Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

100 Years Ago, No Free Broadband Pneumatic Tubes

Posted by kdawson on from the when-brooklyn-was-a-considerable-city dept.

TheSync writes "The Division of Labour blog spotlights a report written 100 years ago by a commission appointed by the Postmaster General, that came to the conclusion: 'That it is not feasible and desirable at the present time for the Government to purchase, to install, or to operate pneumatic tubes.' Here is a scan of the original NYTimes article. If only we had gotten the free government Intertubes in 1908!"

6 of 293 comments (clear)

  1. Snarky article by SatanicPuppy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The reason the government wasn't into buying the pneumatic tube system is because there was no real standard and no guarantee the system would be worth installing anywhere else. I can't see how anyone who researched it at the time would come to any conclusion but that the last thing the government needed was to be saddled with an expensive, hard to maintain, experimental system...Especially given that they already had the postal service.

    The modern situation is a bit different. Government owned local data infrastructure is actually a pretty good idea. Small towns who can't interest the big telecoms in investing have bought bonds and done it themselves with good results, and it really opens the door to local competition since the competition is based around providing actual service...not around providing infrastructure. The technology is also standardized, and much more mature.

    Telecoms are getting too uppity these days. Some kind of smackdown is required.

    --
    ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
    1. Re:Snarky article by corsec67 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The last mile is going to be a monopoly, whether it be water, sewer, cable, electricity, phone, or fiber.
      You aren't going to have people running a cable to your house in case you might want to use it. If there is already a cable TV connection to a house, the value of adding a second one is very low.

      What shouldn't be a monopoly at all is the service provider. The last mile is going to be a monopoly, but the service provider doesn't have to be. Let any company hook up their DSL/phone equipment to the cable going to your house.

      --
      If I have nothing to hide, don't search me
    2. Re:Snarky article by SatanicPuppy · · Score: 5, Insightful

      So the government owned water and sewer pipes that serve your house are a bad thing? You want to see multiple competing water and sewer companies building multiple competing water and sewage treatment systems, and multiple and competing reservoirs, etc? How about competing highway infrastructure? No?

      Or maybe you prefer the current system, where one company is granted a monopoly in exchange for shouldering the infrastructure cost?

      If we own the infrastructure, we can actually HAVE competition based on service. We sure as hell can't have it when the telecoms own all the pipe.

      Educate yourself.

      --
      ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
    3. Re:Snarky article by TheSpoom · · Score: 4, Insightful

      IMHO, the last mile should belong to the municipality. That way, you avoid arguments as to who is responsible for issues that happen to cables outside anyone's ownership, or in communal ownership.

      --
      It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
      - E. Debs
  2. Re:Actually, Ted Stevens wasn't so wrong by Chris+Burke · · Score: 4, Insightful

    My main issue with the analogy is that, to the extent that the internet is like a series of tubes, how is it not like a truck? Data flow is not continuous, it's sent in discreet packets of variable sizes, it can take multiple routes to get to a destination, and every so often at a switching point there's a collision so the data never arrives and has to be resent. Honestly, I think roads and trucks is a much better analogy. Given that, I think it's safe to say that he still really had no idea what he was talking about, and the plausibility of one of his analogies is due to chance alone.

    --

    The enemies of Democracy are
  3. Not every part of the world is in a city by tepples · · Score: 3, Insightful

    You need people running cable to your house on demand, when you order the service. This clearly works, since it has been done. If you refute the idea, ensure that your refutation is compatible with the reality of the telephone/cable duopoly found in virtually every US city.

    You said "city". Not every part of the world is in a city. The phone and cable TV companies allege that running cable to a rural market is cost prohibitive, giving the customers who grow your food a choice between three options with low throughput per dollar: dial-up, satellite, or GPRS.