A Google Opinions on Broadband

So Google is encouraging folks to "Submit your ideas for a National Broadband Plan". At the time of this writing,

1,719 people have submitted 440 ideas and cast 35,988 votes...

As one might imagine, there's a lot of chaff, but there are some solid ideas. It's worth taking a look if only to get a sense of the breadth of opinion (and misinformation).

A few examples:

"Investigate ways to increase the span of wireless networks and make it more advantageous for local governments to provide free wireless internet."
swankestZACK, Louisville, KY

So these are probably both good goals. Longer range wireless networks. Free wifi. Awesome. But the vision isn't matched with tactics. Make it advantageous? Uh, great, but how?

"Make Broadband a Utility. Internet is like phone service, water service, or electricity. It is quickly becoming almost necessary to have it. Since Internet itself is a service, it should become a Utility with no filtering."
Navarr, Spring, TX

So the key for the National Broadband Strategy should be definitional? (I.e., redefining Internet as utility?) What difference would this make at a practical level?

I could go on. But suffice it to say there are a lot of well-intended ideas. But how these would (or will) fit together as a coherent strategy remains to be seen. My hat's off to Google for providing the space to try.

And there are a slightly more articulated visions:

"Encourage investment from diverse companies in broadband infrastructure and support innovative public-private collaborations to reach remote, unserved parts of our nation, so everyone is connected to an increasingly robust Internet."
NextGenWeb, Washington, DC

Okay, sure, so you'd expect NextGenWeb to have a reasonably lucid vision. Of course, like the other ideas, this is a vision, not an implementation plan.

Still this might be an interesting forum. It'll be interesting to see how many ideas and voices will be raised at the Google site.

Henchmen?

So don't know if you've seen it, but techdirt has an illuminating piece by Paul Masnick, who is largely sympathetic with Art Brodsky's (valedictory?!) rant aginst Connected Nation.

Masnick first makes this overwrought claim about Connected Nation:

First, it's just a "mapping" organization and it's run by the telcos themselves, allowing them to continue to fudge the data to make markets look a lot more competitive than they really are. And, yet, thanks to all the political love that goes out to Connected Nation, it looks like they're about to get hundreds of millions of dollars in broadband stimulus money.

Of course, it's disappointing that Connected Nation continues to be seen by its critics as merely a front for the telcos. But the larger disappointment is, without belaboring the point, this characterization of Connected Nation's work completely fails to acknowledge that Connected Nation believes mapping to be only the first step in improving broadband. In states like Tennessee, Ohio, and Kentucky the map has only been stage one run in tandem with statewide, county-by-county planning efforts that foster local empowerment and decision-making focused both on improving demand and channeling that demand toward feasible, meaningful, local improvements in supply.

After swallowing the bromide against Connected Nation hook, line, and sinker without critically engaging the organization's actual work or its results, Masnick then ends with this little bit of confusion:

I certainly agree that better data is important, but I have to admit I'm still somewhat confused as to what real problem we end up solving with mapping alone? Yes, it will give us more data to figure out just what the current situation is when it comes to broadband deployment, but that's got little to do with actually improving our broadband infrastructure.

Ahem, welcome to the party.

And if you'd look beyond your suspicion and prejudicial rage against Connected Nation, then you'd seen the organization's actual focus lies beyond the maps, too. The map is merely the first step in improving conditions on the ground. And those conditions will be vastly improved by enlisting the support and efforts of local leaders and residents and leveraging any and all willing assets, broadband platforms, and potential solutions. Not by throwing out the baby with the bathwater as Connected Nation's critics so often seem willing to do.

How Fast?

So the de facto standard for broadband seems to be 3 megabytes per second. The broadband stimulus will favor proposals (at least for now) coming from areas in which more than 50% of residents have under 3Mb/s.

Many folks argue that in order to be competitive with better-wired nations, we need to set a higher national standard. Say, 20 Mb/s everywhere. Or 50. Or more. By this logic, the broadband stimulus needs to support improvements in bandwidth universally, not just showing a preference for un- and underserved areas.

I won't quibble with that argument. I think it's largely true that for too many years our federal policy failed to push speed. Just think, the FCC definition of broadband for most of Martin's tenure was 200 KILObytes/second! Pretty easy benchmark to meet.

I agree that much should be done to promote higher speeds ubiquitously. But for now, we have literally, borrowing from Matelart, a broadband archipelago: islands of pervasive, high-speed access and large oceans of nuthin'. This differentiation threatens to create (or entrench) a technological underclass that is not healthy for the nation as a whole. So stimulating broadband improvements in underserved areas is essential.

The question for those presently in the ocean, then, is what a tolerable level of service is. For some, the stimulus may mean that the capital exists to build a fiber network. For many (if not most) underserved areas, though, the stimulus will be sufficient for fixed wireless, which tends not to allow bandwidths as high as fiber.

So do we hold all communities, rural and urban, to the same standard? I think a national goal of 100 Mb/s is laudable (hell, I support it myself). But I'm enough of a pragmatist to realize that this standard is out of reach without a much larger federal investment than $7.2 billion.

As such, I contend that the excellent should not get in the way of the good. A national goal (say, 100 Mb/s) should not interfere with local build-out at some lower level. When local actors deliberate over their present needs, their perception of future requirements, and the extant logjams to creating service, the outcome is generally a realistic depiction of what standard should obtain for that locale. This is the strength of statewide planning efforts in places like Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio, California and elsewhere: coalitions of local residents and leaders have considered (and continue to consider) what solutions are possible for them. Right now. This pragmatic approach should supercede any national standard (which is essentially arbitrary anyway) because it based on a finer-grained depiction of local conditions.

In short, speed standards should be pushed by federal policy. But in the near term definitions of broadband should be an emergent property of a nationally-promoted, locally-conducted grassroots planning process.

Muni Broadband In The Cold?

According to Ed Gubbins the rules for obtaining funding through the Stimulus Package (the name pales in rhetorical comparison with "New Deal", doesn't it?) are leaving municipalities with little hope. Specifically, the NTIA's definition of "underservice" keep most areas of any size out of the running for broadband dollars in the near term.

One group of broadband stimulus hopefuls that has been in large part swept out of the running by the specifics of the plan is individual municipalities of any size. Though the stimulus plan stoked broad interest from municipalities earlier this year, many of them have been frustrated by the program’s preference for “underserved areas,” which the government has defined as areas where where at least half of all households lack broadband, where fewer than 40% of households subscribe to broadband, or where no service provider advertises broadband transmission speeds of at least 3 Mb/s.

Those rules sent the city of Northfield, Minnesota, for example, which had hoped to secure stimulus funds, back to the drawing board in its efforts to finance its plans. Melissa Reeder, Northfield’s information technology director, told the local press, “Honestly, I don’t think there’s a single Minnesota city that would qualify.”

I've written before in this space that the urban-rural divide doesn't make a lot of sense anymore. I'll acknowledge that the "unserved/underserved/served" trichotomy may create as many perversions. The bottom line is that any one-size-fits-all federal definition or standard of service or need is likely to have a similar effect. This reality brings us back to the importance of local engagement and planning for broadband. If standards of service are the product of sober thinking coming from local actors, then local conditions and logics of feasibility can dictate what the ideal level of service is.

A Step in the Right Direction: USASpending Site

Haven't had much of a chance to poke around it yet, but the newly released USA Spending site is definitely worth a long look.

The purpose of the site, mandated by the Transparency Act:

To provide the public with information about how their tax dollars are spent. Citizens have a right and need to understand where tax dollars are spent. Collecting data about the various types of contracts, grants, loans, and other types of spending in our government will provide a broader picture of and much needed transparency to the Federal spending processes. The ability to look at contracts, grants, loans, and other types of spending across many agencies, in greater detail, is a key ingredient to building public trust in government and credibility in the professionals who use these agreements.

The Map Is Not the Territory

There's been quite a bit of acrimony in the recent debate over the FCC's soon-to-be-released rules for a national broadband map and plan. The stimulus package (or ARRA of 2009) fully funds provisions of the Broadband Data Improvement Act of 2008, which calls for a national strategy for improving broadband, an integral part of which rightly should be mapping where broadband is and isn't available (and with some reliable gauge of the type and speed of service).

As Art Brodsky of Public Knowledge rightly puts it, however:

It’s unfortunate that the issue of broadband mapping is taking up any time and energy, much less about $350 million in stimulus money. Discussion of mapping takes away from discussion of the real issue – deployment, and why large companies have to be begged to provide service to some areas while they go to court and to state legislatures to prevent others from filling the gap.

Brodsky is entirely correct. Mapping, while important, even crucial, to a sound broadband deployment strategy, is only a small fraction of the challenge. Mapping is relatively cheap. Done well, it benefits all parties (consumers and providers). And with knowledge of existing networks, sound strategies to fill gaps in service can be devised.

But the map is only the beginning. No broadband map can be 100% accurate (not even briefly). Providers do not gather spatial deployment data in a consistent way. Many small providers do not gather spatial data on their networks at all. Maps must be verified. And the best means of verification is through consumers themselves, not by trusting the validity of data providers cough up through any data gathering and compiling process.

A nationwide broadband map, then, is only as effective as the level of public involvement in scrutinizing and correcting it. In other words, the map, which is an artifact of a necessarily imperfect and incomplete and continually changing data collection is not the territory in which the public solicits broadband deployment and improvements in performance. Rather the territory comprises those far-flung locales where various publics either are or are not served adequately to meet their needs.

This reality is what makes Brodsky's blithe dismissal of comprehensive planning processes aimed at engaging those local publics so striking. In condemning Connected Nation, an entity for which Brodsky reserves especial venom, he claims, "Connected Nation charges up to millions of dollars for mapping and, in some occasions, to organize local teams to assess demand." In the same piece, Brodsky marvels at how small a ratio of Connected Nation's budget is dedicated to mapping. (Full disclosure: I have had a working relationship ConnectKentucky and more recently Connected Nation since 2004, consulting on the demand stimulation efforts.)

In unleashing his fury on the skewed nature of Connected Nation's mapping project budgets, however, Brodsky betrays his ignorance of the intricacies of broadband deployment. As is the case with all infrastructures, broadband is a socio-technical system. This means that supply and demand necessarily co-evolve along with regulatory institutions, legal frameworks, and even family life. Drawing a map of where broadband is available is essential. But doing so does nothing to mobilize interest at localities where it has never been available. Connected Nation's approach is two-pronged: mapping supply and working with providers to extend their networks while simultaneously working extensively with leaders at a local level to increase demand and adoption. In many instances, those local efforts have led to local and even regional broadband deployments when no provider was willing to step in and extend supply.

All these efforts are influenced by mapping and accuracy. Indeed, part of the process is to solicit extensive feedback from the public on the maps that Connected Nation produces. But mapping is only a fraction of the overall effort necessary to develop, extend, and improve broadband. Connected Nation's process demonstrates that they understand the complexities of the challenge. Brodsky's off-the-cuff dismissal of this approach is evidence that he doesn't have a clue.

Treading the Limn: Human, Non-Human, Agency?

The WaPo's Shankar Vendantam has the most interesting piece I've seen on the implications of the crash last week.

Money quote:

"The problem, said several experts who have studied such accidents, is that these investigations invariably focus our attention on discrete aspects of machine or human error, whereas the real problem often lies in the relationship between humans and their automated systems."