Why live anywhere else?

http://sn.im/1axal4 #Map (full URL below) ~ AS of October 22, 2010, only these American providers offer bidirectional, synchronous Internet, though the price for 100Mb/100Mb #Fiber #FTTH does vary. Over 22 communities are currently served by #Utopia, UT; #Greenlight, NC; #EPB, Chattanooga, TN; #LUS, LA. Please see the map for more specific locations.

Remember Google’s Go Big for a Gig 5 communities will be announced in 2011. The first might be Stanford University, Stanford, Ca, near Google’s headquarters.

As the cities are announced I will add them to the map even before they offer the service as unlike the telcos, we can count on Google to follow through and provide true, honesty High Speed Bandwidth. Enjoy the map. Here is the full URL as my cable provider prevented the short form from loading once and redirected it. Only after I used the full link, did the short link work again. Yes we need net neutrality, don’t we!

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?hl=en&ie=UTF8&msa=0&msid=107636815986001525252.0004925bda8ab3461a9ef&ll=38.891033,-98.129883&spn=22.725937,53.481445&t=h&z=5

Where’s the Fiber? ….check the map at the link provided.

What this means is that since 2004 I have paid 29.95 euros/month and I get all of this over ADSL/copper wires:
25mbit down/1mbit up internet
HD + Standard TV
Telephone (unlimited free calls to 100 countries, including USA of course.)
DVR function, etc etc..
http://www.free.fr/adsl/index.html

My parents pay Time Warner $140/month for similar service (but 6mbit down and 384kbit up) .

The problem is there is no real competition in the US to drive down prices. When the town of Wilson NC tried their hand at this themselves, Time Warner sued them!

By next year most of Paris, France should be cabled for Fiber (FTTH), 100mbit down, 50mbit up, and with my ISP this will still be 29.95/month!

I have thought about what options might give Americans true high speed broadband via Fiber one day. No other media except fiber is honestly viable and our telcos know it. They are on the record stating that every household will need 300GB of bandwidth in the future and yet they try to institute a 50 GB bandwidth CAP. That is CAP and TRADE folks. (pun intended as most Americans do not understand what that means anyway, thus our politicians use it to confuse and take our attention away from more important issues. If you hear a politician use that phrase, try to see what their other hand is doing; they are hurting you, count on it.

The only options that I could come up with are the four below. The best chance is government de regulation as happened in Japan, that should have happened here in 1996, but the telcos very successfully lobbied against it and won. (This factual success on their part is the reason for my hypothesis at the beginning of this comment)

The second best chance is another business. This new business would need to have no relationship with any current American telco. Why, simple, if the American telcos wanted Americans to have fiber, we would have already had it. We would have had it before the Japanese got it, regardless of the miles of fiber that needed to be laid. The fact that the telcos fight communities wanting to put fiber over the last mile to American homes in and of itself is telling. We know they (telcos / Cable Cos / Wireline / Wireless) are a monopoly / oligopoly as they have very, very successfully stifled any innovation that would free up Americans from their preferred tiered pricing schemes. Sadly they have no incentive to change and we Americans should condemn them for it. (Teach your children the truth of the matter. Free markets work, if the market is not working, follow the money to determine the reason why.)

Here are the only 4 solutions I could conceive of. The best chance is #1 and #2.

1) Government de regulation as they had in Japan in 2000. It was tried here and failed in 1996. (While there is a better chance today then ever as the Telco track record can be successfully used against them if the politicians want too. Most have already been paid off and will not. Again actions speak louder then rhetoric.)

2) A new, not related or in bed with any American telco, business enters the market and starts laying fiber to consumer homes. While I know the US Government will NOT let a foreign entity become a telco in this country. I also know that the current telcos will fight tooth and nail to prevent anyone else from offering to our homes. We have a real world example in Greenlight; after being invited by local politicians into their town, and after the telcos refused to offer service; found the very same telcos filing lawsuit after lawsuit to prevent them from laying Fiber to homes and apartments in that community. Greenlight charges approx $100 for 100Mb / 100Mb. I am unaware of any other company offering or planning to offer this service. (To all companies, contact me I will work to help you realize this dream. It would be a life well spent as it would benefit not just my children, but my friends and neighbors.). Even FIOS charges $119 for 50MB / 10MB.

3) Google to leverage their undersea cables combined with another entity (un related to the telcos) that lays Fiber from their data centers to customers homes. This new business could provide 100MB / 100MB or even 1 Gb / 1Gb, as Japan had in 2006 thanks to their fiber investment, service to residential customers. I have not seen anything from Google to remotely indicate they are interested in this. (Please Google, it would be a great birthday present for America!) This is a shame as the market would be worth multiple hundreds of billions of dollars. Also the first company to do this will have an extremely loyal following that American telcos will NEVER win back. Their history will hurt them eventually, it is not a matter of if, only of when as more and more communities put their citizens first and demand fiber to everyone’s homes and apartments. Sadly the American telcos have abused their monopoly and oligopoly power to prevent innovation since the 1990s. Most American consumers find this unforgivable. It is very easy to point out the facts to Joe Public and once they see a multiple decade history of actions, it no longer matters what the marketing slicks say. The up hill battle is the money in our political system. Do not under estimate $18 million per week spent buying politicians. With the focus being politicians sitting on specific committees and its game over.

4) The LHC Computing Grid, launched in October 3, 2008: Necessary to process the data from the Large Hadron Collider; will be an Internet separate from the current Internet. Designed by CERN to data stream 300 GB/s. Perhaps when the 27 TB of raw + 10 TB of event summary data (per day) is not using it, some lucky people will be able to get Internet access via it. Personally I am not holding my breath. being

Can you think of any other possibilities where American consumers would have fiber coming to their homes and thus true high speed broadband? Please share if you can think of anything.

Because the telcos actively prevent companies like Greenlight (a #2 option) from offering innovation via fiber to American citizens, the only hope we have is government de regulation as they had in Japan. Now Japanese consumers are getting bandwidths that are leading to new jobs and innovation! In 2000 they had 100Mbps / 100 Mbps for less than $55 per month. Thanks to the fiber already laid (fixed cost) in 2006 Japanese consumers started getting 1 GB / 1 GB for less than $52 per month. Yes the price went down, yes consumers got more bandwidth, yes free markets work!

Technology existed pre 2000, that would let a single strand of fiber’s bandwidth get increased from 1X to 1024X by simply switching out the hardware router on either end. With Fiber there is no bandwidth scarcity. The reality is there is no bandwidth scarcity NOW, to increase pricing and justify that increase; the myth is perpetuated.

Any Republican that does not work for this, but still touts FREE MARKETS needs to be tarred and feathered for the charlatan that their lack of action on this issue portray them to be. Forget their words, what are their actions? What has their actions been since the 1990s? How much telco / cable company money have they received? Game over for them based on their own actions.

Being a capitalist, I never thought I would be looking to the Democrats to free up markets, however after over two decades of telco abuse, that is the only chance any of us have to see change. If the telcos wanted us to have it, we would already, never forget this. Markets do work, when they don’t there is a reason they are not working.

As to costs, the Japanese estimate it costs less than pennies to offer 2 GB of bandwidth. So personally I do not get our telco excuses on this either, as at $50 per month (what I am paying now for throttled 100Kbps / 4 Kbps Cable Internet High speed broadband; they promise up to 8MB but you never see that except in a speed test, never in usage.) they would still be making millions, probably billions.

All politicians should be ashamed of themselves for preventing and limiting American innovation and jobs that will follow higher broadband bandwidths. The telcos and Cable companies are obviously un ashamed and thrilled that their preferred business model,tiered pricing, is working so well. They publicly state this when talking to Financial Analyst to increase their company’s stock prices. (This should be unforgivable to all Americans.)

Twenty plus years is enough already. Where’s the Fiber?

Everyone in this country has the right to pursue life, liberty, and happiness without governmental restriction – but the Constitution doesn’t state that it’s the Government’s responsibility to ensure that everyone *has* life, liberty, and happiness. There’s an important distinction there.

Sorry to turn this into a political argument, but folks, that is what this is all really about. Open your eyes.