After watching “The Great Hack” on Netflix I am appalled by the absence of any moral compass at Cambridge Analytica, which transformed Big Data into a political weapon. Other disturbing examples are Uber’s former corporate culture and Facebook’s collusion with CA in abusing our privacy. These cases are prima facie evidence of the crucial need and the opportunity to integrate the Humanities and ethics with deep technology development. I began my career as a Humanities graduate at Intel Corporation working closely with Ivy League MBA’s and senior engineers. We shared our knowledge and learned together to enable the company to excel. The best companies are those grounded in an appreciation of human values, companies that seek out Humanities graduates with a passion for technology to balance out their teams.
Human Oversight of Deep Technology Development Is Playing Catch-up
Systems Similar To Those In Place for Medical Science Are Urgently Required
After watching “The Great Hack” on Netflix I am appalled by the absence of any moral compass at Cambridge Analytica, which transformed Big Data into a political weapon. Other disturbing examples are Uber’s former corporate culture and Facebook’s collusion with CA in abusing our privacy. These cases are prima facie evidence of the crucial need and the opportunity to integrate the Humanities and ethics with deep technology development. I began my career as a Humanities graduate at Intel Corporation working closely with Ivy League MBA’s and senior engineers. We shared our knowledge and learned together to enable the company to excel. The best companies are those grounded in an appreciation of human values, companies that seek out Humanities graduates with a passion for technology to balance out their teams.
After watching “The Great Hack” on Netflix I am appalled by the absence of any moral compass at Cambridge Analytica, which transformed Big Data into a political weapon. Other disturbing examples are Uber’s former corporate culture and Facebook’s collusion with CA in abusing our privacy. These cases are prima facie evidence of the crucial need and the opportunity to integrate the Humanities and ethics with deep technology development. I began my career as a Humanities graduate at Intel Corporation working closely with Ivy League MBA’s and senior engineers. We shared our knowledge and learned together to enable the company to excel. The best companies are those grounded in an appreciation of human values, companies that seek out Humanities graduates with a passion for technology to balance out their teams.
Years ago now Google quietly announced its “Loon Balloon Project” in New Zealand. The objective was to launch high altitude balloons that could potentially float over areas of the globe that did not yet have Internet access. The tech press predicted that the idea was “loony” indeed, though some called it “crazy cool.” Google has since also dabbled with the idea of low earth orbit satellites to achieve the same goal. With the rise of SpaceX, this seems an even more interesting technological approach, though other firms in the 1990s lost large amounts of money and failed. A modest aerospace company and a subsidiary of Airbus in Toulouse France is manufacturing low-orbit internet access satellites, hoping to launch as many as 650 such satellites. The idea that is captivating me is the potential for space-based Internet access to potentially provide an alternative to growing political and corporate control and Balkanization of the Internet.
Net Neutrality May Yet Be Achievable…Maybe
Years ago now Google quietly announced its “Loon Balloon Project” in New Zealand. The objective was to launch high altitude balloons that could potentially float over areas of the globe that did not yet have Internet access. The tech press predicted that the idea was “loony” indeed, though some called it “crazy cool.” Google has since also dabbled with the idea of low earth orbit satellites to achieve the same goal. With the rise of SpaceX, this seems an even more interesting technological approach, though other firms in the 1990s lost large amounts of money and failed. A modest aerospace company and a subsidiary of Airbus in Toulouse France is manufacturing low-orbit internet access satellites, hoping to launch as many as 650 such satellites in a “global constellation”. The idea that is captivating me is the potential for space-based Internet access to potentially provide an alternative to growing political and corporate control and Balkanization of the Internet.
OneWeb Launches First Six Internet Access Satellites
Ariane Soyuz rocket launch with six OneWeb satellites on board. February 27, 2019
Political Internet Censorship And Access In Developing World Potentially Solvable
But business challenges and technical problems remain
Aclear plastic box the size of a sofa sits in an underground factory in the suburbs of Toulouse in southern France. Inside it, a nozzle fixed to a robot arm carefully drips translucent gloop onto bits of circuitry. This is to help get rid of excess heat when the electronics start to operate. The slab that is created is then loaded onto a trolley and taken away as the next piece of electronics arrives for the same treatment.
This is what the mass production of satellites looks like. Making them in quantity is a necessity for OneWeb. The company was founded in 2012, and it has yet to launch a single satellite. Yet it plans to have 900 in orbit by 2027. That seems a tall order. Intelsat, the firm which currently operates more communications satellites than any other, has been around for 54 years and has launched just 94.
OneWeb, which is part-owned by Airbus, a European aerospace giant, and SoftBank, a Japanese tech investor, needs such a large quantity of satellites because it wants to provide cheap and easy internet connectivity everywhere in the world. Bringing access to the internet to places where it is scarce or non-existent could be a huge business. Around 470m households and 3.5bn people lack such access, reckons Northern Sky Research, a consultancy. OneWeb is one of a handful of firms that want to do so. They think the best way to widen connectivity is to break with the model of using big satellites in distant orbits and instead deploy lots of small ones that sit closer to the ground.
The rate at which an object orbits depends on how far away it is. At a distance of 380,000km, the Moon takes a month to travel around the Earth. The International Space Station, around 400km up, buzzes round in an hour and a half. In between, at an altitude of about 36,000km, there is a sweet spot where satellites make an orbit once a day. A satellite in this orbit is thus “geostationary”—it seems to sit still over a specific spot. Almost all today’s satellite communications traffic, both data and broadcasts, goes through such satellites.
The advantage of a geostationary orbit is that the antennae that send data to the satellite and those that receive data coming down from it do not need to move. The disadvantage is that sending a signal that far requires a hefty antenna and a lot of power. And even at the speed of light, the trip to geostationary orbit and back adds a half-second delay to signals. That does not matter for broadcasts, but it does a little for voice, where the delay can prove tiresome, and a lot for some sorts of data. Many online services work poorly or not at all over such a connection. And it always requires a dish that looks up at the sky.
Head in the clouds
Ships, planes and remote businesses rely for internet connections on signals sent from geostationary orbit, but this method is too pricey for widespread adoption. Beaming the internet via satellites orbiting closer to the planet has been tried before. The idea was popular at the height of the tech boom of the late 1990s. Three companies—Teledesic, Iridium and Globalstar—poured tens of billions of dollars into the low-Earth orbit (leo) satellite internet. It culminated in the collapse of Teledesic. Although the technology of the time worked, it was very costly and so the services on offer had to be hugely expensive, too. Iridium survived, but as a niche provider of satellite telephony, not a purveyor of cheap and fast internet access.
OneWeb is among several firms that are trying leo satellites again. SpaceX, a rocket company founded by Elon Musk, a tech entrepreneur, is guarded about its proposed system, Starlink, but on November 15th American regulators approved an application for 7,518 satellites at an altitude of 340km (bringing the total for which the firm has approval to nearly 12,000). Telesat, a Canadian firm, has plans for a 512-satellite constellation. LeoSat, a startup with Japanese and Latin American backers, aims to build a 108-satellite network aimed at providing super-fast connections to businesses. Iridium, still in the game, will launch the final ten satellites in its new constellation of 66 by the end of the year. Not to be outdone, a Chinese state-owned firm recently announced the construction of a 300-satellite constellation. In ten years’ time, if all goes to plan, these new firms will have put more satellites into orbit by themselves than the total launched to date (see chart).
These companies want to avoid the technical issues of geostationary satellites by putting theirs into a low orbit, where the data will take only a few milliseconds to travel to space and back. And because signals need not be sent so far the satellites can be smaller and cheaper. OneWeb claims they might weigh 150kg and cost a few hundred thousand dollars, compared with a tonne or more, and tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars, for the geostationary sort.
Floating in a most peculiar way
At 1,200km up, where OneWeb intends its first satellites to operate, they do not sit still in the sky. A satellite overhead will sink below the horizon seven minutes later. That has two consequences. First, to ensure that a satellite is always available to any user, a great many are required. Second, to talk to such a satellite you need an antenna that can track it across the sky.
One way to understand this is as a cellular-phone network turned inside out. On Earth, cell-phone towers are fixed; a user’s phone talks to the closest or least busy one, which may change as the user moves or traffic alters. In OneWeb’s system each satellite is a moving cell tower, circling the Earth from pole to pole in one of 18 orbital planes that look like lines of longitude (see diagram). The 900 cells, each one covering an area of a bit more than 1m kilometres, skim across the Earth at 26,000km an hour. Clever software hands transmission from one satellite to the next as they move into and out of range.
There are three ways to connect to such a network. One is to place an antenna on a terrestrial cell tower, which can use the satellites to get data to and from a mobile-phone network, in place of the fibre optic, microwave or cable links that are normally used. The second is for homes and businesses to have their own ground terminals, smaller and cheaper antenna that can talk to the satellite. The third is for vehicles to have ground terminals. This might be important for driverless cars, which will need to transmit and receive large volumes of data over an area which may be broader than that covered by appropriate terrestrial cellular networks.
In all cases data will make their way to the wider internet through large ground-based dishes, called gateways. An email sent from a house connected to one of the new satellite network, for example, would travel up to a passing satellite, down to a gateway then onward to its destination.
The firms involved today hope to overcome the obstacles confronting the previous generation of leo satellite firms because building and launching hundreds of satellites is now much cheaper. The cost of launch in particular has tumbled in the past decade with the arrival of better rockets and more competition. OneWeb has a contract, reportedly valued at over €1bn ($1.1bn), for 21 launches with Arianespace, a European consortium. Russian-built Soyuz craft will also take 34 to 36 satellites up at a time from either French Guiana or Kazakhstan. OneWeb may later use Blue Origin, a rocket firm owned by Amazon’s founder, Jeff Bezos; it also has a contract for launching single satellites to replace ones that break down with Virgin Orbit. Virgin Group, like Airbus and SoftBank, is an investor in the company. SpaceX intends to launch its satellites on its own rockets.
Space to grow
The bigger challenge is making satellites quickly and cheaply enough to fill up these rockets. It typically takes existing satellite-makers two years to build one after contracts are signed. They are not up to the challenge, says Jonny Dyer, who worked on a Google project that first brought the OneWeb team together (but stayed with Google when the two parted ways). “The supply chain does not scale,” he says. “They’re not used to working at those volumes, and they’re not used to the unit cost.”
OneWeb and SpaceX thus not only have to make new satellites, they have to build a system for building satellites. OneWeb has been doing so in Toulouse for the past two years. Its first satellite was completed in April and ten more will be ready in time for the company’s first launch, some time before February 2019. To step up manufacture, OneWeb is building two copies of its production line in a new factory in Florida. It hopes to have the first satellite from this facility ready before March 2019 and to raise output to ten a week not long after.
The factory floor in Toulouse has separate workstations for propulsion systems, communications payload, solar panels and so on. Satellites in the making move on robot carts from one station to the next. Cameras track the components and look out for errors—misalignments and the like. The finished cube is about the size of a beach ball bedecked with antennae and solar panels. After testing, it is shipped out. The system has had teething problems. The first launch will be more than a year behind schedule. But Greg Wyler, OneWeb’s boss, says he still hopes to offer connectivity in places in higher northern latitudes, such as Alaska and Britain, by the end of 2019.
Putting satellites in place is only part of the problem. How useful they will prove to be depends on designing and building antennae to get data to homes or vehicles that are not close to terrestrial cell towers. “The elephant in the room…has always been the ground terminal,” says Nathan Kundtz, the former boss of Kymeta, which makes antennae. Mr Kundtz says that tracking satellites across the sky mechanically is untenable if the antennae are to be affordable and widely used. His firm does tracking electronically. No moving parts, he says. Teledesic failed in part because no such ground terminal existed in the late 1990s. Fortunately, the necessary electronics have shrunk in size and cost.
Aerial combat
Firms such as Kymeta, along with at least two other companies, Phasor and Isotropic Systems, are producing flat, electronically “steerable” antennae with no moving parts that can send and receive signals from leo satellites. Kymeta’s antenna is the least orthodox. It relies upon the same kind of lcddisplay found in laptops and flat-screen televisions. Instead of using the 30,000 pixels in its screen to display images, it uses them to filter and interpret the satellite signal by allowing it to pass through at some pixels and blocking it at others. Different patterns of pixels act like a lens, focusing the signal onto a receiver beneath them; the pattern shifts up to 240 times a second, changing the shape of the “lens” and thus keeping track of the satellites overhead. Phasor’s system works similarly, but uses an electronically controlled array of microchips to perform the same task. Isotropic Systems, which has said that it is developing an antenna that will be able to receive signal from OneWeb’s satellites, uses an optical system more like Kymeta’s.
Kymeta and Phasor have both said that they do not want to sell antennae directly to consumers, but will focus on businesses, cellular networks, maritime and aviation customers instead. Isotropic Systems has announced that it will use its technology to produce a “consumer broadband terminal” in time for OneWeb’s launch. Once available, consumers are most likely to get the new pizza-size antennae through their internet service providers. But if it is too expensive for people to receive signals on the ground—most of the world’s unconnected are poor—those ventures selling direct to consumers will struggle. Mr Wyler says his firm needs antennae that cost $200 at most for the consumer business to thrive.
Telesat, the next biggest firm in terms of constellation size, is taking a different approach. It does not plan to offer services to consumers directly, but instead is focusing on filling in gaps for cellular networks, as well as businesses, ships and planes. Specialised telecoms companies would buy bandwidth and resell it. In contrast to Messrs Wyler and Musk, and their aspirations for global coverage, Telesat has divided the surface of the planet into thousands of polygons, and modelled exactly in which ones it makes financial sense to offer strong connectivity. This means its constellation needs fewer expensive gateways.
Mr Wyler, in contrast, is known as something of a connectivity evangelist. His first satellite internet firm, o3b (Other 3 Billion), placed large satellites in a higher orbit, providing a connection only slightly slower than a leosatellite. Now owned by ses, a larger satellite company, o3b specialises in providing connectivity to islands that are otherwise cut off. OneWeb’s goal of connecting consumers is largely in the hands of SoftBank, its main investor, which owns the exclusive rights to sell the new bandwidth.
Even if the new satellites bring the internet to people and parts of the planet that have been ill-served up until now, putting ever more objects in space brings another set of difficulties. Satellites in densely packed constellations may crash into each other or other spacecraft. “If there are thousands [of satellites] then they’ll have much higher probability of colliding,” says Mr Dyer. “If there is a collision in these orbits it will be a monumental disaster. At 1,000km, if there’s an incident it will be up there for hundreds of years.” Geostationary satellites, because they do not move relative to each other, are unlikely to collide.
Managing constellations is particularly difficult, says Mr Wyler, because each satellite has only a tiny amount of power to work with (equipping small ones with bigger thrusters would be hugely expensive). So even if a crash were imminent, there would be little that could be done about it other than watch. “What are you gonna do? Nothing. Get popcorn. There’s nothing to do,” says Mr Wyler. OneWeb has designed its constellation so that faulty satellites fall out of orbit immediately to avoid this risk.
Access all areas
The new constellations will also raise tricky questions of national jurisdiction. Countries generally have control of the routers which connect them to the wider terrestrial internet. Satellites threaten that control. The national regulators that OneWeb has talked to are uneasy, says Mr Wyler, because it would create a route to the internet that countries could not monitor. OneWeb’s intention is to build 39 “gateways” on the ground around the world that will beam up and receive traffic from its satellites.
The first is under construction in Svalbard, a remote Norwegian island chain. These access points, and those planned by other firms, present another difficulty. Some countries are willing to share gateways with other countries. Others want their own because they are concerned that third parties will be able to monitor internet traffic, potentially using it to hack data flows of national importance.
Questions remain about whether the businesses involved can do all they promise cheaply enough. But if these companies succeed, their impact will go beyond helping to bring 3.5bn people online. Mr Musk has hazy plans to use Starlink as the foundation for a deep-space network that will keep spacecraft connected en route to Mars and the Moon.
With a network of satellites encircling the planet, humans will soon never be offline. High-quality internet connections will become more widespread than basic sanitation and running water. The leo broadband firms are trying to reinvent the satellite industry. But the infrastructure they are planning will provide a platform for other industries to reinvent themselves, too.
Correction (December 11th, 2018): This piece originally stated that Intelsat has launched 59 satellites in its 54-year history. That is the number of active satellites the firm has in orbit. The firm has successfully launched 94. Sorry.
This IEEE Talk discusses the three biggest trends in online technology and proposes that in fact, they represent one huge integrated trend that is already having a major impact on the way we live, work and think. The 2012 Obama Campaign’s Dashboard mobile application, integrating Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile is perhaps the most significant example of this trend, combining all three technologies into one big thing. A major shakeout and industry consolidation seems inevitable. Additional developments as diverse as augmented reality, the Internet of Things, Smart Grid, near field communication, mobile payment processing, and location-based services are also considered as linked to this overall trend.
11. Agenda • Some Historical Context • The Emergence of SoMoClo • The Emergence of Big Data • The Emergence of Smart Mobile • The Convergence of ToDaClo • What Do You Think? IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not?
20. Agenda • Some Historical Context • The Emergence of SoMoClo • The Emergence of Big Data • The Emergence of Smart Mobile • The Convergence of ToDaClo • What Do You Think? IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not?
27. Agenda • Some Historical Context • The Emergence of SoMoClo • The Emergence of Big Data • The Emergence of Smart Mobile • The Convergence of ToDaClo • What Do You Think? IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not?
33. Agenda • Some Historical Context • The Emergence of SoMoClo • The Emergence of Big Data • The Emergence of Smart Mobile • The Convergence of ToDaClo • What Do You Think? IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not?
36. Agenda • Some Historical Context • The Emergence of SoMoClo • The Emergence of Big Data • The Emergence of Smart Mobile • The Convergence of ToDaClo • What Do You Think? IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not?
In the simplest terms, the concept here is how a company can potentially increase both revenue and market share by executing a strategy to work with direct or indirect competitor(s) to the benefit of both, a win-win. The old Arab saying, “My enemy’s enemy is my friend” also applies. It can also be as simple as joining an ad hoc collaboration among a group of companies or a standards group to create market order and simplicity from an overcrowded and confused market. Customers invariably respond to products that provide the greatest value and paths to long-term increased value and cost reduction. Collaboration or “Co-opetition” is one of the most effective means to achieve that goal, particularly in an economic environment where “flat is the new up.”
A Strategy For Survival in Tough Times
In the simplest terms, the concept here is how a company can potentially increase both revenue and market share by executing a strategy to work with its direct or indirect competitor(s) to the benefit of both, a win-win. The old Arab saying, “My enemy’s enemy is my friend” also applies. It can also be as simple as joining an ad hoc collaboration among a group of companies or a standards group to create market order and simplicity from an overcrowded and confused market. Customers invariably respond to products that provide the greatest value and paths to long-term increased value and cost reduction. Collaboration or “Co-opetition” is one of the most effective means to achieve that goal, particularly in an economic environment where “flat is the new up.”
Multibus: An Early Example of Collaboration Building A New Market
Soon after joining Intel, I learned about Intel’s concept of “Open Systems” and its “Multibus” system architecture. Motorola was Intel’s primary competitor in microprocessors and so-called “single board computers” at that time. Intel’s now legendary Marketing VP, Bill Davidow had developed a strategy to recruit other companies to support Multibus as an open system standard. Davidow’s idea was to make Multibus more attractive to system designers by having a stable of compatible products from other companies supporting Multibus. It worked. Since that time the concept has evolved significantly and has played a major role in the development of many new markets. This post discusses some of the evolutionary changes, offers two high-tech case studies and some key requirements for successful collaboration. It is more important now than ever as a survival strategy in a particularly challenging global economy.
The IBM Personal Computer Sets The Standard For The Future
Perhaps the best known high-tech example of an open system is the IBM Personal Computer, involving IBM, Intel, Microsoft, and thousands of other supporting companies. The result has been the creation of a huge new market, with over 400,000 applications for the PC, significant price competition, and interchangeable components from multiple vendors. By contrast, Apple opted for a closed, proprietary system, which persists to this day, and continues to be a source of discontent from Apple customers: higher prices, as well as accessories and interfaces only available from Apple, etc. In sheer market share, the PC dominated at 85% of the total market, while Apple was forced to concentrate on niche markets like education and graphic design. I am not going to discuss the PC as it has been analyzed extensively over the years, though it does provide an excellent case study on the dynamics and market power of open systems versus closed proprietary systems.
Important Current Co-opetition Successes: DSL And Android
I will discuss two other cases, one less well known and the other better known and more recent. In the first case, I was personally involved so my experience enables me to speak in-depth on the topic. Shortly after leaving Ascend Communications, I was called by a friend at Compaq/HP in Houston and asked to fly down to Houston for a private discussion with the VP of the Presario Division and his team. The VP wanted to incorporate a high-speed digital subscriber line (DSL) connection in the Presario out of the box. The idea was that a consumer would connect the PC to a standard RJ11 telephone wall jack, and be instantly connected to the Internet. However, I had to explain that the challenges to this were enormous. First and foremost the telephone companies themselves could not agree on the standard for how DSL worked. Equally problematic, the DSL market was fragmented with dozens of competitors offering different proprietary solutions.
We decided to proceed regardless, recognizing that if HP/Compaq were to succeed with their ingenious idea, it would require a fundamental change in the current DSL market and the telcos. This could only be attempted if Compaq joined forces with Intel and Microsoft, and even then the outcome would be uncertain. I contacted Ali Sarabi in Intel’s Architecture Labs, who admitted that Intel had been thinking of the same idea, and talking with Microsoft as well. So within two weeks all three companies met at Microsoft in Bellevue and the idea gained steam. Soon after we held three days of secret meetings in Atlanta with DSL companies, without explaining our purpose, and came away completely dejected. Bringing the competitors together was hopeless. They all pointed in a different direction. It then dawned on us that if we could get the telecom companies to agree on a single DSL standard, they could unite and as “the customers,” and therefore dictate to the DSL competitors what they would buy. Nothing works better than the opportunity to make money.
Another round of secret meetings in Seattle with the telecoms, and follow-up meetings around the country led to a breakthrough: the formation of a global consortium of over 100 telecom companies and DSL companies that culminated in the International Telecommunications Union in Geneva Switzerland creating a single global DSL standard, which eventually made the original Compaq Presario vision a reality.
Special Interest Group Legal Framework Paves The Way
One of the keys to this success was a simple legal framework for the companies to collaborate, known now as a “Special Interest Group,” avoiding any hint of unfair competition and ensuring that the technical aspects of the standard would be in the public domain. The SIG legal document has since been used in a number of other developments, notably Bluetooth and USB. Other standards bodies, like the IEEE and IETF, are also structured similarly, enabling the creation of crucial collaborative projects like WiFi. These efforts are now a key aspect of many high-tech markets. Many companies devote entire teams to managing their participation in these standards bodies and ad hoc industry collaboration activities. Even on a small scale, some agreed framework, a Memorandum of Understanding or a simple one-pager may be required to achieve the necessary trust to move forward.
Android Repeats The IBM PC Phenomenon
The second case of successful global industry-wide collaboration is the Google Android smartphone operating system versus Apple IOS. Once again, Android is an open architecture while Apple IOS is a closed proprietary system. Android has been adopted by a wide range of smartphone manufacturers, most notably Samsung, HTC, and Huawei. Despite the well-publicised popularity of Apple’s iPhone, the fact remains that Android, as an open architecture dominates the global smartphone market at 82% market share in 2015, as reported by International Data Corporation (IDC), and Apple again stuck in the 15% range.
Global Smartphone Market Share 2015 (IDC)
Two Failures To Collaborate: Videoconferencing And The Internet of Things
The video conferencing market has been around for nearly thirty years. Originally, there were big bulky proprietary systems. Cisco Systems later became a major player with its own impressive HD technology. In all, there were nearly a dozen major competitors addressing an “enterprise market” for business use only. The equipment was very expensive. Then along came Skype, WebEx, Apple Facetime and others. The problem is that, after thirty years, none of these competitors applications can talk with any other application. Clearly, this is a problem. So “middleware” startups have sprung up, offering a simple translation of otherwise incompatible video transmission protocols. Bluejeans technology is one excellent example. I have used it personally in my UBC classes to link a guest lecture on Skype to UBC’s corporate video conferencing system because there is no other way to do it. Is this the best solution or cost-effective. Absolutely not. Why, after thirty years, has the video conferencing industry failed to standardize?
In another case, the emerging new market buzzword is “The Internet of Things.” This means that everything in your home can and will be connected to the Internet. Sounds simple enough, right? Not exactly. Today the IoT market remains a complex, confusing Tower of Babble, with multiple competing communications protocols. Some products support WiFi, but there is no one single agreed way to communicate. A recent ZDNet post explains that home automation currently requires that devices need to be able to connect with “multiple local- and wide-area connectivity options (ZigBee, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GSM/GPRS, RFID/NFC, GPS, Ethernet). Along with the ability to connect many different kinds of sensors, this allows devices to be configured for a range of vertical markets.” Huh? This is the problem in a nutshell. You do not need to be a data communication engineer to get the point. I have written here on this blog about this embarrassing failure to collaborate.
Summary
While the open architecture of the PC happened more or less organically, as so many companies were keen to get in on the action, the DSL problem was a hairball of enormous global complexity that had to be solved. I am honored to have been part of that effort. Google’s decision to launch Android as an open architecture was more like Multibus, and the conscious strategic decision of Eric Schmidt and Larry Page to enter the market as an open system from the outset. Other examples in other industries abound and are documented in the now legendary book, Co-opetition.
The result in all three successful cases has been a dramatic market success. The key takeaway point is that in all three cases the open architecture created opportunity and expanded the market. Industry collaborations like this are as relevant for smaller markets with only two or three competitors as for large complex markets. Collaboration can be the key to company survival or failure.
With good intentions, and also a good dose of Facebook business strategy to expand its base of users, Mark Zuckerberg has struck out to promote Free Basics, a free limited Internet for the poor in less developed countries sponsored by Facebook and its local telecommunications partners. While on the face of it Free Basics would seem to have merit, Zuckerberg has run into a wall of opposition. On close inspection of the details, Facebook’s problem, despite all of its global corporate sophistication, appears to be naïveté about the foreign markets it is trying to enter. It is possible to argue that Zuckerberg and Facebook have the best of intentions and sound arguments. But the best of intentions and sound arguments mean nothing if the key element lacking is a clear understanding of the current foreign market, and the crucial need to adapt to it or fail. Zuckerberg could have looked no further back than 2013 for clues to why he has failed.
With good intentions, and also a good dose of Facebook business strategy to expand its base of users, Mark Zuckerberg has struck out to promote Free Basics, a free limited Internet for the poor in less developed countries sponsored by Facebook and its local telecommunications partners. While on the face of it Free Basics would seem to have merit, Zuckerberg has run into a wall of opposition. On close inspection of the details, Facebook’s problem, despite all of its global corporate sophistication, appears to be naïveté about the foreign markets it is trying to enter. It is possible to argue that Zuckerberg and Facebook have the best of intentions and sound arguments. But the best of intentions and sound arguments mean nothing if the key element lacking is a clear understanding of the targeted foreign market, and the crucial need to adapt to it or fail. Zuckerberg could have looked no further back than 2013 for clues to why he has failed.
In 2012 and 2013, I was involved in an effort to deploy wide area wireless Internet capability to broad swaths of India. This involved working with large Indian corporate partners. We were also working at a time when Google, Microsoft, and others were also busily competing to deploy so-called “white space Metro WiFi” to rural areas in lesser developed countries. Google was also experimenting with its “loon balloon” project to use high altitude balloons to deploy Internet access points in remote areas. It quickly became clear to us that the Indian government and corporate officials wanted only an indigenous Indian Internet solution, which fit our strategy of working with Indian partners. Google and the other big U.S. based companies were viewed as neo-colonialists. Ironically, on March 19, 2013, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt wrote an editorial in The Times of India, “Which Internet Will India Choose,” in a well-intentioned effort to convince Indian leaders of the Google vision for the Internet in India. For all intents and purposes, Schmidt’s editorial landed on deaf ears in India. Also, regrettably, Indian corporate culture being what it is, not much happened on the Indian side to develop their own Internet deployment solution. All of this is not unusual in foreign markets.
As a veteran of high technology international business, I am intrigued by these international business blunders by otherwise very sophisticated business leaders and corporations. They seem to repeat themselves over the years, sometimes in different ways and in different markets. Years ago I stumbled on David A. Ricks book, Blunders in International Business, now in its fourth edition, with new and updated case studies. It is enlightening and also quite funny. I recommend the book to Mark Zuckerberg.
Mark Zuckerberg can’t believe Egypt & India aren’t grateful for Facebook’s free internet
All Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wants to do is make the world a better place for his new daughter. While he’s technically on paternity leave, he couldn’t sit idly by as India attempts to halt Internet.org, Facebook’s initiative to provide free but limited internet to the developing world.E
Last week, the Times of India reported that the country’s telecom regulatory body had asked Facebook’s partner, wireless carrier Reliance, to cease the Internet.org service as it determines whether operators should be able to price their services based on content. Responding to criticisms of the program, Zuckerberg penned an op-ed published Dec. 28 in the English-language daily. In it, he expressed annoyance that India is debating net neutrality—a principle dictating that telecom operators provide people with equal access to the internet—as the country struggles to connect its citizens to the internet.
In the process of defending Internet.org, Zuckerberg paints India—where about a billion people are not connected to the internet—as backwards for even daring to question the benefits of Facebook’s charity-like endeavor.
“Who could possibly be against this?” he asks passive-aggressively. “Surprisingly, over the last year there’s been a big debate about this in India.”
Yes, net neutrality is a big deal—and not just in India. In the US, for example, an appeals court is currently examining the legality of a new set of net-neutrality rules enacted by the Federal Communications Commission this year. But Zuckerberg almost portrays net neutrality as a first-world problem that doesn’t apply to India because having some service is better than no service.
Net neutrality activists have long argued that Internet.org provides a “walled garden” experience because the sites that users can access for free are determined by Facebook and its telecom partners, essentially making them gatekeepers to the internet for poor people.
While Zuckerberg acknowledges that Internet.org, which is currently active in more than 30 countries, does not provide people with access to the full web, he argues that it’s a step in the right direction. According to the Facebook CEO, half of the people who come online for the first time using Internet.org decide to pay for full internet access within 30 days.
Instead of wanting to give people access to some basic internet services for free, critics of the program continue to spread false claims–even if that means leaving behind a billion people.
Instead of recognizing the fact that Free Basics is opening up the whole internet, they continue to claim–falsely–that this will make the internet more like a walled garden.
Instead of welcoming Free Basics as an open platform that will partner with any telco, and allows any developer to offer services to people for free, they claim–falsely–that this will give people less choice.
Instead of recognizing that Free Basics fully respects net neutrality, they claim–falsely–the exact opposite.
Zuckerberg continues by offering an anecdote of a farmer named Ganesh, who uses the free internet service to check weather updates and commodity prices. “How does Ganesh being able to better tend his crops hurt the internet?” he asks rhetorically.
But examined more closely, his arguments don’t directly address the concerns of net neutrality activists. For the people who choose not to upgrade or can’t afford to pay for full internet access, Internet.org does indeed provide a walled garden of online content. Millions of people already have a skewed perception of the web, believing Facebook to be the internet, a Quartz analysis has shown.
Furthermore, while Facebook can add more telecom partners, which would theoretically open up the number of sites and services Internet.org users could access for free, it currently has only one partner in India, Reliance.
Zuckerberg also fails to address the claims that zero-rated services such as Internet.org amount to economic discrimination—that this is essentially poor internet for poor people. Furthermore, in an op-ed published in the Times of India in October, net-neutrality advocacy group Savetheinternet.in quoted Tim Berners-Lee, father of the internet, as saying: “Economic discrimination is just as harmful as technical discrimination, so [internet service providers] will still be able to pick winners and losers online.” Facebook’s walled garden could very well determine the sites and services that will succeed in India.
Over and over again, Zuckerberg has pointed to research showing that internet access can help lift people out of poverty. The fact remains that Internet.org provides limited, slow, and subpar access, and these limitations make it all the more difficult for people to climb the economic ladder. As Naveen Patnaik, chief minister of the Indian state Odisha, has said: “If you dictate what the poor should get, you take away their rights to choose what they think is best for them.”
In an extraordinary turn of events, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission appears set to implement strong new rules, later this month to enforce Net Neutrality on the Internet. If the new rules are implemented, it will have major favorable implications for future global Internet policy with the International Telecommunications Union in Geneva, Switzerland. This means simply that all traffic on the Internet will be treated equally and fairly, which is one of the founding principles of the Internet, since its invention by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, Vin Cerf and others back in the 1980’s.
Rule Would Ban Practice Known as Paid Prioritization, Say Sources
U.S. Federal Communications Commission Chairman, Tom Wheeler
In an extraordinary turn of events, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission appears set to implement strong new rules, later this month to enforce Net Neutrality on the Internet. If the new rules are implemented, it will have major favorable implications for future global Internet policy with the International Telecommunications Union in Geneva, Switzerland. This means simply that all traffic on the Internet will be treated equally and fairly, which is one of the founding principles of the Internet, since its invention by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, Vin Cerf and others back in the 1980’s. It is the same for voice telecommunications the World over. The current problem has been the preference of large corporate Internet Service Providers (ISP’s) to charge preferentially for priority access, or “paid prioritization.” The potential for abuse by corporations is obvious. Comcast, one of the largest “carriers with content,” has been cited for the potential to prioritize its NBC content over other competitor content, if Net Neutrality were not enforced. Netflix had already capitulated to Comcast and entered into what is known as a paid “peering agreement,” to insure priority of Netflix streaming content. If the FCC Title II rules are implemented, the Comcast/Netflix agreement would likely become null and void.
REBLOGGED from The Wall Street Journal
By GAUTHAM NAGESH
Updated Feb. 2, 2015 4:18 p.m. ET
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler intends to seek a significant expansion of his agency’s authority to regulate mobile and fixed broadband providers, a move that would fully embrace the principle known as “net neutrality.”
According to multiple people familiar with the agency’s plan, Mr. Wheeler intends to change the way both mobile and fixed broadband firms are regulated. Rather than being lightly regulated information services, they would become like telecommunications companies, which would subject them to greater regulation on everything from pricing to how they deploy their networks.
A key element of the rule would be a ban on broadband providers blocking, slowing down or speeding up specific websites in exchange for payment, a practice known as paid prioritization, these people say.
Mr. Wheeler’s expected proposal tracks closely with President’s Barack Obama’s Nov. 10 statement, in which he called for the “strongest possible rules” to protect net neutrality, the principle that all Internet traffic should be treated equally. That represents a major shift from the chairman’s initial plan, which would have allowed some paid prioritization.
In his statement, the president called for Mr. Wheeler to classify broadband providers as common carriers under Title II of the Communications Act, a move that came after months of campaigning by activists, Web startups and others.
The proposal would also give the FCC the authority to regulate deals on the back-end portion of the Internet, where broadband providers such as Comcast Corp. and Verizon Communications Inc. pick up traffic from big content companies such as Netflix Inc. and network middlemen like Level 3 Communications Inc. The FCC would decide whether to allow these so-called paid peering deals based on whether it finds them just and reasonable, the standard under Title II.
A federal court struck down the FCC’s most-recent set of net neutrality rules in January 2014, sending the issue back to the agency for the third time. Wireless and broadband industry officials have indicated they plan to sue again if the FCC moves ahead with Title II, which they believe would saddle them with outdated regulations and depress investment in upgrading networks.
It remains unclear how the proposed rules will treat other practices besides paid prioritization, such as zero-rated mobile plans that let users access only a small number of apps without hurting their monthly data allowance. The FCC is also expected to exempt broadband providers from the bulk of Title II regulations, in areas including what they charge their customers, through a process known as forbearance.
Mr. Wheeler is expected to circulate his proposal on Thursday, with a vote scheduled for the FCC’s open meeting on Feb. 26. A majority of the FCC’s five commissioners must approve the rules for them to take effect.
A local journal today glowingly reported that not one, but two local companies had won investment on the Dragon’s Den Canadian “reality” television show. What struck me about the two, apparently best “winning ideas” from our community, was how utterly mundane they were: an “empty beer bottle handling system” and “illuminated party clothing.” As an entrepreneur myself, I first need to give respect to the two entrepreneurs who achieved this success with the likes of Kevin O’Leary and the other investors. It is no mean feat and they should be acknowledged and congratulated for it. On the other hand, these are not the kind of ideas that are going to make a major dent in the local or Canadian economy. Meanwhile in Vancouver, two startups, D-Wave and General Fusion are working on Big Ideas that could change our lives.
Why I hate Dragon’s Den
A local journal today glowingly reported that not one, but two local companies had won investment on the Dragon’s Den Canadian “reality” television show. What struck me about the two, apparently best “winning ideas” from our community, was how utterly mundane they were: an “empty beer bottle handling system” and “illuminated party clothing.” As an entrepreneur myself, I first need to give respect to the two entrepreneurs who achieved this success with the likes of Kevin O’Leary and the other investors. It is no mean feat and they should be acknowledged and congratulated for it. On the other hand, these are not the kind of ideas that are going to make a major dent in the local or Canadian economy. Meanwhile in Vancouver, two startups, D-Wave and General Fusion are working on Big Ideas that could change our lives.
Dragon’s Den is nothing more than artificially concocted alleged “reality” TV entertainment. In many cases, the “entertainment value” comes at the expense of the entrepreneurs themselves, some of whom should never have been put on television in the first place. IMHO, this is what is fundamentally wrong with Dragon’s Den. It is pure Fantasyland. My own UBC entrepreneurship students have also developed similar, and very worthy “small business” ideas. But as worthy on a small-scale as they may be, these ideas do not further any vision or goal of entrepreneurship’s importance to the Canadian economy. I judged a graduate student entrepreneurship competition this week which was dominated by Web apps. This is happening in the face of overwhelming evidence that there is very little opportunity or investor interest left in Web apps. Someone recently estimated that there will soon be a Billion Web apps out there. Curiously, Dragon’s Den seems to cull out Web apps entirely, though they must see a lot of them, and prefer to broadcast the eccentric entrepreneurs with really wacky ideas because of their entertainment value.
“Entrepreneurship” has become the current fad, garnering TV viewers and advertiser dollars, and simultaneously conveniently ignoring the bigger issues for the Canadian economy. Large sums of government dollars are being doled out without adequate oversight as to the return on the investment. I was recently advised by someone to “follow the government dollars” being thrown at entrepreneurial incubators. There seems to be no consideration of the importance of Big Ideas, and solving Big Problems. Just entertainment for entertainment’s sake, viewer ratings and advertising dollars.
Coming from Silicon Valley, the current Canadian entrepreneurship landscape looks to me like a confused overheated and over invested mess to me. If I were Kevin O’Leary, I would not be able to live with myself on Dragon’s Den. as if giving a shit only for making his own money equates to some greater economic purpose for Canadians. I prefer to chase Big Ideas.
Winfield Man Latest to Do a Deal on Dragons’ Den
Another Okanagan businessman has made a deal in the Dragon’s Den.
Winfield’s Casey Binkley received four offers from the Dragons for his product FastRack that he pitched along with his partner Mitchell Lesbirel.
Casey Binkley (left) and partner Mitchell Lesbirel pitch to the Dragons
The product was invented by Lesbirel to solve the problem that many bars and restaurants have with collecting and clearing their empty bottles after a busy night. Emptying bottles that spill and cause cardboard boxes to tear as the bottles fall out everywhere is a hassle that many in the industry and beyond are familiar with. Lesbirel found a way to solve that problem with a simple plastic rack that allows for draining, easy organization and transfer to cardboard boxes with no mess.
As part of their pitch, the two men ran a fun race that the Dragons participated in as a part of their demonstration of how the product works.
Photo Credit: Facebook
The partners asked the Dragons for $50,000 for 10% of their business and eventually settled on a deal with Jim Treliving. Along with his expertise in the restaurant industry, Treliving offered $50,000 for 5%, 9 months with no royalty, dropping down to 3% after he gained his capital back.
Binkley and FastRack are the second Okanagan company to make a deal with the Dragons in recent weeks, after Kelowna’s Fur Glory appeared on the showwith their special illuminated party clothing.
You can learn more about FastRack on their website and check out their pitch in the video below.
Originally posted on Gigaom: Netflix has come out in favor of some sort of government intervention when it comes to ISPs that charge content providers for capacity at the edge of their networks, claiming Thursday that it should be a network neutrality issue. The internet video provider recently paid Comcast for direct access to the…
It appears that Netflix move to enter into a peering agreement with Comcast, essentially paying Comcast for “preferred traffic capacity,” was strictly a tactical move, necessary to protect Netflix’ quality of service to their customers. As I predicted earlier, the recent Court decisions and Netflix’ fait accompli move, may well accelerate action by the FCC to insure Net Neutrality, and block a corporate takeover of the Net.
Netflix has come out in favor of some sort of government intervention when it comes to ISPs that charge content providers for capacity at the edge of their networks, claiming Thursday that it should be a network neutrality issue. The internet video provider recently paid Comcast for direct access to the Comcast network after a prolonged negotiation that led to customers getting a crappy Netflix experience during prime time hours.
However, despite coming to an agreement, Netflix isn’t ready to throw in the towel on the issue of ISPs seeking to charge content companies such as Netflix and Google — as well as transit providers like Level 3 and XO Communications — to connect their networks. While it seems like one unified whole, the internet as we know it is a series of interconnecting networks, and for content such as streaming videos to traverse these networks, capacity must be available.
Yesterday, the United Stated Federal Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C. issued a ruling that was essentially a “technical” setback for the notion that all Internet traffic should be treated equally, better known as Net Neutrality. The ruling now permits giant corporations like Verizon, NBC/Comcast, and Time Warner to charge higher fees to content providers like Netflix, Amazon and even potentially, Google. If that sounds bad for consumers, you are right. This decision was essentially caused by an earlier decision of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission to maintain a free and open “hands off” policy, and not regulate Internet traffic, considered evil by Internet purists. But the effect of this Court ruling may be greater evil, leading to the conclusion that “common carrier” regulation may be the lesser of two evils.
Yesterday, the United Stated Federal Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C. issued a ruling that was essentially a “technical” setback for the notion that all Internet traffic should be treated equally, better known as Net Neutrality. The ruling now permits giant corporations like Verizon, NBC/Comcast, and Time Warner to charge higher fees to content providers like Netflix, Amazon and even potentially, Google. If that sounds bad for consumers, you are right.
This Court decision has even deeper implications as NBC/Comcast is in the unique position of being both a “carrier” of the Internet bits, and a “content provider.” The enables Comcast to charge higher fees to content providers for content that competes with NBC. Is that anti-competitive? Sure sounds like it to me.
This decision was essentially caused by an earlier decision of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission to maintain a free and open “hands off” policy, and not regulate Internet traffic, considered evil by Internet purists.
But the effect of this Court ruling may be greater evil, leading to the conclusion that “common carrier” regulation of the Internet may be the lesser of the two evils, and an inevitable outgrowth of the NSA Internet espionage revelations, Chinese military Internet espionage revelations, and “balkanization” of the Internet by foreign governments, building protectionist national firewalls, and just plain old Internet traffic snooping of your privacy. It is like what happened to the Summer of Love. The Internet was originally about free love, but before long the whole thing deteriorated into a jungle. That is what we have now, and by the simple decision of the FCC to declare the Internet a “common carrier,” a regulated telecommunications infrastructure, corporations would need to implement Net Neutrality and report their Internet traffic policies to the government. For those who hate government regulation, I agree in principle. Sadly, it is the corporations, and the NSA that have made this imperative, to insure transparency, equality, and some level of Internet privacy.
In February of 2013 I wrote on this blog about the problem, and the book Captive Audience: The Telecom Industry and Monopoly Power in the New Gilded Age, by Yale Law School Professor Susan P. Crawford.
The post below caught my attention because of the current industry debate and competitive battle over deployment of much higher Gigabit Internet bandwidth via optical fiber to consumers, known as Fiber to the Home or FTTH, at prices much lower than they currently pay for even 50 Megabit Internet connectivity. Gigabit connectivity is already a reality in Hong Kong and South Korea, with Europe not far behind. The big cable carriers, Comcast and Time Warner, have actually argued publicly that consumers don’t want or need higher bandwidth. How they came to that conclusion is a mystery. Now Google has entered into direct competition with the cable carriers, deploying Gigabit FTTH in Kansas City and Austin, Texas to be followed by other locations, at prices a fraction of Comcast’s pricing for lower bandwidth.
The post below caught my attention because of the current industry debate and competitive battle over deployment of much higher Gigabit Internet bandwidth via optical fiber to consumers, known as Fiber to the Home or FTTH, at prices much lower than they currently pay for even 50 Megabit Internet connectivity. Gigabit connectivity is already a reality in Hong Kong and South Korea, with Europe not far behind. The big cable carriers, Comcast and Time Warner, have actually argued publicly that consumers don’t want or need higher bandwidth. How they came to that conclusion is a mystery. Now Google has entered into direct competition with the cable carriers, deploying Gigabit FTTH in Kansas City and Austin, Texas to be followed by other locations, at prices a fraction of Comcast’s pricing for lower bandwidth. This battle has been admirably described in the book Captive Audience, The Telecom Industry and Monopoly Power in the New Gilded Age, by Yale Law Professor, Susan P. Crawford.
So people have asked the question, “what will people do with all of this massive bandwidth?” Having lived with Moore’s Law for most of my career, I smile in bemusement. I can remember a fear that the 256K flash memory chip was “too big.” The truth is that if you were asked 20 years ago to predict how we would be using the Internet today, I doubt many would have accurately predicted our current global village. The few exceptions would be visionaries like Dave Evans, Chief Futurist at Cisco Systems, who authored this Huffington Post article, providing an excellent prediction of how FTTH may impact just one aspect of the future: education.
Reblogged from Huffington Post ImpactX
Beyond Online Classes: How The Internet of Everything Is Transforming Education
Over the next few weeks, students will be heading back to school for the fall semester. In fact, my oldest child will be starting college for the first time, and I have another one not far behind. So naturally, I’ve been thinking about the future of education, and the opportunities and challenges 21st century technology might bring.
Technology has had an amazing impact on education in the last few years. But what we’ve seen so far is nothing compared to the sea change that will be created by the Internet of Everything (IoE) in the coming decade. The networked connections among people, processes, data and things will change not just how and where education is delivered, but will also redefine what students need to learn, and why.
When we talk about technology-enabled learning, most people probably think of online classes, which have had mixed results so far. On one hand, online courses can make higher education much more affordable and accessible. On the other hand, not all students can stay engaged and successful without regular feedback and interaction with their instructor and other students. Even the best online classes cannot hope to duplicate the rich spontaneous interactions that can take place among students and instructors in the classroom.
But with connection speeds going up, and equipment costs going down, we can go beyond online classes to create widely accessible immersive, interactive, real-time learning experiences. Soon, time and distance will no longer limit access to an engaging, high quality education. Anywhere there is sufficient bandwidth, a student can participate in a rich virtual classroom experience — attending lectures, asking questions, and participating in real-time discussions with other students.
And the “sufficient bandwidth” requirement is not that far away. Connection speeds to the high-end home user are doubling every 21 months. Said another way, this is a doubling of almost 64 times over the next decade. Consider a home with a 10 Mbps connection today; this same home could have a 640 Mbps in a decade, and a home with a 50 MB broadband connection today might have a 3 GB connection in 10 years — this is sufficient bandwidth to display streaming video on every square inch of the walls of a 1,800-square-foot home! What type of immersive experiences could educators create with these types of connections?
Within the next decade, high connection speeds and low hardware costs could bring immersive, interactive classes right into the home.
Of course this is about more than simply raw network speeds; the Internet of Everything will also impact some of our basic assumptions about the purpose and nature of education. People today generally agree that the purpose of education is to convey knowledge. But if all the world’s knowledge is instantaneously available online via smartphone or Google Glass, how does that affect what we need to teach in school? Perhaps education will become less about acquiring knowledge, and more about how to analyze, evaluate, and use the unlimited information that is available to us. Perhaps we will teach more critical thinking, collaboration, and social skills. Perhaps we will not teach answers, but how to ask the right questions.
I know that technology will never replace the full, face-to-face experience that my son will have when he starts university next month. But technology can supplement and enrich the traditional in-person school experience. And I hope the school my son attends will teach the new set of 21st century skills needed to help him make the most of technology.
Photo Credit: Facebook
Within the next decade, high connection speeds and low hardware costs could bring immersive, interactive classes right into the home.
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