This report addresses issues related to delivering products and services over broadband, including the technical and business challenges of providing multimedia entertainment, video and other services on demand, interactive television, the wireless Web, videoconferencing, telemedicine, and more. The report also considers the current and potential markets for such applications, the business models providers that can adopt, and pricing and fee structures, while focusing on those applications and on the business models that will make them available and profitable.
Access to the Internet is an increasing problem in many areas of the world. As the popularity and usefulness of the Internet increases on a daily basis, lack of access to the technology is putting many groups at a disadvantage in terms of better education, better jobs and even in terms of higher levels of civic participation. However, creating a network infrastructure to serve outlying communities and sectors of the population is not straight-forward. This book brings together all the aspects of the problem – technical, regulatory and economic - into one volume to provide a comprehensive resource. It describes the latest technological advances that allow cost-effective network infrastructures to be built, and places them in the context of the applications and services that the infrastructure will deliver. A section on business models and case studies from North American and Europe demonstrate that the solutions are economically and practically viable. This book is essential for anyone looking to gain an understanding of the issues and technology surrounding the access debate. It will be of particular relevance to network engineers/designers/planners at the incumbent operator companies charged with delivering broadband access to as yet unconnected regions. Governments and regulatory bodies will also find this a useful guide to the problems that they may face.
High-speed Internet access: the definitive "how-to" guide! Covers cable, DSL, and next-generation wireless high-speed Internet connections, this handbook also Includes Windows, MacOS and Linux coverage.
Integrated analysis of the technologies, markets, and business of Residential Broadband In thirty years, the worldwide market for high-speed information services to the home will reach SI trillion. This book explains how and why. Beginning with tutorials and a few touches of history to position residential broadband today, this essential guide examines how competing technologies will struggle for supremacy in a chaotic market. It stakes out the battles between ADSL and cable modems, IP and ATM, telephone companies and CATV companies, televisions and personal computers, and professional applications and consumer applications. It does so with reverence for none-some will win and some will lose as the market emerges over the next decade or so. Our guide is kim Maxwell, an entrepreneur and executive who has spent twenty-five years inventing ways to make communications technologies and markets fit together. His analysis takes some surprising turns: * The Internet will not be the dominant network for residential broadband. * Despite its current power, IP may over time give way to ATM for residential broadband. * Cable modems have the early lead, but the DSL tortoise will catch up. * Fiber to the Home and the Information Superhighway are at least fifteen years away and depend upon HDTV. * Despite regulatory intentions, residential networking will return to a monopoly within thirty years. * Computers and televisions will not converge. * Ethernet will dominate home networking. * Video-on-demand will not be a viable market for at least five years. * In the long run. Consumer applications such as shopping and entertainment will dominate the more near-term applications for Internet access and telecommuting. * But, the market can only begin with the personal computer and its natural applications-Internet access and telecommuting.
An analysis of the failure of U.S. broadband policy to solve the rural–urban digital divide, with a proposal for a new national rural broadband plan. As much of daily life migrates online, broadband—high-speed internet connectivity—has become a necessity. The widespread lack of broadband in rural America has created a stark urban–rural digital divide. In Farm Fresh Broadband, Christopher Ali analyzes the promise and the failure of national rural broadband policy in the United States and proposes a new national broadband plan. He examines how broadband policies are enacted and implemented, explores business models for broadband providers, surveys the technologies of rural broadband, and offers case studies of broadband use in the rural Midwest. Ali argues that rural broadband policy is both broken and incomplete: broken because it lacks coordinated federal leadership and incomplete because it fails to recognize the important roles of communities, cooperatives, and local providers in broadband access. For example, existing policies favor large telecommunication companies, crowding out smaller, nimbler providers. Lack of competition drives prices up—rural broadband can cost 37 percent more than urban broadband. The federal government subsidizes rural broadband by approximately $6 billion. Where does the money go? Ali proposes democratizing policy architecture for rural broadband, modeling it after the wiring of rural America for electricity and telephony. Subsidies should be equalized, not just going to big companies. The result would be a multistakeholder system, guided by thoughtful public policy and funded by public and private support.
Optical networks, undersea networks, GSM, UMTS The recent explosion in broadband communications technologies has opened a new world of fast, flexible services and applications. To successfully implement these services, however, requires a solid understanding of the concepts and capabilities of broadband technologies and networks. Building Br
The focus of this book is broadband telecommunications: both fixed (DSL, fiber) and wireless (1G-4G). It uniquely covers the broadband telecom field from technological, business and policy angles. The reader learns about the necessary technologies to a certain depth in order to be able to evaluate and analyse competing technologies. The student can then apply the results of the technology analysis to business (revenues and costs, market size, etc) to evaluate how successful a technology may be in the market place. Technology and business analyses lead to policy analysis and how government deal with rolling out of broadband networks; content (such as text, audio and video) delivered over them. Furthermore, how government may ensure a competitive and fair environment is maintained for service provision. The book is unique in its approach as it prepares the student to evaluate products from three different viewpoints of technology-business and policy. The book provides a unified vision for broadband communications, offering the required background as well a description of existing broadband systems, finishing with a business scenario. The book breaks new ground by discussing telecommunication technologies in a business and policy context.
If you loved Hidden Figures or The Rise of the Rocket Girls, you'll love Claire Evans' breakthrough book on the women who brought you the internet--written out of history, until now. "This is a radically important, timely work," says Miranda July, filmmaker and author of The First Bad Man. The history of technology you probably know is one of men and machines, garages and riches, alpha nerds and brogrammers--but from Ada Lovelace, who wrote the first computer program in the Victorian Age, to the cyberpunk Web designers of the 1990s, female visionaries have always been at the vanguard of technology and innovation. In fact, women turn up at the very beginning of every important wave in technology. They may have been hidden in plain sight, their inventions and contributions touching our lives in ways we don't even realize, but they have always been part of the story. VICE reporter and YACHT lead singer Claire L. Evans finally gives these unsung female heroes their due with her insightful social history of the Broad Band, the women who made the internet what it is today. Seek inspiration from Grace Hopper, the tenacious mathematician who democratized computing by leading the charge for machine-independent programming languages after World War II. Meet Elizabeth "Jake" Feinler, the one-woman Google who kept the earliest version of the Internet online, and Stacy Horn, who ran one of the first-ever social networks on a shoestring out of her New York City apartment in the 1980s. Join the ranks of the pioneers who defied social convention to become database poets, information-wranglers, hypertext dreamers, and glass ceiling-shattering dot com-era entrepreneurs. This inspiring call to action shines a light on the bright minds whom history forgot, and shows us how they will continue to shape our world in ways we can no longer ignore. Welcome to the Broad Band. You're next.
Broken Promises is the third book in a trilogy spanning 18 years. Bruce Kushnick, author, senior telecom analyst and industry insider, lays out, in all of the gory details, how America paid over $400 billion to be the first fully fiber optic-based nation yet ended up 27th in the world for high-speed Internet (40th in upload speeds). But this is only a part of this story. With over four million people filing with the FCC to 'Free the Net', one thing is abundantly clear -- customers know something is terribly wrong. Every time you pay your bills you notice that the price of your services keeps going up, you don't have a serious choice for Internet (ISP), broadband or cable service, much less competitors fighting for your business, or maybe you can't even get very fast broadband service. Worse, over the last few years, America's ISPs and cable companies have been rated "the most hated companies in America". While Net Neutrality concerns (detailed in Broken Promises) are important, the actions are only a first step and will most likely be tied up in court for the next few years. More importantly, it does not resolve most of the customer issues and there is nothing else on the horizon that will fix what's broken. Broken Promises documents the massive overcharging and failure to properly upgrade the networks, the deceptive billing practices, the harms caused from a lack of competition, the gaming and manipulating of the regulatory system, from the states to the FCC, and exposes the companies' primary strategy: How much can we get away with? There has been little, if any, regard for the customers they serve.--From http://newnetworks.com/bookbrokenpromises/ --(viewed on June 12, 2015).
Ten years ago, the United States stood at the forefront of the Internet revolution. With some of the fastest speeds and lowest prices in the world for high-speed Internet access, the nation was poised to be the global leader in the new knowledge-based economy. Today that global competitive advantage has all but vanished because of a series of government decisions and resulting monopolies that have allowed dozens of countries, including Japan and South Korea, to pass us in both speed and price of broadband. This steady slide backward not only deprives consumers of vital services needed in a competitive employment and business market—it also threatens the economic future of the nation. This important book by leading telecommunications policy expert Susan Crawford explores why Americans are now paying much more but getting much less when it comes to high-speed Internet access. Using the 2011 merger between Comcast and NBC Universal as a lens, Crawford examines how we have created the biggest monopoly since the breakup of Standard Oil a century ago. In the clearest terms, this book explores how telecommunications monopolies have affected the daily lives of consumers and America's global economic standing.
