Learning how to channel the turtle and the rabbit in one’s life is essential in navigating our ecosystem. Harnessing those forces is important, but when it comes to the ability to access information and knowledge, no or slow connections are not a recipe for success. In the U.S. we label “high speed” internet access as 25 mbps download and 3 Mbps upload speed, a standard that favors large companies that want to treat the internet as a vehicle for the consumption of entertainment rather than one for education, health care, or work. If you want equal download and upload speeds, then you pay up for it.
The nervous system for our informational superhighway in the U.S. is made up of copper and coaxial cable with only a small percentage of our communities utilizing fiber, especially in those that connect people’s homes. Stateside, fiber, only accounts for 14% of our high-speed connections and local cable companies account for 84% of those connections. In those area’s where you get 100 mbps 94% of those subscriptions are sold by the cable company. In rural areas 80% of the population does not have access to 100 mbps internet. Sixty percent of people making $20,000 or less don’t have wired access-not even copper, but 80% of people making between $50,000 and $75,000 do. If you travel around the globe you will see that there are countries who do better than we do. In South Korea, Japan, Singapore, and Hong Kong they can get gigabit internet (10 times faster than 100 mbps) for between $30 and $50 a month. In Sweden, 70% of its citizens get 100 mbps internet for download/upload for $35/$40 a month with plans to have 98% of its residents provided with gigabit internet by 2025. The country of Singapore has a number of companies that offer gigabit fiber internet access to the home for $40-$60 a month. Back here in the states, in the city of New York, a subscription for 100 mbps download/upload internet will cost you $105, while a 500 mbps connection will run you $305 dollars with no gigabit service available. In the Traveler’s backyard they offer a $300+ gigabit package but the infrastructure underground is only coaxial cable. Makes me wonder how that works? Information pulses through the glass that makes up fiber, faster the pulse, the faster the ride; but if you don’t have the pipes, does it really work? Even cutting-edge wireless needs fiber to work the way it should. Because a system that has a fiber backbone and uses wireless is only as strong as the signal it sends and is weakened the more people draw from it. So, why is fiber important? It is important because it is a digital and non-digital entrepreneurs gateway to a world that can unleash their creative energies. As mentioned earlier, the U.S. only has 14% high speed fiber while in China there are 120 million households connected to fiber and they will have 300 million of its 455 million households connected to fiber in the year 2020.
In the U.S. we treat quality high speed gigabit fiber internet access as a luxury, not as a “public good”. Do we want to build gated communities both digital and physical that enjoy a robust and limitless world of creative tools reserved only for those that can afford it? I know in an earlier post, I mentioned some of the challenges an A.I. economy will present. However, even a world that creates a New Social Contract that values pro social community based service, education, and care, you will still need to leverage the digital tools that will allow you to effectively communicate your services, manage the books, and educate the community. Are we cheating ourselves by surrendering our power to Corporate powers who do not have an incentive to provide gigabit access to all, especially when most of the proceeds of their ventures go to the shareholders; instead of the citizen. Imagine what our world would look like if way back in 1935, FDR, did not create the Rural Federal Electrification Administration? That government effort led to the possibility of nearly half of U.S. farms having access to electricity by the year 1950. You think that if we wanted to unlock pent up entrepreneurial energy in under-served areas, and wanted to provide better service to the under-served for business and educational purposes, that a community based local model that put its citizens first might work today?
In a January 23, 2018 article in Vice, “More than 750 American Communities Have built their own Internet Networks” they describe an effort in some communities where they are offering better service, higher speeds, and more transparency. According to their figures: there are 55 municipal networks serving 108 communities with a publicly owned fiber to home network, 76 communities offer access to a locally owned cable company that serves most or all the community, and 258 communities are served by a rural electric cooperative. Large corporate interests resist this effort, in 20 states ISP’s have passed laws that protect their business model and hamper local efforts to build publicly owned local networks. The reason is simple: Profits. In Seattle, robust competition would cost Comcast between $20 Million to $84 million a year. Instead of seeing the innovative approach on the local level and accepting the challenge to out innovate and offer better, cheaper broadband; they spend money to lobby politicians and pass laws to prevent people from finding a better way. Is this American capitalism at work, or a regulatory captured perverted version of it? I fear, here in the world of connectivity and the exchange of information that vacuum’s impact is felt as well.
In an era of dynamic change and a changing climate Municipal networks can nurture and provide a community with resiliency. A local municipal fiber network can: (1) Allow a community to rebound from Severe weather, (2) Stimulate + Attract New Businesses, (3) Attract + Retain citizens (Homes with gigabit internet access have a 7.1% edge in value over homes with a 25 mbps internet connection, especially when 43% of those millennials able to afford a home say internet connectivity would be a deciding factor), (4) Lower Dependency on Large Incumbent Communication Companies (especially when they don’t see the “value” in connecting your community), and (5) Adapt to technology changes and demands (5G and beyond). If the large windfalls that incumbent players are enjoying are not invested in all of the communities they serve, if profit determines where the fiber is placed, and your ability to pay up determines who gets access, then who are we saying should have access in our ecosystem?
Information is power, light is transformative, so why don’t we treat next generation high speed internet access the same way we treat electricity and water? Do we want to keep people in the dark?
Resources used:
Fiber, The Coming Tech Revolution, and why America might miss it, Susan Crawford
Fiber Broadband Association:, https://www.fiberbroadband.org/
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/a3np4a/new-municipal-broadband-map
Next Century Cities and Becoming Fiber Ready – A Community Roadmap and Toolkit:
Economic Journeyman 