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 ...

UK Broadband Network By 2018 Require Public Sector Investment

In the UK there seems to be a consensus on the necessity of truly universal fibre broadband to all the homes in the UK by 2018, and that this needs at least to some agree of public funds. It has yet to be made clear by either of the political party leader how the requirement for investment from the public sector will be handled ...

"Fibre optic in rural areas would be a huge step towards reducing the current social and economic divide resulting from an often poor - and sometimes unavailable - broadband service. As both the public and private sector encourage us to do business on-line, it is clear that investment from both the public and private sector is the only way forward."

Source: Broadband Expert

The above was already addressed by Gordon Brown in a The Observer interview earlier this year suggesting infrastructure such as high-speed broadband could be the modern equivalent of FDR's programme: "When we talk about the roads and the bridges and the railways that were built in previous times - and those were anti-recession measures taken to help people through difficult times - you could [by comparison] talk about the digital infrastructure and that form of communications revolution at a period when we want to stimulate the economy. It's a very important thing."

Source: ISPReview

Broadband And Therefor Society Should Flourish Under Digital President

Assigning a US technology czar at cabinet-level - focusing on the improvement of governmental transparency by streamlining access to information and overseeing to ensure that broadband services are developed in a way that benefits all Americans;

Adopting a 'net neutral' approach - that would prohibit ISP's from discriminating against content coming through their networks; and

Promoting investment in telecommunications and broadband technologies;

All are obvious steps forward to spur broadband development in particular and society in general.

"Whether you agree or disagree with our new president’s policies, you will benefit from his expected approach to mining the Internet for all its worth. Not only will you enjoy greater access to its infinite benefits, you will share in the rewards that all of us will receive by having a nation with a broadband network that can reach every office, every school and even every farm."

Source: Star-Telegram.com

Disappointing That Broadband Won't Support Rich Media Communication

It as pityful that broadband is defined as an universal services to allow one to surf, to use VoIP and to gather information. Video and rich media communication are regarded optional. An appalling conservative vision of what broadband should provide in an era of new ways of communication and collaboration ...

"The question of how to define broadband has long been a challenging one for many proponents of universal broadband. When asked last summer at what speed Obama’s administration might define broadband, Blair Levin, an analyst with Stifel Nicolaus who is now a key member of Obama’s transition team focused on broadband, told Telephony, “Part of it depends on what feature sets happen in the future. I don’t think we’ll define universal service as that necessary to carry Cisco’s telepresence, for example. But we may get to a level of video; who knows. I think there’s a growing consensus that universal service, as it is today, ought to [allow one to] be capable of doing Web-surfing, VoIP, information gathering – those kinds of things. And we want that to be available in roughly 100% of the country. And we’d like to achieve penetration rates similar to what we’ve achieved in voice.”

Source: TelephonyOnline

Financing The Broadband Wave

Reform of the Universal Service Fund and new tax and loan incentives are apparantly the (obvious) ways to finance broadband-for-all in the US. If this is going to bridge the broadband gap ... I am not so sure.

"Both broadband and wireless are included in a paper circulating around town that appears to be the Obama-Biden economic recovery blueprint. The document states the next administration believes it “can get broadband to every community in America through a combination of reform of the Universal Service Fund, better use of the nation’s wireless spectrum, promotion of next-generation facilities, technologies and applications, and new tax and loan incentives."

Source: RCR Wireless

Federal Government Should Allocate Broadband Funds To States For Nationwide Broadband Service

Interesting proposal by Qwest to the US federal government to set up funds to states which can be bid for by broadband network operators to cover at least 95% of broadband service nationwide with at least 7 Mbps or faster ... Not so bad idea. What is the downside?

"Qwest Communications has joined the call from the telecom industry for broadband stimulus funds from the federal government, and it has suggested a round-about way of doing so-by having the federal government allocate funds to states, which would solicit bids from broadband network operators for further broadband expansion projects. Qwest, in a letter to President-elect Barack Obama's transition team, also suggested that the goal of the program should be to achieve 95 percent coverage of broadband service that is 7 Mbps or faster."

Source: FierceTelecom