Broadband: A Primer on Telecommunications Technology

At recent Annual Meeting, at request of Telecommunications Standing Committee, Management Issues Committee recommended, and NRECA members approved, that Resolution on Director, Management and Employee Training should include a directive to NRECA to develop a primer that furthers understanding of emerging telecommunications This document attempts to respond to this resolution. I. Introduction Americans shop, trade stocks, pay bills and search for information on-line. This ability to rapidly send or receive digitized information has transformed global economy. Unfortunately, technologies to provide this capability -- technologies of broadband Internet access- are not penetrating all areas of country equally. A recent article in New York Times was called Life in Slow Lane: Rural Residents are Frustrated by Sluggish Web Access. It described a real estate agent in Pryor, Oklahoma, who uses a dial-up modem to connect through her local Internet Service Provider. According to article, the connection is never very fast -- 33 kilobits per second at most, although she has a 56K modem -- and at night it slows to a crawl. Like millions of others, she wants a faster Internet connection. But unlike urban and suburban Americans, she is stuck with slow dial-up service because there are no other choices in Pryor, Oklahoma, population 8,300. This lady may have been inconvenienced, but problem she faces in other circumstances could turn out to be a matter of life and death. Many communities cannot support medical specialists, but journals are full of stories about how sick or injured people can be diagnosed from afar. Digital technology and advanced imaging systems allow doctors to diagnose and design treatments for people living thousands of miles away from hi-tech medical facilities. The technology for delivering a fine-grained signal must be precise, allowing doctors to peer with precision into a human body using a wire smaller than your little finger. You may recall reading about Dr. Jerri Nielsen, a physician who served at Amundsen-Scott South Pole Research Center at South Pole. Dr. Nielsen found a lump in her breast. Worse, it was Antarctic winter, and no planes could get in or out for a six-month period. Because of Internet, she was able to e-mail photographs of slides of tumor to doctors back home, and they were able to guide her through her initial treatment. These examples show obstacles to and promise of broadband technology. Most urban Americans have fast, stable access to Internet. The generic term for this is broadband. It refers to ability to transmit and receive large amounts of data to and from a computer. The ability to transmit this data is determined by size of pipe through which it moves, referred to as bandwidth. As Internet has become more graphical and interactive, need for broadband has increased. Numerous applications have been developed that require greater bandwidth to be used effectively. Broadband services include interactive purchasing, video-on-demand, remote interactive medical services, remote access to stored video materials, and two-way teleconferencing. As a result, government agencies, hospitals, and consumers all want broadband access. Additionally, many electric cooperatives are investigating telecommunications technologies, and cooperative boards are being asked to invest in broadband infrastructure. But exactly what are these technologies, how do they work, and which have applications in rural America? This Primer attempts to answer these questions. Its objective is to explain basic broadband technologies to non-technical readers. It will begin with a brief explanation of bits and bytes of digital world, and then explain role of Internet Service Provider. …