Broadband toiling over last-mile knots

Planting cable takes money, time, resources

By Lois M. Collins, Deseret News staff writer

Runners will tell you the "last mile" is often the hardest. The folks trying to bring broadband to communities would agree.

Broadband literally refers to "wide bandwidth." It is a transmission medium, such as cable or digital signature lines, that can support a wide range of frequencies, carrying multiple signals at once by dividing into channels. And it's important because it allows transmission of many kinds of data, including sound and video, at T1 speeds or better.

Members of the Utah Information Technology Association gathered at the E Center Wednesday to hear Ragula Bhaskar talk about the "perils and promise" of broadband's last mile. Bhaskar is president and chief executive officer of Utah-based FatPipe Networks.

Broadband will change the way people exchange data and communicate. It will change programs and products, because as more communities have the superfast access capabilities of good bandwidth, both needs and expectations will change.

The push for broadband for businesses is being driven in part by the increase in "outsourced applications," where companies hire someone else to maintain applications off-site and need good bandwidth to access that information fast. The desire for bandwidth at home is fueled by multiple users, the increase in "virtual offices" and capabilities like MP3, where people download large music files. Once the industry irons out its copyright and licensing issues, that demand will skyrocket.

Optical networking and fiber transmission technology allow the same fiber to carry 256 simultaneous conversations, where only one could be carried at a time a decade ago, Bhaskar said. And "bandwidth is expected to increase as better switching techniques are developed."

Bandwidth has long been the cry of public officials like Gov. Mike Leavitt, corporations, schools and many others. The at-home user is starting to demand it as well.

The last mile is complicated because planting cable is cost- and time-intensive. For digital signature lines (DSL), local central offices have to be installed, because they only function within a certain distance of those offices. And companies trying to bring the service to a community face high labor costs and local regulations on where and how they can dig and lay lines.

The last mile is also the segment most subject to line failures.

So far, companies generally offer their services in metropolitan areas where they can get the most intensive penetration of customers. "Suburbia has the least broadband access because of the lack of density of homes," Bhaskar said, noting the irony that suburbanites are more likely to have the money, individually, to afford broadband service.

Land-based wireless systems that use towers are a strong contender in the field. But they work best in small cities that have flat topography. And though handheld devices are changing that demand, most people don't have a compelling reason yet to expand to wireless, he said.

E-MAIL:lois@desnew.com