Dear teachers Internet connectivity can be seen as similar to supply of water/electricity ... or the closer land line phones ... the basic pipes have to be laid out as social infrastructure without requiring a short term return on investment ... but this will trigger off benefits, over time, far disproportionate to the investment.... Waiting for the market do it will lead to failure .... as is seen from the decision of Google (even if it is the behemoth, whose revenues are larger than most governments of the world) to give up laying fibre...
In the continuing era of believing that the market will cater to anything of a digital nature ... this article reinforces common sense beliefs... If Internet has to be a basic right (like education or health), then public infrastructure is essential.... regards Guru source - https://backchannel.com/google-fiber-was-doomed-from- the-start-a5cdfacdd7f2#.yjwybeadb Google Fiber Was Doomed From the Start The internet access answer won’t come from private markets, but rather from policies that make for competitive networks. Just a handful of newsflashes have come home to me in such a way that I never forgot where I was when I heard them. Most were disasters, like the Challenger explosion or the attacks of September 11. In February 2010, I was sitting in my office in Ann Arbor when another event made the list — but this one surprised and delighted me. I cheered. Google had announced its fiber experiment, a plan to wire at least 50,000 homes with fast, bountiful connections. Finally, someone was going to try to unstick the monopolistic, stagnant, second-rate market for high-capacity internet access in the US. Last month, there was a shakeup at Alphabet’s Access division (the new name for what was originally called Google Fiber). It named a new CEO, Greg McCray, and news outlets reported that hundreds of Access employees were being shifted to other parts of the Google empire. The former CEO, Craig Barratt, had already announced last year that Access would “pause” plans to launch fiber networks in several cities. Taken together, these news reports all seem to signal that Google is dumping the idea of fiber and moving decisively into wireless access solutions. The bumpersticker from defenders of the status quo is that this means the Google Fiber experiment was a disaster. That’s simply not the case. What this set of events does usefully and colorfully signal is that we need an entirely different approach to the country’s desperate need for world-class data transmission. We do need fiber, everywhere. But we’re talking about basic infrastructure when we talk about fiber. And it is not in any private company’s short-term interest to make that basic fiber infrastructure — which amounts to a substantial upgrade to the last-century copper and cable lines with which Americans are now stuck — available to everyone at a reasonable price. Google’s retreat is all about the bottom line. It wanted an unrealistic rate of return on basic infrastructure. It wanted to see rapid cost declines per subscriber, like the Moore’s Law changes in productivity that have taken place when digital technologists squeeze costs from other legacy businesses. But although the cost of fiber — the glass itself — has fallen through the floor, and the gear needed to deliver signals over fiber has gotten cheaper over time, 80 percent or more of the cost of installing fiber is labor. The high upfront cost of getting all that labor to rip up the streets and hang wires on poles can’t be paid back in just a few years. The cost of that labor isn’t going down right now. Basic physical infrastructure is like that. It requires long-term vision and patient capital — think horizons of 10 years or more, rather than two or three. In return, investments in basic infrastructure will pay steady, reliable returns until the sun explodes. And the spillovers from those investments in terms of economic growth and social justice for everyone in a community are routinely extraordinary. Think subway systems, railways, and telephone networks: Fiber optic internet access for everyone, and for every other form of infrastructure, is the most important recent addition to that list of physical networks. As Google’s comfort with longterm returns waxed and waned, it labeled its fiber project an “experiment” (2010), then a “business” (2012), and finally a “bet” or “moonshot” (2015). Now it’s hoping to avoid many of those labor costs by experimenting with what can be done using its Webpass wireless access unit, rather than solely installing cables itself. Don’t be distracted by talk about wireless. Saying Americans can rely on wireless alone is like saying, “Who needs airports? We have airplanes!” All those wireless connections will require fiber deep into neighborhoods, homes, and businesses; only fiber will be capable of carrying the tsunami of data we’d like to be producing over our devices. So far, no one has cracked the nut of getting extremely high-capacity wireless signals reliably through walls and doors, much less around hills and through trees. And the only thing that will make those wireless connections competitive is firm public control over conduits and poles so as to ensure no monopolist bosses us around. Look, Google was never going to fix the nation’s high-capacity internet access problem. It’s a problem with several dimensions: In most major urban areas, local cable monopolies dominate completely, selling high-priced, second-rate data services that are inextricably bundled with pay TV packages and unthreatened by competition. In rural areas, former telco monopolies are doing their best to transform themselves into wireless media distribution platforms, cutting off millions of Americans from the modern world by relegating them to third- or fourth-rate unreliable data services. (I keep encountering rural stories of telcos cutting off even crappy DSL service any time anyone stops a subscription; realtors are tearing their hair out trying to ensure that some narrow drip of data will be available to a new buyer of a home. That’s a cataclysm.) We’re systematically leaving behind minorities, less-educated people, poorer people, people living in urban areas, and anyone who simply doesn’t want to pay the inexplicably high rates these unregulated giant companies command for what feels like a utility. The costs to our future are incalculable; we’re failing to provide opportunities to scrappy Americans. But Google Fiber did several things that, in hindsight, were helpful: The initial 2010 competition awakened cities across the country, unleashing a demand for fiber—and for change and choice—that has only grown since then. The company discovered how important it is to be on the ground, working with cities to simplify and rationalize creaky permitting structures and obsolete, status quo-protecting rules about wonky things like poles and conduit. Google Fiber’s 2014 city-readiness checklist provides guidance that’s broadly applicable to any fiber installation. Where Google threatened to go, incumbent cable guys suddenly found it in their power to lower their prices. This showed that competition matters and the margins enjoyed by the existing monopolies are huge. The company inadvertently made plain the problem of treating internet access like any other demand-prompted product, when its Kansas City installations failed to cross into historically redlined parts of the city. A utility serving everyone fairly doesn’t ask for payment and interest up front. On the most basic level, lighting up Kansas City sparked imaginations around the country and made other mayors jealous. The fundamental lesson of Google Fiber is that, in the end, its business model was just like that of another cable actor. It was playing within the existing sandbox, using the right technology but the wrong business model. That sandbox has been left to the vagaries of the marketplace, in which existing monopolies have built moats around their businesses in the form of rights to programming, rights of way, bundled products, relationships with credulous legislators, and a million other barriers to entry that make competing — even for Google — just too expensive for shareholders looking for immediate, media company-like returns, quarter after quarter. In Google’s Wall Street-driven context, making the long-term investments necessary for an infrastructure play and taking on the entrenched monopolies was even harder than a moonshot. The only business model for fiber that will work to produce the competition, low prices, and world-class data transport we need — certainly in urban areas — is to get local governments involved in overseeing basic, street grid-like “dark” (passive, unlit with electronics) fiber available at a set, wholesale price to a zillion retail providers of access and services. There’s plenty of patient capital sloshing around the US that would be attracted to the steady, reliable returns this kind of investment will return. That investment could be made in the form of private lending or government bonds; the important element is that the resulting basic network be a wholesale facility that any retail actor can use at a reasonable, fair cost. The result: Instead of different wires competing side by side with one another, there would be one great basic facility available neutrally to every form of business. Your ISP could use that fiber in competition with 10 others; your traffic lights could use it to govern congestion; your energy grid could use it to measure and regulate consumption and use of renewables. (Here comes the much-touted Internet of Things, which, without fiber everywhere, is being built on sand.) At the same time, the government would stay out of providing and inventing retail services itself. That’s the way communications networks work. Given the high upfront costs involved in building physical networks, we don’t need multiple lines into homes and businesses—but we do need the most modern line available for sharing. That line is fiber. It’s good for the next four or five decades. What we have — cable and copper — is not good enough for America. It’s a win-win: The giant companies that sell us internet access can start selling it in actual competition with one another over wholesale fiber connections. And I don’t think we’ve got a branding problem. People love the Google brand, yes, but they also tend to be quite fond of their local governments. Voters are anxious for competition, choice, and change. So the next obvious step is to support local government involvement, bravery, leadership, smarts, and organization. (Warning: plenty of terrible things are happening at the state level to block local government.) Yes, it will be hard, but the reason I think it can happen is that people desperately want it, and voters will reward those who give it to them. No one has ever said No to much more bandwidth at lower cost. This is a bipartisan issue focused on improving the economic growth of entire areas and ranges of opportunities available to everyone in those areas. Officials can stand up and say, “There is no good reason to dumb down Americans.” They’ll get re-elected. Eventually, after communities have shown the way, the federal government will wise up and ensure any remaining stragglers have great, inexpensive access too. We’ve been through this story before: It’s a recap of what the country did in the early years of electrification. I’ll remember Google Fiber, and the communities that already have it are glad that it arrived. But it was never going to be the answer. And its retreat has made the answer far clearer. Education Team IT for Change Bangalore www.ITforChange.net 080 26654134 IT for Change, Bengaluru www.ITforChange.net On Wed, Mar 15, 2017 at 9:15 PM, Johnson Dcunha - ನಾರಾವಿ ಪ್ರೌಢಶಾಲೆ. naravihs.com <net...@gmail.com> wrote: > The right of getting 'free' internet meant to be a freedom factor (for > access) than obligation. Man can choose to what extent he can be exposed to > the digital world. I feel good to see our neighboring state started it > already. > > Johnson Dcunha > Naravi High School. > > > On Sunday, 12 March 2017 18:53:32 UTC+5:30, itfc.stfkoer wrote: >> >> As more and more parts of our information world get digitized, ensuring >> digital access to all citizens becomes important... Kerala is taking an >> initiative in this regard >> >> Guru >> >> source- http://trak.in/tags/business/2017/03/06/kerala-internet-basi >> c-right-free-internet-citizens/?utm_campaign=shareaholic& >> utm_medium=whatsapp&utm_source=mobile >> >> Kerala, the most literate state in India, has made a very sensible, and >> practical decision regarding access of Internet; something which can be >> described as a watershed moment for India’s digital policy. >> >> Kerala has just declared access of Internet as a basic right for every >> citizen, just like water, food >> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_food_by_country#India>and >> education. Such basic human rights should not be confused with Fundamental >> Rights <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_rights_in_India>, >> which Indian constitution provides for all Indians. However, as per UN, >> Internet >> is counted as a basic human right >> <http://gizmodo.com/internet-access-is-now-a-basic-human-right-1783081865>, >> and they have suggested that every country should include it as a >> fundamental human right as well. >> >> Most probably, Kerala has just taken the first step in that direction. >> >> Kerala has understood that if digitisation and e-Governance needs to be >> spread, then access to Internet is the most crucial element, because unless >> people have access to basic Internet, how will they use the fruits of >> technology? >> >> Kerala Finance Minister T.M. Thomas Isaac said >> <http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/kerala/kerala/article17401919.ece>, >> “It is estimated that by 2017-18, almost all government transactions will >> become IT-based. Thus the *right to basic Internet facility* will become >> a prerequisite for providing civic services universally through the >> electronic medium,” >> >> And, it is not just talks here – some concrete action has been planned as >> well, which will ensure that the basic right of all Keralites is met. >> >> Govt. has announced plans to provide free basic Internet facility to 20 >> lakh citizens across the state, and plans to extend broadband connectivity >> to every household in the state. >> >> The project, named as K-Fon, has been announced, which will establish >> optical fiber cables across the state and would be laid parallel to Kerala >> State Electricity Board towers, all across the state. >> >> M Sivasankar, secretary, department of electronics and information >> technology said >> <http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/thiruvananthapuram/kerala-budget-2017-internet-access-a-basic-right-tm-thomas-isaac/articleshow/57459111.cms>, >> “The government’s idea will be to deliver internet connectivity with a >> limited bandwidth to individual households through an optic fibre network >> to be established parallel to the distribution network of the KSEB..” >> >> K-Fon has been planned in a manner which will enable free access to >> Internet via WiFi hotspots at ‘Akshaya centres, Janasevana Kendras, >> government offices, libraries, and public places’. A sum of Rs 1000 crore >> has been allocated for the same, and the project is expected to be >> completed in 18 months. >> >> *Some other major announcements from the Kerala Govt. include:* >> >> - 12 hardware manufacturing parks would be established in the state, >> to make Kerala a hub of IT and ITeS niches >> - Japanese-Korean industrial cluster would be established at Mavoor >> - Rs 549 crore allocated for the creation of IT parks, Technoparks, >> SEZs, Infoparks, Cyberparks and Techno-Lodges >> - Kerala State Govt. will provide financial help and mentorship to >> 1500 startups from the state >> >> This year, Kerala Govt. created a new benchmark for other states, when >> they saved >> <http://www.business-standard.com/article/news-ians/kerala-saves-rs-300-cr-as-schools-switch-to-open-software-117022600681_1.html>Rs >> 300 crore by using Free & Open Source Software (FOSS) in all schools in the >> state. >> >> Guru >> IT for Change, Bengaluru >> www.ITforChange.net >> > -- > ----------- > 1.ವಿಷಯ ಶಿಕ್ಷಕರ ವೇದಿಕೆಗೆ ಶಿಕ್ಷಕರನ್ನು ಸೇರಿಸಲು ಈ ಅರ್ಜಿಯನ್ನು ತುಂಬಿರಿ. > - https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSevqRdFngjbDtOF8YxgeXeL > 8xF62rdXuLpGJIhK6qzMaJ_Dcw/viewform > 2. ಇಮೇಲ್ ಕಳುಹಿಸುವಾಗ ಗಮನಿಸಬೇಕಾದ ಕೆಲವು ಮಾರ್ಗಸೂಚಿಗಳನ್ನು ಇಲ್ಲಿ ನೋಡಿ. > -http://karnatakaeducation.org.in/KOER/index.php/ವಿಷಯಶಿಕ್ > ಷಕರವೇದಿಕೆ_ಸದಸ್ಯರ_ಇಮೇಲ್_ಮಾರ್ಗಸೂಚಿ > 3. ಐ.ಸಿ.ಟಿ ಸಾಕ್ಷರತೆ ಬಗೆಗೆ ಯಾವುದೇ ರೀತಿಯ ಪ್ರಶ್ನೆಗಳಿದ್ದಲ್ಲಿ ಈ ಪುಟಕ್ಕೆ ಭೇಟಿ > ನೀಡಿ - > http://karnatakaeducation.org.in/KOER/en/index.php/Portal:ICT_Literacy > 4.ನೀವು ಸಾರ್ವಜನಿಕ ತಂತ್ರಾಂಶ ಬಳಸುತ್ತಿದ್ದೀರಾ ? ಸಾರ್ವಜನಿಕ ತಂತ್ರಾಂಶದ ಬಗ್ಗೆ > ತಿಳಿಯಲು -http://karnatakaeducation.org.in/KOER/en/index.php/ > Public_Software > ----------- > --- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "EnglishSTF" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to englishstf+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To post to this group, send email to englishstf@googlegroups.com. > > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- ----------- 1.ವಿಷಯ ಶಿಕ್ಷಕರ ವೇದಿಕೆಗೆ ಶಿಕ್ಷಕರನ್ನು ಸೇರಿಸಲು ಈ ಅರ್ಜಿಯನ್ನು ತುಂಬಿರಿ. - https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSevqRdFngjbDtOF8YxgeXeL8xF62rdXuLpGJIhK6qzMaJ_Dcw/viewform 2. ಇಮೇಲ್ ಕಳುಹಿಸುವಾಗ ಗಮನಿಸಬೇಕಾದ ಕೆಲವು ಮಾರ್ಗಸೂಚಿಗಳನ್ನು ಇಲ್ಲಿ ನೋಡಿ. -http://karnatakaeducation.org.in/KOER/index.php/ವಿಷಯಶಿಕ್ಷಕರವೇದಿಕೆ_ಸದಸ್ಯರ_ಇಮೇಲ್_ಮಾರ್ಗಸೂಚಿ 3. ಐ.ಸಿ.ಟಿ ಸಾಕ್ಷರತೆ ಬಗೆಗೆ ಯಾವುದೇ ರೀತಿಯ ಪ್ರಶ್ನೆಗಳಿದ್ದಲ್ಲಿ ಈ ಪುಟಕ್ಕೆ ಭೇಟಿ ನೀಡಿ - http://karnatakaeducation.org.in/KOER/en/index.php/Portal:ICT_Literacy 4.ನೀವು ಸಾರ್ವಜನಿಕ ತಂತ್ರಾಂಶ ಬಳಸುತ್ತಿದ್ದೀರಾ ? ಸಾರ್ವಜನಿಕ ತಂತ್ರಾಂಶದ ಬಗ್ಗೆ ತಿಳಿಯಲು -http://karnatakaeducation.org.in/KOER/en/index.php/Public_Software ----------- --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "EnglishSTF" group. 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