Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Broadband: A life-saving technology

From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 28 Jul 2004 12:06:10 -0400

Broadband: A life-saving technology
By John Borland and Jim Hu
Staff Writers, CNET News.com
July 26, 2004, 4:00 AM PDT

In a small military hospital in Guam, a cardiac patient lay unconscious
as a catheter was slid carefully into the right chamber of his heart.

Day 1: A life-saving technology Day 2: Why policies must change Day 3:
South Korea leads the way Day 4: Cable, DSL face threats

Bandwidth roundtable Editors' picks from Web Reporters' broadband blog
Readers' feedback here News.com-Harris Interactive Poll

Back to intro

The surgery was fairly routine, save for one notable absence: The
physician in charge wasn't in the operating room during the procedure.
In fact, he wasn't even on the island.

Dr. Benjamin Berg supervised the entire surgery while in front of a
computer screen 3,500 miles away at Tripler Army Medical Center in
Honolulu. He dictated the procedure to the less-experienced colleague
who performed the operation, monitoring every move with a
high-resolution video camera while getting instant sensor data from the
catheter itself.
"The real-time information requires a continuous broadband connection,"
Berg said. "The delay in the transmission of data about pressure inside
the heart would be unacceptable."

The delicate process illustrates why high-speed Internet access--once
considered a luxury--is viewed increasingly as a necessity.  Broadband
is being used in projects that could revolutionize such critical areas
as education, health care and public safety while creating enormous
opportunities in business and entertainment.

Realizing that potential, however, has been a perennially elusive goal.
To date, Internet development has been marked by extremes:

Although the nation has a glut of "backbone" bandwidth that can move
data from coast to coast in an instant, these high-speed
networks slow to a relative crawl at the infamous juncture known within
the industry as "the last mile"--the local connections that link
ordinary homes and businesses to the Internet.

Safety net

NexGen City's wireless broadband system was installed in June by the
police department in Garland, Texas.

Source: NexGen City
Washington, D.C.
"First responder" wireless project has:
Completion date of late summer 2004.
Ten transceiver sites to cover entire city.
Download speeds of at least 1.5mpbs.
Estimated cost of $2.7 million for first year.

Applications such as remote detection of chemical and biological agents,
video surveillance, video support for helicopters and bomb squads,
doctor support for ambulances.

Emergency test

Washington, D.C., is testing a new wireless broadband network that would
provide mobile high-speed data, video and audio feeds to police,
firefighters and emergency crews. The one-year trial project was started
with an experimental license from the FCC and with equipment from
Motorola and Flarion Technologies.

Public safety officials say this is the future, but they need another
big chunk of the airwaves--now destined for auction to the private
sector--in order to make this type of system work efficiently. A group
made up of local public safety officials is lobbying Congress to make
this happen.

Chipping in funds

In a recent survey, most people said they would pay $1 in Internet
access fees to fund a broadband network for police, fire and emergency
crews.

Source: CNET News.com-Harris Interactive poll of U.S. Internet users.

The transportation metaphor is apt, as policymakers are recognizing that
fast Internet connections are as essential to the future of the economy
now as railroads and highways were in the last two centuries. Those
systems transformed the way people lived and worked, irrevocably
changing human conceptions of distance, speed and time. Even in its
relative infancy, broadband is already having much the same effect.

So important is the technology that it has been elevated to a national
campaign issue this election year. President Bush and Democratic
challenger John Kerry have each outlined plans to increase investment in
the technology as part of their platform agendas, and policymakers of
all stripes cite it as an important driver of future economic growth.

"If the United States is going to maintain its ability to grow its
economy, I think the continued proliferation of broadband technologies
is key to that solution," Federal Communications Commission Chairman
Michael Powell said in a speech in May. "This is the central
communication policy objective of the era. It's more than talk now. It
is time for action."
Critical uses for broadband technology are multiplying every day in a
wide range of fields:

• Public safety. Emergency services--including firefighters, police
forces and medical crews--see wireless broadband as a vital addition to
their tools, and are lobbying Congress to help improve these
capabilities. Municipalities from Milpitas, Calif., to Washington, D.C.,
are experimenting with technologies that can speed emergency response
times and help provide environmental data such as hazardous chemical
readings.

• Health care. "Telemedicine" has long been one of the most promising
applications for high-speed networks. Rural and outlying hospitals and
clinics rarely have access to the expertise and experience of doctors in
urban centers. But diagnoses and consulting can be done with the help of
high-quality audio and video and of real-time data connections between
central and remote facilities.

• Education. Schools at all levels are already using high-speed Internet
connections in teaching and research, and many see the networks as ways
to help smooth out the radically unequal distribution of resources
between different regions and institutions.  Colleges provide access to
course materials online, via streaming videos of lectures, for instance.
High schools use the Internet for research purposes and help students
create their own multimedia Web sites.

A matter of economics

Despite the recognition of broadband as an important issue across the
political spectrum, not everyone agrees that it merits federal
involvement. Skeptics and fiscal conservatives say the government should
not provide funding or tax breaks to develop broadband networks, arguing
that such financial incentives are unfair and could disrupt natural
competition in the marketplace.
Cultural change will come from high-resolution applications into the
home. --Mark Cuban former Yahoo executive and
chairman of HDNet

To be sure, much of the push for faster networks comes from high-tech
companies that stand to benefit directly from equipment sales. These
businesses have lobbied heavily and consistently for greater national
investment, particularly since venture capital for telecommunications
dried up with the dot-com bust.

At the top of the scale are giants like Cisco Systems and Nortel
Networks, which provide the routers and other technologies that send
data across networks. Smaller companies would also benefit, such as
OneEighty Networks, which last month helped create a 100-block-wide
public Wi-Fi hot spot in its hometown of Spokane, Wash., or Tropos
Networks of Sunnyvale, Calif., whose equipment helped Garland create a
public safety network based on Wi-Fi.

But economists say the positive effects of broadband will be felt far
beyond the networking industry and could add between $300 billion and
$500 billion a year to the U.S. economy. One widely cited study, led by
a Brookings Institution researcher, predicts that ubiquitous broadband
access could create 1.2 million jobs in the United States.

New employment could come from such companies as Visicu, which provides
the equipment that Berg's hospital in Hawaii uses to monitor intensive
care unit operations in Guam. Within information technology alone,
expanding businesses would range from small companies like
Illinois-based CyberTech Media, which digitizes video for presentations
inside corporate networks, to industry stalwarts like Intel, which sees
broadband wireless components as a new market.

Many economists view broadband as a vital part of the next technology
wave that they believe will drive growth and improve
productivity. Although no one is predicting anything on the scale of the
1990s high-tech gold rush, broadband could make real many theoretical
uses of the Internet touted in the early days of its development as a
mainstream medium.
Such prospects have prompted rural development agencies into making
plaintive calls for broadband investments, to avoid being left out of
another digital economic boom.

"We see broadband as a key, key component for economic development in
this region," said Marc DeFalco, who heads the telecommunications
program for the Appalachian Regional Commission, a 13-state economic
development agency. "We look on broadband as a means of opening up rural
areas to the same opportunities that people would have in urban areas."
That's already happened for Bobby Tuck, who heads Tuck Mapping Solutions
in Big Stone Gap, a small Appalachian town in Virginia's Eastern tip.
Tuck, whose company specializes in aerial mapping, used to swap
floppy-disk files with his clients when he started his business years
ago. But as technology progressed, the files got larger. He soon found
himself loading hard disks into his car and driving to clients'
offices--sometimes meeting them halfway, if he was lucky.

The files eventually got so big--some reach 150GB--that Tuck was on the
verge of relocating, despite having been in the area for 20 years. Then
last year, a regional planning commission won funding to bring a fiber
connection to the area, and Tuck's business turned around.

The trouble with fiber

Optics projects are the future, but difficulties in building networks
will mean slow going.
Fiber-optic broadband makes DSL look as outdated as two cans and string,
with its potential to give homes connections as fast as 100mbps or more.

SBC and Verizon have said they're finally beginning to make serious
investments in bringing the technology to homes. Verizon said last week
it would offer speeds of up to 30mbps, beginning in Keller, Texas. But
unless you're moving into a newly built suburban neighborhood, don't
throw away that old cable modem yet.

Here are a few of the sticking points that keep fiber from being an
overnight success story.
Winning rights of way

A company first has to figure out the easiest and cheapest place to put
fiber networks, often running lines under city streets or through
private land in order to connect homes with central switching
facilities. In some cases this will involve getting permission or rights
of way.

President Bush has created a working group to help companies work with
federal agencies to streamline this process when federal land is
involved.

Digging up streets
The biggest problem is getting fiber in the ground. In new
neighborhoods, developers can dig trenches and put fiber in before the
streets are laid. In urban areas, digging up pavement is difficult and
expensive, making fiber to every home an unlikely proposition in the
near future.

In some cities, conduits already exist underground. Fiber can be pulled
though these tunnels without new trenches having to be dug, as was the
case with SBC's Mission Bay development in San Francisco.

Lighting the fiber

Optical fiber is just expensive strings of glass unless electronics that
can send and interpret data are put at each end.  Most
fiber-to-the-premises projects use a technology called "passive optical
networking," which allows download speeds of 622mbps and uploads of 155
mbps. The technology lets that bandwidth be split, so a single fiber
could be shared by several homes, for example.

Fiber cuts

The bane of fiber networks is the backhoe. Construction projects are
notorious for accidentally cutting through fiber-optic cable while
digging underground, throwing networks into temporary chaos or total
darkness. Telephone companies have considerable experience in fixing
these outages quickly, however.

With access to a 100-megabit-per-second connection, the company could
suddenly download critical data files in two or three minutes, where it
had taken 8 hours before. The business is now staying put, and others in
the area have found new opportunities.

"What it's done for us is make us a major player in our field," Tuck
said. "We could work almost anywhere, once we have access to data. It
doesn't make a whole lot of difference where we're located."
From the ER to the ABCs

Broadband's benefits are being felt in countless other fields,
especially those that rely on real-time access to detailed and complex
information. In some cases, it can deeply affect the way children learn
or even mean the difference between life and death.

To emphasize the technology's urgency, proponents cite a broadband
project being built on the frontlines of homeland security for
firefighters, police officers, ambulance crews and other emergency
workers in the U.S. capital. The wireless network will enable doctors in
Washington-area hospitals to conduct preliminary examinations of
patients in ambulances via live video streams. Police officers engaged
in high-speed chases will get real-time footage from helicopters, while
bomb squads will be able to inspect dangerous sites remotely.

"These are applications that already exist and could greatly enhance the
capability of our first responders," said Robert LeGrande, deputy
technology officer for Washington, D.C., who is lobbying Congress to set
aside more wireless spectrum for public safety.

The multimillion-dollar system, still under construction, is being held
up as the future of public safety by lobbyists seeking funds and more
wireless spectrum for similar projects. While that process continues,
communities as far-flung as Garland, Texas, and Milpitas, Calif., have
already created Wi-Fi broadband services on a smaller scale for their
own public safety forces.
Other technology pioneers have long since seen tangible benefits.

Dr. Bruce Dunn of Clement J. Zablocki Veterans Administration hospital
in Milwaukee was one of the first doctors in the country to create a
"telepathology" practice serving a hospital 200 miles away. Through a
broadband connection, his computer receives video images from a
remote-controlled microscope in a sister hospital in Iron Mountain,
Wisc., which he uses to diagnose cancers and other diseases in tissue
samples.

Many more doctors exchange large data files such as X-ray results, which
do not require real-time connections but still need
high-speed networks. Hospitals have found broadband technologies to be
invaluable in non-life-threatening situations as well, saving
considerable labor and other resources by using it to handle medical
claims, insurance processing and other administrative tasks.

The idea of health care via broadband has even extended to the home.
Federally funded studies have found "dramatic" improvements for patients
who could communicate with doctors through frequent videoconferences and
other technologies. A Florida project serving children with diabetes
recently found that patients using the videoconferencing system spent
about a fifth of the time in hospital as before, saving tens of thousand
of dollars.

Just east of Los Angeles, a project at El Monte Union High School shows
benefits of broadband that do not involve emergency services but have
had other dramatic effects.

El Monte's administrators recently got a grant from the Beaumont
Foundation of America to set up wireless broadband towers on campus,
providing Internet access on school grounds. But a related part of the
project has secured laptop computers for children living in a nearby
trailer park, and the school is now providing them with broadband access
to do research and other homework.

Broadband proliferation is the central communication policy objective of
the era. It's more than talk now. It is time for
action. --Michael Powell chairman, Federal Communications Commission
"Schools in the low end or in the high end socioeconomically need to
look the same," said Nick Salerno, an assistant superintendent with the
El Monte Union High School District. "We must provide the same
opportunity for everyone."

Many other broadband educational applications are transforming teaching
and research. University courses are routinely recorded and put online
for students who miss class or for those who cannot afford to attend
full time. Boys and Girls Club of America chapters are getting live
underwater video feeds from a project exploring shipwrecks on the floor
of the Black Sea and the Mediterranean Sea.

A new world of entertainment

On the campus of the University of Southern California, students and
researchers are being exposed to broadband uses of another kind.

In a darkened lab, a high-definition video of a space shuttle launch
fills a viewing screen. Its sounds shake the floor, rumbling from 10
speakers around the room, each with its own audio stream.

This IMAX-like experience shows the potential for broadband networks in
ordinary homes--in movies on demand, virtual reality games and even
teleconferencing, said Isaac Maya, the director of Industry and
Technology Transfer Programs at USC. The shuttle video and all 10
channels of audio--four more than on most DVDs--are streamed in real
time from services in Georgia over a superfast Internet2 network.

"The vision is immersive presence," Maya said. "How do you get people in
separate locations to feel each others' environments? It's not just
video, it's not just audio, it's not just the Internet. You have to do
them all."
This potential is part of what excites visionaries in entertainment and
consumer
markets. If high-speed Internet access becomes ubiquitous, entrepreneurs
and
media experts have said, the experience of home entertainment, sports,
games, communication and anything else connected to the Internet will
change radically.

"That's a really big economic driver coming down the line," Gary
Bachula, vice president of the Internet2 project, said. "But it's a
chicken-and-egg problem.

You've got to get the technology deployed before these applications
become
reality."

Industry veterans say national broadband access will only lead to major
changes in U.S. society if connection speeds get exponentially faster
than
those typical of cable and DSL today. Otherwise, the most likely result
will
simply be better use of existing technologies, such as those for e-mail,
Web
surfing and music downloading.

"We need 100mbps or more to the home before we see an impact," Mark
Cuban, the former Yahoo executive who now owns the Dallas Mavericks and
who runs high-definition cable channel HDNet, wrote in an e-mail. "The
cultural change certainly won't come from HDTV, but it will come from
high-resolution applications into the home."

That type of connection looks less like science fiction with each day.
At the recent Fast Net Futures industry show in Santa Clara, Calif., a
pair of companies called Ikonos and Metalink demonstrated 100mbps
downloads over a 1,000-foot telephone wire.  Telecommunications
carriers, meanwhile, say it has become nearly as cheap to wire a
brand-new neighborhood with high-speed fiber optic cables as it is to
install slower copper wires for DSL.

Still, that vision remains far from reality in the United States, at
least until companies start seeing economic motivation--or consumers
start demanding--superfast broadband connections. Just ask the high-tech
thinkers inside the adult entertainment industry, who are often the
first to see profit potential and to act on any impending technology.

"We haven't put forth any efforts that require money," said Wicked
Pictures Director of New Media Anne Petrie. Her company offersproducts
for today's broadband subscribers, but has yet to address next
generation services, she said. "At this point, we're basically circling
the airport, waiting for the connectivity issues to be resolved."

http://news.com.com/Broadband:+A+life-saving+technology/2009-1034_3-5261361.html

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