Darien-WiFi (AnywhereTechnology): May 2005 Archives

Owning a small broadband ISP has produced its own series of experiences I never imagined having - and thoughts I never imagined coming from my own person. (For example, I never thought the day would come when I would say 3 Mbit/s is good enough because the cost of increasing said bandwidth is prohibitively expensive.) Reading Verizon hits the gas on fiber campaign (from CNet) started me thinking again about how technology will affect where people live just as the industrial revolution did. I have my doubts it will be as severe as what we have learned about the effects of industrialization - e.g. people moving to the city to specialize in careers instead of being general handymen with no real talent - but many of the choices and opportunities people in my generation have relates to the technology to which they have relatively cheap access. With Verizon's move to bring fiber (enabling a blinding amount of media and data to be efficiently transported to a home or business) to small areas of large communities, it makes me wonder how I can work to bring that type of advanced technology to the neighborhoods I serve. From a business and practical standpoint, delivering the kind of reliability fiber offers without the fiber is a daunting task. Already with our 900MHz and 5.7GHz services, it is difficult to tell what type of RF interference the day is going to bring. Licensed technologies are almost as daunting as trying to use wired technologies. Both require working with bureaucrats and getting licensing to do something that I am doing for more altruistic reasons than the money. Sure, there is some money in providing these types of technologies to people, but nobody wants to pay the real price and you are required - as an operator - to give your business customers the harder end of the bargain. I have a hard time with this type of marketing. I am often inclined at changing midstream and simply marketing to businesses again. I say to myself, however, that the children of our community deserve better. The opportunities that technology brings is staggering if nurtured and used in the correct manner - i.e. learning about your surrounding world instead of looking up porn or playing the latest mindless video game. (Didn't you hear that IM'ing makes you 10 IQ points dumber? [hint sarcasm])
What it boils down to is this: the cost of true broadband services (i.e. DS3) is still prohibitively expensive. I as a second/third tier ISP would love to have that type of connectivity to relay it to our customers (of which, there are very few who actually use much bandwidth). The aggregate cost of supplying ISP's like myself bandwidth is lower than one could imagine due to the fact that so much remains as available excess. Verizon wouldn't be forced to spend billions on ripping up streets. They could spend tens of thousands to provide access to customers like myself who can in turn bring the broadband dream to others.
Hopefully the continued advances in technology will make this possible. If not, we may see another type of industrialization to population movement just because of the internet.