NM BBFA Statement
Most telecommunications service providers and government regulators currently refer to the home, office, neighborhoods and communities as the "Last Mile". They indicate that providing "Last Mile" enhanced connectivity, especially in rural areas, is not economically viable. They have their economic models backwards. The greatest source of value in most peoples’ lives is local, derived from self, family and community. In a globally networked and communicative society, local environments have the opportunity to aggregate and generate new economic resources, value and benefits. The local realm must be considered the "First Mile".
The commonly applied term, "Last Mile" represents a supply-side driven concept. It is a top-down, national and corporate, technical and engineering perspective on telecommunications infrastructure deployment and services delivery. It is based on legacy hierarchical thinking, intent and actions.
The "First Mile" is based on a demand-side based understanding. It describes a local geographic orientation for telecommunications infrastructure and services deployment, with a democratic social and economic perspective, that focuses on the difference these systems and services will make in the quality of peoples’ lives. The "First Mile" is rooted in realizations about the newly emerging ‘hyper-archical’ nature of networked economies, local-global relationships, actions and social change; with the provocative intent that the Information Revolution must ultimately be a "people’s revolution".
Most telecommunications service providers and government regulators currently refer to the home, office, neighborhoods and communities as the "Last Mile". They indicate that providing "Last Mile" enhanced connectivity, especially in rural areas, is not economically viable. They have their economic models backwards. The greatest source of value in most peoples’ lives is local, derived from self, family and community. In a globally networked and communicative society, local environments have the opportunity to aggregate and generate new economic resources, value and benefits. The local realm must be considered the "First Mile".
The commonly applied term, "Last Mile" represents a supply-side driven concept. It is a top-down, national and corporate, technical and engineering perspective on telecommunications infrastructure deployment and services delivery. It is based on legacy hierarchical thinking, intent and actions.
The "First Mile" is based on a demand-side based understanding. It describes a local geographic orientation for telecommunications infrastructure and services deployment, with a democratic social and economic perspective, that focuses on the difference these systems and services will make in the quality of peoples’ lives. The "First Mile" is rooted in realizations about the newly emerging ‘hyper-archical’ nature of networked economies, local-global relationships, actions and social change; with the provocative intent that the Information Revolution must ultimately be a "people’s revolution".
First Mile Origins
Richard Lowenberg began promoting the term and concept of "First Mile" telecommunications and economics in the early 1990's; elaborating on the term in the 1995, U.S. EDA funded, "Rural Telecommunications Investment Guide" (scroll to the Technology page for specific First Mile / Last Mile reference); in a presentation at the Community Networking conference in Taos, NM, in July 1996; and years later (2003) in a Gartner Group report for CENIC, leading to the naming of the California "First Mile" initiative. Many local broadband networking initiatives are now using the term “First Mile”, including First Nations communities in Canada. www.firstmile.ca