[Davisgig] Bill Broadley's Comments

Tue Jan 6 21:32:44 PST 2015

Hi folks. My contribution (right now, and over time) is going to be small, and more about messages than about technical subjects. I think Bill does make some good arguments, but I'm surprised he/we haven't gone a little further into the  subject of "Google fiber cities." I believe a giant corporation did this in a few places as a test bed, and because they anticipated that they couldn't anticipate some of the uses.

There are quite a number of Davis residents who, in their day jobs, use giant data sets and high-bandwidth equipment on campus. It's very easy for me to imagine researchers with sufficient bandwidth writing applications so that they can queue up and remotely process samples (or whatever their kind of research derives data from), and then analyze the data at home using the same data sets. And my point is not so much that these people will immediately see what they can do and want to pay for it. Rather, it is that some (many?) will see that there's a huge potential in this kind of connection, beyond their current immediate work tasks, plus "the Internet of things," where major home appliances are updating their firmware, etc. etc.

I do appreciate that there have to be some practical and near-term benefits. Now that we've started to describe those, the potential for growth and longer-term benefits has me even more interested.

On Jan 6, 2015, at 8:39 PM, Robert Nickerson wrote:

> Hi
> 
> This is very eloquent, and I'd say pretty damn accurate and succinct argument that could be morphed into a letter and put on the website.
> 
> I have more to add about costs as well when I can at some point in the not too distant future.
> 
> RAN
> 
> 
> On 1/6/2015 7:29 PM, Bill Broadley wrote:
>> On 01/06/2015 10:49 AM, Shneor Sherman wrote:
>>> Bill, I appreciate your response. However, it does not address the question:
>>> Where is the direct benefit to homeowners? An extra $5000 value to a
>>> half-million dollar home is inconsequential.
>> 
>> Well it was than $5,200 for a $300k house.  The thought of adding $5k or more
>> (the majority of Davis homes are worth more than $300k) to the value of ones
>> home is a great incentive for registered voters to sign a petition or vote for
>> the initiative.
>> 
>> For the City of Davis that means more tax revenue per home, and more demand for
>> Davis homes (assuming surrounding cities don't get GigE networking).
>> 
>>> How many homeowners want to be
>>> content providers or maintain a website on their own?
>> 
>> Approximately zero.  People who are in the Google fiber cities are quite
>> enthusiastic about the service.  The vast majority of the stories I've heard as
>> just the normal fast internet is great type.  Netflix streams at high quality,
>> youtube videos start instantly, Amazon prime works great, ability to stream
>> video while not impacting phone calls or video conferences etc.
>> 
>> Also the freedom to buy the channels they want instead of expensive bundles and
>> the freedom from the pain of:
>> * buying/maintaining/replacing DVR/VCRs
>> * watching whatever they want, whenever they want, even switching between
>>   devices
>> * ability to watch a season of a favorite show as quickly as they want to.
>> 
>>> I suspect very few. If
>>> we are talking about schools and libraries, it's far cheaper to provide lines
>>> only to those entities.
>> 
>> Certainly, I was just mentioning that hugely improved network infrastructure
>> could lead to improvements in educational opportunities at Davis Schools and
>> Libraries.  Not that these improvements would justify the costs all by themselves.
>> 
>> Generally the higher end users would get very fast network connections (Google
>> does GigE for $70 or so), the most cost conscious would get cheaper/slower
>> connections (Google does 5 mbit for 7 years for $200), and those without paying
>> anything might get better cell coverage (via shared wifi) or be able to use a
>> wifi device in more areas than they do now.
>> 
>>> I'm pretty sure that this will require an initiative, though the City Council
>>> could act on its own. To get votes, voters will have to see direct benefits.
>>> What might those be?
>> 
>> 1) not dealing with hated companies like comcast (typically #1 or #2 hated)
>> 2) not being restricted by bandwidth caps (comcast is 250GB last I checked)
>> 3) improved network performance
>> 
>> Households with multiple people using laptops, TVs, and phones are pretty
>> common.  I run up against my comcast 250GB cap despite having a pretty low end
>> TV (720P, not 1080p let alone 4K) and not having a particularly TV centric
>> household.  We also do minimal music streaming.
>> 
>> So a typical household with a few kids/parents around who like tv and/or music:
>> * 3 hours a day of music from pandora/spotify = 6.5GB
>> * 1 hour a day of news/talk shows on standard definition TV = 30.4 GB
>> * 1.5 hours a day of Movie on a nicer HD tv = 136 GB
>> * 2 hours a week of Ultra HD/4k = 50 GB
>> 
>> So that adds up to 220GB which is pretty close to the 250GB cap.  A bit of web
>> surfing, youtube, email (especially large attachments) could easily consume the
>> rest.  Especially since audio/video streams are getting more data intensive over
>> time.
>> 
>> The above might sound like more than you'd expect, but keep in mind that might
>> be spread over several users.  Even appliances these days can use a fair amount
>> of bandwidth.  My stereo for instance (a fairly standard Denon receiver)
>> consumers a fair amount of data for firmware updates periodically.  Spending a
>> day hiking and taking pictures can take a fair amount of bandwidth to upload
>> photos.  Things like movies or games can easily be over 1GB, and cloud based
>> usage that's today means that the same movie might be downloaded more than once
>> just to allow time shifting for 2 users to watch at different times.
>> 
>> So sure 250GB is plenty for a single person under common use cases, but add some
>> roommates/kids, video hangouts with grandparents, some phone calls or VOIP over
>> wifi, and you can easily exceed 250GB.  I'm a very technical user with a wide
>> variety of uses for my home internet connection, but my 10 year old daughter
>> uses a roku (easy to use streaming widget for audio/video) and tablet that
>> results in consuming WAY more data than I do.  My point being that even Joe
>> Average Davis resident with roommates or kids could easily consumer more than
>> comcast's data cap.
>> 
>> 
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>> 
> 
> -- 
> Rob Nickerson
> 
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