1. Monthly archive
  2. February 2016

February 2016

Google Is Lighting Up Dormant 'Dark Fiber' All Over the Country

Most people don’t know that many cities throughout the United States are already wired with "dark fiber": infrastructure that, for a variety of reasons, is never used to provide gigabit connections to actual residents.

This fiber is often laid by companies you rarely hear about, like Zayo and Level 3, which lay fiber infrastructure in hopes the city, a provider like Google, or a corporate customer (like an office building) will eventually make use of it. This can either be a really difficult process or an easy one, depending on local ordinances. Google is going to start lighting some of those cables up. Welcome to the future of broadband in major cities. “Google is setting a precedent and demonstrating its willingness to offer its services over a network it doesn’t own,” said Joanne Hovis, the President of CTC Technology & Energy [and a member of the Benton Foundation Board of Directors] . “That’s something we really haven’t seen in the broadband era. You don’t have to build a new network, you can leverage what’s already there and different providers can use different bundles in fiber strands to compete with each other.”

Google Fiber Strategy Adapts, Any Market Could be Next

[Commentary] The Google Fiber strategy is adapting and expansion to any number of new markets appears to be on tap. Safe to say we really don’t know what their next move will be.

Apparently any market could be in play. Google’s model has always given them tremendous flexibility in how they serve markets. Some argue they’re allowed to only offer service in areas that have the most promise, by utilizing their fiberhood approach. They are now adapting this Google Fiber strategy to potentially cherry pick the best market segments, using existing fiber. If fiber assets are available, they could target the best high margin potential customers, and get competitive gigabit services (or less) to them more quickly, maybe even through a hybrid fiber – wireless approach.

Broadband Is More Than Infrastructure

[Commentary] For local governments that invest in broadband infrastructure, a critical component of success is ensuring that their communities have access to the infrastructure and take advantage of its benefits.

Access to high-speed broadband Internet is becoming vital for businesses and economic development, and most cities recognize its importance. Broadband adoption and use, which were once commonly overlooked, are equally important for economic development and are now beginning to get their fair share of attention. Communities need to be bold and strategic about how to meet their residents’ broadband needs. The old adage “there is no one-size-fits-all solution” is true even in the broadband world, but with some out-of-the-box thinking, communities can create innovative, sustainable approaches to meeting residents’ digital literacy needs.

[Pulidindi is a broadband analyst for Advantage Engineers, which provides engineering and consulting services for telecommunications and other projects]

Stop Unfairly Censoring Commissioners

[Commentary] As it is being applied today, the Commission’s existing rule intended to protect nonpublic information hinders Commissioners’ abilities to engage in the fulsome dialogue and obtain the data needed to most thoroughly and thoughtfully consider and comment on items. Moreover, it’s being applied discriminatorily as Commissioners are silenced while the Chairman, the Commission’s media relations team and select staff are not only allowed to openly discuss items, but also post blogs, tweet, issue fact sheets, brief the press, and inform favored outside parties about their content.

While I’d prefer to make certain draft documents available to the public and will continue to fight for this, other changes could help improve transparency in the meantime. As a first step, let’s make it standard procedure that all Commissioners and their staffs can discuss the substance of items on circulation or a meeting agenda, minus adjudicatory law enforcement items. To effectuate this, the Chairman should provide blanket written approval to the Commissioners to permit open discussion about the items before us.

Journalist Gets Hacked While Writing Apple-FBI Story

On a recent American Airlines flight from Dallas to Raleigh, journalist Steven Petrow decided to get some work done on a story he was writing about the potential impact on ordinary Americans of the battle between Apple and the FBI over creating a tool that will allow the FBI to access virtually any iPhone.

The feud has divided the public, lawmakers, and tech CEOs over a person’s right to privacy versus the need for national security. The FBI says it needs a backdoor into the iPhone so it can extract data from terrorists’ iPhones, while Apple says creating a backdoor would leave everyone open to increased attacks from hackers.

When the flight took off, Petrow’s stance on the matter was "I don’t really need to worry about online privacy," he wrote. "I’ve got nothing to hide. And who would want to know what I’m up to, anyway?" But by the time Petrow landed, he found out "in a chillingly personal way" just how much the outcome of the Apple-FBI battle matters to everyone.

That’s because Petrow had been hacked mid-flight. Petrow logged in to the Gogo in-flight Internet connection to read and send emails to sources for his story. As the plane landed in Raleigh and Petrow got up to disembark, a passenger behind him revealed that he knew Petrow was a journalist and had just been working on the Apple-FBI story. The passenger even recited an email Petrow had received from a security expert back to him almost verbatim. This passenger knew all this information, he revealed, because he had hacked Petrow’s computer in-flight, as well as the computing devices of almost every other passenger on the plane. "That’s how I know you’re interested in the Apple story," the hacker said. "Imagine if you had been doing a financial transaction.”

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