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Putting The Fiber Glut In Historical Perspective
securitas writes: "This editorial over at the New York Times makes a good case for the optical network buildout being an essential infrastructure project like the railroads, telegraph lines and interstate highways were of previous generations. These projects stimulated new inventions and applications and helped build a great nation. So if you lost a ton on JDS Uniphase, Ciena, Corning, Nortel and the rest, rest easy that you have helped build the future and inspire innovation."
rest easy that you have helped build the future and inspire innovation. 'in the porn industry' got cut off :o(
As always, the archives have the story without requiring NYT registration and login.
Q: could Slashcode be modified to transpose these URLs automatically?
Late last month Digital TV was launched in Finland. Billions of Finnish Marks had been spent on building a next-generation TV network for digital TV.
Now it seems this standard is already on it's way out, and to top it all off, the consumer products needed to actually watch digital TV aren't really available yet...
Just imagine how much better off we could have been if all that money had been spent on a broadband infrastructure for transporting any data, including TV. ARGH.
.: Max Romantschuk
The glut of fiber tends to be more in the metro space. I really don't see the middle of Iowa with a ton of fiber. What this does is give the opportunity for metro buildouts. It's going to be the battle of the cities verus the towns all over again.
Personally, I can't wait to have my own 100mb connection to the net.
dave
I hate to be a stickler, but the comment about "if you lost a ton on JDS Uniphase, Ciena, Corning, Nortel and the rest, rest easy that you have helped build the future and inspire innovation" has no relevance to building the fiber infrastructure.
The only time these companies would have benefited from your investment was when they offered primary and/or secondary IPOs. After that, buying their stock only raises the value of the stock for the people who own it (mainly executives, institutions, and joe public).
Unfortunatly the glut is in long haul fiber, not local fiber. The most exspensive part of any connetion is what is called the last mile. This is the connection between your house and the nearest switching station. The reason for this is simple, Age. In most places the copper in the ground has been their since the 1950's and in some cases longer. It is of different specs than are ideal and is corroding.
The problem with replacing it is that you have to get so many permits and studies just to replace one section of line that it is not feasable to do so. When congress de-regulated the phone industry they forced the local telco to give this last mile to the public domain. Any carrier can provide service over that mile of copper wire, be it DSL , POTS (Plain old telephone service), or long distance. This causes the eminent maintainer (the local telco) not to be interested at all in replacing any of it. Why replace it for other people? Monopolies are bad, but it does help to have someone who are directly responsible for maintaining a service.
Free peice of advice for the day BTW. If you have a 56K modem it really helps to reduce the number of analogue to digital conversion (56K can only stand one) If you are having signal problems call and have caller ID added to your list of services for a month. This forces the telco to move you from older equipment to the new digital equipment they are installing. This will provide better signal to you. After the month cancel the service, they won't bother to switch you back and you will keep the performance increase.
Papa Legba come and open the gate
I know it's nothing special, but probably worth knowing - In my frustration at having to log-in to the NYTimes to read articles, I just tried guessing my way in, and guess what? I was successful on the 2nd attempt:
Login: password
Password: password
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Moderator's essentials
I can't imagine what a fully rounded member of society with interests outside the technological circlejerk might do with a broadband internet. I've certainly noticed that my father has hated having it installed, and has never used it to author articles on World War I aviation in magazines around the world. I've also noticed that my mother hasn't moved to telecommuting a couple of times a week, giving her no end of stress relief by cutting out the daily commute.
Now riddle me this: what use does a loser, no-life geek have for broadband? After all, they can't talk to people, both because they have nothing to say and because everyone hates them; they can't use it for music, video or literature as their tiny little rail-guided tech-obsessed minds are incapable of appreciating the beauty and unpredictability of art; and they certainly can't use it for any sort of creative endeavour as all their life has been dedicated to a soulless cul-de-sac leaving them creatively dead. The only thing I can think of is porn, which these dweebs are in desperate need of in lieu of real women.
OK, I understand how my daily All-Bran helps with "stimulating new inventions". And "Inspire innovation"? Fair enough, it's happened to me a few times. But "helped build a great nation"?
Wow. I'm gonna have another breakfast.
Perhaps I'm being thick here, but isn't it kind of obvious that any available bandwidth will be used up eventually? How can we have "too much" fiber?
Well, the question is not whether it will be used up eventually, but whether it it will be used up before technological innovation makes the current infrastructure obsolete.
I don't think this is like the railroad system at all. When they built those railroads, you could actually buy a train ticket and USE them. I'm curious as to how anyone could use the Dark fiber that we now have a glut of.
Without the equipment on both sides lighting it up, dark fiber is useless.
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
'Investing in railroad companies (RC) cannot be wrong,
because they are the future'.
What about replacing RC with FCC (fiber cable company)?
Go to your local Amazon store and read and enjoy The Devil Takes the Hindmost.
here's an account we should all be able to use.
cowboyneal2001
cowboyneal2001
A one banana problem.
Another tip: If your connection is slow, try taking other devices off the telephone line.
Sometimes old phones or answering machines have an electrical component called a capacitor placed across the telephone line even when the phone is not being used. This will limit the speed of your connection. Just unplug the telephone or answering machine or bell or other device to test.
Bush's education improvements were
The tech isn't allways there...
Voyager Point is a new suburb of Sydney (and not a great distance out compared to some suburbs), with hundreds of new homes full of young couples, where each home is worth a bare minimum of AU$400k. The perfect market! Yet not an inch of fibre in sight! Oh, and adsl isn't available either, anywhere in the suburb. More satelite dishes than any suburb I've seen is oz.
Perhaps they (the telcos) seem to have given up on new fibre broadband.
The problem being that while the railroads were and still are vital to the economic development of North America, by some measures no railroad in NA has ever earned a return on investment. Even the best-managed roads today (e.g. Norfolk Southern) are barely turning an operating profit. And the harder they try, the more money they lose.
Which, come to think of it, sounds pretty much like the situation in the data communications business right at the moment. The only difference being that since investors are a lot faster to pull the trigger on businesses that they perceive as having poor future returns, the telecomm companies will probably never get the chance to establish themselves that the railroads had 1860-1920.
So what happens when all the money pulls out, and all the telecomm providers (except the RBOCs) collapse?
sPh
My stock options are worthless...
The stock price lost 90%.....
BUT I Believe in Nortel...Great company in a bad time. Amazing technology.
"It's technical in a psychometric kind a way" -- C. Parish
When you have to operate a business (running trains) over a vast territory, you have to have reliable, foolproof and positive communication to synchronize the operations of all those trains.
Proper communications were essential to avoid those dreaded "cornfield meets" (head-on collisions).
Railroad signalling also has been a cutting-edge environment too; signal interlocking plants (where complex railroad junctions are controlled) have been from the start crude mechanical computers, where conflicting train routes are avoided by mechanical (then electric and now computerized - but with extremely wierd and exotic kinds of technologies) computers, all to boost safety.
Actually, 100 years ago, railroads were the high-tech industry, and it is striking to see the parallels between the railroads 100 years ago, and the computer/internet scene today...
"I mean with the mass production of cars and trucks; how much do we even need rail?"
During the 1970's, shippers in North America tried to switch everything over to trucks.
Sometime in the 1980's, two things happened: (a) railroads improved their efficiency (b) someone did some simple division and realized that for shipments over x miles (I forget exactly, but it is around 500), transport by rail has about 1/20 the cost of transport by truck.
So since 1990, about 90% of long distance, inter-city tranport again moves by rail (not to mention coal and the Panama Canal bypass, which are separate issues).
Most of the small sidetracks and short lines are gone, though, giving the impression that there is less rail than in the past. In terms of tonnage, not true.
sPh
-dB
"It if was easy to do, we'd find someone cheaper than you to do it."
First off, as another poster mentioned, generally inflated stock values help the next company's IPO in that sector.
The upward trend of price makes people willing to work for (very little + stock options); and until you have the big price drop they normally keep working there. This can save a company a lot of money.
It makes it easy for them to buyout other companies in a stock swap. CSCO did this so successfully they're getting sued.
There are intangibles too, it generally makes it easier to push around your suppliers and buyers the bigger and more important they think you are... so, for instance, you can demand Net/30 and pay on Net/120. And people want to go with your product, because you're so successful and your stock price indicates you're going to be around for the long haul... false, of course, but it works.
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