The National Academies Press

Currently Skimming:

Pages 56-76

The Chapter Skim interface presents what we've algorithmically identified as the most significant single chunk of text within every page in the chapter.
Select key terms on the right to highlight them within pages of the chapter.

From page 56... ... Myers opened the session by announcing that each presenter would have 20 minutes and that the question period would come after all had spoken. He then introduced the panel's first speaker, Mark Doms of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. Read the entire page →
From page 57... ... Those economists who monitor the national economy, whether they work for a statistical agency or for the Federal Reserve, look at measures of how many dollars are spent on communications in the United States every year. What makes their job hard is that a dollar spent today on communications is not the same as a dollar spent yesterday; in fact, there is a great deal of change. Read the entire page →
From page 58... ... In a similar way, the price acts as an indicator of the value that society places on a technological change. It was unfortunately probable, therefore, that the price indexes currently in use for looking at productivity and at GDP understated the true price declines that had occurred for communications equipment. Read the entire page →
From page 59... ... . A quarter-century back, when most of the money spent on telecommunications equipment went to switches for telephone centers, the industry was "a lot easier" to track: "We could see what happened when we went to digital switches." In the 1990s and into 2000, there was a movement away from spending on telephone switches and toward spending on a wide array of telecommunications technologies, in particular those connected to data, computer networking, and fiber optics. Read the entire page →
From page 60... ... Explaining why he had labeled the changes "dramatic," Dr. Jaffe pointed out that the voice network of the future would run over the Internet Protocol (IP) Read the entire page →
From page 61... ... 3. National Emergency Planning/First-Responder Networks. Read the entire page →
From page 62... ... This was because opening up a network to the Internet Protocol meant opening it up to misuse, "something that," he said, "we need to be concerned about from a regulatory point of view." He also called protocol diversity an issue, pointing out that those most expert in the signaling protocol for the next-generation network, IP, were Application Media Server Servers SIP 3GPP/IMS Routing Service Engine Network Switch SIP Subscriber Data Gateway Controller Media Gateway PSTN � Requires regulatory clarity to ensure no hiccups in deployment � Issues include Emergency Planning, CALEA, Disaster recovery � Security issues: SPIT, SPAM, Authentication, Denial of service � Protocol diversity FIGURE 10 3GPP/IMS provides next generation of blended services and VoIP. Read the entire page →
From page 63... ... Similarly, he said, it was important to start thinking about how to do the signaling. For example, should there be some out-of-band signaling even within the Internet Protocol? Read the entire page →
From page 64... ... He cited IBM's Hippocratic Database and Bell Labs' Privacy Conscious Framework as examples of vendors' efforts to fill the vacuum by defining approaches that allowed users to customize their privacy. Improving Readiness for Physical, Cyber Attacks Moving to the topic of emergency planning and first responders, Dr. Read the entire page →
From page 65... ... Jaffe pointed to the major challenge the United States faces in broadband: The country had fallen to eleventh in the world -- or perhaps, as his fellow panelist David Isenberg interjected, to fifteenth-in broadband capacity per capita. Building costs were a factor in this, he said, but there was another reason: While fiber tended to go into new construction, regulatory uncertainty appeared to be holding down the installation of fiber all the way Residential access average peak data rate vs. Read the entire page →
From page 66... ... But using that same technology at the home is very expensive because the amortization is lost. Bell Labs had developed technology in which optical components were put onto silicon wafers, thereby achieving the efficiency of Moore's Law. Read the entire page →
From page 67... ... He stressed that while new services would be enabled through the network's "knowing" a lot about the user, it was necessary to ensure that this was handled appropriately. He termed emergency planning inadequate and called for a nationwide solution based on interoperable high bandwidth. Read the entire page →
From page 68... ... 68 THE TELECOMMUNICATIONS CHALLENGE previous 20 years and would see over the ensuing 10 had resulted from its past leadership in basic research in telecommunications. With this in mind, he advocated reexamining the current U.S. Read the entire page →
From page 69... ... "This allowed the owner of Network C, for example, to introduce cool features so people would prefer it to bad old Network B, which didn't have the features." In the new, inter-networked model, it was the Internet Protocol's job to make all that was Read the entire page →
From page 70... ... Network layer: Expense Network Layer: Commons designed for voice (Subsidized by Internet Protocol Application) Physical Layer: Big Question: non-specific what's the Physical layer: Expense end-to-end (business? Read the entire page →
From page 71... ... Isenberg, "if you get around the fact that when they say `competition,' what they really mean is `competition where I'm the competitor.'" While there would be a modicum of improvement, far less bandwidth would be available than technology would allow or than was available in other technologically advanced countries. Besides a crippled network, this scenario featured crippled competition: Municipalities would not be allowed to compete, for example, and CLECs (competitive local exchange carriers) Read the entire page →
From page 72... ... 72 THE TELECOMMUNICATIONS CHALLENGE Customer Backbone (Terabit) Multiple Players Everybody Loses FIGURE 16 Scenario #1: Competition (as envisioned by 1996 Telecom Act) Read the entire page →
From page 73... ... NEW TECHNOLOGY TRENDS AND IMPLICATIONS 73 Backbone Customer (Terabit) A wisely-run, well-regulated monopoly that gets it FIGURE 18 Scenario #3: Re-regulation -- rethinking "natural monopoly." that monopolies in themselves are not illegal but only become illegal when they engage in certain behaviors, he posited that a monopoly might be crafted that was wisely regulated, well run, and public spirited. Read the entire page →
From page 74... ... , an organization made up of "the abundant small ISPs who helped grow the Internet." She asked advice on what message she might take back from the symposium to her colleagues at WBIA, to the CLECs (competitive local exchange carriers) they worked with, and to others who, she said, "help drive this industry." Voicing the claim that the small ISPs were actually the doorway to innovation, she asked what their future was and whether it was "time for all of us independents to go away." Dr. Read the entire page →
From page 75... ... technological decline and continuation of business as usual, and (2) the development of technologies that allow customers to own their own networks. Read the entire page →
From page 76... ... While admitting that his colleagues generally used the Producer Price Index in their work, he noted that they were receptive to work on indexes being done by academics and in the private sector, and he pointed out that they had incorporated Dr. Doms's work into their price indexes for LAN equipment, switch gear, and other types of high-tech equipment. Read the entire page →

From page 56...

... Myers opened the session by announcing that each presenter would have 20 minutes and that the question period would come after all had spoken. He then introduced the panel's first speaker, Mark Doms of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.