As we await the FCC's release of its Broadband Plan later today, I think we can all say that given the scale of the challenge -- the U.S. went from 4th to 15th in the world in broadband penetration over the last ten years while we pay very high rates for very little compared to Asian and European countries -- the plan will far very far short of putting us on an even footing with the rest of the world. An additional $20+ billion in broadband stimulus would be welcome of course, but we can't really afford to wait. There will be something incrementally better coming eventually, but we still live in the here and now.
Rural areas, [Indian reservations](http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/3/14/63419/5738), impoverished inner cities -- the unserved and the underserved -- will continue to petition the government and telecom providers to make internet access available and affordable, and very slowly the lines will be laid. Backhaul, generally, whether from cellular networks and from satellites will get faster, cheaper, and more available over time, but companies will build most where there is the most profit, and that continues to be where the most people are.
For the U.S. to step forward as a wired society despite limited resources, and quickly, underserved and unserved communities would do well not to wait until eventually fiber is brought in whether through a government grant or a telecom investment. Instead, communities should start to build their own private wireless intranets, with much of the content they would need for education, health, and social services housed locally.
At some point you would have some link -- DSL/Satellite, cellular to the internet or email, web page updates, basic surfing -- but otherwise, you have several terabytes of useful data running off the server.
Here is Julius Genachowski the Chairman of the FCC in a hearing March 2nd offering all the following benefits that broadband could deliver to Indian reservations:
High-speed Internet is not only the Web and email; it’s a telephone; it’s television; it’s a library; it’s a town hall.
Broadband has the potential to help Tribal communities advance farther, faster, than any new technology in our lifetime.
Broadband is a platform for job creation and economic growth.
Studies from the Brookings Institute, MIT, the World Bank, and others all tell us the same thing -- that even modest increases in broadband adoption nationally can yield hundreds of thousands of new jobs, and broadband can generate jobs in Indian Country.
Broadband is a platform for innovation. If you have a high-speed Internet connection, you can dream big, bring those dreams to life, and then bring them to the world.
Broadband also is a platform for solutions to so many of our major challenges: education, health care, energy, public safety, and democratic engagement.
Broadband’s ability to transcend the barriers of distance could be particularly potent for Tribal communities.
With broadband, entrepreneurs on Tribal lands don’t need to move to the cities. They can collaborate, innovate, and create new small businesses and high-value jobs because they have access to robust and open information networks.
With broadband, kids in Tribal schools can have access in their classrooms to the best teachers in the world, and access in their homes to up-to-date e-textbooks and high quality tutoring from energized college and grad students around America.
With broadband, a Native American with diabetes can get dietary counseling on her home computer, a remote diagnosis in a nearby facility, and, if necessary, even surgery aided remotely by specialists at teaching hospitals.
Genachowski here is equating 'broadband' with 'the internet' throughout. They are different. Broadband is the speed to my computer or smartphone. It should not be the same thing as internet speed, which is what is feeding the network ultimately.
Every single benefit that Genachowski lists tribal areas if there were only broadband can be provided even without the internet, via a community intranet. Such an intranet would deliver health, education, public services, video conferencing, telephony (on the intranet), tribal culture and history (as created by the tribe itself through a local portal) via high speed broadband. 802.11n can run as high at 160 Mbps at short distances and from 300 feet away can still hit 70 Mbps. It will be a long time, if ever, until a reservation sees those internet connection speeds. You'd still want an internet gateway at some point to send and receive email, and update local content, but otherwise, keep it all local. It's a tribal intranet.
If I were to develop a telecom plan for a reservation, I chances are I would end up having to use satellite for backhaul. I would add uplinks to the network as needed, with the community sharing the combined pipe. They'd be most likely to agree with a share arrangement, as compared to cable companies or telcos.
With the core data needed by the community already on the local server, you'd want to cache as much as you could besides from the aggregate browsing habits of those in the community. The less traffic on the satellite link the better. No reason everyone has to download the same websites separately. Someone downloads cnn.com once, then the next time anyone goes to that web page, the page is simply updated.
How then would this be funded?
Since the network would be delivering education and health service as well as local public safety services, there would be a lot more places to look for funding sources.
There is enough local commerce, even in the poorest communities, that if the community intranet facilitated a good portion of it, the network could be self-sustaining. The local community portal would help local businesses promote their services.
As for the rest of the web? People will still be surfing, but this is a community intranet. It has its purposes. Globalization wasn't a good thing for tribes in the first place. Now the same technology can lead to tribes being able to reorganize and redefine themselves through wireless and network technologies.
Underserved and unserved communities, then, can get a head start on elearning, ehealth, computer literacy, by delivering essential public services locally and wirelessly. By the time they get more robust backhaul - a fiber link, say -- they will be already a tech literate community by having localized the internet.
One could argue that if a community takes this step, it will become much more attractive to those issuing the grants, and those companies looking to provide telco services. If a community creates a local web, they will already be web literate, and would then have some clout when they negotiated for backhaul.
I'd like to thank exmearden and her excellent diary entitled The National Broadband Plan and Indian Country for inspiring me to think about what may be done here and now for those who will otherwise continue to be left behind.
Because we have limited means and face certain economic and political realities, as today's report will certainly underline -- we need to rethink the problem and the solution.