June 2009

[Commentary] Consumers are embracing new server-like devices and therefore demanding a lot more upstream capacity. We need broadband networks that can deliver robust and reliable enough upstream service to be able to handle supplying these growing demands for bandwidth. And quite frankly, no broadband technology other than fiber has proven itself capable of fully supporting these new demands for upstream capacity. Every other broadband technology has clear capacity and reliability constraints that limit their ability to welcome and nurture the growth of upload-intensive applications. If we want to have a country where every computer can become a server, where every consumer can become a producer in the digital economy, then we need to set the goal of becoming a Full Fiber Nation otherwise we will never realize the full potential of this class of next-generation Internet applications.

A number of groups have filed a joint motion at the Federal Communications Commission asking for additional time to add comments on a National Broadband Plan. In the initial round of comments, 1,700 sets of comments were filed. By the original deadline, parties wishing to answer these comments would have to file their new comments by July 7. Communications Workers of America, Consumer Federation of America, Consumers Union, Media Access Project, National Association of State Utility Consumer Advocates, National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors, National Telecommunications Cooperative Association, New America Foundation, OneEconomy Corporation, Public Knowledge, United States Public Interest Research Group, and ZeroDivide have asked for an extension until August 7, 2009.

West Virginia Gov Joe Manchin thinks the Mountain State can make a good case for getting some of the $7 billion broadband money. Since taking office in 2004, Gov Manchin has emphasized that high-speed Internet is as important a commodity as water and electricity, he told Tech Daily Dose. The economic success and global competitiveness of the United States depends on it, he said. Last year, Gov Manchin advanced a bill in the state legislature that would set up a fund to pay those who successfully apply to expand Internet access in underserved areas of the state. He also proposed that the entire state have high-speed Internet access by 2010. Several years ago, Manchin set up a broadband deployment council to track access throughout the state. "It was the first of its kind in the nation and it pulled everyone under one tent to make sure we were using all the resources available," he said.

Political revolutions are often closely linked to communication tools. The American Revolution wasn't caused by the proliferation of pamphlets, written to whip colonists into a frenzy against the British. But it sure helped. Social networking, a distinctly 21st-century phenomenon, has already been credited with aiding protests from the Republic of Georgia to Egypt to Iceland. And Twitter, the newest social-networking tool, has been identified with two mass protests in a matter of months — in Moldova in April and in Iran last week, when hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets to oppose the official results of the presidential election. But does the label Twitter Revolution, which has been slapped on the two most recent events, oversell the technology? Skeptics note that only a small number of people used Twitter to organize protests in Iran and that other means — individual text messaging, old-fashioned word of mouth and Farsi-language Web sites — were more influential. But Twitter did prove to be a crucial tool in the cat-and-mouse game between the opposition and the government over enlisting world opinion.