san francisco

Content tagged with "san francisco"

Parent
Displaying 21 - 26 of 26

Susan Crawford to Speak in San Francisco May 14th

On May 14th, Susan Crawford will speak at the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) in San Francisco. The event will be hosted by the Division of Ratepayer Advocates (DRA) of the CPUC, and the theme of the discussion will be "Digital Communications in the United States: Should Broadband Communications be a Public Utility Service?”

The event runs from 2 p.m. - 3:30 p.m. PDT. The CPUC auditorium is located at 505 Van Ness Ave. in S.F. For those of us who can't make it in person, the event will be webcast and archived.

From the invite:

Professor Crawford will speak on the current status of broadband communications including the state of competition, affordability, availability of high speed internet, and whether cities should be allowed to build their own municipal fiber broadband networks.  Attendees are encouraged to participate in the dialogue. 

Questions for the Forum may be posted on Twitter using #DRAForum. We look forward to seeing all your great questions and may even ask some of our own.

Muni Broadband: Why Not in San Francisco?

Tim Redmond of the San Francisco Bay Guardian asks why publicly owned networks have worked in so many places but is not being seriously considered in San Francisco:
Then sit back and ask yourself why you're paying so much money every month for the rotten service you get from Comcast and AT&T. Ask your friends, ask around work; is anyone really happy with their broadband service? Do you think you're getting a good deal for the price?
Note that I later clarified a misunderstanding, our Community Internet Map tracks local governments that have made investments, and does not claim that every network is a success. The vast majority are, but there are a few that have encountered serious difficulties and are still struggling.

Community Fiber Group in San Francisco Organizes for Network

An article in the San Francisco Bay Guardian about public opposition to AT&T's further cluttering the right-of-way with 726 metal boxes to start delivering their super DSL U-Verse alerted me to people getting organized for community fiber.
AT&T's U-verse upgrade would enable it to offer connection speeds three times faster than current service — but not nearly as fast as what fiber proponents envision. Several members of the tech industry interviewed by the Guardian cautioned that another AT&T upgrade might be necessary after less than a decade to keep pace with technological advancement.
Ha! Considering that AT&T U-Verse tops out at 24Mbps downstream (if you are lucky and live close to the key electronics) and a piddling 1.5 Mbps upstream, it is already obsolete. Cable networks offered considerably better performance last year -- suggesting that AT&T should stop wasting everyone's time in SF with this approach. We have previously written about efforts to use the City's fiber to bridge the digital divide and the SFBG article introduces us to new ideas using that asset.
Meanwhile, Board of Supervisors President David Chiu recently asked DTIS to examine the possibility of leasing excess capacity on city-owned dark-fiber infrastructure, which is currently in place but not being used. This could boost bandwidth for entities such as nonprofits, health care facilities, biotech companies, digital media companies, or universities, Chiu said, while bolstering city coffers. "There are many places in town that need a lot more bandwidth, and this is an easy way to provide it," he said. Sniezko noted that other cities have created open-access networks to deploy fiber. "This is really effective because it's a lot like a public utility," she explained. "The city or someone fills a pipe, and then anyone who wants to run information or service on that pipe can do so. They pay a leasing fee. This has worked in many places in Europe, and they actually do it in Utah. In many cases, it's really cool — because it's publicly owned and it's neutral. There's no prioritizing traffic for one thing over another, or limitation on who's allowed to offer service on the network. It ...

Muni Fiber in San Francisco Eats into Digital Divide

San Francisco has leveraged its municipally-owned fiber in a program to overcome the digital divide. Projects like this are a good early step for larger communities. First, invest in fiber to public buildings, schools, etc., to cut costs from leased lines (often, while upgrading capacity). Second, begin to leverage that fiber to increase affordable broadband availability in the community. Expand until community needs are met.

Is Publicly Owned Information Infrastructure A Wise Public Investment for San Francisco?

Image
San Francisco has launched an initiative to provide wireless access everywhere in the city. A number of Supervisors and residents have raised the possibility of the City following in the footsteps of over 200 other U.S. cities that already own information networks. To date, the City has not addressed that question, or at least no such study has been forthcoming. Media Alliance invited the Institute for Local Self-Reliance to investigate the economics of a publicly owned information infrastructure. This report contains a preliminary financial analysis. Without complete information from the City, the numbers are not precise. But we think this analysis could serve as the basis for an informed discussion. We urge the City to undertake its own more detailed examination and make it public.