I’m a fan of the concept behind the FCC’s National Broadband Policy.  I’ve been of the position for a long time that the internet is a stable utility and like phone, electricity and water, it should be available to everyone. So there is no question we need to roll out broadband internet to everyone.

The question I have is why 100mbs ?

While 100mbs is much faster than most people have available to them we know 3 absolutes when it comes to internet speed:

1. The true speed is only as fast as the weakest link between you and the destination site.

2. Pretty much everyone shares their internet connection at some level, so your throughput /speed is also impacted by other people who are sharing the onramp you are using to the net.

3. The more bandwidth you have available to you, the more ways you will find to use that  bandwidth, Which means that at some point between now and not too soon after you get your 100mbs, its not going to seem like much.

Just ask all those people using all that bandwidth in all those other countries that we are comparing ourselves to. Japan, Korea, pick a country, all get more bandwidth for less money. Are they all screaming for joy about their good fortune ?

Of course like everything else, from chips to beer, if everyone else has more of what we want  at a cheaper price, we want more of it at a cheaper price too. Right ? Of course right.

BUT, and here is the rub. Is there anything that has come of all that bandwidth that we envy and wish we had ? We hear about speeds and pricing from other countries, but I haven’t heard of applications coming out of those countries.  In a recent NYTimes Op-Ed a Harvard Law School Prof argued his reasons why other countries broadband speeds were faster and cheaper,but he never mentioned a single example of any benefits derived from faster and cheaper bandwidth. Should the FCC aspire to make sure we can all get to TMZ.com faster than before ?

Of course we would all like more for less, but the FCC is talking about spending BAZILLIONS of dollars over the next 10 years. The question I have is WHERE DOES IT GET US ?

Are we building 2 lane highways when we can expect that 2 lanes wont be enough for the things we really want to do ?

As I wrote in my last blog post, I truly believe that with more bandwidth and more specifically more throughput comes unique and amazing applications. But we already know that 100mbs is not enough to do amazing.

We already know that people are planning to pollute the bandwidth with TV and TV like video. More Gilligan’s Island Reruns and The Benefactor on demand or maybe in a fulltime streaming loop..Maybe up-ressed to Ultra High Def 3D. All you need is 100mbs of throughput and special glasses to get it. Now that would make the FCC Broadband money well spent, wouldn’t it ?

There are already plenty of people (I know you hate the fact that its not you) in corporations and educational institutions that have 100mbs of throughput available to them. Have you heard of all the amazing developments coming from that bandwidth ? Neither have I.

There are some cool things happening with Internet 2, but its going to take more than 100mbs to get them. Which is exactly why the FCC plan has destinations that will get 1gbs of bandwidth. In other words, they will be able to talk to each other, but not share those same apps with you.

The point is that there is some amount of bandwidth/throughput to your home,  that when available will open up a new world of applications. Remember, when we went from modems to broadband we didn’t see new applications as a result. We saw better use of the same applications from the incremental speed. We need to find out where the new applications come from.

Before we peg 100mbs as the speed to which all bandwidth providers should aspire, we need to find the water mark at which bandwidth creates new applications and we need to see some of them.

So maybe before we start digging more trenches and upgrading equipment the FCC should focus on applications and providing some funding, or holding an open forum for high bit rate applications. Once we have some application to learn from, the people building the networks can better design them.

The last thing we need is for 2020 to roll around and the national discussion to be “Who’s bright idea was it to build out to only 100mbs and leave 40pct of America unable to use these new DNA sequencing application that can readily save lives, and forget about point to point XRays and Virtual Education. To name a few.

There is a way to get beyond 100mbs. I will wait till I talk to the FCC to share my thoughts. This is one I want to keep.

Today a bunch of the filings from the Viacom/Google/Youtube lawsuit were made public today.  Here is a techcrunch link to all the goodies if you would like to read them.

Lots of folks have commented about the comments and responses from both the Google and Viacom sides. Each basically said the other side was wrong. No surprises there.

What has surprised me is that Google/Youtube didnt deny any of what I thought was the important stuff.  Then again, Viacom, from what i read (and i admit i didnt read every word) didnt make a big deal of what I thought was the biggest deal.

What was the big deal ?

In the DMCA it is clear that hosting companies are not supposed to know what is on their sites.  The logic in the DMCA was: If you dont know what is on the site, you can’t be responsible for policing it. That is up to the people who upload and who own the copyrighted content. Youtube knew what was on their site.

What caught my eye as “game over” material in the quotes from Youtube founder emails was the constant decision making process over what videos should stay and what should be removed.  They talked in one case about a guy uploading a ton of Family Guy videos and what they should do about it. Another stated “if we reject this we need to reject all the copyrighted ones”. Another asked “cant we keep it up a little longer”.

No question they monitored the site and knew what content  was on the site. They knew what was attracting users. They knew what would grow the site so they could be acquired.

They monitored the site and they  made decisions based on financial gain.

Game over.

I had a very enjoyable debate with Avner Rosen of Boxee yesterday at SXSW.  We tended to go around in circles defending our positions. His (to paraphase): the internet will do what cable and satellite do, but it will do it better. That MicroSoft and Apple among others will in the future come up with new ways to do it all better than we can now.

Mine: Of course the internet can support video, but it cant do it as well as the current digital cable and satellite distributors can, nor is there a profit model that would ever incent content providers to switch their content from the internet to TV.

I wont rehash it all here, but the most salient comment came from the audience when someone asked “Whats the difference if the gatekeeper MicroSoft/Google/Apple rather than Comcast/Time Warner/Directv/Dish ?”

Of course the questioner was right.

Bits are bits . The economics of content are going to search for the best place to be monetized, regardless of the delivery platform.  I think the current model will be the place content finds, Avner seemed to feel it would be some future internet.

It shouldn’t matter.

We both seemed to agree that one of the biggest future changes for the internet will be an increase in bandwidth. The question the needs to be answered is “how will all the new bandwidth, both on the backbone and in the last mile be used ?”

Will it be used for digital video content, ie, TV ? Why would we want it to be used for TV ?

The internet has the opportunity to continue to be transformative. There are applications out there that can change the quality of our lives.  Im not talking about the ability to update your facebook, or check out what where everyone is at on 4Square and twitpic what is happening to your friends and followers. Social Media is one more amazing communication platform that is impacting our lives. But its not tranformative.

There will be transformative applications that need all the bandwidth they can get. Medical, Transportation, Defense, Gaming, Simulations and who knows what. As computers become more powerful, we need to be able to send more data to the cloud where they can crunch data and return it to us.

That is the value of an open internet. The things we cant imagine today. The applications that are just dreams because  they dont have enough horsepower and bandwidth to work today. I want the internet to be a platform for amazing. Not Gilligan’s Island reruns.

I recognize that with openness comes the risk of the least common denominator dominating.  Porn has just as much right to dominate the net as any other app. But should it ?

Yes it should. The lesson of TV over the internet vs TV over digital cable or satellite isnt about openness. Its about the value of Application Specific Networks. DIgital CAble is an application specific network. Its only job is to serve up content and it works very well.

The FCC needs to recognize this and start working with internet broadband providers to define tunnels,  Private Virtual Networks  or just plain reserved bandwidth that are saved for future applications. When a transformative application presents itself, there should be an opportunity to define the network to optimize that application.

In the event some form of ubiquitous entertainment comes first ,  takes over the net and saturates it, how is the FCC going to solve the bandwidth traffic jam ? They wont ever be able to put the bandwidth genie back in the bottle. Screaming at broadband providers to spend the money wont work any better than screaming to expand highways helps to alleviate rush hour traffic

The FCC wants Internet 2 at universities to flourish and develop new things. But where are they going to roll them out to if all of our bandwidth to the home is being used for some new form of 3D virtual fantasy sports?

I just dont think these things will just manage to take care of themselves.  The reality is that when we run into future internet application roadblocks our politicians will jump in the mix and attempt to “solve” the problems. You know where that will get us.

We need to start the process now of putting some bandwidth to the home away for a rainy day. Not only do we need to preserve bandwidth in the last mile, but the FCC also needs to  figure out a way to create a transparent market or exchange that allows competing applications a means of knowing how and when they will have access to bandwidth when, not if,  it becomes constrained.

And if you really want to make things interesting, the company that is doing the most work on realtime markets and competing for resources that i know of ? ….. Google.

Deal with it today or struggle with it in the future.