FIBER OPTICS originally uploaded by Kendra
According to the MN Sun (and others that I’m too lazy to search around for because no one will read the links anyway), a taskforce convened in 2008 has decided on the minimum broadband requirements that need to be met by 2015 so that workers can “have a face-to-face conversation with your boss by 2015 – from home.”
Believe me, I want faster Internet and I find the speeds that exist in the United States to be well below what they should be for what we pay. That said, I realize many of the issues that surround both sides of the argument including that the United States is much larger in land mass than many other developed nations that have inexpensive broadband and that this is part of the high costs we pay. I also know that taxpayers paid BILLIONS to have fiber run that remains dark at this point because the telcos don’t want to pay to install it to your door even though it may run as little as 50 feet from your home–like it does in my case. Then there are the citywide fiber networks, like the one that exists in Burnsville, that remain dormant except as a plaything for the IT departments of the city and the school district only with only minimal talks about expanding it to the local business community.
So, presumably knowing all of these issues themselves, this taskforce came up with the ridiculously low requirements of:
ability to download at speeds that reach 10-20 megabits per second (mpbs) and upload speeds that reach 5-10 mbps.
Apparently on 17% of residents had the ability to match those standards (I want to know where these areas are because I have never heard of anyone in the area that had consistent upload speeds of 5 to 10 mbps unless they are business class) and they feel that this cut off will be viable enough in 5 years to move Minnesota from the middle of the pack speed-wise to the “top 5″ nationally. I disagree–completely. And even with this nonsensical “mandate” in place, the government says there’s no money for it unless the private sector pitches in–something which just isn’t going to happen. Remember folks, these providers are making money hand-over-fucking-fist already because of their virtual monopolies and thus they have no incentive to do anything at all.
My favorite part of the article comes with this quote:
Stakeholders in Dakota County have developed a marketing campaign to make sure the county is making progress toward the goal.
They plan to use a video they’ve created through 11 cities and put them on local cable channels and the Internet. In an age where city websites are outdated as fuck (Apple Valley your website is worse than Thisweek’s–get with the fucking program) and people are dropping cable TV service for satellite, Hulu, or just plain old digital OTA TV, do they really think that the message is going to get out? I don’t.
When it’s all said and done this is more bullshit that will mean absolutely nothing in the long run. The providers aren’t going to do jack shit unless they are mandated to do so and when they are they’ll bitch, whine, and get their way with the feds who will tell the State to back the fuck off. If they do end up conceding and offering the service it will be cost prohibitive (as it is now), it’ll come with insane bandwidth caps and/or stupid terms of service and it certainly won’t put us in the top 5 of anything being that the rest of the country will continue to see speed increases (i.e. FiOS and the like).
What do you think about this taskforce’s recommendations? Do you think that the speeds listed will be adequate to push Minnesota into the top 5 nationwide after 5 years? Do you believe that the telcos will listen or will they pull a Progressive Rail and just ignore what they’ve been told until something is done federally? Do you currently use video conferencing (GMail’s video chat is fucking sweet BTW) and if so do you honestly believe that your workplace will be doing full time work-from-home in 5 years? Whatever you have to say about this topic go ahead and comment on as I’d love to hear what you have to say!
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November 25th, 2009 at 10:32 am
Taskforce Wants Fast Broadband: Will it Happen? http://tinyurl.com/ycfrfd9
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
November 25th, 2009 at 10:35 am
I dont think the situation is perfect, but I think if you step back slightly you would have to admit that the pace of change in internet access has been pretty amazing.
The speed of my internet at home today (1.5mbps from Qwest), and the things it allows me to do from home, from downloading music to playing video games to watching TV are incredible.
There is still a great deal of competition in the broadband and cable markets, as you pointed out yourself, in the form of online alternatives to cable, wireless, and satellite.
As an example, when the installation guy from Qwest came out to hook up my internet, I asked when I could get something faster than 1.5mbps. He did not know, but he said in 2009 Qwest installed something like 200 fiber optic nodes in the twin cities. The plan is to install 2000+ in 2010. I may have the numbers wrong, but it was something along those lines. And I did get a flyer in the mail just the other day saying that 7.0 mbps is now available to me.
While the cable companies and telcos might not want to change, the pace of change has been such that if they dont, they will find themselves sitting with AOL wondering what happened.
November 25th, 2009 at 10:40 am
Chad,
To be perfectly honest with you, 1.5 mbps is a complete and utter fucking joke. I had that kind of broadband in 1997 and considered it a wonder at the time–12 years later I would laugh if I was told that was all I could get. For comparison when I moved to Apple Valley (5 years ago) I had 4mbs service which was only upgraded when I went to business class cable from Charter (7mbs).
Qwest offers speeds up to 20mbps in many MSP areas (apparently 7 is all you can get) and while 20mbps download speeds aren’t really necessary for most people, 5+ mbps uploads should be.
November 25th, 2009 at 10:48 am
I would step on a nun’s throat for actual high speed internet. The prices cable companies demand is insane – especially when compared with other countries. It’s been a decade since cable internet first appeared and there have been no price decreases or speed increases. The problem is that cable companies are shitting their pants about how much video people will stream or download and how that will lead to people dropping cable TV service. If that’s their worry, how about a price decrease that allows people to have both instead of choosing one or the other.
November 25th, 2009 at 10:52 am
Is your Internet connection fast enough? Is 20/5 in 2015 fast enough? http://tinyurl.com/ycfrfd9
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
November 25th, 2009 at 10:56 am
Qwest is a joke of a phone company and their DSL options have always been overpriced and sub-par. They’d do well to take a lesson from Verizon Fios and actually field a competitive product with the cable companies.
November 25th, 2009 at 12:32 pm
I think your memory is selective or faulty. 1.5mbps in 1997 would have been VERY costly. The vast majority of users in 1997 were still hooked up via a modem and phone line, most still at 33.6k or slower. Added to that most of the dial up users were paying as much or more than we pay for broadband access now.
As for Qwest, I dont have phone service with them, but the internet service is about 1 million times better than what I had with Comcast.
November 25th, 2009 at 12:42 pm
Chad,
You’re right. It was 1998. The first summer I came home from college. We were the first family to sign up. I believe it was about double the cost of dialup at the time (I had a static IP for dialup and I think we were paying $20.95/month and this was probably in the $45 range).
The service or the speeds? Comcast is wicked fast in our area and absolutely trounces Qwest. I had ATTBI and then Comcast when I lived in Burnsville and even in 2002 it was 2/256k.
November 25th, 2009 at 12:48 pm
Oh and I worked for @Home and then ATTBI when I still lived in OH and @Home was offering speeds in the 10/1 range at the time (unsustainable). When ATTBI came online later in 2002, the speeds were originally reduced to 1.5/128 and slowly slid up to 2/256 by the time I was in Burnsville in November of 2002.
November 25th, 2009 at 1:34 pm
Here is an interesting article from 2001. The landscape of broadband internet access, including prices and speeds have changed.
If you feel like these companies are stealing your money and racking up huge profits at your expense, you can always buy stock in them. Perhaps you can start with Charter? They have done incredibly well. This internet business, its just a license to print money really.
November 25th, 2009 at 1:34 pm
Well that was pointless.
Sorry, here is the link:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/48945/verizon_joins_broadband_price_hike_parade.html
Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
November 25th, 2009 at 6:57 pm
Chad are you joking??? “If you feel like these companies are stealing your money and racking up huge profits at your expense, you can always buy stock in them. Perhaps you can start with Charter? They have done incredibly well. ”
Charter Communications (CHTRQ) has been delisted and trades over the counter for .0181 per share as of 11/25/09. Their 52 Week range is .24 to .011 so just because a company may be charging an outrageous fee for their services does not mean that they are a good stock buy as you would be in the poor house if you bought Charter Stock. I suspect a larger player will be gobbling up Charter in the near future for nothing and taking on their customers.
November 25th, 2009 at 8:45 pm
broadband will change a lot in the next 3 years – with the deployment of 802.16 and WI-Max. Fiber to the curb is getting cheaper but it still will be expansive relative to wireless. I installed a 802.16 network in a large campus setting – sustained speed of 29 /18 mb for a tower servicing 40 nodes.
November 25th, 2009 at 8:48 pm
Wireless is insanely expensive and the bandwidth has been lame so far. How much is said service going to cost?
November 25th, 2009 at 9:37 pm
The wimax pricing I’ve seen is still pretty expensive relative to speed – around 60 a month for 6 meg service. That’s on clearwire, the major wimax provider that sprint is an investor in along with a bunch of other telcos and cable companies (sprint is calling it their “4G network “, but they’re charging 70 a month and bundling it with their much slower 3G service).
It’s still got a ways to go and no sign of it coming to this market any time soon.
November 26th, 2009 at 11:38 pm
Being a one time member of the Burnsville Visioning Economic Development Committee, our number one recommendation was to create a city wide wifi system, following the Chaska or Minneapolis model, at a cost of between $16 to $20 per month. The Wifi system would consist of a fiber optics back haul with a WiMax front end resulting in speeds of 54 megabits per second. This would be a local government system with NO commercial involvement what so ever. This committee was made up of BOTH city residents AND Burnsville businesses. The recommendation was SHORT CIRCUITED by Mayor Kautz’s awarding Frontier Communications with a NO BID contract to provide Burnsville with wireless internet service at a speed of 1.5 megabits per second at monthly cost of $50. If you check Kautz’s reelection campaign donations,you will see that she received a total of $1200 from Frontier’s CEO and her husband.
November 27th, 2009 at 7:14 pm
Chad, not sure if you were serious or not. Based on this article from about 2 weeks ago, their shareholders are getting the big schwantz as they come out of bankruptcy. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=awSbfq2OIQz8
And one point for the task force. Be careful how you measure success. Bandwidth to the home is only one piece of the puzzle (the easy to explain piece). All providers are based on an oversubscription model. QoS technologies can used to manipulate the link. Your definition of success may depend on personal traffic patterns (protocols, sources & destinations). I highly encourage government to get the fuck out of the issue.
November 30th, 2009 at 9:57 am
I was not serious. My point was that the sentiment seems to be that these companies are raking in huge profits at the expense of subscribers, which appears to be somewhat untrue based on the financial performance of Charter, Frontier, Comcast, etc.
April 23rd, 2010 at 10:49 am
[...] do you think about the possibility of fiber in Eagan and how it matches up with the broadband taskforce’s recommendation on bringing it to Dakota County? Do you like the price points? Do you think that [...]