Fiber Optics for All (if your in NYC)

[Wild Style]

I have been following EJ's posts about the next bubble. One aspect I find interesting is the emergence of telecommuting, given rising energy costs. I saw a news article about Verizon FIoS and the build out of a fiber optic network through out NYC. The article says, Bloomberg's administration and Verizon have been in secret talks for some time to sort out all the details. They expect this to be finished by 2014. I think this news lends itself well to the prospect of telecommuting becoming the next major step in easing rising energy prices as EJ predicted.

On a side note, when I worked at Lucent back in 2001, the big push was telecommuting. My boss told me the higher ups wanted at least 40% of the work force to telecommute. Reason being, it is far cheaper to give someone a laptop, broadband and a cellphone than it is to run a large office building.

Anyway here is the article

Some cities, like Seattle and San Francisco, have considered municipally backed fiber networks to solve this problem and bring internationally competitive Internet service speeds to their residents, but the cost and timeframe can be daunting. Entrepreneur Brewster Kahle recently paid to wire a San Francisco public housing complex directly into the local backbone, giving residents access at up to 1 gigabit, or 1000 mbps. Smaller cities like Burlington, Vermont, have built such networks and are providing the "triple play" of services - voice, video, and Internet - themselves and at lower prices than the incumbent cable company. From the looks of it, New York public officials are going to rely on the private sector, especially Verizon, to bring us the next generation of broadband.

link

[Mega]

Re: Fiber Optics for All (if your in NYC)

Thanks Wide
Yes, with Peek oil now out the bag & running we will see a lot of this going on.
Mike

[FRED]

Re: Fiber Optics for All (if your in NYC)

I have been following EJ's posts about the next bubble. One aspect I find interesting is the emergence of telecommuting, given rising energy costs. I saw a news article about Verizon FIoS and the build out of a fiber optic network through out NYC. The article says, Bloomberg's administration and Verizon have been in secret talks for some time to sort out all the details. They expect this to be finished by 2014. I think this news lends itself well to the prospect of telecommuting becoming the next major step in easing rising energy prices as EJ predicted.

On a side note, when I worked at Lucent back in 2001, the big push was telecommuting. My boss told me the higher ups wanted at least 40% of the work force to telecommute. Reason being, it is far cheaper to give someone a laptop, broadband and a cellphone than it is to run a large office building.

Anyway here is the article

link

Good find and welcome.

Soon businesses will offer their employees incentives to work from home, including financing of a place to work closer to home, if no distraction-free place in the home is available.

Next step, government offers huge tax incentives to businesses to compensate employees for working from home.

Many other steps, and we can tell you that there are people in government already working on the plans.

[Wild Style]

Re: Fiber Optics for All (if your in NYC)

Good find and welcome.

Soon businesses will offer their employees incentives to work from home, including financing of a place to work closer to home, if no distraction-free place in the home is available.

Next step, government offers huge tax incentives to businesses to compensate employees for working from home.

Many other steps, and we can tell you that there are people in government already working on the plans.

First I want to say, I love this site you guys have. I have been lurking for some time now.

I think it will be interesting to see this whole thing play out. Especially since it will take a shift in attitudes. Many bosses have this "you must be in the office to actually be working" mentality.

We do you guys think about the upswing in two wheel commuting? Do you think America will start to look like Europe or Asia in this regard? One thing I have noticed as EJ, Fred and many others have pointed out. You can tell when the powers that be want a certain agenda pushed. You start reading about it all over the place. Well, I have seen a HUGE upswing in news articles about the practicality of daily commuting on scooters, motorcycles and trikes like the Can-Am spyder . You guys think this will be apart of the big push toward the "New America" as I like to call it.

Fred, do you think the push toward telecommuting will affect heavy mass transit cities like NYC in a major way? By this I am referring to all the office space in that city.

Sorry so many questions, just somethings I have been thinking about recently.

[FRED]

Re: Fiber Optics for All (if your in NYC)

First I want to say, I love this site you guys have. I have been lurking for some time now.

I think it will be interesting to see this whole thing play out. Especially since it will take a shift in attitudes. Many bosses have this "you must be in the office to actually be working" mentality.

We do you guys think about the upswing in two wheel commuting? Do you think America will start to look like Europe or Asia in this regard? One thing I have noticed as EJ, Fred and many others have pointed out. You can tell when the powers that be want a certain agenda pushed. You start reading about it all over the place. Well, I have seen a HUGE upswing in news articles about the practicality of daily commuting on scooters, motorcycles and trikes like the Can-Am spyder . You guys think this will be apart of the big push toward the "New America" as I like to call it.

Fred, do you think the push toward telecommuting will affect heavy mass transit cities like NYC in a major way? By this I am referring to all the office space in that city.

Sorry so many questions, just somethings I have been thinking about recently.

EJ writes in:

Structural changes take much longer than anyone can imagine, but the long term future - over the next ten years – is not hard to envision. Many changes in modes and forms of transport will occur, depending on climate and other factors. California is in a good position to adopt more of the two wheeled methods you refer to; transport in northern US will look more like its norther European counterparts with greater reliance on transport that keeps you out of the cold and snow.

The major wild card is high speed rail. For that you need long straight stretches of rail bed through currently populated areas. That means draconian use of eminent domain laws. I have interviews with PE firms that have been tackling these issues for many years in developing their infrastructure investment thesis.

As for the the bosses with the "you must be in the office to actually be working" mentality, they will be out-performed by more sophisticated managers that know how to use modern collaboration tools and have the discipline to manage employees by productivity by output. Why ask employees to waste hours sitting in traffic waiting to get to an office to sit at a computer instead of sitting at a computer in an office at home or nearby home? Companies should be paying employees to not go to the office but will have no trouble motivating them to work from home for free. Employees will, however, need to come to work at least once per week for team coordination and other meetings.

[Wild Style]

Re: Fiber Optics for All (if your in NYC)

Much appreciated. This is what I have assumed would happen. As you said about the Boss with the outdated mentalities, I guess they will be pushed to the side if they can not adapt.

[c1ue]

Re: Fiber Optics for All (if your in NYC)

As I've noted before - telecommuting looks nice for the employee, but ultimately makes it even easier to outsource a job.

After all, what is to keep the job in the US vs. somewhere cheaper when already there is not even an office space that needs to be filled?

Sure, there are those with the 'it' which cannot be replaced, but they are less than you think. After all, redundancy is what the corporation is all about.

Then there's the other factor: even employees with the 'it' which prevents their jobs from being outsourced - what is to prevent them from moving to cheaper parts of the country?

Sure, the weekly office team building and meeting sounds nice, but really as it neither replaces nor obsoletes the proximity benefit. And without this, why not telecommute from 3 states away rather than 3 miles?

And how will that affect local economies?

[Wild Style]

Re: Fiber Optics for All (if your in NYC)

As I've noted before - telecommuting looks nice for the employee, but ultimately makes it even easier to outsource a job.

After all, what is to keep the job in the US vs. somewhere cheaper when already there is not even an office space that needs to be filled?

Sure, there are those with the 'it' which cannot be replaced, but they are less than you think. After all, redundancy is what the corporation is all about.

Then there's the other factor: even employees with the 'it' which prevents their jobs from being outsourced - what is to prevent them from moving to cheaper parts of the country?

Sure, the weekly office team building and meeting sounds nice, but really as it neither replaces nor obsoletes the proximity benefit. And without this, why not telecommute from 3 states away rather than 3 miles?

And how will that affect local economies?

Good points.

In 2000 when I was still at Lucent they wanted me to move to Texas. I refused, and told my boss I will be in NYC if he needs me. He said no problem, you can just telecommute and fly out when we have our team meetings (just as Fred\EJ pointed out). We did project management for co location work. We were doing the ground work for rolling out 3G networks, DSL and fiber optics. Something like that, you really didn't need to be in a office. You can't outsource a job like that though. I think the local economy effect you mentioned would be far more of a issue than anything else. Maybe with this new economy, some towns and suburbs may not "make it"?