Spectrum of Greed

This is the REAL Economic Stimulus, right here baby!

If you haven’t been there yet, you need to stop by a website called Internet for Everyone.  My post headline is their theme.  This site was launched by several people, including an FCC member (Jonathan Adelstein).  Larry Lessig, shown in the YouTube video in my previous post, along with Vint Cerf of  Google mythology are supporters of this organization.

Why should you go there, you ask?  Let me count the ways…   we have less than 15% of our entire country using wireless internet, our current government thinks 200k is broadband, we have slipped past #16 in connected countries, most major parts of our country are lucky if they have 3 choices of internet providers, when you do get mobile internet it is going to be an add on to your phone rather than a service you can buy separately, you don’t have any choice of what phone you want to use with which carrier, (pause for breath). (continue reading…)

Managing Dark Fiber - an economic stimulus opportunity.

Does anyone remember the term ‘Dark Fiber‘?  No, it isn’t an action movie starring Christian Slater and Heath Ledger.  It was a term coined in the telecom industry describing the results of unchecked capitalism during the initial heady gold rush to the internet in 1999 & 2000.  Several telecom vendors went out and each built what they considered to be the one best fiber network in the country, connecting cities all over the country and providing the potential for exponentially more bandwidth for the rapidly expanding internet economy.  But when the bubble burst in 2000, in the vernacular of the industry, many of those fiber lines didn’t get ‘lit up’, because with several vendors all connecting the same places, they overbuilt.  To make it worse, because technology’s nature is to get better, faster and cheaper over time, before all the fiber was even buried, technology had been created to make each strand of fiber 100 times as productive as it had been just a few short years earlier.  The result?  Dark Fiber, or fiber that was never lit, because it was never needed.  Much of this unused capacity still exists today and is resold and marketed to private industry and telecoms, but vastly under utilized. (continue reading…)

Now we should see some changes!

His name is Michael Copps (not pictured - I am a Mel Brooks fan so picked a different sheriff).  And is he needed!  The last staff survey of FCC personnel that measured the ‘honesty and integrity’ of FCC leadership came back with a 38% approval rating.  For those that are numbers challenged, this indicates that 62% of FCC employees think we have unethical scum bags running the joint.  In an ars blog appropriately titled, ‘DeMartinizing the FCC‘, Matthew Lasar details several very telling statements that make me want to stand and shout, “Hallelujah!”  Of course, people would give me very funny looks if I actually did that.  I liked his blog article photoshop - check it out.  Thanks.  (continue reading…)

Just a few short months ago, a group of misty eyed cellular phone trail blazers and their adoring hangers-on gathered in Chicago to celebrate the start of an institution that is at least ten years beyond its expiration date.  In the good old days before the portable phone,  the concept of a technology called the internet was barely on the horizon.  Cellular was born of the traditional land line phone and the radio hand set. People needed to communicate while they were on the move, and cellular was a giant step in the right direction. (continue reading…)