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March 2006 Archive

Footsteps in the Hallway ... quick, lock the door!!!

A staple of the older horror movies (back in the days before the explicit gory slasher ones) was the suspense that a few sound effects could create, like footsteps coming down the hallway, or that scene in the dark street where the hero hears footsteps, but then when she stops to listen, the footsteps stop, then they start up again when she starts walking, and then ... well, you get the picture. Those footsteps create suspense by way of Apprehension, because we can't help but fill in the blank of what will come next when the footsteps turn into something more tangible, like one of our worst fears. I think that in the quiet times when they are alone, that's what it must be like inside incumbent telecom executives heads these days. All these footsteps, and they just won't stop!

i guess that's just the nature of change: exciting for some, painful for others. Everyday, it seems, there's another disruptive business making an announcement about taking advantage of new technologies and the Internet to offer a better ISP / voice / video service. I stumbled on three such services in the last couple of days, as I scanned email newsletters and websites.

First, here comes a service that seeks to outSkype Skype and outVonage Vonage. Jajah, a Luxembourg-based VOIP service, gets rid of both the Skype software download and the Vonage hardware component, turning telephony into a straight Web-based service, where you go to a website to place a call, by typing in the phone numbers - all over the Internet on the PC, and calls are charged by the minute - I think the rates sound steep, but I'm not calling from Luxembourg, where most calls are International. Still, you have to admire the ingenuity. Footsteps - can you hear them?

And then, back in the good old USA, right around the corner here in Austin, there's this announcement I picked up off of Glenn Fleishman's WiFi Networking News (great site, BTW) that promises to give the Community Internet folks a boost: 2hotspot is a free - there's that word again - downloadable solution to expand your access point into a Hot Spot and share it / commercialize it with your neighbors and passers by. The footsteps are getting louder.

And just the other day, I downloaded (for free, of course) a service called Loki , which is a tool that sits on your browser - it will, and I kid you not here folks - it will use a preloaded database of Wi Fi access points (they have millions catalogued) to locate you on a map, real-time, and ultimately will serve you local content and ads, based on where you are, at that moment. More Footsteps. Again.

There is so much going on in the background that it's hard to piece it all together, even harder if you aren't watching it daily like many of us in the blogosphere are. But when you do stop and think, it adds up to dramatic change on the horizon. Many in this field already think we're in the middle of that change and it's just hard to perceive right now. I am one of those folks, who recognize that it's not just surface change, but buisness fundamentals that are getting wobbly. No, gravity won't be repealed, we won't do the dog food thing again, but the underlying assumptions on whcih many of our great busiensses are based, are changing, constantly, inevitably, as the Internet matures, and those are the footsteps we keep hearing. Listen, and you'll start to hear them too. Open your eyes and ears and you'll see that the changes around us, growing everyday, are not your garden-variety changes that you could call evolutionary. They are fundamental to how we do business and live our lives. I think its exciting!

Posted on March 29, 2006 at 04:17 PM | Comments (0)

Lighting a Candle by Building a Better Mousetrap

It's hard to see this crisis; it's made up of a million incremental steps. But it's happening. The terrible state of broadband penetration in this country is just a visible symptom. The solution isn't going to be found in short-term market players who have every reason to act monopolistically (and uniformly bad track records). The people who lead us need to recognize that this country is steadily declining, and that pride in our former accomplishments won't save us. We need vision, and we need it now. Susan Crawford Blog

What words of wisdom and insight - I'm glad I discovered this blog. You should check it out. Where have all the good leaders gone, long time passing? So many of our leaders today seem to be out to fill their pockets and get theirs. I just commented on this excellent blog by Susan Crawford, who writes with insight on telecom and policy matters, and in this particular piece, "A Gentle Decline," bemoans the building crisis of lack of broadband infrastructure (and leadership) in the US. My comment below:

Susan, I found this to be a dark blog, and I sense your despair at a seemingly insoluble crisis. I too despair when I think about our situation, but I just came from SXSW and Barcamp in Austin last week, and it was so full of hope and optimism and creaivity, I guess I'm still feeling pretty buoyant. But I too ponder this infrastructure crisis often in my business, and I feel the despair too, most of the time. I do love your thoughts and insights and your writing though. I'd like to offer a different perspective on this topic, perhaps a little more optimistic in tone.

First, I'm with you on the recognition that we're in the midst of a national, as yet largely unacknowledged crisis. But I would argue that our crisis of broadband infrastructure is one more symptom of our greater crisis - that of leadership, which you also implicate in your blog, and which I feel is the deeper problem. Still, I would challenge your call for better leaders - in fact, we get the leaders we deserve, and we as a people continue to re-elect and tolerate the meager minds that we call leaders these days. I think the problem and solution then lies within ourselves. As individual thought leaders, we need to find our voices and articulate our visions - both leadership traits.

I believe our hope lies in the growing concept of emergence, as evidenced by such things as the democratization of journalism (blogging) and other forms of media creation enabled by new technologies. I'd suggest such emergence is becoming possible when it comes to infrastructure as well.

In fact, never has the man/woman on the street had more power at his/her fingertips than today - today's world enables emergent leadership - we all need to find our voice and take action to make things better and that includes our infrastructure crisis. What could communities do, for instance, if they formed Internet Cooperatives to provide for their own infrastructure needs collectively? That's what rural coops did to get electricity 70 years ago.

I believe that we can now conceive of a world without big telecom companies (I know I can, its a favorite fantasy). That's a challenge to all you thinkers that read this blog. What would a world of distributed locally-self-provided telecommunications services look like?

Instead of the dark image of Its a Wonderful Life that shows what the world would have looked like if the telecoms had had their visions realized and the Internet had not happened, what if we were to focus instead on a fantasy where the telecoms are now made irrelevant and infrastructure access becomes the commodity it deserves to be?

I think the act of creatiivty begins with imagination, so I'd challenge you creative types to imagine a way out of our infrastructure crisis. Here's a wacky idea: Why doesn't some big corporation, maybe one whose name rhymes with oodles of money (does that ring a Bell?)create a contest like that one with the rocket that goes up to space, comes down, and goes up again the next day. That was thought impossible but it was finally accomplished through lots of trial and error. Thankfully, infrastructure is not rocket science.

So this particular contest to stimulate emergent thinking would be about how we could as a world of users create an emergent communications system that would fulfill the need for last-mile broadband connectivity, so that everyone would finally be on the Internet. When the whole world gets on, doesn't Metcale's Rule tell us that the Internet is worth - well, I can't do that math, but wouldn't it be a WHOLE LOT more valuable with million/billions more nodes?

Anyone?

Posted on March 24, 2006 at 11:34 PM | Comments (0)

Sacramento Follows a Familiar Pattern

Unstrung - Sacramento to Set Up Muni WiFi - Wireless Networking News Analysis Check out this clip - it describes the process Sacramento followed to get a network, whcih is starting to look like a text book.

Speaking of which, take a sneak peek at my new site, which allows you the Reader and Network Student to build an on-line MetroNet Users Manual - see the WikiMetroNet here and play around on this newest member of the Wiki club.

Posted on March 24, 2006 at 11:09 PM | Comments (0)

Glocalization? On Neighborhoods, Communities, and Cities

Back from a week's R&R with the family (oxymoron?), I'm chomping at the bit to get back into the swing of things. What better way than to start blogging? While on vacaiton in Palm Dessert (golf and beautiful weather) and LA (swimming pools, movie stars), I thought a lot about neighborhoods, communities, and cities, and how they all work together.

I especially got busy on my thinking in the still of the early morning, while my family slept and I drank coffee in the lobby. All these terms we use in our discussions about metropolitan broadband tend to get used interchangeably, although they are distinct, if subjective. Do you relate more with your neighborhood, your community (which one?) or with your city? Is that a fair question? I think it depends on the size of your city, and how long you've been in your neighborhood, and the strength of the bonds you have made with different communities, both on-line and in the real world. It's easier to have an affinity for a smaller town, for instance, and it's easier to consider your neighborhood your community if you've been there a while and know lots of people. When out of town, I claim Austin as my home, but day-to-day, I reference Westlake Hills, and my neighborhood of Davenport Ranch, sometimes referring to the local elementary school, Bridgepoint. It depends on context, but I veer towards more local interests when I consider how I spend my energies.

So, let's fast forward to a year from now - its March 2007 - and let's assume that we have all been wildly successful at what we work at - deploying wireless municipal networks to get more people access to high-speed broadband. What will the world look like? How will the networks have been deployed? How will we get people to use them? Have incumbent providers countered this new competition by dropping their access fees to the floor? (they can do that, and they will).

I would propose that it is inevitable that we all begin to pursue a neighborhood / community development strategy if metropolitan broadband is to succeed in its lofty goals of ubiquitous connectivity. The ROI business cases for these networks involve getting either retail or wholesale customers to sign on to brng in subscriber revenues, and the greater the ratio of subscribers to homes passed by the network, the more successful the network is. With such goals, it makes sense to go local and go native - find out what makes a community tick and use local knowledge of those issues to sell the new network approach and optimize network traffic. It's a guerrilla warfare, where local knowledge trumps aerial bombardment (mass marketing and low prices).

For just that reason - the need for community adoption - I have long promoted community involvement up-front, so that there is widespread buy-in on such a dramatic project as a community network. That requires education, promotion, in short, an all out effort to open people's eyes to the possibilities of Last Mile Connectivity. For planning purposes, I believe it starts at the metropolitan level - thus, the Metro part of MetroNetIQ.

For deployment purposes, however, I think it will be best to go down to the neighborhood level, to give priority in building out networks to those areas where penetration will be the highest, and to where the needs for network connectivity are the greatest. Such discernment only comes from on-the-ground intelligence that is best derived from local community relationships.

For more on this concept that some have labelled G/localization, I recommend Danah Boyd's excellent speech at the recent ETech Conference in CA. See also Danah's wonderful blog apophenia for more such musings on community, culture, and social networking.

Posted on March 20, 2006 at 09:32 AM | Comments (0)

Places and Spaces

Back at SXSW, I went to a panel on physical and on-line experiences and marrying ithe two. Founders of MeetUp, Socialight, Dodgeball discussed and profiled their efforts to tie together place and space. History of places will soon be available, as all this new data gets loaded on-line and tagged by its creators - once these images are geo-tagged, we will have a growing database of places that can be compared over time - this is truly exciting and paradigm shifting. Changes are afoot.

Check out some of these sites:

It was good to see Dennis Crowley, founder of Dodgeball and now sporting a Google business card. Good to see creativity rewarded liike this.

Socialight is by a South African company that is tagging sites.

Platial- by Diane Eisner, where users share their favorite spots with other users.

NYSongsOnline, which maps the street grid of Manhattan, geographically and textually.

PropertyShark - New York again - type in your physical address and it will give you a history of your building.

MeetUp - organizers and voting to determine meeting sites: seeing more homes listed by organizers as meet up locations. more application specific databases that deal with locations...meetup database is rich in space information.

The point here is clear - the Internet is moving out into the streets and alleyways of our cities, and it will be about a whole lot more than getting on-line to check your emails. Hold on to your hats.

Posted on March 11, 2006 at 03:46 PM | Comments (0)

Juggling in Austin

I've got a press pass for South by Southwest Media Conferencein Austin, but the irony is that there is another event, scheduled right on top of SXSW - Barcamp is a guerrilla open source developers "unconference" going on today at the Thistle Restaurant in Austin, down the street from the Convention Center and the SXSW conference.

It's been irresitable to attend this event, even though the SXSW panels have begun today - I have to think that this is the ironic week in my life, because on Monday I'm leaving on vacation with my family, so I"ll miss a lot of the action in Austin this next week. Too many events, so little time. Oh well, my friends will fill me in when I get back. But, for now, I'm heading out after this session to SXSW to see James Surowecki talk about the Wisdom of the Crowds (see Books & Whitepapers section to read about Surowecki. SXSW really gets some good speakers).

Back to Barcamp - the first session has started - Getting Shit and Gettng Shit Done with Blogs. Its about using blogs to communicate in the workplace. Wikis are another alternative and this strategy works - set one up and let the communication start.

I'm making my presentation at 5:30 today to talk about the wireless network I'm deploying with Cellnet in Austin this spring, and seeking developers to contribute to the Community Internet interface.

Posted on March 11, 2006 at 12:09 PM | Comments (0)

Red v. Blue at South by Southwest

The big to-do n Austin this week is the South by Southwest Media Conference. It has three tracks that include both industry seminars and panels, events, and most important for networking - Happy Hours and After Event Parties.

The Music track is the most famous and what started it all. Music company executives come and meet with musicians, and bands get out and play in nearly 100 bars - its huge, and people fight to get the wrist bands. Austin as Live Music Capital of the World.

The Film track came along and you could go to films - another independent film festival, but with panels to discuss the business of film.

The Interactive track is my main interest, and this looks at all things Internet and someone told me that attendance was up 300% this year for this track.

I'm at the very first of a series of panels, here i'm sitting on the front row listening to the creators of Red v. Blue, one of the most creative things I've seen out there on the Internet in the new field of Machinima - using gaming software to produce animated film shorts - NEAR PIxar-like quality, but much cheaper to produce - check this out! They are pioneers, breaking new ground, and they have an audience - how about ONE MILLION DOWNLOADS A WEEK! Try that on!!

The team uses the game Halo, owned by Microsoft, and its characters, to produce creative new animation. They will do the Keynote address on Tuesday, but I'll be on Spring Break with my family in California. Oh well. Hollywood is starting to use Machinima and it is starting to be used on TV a little. It's a valuable tool for storyboarding for movie making, but I like it as a creative, raw new medium.

I enjoy their product, but I'm more wowed by their creativity and social commentary than I am about the technology. They are creative and irreverant, which I think is a big part of why they've developed such an audience.

Posted on March 10, 2006 at 03:04 PM | Comments (0)

The Cincinatti Model: Community Lilly Pads, not City Clouds

TechWeb | News | Lily Pad Hotspots Cover Cincinnati With Free Wi-Fi Here's an interesting business model that is innovative in more than one way.

First, it eschews city-wide coverage in favor of numerous "lilly pads" of coverage, bigger than coffee shop Hot Spots, but smaller than a city cloud - a Hot Zone model.

Second, it says "No thanks" to city government support or involvement, in one fell swoop, taking the prinicipal objection of the anti-municipal wireless army off the table. Huge sigh of relief.

Third, it borrows from the Adopt a Highway model, wherein benefactors, from corporations to individual families, sponsor a Lilly Pad and so give back to the community.

I'd call this true Community Internet, as opposed to Municpal Wireless, in so much as we don't look to the govenrment for the solution, but to the members of the community, helping each other.

This approach shows that there is more than one way to skin a cat - I'd look for more of these alternative business models in 2006. This is Emergence in action, and both a result of a maturing marketplace and a leading indicator of change, where enough people now understand what's going on to come up with new business models. I love America!

Cheers for Cincinnati and that good old Midwestern, Buckeye Can Do spirit!

Posted on March 08, 2006 at 08:44 PM | Comments (0)

Digital Cities: National League of Cities

Sonja Reece, Mayor Pro Tem of Normal, Il, and Vice-Chair of the National League of Cities (NLC) and on the Information Technology and Communications Steering Committee, delivered a speech under the title"Another Role for Elected Officials: Advocate for Broadband."

The message of the National League is that there is strength in numbers. Ms. Reece is a hospital administrator and part-time elected official in her hometown, so she has a unique perspective. Her goal is to ensure that essential services are provided to her city.

Cities are coming up to speed quickly, but many cities are still very new to this field. It will be up to local officials to push for design and implementation of these networks. In terms of public v. private, Ms. Reece suggested that a better perspective for cities to consider is Public Private Partnerships. Some states, 14 of them, have limits on what public entities can do. That includes Texas, which dodged the bullet back in May last year, but still has constraints on the books.

The debate has shifted to the US Congress now, and congressmen are looking at the franchise issue. Texas passed a law for a state-wide franchise approach, and nation-wide franchise is being pursued by large private sector vendors, with the argument that avoiding franchise agreements with 18,000 cities will speed things up. It's important that local control of local land be maintained - its expensive real estate, estimated to be worth $7.8 Trillion in real estate value, if totaled up nationwide. Wow.

So, city officials have a dual role to play: 1) preserve the assets of the city (ROWs, Streets, etc.; and 2) ensure that cities' options remain open regarding broadband be kept open. The McCain Lautenberg bill (S 1294) remains on the agenda and is under discussion.

Why should elected officials be so interested? 1) Economic Development is an issue for cities of all sizes (Princeton, IL); 2) Higher quality of life (Loma Linda, CA); 3) Uses for core municipal services (Corpus Christi); and 4) Critical Needs during emergencies and disasters (Hurricane Katrina).

VisionGain has a Jan 26, 2006 Report that describes broadband as a city's Fifth Utility. Models to follow include 1) Public Utilities; 2) Public Private Partnerships; 3) New City Utility. Various technologies are available, wired and wireless.

Expectations of cities: affordability and dependability. Connectivity: 1) On average 45% of city employees work away from their desk - again, Wow! Mobile workers can stay in touch with these networks; 2) location-based services and GIS; 3) crime control via video surveillance. Schools and Health Care providers benefit from broadband availability. Other expectations include 911 compatibiltiy, customer service, Digital Inclusion, rural/urban parity for outlying regions, and competition (favored approach).

The Call to Action for elected officials is to become an educator - work on the rest of your elected officials, urge Congressional support for the NLC positions above, and involve both public and private partners. What's more: 1) Draft a Technology Master Plan - shows your level of seriousness about these issues; and 2) Prepare for open infrastructure and diverse systems - keep your head in the game regarding Last Mile access for your citizens and make provisions for requiring conduit to the home and ultimate municipal ownership of conduit to the home - if the city owns the conduit, that will keep the opportunity for various users to have access to the home.

It's a dynamic time: Ms. Reece detailed the state of municpal broadband projects from her perspective. Lots of activity and experimentation. Get out there and get busy is Ms. Reece's message. Exciting Times.

Finally, the issue of Texas regulations came up and it was clarified that there is no regulatory or statutory proscription for cities to lauch these networks, and the issue of grandfathering came up. Clearly, if a law is passed in the future, a grandfather perspective would protect those early birds who put a network in this year. So, Get Busy is the clear message of the day.

Posted on March 01, 2006 at 02:33 PM | Comments (0)

Digital Cities: Service Provider Perspective

Yesterday, we had a good discussion at the Digital Cities Service Provider Executive Roundtable, which was hosted by Yankee Group, rClient and W2i, and facilitated by Berge Ayvazian (Chief Research Officer, Yankee Group). This special seminar and roundtable (by invitation only) drew on the Yankee Group's extensive research on service-provider strategies for municipal and metropolitan broadband-wireless networks. It provided a forum for service providers to discuss business and market strategies and examine the potential for cooperation among emerging broadband-wireless service providers and existing cable, telco, cellular, and Internet service providers. As an experiment, it worked.

Berge asked for volunteers to present the findings and provide a perspective on the "Service Provider Diliemma." Here's a scoop on my opinions in advance of the panel.

First and foremost, I'd define the Service Provider Dilemma as follows: the industry, for all of its progress, is still in its infancy and to many observers, from large incumbents to enterprise service providers to city government officials, still in a Proof of Concept stage. No clear business models are yet proven out with quantifiable case studies. We're starting to see that, but frankly, until we start analysing some of the largest deployments, we won't have the hard data to communicate with skeptics.

Who's going to do the proving? That's the service provider dilemma - to build these networks in a speculative fashion is a risk that not many are not yet prepared to make. So, despite the incredible value that these new technologies provide, we have a plethora of small scale deployments - we're just starting to see large deployments mature, such as Corpus Christi and Tempe.

We're still in the experimentation stage, and that's frustrating for big service providers, who need to see a clear road to the ROI before their executives will commit resources to this space. Smaller innovators can take more risks, but they lack the deep resources of the big guys.

I believe that that puts a premium on all of us to help each other where we can. Can we focus on 1) learning and education; 2) on experimentation, trials and proofs of concept and pilots, and 3) collaboration, both Private/Private, Public/Private and geographic among regions? We'll see. If and its a big if because many are not ready to go there, but if we're able to work together in some coordinated fashion, we can get to our mutual goals sooner.

So my dream is that we see ourselves reaching our goals sooner than we thought because we find safe ways to work together and collaborate to collapse cycle times and learn more efficiently. I saw yesterday that there is significant interest to focus on common areas, such as customer service,, that we all can agree on and go from there. I'd urge you public sector guys to challenge yourselves in similar fashion, to identify what you can do to help each other.

Posted on March 01, 2006 at 02:29 PM | Comments (0)

Digital Cities: Houston Mayor White Speech

Back in Houston, it's afternoon and Mayor White has just shown up to speak to the 250 or so attendees at the W2i Digital Cities Convention. There's excitement in the room, because Mayor White is known as an innovative visionary among public officials, and the Houston RFP for Wireless Broadband Network is keen on everyone's mind, especially given that most attendees from the public sector at this convention are from Texas. This is probably the big moment at this convention, which has been a big success so far.

Mayor White opened with his personal background as a young computer programmer where he saw Bill Gates drop out (we know how that worked out) and he reminisced about the days of programming in Fortran...a while back.

When he was deputy secretary of DOE, Mayor White recalls DOE RFPs during the Cold War for Cray mainframes operating in parallel and the two (2) applications that required the most computing capability were weather and energy applications, like seismic forecasting, etc.

The message: Houston has a long history in IT, from those early days. On to the present, Houston has significant networking capability, but the addition of the wireless network will build on. The origin and driver for this initiative were the efforts of the Greater Houston Partnership, whose business leaders are looking out for the long-term economic health of the city.

Digital divide, economic development, and greater choice for users are key goals of this initiative. It's important that the city partner with private sector providers to accomplish its task. The GHP report in October led to a goal of an RFP process, where the city would be innovative and maintain a transparent process to build out a mesh network. Their draft RFP has been available for comments, out on the Internet, with the goal of public procurement to be one of transparency.

Continuing technology development will impact this process, probably to a greater extent than a wired system. Ongoing opportunities will be presented to upgrade the network during its deployment. Too often public entities, continued Mayor White, make a big deal about public announcements, but the mayor's goal is to get the network out there, not so much with fanfare as with a focus on business.

While small cities have been innovators in this space, large cities like Houston will offer the densities that will demonstrate economic success for these metropolitan broadband networks.

Houston is home to one of the greatest medcal centers in the world, home of the energy industry, and the aerospace industry -- all these industries are heavy consumers of IT, making Houston an important world center in IT application development. Finally, creating these new tools that support a more flexible workplace will address traffic congestion - a key issue in big cities like Houston.

Posted on March 01, 2006 at 01:54 PM | Comments (0)

Digital Cities: Metropolitan Network Survey

W2i/Yankee Group Local-Government Broadband-Wireless Deployment Trends Survey Results

Back to blogging again. This is hit and miss, but will give you a flavor of what's going on down here.

Berge Ayvazian, Chief Research Officer, Yankee Group, is up now and is talking about a recent survey focused on attendees here. Berge led a great service provider CEO roundtable yesterday, by the way, and he's now up talking about trends in the industry.

What are cities trying to do with broadband networks?

Increased productivity
Mobile worker efficiencies
Public safety enhancements
Digital Inclusion (need a network to deliver eGovt services)
Traffic management
Infrastructure (utility) management
Etc,etc

Existing Technology can be accelerated with new technologies, and there is a boatload of technologies to work with. For instance, networked home Wi Fi - FON initiative - is a 2nd generation technology that builds on an existing technology - and its emergent. Also, 3G cellular is out there. Wi Fi mesh holds great potential and that will only move forward faster with WiMax. Spectrum is a big issue, to be sure.

LIke Family Feud, "Survey Says:" Many priorities, see above. 23 respondents to the latest survey reflect the focus on Texas, given that 85% of attendees here in Houston are from Texas cities.

Mobility support, in vehicles as well as stationary.
4.9 GHz band for public safety draws a lot of interest

Focusing on the Role of Local Governments, the survey showed these things for a city to do
1. Anchor Tenants (fewer than nationally)
2. Incentives
3. Strucuture
4. Demand Aggregator
5. City owned network that leases space (more than nationally)

Financing? Balance between tax money and private sector funding.

Business Models are 1) Public Private Partnership model (Philly, Minneapolis); 2) Private owned and operated (small towns especially); 3) City owns and operates; 4) City owns and outsources management.

What can incumbent telecos do?
even split between partner, systems integrator, and managed service provider - they see a role for the incumbent - an interesting point to note.

Go to market pricing strategy?
17% Free, 11% Free with options to upgrade, 28% Free for low-income, tiered price for the rest; 28% Tiered pricing, 17% Other.

There will be more results, more final towards the end of this conference.

Posted on March 01, 2006 at 10:12 AM | Comments (0)

Digital Cities: 100 RFPs in cities with over 100K in 2006?

I'm at the Wireless Internet Institute Digital Cities Convention in Houston and just started blogging! Hold on to your hats - this will be fast and furious, a little raw, with minimal editing. What an adventure blogging is.

Paul Butcher from Intel, one of the most traveled and wise veterans in this new space, is up on the dais and he just issued a "challenge" or "prediction,' depending on your perspective. He anticipates 100 RFPs for municpal broadband in cities over 100,000 in population in 2006 - we're around 40 now, so this isn't too far a reach - this will be quite a year if this happens.

Open Network Standard has taken root - buisness model in which an operator would extend end customer connectivity to a number of competitors.

Licensed Spectrum - as networks are deployed, spectrum becomes a constraint and may impact on Unlicensed networks - will WiBro be enabled in licensed and unlicensed spectrum?

Paul's concerns looking forward? 1) Not enough VC capital to fund the deployments.What will it take to free up the capital needed? 2) Need more reputable Tier One service providers; and 3) Need an affordable wireless MANAGEABLE bridge so that the service provider can manage services remotely and efficiently.

Moore's Law ensures that the necessary technology to drive this business is available and affordable. The Intel Digital Communities initiative is a great resource for understanding the benefits that accrue from these projects: networked parking meters, automated vehicle location tools and other wireless asset management programs, focused industry vertical solutions, the list goes on and on.

Where are we now? Digital Divide has morphed into Digital Inclusion. This is my two cents worth here: We all benefit when we bring more people onto the Internet - that's Network Economics, not Philanthropy. Back to Paul - the conundrum of the Digital Divide is that every new adoption and move forward widens the gap as long as there are people lagging. Intel is launching programs, 18 in total, (as are Dell and IBM too), to address Digital Inclusion globally. Paul highlighted efforts in France, Brazil, Egypt, and the Phillipines. Its about network, network devices, financing, and training. Here in Corpus Christi, just down the highway from Austin, the city is dealing with Dell.

We are in a crisis now, as yet unacknowledged. The world is changing faster and faster. What will this all mean in 2010 (just a few years away, by the way)? Cities that get active now are gaining a seat at the table in 2010. They are gaining the experience and putting their communities at the front of the line. 2.5 GHz spectrum usage in this area is on the horizon.


Posted on March 01, 2006 at 09:42 AM | Comments (0)