Results tagged “broadband”

I am a big supporter of using broadband access as a green IT strategy (and a way to combat pig flu). But it goes without saying that before you can enjoy the benefits you need true, fast-speed broadband access wherever you reside or roam.

In preparation of OneWebDay this past Tuesday, technology journalist and broadband stimulus grant writer Alex Goldman of Net-Statistics.net delivered a speech on universal broadband that lays out how high-speed access to the Internet is not a luxury. He goes into further detail in his blog post commemorating OneWebDay. Although not expressly about reducing carbon, there are parallels to some green IT principles like dematerialization (downloading IRS forms instead of fetching them at the post office) and telework.

Unfortunately, the U.S. is still behind the times, putting those benefits out of reach for many Americans:

In broadband, the U.S. is 15 years behind South Korea. One attendee at Saturday's event, Regina Walton, writes that the speeds don't tell all of the story: Korea's utilities also provide -- gosh -- customer service. As this map from the BBC shows, several other nations around the world are also ahead of the U.S. in broadband speeds.

We're also still wrestling with getting ISPs to allow unfettered access to the Internet, although the FCC is working to remedy that.

Put simply, without a broadband infrastructure that resembles a free and roomy freeway instead of creaky and tollbooth laden back roads, consumers and small businesses have the deck stacked against them if they want to telecommute or reduce their carbon footprints by offloading computational tasks to the cloud. Beyond the energy efficiency angle, broadband is growing increasingly critical for an industrious workforce and an informed populace.

Be sure to read the rest of Goldman's universal broadband insights.

Photo credit: Rennett Stow / Flickr - Creative Commons

South Korea gets it.

Super fast broadband, Green IT initiatives and cloud computing (plus a dash of open source) go hand in hand. This Korea Times report, has some details on what the country has in store for the $3.38 billion plan announced by the presidential Green Growth Committee, which is expected to generate "52,000 new jobs by 2013 and reduce the country's carbon emissions by 18 million tons of CO2."

Developing solutions to reduce power consumption of Internet data centers (IDCs), by advancing technologies for designing servers, is also an important part of the plan. This is connected to the efforts to introduce "cloud computing'' solutions, which allow individuals and organizations to store data online and operate servers via remote computers.

The government will standardize the technologies for the energy-efficient IDCs and develop cloud-computing technologies based on open-source software platforms, while testing the services in government organizations.

Policymakers will work with telecommunications operators to build a foundation for the next-generation Internet network by 2012, and also advance the networks for WiBro, a homegrown wireless technology, and upcoming fourth-generation (4G) communication services.

Commendable!

Normally, I advocate telework and telecommuting as a great green business strategy. But now Swine Flu is thrusting the concept of working from home into the spotlight.

CIO.com offers 10 tips to prep your IT shop should the situation get worse. Numbers 5-7 best sum up how your business can accommodate workers that can't make the trek into the office. But before you can even consider the prospect of letting your employees work from their jammies (fuzzy slippers optional), make that you sure heed tip number 6:

Ensure key employees have broadband access. Dial-up access won't cut it for employees who need to use enterprise applications for an extended period of time. Make sure key employees have broadband access from home as well as mobile broadband access. Mobile data cards are a good solution, Hochmuth says. "In a worst case scenario, people may not be working from home. They may be leaving the area for health or safety reasons, and they may need to take their laptops with them." Hochmuth recommends buying mobile broadband cards from multiple carriers. "If you get a lot of those to your most important employees, that's another high availability, load balancing tactic on the end user side," he says.

A cache of mobile broadband cards is one idea that I didn't even consider, but good to keep in mind. And if some of your workers do a fair amount of traveling, the cost of the cards and service will likely be offset by not having to expense those exorbitant hotel Wi-Fi fees.

Grab the rest of the tips at CIO.com.