I just came across a great interview on a blog called “Another Signpost on the Information Superhighway.” The blogger, identified as “bfpower,” in a post called “The Rural Broadband Crisis” prints a transcript of an interview with Frank Odasz of Lone Eagle consulting, someone identified as an expert in rural broadband. I strongly encourage you to read the whole interview, which showcases Odasz’s belief, shared by me, that efforts to improve internet infrastructure and usage are central to 21st century rural (and Iron Range) economic development.
Here are some highlights. First, Odasz talks about what he’s seen happening with the Internet in rural communities starting 10 years ago.
There are “early adapters” in rural communities that have figured this out on their own. They typically are shunned by their neighbors because technology is something that makes a lot of people uncomfortable, and innovation is the same way. … It makes people feel inadequate.
So there are these success stories that are not being recognized in every community, and the flip side of that is the governor’s office, the economic developers, the elected leaders, are from the older generation. They’re also uncomfortable, and most rural developers today (despite pushes for broadband that goes back over ten years), don’t address broadband as an economic development solution.
The dot-com bubble burst gave many an excuse to say that the Internet was a fad or novelty, Odasz said, but that was more related to bad business models by early e-pioneers, not a lack of potential for the technology. In truth, he says high speed internet availability has the ability to allow people to hold a wide variety of creative, interesting jobs from anywhere. This allows locals to stay and attracts people who enjoy the lifestyle of a more rural location.
Our greatest export is our youth. They leave because there is nothing here for them. We are not teaching entrepreneurship in school, which should allow the students to understand they can live anywhere they want to.
And Odasz says that the next step isn’t necessarily going to come with massive infrastructure projects
…most rural broadband initiatives have focused on the infrastructure. It makes sense, you’ve got to have it before you can use it. But if we look at most infrastructure projects in the past, most existing rural broadband, the take-up rate is so low as to dissolve the business case and incentives for the telcos to expand that access without government subsidies. Even if the government does subsidize it, if people don’t pay for the subscriptions, if the universal service fund goes away, so does the broadband.
So there needs to be a cultural shift at all levels, top down and bottom up, to embrace the application side for how this can contribute to rural sustainability and our way of life. And the rise in oil prices has pushed this dramatically in the short term.
What’s the big picture? Nothing short of world peace.
I think the big vision is that now we have the capability to create a global information society and economy where everyone participates. And once we have uniform connectivity, the issue is helping everyone become part of the global supply chain through education. If economic disparities remain, that’s the main cause for war – if everyone is invested in the global supply chain, that’s the biggest step we could make for peace.
I read this and see a good idea of what I’ve been talking about in my rural broadband posts and columns. I don’t care if it’s an all-public infrastructure or public/private, just so long as people understand that internet is a utility now and a necessary one for a modern economy.
I am a writer, college instructor, arts event coordinator, radio essayist and political organizer who has gotten people elected to multiple levels of government. And I can, and often do, almost all of the core work from my home on a lake in the woods around the Mesabi Iron Range in northern Minnesota. That leaves the rest of my time to enjoy my family and friends in a place where I am from and want to stay. I’m not saying to support a major internet initiative in this region, state and country so you can be like me; I’m saying that this will allow your kids to be what they want to be, which might (and, dear God, should) be entirely different.
Sincere thanks to bfpower for posting this.
Aaron,
While I fully support efforts to bring high-speed internet access everywhere, the more I think about it I’m not sure if an expensive project to bring cable/wired/fiber optic access is a good idea. I just wonder when the time where satellite internet will be the norm will come. One of my friends ordered his internet service from HughesNet and he swears it is faster that the cable broadband access he previously had. I’m far from an expert in this field and don’t know very much about satellite internet other than from this friend and from a few television commercials, but I wonder how wise it would be to invest tens of millions of dollars in a technology that may be ancient a year after the project is completed. I suppose there may be some reliability issues from satellite internet just like from satellite TV that businesses may not want to deal with, but that’s nothing more than speculation on my part.
The biggest drawback with satellite is something called latency. Satellite is great for downloading graphics-heavy web pages, audio, video, etc. because of the great bandwidth, but it’s not well suited for games or for handling voice traffic.
Think of satellite as a big fat water pipe that also happens to be incredibly long. It can deliver a lot of water (content) due to its width (bandwidth), but from the time you turn on the tap until the water comes out can be unusually long.
This delay is due to the enormous distance between the receiver and the satellite (geostationary orbits are a loooong way up there). Radio signals travel at the speed of light (well, a bit slower in the atmosphere), but even at that speed, the distance is so vast (about 22 thousand miles one-way) that the time for the signal to get there is noticeable.
The “long time” here is typically about 1/2 a second. If you’re downloading a video clip off of youtube, you’ll never notice the slight delay (especially when you account for the speed). If you’re doing anything interactive, it will drive you crazy (Imagine the worst cell phone call you’ve ever been on, where both parties kept talking over each other due to the delay, now double or quadruple that).
Fiber optic, well nice in many ways, seems to get people way to excited to think logically (witness the glut of “dark fiber” that went into the ground in the late ’90s, not to mention the Fibernet project, which thought that putting fiber into homes already served by DSL and cable was a good idea). It’s also not very cost effective to deploy in rural areas (Note: “rural” here means something like “Take county road 123 for ten miles, turn right at the second dirt road after the solid waste transfer station, take that for three miles until you see the house behind the big pine trees”. All too often in these conversations, “rural” seems to mean “more than half a mile from downtown Hibbing”).
Kind of strange that people who plow their own road, haul their own garbage to the dump, have a well for their own water, and have a septic system for their sewage, now need to have broadband access at the same level as if they lived in town. Not trying to rag on anyone, but it’s an interesting sign of how much the Internet has become a part of our lives.
Sorry for a long comment, but I thought you might find this interesting. From Mark Warner’s 2008 DNC Speech:
We delivered broadband to the most remote areas of our state, because if you can send a job to Bangalore, India, you sure as heck can send one to Danville, Va., and Flint, Mich., and Scranton, Pa., and Peoria, Ill. In a global economy, you should have to leave your home town to find a world-class job.
Let me tell you about a place called Lebanon – Lebanon, Virginia. Lebanon is in the coalfields of southwest Virginia, and everyone in that whole town could fit right here on the convention floor. Lebanon is like many small towns in America, it has seen the industries that sustained it downsized, outsourced, or shut down.
Now, some folks look at towns like Lebanon and say, “Tough luck. In the global economy, you’ve lost.” But we believed that we shouldn’t, and couldn’t, give up on our small towns and expect the rest of the state to prosper. And that’s what brought me, towards the end of my term, to the high school gym in Lebanon. To announce that we were going to bring over 300 high-tech jobs. Jobs that paid twice the county average.
One student told a reporter from The Washington Post that before this, he always thought he’d have to move away to get a good job and raise a family. I just heard from this young man, Michael Kisor. Today he is a junior at Virginia Tech. His older brother just moved back home to Lebanon because there was an information technology job open for him that was just too good to pass up.
That’s a story worth rewriting all across America.
He doesn’t say it explicitly, but he is talking about BVU – a community-owned broadband network. You know, one of those horrible mistakes Qwest tells us about…
Todd,
While I understand that the idea of satellite Internet seems to be the answer, the truth is that satellite does not allow for video uploads, voip (voice calling) or many of the other products that are important for home users and business users today and most certainly in the future. The reason is simple. The internet was designed to be similar to a highway system (only virtual), so that products and services could be delivered in two directions without interference. However, because the satellites orbit so far above earth the latency to send the data back to the satellite and down to the ground is significant. So instead of a four lane highway with traffic flowing both directions it is more like a two lane highway on one side and a dirt road on the other side. Unfortunately this is the same problem that DSL and Cable modems have as well. For downloading content the cable modem, satellite, and DSL connection are fine. However, as soon as you need the service for providing goods or services (like so many online companies are doing today) the speed is not there, especially when trying to send the data out. Because of the US infrastructure being monopolized by the phone and cable companies, it is hard to get them to put four lane virtual highways to each home and business unless there is a ROI model. The problem with that philosophy is it forces the online companies to do business in larger cities effectively assisting the smaller communities to not grow.
There is some good news. Fiber is only limited by the optics on each side of the fiber line. In fact fiber has already been built out by the phone companies and cable companies to deliver their products to the towns and cities across America. The real problem is what we call last mile delivery. And yes the simple answer is if we had not built highways in America (the reason for building the highways was for national defense) then we would not have had the economic strength as a country that we have today. So even though we can’t use the fear of national defense to build out fiber to each home and business in our country, I can tell you that China, Tiawan, South Korea and many other countries are building these virtual highways using fiber.
Why Fiber?
Fiber is strands of glass. How fast is the speed of light? Fiber optics uses light to travel over the glass fibers. The speeds are faster then we can imagine.
Verizon phone company is having a lot of success with FiOS their fiber product. Initially they were laughed at. Now people are begging for their service.
Anonymous nailed it.
I can’t even dignify the other wildly misleading post with replies.
Know this, Todd, if you are curious about how these networks work (Terrestrial or otherwise), I’d be happy to show you first hand. I encourage you, as I also encourage others, to get your information about how networks function from actually network technicians – be wary of those employed by public sector or other efforts to cram a particular initiative down your throat.
Quoting Zach:
I encourage you, as I also encourage others, to get your information about how networks function from actually network technicians
I’m not sure who Zach thinks builds these networks for communities that decide to build themselves rather than waiting for the private sector to get around to them, but it is network technicians. Are we to believe that the private sector has special access to the laws of physics that allow it to build networks that operate differently?
Heck, in some cases, the same people building these networks for munis or public power cos are also working for Verizon in other areas. Same technology. It is the owner and accountability that are different.
Certain entities like to “educate” readers and taxpayers by telling them that public glass is somehow superior to private glass. To me the only difference between muni fiber and private fiber is who’s paying to put it in the ground.
My post was directed to simply advise Todd that, if he’s still interested, he can meet with a private operation to see what’s already made available to him (assuming of course he doesn’t live next to Aaron). For me and my operation, offering personal tours is all I can really do to combat this relentless campaign that attempts to convince people and even my local government that my company either a) doesn’t have any fiber, or b) couldn’t care less about my customers’ requests.
Aaron knows me well enough to expect a swift response to anything remotely suggesting the above.
What a great discussion. I wish it were this high level at public meetings.
Here’s the thing. Anonymous did have it right that the Internet is a big part of our lives. I live in the sticks and I must admit that, because I work in fields that require fast internet, this is personal for me. But I know that a fiberoptic line to my house is going to be low on the priority list. What is more important to me is the cultural and economic possibilities of the internet in our economic development. I can do all sorts of cool, 21st century stuff from my house on the Iron Range. (I could do even cooler stuff if I wasn’t limited to satellite internet). THIS IS OUR FUTURE. We can’t keep the blue collar mining, logging, manufacturing thing going forever. The real advantage of this area is the appeal of natural beauty outside our towns and affordable housing and good schools in our towns. We can do so much if our people had a better understanding of the unbridled potential of high speed internet.
And at this point, though I’d love to have a public internet delivery system (as I would love to have a public universal health care system), I recognize the fact that our system as it stands is private. FiberNet’s demise was sad for me, sadder for others, but it shows us the lay of the land. I know Zach can deliver high quality internet service to anyone in his realm and that, once demand rises, he (or, gulp, Qwest) can expand the reach. What I’m really saying in my persistent raising of this issue on my blog is that this technology and its future incarnation is crucial to the economic survival of our region (and any region like it).
Our leaders aren’t even talking about it. That’s a big problem for me.
Wow, it’s great to know that a conversation at a little cafe in Dillon can spark this kind of profitable discussion. Thanks for posting this.
I did write an article based on the interview as well. It can be found at http://www.dailyyonder.com/wanted-broadband-and-broader-minds
Thanks, bfpower! It really was a great interview in looking at the nontechnical aspects of the issue. Obviously, the technical barriers are great, but the discussion is vital.