Make Broadband a Campaign Issue in West Virginia

Who benefits? (0.00 / 0)

Who really benefits?  Who did Deloitte do the study for?  What specific jobs did they say 4G will create?

Every politician in the state, red, blue,and green, has paid at least lip service to broadband.  Now we have the remonopolizing AT&T pushing for wireless rather than wired broadband, and apparently government support for that.

Wireless broadband is good for small communities and those that are spread out.  It can be done cooperatively or by a small business; it is not technology that needs massive capital or an existing corporation, just about as much savvy and equipment as ham radio.

Broadband is already accessible from anywhere in the state, at a price, by satellite Internet services.  

Realistically, any business which needs really high-speed, high-capacity is not going to locate away from the towns and cities where broadband is already available and wired.  Wireless is a last-mile technology, to connect devices to wires.  "wireless" traffic travels overwhelmingly over wires.  Wired technology is far less expensive to build and maintain where there is much population density at all.

And 4G is specifically a cellphone and mobile technology.  It is not going to enable your desktop computer to connect without a different card and a mobile plan.

From the Deloitte summary of their "thought piece"

enabled by 3G technology, Apple has redefined the handset market, selling devices with a $625 average sales price, far above its competitors.

America's success with 3G has been driven by an "entrepreneurial innovation ecosystem" in which private enterprise pursues opportunities created when the government auctioned large amounts of spectrum, removed spectrum caps limiting individual carrier's spectrum holdings, and permitted market forces to operate. Maintaining and expanding the ecosystem is crucial as 4G technology emerges.

So what we need is to remove more barriers to market forces, including barriers to individual companies owning most or all of the spectrum.  Huh?

And I love how they are using "ecosystem" to mean, apparently, the corporate world.

Also

For wireless broadband, the 2009 weighting was estimated at 93 percent wireless communication equipment and 7 percent construction.

I'm guessing that equipment is not going to be made here in West Virginia, which leaves us with the construction.

areas with promise include augmented reality applications for businesses, machine-to-machine applications involving the use of sensors and actuators, smart highways, enhanced immersive interactive education, telemedicine, augmented shopping, and entertainment and recreation.

Do any of those sound like a telecomm company has an incentive for building 4G cell towers up a holler?  

Is a 4G connection through a national corporate connection really need within a hospital for tablets to connect to the system?  And do we really want daily medical information run across that network to a cloud computing facility who knows where?

Supporting this raises far more issues than whether it will create jobs.  And everyone who hasn't should read Deer Hunting with Jesus on some of the issues of the corporate "ecology" and what it means for places like ours.  I haven't seen the new book, mentioned in another post.

The full Deloitte piece is here:
The Impact of 4G Technology on Commercial Interactions, Economic Growth and U.S. Competitiveness

(This would have been posted sooner if my Frontier broadband worked when it rains. It didn't work when it was Verizon, immediately improved when Frontier took over last summer, and then flaked again this spring.  A better use of West Virginia's resources might be to make sure the existing roads, water and sewer, schools, networks, etc. work and the real ecology is not destroyed, rather than buying the story that yet another new technology or industry is going to make us all rich.)

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by: JAWVMM @ Thu Aug 25, 2011 at 15:04:54 PM UTC

"broadband" via satellite internet (4.00 / 1)

Broadband is already accessible from anywhere in the state, at a price, by satellite Internet services.

It might be accessible, but it certainly isn't affordable or reliable. Painfully high at ~$79.95 a month for WildBlue service, most people can't afford it. WildBlue will arbitrarily cut your bandwidth and slow you down to dial-up speed if they think you're using too much. This wasn't in the initial contract for "unlimited access" that I signed, it has become "their policy". I understand that HughesNet's policy is similar but upfront. Moreover, clouds, fog, snow, or rain either locally or in the San Antonio, TX uplink area frequently disrupt service. It is not even close to the reliablility of satellite television.

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by: DB @ Thu Aug 25, 2011 at 19:48:08 PM UTC

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4G data runs as much or more than satellite (4.00 / 1)

AT&T's 4G's data plan only gets you 5 Gb of data for $55 a month. I didn't look at what the charges are if you run over that.  For photos, music, streaming video, or graphics-heavy web browsing, as your only Internet connection, 5Gb is not nearly enough. It certainly wouldn't be enough for distance education or the telemedicine monitoring people keep mentioning, or to run a business.  

Frontier DSL, as I said, goes down in the rain, and I'm in the Clarksburg city limits.  Cell reception, even at a fixed point, is less reliable than that, although it seems like I've been getting fewer dropped calls lately.

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by: JAWVMM @ Thu Aug 25, 2011 at 21:14:29 PM UTC

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Don't just watch the pitch go by (0.00 / 0)

West Virginia ranks 48th in terms of people who have access to high-speed broadband. (See Eric Eyre's "Broadband Challenge" in Charleston Gazette 2/27/11.)

You make some good points, but I take issue with your claim that it is not expensive to reach broadband into rural areas. A buildout of that scale in West Virginia will be hugely expensive, and like it or not (and I'm not saying I do) AT&T is the only company with the pockets deep enough to do it, has a presence in West Virginia, and is willing to put up a plan to do it costing in the hundreds of millions. T-Moble has less than 2% of the telecom customers in West Virginia, so the effects of that deal here will be practically negligible on that front.

AT&T may have its issues, but at least it's unionized here. And West Virginia can take their offer, or choose to pass and wait until someone like Ben & Jerry's comes along with $300 million that we like more. But don;t hold your breath. We can grab this opportunity to diversify that exists now, or West Virginia can watch the pitch go by and let somebody else take a swing.  

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by: twilight campfighter @ Thu Aug 25, 2011 at 15:54:31 PM UTC

Cell towers are expensive, wireless broadband is not (0.00 / 0)

Free WiFi Hotspots Growing 5x faster than Cell Towers

and

How Much Do Cell Towers Cost?

It is possible for a single entrepreneur to provide a local fixed wireless broadband service from scratch and support a family.  

Before we support corporate 4G expansion, we should consider what it will cost us, what we will get for it, and how useful what we get will be.

Here is an interesting paper done last year for the Pennsylvania house which addresses some of the issues, and questions why fixed wireless is not being considered more.

Broadband in Pennsylvania: An Essential Service?

About 1993, I spent a good bit of time with AT&T and Southwestern Bell (now absorbed into AT&T) explaining the Internet and explaining why it was in their interest to help provide access.  They had not a clue as to what their role might be and the potential.  They were not best pleased when we were able to institute a service fee to subsidize service to schools and libraries.  But now they have seen the advantages and are perfectly willing to have expensive 4G subsidized in areas where it will be underutilized, when there are less expensive alternatives available.

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by: JAWVMM @ Thu Aug 25, 2011 at 18:22:00 PM UTC

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