Sunday, March 29, 2015
No Backup
What would you do if you realized that there was no internet for the next couple of days? Panic? Hyperventilate? Postulate about how the world is coming to a devastating end with an apocalypse led by zombies? A fiber optic cable was cut by vandals a couple weeks ago in Arizona and left thousands without internet. The infrastructure has some huge vulnerabilities. Because Internet service is largely unregulated by the federal government and the states, decisions about network reliability are left to service providers. Industry analysts say these companies generally do not build alternative routes, or redundancies, unless they believe it is worthwhile financially. This means that most smaller cities and rural areas do not have a backup system if one of the internet routes fails. To be honest, it is to everyone's advantage to have backup. Internet phones are overtaking landlines and they are more cost efficient. The FCC says about half the rural U.S. lacks access to high-speed Internet service. It plans to distribute about $20 billion over the next five years to support rural broadband, but it does not require recipients to build network backup systems against outages. Should there be more regulation at least over the infrastructure?
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Since more communication services are being connected to the internet, it is cost efficient to improve the infrastructure of the cables.
ReplyDeleteIn the long run, the internet and internet phone services will be what people rely on. It would cost more to wait until something needs fixed.
ReplyDeleteWith internet phone services, you also need really good anti-malware programs since you are sending and receiving valuable information.
ReplyDeleteThe internet is also needed because of cloud services and everything being connected. At a certain point, it should become a human right.
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