bellhead.net

I came home this afternoon to find a bag on my front porch containing at least an acre of forest processed into yellow paper. Yes, it’s that time of year where we get our new directories and the recycle center overflows with last years copies. I guess I’m a bit nostalgic here, but I still use mine quite a bit. I have yet to find an online version compelling enough or lacking the clutter of a millions of adds layered amongst multiple frames that are indistinguishable from my search target. Furthermore, it takes a few minutes to boot the computer - a problem squarely rooted in my preservation of an antiquated version of IIS struggling on a NT Server because Microsoft no longer has reasonable pricing for web developers like my wife. I digress…

Anyways, I did not intend for this post to be about directory services, but about the bag in which my yellow pages came in, or more specifically the advertisement that was on it. FIOS is here, the ad trumpets. But a buzzer sounds. And an announcer goes, “sorry, wrong answer!”

I live in an at&t neighborhood. Only in the last year did we get DSL, a result of a lot of new copper and a cleaning up of the pedestal in the alley that got whacked by the garbage truck every third week (on a side note, how to you distribute high frequency signals on a punch down panel that makes Medusa look like a good hair day with out crosstalk and severe attenuation?). My old bonded 128K ISDN ran faster! Prior to the DSL roll out our cable operator upgraded their plant, giving us something in a more respectable range. This was only after a year of us languishing with nothing. Nothing but the dead carcasses from project Angel, the failed fixed wireless broadband project of AT&T, hanging on our garages. And to add insult to injury, I live walking distance from a major research university and within minutes of one of the top technology corridors.

Sorry Mr. Hoewing, but we do not have competition, thus your ad is meaningless. Likewise, please do not try to sell me on your distant cousin’s wireless service, the one with restricted unlimited downloads. My neighborhood is a perfect example of the wireless broadband rollercoaster, it is just not prudent to use technology with such a short life cycle for more durable purposes like fixed urban infrastructure. And if you are going to tell me that “LightSpeed” is on the way, need I remind you that I have brand spanking new copper that has yet to even see its first year of depreciation - telco’s abhor sunk costs.

In all fairness this is not a trivial issue to solve. It has social dimensions rooted in Universal Service, regulatory overflow from Common Carriage, and a plethora of technical and business challenges. The Telco 2.0 conference looked at many of them as reported here by James Enck. Furthermore, those interested in all of the alternative business models in Europe that are getting the attention of Lessig et. al. should try Gordon Cook’s blog starting with this entry.

So I leave you with my favorite tidbit of all. I know this has to make Ed Whitacker sick whenever he is reminded of it, but think what it now means to the end user who now has choice of service providers on fiber to his home, including at&t. Now think of all the happy investors, the at&t ones who did not have to bear significant capital expenditure, or the municipal bond holders who are seeing a secure tax-free return. And my favorite part of Utopia, I am no longer forced to buy phone service or television just to get some bits brought to my house.