Daily Archives: March 8, 2007

Open Networks: Better Broadband for the Common Good

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blog_bjgf.jpgI had the chance last week to make a presentation to the Humphrey Institute’s Telecommunications and Information Society Policy Forum (TISP) on the subject of Open Networks. Thanks to the remarkable Milda Hedblom, the forum’s creator and long time facilitator, TISP has long provided the Twin Cities’ telecommunications policy community a safe and thoughtful forum for discussing stubborn challenges and new ideas.

Steve KelleySteve Kelley, former State Senator and long time proponent of technology, especially telecommunications technology in the Minnesota was the moderator. Also in attendance was Gary Fields (pictured above) who is part of the Blandin Broadband Team.

With the second big snowstorm of the season about to fly, I had expected to see a lot of empty chairs in the room, but it turned out that plenty of folks were willing to risk facing a messy drive home to hear me out. Though I’ve been working hard to learn all I could about Open Networks, I was still plenty nervous to be speaking publicly for the first time about this new area of focus for the Blandin Foundation’s Broadband Initiative, especially at my alma mater, and with Dean Brian Atwood in the room.

With a nod of appreciation to my Humphrey training, I had titled my presentation “Open Networks: Better Broadband for the Common Good.” Continue reading →

Statistics on Digital Info Created

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Dick Nordvold sent around this mind bending citation today (Billions and Billions of Gigabytes Served – from Internetnews.com) as part of his diligent efforts to make the case for building a FTTH project on the Iron Range.

BroadbandDick is the recently retired founder director of the Iron Range Resources’ Do I.T.! Project, and a member of the Blandin Foundation’s Broadband Strategy Board. Dick is passionate about this project because it would bring world class high speed internet access to 13 towns and one Indian tribe on the Range.

It’s an expensive project, requiring upwards of $50 million of public subsidy to build. Although plenty of folks now recognize the importance of high speed internet access for healthy rural economies, in an environment where gaming and entertainment dominate internet use it is still challenging to make the case for why we need really big pipes. This does a pretty good job.

Here are the really cool numbers from the article (Billions and Billions of Gigabytes Served – from Internetnews.com):

Last year, 161 exabytes (exabyte is a billion gigabytes) of digital information were created, representing roughly 3 million times the information in all the books ever written. Or, if you prefer, the equivalent of 12 stacks of books, each extending more than 92 million miles from the earth to the sun.

They then cite a new report that says that as many as 988 billion gigabytes of digital information will be created in 2010, a six-fold increase from 2006.