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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?"
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.
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
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.
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.
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.