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Bandwidth Shortage And The Telephone Company
FasterThanLight writes: "This article from USA Today regarding (non)usage of existing fiber and its impact on bandwidth in the semi-near future ... more doom and gloom. Why? Greed, of and by the (surprise, surprise) large telcos." Remember, this story is about a predicted shortage, not a current shortage.
Build your own!
http://www.freenetworks.org
Reminds me of an amusing story. When I worked, for a very brief time, at a telco (Sorry, can't name 'em because they're bankrupt now), they had a rather hefty debt to pay off.
Their business model depended on several fat internet pipes running underseas. Given their current options of selling assets, cutting salaries, layoffs or other such corporate things, what do you think they did to pay off the debt?
That's right. They sold the fat pipes and leased them back from the buyer.
No wonder my phone bill is so high.
When I see billboards around town suggesting a second phone line for internet use, I suspect the telcos' plan is to get lots of people addicted to having long internet sessions on their modem, after which the telcos will go running to Congress saying that they need to start charging local calls by the minute due to the excessive connect times in the Internet Age.
Why, why am I so cynical? Oh, well. It was fun while it lasted. I now return you to the scheduled rants...
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
If there is a shortage... the unused lines will be used due to their value. Waste is lessened with necessity. There isn't going to be a TRUE shortage... rather just a perceived one from quasi-waste. These lines will be used when it becomes a necessity. Remember... supply and demand are closely intertwined.
The alternative to greed in a competitive marketplace is irrelevancy.
This predicted shortage goes right along with the predicted number of spam emails we will all recieve... Maybe we need some creative matchmaking.
Do a google search before posting.
Seriously, this is just another business cycle. Lots of people jump in, overbuild for the current market, the market crashes, the survivors consolidate, demand marches onward, business picks up, lots of people jump in, ... Happens to everything: wheat, memory chips, telecom, you name it.
-- ;-)
Kuro5hin.org: where the good times never end.
Didn't the DRAM boys finally get their game together and do the same thing.
Argh, a spam story, sssca and a telco story in one day, slashdot is really pissing me off today. :)
I can totally see my local telco using this to their advantage. These are the same jerks and assholes who charge an extra $15 a month for a static IP. All I want is 1mbit up and down, and no restrictions on what services I can use (ie. servers). Is it too hard for these broadband 'providers' to offer something so simple? Is it so hard?
NO, they'd rather spend their cash revamping their websites every 15 days with more 'features', or telemarketing me to death - and we already know that you're only service from a dsl provider is dslreports.com.
No sympathy from me - I'll continue to get screwed and like it, along with everyone else.
a company has to spend $20 to attach it to all the equipment, configure it and turn it on."
Sorry, but my bogosity meter is banging against the peg on this one. Anybody have any real figures on this?
They stab it with their steely knives,
But they just can't kill the beast.
I'm no expert on the Telecom industry, but I've been hearing and reading these same predictions for 6 or 7 years now. Over that entire period, there was always some "telecom guru" or another predicting an imminent bandwidth shortage. None of them ever happened.
The beauty of capitalism is that where there is a demand, someone will create a supply because there's money to be made. In this case, more so because there is already so much unlit fiber there. SOMEONE will find a way to acquire it and get it lit if there is that much demand.
OTOH, the anticompetitive nature of the large Telcos concerns me somewhat. I wonder If I would have some sort of broadband access available to my rural home if SBC wasn't making so much money by making sure ISDN is my only option?
Were those who expected the fiber optics to last so long not anticipating Napster and widespread piracy? To me it seems that those illegal activites have contributed greatly to the growth of Internet traffic.
I have lived in three neighborhoods in Texas during the past 4 years, and during all but the past years, everytime I went on a drive, I could see construction trucks with spools of thick fiber lines being buried underground.
However, this all stopped about 4 months before I got layed off from Alcatel, one of the largest suppliers of fiber-optic cable in the world. There's just not as much business as there used to be, and people aren't willing to speculate on putting fiber down when they won't immediately see profits from it in this kind of market.
I don't, however, think we are going to see a shortage of bandwidth anytime soon...at least in big cities and suburban America (judging from the state of things in Texas). There's more cable underground than I care to think about, and I know for a fact you can get more bandwidth up and running in less than 9 months--the timespan that this article suggests. If there's a big enough market for it, telcos will have it in tomorrow! We threw up huge testbeds at Alcatel in under a month that could easily have served a small city a good amount more bandwidth.
Basically, this article is a bunch of speculative horseshit supported by quotes from people that either don't know what they are talking about, or have alterior motives for giving the quotes.
My local telco is laying fiber as fast as they can. Most of the towns they serve are connected by fiber or microwave. They have up-graded their connection to the internet backbone to a OC-3 to up the bandwidth asorbed by the new DSL customers. Since the telco is a cooperative and I am a "stock holder" because I have phone service I get a rebate check every year. I guess smaller is sometimes better.
1. DWDM -- OC768 is coming your way and a lot of badly beat down telecom providers want to sell it.. BAD. Think they'll give ya a discount if yo buy a bunch of units?
2. Theres so much fiber in the ground on long haul routes that if there is ever anything resembling a shortage in my lifetime, I'd be impressed.
3. It's not nearly as expensive as the article poses to setup electronics on fiber. It's not $1 to install a fiber and $20 to put electronics on it. It just doesn't work like that.. Dug up the street lately? It costs a fortune.. Attaching the fiber to the Gigabit Ethernet port is far less.
4. Greed -- If there is money to be made, the bandwidth will be created.. It's called the law of supply and demand..
"Why? Greed, of and by the (surprise, surprise) large telcos."
What does this have to do with the shortage of services? Commodity prices are determined by the market. Aptly put by the article, fiber is like farmer's seed. Farmers are actually subsidized by the government to not grow certain crops, because it make it harder to make money when *everyone* is growing the same thing. When it costs 20 times to actually use dark fiber compared to just laying it down, this makes it hard to make money running a fiber service. The big telcos can afford to always undersell the startup. Such is the nature of the market. And don't spew any of that "there's no competition" crap, look at how many telcos there are. If that number is more than 1, you have competition.
When prices do rise due to "shortage" then as the article predicts, those who raise prices because they do not want to use more fiber will be undersold by new companies that will find it suddenly profitable to provide comms services. The article is basically predicting that the 20:1 cost ratio of use vs. creation will decrease.
This article completely discounts the obvious innovations coming to market for pushing more bits down the same fibers over time.
I also dispute the notion of an approaching shortage. Of course James Crowe wants you to believe that there is an impending shortage - his company is on the ropes and he desperately needs to foster the notion of the bandwidth boogeyman to keep investors interested in his moribund stock.
Yes if the "last mile" problem is solved, there will be a tremendous spike in demand...but lets be realistic about developments in the last mile - many telcos are scaling back or cancelling outright plans to push high bandwidth deeper into their networks. Case in point, SBC's "Project Pronto", which would have given 80% of SBC customers the equivalent of a 5-7MB/sec connection, has been cancelled for good. If SBC has to provide cut-rate access to their networks to companies like Covad, they simply aren't going to bother with upgrades...and forget about the government forcing companies like SBC to sell off the local loops, this isn't Cuba...hell will freeze over first.
The sad fact is that the regional Bells are only going to make major upgrades when they no longer have to subsidize the competition. It sucks, but its the inevitable fact.
No figures, but a theory, perhaps.
Techs are not cheap, especially when you consider things like benefits, office space, and so on, and so forth. If you add up the costs between manpower, networking gear (and the high-end stuff isn't going for peanuts either) and administrative overhead (management) then maybe that number isn't so far fetched.
Just a thought.
And since these calls are billed by the second, it equals more $$$ in the pockets of the telcos and less money spent on 1-800-tech support with joe dumb user.
Stop and think about how much bandwidth costs.
It's a lot more than routers and fiber. In fact, compared with the costs of upkeep and support, the infrastructure is almost negligible. That's why there's so much infrastructure already built, but so little utilized.
Why not use it all? Because people are not yet willing to pay for what they get. Standard business practice is to charge the customer 5x the actual cost of a product or a service.
Broadband service is so desparately trying to compete with the low cost of dialup, that it's not making the margin it needs. Of course it doesn't scale linearly, as a 128kb DSL connection doesn't cost 32x a 4kb dialup, but a 128kb DSL connection for only 2x or 3x the cost of that dialup sure isn't making the DSL provider the same margin as the dialup gives the dialup provider.
Bandwidth is expensive, we want -- no, we demand 100% uptime, no slowdowns, this, that, etc. Until people are willing to pay the true cost of this service, none of the greedy Telcos are going to make any money out of this, and will have no motivation to build new infrastructure, make new plans available.
As Gilder once noted, value migrates to the edge of the network (think broadband beach-head into office/home/mobile) and all that software on the SIM card. If any telco forgos this control, they suddenly enter the wholesale broadband market with low margins and having someone else eat their lunch. They want to provide telephone numbers, white pages, call-waiting, call-blocking, etc ... (all at a nice mark-up) and when (not if) Microsoft rolls out their Smart Phone in force, there's going to be some major tussles (see http://www.economist.com/agenda/displayStory.cfm?S tory_ID=1033763). Given the circumstances, it is probably cheaper for telcos to leave unused fibre in the ground rather than give a potential competitors an opportunity to get a slice of the action. Not good for the average consumer but when did that worry stockholders?
Despite what happened to Enron, they did have a role in moving staid industries away from regulated energy supply/demand contracts into a much more market-friendly environment. Too bad they could do a proper job (with decent accounting controls) on bandwidth.
LL
"Few compelling new applications -- such as online movies -- take advantage of higher bandwidth. Dial-up lines and lack of applications are "choke points" -- they could be holding back a potential surge in consumer demand for bandwidth."
Oh, no! Dialups aren't using enough bandwidth!
There's too much bandwidth!
Oh, no! This means people aren't investing
in bandwidth! There's too little bandwidth!
Yay, it's Y2K all over again. Hooray for industry forecasters who never have any idea what the fuck they are talking about. There may be an illusional shortage and a good probability of a rate increase but if the road condition of downtown Atlanta is any indication of the industry, new fiber is going to keep ahead of demand. Good score for the telcos, who else feels like buying WCOM stock and praying that this actualy happens?
Hammer of Truth
Another year, another "Internet Will Collapse Upon Itself" story. Haven't we been hearing this same story (albeit with players and situations changed) since the first two ARPAnet computers were linked up?
yawn.
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
What happend to the 2 strands in the dark for every one that was lit up?
That was only last year!
I read that in my CCNA course
That was a release from Cisco a week before.
Man, thats alot of pr0n
It's not the OS it's the user that sucks. If it's user friendly, you get stupider people. - clinko
....then wireless networks will start popping up as tonnes of people buy 802.11 and bluetooth cards! No ISP bills! Will there be a bandwidth shortage? Only if some freebander fires up his RF noise generator...
When the glut really happens and demands for broadband go up, so will the finances.
It's worth noting, too, that fiber optic will make this problem disappear. As of this moment - unlike almost every other technology - there is no "next step" after fiber optic. It is a technology available now that there is no percieved successor to and no percieved NEED to have a sucessor - as the amount of data that these cables can handle is considered limitless.
So don't sweat this. The market will give the telcos, etc the finances when they need it and once the fiber is in, you can count on your grandchildren using it too.
Well, gosh, if the SSSCA passes, then according to Sen. Hollings, et. al., there will be *more* content out there clogging the pipes.
Who wants that?
Write your reps! VOTE NO ON SSSCA! (or whatever the hell they're calling it these days)
Nobody is forced to subsidize anyone, they are just forced to resell at fair prices. It is amazing how much people bash this mild antimonopoly provision.
The last mile problem is not being solved because cable and dsl are much less popular than everyone thought they would be.
People are not flocking to cable and DSL and communication companies are seeing little point in releasing something better.
If I misunderstood Cable companies can lay fiber, so can electric companies and gas companies. Fuck the telcos.
I mean digging wholes and putting fiber in is supposed to be the hard part.
We will run out of bandwidth and bandwidth will become expensive, and telcos will make a lot of money....
Wait I know, I will buy lots of telco stock!!!
Some telco executive got himself a good piece of fud, but he forgot one thing - all the idiots lost their money during the dot com boom.
The last mile problem is being quickly solved by a combination of adsl, wireless, satellite.
My favourite is wireless. There's a lot of people think that this is going to be an 'evil steal bandwidth vampire' deal. But I think this is just how the last mile is going to be solved. There's still the problem of how to get packets from town to the rest of the world; you need the ISP/backbone for that; and there will be firewalls you have to log on through which have 'traffic shaping' to stop any one user taking more than they should by loaning it to their friends.
Still, everyone is bleating about the lack of investment, but organic growth on an 80% annual demand curve could be awesome!
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"If you currently have Sprint as your local telco, you needn't worry about bandwidth shortage. Sprint has recently (1 year ago) launched a C2P initiative for their entire local telephone network. They're converting entirely to a packet-switched network. Here is what I know about the project:
- Budget of $4 Billion
- Expected savings of over $2 Billion / year upon completion
- Timeline 8 years (compared to 20 converting from analog to digital)
- Using Cisco WAN switches (ATM upgradable to TCP/IP)
- ATM/Frame Relay based (not TCP/IP because not enough prioritization available - for now)
- Will allow broadband Internet to EVERY home serviced by Sprint (regardless of distance, location)
See http://www.lantimes.com/98/98jun/806b001c.html for more information about this plan.
This frees up a lot of dead space in voice and data calls to handle other communications - rather than tying up a circuit for each call. They claim up to 70% cost decrease from a traditional circuit based network. Assuming that even a modest 50% of this cost cut is passed on to consumers, bandwidth will cost 35% less than before, not more.
Full-Featured GPL Web Hosting Control Panel
Perhaps the Act wasn't such a good idea after all. It allowed the telcos to become little "microsofts" and stifle competition and therefore innovation.
I've been involved with a WAN project, based on in ground fiber. At the time, people started with Cisco based fiber routers, because of networkability - these cost $30k on both ends for a T3 line worth of bandwidth. I personally think it was a horrible idea and would far prefer 100Base-FX on both ends - 1/20th the price (I estimate), and greater functionality for our situation, which is mainly data traffic.
Phone companies simply can't use ethernet - it doesn't have QOS, or guaranteed packet delivery times, dedicated channels, etc... These are what telcoms want/need, and the technology that does it costs a ton. For your joe blow data network, ethenet makes sense - telcom is a different issue entirely.
BBK
Actually sounds low to me. Most of those extra fibers went in because they cost basically $0 to put in. Think of it this way. You need to dig up the countryside to lay the fibre. If you lay one fibre or a full bundle it's the same cost. The added cost for the additional fibres isn't that high. So great you've got this fibre in the ground. Does it go to the places you need it? Will it be the right kind of fibre when you get around to lighting it?
I mean, really. BTW - The telcos were almost assimilated by ENRON Hubbard.
"ulterior", not "alterior"
...sorry.
I somehow find it telling that the comments show no moderations of "funny" posts. It seems that a lack of bandwidth is one of the few things that the collective Slashdot has a hard time making cracks about.
The article you are referring to is kind of out of date. Yes, Sprint is putting in a C2P network but the broadband part of the equation (ION) is dead.
:) As a matter of fact there will be 0 increased bandwidth.
Your voice traffic will not be compressed so don't expect too much extra bandwidth.
Guess what 0% is going back to the customer because the 70% savings is in network maintenance costs. They still have to recover
the $4b.
What the article failed to mention was the current innovations that exist to solve bandwidth problems.
A few of the problems now:
1) The internet is a web, but routing is done with huge look-up tables - its not as web-like.
2) Packet-routing is fairly stupid.
We could cut down on the bandwidth considerably if we used different applications that didn't require this. In fact, it is quite possible to create an ad-hoc network (a network formed by joining lots of users but with no central hosts) that would behave like the internet does wirelessly given a dense enough population of broadcasters. Of course, we couldn't really use the ethernet protocol - we'd have to use another one, but its not outside of the realm of possibility or even probability.
Given a dense population, such ad-hoc systems are cheaper, wider bandwidth, more reliable, and more adaptive than the version of the web we get right now. I imagine that when we're ALL online, and we ALL have bandwidth problems, we'll leave the telecos en-masse in favor of the new technologies that exist today.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
I won't bother clicking thru unless the blurb promises me it's a good read....
If you guys can't maintain some consistency in your pragmatic reader hooks, we may begin to lose trust and all that.
** And remember, problems regarding accounts or comment posting should be sent to CowboyNeal.
fiber is dirt cheap. it costs approx $100.00 for every fusion splice to be made (that is what we pay the contractor.. $100.00 per splice) and it costs $6500.00 to light up 1 (that's ONE) 50km fiber to a paltry 100mbps Full duplex. Bringing up a 1000mbps linx is 5 times that price and bringing up a multiplexed 5000 mbps (that's 5 of the above multiplexed over that one single fiber over a tiny 50 km distance) costs $100,000.00 in all supporting equipment. I know as I just lit one up (I didnt pay for the fusion splicing... I did them myself! Dang cool machine to play with!) We had ran a 16 fiber run laid using directional boring equipment on utility right of way. The cost of the equipment to light it up was at least 20 times the price of the fiber,and the cost of shoving it into the ground and the 256 splices made (I did them so that cost was gone... except for the $50,000.00 for the fusion splicer but that's a long term investment.)
It makes you sick holding onto a piece of equipment that is no larger than a paperback book and has less than a handful of electronics on it and knowing that you were bent over and made to bark like a dog for the fiber module company to a tune of $3500.00 each for the cheap stuff.. (single mode is the way to go, cheaper and you can get decent distances with it compared to multimode.) Now if you are a large telco or company that has to overpay your "fiber technical engineers" to do what I did last week, you'd spend another $15K in salaries...
Oh BTW, if you install 16 fibers... you light up 8 of them MAX... you never just start using your spares, that's a big no-no.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
How The Bells Stole America's Digital Future
A NetAction White Paper
http://www.netaction.org/broadband/bells/
Basically, remember all that talk about 500 cable channels? The phone companies made all this hype, got some money from the counties, states, feds, and then kept charging lots of money for things. Hmm...
I wouldn't mind a little fiber hookup...
certron
(i should post more. maybe I could say something intelligent once in a while.)
fair.org counterpunch.com truthout.com indymedia.org salon.com
eff.org guerrilla.net debian.org gentoo.org
I would think that it would be in the Telcos interest to get DSL up and running everywhere. It costs more than an extra line and I would think it offers more profit to the telcos than physically going out and installing a 2nd line. Oh yeah, and it's faster. I can't imagine going back to 56K.
Starsucks
All I want is 1mbit up and down, and no restrictions on what services I can use (ie. servers). Is it too hard for these broadband 'providers' to offer something so simple? Is it so hard?
No, it's not hard, in fact it's pretty easy, though it takes a few weeks to set up.
If you want to run servers, you need to get a real ISP.
You call up bandwidth.com. You say, Hi, I'm Joe Blow and I want a megabit up and down. They will say "great, a T1 is just what you need".
The helpful staff will then compile a list of packages you can buy, ranging from about $800-1600/month for 1.54 Mbits/sec in most areas.
You see friend, in the real world, people have to pay for bandwidth. Your ISP has to do the above when they buy bandwidth, and logically, they can't sell it to you for less than they pay for it, otherwise they won't be in business very long.
They may get a little discount if they can afford a T3, but that's still $20,000-$30,000 a month, and is about the equivalent to 30 T1s.
Are all you people that whine that they want 1Mbit up and down, unrestricted, for $30/month math challenged, or just stupid?
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Remember, these are the same telephone companies who are being investigated because Enron helped them...sell excess bandwidth to each other! Either there is excess bandwidth or there are shenanigans...and has your ISP run out of bandwidth?
For every $1 spent to put a fiber in the ground, (Score:1) a company has to spend $20 to attach it to all the equipment, configure it and turn it on.
Sorry, but my bogosity meter is banging against the peg on this one. Anybody have any real figures on this?
That's a reasonable number.
When you're burying the fibers it costs you a bunch to dig a trench. That's because the trench goes around the whole continental USA, plus a few cross-paths. Every major city has to end up with two trenches connecting it to two other cities (so if the fiber going one way gets cut the signals can be rerouted to go around and come in the other way).
It costs you a LOT to dig that trench. If you put the minimum two fibers you need in it, when you need more you'd have to DIG ANOTHER TRENCH. So you put in a BUNCH of fibers. You don't want to dig another trench for a century or so.
The extra individual fibers cost next to nothing compared to the trench, even after you include the cost of the splices. The total cost is still enormous. But once you divide the cost of the trench among all those fibers the cost PER PAIR OF FIBERS is small - approaching the cost of the fiber itself.
But now you go to light them up. This means a box at every city or town along the way where you want to hook up, plus maybe several repeaters in access boxes EVERY MILE along the fiber (the spacing and cost varying according to the type of fiber and what type of signal is going through it - but it's not cheap). For packet switching you need maybe a million bux worth of box in each town for each fiber pair you light up (though lighting extra fibers can be done for maybe a quarter of that by adding cards to existing boxes.) For phone calls and raw pipes, maybe an eighth of that (though that just lights and protection-switches the fibers and hooks them to the local signals with a few fat pipes). And a rule of thumb is that the rack space for the box costs more than the box.
20-to-1? Might be low.
Of course the repeaters and boxes both get better roughly by Moore's law. So if you can hold off lighting a fiber for 18 months, it costs you half as much. So of COURSE you don't buy boxes and repeaters until you're ready to light the fibers.
So the analysts looked at all the dark fibers, forget about all the non-installed boxes, and started prattling about a "bandwidth glut" - as if nobody would buy another box for 20 years.
Meanwhile the tellcos had bought enough boxes to light their first fibers (plus a couple spares). So there was a dip in box purchases while they switched to finding customers to use the bandwidth on the first lit fibers. (One set of fibers has a LOT of capacity, so purchases are lumpy.) And the tellcos got into a price war to get those customers - with the little guys getting squeezed out by the old former monopolies with their buckets of cash.
So the investors paniced. And investment in "telecom" dried up. And without investment the squeezing proved fatal for the new little guys. And without the little guys nipping at their heels the big guys started taking their time (though they're still installing and still filling up their current boxes - plus the ones they got for near-free from the dying little guys). And without investment nobody bought more of ANYTHING, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy and crashing the stock of anything tarred with the name "telecom".
But even with the big guys dragging their feet the boxes ARE getting filled up, just like the article says. Some time soon the surviving companies will need to buy more. And the surviving suppliers will have less competition and ZERO inventory (having long since switched to build-to-order as a belt-tightening measure, and also sold off all their pre-made stuff at fire-sale prices).
After all - do YOU have broadband yet? On slashdot, probaby yes. But don't you know somebody who doesn't, but wants it and can't yet get it?
They're STILL doing the INITIAL buildout - and the "broadband" pipes are still tiny compared to what people WOULD buy if it were available and the price were right. Only a couple percent of the country has broadband. A LOT more people want it, and will get it as soon as it's available. (As of a couple months ago the tellcos expected to install as much DSL this year alone as had been installed since it was invented.)
Seems to me the article is right on. The current "telecom crash" is at least partly due to a panic reaction by investors, and the result will be a bandwidth crunch as the boxes fill up and there is a sudden need to buy more - creating a seller's market for the surviving suppliers.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Regional monopoly.
Yes there are several telcos in the US, but usualy only one services a given area, meaning they effectivly have all the power of a monopoly. That "there's no competition" crap is not crap at all, it's a very real issue.
This article completely discounts the obvious innovations coming to market for pushing more bits down the same fibers over time.
You missed the point.
Innovation means you can put more down the fibers. So that means it's even LONGER until you have to lay more FIBER.
But when it comes to the BOXES to LIGHT the fiber, it means you have to BUY A NEW BOX - even to upgrade a fiber you ALREADY LIT with LAST YEAR'S BOX (which you won't do until the dark ones are mostly lit).
He's talking about the lack of capacity in the BOXES. By his numbers (which look right to me) about 5% of the cost is the fiber and the remaining 95% is the boxes and the rest of the infrastructure.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
ATM/Sonet/SDH switching equipment is damned expensive. Fully decked out switches can easily cost $250,000 - $1,000,000+ depending on port density and speed (OC3 - OC192).
You also have to deal with what TYPE of fiber is in the ground already. Older stuff can't support the big DWDM equipment. Zero-dispersion fiber was popular until we cranked up the speeds and found that certain problems occurring about OC-48 result in exponential loss (no data making it thru). Newer fiber is dispersion-shifted, with erbium or another rare-earth doping.
This is why ATM never caught on in the LAN, even with cheap OC-3 cards -- switches cost a friggin' fortune!
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
In several areas here, they are multiplexing the phone lines so badly that one can only get 28.8K on dialup. DSL is not available (oh, sure, they advertise it, just try to order it...). The "solution" pushed by the telco (Verizon)? I$DN. 56K at ~$300/mo.
Which would you rather sell? 56K at $300 or 600+K at $75 or so?
Actual competition would be nice, but our local cable (Comcast) offers quite spotty service. At least the dialup (I still get ~45-52K) is reliable, that's why I've stuck with it.
He that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom.
-- J.R.R. Tolkien
...you're one of those wise people who recognizes that history does indeed repeat itself. Most of our people are dumber than hamsters. Hamsters would stop choosing the things that bring them harm, most of our people will be voting for republican/democrat till they die, always idioticly wondering why things never change and at times, seem to be getting worse. Duh.
:)
Or maybe I'm just cynical.
... and the foreign policy and back room dealing of the time had nothing to do with it.
Bizzare how people can look at history, then pick that which suits the world view they are cultivating, and ignore that which doesn't fit.
A lot of times the speed of my download is not limited by the first hop from my home, but at the source or someplace in between.
Read the same article on an optical trade publication, Light Reading at OFS: What Fiber Glut?.
More interestingly read the comments of some industry people.
This is just marketing hype folks!!!
All bow to his Noodliness!! His Noodle Appendage has touched me!
More cheese to go with the whine, anyone?
I don't think any shortage of bandwidth exists or will exist in the near future. At least on the physical network side. Or at least I won't believe there is a shortage anymore if anyone ever tells me that. I just bought 360 Networks and Global Crossing in the past year and they both tanked!
There will be no shortage because the market is capable of meeting demand.
If the internet bandwidth usage grows at 80% a year then I think shortages are likely. The introduction of video on demand will cause a spike that you really can't predict. Mostly, we will continue not getting every thing we want when we want it.
The really sad thing, though, is the disappearance of the smaller companies before the growth phase. The current consolidation will give the monopolies the power to ream consumers and stifle and control distribution.
BTW, I used GST when they ventured into the local market. I wish local competition had emerged, but there were enough saps like me around to keep them afloat.
The math doesn't add up. Even if a 20 year projected supply gets consumed in 5 years, and even if you have to start "9-18 months in advance" for establishing new networks, there is still plenty of time in there for companies to beginning hooking things up once it is apparent that we need more bandwidth sooner rather than later.
Etc, etc, ad nauseam, and so on and so forth.
I have several problems with that article. Not the least of which is that it contradicts itself several times. The article claims that the lighting of dormant fibers has come to a standstill, and it also says that it takes 8 to 18 months to get it in the ground (that much is true). Clearly it can be lit very quickly, and yes, it costs money to light it, but if the demand is there, so is the revenue. So where is the problem? Is the problem supposed to be that the telecom companies don't have enough money to light the fiber because investors don't want to put money in Telecoms? Rubbish! If the demand is there, so is the revenue, hence so is the money. That's why they didn't light the fiber in the first place..
The biggest hurdle in telecoms is getting the fiber in the ground. It is the Right of Way that drives this business, that is why the Utilities and the Railroads are the biggest players in this business.
I think the comparison of Fiber to a farmers seed is kind of interesting. Well, more amusing that interesting.. Yeah, I guess they both go into the ground, but apart from that, there are no similarities..
I also dispute the claim that for every $1 they spend to bury the fiber, they spend $20 to light it. It is the burying of the fiber that costs more time and money. I wish I had some hard facts to back that up, but the 20 to 1 ratio has got to be nonsense..
-- -- Warning. Do not stare directly at the sun.
Never sign a contract for more than one year on a leased line, or 6 months for colo.
I ran an ISP for about three years, until around mid '99. It's not my main business any more, but I still have a couple of hosting clients for high bandwidth sites. the ISP business is TOUGH. The competition is insane, so the approach most ISPs take these days is to advertise really high prices while offering competitive rates only to those who haggle and know how to shop around.
Here's what I've been spending, year by year on Internet service. I've switched providers several times over the years due to changing needs wrt colo vs leased line, and varying costs. I've now been with Hurricane Electric for over a year. They are outstandanding, but you'll have to haggle to get a good price.
1997-1998 - 3 bonded centrex ISDN lines from Brainstorm, 384Kbps: $750/mo
1999 - shelf and 1Mbps at Above.net plus a ptp T1: $2000 + $450/mo
2000 - shelf and 1.5 Mbps at maxim.net: $700/mo
2001 - ptp t1 to Hurricane: $650 ISP, $350 XO for the line
2002 - shelf at Hurricane and 2MBPS: $650. PTP T1 to my shelf: $350
As you can see, over the years the cost of connectivity has fallen from $1822/mbps to about $500. That's not just per MBPS, I'm talking about a complete package - remote connectivity for 1-2MBPS upstream.
The cost of installing fiber is still outrageous, but the fluctuations in demand have resulted in a surplus of strands in the ground. I've coordinated fiber installations before - trust me it's a BIG deal. Trenching, conduit, permits, dealing with the city and the fscking retarded telcos. It's no fun, it's EXPENSIVE, and it can take upwards of three months just to get 100 yards of fiber in the ground. But now that the fiber is there, ISPs and telcos can start using it as soon as there's demand, just by connecting the needed equipment.
Also don't forget that the same strands can usually be used for OC3, OC12, GigE, etc. So it's not just that there are unused strands in the ground, there is also a ton of equipment that can be upgraded to increase the capacity of the strands we're using.
Bandwidth costs still have a long way to fall!
This so called shortage is in my opinion a result of the telephone companies FUD over the current regulatory climate. They are unwilling to invest and more in infrastructure then they absolutely must. The telcos do not know if they might be forced to sell unused fiber and/or other capacity to their competitors. I do not think they will change their practices until they are assured that when they invest in infrastrucucture, they will reap the profit from it.
I like Krispy Kream Donuts!
(this is relevant to the preceding post. think about it. yuk.)
USA Today got the story half right as usual.
There is indeed a glut of long haul fiber. That is the fiber optic connectivity between cities. many different telcos have been laying fiber. What's more, multiplexing equipment keeps on getting better, allowing carriers to place more data on individual wavelengths, increasing the capacity of a given fiber route.
However, when one starts looking at the last mile, connectivity is sorely lacking. It's estimated that only 5% of US commercial buildings have a fiber hook-up. Mind you, these are the biggest office buildings in major U.S. cities so it represents a disproportionate amount of actual office space. Nonetheless, there is a shortage of fiber in the last mile. One of the main problems is that laying metro fiber is much more expensive than long haul fiber. The telco needs all sorts of permits and permissions from the municipality and needs to buy rights-of-way to lay the fiber. Companies can spend thousands of dollars and months just to lay a few feet of fiber.
BTW...Assets of bankrupt telcos are actually averaging close to $0.05 on the dollar.
Roll up your sleeves and get to work, mutherfukka!
.45!
/. set up their own link, that'd be 50,000 links. (of course, we'd need people who can connect us to a backbone -- I'm thinking universities here.)
I absolutely despise the attitude our society endgenders that you have to sit around and wait for the "professionals" to get around to serving your needs.
They expect you to dial 911 and wait for the police to (maybe, eventually) show up when someone breaks into your house. God forbid you take responsibilty for your own safety and plug the bastard with a
If 1 person in 100 on
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
I've got 56k analogue modem (just for those rare times I may need it - not actually used it for over a year).
:)
I've got 1M/s cable modem (£20 pcm, or $29) which is connected 24/7.
I can also get ADSL if I wanted - cable was cheaper but the option is nice.
Then there's wireless internet - likewise, Cable worked out cheaper, but the choice is always good to have.
Plus I can get satalite internet if I really want fast downloads (56k uploads though - booo!).
Oh, and of course, ISDN, but who wants something that slow?!
Yup, maybe you should move to the UK if you want high-speed internet access, because there's plenty of it where I am!
People should not be afraid of their governments - Governments should be afraid of their people.
Right, here's a tip that goes right along with what you're looking for.
If you look at global stock indices for cable companies, companies that sell the actual cable, you'll find that some of them have gone nuts in the last year. Why? Becuase you're absolutely right that it's bullshit that it costs a lot to light dark fiber. The 10GbE standard is already settled and preliminary switches were available already last year at about US$10000 per port for an 8 port configuration. Hint --10GbE switches connect directly to dark fiber. Correct me if I'm wrong, please, and give lots of details if you don't mind.
But supposing I'm right, can you imagine why certain wholesale fiber companies might have taken on massive capitalization last year in places like Asia and Northern Europe? Could it be that they've added data services to their product line by adding a few switches so some of that fiber they had laying aroud? We have to ask these questions, don't we?
"It's not like you can put this stuff in in a minute," says James Crowe, CEO of Level 3 Communications. "If you want it nine to 18 months from now, you need to start today."
With wisdom like this gem, is it any wonder why companies like Level 3 are in the bankrupcy conga line?
Where were we on optical technology 5 years ago? Can you imagine where we'll be 5 from today? DWDM will be superceeded and OC-768's & OC-3072's will be commonplace. Technology will provide for squeezing more data into the same # of physical fibers. Have faith.
Never ascribe to malice what can be adequately attributed to ignorance. -Napoleon
status as for today...
zero:/var/log/apache# grep -c exe access.log
2940
hugonz
Fiber companies have spent a fortune in Asia due to population density. Solutions like FTTH make a lot of sense there since you might find 5000-10000 people living in a large apartment complex. This makes FTTH an attractive option, plus the growth rate of broadband service is phenominal. Koreans are far more likely to have broadband in their home than Americans are.
Don't think this will be an issue for more than a very short period, if ever. Read George Gilder's _Telecosm_.
Why don't you just get the links set up, and then everybody go in on a T-1 (or two, or three, or what have you) for the Internet connection? Have one person take on the job of monitoring the T, and maybe have your router do traffic shaping (if it supports it) to keep people from hogging the bandwidth. It seems like you could pull it off, at least in theory.
Pope Felix the Scurrilous.
Computer Geek by day, religious Icon by night.
For symmetry, "dubble" should be the spelling.
I "expanded the apostrophe" in "you're". (Oh, I get it. You are really trying a variant on "All your base are...")
by eliminating spam we can probably reclaim %50 of the bandwith
http://Lenny.com