Rebuttal: Why The Stimulus Speed Upgrades Are Right, Or Public Utility Meets Zeno’s Paradox.

Harold Feld over at WetMachine has proffered some observations as to proposals for a nationwide network upgrade. Angst wells within me noting some of the observations without an anchor. Herein is a light rebuttal –

“But a really good communications system is a matter of continuous non-stop upgrade. Even with fiber, you are not going to just pull glass and go away for 20 years with regular maintenance and easy to predict upgrades. It’s going to be dynamic.”

Harold, actually you could. Do you really think that Verizon installed all that fiber to just make things faster?? Far from it. The delivery of FIOS is as much a Union Busting tool as anything that management could think of. Look, copper plant is subject to moisture infiltation. To defeat that the lines in areas of moisture are pressurized with nitrogen at about 2psi above ambient. (That’s why you see cylinders along the roads in some areas.) It takes labor to maintain those lines. Now if you come along and lay down fiber the labor has been reduced by at least a factor of 4 over the life of the installation so your outside union labor drops accordingly. Fiber is also impervious to wet so you eliminate all the pressurization plant and contractors. Short of a backhoe or gopher mating with the cable that transport plant could last 20yrs easily. I direct your attention to page 19 of this report. Corning already provides a 25 year life on its plenum rated fiber.

You also do not need to do much with the fiber in regards to capacity. Most of the fiber laid today does not take advantage of spread spectrum or wave division multiplexing in the last mile. So the maxiumum capacity of the current installed base is not even tapped for the most part. What you are suggesting is not the outside plant but CO based interior facilities. To take advantage of WDM one needs WDM capable cards in the CO adjunct systems. Buildout would not even be the right term in my view.

“Worse — from the point of view of the network manager, better for society as a whole — that expanded capacity has real use. Build fatter pipes, and people build better and more productive applications for fatter pipes. Sure, you can get by with dial up or dinky FCC-style “broadband” for a lot of things even today. But is that really our measure of success?”

That is the field of dreams approach to network design. Review any technology advance of the last 30 years and you will note that the Application demand came first then the technology to handle it more efficeintly came afterwards. The classic of course is Visicalc spurring the demand for AppleII’s, Postscript pushing the demand for laser printers and bicycles pushing the need for paved roads in the bygone era of two centuries ago. The reason ‘why’ must be defined in the public eye before the supply of ‘what’ can be addressed. It is not sufficient that you just get all your mail faster. There are only two applications that would push the demand button — TVoIP and multihead video conferencing. Problem is the latter is confined to business use in the public’s mind right now. The former has the issue of being tied at the hip to entertainment. That is a poor poster child to hang a public policy on for what is such a massive expenditure. (”Senator, you propose to spend $350B so that everyone can see ‘Santa Barbara’ on TVoIP HD?” The answer would be a doozy!) Higher broadband is in need of a ‘killer ap’ and right now I don’t see one that you can hang your hat on.

“…It focuses primarily on rural build out (although I am hoping that other pots of urban agenda and health IT reform money can go toward getting our poor and unserved urban folks connected). It boosts speeds, but remains asymetric and, no surprise, most of us would like to see better than 3/1 for wireless or even 45 mbps for wireline.”

A wireline rural buildout is Seward’s Folly. Anything that is below a 100 households per buried mile has little chance of being either profitable or good use of tax dollars. Better that WiMax or LTE wireless be fostered for that purpose. Or alternately BoPL be pushed. As to unserved regardless of economic status, that albatross should be laid around the necks of the municipalities that believed a tooth fairy was going to delivery it all. I speak of failed deployments in Chicago, SanFran, Philly, Atlanta, etc. All municipal targeted ideas that lacked planning and support and too much pollyanna from mush headed bureaucrats that don’t know the difference between a bauln and a NIC card.

As to the speed angle there is nothing wrong with asymmetric. The typical end consumer is a heck of a lot more down than up. The typical 6:1 ratio is reasonable in practice. What needs to happen (hence I agree with you) is that the overall bandwidth has to rise.

In the Beltway speak what is happening with all the funding proposals is that it is not ‘Comprehensive’. Seems to be the vogue buzzword right? Well let me tie one on for you. Why would we spend billions for both a upgraded network and a upgraded road system at the same time? If one is rationale one would not. What one would do is use the network upgrade to justify a reduction in road building by reducing the demand side of the commute cycle. You encourge substitution –

• Companies are incented to upgrade their networks to support telecommuting. The employees are provided tax incentives to utilize telecommuting. Companies that can get 20% of the work force to telecommute also get additional tax relief.
• Funds that would have been used for road building are pared down to only the essentials and the funds transferred to network infrastructure.
• In the shift away from a physical transport model the demand for transport fuel drops even further. That assists in the energy independence department. (How does $20/bbl oil sound?)

What’s not to like?

Linky.