BROADBAND: A PRIMER ON TELECOMMUNICATIONS TECHNOLOGY.

AuthorBoudreaux, Greg

At the recent Annual Meeting, at the request of the Telecommunications Standing Committee, the Management Issues Committee recommended, and NRECA members approved, that the Resolution on Director, Management and Employee Training should include a directive to NRECA to "develop a primer that furthers the understanding of emerging telecommunications technology." This document attempts to respond to this resolution.

  1. Introduction

    Americans shop, trade stocks, pay bills and search for information on-line. This ability to rapidly send or receive digitized information has transformed the global economy. Unfortunately, the technologies to provide this capability -- the technologies of broadband Internet access- are not penetrating all areas of the country equally.

    A recent article in the New York Times was called "Life in the Slow Lane: Rural Residents are Frustrated by Sluggish Web Access." It described a real estate agent in Pryor, Oklahoma, who uses a dial-up modem to connect through her local Internet Service Provider. According to the article, "the connection is never very fast -- 33 kilobits per second at most, although she has a 56K modem -- and at night it slows to a crawl." Like millions of others, she wants a faster Internet connection. But unlike urban and suburban Americans, she is stuck with slow dial-up service because there are no other choices in Pryor, Oklahoma, population 8,300.

    This lady may have been inconvenienced, but the problem she faces in other circumstances could turn out to be a matter of life and death. Many communities cannot support medical specialists, but journals are full of stories about how sick or injured people can be diagnosed from afar. Digital technology and advanced imaging systems allow doctors to diagnose and design treatments for people living thousands of miles away from hi-tech medical facilities. The technology for delivering a fine-grained signal must be precise, allowing doctors to peer with precision into a human body using a wire smaller than your little finger.

    You may recall reading about Dr. Jerri Nielsen, a physician who served at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Research Center at the South Pole. Dr. Nielsen found a lump in her breast. Worse, it was the Antarctic winter, and no planes could get in or out for a six-month period. Because of the Internet, she was able to e-mail photographs of slides of the tumor to doctors back home, and they were able to guide her through her initial treatment.

    These examples show the obstacles to and the promise of broadband technology. Most urban Americans have fast, stable access to the Internet. The generic term for this is "broadband." It refers to the ability to transmit and receive large amounts of data to and from a computer.

    The ability to transmit this data is determined by the size of the "pipe" through which it moves, referred to as bandwidth. As the Internet has become more graphical and interactive, the need for broadband has increased.

    Numerous applications have been developed that require greater bandwidth to be used effectively. Broadband services include interactive purchasing, video-on-demand, remote interactive medical services, remote access to stored video materials, and two-way teleconferencing. As a result, government agencies, hospitals, and consumers all want broadband access.

    Additionally, many electric cooperatives are investigating telecommunications technologies, and cooperative boards are being asked to invest in broadband infrastructure. But exactly what are these technologies, how do they work, and which have applications in rural America?

    This Primer attempts to answer these questions. Its objective is to explain basic broadband technologies to non-technical readers. It will begin with a

    brief explanation of the "bits" and "bytes" of the digital world, and then explain the role of the Internet Service Provider. Finally, it will review specific technologies that currently deliver Internet content to users, including 56K dial-up, satellite, Digital Subscriber Line, ISDN, terrestrial wireless, cable and fiber. A glossary of telecommunications phrases and concepts is included at the end of the Primer.

  2. The Digital Divide Versus Broadband Access

    About 60 percent of Americans have a home computer, and about 50% have logged on to the Internet. It has become a dramatic force in people's lives. Although the Internet is fairly new to the consumer market, it has already divided the nation into two camps: the 'technology haves' and 'have nots'. This division is commonly called the "Digital Divide," and primarily relates to the distinction between those who use or don't use the Internet. As we'll see below, Internet use correlates with socioeconomic status.

    Broadband access is different. It relates not to the socioeconomic status of the user, but to the availability of technologies that provide high-speed access to the Internet. In many rural areas of the Untied States, those technological options are not now available.

    Let's begin with the Digital Divide. Millions of Americans view the Internet the same way they view their telephone, car, or microwave: as an essential part of life. According to a AOL/Roper Starch Cyberstudy, 66% of Internet users would prefer a computer with Internet connection to a telephone or television if stranded on a desert island.

    However, many Americans are not on-line and are not taking advantage of the resources found on the Internet. According to the White House, 45 percent of homes where at least one person has a college degree are connected to the Internet. This compares to 14 percent of homes where no one is a college graduate. Sixty percent of households with incomes above $75,000 have Internet access while households with incomes in the $20,000-25,000 range only have a 14 percent on-line rate.

    The trends of the Digital Divide are clear. Lower income consumers are at a disadvantage and run the risk of being left behind. This has important implications for rural America as it has historically experienced lower incomes than urban areas.

    The Digital Divide is primarily a socioeconomic problem related to users. In contrast, broadband access is a business problem because of rural density. It is not about owning and using computers; it is about having access to a telecommunications infrastructure that allows users to take advantage of what the Internet has to offer. According to a major study produced jointly by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Department of Commerce, "...rural areas are currently lagging far behind urban areas in broadband availability.'' 1

    This report claims that two broadband technologies are currently being deployed at a high rate in the United States: cable modem and digital subscriber line (DSL). But each of these is being deployed primarily in urban areas. As shown in Exhibit 1, cable, the most used broadband technology in the United States, is available in more than 65% of cities with populations over 250,000, but is available in fewer than 5% of towns with populations less than 10,000.

    DSL is the second most used broadband technology. As shown in Exhibit 2, more than 56%] of cities with populations exceeding 100,000 have DSL, but fewer than 5% of cities less than 10,000 have such service.

    The reason for the slower deployment of broadband technologies in rural areas is economic. Just as with electric distribution, the cost to serve a consumer with a wireline carrier increases the greater the distance among customers. Cable and DSL are also limited because of physical limitations on how far their signals can be transmitted.

    The government report notes that newer technologies are becoming available, and some, like satellite broadband service, have potential for rural areas because the geographic location of the consumer has virtually no effect on the cost of the service. Several broadband satellite services are now available, along with terrestrial wireless services, including multipoint multichannel distribution systems (MMDS) and local-multipoint distribution systems (LMDS).

    These broadband technologies will be explained later. First, however, we must address the "bits and bytes" of digital language.

  3. The Language of Digital Technology

    Computers and microprocessors are driving the global economy, but how do these technologies really work? What is digital technology?

    Signals are of two kinds: analog and digital. An analog signal (Exhibit 3) is a representation of a continuous physical variable, like a sound wave. In contrast, digital signals (Exhibit 4) represent variables mathematically. Because of an essential feature of electricity, it is an ideal medium for sending digital information. It recognizes two possible states: OPEN or CLOSED. This fact about electricity is the foundation of all computer driven devices: the number "1" is used to represent a closed circuit, and the number "0" is used to represent an open circuit. Hence, electricity is more than just the energy used to make computers work. It is the medium that computers use to do their job. Rapid, tiny changes in voltage represent the ones and zeros that make up digital information. Since computer language has only two symbols, it is called a binary language. This accounts for the translation, storage and manipulation of all information within or between computers. Each 1 or 0 is a bit of information.

    Bits can combined into 8-unit sequences called bytes. Consider the following sequence:

    128-64-32-16-8-4-2-1.

    These numbers are the code through which information can be expressed digitally. Underneath each number is a one or a zero.

    A one means that number is activated. A zero means that it is not. Imagine that we want to activate some mix of these numbers to achieve the number 72. Since it is not on the list, we must add two numbers: 64 plus 8 equals 72. Symbolically, this can be represented as:

    We have presented this because computer engineers have agreed to follow the...

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