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A new broadband idea: 'Homes With Tails'
"Homes With Tails" sounds like an effort promoting puppy adoption (an excellent cause, we might add), but it's actually a very interesting idea about how to promote universal broadband. Is it compelling, too? Hmm... "Homes With Tails" is the title of a paper authored by Columbia University law professor Tim Wu and Google policy analyst Derek Slater, and it proposes that last mile fiber ownership go the way of condominiums, with individual home owners owning all their household wiring. The paper also suggests creating associations to own and manage common neighborhood network facilities.
The proposal further would create neighborhood hubs that would support an open network environment allowing consumers to choose service providers on a flexible basis, rather than having to commit to one.
Sounds like a telco nightmare, yes? Well, it also sounds like a householder nightmare: Proposing homeowners take on the cost of own and funding a network management association at a time when many can't meet other household cost obligations. That doesn't even count ongoing maintenance costs.
I haven't read the paper, so while I'm picking at the idea a little, I'll also admit that it sounds very creative and noble, and in a way, elegantly connects back to some of the ambitions the telecom industry and the nation had when local exchange competition was authorized almost 13 years ago.
And while you may have stopped listening at the mention of Google, Slater told InternetNews.com this was a personal project and an effort to bat around new ideas: "It was something I worked on on Sundays before football season started."
For more:
InternetNews.com has this report
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Comments
Posted by Dropping By | November 24, 2008 - 1:57pm
Home with tails is a very innovative "First Step". Someone is thinking out there instead of critiquing without offerring their option for universal broadband. Everyone needs to leverage each others ideas to get something "acceptable".
This idea will force carrier to think out side of the box and modify their out dated business plans that have kept them and us so in the past to where we have become stagnate and can not adjust to advancements in the internet or its users. If we had a workable solution in the past 2 years, comcast would not have an issue with BitTorrent users. Openness is the only solution in a fluid environment we live in. The "open hub" idea is the direction we need to move in.
Move the responsibility out to the customers and hold on to your socks. Think about every downtown residental building competing for residents because they offer "unlimited" bandwith or 200Gb/s for every resident. Internet access in buildings like this creates a psuedo-network, free network that will span entire downtown areas. The owners can then throttle the transport and not the access as they see fit. Downtowns/Municipalities can then offer better yet give away free access to an "infinate" amount of bandwidth.
This downtown aspect is just a step further of the rural co-op idea of the "Homes with Tails" report. This was an amazing read.
Let us have cake. Or just compete, again.
