Everyone, it sometimes seems, is looking to go faster on theinformation superhighway: researchers at Virginia Tech who want tostop FedExing big files and send them to colleagues electronically,families falling in love with Netflix streaming video, and smallbusiness owners hoping they or their employees can work from home.
But no matter how much computing power improves, consumers wantmore -- and how about cutting my rate at the same time, they ask?
This summer, the Roanoke and New River valleys and nearbycommunities are in line to get nearly 300 miles of federallysubsidized "middle mile" cable for upgrading the region's Internetconnectivity. This potentially historic bandwidth boost, if handledright, could usher in the possibility of game-changing advances inbusiness, education, health care and quality of life.
Plans call for laying and lighting state of the art fiber-opticcable through Blacksburg, Bonsack, New Castle, Pearisburg, Radford,Riner and a host of other small, underserved communities, makingpossible mind-blowing Internet quality in places where connectivityspeed is seriously lagging.
Optical fibers made of glass or other transparent material cancarry large amounts of information beamed by lasers at virtuallythe speed of light, a significant improvement from copper TV orphone lines that carry most Web traffic to and from the end usertoday.
Companies and researchers could get the speed they need.Entrepreneurs pecking away in pajamas could upload the next greatbusiness idea -- whether they live in town or the country. Familiesand individuals could enjoy the full social and entertainmentbenefits of the Web. Groups that find accessing the Web toodifficult or expensive today, such as some disabled people andminorities, could finally get hooked up. And, finally, the region could advance exponentially as a place to do business.
Right now, the federal government is pouring billions of dollarsinto improved Internet. The region's new lines will be paid for inlarge part through an initiative called "Connecting America: TheNational Broadband Plan."
Released a year ago this March, the Federal CommunicationsCommission vision and policy statement says that everyone will haveaccess to affordable, "robust" Internet service, meaning amplebandwidth for downloading content from the Web and uploadingcontent to it.
The act aims to enable everyone to be both a consumer and aproducer of Web content. Vast troves of creativity could beunlocked, the vision states.
"This is a transformative technology, much like electricity wasover 100 years ago," Jim Baller, head of the US BroadbandCoalition, told the New York-based International Business Times.
Increasing availability
To furnish the tools, the government is aiming for massiveincreases in bandwidth availability. And it is willing to foot aportion of the bill.
At a basic level, a community's electronic connections to theInternet are like its physical roads. Both offer connection toother regions and conduits for commerce. Experts say communitieswithout good digital roads will struggle, just as communitieswithout good physical roads are no longer on maps.
Today, many Americans including many in Southwest Virginia haveplenty of bandwidth at home to play a YouTube video, for instance,which requires about 1 megabit per second, and easily send e-mailand browse websites, which requires about half that. The averagespeed by which people are now connected is 4 megabits -- 4 millionbits of information per second -- but rural Southwest Virginia isdotted with neighborhoods with much less and the U.S. average isonly about one-fourth the speed of that attained by global leaderSouth Korea in its major cities, according to Akamai Technologies, aWeb services company.
A two-way video conference requires 7 megabits. Connecting withan employer's computers while working from home would take evenmore. Running a data-intensive business from the den would requirestill more. Because upload speeds are often significantly lower,placing content on the Web is difficult for many.
What's more, some Americans do not use the Web on account of thecost of service or equipment or lack of skills.
Among those making $20,000 or less a year, six in 10 do not haveWeb access at home. Only 10 percent of people living on triballands, 42 percent of people with disabilities, 49 percent ofHispanics and 59 percent of blacks had Web access at home at thetime the U.S. broadband plan was being written in 2009 and 2010.There is evidence the feds are serious about changing this.
"Goal No. 1," the broadband plan reads. "At least 100 millionU.S. homes should have affordable access to actual download speedsof at least 100 megabits per second and actual upload speeds of atleast 50 megabits per second."
That's a speed comparable to what 140 companies and researchcenters can hook to at the Virginia Tech Corporate Research Centerin Blacksburg. The administration is calling for the 100 millionhomes to be connected by 2020.
Toward that end, the Department of Commerce has awarded amultimillion dollar grant to the Virginia Tech Foundation toinstall 110 miles of fiber-optic cable between Blacksburg andBedford and another large grant to Citizens Telephone Cooperativeof Floyd to install 186 miles of the cable in the Roanoke and NewRiver valleys focusing on rural places.
Once installed, these lines will provide needed supplementalconnections to global Internet networks.
The Virginia Tech line will widen the information highway interms comparable in scale to widening the region's chief physicalhighway, Interstate 81, to 250 lanes.
All that and more will cost less than $20 million and be done bythe end of 2013.
"In terms of what we mean by broadband, we're talking many ordersof magnitude of expanded capacity. It's more important than manypeople realize," said Jeff Crowder, an information technologyprogram director at Tech.
Improving quality
Right now, latching onto a high-bandwidth connection can be ahassle.
VTLS Inc., a global supplier of library software in Blacksburg, encountered a five-month delay last year connecting its headquartersto a backup fiber for Web access, CEO Vinod Chachra said.
"The quality of broadband in this general community needs to beimproved substantially to stay competitive in modern industry,"Chachra said. "Frankly we are falling behind and we are fallingbehind due to a lack of commitment by local governments and othersto this very important infrastructure development."
Skip Garner directs the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute, whichunites the powers of biology and information technology to advancemedicine. It is at Virginia Tech. Garner said he, too, findscomputing power a constraint. In spite of a 1 gigabit connection,"we are limited in what we could do," Garner said.
When the lab's DNA sequencers pile up data, "we will often put iton a 1-terabyte drive ... and FedEx it to our customers," Garnersaid.
An upgrade to 10 gigabits is coming. He expects it still won't beenough.
It might appear that new facilities would not have such problems,but even the 5-month-old Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institutenear downtown Roanoke is not satisfied with its Web service. Whilethe speed is good at 10 gigabits, the cost it pays to serviceproviders is staggering.
"It's in the tens of thousands of dollars a month," saidExecutive Director Michael Friedlander.
He called the new middle mile lines in Southwest Virginia apotential game-changer. Here's why: Virginia Tech has dibs on 12fibers out of a 144-fiber trunk line running to Blacksburg to useas its own.
One pair alone is enough to create 120 10 gigabit connections atminimum. By the time the line is ready, laser strength could haveadvanced enough to support 120 100 gigabit connections, Crowdersaid.
At that point, Crowder expects Virginia Tech to be able to easilysatiate the bandwidth needs of the bioinformatics institute andcampus facilities and do so affordably. The university would be seton Web access for 20 years, he said. Off campus, venues such as theresearch center in Roanoke can be covered, too. It will requirebranching off the closest new trunk line, in Bonsack, to SouthJefferson Street.
Just how that will happen is undecided, but Crowder speaks optimistically.
A matter of economics
That's fine for colleges and universities, but is all thatbandwidth really needed in downtowns and neighborhoods?
Some argue yes -- or it soon will be because existing Web linesare becoming busy.
People watching Netflix consume 20 percent of prime-timebandwidth on a typical weeknight. And at the rate Skype is catchingon as an alternative to phone service -- and now there's Skype withvideo -- the demand for bandwidth can only go higher.
To up their bandwidth, communities must connect themselves to newhigh-capacity trunk lines of the information highway like thosecoming to Southwest Virginia through local initiatives and,possibly, at local expense. It's undecided how these so-called lastmile connections will occur.
"It all comes down to economics," said Dennis Reece, chiefoperating officer at Citizens Telephone. "The potential seems'endless' at first glance, before economics are considered."
In other words, somebody has to connect the new glass filamentswith wireless transmitters or additional fiber optic lines tohomes, businesses, K-12 schools, hospitals and communityinstitutions such as libraries for the Internet vision to happen.
Who could do that?
Should fiber lines be, like roads, owned by the government? Or,should the job be left to phone and cable companies, whichinstalled and privately own the cables that carry most Web traffictoday and are already investing heavily in system improvementsincluding fiber-optic cable?
Advocates for broadband Internet over fiber-optic cable say theanswers can't come too soon, and add that the region is alreadytrailing.
"This region doesn't really have a solid plan how are we going toget big broadband everywhere," said Andrew Cohill, former directorof the Blacksburg Electronic Village and now a private consultantwhose firm, Design Nine in Blacksburg, helps communities get fiber-delivered Internet. Installing and maintaining that fiber -- thoughnot being the service provider -- is a role for local governmentsor community nonprofits to consider, he said.
"We think it's got to be treated like essential publicinfrastructure," he said.
That way, access would be open to any service provider on equalfooting. Just as anyone could launch a cab company or food deliveryservice over the road system, anyone will be able to use theinformation highway's new lanes. This creates competition, andcompetition lowers prices.
Cohill has seen it happen elsewhere. One of about 100 U.S.regions getting aggressive in this area is western Massachusetts,where 47 localities combined efforts to install fiber-opticInternet cabling to homes covering about one-quarter of the state,he said.
"Their vision is fiber everywhere. Fiber to every home, everybusiness," Cohill said.
In western Massachusetts, Cohill ran into Douglas Trumbull, the 68-year-old film director behind the special effects in such filmsas "2001: A Space Odyssey," "Close Encounters of the Third Kind,""Silent Running" and "Brainstorm."
At his home in the area, Trumbull wants a 300 mbps connection tosupport his continued work in the special effects business; hisphone company-provided Web access is too slow. Trumbull said thatif high-speed connectivity were available through the region wherehe lives, "he'd bring 100 more, very high paying movie jobs,technical jobs to western Massachusetts. Why western Massachusetts?He thinks it's a beautiful place to live. It's the same mountainchain as down here. So there's tremendous opportunities, but it'snot about attracting another manufacturer," Cohill said.
Room to improve
At the moment, the topic of "last mile" connections is nowherenear the top of official agendas in the two valleys. But it couldget new attention soon.
Steve Jones, Blacksburg's director of technology, acknowledgesthere is evidence that Blacksburg has fallen from the lead sincebecoming the first town in the world with a high percentage ofhomes, businesses and community institutions wired to use theInternet in 1993.
"We think there is a lot of room for improving what's availablein this community now," Jones said.
Students attending Virginia Tech who live in urban areas servedby Verizon's FiOS -- fiber-optic Internet at home -- ask why theycan't get that here when they live off campus in Blacksburg, Jonessaid.
Blacksburg Mayor Ron Rordam is expected to announce the formationof a task force to fashion a vision for the town's Internet future,Jones said, and a public forum is planned before April 1.
Roanoke is aware of the issue and interested in following all developments, said Rob Ledger, economic development director.
For Ledger, there is no pressing need to do more, at least notyet. No one has come to his office and complained about anyshortcomings in bandwidth, he said.
His conclusion: "The private market has addressed that need very adequately."
Sam English, a Roanoke businessman and economic strategist, seesan opportunity for Roanoke in the trunk line running throughBonsack. He supports Roanoke piggybacking on Virginia Tech's needto branch from it to the research institute on South JeffersonStreet, he said. English is confident there would be many usersalong the way as the line passes through downtown. He said it mighttake a utilization study to make the case.
One thing that could propel everything forward will come out of California later this year. That's when Google has said it will namethe U.S. communities to be gifted with Google-funded last mileconnections sufficient for 1 gigabit service everywhere. Blacksburgand Roanoke have applied. If they are not picked, they are on theirown.
You'll get a different take on the shifting Internet landscapefrom some of the communities that have in the past decade losttextile and furniture manufacturing jobs galore and suffered in theagricultural downturn in tobacco. Through Southside and SouthwestVirginia are examples of heavy investments in fiber-opticconnectivity as the economic driver of tomorrow.
Fiber optic-based Web service from three providers is availableat 60 buildings in downtown Galax over lines installed by a three-government authority. The Galax-based Wired Road BroadbandAuthority expects to finish this year with $3 million raised andspent out of a $42 million plan to connect every home, business andcommunity institution in Galax and the counties of Carroll andGrayson, a region of about 54,000 people, that will want Internetservices that require fiber.
Private telecommunications providers could not be counted on todo the work, because the payback would have been too low, said MikeMaynard, a Grayson County supervisor who chairs the Wired Roadboard.
"The only reason we're in this is to get people connected,"Maynard said. "If we had to wait for private entities to invest $42million in the region, I don't know that it would ever happen."
HOW FAST IS YOUR CONNECTION?
Virginia Tech built a Web site that clocks how fast yourcomputer's Web connection runs and posts it to a publicly availablemap along with your address, monthly plan cost and provider name.The project will identify the Web-access haves and have nots andprovide guidance for the expansion of broadband services.
On the Net: acceleratevirginia.org/speedtest
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