Daily Archives: July 7, 2008

Minnesota number 2 in US FTTH service providers

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To make a long, not-so-interesting story short … I saw a great article on fiber in Iowa leading up to an FTTH Council conference in Iowa. So I asked the author (Joe Savage) if there was a chance he could send similar numbers for fiber deployment in Minnesota. He kindly did me one better by writing a whole article that focuses on Minnesota.

It’s great to see the numbers for Minnesota but it’s also nice to see an optimistic outlook for broadband in the Upper Midwest – including obviously Minnesota.

The March to Next-Generation Bandwidth – the View from MinnesotaFTTH Council

by Joe Savage
President, Fiber-to-the-Home Council

A quiet revolution is going on in the world of broadband. And Minnesota is smack-dab in the middle of it.

Over the past three years, nearly three million U.S. households have been connected directly to the Internet via end-to-end fiber optic cable. Fiber networks are now present in neighborhoods where ten percent of Americans live. And this rewiring of America is gaining speed.

Optical fiber is an amazing thing. One fiber optic cable the thickness of a pencil could theoretically carry all of the world’s communications traffic at any single moment. In fact, fiber has long used in the telecom industry to carry voice and data communications over long distances.

Today, thanks to improvements in the technology, it is now economically feasible to run fiber all the way to homes – replacing copper wires and copper coaxial cable now used in the “last mile” links between telecom company premises and the subscribers.

Telephone companies, which have been looking to compete with cable TV companies offering voice services, are replacing their copper wires with “fiber to the home” (or FTTH) technology, thereby enabling them to offer their own robust video services and bring needed competition into the traditionally monopolistic market for cable television. Some cable TV companies, seeing the handwriting on the wall, are looking into FTTH, as well.

And while the telecom giant Verizon has garnered much of the attention with its $23 billion fiber to the home project that is now being rolled out in a number of states, the upper Midwest, and Minnesota in particular, is poised to become a hub of the fiber to the home revolution. While the number of FTTH subscribers in the state is still relatively low – about 29,000 – this number will grow because there are many small telephone companies in the state are looking to stay competitive in the Information Age. In fact, we estimate that Minnesota ranks number two in the country with regard to the number of FTTH service providers it has – nearly 30 of them in various stages of deployment, including rural telephone companies and cooperatives, competitive telecom providers and municipalities.

As an example, one of these providers is Hiawatha Broadband, which is wiring up small communities in Southern Minnesota with fiber to the home. Combining access to superior broadband with its neighborly and community-oriented approach to customer service, Hiawatha is finding that once subscribers go fiber they never want to go back to anything else.

Fiber to the home is a regional phenomenon, as well. About a quarter of all the FTTH providers in the country are located in the states of the Upper Midwest. This is good news for the heartland. As networks are built and services gain traction, the capabilities made possible by FTTH will have a profound, positive effect on life and on economic opportunity in the region.

For one, it means that a growing number of people who live here will have access to the Internet at speeds that will make today’s “broadband” look like the dial-up service of old. Many fiber to the home providers across the country are already offering data transmission speeds up to six or eight times the standard five megabits per second that customers get via cable modem or DSL – and 100 megabit service is over fiber to the home is already feasible and available in a few places. Once the fiber is installed, it is not a big technological leap to deliver that level of bandwidth.

These vast improvements in connectivity will put a whole range of sophisticated new online services within reach of the average American household – teleconferencing, teleworking, and telemedicine, to name a few – the kinds of applications that help take the “place” out of knowledge work. By plugging rural and small-town America into networks at big city speeds and connectivity, hard-pressed communities will see enhanced opportunities to participate directly in the global economy.

It’s already happening. As just one example, an Asian company recently contracted with American partners to hire 150 language instructors who will teach English to Korean kids over high-speed teleconferencing networks – directly from their homes in a small city in Wyoming. This is happening because fiber to the home will soon be available there, thanks to a recent decision by the city government to build a network for its citizens.

There are legitimate concerns that the opportunities of the Internet Age have thus far bypassed many who are outside of the country’s major metropolitan areas. The fiber-inspired transformation to next-generation networks, particularly over the last mile to the consumer, offers hope for a rising tide of connectivity that will lift all boats. Watch it happen here in Minnesota.

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Joe Savage is the president of the Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) Council North America, an industry group representing FTTH service providers and equipment vendors.

Broadband for the other 90 percent

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The Walker Art Center (in Minneapolis) has a great exhibit this summer – Design for the Other 90 percent. We went to see it on Saturday. OK really we went because on the fist Saturday each month admission is free and they have kids’ activities– but the coolest thing was the Design stuff.

Here’s the gist of the exhibit:

Of the world’s 6.5 billion people, 90 percent have little or no access to most of the products and services many of us take for granted. In fact, nearly half do not have reliable access to food, clean water, healthcare, education, affordable transportation, or shelter. The exhibition Design for the Other 90% features more than 30 projects that reflect a growing movement among designers, engineers, and social entrepreneurs to create low-cost solutions for everyday problems. Through local and global partnerships, individuals and organizations are finding unique ways to address the basic challenges of survival and progress faced by the world’s poor.

So I got to see a $100 Laptop – those are the super durable laptops for kids in third world countries. I learn about them on 60 Minutes last year and have been looking forward to seeing one. It’s cool. The fun thing is that it wasn’t part of the exhibit so much as one guy had one it and decided that he would take it upon himself to show it to others.

The other very cool thing was the Internet Village Motoman. Here’s the description:

The Internet Village Motoman was launched for fifteen solar-powered village schools, telemedicine clinics, and the governor’s office in Ratanakiri, a remote province of Cambodia, using five Honda motorcycles equipped with mobile access points and a satellite uplink. Each of the schools can send and receive email and browse the Internet using a non-real-time search engine.

I was just amazed at how innovative and driven people are to make lives better – and was excited to see the prevalence of the Internet. It made me think about quickly the world really is becoming so flat. So if you’re around Minneapolis – the Design exhibit at the Walker is worth a visit. (It’s free on Thursday nights, if you’re economical like me.)