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Title: The First 100 Feet: Options for Internet and Broadband Access by Deborah Hurley, James H. Keller ISBN: 0-262-58160-4 Publisher: MIT Press Pub. Date: 16 July, 1999 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $26.95

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Average Customer Rating: 3.33 (3 reviews)

Rating: 2
Summary: a lot of hot blowing out of Cambridge MA
Comment: This is a bunch of reports/essays/articles written up for some project out of a Harvard University project, collected into a book.

First off, the introduction was, IMO, an impenetrable blather of buzzwords and fluff. Skipped it when, after three tries, I couldn't make sense of the first couple of paragraphs.

The rest is, I guess, more or less interesting but certainly not relevant to anyone I know. It's interesting to know how many years it took for different new technologies to achieve 50% market penetration in the US, but why does one writer claim on page 42 that by late 1997 PCs had only reached 40% of the market, while only 4 pages later state that 60% of US households had a PC AND a modem by early 1997. Which is it? This makes me doubt all the rest of the copious statistics cited in this book entirely.

The rest of the book blathers on about various broadband pie-in-the-sky like satellite access and broadband through electric utility wires, but all from the perspective of the "policy wonk". If you're a technologist, or even a business person, I wouldn't wast my money here. Though it's worth a skim if you see it in the bookstore, and maybe an hour or two if you can pick it up in the bookstore.

Rating: 4
Summary: A Glimpse of Alternative Models
Comment: The monograph compiles twelve articles contributed by well-knownscholars and practitioners. It is a good backdrop about the issues in tackling the "last 100 feet" in the nowadays telecommunications market and the broadband market.

The first part of the book provides analytical tools in assessing the market issues, finances, practicality and consumer behaviour involved in adapting to new modes of communication. These analyses shed light on the crucial factors inducing to the introduction, adoption and diffusion of a particular communication tool.

Different models for "bottom-up investment" (local wireless, rooftop community network, satellite broadband, electrical power lines, etc.) are discussed in the second section. Although the sources mentioned in these articles are not newly updated, they provide some basic ideas on what's the alternatives being considered.

The last section reports some cases in building regional telecommunications network by some of the municipal or city councils in the United States, as well as the experimental cases in some public utilities (mainly electirc utilities) in providing communication or internet services to the household consumers.

A special note shall be given to the Introduction, which summarizes the history of the development of US telephone network, and cases in favour of bottom-up investment could be found. However, the introduction, in a concise manner, points out the difficulties and constraints of these alternative models.

Rating: 4
Summary: reengineering our thinking
Comment: This book provides us a differnet kind of view, Let us think whole the internet industry, the future of internet. Of course, the wireless communication is also included.