Green Broadband Overview

One of , if not, the greatest threat to our future society and economy is global warming. It is estimated that the CO2 emissions of the ICT industry alone exceeds the carbon output of the entire aviation industry. The ICT industry and research community has a collective responsibility to help address this problem. Fortunately, as compared to the aviation industry, the ICT industry and research community has the tools at hand to reduce its direct CO2 output to zero and the additional capability of enabling other sectors of society to reduce their carbon footprint through “bits and bandwidth for carbon” trading schemes. Governments around the world are wrestling with the challenge of how to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. The current preferred approaches are to impose “carbon” taxes and implement various forms of cap and trade or carbon offset systems. However another approach to help reduce carbon emission is to “reward” those who reduce their carbon footprint rather than imposing draconian taxes or dubious cap and trade systems. It is estimated that consumers control or influence over 60% of all CO2 emissions. As such, one possible reward system of trading “bits and bandwidth for carbon” is to provide homeowners with free fiber to the home or free wireless products and other electronic services such as ebooks and eMovies if they agree to pay a premium on their energy consumption which will encourage them to reduce emissions by turning down the thermostat or using public transportation. Not only does the consumer benefit, but this business model also provides new revenue opportunities for network operators, optical equipment manufacturers, and eCommerce application providers.

For more details please see

Free Fiber and High Speed Internet to the Home Initiative
http://free-fiber-to-the-home.blogspot.com/

ICT and Global Warming - opportunities for innovation and economic growth
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dgbgjrct_2767dxpbdvcf

Wednesday, December 19, 2007

A carbon negative Internet - Freedom to Connect Conference

[I encourage all those who are interested in the issues of global warming and how the Internet call help mitigate against the greatest challenge of our lifetime to attend the upcoming Freedom to Connect Conference in Washington DC --BSA]

http://freedom-to-connect.net/

Announcing F2C: Freedom to Connect 2008!
March 31 & April 1, 2008, Washington, DC

The theme of F2C: Freedom to Connect 2008 is "The NetHeads Come to Washington."

This year there will be a second theme at F2C, "A Carbon-Negative Internet." We will devote at least one session, and perhaps a half day, to exploring the impacts of applications like user monitored edge-based control of energy usage, cloud routing of compute-intensive operations to geographical locations with renewable energy, peer-to-peer automobile traffic optimization, and the putative trade-off between physical presence and virtual presence.

Conventional wisdom is that NetHeads have sharply different interests than telephone companies and cable companies. This is mostly true, yet both need a robust, sustainable Internet. It is in the long-term interests of neither to kill the 'Net's success factors. Further, conventional wisdom is that NetHeads are represented by public advocacy groups like Free Press, Public Knowledge, and the New America Foundation and aligned with Internet companies like Google, Amazon, and eBay. Again this is directionally correct, but the diversity of the NetHead community ensures divergence on key issues.

Biology teaches that diversity is good. Most business practices teach the opposite. Washington hears much from the telcos and cablecos, and much from the Internet companies and the public advocacy groups, but way too little from the NetHeads themselves. F2C 2008 will provide a platform for NetHead voices and a forum for dialog among all parties with a stake in the future of an open, sustainable, state-of-the-art Internet.

So far (this is changing rapidly so check back here often) F2C speakers include:

* Tim Wu, Professor, Columbia Law School, Author of Wireless Carterphone (2007)
* Tom Evslin, founder ITXC, founder AT&T WorldNet, blogger, author, telecom activist
* Reed Hundt, former chairman of the FCC
* Andrew Rasiej, co-founder, Personal Democracy Forum
* Bill St. Arnaud, Chief Research Officer CANARIE and green-broadband blogger
* Brad Templeton, Chairman, Electronic Frontier Foundation
* Katrin Verclas, former Exec. Director NTEN, MobileActive blogger.
* Robin Chase, founder of ZipCar, entrepreneuse and environmentalist.

Posted by Bill St. Arnaud at 7:27 AM

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