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October 11, 2007 4:00 AM PDT
Perspective: Fixing our fraying Internet infrastructure
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The infrastructure underlying each has a limited useful life and is designed to meet the expected demand when deployed. But demand changes, and without proper planning and investment all infrastructure will eventually fail.
Americans are serious about infrastructure if California voter support for recent water, transportation and school bonds is any indication. In the same way that levees and bridges need to be safe and reliable, our communications networks need to handle our growing Internet traffic. Imagine a day without phone or Internet service, and then imagine a week without them during a crisis.
The broadband infrastructure in the United States is largely invisible to all but a few engineers. Were it as visible as a road system it would appear to be excellent in some places, but riddled with potholes in others; heavily congested at many times and locations; and in need of massive redesign.
The problem is that we have reached a point of disconnect between the traditional Internet's architecture and the needs of today's customers. The traditional Internet's architecture was not designed, nor can it be expected to handle, the demands being placed on it. Bandwidth demand is growing rapidly, outpacing supply. It's as if every home in America suddenly needed 10 times more water at 10 times the quality coming out of the same size faucet.
Today, the average home uses as much bandwidth as a major office park did a few years ago. Remember when you used Internet access for just e-mail? Now, chances are you e-mail photos, download music and watch videos, often all at the same time. The bandwidth consumed by a popular YouTube video, "The Evolution of Dance," downloaded 54 million times, equals an entire month's worth of data network traffic in the year 2000. iTunes usage grew 47.5 percent in 2006 alone.
The Internet has gone from a complement to everyday living to a principal platform for business and personal activities. Jitters and low-quality service are unacceptable. The Internet needs to be able to deliver huge amounts of quality traffic anytime and anywhere, and the nation's current infrastructure cannot handle exponential growth.
We think our broadband is fine. But in five years, we have dropped from 4th place to 15th place on the broadband ranking kept by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. When students visit from South Korea, which perennially ranks above the U.S., they are shocked by two things: the homeless problem and the sad state of broadband in this country. Being in 15th place means that innovation will happen in countries that have the digital infrastructure (and digital culture) to incubate the next great idea.
The technological formula for broadband competitiveness is simple: deliver more quality bandwidth to more people faster. The first approach is to build more capacity, which is happening. Compression and network triage are two other technological solutions. Traffic, especially video, can be compressed to reduce the network demands.
Core routers, the switches of the Internet, can become increasingly sophisticated. They can speed time-sensitive traffic through the Internet more quickly than, for instance, e-mails, which can be delivered a few seconds later without consumers noticing or caring.
A national broadband policy is an essential part of the formula. A central component of this policy must drive us toward universal access to broadband. High-speed Internet access is not a luxury, but should be considered a necessity for members of a developed country. Fifty percent, even 75 percent, penetration is not acceptable.
We need ubiquitous broadband penetration in the U.S. if we intend to claim leadership in the next Internet age. Every year, we can expect a fresh crop of laws, rules and policies intended to help the Internet. Each should be mercilessly analyzed based on whether they will hurt or help the nation's broadband competitiveness and whether they get us to 99 percent.
Getting there will take leadership, the kind we saw from California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in making the case for roads, schools and levees. Even though we can't see the Internet, our economy depends upon broadband. Without investments in broadband infrastructure, not only will consumers suffer, but we will experience a creeping lack of competitiveness, as well as job loss and the gradual ceding of our Internet leadership to other nations.
And one day, in the not-too-distant future, two people in a garage in the U.S. won't start the next great Internet company--because two people in a garage in South Korea or France or the U.K. will already have.
Biography
Michael Kleeman is a senior fellow at both the University of California at San Diego and USC's Annenberg Center for Communication. He also is national chair of strategy for the American Red Cross.
See more CNET content tagged:
infrastructure,
Internet-infrastructure,
bandwidth,
broadband,
data network
Suddenly we wake up and realize that the world is surpassing us with new, faster and more ubiquitous broadband technologies and our answer is to give more money to the people that are responsible for our current situation?
The only way we can foster innovation, and increase markets served by our stagnant broadband infrastructure is to break up monopolies and promote competition. But you don?t have to believe me, Vint Cerf, Father of the Internet said in the Washington post "The experience of the last seven years shows that sometimes you need a strong federal regulatory framework to ensure that competition happens in a way that is constructive,"
So please do not suggest that anything less than taking away Telco and Broadband operator monopolies which they have so easily abused for profit at the cost of our nations competitiveness, and allowing competitive carriers on the new (to be built ) fiber infrastructure will fix our problem?.and don?t get me started on the 700Mhz auction.
In South Korea where our two garage inventors will make the next great internet company, they will do so because their choices for a broadband connection were not limited to local cable or local bell. (CNET has a great article on South Koreas rise to broadband power (South Korea Leads The Way ? July 28. 2004)
entire system, like what we have with the computer
desktop. Look at how well that is working, always
innovating to give the customer just what they want!
I am just not quite sure who "they" are? :)
Two or three choices is NOT competition, not in my book and not in anyone else's if they were honest.
long term stability for short term benefits? No!
That must be some other America! :)
The Mini-HDV recording format uses 25 Mbps.
More advanced compression gets us down around 10 Mbps.
Bill Gates came late to the internet table because he thought people would not accept the fare deliverable by a dialup.
What he missed was that content IS king. People will accept whatever quality is available if the information is important to them. As better delivery becomes available (replacing VHS movies with DVD, for example) an electronic Gresham's law pushes the inferior product out of the marketplace.
Your point that infrastructure needs to improve is well taken, however. I totally agree that broadband speeds are pathetically slow. We are not as bad off as India, but we are certainly no South Korea or Japan!
The point you appear to be missing is that the Internet is largely carried upon the big telco's networks, and if that breaks enough, yes it will break all of America! There needs to be a change, and Communication needs to be to all, not in the hands of the few. The Government can improve things by setting device protocol standards, such that devices, not companies, provide services and do so for the cost of the device and the energy to run and maintain it only. When you dial your cell phone, do you think a single human has been involved in making that connection? Manage the Communication infrastructure just like the highway system. Each requires periodic inspection, maintenance and upgrades. Each requires construction contrators to actually perform this work (of which telco's could bid for just like road builders do). In fact many of the network routes are along Highways...hmmm a lot can be leveraged. With the governement taking ownership of the communication infrastructure, there would need to be measures put in place to ensure privacy, but we already have those problems in our current system, that need to be fixed.
There is absolutley NO reason why the we can not ALL have service fee free wireless bi-directional interactive communication for everyone, everywhere, that we will never out grow, and at the same time reduce 'RF polution' by using a lower power shorter range, physical location (~GPS or equivalent) addressed and routed, mesh network that consists entirely of the devices theselves, without high level servers, routing tables, or the hierarchial addressing structure of todays internet. Devices can be dynamically adjusting (just like cell phones) making and routing connections based upon their neighbors and physical locations of source and destination of packets. It can be made completely fault tolerant, such that information and packets get routed around power outages, etc. just by its very nature of efficient dynamic physical location routing. As long as the units are specified to carry several times the bandwidth and routes that a single unit provides to the end user (Example: A hub provides me with 1 channel at 100MByte/second bandwidth access, should also provide 8-10 times that many channels in tranfer and routing capability, we will never outgrow the network, even with a density of 1 unit per every 1 square meter or less. The cost to the individual, is the cost of the Hub Unit, and the cost of the energy to run it. The Gov can do this, and for a lot less than the telco's because the Gov does not have to make a profit. It does not violate free enterprise because the telco's can still do the work (through gov contract), build and sell devices, etc.
Despite the fact we have file upload services, ftp and things like Flickr for photo sharing people still continue to send large files and attachements within e-mail. By default anytime someone send a large file it should go to server space and the e-mail program should create links automatically.
Finally despite the face we have the ability to sign and secure e-mails with certificates etc. it's a system a majority of the people don't uses. Let's change that as well.
(about four articles all told.)
Jonathan Rintels, Executive Director
Center for Creative Voices in Media
Is it free? Of course not. But once a consumer pays the $150 to buy a rooftop hub, he gets the 500 MHz bandwidth for no extra charge.
A modern MIMO, GPS-ROUTED, mesh is self forming, self healing and virtually unbreakable by terrorist or natural disaster.
What's holding us back? The telcos, useing their unlimited anti-competitive war chest, blocked the 802.11N standard for so long that the WI-FI association had to go around the standards committee just to get first-generation MIMO out to the public.
Now they want to OWN the 700 Mhs spectrum which, if used for public access (like 2.4,) would bring GHz bandwidth to every nook and cranney of America.
CALL, EMAIL, or WRITE YOUR CONGRESSPEOPLE, and urge them to make 700Mhz public.
What do YOU want? a free modem and $50 a month bandwidth? Or a $150 modem and free bandwidth?
If the telcos continue to "own" the airwaves, we will always be a third world country in the Information Age.
Remember there is absolutely NO technical reason to assign information spectrum to a single entity.
The BILLIONS the treasury would get from the upcoming FCC auction will be extracted from you and me, built into the $59.95 per month you pay (thats AT&T's current price for an air card BTW) for Internet Access.
Another billion or two will be extracted from stockholders of communication companies that go chapter 11 while clinging to a business model based on limited availability of bandwidth.
Radio waves and light are identical, the photons follow the same laws.
Imagine that the FCC auctioned the visible spectrum. Red, because of its superior propagation charactistics, would fetch a very high price. Perhaps Trillions. But the winning bidder would quickly recover his investment by charging a monthly fee to every traffic signal. and aircraft warning beacon radiating red light.
Second: Until we DO fix the FCC, forget talking about using the EM spectrum. That's an even more closed-off version of the rich boys' playbox.
Third: reform at the FCC can't happen in our current political climate. The media already control common access to ideas such as appear here. We need to make them tell OUR truths, on an equal footing with Federal and Corporate PROPAGANDA. We need political REFORM and media REFORM, before we (the People) control our country properly. Mark my words: whoever wins the presidency in 2008 WILL NOT ADDRESS THE FCC's STRANGLEHOLD IN FAVOR OF CORPORATIONS. WE THE PEOPLE have to FORCE THE ISSUE.
I have yet to hear there are huge monopolies and abuses in the highway construction and maintenance industry, maybe there are, but it seems unlikely using the bid process.
The only people who Don't like Socialism are (a) people who have no adequate idea what it is, based on hearing antiSocialist propaganda in this society from birth, and (b) people who make, or dream of making, TONS OF MONEY by being Capitalists.
If Socialism never worked here, it was because (a) it was never tried, and (b) whenever it raised its head, it and its adherents were viciously attacked by the media, the government (dominated by capitalists), and the capitalists themselves, with strikebreaking goons.
Considering that "Government" is a collection of named individuals, let us never hear again that "Government is the problem" - by definition it can't be. The "problems" are given to us by particular individuals - who, if we were allowed to, we could refute. Government is necessary, but so is PAYING ATTENTION and REMAINING INVOLVED and FEEDBACK. We can't just sit back and let "someone else" run our whole economic system as if we had no input, and then just complain about the results. Make people compete to do the best jobs running public agencies, force the administrators to answer questions and challenges, in public, and everything will run great in not long at all.
Frankly, the problem is me - me buying more consumer goods versus my money used in investment in the general good. The latter means paying for something with no immediate apparent direct benefit to me or, even worse, benefit to someone else who is not as deserving as me. I'm an American and I deserve a new iPhone because it does one more thing than my several-weeks-old iPhone or it is in my latest color preference.
The fact that in some vague 20 year future the then newest iPhone successor won't work in many (or most) areas in this country is irrelevant. In my case, that will be my grandkids problem. They can pay for those huge infrastructure costs, and their parents' (my kids') Social Security, and Health Care, and the debt on the Bush war in Iraq....
I'm a geezer. What many don't know about my own parents' generation - the so-called Greatest Generation - is that they not only fought WWII, but were taxing themselves in the 1950's with a federal income tax upper bracket of 90%. That attitude is how the initial construction of the American Interstate Highway System, potable water systems, sewer systems, power grids, phone systems, etc. was funded. And it was assumed that in some fashion that the middle, upper-middle and upper classes would pay for infrastructure before we would even think of buying a new Lexus to replace a 3-year-old Accura, throw away a one year old phone, send our kid to private school, and live in a closed community with a private police force.
Utilities associated with the internet (which are merging reminiscent of a time comparable to when telcom had the AT&T group and few others) need to be directed not by Wall Street Analysts but by rate oriented regulators that allow reasonable profits but require heavy infrastructure reinvestment and R&D investsment. Plus rates that "tax" the profits of bandwidth hogs like Google and other commercial users more than the individual are necessary. As an individual, I am certain that the commercial users will recover those extra costs each time I use their services, so that I too will be paying for the bandwidth I use.
By the way, as a Californian, I can tell you that the Gubernator is not proposing to collect higher taxes for water, highways and levees. He's proposing higher debt without higher taxes or other rates so that my grandchildren can figure out how to pay for them. Now that's an American approach.
It is not the approach used by America's "Greatest Generation" but the approach used by my and my kid's generation - the "Buy Stuff Generations" or BS Generations. The BS Generations barely paused at Bush's commandment to support the war against terrorism - keep on shopping. As good Americans, we have continued to buy things we don't remotely need and which provide minimal marginal hedonistic benefit to us. Fortunately for us, we have plenty of talking heads to help rationalize this approach to living.
- Let us build our OWN networks and get what we want NOW
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by ecsd
February 21, 2008 6:53 PM PST
- See http://communityfiber.org. Citizens can build their own networks, town by town, and
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Reply to this comment
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See all 24 Comments >>1. Get GIGABIT speed to _start_ with, for UTILITY RATES
2. No more PRICE GOUGING/FIXING
3. No more threat to NET NEUTRALITY
4. No more Telcos, ultimately, making America a much nicer place to live.