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Fiber: The Coming Tech Revolution―and Why America Might Miss It
The world of 5G, the next generation of telecommunication technology, will be as different from what came before as the world after the advent of electricity. The massive amounts of data we’ll be able to stream through fiber-optic connections will enable a degree of virtual presence that will radically transform health care, education, urban administration and services, agriculture, retail sales, and offices. Yet all of those transformations will pale in comparison to the innovations that we can’t even imagine today.
In a fascinating account combining legal expertise with compelling on-the-ground reporting, Susan Crawford reveals how the giant corporations that control cable and internet access in the United States use their tremendous lobbying power to tilt the playing field against competition, holding back the infrastructure improvements necessary for the country to move forward. And she shows how a few cities and towns are fighting monopoly power to bring the next technological revolution to their communities.
In a fascinating account combining legal expertise with compelling on-the-ground reporting, Susan Crawford reveals how the giant corporations that control cable and internet access in the United States use their tremendous lobbying power to tilt the playing field against competition, holding back the infrastructure improvements necessary for the country to move forward. And she shows how a few cities and towns are fighting monopoly power to bring the next technological revolution to their communities.
264 pages, Hardcover
Published December 11, 2018
58 people are currently reading
319 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews
February 15, 2019
This book makes a great argument the high capacity last mile connection is critical to our economic future! Along the way it shows examples in Japan, Scandinavia, and Korea where fiber is extensively deployed and how that has facilitated education and medicine and social engagement! That happens as a result of the governments public policy. As AT&T was given a mandate, “one policy universal service” and a guaranteed rate of return from long distance, they, AT&T, delivered on universal service and funded Bell Labs, a national asset! This has happened with fiber deployment in those countries.
But it will not happen in the US that way! Our broadband industry is designed to deliver content and along the way to deliver some asymmetrical communications. To get really high speed symmetrical fiber broadband and a network that will provide the infrastructure for high speed mobility (5G) fiber to the premises is needed!
The combination of our country’s entrepreneurial culture an “universal” fiber connection is the key to our country next generation economic leadership. The author argues that it is essential!
Her solutions however are piecemeal, she proposes community based dark fiber that could carry entrepreneurial services, the internet of things. Each community on its own would have find experts, find financing, and promote services, daunting at best!
Chapter 11 of the book proposes regulatory requirements and enforcement policies that might be necessary. Ok, maybe, but a policy for universal service is not proposed, and it is unnecessary!
I’m convinced that the market place can solve the problem given proper incentives, and some minimal funding of/or loan guarantees of pilot programs.
I know of some!
But it will not happen in the US that way! Our broadband industry is designed to deliver content and along the way to deliver some asymmetrical communications. To get really high speed symmetrical fiber broadband and a network that will provide the infrastructure for high speed mobility (5G) fiber to the premises is needed!
The combination of our country’s entrepreneurial culture an “universal” fiber connection is the key to our country next generation economic leadership. The author argues that it is essential!
Her solutions however are piecemeal, she proposes community based dark fiber that could carry entrepreneurial services, the internet of things. Each community on its own would have find experts, find financing, and promote services, daunting at best!
Chapter 11 of the book proposes regulatory requirements and enforcement policies that might be necessary. Ok, maybe, but a policy for universal service is not proposed, and it is unnecessary!
I’m convinced that the market place can solve the problem given proper incentives, and some minimal funding of/or loan guarantees of pilot programs.
I know of some!
November 9, 2020
This is really a must-read for policy analysts. The author takes a deep dive into a complicated topic while making it as understandable and relevant as your favorite morning podcast. It's really two stories in one: first, how the political squabbles currently preventing widespread access to fiber networks are essentially the same that previously burdened the spread of electric power to rural communities in the early 20th-century. Second, that fiber access across class lines is a plausible remedy for many of the complex inequalities that have otherwise been augmented by the advances in internet technology over the past few decades.
Sadly, however, the author also does a good job of explaining how America might easily miss this opportunity to repair its struggling infrastructure, and that ultimately the success of the fiber revolution hinges on the same thing most other progressive tech policies hinge on--the willingness of voters and policymakers to dive as deeply into a complicated (but accessible) topic as Crawford has.
Sadly, however, the author also does a good job of explaining how America might easily miss this opportunity to repair its struggling infrastructure, and that ultimately the success of the fiber revolution hinges on the same thing most other progressive tech policies hinge on--the willingness of voters and policymakers to dive as deeply into a complicated (but accessible) topic as Crawford has.
October 17, 2021
For someone who currently works in local government with the job of trying to provide internet access to rural communities, this book is incredibly relevant to me. However, the more the general public knows about the importance of this issue, the better.
Susan Crawford walks through every step of how fiber is made, how it is implemented and expresses the technological potential it unlocks. Fiber is the only way communities can compete in our new global digital economy. Fiber allows multiple people in the household to access the internet for remote work, and online school/homework. Fiber also allows for advancements in telehealth whether that is online therapy or medical monitoring of the very sick and elderly. It will allow residents to access more information and buy and sell on a global marketplace. Maybe most importantly, it provides a foundation for communities to participate in the next economy. The days of manufacturing labor dominance are over. Local governments will have to invest in their communities' digital skills to keep up with changing labor demands to avoid much of their workforce experiencing the worst effects of automation. Fiber is the foundation that will keep these communities afloat in the future.
What Susan Crawford does best though is explain how this is incredibly hard to do on the local level. Local governments face a list of challenges including limited budgets, existing socioeconomic issues, opposition from powerful incumbent internet service providers, and regulation limitation.
"Fiber: The Coming Tech Revolution - and Why American Might Miss It" is incredibly relevant to the economic future of the United States today. The pandemic highlighted the need for Fiber, and there is now much more national attention on this issue, but Susan Crawford's book provides the steps on how to get this done.
Susan Crawford walks through every step of how fiber is made, how it is implemented and expresses the technological potential it unlocks. Fiber is the only way communities can compete in our new global digital economy. Fiber allows multiple people in the household to access the internet for remote work, and online school/homework. Fiber also allows for advancements in telehealth whether that is online therapy or medical monitoring of the very sick and elderly. It will allow residents to access more information and buy and sell on a global marketplace. Maybe most importantly, it provides a foundation for communities to participate in the next economy. The days of manufacturing labor dominance are over. Local governments will have to invest in their communities' digital skills to keep up with changing labor demands to avoid much of their workforce experiencing the worst effects of automation. Fiber is the foundation that will keep these communities afloat in the future.
What Susan Crawford does best though is explain how this is incredibly hard to do on the local level. Local governments face a list of challenges including limited budgets, existing socioeconomic issues, opposition from powerful incumbent internet service providers, and regulation limitation.
"Fiber: The Coming Tech Revolution - and Why American Might Miss It" is incredibly relevant to the economic future of the United States today. The pandemic highlighted the need for Fiber, and there is now much more national attention on this issue, but Susan Crawford's book provides the steps on how to get this done.
May 30, 2019
I was anxious to read this book about fiber optic communications because I worked as an engineering intern (almost 40 years ago) on the beginnings of this technology. My actual engineering career was in a different field and I have always wondered why we don’t hear more about FO use in this country.
This book was just technical enough to answer many questions I had about what is essentially a process of sending a light frequency through a glass tube, and how all the connection and power loss problems have been handled. It has become the ideal for high speed computer connections but because of a certain huge US cable company, it has not been installed in most homes and at a huge cost where available. This has caused the US to fall behind other countries in Europe and Asia and to have “awful internet access” in most American states and cities.
This book was just technical enough to answer many questions I had about what is essentially a process of sending a light frequency through a glass tube, and how all the connection and power loss problems have been handled. It has become the ideal for high speed computer connections but because of a certain huge US cable company, it has not been installed in most homes and at a huge cost where available. This has caused the US to fall behind other countries in Europe and Asia and to have “awful internet access” in most American states and cities.
April 7, 2019
It's hard to imagine a world where electricity isn't everywhere. Would the modern world make sense if I had to go the library everyday to charge my phone? How about a world where there were fewer highways? There would be places you just couldn't drive to because someone just decided there was no profit in building a road to Alaska.
You'd also have to pay to travel on roads by the mile. Alternatively you could pay a higher base price for a monthly ration of miles, but quake with fear from exceeding your monthly allowance because you'll be charged an even higher price for each mile exceeded. They might call that network optimization and they would be saying that they'd be doing you a favor sparing you from the pain of traffic. And that's the future of information access in America, but we can still dream of a future America where information access is more like electricity and highways and less like DSL and mobile internet service. They'd just be there and you wouldn't have to worry about it; you could just get on with your day and make your living off it without being taxed twice over it. First by the government then again by Big Telecom. What a dream.
Crawford would like us to believe that the only necessary thing we need to make that future a reality is leadership. Sure there's a short list of cities and towns who have leaders with foresight that have opted to invest in last mile fiber, but Crawford only mentions in passing the crises that triggered the leadership that demanded electrification and the interstate system. Perhaps her long discussion of fiber's impact on healthcare might make up for that but it's hardly as dire an existential threat like the Great Depression or the Cold War. An alternative might be a discussion of how ubiquitous digital access might affect our ability to manage climate change. Today we have thousands of weather sensors and they give us a powerful ability to predict the weather. Imagine what could be done with millions of sensors and all of that data running around on a fiber network powering our response to catastrophic weather events. Now that's a crisis on par with the Soviet challenge.
We need a compelling reason to change. Just consider how without the Cold War hanging over us we've failed to maintain the interstate highway system the way it deserves to be maintained. It's like we just woke up one morning and decided collectively that investing in the future was futile. And the latest greatest infrastructure debate we're currently having is over a wall that will cost us too much money to build and cost too much to maintain.
I don't have much hope for a fiber future for America. I don't have much hope for 5G. Chattanooga may be the best, most efficient place in America to show the rest of the country what 5G will be good for but I don't imagine Verizon or ATT lining up to install it there except to prevent any independent effort to create a 5G network. But at least Fiber lets us still dream of a future with fiber and 5G while the rest of the world leaves us behind or you can just move to Chattanooga.
You'd also have to pay to travel on roads by the mile. Alternatively you could pay a higher base price for a monthly ration of miles, but quake with fear from exceeding your monthly allowance because you'll be charged an even higher price for each mile exceeded. They might call that network optimization and they would be saying that they'd be doing you a favor sparing you from the pain of traffic. And that's the future of information access in America, but we can still dream of a future America where information access is more like electricity and highways and less like DSL and mobile internet service. They'd just be there and you wouldn't have to worry about it; you could just get on with your day and make your living off it without being taxed twice over it. First by the government then again by Big Telecom. What a dream.
Crawford would like us to believe that the only necessary thing we need to make that future a reality is leadership. Sure there's a short list of cities and towns who have leaders with foresight that have opted to invest in last mile fiber, but Crawford only mentions in passing the crises that triggered the leadership that demanded electrification and the interstate system. Perhaps her long discussion of fiber's impact on healthcare might make up for that but it's hardly as dire an existential threat like the Great Depression or the Cold War. An alternative might be a discussion of how ubiquitous digital access might affect our ability to manage climate change. Today we have thousands of weather sensors and they give us a powerful ability to predict the weather. Imagine what could be done with millions of sensors and all of that data running around on a fiber network powering our response to catastrophic weather events. Now that's a crisis on par with the Soviet challenge.
We need a compelling reason to change. Just consider how without the Cold War hanging over us we've failed to maintain the interstate highway system the way it deserves to be maintained. It's like we just woke up one morning and decided collectively that investing in the future was futile. And the latest greatest infrastructure debate we're currently having is over a wall that will cost us too much money to build and cost too much to maintain.
I don't have much hope for a fiber future for America. I don't have much hope for 5G. Chattanooga may be the best, most efficient place in America to show the rest of the country what 5G will be good for but I don't imagine Verizon or ATT lining up to install it there except to prevent any independent effort to create a 5G network. But at least Fiber lets us still dream of a future with fiber and 5G while the rest of the world leaves us behind or you can just move to Chattanooga.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
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September 25, 2019Actually stopped reading with 50 or so pages to go. Thinking I will re-read next winter and finish.
March 26, 2019
My job involves helping a city government use data to better understand what is happening within its borders and ultimately make policies and decisions based on that information. As sensors and other internet of things devices become available, a city can benefit because information can be collected in an autonomous fashion that previously would have either not been possible, or required too much staff time.
In my city, almost half of the households do not have a broadband subscription or a computer. In the poorest Census tracts, about 80% of households lack connectivity.
Fiber is only available to a small portion of the population in my city, and it costs almost $100 per month, if you're lucky enough to have the wires run to your house.
This book does a masterful job discussing the challenges cities face when fiber is not available to all at a reasonable price. It also tells inspiring and exciting stories about the potential for fiber and innovation. Though fiber does not suddenly end poverty or solve challenges related to education or health, it does enable new economies that could help better a citizenry.
The book is a call-to-action of sorts to local and federal governments, and to all of us, to demand fiber that is available broadly and comprehensively, and for a reasonable price.
The United States ahas already fallen behind countries like South Korea and Sweden when it comes to fiber deployment. But with successful examples in Chattanooga, TN and a fiber cooperative in Minnesota, the examples for progress exist in the US today.
In my city, almost half of the households do not have a broadband subscription or a computer. In the poorest Census tracts, about 80% of households lack connectivity.
Fiber is only available to a small portion of the population in my city, and it costs almost $100 per month, if you're lucky enough to have the wires run to your house.
This book does a masterful job discussing the challenges cities face when fiber is not available to all at a reasonable price. It also tells inspiring and exciting stories about the potential for fiber and innovation. Though fiber does not suddenly end poverty or solve challenges related to education or health, it does enable new economies that could help better a citizenry.
The book is a call-to-action of sorts to local and federal governments, and to all of us, to demand fiber that is available broadly and comprehensively, and for a reasonable price.
The United States ahas already fallen behind countries like South Korea and Sweden when it comes to fiber deployment. But with successful examples in Chattanooga, TN and a fiber cooperative in Minnesota, the examples for progress exist in the US today.
January 22, 2019
Susan Crawford has published the right book at the right time. Fiber: The Coming Tech Revolution -- And Why America Might Miss It, makes a compelling case for local organizing around better Internet networks upon which the future will be written.
The book revolves around several communities that will be familiar to anyone following community networks - cities like Chattanooga and Wilson, many of whom are members of Next Century Cities. Even people with only a casual interest in how to achieve the best Internet access will recognize some of the community names in Susan’s latest book.
As someone who has tracked these networks closer than most, several of the anecdotes were new to me and sufficiently powerful that I - literally - had to restrain myself from cheering while finishing the book on a flight. So it works well both for someone unfamiliar with the technology or movement as well as for those of us who have worked from within it for many years.
I published a longer review here
The book revolves around several communities that will be familiar to anyone following community networks - cities like Chattanooga and Wilson, many of whom are members of Next Century Cities. Even people with only a casual interest in how to achieve the best Internet access will recognize some of the community names in Susan’s latest book.
As someone who has tracked these networks closer than most, several of the anecdotes were new to me and sufficiently powerful that I - literally - had to restrain myself from cheering while finishing the book on a flight. So it works well both for someone unfamiliar with the technology or movement as well as for those of us who have worked from within it for many years.
I published a longer review here
August 4, 2019
I enjoyed this book a great deal. The author puts forth an argument (would that be the right word?) that the time has come for local government to connect every home and business within its jurisdiction to a fiber optic line. The connection would be a public service - like your electric connection or your water or sewer connections. The resident of each building would then be free to contract for high-speed internet with any one of several competitors. The author gave three examples of small U.S. cities (Wilson, NC, Chattanooga, TN, and a rural area in Minnesota) where the local municipalities laid and connected the fiber and are running their own internet connections. She discussed the barriers that the current monopolistic cable and telecoms are placing in the way. She tells how the lobbyists have bought their ways into the legislatures and worked through ALEC to pass laws at the state level to prevent cities and towns from laying their fiber and running the service as a publicly owned utility. I hope that city leaders can use this book to get municipal high-speed fiber optic internet service connected all across the U.S.
March 20, 2024
It's not that this book was poorly written, but that it didn't have enough to do with the nature of fiber networks, it's engineering, operations, and history, and had too much discursive content on what fiber enables (mostly web 2.0 services, like MOOCs and interactive multimedia etc., the book was written a few years ago at the height of that web trend).
The problem with a book that tries to discuss too much and connect everything is it's not too satisfying as a book on any one topic. Towards the end of the book there's a good amount of content on the competition between Fios, DSL, and other consumer-grade broadband vectors. If the entire book went deeper into this, this text could be a 4 or 5 star text. As-is, it's a introductory text at best. Not recommended.
The problem with a book that tries to discuss too much and connect everything is it's not too satisfying as a book on any one topic. Towards the end of the book there's a good amount of content on the competition between Fios, DSL, and other consumer-grade broadband vectors. If the entire book went deeper into this, this text could be a 4 or 5 star text. As-is, it's a introductory text at best. Not recommended.
March 20, 2019
This was my go to resource for information on everything related to broadband. Crawford has traveled and researched those countries who are already providing reliable, affordable broadband to their citizens and notes that the U.S. is behind in this realm. She discusses the challenges that the U.S. faces with large corporations monopolizing the broadband industry as well as the solutions that municipalities have taken in order to provide reliable, affordable broadband for their residents. I recommend this book for anyone who is trying to help their community solve their broadband issues.
February 17, 2019
There are many things that influence our lives. Access to technology is one of them. One of the things that set Bill Gates apart from his peers is that he has access to a computer as a child before most adults did. One of the things I really liked about this book was the comparison to the fight to make electricity accessible nationwide. There is a battle going on right now and I'm happy this book exists to shed light on that battle.
March 14, 2019
Very interesting subject matter and learned a lot (made me go and check my own speed - 150MBps, which made me realize both my own privilege as well as the unfulfilled potential of fiber connections 8x as fast as my current one). While I am always a fan of repeating important points to drive home the message, I felt that some of the authors points were overly repetitive at times. Overall though a great read.
October 15, 2020
This is a must-read primer on the significance of fiber optic networks and the implications it has for expanding economic opportunities and democracy in general. It also provides a clear-eyed overview of who and what stands in the way of bringing the US into to 21st century as it relates to broadband infrastructure. Best of all, you don’t have to be a tech whiz to engage this easily accessible and readable book
November 27, 2023
This is a good length for the subject. It was a fast listen, and I came away on-board with the author's thesis that fiber connectivity is imperative for our country, but she seems to move too fast away from considering the major companies as part of the solution, something that is happening now (with Federal $$$). I hope that she does a post-pandemic edition, now that there have been so many advances.
April 9, 2019
Like in Europe, back in the 1930s, another self appointed expert using nationalism to shoot for a good governmental position. And it's an excellent bet. Either outcome the results have no negative effect on the speaker.
August 9, 2019
Honestly one of the most important books out right now. Very interesting to learn more about how state government is hindering local fiber build-out and what small towns and counties have been able to achieve thanks to fiber access.
September 15, 2021
No doubt this author is professional at optical communication. However, he doesn’t know what make America so great! Freedom! Free speech. Free business without control or subsidies from government or very little control and subsidies. Of course, everything is based on the rule of law.
January 8, 2019
O.K., the country needs to be wired & we're being held hostage by the monopolies that control our communications network.
March 3, 2019
A must-read for government officials at all levels.
January 30, 2021
Opens the mind to the limits that big telco projects onto us consumers.
May 7, 2021
Fiber seems good.
March 17, 2022
Incredibly well researched and written. An amazingly detailed look at the state of internet connectivity in the U.S. and where we can be and should be.
February 12, 2020
Big disappointment. Too much of it was historical with little insight on new discoveries.
January 16, 2019
This is one of those books that should be very widely read. Minor nitpicks aside, the author makes a strong case for why fiber optic internet infrastructure should be established as a public utility.
Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews