Triangulator

In a report bashing a city-owned broadband utility, the conservative John Locke Foundation reveals a stunning level of ignorance about technology.

"Wilson's Fiber-Optic Boondoggle," written by research director Michael Sanera and intern Katie Bethune, criticizes Wilson, N.C.'s $28 million investment in a fiber-optic network that makes high-speed Internet, cable TV and phone service to every resident and business in the city. The utility project, called Greenlight, is funded by bonds which under the city's business plan are expected to be repaid through subscription revenue.

JLF leads with the critique that the technology "could be obsolete before it's paid for."

Come again?

"WiMax wireless Internet technology is rapidly leapfrogging fiber-optic cable technology, making it obsolete."

To anyone who actually follows Internet technology, that statement is a howler.

Fiber is far and away the most advanced technology available for connecting to the Internet. It offers effectively unlimited capacity and speed. WiMax is the next generation of wireless technology, reaching further and moving data faster than the WiFi most of us use now -- but nowhere near as fast as fiber. And every wireless system has to connect up to some kind of backbone. WiMax works best if connected to a fiber network.

It's expensive to run fiber through city streets and connect every home and business. That's why most private companies aren't willing to do it unless they're assured of making a hefty profit on the investment, and a city must be more densely populated than Wilson for that profit to be high enough. Even in the Triangle, companies like AT&T, Embarq and Time Warner prefer to stick with the copper and coax lines they've already got in the ground.

The JLF report cites no sources for its embarrassing tech analysis, except a footnote to a brief article in the Washington Times that reads like a press release for Sprint's acquisition of wireless company Clearwire. That piece talks about WiMax surpassing the WiFi technology most of us use -- but it makes no mention of fiber.

I showed the JLF report to Jim Baller, a Washington, D.C., attorney who's widely respected as an expert on broadband technology. He recently convened a broad coalition of industry and public interest groups who hope to shape a national strategy for deploying broadband technology.

"The John Locke Foundation's suggestion that WiMax will render Wilson's fiber system obsolete is just absurd," Baller said by e-mail. "The Foundation should understand this -- and perhaps does. To be sure, WiMax offers mobility, and fiber does not. But as any expert will tell you, no wireless technology, including WiMax, has anywhere near the capacity of a fiber-to-the-home system. As applications become increasingly bandwidth-rich, fiber will be able to accommodate them, and wireless won't. At the same time, we will increasingly want to be as mobile as possible. In Japan, South Korea, and other leading broadband nations, fiber and wireless extend and complement each other. That's where we're heading too."