The Europeans mock us. The Koreans boast a claim they are the world’s most wired country. Finland is bringing broadband to reindeer. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) published in their 2009 statistics the U.S. now ranks 15th among the group’s 30 member countries for broadband subscriptions. This is down from 12th in their previous study. No way!
Is the United States actually that far behind the world in broadband deployment? Should the home of Cisco Systems, Brocade, IBM, and HP hang our heads in shame at our inability to deliver a world class communications infrastructure?
Geography and Statistics
Well, we shouldn’t hang our heads in shame, however there is ample opportunity to further develop our national broadband infrastructure.
Looking at the following table you can easily see the US has a huge landmass, with much lower than Euro-Asian average population density. Kudos to Canada and the Nordic countries, although let’s be honest – 90% of Canada’s population is within 100km of the US border, and most of that is in cities. Same for the Nordics, and Iceland is not what you would normally refer to as a large landmass.
The US is big, and other countries with a similar landmass such as Russia and China did not even qualify for the top 35 countries in the study
(From OECD Study dated June 2009)
Taking Inventory of the US Telecom Toolkit
Now let’s brush off the “feel good” paragraph and get back to the real issue. Making broadband accessible to every person in the United States who wants or needs access to network-enabled applications and resources.
We have a fairly robust toolkit of telecom resources available to deliver our bits:
- ILECs (Incumbent Local Exchange Carriers)
- CLECs (Competitive Local Exchange Carriers)
- Long Distance Carriers
- Cable Television Service Providers
- Cable (fiber optic) wholesale infrastructure providers (may also provide other services)
- Wireless Broadband providers (including mobile telephone operators)
- Utility operators (such as power companies and water companies)
In a country as large as the US, the long distance carriers and wholesale cable providers deliver infrastructure that connects New York to Los Angeles, and all others in between with high performance cable infrastructure. All other service providers deliver either a specific service to regional markets or end users. Some may contribute to “overlay” networks which provide a higher level of product or service to users throughout the market, such as Internet services, telephone services, television and “triple-play” (video, voice, Internet).
Sounds Easy? Just connect all this stuff together and the USA will be back on top of the broadband podium with a gold medal.
But…. The US is an open, competitive market. As all the US carriers (with the exception of some utilities) are privately (not government) owned, the objective is to make money for shareholders. This means cooperation with other companies is a mere short-term convenience, with no incentive for investing in any infrastructure that does not meet a business plan for satisfying the demands of investors. Altruism or working for the common good is reduced to marketing hype – and has very little basis in the reality of America’s communications infrastructure.
Maybe stimulus money or additional tax credits for companies to cooperate and meet national objectives? Unlikely, as most states are already suffering a great deal from the loss of telephone tax revenues (you’ve got to love VoIP), and to get into the stimulus business you will need to means to hire a legion of lawyers, lobbyists, and prepare for a long time horizon to see any support. That narrows it down to the ILECs, long distance carriers, and wholesalers. Same applies for money available through the Broadband Initiatives Program (BIP) and the NTIA Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP).
Thus, my favorite little town of Baudette(Minnesota) is not likely to be a really high priority for any serious infrastructure development. Yes, companies like Time Warner have delivered cable TV and cable modems to the market, however if you do not have access to the cable (which pretty much follows the state highways, and does not venture too far off the asphalt), chances are you will not be receiving multiple streams of HD video any time soon.
There are many people in Northern Minnesota who don’t spend any more time online than they have to. They would rather be in a boat with their line in the water. If broadband could help them catch fish, they would be all for it. (from Minnesota Brown)
This also begs the question – if people really want to be wired, maybe they will migrate closer to cities which offer much more robust urban 
infrastructure, and those who want to spend their life fishing can do so in peace?
Good, as long as they do not choose to reproduce, in which case the children deserve to have the same access to global information ands communications technology needed to ensure they are competitive with children in Korea and Amsterdam.
Hunter Newby, CEO of Allied Fiber reminds us that “We here in the USA are destined for a major change in our communications infrastructure. An entirely new physical layer design needs to be rolled out in the USA if we are ever to reach broadband speeds and penetration like that of the other civilized and advanced countries in the world.”
Allied Fiber was created to “address America’s need to eliminate obstacles for broadband access, wireless backhaul and lower latency through new, next generation long haul dark fiber construction with sound principles and an open access philosophy.”
Newby continues “The USA is much larger than South Korea, or Japan, yet we are always stacked against those “countries” and others that are equally as small in geography. We will never reach the speeds, services, applications, or processing power of the people if we do not match their National physical layer network designs – designs that have incorporated wireless and fiber for backhaul for many years.”
Big, Fat, Dumb Pipes
In the 1990s companies such as Level 3 Communications used marketing taglines with the theme “bandwidth is like water,” and fiber infrastructure should be considered “big, fat, dumb pipes.” If the philosophy had survived investors, Wall Street analysts, and the desire to increase cash flow by adding higher level value added services (such as voice, Internet, TV, etc), the US might have a very high performance 
physical infrastructure in place that served as a neutral conduit for regional and local carriers and service providers to deliver broadband closer to the edge – or end users.
Companies such as Allied Fiber hope to bring that idea back to reality, providing the United States and Canada a very high performance, cost-effective trans-continental backbone allowing regional and local service providers and easy way to bring their edge resources to the North American “cloud.” Wireless companies can focus on delivering transmission to end users from the tower, and Allied Fiber will connect towers, regional networks, access networks, and value-added service networks (such as Internet providers) on a national scale.
A Happy Broadband Ending
One bright spot in the discussion is broadband wireless. The US carriers are pushing deployment of LTE and 4G, further incorporating broadband support via emerging technologies such as MIMO (Multiple In – Multiple Out) antennas which bring wireless up to the Gigabit/second level on individual end-user devices. This will reduce the need for fiber optic or high speed cable infrastructure deployment into both rural and urban areas with obsolete or decrepit building/street infrastructure.
“(This) isn’t about technology, (this) is about preserving small town communities by using technology to allow them to survive in a world that is changing. It’s about allowing kids to build careers in their local community, not just find a job. (Ross Williams – Minnesota Brown)
All new communications technologies being delivered by Verizon use Internet Protocols, including wireless telephone service, and incorporating IPv6 into the basic network. A combination of their FiOS (fiber optic to the home) product and high performance LTE=>4G wireless deployments will make up a lot of ground in the US.
Add a national high performance backbone network connecting the whole North American mess via Allied Fiber, and the US has a pretty good chance at jumping into the top 5 in OECDs broadband deployment listing. And Baudette’s culture and global presence is preserved.
Filed under: International ICT, Internet and Telecom, Social Issues | Leave a Comment
Tags: allied fiber, baudette, broadband, finland, hunter newby, level 3 communications, mimo, minnesota, oecd, towers, wireless broadband
The headlines are no surprise to those in the Internet business. “Police in Central China have shut down a hacker training operation that openly recruited thousands of members 
online…” (AP) We’ve know China, Russia, and several of the former Soviet block countries are the source of sophisticated hacking, and those activities have at least been tolerated, if not directly supported, but the host governments.
The recent dispute between Google and China’s government brings another question into the breach – does a national government have the right to censor or control the flow of information in or out of the country? While China may be in the news, citizen journalists in Tehran have been severely punished for attempting to Tweet, email, blog, or transmit cell phone images outside of the country. Under the umbrella of national security do countries like Iran have the right to control that information, or develop teams of professional hackers to go out and look into the accounts of residents and citizens?
Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA): To amend title 18, United States Code, to make clear a telecommunications carrier’s duty to cooperate in the interception of communications for Law Enforcement purposes, and for other purposes.
DCSNet, an abbreviation for Digital Collection System Network, is the FBI’s point-and-click surveillance system that can perform instant wiretaps on almost any communications device in the US (Wikipedia)
I think we can all agree that any state which sponsors cyber attacks on another nation, either through direct objectives, or by turning a “blind eye” to the activities of criminal groups or organizations is a bad thing, which the entire global-connected world should fight. There is no justification for state-sponsored or state-tolerated denial of service, disruption or access to personal and private data, nor online theft.
The Rights of a Sovereign Nation
As Americans, we can get very sanctimonious in our approach to human rights, national ethics, or national morals. We believe we are always right, based on our religious or cultural beliefs, and other nations and cultures should learn from us and change their errant ways to be more like Americans. This means it is probably OK for the national Security Agency, or other three-lettered government agencies to tap, monitor, or perform other forms of espionage – as long as it is done under the context of national security, or even better if you can throw the word “anti-0terrorism” in the conversation.
Thus activities such as DCSNet, or laws such as CALEA, do not bother us too much. However when China tries to look into the systems using a similar premise of national security, the world has an uproar of indignity, not understanding how those people can possibly violate the privacy of email and other systems.
So the question is – “does a nation have the right to set its own laws, cyber-policies, and regulations regarding the Internet and other information systems?”
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has strong opinions on the topic. As a long time advocate (since 1990) for protecting the civil liberties of Internet users, both through protecting the rights of users and educating law enforcement agencies, the EFF includes the following points in its stated mission:
- Develop among policy-makers a better understanding of the issues underlying free and open telecommunications, and support the creation of legal and structural approaches which will ease the assimilation of these new technologies by society.
- Raise public awareness about civil liberties issues arising from the rapid advancement in the area of new computer-based communications media.
- Support litigation in the public interest to preserve, protect, and extend First Amendment rights within the realm of computing and telecommunications technology.
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Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. (1st Amendment to the US Constitution) |
Law enforcement and national security agencies of countries around the world would object to the American equivalent of the First Amendment, citing the current world situation, or the sovereign rights of a nation allow it to write, establish, modify, interpret, or change such laws as needed to meet an existing or desired environment.
With global connections to a global community governments are struggling to understand how to control or manage information flows within the country. Twenty years ago it was easy for a government to determine exactly what materials would be used in the education of an 8 year old primary school student. Today, a student in Vietnam, Mongolia, or New Jersey basically have the same access to educational materials as any other student in the world, as well as news, intercommunications, and citizen journalism.
And we must also acknowledge the inherent use of deception by governments and other lobbyist organizations. In the world of governments, what you see is not necessarily what you get. The media is used as a mouthpiece of government policy (when it can be controlled), and without a strong governmental “noise filter” and open citizen journalist community you may not get the real story – only the story a government or organization wants you to receive. They believe it is their right as a sovereign nation’s government of deliver you the news they believe you need to know, or they want you to know.
Some Guidelines for Responsible Cyber-Government
There are priorities. While we all understand national intelligence agencies will always do what they do best – access information they believe will give their respective nation some level of political, economic, or military advantage, the priority should be to protect citizens (including the context of global citizens) from malicious attacks on their personal data and ability to do business and communicate via the Internet.
Hacker schools, such as the China-based Black Hawk Safety Net, cannot be tolerated by a reasonable global community. If a government supports the activities network-enabled criminal activities, then that government should be identified and the world given the means to protect themselves from that risk. The US Government has taken some openly advertised steps in this direction by authorizing the US Air Force to establish the USAF Cyber Command.
The new Air Force Cyber Command “will train and equip forces to conduct sustained global operations in and through cyberspace, fully integrated with air and space operations,” said Major General Charles Ickes.
Of course that capability can both defend – and attack as needed to meet military and national objectives.
Leaving users once again at the mercy of governments to both act responsibly, and in the interest of a global community. Sure, we have our work cut out for us. Like most individual users and people depending on the Internet for our livelihoods and futures, the burden is ultimately on us to protect ourselves from intrusion, theft, and denial of service.
Filed under: Government Regulatory, International ICT, Internet and Telecom, Open Topics, Social Issues, citizen journalism | Leave a Comment
Tags: calea, china, cyber security, dcsnet, nsa, russia, sovereign nation, usaf cyber command
Not So Green Hawaii
Energy Secretary Steven Chu has evangelized the simplicity of painting rooftops white to save energy. We believe a simple thing like painting a rooftop with solar reflective materials can reduce carbon dioxide production on a scale of billions of tons.
Think Green Hawaii, a local website highlighting local green initiatives notes that even tourists are starting to look for environmentally friendly hotels for their vacations, using examples such as the Hyatt Regency Waikiki which has implemented energy-efficient LED lights in public areas to reduce the use of energy.
Other local initiatives, such as the mbbEMS (Energy Management System) uses wireless communications connecting things such as lanai (balcony) doors to air conditioning units, shutting down the fans when doors are opened, and sensors to determine if guests are actually in their room (Hmmm…., that might not be so “cool’), shutting off lights and closing drapes to reduce the cooling load within a hotel. Great ideas.
Then I look out of my high rise condo window, and see around 100 rooftops scattered
around the neighborhood below. An unscientific count of the area gives me a tally of about 65% of Waikiki/Honolulu rooftops within my line of sight have black, tarred, asphalt, or dark colored tiling.
If the energy savings buildings expect to receive using solar reflective materials start at around 15% (at the low end) and work their way up, then it appears that Honolulu may be wasting a lot of energy on cooling systems.
Hawaiian Electric Company/HECO may have the highest electrical rates in the country, coming in at something over $.25/kw hour. Today, most of the energy produced in Hawaii comes from oil. The risk in Hawaii is not only using fossil fuels for energy, but also what might be the impact if Hawaii is hit by a natural disaster that disrupts the ability of HECO to provide power, which is mostly from oil-driven power plants.
“Hawaiian Electric Company shares the very serious concerns of many regarding the potential effects of global warming, and human contributions to this phenomenon, including the burning of fossil fuels for electricity production, transportation, manufacturing, agricultural activities and deforestation.”
(Policy Adopted in January 2007 by the Hawaiian Electric Companies’ Board of Directors)
However, the good news is HECO, at least publically on their website, fully promotes use of renewable energy, and is actively participating in finding energy sources to meet a state-mandated (Hawaii Clean Energy Initiative) to provide 40% of electrical needs through renewable energy by 2030.
So Why the Asphalt Rooftops?
Maybe it is because solar reflective issues have not been a mainstream topic of conversation until the past few years. Maybe the building code is not enforced or strong enough to drive builders and landlords to either build all new buildings with solar reflective materials, or require all new roofing projects to include use of efficient materials.
Maybe people simply don’t care – “green” is a really nice buzzword to use, but to be green actually takes a bit of effort. This simple act (using solar reflective materials on rooftops) may help bring Hawaii (and HECO) to the state’s clean energy initiative goals – as well as saving a tremendous amount of money over the long run in air conditioning costs. Saving something higher than 15% in possibly 50% or more of the addressable buildings amounts to a bunch of kilowatts. Kilowatts provided today through fossil fuels.
“What is more, a white roof can cost as little as 15 percent more than its dark counterpart, depending on the materials used, while slashing electricity bills.” (NY Times, 29 July 2009)
When I ask friends and acquaintances, even in the real estate industry, why they don’t push the topic, sadly the normal responses I get include “what are you talking about? what is with painting your rooftop white? I have no idea what you mean, first I’ve ever heard of it.”
Sitting in my admittedly cool condo, high above Honolulu, I have never in my memory actually used the central air available in my unit. Tradewinds provide a very nice breeze nearly all the time, and in fact almost makes the room cold at night. My building has a white roof. If your’s doesn’t, maybe it is time to have a heart-to-heart with your landlord. If not for the environment, think about your energy bill, and how much you could potentially save with a cooler building.
Filed under: Energy, Social Issues, environment | Leave a Comment
Tags: Energy, HECO, Honolulu, steven chu, white rooftop
Vietnam is in the process of upgrading the entire country’s IT system. With support from organizations such as the World Bank, Vietnam is rebuilding not only physical infrastructure, but also starting from the ground up building new IT systems – including a large scale virtualization strategy.
Hawaii may not be so progressive. The first line of an Associated Press story on Hawaii’s lack of a functional IT strategy goes like this:
“In many ways Hawaii’s government runs its computers like the Internet age hardly happened.” (AP)
The story goes on to expose Hawaii’s lack of IT policy, the fact they are using old systems, a mixture of Apple and PCs for individual users, have a 1960s version of disaster recovery (offsite physical diskette storage), and other parallels with industry that add more discouraging evidence to Hawaii’s IT shortfalls.
Sensationalizing the Obvious
I’ve always found it very easy to criticize. Perhaps the role of a journalist is to sensationalize the shortfalls of others, as people do tend to like watching others suffer – as long as the pain stays in somebody else’s life or reputation.
OK, so Hawaii does have some shortfalls in their IT systems. As a user, I have to say my experience using Hawaii’s eGovernment applications hasn’t been too bad. A plus in the Hawaii IT strategy column. I have never had an email rejected from a Hawaii state email server. Another plus. I could probably rack up a lot of pluses, but it is not sensational.
Now let’s look at the difficult side of journalism. Writing something positive and still trying to make it interesting to the readers.
Vietnam is an interesting case study. A larger population, and a lot more government than Hawaii. More problems to deal with – but the government is trying to drive the national IT strategy down to the city level, decentralizing actual applications and access as much as possible to promote the independence of provinces and cities – without disrupting the national IT plan to standardize IT management throughout government.
Nobody would ever suggest the US government try to standardize data strategies down to the state level, much less the city level, however there is still an interesting lesson that can be applied from the Vietnam model.
Data format standards on a national scale can facilitate information sharing and data mining. We won’t go into the personal security issues of that statement in this article, however data format standardization is a good thing for government. The commercial world and manufacturing have had data format/classification standards for many years, including projects such as RosettaNet, XBRL, and UNSPSC.
Thus a driver’s license format in Danang would look identical to the same item in Hanoi – representing 2 very different provinces. Data can easily be shared as needed for identification, reporting, law enforcement, and other data transfer.
Standardization is good.
Enter Virtualization and the Cloud
If a government bureaucracy in a state like Hawaii has extended its inefficiencies into the world of IT, and as stated in quotes the AP article included:
- Hawaii’s department-by-department way of handling information would not work in the business world, where companies invested heavily in upgrades as the Internet and computers grew in importance.
- It’s like we had all these little companies and they all grew at the same time, and then when the big company came along and merged everything, it never made the changes.
Well, even in deeply entrenched bureaucracies there has to be a scheduled refresh of technology at some point. Even those precious little Macs and PCs will eventually die, become so old they cannot even load a browser, or the state will grind to a halt because a day will come when no computer in the government will be able to open a Microsoft Word 2010 document.
Maybe, just maybe – much like the government of Vietnam has come to realize, that refresh strategy could include cloud computing. The city of Los Angeles has accepted cloud, and that city probably has a larger government and bureaucracy than the entire state of Hawaii.
The AP article mentions that Governor Lingle has tried to establish an Office of the CIO within Hawaii. Good idea. One that will ultimately save the state a lot of money. Let’s push our representatives to make that happen!
A Proposal
Now select a couple of good data center locations. A couple on Oahu, maybe one each on Maui and the Big Island. Start building cloud computing centers on each island, connect them via dedicated high speed links, synchronize data and applications, then inform the state that all new editions of office automation software will be using a hosted edition of Office 2010, or other high performance hosted package.
Bang – saved money on license fees, labor for installers (those guys who are paid to update your anti-virus software and load service packs on your computer), and high performance desktop and laptop computers.
Start refreshing with dumb terminals and netbooks.
Establish a real state-wide disaster recovery model:
- Cloud-based virtualized storage
- Central cloud-based email system
- Distributed DR model using network-based backups in geographically separated locations
- Dumb terminals and netbooks backup to the centralized data base and storage – not on local equipment (unless the worker is a traveler). Access to the data is still available from a distant end location through use of VPNs.
Retrain the IT staff on developing applications in the cloud – not on under-the-desktop servers.
Could it really be that simple? Actually – yes. In addition, if the state of Hawaii can build a storefront of applications (including Office 2010-like products), and make those applications available to users on a state-wide basis, and reduce provisioning time for applications to minutes rather than months, why wouldn’t we consider this as an option to what Sen. Donna Mercado Kim (D, Kalihi Valley-Halawa) was quoted as saying, “Every department has IT (information technology) people, and they each have their own way of doing things.”
Nonsense
Very 1970s… So not 2020s…
Vietnam is rebuilding their national infrastructure, the US government under the direction of CIO Vivek Kundra is rebuilding the national IT strategy. Hawaii can rebuild ours as well. And we have great examples and precedent to learn from.
Filed under: Cloud Computing, Government Regulatory, International ICT, Internet and Telecom, LA Life, Open Topics, Social Issues, citizen journalism | Leave a Comment
Tags: cloud computng, hawaii it, information technology refresh, los angeles, vietnam, world bank
2009 was a horrible year for job seekers, and even those holding on to existing jobs. No bonuses, no promotions, layoffs, and nobody hiring. And SoCal successfully beat most of the United States in unemployment claims, by several percentage points, attaching painful and empirical fact to the grim situation.
But that does appear to be changing. Slowly changing, but it is looking better for job seekers in the region. A recent scrape of job openings for Los Angeles and Orange Counties yielded some pretty strong job titles:
- Director of Engineering – Marina Del Rey
- Chief Integration Engineer – El Segundo
- Director, information technology – San Clemente
- VP Global Services – Los Angeles
- Customer Services Director – El Segundo
- Lead Systems Engineer – Los Angeles
- Senior Industrial Director – Irvine
- Smart GRID Architect – Rosemead
- HL7 Integrator – Los Angeles
- Disaster Recovery Manager – Irvine
- Manager, Operations Systems – Van Nuys, CA
- Systems Architecture Engineer – Huntington Beach, CA
And the list goes on… About 350 good positions listed in my 25 January search.
One additional exciting trend in the job stack is the high number of positions in manufacturing industries. While the services market is great, manufacturing spawns input into the supply chain, which adds a lot of downstream value to those companies increasing or expanding their business operations.
Dust Off that Resume
The time is near, and technology-savvy job seekers will reap rewards if they are prepared for the next boom in business expansion. Cloud computing, unified messaging, IT operations, data center consolidation, process automation, green technologies – corporate jargon to some, but areas with increasing demand for qualified candidates.
Cloud computing and data center consolidation are quite interesting, admittedly because they are new and exciting trends in the IT community.
The Dot.Com era taught us painful lessons on the value of investment money. The venture community sat back after 2002 and made a decision to actually perform a bit of due-diligence prior to throwing money at PowerPoint companies and paper ideas. At least those which were not using private equity with large investments in real estate.
The Dot.OMG era is now just about at an end, and some of the lessons learned are focused on the execution of business plans and intelligent use of capital and operational expenses – while building business.
IT has gone from being a “darling” of the internet age, to a very powerful means of adding tremendous business value through globalization of markets, and real-time transaction processing to support the global economy and marketplace. The only problem was to support that IT engine, technical managers tried to solve their processing challenges by throwing more disk, processors, and bandwidth at their requirements.
The next age will be one where companies refocus their energy on developing their business, and begin to expect processing and IT to be more of a utility than an exceptional part of their business. Welcome to data center outsourcing, virtualization, cloud computing, and Software as a Service/SaaS. Recover the costs of expensive and inefficient data centers.
So those engineers and sales staff still hanging out in the Communicator’s Bar, get ready to get sized for your next retro-logo polo shirt. The time is now for those who can put their fantasy of re-entering the telecom community to deal in bilateral telephone minutes aside and get ready to support thought leadership strategies to bring customers into commercial data center outsourcing models – or go sell them on consolidating their in-house operations into enterprise clouds.
Look at the tech job listings again. Companies are begging for IT and tech visionary managers to solve their growth and development pain. Begging.
2010 is going to be a great year in SoCal, so let’s get out there and make sure it does not pass us by, and does not require our companies to go elsewhere to attract talent. We’ve got the talent right here, and we need to put it back to work.
Filed under: Cloud Computing, International ICT, Internet and Telecom, LA Life, Social Issues, Virtualization | 1 Comment
Tags: california, cloud computing, data center consolidation, green technologies, jobs, unemployment
As children of the 50s and 60s, growing up in the US, we had the constant fear of nuclear annihilation riding on our backs. The “Red Threat” resulted in the construction of nuclear fallout shelters, attack drills, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the “Domino Theory” warning of the advance of communism. Every American child was taught to fear, and hate, those who lived in foreign countries considered hostile to the US because of their ideologies and forms of government.
During my first visit to China in the early 1990s, I was genuinely afraid I’d be arrested at immigration due to my past US military experience. Even though I was in my late 30s, the fear of China was so deeply embedded into my psyche that I could not shake the impending feeling of doom as my airplane touched down at the Beijing airport. Even while deplaning I could not help but notice nearly EVERYONE in the airport was wearing some kind of uniform, and they were all looking at me as a spy or person who had entered their country to do them harm.
At immigration the inspector looked at my passport, and said “welcome to the People’s Republic of China.” And that was it.
Exiting the airport also meant exiting the community of uniforms, and I entered a world that fascinated me then, given the warmth and openness of the people in Beijing, and continues to fascinate me today. Occasionally a Chinese person engaged me in a debate about the differences of democracy vs. communism, but in the post Tianamen period most Chinese were concentrating on making money, working hard, and getting on with their lives.
Ditto for Mongolia. While I have to admit it was a bit uncomfortable for me to see HIND helicopters flying around, and soldiers walking around with AK-47s, I started to warm up to the idea they were defending their country, their way of life, and trying to keep enemies away from their borders. Kind of like what Americans do within our country.
In Hanoi, a name that still brings a bit of anxiety to many Americans of my generation, walking through the city and museums produced concerns that I might not be well liked, as an American, in a country we fought in a horrible conflict through much of my youth. I had the feeling everybody looking at me was wondering if I flew B52s, or had wounded or killed one of their family.
In fact, many of them do have that question. But much like other humans around the world, life is for the living, and the living get on with their lives. In fact, Hanoi is one of the friendliest cities I have been in, and continues to bring pleasant surprises every time I venture out of the hotel into the community.
The 1000 Pound Reminder
I have started rationalizing my emotions towards war. As a professional soldier I know the meaning of conflict, have been in conflict, and don’t like it very much. The enemy has no face, no soul, no name, no family, and is a slab of meat that needs to be captured or killed. Soldiers, regardless of the soft news that surrounds winning the hearts and minds, are trained to take the lives of their enemies either while advancing on their position, or defending their own position. Pretty simple.
Walking through Hanoi there are still signs of conflict. A large crater that formed when 1000 pound bombs were dropped into neighborhoods. The “Hanoi Hilton” of John McCain fame. The “Hanoi Jane” memorial anti-aircraft gun. All memories of a time many years ago when people in Hanoi were killing or being killed.
As an American I grew up hating the Vietnamese for torturing US airmen. I grew up hating Muslims for the terrible things they did to Jews. I hated Cubans for just about everything. All a result of the media telling me I should hate them. A media that continue s to drive the same message for other conflicts and cultures – broadcast by people with a lot of experience in war, such as Sean Hannity, Glen Beck, and Rush Limbaugh. They do have a lot of military experience to draw their conclusions from, right?
Now, after many years of walking through countries we have at some point in our generation been at war (Japan, Korea, China, Russia, Mongolia, Viet Nam, Palestine, Israel, Germany, etc., etc., etc…), my perspective is changing. I wonder how I, as an American, would react if the war was fought, for example, in Long Beach (California). If bombers from Manitoba were dropping 1000 pound bombs on Belmont Shore, what would my reaction be?
If I caught a Manitoban flyer who had his plane shot down while dropping bombs on my neighborhood, what would I do to him?
The answer is pretty easy. I would rip him limb from limb and feed the parts to coyotes – while I watched and laughed.
When I think of the indignities a young school girl encounters while passing from Ramallah into East Jerusalem, what can I expect her to think or feel as she passes Jewish people or Israelis each day? What if I was her father? How would I react to bulldozers wiping out my neighborhood to accommodate settlement expansions? If foreigners were occupying my homeland, would I welcome them with open arms, or find a way to fight?
How do you win the hearts and minds when a bomber accidently drops its payload on a civilian community and calls it “collateral damage?” At the end of the day, it really makes no difference if it is a mistake or not – people die.
It is all about your perspective. As history has shown, the winner ultimately writes the history. It is both enlightening, and confusing to look at the perspectives of each side. We can now look at the wars of the Romans, Mongols, British Empire, and Zulus with a detached, neutral, and academic view. Recent wars are still being written, and may not be understood for another 500 years or so. And when they are written, there is not going to be a right or wrong, only a winner and body count of the dead.
My perspective is now that war is not a good thing for the living. And as Clausewitz eloquently said, “war results when diplomats are incompetent or screw up.” Or something like that. And 16 year old children implement their failed policy with guns or explosives strapped to their belts.
All about perspective, and understanding there are two distinct sides to every argument or conflict.
Filed under: Open Topics, Social Issues, citizen journalism | Leave a Comment
Tags: china, conflict, israel, Mongolia, perspective, russia, vietnam, war
When you live in California, it is easy to be a bigot when it comes to technology. Even within the United States the Silicon Valley attracts venture capital at a multiple of any other location within the country. It is easy to ignore the efforts of companies in Los Angeles, San Diego, Atlanta, or even Boston when looking at the rate of investment going into the ‘valley.
Here in Hanoi, the English newspaper “Viet Nam News” provides not only a mini-International Herald Tribune view of international news, but also a well-written review of primarily economic news within Viet Nam. Looking at the topics in this week’s papers you see a high number of articles related to both high tech investments in Viet Nam, as well as reviews on the status of technology infrastructure projects.
- “Intellectual Property will be Protected, says VN President”
- Articles on energy conservation and “green” strategies
- The national telecom company (Viet Nam Post and Telecommunications/VNPT) subscriber growth
- eCommerce and eBusiness strategies and support
- Cooperation with other nations such as Israel, India, Japan, and the US
- Regulating the internet “café” and kiosk industries
- A critical article on the low rate of 31% for companies supporting web presence for their organization or business
It is all very exciting. It is exciting to know ICT infrastructure is getting a very high priority by the government, in addition to education. The marriage of ICT and education will continue to provide the country with an educated workforce, who will no doubt find their way into the international university system, and ultimately find their way home to Viet Nam.
It is easy to observe children going to school early in the day, and staying until their evening classes are completed. School children explain they are focusing their academic efforts on mathematics, physics, and language. Contrast this to the “soft” education our children are receiving in American schools, with a high percentage of children in cities such as Los Angeles never graduating, and you can see that countries like Viet Nam, with an emphasis on delivering ICT infrastructure and education will eventually have a major impact on the US’s ability to remain competitive with our own citizens.
In the US we fight over who has the right of way to build infrastructure though a public location, or which carrier has the monopoly to deliver services within a community. We worry about Network Neutrality and the control of content delivered over the network.
In Hanoi the government is funding, with the help of international donors and lenders, ICT infrastructure that equals or exceeds standards in many US cities – without the drama. You cannot walk a sidewalk in Hanoi without seeing major development projects, and huge bundles of conduit being buried beneath the sidewalks and streets.
Back to Education and ICT
At what point does Stanford and MIT determine they cannot meet their academic standards with American students, and have to come to countries like Viet Nam to recruit qualified freshman? At what point do the Vietnamese students return home, and begin to develop industries with funding from countries happy to encroach on the Silicon Valley’s dominance in technology and investment?
Years ago I would be offended by the high number of immigrants in cities such as Sunnyvale, Mountain View, and Milpitas. Now I realize we, as Americans, need the immigrants to continue providing highly educated and qualified people to drive our high tech industries. Rather than push these innovative and educated immigrants away, we need to embrace them and hope they will stay and become Americans as well. (author)
When I review newspapers in Los Angeles, Long Beach, or the San Fernando Valley, I cannot find the level of energy related to ICT found in the Viet Nam News/VNN. Counting on my fingers, the VNN has about three times the number of articles related to technology that AI would find in the LA Times. It is exciting to see the publisher, even if it is the government (with a bit of planned media influence), evangelizing the topic. The exception may be the San Jose Mercury News, which is by default focused on the activities in the Silicon Valley.
If it was only hype, I would probably ignore the news and go on about my business in Viet Nam. But you cannot walk the streets without absorbing the reality of ICT infrastructure construction. Telecom and telecom transmission, Internet, electricity, data centers, education – it is all visible.
Viet Nam is on the right track for their country’s development. Nothing is perfect, and there is always a “B” side to every story. However to the critical observer the direction of ICT in Viet Nam is strong.
Forward
Filed under: International ICT, Internet and Telecom, Social Issues, citizen journalism | 3 Comments
Tags: education, hanoi, ict, mit, stanford, viet nam news, vietnam
A very cold and icy evening in Denver. One of my new data center customers, WBS Connect, was based in Denver under the technical leadership of Scott Charter. Scott gave me a call, and asked if I had the time to get together and meet, since I was in town for some business meetings and he had some ideas I might be interested in.
Several hours later, with staff at the Rialto Café getting annoyed, and my head hitting the data absorption and comprehension threshold all of us experience when talking with people a whole lot smarter than us, I knew I’d met a true visionary.
Ideas. Ideas about technology, about business, about people, and about the world we live in. Beyond the technology, Scott is a guy who genuinely cares about people – an excellent role model for young entrepreneurs.
Pacific-Tier: Today we are talking with Scott Charter, who is with GTT. Scott, how do you like Hawaii?
Scott Charter: Love it. I’ve been here a few times (Hawaii) before, but this is my first time on Oahu.
Pacific-Tier: We’re at the Pacific Telecommunications Council annual meeting. Scott agreed to sit down and talk with us a little bit. Scott, you’ve had some changes professionally – what’s going on?
Scott Charter: December 16th, WBS Connect, my company that I co-founded in 2002 was acquired by GTT. The deal had been brewing a couple months prior (to December), but we announced it December 16th and we’ll call it the end of January when the integration will be complete.
Pacific-Tier: So what does that bring to the business? Aside from obviously the acquisition and things, does that bring any benefits to WBS, your customers, or to the business that didn’t exist before?
Scott Charter: That’s two pointed questions. I’ll start with my customers at WBS Connect. They will continue to receive the same level of service they did from WBS Connect, and now from GTT, with an augmented NOC (Network Operations Center), we are a much larger entity as a publicly traded company. So from a financial perspective it is a much healthier organization that is continuing to grow.
We feel that what we brought to GTT was something they didn’t have, and that was a network. GTT was a switchless, global network integrator, and it was an easy add-on to give them a global Ethernet backbone.
Pacific-Tier: So how about the services WBS Connect was offering? Video services, and different types of value-added services to your network, where do they exist today?
Scott Charter: The growth on where we are on a commodity-based, circuit-based, will only continue to grow as we layer on. We have to be careful though, not to layer too much in at once. We don’t want to have too much culture shock.
So for example, I don’t really see us striking out immediately and driving more video. Conferencing services as a primary add-on for our business customers, as a business product, give till the second or third quarter and we’ll roll back into that.
Immediately we’re talking about going back to all of the GTT customers with more Ethernet. Going into the WBS customer with more off-net circuits that GTT had already done as well.
Slowly, when we get out of that, we’ll go more into managed services. I see us actually going more with other managed services in addition to video, such as managed security. Probably by Q2.
Pacific-Tier: How about WBS Connect, and I hate going back to that, but I will… You were a very open network. You would peer with other networks, you would peer with CDNs (Content Delivery Networks), do you feel that your ability to integrate or work with other companies would be changed by your acquisition (or merger) by GTT?
Scott Charter: I’m learning as we’re going, because I am now working with a publicly-traded company. Things are a little bit different than when you are with a privately held, entrepreneurial small organization that is quite dynamic.
We want to bring the dynamic nature of WBS Connect to GTT, however we also have to remember that we have certain parameters that go with a publicly-traded company.
On top of that you also have an organization that really focuses on ensuring they maintain good margin. Now what we’ve done in the past with WBS Connect was that at times we’d take a lower margin deal in order to expand our network, and ultimately grow our value in another way that was not standard “Hey I need to have this much margin.”
I don’t know how much of that we’ll continue to do, but if it doesn’t make sense financially we probably won’t do it moving forward.
Pacific-Tier: So you’ve always been a leader, a thought leader in the industry. There are things changing now such as carrier Ethernet exchanges, Internet exchange points, cloud computing and the integration of CDNs into the network itself. Tell me your visions. What’s happening now? Where will we go into the future that will either support, or change, or direct the future of our business?
Scott Charter: There are so many great things that I see on the horizon right now that all seem to layer back into one another. So when we talk about additional transport services that are required to talk about enhanced cloud. Machine-machine activity, and the way they are going to interact is the future of where hosting goes – for sure.
I mean just standard dedicated servers and things like that are… I don’t want to call them a typewriter of the future, but things are definitely going to evolve. I think that as a WAN operator as part of our business we definitely see the need to connect more and more data centers that have this idea of being able to understand the need for this cloud infrastructure.
And I think you are going to find that you are going to have a global consolidation in certain points around the world that are going to mirror this cloud that is going to happen in let’s call it 10 mega data centers, at least, for computing. And we want to be a part of that.
One of the things I’m really excited about though, is the game-changing effect that I believe that 4G will have on incumbent connectivity in our existing infrastructure. If you’re a LEC (Local Exchange Carrier) with DS3s, OC3s, out to an enterprise base, that’s going to compete in a way with 4G. Call it 18~24 months from now.
I see us steering GTT towards embracing 4G as a part of our WAN business.
Pacific-Tier: Are you going to get into the tower business yourself, or are you going to connect towers?
Scott Charter: Connect towers for sure. You know, continuing to talk about any type of carrier extensions or servicing that wholesale side. But in addition to that I see from a large enterprise side, really seeing us drive more and more into that (4G and connecting via the wholesale business).
Pacific-Tier: With 4G, and LTE – ultimately 4G, does GTT get into the wireless business yourself or are you going to stay in the terrestrial business?
Scott Charter: That’s to be seen. I’m cautious on what I say now on where we’ll be, depending on where we need to be then. When I look forward now - I’m only talking about LTE. No offense to WiMAX, but I feel the real play there is with LTE.
It’s not just North American LTE, it’s global LTE. So seeing the Vodafones, the China wirelesses, and how they’re going to drive global saturation of LTE, let’s call it over the next four years, five years possibly, we’ll want to play there one way or another. I’m not sure how we’ll do it.
Pacific-Tier: So in 18 months what is the difference between terrestrial cable, terrestrial services, and wireless? Is there a difference?
Scott Charter: I’m afraid that spectrum is going to be a too little, people are going to be so excited that we might almost have another iPhone paradox that we see now with AT&T – that their own success with their partnership with Apple has caused some people to believe that the AT&T 3G is completely saturated.
Now there are some people who have some data on it which says that’s not truly the case. But there is enough of a customer backlash that it’s a customer perception that the AT&T network, due to its own success, has lead to its current situation that people are accepting it.
Now, fast forward a couple years and say what happens if we actually eat through all that LTE spectrum that’s out there now that that Verizon and AT&T – let’s just talk that North America’s acquired, wouldn’t that be interesting if that too becomes so saturated that we’re now reverting back to just terrestrial, as we’ve eaten up all the wireless.
Pacific-Tier: Tell me something, domestic or international, where’s your focus?
Scott Charter: 50-50. Let me take that back. (the) Opportunity for growth, 80-20 international. Consistent with where we are today, 50-50. New growth, international.
Pacific-Tier: Why?
Scott Charter: Under-served markets with a much higher profitability margin. It’s much easier to go in and saturate MENA, or LATAM, or parts of Asia than it is to continue to try and compete against incumbents in major markets, Tier 1, Tier 2s, or for that matter try and compete against a Time Warner in a Tier 3.
Pacific-Tier: WBS Connect helped shake up the American Internet industry by bringing affordable bandwidth and high-performance services to people. How do you continue to disrupt Verizon and AT&T and people who would possibly like to hold back development of competitive services in the United States. How do you go about continuing to hit that “borg?”
Scott Charter: By coming to shows like this (PTC) and ITW. You continue to partner up with aggressive companies that are willing to shake up the status quo. If you are working within a fleet of speed boats, if you are not there you are probably in a super-tanker that is probably going to run aground at one point.
That’s a little too much of an analogy…
Pacific-Tier: Let’s talk about your effect on the social or the people part of this business. Do you feel that your new company (GTT) or your old company (WBS Connect), or yourself as an entrepreneur – do you feel you have a responsibility to contribute to the good of the community? Is there any inherent responsibility you have to the community?
Scott Charter: I believe we all do if we want to be good global citizens and good global businessmen. It’s in our best interest to make sure we are doing things more and more efficient.
Power (electricity) is probably a great analogy because we are all working towards a more efficient data center. It’s in our best interest to try and find a means to use off-peak power. We’re involved in something right now that I think is going to shake up data centers worldwide.
And when I talk to people about it I don’t want them to think I’m getting too…, what I really want to say is that I think I have a real opportunity to change what we’re doing in global computing with some colleagues that we’re involved with on power.
Pacific-Tier: Well we hope so, and whether it’s alternative energy using solar or wind, or whether it’s using innovative ideas like fuel cells or co-generation… All of those things are good for the environment and hopefully in the future we’ll be able to reduce our reliance on very energy-inefficient hardware.
Hopefully people like you will put in SSDs using 1% of the power draw as a spindle… But tell us, as we wind down the discussion to a close, again you’ve been a visionary ever since I’ve known you. For several years I’ve looked to you for ideas and thoughts on what’s going to happen to our industry in the future.
Shoot for the stars. Tell us something we don’t know that is going to excite us.
Scott Charter: Well let me follow up on this through energy consumption. To drive the existing grid to use it more efficiently so we don’t have to build new. If we can avoid building new coal-fired power plants in order to generate all this new data, because data centers are gobbling up more power per capita than any other sector in the world right now. I mean it’s amazing.
We’re not getting that many new aluminum smelters out there, but new data centers are coming up and just eating and eating more power.
What if? And we believe we’re on to something that will allow us to not have to go and just massively overbuild our electrical infrastructure in order to accommodate this data center growth. I can’t wait to see where we are in two years with this.
Pacific-Tier: I think it’s exciting too, as a former data center operator I saw the sins of inefficiency time and time again, and I applaud your efforts in trying to correct that problem in our industry.
Any final words for the readers?
Scott Charter: I’m excited where I am going with GTT. I’ve never been a chief marketing officer in a publicly-traded company before. Colleagues of mine have come up joked with me and said “Mr. CMO! What are you going to do?” I laugh. It’s so exciting. Coming here and just trying to drive brand.
Go meet 40 new companies out of Eastern Europe, or go meet Western Africa. Wow!
Pacific-Tier: The industry needs competent evangelists and we warmly welcome your entry into the marketing business. Thank you very much for the time!
You can download the audio/recording of Scott’s interview HERE
| Scott Charter has more than 16 years of data telecommunications experience, specializing in data networking. Prior to launching WBS Connect, Scott held management positions with Qwest Communications, Rhythms Netconnections, and Echostar Communications.GTT is Global telecom and Technology http://www.gt-t.net/ |
Filed under: Cloud Computing, Energy, Entrepreneurs, International ICT, Internet and Telecom, Social Issues, environment, startup business | Leave a Comment
Tags: communications, entrepreneur, environment, gtt, hawaii, network, ptc 2010, scott charter, wbs connect
Emerging technologies have always forced business decision-makers to decide if they will embrace a new technology as a first-mover, or if they will maintain their existing technologies. 
Each brings a risk – does the cost of maintaining existing technology result in higher maintenance and operational expenses, or does the cost of embracing and acquiring new technology put an unwarranted capital and process change burden on the organization?
Many years ago (~15) the Northern Telecom (Nortel) DMS 100/250/300/500 line of digital telephone switches represented one of the finest technologies for digital communications. The cost was high, but the technology promised telecom carriers everything they would need to operate their networks well into the next generation, which was not yet associated with a real time horizon. At least in marketing PowerPoint slides. Buy a DMS 500, and you will be running that for a couple decades.
Then seemingly overnight the Internet matured, with communications applications such as Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), Skype, Vonage, and other Internet-enabled utilities. Suddenly the DMS, 5ESS, 4ESS, NEAC, DSC – all became obsolete almost overnight, replaced by simple Internet-friendly communication applications or Internet Protocol-based “soft switches” which managed telephony over the Internet protocol with a form factor about the size of a mini-refrigerator, And 100 times the switching capacity.
And, as with all soon-to-be-obsolete technologies, the cost of maintaining the legacy system, finding spare parts for the legacy system, and even finding operators for the legacy system may be rapidly hitting a point of extreme risk. The old telephone switches are now most often found in landfills, gone forever.
Traditional telecommunication transmission protocols such as SDH and SONET began falling to Ethernet, and within a period of about 5 years from 2003~2008 the “legacy” telephone technologies began to quickly fade to historical Wikipedia entries.
The Cloud Computing Analogy
We are entering a period of “plentitude” in cloud computing. The “Law of Plentitude” is loosely defined as a threshold of acceptance (of a process, technology, system, etc) that if not adopted will put an entity at a greater risk of non-participation than if they participate at the point of emergence. In technology we normally place the “Law of Plentitude” at around 15~20% diffusion into a selected environment, community, industry, or organization.
For example, when the fax was first introduced there was a single machine. By itself it is not useful, as you have nobody to fax images to on a distant end. With two fax machines it is more useful, with a community of two. The law of exponents begins at 4 users (N*N-1/2) and you end up with an addressable community of 6 potential relationships. And it continues growing.
At “plentitude,” you are at risk of not acquiring a fax machine, because your community has now adopted fax machines at a level that you need to be able to communicate with fax, or find yourself in jeopardy of losing your place in the community.
It can now be argued that cloud computing is quickly starting to reach a level of “plentitude.” Communities of interest are emerging within clouds, allowing near zero-latency in user-to-user transaction time. Think of a financial trading community. Zero-latency means zero transaction delays. At some point if you are not in the zero-latency community, your operation is at risk of either losing business, or being expelled by other members of the community who do not want to deal with your latency.
Think of companies outsourcing their IT infrastructure into a commercial cloud service provider, or even building their own internal enterprise cloud infrastructure. If all things are equal, and the cloud-enabled company is able to recover the cost of building their own data center, reducing operational expenses, and potentially greatly increasing their ability to expand and reduce their processing capacity, then they may have more resources left over to increase research and development or product production.
Think of the guys who were running DMS 500s in 2009, vs. their competitors who were running much more powerful, and cheaper soft switches. We can produce a roll call of regional telephone companies who closed their doors over the past few years because they simply did not have the ability to compete with next generation technology.
The Cloud Computing “Plentitude” Target
The trick of course is to try and plan your refresh, through a well-managed business case and review, to as close to the plentitude “risk threshold” as possible. This will ensure you do not fall prey to a bad technology, are able to see the industry trend towards adopting a new technology, and that your competition does not leave you suffering through a last minute technology refresh.
Cloud computing and data center outsourcing may not be the ultimate technology refresh, and still has a number of issues to resolve (security, compliance, data center stability, etc). However, the trend is clear, companies are outsourcing into commercial cloud service providers, and enterprise virtualization is on the mind of every IT manager and CFO in the business community.
We hope
If your company or organization has not yet started the review process, the technology refresh process, and the planning process to determine if/when cloud adoption is the right thing for you company, we would strongly encourage that process to begin. Now.
If nothing else, you owe it to yourself and your organization to ensure they are not caught on the bad side of plentitude.
Filed under: Cloud Computing, International ICT, Internet and Telecom, Virtualization | Leave a Comment
Tags: cloud computing, law of plentitude, nortel, plentitude, soft switch
CNN has people on the ground in Port Au Prince. They use high performance satellite phones and transmission equipment to bring a 
few shots from Anderson Cooper and Sanjay Gupta to world viewers. That is what we expect from CNN. Then CNN begins the roll call of tweets from people within Haiti bringing real time news. Continuing with interviews using Skype with video direct from Haiti. And the innovative ideas on how to get the word out continue.
Fox news, MSNBC, all the major US news sources quote the information they are getting from the ground, or show videos received via Twitter and other social media tools. Most of the news we are getting via Twitter and social media is raw, simply passing on a snapshot in time. Then the news casters, with their back office of analysts and experts, are able to translate the news into a consumable item for American and international viewers.
This is citizen journalism at its best, bringing the news of nature’s worst to a global audience. It is important, as it brings the real news, direct to a global audience, without censorship. It tells us, as humanitarians, that our help is once again needed to support our fellow man in a distant land we May not even be able to find on a map. It allows CNN (as my preferred news source – you can pick your own) to give us “vetted” instructions on how to help. It gives you access to real time “tweets” on how to find out the latest news direct from the source (@cnnbrk/Haiti or #haiticnn).
Of course nearly all news networks and sources have a similar listing of sites to learn the best way for you to contribute – just log into the site of your choice. In California you can contact several great sites, including”
- KTLA CW-5 News – www.ktla.com
- KNX 1070 News Radio – www.knx1070.com
It probably makes no difference which site you use, just find a site with a vettesd and legitimate means of getting your donation to Haiti.
Go to your Twitter account and do a search on Haiti and you will find more sources of real-time information.
Tweeting Reality
Our world is changing. Whether it be a mobile phone with video or photo capability, internet-enabled computer, or wireless PDA, the ability for humans to provide real time event information is now at an unprecedented level. Could Twitter Founders Evan Willams and Biz Stone have envisioned their short messaging service, or micro-blog could potentially change global communications in 140 characters or less?
From wildfires in California, to airplanes landing in the Hudson, to the streets of Tehran, and to the horror of Haiti, Twitter is rapidly becoming the citizen journalist’s weapon of choice in delivering status updates on just about everything, with an uncanny ability to focus on real things when necessary.
Let’s get Haiti under our belt, and then start a deep dive into social networking, real-time information transmission and sharing, and find ways we can structure this tremendous resource into a much more easy, and logical process for users of all capabilities and knowledge. This is one of the world’s true disruptive technologies with a potential to change not only real time communications, but also media and journalism as we know it today.
Filed under: International ICT, Internet and Telecom, Social Issues, Social Networking, citizen journalism | Leave a Comment
Tags: anderson cooper, citizen journalism, cnn, haiti, social media, Social Networking, twitter
John Savageau’s Profile
John Savageau is a life long telecom and Internet geek, with a deep interest in the environment and all things green. Whether drilling into the technology of human communications, or describing a blue whale off Catalina Island, Savageau will try to present complex ideas in terms that are easily appreciated and understood.
John Savageau is President of Pacific-Tier Communications based in Honolulu, Hawaii
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Recent Entries
- The Need for Speed – and Big, Fat, Dumb Pipes
- Rights of a Sovereign Nation or Invasion of an Open Internet?
- Not So Green Hawaii
- A Developing Country That Can Teach Hawaii An IT Strategy Lesson
- Southern California Tech Jobs Make a Comeback
- Perspectives on War and Conflict – Which Side is Right?
- Vietnam’s Focus on Information and Communications Technology
- Traveling the Telecom Highway with GTT’s Scott Charter
- Maintain or Refresh – the IT Dilemma Meets Cloud Computing
- Citizen Journalism and Tweets bring Haiti’s Horror to the World
- Techno-SciFi for Engineers and Soldiers – Daemon
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