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“Homes With Tails,” the presentation, next Friday

Tim Wu and I are going to be presenting our forthcoming paper about customer-owned last-mile broadband connections —  “Homes With Tails” — next Friday at the New America Foundation.

For more on the concept, see my previous post. We’ll post the v1.0 of the paper early next week.

If you’d like to come to the event, here are the details, or see below.

Homes With Tails: What if You Could Own Your Internet Connection?

America’s path to becoming a broadband leader is uncertain. Few dispute that deploying fast, universal, and affordable broadband is imperative, but the costs of robust network infrastructure are daunting for the private sector and governments.

In a forthcoming New America Foundation working paper, Tim Wu and Derek Slater propose an innovative way to drive broadband deployment: a model that encourages consumers to purchase and own the “last-mile” connection that runs into their home. By purchasing their own fiber optic connections, consumers would be able to connect to a variety of service providers. This model holds the potential for higher broadband speeds, greater competition, and lower Internet service prices.

The idea of customer-owned fiber may seem odd at first, but buying items like personal computers, answering machines or even telephones was also unheard of only a few decades ago. Home fiber could someday become a must-have technology.

Join the authors for a presentation and discussion of this new proposal, and learn more about “Homes With Tails.”

Start: 11/21/2008 – 12:30pm

End: 11/21/2008 – 1:30pm

New America Foundation

1630 Connecticut Ave NW 7th Floor

Washington, DC, 20009

United States

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