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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?
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
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.
Similar in the UK. The gubmint claims that it's a top priority to make the UK a world leader in broadband access, then does... nothing. No tax breaks, no investment, no intervention, nothing. "The regulator will decide. We have complete faith in their judgement." So, we ask the regulator what they're doing, and the answer if (of course): "The market will decide. We're reactive, not proactive. That's gubmint policy!"
So, the incumbent monopoly decides that the market is just fine the way it is and staggers blindly on, screwing up DSL, blocking local loop unbundling, and basically making the whole thing more trouble than it's worth for both competitors and Joe Public. At last count, the entire UK has less than 100 local loop lines unbundled from the incumbent monopoly, and potential competitors are just shrugging their shoulders and walking away from the whole deal.
The cable companies have indeed crippled themselves to put in a competing network (competing with the huge, taxpayer funded one that the monopoly telco was gifted when it was privatised). They then piss away yet more money undercutting the telco monopoly for broadband access, all the while putting on the happy face and relying on the (non-existent, IMHO) holy grail of selling content on the back of broadband, rather than charging realistic, sustainable amount for access and letting us find and create our own content. Idiots. They rightly deserve to get reamed, I'm just glad to be hitching a ride as they go down in flames.
The digital TV companies provided a profitable service that people actually want (channels! more! more!) but are now tacking on proprietary interactive services (read: shopping), crippled walled garden web browsing (read: shopping) and L4M3-0-W1Z email on top, producing a sort of clunky circa 1992 experience. Takeup has been (their words) "disappointing". No shit, Sherlock.
Meanwhile, the real tax payer money goes (via the license funded BBC) towards... widescreen. Not to broadband, or interactive digital services, but to producing 16/9 widescreen content. Apparently this is what we want. Not better quality content, just wiiiiiiiiiider content.
All this time, the gubmint keeps on with the "all is well" message, claiming that they are on target to get all government services online by 2005. When pressed, they admit that "online" covers non-written access, including the web, but also including... the telephone.
Yes, switched on <strike>broadband</strike> widescreen UK is bravely dragging itself into the 20th century. Yay us!
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
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
Maybe, but a network built for TV can take a lot of short cuts that a generic data network can't. So a TV style network will be a lot less expensive then a generic data network (and also less useful).
The TV network can assume that there are a small number of transmitters, and a large number of listeners, and that the listeners don't need to ACK traffic. So something like a T3 (about 45Mbits/sec) could transmit about 30 channels (assuming 1.5Mbit/sec of MPEG2 data) to any number of listeners. You can set up the network as a tree and get full use of the bandwidth from the head end out to the listeners with very very little back channel (for ordering Pay Per View, or you can do that fully out of band).
A generic data network wouldn't be able to assume a single source point for all the traffic, so they can't be built like a giant tree. They have to be built like more of a web. Much more costly. Of corse it is more useful as well, but not everyone is willing to pay extra money to be able to do more then just watch TV.
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...