David Ellis is self described as a digital strategist, educator and broadband evangelist. He teaches in York University’s interdisciplinary Communications Studies Program and he has been writing about Canadian broadband. In particulare, he is advocating for more to be done to accelerate adoption of higher speed services.
Among his writings, he has been frustrated by provincial complacency with 100% broadband availability and my regular readers know that I share his feeling that we need to do more to get people to actually subscribe.
He had a piece through the weekend that merits discussion.
I took issue with his view that a reason to rule out satellite connectivity is that the higher latency rules out telemedicine applications.
Most of all, geostationary satellites have latencies that put them completely out of the running for important apps like telemedicine – three or four times higher than the 250 milliseconds it takes a signal to travel 22,236 miles into space and back, i.e. 900 to 1,000 milliseconds or more
Telemedicine is an imprecise name for a broad field, with a variety of requirements for broadband connectivity. Let’s be clear – most of us are not ever going to have digital imaging devices in our homes and even fewer will have a robotic scapel connected to a gigabit optical feed to allow doctors to operate from the comfort of their homes. Instead, a more immediate requirement is for telemetry type connections: vital signs, blood pressure, heart rate, temperature, blood sugar levels. Isn’t that a reasonable definition for residential telemedicine?
Until we get to pricing of home CT Scans in the order of Mr. Fusion, we need to be more realistic about the kinds of broadband speeds and latency that are really needed.
There seems to be a subtext that implicitly suggests that anything less than the types of speeds possible in an urban setting isn’t worth consideration for univeral broadband services.
This strikes me as a noble, but naive message.
There is an enormous benefit to having any form of data communications connection in a household. The leap from zero to anything greater than zero enables all sorts of efficiencies in the delivery of government and social services. Most importantly, it provides an appetizer – a taste of what being connected can do.
The next stage is moving from casual – call it dial-up – to always-on connectivity. With ‘always-on’ connections, there is the ability to push as well as pull, an ability to stay on any time, without tying up the phone line. Many applications, such as home energy monitoring, e-health, e-commerce, e-mail, need just a basic always-on connection.
We want way more than basic always-on connections, and we are going to need a variety of connectivity technologies – including next generation satellite – to enable all Canadians to derive benefits from the digital economy. There are high throughput satellites being launched early next year that will bring affordable urban speeds to every home in Canada – no matter how remote it may be.
As I have said many times before, I used satellite for the entire summer, for business and consumer purposes and it works just fine, thank-you.
The ITU released a report yesterday, A 2010 Leadership Imperative: Towards a Future Built on Broadband, that will be getting a lot of coverage over the coming week. The ITU Secretary General called for making access to high speed networks a basic civil right, a stronger statement than what appears in the official report. However, keep in mind that the ITU has a low bar for its definition of high speed service: 256 kbps, always-on connection. The ITU defines wireless, mobile broadband and satellite as all being acceptable substitutes. Canada is well beyond this hurdle for all our citizens.
As I wrote on Friday, there needs to be a greater emphasis on broadband adoption. On that key point, I am in full agreement with Professor Ellis. Let’s hope for some action as Parliament returns for the fall session.
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Mark, let me clear up some misconceptions here about satellite connectivity and the bigger picture.
You’ve stood me corrected on the idea that satellites can’t cope with emerging applications like telemedicine. I hold nothing against satellites – or any particular platform. The point of raising the satellite-cable comparison in my post was to explain why it’s not a good idea to treat 1.5 Mbps connectivity as functionally equivalent to 50 Mbps connectivity.
In your previous post, you said yourself we’re spending a huge amount of money without first having a clear statement of our objectives. I like your Hollywood followup: What is Canada’s one-line elevator pitch on broadband?
So let’s get back to what we agree on: a greater emphasis on broadband adoption. So far, the political message from Ottawa is: Canada’s broadband problem begins and ends with those who are not connected because of where they live. That’s been the packaging favored by the Liberals as much as the Tories (at least it was back in the spring). That was also the heart of the CRTC’s message during its August online consultation.
By all means let’s provide connectivity any way we can. Just not at the expense of ignoring Canadians who are disadvantaged by factors other than place of residence. Nor by treating 1.5 Mbps as “real” broadband and the best we can do.