Yesterday I came across a passage on the Cook Report discussion list that I thought was both inspiring and very powerful. It addressed the bandwidth abundance that has now become commonplace in a growing, but still too few, number of communities around the nation and the world. It was posted by Michael Bookey, who earlier than most was instrumental in deploying a FTTH network in his home town, which is chronicled, among other matters, in his recently-published book on the subject of community networking:
America at the Internet Crossroads: Choosing the road to innovation, wealth, and a supercharged economy:
america-at-the-internet-crossroads.com
George Gilder, oddly enough, commended Mike for the work he did early on, citing his achievements in the article below titled "Issaquah Miracle." I say "oddly enough" due to George's apparent reversal over the merits of municipal networking, and how he now favors those who built the copper cages he so eloquently chided not even a decade ago. You can see what he had to say about Mike's work back in the day, here:
"ISSAQUAH MIRACLE"
tcet.unt.edu
Getting back on topic, responding to another poster's assertions yesterday concerning the value, as opposed to the lack thereof, of wireless WiFi services that might work at rates of only 250 kbps "real" throughput. In contrasting the latter with the gigabit speeds achievable over FTTH facilities, Mike asked the following series of questions in his return:
"... what parent would not be willing to pay a couple of dollars a month to give their child gigabit access to the local schools intranet education services 24 hours a day/ 7 days a week? What driver would not like to see live full motion video showing traffic at major intersections close to their home? What voter would not like to access on demand video showing city council meetings about subjects that concern them? What patient would not like to have access to their local hospital's video library with information about their illness and treatment procedures? What builder would not like to have access to video information showing procedures that conform to the latest building codes? What citizen would not like to get access to competitive ISP, VoIP, and IPTV providers over the same public fiber network they receive community services. All this for less money than they spend today for scarce Internet bandwidth from telecos and cablecos."
Following this read I began to wonder about similar scenarios that would benefit from an abundant supply of bandwidth in my own community, as I'm sure many threadsters here might find themselves doing, as well. Which occupations or pastimes could notbenefit from an abundance of bandwidth in the community?
Of course, none of the above is intended to take away from the importance and benefits that wireless networks bring to communities. It was not intended in that spirit, since the two technologies are ideally suited to being complementary to one another. The issue that this passage DOES address, however, is the proposition offered by some that WiFi alone can be used in lieu of fiber, which it cannot, leastwise not any more than fiber could be used for appllications requiring mobility.
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