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The NYT Compares Broadband Upgrade Costs in US, Japan
zxjio writes with this excerpt from a New York Times article about just how much networking infrastructure costs vary between the US and Japan: "Pretty much the fastest consumer broadband in the world is the 160-megabit-per-second service offered by J:Com, the largest cable company in Japan. Here's how much the company had to invest to upgrade its network to provide that speed: $20 per home passed. ... Verizon is spending an average of $817 per home passed to wire neighborhoods for its FiOS fiber optic network and another $716 for equipment and labor in each home that subscribes, according to Sanford C. Bernstein & Company. ... The experience in Japan suggests that the major cable systems in the United States might be able to increase the speed of their broadband service by five to 10 times right away. They might not need to charge much more for it than they do now and they would still make as much money."
That's just...ridiculous. No wonder they have such enormous speeds compared to the US. At least the States get a decent speed though. Here in Australia you tend to pay through the nose for anything more than 1Mb/s
Of course verizon is going to milk its customers for every penny they can squeeze out. That what US telco's do.
Remember the bright star of ISDN? Yeah. Priced out of existence when simply selling in volume could have made them a mint.
Verizon! Bring me a 100Mbps line.
And what is the population density in the areas where they are installing this $20/house fiber optic? Do they need to trench through miles of yards to get the lines there? And how much time and resources do they have to exert fighting the local dictators in each and every state/county before they can even begin? A straight "it costs $x vs $y" comparison without looking at all the factors is useless.
You mean in the US it's all about making money? It's not about trying to do the rollout as efficiently as possible? Especially when they can repeatedly charge the customer for it? I'm shocked. Ahhhh, the joys of a hyper-capitalist society.
It is right across the street and has been for three months. I watched while they put it on the poles. There is a coil of fiber hanging for each building. I'm planning on buying their triple play, who wants comcast. The fiber is not dark, many houses get it already on my street. My availability, not so much. They are not doing it right.
All your database are belong to U.S.
THe cost on this is actually pretty simple. I have been living in Japan for 10 years and yes we do enjoy some really incredible bandwidth here. Most of the population lives in very condensed areas. Greater Tokyo has about 30 million people in an area the size of LA... so rolling out the latest technology in one of the most wealthy and densely populated cities in the world is well... nearly easy if you can say that. Cell phones are the same way. Docomo, Softbank, AU etc.. rolled 3g out YEARS... before the US, simple put because logistically they can. Japan is 2/3 the size of California with 45% of the population of the entire US. 80% of the country is mountainous (ie.. nobody lives there) and half the countries population is centered in 4 or 5 cities. Tokyo, Osaka, Nagoya, Sapporo.. Heaven for Technology fans. In a nutshell, you can roll out new technology fast and cheap because the distances between hubs are short, and the overall physical breadth and width of the network is small.
Verizon is spending an average of $817 per home passed to wire neighborhoods for its FiOS fiber optic network and another $716 for equipment and labor in each home that subscribes,
WTF? Who knew running a cable between telephone poles cost so much.
Deleted
Don't you have telephone poles in America?
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Oh this is great. If TWC does this, you will be able to max out your 40GB cap in a matter of an hour or two.
J:Com's costs were substantially reduced because they rolled out DOCSIS 3.0 on their existing copper infrastructure.
Verizon is laying new infrastructure in the form of fiber-optic cable.
Ah the New York Times, where Journalism meets Technology like a retard smacking his head into a brick wall.
Three cheers for unfettered capitalism!!!
Oh wait. You mean it's not really capitalism? There really isn't enough competition?! Yet they companies keep hiding behind the premise of free markets and profits?
Write your senators and representatives folks ... we all believe this is the future right? Where everyone has access to broadband and those who can't afford it are subsidized in some fashion? Information wants to be free right? Not just for some people.
The US will never get reasonable fast broadband in the current vacuum of competition.
They're using the existing cable network, and sending their customers upgraded modems ($60 a pop) that can handle up to 160mpbs. No digging, no rewiring.
RTFA
---Technology will liberate us if it doesn't enslave us first.
While it makes for nice, simplistic headlines (and even more simplistic marketing - along with unfulfillable expectations that just cause resentment and ill-feeling later) it's largely pointless. Far better for the providers to come up with a balanced delivery, than to go around having to make excuses for who someone's gigabit/second link is only running at 1MByte/s in real life.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
I question that. Here in Sweden I know of at least one company (bredband2) connecting private consumers at 1 gbit.
Did you read the article? I'm guessing no from your response.
The whole point of it was Japan used existing cable lines and upgraded it to docsis 3, which is cheap to do. There is no running of new cable to the highrises vs the suburbs. The article attributed the US's slow uptake of docsis 3 to lack of competition and fear of losing traditional cable services to streaming video. Not cost of adding new wire or running phone, which doesn't make any sense anyway because VoIP runs on cable just fine. The excessive cost is FiOS which is running new wire, but if the cable company wasn't asleep and upgraded their system before FiOS would be dead in the water.
>Most of Japan is high rises
>Also, a lot of the buildings in the US are older than those in Japan
You've clearly never ever been to Japan.
--- Little Atomo - The Amazing Thinking Robot from Atomocom! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIP9KisHi4k
The article is badly written, it's true. However, the issue the article is trying to make clear is that there is a cheap way of providing much faster service: by upgrading cable service. Upgrading cable service doesn't require new cable, or work in the streets; it just requires new equipment at the central office and new modems for the customer.
The reason that the cable companies don't do that, apparently, is because in the U.S. they were granted poorly regulated monopolies. Therefore they can 1) lie to customers, 2) give poor service, and 3) give slow service, and still raise prices.
That's something that we all get charged on our bills for the federally mandated fund that's supposed to be used to build out broadband infrastructure.
Why aren't they building out their infrastructure?
Why, instead of building upgrading to the highest speed available, are they only upgrading to the next increment?
It's the mentality of these industry giants. They spend as little as little as possible only when absolutely necessary. But they charge out the ass for it.
Comcast has the capability of providing 100Mbit service with their docsis 3.0 upgrades. Will they provide 100Mbit service? No. Because it makes more sense to charge double the normal rate for 20Mbit service.
They will probably provide 50Mbit service also. They will charge $300 for 50Mbit. Capitalism does not like innovation.
They're using their grammar skills there.
Comcast will have DOCSIS 3 nationwide by the end of the summer. Qwest is running fiber to the home in select areas. AT&T is still rolling out uVerse service. Verizon FiOS is still moving along. Clearwire, while not in the same league as the wired services, is building out. I agree the pricing is harsh, but faster Internet will be here soon.
The way the NYT article read, we'll never see any improvement over what we have now, and 6 months is an eternity. Meanwhile I click the "preview" button and wait 5-6 seconds for the page to build. What's up with that?
"Well, good luck finding a judge that doesn't run a bestiality site."
for example, the Japanese ISPs probably dont need to provide any kind of stuff to handle phone connections since just about EVERYONE has a mobile phone whereas Verizon has to support phone connections over FIOS with an expensive UPS to keep things going if there is an outage and someone needs to call 911 in a hurry.
Then why doesn't Verizon just bundle basic cell phone service with FiOS? Verizon is The Network.
Aren't the costs mentioned by NYT fixed in nature?
Which means, if they are higher, it would just take longer to recoup.
Lets use a liberal estimate of these costs and say it was $2000.
A customer paying $60 per month, would pay it in 34 months. Even if $40 were going towards paying that costs, and $20 to cover variable costs, it would take 50 months to recoup.
Seem to me like a reasonable time before an investment starts making profit. If only the telcos would just stop abusing their customers and win their loyalty for that period.
Here's another thought, could it be the legal fees and the mismanagement overhead what's making the telcos less profitable?
You speak London? I speak London very best.
My understanding of the Fiber to the home projects is that it is a legal maneuver to re-establish absolute monopoly on services to the home. I have heard that as they bring the fiber in they are ripping the copper out to ensure it is VERY expensive for you to decide to switch back to your old provider.
This is because of a law/regulation that says networks laid down during the telco-monopoly days must be shared with competitors at market rates. If they put in a new network for the "last mile" (or 100 feet) then they don't have to share.
This desire for monopoly pricing is driving American companies to invest huge amounts of money for technology that isn't technically superior any more.
Think Deeply.
This article misses the point. Cable companies could make a profit selling higher bandwidths, but only at the expense of their real money maker, cable subscriptions. They've known since the mid-90s that the inevitable consequence increasing bandwidths would be the rise of services like Netflicks and Hulu (though we never envisioned them quite as they are), and the end of cable TV, where they make their real money. Everything they've done since then has been aware their fate and calculated to put off that end, the trading of their high profit product for a commodity, bandwidth, as long as they could. And that's the reason bandwidth suck in the US. Everything else, all the technical difficulties, etc., have been exaggerated as an excuse.
Are we really surprised that LARGE American companies keep whining that its too hard or expensive to offer high quality service that their customers want?
We are into 40 years of Detroit automakers largely ignoring what their customers want. As a result they were already in serious trouble before the current financial mess. Mean while Toyota and Honda were giving people what they wanted. High quality reasonably priced cars in the sizes and shapes people wanted. When we come out the other end of this mess its likely only Ford will survive and hopefully they will be more responsive to market demands.
I just hope someone American or foreign, comes in and shakes up the ISP/Cable/Phone market here the way that the Japanese car companies did the automotive industry.
Think Deeply.
I understand this is slashdot, but did *anyone* RTFA?
He's not comparing the cost of laying copper cable to the cost of laying Fibre.
He's comparing the cost of upgrading the boxes connected to the *existing* copper wire cable network to support up to 160 Mbits to the cost of laying NEW fibre.
Which is a reasonable comparison, given that these are our two options to get that kind of speed out to most people in the country right now. He is saying that it is ridiculous that to get that high speed we have to wait for verizon to spend $800 instead of Time Warner spending $20, because Time Warner refuses to spend that $20.
Time Warner could be giving us Japan-like speeds everywhere that their network currently reaches, but they are refusing to because they have a monopoly in those local areas, and therefore no incentive to improve a service that only competes with their over services.
I live in Tokyo. A few weeks ago the doorbell rang and a J:com salesman started trying to sell me some new package deal. I started to wave him away and close the door when my ears picked up the words "160 megabytes." Interested, I enquired further. The next day the cable guy came around to upgrade our system. We went from a basic 30meg line for 5500yen per month (US$55.00 give or take at today's rates) to a 160meg line, 100 cable channels, pay-on-demand selection of thousands of new-release movie titles in high-definition format, fixed phone and a DVD HDD/DVD recorder HDTV-ready box for 6200yen per month. I'm very happy. But Tsutaya, the leading movie rental chain in Japan, probably won't be.
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge." Darwin
http://www.fcc.gov/cib/consumerfacts/universalservice.html
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
It's not just USF. ILECs also got nice tax breaks and other concessions because they 'promised to wire america'. Teletruth.org has more info. Since they were part of the FCC Consumer Advisory Committee they know what they're talking about. The 200 billion dollar broadband scandal, talked about by Crigley and others, are based on this investigation.
Comcast is rolling out DOCSIS 3, just like the "$20 per house" Japanese company, because they can reuse their existing coax cable. They may have to move the fiber nodes in their fiber/coax hybrid network a little closer to their customers but hey, no big deal. Eventually they'll have to go FTTH but they can get by for now.
Verizon's old telephone copper wire pairs are woefully inadequate for high speed Internet, much less video, so going straight to FTTH and reaping the operational cost savings from their state-of-the-art FiOS network (reliability of fiber, more automated diagnostics, fewer maintenance truck rolls required) makes sense. Fiber optic cable is expensive but it'll last for decades, just like the copper it replaced did. They can own the high-end of the market easily.
AT&T, unfortunately, decided to shoehorn Internet and TV into their existing copper pairs, call it U-verse, and trust that the average stock market analyst and NYT journalist is too ignorant to know what a joke it is. But at least they can reuse their new fiber nodes and settop boxes in the unlikely event that they finish the job and build FTTH.
Somebody smart could build dark FTTH networks and lease them to competing carriers, setting up the company as an old-fashioned dividend paying utility (which would work better were it not for the double taxing of dividends that's killed many a capital intensive American company but I digress). Separating the dumb dark fiber that lasts for decades from service providers' rapidly evolving electronics makes a lot of sense. Municipalities could build them, if they could refrain from the control-freakishness that helped kill UTopia. So could the power companies who already have rights-of-way, or new companies could emerge. But the incumbent carriers seem more interested in suing anyone new than engaging in rational cooperation.
$20 per home passed indeed. It doesn't cost much per home to pass an apartment building with hundreds of homes and declare it eligible. Verizon is only building to single family homes right now; the cost per structure is lower than J:Com but the cost per home is higher.
On the other hand, the $716 per home hooked up is Verizon's own fault. They never have processed the old AT&T lesson that it ain't cool to require the customer to lease the CPE.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
I'll be you the Japanese don't have to put up with the mountains of red tape that you do in the USA either!
So if the cost to upgrade a house is $60, how much would a typical cable company need to invest in their own infrastructure in the core and distribution networks to deal with the higher amount of bandwidth.
I've got 16Mb down service wit Comcast, and if they gave me 100Mb, I don't think it would make that much of a difference, since I can almost never find sources that will provide me with enough content to fill that pipe. Even torrents with hundreds of seeders never get that high.
How would the service providers get a solid return on their investment? Will 100Mb/s connections get more people to switch providers or get more people to move fro dialup? I doubt there are people that are saying, "I'd drop my dialup connection for broadband, but I'm waiting for 100Mb/s." I'd be interested to know what percentage of customers opt for say the highest tiers possible although the price difference might be as small as $10/mo (it is for comcast to go from 6-16Mb).
Why they do that all the time, according to their ads :)
"Blazing fast"
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I understand why the government may have wanted to protect the markets in a sense... if someone came in and undercut the existing Tele/Cable co, took over the market and then jacked prices up or went bankrupt, things would be worse off. But that's no excuse to allow the existing company to essentially do the same thing with jacking prices up and locking out the market.
All the investors will bitching about the Socialism aspect of the bailouts, and wha wha wha, but where is all the bitching and government action of the basically Socialized Tele/Cable incumbents?
I say let the free markets work like they are intended to. Open the markets and allow others to compete, and may the best company win. If Verizon, ATT, etc fail, well too bad. I guess they weren't the best option in the public's eye.
It's no different than the government giving Denny's a monopolistic area where they are the only Restaurant and have full control over the supply lines of food.
You want to open a Eat N Park, Perkin's, etc?
First off, good luck getting past the legal blocks.
Oh, you successfully managed to get one location open?
Good for you, too bad we own the food supply lines, and we're not going to allow you to get any.
Oh so the government finally forced us to open the food supply from our grimy clutched fists?
Fine, we'll just up your costs to the point where you either won't be able to afford it, or the cost will be so great you'll have to make your customers pay too much for your service so we still win!
"... suffer from being shared between a large number of people (several hundred or even a thousand, IIRC)."
Yes, that's obvious. They are trying to make use too little equipment for too many customers. The cell phone companies do that too; there is no regulation about quality of service, as there is for land line telephones.
There's an easy solution. Just install more of the latest design of central office equipment, so that there are fewer customers per hardware installation.
Apparently cable companies don't do that because, if they want more money, they can raise prices any time they like, even if service is poor.
In the States (aka U.S. of A), tax payer money has been thrown at industries with neither oversight nor review of the lessons learned. For example, American [U.S.] industry, the eighty mile per gallon car resulted in the worst outcome. We got over sized SUVs and the Bummer!, albeit with the long term promise of pristine hydrogen powered electrics vehicles that we will probably never see. However, it scared the Japanese into action where without direct subsidies they were and are better positioned to produce vehicles with superior economy. Then we financed several build outs for the Internet, that resulted in the Telcos demanding more return for their efforts. Now we are savng the Banks and the Brokerage houses that caused our economic disaster. It is long past the time that the guilty should pay, with a reduced life style, which they were never entitled despite their fondest self regard and over estimated self worth.
[question: why aren't the extrans working?]
AT&T Uverse has 30mbps download with a 1.5 mbps upload. It's too bad that Uverse only has a 1.5 mbps upload speed. Both AT&T as well as the the cable companies will eventually be forced upgrade their networks if they want ot carry HDTV on all their channels.
160MB so what!
A few years back HKBN was touted as the worlds most advances metroethernet broadband provider. They are also a big cisco site.
I think they had 1Gbit to the home in early 2007
A lot of communities in the U.S. (mine included) have voted to increase taxes so utility companies can run everything underground. Where I live they've finished half of the city. We have a road that splits the city and those on the south side have everything buried.
OK, its the greater (cough) St. Louis Metropolitan area. I've lived in cities here that still use power/telephone poles and have spent days with out both. Since I've moved to where I am now, not even a flicker. Ice storms, ridiculously high winds, snow...doesn't affect me.
I was out walking my dog after a severe thunderstorm (the weather guy had his sleeves rolled up so you know it was severe) and it was weird to see half the town black and my half lit up.
But that costs lots and lots of $'s. They have to get permissions, pay off landowners and councils, disrupt traffic, rape sheep.
And even though it has been pointed out before, the U.S. is very, very, very, very large. That's part of the reason unless you live in a very large city that commuter rail lines don't work.
Except for that one that our government built with help from the Reptilians with Grey technology that moves at hyper speed from Los Angeles to (scary music) Area 51 and then to New York!!
There are several different companies in Japan that offer speeds faster than 160Mbit/s.
One of them is Japan's largest telephone company: NTT (Nippon Telephone and Telegraph).
(there are several different companies that provides gigabit services and I think another was mentioned before on slashdot).
Anyways, NTT offers what's called Flets Hikari (Flets "Light" as in fiberoptic).
Though it is limited in deployment to locations that are properly wired, speeds can be upto 1Gbit/s up and down as well as other versions that offer 622Mbit/s down and 156Mb/s up.
Mainly, however, they seem to emphasis 1Gbit/s as being their maximum on their own page
eoNet is another that provides gigabit services (they offer tiers from 100Mbit, 200Mbit, and 1Gbit)
KDDI, yet another company, announced their intentions of deploying 1Gbit/s speeds WAY back in 2003.
This is just one of the examples why I'm awry about NYT...they really need to hire a better fact checker.
just proves that the Japanese can absorb propaganda must faster than Westerners.
You know, like that old joke says: I know you can't read very fast, so I'm typing real slow...
What?
And you have to keep in mind how insular the telecoms and cable companies are in comparison to how the Japanese counterparts are. The majority of their systems are gov't sanctioned, driven and funded. They can afford to keep their customers happy, in direct comparison to how the utilities take care of their American clients. From what I've seen, heard and experienced, our telecoms in the US treat their clients like dirt in comparison to our Asian friends.
First rule of holes; When in one, stop digging.
The difference between upgrading the network in the US vs in Japan, is the amount of distance one has to lay cables down on. Japan is nearly half the size of Texas, and the density is such that repeaters are seldom needed. In the US, there are great distances to be covered in laying down any lines because the country is so spread out.
Also, per capita adoption of such an upgrade will be higher in Japan as opposed to the US.
This doesn't mean the American ISPs aren't lazy/inefficient, but merely points to the fact that the US is literally a different playing field, and so you can't completely bridge that gap between $20 and $717.
Thanks to our fascist economy, public monopolies can charge what ever they feel like charging, regardless of how much it actually costs them. Get used to that boot in your face. Broadband service monopolites were given away years ago.
Our cable company here in Canada is currently upgrading for 100mbit connections in the near future. The bandwidth potential on cable in enormous.
Having spent time in Asia I've come to find that Americans wouldn't recognize a free market if it bit them on the ass. And yet they rant and rant that capitalism is screwing us. No, improper regulation is. All this regulation has stifled competition and made it exceedingly difficult for anyone new to enter the market and be competitive.
These issues could be easily addressed, but with the government heading towards even more regulation things are only going to get worse.
please read the above page and get back to us about where it says the USF is collected to build out broadband infrastructure.
it is used in certain small and rural areas- but it is not for "everyone's network buildout"
Exactly. It is used to subsidize the "rugged individualists" who choose to live in places like Montana and Alaska.
This is why government mandated duopolies by the cable companies are retarded. From TFA:
Mr. Fries added another: Fear. Other cable operators, he said, are concerned that not only will prices fall, but that the super-fast service will encourage customers to watch video on the Web and drop their cable service.
I don't think the price gap should be as large as it is but ...
In Japan they have little space so they build up.
In America we have lots of space so we build out, cause its easier.
Building out means a lot more digging trenches than building up when laying cable. Wiring 200 homes in Japan means running cable another block down the street. Wiring 200 homes in most of America requires several miles of cabling in a sub division, all the permits for screwing with roads and digging trenches or putting up polls.
Of course it costs more here to lay cable, its a different way of life. Still, we already paid the teleco's to do this with tax money and they haven't done it.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Their internal infrastructure isn't overloaded ANYWHERE. They just don't want to pay the price for bandwidth to the rest of the world to deal with the number of customers they've sold unlimited bandwidth to.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Rather, Verizon is rolling out FiOS, because it has no other option. VDSL technology over old twisted-pair phone line has peaked, it has no choice but to roll out FiOS if it wants to keep up with cable.
Your comparison (and the articles) is therefore very foolish. The real question I have is why Comcast is not rolling out DOCSIS 3 - wait, actually I don't have that question, because they are already.
Man I hate misinformed articles and postings... I am not even an American and I know about this.
If I had to guess, the problem with broadband in the US has far more to do with politics than technological limitations. No one wants to risk getting labeled as being "soft on piracy" and held liable for facilitating large-scale content piracy simply by offering bandwidth speeds far higher than the nearest competitor provides. If anything, many of these companies may be artificially holding back network speeds until the potential liability costs from litigation become lower than the loss of profits due to poor quality service.
Unlike most places, the old addage of "Too much of a good thing is bad for you" really means something here in the US.
8==8 Bones 8==8
In Australia you suffer even more so than we do in the western US in that there's LOTS of space between A and B, making any infrastructure cost much higher than Japan where they measure that space in feet or inches.
Higher than Japan, maybe, but for the majority of Aussies, the math doesn't support their outrageous rates in comparison to the US. Here is my rationale:
While Australia and Japan have dramatically different geographies, both countries have majority populations that live near major cities. According to Wikipedia, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia), 14.7 million of Australia's 21.7 million citizens or 67.8% live in the 10 largest cities. The top five cities alone account for 58.6% of the population. On my visits to Sydney and Melbourne, I did not observe those cities to have infrastructure barriers or distances significantly worse than in the United States.
So while the cost to wire the rural areas with the highest speed option is cost-prohibitive, the cost to wire 67.8% of the population should not be appreciably greater than the US (at worst!).
Those Australians who have commented on Slashdot have indicated that they are paying dramatically more than we pay in the US. Unless Australian Slashdotters are largely rural in location, it suggests that there is something deficient in some part of the high-speed business model as it has been implemented in Australia as compared to the US, South Korea, etc.
[/tact translation on]: Aussies appear to be getting screwed on high speed rates [/tact translation off]
Live Long and Prosper - Thanks Leonard. You are missed.
I know all about the 200 billion broadband scandal, and I consider myself scandalized.
I agree, the telco's fucked the nation in fulfilling those promises.
but the USF does NOT FIGURE IN TO THAT!
if you are going to make arguments about how wronged the broadband in this country is, great, I agree with you- and wish it weren't so.
but just as I'm not going to accept an argument based on it was done by mind controlling unicorns, I'm also not going to accept it was done from USF funds, in both cases- it's just simply not true.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
As of today, only 1% of total world population is ONLINE.
Remaining 99% are connected through Mobile Phones, News Papers and Word of Mouth.
Let us focus on bringing more people into Internet rather than speed of Internet.
I'd like to buy homeland for our 10 million people. http://twitter.com/mahadiga
they just don't want to pay the price for bandwidth to the rest of the world
Bandwidth is cheap, very cheap. The only time it gets expensive is when relying on old outdated technology, like the very old T1/T3 technologies or the current last mile US networks. (On a seperate note. I truly cringe every time I see someone using T1s as way to show how expensive bandwidth is. It just shows how far behind the US is, not only in technology, but also mentality)
When you have a modern fiber network in place, shuffling relativly large amounts of data around is cheap. Not free, but nearly so compared to the costs of these old networks. The cost of Time Warner's laughable top tier at 40GB/month is at most a dollar of data transfer on a modern network. Probably less.
The King giveth and the King taketh away a limited monopoly to one corporation which in turn pays a large recurring premium for this right. The East-India corporation springs to mind, but the Italians and the French had similar models, back in the 17th century.
Which one, the Dutch East India Company or the British East India Company? It's good to see someone else on /. knows of the first company(ies) granted corporate charters.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
You buy a home to live in, not to be used as an investment, asshole.
Actually you, well maybe not you specifically, buy a home to both live in and as an investment.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
The only time it gets expensive is when relying on old outdated technology, like the very old T1/T3 technologies
From what I've been told, while newer technologies can deliver faster speeds the speed is not guaranteed but it is guaranteed with T1s.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
They will probably provide 50Mbit service also. They will charge $300 for 50Mbit.
That is not capitalism, that is corporatism and a monopoly. Under capitalism Comcast would have competition.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
It costs more than $20 to simply run coax from my street to my house - that $20 number is silly.
From what I understand, if someone who reads this knows I'm wrong let me know, running new cable isn't needed to increase the speed of cable. What is needed is for DOCSIS 3.0 equipment to be installed in the central office and a DOCSIS 3.0 modem. These should cost more than $20 I'd imagine but they shouldn't cost too much.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
And you have to keep in mind how insular the telecoms and cable companies are in comparison to how the Japanese counterparts are. The majority of their systems are gov't sanctioned, driven and funded.
US companies are also government sanctioned and funded. They are given the right to use rights of way and have been given hundreds of billions of dollar to build out broadband. Instead they used the money to pad their bottom lines.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
You don't need all the special emphasis, if you say America, or The States....we all know you are talking about the United States of America.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Falcon,
The issue is, they are doing a cost comparison of $20 to upgrade one infrastructure with a forklift network upgrade at $1,500 to a complete fiber to the home roll-out. What did the Japanese company pay for their infrastructure? Why not compare Japan cable companies with US cable companies, and since there is still a large number of homes that cable co coax doesn't pass in front of, you need to consider the initial infrastructure costs (as US cable cos will need to roll out new infrastructure in many parts of America)?
Ken
The problem with T1s are the regulations. Tariffs dictate the price -- which is hundreds of times higher than it actually costs to deliver today. We pay ~500$ per month for a T1 (voice and data), but the "last mile" is a 300ft run -- all inside the building -- from an optical shelf to our phone room. (the same shelf feeds us a DS3, 'tho I don't see the bills for that one.)
(BTW, it's VDSL for that 300ft.)
Correct. However, there are other problems... the biggest is the move away from traditional pay TV service (read: cable) to internet streaming, which means a (huge) drop in revenue. The other big issue is the amount of bandwidth necessary to provide DOCSIS 3.0 speeds. Many operators have extreme congestion in the cable network (due entirely to all this BS on-demand and iControl crap) so doubling or tripling the number of channels used by data services is going to be a hard sell. And moving to high frequencies means upgrading a lot of (expensive) equipment. (most cable networks only go to 850Mhz, which is as high as they needed to go in the days of analog cable.)
OK, that explains why you define Capitalism as Free-Market Capitalism only.
No, I use capitalism as a voluntary exchange. A free market is included in that though. I am a member of 2 coops, and I include that as well.
You are into Mises/Austrian "economics."
Actually I don't know that I am, I don't know much more about it than what I posted earlier.
The Theory of Moral Sentiments is classic. Smith was a great empirical philosopher.
Another author I should have included as recommended reading is Thomas Paine, especially his "Common Sense" and "Rights of Man". I'd also include the book "Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution".
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
I am not a socialist, not even a market socialist, whatever that is. I believe in free trade, private (real) property, and voluntary exchanges. I put real in parentheses because I oppose imaginary Intellectual Property, IP, like patents. They may of been useful at one tyme but now they hinder progress.
Your definition would seriously disappoint market socialists like Sam Bowles or Ben Tucker.
I don't know who either one is, I don't recall ever hearing of either one, so I don't care.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
I am not a socialist, not even a market socialist, whatever that is. I believe in free trade, private (real) property, and voluntary exchanges. I put real in parentheses because I oppose imaginary Intellectual Property, IP, like patents. They may of been useful at one tyme but now they hinder progress.
Your definition would seriously disappoint market socialists like Sam Bowles or Ben Tucker.
I don't know who either one is, I don't recall ever hearing of either one, so I don't care.
Falcon
I think Market Socialism is pretty self explanatory. It is a system of free markets and public ownership. Because, you know, Socialism and Capitalism are not market models in and of themselves. Sam Bowles is a famous American economist. Benjamin Tucker was America's foremost Individualist Anarchist. He founded and edited the journal Liberty. He was a 19th/20th century market socialist who argued passionately against private property, which he called the land monopoly, and for free markets. Many American Libertarians worship him, presumably because they don't understand his beliefs fully.
But why should you care about anyone you haven't heard of? They couldn't have been important.
Oh also, anyone who reads Paine should also read Mary Wollstonecraft.
It is cowardly, and a betrayal of whatever it means to be a Jew, to act as a white man
-James Baldwin
I think Market Socialism is pretty self explanatory. It is a system of free markets and public ownership
A free market is a two way street not one way. If I can't own my own business it's not a free market.
Benjamin Tucker was America's foremost Individualist Anarchist. He founded and edited the journal Liberty.
Let me check that... My copies don't list him but wiki says he published it.
Many American Libertarians worship him, presumably because they don't understand his beliefs fully.
I read "Liberty" semi-regularly, and subscribe to "Reason" magazine, and don't recall reading about him before.
But why should you care about anyone you haven't heard of? They couldn't have been important.
Perhaps I phrased it wrong. I hadn't heard of them before and didn't know if they were important.
Oh also, anyone who reads Paine should also read Mary Wollstonecraft.
The name looks familiar but I don't really recall why. According to your link she supported woman's rights in the late 1700s. That's two people I know of that did back then, Thomas Jefferson also supported equal rights for women and Blacks. In his early drafts of the "Declaration of Independence" he included both as enjoying rights also. However others had to sign it and they opposed this.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
A free market is a two way street not one way. If I can't own my own business it's not a free market.
Control is not ownership. According to Tucker, if the state grants you a monopoly on capital (by enforcing property rights), even if you don't contribute to product, the market can't be free. In other words, If you don't farm your land yourself, you shouldn't exercise any rights over it. He opposed rents and interest. Markets were Tucker's thing. He hated capitalism, but often said it was preferable to State Socialism, because it at least allowed for SOME choice.
Let me check that... My copies don't list him but wiki says he published it.
Maybe Lysander Spooner founded it and he took it over. I don't remember. They were practically the same person. Best friends.
I read "Liberty" semi-regularly, and subscribe to "Reason" magazine, and don't recall reading about him before.
Well, he was a big influence on Murray Rothbard. I don't really get why, except that Rothbard was intent on appropriating the term Anarchism from the Socialists. I guess he thought it sounded cooler than Libertarian.
Perhaps I phrased it wrong. I hadn't heard of them before and didn't know if they were important.
The name looks familiar but I don't really recall why. According to your link she supported woman's rights in the late 1700s. That's two people I know of that did back then, Thomas Jefferson also supported equal rights for women and Blacks. In his early drafts of the "Declaration of Independence" he included both as enjoying rights also. However others had to sign it and they opposed this.
Jefferson was a flaming hypocrite. His support for black and women's civil right extended as far as his conversation. He literally kept an underage black sex slave. I don't think holding black women in bondage and repeatedly raping them shows much support for their civil rights. Perhaps you are confusing him with John Adams, whose deeds more closely matched his rhetoric. Adams and his equal partner/wife Abigail actively supported black causes and opposed slavery in deed as well as word. Their son John Quincy was an even more active civil rights advocate.
That said, another influential 18th century feminist was Mme. Olympe de Gouge. If you are interested in such things, read her.
Mary Wollstonecraft was married to the first Anarchist philosopher, William Godwin. Their daughter was Mary Shelley.
It is cowardly, and a betrayal of whatever it means to be a Jew, to act as a white man
-James Baldwin
Well, he was a big influence on Murray Rothbard.
Well, both "Liberty" and "Reason" have some words about Murray Rothbard. But usually in reference to Ayn Rand.
I don't really get why, except that Rothbard was intent on appropriating the term Anarchism from the Socialists. I guess he thought it sounded cooler than Libertarian.
Ump, using Anarchism for Socialism? As I learned them anarchism is the absence of government, unlike libertarians which advocates small and limited government, and socialism is the government owns the means of production. A person could own their own home but not their own business. Actually under Tito's Yugoslavia a person could run their own business but the government owned part of it.
Jefferson was a flaming hypocrite. His support for black and women's civil right extended as far as his conversation. He literally kept an underage black sex slave.
Not really, not everyone is able to live up to their ideology. Yes he owned slaves but he never bought or sold any. All the slaves he owned he inherited from his father and father-in-law. He did however free some slaves, including Sally Hemming's children. In his will he left instructions to make sure Sally was taken care of. He wanted to free all of the slaves, but I believe he made a mistake because he thought he couldn't afford to free them all. He thought it would cost too much. For the slaves too, afterall they had food and a roof. However thinking about it it should be cheaper to employ freemen than to own slaves. Slaves cost more, there's the cost of a blacksmith and chains as well as guards to prevent them from running away. Economists studying the period before the Civil War concluded slavery would have ended without the war, though it may of taken longer.
Oh, BTW TJ once said he thought farmers should grow hemp, AKA marijuana.
Fslcon
Should there be a Law?
The reason why libertarians need government is to enforce private property rights. Anarchists don't believe in private property, so there is no need for government.
Another function of government for libertarians is defense. Myself I do believe in property rights but I don't believe a person should be able to do whatever they want with their property. If something they do harms another they shouldn't be able to do it.
In discussing Yugoslavia you remind me of a real world market socialist scenario. In the 1980s the Chinese government started to liberalize agriculture by allowing farmers to sell a portion of their product in open markets with less regulated pricing. The government still owned all the land. The farmers essentially rented from them for a portion of their product and sold the rest for themselves.
Yea, I heard that before. The people who were able to grow their own gardens actually produced more food than what was grown on collective farms.
I don't keep up with China, so I have no idea where this went in the interim.
It's still something like that today, at least in some parts of the economy. For instance developer/builders who build housing don't own the land instead the land is leased for 99 years I believe. The cities where factories are built own the land as well. Or the regional or national government may.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?