Where’s the fiber?

I was driving near my house the other day and saw a couple of workmen dropping cable down a manhole on a boulevard. While I was waiting at the traffic light, I noticed the label on the truck’s cable spool. It said FIBER. They were laying fiber underground into the sewer system. That’s a very good sign. Of course it will take years before I see that fiber reach my house. Why is this important? Because my internet connection is much more important to me than my cable television package. As an example, I watched the coverage of the bridge collapse in Minneapolis on CNN’s video service and it was much better than the actual broadcast because I could click on the clips that I wanted. I use broadcast television a lot less these days. All of this is possible because of increased bandwidth. But the technology is there to have even better connections in the form of fiber-optic communication, but it’s adoption is very slow.

My cable outfit recently upgraded it’s top of the line “extreme” internet package to provide about 9409 kb/s down and about 946 kb/s up. In other words my upstream is 1/10th my downstream. And for the average user that would be okay. But when you’re uploading 100 massive full resolution images to Flickr or an audio podcast you really notice the slow upload. And I’m not even doing video. I don’t use file sharing services, so it’s not like I need my upstream for bit torrent. This is content that I created, and I’m sure I’m not alone. In fact I know I’m not. Doc Searls did some digging and found a maze of sales information about fiber. His investigation continued here.

I want fiber to the curb man. That’s when the real fun will begin.