Web Development Live

The report, “Broadband Internet Use in Rural Pennsylvania,” examines broadband availability and adoption in four sectors health care, local government, education and business through case studies, interviews with key information-technology personnel and analysis of organizations’ Web sites. While the report focuses on Pennsylvania, their recommendations hold true for any state with a large rural population, according to the researchers.

“Broadband services offer a huge opportunity for rural areas with significant payback in terms of economic development and community revitalization,” said Amy Glasmeier, professor of geography and co-author of the report. “The Internet makes possible a whole range of processes which involve more than rapid access to information and which range from joint projects by municipalities and collaborations between schools to development of new business processes.”

According to the researchers, while the number of rural users of broadband Internet services has been steadily increasing, access to broadband is not universal in rural areas, and in some places, dial-up remains the only affordable option. While dial-up allows for electronic access to information, its slower speed and lower bandwidth capacity limit organizations from developing Internet-enabled processes and collaborations what the researchers distinguish as “transformative” uses.

For instance, with broadband Internet, rural hospitals could improve patient care by forging networks with urban hospitals to access their expertise and resources. Rural hospitals also could develop interactive processes such as online appointment scheduling, remote patient monitoring through biosignals and image data and videoconferencing between patients and doctors.

“Policy must consider ways to facilitate broadband deployment to do more than the status quo only slightly faster or with less face-to-face contact,” Glasmeier said.

But policy makers also need to recognize that there is no single solution to the challenges of broadband utilization. Programs need to be specific to their sectors and linked to the specific challenges facing individual sectors, the researchers assert.

Some interactive processes such as streaming of public meetings, tax payments, conversation forums and collaborative software for curriculum development which broadband Internet can facilitate for local governments and school districts are less relevant for businesses and hospitals, for instance.

The report’s co-authors are Chris Benner, associate professor at University of California-Davis; Chandrani Ohdedar, Ph.D. student, Penn State department of geography; and Lee Carpenter of the Penn State Children, Youth and Families Consortium.

Once upon a time, people bonded with their co-workers on office softball teams and traded gossip at the watercooler.

OK, so those days aren’t gone yet. But as big companies parcel Information Age work to people in widely dispersed locations, it’s getting harder for colleagues to develop the camaraderie that comes from being in the same place. Beyond making work less fun, feeling disconnected from comrades might be a drag on productivity.

Now technology researchers are trying to replicate old-fashioned office interactions by transforming everyday business software for the new era of work. The historically dry-as-sawdust products are borrowing elements from video games and social-networking Web sites.

You can tell just from looking at the Beehive program under development at IBM Corp. that something is different. Beehive’s color scheme is bright yellow, not IBM’s standard blue. The cheerfulness reflects the fact that Beehive is meant to encourage far-flung co-workers to like each other more.

Such personal touches often are missing when people work at a distance from one another, says Joan Morris DiMicco, an IBM researcher developing Beehive. Co-workers in different locales can’t wander into each other’s offices and see family pictures on the desk. They don’t shop at the same places or have children in the same schools.

These tidbits, DiMicco believes, help people understand each other better. And the usual communication tools like e-mail, instant messaging, phones and even videoconferencing do only so much to fill the gap.

This problem isn’t confined to IBM, whose 386,000 employees often find themselves working with people from Boston to Bangalore to Beijing. It affects any company where telecommuting, outsourcing and globalization have spread the staff across cultures and time zones.

At Intel Corp., for example, many project teams have at least one person who has yet to meet the group’s boss face-to-face.

Recently, Intel tried to improve the situation by testing a “visual business card” system. Participants could not only list standard information about their location and job title, but they also could post pictures, brief biographies and things they like.

Now Intel is exploring whether virtual-world software, which can show graphically rich, 3-D representations of meeting rooms, auditoriums, factory floors you name it will make it more natural for groups to collaborate. Intel’s initial efforts are focused on such tasks as monitoring computer centers, designing products and training staff.

Other companies are already using virtual worlds for certain events, allowing people to maneuver graphical representations of themselves, known as “avatars,” through online trade shows and product demos.

When CDC Software recently staged parts of an annual sales kickoff event in a virtual world created by Unisfair Inc., it included an online version of the golf outings that commonly accompany such affairs. It held tournaments in baseball and golf video games and gave real trophies to the champions, said Julian Hannabuss, a CDC sales director.

In the coming years, more aspects of everyday working life could include virtual interactions that resemble games but are plenty serious.

One reason is that the technology is getting more sophisticated. For instance, if my avatar appears to be sitting to your left in a meeting, what I say into my computer microphone can come through your left computer speaker. And I’d hear you on the right.

Soon such meetings will be able to incorporate images from Web cameras that capture gestures and face movements so your avatar can reflect your nonverbal communication cues, crossing its legs or frowning when you do so in real life.

Eyeing that same future, IBM researchers are exploring whether groups of people in different locations can bond by playing collaborative virtual-world games, like solving puzzles together. IBM calls the effort “Inward Bound,” a nod to the Outward Bound wilderness exercises.

And an IBM project called Bluegrass is testing how software programmers in different locations can organize their work in a virtual landscape. People traversing this virtual world appear as the pictures they posted of themselves in Beehive.

IBM researcher Steven Rohall hopes to enable people engaged in solitary, “heads down” work at computers to get the kind of “heads up” interactions that come from walking down the hall in an office.

Steiger predicts that office politics will be transformed as virtual interactions replace or augment in-person connections, because the technology often liberates wallflowers to act more aggressively.

Cindy Pickering, the engineer overseeing Intel’s internal virtual-world efforts, says younger employees will be key to quickly advancing socially oriented workplace software. They’re already used to chatting and playing online, whether in networking sites or complex video games.

Still, one big question is just how many plane trips for actual meetings can be realistically replaced by software.

Another question is whether getting distant co-workers to enjoy each other more will actually improve workplace productivity. Research on the subject indicates that a much bigger factor is whether people trust their colleagues to do their parts.

“I think companies underestimate that,” says Catherine Connolly, a professor of industrial psychology at McMaster University. “Especially when they have team-building Kumbaya exercises.”

That’s the warning from Ian Fogg, research director at JupiterResearch Europe, who was speaking during a Westminster eForum debate on the future of broadband in Britain.

Without investment to improve broadband infrastructure ?such as fibre to the home (FTTH) and fibre to the cabinet (FTTC) ?Fogg said the danger is “the next big thing on the internet may not work in the UK”.

But, even so, Fogg admitted that the business case for fibre is “incredibly hard” as the market has seen a slide in the average price for broadband over the last few years and consumers don’t see why they should pay more for fat-pipe access.

All-IP next-generation networks (NGNs) are being rolled out in the UK ?such as BT’s 21CN ?but NGNs do not solve the problem of legacy copper wiring at street level, from exchanges to cabinets and homes ?an issue known as “next-generation access” (NGA). NGA is the fly in the ointment of faster broadband in the UK.

Antony Walker, chief executive of the Broadband Stakeholder Group (BSG), told delegates the prospects for early investment in NGA are not good. But he said this is an issue that is likely to trouble small businesses before it annoys consumers, as SMEs might feel they are losing a competitive edge for accessing and competing in global markets where fibre deployments have ?or may ?outstrip the UK.

Consumer demand for upgrading the UK’s broadband infrastructure is less clear cut, Walker said. This point was echoed by Ofcom executive Peter Phillips, partner for strategy and markets development, who said there is still “a lot of uncertainty” about how long current broadband networks will deliver what consumers need.

The speakers at the eForum touched on various applications ?from videoconferencing to greater opportunities for home working to the rise of social networking and even the BBC’s iPlayer ?that might benefit from improved broadband infrastructure. But the general consensus was no “killer app” for NGNs has yet emerged.

JupiterResearch’s Fogg said: “No-one has yet identified that unique application that can only be delivered over next-generation broadband.”

Ofcom’s Phillips added that there may even be some advantage to the UK holding back on broadband development ?to see how things pan out in other countries and learn from their experience. The regulator is currently consulting on NGA.

The stance of the network operators was summed up by Andrew Lazarus, head of regulatory policy and strategy at BT, who said the company “does believe we can get a lot more out of copper”.

Lazarus cited ADSL+ ?coming next year, with top speeds of up to 24Mbps ?and said speeds would still “satisfy a lot of apps”. Issues such as broadband “not spots” ?areas not currently served by fat pipes ?and headline speeds are “not necessarily part of the fibre debate”, according to Lazarus.

That’s the warning from Ian Fogg, research director at JupiterResearch Europe, who was speaking during a Westminster eForum debate on the future of broadband in Britain.

Without investment to improve broadband infrastructure ?such as fibre to the home (FTTH) and fibre to the cabinet (FTTC) ?Fogg said the danger is “the next big thing on the internet may not work in the UK”.

But, even so, Fogg admitted that the business case for fibre is “incredibly hard” as the market has seen a slide in the average price for broadband over the last few years and consumers don’t see why they should pay more for fat-pipe access.

All-IP next-generation networks (NGNs) are being rolled out in the UK ?such as BT’s 21CN ?but NGNs do not solve the problem of legacy copper wiring at street level, from exchanges to cabinets and homes ?an issue known as “next-generation access” (NGA). NGA is the fly in the ointment of faster broadband in the UK.

Antony Walker, chief executive of the Broadband Stakeholder Group (BSG), told delegates the prospects for early investment in NGA are not good. But he said this is an issue that is likely to trouble small businesses before it annoys consumers, as SMEs might feel they are losing a competitive edge for accessing and competing in global markets where fibre deployments have ?or may ?outstrip the UK.

Consumer demand for upgrading the UK’s broadband infrastructure is less clear cut, Walker said. This point was echoed by Ofcom executive Peter Phillips, partner for strategy and markets development, who said there is still “a lot of uncertainty” about how long current broadband networks will deliver what consumers need.

The speakers at the eForum touched on various applications ?from videoconferencing to greater opportunities for home working to the rise of social networking and even the BBC’s iPlayer ?that might benefit from improved broadband infrastructure. But the general consensus was no “killer app” for NGNs has yet emerged.

JupiterResearch’s Fogg said: “No-one has yet identified that unique application that can only be delivered over next-generation broadband.”

Ofcom’s Phillips added that there may even be some advantage to the UK holding back on broadband development ?to see how things pan out in other countries and learn from their experience. The regulator is currently consulting on NGA.

The stance of the network operators was summed up by Andrew Lazarus, head of regulatory policy and strategy at BT, who said the company “does believe we can get a lot more out of copper”.

Lazarus cited ADSL+ ?coming next year, with top speeds of up to 24Mbps ?and said speeds would still “satisfy a lot of apps”. Issues such as broadband “not spots” ?areas not currently served by fat pipes ?and headline speeds are “not necessarily part of the fibre debate”, according to Lazarus.

That’s the warning from Ian Fogg, research director at JupiterResearch Europe, who was speaking during a Westminster eForum debate on the future of broadband in Britain.

Without investment to improve broadband infrastructure ?such as fibre to the home (FTTH) and fibre to the cabinet (FTTC) ?Fogg said the danger is “the next big thing on the internet may not work in the UK”.

But, even so, Fogg admitted that the business case for fibre is “incredibly hard” as the market has seen a slide in the average price for broadband over the last few years and consumers don’t see why they should pay more for fat-pipe access.

All-IP next-generation networks (NGNs) are being rolled out in the UK ?such as BT’s 21CN ?but NGNs do not solve the problem of legacy copper wiring at street level, from exchanges to cabinets and homes ?an issue known as “next-generation access” (NGA). NGA is the fly in the ointment of faster broadband in the UK.

Antony Walker, chief executive of the Broadband Stakeholder Group (BSG), told delegates the prospects for early investment in NGA are not good. But he said this is an issue that is likely to trouble small businesses before it annoys consumers, as SMEs might feel they are losing a competitive edge for accessing and competing in global markets where fibre deployments have ?or may ?outstrip the UK.

Consumer demand for upgrading the UK’s broadband infrastructure is less clear cut, Walker said. This point was echoed by Ofcom executive Peter Phillips, partner for strategy and markets development, who said there is still “a lot of uncertainty” about how long current broadband networks will deliver what consumers need.

The speakers at the eForum touched on various applications ?from videoconferencing to greater opportunities for home working to the rise of social networking and even the BBC’s iPlayer ?that might benefit from improved broadband infrastructure. But the general consensus was no “killer app” for NGNs has yet emerged.

JupiterResearch’s Fogg said: “No-one has yet identified that unique application that can only be delivered over next-generation broadband.”

Ofcom’s Phillips added that there may even be some advantage to the UK holding back on broadband development ?to see how things pan out in other countries and learn from their experience. The regulator is currently consulting on NGA.

The stance of the network operators was summed up by Andrew Lazarus, head of regulatory policy and strategy at BT, who said the company “does believe we can get a lot more out of copper”.

Lazarus cited ADSL+ ?coming next year, with top speeds of up to 24Mbps ?and said speeds would still “satisfy a lot of apps”. Issues such as broadband “not spots” ?areas not currently served by fat pipes ?and headline speeds are “not necessarily part of the fibre debate”, according to Lazarus.