Slashdot Mirror
Do We Still Need Telcos (and ISPs)?
eraserewind asks: "Are telecom providers and ISPs going to continue to be necessary in the future? Why are we all paying subscriptions for communicating? What I want is a global extremely-high-speed ad-hoc wireless data & voice network, where the only entry cost is a mobile phone (or newtork card or whatever). Devices communicate peer to peer, or routed via other people's idle devices. Remember there is no subscriptions, so don't expect to piggy-back on someone's paid for DSL bandwidth. What are the technological barriers? What kind of protocols would you need? What hardware advances? How would you solve problems of geographic isolation? Are there theoretical, political or economic reasons it couldn't work?"
All you have to do is convince all of the companies involved (bandwidth owners, hardware manufacturers, administrators, etc.) to work for free and you'll be all set.
Seriously. Every part of the chain costs money. Eventually somebody is going to be putting money from their pocket into somebody elses so unless you want to pay $10,000 for a network card and have the network card companies pass everybody's share along, you're going to have to pay a subscription of some sort.
While this is a very interesting Neo-Utopian vision, it really falls the reality test. Simply put, there are - and always will be - set, fixed operating costs of keeping a system up and running. Those costs have to be carried by those that use the system.
That said, is it possible that we could get to the point - given the advances in technology - where there is very little, if any, variable costs associated with our telecom infrastructure? Yes, I do! TelCos and ISP are quickly moving to flat-rate pricing for services. You see it with packages of unlimited local and long distance for a flat monthly fee. The same with ISPs. Combine the two, and you have single, flat-rate, Connection subscription.
So, yeah, it does meen making use of the existing (paid for) network first. How does that work? Well, first of all, everyone with a wireless link starts routing to all there peers (or at least, the early adopters build pringes can links to other early adopters), and shares their uplinks (free of charge).
The thing standing in the way of that happening (I've put a lot of thought into this already, myself) is the lack of a suitable dynamic routing protocol for these routers... how do you get these wireless mesh nodes with uplinks to the *real* internet to properly route and make good use of those uplinks? Currently no dynamic routing protocol is designed for such a task.
:Wq
Not an editor command: Wq
this is a baited question. I have 1/2 dozen or so phone bills but what i really need is for my cell phone to double as my wireless router to my home network, and get 3G/4G high speed service.
when the heck am i going to get that?
Sprint, hello? can you do that for me?
then i can cancel my landline and earthlink account and have only my cellphone bill.
probably wouldnt work unless there was an extreme density of cheap wireless devices. Something like this is far off down the road, although it is feasible in high density communities. If we had lots of money to throw around, local goverments could provide the wireless access in medium to large cities. Central government could cover rural and smaller towns. This is far flung to say the least. Large corp. users would probably want their access to be more secure and reliable, regardless of how secure and reliable a global wireless p2p network would be.
TallGreen CMS hosting
What if wireless repeaters became so common place globally, you didn't need 'copper'?
The the cost would be price of repeater, communication device, and electricity. Why would we needs Telcos?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
We can treat the internet like we treat roads. Let the gov and taxes pay to built the network and then use our wireless connections and software to use the free network. It can work, the only problem would be reliability. I think the quality and reliability is something only an ISP can provide.
I would use an ISP for business, for commerce and so on, but I'd use the free internet to surf the web and do stuff like slashdot.
I think theres room for both.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
I wouldn't make any large bets on it never happening. Remember that the Internet wasn't invented by those telcos or ISPs; it was develooped 100% on government-supported projects.
And there's an obvious metaphor that's been with us for years: The highway system. In most of the world, it is "free", and all you have to buy out of your own money is a vehicle.
It isn't really free, in the "free beer" sense, of course, since we all pay for it with taxes. But it is free in the "free speech" sense, since anyone can use most roads without paying anything extra.
It's true that there are a few privately-owned roads, but they are generally a very small portion of the roads. And there are toll roads, but they are mostly short, high-capacity roads.
We could very easily end up with the same system for bandwidth. In all parts of the world, bandwidth is legally "public" property, i.e., owned by the government. And when parts of it have been leased to private business, the result has generally been a "vast wasteland", built up with near total disregard for the needs or desires of the general population.
The business world has, quite frankly, done a crappy job of making Net access available to the masses. They provide support only to MS customers, block ports 80 and 25, and extract things from customer messages for commercial use. And they sue us for making use of it in the obvious ways.
All it would take is enough people getting disgusted with this to produce a widespread "public" network. It's already happening in many rural areas, where commercial comm companies see no prfit in supplying service.
Of course, if the telcos and ISPs would provide true Internet service over wide areas, they could probably become very popular. But there's no sign this is happening. They are being dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century, all the while trying to protect their traditional way.
The new "mesh" buzzword could well be their death rattle. Stay tuned. It should be fun to watch.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
And of course, the upkeep costs on lines that are already there (of which there are plenty...a lot of buried fiber is still cold because it isn't necessary to light it up to be cost effective). You know, costs like all of us geeks' salaries, or power, or maintaining and upgrading switches. These are REPEATING monthly costs. Therefore, the cost should be a repeating monthly cost. That's the only way it makes sense to keep doing it.
Subsidizing this with taxes to reduce the cost (like we did with the Post Office) isn't a terrible idea. Wouldn't we like our data to have the uptime of the Post Office...you know, which is always available (except on sundays, holidays, or after 5:30)? I mean, there's no need for privatized alternatives (UPS, FedEx, Airborne, DHL), right?
The best thing that can happen to communication is a global standard protocol for switching and delivery on all systems. And it's already there: IP. Now we're just waiting for the Baby Bells and Time Warners to a) combine everything and b) really get cheaper. And I think Time Warner is almost to A...they're testing IP phones that are damn good. As soon as we get a few players in combined communications, we'll get to B (check the rapid price drops going on in cellular right now).
Capitalism may not always work right the first time...but with this much demand, yes, it will work eventually.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
Sure, it's possible, but no, it would never work.
First of all, you have the problem of latency. The only reason you can cross the USA in 40ms and the Atlantic in 100 is high-speed backbones. ad-hoc networks are going to have terrible latency, on the order of seconds.
Combine thousands of crappy routers with thin pipes contantly re-negotiating in between yourself and your target node, and you get crap latency.
Second of all, you've got to supply the other aspect backbones supply: links between population centers. You don't think every hick in Nebraska and every desert dweller in New Mexico is gonna contribute to this, do you?
Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.
OK, No free long distance (problems crossing empty spaces).
OK, we need backbones.
I have very little problem with those guys. I have a big problem with the last mile companies, cable and telephone (esp. Verizon).
Is there a way to just bypass them?
This question is quasi-Marxist and stupid on a number of levels, but let's give it the benefit of the doubt.
What we are talking about here is totally decentralizing the internet, which isn't a bad idea, at least in theory. There would be no ISPs or backbones to go down, so the system would be pretty damn robust. However, there are a couple of conditions that have to be met, which make the solution in many ways worse than the problem.
In order for this to work, the following situation must exist:
1. Bandwith of each node is exponentially greater than the amount of data to be sent, on average. In other words, since Farmer John's wi-fi card is going to be called upon to link Baltimore to Philadelphia, it's going to have to be hugely, gigantically fast.
2. Power of each node is exponentially greater than the distance to be covered requires, on average. See above.
So an ad-hoc, dynamic system can only work if each node has a huge amount of bandwith and power to throw around, which will be wasted in 99% of cases. The current hierarchial system is advantageous because it lessens the requirements on most nodes and allocates bandwith to the links that need it.
Nobody said that there would be no controlling authority (or maybe he did, but it's a baseless assumption).
The ultimate goal of governmental control, in theory (please, I know it does not always work quite this way) is to regulate various aspects of public life in order to best serve the public good. This is the point of intellectual property, this is the point of FCC regulation (unregulated bandwidth use, similar to this example, renders the whole system unusable) and so forth.
A controlling body, quite possibly the FCC, could quite possibly regulate who and what sorts of devices can use the network, perhaps while charging a nominal device tax to pay for regulation, while keeping the access fundamentally free. There is no real reason to assume that this regulation can only happen commercially, or that such regulation renders the network "closed" in some sort of fundamental, sinister way.
As long as we are talking pie-in-the-sky, at least in the short term, assumptions about inability to govern this sort of thing are far less relevant than discussions of technical feasability; if such a thing can be done, and is done, its quite possible to govern it properly.
Such regulation could, of course, be done privately instead. Imagine a cooperative network with a EULA contract for all members that requires certified devices and specific behavior.
I'm expecting a flame or two from techno-anarchists who feel that all regulation, no matter how necessary, is bad. I'm reasonably suspicious of regulation, but here is a clear situation in which regulation is far more necessary than the lack of it.
Not true! I was participated in the roll out of the Brasilian B-Band cellular telephone system. Believe me, it was much cheaper to use microwave repeater technologies to connect up the network of towers than to lay cable to do the same job.
2) There are great distances between areas where people live. Despite apperances you can't go from DC to Boston through suburbs all the way.
This is also incorrect. You merely have to increase the ouput power of each node signal or the ability to read weak signals to that which would allow each hop to span several hundred miles, then you could easily make that distance through the suburbs, and just have a couple of benevolent citizens on each side of the ocean to make the transoceanic hops.
3) Data has to be served from somewhere, and you have to connect that to everyone somehow. Your not going to do multi Gigabit out of a medium sized Data center let alone the big ones.
This makes me think of the Bill Gates quote: "No one could ever use more than 640k.
- Wifi becomes really really fast
- Long-range Wifi becomes really cheap
- All Wifi stations are connected on a huge Mesh network
- Everything is encrypted and signed
- Bandwidth and memory are so abundant that keeping a list of all nodes and routes on this huge network becomes easy
- Batteries get replaced by hydrogen power cells which promise a theoretical 100-fold improvement over batteries
- Camera's get really small
- retina-laser-projection HUD displays are default in glasses
- You control what you do or who you communicate to by looking at your HUD (that's also possible already)
It's inevitable - probably during our lifetime we'll be wiressly connected just about everywhere while being able to talk to everybody for free and sending high resolution life-video from just about everywhere to just about everywhere. Control TV's, stereo's, lights and microwaves wirelessly with your eye-movements. Work on the beach lying in the sun on your back. But your head's in the office/school. Or in the cinema:) And ordering a drink is a matter of seconds.But there's more:
- Cam, HUD and videofilters will make the sun shine everywhere and you can be in any possible virtual room you want together with all your friends
- Face-recognition will bring up names next to people while they automatically send you their business card, blink once to talk - even if the other person is pretty far away
- Zooming is default on all glasses
IMHO all this is just a matter of time - all basic technologies exist and everything's getting faster, cheaper, smaller, wider...0x or or snor perron?!
And why are we waiting for everything to come down one pipe?
I personally like everything coming in separately. Example: my power goes out. I still have my phone, because it comes on a different physical cable down the street. If my satellite TV goes out, I still have my Internet access, because it comes on a different cable.
Personally, if everything came down one pipe and something goes down, I'd get not only bored, but also quite mad. Think about it. It's a little bit better to have variety.
This, of course, extends to political reasons. Would you like one company to provide your food, gas for your car, heating oil and run your children's school as well? Not really.
I'll stick to my variety, thank you very much.
Who defines free and open? All the companies that provide backbone data service are (to my knowledge) publically held companies; they are subject to regulation from the FCC and the federal government. They aren't "publically unaccountable". And, all-in-all, they do a fairly good job of moving bits from place to place. Why should we induce the inherent inefficiencies of a government buracracy in to this equation? There are already publically accessable computers available for those who can't afford internet access -- go to virtually any public library in the country; the government provides special funds for computers with Internet access (encumbered by restrictions, true, but funds are still provided). As far as I'm concerned, this is enough "information infrastructure" already.
reading the responses here is so depressing! you pepole have no vision! this idea is largely possible, we just have to do it. don't wait for the telcos to make a high speed network in your neighborhood or apartment building. DO IT YOURSELF. NOW.
1. create a high speed ad-hoc network covering say 100 households
2. create a high speed connection to a neighboring community who has done similar.
3. repeat
stir in Internet connections via radio or fiber as needed.
and while you are at it, get some good bandwidth back from the military (through government lobbying).
no really, we can have free high speed internet access. i give my neighbors free access through a wireless router.
it happens gradually.
fear is the mind killer
Well, here are some ideas about what you would need to make this work and to deal with the problems.
Problem 1: Freeloaders. Well, you could design a tit-for-tat protocol where you never rebroadcast packets from a freeloader. Think Bittorrent, where if you don't share, you don't get good download badnwidth. The game-theoretic knowledge is there to design an ad hoc protocol where the Nash equilibrium behavior is to not freeload.
Problem 2: Long Hops. OK, so long distance pipes cost money. And they won't go away soon, because some, posibly large, fraction of traffic needs them. So let the operators of the pipes charge tolls. You could have a whole ad hoc marketplace where some people let you use their hardware for free, and others charge. You tell your computer how much money and what QoS you want, and it tries to route effectively.
There are problems here, of course. One is how to establish trust -- how to do billing in an anonymous ad hoc system? Some sort of self-signed certs might be made to work... or maybe we'd need a palladium-ish technology? Either of these solutions can also help with the problem of needing end-to-end encryption on everything.
So there. I've thrown out some solutions. They may have problems, but at least its a start, instead of grousing about the original question.
Individuals, with no wires or terribly sophisticated equipment, have been able to broadcast voice across the world for decades using ham radio, and digital has proven to be a hell of a lot more efficient than voice. Look at what has been achieved in the way of wireless just using scraps of some of the worst spectrum, the unregulated dregs. Given the right protocols to avoid saturation, along with deregulation of the airwaves, there should be no problem implementing such a system with minimal hops.
The areas Iâ(TM)d say were most relevant to the problem would be first, achieving enough processing power in the devices to deal with the fact that they would be basically analysing the entire spectrum all the time looking for relevant broadcasts. Secondly, achieving enough power storage efficiency to run the thing portably, and third, more precise emitters and sensitive receivers to allow increased signal granularity and give the protocols something to work with.
We could probably make a pretty good go at such a setup now, if the airwaves werenâ(TM)t so thoroughly regulated. But don't expect it to come from any of the existing commercial entities.... they'd probably have you shot if they thought you could make it work.
<rant> Oh, and a big fuck you to the multitude of rabid capitalists who think thereâ(TM)s something inherently wrong with not wanting to pay for stuff. You can take your American Dream, consumer culture, built-in obsolescence, slave to the machine, bleached pop culture ideas and go fucking rot. Itâ(TM)s idiots with a attitudes like yours that make it possible for someone to sell boxes of fucking diapers to clean your floor with when a fucking mop will do. You are the modern day serf... go back to your damned cubicle and shut up.</rant>
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
a) what does this have to do with communism? It has everything to do with a corporation/industry that charges money yet doesn't provide anything of value (well, _do_ they actually provide any value might be another of phrasing the question. Is any of this sinking in yet?)
b) Communism didn't work? I'd love to have a discussion about this (everything most people "know" about communism has nothing to with communism and everything to do with the fact that *all* communist countries were also totalitarian and "basket case" -- that is 3rd world or worse -- economies to begin with). Either way, the merits/problems of communism are a red herring thrown up by someone with nothing else to say, and totally off topic (in this disucussion).
Hmmmm.. This sounds interesting. So you want a communications network that doesn't actually require an infrastructure? If there's any additional equipment required, you'll always have to have someone to pay for it. Your phone bill goes to your telco's costs, like paying for the wires, hardware, physical locations, staff, etc, etc, etc...
:) You're limited to being within range of their AP's though.
I like the idea of the wireless peer networking idea.. If you're in range of other devices, you can relay through them. There was a PDA out a year or two ago targeted towards school kids that could do that. But it was limited to about 100' range. I suppose it could be done with an ad-hoc network, but there are definate problems with it.. Like, what happens if you have too many people in the same place? What if you're the only link to the next network?
I'd definately not want to be the only point between two large groups.
But, it's not on "the" internet, unless there's a peering.. Peerings don't come free. Without a peering, you don't see the Internet.
Wireless, as it is, won't cut it. There are a few places in the world that would be obsticles to this, such as oceans (a subtle percentage of the earth's surface), and deserts.. I drove across I-10 not too long ago, and saw a whole lot of dirt and rocks, but had no signal on my phone, and no AM or FM reception. I know what I drove across (4 lanes of pavement 2000+ miles long) is a very small sample of what's out there. A boost in power could work, but it would also cause *LOTS* of interference. Imagine 10 people broadcasting at high power in the middle of the desert. They'd have no problems reaching each other.. Now imagine the same broadcast power in a "hyperdense" area. 83,000 people per square mile in New York.. That would be messy. Good thing cell phones are low power, and they have a lot of towers.
To get access *anywhere*, you'd need a more distributed method.. Iridium has a beautiful network of satellites, with both data and voice service, but you're going to have to pay for using it.. Someone paid a few dollars to get those satellites up there.
Until people are willing to do things for free, and receive things for free, you won't see free connectivity.. Now you're looking at a Star Trek Utopia that will never happen.
I for one, am willing to give my time, but it's going to take a lot more than the two of us, and someone's going to have to figure out where the equipment comes from to do something like this. You can just go war-driving, and find poorly configured access points, and do VoIP on those.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
I would dare say that capitalism is working relatively well
From a capitalist standpoint, we are spreading the broadband network far and wide wherever there is enough money to be made to cover the cost of the upgrade and the CEO's perks package...
From an end user perspective, this capitalist view sucks... I live in an area where there is enough demand in my eyes to justify the cost of bringing high speed into the area, but according to my phone and cable providers, I am wrong... there are bigger money fish to fry...
This is like communism, looks good on paper... I think it is completely possible this is what the future holds, but at this point there is too much capitalist profit to be made, and far, FAR too many jobs that will get skimmed off by nationalizing/federalizing communications systems.
~~~ SCO sued me because I printed this t-shirt with a Linux driven printer...
First off, BGP and IS-IS are the standard routing protocols for the backbones. A network with ad-hoc peer-to-peer routing is simply a nightmare to route on a large scale. The current Internet topology evolved to the present state greatly due to the problems with ad-hoc routing. Remember Bang Paths? That's what we would be back to. Otherwise we'd be looking at ridiculous sized routing tables or a situation close to the current one would eventually evolve, with one or more 'backbone' providers providing intersity links and routing.
As to MAN's and Wireless, I was stating that a MAN was about the largest size network that an ad-hoc wireless solution could scale to, not that current MAN's weren't significantly faster.
"You've got an invalid haircut" -Warren Zevon - Life'll Kill Ya
The way I see this, is that he means that his computer is connected to all of those around him, they in turn are connected to all those around them, etc. Think about this for a minute. My computer is 1 km away from yours, and we can connect to one another wirelessly, but you can't reach a computer 2 km away. However I can reach that computer, and relay the information back to you.
A lot of the posters here have got it in their heads that "it can't work without internet access." Don't they realise that this is a form of internet access? Instead of the commercial internet, we could end up having a world wide INTRAnet arrangement.
Someone said "what if Bob went away and took his computer with him, Susan turned hers off and mine is broken... the network would fail." I disagree on this point. You are looking at the problem of A connects to B connects to C, etc. Think a little bit outside the square and create an actual WEB (after all that is what it is, isn't it.... World Wide Web) Why can't A connect to B, C, D, E, F. Then B could connect to A, C, E, G, H. Now for A to connect to H, the packets must go via B, but D is also connected to H, therefore they can go via D. Think of an actual spider web where every computer is connected to hundreds or thousands around it.
Naturally there are some problems which have been brought up, namely accessing the other continents, but he was also talking about the future. In time that will be no problem. Think about how far we have come.
But who knows... prehaps I am dreaming... but remember this, there is nothing that man can dream that he cannot create/do
I am not stubborn. I am right!
ya, because when your power goes down then you can still use your satellite TV.. oh wait.. the TV won't turn on.. maybe the Internet? damn, computer won't turn on either..
still one point of failure.
Good management and policy by the FCC would allow in the near future many solutions.
However, donâ(TM)t expect â¦, do expect anti-competitive freq-hogging by telcos to keep control of local market.
In the near future, it should be possible to provide 100% wireless voice, data, TV, ⦠multiple carriers/providers over the most populated areas. Allowing the customers to swap (totally, 100%) providers/services for QoS or cost reasons. I look forward to getting rid of the wires in the house and the local-bell. The USA Government and businesses are not in the lead on these technology sectors.
PLEASE, check out these technology concepts: http://www.airship.com
REVOLUTIONARY AEROSPACE SOLUTIONS FOR TRANSPORT AND TELECOMMUNICATIONS IN THE 21ST CENTURY
There are other companies around the world (Europe) moving in this direction.
Take a look at http://www.cargolifter.com/2002/repository/splash_ e.html
Take a look at http://www.aiaa.org/images/about/01_TC_Highlights/ aiaa-lta.pdf
Take a look at http://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/systems/haa.h tm
OldHawk777
Reality is a self-induced hallucination.
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?