Fast, affordable Internet access for all.
infrastructure
Content tagged with "infrastructure"
Crawford Identifies Historic Parallel Between Electricity and Fiber
Susan Crawford recently wrote for the Blog of the Roosevelt Institute, where she spent the last year as a Fellow. She draws on the history of electrification to remind us that the impasse we have in expanding great access to the Internet to everyone is not a novel problem.
Crawford emphasizes the similarities between the electrification of rural America in the 1930s and the need for ubiquitous high-speed Internet access today. Crawford sees an almost identical reality as she compares the world of broadband and the attitude toward electricity in the 1930s:
In 1920 in America, unregulated private companies controlled electricity. The result? 90 percent of farmers didn't have it, at the same time that all rich people in New York City did. And it was wildly expensive in many places. Although it's now considered an essential input into everything we do, at the time electricity was seen as a luxury; the companies served the rich and big businesses, and left everyone else out.
Crawford notes that in the '30s, it was strong and thoughtful leadership that led the charge to turn the lights on in rural America. It ws not inevitable - it took the hard work of many people dedicated to a better tomorrow. In fact, the Rural Electrification Administration was created only after many states had already created their own electrification programs, creating valuable lessons for those that came after.
As many of our readers know, local authority in one state after another has fallen to the armies of lobbyists recruited by AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, and others at the top of the telecommunications heap. South Carolina and California recently joined the list of states where the legislature abandoned the public interest in favor of a few corporate interests.
Community Broadband Bits 17 - Joe Knapp of Sandy, Oregon
Oregon's SandyNet to Use Sewers for Fiber Deployment
SandyNet, of Sandy, Oregon, recently announced that it plans to expand Internet service with fiber to every home and business in the city. The network, which has serviced the community for ten years, currently offers fiber to businesses along the Highway 26 corridor. Wireless service is available throughout town and in some rural areas around the City.
SandyNet plans to provide a range of tiers for fiber connectivity. Preliminary rates include residential fiber service of 100 Mbps for $39.95. Business service will vary from $69.95 per month to $499.95 per month for 1 Gbps. Construction is scheduled to begin spring of 2013 and the utility estimates service to be available by the end of the year in most neighborhoods.
The City will be working with i3 America, which uses city sanitary and sewer storm pipes as a makeshift conduit for fiber optic cable. i3's "FOCUS" system uses special armorerd cable designed to withstand a harsh environment and does not affect operation of clean or wastewater systems. Because this method uses existing pipes, construction costs can be up to 70% lower than traditional burying of conduit and fiber. The location of cable is much deeper in the wastewater pipes, so there will be less chances of damage due to construction or the elements.
From the press release:
The City of Sandy last year sponsored a "Why Wait for Google?" contest to gauge interest in fiber Internet service, and to select a neighborhood for a pilot program. Resients in every neighborhood expressed interest in the service , and i3 approached the city with a proposal to extend fiber to every building in the town.
Similar to the Google Fiber deployment in Kansas City, neighborhoods that show the most interest will be hooked up first. Residents and businesses are encouraged to sign up now.
Joe Knapp, IT Director and General Manager of SandyNet offered some details via email:
Independence and the Limits of Markets
The great missing debate in contemporary politics is about the role and reach of markets. Do we want a market economy, or a market society? What role should markets play in public life and personal relations?
The Internet is More Important than Broadband
The Internet is no more capable than the infrastructures that carry it. Here in the U.S. most of the infrastructures that carry the Internet to our homes are owned by telephone and cable companies. Those companies are not only in a position to limit use of the Internet for purposes other than those they favor, but to reduce the Net itself to something less, called “broadband.” In fact, they’ve been working hard on both.There is a difference between the Internet and "broadband." Broadband is a connection that is always on and tends to be somewhat faster than the dial-up speeds of 56kbps. Broadband could connect you to anything... could be the Internet or to an AOL like service where some company decides what you can see, who you can talk to, and the rules for doing anything. The Internet is something different. It is anarchic, in the textbook definitional sense of being leaderless. It is a commons. As Doc says,
The Internet’s protocols are NEA:Because no one owns it, few promote it or defend. Sure, major companies promote their connections to it (and when you connect to it, you are part of it) but they are promoting the broadband connection. And the biggest ones (Comcast, AT&T, Verizon, Time Warner Cable, etc) will do anything to increase the profits they make by being one of the few means of connecting to the Internet -- including charging much more and limiting what people can do over their connection, etc. This is one reason the connections from major corporations are so heavily tilted toward download speeds -- they want consumers to consume content. Just about every community network built in the last 3-4 years offers symmetrical connections by contrast.
- Nobody owns them.*
- Everybody can use them, and
- Anybody can improve them.
Last I heard, the fastest cable offering in the upstream direction was 12Mbps. Cox, our cable provider in Santa Barbara, gives us about 25Mbps down, but only 4Mbps up. Last time I talked to them (in June 2009), their plan was to deliver up to 100Mbps down eventually, but still only about 5Mbps up.
CED Magazine: Broadband is a Lifeline Service
These disagreements are hopelessly tangled in another argument entirely: What role should the government have in any market, let alone the broadband market? North Carolina’s state legislature just passed a law prohibiting municipal broadband services. But in the communications industry, many free-market and anti-regulatory arguments would be mooted if the market provided what is being asked for – affordable and universal access to broadband. Now, not later.Communities are not building their own networks on a lark - they do it because they have to in order to ensure their future vitality. Just last week, we also answered the same question of the role of government in broadband when revisiting an excellent commentary published years ago about the proper role of government in matters of infrastructure. We will all benefit the most when we all have access to fast, affordable, and reliable access to the Internet. But blindly relying on a few massive companies to get us there is lunacy. They simply do not have the motivation or capacity to sufficiently invest or to run the networks in such a way that all have access -- as private companies, they are supposed to maximize profit. Maximizing profit is incompatible with managing infrastructure -- pricing access to infrastructure too high results in losses for everyone, including the vast majority of the private sector. At the very least, all communities must maintain the freedom to choose locally if building a network is the right decision for them.
The Proper Role of Government in Broadband
North Carolina and Broadband as Infrastructure
As stated above, S.L. 2011-84 imposes some significant limitations on a municipality’s authority to provide cable and Internet services. With some exceptions, the limitations apply to a “city-owned communications service provider.” A city-owned communications service provider is defined as:Though it is an extreme long shot, it would be fascinating to see a community build a network without charging a direct fee to access.This definition is important because the new limitations only apply to municipalities that meet all of its elements. In particular, the Act’s provisions only apply to a municipality that provides the listed services “for a fee.” That means that the requirements do not apply to any municipality that provides the above-listed communication services for free to the public. Many local governments provide free Wi-Fi service in their downtown or other central business areas. (In fact, I am taking advantage of Town of Carrboro’s free Wi-Fi as I draft this post.) If a municipality uses its unrestricted general fund revenue to finance this service, or any other communications services, it is not subject to the new Act’s provisions. (Note that many local governments actually offer this service by taking advantage of excess capacity on their internal broadband networks.)
- a city
- that provides cable, video programming, telecommunications, broadband, or high-speed Internet access service (collectively, communication services)
- directly, indirectly, or through interlocal agreement or joint agency
- to the public
- for a fee
- using a wired or wireless network (communications network).
Lessig Promotes Publicly Owned Broadband at Personal Democracy Forum
I have long been a fan of Larry Lessig's work, so I was proud to see him use our work as the foundation for his presentation at the 2011 Personal Democracy Forum. He talks about the fundamental right of communities to build their own networks as well as Time Warner Cable's successful purchase of competition-limiting legislation in North Carolina.
Wanna Be a Wonk? Understanding Regulatory Capture
But the most common form of capture is honest and may be characterised as intellectual capture. Every regulatory agency is dependent for information on the businesses it regulates. Many of the people who run regulated companies are agreeable, committed individuals who are properly affronted by any suggestion that their activities do not serve the public good.