be.
However, I hear things about Verizon bring optical connections to the curb, FIOS I think, and if this gains momentum perhaps this will persuade other ISPs to pick up the pace. As a final side note, I talked with a friend’s dad awhile back and he works for AT&T. He said that they were testing fiber to the curb in the some regions of N.W. Indiana. However, with no other competitors doing the same there is little incentives to follow through.
I’m still paying $50 for a 1.5/256 DSL connection and it really pisses me off.
The problem that I ran into with my telco and getting enough bandwidth for my home business wasn’t technological. It was cost… and I live way out in the boonies. I need to move big video files around for my podcast, both to support pre-production and to get the final versions to the various hosts. Windstream was happy to contract me for six T1 lines to give me 9 Mbps bi-directional at a cost of $2,400 per month plus one-time installation costs. Fortunately a non-telco company had just laid an OC192 line through my town and offered 8 Mbps bi-directional off the fiber via wi-fi for $250 a month, billed by my electrical co-op. I got on the phone to Windstream and got a very friendly and knowledgeable representative in business support. After chatting her up for 20 minutes she finally admitted that Windstream was perfectly capable of giving me 8 Mbps in both directions over DSL, but the “higher ups” wouldn’t allow it because it would undermine their highly lucrative T1 business where they charge by the mile from the switch. So now I’m enjoying my fiber connection via wi-fi and I nearly always hit 1.1 MB per second in both directions when connecting to large servers. The wi-fi is 802.11g, so theoretically I could upgrade to faster speeds up to 54 Mbps if and when those tiers of service become available. If I can find a way to easily connect all my satellite receivers and burglar alarm without a land line, I’ll get rid of Windstream (formerly Alltel) altogether.
#8 – Yeah thats what I was trying to get at, but didnt feel much like typing it all out ;).
Verizon does offer FIOS up here in the northwestern usa – ive heard its super-crazy-fast.
What is the cost like?
#7 – yeah… in a small-ass country i’d imagine there IS very little maintenance or administration – have fun scaling that up 6x (user wise – s.korea has 49mil, usa has 300mil) – not even going to get into how much more area usa covers (sq miles vs sq km’s)
#10 –
Cost:
http://www22.verizon.com/content/consumerfios/packages+and+prices/packages+and+prices.htm
Availability:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verizon_FiOS_Availability
I’m in Saskatchewan, Canada. We’ve got two providers here that can technically push approx. 15 (adsl2+ over copper) and 30 (cable) Mbps. The telco with the copper is looking at VDSL sometime in the next three or four years, which should give up to 50Mbps. As someone who has worked on that copper infrastructure though, I know it ranges from bad to very good depending on the city/area. Outside of the major centres, the cost skyrockets because you need a loop of less than 1 km to get those kinds of rates over copper. As #3 wisely pointed out though, and I concur…with my 6Mbps (about $30CAN / month) connection in my house, I am very happy. If everyone isn’t upgraded, a big pipe doesn’t always do a lot of good. If the file I’m pulling down is from someone with a 1.5Mbps connection…my highest rate is limited by how much they are going to give me.
As far as fibre…again, cost. That is a big infrastructure overhaul. If its a telco provider who goes to fibre, they would also need to implement some type of power-over-fibre solution as well…
http://optics.org/cws/article/research/25151 which would probably add to the cost – either that or have a whole market of customers buying new OE stuff. Not saying that fibre wouldn’t be a good idea…it is coming sooner or later. As for it being maintenance free – well, I’d believe that when I saw it. Things often seem to have some unexpected costs along the way.
OK…
I think it was in the 70’s that alot of books, including POPULAR SCI…
were forcasting the advent of …..
Telephones with VIDEO..
The only drawback was the telco…
I THINK, most of you understand what is required for this to happen, just from useing the internet..
For those that know whats involved…
ISDN is STILL expencive, and NOT equal to ADSL.. (insert BIG debate.)
Insert corp IDEAL…
Install THE BASICS save $0.50 or more and dont worry about it.
RURAL areas were using 40 year old tech until about 2002, BECAUSE they didnt require much more.
Advent of the Internet brought phone use from an avg of 6% use for ALL phone lines in a city to 80%…
ALL that fiber optics that WERE only between major Metro, had to be installed INTO the cities…FINALLY…
#4 I want to believe you, so please show a reference to your source of info. Serious comment.
Verizon recently put fiber all the way to the house, so now I’ve actually got two companies competing for broadband internet. And they’re trying to cut each other’s throats. The FiOS isn’t really that much faster than the cable, probably due to server limitations, but that might change. I can’t get remote university servers to go any faster, so I’ll just go with the company that offers the cheapest price. Still near $50/mo. either way. Oh, and uplink speeds are about the same, too.
Just my 2 cents (2 new gold dollars) worth.
I live in Tokyo and have “100MB” fiber optic service from NTT. Guess what? It tests out around 5MB on a good day. And, slow sites, latency problems etc. mean the Net isn’t very much faster for me than back in 2002, when I had “15MB” ADSL service from Japan’s YahooBB…which actually tested out around 600k.
For example, the CNN site takes over 25 seconds to load. Video, streaming music…it all hiccups and buffers and hiccups and buffers, same as it ever did in the dialup days.
Don’t believe the hype. The days when people actually get 100MB are far off indeed. And a lot of other things need to get faster in order for people to actually use that much bandwidth.
#11
Have you seen the terrain in Thailand? a fair amount of it is like the everglades and people live there.
Taiwan it little but most of it is mountain. The same applies to S. Korea plus those horrible winters thanks to the proximity to Siberia.
Japan… Who cares? Japan is loaded with cash.
The cost excuse is way overused, just because the USA is big it doesn’t mean they can’t apply a 100mb connection to a smaller area such as a more profitable state such as NY or California.
#17 – I already stated that major metro areas should be used as test cases. Also, I mentioned population densities, not terrian characteritics.
http://www.photius.com/wfb1999/rankings/population_density_0.html
Rankings:
Taiwan – 14
South Korea – 18
Japan – 32
U.S. – 172
Lots of moaning about the costs that it would take to catch up with the rest of the world – lol @ all the people whining that places like Thailand have less terrain to cover – yeah and about 1/1000 the wealth of the U.S., too!
It’s pathetic that the U.S., the world’s richest and most powerful nation, is trying to “make is all a reality” for the majority of Americans by 2010 (and fully available by 2015), when other countries have had it available to the overwhelming majority as early as 3 or four years ago. By 2015, the rest of the world will be measuring their capabilities in gigabits.
I live in Japan, and in reply to the fellow in Tokyo who is “only” getting 5MB/s … you DO realize you’re mixing Mb and MB, do you not? If you’re getting 5 MB/s (capital B), then you’re in excess of 40 Mb/s (small b), which is a speed the folks in the U.S. can only dream about. I live out in the sticks, have a fiber optic connection, and even though I’m a good 3 km from the telephone office, I have seen speeds in excess of 50 Mb/s. If you’re downloading big files, it’s fantastic.
#18
And the best part is when they realize that high bandwidth connections are profitable then it would be worth the investment.