Leapfrogging the net in the world at large

I started out to write about O3b's initiative to radically extend the reach of the internet by a combination of satellites, WiMax and 3G cell service. I'll get to that [I don't think I ever did, but O3b looks to still be in business, so I guess there's still time --D.H. June 2015], but as so often happens I ran across something else while running that down. It's probably worth its own post, but it's in line with the theme of leapfrogging so I'll go ahead and mention it here:

There is now approximately one cell phone subscription for every two people on the planet -- pretty mind-boggling considering that about a quarter of the world's population is under 15. Now, I know for a fact that some people have more than one cell phone subscription and some portion of the under-15 set has cell phones, too, but still ...

Not only are cell phones competing vigorously against land lines head to head, to the point that many people don't even bother to set up a land line when moving into a new place, but they have a significant advantage in areas where wires are expensive to build out or simply haven't been. This includes large rural areas, mountainous areas, archipelagos (which, come to think of it, are just mountainous areas with a higher waterline) and much of the developing world.

This isn't just a cell phone thing. It's a general wires vs. wireless thing which should apply equally well to internet service. Which brings us back to O3b.

O3b is short for "Other 3 billion," though as far as I can tell there are more like 1.5 billion internet users (a lot, but fewer than have cell phones), which left me to wonder about the other other billion and a half. It turns out they mean the 3 billion for whom fiber is not likely to be an option anytime soon.

If you buy the premise that internet access is a good thing, and if you don't you're probably not reading this, then the bad news right now is that large swathes of the world lack the infrastructure to offer copper-based service to everyone, much less fiber. The good news is that whoever wants to build out the internet has a blank slate to work with and won't have to wrangle with telecoms and cable operators. Thus the notion of leapfrogging over the wired stage directly to wireless.

When I first read that someone was going to use satellites to cover previously uncovered areas, my thought was "why?" Putting birds up in orbit is expensive. Building radio towers on the ground is much cheaper. There have been attempts to bring the internet to rural customers via satellite, but as I understand it the results are cumbersome. Typically the satellite broadcasts your incoming data and everyone else's down and you use something low-bandwidth (maybe even dialup?) for the uplink.

But this is not what O3b is going for. Their tagline says it all: "3G / WiMAX Wireless Backhaul and IP Trunking." That's clear enough, right? If not, perhaps this Financial Times article linked from the O3b site will help. It certainly helped me. [you'll have to register unless their server arbitraily decides you've downloaded fewer than four FT articles in the last 30 days]

The problem these days is not getting billions of people wireless connections. Everyone has a cell phone, or soon will, it seems. The problem is, what is that cell connection connected to? Right now, in much of the world, the answer is "not much", or at least not much beyond the carrier's cell phone network.

This is where the satellites come in. The satellites connect the cell towers to the internet backbone. Since the messy work of gathering up the incoming data and dispersing the outgoing data has been done on the ground, the satellites just have to beam high-bandwidth, much more uniform traffic around to each other and to and from the backbone and cell networks. This seems like a much better match, to the limited extent that I can tell, and at least some major players seem interested as well (notably, Google).

If done right, this could be quite a Good Thing. Lots of people get cheap, fast internet access, the local carriers make some money, O3b makes some money and all those One Laptop Per Child laptops get something to connect to.

We want the world and we want it reasonably soon

One of the nice features of digital TV is that you can decide when to watch a given program. This isn't a new feature, but digital delivery makes it a lot easier. Anyone remember VCR Plus?

In fact, you can time-shift in two different ways with a typical digital cable setup (at least, I think mine is fairly typical):

• Record a program and watch it at your leisure
• Get it on demand

In either case, you watch the show when you want. The difference is when the bits arrive. In the first case, they arrive when the broadcaster decides to send them. In the second case, they arrive when you ask for them.

What determines which way the bits get to you?

• Storage space: Your DVR will only hold so much. If you try to record everything you might possibly be interested in, you're liable to run out of space. This factor is rapidly changing.
• Broadcast bandwidth: There's only so much spectrum available. With infinite bandwidth, a provider could broadcast every piece of video/film ever made at 1,000,000x speed on an infinite loop and everyone could grab what they wanted as it came by [See this post for some implications of that].
• Copy protection: A provider might prefer that you not store a copy of the bits. Instead, it would prefer to send encrypted bits to a box that decodes them, without offering a ready way to store the results. This factor is also subject to change as the whole copy protection issue shakes out.
• Time sensitivity. A live event has to go out live. Even pre-recorded material can have more impact if everyone gets it at the same time -- the water-cooler effect.

The broadcast-and-record model doesn't require a data network. Traditional TV/Radio broadcasting, whether from towers or satellites, works just fine. VHF and UHF together comprise around 3GHz of bandwidth, readily available without building out a "last mile". At the moment, that's still quite a bit of bandwidth. Even if the broadcast is via a data network, there's no requirement that said network be connected to or behave like the internet.

The downside is that (for the most part) you don't get to choose when the bits are sent. But how much of a downside is that? It's not a problem for live content -- quite the opposite. It's not a problem for not-so-live content either, as long as you can still choose when you watch.

Again, the connection between receiving and watching has been loosening over time as storage gets cheaper and easier. Maybe this is just me, but if my favorite show comes in while I'm asleep and I can watch it whenever I want the next day, I've got no problem. On the other hand, if it's something that everyone just absolutely has to watch at a given time, that's essentially live content.

The upshot is this: Given ample cheap storage, it would appear worthwhile to broadcast anything new that lots of people want to see, regardless of whether they want to see right at that moment.

I haven't paid a lot of attention to satellite TV lately, having had cable for the past few years, but I could imagine someone shipping out a set-top box pre-loaded with a huge video library and space for plenty more. Only new content gets broadcast.

Live content comes in as it happens. Pre-recorded content comes in whenever the bandwidth is available. Everything gets stored on the box, using double-secret heavy encryption mojo. You can have whatever you want, and reasonably soon. The result would be pretty much indistinguishable from a cable set-up.

You would even have on-demand viewing. This difference is that instead of demanding the bits, you're demanding authorization to decrypt the bits (for a while, at least). You might well obtain the decryption key via the web, in which case the web handles the transaction, but the heavy lifting of moving large hunks of video around can happen elsewhere if that makes sense.

Such a scheme would also have all of the usual data-protection problems, notably including analog conversion, but that comes with the territory. Whether it's less secure than an existing on-demand service depends on just how good the double-secret heavy encryption mojo is. I can see content providers being nervous about putting the keys to the kingdom directly in the hands of millions of subscribers, however well protected the data may be. But on the other hand, isn't the whole point of mass media to get the bits to as many people as possible?