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Where Is The Broadband?

Posted by timothy on from the mostly-in-south-korea dept.

gouldtj writes "First Monday is running an article in its current issue entitled: The many paradoxes of broadband. It discusses some of the issues and ideas behind broadband, but seems to focus on: Where is it? There is also a really nice discussion on the telecom industry in general, along with the .com boom."

8 of 477 comments (clear)

  1. How many of us take it for granted? by vacaboca · · Score: 5, Insightful
    The points are thought-provoking - specifically along the lines of how much we that have broadband connectivity take it for granted? It is so easy to assume that since I've had residential broadband access for about 10 years, it *must* be a normal thing for everyone else by now.

    It's almost as if there's a virtual Third World of 'net access within our country - those oppressed by dial-up-only access. Is it in fact a governmental responsibility to bring it to everyone?

    1. Re:How many of us take it for granted? by NineNine · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Is it in fact a governmental responsibility to bring it to everyone?

      NO!I don't want it. I have no use for it. It poses no greater good, so I don't want my tax money going to pay for people to download porn and MP3's. No fucking way.

    2. Re:How many of us take it for granted? by squarooticus · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Is there a greater-good benefit,

      I don't ever buy these arguments. If I want something, I'll pay for it voluntarily. Co-ops are a good example of a voluntary "greater-good" financing scheme.

      or a direct benefit to the "haves" in the situation (us!), for everyone to have access?

      Again, if I want something, I'll pay for it. I simply expect others to do the same. If there is truly any benefit (all of which can ultimately be expressed by monetary profit) to subsidizing broadband to the sticks, then some private company will step up to provide it. If not, then I don't want the money taken from my pocket at the point of a gun to pay for something that might theoretically provide me with some hypothetical benefit.

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  2. Broadband by J3M · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Isn't really needed by most people. Most people only use the net for email and some shopping. Paying $40 - $50 a month so your email gets sent a lot faster isn't very cost effective. Course us geeks like it, but we're the minority.

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  3. Asymmetry by captaineo · · Score: 5, Interesting

    How about the shocking asymmetry of download vs. upload speeds? Time Warner Road Runner just lowered our upload cap to 10KB/sec. This more than 20x slower than our max download rate (~225KB/sec).

  4. Where is it? by mopslik · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Most folks I talk to are still turned off by the price. While $40/mo for broadband certainly doesn't bankrupt me, it may still not be as attractive as many of the "$15/mo 56K access" deals that compete with it.

  5. You'll have to be more specific by The+Clockwork+Troll · · Score: 5, Funny
    By "broad band" did you mean:
    • Four Non-Blondes
    • The Go-Go's
    • The Supremes
    • The Donnas
    • Creed
    ?
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  6. BGP peering contracts dictate some asymmetry by kylef · · Score: 5, Informative

    I remember reading about how all of the ISPs figure out how they bill each other whenever they "peer" (i.e., connect) to another network. Lots of these contracts are apparently very complicated, but the primary metric that stuck with me was this: most companies pay for the number of packets injected into (not received from) a peer network .

    Now obviously, not ALL contracts are the same, but there are some important ramifications from this concept. There are two ends of the "spectrum" of ISP's, those that are net information sources (inject more packets than they receive), and those that are net information sinks (receive more than they inject) at any peering point. End-user ISP's are therefore usually better off when their users are primarily downloading information. When home users' computers start serving more packets, the end-user ISP is forced to pay more to its provider because it has injected more packets into the adjacent network(s) at the peering point. Hosting company ISPs (hosting web servers, for instance) pay significantly more because they are net information sources, and inject far more packets into the network than they receive.

    Granted, this is a vast oversimplification of what is a very complex topic that not many people are familiar with, but in my opinion, it explains why it has traditionally always been cheaper to obtain download bandwidth than upload bandwidth: peering points generally "charge" based on packets sent. Anyone who knows differently can correct me... I'm still looking for the paper on BGP peering that I read that brought this all to my attention.