The State of Broadband

Bartbrn writes "Here's an article ripped from today's headlines! Though this sounds like one of those Reader's Digest articles like "Ten Ways to Make Herpes Work For You!", it's actually a pretty interesting nugget written by Stephen Heins, Director of Marketing (uh oh) for NorthNet LLC, concerning the current political state of broadband access in the USA." Although this guy has a vested interest in the process, his take on the situation looks pretty accurate as far as I can tell.

Comments

Why It's Stalling

[qpt]

The broadband 'explosion' is crawling to a halt, and many providers are wondering why. It's quite simple, really - everyone has as much pornography as they want.

Pornography has always been the driving force behind Internet innovation, after all. It was for pornography that ever faster connections were demanded, and it was for pornography that the basics of online financial transactions were fleshed out.

However, there's simply a limit to the demand for pornography. To put it bluntly, everyone who uses the stuff is beating themselves sore, and can't possibly consume any more. Thus, the adoption of home broadband connections has dropped off severely.

I predict, though, that our wily friends the pornographers will find a way to stimulate demand. Perhaps they will lobby congress to allow advertisements for pornography on television. Perhaps they will hire a celebrity spokesperson, such as Bob Doll or Heidi Wall. Regardless, once the pornographers get back on their feet, broadband demand will ignite once more.

- qpt

Re:Herpes

[Anonymous Coward]

Must have been a typo. The original article was Ten Ways to Make Herpes Work for You if are serving a life sentence with a bunch of lonely guys named 'tiny'.

haha Re:Why It's Stalling

[StandardDeviant]

The broadband 'explosion' is crawling to a halt, and many providers are wondering why. It's quite simple, really - everyone has as much pornography as they want. Pornography has always been the driving force behind Internet innovation, after all. It was for pornography that ever faster connections were demanded, and it was for pornography that the basics of online financial transactions were fleshed out. However, there's simply a limit to the demand for pornography. To put it bluntly, everyone who uses the stuff is beating themselves sore, and can't possibly consume any more. Thus, the adoption of home broadband connections has dropped off severely. I predict, though, that our wily friends the pornographers will find a way to stimulate demand. Perhaps they will lobby congress to allow advertisements for pornography on television. Perhaps they will hire a celebrity spokesperson, such as Bob Doll or Heidi Wall. Regardless, once the pornographers get back on their feet, broadband demand will ignite once more.

Well, as one person (whose name I can't recall) said: "The entire body of computer science can be viewed as nothing more than the development of efficient methods for the storage, transportation, encoding, and rendering of pornography.".

It's easy to see how pr0n providers could cater to and increase demand for the broadband market: higher resolution and encoding for stills and motion picture files, high quality sound in motion picture files, Flash site navigation, etc. etc. etc. Figure, what, the average file size of a pr0n JPEG is 40-80KB? You could easily 10x that if you went for higher quality encoding and/or greater resolutions.

btw, Bob Dole is already a spokesperson for the sex industry. "Take viagra! It gave me a stiffy!"

--
News for geeks in Austin: www.geekaustin.org

It's not happening

[DavidpFitz]

Broadband is not happening because telco's don't know how to charge for it.

In the UK, BT is holding back ADSL because of marketing reasons -- ie. it can make more money from dial-up.

Re:It's not happening

[gascsd]

In the UK, BT is holding back ADSL because of marketing reasons -- ie. it can make more money from dial-up.

I have a friend in UK and I was talking to him about this the other day. My suggestion was to start a petition, and get the entire community to sign it.

I speak from quasi-experience. A friend of mine had a friend who lived in a new housing sub-division, 90%+ of which were families with ages sub-40 (you gotta love my science, but stereotypically, this is probably the largest demographic that wants high speed internet). The sub-division has about 900-1000 homes in it, and they got about 1600 signatures. The petition said something along the lines of 'give us DSL, or we go elsewhere' (they had the benefit of being able to get local telco service by another company, unlike what it sounds like in the UK w/BT). They sent in the petition, and about a month later, their CO was wired for DSL.

I told my friend in the UK to try this petition deal, because it's better than not doing anything at all. He said everyone and their dog has a cell phone, so ditch BT and your local wired-line and get a cell through some other company.

Re:It's not happening

[Psiren]

Not all that many cable companys are offering broadband access. And since cable only reaches about half of the population its not going to work for everyone (neither does ADSL either, but thats another problem).

All the cable companies I've seen that do offer broadband access place far too many restrictions on what you can and cannot do with your line. Many ADSL providers however allow you to network, run servers and other such niceties that are usually expressly forbidden in the terms for cable use. So, to cut a long rant short, ADSL is the least restrictive of broadband solutions. And yes, BT does piss everyone about.

Re:It's not happening

[Bassthang]

You can get a cable modem if you live in a Telewest or Blueyonder area. Most people don't . You can get ADSL if you live within 4km of the right kind of BT exchange. Most people don't. The ADSL will come from BT only (Freeserve, Demon et al just sell rebadged BT ADSL). This does not constitute competition in my book, or in that of any sane person. And this is just for home use, the prices they charge to businesses are significantly higher.

If OFTEL gave BT a kick up the arse, and there was proper LLU, then (a) there would be ADSL available from more exchanges, (b) there would be an incentive on BT's ADSL competitors to provide ADSL at >4km distance, (c) cable companies would have further incentive to lay more cable in order to reach more possible users and (d) you would get a better cable modem service at a better price. What we seem to be getting is exactly what has happened in the US. Yet another case of the UK blindly copying the US and it all going tits-up.

one of many ways Verizion frustrates customers ...

[OmegaDan]

I live in a verizion only town ... a so. cal town of about 100,000 people ... dsl has been avaliable here for years, if you live in the rural part of the valley! ... Thats right, they put dsl into the rural / agricultural portion of town ... my buddy who has a 10 acre farm has dsl, the budweiser clidesdales (sp?) live a few miles down the street from him and THEY could get dsl ...

Meanwhile, I live in the urban part of town, high schools, businessess, high population .. no dsl .. no plans to put dsl in ... however this dosen't stop them from sending out flyers every 6 months to announce that dsl is avaliable in my area --then you call them and they tell you they aren't REALLY planning on putting dsl in, they just wnated to see how many people are interested to gague wether it'd be profitable ...

Even worse in the UK

[OpCode42]

If you think the USA has it bad for broadband access, take pity on us UK guys.

Apparently you can only get cable modems or ADSL if you live in one of two cities, have a sister called Sue, an even number of vowels in your name and order on a Thursday.

-----

Re:Even worse in the UK

[fitsy]

Believe me it ain't that bad.

Its expensive yes, but at least there is _some_ competition in the market from the likes of NTL which provide Cable modem acess in a few cities.

I thought it was bad, then I moved to Paris a month ago. I not only have to put up with a stupid keyboard, rude assholes everywhere you go or a confusing choice of cheese, I can get a telephone from ONLY ONE SUPPLIER, France Telecom, the equivalent of BT (NO COMPETITION WHATSOEVER), cable companies don't do phone services as all the lines belong to FT. I can get ADSL for about £45 per month, yet again, a product from ONLY FT as the cable companies have silly upload/download limits, and after a certain amount, you start paying per the Mbyte.

So to cut a long story short it ain't as bad as you think in the UK. BT are monopolistic pricks yes, but they don not have _TOTAL_ control of the market as FT has.

Re:Even worse in the UK

[wiredog]

At least you don't have to sacrifice a goat by the light of the full moon.

Re:pleh

[raju1kabir]

I remember reading somewhere(5 years ago) that by 2000, that all payphones will be changed over to broadband web terminals, what happened to that?

I think you blinked and missed it. In Amsterdam there were high-speed all-weather web stations clustered with pay phones all over town for the past couple years. Now most of them are gone. I don't think they got a lot of use - I saw lots of people staring at them and taking pictures, but not many actually sidling up to do some surfing.

Likewise the web kiosks that were placed in shopping malls all over Malaysia have vanished (no great loss, as half of them were displaying BSOD at any given moment).

Yet both countries have thriving internet cafe cultures. In Amsterdam they've now got what seems to be the largest internet café on earth, and it's been packed every time I've been there (and with its high speeds, ludicrously low charges, comfy workstations with nice LCD screens, and well-kept machines, I'm there quite often).

I just think people didn't want to do their webbing standing up. And a fair number of them wanted to be able to run telnet, IRC clients, etc., which most of the kiosks don't offer.

Bob on broadband

[Sir Runcible Spoon]

Mr Cringley had go on this very subject last week.

More important than broadband

[NigelJohnstone]

Think of all the third world countries in the world and help them first.

I read of one third world country that had huge debts and its people have no hospitals to go when they are sick.

Its politicians are corrupt and can be bought and sold.

Why out in the remote province of California people have no electricity and constantly shoot each other to protect what little they have. Mobs rule in the city of Miami (pronouce My-am-ee).

On top of that the people of this third world country suffer Earthquakes, tornadoes, and Seinfeld reruns.

Don't be selfish, help that country first before you indulge yourself with broad band internet access.

20+ Mbit broadband in US?

[green pizza]

I've recently seen some pretty big claims from CableTV providers talking about brining in 45+ Mbit access to subscriber home with an average thruput of over 20 Mbit. I belive MaximumPC Magazine even had an article on this. In my area we can only get ~4.5 Mbit cable, 1.5 Mbit SDSL, and 2.2 Mbit ADSL. What is available in other parts of the country? Anyone have experinece with *consumer* 20, 30, or even 40 Mbit broadband?

Re:20+ Mbit broadband in US?

[dachshund]

...CableTV providers talking about brining in 45+ Mbit access to subscriber home with an average thruput of over 20 Mbit.

Each (6Mhz) cable channel dedicated to Cable Modem service can carry between 27 and 32Mbit, depending on the frequency and the encoding. Of course, since cable modems are a shared technology, that bandwidth is divided amongst however many people are on the local loop (optimistically, 300-400, for some companies more like 2000-3000.) So yeah, the cable companies are telling the truth, just not the whole truth. Now, it's possible to use multiple channels for cable modem service, but you won't see a whole lot of it. Each cable modem channel used takes away a slot that could have been used for an analog cable channel, or up to 10 digital cable channels. Right now, that's not part of companies' business model.

You can also reduce the size of the local loop. This means running multiple copies of the local channels (one for each loop) through the analog fiber from the head-end. One of the biggest problems today for many large cable infrastructures is lack of fiber bandwidth, even more than lack of space on the local loop. So any plans to bring sustained 20Mbit connections to homes is a long way off. It may not arrive til fiber-to-the-home, which is where DSL and Cable are both going to converge.

Re:Telecommunication is inefficient

[qaggaz]

Comunication providers (including ISPs) do not manufacture a product, and thus do not benefit from "economies of scale" in the same way that a manufacturing enterprise would. Why? They are primarily service providers. Take the following two examples:

Example 1 - Traditional widget manufacturer: develops a product in R&D labs. Incurs high development costs, prototype units are each hand-built by engineers. Manufacturing process is developed (at additional expense), assembly-lines are set-up, workers hired and trained. Now the first widgets come off the assembly line and quality-control finds problems in 50% of the widgets. Reasearch determines that a crucial step was missed when developing the process, which then must be revised.

Example 2 - Plumber, a service provider: Fred, a plumber decides to open his own plumbing business. He is a trained professional with 10 years of experince. One day, he may work on a bathroom remodling job, the next he may be working on new construction. He initally invests in a computer to help with his bookeeping, a set of tools, and a truck. After a while, he has more work than he can do himself so he hires a helper. This enables him to work faster, but he would like to take on even more work, so he hires a few more teams of plumbers and helpers, but then needs to expand his administrative staff to cope with the new employees. He hires supervisors and foremen to direct the work.

Now, in the context of the first example, the unit cost of the first 100 units is quite high while the unit cost of the millionith unit is quite small since the development costs can be spread over many more units. This is the basis for the "economy of scale."

The impact of "economies of scale" is much less pronounced in the second example. Yes, the unit cost (to Fred, not the customer) of the first job is much higher than the 100th, because Fred has to recover the costs of the tools, the truck, and the computer. On the other hand, Fred is not able to serve customers more quickly (and thus reduce his cost) just by increasing the number of jobs completed. The increased overhead of the additonal administrative expenses will curb an increase in profits. Fred may, in fact, be better off as an independent contractor and limiting the number of jobs that he can do.

I am a network engineer, not a plumber nor a widget maker, so I'm sure that these examples are over-simplified. But I am equally certain that the telecominications is much more like the service provider and less like a widget maker. Yes, there are economies of scale early on: it will take much longer to recover the cost of a 100 port DSLAM with only 10 customers, but much less with 90. But guess what? The 101st customer will require that an additional DSLAM be purcased, space found in the Central Office (notoriously cramped places), cables run from the MDF (main distribution frame), etc. At the 201st customer, the same exercise must be repeated. At the 1001st customer, an extension to the Central Office must be built, power and HVAC installed, new distribution frames installed, and so on.

I have not even mentioned customer care, network engineering and operations, billing, and all of the other factors assoicated with rolling out a communications service.

Economies of scale just don't apply in the "big" telco world.

Let's check our definitions.

[mindstrm]

"Broadband" does not mean "Fast" or "High Speed", it simply has to do with the transmission mechanism.

Gigabit ethernet is not Broadband.
Cable is.
DSL isn't.
Fiber isn't, usually.

Let's start calling it 'high speed' and quit calling it 'broadband'.

Re:Let's check our definitions.

[mindstrm]

Yeah. But I can't resist...

Re:Let's check our definitions.

[wowbagger]

DSL uses a bandwidth of about 1 MHz on the wire. If that's not broad, I don't know what is.

And gigabit ethernet will die a horrible death if the wire won't pass at least 100 MHz of signal.

Let's compare the ratio of carrier frequency to signal bandwidth (Q := BW/Fc). DSL and ethernet are baseband signals (Fc= 0Hz, BW ~ 100 MHz, Q = BW/Fc ~ NAN). Cable is fairly broad (Fc ~ 300 MHz, BW ~ 20 MHz, Q = .1). Fiber isn't broadband (Fc ~ 230 THz, BW ~ 600 MHz, Q = 2.6E-6).

Don't sweat it: most people think their modems are 56kBaud....

Re:Let's check our definitions.

[K.]

We could call DSL extremelyFinelyChoppedBand
if you'd prefer.

K.
-

Re:Let's check our definitions.

[billcopc]

I suggest we call it bigband.

(What do you call a piece of black tape patching a hole in coax shielding ? a broadbandage.)

Re:Let's check our definitions.

[decaym]

Broadband typically refers to running multiple frequencies over one wire (such as multiple channels on cable). Baseband is what twisted pair wire systems are usually classed as. Although, DSL is an odd beast being that the signal is being split into a low and high frequency range for voice and data.

telecommunication vs. information

[BigJim.fr]

"High-speed cable access is not a telecommunication service -- it is an information service"

What about convergence ? In my opinion, there is no difference between telecom and information. Can anyone defend his point by making the subtlety clearer ?

Is this news or whining?

[Caid Raspa]

In related news, the company X is worried as competition from other companies in the same field of industry does not allow them to fulfill their vision of "$$ for company X"

Just one sample from the article:

"FACT:"Until spectrum caps and other regulatory barriers are eliminated, neither wireless nor satellite high-speed services can fulfill the vision of 3G wire-free access to the Internet.

Radio waves have a lot more use than just wireless net. TV, commercial radio, communications (for aviation, coast guard, ships, police, military, satellites), radio astronomy, HAMS, etc. This is just why there are spectrum caps.

Radio spectral ranges are a natural resource that could be used at least 100 times more than there is available bandwidth. So, everyone using radio bandwidth would like to have some more. Whining about that is hardly "news for nerds".

broadband = jobs

[green pizza]

Should we all quit our jobs too? I am willing to bet that over 50% of Slashdot readers from America are either sysadmins or coders, making six figures. To us, broadband is PART of our life and job.

Re:Opensource and Broadband

[qaggaz]

Has anyone stopped to think about some of the expenses that the world's broadband providers have? Overpriced Cisco routers and switches (running Cisco IOS), overpriced NT and Solaris servers, overpriced HP NetVue management software, etc. Notice a common thread? Closed source.

No. The common thread is hardware. You mentioned routers, switches, servers (running NT and Solaris), etc.

Juniper routers use an OpenBSD based OS (JUNOS) as the kernel of their software (as well as an Intel-based PCI platform routing engine as hardware). This reduced development cost and time of their products, but the list price is as high or higher for similar Cisco products.

Why?

Network equipment vendors manufacture hardware and are therefore subject to economies of scale. If Cisco ships 10 times as many 12000s as Juniper ships M40s, guess which one will be cheaper to manufacture?

Another factor driving up hardware costs is the limited customer base for this sort of equipment. What is the market demand for 10Gbps routers?

Of course if you want to run open source software on specialized hardware, that is possible too. For instance, you can run Linux on a Cisco 2500, if you are an open source purist. It would be unlikely that this will significantly reduce the cost of owning and deploying a network, however.

Re:Competition is inefficient

[galego]

First, you can check this post out for the experience I had with the Covad/Qwest run around I shopped around and compared price/features on DSL:

• SpeakEasy offered me all-in-one billing
• Charged me the same price for the modem no matter what sort of box it was (try getting that free internal modem for Linux/Mac from Qwest...ain't happening)
• Oh yeah...rebated the install/modem through Covad
• Offered me three free months
• Offered support on just about any platform that could handle 10BaseT network adapter
• Didn't put me behind a firewall
• Allow me to run a server if I wanted

For the same price as it would cost me with Qwest's DSL + ISP. I am getting bang for my buck. Now...

For Covad & Speakeasy to set me up, Qwest had to plug in my phone loop to Covad's DSLAM. The request went in twice...Qwest twice said "Sure, it's done"...and hadn't done it. The tech. told me this was typical procedure (and Qwest wasn't paying the gas on his van nor his salary). I considered dropping my order...but whose fault would the delays have been?

I agree that competition is inefficient when such an unfair advantage is leveraged in this maner.

Galego

Re:one of many ways Verizion frustrates customers

[wowbagger]

There may be a good technical reason for rural customers having DSL and urban customers not having it.

DSL requires clean copper from end to end. In a lot of urban areas, the phone company ran out of pairs out of the central office (CO) a long time ago. They solved this by using a thing called a SLIC-96 (subscriber line interface card). What a SLIC does is take 96 phone calls, encoded them to digital at 64 kbit/sec, and puts that on 4 pairs of wire. So, that new housing development gets all its needs solved without running new wires.

However, a SLIC will KILL a 56k modem, and DSL is right out. It may be that your local area is just chock full of SLICs, and the telco would have to run a SPL (shit pot load) of pairs from the CO to enable DSL.

For rural customers, the scenario is different. The only traps waiting for them are loading coils. A run of wire has an intrinsic capacitance, that gradually rolls the signal response off. In order to keep the voice band of 0Hz->3kHz flat, the insert inductors (loading coils) to offset the capactiance in the voice band. However, this doesn't come without price: everything above 3kHz is toast.

However, telcos haven't been installing loading coils for a great many years, since they knew this sort of thing was coming. Especially in a case where they had to upgrade the rural plants, they pulled a bunch of pairs and have clean copper in the ground. (The single biggest cost in pulling wire/fiber is the hole in the ground: the cost of the cable itself is trivial).

The other thing that is happening is that in the urban areas, the ILOC (incumbant local operating company, a.k.a. baby bell, Verison in your case) must provide space, equipment, and service to any CLOC (competitive local operating company, a.k.a. Bubba's Barbeque Pit and Phone Company) at a loss.

Now, why would Verison upgrade their racks again...?

Want competition? Don't grant legal monopolies!

[Brian Stretch]

1) Repeal all laws granting legal monopolies to cable and telephone companies. The ex-monopolies will either have to resell access to ISPs or risk a competitor building new (and state-of-the-art) infrastructure in their territory. Works for me either way.

2) The Federal government is being greedy as hell with their auctioning of spectrum licenses. A "land rush" model would be more appropriate, with the first company to occupy spectrum (deploy service) registering their claim with the government (and meeting certain qualifications, ie, real service and not a white noise generator). Yes, this was Ayn Rand's idea. Cheaper for the companies than paying hundreds of $billions to Big Brother (guess how they'll have to pay that back?), and it makes it far more likely that we'll get 3G (and whatever succeeds it) soon and cheap. If companies can share spectrum, this model works even better.

Another POV

[dmccarty]

I don't mean to play devil's advocate here for the "incumbant carries," as Mr. Heins refers to them, but I do have a point of view from our regional provider, Ameritech. I don't have the specifics of the story, but a friend who works installing DSL for Ameritech says that Ameritech has ceased upgrading equipment in all CO's. The reason is because they have been forced by the FCC to lease out their new, expensive equipment at laughable rates in the name of competition.

So instead of buying any more they've decided to take their ball and go home, so to speak. But when Heins says that "independent ISP owners and operators are willing to pay fair-market rates" it does make me wonder what he means by fair-market rates .

Re:one of many ways Verizion frustrates customers

[cswiii]

Want to know about a situation where living in a proclaimed "rural area" really bites?

Welcome to Loudoun County, Virginia. I moved out here to live close to my place of employment. In the past few years Loudoun was sly enough to lure all these high tech companies out here. Let's look for a second at which companies have buildings and/or HQ in this general region:

AOL
WorldCom
PSINet
EDS
AT&T
Oracle
Winstar
...probably a lot more that I've missed.

Looks neat, right? Until you move out here and realize that there is /shit/ for broadband. Absolutely nothing. Adelphia cable is oversubscribed and not accepting new customers, and is unidirectional anyway. And then despite being 9000 feet from the CO, I ran into fiber on the loop when I tried to get DSL. Oops. And of course satellite is right out.

Granted, this isn't ma bell's fault so much, as it is the county for luring in the high-tech companies w/o appropriate infrastructure. But there's something bitterly ironic about the fact that I live 4 miles from the largest ISP in the US and can't get broadband. They call this area "silicon valley of the east". Well, if this is an oasis, I'm in the fucking desert.

The State of Broadband in Japan

[greggman]

1) Last week usen started offering 100mbit service for $50 a month. Yes, that's not a mis-print. 100megabits. That's 66 T1 lines for $50 a month. It's not available everywhere but they do have a roll out plan. It's supposed to be available in all cities in Tokyo (including mine) by October this year. Just FYI this is fiber optic service. They've been laying the cables for a while.

2) NTT (Japan's version of AT&T and still a virtual monopoly) is offering 1.5mbit DSL for $60 a month throughout the country. They have some competition from 2 or 3 other DSL providers but the other providers have to work through them.

3)The power companies were recently deregulated allowing them to sell more than just power. Their first product is 3mbit service through your powerline. Maybe California power companies should offer this service to help their financial problems.

Japan *was* behind the U.S. but it looks like they are quickly going to pass the U.S. in terms of being *wired*

Re:one of many ways Verizion frustrates customers

[Richy_T]

However, a SLIC will KILL a 56k modem, and DSL is right out. It may be that your local area is just chock full of SLICs, and the telco would have to run a SPL (shit pot load) of pairs from the CO to enable DSL

I live in a rural area but I think this is what has happened to me. Every day at around 9-10 am and 530pm, the line quality degrades so much that my external USRobotics modem can't keep the signal and disconnects. As a home worker this pisses me off. Thankfully the 3com PCMCIA card (it is v.90) in my 486 laptop behaves a bit better and connects at a less optimistic speed (~31200) and stays conencted all day.

Unfortunately broadband is out of the question. BellSouth want to get everywhere wired up with ADSL by 2002 (they claim) but currently have no plans to put it in here. Intermedia actually came in a year or two ago and took out all the internet capable cable equpt and swapped it with another county

I can't even get ISDN reasonably. Bellsouth's areaplus plan which makes any of the POPs local is not available with ISDN. The only ISP which has a local pop (valley.net) has not returned any of my numerous calls or e-mails.

Sprint ion isn't here yet (big surprise). I think it's going to have to be Starband but I'm half suspecting that the satellite's going to have an imperfection is its dish so that we can't get it here.

Rich

Re:one of many ways Verizion frustrates customers

[wowbagger]

If you were on a SLIC, you'd be on it 24/7. It sounds more like to me you have crosstalk from other lines, and they happen at that time of the day. You might try disconnecting the modem, picking up the phone, dialing a single digit to quiet the dial tone, and listening. See if you can hear any voice on the line (it will be pretty faint). If so, call the phone company and complain about "hearing other people on my line." DO NOT MENTION THE WORDS MODEM OR HOME WORKER If you say those words the phone company will try to nail you with a business line charge. Say you hear other people talking on the line and maybe they will re-route your pairs away from the problem. Or maybe they will make it worse....

Re:Herpes

[unitron]

You've heard of Reader's Digest Condensed Books? This was a Reader's Digest Condensed Title.

Will no one ever realize the real issue?

[Esperandi]

How many more years am I going to have to wait around until people start waking up to the real issue of consumer broadband? That issue is that asynchronous connections are going to turn the Internet into a completely passive medium. You can watch, but you can't create. Sure, with a cable modem or DSL I can watch a TV show streaming across the web just fine. But I'd never be able to stream my own, not even to an intermediate server which would handle the larger scale distribution. If you think its paranoia that I think we're being set up to watch the Internet turn into TV, go ask any broadband provider why they cap upload speeds. The reason isn't because THEY have a capped upstream (they buy synchronous bandwidth) or even anything like "we're afraid people will use it for illegal stuff and we'll get blamed", the reason is because if you are serving content, you must be making money right? People wouldn't put up personal web page with multimedia conent and want to run the server from their house unless they were just raking in the cash, right? That's what they're doing. Either charge for it, or don't serve. The Internet that was built on personal web pages and experimentation is dying. Don't say I never warned you.