Southwest Virginia Blogs

One big change in the switch to an all IP-based telecommunications system is that businesses may see lower taxes. Franchise fees, carrier line assessments, subscriber line charges, and other state and local telecom taxes often add up to nearly 50% of the cost of a business telephone line. Most or all of those charges disappear when a business switches to VoIP. Local and state governments may not like that, but over-taxing businesses just makes local businesses less competitive in a world economy (it is not accident that Asia is roaring ahead economically--business taxes in high growth Asian countries are usually much lower than in the U.S.).

High business taxes on essentials like phone service simply leave businesses with less money for new jobs and business expansion. Government can't have it both ways: high taxes on businesses and good economic growth.

But community broadband does not mean local governments have to give up revenue from telecom. Just the opposite is true. By designing a fairly structured open service provider network, more telecom users pay for the cost of right of way and community infrastructure, and the cost of providing the network (and some fair return to a government's general fund) is more evenly applied across the community, with a lower burden for businesses. As a bonus, the open competition of an OSPN community system tends to lower telecom costs for business.

With an open service provider network, everyone wins. Businesses get more and better telecom services at lower costs while paying lower taxes, citizens and local government pays less for telecom, and local government actually gets more revenue than it would with the crazy patchwork set of taxes and franchise fees in use now.

Sound interesting? Call us to talk about doing a financial engineering study of how your local government would benefit financially from an OSPN community broadband system.

In one of the most disheartening and discouraging articles I have read in a long time, Robert Cresanti, the Undersecretary of Commerce for Technology, says, essentially, that Americans are stupid and that we need to import more foreign engineers and scientists.

He apparently visited China recently, and came away so impressed that he has unilaterally surrendered the U.S. economy to China. This man ought to be fired on the spot. Instead of drafting a plan to increase U.S. investments in science and engineering, his approach is to give up and hire more Chinese.

I have a little more faith in America and American workers than that, and it is a tragedy that this guy gets paid with our tax dollars.

In one of the most disheartening and discouraging articles I have read in a long time, Robert Cresanti, the Undersecretary of Commerce for Technology, says, essentially, that Americans are stupid and that we need to import more foreign engineers and scientists.

He apparently visited China recently, and came away so impressed that he has unilaterally surrendered the U.S. economy to China. This man ought to be fired on the spot. Instead of drafting a plan to increase U.S. investments in science and engineering, his approach is to give up and hire more Chinese.

I have a little more faith in America and American workers than that, and it is a tragedy that this guy gets paid with our tax dollars.

NetworkWorld reports that spam traffic has jumped substantially in the past month or two. Fueling the deluge of junk mail are two changes in the spam ecosphere. Spammers are using two new zombie programs that infect Windows computers, making ordinary desktop computers into spam machines that can send out hundreds of thousands of spam emails per day. Often, people don't even know their machine has been infected; the only hint that something may be wrong is sluggish performance.

The second thing driving the new levels of spam is "image spam," which replaces text with GIF and JPEG images. Very few junk mail filters are able to detect that an email with just an image in it is spam, so spammers are both sending out more of that kind of spam, but we are seeing more of it in our IN boxes because our email filters and firewalls can't detect it. There is some work being done to use image processing software to identify and detect image spam, but it will take some time to get the software working well enough to deploy.

Ultimately, I see no solution other than to charge a fee for email. The problem with spam is that there is virtually no cost to send it. In essence, the cost of delivery is paid by the receiver, rather than the sender. If we had a micropayment system in place where it cost, for example, 1/100th of a cent to send a piece of email, it would cost most people and businesses almost nothing, but spammers sending millions of emails per day could no longer afford to do it.

NetworkWorld reports that spam traffic has jumped substantially in the past month or two. Fueling the deluge of junk mail are two changes in the spam ecosphere. Spammers are using two new zombie programs that infect Windows computers, making ordinary desktop computers into spam machines that can send out hundreds of thousands of spam emails per day. Often, people don't even know their machine has been infected; the only hint that something may be wrong is sluggish performance.

The second thing driving the new levels of spam is "image spam," which replaces text with GIF and JPEG images. Very few junk mail filters are able to detect that an email with just an image in it is spam, so spammers are both sending out more of that kind of spam, but we are seeing more of it in our IN boxes because our email filters and firewalls can't detect it. There is some work being done to use image processing software to identify and detect image spam, but it will take some time to get the software working well enough to deploy.

Ultimately, I see no solution other than to charge a fee for email. The problem with spam is that there is virtually no cost to send it. In essence, the cost of delivery is paid by the receiver, rather than the sender. If we had a micropayment system in place where it cost, for example, 1/100th of a cent to send a piece of email, it would cost most people and businesses almost nothing, but spammers sending millions of emails per day could no longer afford to do it.

NetworkWorld reports that spam traffic has jumped substantially in the past month or two. Fueling the deluge of junk mail are two changes in the spam ecosphere. Spammers are using two new zombie programs that infect Windows computers, making ordinary desktop computers into spam machines that can send out hundreds of thousands of spam emails per day. Often, people don't even know their machine has been infected; the only hint that something may be wrong is sluggish performance.

The second thing driving the new levels of spam is "image spam," which replaces text with GIF and JPEG images. Very few junk mail filters are able to detect that an email with just an image in it is spam, so spammers are both sending out more of that kind of spam, but we are seeing more of it in our IN boxes because our email filters and firewalls can't detect it. There is some work being done to use image processing software to identify and detect image spam, but it will take some time to get the software working well enough to deploy.

Ultimately, I see no solution other than to charge a fee for email. The problem with spam is that there is virtually no cost to send it. In essence, the cost of delivery is paid by the receiver, rather than the sender. If we had a micropayment system in place where it cost, for example, 1/100th of a cent to send a piece of email, it would cost most people and businesses almost nothing, but spammers sending millions of emails per day could no longer afford to do it.

If you needed proof that the US Patent and Trade Office (USPTO) has problems, look no further. The USPTO just granted Cisco a patent on the triple play, which means delivering voice, video, and data to the home. Cisco does not have much a presence in the Fiber To The Home (FTTH) market because their gear is designed for corporate and institutional networks, and is not really the first or even second choice for community broadband systems.

Like a lot of companies, Cisco has apparently decided if they can't innovate, they can at least sue. The notion of "triple play" is so common that it is laughable to think it could be patented, but we're talking the Federal government here, in a perfect illustration of why you really don't want Federal bureaucrats helping too much with local broadband. You would likely end up with some Federal agency defining broadband as 256 kilobits, or about one one-thousandth of what other countries view as acceptable. Oh, wait, that is what we have--it is the FCC's definition of broadband.

Anyway, I digress. This patent is likely to be challenged early and often. There are numerous other companies that have been working in this field, and Cisco's only (weak) claim to the patent is that they filed it in 2000, before there were too many products on the market that actually implemented this.

Communities need to deal with broadband locally. The Federal government simply does not have the cash to rebuild the entire telecommunications infrastructure of the United States over the next ten years, so waiting for the Feds is an exercise in futility. But there is some good news: there is plenty of money to rebuild local telecom infrastructure. You just have to know where it is. And no, it is not at the state or Federal level.

If you needed proof that the US Patent and Trade Office (USPTO) has problems, look no further. The USPTO just granted Cisco a patent on the triple play, which means delivering voice, video, and data to the home. Cisco does not have much a presence in the Fiber To The Home (FTTH) market because their gear is designed for corporate and institutional networks, and is not really the first or even second choice for community broadband systems.

Like a lot of companies, Cisco has apparently decided if they can't innovate, they can at least sue. The notion of "triple play" is so common that it is laughable to think it could be patented, but we're talking the Federal government here, in a perfect illustration of why you really don't want Federal bureaucrats helping too much with local broadband. You would likely end up with some Federal agency defining broadband as 256 kilobits, or about one one-thousandth of what other countries view as acceptable. Oh, wait, that is what we have--it is the FCC's definition of broadband.

Anyway, I digress. This patent is likely to be challenged early and often. There are numerous other companies that have been working in this field, and Cisco's only (weak) claim to the patent is that they filed it in 2000, before there were too many products on the market that actually implemented this.

Communities need to deal with broadband locally. The Federal government simply does not have the cash to rebuild the entire telecommunications infrastructure of the United States over the next ten years, so waiting for the Feds is an exercise in futility. But there is some good news: there is plenty of money to rebuild local telecom infrastructure. You just have to know where it is. And no, it is not at the state or Federal level.

Demonstrating that the big telecom companies have not learned much over the past decade, they have successfully gotten a new top level domain called 'mobi,' as in cingular.mobi. In theory, this is supposed to make it easier for people to find content customized for cellphones, but this is a non-problem. It is straightforward now to design Web sites for cellphones, and you don't need a new domain to do it--there is no value add here.

All this is is a clumsy attempt to create more walled gardens for content, and of course, in a walled garden, there is a gatekeeper collecting fees. From a user perspective, it makes things worse, as you now have to make an extra decision....do you go to cingular.com to find what you are looking for, or do you have to search on cingular.mobi? Since it is very expensive to duplicate the content of Web sites, most companies using the mobi domain won't keep everything on their 'normal' site and the mobi site, so you may have to check in both places. Which takes time--make that *wastes* time and will irritate everyone.

The telecoms are still pursuing a 1950s era business model of "owning the customer," and they continue to try to do so in the Knowledge Economy, where you can't "own" the customer anymore. Every scheme to try to create special content for cellphones has failed...remember WAP? Neither does anyone else, because it was a complete failure.

Demonstrating that the big telecom companies have not learned much over the past decade, they have successfully gotten a new top level domain called 'mobi,' as in cingular.mobi. In theory, this is supposed to make it easier for people to find content customized for cellphones, but this is a non-problem. It is straightforward now to design Web sites for cellphones, and you don't need a new domain to do it--there is no value add here.

All this is is a clumsy attempt to create more walled gardens for content, and of course, in a walled garden, there is a gatekeeper collecting fees. From a user perspective, it makes things worse, as you now have to make an extra decision....do you go to cingular.com to find what you are looking for, or do you have to search on cingular.mobi? Since it is very expensive to duplicate the content of Web sites, most companies using the mobi domain won't keep everything on their 'normal' site and the mobi site, so you may have to check in both places. Which takes time--make that *wastes* time and will irritate everyone.

The telecoms are still pursuing a 1950s era business model of "owning the customer," and they continue to try to do so in the Knowledge Economy, where you can't "own" the customer anymore. Every scheme to try to create special content for cellphones has failed...remember WAP? Neither does anyone else, because it was a complete failure.

The media has numerous stories on the Maryland campaign aide who was fired for blogging on the job. The young woman's remarks, aside from being insensitive and rude, are incredibly naive. Not only was she making inappropriate remarks about her boss' opponent, she was also making inappropriate remarks about her boss' own associates--she was writing negative comments about her own boss.

So we have a perfect illustration of a blog gone too far. Regrettably, we have people today who think they have a right to blog about anything that strikes their fancy, but blogging is not a right, it is an opportunity. So we can formulate a simple rule.
Don't blog the hand that feeds you.

I hope this campaign aide is not surprised that she was fired, but somehow, I doubt it. Businesses need to add a policy on blogging to the company handbook, and it could be just one word, "Don't," as in "Don't blog about the company you work for or the people you work for or with, period. Doing so will be grounds for dismissal."

The media has numerous stories on the Maryland campaign aide who was fired for blogging on the job. The young woman's remarks, aside from being insensitive and rude, are incredibly naive. Not only was she making inappropriate remarks about her boss' opponent, she was also making inappropriate remarks about her boss' own associates--she was writing negative comments about her own boss.

So we have a perfect illustration of a blog gone too far. Regrettably, we have people today who think they have a right to blog about anything that strikes their fancy, but blogging is not a right, it is an opportunity. So we can formulate a simple rule.
Don't blog the hand that feeds you.

I hope this campaign aide is not surprised that she was fired, but somehow, I doubt it. Businesses need to add a policy on blogging to the company handbook, and it could be just one word, "Don't," as in "Don't blog about the company you work for or the people you work for or with, period. Doing so will be grounds for dismissal."

The media has numerous stories on the Maryland campaign aide who was fired for blogging on the job. The young woman's remarks, aside from being insensitive and rude, are incredibly naive. Not only was she making inappropriate remarks about her boss' opponent, she was also making inappropriate remarks about her boss' own associates--she was writing negative comments about her own boss.

So we have a perfect illustration of a blog gone too far. Regrettably, we have people today who think they have a right to blog about anything that strikes their fancy, but blogging is not a right, it is an opportunity. So we can formulate a simple rule.
Don't blog the hand that feeds you.

I hope this campaign aide is not surprised that she was fired, but somehow, I doubt it. Businesses need to add a policy on blogging to the company handbook, and it could be just one word, "Don't," as in "Don't blog about the company you work for or the people you work for or with, period. Doing so will be grounds for dismissal."

This CNet article describes how telephone and cable companies are responding to competition with better customer service. As cable companies roll out voice services and telephone companies are slowly rolling out TV service, we are getting a glimpse of what happens when these companies have to worry about keeping their customers--they treat them better.

But a duopoly also tends to lead to cartel-like pricing, where service may be slightly better but you don't see much movement in prices. With just two firms, there is little reason for either firm to cut prices very much or to try to do things differently. That is one reason why you see a lot of low ball "introductory pricing" for DSL and cable modem services, but never see any permanent price cuts. The phone companies still have a much smaller broadband marketshare, so DSL tends to be about $10 cheaper than cable modem service in most markets--consumers won't bother to switch at all if the savings are less than that.

But prices for all services--voice, video, and data--could be much less expensive if all those services were carried over an Open Service Provider Network (OSPN) using an Open Service Architecture (OSA) system. Then and only then do things really get interesting, because now instead of two providers for a service, you are much more likely to have four or more, making cartel pricing much more difficult.

The future of broadband is Open Service Provider Networks. They work--you get more services at much lower cost. The OSPN concept started in Europe, but once we get a couple of communities in the U.S. with OSPN systems, it will be hard to imagine doing it any other way. Oh, and one more thing.....OSPN networks make communitywide broadband systems financially viable over the long term. Design Nine is the only broadband architecture firm in the U.S. that specializes in the design and implementation of OSPN systems; call us if you want help with your community fiber and wireless projects.

A consortium of communities in Michigan figured out that building their own fiber network would save them millions in taxpayer funds, but if you read the article, you get the distinct impression that Verizon believes the purpose of government is to ensure that Verizon never has any competition.

Apparently, Verizon believes government should never try to save money and never try to do things differently if there is any impact on Verizon's bottom line.

The clue that something is amiss is the huge costs savings the local governments gain from building an entirely new network--an expensive undertaking. Verizon, in many areas of the country, has chosen not to invest in new infrastructure, effectively forcing communities and businesses to continue to pay high prices for old, 19th century copper technology.

Done right, community fiber systems can not only save taxpayer dollars but also be a huge boon for businesses, who could get access to less expensive voice and data services from competitive providers.

In the studies that Design Nine has been doing for communities, when you look at the forty year expected life of fiber, the multi-million dollar cost of a fiber system is a fraction (typically less than 5%) of what business and government will pay for telecom over that same time period. And it's a lot less expensive than water and sewer projects, which communities build and manage routinely.

Who do you want deciding the economic future of your community? You, or Verizon?

A consortium of communities in Michigan figured out that building their own fiber network would save them millions in taxpayer funds, but if you read the article, you get the distinct impression that Verizon believes the purpose of government is to ensure that Verizon never has any competition.

Apparently, Verizon believes government should never try to save money and never try to do things differently if there is any impact on Verizon's bottom line.

The clue that something is amiss is the huge costs savings the local governments gain from building an entirely new network--an expensive undertaking. Verizon, in many areas of the country, has chosen not to invest in new infrastructure, effectively forcing communities and businesses to continue to pay high prices for old, 19th century copper technology.

Done right, community fiber systems can not only save taxpayer dollars but also be a huge boon for businesses, who could get access to less expensive voice and data services from competitive providers.

In the studies that Design Nine has been doing for communities, when you look at the forty year expected life of fiber, the multi-million dollar cost of a fiber system is a fraction (typically less than 5%) of what business and government will pay for telecom over that same time period. And it's a lot less expensive than water and sewer projects, which communities build and manage routinely.

Who do you want deciding the economic future of your community? You, or Verizon?

We know exactly what will happen if the big telecom companies succeed in convincing Congress to let them partition the Internet. We have a perfectly good example of the mess we will be in, and it is called the cellphone industry. Read this article to see how innovation is choked off, small businesses are forced out of the market place, and how consumers end up paying more, much more, for mediocre services.

Right now, anyone with a good idea can start an Internet-based business and know that the service will be available to anyone with an Internet connection. What the telecom companies want is a "two tier" system, but in reality there will be many tiers, and companies that want to sell a service over a Verizon network, as an example, will likely have to pay high up front fees and high monthly fees, before any revenue comes back to the new enterprise. This means most new business ideas will never launch, because the start up costs will be too high, and the next Google or eBay will never have a chance. Let's hope Congress comes to its senses before it is too late.

We know exactly what will happen if the big telecom companies succeed in convincing Congress to let them partition the Internet. We have a perfectly good example of the mess we will be in, and it is called the cellphone industry. Read this article to see how innovation is choked off, small businesses are forced out of the market place, and how consumers end up paying more, much more, for mediocre services.

Right now, anyone with a good idea can start an Internet-based business and know that the service will be available to anyone with an Internet connection. What the telecom companies want is a "two tier" system, but in reality there will be many tiers, and companies that want to sell a service over a Verizon network, as an example, will likely have to pay high up front fees and high monthly fees, before any revenue comes back to the new enterprise. This means most new business ideas will never launch, because the start up costs will be too high, and the next Google or eBay will never have a chance. Let's hope Congress comes to its senses before it is too late.

We know exactly what will happen if the big telecom companies succeed in convincing Congress to let them partition the Internet. We have a perfectly good example of the mess we will be in, and it is called the cellphone industry. Read this article to see how innovation is choked off, small businesses are forced out of the market place, and how consumers end up paying more, much more, for mediocre services.

Right now, anyone with a good idea can start an Internet-based business and know that the service will be available to anyone with an Internet connection. What the telecom companies want is a "two tier" system, but in reality there will be many tiers, and companies that want to sell a service over a Verizon network, as an example, will likely have to pay high up front fees and high monthly fees, before any revenue comes back to the new enterprise. This means most new business ideas will never launch, because the start up costs will be too high, and the next Google or eBay will never have a chance. Let's hope Congress comes to its senses before it is too late.

Regular readers know that I am often no fan of Google, but this article suggests Google may be the best friend we have as the telecom wars heat up. With Congress determined to pass the best laws that the big telecom firms can buy, Google (and Microsoft, if it wants to take sides) is a firm with pockets deep enough to go eyeball to eyeball with the cable and phone companies over net neutrality and the two tier Internet.