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March 2008 Archive

Back to the Drawing Board

In an editorial this morning titled Broadening Broadband, the NY Times Editorial Board indicates that it reads its own paper (eventually) - see this article from March 22: Hopes for Wireless Cities Fade as Internet Providers Pull Out) and says, in effect, and incredibly,

EarthLink should fulfill the commitments it made.

To borrow a turn of phrase from my friend, John McCain, "That, my friends, is not likely."

But I do give them credit for the last sentence, in which direction lies wisdom...

Even in these tough economic times, cities should keep pushing municipal Wi-Fi and looking for partners and plans that can make it a reality.

The reality is that cities have to go back to the drawing board, broadband is an essential commodity, a necessity for modern society. They get that right. Let's give them credit.

Posted on March 29, 2008 at 04:28 AM | Comments (0)

A Dozen Roses, Kid Gloves or a Baseball Bat?



ARTHUR:
"How to handle a woman?
There's a way," said the wise old man,
"A way known by ev'ry woman
Since the whole rigmarole began."
"Do I flatter her?" I begged him answer.
"Do I threaten or cajole or plead?
Do I brood or play the gay romancer?"
Said he, smiling: "No indeed.
How to handle a woman?
Mark me well, I will tell you, sir:
The way to handle a woman
Is to love her...simply love her...
Merely love her...love her...love her."
from the soundtrack for Camelot

Hate me if you must for inflicting this clip of William Shatner "Singing" - if you can really call it that - on you. I just couldn't resist. It's so bad ... it's good!

Somehow, this performance captures - a little - the way I feel about working with Incumbent ISPs. I have to admit, based on my experience so far, I feel somewhat helpless, not unlike the way I've felt with women most of my life, and with my wife these past 18 years...should I just love the incumbent ISPs, simply love them, merely love them, love them, love them?

Naaaaaaaaah...don't think it's quite the same thing ...

So, my question for all who read this is this - should a new market entrant or a city team try to win over the the incumbent ISP when engaging in a metropolitan broadband project (Dozen Roses)? work with them (Kid Gloves)? or just forgo the pain and move forward and accept the consequences, hoping they'll come around or be pounded into submission (Baseball Bat)?

Believe it or not, I lean towards the middle alternative, and here's why...we need the incumbents to be successful...they have so much going for them, and they can do so much harm ... it's to the advantage of the entire community to have an established network operator or better yet, two or more, fall into line behind a community wireless project. Impossible? Maybe, but it's worth a try and here's why...

This morning, after writing this two-part post about Sascha Meinrath's recent essay on Municipal Wireless and Best Practices (here and here), I went back to his web site and left the following comment:

I second Sascha's comments in this essay and underscore the need to begin to follow some industry best practice, as he outlined in his five steps. In practice though, I'd temper some of the idealism in this essay with the very real problem of negative impacts on incumbent service providers - this is a big issue for sitting mayors and city council persons and a very real political risk.

That said, sensitivity for negative impacts on beneficiaries of the status quo must be weighed and balanced with the needs of all citizens and the benefits to the community at large that come from a progressive project like metropolitan broadband infrastructure. All parties, including the incumbents, benefit when the community gains a new resource like ubiquitous broadband. One can make the strong argument that we have long erred on the side of the status quo, and that it's time we began to err a little on the side of progress, especially when it comes to broadband connectivity.

So it is up to the leaders in a community, in both the public and private sector, to explain these purported community benefits in a well delineated vision. And it's up to those leaders to lead the broadband incumbents away from their narrow focus on self-interest to a more expanded assessment of holistic community benefit - I believe they can do that through public discussion and by shining a light on the complex facts of such social change. The sooner that incumbent service providers recognize that they're a part of a community as well as a profit-taking corporate entity, in deed as well as in word, the sooner the impediments to progress will be removed and the sooner the benefits of ubiquitous community broadband will be realized.

My more detailed comments can be found on my website MetroNetIQ at www.metronetiq.com - keep up the good work, Sascha!

I felt compelled to elaborate on this comment because, you see, policy perspectives and best practices are all well and good - in a vacuum - but get out into a local political environment and try to pursue an objective in opposition to the local cable and/or telecom incumbent - and come back and tell me how that worked out for you.

I'm betting that you'll find that their senior management staff are registered lobbyists in Washington and the state capital, that their management staff sit on local boards and commissions, that they run the Chamber of Commerce, that they pay significant municipal franchise fees into the city coffers, that they routinely donate to local charities and sponsor local softball teams and kids' Little League. Let's face it folks, the incumbent ISPs are no dummies, and this is what they do for a living - they ARE the Status Quo, and the status quo is quite good now from where they sit, thank you very much.

They make a pretty profit on broadband, and they have no conceivable idea why that should change. In fact, they make so much money from broadband now, just over the last decade, that they've grown to like it and it's become such an important part of their portfolio, that it's even perceived as a threat to them if anything about the current situation were to change. When you're on top of the pile, "change" is not a popular word. "Change" means going down, "stasis" means staying on top.

So, they're here, they're an integral part of the community, and you ignore or offend them at your peril. Just ask the FCC...it's the same, from the federal level, to the state level, to the local level - really, when you think about it, managing political outcomes has perhaps become over time their key core competence ... forget managing networks. Though they are good at that, you have to admit.

And so I come back to a new way to look at incumbent ISPs. They're important citizens of the community. They deserve respect for what they've accomplished, and for the vital services they offer day-in and day-out. But they also need to be prodded to move ahead, because they are comfortable where they are, and their comfort can become an impediment for the greater good of the community. They look at change with a jaundiced eye - they don't trust it.

So I opt for the middle path: forget the Roses, don't even try, begging earns you no respect when approaching a powerful player - they will dismiss you and crush you...and forget the Baseball Bat - if you haven't noticed, they're richer than you, they're better connected than you, they have local market knowledge better than almost any, they have staff who can vote in a block to keep a politician in line ... and they're sitting on a pile of cash, so they can outspend you. So, forget the baseball bat folks.

So, what about the Kid Gloves option. I've become a recent advocate of Kid Gloves. Because this is a path of respect, and not just for the incumbent ISP, but also for the metropolitan broadband project promoter. Moving down this path should also help in establishing a valuable link between the powers of the present- the power of the status quo - and the power of the future - the power of change and innovation. Whether they realize it or not, those who hold the status quo need the power of change, because they often face strong internal resistance to change and innovation. And the world they operate in is changing, whether they admit it or not. The smarter ones know that already and will be receptive to a Kid Glove treatment that offers them a way to profit from change, a way to turn lemons into lemonade, a way to get ahead of the competition.

So, without further ado, here is something to make you and the incumbent ISP think twice about a metropolitan broadband project that may be coming to their area whether they like it or not.

Reasons an Incumbent ISP Should Support a Community Broadband Project

1. Wireless broadband is a new mobile broadband service that incumbents can purchase from the city or provider on a pay-as-you-go wholesale basis (in account bundles) and then resell to current and new subscribers for a profit, but without having to invest capital in the infrastructure needed to provide that service. They may choose a "take-your-broadband-with-you-when-you-leave-the-house" add-on service that incumbents can add to their service bundle. If they were able to buy the service wholesale for app. $5/mo and resell it for $8 - $10/mo, they'd have a clean path to good margins.
2. Wireless broadband is an opportunity to service traveling professionals through adhoc revenues.
3. Wireless broadband offers a fixed broadband service over a different network. Incumbents can resell such service to pursue potential subscribers who do not currently have broadband accounts (dial-up or no broadband at all or who are out of their service territory). As with the mobile broadband service offer, this is attractive because incumbents can avoid the capital investment of building a network that would be required to go after this new business. They will have an expanded service area.
4. Wireless broadband creates a test site for future mesh projects elsewhere in their coverage area. They can learn from it and perhaps gain new insights into their current operations.
5. Wireless broadband offers the incumbent lower operation costs: a local area network will provide new and cheaper broadband connectivity options for field service workers of the incumbent ISPs. Just like the city employees who need to access data while in the field, often requiring large bandwidth (e.g., GIS files), ISP field employees can use this service to be more effective and lower operation costs for the incumbents.
6. Wireless broadband offers the incumbent a site for piloting mobile products and services such as gaming, in home health, e learning, security, etc.
7. Wireless broadband creates an expanded market for selling wholesale bandwidth. As a city project focuses on broadband and new uses, the total bandwidth consumed in the community can be expected to increase considerably, which increases the market size for the incumbents. The wireless partnership will need to supply the wireless network with bandwidth "injection" and will need to either purchase that bandwidth from the incumbents or may be willing to bargain with the incumbents to trade wholesale "seats" for bandwidth.
8. Wireless broadband represents a marketing opportunity to every WiFi device used in in the coverage area.
9. Reinforcement of Brand. Each incumbent that chooses to offer service over the wireless broadband network could enjoy a branded SSID so that the consumer would see the service on their device screen as coming from the incumbent ISP.
10. Experience with a new business model and new skill sets for incumbent ISP workers. Incumbent ISPs will be able to train their staffs in new skills of working with wireless broadband and gain experience in a new market environment, which may translate into a competitive advantage in other markets in which the incumbents operate.

Let's face it, there could be more benefits to the smart incumbent than risks when a wireless broadband network comes to town. By seeing the glass as half full, by envisioning the opportunity to grow a larger pie, rather than losing slices to a competitor, an incumbent can turn a project in its territory into a major plus, if they so choose. This is, I hope, a glimpse into the future. I'm reminded of Green Eggs and Ham ... in fact, if they try it, incumbent ISPs may just find that there's lots to like about a community broadband project in "their" backyard.

Posted on March 27, 2008 at 09:10 PM | Comments (0)

Muni Schmuni, Part 2

Yesterday I introduced a dialogue on "what's in a name?" and asked "is it appropriate to still call this industry 'Municipal Wireless?'"

I highlighted especially a very well written essay by community wireless activist Sascha Meinrath, and we left off still needing to address the five Best Practices that Sascha listed at the end of his essay. The list and my comments below.

First, Sascha highlighted the basic conflict in the municipal wireless debate as "liberation vs. lock-in," drawing a comparison to municipal franchising and grants of exclusivity by cities to private service providers.

Corporations such as EarthLink, AT&T and MetroFi have staked a claim over "municipal wireless," but their business model is predicated on cities granting a private franchise to these companies. Many of these corporations blame the failures of multiple networking initiatives on municipalities, claiming that the problem with their model was the onerous and greedy requirements of the cities. This is how much of the media have reported it. But there's a far deeper conflict that can be boiled down to a simple phrase: liberation versus lock-in.

What cities want is an open platform to support public use and new applications. When The Economist reported in January that open networks are necessary to support next-generation networking and the global competitiveness of the United States, it opened up debate about the wisdom of our sole reliance on free-market solutions for broadband networking. What private corporations have implemented are closed systems using proprietary hardware, software and services. Such systems may seem good on paper, but as history is teaching us, their many points of failure makes them unreliable in practice.

So Sascha set up a debate on whether a system should be open or closed. I would submit that we are still in the early stages and while we can discuss ideals, we should also be practical: any network is better than no network at all...but, the necessary requirement must be on a practical and sustainable business model.

Sascha then went on to suggest his five best practices:

As municipalities rethink their broadband strategies in 2008, they are looking to implement five best practices to support liberation and avoid lock-in:

Utilize open technology. The smart choice for municipalities is to require open standards that support interoperability and an easily upgradeable modular design. Too many wireless broadband networks in this country use proprietary technologies that are far more expensive and far less dynamic than other systems available today. Open technology alternatives like WiFiDog (Ile Sans Fil), Austin Wireless (LessNetworks), CUWiN (Champaign-Urbana Community Wireless Network), and FreiFunk/FunkFeuer (Berlin/Vienna) may not have the public relations or marketing budgets of proprietary solutions, but that should not excuse municipalities from seriously considering them. The success of the Internet itself is predicated on an open architecture with open protocols, and municipalities would be wise to support these principles in the wireless realm.

Build hybrid infrastructures. Infrastructures that support multiple, redundant delivery options are more robust than single-medium solutions. That means integrating fiber and incorporating other wireless systems whenever possible (Wi-Fi, WiMAX, 802.11n, EVDO, and others). Similarly, municipalities can create enormous synergies by interconnecting public-safety and public-access networks without compromising either goal. Single-use networks are far less efficient than hybridized and interconnected solutions, and are often more expensive. Hybridized, redundant networking requires a rethink about how to create reliability. Unfortunately too many decision-makers approach municipal networking with yesteryear's thinking.

Prioritize competition. One of the main failings of so-called municipal wireless networks has been the over-reliance on single-provider solutions. Wireless networking is a critical tool for municipalities struggling with the cable/telco duopoly. Open-access networks allow a city to support multiple market entrants, which enhances leverage far more than simply introducing a third competitor. Whether focusing on fiber optics (e.g., the UTOPIA project in Utah), or the wireless realm (e.g., Open Air Boston), municipalities should support an open platform that can serve as a level playing field for many competing service providers.

Think holistically. Municipalities must initiate dynamic, evolving digital inclusion initiatives rather than silver-bullet, one-off solutions. What might sound today like an ideal solution for the digital divide may tomorrow become the source of a new divide in speed, reliability or access. Solutions must promote ongoing public engagement and ensure long-term benefits to local constituencies. As examples, check out Minneapolis's Community Benefits Agreement and the Chicago Digital Access Alliance's Ten Principles for Digital Excellence, both of which were drafted by local community members to meet local community needs.

Embrace change as the new status quo. When it comes to high-speed Internet access, municipalities should embrace the constructive disruption coming from new technologies, applications and telecommunications policies. Due diligence for municipalities does not mean a one-time review of available technologies and community needs, but rather constant research and feedback. In 2008, we will see the advent of white space devices, open platform spectrum, and distributed device-as-infrastructure networking. Pro-municipal broadband legislation in Congress and the Broadband Census Act, and the growth of initiatives like the CAIDA COMMONS Project, which is creating an alternative, cooperative Internet backbone, will continue to impact the national telecommunications debate and carry with them the potential for transforming the broadband playing field. Municipalities need adaptable infrastructure and continued vigilance to keep pace with rapidly changing conditions and technologies.

I would trumpet these best practices, which are well-thought-out and comprehensive, and I'd trumpet also the idea that we should all, both cities and private sector players, begin to pattern our industry development on what has been proven to work best. We should not continue to make the same mistakes and reinvent the wheel, rather we must improve over time - otherwise, we waste valuable energy and time. We should of course experiment and document our experience, we should of course embrace mistakes when they provide a learning opportunity and share the lessons learned. But we should avoid mistakes that are mere repetition of mistakes already made by others - what's the point of that?

I'd also invite anyone reading this blog post to visit two websites I've set up in the past to encourage information sharing and best practices. First, there's the WikiMetroNet I set up a couple of years ago for just this purpose. I'll be the first to admit that that site and project has been more or less neglected, as I've focused on my consulting business and this particular blog and website. But we should all be thinking on how we can help each other and accelerate progress, and the WikiMetroNet has a good outline to follow and is relatively easy to post to -this is an open invitation.

Second, I'd encourage the interested reader to visit Facebook, which is developing into a some kind of new shadow WWW - really quite remarkable. Go ahead and join if you're not a member, then go over to the Group Page I set up titled "Alternative Broadband."

These best practices and those of others only have value when they are followed and put into practice. In a few weeks, we'll have another example, I expect, as the City of San Marcos makes their decision on whether to go forward with their wireless broadband plan. Either way, whether the vote is up or down, we'll be diagramming that project as another example of a Best Practice on this website. Now is the time to step up and get busy in helping to define a better pathway, just as Sascha has done with his essay. Your comments are welcome here!

I'll leave the final word to Sascha and his essay...

Municipal networking proponents are not opposed to private investment in city-scale wireless networks. But they believe that municipalities have to take more responsibility and control over the broadband networks they're involved with. Regardless of who pays for the physical infrastructure, municipal networks will continue to struggle unless they provide reliable, open platforms for innovation that support diversity at the hardware, software and service-provision levels. Municipalities should choose liberation over lock-in as they continue to address growing Internet needs in 2008.

Posted on March 27, 2008 at 10:49 AM | Comments (0)

Muni, Schmuni, Part 1

I just posted a blog recommending public ownership - see OHIP: Ownership Has Its Privileges - and now here I am posting a blog to discuss taking the "muni" out of municipal broadband. Go figure. Welcome to my world!

When I launched this website in May 2005, it was called UnwireMyCity.com - the focus? Wireless and Cities ... but then, that was the focus back then, when the big question was whether any of the 15 or so state legislatures would pass an outright ban on city ownership of broadband networks. We beat back that assault on sanity and basic rights of home rule, and the industry rolled on nevertheless to focus on the Public Private Partnership, where a private partner would build a network and the city would act as a host in a variety of capacities. Cities seemed to breathe a sigh of relief if a private partner would take on the risk. More and more released Requests for Proposals outlining in ever greater detail their demands while refusing to take on any of the risks. That trend reached its zenith, and its inevitable demise last fall with the withdrawal of EarthLink from the marketplace.

It was bound to happen. When I redesigned the site 8 months after the initial launch and re-launched in late January 2006, I retitled the site "MetroNetIQ" for a number of reasons. I took the focus away from "cities" and placed it on metropolitan regions, where innovation regarding connectivity would be free to sprout up in any variety of ways, unconstrained by the limits or imagination of those in the public sphere. My experience made me wonder why we would put cities at the front of a parade that had "Risk" written all over it. The alternate broadband world is so exciting, but folks, back then, we were still experimenting with business models, and sometimes there are explosions in the lab. Public officials by and large shy away from taking risks with the taxpayers' money, for good reason. That's not the business they're in. Only now are we starting to identify business approaches that have suitably low levels of risk to satisfy the demands of public officials. Such risk was and continues to be a constraint in this industry.

I removed the focus on "wireless," understanding that it was broadband networks that were the key, whether that connectivity came over a wire or through the air - or both - was immaterial.

And the IQ part said that it was about doing things the smart way, not necessarily the conventional way. Sometimes those align, but why limit yourself to what everyone else is doing?

All this was to say - public involvement is not a bad thing, in fact, it is to be encouraged. But to limit the definition of a new industry as one in which the public leads and the private sector follows was a mistake. What opened up with the combination of new and powerful technologies and unlicensed spectrum was a new business opportunity that empowered creativity out at the edge, where we could experiment with new ways of providing connectivity. Why limit that scope to a straitjacket of criteria determined in city-led RFPs? To their credit, city officials have doggedly pursued a vision and some, like my client in San Marcos, are on the verge of discovering new, sound ways to approach broadband without the risk of earlier models.

Well, two years later, I'm glad to see the debate shifting over to my perspective, if by degrees.

The recent NY Times piece, Hopes for Wireless Cities Fade as Internet Providers Pull Out, though widely read and copied to me in a variety of emails - yes, I saw it! - was of the "so what" variety of journalism, and widely errant in its conclusions to boot. They are so far behind the curve and off the mark as to challenge their involvement in the "news" business. As usual, the main stream media comes in way behind the blogosphere when it comes to timeliness and accuracy.

Glenn Fleishman provides good commentary in his piece the other day at Wi Fi Networking News - see the March 22 post titled NY Times Gets around to Muni-Fi’s Failures, Slowed Pace. His conclusion: Glenn concludes that the reporting is tired and relies on old information to make erroneous conclusions. Which begs the question, is it still true that "any press is good press?"

For more accuracy and immediacy, I recommend community wireless advocate Sascha Meinrath, working out of Champagne-Urbana, Illinois - he's one of the deep thinkers in this new industry, and a passionate advocate of community-based wireless solutions. He took on this subject of "what's in a name" in a recent essay.

In addition to a wide-ranging commentary on the state of what I call "metropolitan broadband" Sascha outlined criteria for success recently in an intriguing post on his blog titled Municipal Wireless Success Demands Public Involvement, Experts Say. | saschameinrath.com, where he republished an essay he had written for GovTech's Digital Communities on-line magazine.

More discussion on Sascha's article after the jump.

Most media have it wrong. Municipal wireless networks across the United States didn't stumble in 2007 - high-profile cities where deals fell apart, such as Chicago, San Francisco and Houston, were not going to finance, own or operate their respective networks. These weren't municipal networks at all. The business model that faltered in 2007 was the "private corporate franchise" model based on the deal that Philadelphia and EarthLink agreed to in 2006. It was, in fact, the free market that failed last year - not governments in their traditional role as the builders and maintainers of critical infrastructure.

OK, so much for misconceptions on what has happened to date. We're really swimming upstream when the popular press continually misrepresents the realities of an admittedly complex and politically-loaded issue.

Sascha goes on to suggest that the definition of a topic matters. A more accurate definition of the industry we're in and the networks that are being built is more descriptive too.

Jon Peha, associate director of the Center for Wireless and Broadband Networking at Carnegie Mellon University, addresses these problems in his work. "Unfortunately some define municipal networks as a network that serves a city, and some define it as the city government's network, and people argue about exactly what the latter means," Peha said. "I often write about models for a 'wireless metropolitan-area network' (WiMAN), because it is a broader term that carries no ambiguous baggage."

I like that, and I feel it approximates the terms I use on this site - "Metropolitan Broadband" and "MetroNets."

Esme Vos, founder of MuniWireless.com, lays out a spectrum of ways municipalities can be involved as an anchor tenant; as a subscriber, leasing out or donating city-owned property on which wireless nodes can be mounted, or leasing out or donating backhaul (e.g., fiber access); as an investor or guarantor of a loan; [and] as the owner of the network (e.g., Corpus Christi, Texas, and Burbank, Calif.). At its heart, there's a battle brewing between "free-marketeers" who favor the government taking a hands-off approach to broadband networking, and those in favor of government involvement to help direct efforts at the national, state and local levels.

I ran smack into this debate when I espoused the benefits of public ownership and contrasted those with the short-comings of the Anchor Tenancy model, which is currently the most popular candidate to replace the now-discredited Corporate Franchise model based on EarthLink's design of 2005. My post drew a comment from free-marketeer Hal Hayden, who challenged my conclusions and promoted private sector solutions over those of the public sector. Hal's comment made me realize that we can all too easily slip into a false debate of whether A is better than B, when in fact, there are times when A is better, and when B is better. In a sense, we're both right.

There's no winning such an argument, not only because its subjective, determined by one's outlook on the world, but also because it's case-specific, determined by the circumstances at hand. The circumstances will determine whether it makes sense for a city to go with an attractive Anchor Tenant offer or to forge ahead to own the network themselves. In practice, the choice between buying a service from a private vendor and buying an infrastructure to own will be decided by city officials on a case-by-case basis. My point about city ownership is that its a valid alternative to anchor tenancy, and should be considered when no good offers are available to buy service as an anchor tenant.

Sascha does well to shine the light on how the public and private sectors can intersect to the benefit of all, when he highlights the birth of the Internet and the World Wide Web. He also highlights how fear can slam the brakes on such positive experimentation and collaboration.

When the NSFNET was privatized beginning in 1995, a huge boom ensued whereby numerous corporations built broadband infrastructure. Unfortunately when the free-market technological bubble burst in 2000, governments at all levels refused to get involved in broadband networking. Today, after more than a half-decade of market failure, as a growing number of other countries continue to pull ahead of the United States - deploying far better and more accessible broadband infrastructure - municipalities have an opportunity to turn things around. Joshua King, senior network administrator for the Chambana.net community Web hosting project, puts it this way: "A 'municipal' network is a network whose ownership and operation is under the control of a city and is run for the common good of the citizens of that city rather than for profit."

Like many, King is not against public-private partnerships, but he supports the notion that the core intent of these networks must be the public good and not corporate profits. "This does not mean that the network cannot be utilized by local businesses to turn a profit, nor does it mean that third-party companies can't be contracted to deploy or maintain a network," King said. "But that the network itself provides services in a neutral fashion to all citizens within the network's coverage area (and the city has some obligation to expand that coverage area to all citizens)."

In fact, we're all going to call it as we see it, I believe. While I gravitate to "metropolitan broadband" or "metronets" for short, Sascha veers toward "community broadband" or "community wireless," because that favors his worldview. And he's right, to a degree. A community has to be involved in any effort that has community-wide impact, and a network of this type has far-ranging impacts on a community, not the least of which has to do with cost-recovery, which gets entirely too much press in my opinion. And I'm not alone.

Dailey said municipalities are often overly focused on bottom-line accounting rather than the best interests of local residents. "Why should we predetermine what the right tool is for a network before we have defined who the network is for, where it is, and why it's needed?" she said. "Many of my colleagues want to cling to the term 'wireless' because it seems at the moment to represent something new, something that is in opposition to all of the problems that we have with legacy networks controlled by incumbents. But by emphasizing the technology, I think we fall into the same trap that created the legacy mess. We need to jettison the techno-centric, vendor-driven model of buying and selling networks."

Ramon Roca founded Guifi.net, a regional wireless network with more than 5,000 wireless nodes covering much of the Catalan region of Spain. Roca sees the traditional municipal wireless model as often leading to failure for similar reasons as we've seen in the United States. "Like in many other countries, we [have seen] many of those initiatives fail for many reasons: hype, overestimating the technology capabilities, etc.," Roca said. "In Spain [there] have been significant, multimillion [euro] failures, as an example, here in Catalonia, 'Flash10' (15,000,000), Zamora Wireless (about 500,000, sponsored by Intel) ... Barcelona Sensefils."

What differentiates Guifi.net, which won Spain's 2007 National Telecommunications Award, from many other Spanish wireless endeavors is that it has found a way to coexist with private companies and municipalities. "The municipal projects don't have to be linked to a single contractor operator and should be able to connect to any other network in the neighborhood, and therefore, be 'open' in the sense of 'open network,'" Roca said. "The only solution for doing so is by considering the network as something open and neutral, out of the assets of anyone. A model where everyone [has] ownership of the physical infrastructure, but not the whole network itself." Roca points out that this ownership model, while seemingly a radical notion is "not very much distinct from the original Internet idea itself." For him, the real question is whether Guifi.net is "a singular exception - or can this mutation also occur and be replicated elsewhere?"

This post has already gotten too long, so in my next post, I'll follow up with the rest of Sascha's well-written and comprehensive piece, where we'll recap his "Ideas for Better Municipal Networks."

Posted on March 26, 2008 at 07:15 AM | Comments (0)

Race has Nothing to do with Metropolitan Broadband

It's a little early for Thanksgiving, but we did just observe the Easter Holiday. So one thing I'm thankful for today is that Race has absolutely nothing to do with wireless broadband. But it has everything to do with Idiocy and Stupidity.

The thing is, this debate that's underway in our country, at least in some corners of informed dialogue, does produce some pretty bizarre links out on the web, and some pretty funny ones. It's been a while since I had a good belly laugh to a Richard Pryor video, or for that matter, to an Eddie Murphy video... so, just to share, here you go - these clips are courtesy of that wonderful, irreverent TV show, Saturday Night Live...

I'm guessing this one is from the 1970s ... ah, I remember them well...

So of course, now we'll talk about race on my blog, which has everything to do with wireless broadband, but also has a lot to do with society and how we live together and get our work done - sometimes, one needs to step up and say what needs to be said. And I think what needs to be said right now after watching that Saturday Night Live video and laughing my ass off is that Racism is Idiotic, Inane, and Stupid.

To underscore the inanities of racism, we have this video, also from SNL, from the 1980s, my guess - based on Eddie Murphy's youth?? Here's a different perspective...

Then, there's Chris Rock ... what would a tour through racial humor be without Chris Rock ... it's harsh, and funny, but who can argue that this subject isn't complex? ...hold on to your hat...

How about Dave Chappelle? As a blind KKK white power monger? How stupid can racists be?

Or something from across the pond?

And for me, the classic, from Mel Brooks ..."the sheriff is a ...." and "excuse me while I whip this out." and "the next man makes a move, the n**** gets it."

On a more thoughtful note, I remember these scenes from Star Trek when I was about 10, but often, I watched the show in .... black and white ...hmmmmmmm.

OK, after all that, I feel a need to clean it up a bit ... so, here's the cleaner side of Chris Rock ...introducing Barack Obama...

Now, here we are, in the 2000s ...all kidding aside, let's hope that some day soon we no longer need to look to Saturday Night Live, or Richard Pryor or Eddie Murphy or Chris Rock or Dave Chappelle or Mel Brooks and Cleavon Little or any other comedic geniuses to tell us what we all know - racism may be hilarious and really really funny when lampooned, but at its heart, racism is stupid, and racists are morons and deserve our undying disrespect.

Racism should die out, racists deserve our scorn wherever we encounter them, and the sooner racism is gone, the better...for my kids, and yours. It's a cancer in our society.

We've had to look to comedians to laugh instead of crying, because our society is sick. This is sad, it's messed up ... For truth about Race in America, we need to start talking about it and forge a consensus that it is simply intolerable..I think that this speech will weather the winds of time and be seen as an historic event. Enjoy.

I loved my grandfather, but he was a racist, born in Georgia in 1902 and raised in deep East Texas, dying in the 1980s. I loved my uncle, but he was a racist too. They're both long gone, but their memories linger. It was painful to watch them and hear their hateful comments growing up, and I never felt comfortable watching them express their scorn for black people. They looked ignorant as they spoke, and they were, yet I loved them. It was confusing to a young boy growing up. Racism is complex, but it is wrong.

Though racism is a complex issue, that's all the more reason to address it and find our common bonds and come together as a community to celebrate our humanity together and repair our wounds. We should continue to laugh at the stupidness of racism, but we should also work together to make racism a thing of the past.

Posted on March 24, 2008 at 08:53 PM | Comments (0)

OHIP: Ownership Has Its Privileges

It seems as if the debate over ownership of metropolitan broadband networks has come full circle over the past three years, at least it has from my perspective. A lot of folks still think that the role of the city is find a private sector company to own a broadband network, if they've gone so far as to consider broadband as a resource to pursue beyond the status quo of buying services from an ISP.

I don't cotton to private ownership any longer, if I ever fully embraced that concept. The reason for my change of mind? Acknowledgment of reality. Consider these five points which are the reality of government and society, and the sixth one I've added as a conclusion.

1. Cities and counties have to provide services and they need to communicate and manage growing costs. That's why as individuals and businesses we pay our taxes and why as a society we tolerate being governed, regulated, guided and managed.

2. We need our critical infrastructure to enjoy our civilization. Roads, electricity, gas, water and wastewater and yes, more and more, broadband, are infrastructures vital to both the private and public sectors. Just consider for a moment what life would be like without those infrastructures if you don't believe me.

3. We need critical services to live in some kind of order. Public safety, fire prevention, crisis management, property and health codes, and social services are the stuff of government. For those who rail against regulation, there are plenty of reminders at hand of the role that government must play in keeping society on an even keel, from the recent collapse of the sub-prime mortgage markets, to the realization that our kids have been playing with lead-laced toys from China, to the recall of beef from sick cows that was headed to our nation's schools...we need government.

4. Complexity creeps in with technology, and broadband has become the backbone for the data that enables our infrastructure, our commerce, our management, and all these vital services we depend on. Even for small towns, complexity and growth need to be managed. For those areas in high growth corridors, there's little doubt of the need for a plan to manage growth, because governments have to build out ahead of growth, or face the consequences. That's reality, folks.

5. Risk is not something to be avoided, deferred or to hand off to another party. Risk is something real and ever present because we live in linear time and cannot know the future. Therefore, risk must be managed, and control is key to that equation. Those who deny risk management either live very conservatively by avoiding risk and see opportunities pass them by, or live recklessly by ignoring risk and suffer the consequences when things inevitably go awry.

6. When it comes to broadband communication, the best way to manage risk and uncertainty is to own and control the critical infrastructure that you must use to provide critical services. With ownership comes greater control over costs and service delivery and supplemental revenue opportunities - in a word, lower risk and more opportunity over the long term.

Without a strategy to secure low-cost access to widely available broadband, cities are left with managing in the old way - by adding more staff where and when it's absolutely necessary and by buying services from vendors. These "analog" solutions are from the last century and they are subject to abuse, price increases due to inflation, and the inefficiencies inherent in analog solutions. In short, these are solutions based in Expenses. In contrast, Investment in digital broadband infrastructure produces returns not available from that old way of doing business. Sure, it's more complicated, but for those cities willing to take the Road Less Traveled, spending the time to investigate and embrace a new way of doing business that takes advantage of new technologies and new business models, there will be impressive dividends.

And being a leader is about taking bold risks that make sense, in prudent fashion. The compelling advantages of new technologies give us promise that there will be leaders among us.

After the jump, we develop the case for ownership of broadband infrastructure.

When this little industry first flew out of its nest, the prevailing model was for the city to own its own network (Corpus Christi, Cerritos, etc.). That made sense then, and I think it makes more and more sense now.

But in 2005, public ownership came under assault from industry groups who saw a rising competitor in publicly-owned communication networks. They challenged that model and we saw the momentum in Philadelphia turn away from public ownership in the face of that challenge, hearing the siren song of a privately-owned network, perceptively taking the risk away from the city. The argument against city-owned networks ultimately proved to be a legislative loser, but the tide had shifted and the deals that followed were all about "how the private-sector assumes the risk," with EarthLink leading the charge.

Philadelphia's muni wireless network is in a holding pattern as it waits to see what EarthLink's proposed sale of the network will mean to its future. Last week, in a interview with local radio station KYW, city Chief Information Officer Terry Phillis discussed the implications of the sale, calling it "by far the best alternative" for the future of the network.

He acknowledged that finding an appropriate buyer will be challenging. Phillis said the buyer "would have to have a financial model that would make sense for them" and that a limited number of customers would likely accompany the purchase. He said he has not seen EarthLink marketing its commercial service in Philadelphia "for some time now." Philly muni Wi-Fi sale is city's "best alternative"

Well, we know how that story of risk avoidance through private ownership turned out - folks, we've turned the page and finished that chapter titled "Private Sector Owns the Risk." We're on to a new chapter now... Thank Heaven for small favors.

But since last August when the EarthLink pull out began, we've pondered the question, "what is to be the title of that next chapter?" The prevailing wisdom has made it look like it was going to be "City as Anchor Tenant" - where the public sector would share the risk with the private sector player...but there's a problem - a big problem - with that alternative...the private companies who want government to share the risk are in fact engaging in a wholesale transfer of risk in practice, when service providers price their services at such a high rate that have most of the risk handed off to their erstwhile public sector partners.

But there was more wrong with the new model than met the eye - we're still in a transition, and I'm arguing that Anchor Tenancy under high service contracts is yet another distraction and dead end...

Just for a start - why would anyone turn to one of the least risk-friendly partners - namely, public sector elected officials who are subject to press and political scrutiny - to take on so much risk in order to make an acknowledged risky deal work ... hmmmm, I see a few problems with that. Why would a public partner take on that risk of buying services when it comes with so little control? Why rent a couch when you can buy one for a little more? Usually people rent rather than own only if there is a huge price break for renting, if there are other significant advantages (tax-breaks?) or if they are desperate and have no other alternatives (e.g., lack of credit).

In point of fact, Anchor Tenancy when examined a little closer has started to resemble a game of Hot Potato - when you get a twice-burned private partner (as many of the entrepreneurs in this sector are), who seeks to lay off most or all of the risk in the deal to the public partner through inflated service fees, they have to look far and wide for a potential public partner desperate enough to take such a deal. I'd argue that's where the slowdown in this industry lies. The current Anchor Tenant business model isn't selling for a reason - it's not a good deal for the cities.

All of a sudden, shared risk became assumed risk, but with no control to make the city better able to offset the risk of the deal. Small wonder there have been few takers. It just won't fly for cities to take all the risk via a long-term service contract yet have none of the control on the long-term development of the network that would offset that risk...control and risk need to go together or the deal won't fly.

This recent essay from California - Public ownership of broadband access is best - makes the argument for public ownership in a compelling way, saying that if cities don't step up to take ownership and bring in affordable broadband, nobody will (my underlining for emphasis).

Too many cities in California are stuck with slow (or no) broadband access. As the United States continues to dip in international broadband rankings, individual communities have a choice: build their own broadband network or hope someone else does it for them.

Broadband may be comparatively new, but these difficult questions of infrastructure have been with us for far longer. One hundred years ago, communities were told electricity was too complicated for municipal meddling and they should wait for private companies to electrify them. Thousands of communities realized that a community cannot wait for essential infrastructure. They accepted responsibility for their future and wired their towns. How little has changed since then.

California's Broadband Task Force has released its final report, complete with maps showing some 2,000 communities without any access at all. Many more communities are underserved, offered an always-on connection faster than dial-up, but not by much.

So far, so good - lots of cities need broadband. But where do the smart guys and girls in California take the cities in their report? Back to the flawed private sector ownership model, it seems.

Unfortunately, the Broadband Task Force has chosen the seductive path of dependence on private providers for these networks. Public ownership is a better plan. Broadband networks are here for the long haul, and our dependence on them will only increase. Many citywide wireless networks are privately owned, depending on city government as an anchor tenant. The network requires city money without offering the city any control. Under such circumstances, owning beats renting.

The Broadband Task Force clearly views public ownership as a last resort, allowing community services districts to offer broadband only when a private provider refuses. Once the CSD has taken the risk and built a functioning network, it must sell it to an interested private provider.

Public ownership should not be a fallback option.

The author goes on to hit the nail on the head: infrastructure is an investment that cities are used to making and with ownership they get control and other benefits that lower the risk.

The Broadband Task Force's first recommendation should have been to encourage every community to evaluate its needs and assets to determine whether it would be best served by investing in a publicly owned network.

Publicly owned networks can be tailored to the present community and upgraded as needs change.

Ownership is about self-determination. Modern telecommunications regulations mean owners make decisions. A city cannot compel a private provider to upgrade the network or mandate network neutrality. Residents have little recourse when the sole private broadband provider blocks some applications or network protocols.

A number of large private providers have managed their networks in a questionable manner. These companies have one goal. The law requires them to maximize their shareholder value. In contrast, a publicly owned network should maximize social benefit. If it does not, residents can change it. Try getting AT&T to modify its network management policies.

So, to recap, we have these benefits from public ownership of broadband infrastructure.

1. An infrastructure tailored to the specific needs of the community.
2. The flexibility to add and upgrade the network as needed as the community changes.
3. The control of self-determination.
4. Assurance of fairness regarding the use of the network for all citizens of the community.
5. A focus of priority on social benefit rather than corporate profit, which means coverage and affordable rates for all society, not just those segments that can afford to generate profits for the corporation.

I would add these benefits of public ownership, based on my recent experience in developing a model for the City of San Marcos down here in Central Texas.

A. A new focus on efficiency in public government - ongoing cost reductions in operations through a focus on leveraging digital infrastructure to provide greater efficiency.

B. A new diverse revenue source for the city that is not based on a tax. How many of those do we see everyday? The excess bandwidth left over after public sector needs have been met can be sold to the residents and businesses of the community, even the current communication providers. That revenue can be used for network upgrades, new applications and equipment, subsidization of disadvantaged population needs (Digital Divide), and economic development, just to name a few potential ways to spend that money.

C. Insurance against a potential shortage of broadband capacity in the future. As broadband use becomes more prominent and as high bandwidth uses grow on the Internet, the availability of infrastructure to carry all that network traffic will become more and more important. Investing now in broadband infrastructure is akin to securing water rights to provide a hedge against future price increases and to secure ready access to a vital resource.

I'll leave the conclusion to the author of the essay from California, who puts it well.

Investing in broadband networks is an important decision that should come after developing a strong business plan that identifies how the network will sustain itself. Successful municipal networks across the country offer many different models and technologies. From western Utah to tiny Vermont, they also offer reliable fast speeds at affordable prices in areas long ignored by private companies.

To be clear, publicly owned networks are a boon to many private companies. Local businesses are too often stuck without the fast, affordable access they need. As members of the community, they are important stakeholders in any publicly owned network. A private company can even be contracted to maintain the network, with policies set by the community.

Broadband networks have become essential infrastructure. Depending on a private network may be the easier course of action, but gives away too much power. Network owners make decisions; they do not have to beg providers for faster speeds, lower prices or better customer service.

In my humble opinion, the title of the next chapter in the unfolding saga of Metropolitan Broadband will not be "City as Anchor Tenant." The next chapter must be titled "Ownership Has Its Privileges." Vive L'Independence!

Posted on March 20, 2008 at 07:42 AM | Comments (1)

Is this a Great Country, Or What?

2,180,731 views in three months - you'll want to watch this one twice ...

More proof that a) You Tube is eating the Internet and b) We've Fallen Through the Looking Glass... OK, maybe it just seems that way when you see videos like this ...

Posted on March 13, 2008 at 05:04 AM | Comments (0)

Yeah, What He Said!

It's reassuring when a highly paid Op Ed columnist at the NY Times says basically what I just said, the very next day.

I wrote a post yesterday titled, Down the Rabbit Hole ... Numbers, far, wide ... and tall, in which I detailed the growing insanity of the very large numbers that we are spending daily to pay for just three things: the Iraq War, Imported Oil, and Tax Cuts for the Wealthy, which I termed WOT. As in, "WOT the Hell have we gotten ourselves into?"

I veer into politics because the act of spending on such gargantuan items crowds out spending on the things we really need to spend our hard-earned money on, most notably for me the investments we need to make in infrastructure that will sustain our economy into the 21st century and provide the jobs and standard of living that will support our children and their children.

We are way, way off the tracks and in need of a correction. It's time, folks!

Here's how Bob Herbert concluded his piece this morning titled "Sharing the Pain."

Americans save virtually nothing. They have looted the equity in their homes and driven their credit card balances to staggering heights. Meanwhile, the Bush administration has claimed colossal new standards of fiscal irresponsibility. At some point, to take just one example, someone will have to pay the $3 trillion for the war.

This craziness is not sustainable.

Without an educated and empowered work force, without sustained investment in the infrastructure and technologies that foster long-term employment, and without a system of taxation that can actually pay for the services provided by government, the American dream as we know it will expire. Sharing the Pain - New York Times

We all need to start shouting some version of this message from the mountaintops, because the status quo is not sustainable, and it's killing us and our way of life:

LET'S STOP THIS MADNESS!

LET'S GET BACK DOWN OFF THE LEDGE!

LET'S START ACTING RATIONAL AGAIN - THE PARTY IS OVER!

IT'S TIME FOR A CHANGE!

Posted on March 11, 2008 at 06:25 AM | Comments (0)

Down the Rabbit Hole ... Numbers, far, wide ... and tall

PFD1573~Alice-Down-the-Rabbit-Hole-Posters.jpg

Some days, I really feel we've gone down the proverbial rabbit hole. This happens to be one of them. "Move over Alice, there's more and more of us on the way down to join you in Wonderland."

I'm often told these days by serious economic types that wireless broadband is just "too expensive" and "difficult to justify in terms of economics," and well, a variety of other ways of saying - "we can't afford that." For me, that just means that they are not yet tuned in to the new business models we've been discussing on this site (Making Broadband Access a Reality and Broadband Access Diagram).

But comments like that also beg this question for me: "Well then, what CAN you afford?" Surely anyone that says that they can't afford something must also have an answer to my question in mind, no? In fact, we get used to saying we can't afford things when in fact we just don't understand them so well - it's a matter of imputing value. And inevitably, it's a matter of priorities - we know that from how we manage our own household budgets - funny how we manage to find money for the things we value.

Not so funny how we manage to overlook where all of our money goes so that we can't afford those things that could really help us, the things we really need. Like infrastructure...

"Billy, we can't afford to move out of the trailer and into a house like all them rich folk - the rent on the trailer is just too high ... now go get me another beer and a pack of cigarettes from the kitchen..oh, and my lottery tickets."

Sure, we're used to this image of poor people whose habits keep them from acquiring wealth. But the real story of bad habits goes way beyond the local trailer park.

Just today, I listened to NPR describing how the Price of Oil just hit a new high of $108/barrel - continuing a progression closely tied to the Iraq War, started in 2003. Increases in the price of oil dramatically impact increases in other prices and are a major contributor to inflation - something they call "Cost-Push Inflation".

I'm led down this path because so much is made about what we CAN and CAN'T afford today...don't tell me that these expenses - starting with oil price increases - don't have something to do with the fact that we currently find INVESTMENTS in our own infrastructure so darn expensive.

But it's more than the run up in oil prices. Let's label the oil run-up and its impacts on our budget with the letter "O." There's also the Iraq War - "W" and the simultaneous tax breaks - "T" - put them all together and we have WOT - as in WOT the Hell??? People are starting to connect the dots on this economic disaster and how it impacts all of our decisions, down to the local investment level.

On to the Iraq War. So much of the debate is on whether or not we're "winning," whatever the hell that's supposed to mean - does the Surge work? That's a distraction. More and more, I think we're going to be hearing about the costs of the war and the impact on our economy. The cost of the war has been in the news especially just recently, with the release of the book by Nobel-prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and his co-author, Linda Bilmes, titled The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict and this article describing the book - The Three Trillion Dollar War.

Three Trillion Dollars - it's an astounding number...that's $3,000,000,000,000.00 ...

Ah, the power of a graphic image....we really need a graphic image when numbers get this big ... sometimes really really - really really - big numbers just lose us in their significance...let's hope more candidates in this election year start tying these two things together, because they are intertwined. The reason our economy is heading into the crapper these days is closely tied to WOT - the War, the price of Oil, and Tax breaks. Some folks out on the web are really trying though to provide relevant lessons on the truly staggering costs of the Iraq War. There's this one - $87,000,000,000.00, which stacks the $1 bills in blocks that get bigger and bigger and bigger.

eight.jpg

Now imagine 34 of those stacks, and you are getting close to $3 Trillion...3,000 Billion.

In some ways, that stack is hard to beat .. but I'll try. This next website takes a different approach, suggesting what we could have instead of the Iraq War ... this is the tack I hope that the Democratic candidates take in their campaigns. It is truly remarkable.

So here is a depiction of $165 Billion, from an article titled Monetary Costs of the Iraq War that has a lot of other tables - I know, boring, show us more pictures.

165 Billion.png

OK. Here's a Trillion Pennies...

trillion.png

Perhaps the best way to understand the concept of a Trillion is to consider the US National Debt. This picture shows the debt.

national debt.jpg

For a good explanation of Deficits and Debt, see this link.

The largest sustained increase in the national debt occurred from 1980 to 1992, when it rose from $930 million to $4 trillion. Ironically, this is the period of the administrations of Ronald Reagan (1980-1988) and George H. W. Bush (1988-1992) - ironic because Republicans had long been associated in the public mind with fiscal responsibility. Indeed, President Reagan regularly spoke of "those tax-and-spend Democrats." The program of his administration was to "spend and borrow" after cutting taxes. As a result, the national debt tripled during his two terms. Yet President Reagan's strategy for igniting strong growth worked.

As I mentioned earlier, the 1970s had been a period of stagflation: slow growth along with high unemployment, high interest rates, and high inflation. The economic stimulus provided by President Reagan's tax cut in August, 1981 - which scaled back marginal tax rates by 25 percent over three years - clearly set the economy on a growth trajectory.

But it also set the national debt on a growth trajectory. The debt rose from $930 million in 1980 to $2.6 trillion in 1988. Some observers point out that this doesn't matter because after the tax cut, government tax receipts doubled from about $500 billion to $1 trillion from 1980 to 1990, due to the higher income in a growing economy. But whatever the increase in tax receipts, it clearly did not come near to covering the increase in government spending - for which each party blames the other.

And for a more current understanding of the concept of Trillions (and the impact of tax cuts for the very wealthy in a time of war spending), see this National Debt Graph. Note the trajectory of the debt, now going back UP under another GOP president, modeling the Reagan years...Indeed, it's risen dramatically, although the slope on this graph differs because it shows the debt as a percentage of gross domestic product, which is perhaps a better indicator of its real impact.

National-Debt-GDP-L.gif

This website focuses on the connection between presidents and debt, showing that Presidents Reagan, Bush, and Bush have been the true champions at spending - so don't believe all that you hear about "Tax and Spend Liberals" ...it's the Conservatives, it would seem, who are the real kings of spending...

Stoft-2004-debt-presidents-L.gif

Finally, we're left with Tax Cuts ... the focus on cutting the tax rates at the highest brackets has resulted in a tremendous transfer of wealth over the past seven years ... this website by Citizens for Tax Justice is good: Year-by-Year Analysis of the Bush Tax Cuts Shows Growing Tilt to the Very Rich - it's pretty thick with numbers, so maybe one more picture is in order... on to the L Curve, so named because it actually looks like the mirror image of a captial L ... it uses a football field to show income disparities, placing the population along the football field yard lines, based on their annual family income, represented by the height of a stack of $100 bills. It remains relatively flat until the 95 yard line, when it begins to creep up, then it sky-rockets out of sight at the 99-yard line. So naturally, McCain's plan is to make the Bush tax cuts permanent!

L Curve.gif

According to the U.S. Treasury website, the following are recent annual additions to the U.S. public debt.

* Fiscal year 2001 (begins 10/01/00) $144.6 billion
* Fiscal year 2002 (begins 10/01/01) $409.3 billion
* Fiscal year 2003 (begins 10/01/02) $589.0 billion
* Fiscal year 2004 (begins 10/01/03) $605.0 billion
* Fiscal year 2005 (begins 10/01/04) $523.2 billion
* Fiscal year 2006 (begins 10/01/05) $536.5 billion
* Fiscal year 2007 (begins 10/01/06) $514.1 billion

The cumulative debt of the United States in the past 5 completed fiscal years was approximately $2,767.8 billion, or about 30% of the total national debt of ~$9.25 trillion. Wikipedia on United States Public Debt

So, on to the bottom line - the conclusion of all these graphs and pictures:

We are not poor. We just make poor choices when setting our priorities.

As a body public, we've been deluded into thinking that we should must spend our money on a) War in Iraq, with no clear justification or exit plan; b) Oil imports from despotic nations with no clear strategy to break free to energy independence and alternative energy sources; and c) Tax cuts into infinity for the very wealthy, with no clear indication of why they are more deserving than the middle and lower classes.

As long as those remain our national priorities, we will continue to have little free money to invest in Infrastructure that will pay dividends for future growth - they'll be no help from Washington for local economies under this leadership. We're too busy spending the money of tomorrow's generations on today's skewed priorities - debt spending like a drunken sailor on shore leave. We've gone down the Rabbit Hole as a nation, and there's little that makes sense any more. Fiscal Conservatives have grown loopy with spending, Congressional representatives addicted to earmarks for their constituents - real financial libertines. And Social Liberals are starting to look like tightwads with public money, squeezing the budget so that they can find ways to pay for their beloved social welfare programs and progressive ideas. Which, by the way, are dwarfed by US defense spending, which now amounts to more than the rest of the world combined!

us-spending-2001-2009.png

One last thing ... At current war spending levels - $10 Billion/month, which show no signs of abating, by the way - just one day of the War in Iraq costs $333 million dollars. At an average cost of $5 million per network (rough estimate for the City of San Marcos, Texas, a town of 50,000 and 25 square miles), as a nation we could build 66 city networks with just one day's war spending, and provide very cheap broadband for all 3,300,000 residents. Or if you prefer, 2,000 city networks for the cost of 30 days worth of war spending...and that's just the war costs, to say nothing of the oil spending and the tax cuts for the wealthy.

Folks, in this country, we have the money to do whatever we have the will to do, we just consistently have chosen to spend it on other things like War, Oil, and Tax Cuts, under the leadership we keep electing. We have chosen not to invest in our collective futures by building new broadband infrastructure, among a host of other constructive purposes and paths we could have taken. We're a collective mess when it comes to decision making, I'm afraid to say.

So don't believe it when people tell you "we can't afford it." They're really saying "We have different priorities."

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Posted on March 10, 2008 at 09:33 PM | Comments (0)

Ten Technologies to Watch

Strap on your thinking cap for this one....here are ten emerging technologies, and I'd wager that you had not anticpated a one of them - OK, let's just say I had not.

This kind of list is appealing because it stretches out the brain and gets one to thinking in a new way about the future. Check it out!

Technology Review Identifies Ten Emerging Technologies Poised to Change the World - Government Technology

Posted on March 05, 2008 at 08:39 PM | Comments (0)

Emergent Change in a Networked World

After last night's Texas Two-Step (the Democratic double-punch of Primary and Caucus), I'm even more convinced that we don't get it as a society, not yet. I participated in my first-ever caucus at Precinct 345, at my kds' former elementary school gym. We waited until 8:30 (polls officially closed at 7:00 pm) to sign our names on lists for our preferred candidates. About 500 of us grown adults separated into two groups on either side of the room, based on our affinity for either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton (my wife was there to counter my vote for Obama with her vote for Hillary!).

After last night's election returns, I think that we all have our work cut out for us as we talk about CHANGE. When I lie awake at night, I fear we have little idea of the grip that the Status Quo has on all of us. That's why I've embraced the candidacy of Barack Obama - I feel that US society, so critical to the way that we all live our lives on this planet, has gone way off the rails over the past decade and we need some dramatic change to get back on track. But that's just me - obviously, there are a greater number of Democrats, at least last night, who believe that Hillary Clinton represents sufficient Change, at least as far as the pure numbers in Ohio, Texas, and Rhode Island go. Me, I'm not so sure; I think that as talented as Hillary is, as an early Baby Boomer, she still represents evolutionary change and she's still too close to many of the problems we face to represent the solution that we really need. In a way, she's compromised by the very experience that she touts to urge people to vote for her. Whether our society is really ready for the solutions that we really need is another question altogether. I'm afraid it may not be. Not yet.

Obama sketched out a different theory of social change than the one Clinton had implied earlier in the evening. Instead of relying on a president who fights for those who feel invisible, Obama, in the climactic passage of his speech, described how change bubbles from the bottom-up: "And because that somebody stood up, a few more stood up. And then a few thousand stood up. And then a few million stood up. And standing up, with courage and clear purpose, they somehow managed to change the world!"

For people raised on Jane Jacobs, who emphasized how a spontaneous dynamic order could emerge from thousands of individual decisions, this is a persuasive way of seeing the world. For young people who have grown up on Facebook, YouTube, open-source software and an array of decentralized networks, this is a compelling theory of how change happens.

Clinton had sounded like a traditional executive, as someone who gathers the experts, forges a policy, fights the opposition, bears the burdens of power, negotiates the deal and, in crisis, makes the decision at 3 o'clock in the morning.

But Obama sounded like a cross between a social activist and a flannel-shirted software C.E.O. - as a non hierarchical, collaborative leader who can inspire autonomous individuals to cooperate for the sake of common concerns.A Defining Moment - New York Times

I think the fact that I'm pulling a quote from David Brooks is noteworthy - he's not my favorite columnist, not by a long shot. But still, he makes a good point - we're seeing dramatic changes in our society, coming into focus this election year, and I can't help but conclude that our politics are lagging behind the curve of social and technological change.

Brooks captures the idea of Emergence that I've long trumpeted from this podium. Do take time to check out the Steven Johnson book titled Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software - I think it must be one of the most readable books I've read and re-read over the past five years and it absolutely influences the way I look at the meta concept of Change, with a capital C. (I can't resist a plug here for the Books section on this website for other good reads!)

And while you're at it, go ahead and check out the concepts in The Wisdom of Crowds, another key book, this one by James Surowiecki. And one more - not to leave out Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything by Don Tapscott.

If you can find the time to sit down and read these three books, I think you'll understand what I'm saying, and by extension, the point that David Brooks is trying to convey, as well as the essence of Obama's campaign - the Change we need today is different than in other election cycles, and it portends a different kind of politics. But whether the change we need is the change the public will accept remains to be seen.

OK, no time to sit down and read?

Here it is, then, in three sentences (and I welcome comments from you all who maybe can explain these abstract concepts better than I can)...

Emergence: In nature and society, change occurs more readily at the individual level and more effective solutions tend to emerge from the bottom up rather than from some wise top-down action that is based on inspired leadership - we ARE the change we crave, we ARE the leaders we seek, we ARE enough.

Wisdom: Experiments show that contrary to conventional wisdom a relatively large group of well-informed individuals (100+) consistently makes superior decisions than does a smaller group of experts (10-20 - the dream team of top advisers we are so used to) - in effect, crowds are consistently smarter than the leaders they follow! Go figure!

Collaboration: The Internet and the new Wiki software offer a tool to enable disparate individuals to come together and collaborate as never before, raising the potential of more effective social behavior that harnesses group dynamics more effectively and produces dramatically more efficient results - e.g., Wikipedia, a comprehensive, dynamic on-line encyclopedia of world knowledge that costs nothing for the user yet provides good-enough information, consistently - not perfect, but good enough for first-level analysis - if you don't like the definition, change it, and ultimately, the collection of changes combine to make for a better definition, as it finds its harmonic level.

So, my conclusion based on my recent experience these past five years and my readings, is as follows:

Our American society, and the global society as well, has been impacted by dramatic change, from geo-political change (9/11), from geo-economical change (global outsourcing), from technology change (Internet, Mobility), and from political change (Bush's Imperial Executive) and has yet to come to grips fully with the deeper meaning of all these changes.

See for instance my recent ongoing series On Structural Change, starting with this post. We have a lot further to go with this concept of Change, the theme of this year's election.

So now, for something a little lighter, here are some truly bizarre world videos that showcase how we really are one planet and one people, and that what happens in America ripples out to the rest of the world, but with widely divergent perspectives than we have here in the USA.

First, I give you Barack O'Bollywood (truly bizarre and intoxicating)...

Next, we have a Hillary of a different sort, where Hillary's Bust Bewitches with its Sexuality ... seriously...bizarre in an altogether different and not altogether pleasant way ...

And on the more conservative side - how can we really expect change from a candidate who would continue the Bush policies, after all??? - here we have Sen. McCain, as viewed from the Middle East:

and to wrap it up, here's Sen. McCain's now infamous, warped Beach Boys quote ... ah, Freud really had it down, didn't he?

Posted on March 05, 2008 at 06:58 PM | Comments (0)

The Blob Returns - YouTube is Eating the Internet

The end is in sight! By October 1, 2012, we should see ALL Internet traffic coming from YouTube videos! REPENT, ALL YOU BANDWIDTH HOGS, THE END IS NIGH!!

Don't believe me? Just get out your graph paper and plot these three data points below and then extend the line to where it crosses the 100% mark...

OK, so maybe my grasp of statistics and use of straight line trend extensions doesn't exactly hold water ... still, consider that ...

2% JANUARY 29, 2007 Surveys: Internet Traffic Touched by YouTube

10% JUNE 19, 2007 YouTube Comprises 10% Of All Internet Traffic | WebProNews

20% FEBRUARY 1, 2008 Alexa.com YouTube traffic statistics

OK, so, I've already admitted that I'm no expert on statistics, but I do believe that this is a statistically significant growth curve, and I agree that it supports the concerns about the ultimate capacity of our dearly beloved Internet, fast becoming as critical an infrastructure as our electric grid. (See this article on the coming ExaFlood!!)

Personally on my own little website, with our minuscule level of traffic, we've nevertheless seen a tremendous growth in bandwidth - from 392.67 MB in January 2007 to 1.31 GB in February 2008. Sure, we should adjust for a doubling of traffic in the last year (don't get too excited, the numbers are still fairly trivial). Nevertheless, it's easy to see that the big leap was in October last year, when I started adding YouTube videos to the site - we went from 653.8 MB to 928.1 MB in one month, from Sept to Oct.

When I adjust the data for growth in visitors to my site, we see a 37% increase in bandwidth used by this site each month...

Let's check back again about the time that college football season starts (September 1) - YouTube traffic should be at 30%, given the political season and the current growth trends?? Care to make any bets??

Besides being fun to track, why should this matter? Well, it does ...

As more and more Internet traffic is video traffic, and as more and more subscribers start using broadband to gain access to the Internet, we will face some mixture of these consequences, to an ever growing degree.

1. Network performance degradation, most likely in the form of slower uploading and downloading
2. Pressures to manage the Demand Side
a. Moves by ISPs to suspend heavy users or cut them off entirely (see Putting a lid on broadband use)
b. Political pressure to allow ISPs to charge varying rates for different levels of service (see Civil Rights Groups Side With Comcast's Net Neutrality Stance)
c. Political pressure to prohibit different levels of service (see Save the Internet)
3. Incentives to manage the Supply Side (my preferred alternatives)
a. Growing business incentives to build more last-mile broadband infrastructure
b. Political pressure to fund or otherwise stimulate broadband infrastructure build-out

Clearly, when it comes to broadband, I don't understand why we would spend so much energy and effort at trying to fit all of our traffic into an ever tighter tight box (i.e., current network capacity) and so little energy at trying to figure out a way to get a robust sustainable infrastructure built out.

Folks, we're going to have to spend the capital on broadband, so let's get busy talking about the best ways to get this infrastructure built! There will be plenty of time to keep arguing about how we use it, but let's all agree that we need more broadband infrastructure NOW, not later. The time has come to get busy and start building!!

Posted on March 05, 2008 at 05:00 PM | Comments (0)

Built to Last or Last to Build?

So many decisions face an official pondering the merits of a metropolitan broadband network.
- Invest in a solid network infrastructure with long-term staying power? (Built to Last) ...
- Hold out for a free deal with little to no investment or risk for the city - yet risk getting passed by when other cities do step up and take a chance? (Last to Build)...what to do, what to do??

The bad news is that there are no easy answers to such a question. The good news is that there is a yet one more resource at hand to help one think through these issues.

I recommend this 20-some-odd page white paper, Wireless Pittsburgh by The New America Foundation, putting the City of Pittsburgh under the microscope as an example. The author methodically works through the options and merits of different business cases, in sound and quantified ways.

If you want to skip that website and Abstract, just go ahead and download the PDF here (you'll need to register on MetroNetIQ though).

Highly recommended to put difficult topics in context!

Posted on March 05, 2008 at 02:43 PM | Comments (0)