Applying Lessons from Australia
Hosted by Brier Dudley, Tech Columnist, Seattle Times
Larry Smarr, Founding Director of Calit2 Lab, UCSD
Australia had the opportunity to rethink their entire broadband structure and examined incremental telecom proposals.
In the end they threw out that proposal in order to provide 100Mbps to every home and to cover the rest of the network with wireless.
Imagine every house in Kentucky has fiber to the home and they can become a global corporation.
By 2013, 24m people in Europe, Middle East and Africa will have fiber to their home, 23 M in the Americas, 85M in Asia. The Australia project is a model for the US.
Victor Perton, Commissioner to the Americas, State Government of Victoria
Broadband network was the most important factor that determined the election of the government in Australia.
The US has a huge surplus w, AUS, but they’re a surplus country.
State requirements for 20% renewable energy. Prosperity based on privacy- penchant systems are private, private health system, education system, etc are largely private. Lot’s of political debate.
Drawing the two economies even more closely together. trying to figure out how Australia’s tech, can be applied to California.
Steve Reynolds, CEO, Puget Sound Energy
Puget Sound Energy operates two very significant wind farms and is in the process of developing a 3rd. in the next 3 years, we’ll exceed over 15% of energy coming from alternative energy sources.
NW is an energy intensive region and low-cost energy stimulates the economy in this region. “We will escalate the development in Eastern Wa over the course of the next 5-10 years.” During a down economy, this is a clean energy solution that’s helping to pick up the economy and doing it in a thoughtful, long-term way”
Bob Warshawer, CEO, Black Rock Cable
Covers 3 counties, 300 locations, 800 miles of fiber. They have never taken any funding, they just saw the need for broadband and responded to that need.
our country has a very strong telco duopoly, monopoly, which will try to prevent the fiber roll-out. “I think in America, the last 1/4 of a mile is going to be wireless. . . Given the competitive landscape in America, it will be the fiber-wireless hybrid approach”
Larry: the universities will be first movers in the wireless movement, particularly the UW. They have built out fiber in this entire state. The california U system has done essentially the whole thing. This is a model for what we could be doing. US is starting out with a higher level of bandwidth, but we have a stronger telecom duopoly that will fight this.
NTT in Japan has already put fiber to the home of more Japanese than all of Australia. Consumers complained about 40 Mbps and demanded 100 Mbps to the home.