Triangulator

Google Fiber boosters to spell out wishes at DBAP on March 18

Samiha Khanna · 5 Mar 2010, 1:52 PM · 1 Comment

Folks, this is even bigger than the “We Want Oprah!” sign that used to occupy the windows of a converted motel on Corcoran Street downtown.

Durham wants Google. Specifically, Durham residents, businesses, elected leaders and creatives are hoping to lure Google Fiber, an project that Google is embarking on to bring broadband fiber and high-speed Internet access to one or more lucky cities in the U.S. Google has opened the application process to the entire country, and like many cities across the country have demonstrated in recent days, Durham wants in.

To demonstrate Durham’s engagement, a committee has organized an effort to spell the words “We want Google” on the field of the Durham Bulls Athletic Park on Thursday, March 18, said Sam Poley, a spokesman on Durham’s application for Google Fiber. An aerial photographer will take photos of the display that day and submit them to Google when the application is due, March 26. Continue reading »

Durham, Durham County, North Carolina, business, national, news City of Durham, DBAP, Durham Bulls, Durham Convention & Visitors Bureau, Google Fiber, Internet, technology

Anti-muni broadband bill goes before House commmittee tomorrow

Fiona Morgan · 5 May 2009, 2:38 PM · Comment

The battle over municipal broadband Internet services continues tomorrow, May 6, when the N.C. House Public Utilities Committee will be the second to consider House Bill 1252, which would severely limit the ability of local governments to provide broadband Internet and other telecommunications services.

The committee meets at 10 a.m. in Legislative Building room 1228. A vote is expected.

The North Carolina Cable and Telecommunications Association has been running push-polls across the state to generate support for the bill, which it says will “level the playing field” by forcing municipal service providers to add fees and meet other requirements when they compete with private industry.

And Americans for Prosperity, the same group that sponsored “tea parties” on tax day, is also running robocalls in favor of the legislation and trying to rally support online.

Opponents are mobilizing, too. They say the bill would effectively stop local governments from providing Internet service even when private companies choose not to offer the speed and availability citizens and local businesses need.

A blog called Stop the Cap!, which voices opposition to Time Warner Cable’s recent proposal to cap its customers bandwidth, had run a series of posts focusing on the North Carolina legislation, which is heavily backed by Time Warner Cable. Google recently joined Alcatel-Lucent, Intel and a number of other private industry groups in a joint letter to House Speaker Joe Hackney opposing the bill. The City of Raleigh and Town of Chapel Hill have also passed resolutions opposing it.

The bill passed the House Science and Technology Committee last month without a vote, and without a favorable recommendation, following testimony from many opponents.

North Carolina broadband, NCGA, technology

SAS founder to Obama: Use my software

Fiona Morgan · 23 Jan 2009, 1:13 PM · Comment

Jim Goodnight tells BusinessWeek that one way to reform the U.S. education system would be to use the SAS Curriculum Pathways software his company created and recently began offering for free to all American schools. “We have the most complete set of curricula available,” he told the magazine, “so let’s not reinvent the wheel.”

Uncategorized Jim Goodnight, SAS, technology

John Locke Foundation’s tech analysis: Epic fail

Fiona Morgan · 19 Jan 2009, 3:13 PM · 8 Comments

In a report bashing a city-owned broadband utility, the conservative John Locke Foundation reveals a stunning level of ignorance about technology.

“Wilson’s Fiber-Optic Boondoggle,” written by research director Michael Sanera and intern Katie Bethune, criticizes Wilson, N.C.’s $28 million investment in a fiber-optic network that makes high-speed Internet, cable TV and phone service to every resident and business in the city. The utility project, called Greenlight, is funded by bonds which under the city’s business plan are expected to be repaid through subscription revenue.

JLF leads with the critique that the technology “could be obsolete before it’s paid for.”

Come again?

“WiMax wireless Internet technology is rapidly leapfrogging fiber-optic cable technology, making it obsolete.”

To anyone who actually follows Internet technology, that statement is a howler.

Fiber is far and away the most advanced technology available for connecting to the Internet. It offers effectively unlimited capacity and speed. WiMax is the next generation of wireless technology, reaching further and moving data faster than the WiFi most of us use now — but nowhere near as fast as fiber. And every wireless system has to connect up to some kind of backbone. WiMax works best if connected to a fiber network.

It’s expensive to run fiber through city streets and connect every home and business. That’s why most private companies aren’t willing to do it unless they’re assured of making a hefty profit on the investment, and a city must be more densely populated than Wilson for that profit to be high enough. Even in the Triangle, companies like AT&T, Embarq and Time Warner prefer to stick with the copper and coax lines they’ve already got in the ground.

The JLF report cites no sources for its embarrassing tech analysis, except a footnote to a brief article in the Washington Times that reads like a press release for Sprint’s acquisition of wireless company Clearwire. That piece talks about WiMax surpassing the WiFi technology most of us use — but it makes no mention of fiber.

I showed the JLF report to Jim Baller, a Washington, D.C., attorney who’s widely respected as an expert on broadband technology. He recently convened a broad coalition of industry and public interest groups who hope to shape a national strategy for deploying broadband technology.

“The John Locke Foundation’s suggestion that WiMax will render Wilson’s fiber system obsolete is just absurd,” Baller said by e-mail. “The Foundation should understand this — and perhaps does. To be sure, WiMax offers mobility, and fiber does not. But as any expert will tell you, no wireless technology, including WiMax, has anywhere near the capacity of a fiber-to-the-home system. As applications become increasingly bandwidth-rich, fiber will be able to accommodate them, and wireless won’t. At the same time, we will increasingly want to be as mobile as possible. In Japan, South Korea, and other leading broadband nations, fiber and wireless extend and complement each other. That’s where we’re heading too.”
Continue reading »

North Carolina technology

AT&T rolls out TV service … and that’s not all

Fiona Morgan · 15 Dec 2008, 4:17 PM · 2 Comments

When AT&T announced last month that its U-verse TV service was available in Charlotte, we wondered when it would come to the Triangle. We asked, but they wouldn’t say. “Our competitors would love to know that,” an AT&T spokesperson said.

Now the company announces service in Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill, Cary and Garner — but they still won’t say where in those places.

All this secret-keeping has been getting on the nerves of some state legislators who’d like to get a clear picture of exactly where high-speed Internet is available — and not available — in North Carolina. To get the service out to those who don’t have it, it helps to find out where they are. U-verse’s TV signal is sent via Internet Protocol, and Internet service is part of the U-verse bundle.

Rep. Bill Faison, who chairs the House Select Committee on High-Speed Internet Access in Rural Areas, has been asking the telecom and cable companies to agree to some terms under which it would disclose that highly guarded information to the e-NC Authority, a statewide non-profit agency created by the General Assembly in 2000 to expand access to the ‘Net.

For months, cable and telecom lobbyists have been putting up resistance. But when Faison’s committee meets this Thursday, they’re expected to sing a different tune. Industry representatives have recently indicated they’d be willing to disclose the information through Connected Nation, a nation-wide non-profit whose stated mission is to “expand access to and use of broadband Internet” — kind of like e-NC.

So why bring in Connected Nation to do the very same work another state-funded group is attempting to do?

One explanation could be Connected Nation’s ties to the telecommunications industry, which go back to its founding as Connect Kentucky, according to an investigative report blogged by Art Brodsky, communications director for the digital advocacy group Public Knowledge, in January 2008:

[Sources say] Connect Kentucky is nothing more than a sales force and front group for AT&T paid for by the telecommunications industry and by state and federal governments that has achieved far more in publicity than it has in actual accomplishment. Connect helps to promote AT&T services, while lobbying at the state capitol for the deregulation legislation the telephone company wants.

We’ll be eager to hear the industry explain to Faison’s committee why they’re bringing Connected Nation into the picture.

North Carolina Bill Faison, broadband, Connected Nation, e-NC, technology

Nortel considering bankruptcy

Fiona Morgan · 10 Dec 2008, 3:09 PM · Comment

Wall Street Journal reports (and WRAL’s LocalTechWire follows) that the Canadian company may seek a bailout from its home government. The 2,000 Nortel employees in the Triangle would probably appreciate that.

economy financial crisis, Nortel, technology