Archive for September, 2009
The price of universal broadband
September 30th, 2009 | 
Author: Bringing universal broadband to all Americans is not going to be cheap.
The Federal Communications Commission said Tuesday it could cost more than $350 billion to wire America with high speed Internet access.
The FCC has been given the responsibility of coming up with a national broadband policy to ensure every American has access to broadband. And on Tuesday a task force at the FCC led by Blair Levin, former chief of staff to chairman Reed Hundt, issued its initial report on forming this plan. The final report is due to Congress in February.
The FCC task force has been hosting workshops and hearings. And it will continue to do so over the next few months. But what it has concluded at this early stage is that bringing true broadband to all Americans is going to cost a lot.
While it would only take about $20 billion to blanket the country with broadband service with speeds between 768 kbps to 3 Mbps service, the FCC has questioned whether those speeds will be enough. Instead, it is recommending more aggressive network build-outs that would increase the speed of these networks to about 100 Mbps or faster. This will likely push the price tag of the entire network expansion to more than $350 billion. And if all consumers are given a choice of broadband provider, these cost estimates would be even higher.
There are a lot of factors that make building universal broadband expensive. It’s much more expensive to build infrastructure in rural areas. Not only are capital expenditures more expensive in rural areas, but the operating expenses are higher, driven by transport and transit. Universal Service Fund recipients have made progress bringing broadband to rural America, but the fund faces systemic and structural problems.
So who is going to pay for this expensive infrastructure? The government will pay for some of it. Congress has already allocated $7 billion as part of the economic stimulus package. And more tax payer money is likely to be used in the future. Exactly, how much is uncertain.
But the bulk of the money used to build these networks will likely come from private industry, Levin said at the meeting held Tuesday in Washington, the Wall Street Journal reported.
“Most of that ecosystem is funded by the private sector,” Levin said. “We expect that to continue. Where can the government play a role in ensuring and improving the role of that ecosystem?”
The FCC believes these faster networks are necessary because broadband users are expected to use more bandwidth intensive applications in the future than they use today. For example, the average consumer today uses the Internet for Web browsing, email and instant messaging, and entertainment, but in the future they will be streaming video, video teleconferencing and electronic medical monitoring. These services and applications will require significantly more bandwidth.
If the FCC establishes regulation and policy to encourage these faster speed connections, the agency will have to figure out how to measure the quality of these connections. Today no such quality assurance is in place. And the FCC said in its report that actual broadband speeds lag advertised speeds by at least 50 percent, which means people are often paying for speeds that they do not get.
Another issue that must be dealt with is how the FCC will encourage more competition to give consumers choice, especially when it comes to these higher speed services. At least half of Americans today only have access to one provider that can offer Internet speeds for video streaming and two way video conferencing.
While wired broadband is critical, the FCC also noted in its report that wireless broadband access is also becoming increasingly important. By 2011, smartphones, which are more like mini-computers than phones, will overtake sales of traditional cell phones. Smartphone users generally use a lot more wireless data services, which means that carriers will have to keep beefing up their networks to provide more capacity.
While some of the biggest carriers, such as Verizon Wireless and Sprint Nextel are already building the next generation of wireless networks, which increase speeds and network capacity, the FCC noted that there is still a need to make more wireless spectrum available.
The CTIA, the trade association for the wireless industry, sent a letter to the FCC this week saying the government needs to identify more airwaves that can be used for commercial use.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-30686_3-10364590-266.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20
Posted in broadband, Communication, Internet | 
Tags: broadband, FCC, national broadband policy | 
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5 apps get you tweeting from the desktop
What’s better than posting tweets from Twitter.com? Just about everything.
Third-party Twitter apps are typically more powerful, crammed with managerial features that get you quickly viewing, sorting, replying to messages, and retweeting in a click or tap. They automatically shorten URLs to fit Twitter’s character limit, and help you post pictures through other services, like TwitPic and yfrog. Most of these desktop apps manage multiple Twitter accounts, are customizable, and are more attractive than Twitter online. They also tend to succeed in posting your tweets during times when Twitter’s site famously fails.
Convinced yet? Good. We’ve rounded up five desktop applications that help you post tweets and retweets to Twitter. Four run on the Adobe AIR runtime environment (Windows | Mac | Linux), which you need to download before you install the Twitter apps. But enough of the technical details–get tweeting!
http://download.cnet.com/8301-2007_4-10363810-12.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20
Posted in Communication, Internet, social networking, Twitter |
Tags: apps, Communication, Internet, social networking, Twitter |
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Strong earthquake jolts Indonesia
JAKARTA, Indonesia (CNN) — An earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 7.9 struck in Indonesia on Wednesday, the U.S Geological Survey said.
The quake was recorded about 33 miles (53 km) from Padang, the capital city of West Sumatra, Indonesia
http://cnnwire.blogs.cnn.com/2009/09/30/strong-earthquake-jolts-indonesia/
Posted in diaster, earthquake, News, World News |
Tags: earthquake, Indonesia, Jakarta |
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Wireless recharging comes to laptops
The Latitude Z on wireless charging station, and wireless dock adapter on the right.
(Credit: Erica Ogg/CNET)
That Dell is releasing a new laptop for business customers is the opposite of surprising. But the fact that it contains notable features not seen in any other laptops certainly is.
Most everything about the new Latitude Z is expected: It’s yet another very thin notebook (a metric which PC manufacturers keep using to try to one-up each other), with a different kind of exterior finish (soft-touch, in this case), and comes in a black cherry. It measures 16 inches across, and is 14 millimeters thin at its most narrow point.
But you probably wouldn’t guess that the Latitude Z charges wirelessly. And as far as we can tell, it’s the first laptop to do so. Surprised that this is coming from Dell? You’re not alone.
The wireless charging is handled elegantly enough. An inductive pad that’s built into a laptop stand can accomplish a full recharge in “about the same amount of time” as a standard-issue cabled charger, according to Dell. While smartphone maker Palm has a similar (albeit smaller) wireless charging system for the Pre, and companies like Visteon and Wild Charge have debuted wireless charging accessories for phones, no PC maker has incorporated the idea until now.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-31021_3-10362968-260.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20
Posted in laptop, Tech, wireless |
Tags: laptops, Visteon, Wild Charge, Wireless recharging |
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MIT spin-off stores sun’s energy to power the world
CAMBRIDGE, Mass.–MIT professor Daniel Nocera is a “huge centralized energy person” but when he looks at the world’s energy challenges, he thinks the key is to make energy generation cheap and distributed.
MIT last year announced that a technology developed by Nocera’s lab— a catalyst that can split water–could be used store solar energy. Earlier this year, Nocera formed a company called Sun Catalytix, backed by venture capital firm Polaris Ventures, to commercialize that discovery.
Engineers are now working on a prototype design for the system, Nocera said at the EmTech conference on emerging technology last Thursday. He added that the company has also hired Art Goldstein, the retired CEO of water desalination company Ionics which was purchased by General Electric, to be chairman.
Full story :
http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-10362614-54.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20
Posted in evironment, Green, Tech |
Tags: Green, MIT, power, solar power, Sun's Energy |
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