This report addresses issues related to delivering products and services over broadband, including the technical and business challenges of providing multimedia entertainment, video and other services on demand, interactive television, the wireless Web, videoconferencing, telemedicine, and more. The report also considers the current and potential markets for such applications, the business models providers that can adopt, and pricing and fee structures, while focusing on those applications and on the business models that will make them available and profitable.

Access to the Internet is an increasing problem in many areas of the world. As the popularity and usefulness of the Internet increases on a daily basis, lack of access to the technology is putting many groups at a disadvantage in terms of better education, better jobs and even in terms of higher levels of civic participation. However, creating a network infrastructure to serve outlying communities and sectors of the population is not straight-forward. This book brings together all the aspects of the problem – technical, regulatory and economic - into one volume to provide a comprehensive resource. It describes the latest technological advances that allow cost-effective network infrastructures to be built, and places them in the context of the applications and services that the infrastructure will deliver. A section on business models and case studies from North American and Europe demonstrate that the solutions are economically and practically viable. This book is essential for anyone looking to gain an understanding of the issues and technology surrounding the access debate. It will be of particular relevance to network engineers/designers/planners at the incumbent operator companies charged with delivering broadband access to as yet unconnected regions. Governments and regulatory bodies will also find this a useful guide to the problems that they may face.

High-speed Internet access: the definitive "how-to" guide! Covers cable, DSL, and next-generation wireless high-speed Internet connections, this handbook also Includes Windows, MacOS and Linux coverage.

Integrated analysis of the technologies, markets, and business of Residential Broadband In thirty years, the worldwide market for high-speed information services to the home will reach SI trillion. This book explains how and why. Beginning with tutorials and a few touches of history to position residential broadband today, this essential guide examines how competing technologies will struggle for supremacy in a chaotic market. It stakes out the battles between ADSL and cable modems, IP and ATM, telephone companies and CATV companies, televisions and personal computers, and professional applications and consumer applications. It does so with reverence for none-some will win and some will lose as the market emerges over the next decade or so. Our guide is kim Maxwell, an entrepreneur and executive who has spent twenty-five years inventing ways to make communications technologies and markets fit together. His analysis takes some surprising turns: * The Internet will not be the dominant network for residential broadband. * Despite its current power, IP may over time give way to ATM for residential broadband. * Cable modems have the early lead, but the DSL tortoise will catch up. * Fiber to the Home and the Information Superhighway are at least fifteen years away and depend upon HDTV. * Despite regulatory intentions, residential networking will return to a monopoly within thirty years. * Computers and televisions will not converge. * Ethernet will dominate home networking. * Video-on-demand will not be a viable market for at least five years. * In the long run. Consumer applications such as shopping and entertainment will dominate the more near-term applications for Internet access and telecommuting. * But, the market can only begin with the personal computer and its natural applications-Internet access and telecommuting.

An analysis of the failure of U.S. broadband policy to solve the rural–urban digital divide, with a proposal for a new national rural broadband plan. As much of daily life migrates online, broadband—high-speed internet connectivity—has become a necessity. The widespread lack of broadband in rural America has created a stark urban–rural digital divide. In Farm Fresh Broadband, Christopher Ali analyzes the promise and the failure of national rural broadband policy in the United States and proposes a new national broadband plan. He examines how broadband policies are enacted and implemented, explores business models for broadband providers, surveys the technologies of rural broadband, and offers case studies of broadband use in the rural Midwest. Ali argues that rural broadband policy is both broken and incomplete: broken because it lacks coordinated federal leadership and incomplete because it fails to recognize the important roles of communities, cooperatives, and local providers in broadband access. For example, existing policies favor large telecommunication companies, crowding out smaller, nimbler providers. Lack of competition drives prices up—rural broadband can cost 37 percent more than urban broadband. The federal government subsidizes rural broadband by approximately $6 billion. Where does the money go? Ali proposes democratizing policy architecture for rural broadband, modeling it after the wiring of rural America for electricity and telephony. Subsidies should be equalized, not just going to big companies. The result would be a multistakeholder system, guided by thoughtful public policy and funded by public and private support.

Optical networks, undersea networks, GSM, UMTS The recent explosion in broadband communications technologies has opened a new world of fast, flexible services and applications. To successfully implement these services, however, requires a solid understanding of the concepts and capabilities of broadband technologies and networks. Building Br