[1st-mile-nm] Mea Culpa and Comment

[peter]

Agree again but as our company sees in many of the complex data models 
it builds even your University centric viewpoint will still be a layer 
of the master economic model just from a different usability perspective 
similar to job creation and type - where the students will go 
eventually  to investment directives for new business, creates research 
and jobs etc etc

( : ( : pete

Peter Baston

*IDEAS*

/www.ideapete.com/ <http://www.ideapete.com/>


 

 



Arthur Maccabe wrote:
>
> On Feb 12, 2008, at 2:26 PM, peter wrote:
>
>> Very good points Arthur
>>
>> Yes I realize that the FULL economic targets are never known but with 
>> logical thought process ( mapping - modeling - monitoring ) we should 
>> at least have some direction and reasons
>>
>>
>> Many moons ago there was a tech conference in Santa Fe called 
>> Leapfrog ( How could we jump start NM Connectivity technology 
>> )http://www.ideapete.com/leapfrog.html at which there where some very 
>> quite Germanic types floating around.
>>
>> Some months after the conference I was in Vienna doing work with the 
>> IAEA on security installations and in the hotel where I stayed there 
>> was a conference hosted by Deutsche Tel / Siemens at which I 
>> recognized some of the same guys and naturally we gravitated to the 
>> bar for more discussion.   Turns out that as we all now know DT was 
>> making a run at U S West ( Now Qwest ) and several other telecoms. 
>> The thing that sticks in my mind is the computerized maps and models 
>> they shared about economic growth layered onto the network and 
>> possibilities and how they felt it was essential that part of their 
>> companies mission was to facilitate this.  I well remember going up 
>> to my room thinking " How in the hell did a bunch of Germans come up 
>> with such a clear potential possible road map for our state and why 
>> don't we locally have even snippet of these possibilities " That 
>> vision and our lack of still gives me nightmares
>
> Two observations: 1) DT is a company, they live and die by their 
> ability to build accurate business projections.  My guess is that our 
> local companies don't have particularly good models of the state, but 
> that's just a guess, because if I were them, I'd treat what ever 
> modeling I had as highly confidential (didn't you feel like you were 
> seeing something special).  2) My model is likely to emphasize very 
> different things than the model that others might build.  Working for 
> UNM, I'm going to focus on students who might be better prepared 
> and/or motivated to go on to college (specifically at UNM, but more 
> generally in NM), and I'll include the students who attend virtually 
> because they have sufficient connectivity to work from where they 
> choose to be.....  I expect that others have very different models for 
> supporting first mile connectivity.
>
> BTW, I didn't mean to imply that we should embrace serendipity 
> (unexpected, pleasant surprises) as our economic model (it probably 
> sounded like that), we just need to be wide ranging in our exploration 
> of the space.
>
>>
>>
>> ( : ( : pete
>>
>> Peter Baston
>> IDEAS
>> www.ideapete.com
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Arthur Maccabe wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> Actually, I expect that we are closer to agreement than 
>>> disagreement.  My statement starts by focusing on infrastructure and 
>>> transitions to providing services -- I really meant to emphasize 
>>> services.  As you point out, the existence of physical 
>>> infrastructure does not imply the existence of services.
>>>
>>> I can't say that I am well versed in the specifics of the issues 
>>> that you identify (shame on me since I've lived in the state for 25+ 
>>> years).  However, when I suggest that our challenge is to push 
>>> service to the edge, I intend to include pushing through all 
>>> obstacles that interfere with the delivery of services.  As you 
>>> suggest, many of the obstacles will be financial and political only 
>>> a precious few will be technical.
>>>
>>> In case you're not fond of "pushing services to the edge," I have 
>>> another way of expressing the sentiment  :) :)
>>>     Making place irrelevant so that place can matter.
>>> One of the things that defines New Mexico is that people tend to 
>>> have a strong (social) connection to place.  However, economic 
>>> considerations frequently make it difficult to maintain this 
>>> connection (economies of scale tend to favor metropolitan areas).  
>>> The goal of connectivity is to reduce the negative economic impact 
>>> for rural -- making place irrelevant.  Flattening the cost of 
>>> connectivity is the first step.
>>>
>>> If you don't like that one, I have another :) :)
>>>     IT extension services
>>> This one is from Dan Reed when he was in North Carolina.  NC turns 
>>> out to be a very rural state with an economy based on tobacco, 
>>> furniture and textiles (i.e., really bad things for their economic 
>>> future).  Dan's notion was to build a service infrastructure, based 
>>> on the agricultural extension services model, that could support IT 
>>> as an economic engine in the rural parts of NC.  The ag extension 
>>> service model was successful because the service was pushed out to 
>>> the edge, where everyone could take advantage of the service.
>>>
>>> Now, we need to articulate the economies that will be enabled by the 
>>> presence of IT extension services.  I think this is Peter's point.  
>>> In retrospect, it seems that it would have been easy to articulate 
>>> the economies that would be enabled by ag extension services -- I 
>>> doubt it was.  I expect that a review of the times would show that 
>>> the development of ag extension services was very controversial step 
>>> and that many of the initial attempts failed.  As long as I'm on the 
>>> topic of economics, it's worth remembering that two of our most 
>>> successful networks, the interstate highway system and the Internet, 
>>> were not motivated by the economies that they enabled.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Feb 12, 2008, at 10:45 AM, Marianne Granoff wrote:
>>>
>>>> I agree with almost everything that you have said about NLR and I2,
>>>> but I have to take exception to this last paragraph.  A great many
>>>> of the rural areas of our state have more than adequate fiber
>>>> deployment because the rural phone providers in this state have
>>>> invested in fiber deployment for over 20 years.  For the most part,
>>>> these rural LECs put their customers first.  On the other hand, some
>>>> phone companies with dense population centers in NM put their money
>>>> in 1) other states, 2) paying attorneys to fight regulation, 3)
>>>> paying SEC fines for past bad behavior, 4) paying their high-priced
>>>> executives' defense attorneys in criminal lawsuits, 5) paying for
>>>> expensive media advertising saying how much better they are, 6) paying
>>>> lobbyists to overturn consumer-oriented regulation at the State and
>>>> Federal level, and 7) paying attorneys to fight with their customers.
>>>>
>>>> The challenge is not to "push" network services to the edge.  The
>>>> challenge is to understand that the same services can be had in rural
>>>> areas of NM today, but that such services will cost much more because
>>>> the cost per person is more in rural areas.  I would offer that the
>>>> solutions can be found by inviting the rural LECs to partner in some
>>>> innovative ways instead of paying out-of-state consultants mega-bucks
>>>> to find out what exists.
>>>>
>>>> I have never had a rural LEC in NM tell me I could not order a T1/DS1
>>>> or a T3/DS3 (usually provisioned on fiber).  Our urban phone company
>>>> has responded that they cannot provide even a DS1 on more than one
>>>> occasion, unless I want to pay "construction costs".
>>>>
>>>> My two cents.
>>>>
>>>> Marianne Granoff
>>>> NM Internet Professionals Association
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> At 08:34 AM 2/12/2008 -0700, Arthur Maccabe wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> In the end, it's critical that New Mexico move forward in building
>>>>> adequate communication infrastructure.  This is far more important in
>>>>> New Mexico than in our neighboring states like Arizona or Utah where
>>>>> population is much more centralized and they tend to ignore the rural
>>>>> parts of the state.  I like to think  of our challenge as the need to
>>>>> push (network) services to the edge.  As we go through this process,
>>>>> there will be false starts.  We can spend our time complaining about
>>>>> the problems that we have run into, or we can try to learn from
>>>>> failures and move on -- there's clearly a lot more to do.
>>>
>>
>
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