All Eggs in One Basket

 The recent outage causing thousands of Cincinnati Bell Fioptics subscribers to be unable to watch the Bengals trounce the New York Jets calls to mind an old saying: “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.”  The problem is that with the integration of all things digital, that good advice may be difficult, if not impossible, to follow.

Not too long ago you made telephone calls on a wired phone, watched TV using rabbit ears, paid your bills with a check, envelope and stamp and watched your favorite movie at the local movie theater.  When planning a family trip to Aunt Gertrude’s house you sent her a letter using the post office and you plotted your route using a free map picked up from the Esso station down the road.

Today literally all the tasks listed above are routinely accomplished with a smart phone and the internet.  Great when it all works as it does most of the time, but a real pain in the (fill in your favorite word here) when it does not.  Our eggs are indeed now firmly packed into a single basket.  While the integration provides great convenience, when the technology fails bad things can happen and sometimes it can be more serious than just missing out on a touchdown.

For example, many have cut the cord with Ma Bell and use a voice over internet (VOIP) service from Time Warner or another internet provider.  A power outage can render the phone useless.  Since Cincinnati Bell provides power to their network, even powering standard phones in your house, very seldom will you lose the use of your wired phone, even if your whole neighborhood is without power from Duke.

A few months ago there was a story on the news about a motorist who placed a bit too much confidence in her malfunctioning GPS, only to get lost in the Mohave Desert.  This does not happen often but a healthy skepticism of technology can be good idea.  Digital or not, you are using machines, very sophisticated machines but still machines.

Just as you most likely have a flashlight on hand for those times when the lights fail, you should have some alternate ways of handling those tasks that you take for granted and are handled solely by the internet.  So the cloud is fine for storing your files but make sure you have copies of those important files in a safe place. 

In the case of the customers relying in Cincinnati Bell Fioptics, a $10 rabbit ears antenna would have solved the problem.

All Eggs in One Basket

 The recent outage causing thousands of Cincinnati Bell Fioptics subscribers to be unable to watch the Bengals trounce the New York Jets calls to mind an old saying: “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.”  The problem is that with the integration of all things digital, that good advice may be difficult, if not impossible, to follow.

Not too long ago you made telephone calls on a wired phone, watched TV using rabbit ears, paid your bills with a check, envelope and stamp and watched your favorite movie at the local movie theater.  When planning a family trip to Aunt Gertrude’s house you sent her a letter using the post office and you plotted your route using a free map picked up from the Esso station down the road.

Today literally all the tasks listed above are routinely accomplished with a smart phone and the internet.  Great when it all works as it does most of the time, but a real pain in the (fill in your favorite word here) when it does not.  Our eggs are indeed now firmly packed into a single basket.  While the integration provides great convenience, when the technology fails bad things can happen and sometimes it can be more serious than just missing out on a touchdown.

For example, many have cut the cord with Ma Bell and use a voice over internet (VOIP) service from Time Warner or another internet provider.  A power outage can render the phone useless.  Since Cincinnati Bell provides power to their network, even powering standard phones in your house, very seldom will you lose the use of your wired phone, even if your whole neighborhood is without power from Duke.

A few months ago there was a story on the news about a motorist who placed a bit too much confidence in her malfunctioning GPS, only to get lost in the Mohave Desert.  This does not happen often but a healthy skepticism of technology can be good idea.  Digital or not, you are using machines, very sophisticated machines but still machines.

Just as you most likely have a flashlight on hand for those times when the lights fail, you should have some alternate ways of handling those tasks that you take for granted and are handled solely by the internet.  So the cloud is fine for storing your files but make sure you have copies of those important files in a safe place. 

In the case of the customers relying in Cincinnati Bell Fioptics, a $10 rabbit ears antenna would have solved the problem.

Wideband...Broadband on Steroids

There has been a flurry of advertisements on TV and print lately touting new higher speed access to the Internet. Cincinnati Bell offers a new fiber based system which is very good and robust and provides both very high speed Internet access and high definition TV service. They promise Internet speeds up to 100 mbps. Unfortunately, they do not yet provide this enhanced service throughout the region. Time Warner Cable has been pushing what they call Wideband. According to the ads, the new service can provide up to 50 mbps. To put this all in perspective, the regular turbo RoadRunner runs at about 3 mbps.



Time was when most of us only used the Internet to send and receive emails which, for the most part, were made up of text and, on occasion, a few pictures. This required very little bandwidth and many of us used our regular telephone lines to make the Internet connection. You may remember the term “dial up.” Today we use the Internet for tasks that were unheard of just a few years ago. Watching high definition video, making video calls to persons around the world and connecting our smart phones to the cloud all require a great amount of bandwidth. The big question is what speed is right for your situation.



Watching the new TV commercials for Time Warner’s Wideband can give the impression that we all need super high speed services. This may be a bit of a stretch and can also be very expensive. For sure, if you are going to use the Internet to download full length high definition TV programming, the higher speed is a good idea. A ten page text email uses less bandwidth to download than one second of HD video. The fact is that, so far, few use the Internet as the primary way of watching TV programs.



Some people are confused about the advertisements because they blur the lines between watching TV via the Internet and watching TV via digital cable. You need the Wideband speed only if you watch programming via the Internet from services like Hulu.com or Netflix.com. If you are a digital cable subscriber you don’t need Wideband to watch TV.



I find it interesting and somewhat disingenuous on the part of Time Warner with their commercials promoting Wideband. The ads show a family happily playing games and watching movies. All of these activities require Wideband band service. Then the commercial cuts to a graphic with large text, “Starting at only $29.99 a Month.” Of course, when you investigate further, you will find that Wideband is much more expensive and will cost as much as $99.99 per month. The $29.99 per month has fine print indicating this rate is for a 2 to 10 mbps service. The remaining 40 mbps will cost you a bit more. Caveat Emptor!

Wideband...Broadband on Steroids

There has been a flurry of advertisements on TV and print lately touting new higher speed access to the Internet. Cincinnati Bell offers a new fiber based system which is very good and robust and provides both very high speed Internet access and high definition TV service. They promise Internet speeds up to 100 mbps. Unfortunately, they do not yet provide this enhanced service throughout the region. Time Warner Cable has been pushing what they call Wideband. According to the ads, the new service can provide up to 50 mbps. To put this all in perspective, the regular turbo RoadRunner runs at about 3 mbps.

Time was when most of us only used the Internet to send and receive emails which, for the most part, were made up of text and, on occasion, a few pictures. This required very little bandwidth and many of us used our regular telephone lines to make the Internet connection. You may remember the term “dial up.” Today we use the Internet for tasks that were unheard of just a few years ago. Watching high definition video, making video calls to persons around the world and connecting our smart phones to the cloud all require a great amount of bandwidth. The big question is what speed is right for your situation.

Watching the new TV commercials for Time Warner’s Wideband can give the impression that we all need super high speed services. This may be a bit of a stretch and can also be very expensive. For sure, if you are going to use the Internet to download full length high definition TV programming, the higher speed is a good idea. A ten page text email uses less bandwidth to download than one second of HD video. The fact is that, so far, few use the Internet as the primary way of watching TV programs.

Some people are confused about the advertisements because they blur the lines between watching TV via the Internet and watching TV via digital cable. You need the Wideband speed only if you watch programming via the Internet from services like Hulu.com or Netflix.com. If you are a digital cable subscriber you don’t need Wideband to watch TV.

I find it interesting and somewhat disingenuous on the part of Time Warner with their commercials promoting Wideband. The ads show a family happily playing games and watching movies. All of these activities require Wideband band service. Then the commercial cuts to a graphic with large text, “Starting at only $29.99 a Month.” Of course, when you investigate further, you will find that Wideband is much more expensive and will cost as much as $99.99 per month. The $29.99 per month has fine print indicating this rate is for a 2 to 10 mbps service. The remaining 40 mbps will cost you a bit more. Caveat Emptor!