Connectivity to Schools, Libraries, and Even Homes

Connectivity to Schools, Libraries, and Even Homes

Alan K. McAdams

Professor of Managerial Economics, Cornell University

and

Senior Member IEEE

The Telecommunications Act of 1996 was intended to bring about competition among the various modes of information transport in the US thus moving the nation into the true “information age”. The Act, along with the bursting of the dot-com bubble, appears to have done exactly the opposite. The monopolies of the local telephone companies are now virtually locked in cement. Lack of competition is undermining the otherwise-likely emergence of exciting new information technologies including full fiber to the end user, including to the home user.

Fortuitously, US local and regional power utilities have the ability through alliances with others, perhaps including community institutions such as school districts, universities, libraries, even condominiums and housing developments; to unleash precisely the new technologies whose emergence can result in the next, grand technology boom. Now is the time for US power utilities to seize the initiative!

A new approach has begun in Canada and is already spilling over to the United States, especially just below the Canadian border. It is based on: gigabit-speed, all-fiber, IP-only connectivity to schools, libraries, and even homes. Soon, through community initiatives, it can extend as well to offices and businesses of every sort.

The Canadians established a partnership, known as CANARIE, among their research and education community, their Federal government, Canadian Telcos, and North American equipment suppliers to develop new networks with the stated objective of establishing Canada as the world’s telecom-technology leader. Adopting Occam’s Rule of network design,

--“the simplest network design is likely the most effective network design”--

they have over-built their backbone. They have built from the ground up a new, high-speed, all-fiber, IP-only, optical network. The Canadians refer to their approach as “divergence”, not “convergence”. After they digested what they learned in this process, they adapted the same approach to last-mile networks. One of the most innovative aspects of their last-mile networks is that many are user-owned, -operated, and -controlled!

These networks are simpler, faster, more quickly and easily constructed; and they avoid myriad problems associated with legacy systems, not the least of which are the regulatory and political baggage that has developed around legacy systems. Power companies have played a secondary role in Canada -- facilitating the rapid construction of the new networks and participating in their operation and control.

Now is the time for US power companies to step up, figuratively and literally build on the Canadian prototypes, and play a leadership role for the US. It is time to catch up -- and surpass!