Question About Obama's plans for Infrastructure

[karsen]

US president-elect Barack Obama on Saturday vowed to make the largest investment in the country’s infrastructure since the 1950s and bolster development of broadband Internet connections as part of his program to create 2.5 million jobs.

Obama says he plans on spending billions on improving infrastructure, but he expanded statement that to include such things as broadband cable lines and hospital networking to make insurance cheaper. I'm fine with most of that, but is it just me, or does investing in broadband cable lines seem like a bit of a waste of money? It seems to me the future of broadband is wireless.

Thoughts?

[lafinfil]

I'm no expert, but it seems that even with wireless you would need to have a broadband
distribution system in place to feed those wireless distribution points. That and the US is far behind
many other countries in the implementation of broadband.

Also it seems that many towns have tried overall wireless availability with mixed results but some are still trying.

[karsen]

That may be true, I 'm no expert either. I'm basing my assumption on the fact that most cell phones have Internet capability now. It seems to me that is the next logical direction the technology is headed, not through cable wires.

[mattkime]

>>It seems to me the future of broadband is wireless.

Do you live out in the sticks?

Wireless is good when you need a mediocre connection anywhere otherwise you need copper (at minimum) for a high speed reliable connection. In dense apartment buildings its not unusual to see a dozen different networks. There's only room for 3 without interference.

[lafinfil]

karsen wrote:
That may be true, I 'm no expert either. I'm basing my assumption on the fact that most cell phones have Internet capability now. It seems to me that is the next logical direction the technology is headed, not through cable wires.

Well the long term future may be wireless but I doubt that is is cell technology if your are intending
to use it for heavy duty data transfers like medical records. Also cell is fine as long as you are in n area
that is populated and has good coverage.

I think that if you get a wired backbone down and make it affordable (likely fiber optic) that there would be
a good opportunity for entrepreneurs to create other products off of it - like wireless data systems.

Look at the Korean model. They have a very wide spread broadband system that reaches into the rural areas.
It is very inexpensive because it is government subsidized but there are many companies making money
by charging for services or entertainment over the system.

[karsen]

mattkime wrote:
>>It seems to me the future of broadband is wireless.

Do you live out in the sticks?

Wireless is good when you need a mediocre connection anywhere otherwise you need copper (at minimum) for a high speed reliable connection. In dense apartment buildings its not unusual to see a dozen different networks. There's only room for 3 without interference.

I did say FUTURE.

I understand that wireless is not optimal now. But investing in broadband cable seems to me kind of like investing in VHS technologies when DVD's were already shown to be the wave of the future. Broadband cable seems like a dead end to me.

jmo.

[$tevie]

I'd be very surprised if schools and hospitals are going to be in any position to go totally WiFi any time soon. Just the security aspects of that idea are going to be daunting.

[BigGuynRusty]

karsen wrote:
[quote=mattkime]
>>It seems to me the future of broadband is wireless.

Do you live out in the sticks?

Wireless is good when you need a mediocre connection anywhere otherwise you need copper (at minimum) for a high speed reliable connection. In dense apartment buildings its not unusual to see a dozen different networks. There's only room for 3 without interference.

I did say FUTURE.

I understand that wireless is not optimal now. But investing in broadband cable seems to me kind of like investing in VHS technologies when DVD's were already shown to be the wave of the future. Broadband cable seems like a dead end to me.

jmo. Going all WireLess is like replacing all the water mains in a city with drinking straws.
It isn't going to work.
You still need a ultra high speed, ultra high bandwidth backbone.

BGnR

[BigGuynRusty]

$tevie wrote:
I'd be very surprised if schools and hospitals are going to be in any position to go totally WiFi any time soon. Just the security aspects of that idea are going to be daunting.

All eight medical centers I work for went wireless almost three years ago.
No security issues.

BGnR

[Black Landlord]

BigGuynRusty wrote:
[quote=$tevie]
I'd be very surprised if schools and hospitals are going to be in any position to go totally WiFi any time soon. Just the security aspects of that idea are going to be daunting.

All eight medical centers I work for went wireless almost three years ago.
No security issues.

BGnR
I know a host of medical centers here in Chicago with free wireless for patients and visitors, but I don't know of any that use wifi for internal business and patient related networking.