Public-Private Partnerships and Bandwidth-as-Currency

Investment in fiber optics is down, wireless is up. It leaves unused fiber laying around. By being able to deliver to specific customers on-demand, as opposed to a large-investment, wide-area of customers, PPP's can use up this unused fiber, and then run your life with it. (but not really; but then again; see below.)

Red Death

NASA Langley Research Center - Multimedia Repository

Why Is Google Fiber the Country’s Only Super-Speed Internet?
KLINT FINLEY 01.11.13
clipped:

"Seattle is one of several cities left behind by the major broadband providers, but it happens to have excess fiber capacity. But according to The Seattle Times, few residents have been able to take advantage of it, though Spectrum Networks does offer service in the South Lake Union neighborhood."

"The problem, Ansboury explains, is that the most expensive part of a fiber deployment is the what’s called the “last mile” service — bringing fiber from the big “backbone” connections to the customers’ homes and office buildings. Gibabit Squared will lease fiber capacity from the city and build much of the last mile infrastructure itself."

-Mark Ansboury, president and co-founder of GigaBit Squared, broadband provider company\

[The topic of bandwidth is next mentioned in the article, where we are looking at the potential for wireless to equal fiber. It is so very difficult not to remember Charles Stross, in his posthumanist scifi Accelerando (2005), where he places a lot of value on bandwidth in the future, and ever offers a solution to the Fermi paradox, claiming that the apparent lack of intelligent life in the universe is an illusion created by a shortage of bandwidth. Anyway, back to reality.]

...the secret to getting and maintaining these speeds is keeping the user count low, according to GigaOM

...the issue with both CTC and DARPA’s project is how many simultaneous users it can support
http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2013/01/google-fiber-shaming-exercise/all/

It's hard to see the future without wireless communication dominating all other forms. The problem with the future of bandwidth will not be what -  the medium of transmission - but who and when is using it and at how much. It's a time-management issue mixed with some user-prioritization. We can imagine myriad package deals of data use, similar to peak times and multi-tiered data plans already in play. But now imagine that you need data to live, more than money, in fact, and the better job you have, the better your data package. The president can have maximum access of the total bandwidth if he wants, whenever he wants. Children under 6 years old get much less.

With so many new ways to create disparities within society, what laws will we be fighting for and against?

Zoning Laws in the Metaverse
JUNE 25, 2012
Decision-making, Public Oversight, and Privatization
AUGUST 4, 2012