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"With fiber optics you are ready for the next decade." An unique message ... from an incumbent. Kudos, KPN!

Huge US Stimulus Bill - Small Broadband Funds

February 15, 2009, 10:13 AM — IDG News Service — The U.S. House of Representatives and Senate have both passed the final version of a huge economic stimulus package, including billions of dollars for broadband deployment and electronic health records.

The House Friday afternoon voted 246-183 to approve a compromise version of the estimated US$787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. All 176 House Republicans present voted against the bill.

The bill includes $7.2 billion to help deploy broadband in rural and other unserved areas, $17 billion for incentives for health care providers to adopt electronic health records, and $11 billion to update the nation's electricity grid by hooking it up to the Internet.

Source: ITworld

Build National Broadband Networks On Community Networks As Extension Of University-campus Architecture

Exellent 'nascent' idea of Lev Gonick.

Lev Gonick is CIO of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio and Chair Emeritus of OneCommunity, a regional community network connecting 22 counties, 1500 facilities, including more than 1000 schools, cities, counties, health care systems, universities, libraries, museums and public broadcasting authorities.

"I have proposed that we model America’s broadband future on the standards and expectations currently managed and operated at many of our Universities and Colleges across the country. [...] America’s pursuit of a world leading broadband network policy framework should be an extension of the huge and robust gigabit networks developed at our world-leading universities and colleges. [...] I do not mean just a blueprint. I mean a real physical extension of the university-campus network backbone. Connecting public sector institutions into a converged and layered network focused on local community contexts and priorities enables collaboration and shared services with health care, libraries, governments, museums, p-12 education, and public broadcasting to mention just a few. In the first instance, and certainly from an technical architecture perspective, *community networks*, as we might call this model, are a more evolved and intelligent design than the way most of our public sector and commercial/consumer networks are designed. Community networks are designed as tightly bounded geographic hub and spoke (or star) configurations around local points of presence."

Source: From Digital Community to Connected Community to Digital Nation by Lev Gonick

South Korea Spends 24.6bn USD On Improving Broadband Infrastructure

South Korea to invest in fixed line broadband infrastructure; targets 1Gbps speeds by 2012

"The South Korean regulator, the Korea Communications Commission (KCC), has revealed plans to spend approximately KRW34 trillion (USD24.6 billion) on improving the nation’s broadband infrastructure. The KCC is aiming to increase speeds for fixed line broadband services to 1Gbps by 2012, with wireless services expected to offer speeds of 10Mbps by the same date. The highest level speeds are only expected to be available in the country’s larger cities however, with fixed line subscribers in smaller towns expected to have internet access at speeds between 50Mbps and 100Mbps by 2012. The KCC expects that around 12,000 new jobs will be created as a result of the project."

Source: TeleGeography

Public Sector Led Community Broadband Networks Are Taking Up Quickly In UK

LOCAL INITIATIVES ON NEXT GENERATION ACCESS IN THE UK

Published January 20th 2009

In September 2008, the Communications Consumer Panel – previously known as the Ofcom Consumer Panel - issued a position paper entitled *"What is the value of next generation broadband?"* In that paper, they stated: "Any large-scale investment programme by the private sector at this stage will be predicated on a roll-out to significantly less than 100% of UK homes. They believe that the question of how to deliver next generation broadband to homes likely to be outside such private sector investment plans cannot be left until some indeterminate point in the future; instead we must debate the issues now - and so avoid the possibility of creating a second physical digital-divide. CCP wants to encourage exploration of public sector and other non-private interventions even at this very early stage, alongside commercial developments."

In this note, the Consumer Panel has collated information on the range of local initiatives now taking place in the provision of next generation access (NGA) networks in order to indicate to interested parties just how many such schemes – almost 40 - there are and how they can contribute to the national debate on the roll-out of NGA.

Source: Communications Consumer Panel UK

Broadband In Every UK Home In 2012 - Spur Community Broadband Networks

The Digital Britain interim report from minister for communications, technology and broadcasting Lord Carter, published today, calls for every home in the country to be broadband-enabled by 2012.

"The Government will help implement the Community Broadband Network's proposals for an umbrella body to bring together all the local and community networks and provide them with technical and advisory support." Now, that is truly splendid news! European fibre deployments have frequently been community-led, and setting up a unified way to do that here is definitely a piece of the puzzle.

Source: zdnet.co.uk; Interim Digital Britain Report: First Impressions

How A Next Gen Broadband Connection Is Installed In Japan?

"On some mornings when combustible garbage is to be thrown out, you will often see crows waiting on these lines to dig in."

How to install an optic fiber connection for a 100Mbps Hikari line from NTT?

Costs a 1,022 yen (11.53 USD) per month for the first year. Going up to 6,720 yen (75.75 USD) for the second year.

Well, have a look at the colourful, funny narrative by Danny Choo, describing the installation, with lively pics, and be wowed and amazed by the Japanese way of cabling.

About Danny
Born in London England. Lived there until 1999 before relocating to Japan. Danny spent some time as a shoe designer working for his father before deciding to take a completely different path and follow his passion for Japanese culture.

He started to study Japanese and after graduating from SOAS in London, he joined Japan Airlines as a Computer Engineer before being relocated to Japan by Nature to work in web marketing - has been working in the Internet ever since.

In his career, Danny served as Website Manager on the management team at Amazon Japan (Tokyo and Seattle) and as CGM (Consumer Generated Media) Product Manager at Microsoft for Live.com before incorporating his own Internet solutions company Mirai Inc.

Apart from being the full time president of Mirai Inc, Danny is also a full time otaku who enjoys writing about and sharing many aspects of Japanese culture.

Danny runs a Japan portal at dannychoo.com which focuses on Japanese figurines, subculture and daily life in Tokyo. The site is visited by 2 million unique visitors per month who generate 20 million page views.

Danny's spoken languages are English, Japanese, Mandarin, Cantonese, Korean and his written languages are PHP, MYSQL, JavaScript and CSS.

Public Sector Led Open Access Broadband Initiative Boosts Economy and Social Inclusion

"NYnet hopes to overcome the challenge posed by rural and coastal areas in the area of broadband and connectivity. The project represents Europe's largest public-sector led, open access, broadband infrastructure initiative. Now a Wetherby telecommunications company has been selected as a partner in a major initiative to deliver super-fast broadband services to businesses in North Yorkshire. This will offer a major boost to regional SMEs."

"The collaboration of public sector and private enterprise in this venture creates a major opportunity to meet the challenge of ensuring a socially inclusive approach to all North Yorkshire citizens as both businesses and public sector move towards more digital services. By partnering with carefully selected commercial organisations, the NYnet core network will offer public sector bodies in North Yorkshire an early opportunity to deliver sophisticated broadband solutions both to employees and citizens."

Source: EU Research

Broadband Carbon Awards - Smart Energy Policies

Source: jcwinnie

"However another approach to help reduce carbon emission is to “reward” those who reduce their carbon footprint. It is estimated that consumers control or influence over 60% of all CO2 emissions. As such, one possible reward system of trading “bits and bandwidth for carbon” is to provide homeowners with free fiber to the home or free wireless products and other electronic services such as ebooks and eMovies if they agree to pay a premium on their energy consumption which will encourage them to reduce emissions by turning down the thermostat or using public transportation. Not only does the consumer benefit, but this business model also provides new revenue opportunities for network operators, optical equipment manufacturers, and eCommerce application providers."

Source: Green IT/Broadband and Cyber-Infrastructure

Source: The New York Times

High Speed Broadband Service By New Cable Modem Technology Will Do The Trick - Really?

Does the vision of a nationwide high speed broadband infrastructure, enabling broadband for all, justify large public sector investments?

For example, the Communications Workers of America (An Economic Recovery Plan For American Families) and the Telecommunications Industry Association called for $25 billion in subsidies to network providers as well as tax breaks (TIA Recommends Specific Broadband Incentives for Economic Stimulus Plan). The Free Press, a group that advocates for media diversity, recommended spending $44 billion (Down Payment On Our Digital Future), with an emphasis on subsidizing companies to compete with existing cable and phone companies.

Some people think it is a waste of money. Those same people, read: gorillas and gorilla lovers, claim that new cable modem technology will provide internet service to 19 of the 20 homes in the near future, faster than any service around the world. Source: The New York Times

Oh, really? Do I hear 19th century British canal boat owners (or narrowboats) rethoric echoing in my ear, opposing the devilish trains and railways and favouring just more boats in the narrow canals to enable more and faster cargo transport spurring the local economy ... No, no. Listen, just more and stronger horses. That will do the trick ...