Japan Eyes 10 Gigs by 2010 as United States Sweats 200 Kbps

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In Japan today, the "point of competition" is a gigabit, and by 2010 it will be at 10 gigabits, observed telecommunication lawyer and broadband champion Jim Baller as he kicked off the panel "Broadband Policy Imperatives from the Bottom Up" at the 15th Digital Cities Convention in Washington, DC (December 11-12, 2007).

"The dialogue has begun there about how to get to 100 gigabits per second, and this is all symmetrical. And here in the United States we’re talking about a definition of broadband that is 200 Kbps and some places in the United States can’t get that — or get it at affordable rates. What kind of country are we when we are talking at that level and the world is moving so quickly?"

The national digital divide widens when other countries move ahead and the United States falls behind. But what happens when that disturbing technology trend pairs with a preexisting shift in the world economy? Baller quoted from Ted Fishman’s China, Inc.: How the Rise of the Next Superpower Challenges America and the World:

The far bigger shift, just now picking up steam, is occurring among the products that manufacturers and marketers trade with each other: the infinite number and variety of components that make up everything else that is made, whether it is the hundreds of parts in a washing machine or computer or the hundreds of thousands of parts in an airplane. And then there are the big products themselves: cars, trucks, planes, ships, switching networks for national phone systems, factories, submarines, satellites, and rockets. China is taking on those industries too.

And it's not just China, Baller noted. It’s India, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Brazil, Russia and every other country that is competing at the low end of the manufacturing scale.

Evaporation of the U.S. manufacturing base means the creation of high-technology jobs is essential to maintaining American competitiveness and standards of living. But what if other advanced countries like Japan are already far ahead in developing the broadband networks that support a robust information-based economy?

The statistics are all too familiar now. The United States used to be first in the broadband rankings. It was fourth by 2001 and had slipped to 10th by 2004. At that time, President Bush issued a strategy promising that broadband would be available to everybody in the United States by 2007. But today, the U.S. is somewhere between 15th and 24th.

“We pay more than four times and get a 10th of the capacity that the Japanese get,” Baller said.

Trade associations, think tanks, scholars, foundations, high-tech business leaders are all beginning to talk about what America needs to do, he said.

• At the federal level, there is growing support for a national broadband strategy, with support from FCC Commissioners Copps and Adelstein, and Senators Rockefeller, Durbin, Clinton, Obama, and others.
  
• Before Congress are two bills that would prevent states from interfering with the ability of local governments to step forward and participate in the growth of broadband. "The key message is that we’ve got a national challenge that can be solved only by the public and the private sectors working together in a spirit of mutual respect and harmony," Baller said.
• At the FCC, there are various rule makings, including defining broadband more realistically than it has been doing in the past.

"My main message is: We can’t stop at making small plans, we can’t look at issues in isolation, we’ve got to fit together digital inclusion with economic development, we’ve got to fit together wireless and fiber, we’ve got to fit together the role and the needs of the incumbents with the role and the needs of communities we’re supposed to be serving. Most important, we’ve got to recognize that we’re missing the big picture: We’ve got to get the sewer people together with the entertainment people. We’ve got to get the cities together with others."

From the Bottom Up #1: Regional Initiative

When the federal government or industry lag behind or even pose barriers to progress, American communities have a long tradition — from rural water supply and electrification on down — of setting their own examples to meet their own needs. Panelist Ken Fellman, a veteran telecommunications lawyer and former Mayor of Arvada, Colorado, echoed Baller's emphasis on communities, asking, "Why do local governments matter? I wish that’s a question we didn’t have to be asking."

Industry and state governments don’t like barriers to entry, but they “seem to be okay in some states and with some in the federal government when we impose them on local governments. I would suggest that we all ought to be working together.... We need to figure where we identify barriers to entry and how we eliminate them for all parties so we can move a national broadband policy forward."

Fellman described the regional Colorado Wireless Communities initiative in the metro Denver area. CWC is an intergovernmental agency created by 10 cities north and west of the City of Denver — with more than 600,000 population and almost a quarter of a million households over 140 square miles — to bring a broadband network together throughout all 10 communities. CWC put out an RFP earlier in 2007 and is seeking a private-sector partner to develop and operate the wireless network. From the provider side, the regional initiative represents a one-way entry into the market in ten cities — to the light poles, city assets, and expansion as other cities might want to join.

"The RFP and then the responses came out right around the time the market was crashing but we still we found a couple of providers and hope to conclude negotiations in January 2008," Fellman said.

From the Bottom Up #2: State Initiative

ConnectKentucky's statewide broadband director Joe Mefford said: "The reason we made this a statewide initiative is because for years Kentucky has ranked statistically at the bottom of the list relative to other states, and if we could give 10 or 15 of our counties to W. Virginia, we wouldn’t have that problem [laughter], but you’ve got to pull your whole population of a state together or you’re not going to change those statistics or those rankings. So our focus is totally statewide, and is supply and demand side focused. Someone mentioned the national goal is 100% availability by 2007; we’re going to meet that goal in Kentucky."

Kentucky began with 60% availability for broadband. Early research revealed 27% of the public saying they didn't even need broadband; 26% said it’s too expensive; and 23% said, It’s not available, so how can I use it?

ConnectKentucky set to work on a statewide transformation in access and in attitudes.

From a supply side, the state has 25 telephone companies, about the same number of cable companies, about 15 WISPs, and about 15 municipal deployments — cable or wireless. ConnectKentucky used the data to map coverage footprints against census data, providing market intelligence back to the providers on household availability in underserved areas.

"When you overlay census and household data over underserved areas, all of a sudden those providers say, Oh, I didn’t know there were that many homes in that area," Mefford said. "As a result of that, we’ve moved from 60% to 97% availability just by supplying that information."

Local leadership teams in each county look at how broadband was being used and how it could be used and developed a strategic plan. "When we started out, 40 out of 120 counties had a Web site, a very basic tool for any e-government services. Now all 120 have that. We’re going back and helping them develop online applications."

From the Bottom Up #3: Local Initiative

Springfield-Washington County, an hour south of Churchill Downs in Louisville, has a population of 12,000. Springfield, the county seat, was the only community with high-speed Internet, and only 50% had dial up. In a project with ConnectKentucky beginning in January, it began defining where it needed to be, how to bring partners in, and to get county and city officials to work together with a private-sector partner.

"More than 300 people have pre-signed for high-speed wireless Internet — higher than DSL — so we know it’s going to be a huge success without even advertising it one little bit so far," said Hal Goode, the county's economic development director.

Broadband is bringing new life to entrepreneurial efforts. Said Goode: "Even in a small community in central Kentucky, we’ve been able to see manufacturing come in....We've worked with one company — Joseph Thomas — and they have a really high-end candle called True, and they’ve been able to hook up with Nieman Marcus, and over the Internet in the first year they were able to do $200,000 with seven employees, and now they’re up to 13 and have surpassed $1 million in sales with some of their products being used by actors in California and in Buckingham Palace, and that’s because of the online orders. So we see in a small community in a rural setting that we’re really able to reach the entrepreneurs who can get started. Plus, people like to move into the scenic area."