Bandwidth – Ready or not here I come.

I confess, I’m spoiled.  Yes it’s true; I have a high speed connection to the internet in my office.  My email and internet graphics come flying in faster than I can read them.  I can recall, in the not too distant past, waiting and waiting for a web page to display. My rule-of-thumb used to be that if it appeared in 10 seconds then it was bearable.   

The benefits of high bandwidth are well known.  Tim Ganschow, Vice President, Satellite Strategy of Agristar says, “The responses we’re getting to AgriStar from throughout the country are outstanding.  As an example, shortly before subscribing to AgriStar, an Illinois corn farmer downloaded a board meeting package that was graphic intensive.  It took 2 hours.  With AgriStar, as a test he downloaded the same package again.  It took 4 minutes.”

Elsewhere in this issue, you will see the results of a study commissioned by Meister Media Worldwide, publisher of CropLife, and performed by Purdue University.  In this research, 56.2% of dealers that responded said they had some kind of high speed connection to the internet.  While these numbers are encouraging, it does show how far we have to go to get high speed connectivity in rural areas.

Now let’s take a look at the technology, costs and barriers to making high speed internet available in non-metropolitan areas.

The Players

Wireless is a broad category that encompasses everything from WiFi to satellite. WiFi (Wireless Fidelity) also referred to by its ISO specification 802.11g, for example, is principally used within an office or home to provide a local network.  It is cheap, and fast, but it has a limit of about 300 feet.

A popular category of wireless is a transmitter/receiver antenna on a tower that connects many customers within a 10-15 mile radius.  These must be line-of-sight and are often placed on top of grain elevators in small communities.  I have heard that antenna towers can cost upwards of $125,000 and are not economical for less than 2,500 subscribers.   You should plan on about $500 for installation and $50 per month for service which provides 512Kbps (Kilobytes per second) download and 200Kbps upload. There are new technologies in this area like Motorola’s Canopy and MMDS, but the basic coverage and features are similar.

Satellite is a very popular form of broadband in remote areas.  Typical charges, for a system which will handle one or two computers, are $500 to install and $90 per month access.  Satellite has benefits over many other technologies in that you don’t have to wait for a build out of a network.  It’s ready today.  The only restriction is a clear southern view.   Also, don’t make a big deal out of latency (the time it takes the signal to travel the 89,200 miles) at the speed of light, that’s only 500 milliseconds.

There are three kinds of service that bring a wire into your home or business: DSL, Cable, and BPL. DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) is a signal that coexists with your voice traffic.  While there are hybrids including VDSL, SDSL, RADSL, the main theme is that you get very high speed connections over existing telephone lines.  The standard for DSL is 1.5 Mbps (Megabytes per second) as opposed to dial up of 56Kbps – or about 24 times faster.  In some DSL, the download speed (information from internet) is much faster than the upload speed (what you send to the internet) – which is a perfect fit for browsing.  The limiting factor for DSL is that your phone must be within 18,000 feet of the phone company’s central office. There are other restrictions as well, no fiber-optic, and no bridge taps (voice amplifiers) among them. Check out www.dslreports.com for more information – be sure to see their distance to phone company estimator. There are lots of deals out there – prices vary from $29 to $139.

Connectivity from your cable TV company is a great step up from dialup.  Cable modems are typically advertised as being 100 times faster than dial-up internet access or the equivalent of 5 Mbps.  Theoretically yes, but in practice, the speed is more like 20 times faster or about 1 Mbps.  The big difference between cable and DSL is that cable is a shared connection. Your performance will be affected by how many other people in your area are on-line when you are. Still, if the price looks good, it’s reliable and a good choice at $40-$50 per month.

The newest kid on the block is BPL or (Broadband over Power Lines).  This technology uses existing electrical distribution systems as the backbone.  Installation is as simple as plugging a small device into your electrical outlet to split off the computer signal from the power.  While it looks very promising, the infrastructure costs are still very high and it has a limitation of 12,000 feet.  Be sure to watch how the rollout of the city of Manassas, VA goes this year.

Let the buyer beware

Whichever way you decide to go, be aware of the backhaul issue.  Backhaul is how DSL, wireless, satellite, and dialup connect to the internet.  If a wireless provider offers 1Mbps connection to you and 200 other customers, you need to be sure that the speed they connect to the internet is adequate.  If not adequate, it will be like putting a 30 MPH speed limit at Darlington.

The fundamental problem.

To no-ones surprise, the problem is population density.  If you take your area on the map and divide by the mythical 4.2 family size to get households, you can see the economics that internet providers are wrestling with.  Econ 101 says that if you can reach out 20 miles, 2,000 homes is a better number of potential customers than 200.

The federal government and the FCC recognize this and have funded broadband loans through the RUS (Rural Utility Service) of the USDA.  Recent budget cuts provide for funding of $331 million in fiscal year 2005.  This is down from the $602 million in FY 2004. The emphasis for this funding was based on providing broadband for public safety, distance learning and telemedicine.

Map courtesy of the University of Arkansas

And the winner is:

While there will be some technological advances in the next few years that will improve all of these technologies, the facts remain.  The earth is curved, the laws of physics can’t be changed, and expansion chases population.

So look out your window, if you don’t see a tower, a cable TV wire, or the phone company office your best bet may well be asynchronous (two way) satellite.  Besides a high speed connection, there are the resources and opportunities available to you on the internet to consider as well.    

Cliff Ganschow, Chairman of AgriStar, in his comments to the FCC’s Rural Satellite Forum, says internet content, “…  will include virtual seminars with streamed audio and video, multicasts of business and financial topics, distance learning, production input sourcing, value-added marketing opportunities and a number of others.”  This isn’t just about faster email.

Next month we’re back on the software review we promised you in February.