tell because my heart is pounding like
crazy but it’s a good opportunity to be
here amongst friends so today I want to
talk about the internet start with the
internet something that we all know and
it’s familiar to us but it’s probably
something we don’t consider to be the
greatest invention since the Industrial
Revolution it’s an innovation that’s
affected all of us and the reason why
it’s so impetuous because it’s open its
open to commerce it’s open to innovation
it’s open to ideas and services and so
many things but the irony to that
statement is that all of us access the
internet through a closed network and
that’s important thing that I want to
talk about today but before we go I want
to just do an experiment and the purpose
of this experiment is to try to validate
a recent study that showed that
something that we experiment experience
on a daily basis has the ability to
increase our heart rate by up to thirty
eight percent now that’s almost as much
as you get when you watch a really scary
movies so this is pretty intense stuff
technology right one more time there we
go this always happens at the worst time
right did anybody experienced an
increase in heart rate maybe skip a beat
so the idea here is it this spinning
wheel of death is something that we can
all appreciate it right because we’ve
all experienced it and when we
experience that we might even ask the
question is my internet broken we don’t
know right so I want to start and just
share a story with you about a city that
is probably familiar to all of us it’s a
man I to home now a man is not a
technology hub by any stretch of the
imagination but they’ve done some really
amazing things so I’m going to throw out
a big term and we’re going to talk about
this but they built the first dynamic
open access fiber-optic network now
hopefully by the end of this all of that
will make them a lot more sense and
maybe understand why it matters so the
Ammons story really starts with an
individual named Bruce Patterson man
this is sensitive there we go so Bruce
it starts with him he’s just a regular
guy but he’s a smart guy and he really
knows how to listen now he started his
career as a plumber and he eventually
ended up as the IT Director for the city
of Amman now you may think plumber to IT
that’s a pretty big stretch right but it
might be because of his background as a
plumber that he’s been able to see IT
problems in a different light now Bruce
is it didn’t take him long to figure out
that the internet was broken in the city
because he was unable to connect the
city facilities in a meaningful and
really cost-effective way so he took it
upon himself to start to figure out that
problem now Bruce has been innovative as
he’s tried to solve these problems but
he hasn’t worked alone he’s had the help
of the City Council the mayor Ammon
residence some local service providers
and also some technology companies and
they’ve all been working together for
the past several years to try to fix the
internet and the challenges that the
city of em and is faced are not unique
their challenges in many cities face as
well but the thing that’s important to
know about the city of em and why it
matters is because they’re fundamentally
changing
way that we interact with the internet
and I’ve managed to solve some problems
along the way that we might not even
realize were problems so I want to
compare the experiences that we have on
a daily basis with some of the
experiences that a man residents might
have so that we can see ways that the
internet is broken so to start I want to
talk about your broadband bill I’m sure
you’ve all gotten one of those before if
it’s like mine it’s a couple pages long
has a bunch of line items of fees that
you probably don’t understand and a
total of more than you want to be paying
so what are we really paying for do we
know do we understand what’s going on
there the city of ammons broken the mold
in this regard because they’ve taken I
keep skipping forward sorry about that
guys don’t get ahead of me okay they’d
broken the mold in this regard because
they want to be completely transparent
with the people in the city so what
they’ve done is a separated the
infrastructure which is the fiber optics
from the services that are on the
network and in by doing that they’ve
given the residents the opportunity to
participate in the network so the
residents opt-in and by opting in they
agree to pay for the cost of the
infrastructure to their home and it’s
about three thousand dollars so they can
pay that upfront or they can choose to
pay for it over 20 years and it’s about
seventeen dollars a month and another
fee that they pay is the maintenance and
operation fee and this is also seventeen
dollars a month so for about thirty four
dollars in the city of am and you can
get a fiber optic connection to your
home any services that go on come as a
different bill from the provider so
amman residents know exactly what
they’re paying for so another part of
the cost of the internet is what it
costs when you switch from one provider
to another and some of you might have
had that experience at a co-worker who
recently went through this process and
it wasn’t pretty and his story is
probably not unique he tried to first
connect to the fiber-optic network in
his city and he was unable to after a
monthly finally told him no you can’t
connect so his next choice and his only
choice was to change from his cable
provider to his dsl provider now because
these were to physically separate
networks there had to be infrastructure
that came to his home and he had to have
new equipment in order
make that switch he got the equipment
set up and it didn’t work imagine that
right so we’ve called customer service
and they couldn’t help him out they sent
out someone I took about three weeks for
them to get there and after that he was
finally able to get mode from his
current provider to his new provider so
in total it took about two months and
countless hours for him to move from one
surface to another that’s just not
acceptable right so in the city of a man
it’s much different so I have a Vita
little video here that shows you how
this works they’re presented with a
website they choose from list of
services that they want and they go
through the subscription process takes
about 15 seconds and then a dynamic
network is created from them through to
the service provider and when they want
to change they just find that service in
the web page click on subscribe takes
about 10 seconds so there you just
witnessed what it’s like to change
providers in the city of em and it’s a
little bit of different experience right
so gone are the days of months and weeks
of waiting and fighting to get it done
to simply clicking a button and having
it happen for you so if you’ve ever
found yourself and this is all
hypothetical this is not me talking at
all if you can found yourself at three
o’clock in the morning four hours into a
binge watch of your favorite TV show and
all of a sudden you get buffered you
might have had that experience or the
sense that what you’re paying for is not
what you’re getting now we live in a
world that tells us that bandwidth is a
scarce commodity we hear that from our
cell phone providers and our internet
providers and then give us data caps and
rate limits and all of these things that
create this fear and uncertainty in us
as we try to use these resources that
have been given to us but what if it was
different so the city of Ammon has taken
a different approach and they’ve tried
to create an environment that’s a
bandwidth abundant so what they’ve done
is they give all of the residents to
connect to the network a gigabit
connection not to give you some
perspective of what that means this is
actually a thousand megabits so if
you’re on like a 50 megabit connection
you can see that you know they’re far
out passing what you can do so this
white circle on the outside represents
what a resident and hammock
and most likely you and I are up there
at the top of the 10 megabit range so to
put this in Ted terms if you try to
download a 15 minute TED talk on your
internet connection it would take about
a minute and 15 or 45 seconds and that’s
if the Stars have aligned and
everything’s working just perfectly and
it would take about 22 minutes to upload
that same video back to the internet an
almond resident can download that video
in about two seconds and they can upload
it in about two seconds so think about
how your behavior might change if you
were given a gigabit connection no
limits no caps so most likely the
network that you connect to the internet
with is a closed Network and what that
means is that you’re only allowed to use
the services that they provide on the
network there’s another service that you
want you’re just a locker you have to
change to a different network so what we
can do well I guess think back to my mic
yeah that guy back to my coworker when
he switched his network he had a choice
he had two networks and they both had
physical infrastructure that came into
his home so if we think about the
roadways that we use on a daily basis
this would be like saying don’t touch
that button too hard this would be like
saying that UPS and FedEx both have to
build a road to your house in order to
deliver packages here that you want and
that’s pretty silly right we understand
that so the city of a man said let’s
make this an open access network and
that allow and they’ll allow anybody to
come in and provide a service and
deliver packages to your home so what
this looks like the outer circle is the
fiber optics and this is just a sampling
of a few of the services that they can
put on to that fiber optic so that’s the
common roadway that goes into the home
and they do this using cutting-edge
technology and they’re able to create
logical slices of the network that are
separated from each other and it creates
this private environment for the service
to be delivered to the home so just as a
recap to help illustrate what the city
of a man has that your network probably
doesn’t have they have complete
transparency and costs they’ve separated
the transport from the infrastructure
and the residents are able to buy into
that Network and they’ve made it very
very simple to switch from one surface
to another they’ve created an abundance
of bandwidth each resident is given a 1
gigabit connection and they can choose
how they want to allocate that and there
are no data caps or limitations enforced
by the operator and they’ve also created
a marketplace of services that allow the
residents to choose which services that
they want and then it creates a platform
for innovation so that the service
providers can come in and truly provide
services that the subscribers on the
network one so sheesh this is a quote
from Kevin Kelly he said of all the
endeavors we humans are now engaged in
perhaps the greatest of them all the
grandest of them all is the steady
weaving together of our lives minds and
artifacts into a global scale network
now this network that he is envisioning
it’s not the internet that we know today
and the Alma network is more than just
fast internet it’s bigger than that to
really be able to realize Kelly’s vision
most likely it’s going to be small
networks that are open access that have
abundant bandwidth and have the ability
to ensure security privacy and
reliability and Allen has built the
first network to help realize that
vision so as I’ve described the Emma
Network there’s a possibility I’m sure
it’s remote but maybe you felt a little
bit of internet envy and I know that I
feel it too but I hope that you can
consider the implications the Emma
network might have for you and your
family and for your community as well
what they’ve done is unique but it’s not
something that isn’t reproducible this
can be done in your town as well so
consider for a minute your current
internet provider if you could change
that provider at a click of a button
would you do it what about your home
secured in your home automation if you
could choose not to put that information
on the public internet all the click of
a button would you do it what about that
amazing technology idea that you have if
there was an open access network with
abundant bandwidth would you build it
all of this is possible today in the
city of Amman and it can be in your city
too so how do we start I think the first
step is to share what you’ve learned
today with your friends and your
neighbors and especially with your city
it’s in cities that these networks can
be built because they’re the right the
right place and the right entity as long
as the city stays true to the
foundational idea that the network must
be open so the internet is broken but
together we can fix it [Applause]