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North American Network Operators Group Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical RE: Way OT: RE: @Home's 119 domain names up for sale
Responding to all previous messages in this and the original thread: I note that "Way OT" was added to my original subject heading, and indeed for good cause because this discussion has veered off the course it could have taken in some ways, and that's okay, too. My associating the name "[email protected]" and the news release about former cable ISP @Home's sale of its domain names was more a matter of curiosity than it was actually suggesting there was a connection between the two. Although, the timing of both leaves me wondering, still, because up to this past week I had not seen the name @home, or even @work for that matter, used in almost five or six years, anywhere outside the context of discussions that were historical in nature. IMO, there's more to be considered here than whether this is just another example of pork distribution, which I suspect it is, in the accepted vernacular. Meaning, the spending of funds that result from marathon congressional horse trading and voting in order to get rid of funds that have been allocated for certain (in some cases, new) causes, lest those funds be lost forever in the spirit of "use it or lost it," both now and forever more. Sometimes the ends to these rituals actually turn out to be noble, and sometimes they can be seen as a cause for outrage. In the case at hand I'm neither showering Rubin and Clinton with praise nor condemning their motivations in any way. Rather, I have serious questions as to what they are doing and how they have set out to accomplish their goals, and probably just as importantly, the fact that have they labeled their initiative as one that would bridge the digital divide. I see two issues I may want to pursue further --elsewhere of course, since this is indeed "Way OT" for this venue-- because they may prove detrimental to the cause of end-to-end networking, even if a relatively few more broadband lines do get built in the process. If you have been following the tightening noose around anything that smacks of being open lately, and view the timing of this action against the backdrop of recent FCC rulings, which are causing some ISPs to seriously begin wondering about their very survival and where they will get their next HSI lines from to provide to their customers, you must then conclude that the secondary beneficiaries of the initiative will at some point be incumbent service providers. For, who else will be left to provide fiber and cable services by the time these homes are built and ready to be inhabited, save for the small number of muninets that have already been built, and maybe to a similar degree, those of WISPs? When such an initiative is announced proclaiming that $1 Billion dollars will be spent on "bridging the digital divide," when in fact it is federal housing and urban development projects that happen to include the installation of residential inside wiring and an undisclosed plan for how "broadband" service providers would be paid, (without also mentioning that it will ensure that structural foundations, carpentry, plastering, plumbing, lighting and electrical work will also be covered), it gives cause to detractors of municipal networking to shoot down further, legitimate proposals that are relatively "undiluted" in comparative terms, efforts to promote Internet access. In effect, it gives the nay sayers of muninets something to point to when proclaiming "enough is enough", and that sufficient public funds have already been spent on such programs. As a consultant who at times receives feelers and RFIs from landlords of housing complexes, community leaders and apartment owners' boards of directors who are applying for local, state and federal development funding to upgrade their properties (which are sometimes nothing more than slums that they picked up for a song), I can state unequivocally that one of the first bullet points to appear in their executive summaries in order to receive meritorious recognition from those who hold the purse strings is the fact that their newly re-done units will be "Internet ready." Internet read is a euphemism that means that those units will be fully wired with Cat6 and coaxial cabling. It's gotten competitive to the point where some take it a step farther and enter into agreements with the incumbent telco and cable operators, or they go to both the telco and the National Cable Television Cooperative (NCTC) and create their own private cable companies (PCOs) to ensure that residents who desire triple play services can have it delivered to them at the stroke of a couple of keys and a credit check. Which leads me to my last point of skepticism in this post. Where and what percentage of the funds being allocated under this [email protected] initiative is the money going? I'd be surprised if the in-home wiring went above 1% of the total Billion cited. How much of it will be spent on recurring rental fees for broadband lines? Computer hardware and terminal gear? Will said funding lead to another round of abuses, such as the E-Rate abuses we've seen in the past? Will residents be given broadband access even if they don't have ample terminal gear to utilize it? Perhaps, even if they don't want or need it? After all, Luddites have rights, too. Comments here or via mail welcome. [email protected] |