New broadband statistics from the OECD (through the last quarter of 2007) point to the complete and continuing failure of the United States to reclaim its prior successes, much less, even keep up with a growing list of other countries. Even the Wall Street Journal is jumping into the fray:

"Once the undisputed leader in the technological revolution, the U.S. now lags a growing number of countries in the speed, cost and availability of high-speed Internet. While cable and telecom companies are spending billions to upgrade their service, they're focusing their efforts mostly on larger U.S. cities for now."

The Wall Street Journal article contains some real gems -- pointing to historical precedents that mirror today's broadband situation and debates:

Chattanooga's Mr. DePriest compares his agency's plan for high-speed Internet to the rollout of electricity, which came to many parts of Tennessee only in the 1930s as a result of the creation by the federal government of the Tennessee Valley Authority. That was three decades after many businesses and homes in major urban areas like New York were first electrified. The country's electricity at the time was largely provided by private companies, which denounced any government efforts to get into the business as "socialist" -- echoing the debate over municipal fiber networks today.

Meanwhile, if a picture's worth a thousand words, here's a few bloggings worth of data:

Lots more OECD facts and figures concerning broadband statistics are available here. For the truly ambitious, take a look at the OECD report on broadband growth and national policies to read about the documented importance of governmental intervention to supporting the spread of broadband connectivity.

Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) recently released a fascinating assessment, "The Incredible Shrinking Think Tank" documenting the third straight year in a row that think tanks were cited less than the prior year. At a time when think tanks are, on average, saw a 17% decrease in their citations in the press between 2007 and 2008, New America Foundation saw a 44% increase! In fact, New America saw the largest increase of any think tank in the study. When you take a look, the numbers are rather stunning:

I've just been reading about the new 2009 budget numbers. George Bush is asking for $515,000,000,000+ in government spending for the Pentagon. It occurred to me as I was thinking about this gargantuan number, how come we're constantly hearing about the tiny amounts being proposed for broadband, yet huge numbers like these barely raise an eyebrow.

So I thought I'd break down the numbers to drive home my point. Assuming 300,000,000 Americans, every man, woman and child will be paying a bit over $1,700 to support the Pentagon's budget. Which ends up being about three times as much as people pay for their broadband at home... but wait, people buy broadband for their household -- so I needed to find out how many households there are in the US. According to 2004 census numbers, there's a bit under 115 million households -- so once one makes the adjustment, the per household Pentagon allotment hefts in at roughly $4,500 for the year.

As we ponder where our money is going this next year, remember, broadband isn't really the big ticket item, it's not even close. Recent estimates have claimed that $150 billion (a bit under 30% of the proposed Pentagon budget) would provide universal fiber broadband connectivity to every household in the United States.

Geoff Daily over at Apprising posted an informative article about Intranet data traffic on a municipal (fiber) broadband network. He spoke with the CEO of Packetfront, Matt Wenger, who gave him some interesting insights into the traffic flow shift they experienced in Vasteras, Sweden. I've spoken at length with Matt about Packetfront's interest in documenting what's happening around the globe in these community and municipal networks, I'm glad to see that Geoff has got a jump-start on this effort. As many readers know, Sweden has been making phenomenal progress in achieving universal affordable broadband access (something that's still a pipe dream throughout the United States). Meanwhile, here's the rest of Geoff's article:

Internet Reinforces Local Bonds

So often when you talk about the benefits of the Internet the conversation focuses on its ability to break down the barriers of distance, to unite disparate friends and relatives, to provide access to resources not available in your local community.

But there seems to be a growing understanding that the ultimate benefits that the Internet brings to society may be found not in tying together things that are far apart but instead enhancing the relationships that exist locally.

For example, this Wired essay entitled "How Email Brings You Closer to Guy in the Next Cubicle" explores how while broadband should enable anyone to do anything from anywhere that what it's actually doing is putting a premium on living in concentrated areas. The reason for this is the efficiencies the Internet can bring to day-to-day communications with the people you interact with regularly.

I can personally attest that this is the case for me. While I do email a lot with my parents and friends back in Minnesota as well as with colleagues across the country and world, when I look back over my inbox I have far more emails sent to and from people who live within a few miles of me.

But this capacity of broadband to unite communities is perhaps best highlighted by one of the most stunning facts I've heard in a long time.

In catching up last week with Matt Wenger, CEO of Packetfront America--Packetfront enables the creation of open access, multi-service networks--we got to talking about Vasteras, Sweden, arguably the fullest realization of what an open access, multi-service network can be.

The fact that blew me away was about them and how the deployment of a fiber network impacted their use of broadband.

Before this community fiber network was put in place, more than 80% of the traffic on local networks was outbound, pulling in and sending out information over the world wide web.

After the fiber network came into being? That ratio basically flipped as now more than 80% of the bandwidth being consumed is for moving data around within the Vasteras network, so neighbors talking to neighbors rather than users pulling in data from all over the Internet.

It should be noted that just because the percentage dropped, doesn't mean people on that network are consuming outlying Internet content less. Instead, it's a sign of just how massively demand for bandwidth in-network has grown, literally more than a thousandfold.

This trend is totally and utterly remarkable to me.

Basically everything on the Internet to date has taken a server-in-the-sky mentality where you're almost constantly sending and receiving data out over the world wide web.

To think that that paradigm has now fundamentally shifted in communities like Vasteras is one of most under-discussed potential outcomes of deploying a fiber network, and one that demands further exploration.

But never fear! While I don't yet have the answers to what's driving all that demand for bandwidth, my curiosity has officially been piqued and I'm on the hunt for more information.

Until then I'll leave you with this thought: the deployment of fiber networks can and should be considered the best opportunity we've had in a long time to not just hook people up to the global economy but also to reinvigorate the ties between people in their local communities.

Anyone deploying fiber, big or small, public or private, should be keeping this thought in mind, as otherwise we may end up missing out on one of the great unsung benefits of what broadband and the Internet enables us to realize.

According to the Q3 2007 report by Point Topic on broadband download speeds, most of the rest of the world is seeing increases in their download speeds. The United States, continuing in its stagnant trajectory, has broken off from much of the rest of the most industrialized nations and is now lumped in with the Middle East and Africa.

If one picture is worth a thousand words, this one tells it all:

I recently gave a presentation on the COMMONS project at the 2007 Telecommunications Policy and Research Conference (TPRC). The presentation is based on the Final Report of the 2006 COMMONS Strategy Workshop which my colleague, kc claffy, and I drafted up.

Originally posted by Esme over at MuniWireless.com. Under the continuing leadership of folks like Jonathan Baltuch, St. Cloud Florida has been a paragon of openness concerning their usage statistics. The challenge I will make is for other (private) providers to make these statistics publicly available so that we can directly compare the pros and cons of various business models. Of particularly importance here are the "take rate" -- over 77% of households are registered to receive services (typical industry take rates are 15-20%) -- thus St. Cloud is a remarkably inclusive digital city. And the bottom line, St. Cloud residents have saved over $3.7 million since inaugurating their free public broadband service.

Meanwhile....

...Detailed statistics on St. Cloud Florida Municipal Wireless:
(1) Total number of registered households: 8,492 (77.2% of the city)
- total number of registered devices: 14,198
- total number of individual users (2): 20,0008

(2) Average number of users per household: 2.09
(3) Average number of devices per household: 1.38
(4) Maximum number of simultaneous users: 2040 (24% of households)
(5) Total number of individual sessions: 1,322,109
(6) Total hours logged on by users: 4,627,381
(7) Total megabits of information transferred: 25,617,918
(this amounts to approximately 410 million web pages)
(8) Ave session length: 3.5 hours

Additional statistics:

(a) From the end of month 1 to the end of month 12, the Megabits of information transferred by users has increased by 470%
(b) Average monthly growth rate of subscribers in year 1: 26.1%
(c) Average monthly fee previously paid per household by residents for Internet access: $36.47
(d) Estimated currently available annual savings to the residents of St. Cloud: $3,724,754

UPDATE: In response to questions about how they calculated the number of registered households, here's the formula:

Total number of devices registered: 14,198
Minus system reset in first month: 1,000
(note: in the first two weeks of operations the registration system was reset and the database of approx 1,000 users was wiped out. It is assumed that they re-registered and would show up twice in the total number

Total number of unique devices registered: 13,198
Minus business users: 805 (6.1% based on user survey data)
Minus visiting users: 674 (4.9% based on user survey data)
Total number of residential devices: 11,719

Total number of registered households: 8,492
(the user survey determined an average of 1.38 devices per household)

This gives the percentage of homes registered (or homes passed) as 77% based on a total of 11,000 homes in St. Cloud.

As many folks know, my background is in quantitative statistics. When the Lancet came out with a second study on the number of deaths in Iraq, George Bush dismissed the report stating, "I don't consider it a credible report...the methodology is pretty well discredited." George Bush's response fascinating me since the Lancet is one of the most well-respected medical journals in the world and it seemed quite unlikely that it would publish scientific analysis that didn't pass peer review, and the peer review is pretty damn rigorous.

So I decided to take a look myself at the Lancet report. First, the authors used a random sampling of 50 "clusters" (controlling for population density) that would provide both the statistic power and 95% confidence interval to determine whether there was, at least, a doubling of the death rate post-invasion. In each of the 50 clusters, 40 households were interviewed by medical doctors.

The results from the interviews were quite stunning, and the information was broken down in Table 2 of the study. Most stunningly, while violent deaths composed 2% of the total deaths pre-invasion, violent deaths made up a full 55% of total deaths post-invasion.

Read more...

The OECD today released June 2006 statistics on international broadband penetration rates. Here in the US, the best that can be said is that our international ranking has continued to stagnate (just as I reported earlier this year).

I'm very much hoping that the penetration rate by population density graph will be linkable soon -- it certainly brings home the point that population density and broadband do not correlate well. In the meantime, here's the findings (note that broadband appears to be any service faster than 256k -- which would be a very poor measure of "broadband", but might explain why the US is placed ahead of Japan):

Read more...

Sharon Gillett takes an in-depth look at municipal broadband and takes apart detractors' rhetoric. Gillett finds:

the real public policy issue raised by municipal wireless is not
whether cities should be involved in broadband wireless deployments. There are many legitimate reasons why they should, and strong economic drivers that ensure they will continue to be. The real question that needs to be addressed in this debate is how to ensure that city authority does not get subverted to create artificial limits on future wireless competition.

Here's more:

The review of municipal wireless activity in this Article highlights its
ability to complement four traditional functions of local government:

(1) Efficiently delivering city services. Broadband wireless enables
cities to apply e-government techniques that let them maximize the value of the taxpayer’s dollar. By deploying their own networks, cities can make police more productive, schools more cost-effective, and maintenance workers more responsive. In this regard, cities are following a trend toward customer ownership of communications networks that is evident in corporations and nonprofits, such as hospitals and universities, as well.

(2) Ensuring equity among local residents. Even in communities
where commercial wireless broadband services are available, such services are rarely equitably distributed geographically. By leveraging local government facilities, such as libraries and schools that are geographically distributed within their communities, cities can supplement private sector offerings to ensure equitable access in traditionally underserved parts of town.

(3) Promoting local economic development. This concern has been manifested in two distinct forms of municipal involvement in wireless broadband. First, cities have experimented with the sponsorship of hotzones intended to draw shoppers and tourists. High churn among the cities involved in such efforts reinforces the experimental nature of these efforts. Second, cities have taken steps to lower barriers to WISP entry, to ensure the availability of broadband services that have become essential to many forms of economic activity.

(4) Managing public rights of way. This function takes a somewhat different form with wireless infrastructure, which imposes a physical requirement for the placement and powering of radios (boxes that can transmit and receive wireless signals), rather than street cuts. Many different types of city facilities can be helpful or necessary in this regard, ranging from water towers (typically used for longer-range, line-of-sight technologies) to traffic signal poles (used for dense mesh architectures).

Gillett points out the current tensions whereby telecom incumbents are attempting to stifle competition and innovation, concluding that "creative destruction" is sorely needed:

While it may be economically rational for existing communications providers to use the legislative process to slow down the adoption of new technical and organizational paradigms that threaten their existing revenue base, the nation’s economic well-being is clearly better served when legislators allow “creative destruction” to proceed apace. Given that it is also politically rational for legislators to respond to the pressures placed on them, political compromises should be considered — for example, providing financial support to the incumbent industries and workers actually dislocated by the advent of municipally supported wireless broadband — rather than completely blocking experimentation and its potential ensuing benefits.