Full Transcript:

Larry Irving: I am Larry Irving and I am with the Internet Innovation Alliance (IIA) which is a coalition of non-profit corporation and think tanks. All of them are dedicated to developing broadband applications for the internet.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Could you define that and give a real world example of developing broadband applications for the internet?

Larry Irving: We are talking about how do people get video and audio over the Internet. People using YouTube and MySpace, also networking people who are gamers who are using things, people using things like Second Life and other emerging types of applications on the net. More and more people are doing more and more things that require a lot of bandwidth. They don’t think of it in terms of bandwidth, they think it is Internet, but the reality is the Internet which is really built for email and short messages, increasingly it’s been used for audio, video, photos. 400 million digital cameras sold in the country, 600 million camera phones are sold in this country, all of those are connecting to the net, all of those using same backbone, that backbone wasn’t made for that.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Now interestingly enough, we streamed your keynote live earlier today and we had a chat room open and one of the people asked in the chat room “why would I need fiber into my home” because you are specifically talking about fiber at the home, “I’ve got my cable connection come in and I have a plenty of bandwidth, I get HD on my cable what’s the point?”

Larry Irving: Reality is, it may not be fiber at the home, but you certainly want broadband and you want more capacious broadband. You want broadband because right now you can, 5, 6 MegaHertz bits per second is enough for most people, but if you online downloading a video on-demand with High Definition television is, your daughter is watching IPTv, your son is skyping and your wife is sending photos to her mom of the grand kids, you don’t have enough capacity in your home for all of the applications at same time and all of us beginning to do that. Then the reality is just the ramp, that on ramp is getting increasingly congested. If your neighbor down the street is also has three or four people also using bandwidth intensive, they need more capacity and anyone in that block to five or six house in a block, they download to the kind of the main artery of the internet coming out of your block that also need more capacity. Each of us if we think with individually are doing things on the net very differently, we use to. We use to do e-mail, just exchange relatively small files, then we started downloading iTunes into our iPod that’s a slightly bigger file, now we are doing video, that’s a slightly a bigger file and they may go to video on that’s High Definition, that’s going to be a bigger file and it is not going to be one person in a house, it will be three or four people in the house, all of the sudden that starts to clog that line.

Benjamin Higginbotham: So let’s start with the backbone of the Internet, where all the Internet traffic goes and then lets move forward from the all the way up into the house, the backbone of the internet primarily right now, is OC 198's and a few 192’s, what’s the next step after that and how full is the backbone today?

Larry Irving: We had a surplus of backbone capacity from the golden ages of the internet we all talk with all the dot fibers out there, we are spending now that capital at a rapid rate as more-more video applications. We are looking at possibly I think as the OC-768 and we are going to get there in next two years, it going to require billions of dollars investment and we have to make sure that the right centers are in place for that investment. The backbone capacity, its peek versus non-peek, at peek times your are close to filling out to that fell off and that’s kind of the problem. We are not there yet, but we will be there very shortly. When you look at the changing patterns of use Internet, we have 50% of kids having streamed once a day and under 18 its 50%, 15 to 18 its 50%, 18 to 24 all under 50%, 24 to 35 its approaching 50% that’s once a month. Its going to become a habit, as those numbers start getting up and it is the streamy, they are going to fill the backbone up. You have to think prospectively and that’s what we are trying to get people to think, backbone is filling up, we need to get more capacity, no you have no debate about that in Washington. You had little debate about that in the industry, it is nothing on the public media, the reason we coined the term Exaflood, was to give people on easy way of thinking about what happening to all of the on and off ramp in the backbone and need for us to start thinking and I really relatively compressed time frame what we need to do? It is not going to be tomorrow, but the day after tomorrow, because we are looking at some real problems in terms of buffering and slowing down.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Do we need other solutions as well as such as quality of service and eliminating that neutrality?

Larry Irving: We don’t want to get involved in the neutrality debate, we are not involved in it, we have no neutrality debate, because no neutrality debate in many ways a tangential debate, what we are talking about. Business people make their businesses they need to make and regular as like a regulatory models they need to make on that side of it. What we need to make sure is we have the right regulatory models, maximizing in signing investment and maximizing in competition breaking the barriers, we want a wireless network. What we are going to do about tower sighting, it is an issue everybody is a nimbi and I understand that in one level and then we all want that wireless capacity, therefore we charge taxes for the internet and telecommunications that exceeded only by only by alcohol, gambling and tobacco. Well, most of us say that the alcohol, excessive alcohol drinking, excessive gambling and any use of tobacco could be harmful, no one thinks of using telecommunications by definition harmful, if we tax them in the same way. Let’s start talking with the policy that we need to certain investment to get this thing build out and to make sure that the Americans have the kind of Internet experience, the kind of broadband experience they expect.

Benjamin Higginbotham: No that we have already got good junk of fiber already laid in the ground and now we have already got the actual physical lines in the ground isn’t it, just as simple as switching on equipment on either side to essentially boost that fiber?

Larry Irving: Two things one fiber does a finite life, so fiber that one at ground 5, 10 years ago won’t have the same propagation characteristics it won’t be as good, just as the other technologies improved, fiber has improved. The second thing is that it is not the simply changing out of electronics, because they not necessarily compatible. So, we are looking at you can look at different configurations, different types of fibers and in fact fiber does have a useful life beyond what, it can’t be pushed. So, all of those things say that in some instances we can just rectify it, in some instances we are going to have to put new and some instances fiber hasn’t been laid, all kind of communities in this country, most of them are fiber connected, but not all of been now. We have communities that are 4 – 5 years old, where the infrastructure to those communities isn’t fiber, I mean it has to be, but may be it should be and we again, our technology agnostic, some of our members and our coax of our members are cabled, some of our members are fiber, some of wireless. We think that there are lots of solutions in the market place and the consumer determines the solutions, we just want to say the investment made, so the people are making inform choices and making right choice for them, their family and their community.

Benjamin Higginbotham: So the steps as I understand them, we need to increase the backbone and I think that should be fairly important because you can increase the level from the curb to the home or you want you could have 20 gigabits going between the two, but as the backbone can’t handle that traffic what’s the point? But, conversely…

Larry Irving: Where is it, if you have 20 gigabit going to every home, it won’t be if the backbone can handle it, the backbone guaranteed won’t be able to handle it. So, as you increase the on ramps you got to increase that’s how charge the free way. Imagine if you had 55 on ramps all of which you are getting filled to a free way that have three ramps/three lines, it isn’t going to work for very long. So, you have to come in simultaneous commitment, let’s increase the size of the on-ramps of the home and as you are doing that, let’s ensure that the backbone is sufficient to handle it.

Benjamin Higginbotham: We could have the same issues we have using the same chronology, where I know in our area, in Minneapolis same power work extend road laid twice as many lanes and as soon as we had those lanes, it took so long to get the lanes in there, that they are immediately full again.

Larry Irving: We could get there, we are going to have certain leap frogging and thinking very and that’s why my Michel Jordan played the way the ball is going to be, make some sense. You can start doing some analysis and the reality of the Internet, we always underestimate it. If you talk to people in 2000, the Internet was history, invasion super high ago, these guys had the .com burst, we are using the Internet in ways we never conceived of using it and two years ago, none of us would ever heard of YouTube, three years ago none sort of MySpace, four years ago Slingbox, what the heck was a Slingbox. Voodoo, I mention a word Voodoo, so again what you are talking about with Voodoo? Voodoo is a new video on-demand application that may be to video on-demand with mosaic was to browse the Google was to search, I don’t know may be some other company like Kimbow, DAVE.tv or may be somebody else, but all of these brilliant young entrepreneurs and engineers and web designers has come along new tools that changed the experience for the better, for the consumer, which means that we use the web in a way we did it for using it and increases our demand on the web. That’s phenomenal let’s design assuming that we are underestimating how people are going to use it, but within a constraints of what is a reasonable investment for corporation. Again this is all about private sector incentives, really not as much about government act and so much as government policy.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Can’t the connection from the curb to the home be use as a artificial bottle neck to ensure that we don’t actually fill up the backbone too much? I mentioned 20 gigabits to the home, of course it will fill up the backbone, because I know that we are doing High Definition video online, that the files are freak and huge, it is enables lot of people to start downloading it, fills up the backbone, now we have a problem, but if we only have say one megabit to every home, well now every home is bottle neck down, they can’t download as fast, doesn’t that help protect the infrastructure?

Larry Irving: So, we constrain innovation, we constrain investment, we constrain competitiveness, we constrain education, we constrain first responder response time. Now, you want just to grow organically, you want to go the way it is going through, this is an opportunity to do good things for consumer to create incredible opportunity and economic development. If we constrain our backbone, they are not going to constrain in European Union, not constraining in Asia, they are not constraining it in Africa, or Latin America. They are building networks and we are competing out, so we are competing, we are learning against these folks, if we are going to stay competitive with nation, if we are going to continue to grow our economy, we have to continue growing this information infra structure. There information infra structure is important as waterways going to 1,700, it is as important as Railroad run 1,800, it is important as the interstate highway with 1,900. It is something that’s crucial to economic competitiveness, but it is also everything else we do. It is how kids interpret to their grand parents, about how students interpret their teacher, there is thing called teacher tool, it is YouTube for teachers, it is a phenomenal experience. They are daily report cards that parents can get from their school, all this is web based. When I was kid, the last thing I want with the daily report card from my teacher, but given the state of education in this country there are some parents who want that. We don’t want to constrain any of that, I want to make sure every teacher has every tool that needs, every doctor has every tool he or she needs, every kid that sits in a small road town of South Dakota is able to access the library of congress, it is his favorite museum, his favorite composure, stands of universities, online library all of those things should be available. You constrain these things artificially, those are kind of thing you constrain.

Benjamin Higginbotham: So, in order to stay competitive in a world market place and in earth that growing continually smaller and smaller, from what I hear, you say Up grade the backbone, upgrade the curb, upgrade the home.

Larry Irving: And understand what the exploit is all about. Again, we want to see all those things happen, we want to see upgrade, we want to see investment and we want the American people to understand why this is so important and when they understand, when you send information of highway with the term they didn’t last, but it got people think about what is this thing really mean? And it became the Internet. Certain things will come symbolic, become emblematic of change of progress. We think the Extra flood is emblematic of the progress presentation need to make. We need to flood these networks with more and new applications and flood policy make us with the understanding, that they need to do the right thing for us to make sure we have the opportunity.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Where can a consumer who is interested in this, go for more information?

Larry Irving: Internetinnovation.org, that’s our website, we have a broadband fact book that will tell them lot of things and one of the things we hope people who are watching or hearing or listening to this will do, is send us factoids, send us information, look at our facts books and say, “you know what? I know something interesting that other in the country or people around the world need to know. Here is a fact that you don’t know how people are using the net or capacity or fiber or wireless” whatever that interesting broadband fact is, send it to us. We will get it online and when we do our next publication we will put in the hard band.