US needs more fiber

Ha! Before you run away, holding your nose, thinking this is another one of those cliche "diet" recommendations, please reconsider! For a change, this "fiber" post is referring to high-speed communication lines, the future of telecommunications.

As a former Baby Bell employee, it amazed me that so many of our telecommunications lines were still copper. In fact, we were just starting to deploy fiber to the home at the turn of the century. The reasoning? Cost, most likely, although the enhanced video and other highspeed services that can be packaged on a fiber line would (eventually) more than make up for that initial buildout cost.

In fact, we lived in a small town near the mountains in Colorado for a short time, where the local "mom and pop" phone comapny had actually deployed fiber to the home. Granted, most of the residents had no idea what this was. In fact, many of them didn't even use the internet yet, but they were prepared.

It is a common offering from more advanced communications companies like GOL in Japan, to offer fiber lines with blazing speeds up to 100MB. Here in the US, we're debating between the 1.5Mb of local DSL and 3MB (if you're lucky) with cable. If I were moving to Japan (and if you ever plan on moving there, listen up!), I would check out Japan's only English ISP, where you can also grab ~47MB ADSL lines. Unbelievable. Companies like GOL even offer free setup for all of their web hosting packages and free domain name registrations, which means that your ISP and hosting needs could be tackled under one roof.

I ran across GOL while thumbing through the latest PayPerPost opportunities, and it really has me longing for the day when I can get great deals like this on amazing internet speeds packaged with hosting service. Seeing as this is the good ol' US of A, I give it at least another 7-10 years before the "bellheads" have figured out how to offer opportunities like these to average net users like myself. But then again, the average net user of the USA probably wouldn't know what to do with this type of bandwidth.

Ahhh, but there's always video!