An essential element is often left out of excited industry discourse around cloud-computing. Is the physical network infrastructure in the country sufficient to support visions of the future cloud?

Allied Fiber CEO Hunter Newby offered a rather sobering view of reality at the DatacenterDynamics conference in Seattle, Wash., Thursday. The company specializes in building out dark fiber infrastructure.

"Without physical there is no virtual," Newby said. "Without fiber there is no cloud."

"Moving apps into the cloud is very dangerous if you don't know your physical fiber route. You can be buying from three or four different providers but there's only one path and everybody else is tied too on that path and you think you're redundant and diverse, but in fact, you're not. Those are very basic questions you need to ask before you do anything in higher layers. I believe that if you're not aware of the basic fundamental things that are very simple to understand, your entire business that you build above it is in jeopardy."

Fiber-rich patches, such as coastal areas, are sporadically spread around the country, enabling a healthy amount of competition but connectivity outside of those areas leaves a lot to be desired. "And no one company can afford to build out the proper infrastructure to make it all work and that's the problem."

Of $787 billion the U.S. government allocated to stimulating the economy, $7.2 billion was dedicated to developing the country's broadband infrastructure. Newby feels that, while a lot can be accomplished with $7.2 billion, the amount is insufficient for satisfying the country's broadband needs.

"It's a bit of a misnomer for the U.S. to be put on a list and (to be) ranked 11th, and sometimes I've heard 15th in the world, in terms of countries with broadband. It's just not fair. We can't be put on a list next to South Korea and Japan because of one thing: geography."

Every child in South Korea has a full-duplex videophone "because their country is the size of Indiana and they can make a physical layer plan to build fiber to every tower and have 3G and there are 70 different wireless providers in South Korea and they all make money. It's incredible. We don't even have four, nationwide, in this country" because of its vast expanse. "I think, if we were on a different list - based upon the size of the country and broadband penetration - we'd probably be alone."

Allied Fiber has embarked on a project to build one large fiber ring around the country to provide intermediate access points in states that currently do not have a choice for backhaul except the incumbent telecoms.

It is applying for "stimulus" funding for the first build-out phase and it has not been an easy task, Newby said. Applicants are being asked a lot of irrelevant questions and the agencies responsible for fund disbursement have reserved the right to change term definitions at will before the application deadline.

"The dollar amount was created and legislated (without a) plan," Newby said. "Coming up with the budget first and then trying to figure out what the architecture is going to be ... doesn't really make a whole lot of sense."

Total amount of the broadband stimulus is broken up into two chunks, administered as grants by two government agencies in three rounds. The National Telecommunications and Information Administration is responsible for disbursing $4.7 billion and the Rural Utilities Service (RUS) is in control of $2.5 billion. RUS will disburse some of the money as loans.

Deadline for applications for the first round of grants is Aug. 14 and the plan is to disburse the funds by December. Target dates have already been pushed back significantly (the money was originally supposed to become available in June) largely because NTIA was too thinly staffed to be able to review the volume of applications received - currently about 15,000.
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