Adam Gifford: Prophet of broadband revolution

By ADAM GIFFORD

Occasionally an essay comes along so powerful or well-reasoned that it sweeps the internet, popping up on newsgroups, e-mail lists and multiple websites, and leaks into the print and broadcast media.

Eric Raymond's The Church and the Bazaar was one such blast which struck a chord with people trying to understand the new models the internet was creating.

The internal Microsoft debate on how to counter the rise of the open-source Linux operating system, leaked as a series of memos known as The Halloween Papers, was another. Both blasts echo at tuxedo.org.

In 1997, the United States telephone giant AT&T posted an internal paper on its site, Rise of the Stupid Network: why the intelligent network was a good idea once but isn't anymore. Before the company pulled it down, the paper made its way to the Wall St Journal, Network Report and other publications and to lists read by people who think about networks, telecommunications and why their telephone company does not deliver the service they need.

That paper was written by David Isenberg, a senior technical staff member at AT&T Labs Research (or Bell Labs, as it is more commonly known), and can still be found via a link from his site.

"Our department had consultants in who'd written a paper on the intelligent network and how wonderful it was. I had some verbal comments and they asked me to put them on paper," Dr Isenberg says.

"Writing comes hard to me, but my wife was off on a yoga retreat that weekend so I sat down and it just flowed out of me."

An intelligent network, the model for a telephone company, adds value to the network by putting features and applications under central control.

"The internet makes that obsolete, because internet working protocols are designed to bypass network specific inferences. That means there's only one place you can do anything specific by way of adding value, and that's at the edge."

Dr Isenberg's attempt to tell his employers the company was going down the wrong track (ie, the track it had always taken) went down badly, and he soon gave up trying to steer dinosaurs and went looking for younger, more nimble companies to play with.

That brought him to New Zealand last week to help UnitedNetworks launch its Auckland and Wellington fibre loops, a network of fibre-optic cables running through old gas mains in the central business districts which will allow ISPs, ASPs and other operators to offer broadband internet access at tens of gigabytes a second.

Dr Isenberg says that sort of bandwidth will open New Zealanders' eyes to the potential of the broadband revolution that has been shaking other parts of the developed world.

"The bottom line is it's important for people to be connected at megabit speeds so they can really be connected to rest of world's economy and the world's knowledge and to events and entertainment and all the things people need to be connected for."

But don't expect the telephone companies to get you there. Dr Isenberg says that, as incumbents, they are too scared of killing the cash cow to embrace disruptive technologies fully.

He says broadband is a technological and economic lead for early adopters like Canada and Sweden.

"It wouldn't take much for New Zealand to be there too."

Both those countries have adopted fibre-friendly policies. Canada has made it possible for civic organisations like churches or service clubs to hang their own fibre. Even the rural areas are catching on, in a similar development to the rural cooperatives of the 1930s.

"History doesn't repeat itself, it rhymes, and the rural electrification movement of the 1930s is going to repeat to a large extent and make beautiful poetry in 2010."

In Sweden, where high taxes and a Social Democratic establishment create expectations of state or civic involvement in any infrastructure development, a city-chartered company has been created to lay fibre through Stockholm subways, steam pipes, sewer lines and other existing holes in the ground.

"Stockholm wanted a robust level of telecoms competition and didn't want its historic streets pulled up."

Sweden also has a national initiative to get a minimum 5 Mbps access to every home, even above the Arctic Circle, by 2005.

Dr Isenberg says economies of scale will kick in with fibre, allowing access even into rural areas.

"The Government should help because it is to everyone's advantage to have rural sections connected at good speed. Ideas like distance learning, telemedicine and so on become even more valuable in rural areas ."

Looking ahead, he says optical fibre and wireless are what seem to be winning, and copper-based technologies like DSL will fade away. Anything which needs a box at the telephone company, like WAP (wireless application protocol) will not take off.

BOOKMARKS

Adam Gifford's top websites


VISIONARY: The Smart List

David Isenberg calls himself a "prosultant" rather than a consultant, but "telecom troublemaker" or "independent industry observer" will do just fine.

His slate is his website, where he archives his monthly Smart letter full of pithy observations about the threshings of the dinosaurs in the tar pits and where networking technology is going.

One to grok even if you're not in the business.

Advisory: "Generous to a fault."

INTERNET SPECIFIC: The Cook Report.

This is a monthly newsletter put out by the former Director of the US Congress Office of Technology Assessment, focusing on the technology and policy complexities of internet infrastructure development.

Voice and data convergence, the role of fibre networks and the antics of ICANN in its attempts to control the internet all get the Cook scrutiny, with long interviews with key figures and links to fascinating documents. A heavy read, but sometimes you need to know.

Advisory: A pay subscription model, but there's enough free stuff to give you the idea.

* adamg@iprolink.co.nz

Links


Tuxedo.org

David Isenberg

The Cook Report