April 2014

[Commentary] New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio talks of making broadband cheaper and faster. One solution may be lying beneath his feet. A vast conduit system runs through Manhattan and the Bronx that could support a thriving broadband marketplace -- or a municipal fiber network similar to the one in Chattanooga (TN), which delivers 1 gigabit per second (50 times faster service than what most New Yorkers experience) for $70 a month.

But New York's subterranean system -- built for telephone lines after the Great Blizzard of 1888 and owned since 1891 by Empire City Subway, or ECS -- also highlights the challenges the city faces in updating its broadband infrastructure. Like much of underground New York, portions of the network are in rough shape: Clogged or collapsed conduits force construction crews to detour south in order to go north as they run fiber from one neighborhood to another.

The extra mileage means the data take longer to reach customers -- a problem for finance companies, which count their connections in nanoseconds. And the extra costs make it tough on the city's few independent broadband providers, who have narrow profit margins and shallow pockets compared with the big operators.

A Q&A with David Blumenthal, a physician and former Harvard Medical School professor. The health-care system is one of the most technology-dependent parts of the American economy, and one of the most primitive. Every patient knows, and dreads, the first stage of any doctor visit: sitting down with a clipboard and filling out forms by hand.

Blumenthal was from 2009 to 2011 the national coordinator for health information technology, in charge of modernizing the nation’s medical-records systems. He now directs The Commonwealth Fund, a foundation that conducts health-policy research. Here, he talks about why progress has been so slow, and when and how that might change.

“From the patient’s perspective, this is a no-brainer,” he said. “The benefits are substantial. But from the provider’s perspective, there are substantial costs in setting up and using the systems. Until now, providers haven’t recovered those costs, either in payment or in increased satisfaction, or in any other way. Ultimately, there are of course benefits to the professional as well. It’s beyond question that you become a better physician, a better nurse, a better manager when you have the digital data at your fingertips. But the costs are considerable, and they have fallen on people who have no economic incentive to make the transition.”

Asked in the broadest sense, what difference will better information technology make in health, Blumenthal responded: “Fundamentally, every medical record is a tool for collecting information: the information a physician collects when looking at you in a physical examination; the results of lab tests. The constant automatic information collection is going to increase, whether it’s your phone monitoring your heart rate or your scale sending information about your weight to your health provider, or the contact lenses Google wants to market that measure blood glucose levels.”

Cincinnati Bell said that it has agreed to sell its wireless spectrum licenses and other related assets to Verizon Wireless in a deal valued at $210 million.

Cincinnati Bell Wireless will sell all of its rights, titles and interest in its wireless spectrum licenses for $194 million in cash, while Verizon will take over certain tower lease obligations. CBW said it expects to continue to provide wireless service for eight to 12 months from the time of signing, and that customers don't need to take any action at this time.

"This transaction is an important step toward increasing focus on our growing strategic product base, wireless service and support throughout the transition period," said Ted Torbeck, president and chief executive of Cincinnati Bell, adding that it gives the company "increased flexibility" to meet growing customer demand for its suite of fiber-optic connection products.

CBW will lease back the spectrum it is selling for a period of time following the closing of the transaction, in order to wind down its wireless network operations and to help its wireless customers transition their service to Verizon Wireless or other wireless providers, the company said. The transaction is expected to close in the second half of 2014.

The massive data centers that power services from Google, Facebook, IBM and other tech giants are big-time energy hogs. But researchers around the world are starting to turn them into an energy source.

In the United States, data centers are responsible for more than 2% of the country's electricity usage, according to researchers at Villanova University. If the global cloud computing industry were considered to be a single country, it would be the fifth-largest in the world in terms of energy consumption, according to Ed Turkel of Hewlett-Packard's Hyperscale Business Unit. Nearly half of the energy data centers consume goes to cooling the equipment using fans and other methods.

That's "just wasteful," said Jill Simmons, director of Seattle's Office of Sustainability and Environment. That's why the city of Seattle is working on a project to make use of the heat data centers produce. The city plans to route heat from two local data centers to to help warm 10 million square feet of building space in the surrounding area. The project is still in the conceptual phase, but Simmons said the city hopes to have it in motion "within the next year." The plan is to take the water that cools the data center and pipe it out to buildings nearby. The system will also rely on water heated by energy from sewer lines and electrical substations.