Dirk van der Woude, John St. Julien, Adam Peake, Tim Nulty, moderated by Jim Baller
Dirk, Amsterdam Broadband: "Yes, we can." Amsterdam's telecoms are owned 40% US, 30% UK, other non-Dutch firms 16%.
Look out for Fraudband.
In France, the law says that cities are explicitly allowed to roll out fiber networks. Cologne has 2 parallel fiber networks.
Taking a break from the very techy, accented presentation that is overly reliant on a slide show that nobody can read, I'd like to mention that the back channel here is really juvenile. I'm probably one of the youngest 5 people in the room, but to read this thing, you'd think it was packed with 19 year old boys with a chemical dependency on Red Bull. For example:
Such a weird contradcition between a hardy comprehensible presentation and a painfully comprehensible back channel. Just saying. Not to mention, Dirk went on way too long.
Adam on the Japanese broadband "miracle."
1) Traced back to the 1996 Telecoms Act.
2) Incumbent who bought into the idea the IP networks were good.
3) The open network model can work, if the conditions are right.
What are the conditions?
1) We don't have a cable industry
2) The legal system is not litigious, NTT didn't spend it's resources and time in court fighting
3) Regulator stuck to its policy
4) There was a national policy of ubiquitous information or network society
5) Japan doesn't have a good broadcasting industry; programming is poor; limited pay-per-view market. Opportunities for people who want to invest, in IP video distribution (I guess), is great.
What is the Japanese view of network neutrality?
1) IP networks should be accessible with ready access to applications and content
2) Support E2E
3) Users should have access equality
Tim on Burlington, VT fiber network: Broke grown in '05, first customer '06, being profitable in '09, four years after initial funding was received with 5000 customers. Muni telecom can be profitable for cities.
1) Universal - it's like water. The economics work much better if you do it that way from the beginning.
2) Open Access: The government should offer retail, but be prepared to make the resource available on a non-discriminatory basis.
3) Financially self-sufficient
4) Future-proofing: forget DSL, cable modems. Build something that will last for a long time, at the fundamental investment, but also upgradeable.
Now, Tim is taking the model across Vermont. Can you do fiber to the home in rural areas that meets the above stated goal? The biggest problem is that no rural town is big enough, so look to working together as an assembly of 20-30 township. It's an organizational problem, and a problem convincing financiers that this inter-organizational entities can handle it.
The measure to move forward are receiving 100% votes, in one township it dipped to 80%.
In the interim, there is a lively discussion about how we've reached our broadband capacity. Within minutes someone pipes up "I have IDed the perpetrators IP address!"
John, Lafayette Project : "I'm of 2 minds. The Geek/Wonk says there has got to be a way to get this machine to work. The Historian/Activist is more interested in the root of these things, expects contingent outcomes that are hard to maintain and require constant democratic work." We'll be hearing from the Historian/Activist.
"The real problem is that we are not being treated with respect... not like citizens of the Net." He says we're more like serfs, with the providers acting like the lord of the land. "Look at [your service aggreements] and this is roughly your condition... They can kick you off for any reason...They don't have to follow their own rules consistently." While, the Geeks and the Wonks want a technical solution, but we want to be citizens.
To solve the feudal system "We had the Enlightenment, then we had a Revolution."
"Lafayette is one of the most conservative cities in one of the most conservative states in thsi corporate-beholden country... and it happened there."
How did it happen? First, the geeks convinced the financial leadership to put in a fiber link, just for wholesale, government, big business use. The deepest malcontents were already saying they should provide retail to the home, and they lost, until a few people who remembered the argument but forgot who said it. The malcontents organized a grassroots campaign. The assumption was that the old boys club would run the show, but the opposition was so virulent, that they faded from the playing field and left it to the grassroots, and they won, 2-1.
"We are going to get a network that is going to be one huge intranet." Citizen-citizen speeds of 100 mb, offering the basic tier at a 20% discount to the incumbents, with a wi-fi network on top that won't have to be meshed. "We're exploring... the digital divide issue... The current plan is to put, in every cable box, internet access as well... The end result of that everyone on the system in a huge swath of the town who never had that kind of connectivity before."
Q&A:
Q: Japan is facing big problems with their system - pollution, viruses. Policy makers are proposing a closed fiber, next generation, IPv6 solution that might close out all the retailers.
Adam: We always move through phases of new problems and solutions.
Mary Beth, NATOA: "We in Portland are trying to build an open-access community network. How do we build the momentum in the "glassroots? How do you educate populace & electeds to make this happen?"
Tim: You have to address "Who's going to pay for it, and if you [can say] 'not you. It will be a financial investment that will be paid back from the services'" then you will win.
Other resources:
http://www.benkler.org/SharingNicely.html
http://gordoncook.net/wp/
http://www.carlotaperez.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_telegraph
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_capital vs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_capital
