UBIQUITOUS BROADBAND DEPLOYMENT WILL DEPEND ON APPS, FERREE SAYS
FCC Cable Bureau Chief Kenneth Ferree discounted idea that govt. should play significant role in deployment of broadband nationwide. Speaking at Broadband Outlook 2002 conference in Washington, he said there were several “grains of sand,” or myths, that should fall by wayside if broadband was to reach masses. First, he said, is that U.S. should follow S. Korean model. While broadband adoption rates are much higher there, Ferree said Asian country’s population was packed into small geographic area and mostly in multi-unit dwellings, making rollout much easier than in U.S., where large portions of population live in wide open spaces not easily reached by fiber.
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Ferree said he had reservations about “open access” for broadband deployment because such model offered little incentive to roll out backbone, and, in fact, might be disincentive. “What would be the specific public interest benefits of a pure open access model?” he asked. “We have to be wary of accepting without… consideration apparently attractive propositions like open access.” He acknowledged criticism that some cable companies might want to slow applications such as streaming media that required large amounts of bandwidth because doing so might cannibalize their primary product, multichannel video, but said there would be no “surgical” way for govt. to intervene if that were case. He said govt. shouldn’t get into business of bandwidth management and he discounted “grain of sand” that broadband should be treated like nation’s interstate highway system. Problem with that idea, he said, is that govt. actually operates highways but private industry is building broadband.
Instead, Ferree said, companies should be focusing on “killer app” to drive people into adopting broadband. He offered his own ideas on that score, pointing to videogames as one possibility. Other drivers will be teleconferencing, televisiting, Webcasting, telemedicine and virtual interviews, all of which would cut down on expensive travel, he said. But people like his mother hold key, he said. Broadband uptake will become widespread when his mother can use it to speak with her granddaughter face-to-face about hairstyles over videophone or other broadband-powered technology. “When people like my mother can use her connection to enhance her relationship with her granddaughter, broadband will cease being a niche service for high-end professional users and start to become a ubiquitous, mass market, consumer service,” he said.
In later session, panelist Lincoln Hoewing, asst. vp- Internet and technology issues at Verizon, said his company believed entire Internet would have to be upgraded and companies such as his own would have to invest in “getting the loop shorter” for ubiquitous uptake to happen. But, he said, phone companies like his aren’t aggressively rolling out in some places because current govt. regulations that require open architecture preclude economic investment. Why should other companies benefit from Verizon’s investment? he asked. Thomas Jokerst, senior vp-advanced technology, Charter Communications, said he thought that today, some applications such as those Ferree suggested already were in place through people’s personal computers. However, Charter is only in trial stages with Web conferencing for average family at this point, he said. “Clearly, I think that’s going to happen,” Jokerst said. “It’s an obvious application… It’s going to take some time.”