A few weeks ago Google Fiber announced they had a partnership with Huntsville, Alabama. These announcements were once exciting, but over time shifted to mildly interesting and then to - well - just ho hum. Google's motives appear to have shifted over the years and there is this nagging issue of an access provider also being a major service provider. So I didn't pay attention to the press release until a few days later when Susan Crawford posted.
You Didn't Notice It, But Google Fiber Just Began the Golden Age of High Speed Internet Access
In technology as with politics there are any number of pieces over the top with excitement about possibilities. Most of them never amount to much, but you pay attention when a friend who usually isn't taken with hyperbole gets excited. I read her piece and then thought a bit.
Huntsville owns their own fiber. Initially installed for remote metering and other infrastructurish projects, it has a lot of capacity - after all, most of the cost of fiber is digging trenches - the fiber itself is so cheap the difference between one and forty-eight strand fiber is almost nothing. It is common for cities to own their roads, water and sewer and sometimes electricity and natural gas lines - after all - this is just common infrastructure that everyone uses.
Given Internet penetration rates you can make the argument that municipal fiber makes sense, but municipal ownership and the ability to offer an Internet connection is comparatively rare. In addition to a pile of new debt it takes a fair amount of technical and business expertise to build and run a service. Making matters worse the connection incumbents - telcos and cables - have powerful lobbies at the state level and have been erecting high barriers.
Susan is excited that Huntsville deal is not exclusive to Google. They are offering access to their dark fiber. Google, and anyone else with the wherewithal, can come in and light up strands and offer connections to homes and businesses. Neat - it sort of sounds like the fantastic Stokab municipal fiber project that has been in operation for nearly two decades in Stockholm. Multiple access providers can offer access to anyone and competition has driven down the price of very high speed symmetrical connections to the point where most of us can only be envious. As successful as Stokab is there have been few imitators .. det är de små, små detaljerna som gör det.1
I went over to the Community Broadband Networks site - a group representing and connecting those who have been taking on the incumbents to provide access. They had just posted a podcast interview with some of the Huntsville principals and I hadn't done my exercises .. a good excuse to listen rather than search and read.
It turns out the system is PONS - a passive optical network. Cheap, but inflexible. There will be thousands of splitter boxes spread throughout the town with each serving four to eight residences. The access provider would sign people up and 'own' whatever customers they could attract. They would run a connection from the splitter closest to the customer to the customer owning the last several hundred feet - the connection from the PONS fiber to the customer. It was mentioned that Huntsville would offer a volume discount. This would favor large providers. The situation is likely to favor a major provider and perhaps another smaller player. We're left with what we've had - an oligopoly.
Google might take a different tack. Rather than dig a trench and run a fiber from the splitter to the customer, Google might go wireless. They've been playing with short and medium range wireless for several years and have been lobbying the FCC for some interesting frequency bands.2 With volume pricing and the hurdle of the cost differential between Google's wireless and a trench, it may be that oligopoly becomes an effective monopoly.
This may well be cherry picking for Google Fiber. It isn't as if they haven't been doing that to date. It could even be a big thing if a lot of cities owned their own fiber infrastructure. But there aren't many places this can be done. Some of the cities that have done it, Charleston (which still is fending off attacks from telcos and cables) and Baton Rouge have taken more sophisticated approaches. Ting is doing a fiber deal with Westminster, MD that looks better than Huntsville/Google. There are dozens of very small and rural municipalities and even buildings in cities that are rolling their own using a variety of models. The point is there isn't any one size fits all and there is still enormous legal harassment from the incumbents. So don't expect much change soon. But for the longer term...
In the longer term there will probably be change. Verizon pulled through the halt switch on new cable deployment. I live in town that happens to host Verizon's headquarters and face a monopoly - Cablevision is the only access provider in my part of town. The DOCIS cable standard is a hack. The download peak speeds have improved dramatically, but upload speeds are terrible and it is likely not to improve much - not to mention the cable companies are facing cord cutting and have been playing around with data caps. To say they are pissing off their customers is understatement and dramatic change will take place over the next few years.3 A few locations will have their own fiber and will have multiple options as to how they light and distribute it. Wireless is improving dramatically. It seems reasonable that a city might have hundreds or even thousands of configurable wireless stations getting backhaul service from close enough fiber. And very dramatic things can be done with software defined radio.
In the long run the losers may well be the cables and telcos... and that includes conventional wireless providers. In the long run it is likely an air war. Hopefully the FCC and FTC will side with consumers and technology.
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1 The devil is in the details. - a tip of the hat to Anders
2 My favorite is one dedicated to short range Naval operations. While heavily used in places like San Diego, Norfolk and Seattle, it isn't exactly busy in Kansas.
3 We're on the left side of the adoption S curve for cable cutting. At some point the slope increases dramatically and the cables and their dance partners are in serious trouble. For the time being they note defections are small, but people under 30 are not signing up for service. They also claim that some programming - notably local and sports - will keep a large majority with them. But when cord cutting gets in the 10 to 15 percent range with a steeply rising slope, sports and local providers will have no choice than to offer Internet accessible services.
At some point people notice that telephony and television is just better over the Internet. Lobbyists will get rich, but in the end the incumbents lose unless they figure out attractive Internet offerings.
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Recipe Corner
I love roasting vegetables, but when new Spring produce turns up I tend to braise to highlight their delicate flavors. It is also great in the late Summer when the produce floodgates open wide. Olive oil braising gives terrific flavor .. you don't need a fine finishing oil, but use a real olive oil rather than a cheap blend. Trader Joe's Extra Virgin California Estate is about a fifth the price of a good finishing oil and is great for a dish like this. I can't say the same of some of the other TJ's oils. The recipe is a modification of a standard oil braising technique and is just a guide, so read it, put it away and use what you have!
Vegetables Braised in Oil
Ingredients
° 1/2 cup olive oil
° a lemon, cut into thin wedges
° some sun dried tomatoes, cut into strips (about a third of a cup for me)
° 3 cloves garlic
° pinch red chili flakes
° sprig of rosemary
° salt & pepper
° 1 pound baby red potatoes halved
° 3 shallots, quartered
° 3 or 4 baby carrots cut into medium sized sticks
° 1 asparagus bunch , trimmed
Technique
° Heat olive oil on medium high
° add about a quarter of the lemon wedges and bring them to a light brown
° add the sun dried tomatoes, garlic cloves, red pepper flakes and rosemary, and stir for just a minute
° cut the heat to medium low and add the new potatoes, shallots, and some salt and pepper. Stir to coat with the oil and cook for about 20 minutes.
° now add the carrots, stir to coat, and cook covered for another 20 minutes. Check to see that veggies are fork-tender but not falling apart. Add asparagus, again stir gently to coat, and cook covered until asparagus is just done (about 8 minutes for me)
° Remove from heat and serve with lemon wedges and perhaps a bit of parsley or basil
This is really good with a crusty bread!
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