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Viodi View

Viodi View – 12/01/14

Gigabit in the Cowboy State

An image iof the Snake River in Wyoming.
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Reinvesting in their community is what differentiates independent operators from their competition. Silver Star Communications, which serves northwestern Wyoming and eastern Idaho, exemplifies the difference a local operator can make. It was an honor to spend the day with Silver Star Communications as they launched the first Gigabit communities in Wyoming.

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Leveraging Existing Assets to Bring Fiber to the Bunker

Examples of warhead bunkers that are now used for storing data of various forms.
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With over 2,000 miles of fiber, Finger Lakes Technology Group, Inc (FLTG)., has transformed from a 90+ year-old, independent last mile provider to a provider of mid-mile connectivity in western New York and northern Pennsylvania. In the above interview, FLTG’s president, Paul Griswold, explains their approach to building out a fiber network with the help of anchor tenants. Being independent, FLTG has the flexibility to adapt to local market requirements and provide everything from dark fiber to hosted VoIP services.

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The Nationwide, Distributed Meet Me Room

Ken Pyle interviews Hunter Newby of Allied Fiber at a conference in Half Moon Bay.
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“We treat dark fiber as real estate,” says Hunter Newby, CEO of Allied Fiber in the above interview. Allied Fiber is building a giant ring around the United States to help facilitate connectivity for ILECs, CLECs, Munis, businesses; really any entity that has a need for fiber connectivity.

Building on his earlier work as a founder of carrier hotel Telx, Allied Fiber is transforming the carrier neutral, meet-me room from a single location to one that is distributed over thousands of locations via underground, 528-count, outside plant fiber.

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SDN and NFV Takeaways from Light Reading’s Network Components Conference in Santa Clara by Alan Weissberger

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For years, we’ve been reading and hearing about the never-ending boom in data traffic, the need for fast provisioning, agile networks, service velocity (quicker time to market for new services) for telcos, etc.  It’s been like a non-stop siren call to battle for network operators.  Yet little has been done to date to remedy the situation. At the Nov 6, 2014 Light Reading Nex Gen Network Components conference in Santa Clara, CA, Heaving Reading analyst Simon Stanley echoed a familiar solution. He said that SDN and NFV will permit network equipment vendors and telecom carriers/ISPs to keep up with rising traffic demand, reduce OPEX, and create more flexible networks.

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From Tubes to Semiconductors

The artwork for the book the Tube Guys.
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Paul Wesling (GTE/Lenkurt), Norm Pond (Varian) and Ted Hoff (Intel) explain the transition from tubes to semiconductors and describe the resulting transformation of the Valley of the Hearts Delight into Silicon Valley. Starting in the early 1900s, this fascinating talk shows how modern concepts, like hackathons and sharing, were a factor in the development of homegrown technology that was instrumental in defeating the Nazis in World War II and sending a man to the moon a few decades later. More than technology, the birth of Silicon Valley was about the creation of a culture of innovation and that rewarded results.

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Closing Comments & Perspective on Moore’s Law

Ted Hoff shows an example of a small tube.
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IEEE SV Tech History Chairman Alan J. Weissberger wraps up the panel session with comments about Moore’s law and thanks the panel participants.This video prompted some interesting comments about Moore’s law, including one from Intel employee number 12, Ted Hoff, Jr. about the meaning of Moore’s observation as it related to Intel’s business. The advances in semiconductors led to many changes, including the employment market for the technologists who are the catalyst for the continuing cost/performance advancements described by Gordon Moore so many years ago.

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Some Tweets and Short Thoughts:

  • Nice seeing Innovative Systems’ Ryan Tupper and his son featured in Tom Brokaw’s NBCSN special “OPENING DAY” about opening day for pheasant hunting in South Dakota.
  • @ipolicy Richard Bennet  “All packets are equal” = Denial of Service for real-time apps. Great thinking.
  • Thanks @gleavieboy @TelcoAmericana for the chance to talk about the great things my friends in rural America are doing. . As brought out in TelcoAmericana’s article, my rural friends remind me of what this valley was like when it was primarily rural. What’s cool about the rural broadband providers is that they are the ones bringing Silicon Valley technology to their home towns.

The Korner – A Proposal for an Autonomous Vehicle Mobile Laboratory

Image showing what a vehicle might look like without a steering wheel.
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Maybe it’s the pending increase in insurance rates that result from adding a teenager to one’s insurance policy. Or, maybe it’s the distraction of the always-on Internet that tempts me while I am in the driver’s seat. Or maybe its the frustration that we seem to be on the cusp of some big changes, yet public policy and resource allocation for infrastructure reflect past approaches. Whatever the reason, adding autonomy to vehicles has captured my imagination.

For decades, Michael Robinson has been using his imagination to think about the broader implications of autonomy, as evidenced by his work with the 2001 Lancia Nea, a concept car that foretold many of the features that are in today and tomorrow’s cars. Transforming stupid cars into smart cars is the end-game of his recently announced Mobile Autonomous Automobile Laboratory (MAAL) project.

In his presentation, Robinson outlines plans for creating a platform that will enable vehicle designers to move from designing objects to designing experiences. The first 30 minutes of his presentation discusses the challenges that must be addressed with the addition of autonomy to vehicles (see this link for a description of a similar presentation from Robinson).. The rest of his presentation, highlighted in the links below, talks about how the MAAL project will provide a framework to transition to a world seen in science fiction movies like Iron Man and Terminator.

Author Ken Pyle, Managing Editor

By Ken Pyle, Managing Editor

Ken Pyle is Marketing Director for the Broadband Forum. The mission of this 25+-year-old non-profit “is to unlock the potential for new markets and profitable revenue growth by leveraging new technologies and standards in the home, intelligent small business, and multi-user infrastructure of the broadband network.”

He is also co-founder of Viodi, LLC and Managing Editor of the Viodi View, a publication focused on the rural broadband ecosystem, autonomous vehicles, and electric aviation. He has edited and produced numerous multimedia projects for NTCA, US Telecom and Viodi. Pyle is the producer of Viodi’s Local Content Workshop, the Video Production Crash Course at NAB, as well as ViodiTV. He has been intimately involved in Viodi’s consulting projects and has created processes for clients to use for their PPV and VOD operations, as well authored reports on the independent telco market.

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