Daily Archives: May 2, 2008

CISCO – Healthcare BizTech Forum – St. Cloud

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I learned Wednesday that health care technology purchases account for over 30% of CISCO’s business revenue. CISCO and its partners provide technology tools that track people, information and equipment, enabling better health care management, and hopefully, better and more affordable health care. The day focused on four related topics – security and compliance, wireless technologies, unified communications and RFID technologies.

Security and compliance – Keeping ahead of HIPPA regulations and electronic payment requirements was a major concern of providers. The key to success is to put a plan in place and to systematically pursue that plan. The emphasis was to show strong and credible efforts to meet the regulations and to address any shortcomings.

Wireless technologies – Vendors were displaying cool “star trek” communicators that allowed hands-free communications throughout the hospital, allowing staff to contact specific people or teams of people, depending on the need.

RFID – These devices enable the hospital to track people, equipment and devices so that they are in the right place at the right time. These devices, tied to GPS technologies, allow staff to be able to find what they need, when they need it.

Unified communications – Bringing all of these systems together is a critical task so that information is not lost or does not have to be re-entered into multiple systems.

I was a bit disappointed that there was very little discussion about home health care devices and practices. Maybe at their next seminar!

The Economics of Rural FTTH

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A couple of days ago I relayed that the current administrators of the Burlington (VT) fiber project felt “that Burlington Telecom will not be breaking even by June as earlier projected by previous general manager, Tim Nulty.”

Tim Nutly spoke at the Broadband Properties conference yesterday (as reported by Telephony Online). He talked about the economics of providing FTTH in rural areas.

I have to admit that I don’t know the costs involved firsthand, so I thought his explanation (and specificity) was very helpful:

Fiber triple-play deployment costs generally come in three categories: the hub, the hook-up and the pass. Building a hub is actually less expensive in rural areas because real estate costs are lower there, Nulty said. “Building a hub in a cow pasture is cheaper than doing it downtown.” Hooking up rural houses is more expensive, but not much, he said, partly because fiber costs have come down considerably. Vermont spends about $1600 per home connecting subscribers in the city and about $1800 per home in rural areas.

The biggest cost gap is in passing homes, since there’s so much more space between homes in rural areas (though rural areas have more aerial, pole-based networks, which are easier and less costly than the underground networks in cities and suburbs.) Vermont towns contain more than 100 houses per square mile, but its rural areas can contain about 12 houses per square mile. As a result, Vermont spends about $250 per home in the city on this part of the project and $1100 per home in rural areas.

However, passing homes is a small part of the overall cost of fiber deployment, Nulty said. And rural areas see higher service take rates because there’s less competition there. In rural towns due to get municipal fiber, Vermont is seeing 50% of the market presubscribe for its services, and Nulty expects that rate to reach 75% or 80% by the time funds are secured.