7:17pm EDT, Thu Sep 2

'A 100 Megabit Nation' by 2015

By: The Online Reporter
Publish Date: March 09, 2007

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"A 100 Megabit Nation may seem like a luxury today. But it won't be long before it will be an absolute necessity. We've got to work now to bring down the barriers that are hindering access to higher bandwidth." - Fiber to the Home (FTTH) Council president Joe Savage, calling on the US government to adopt a "100 Megabit Nation" policy aimed at "ensuring that next-generation broadband connections are universally available by 2015." FTTH members, of course, have a vested interest in having a fiber optic cable run to every home - they're the ones that make money off of that initiative. But so does News Corp's Rupert Murdoch, who called for 100 Mbps Internet access in every home in his native Australia and his adopted home, the US. And so does every media company and every Web site operator. So do doctors, hospitals and educators - everyone involved in medical care and education. More importantly, so does every family, every parent and every child have a vested interest. Without very high-speed Internet access (not the 1 Mbps, 2 Mbps, 4 Mbps, 6 Mbps or 10 Mbps tortoise-like speeds that most people are limited to), America or Australia or the UK or Germany or France or Italy or any country will become a second-rate has been. The Internet Impacts All The Internet has had a bigger impact on more businesses than any other phenomenon. It's as essential to a nation's well-being as roads, electricity and running water. The FTTH Council this week said it wants to "underscore the importance of higher bandwidth to America's future competitiveness." It proposed that Congress and the President act by the end of 2007 to adopt a strategy and timetable for clearing the way for all Americans to gain access to communication services at transmission speeds in excess of 100 Mbps. It pointed out that the technology exists today to provide 100 Mbps, but most Americans can only get 5 Mbps or less. Only Verizon Has Stepped Up Of all the major broadband services, only Verizon has repeatedly and publicly committed to make 100 Mbps broadband available to the home - and even then Verizon limited the geographic area where it made the 100 Mbps commitment. The FTTH Council called for both private and public sector initiatives to make high-speed, affordable next-generation broadband to a majority of Americans by 2010, with universal availability by 2015. "When it comes to broadband, America has the need for speed, the need to compete and the technology at-hand to make it all happen," Savage said. "If we are to preserve our global leadership in the information age, we must look beyond our current broadband capabilities and begin moving now toward next-generation networks with vastly superior capabilities than are widely available today. We can start doing that now by establishing a national broadband strategy." 100 Mbps Is Achievable and Needed Savage noted that recent investments by large network operators have shown that 100 Mbps is achievable - and that such speeds are very much needed. Every First World country, not just the US, has citizens that are accessing increasing amounts of video from Internet sites. It may be for entertainment, information and shopping today, but it'll be for education and health care shortly. "Telephone and cable providers are deploying deep-fiber networks delivering far more bandwidth than before - often multi-megabits in both directions. And forward-looking phone companies, municipalities and new home developers are deploying next-generation networks," Savage said. "But at the present rate of build-out it's not going to be enough to keep up with America's growing demand for higher bandwidth applications such as teleconferencing, telemedicine, video sharing and a whole range of information and entertainment services that will be developed over the next few years." Competing in a Flat World International competitiveness is the key factor that should be considered, the FTTH Council said. "Other nations are deploying lightning-fast broadband networks that have the potential to leave America's available systems in the dust if we don't upgrade quickly," said Leonard Ray, chairman of the Council's Government Relations Committee. "In Japan, Korea and a number of European countries, fiber-to-the-home networks and 100 megabit connections are increasingly common. America must accelerate its broadband connectivity." FTTH Council Proposals The FTTH Council suggested a number of policy proposals it believes will help reach this objective, including: - Continued reform in the awarding of pay-TV franchises. - An end to restrictions on municipal broadband. - Unspecified financial incentives. - The re-authorization of the Rural Utilities Service broadband loan program. - Congressional oversight on video content access concerns. Jumping on the 100 Mbps Broadband Wagon The FTTH Council points out that several corporate leaders have also called for faster networks. Dell Computer CEO Michael Dell talked about the need for more high-speed fiber in January during his keynote at the Consumer Electronics Show.