Submitted by acohill on Mon, 06/07/2010 - 08:16
Lately, visiting some of my regular "regular read" blogs, I'm finding not only fewer posts but notes from the bloggers that after five or six years, they are turning the blog off or just posting a lot less. The comments all seem to run in the same direction: "I've said everything I have wanted to say." And regular readers of this blog may have noticed that I am posting a lot less than I was three or four years ago. Part of the change is due the the growth in Design Nine; we're planning and building more networks in more places around the country than we were three or four years ago. But the technology of broadband has also matured, and there is less to write about. But I'm not turning the blog off yet. There is plenty of broadband news, and lots of other interesting technology. Nor do I think the age of blogs is over, but I think the "newbie" phenomenon of blogs has peaked. As I have written in the past, good bloggers are good writers, and there are few good writers. Anyone can post a few odd items to a blog, but only a love of writing will sustain a blog over a longer period of time. The fact that some blogs are slowing or shutting down is a sign that this particular medium is maturing. Fewer, higher quality blogs are, all in all, a good thing.
Submitted by acohill on Wed, 06/02/2010 - 08:35
AT&T has announced changes to its U.S. data plans for iPhones and iPads. Most current iPhone users pay $30/month for an unlimited data plan. A bit pricey, but you know what you are paying every month, and you don't have to worry about surprise charges on your next month's bill (I've had an iPhone for two years).
Under the two new plans, there is no unlimited option for the iPhone. Instead, there are two plans that provide 200 Meg ($15/month) and 2 Gig ($25/month) of data. Overage charges are actually fairly priced, in my opinion, rather than some of the punitive charges we have seen from some cellular providers in the past.
iPad users have a choice of two similar plans, one that provides 250 Meg ($15/month) and an unlimited plan ($30/month). The big news is that AT&T will finally allow tethering, meaning you can use your iPhone as a cellular modem for your laptop while traveling. AT&T is going to charge an additional $20/month for this service. iPhone users have been waiting a long time for this, and I think the additional charge is fair. Tethering your laptop is going to use a lot more bandwidth than equivalent Web browsing and data on an iPhone. And the $20/month charge competes very favorably with the cost of buying a dedicated cellular modem service (these plans tend to run about $30/month).
I am ready to sign up for the tethering plan. Free WiFi services while traveling are often hard to find and if you do find one, performance is typically abysmal--slow when working, and often not working, especially in airports, where I most often want to try to get some work done.
AT&T is also promising easy to use tools to keep track of how much data you have used over the course of a month so that you can avoid overage charges. This is essential to keep from annoying customers. Mobile data access is increasing rapidly as more people have smartphones and pad computers, and the cellular providers have to do something to manage bandwidth. The big weakness of wireless broadband is that there is only so much spectrum to go around, and when demand uses up the bandwidth available from an access point, the wireless provider has only one option--a costly upgrade to the access point and/or adding more access points and more backhaul--all expensive.
Submitted by acohill on Wed, 06/02/2010 - 07:50
Here is an article that says the median age of traditional TV viewers has moved up to nearly 51 years old. For an industry that covets the 25-44 year old demographic, that has to be bad news. It explains why you see so many laxative,Viagra, and arthritis ads on TV--nothing but creaky and cranky old folks watching. A massive wave of tablet computers, optimized for video, are going to accelerate the trend away from sitting in front of the "TV." Indeed, the term "TV" is rapidly becoming an anachronism, as more and more people are going to be saying, "What's on the pad?"
Submitted by acohill on Mon, 05/24/2010 - 13:48
The Australian, a major paper in Australia, has sold out the ad space on its iPad version of the newspaper. At least one paper intends to stay ahead of the news game and make the new medium work for its business. Good for them.
Submitted by acohill on Fri, 05/21/2010 - 12:53
Google has announced that the next version of its Android operating system will have something much like the Apple iTunes software and a companion music store.
Submitted by acohill on Fri, 05/21/2010 - 12:49
Google has announced the fall, 2010 availability of Google TV, which is a set top box but may also be built in to some new TVs. The little video that is embedded in the linked article shows an interface that looks remarkably similar to the interface used by the Apple TV appliance, which is also a set top box. Either Apple nailed the interface design for this kind of device, or Google could not come up with anything better, or both.
The problem I suspect I will have with Google TV is that I"m pretty sure the Google TV device will send everything I watch or anyone in my family watches to Google, where they will add it to the massive dossier they have already collected on me and everyone else in the country. Google TV will also conveniently, I'm sure, provide handy connections to other Google services like Google Docs. Google is going to take over your life, one little "free" service at a time, until you can't do anything on the Web without touching some kind of Google service. Google could easily build in an "opt in" feature that only allows them to collect personal information if you expressly agree, but their general tendency for other products and services is to collect first and ask later, or worse, include a requirement to let them have all your personal information in return for the "free" service. It's a Faustian bargain.
Submitted by acohill on Fri, 05/21/2010 - 08:29
The broadband battle rages on in North Carolina, with more and more people starting to realize that the state and NC communities needs flexibility in addressing economic development problems.
Submitted by acohill on Fri, 05/14/2010 - 10:14
The City of Palm Coast, Florida formally opened its high performance fiber network on Tuesday. Design Nine provided the early phase planning, financial and business modeling, network architecture design, vendor evaluation, and equipment and contractor procurement. The open access network opened with two service providers and several business customers on day one.
Submitted by acohill on Fri, 05/14/2010 - 10:00
An automobile took down a large Amazon EC2 data center when it crashed into a utility pole near the facility and broke the power line. In a cascading failure, the Amazon data center's backup power system also broke, and the backup power did not work. This is one reason why data centers looking for new locations want to see business parks with power coming from two different sub-stations, and you get bonus points if you have feeds from two entirely different electric companies or grids.
Submitted by acohill on Sun, 05/09/2010 - 11:01
DirecTV recently announced it was bringing more jobs to southwest Virginia, but these are not traditional jobs. Instead, these are work from home jobs. The company is establishing a virtual call center. Congressman Rick Boucher made a sweep through the region last month to announce the new job opportunities, which amount to 100 new jobs. DirecTV already employs more than 1100 home-based workers, and other major firms like Apple have been making heavy use of home-based workers for several years.
What does this mean for economic development? Several things jump out:
Submitted by acohill on Fri, 05/07/2010 - 13:19
Design Nine has been an advocate for open access for many years--long before it became fashionable. So it is nice to see that some places are finally figuring out that open access is the right way to do telecom. Via Ars Technica, the Australian government has announced a $38 billion (in U.S. dollars) plan to take fiber to most Australian homes and businesses. The government intends to operate it as a open access network, with private sector providers offering all the services. The article notes that the country has decided it will not impede economic development by allowing a single incumbent to make long term decision about how much broadband is enough.
Submitted by acohill on Fri, 05/07/2010 - 12:46
The market for netbooks, those small, lightweight, and inexpensive laptops, was enjoying double digit growth until Apple announced the iPad back in January. Since then, sales have slowed dramatically. And the iPad may also begin to have an effect on desktop and laptop sales. This report only represents one household, but it sounds plausible to me: if you have a couple of iPads in the house, you don't need as many computers.
Submitted by acohill on Wed, 05/05/2010 - 09:08
A knock down, drag out fight over the right of communities to control their economic future continues in North Carolina. Via Save NC Broadband, the City of Salisbury, North Carolina is struggling to put a stop to a state legislature proposal to ban community investments in broadband. The cable companies in North Carolina are encouraging the ban, and as the editorial notes in the link above, this is really about the right of communities to determine their own future. As is often the case, using a roads analogy helps put it in perspective: "... That's like letting one or two asphalt companies determine the future of North Carolina's roads."
Communities need modern digital road systems that will help retain existing businesses and assist with attracting new ones. It almost beggars belief that NC legislators want to cripple economic development and drive businesses into neighboring states like Virginia, where community fiber projects like nDanville have brought more than 550 new high tech jobs to Danville, Virginia in the past year. Danville's open access network does not compete with the private sector because all services are being offered by private sector companies, which creates a win-win situation. The City of Danville has lowered the cost of offering high performance broadband and created new business opportunities for private sector firms. This "third way" approach to broadband is a win-win approach to community broadband that neatly balances public and private interests.
Submitted by acohill on Wed, 05/05/2010 - 08:49
Congressman Rick Boucher (D) of Virginia's Ninth District has proposed an Internet privacy bill, which is co-sponsored with Cliff Stearns (R) of Florida. The bill has critics from both the business community and consumer advocates, which suggests it probably strikes the right balance as a place to start. I am constantly amazed at how casually people give up personal information like their birthdate, street address, and other information just to get some "free" service (e.g. Facebook). Not all companies abuse how they use that kind of information, but some do. One of the bill's primary requirements is to simply have firms explain better what they do with personal data. That seems like a good place to start.
Submitted by acohill on Tue, 05/04/2010 - 08:39
Almost everything written about the iPad to date has been speculative and overwrought because most of the writers had little or no time actually using the iPad. Depending on what you read, you might come away believing the iPad was the worst device in the history of handhelds (...NO USB PORT MAKES IT USELESS!!) or the most important new device since the mainframe. Here is a thoughtful review that compares the iPad to the Kindle for reading books. My take: Kindle still has a bit of an edge, but as the software book readers for the iPad improve, the Kindle is toast.
Submitted by acohill on Tue, 05/04/2010 - 08:32
Via the Washington Post, the FCC has indicated that broadband services will likely remain unregulated for the time being. The recent court ruling in favor of Comcast most likely brought the change in direction. An attempt by the FCC to regulate broadband service providers would likely bring many more lawsuits that could drag on for years.
Net neutrality advocates will be disappointed, but there are simpler and better ways to achieve net neutrality, and those approaches are already in place and working--Utopia is the country's biggest open access network, with net neutrality baked into the network architecture and business model. Utopia has fifteen service providers on the network, all competing on price and service quality over the open and neutral community-owned system. The Wired Road, in southwest Virginia, has five providers on its open and neutral network. Palm Coast FiberNET is just starting up, but has two competing providers on day one.
The FCC has done the right thing; trying to regulate twentieth century business models will not give communities and businesses the economic growth they need. Design Nine is a national leader in the design and development of open access networks. Give us a call for help with your project.
Submitted by acohill on Tue, 05/04/2010 - 08:21
There has been a long running debate about artificial intelligence, with a large contingent of computer scientists always proclaiming that computers "smarter than humans" is only five years away. And there has been a small but persistent group of computer scientists who have insisted computers will never be "smarter than humans."
Here is an interesting read on speech recognition and why it has never caught on. The "computers will be smarter than humans" crowd will scoff at this and insist that speech recognition has little to do with artificial intelligence, but if you can't write a program to recognize speech, how are you going to write a program to make a computer "smarter" than a human? Our ability to hear and cognitively process the spoken work is absolutely staggering, and after thirty plus years of attempts to duplicate it, speech recognition is still lousy. Spend just a few minutes on the phone with one of those voice mail speech recognition systems (...say Customer service.... "Cus-tom-er ser-vice"...I'm sorry, I did not understand, say Customer service..."Cuuuusssttttommmer Seerrrrvvviccce"....I'm sorry, I did not understand, returning to Main Menu...) knows that speech recognition stinks.
Submitted by acohill on Tue, 05/04/2010 - 08:11
Microsoft has announced that for Internet Explorer 9 (IE9), the company has a preference for HTML5 and the H.264 video codec. Flash plug-ins will continue to be supported, but IE9 will only have native support for H.264. This follows on the path blazed by Apple, which decided a while back not support Flash at all on the iPhone and iPod. The controversy has heated up with the release of the iPad, which continues the Apple strategy of no Flash support at all. With both Apple and Microsoft coming out against Flash, Flash is essentially dead, and Adobe has lost this battle. Some years ago, Adobe elected to "win" by buying up competitors and killing off their products rather than competing on price. As a result, professional graphics designers and Web designers have fewer pro-level tools to choose from and much higher prices. Adobe is now beginning to pay the price for its monopoly-style attempt to control the marketplace.
Submitted by acohill on Thu, 04/29/2010 - 14:31
Excerpt from Speech by FCC Commissioner Mignon L. Clyburn
SEATOA’s 9th Annual Conference
Asheville, NC – April 27, 2010
"...The theme of this conference “Expanding Community Networks,” is exactly what the National Broadband Plan is about – to ensure that broadband is made available to all Americans, no matter where they live..."
"...In addition to recommendations about improving providers’ access to infrastructure for building broadband, the Plan also acknowledges that in some jurisdictions, no provider is constructing a broadband network. Thus, the Plan recommends that Congress clarify that State and local governments should not be restricted from building their own broadband networks. I firmly believe that we need to leverage every resource at our disposal to deploy broadband to all Americans. If local officials have decided that a publicly-owned broadband network is the best way to meet their citizens’ needs, then my view is to help make that happen...."
"...last month I heard Lafayette, Louisiana’s City-Parish President describe the development of economic opportunities in his city, that were a direct result of the fiber network built by the community. Right here in North Carolina, I understand that Wilson and Salisbury are trying to invest in fiber optic systems, that they hope will transform their local economies..."
"...When cities and local governments are prohibited from investing directly in their own broadband networks, citizens may be denied the opportunity to connect with their nation and improve their lives. As a result, local economies likely will suffer. But broadband is not simply about dollars and cents, it is about the educational, health, and social welfare of our communities. Preventing governments from investing in broadband, is counter –productive, and may impede the nation from accomplishing the Plan’s goal of providing broadband access to every American and every community anchor institution..."
Submitted by acohill on Thu, 04/29/2010 - 13:29
Apple is now worth more than Google. Last year, profits increased by 39% to almost $10 billion. That's a profit margin three times bigger than Hewlett-Packard. Over ten years, Apple profits have increased by more than 2,000%. Apple is bigger than Intel and Cisco.
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