(1) The open city networks in Sweden are generally expected to pay for themselves through the small fees they charge ISPs when they sell their services on them. Here is a report (in swedish) from The Swedish Post and Telecom Authority (somewhat equivalent of FCC) on the cost/price calculations commonly done: If I understand it correctly, they calculate a return on investment of different periods for these categories: Canalization: 15-50 years (recommended 20-40 years*) Fiber: 10-30 years (recommended 20-30 years*) Active equipment: 3-10 years (recommended 3-5 years*) Equipment at customer: 0-3 years *recommended by the Swedish City Network Association, a non-profit organization comprising the municipalities and municipality-owned companies who have city networks.
(2) The networks are often built for a much lower cost than you might think. Since it's the municipalities and local utilities building them, they have been taking the opportunity for years whenever there is road/construction work for other purposes to just lay down empty ducts everywhere and later using Cable jetting to build the actual fiberoptic network. I was told by the CTO of the municipality-owned utility company where I used to live that doing it that way brought down that part of the costs from ~$5M to ~$0.4M versus digging just to lay fiber.
(3) Even if the municipality has a monopoly over the city network infrastructure, there is always competition from xDSL, cable-tv and a handful of different 4G networks, all of which are also available pretty much everywhere. I happen to live in one of the few municipalities with a privately owned city networks, but i still have a choice from more than a dozen different ISPs, two of which offer gigabit connections at just over $100/month.
(4) The customers are normally never in contact with whatever organisation is running the city network, they deal directly with the ISPs offering their services on them.
I fully agree that this is welcome news, however there's a few things you should know:
1. It is perfectly possible for a country in the EU to refuse implementing directives (as for instance Latvia is doing in one case), what happens is that if they are stubborn enough in their refusal they can be fined by the European Court of Justice.
2. Norway is not part of the European Union, so they can do whatever they want. That's the beauty of national sovereignty... =)
This has been available for several years allready in quakeworld.
Check out http://www.quakeworld.nu/ they do broadcasts of most interesting matches with commentators, "cameramen" as spectators with attached proxy chains etc. (It's also an excellent qw news/community site)
Oh, you want them to represent your country? We got that as well, at least if you're from one of the 13 countries participating in the QW Nations Cup that just started.
Quakeworld also has the ability to record the match serverside so you can view it later from any players POV or fly around in "ghost mode" along with mp3/ogg recordings of the commentating.
On the quakeworld lans i arrange we set up bigscreen projectors showing the matches and during playoff and finals we have lots of people gather to watch and cheer for their favorites. Feels a lot like... regular sport events? =)
I've been playing Quake - both LAN and online - an average of 2-3 hours a day for the past 5+ years now, using a wide variety of connections, and know a lot of quakers irl, so I'm quite familiar with what people find acceptable, at least here in Sweden/Scandinavia.
I've played mostly Quake1/QuakeWorld and Quake3Arena, so this might not be applicable to other games, it certainly isn't to games in other genres, like StarCraft/BroodWar etc.
My experience is that people's view of lag/ping times is much the same as with fps (and pretty much anything, i suppose) It all depends on what they're used too, back when Quake first came out, we were all quite happy playing it with 20fps/keyboard/high ping. Then - as we got better computers/mice/connections - we got more and more fastidious. After we had played on LANs we were no longer content with our modem connections, when we got faster computers, going back to playing on slower ones (like in school) was no longer as fun.
Of course - as with anything - sooner or later you get to a point where you're satisfied, better ping/fps doesn't make much difference any longer, and this is what's interesting, we don't want the lowest that's acceptable, we want it good enough so we don't have to go around wishing we had better connections/fps/whatever...
The magical point when you get content - however it may vary from person to person - seems to be around 70 fps and 20 ping. I'm sure a lot of people will disagree with me here - I probably would have a few years ago - but most of those haven't tried playing with those conditions, and playing with 25 ping as opposed to 50 really is a big advantage
I had some other really clever points thought out, but I'm too tired to remember them. (which might also be the cause of my somewhat incoherent rambling =)
If You want to flame me, discuss ping times/the qw scene or whatever, feel free to reply/mail me/contact on irc(#qh on quakenet(irc.quakenet.eu.org)) I'm almost allways online...
Too tired to leave some witty closing line, gonna sleep now, later...
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(1) The open city networks in Sweden are generally expected to pay for themselves through the small fees they charge ISPs when they sell their services on them.
Here is a report (in swedish) from The Swedish Post and Telecom Authority (somewhat equivalent of FCC) on the cost/price calculations commonly done:
If I understand it correctly, they calculate a return on investment of different periods for these categories:
Canalization: 15-50 years (recommended 20-40 years*)
Fiber: 10-30 years (recommended 20-30 years*)
Active equipment: 3-10 years (recommended 3-5 years*)
Equipment at customer: 0-3 years
*recommended by the Swedish City Network Association, a non-profit organization comprising the municipalities and municipality-owned companies who have city networks.
(2) The networks are often built for a much lower cost than you might think. Since it's the municipalities and local utilities building them, they have been taking the opportunity for years whenever there is road/construction work for other purposes to just lay down empty ducts everywhere and later using Cable jetting to build the actual fiberoptic network.
I was told by the CTO of the municipality-owned utility company where I used to live that doing it that way brought down that part of the costs from ~$5M to ~$0.4M versus digging just to lay fiber.
(3) Even if the municipality has a monopoly over the city network infrastructure, there is always competition from xDSL, cable-tv and a handful of different 4G networks, all of which are also available pretty much everywhere.
I happen to live in one of the few municipalities with a privately owned city networks, but i still have a choice from more than a dozen different ISPs, two of which offer gigabit connections at just over $100/month.
(4) The customers are normally never in contact with whatever organisation is running the city network, they deal directly with the ISPs offering their services on them.
I fully agree that this is welcome news, however there's a few things you should know:
1. It is perfectly possible for a country in the EU to refuse implementing directives (as for instance Latvia is doing in one case), what happens is that if they are stubborn enough in their refusal they can be fined by the European Court of Justice.
2. Norway is not part of the European Union, so they can do whatever they want. That's the beauty of national sovereignty... =)
This has been available for several years allready in quakeworld.
Check out http://www.quakeworld.nu/ they do broadcasts of most interesting matches with commentators, "cameramen" as spectators with attached proxy chains etc. (It's also an excellent qw news/community site)
Oh, you want them to represent your country? We got that as well, at least if you're from one of the 13 countries participating in the QW Nations Cup that just started.
Quakeworld also has the ability to record the match serverside so you can view it later from any players POV or fly around in "ghost mode" along with mp3/ogg recordings of the commentating.
On the quakeworld lans i arrange we set up bigscreen projectors showing the matches and during playoff and finals we have lots of people gather to watch and cheer for their favorites. Feels a lot like... regular sport events? =)
I've been playing Quake - both LAN and online - an average of 2-3 hours a day for the past 5+ years now, using a wide variety of connections, and know a lot of quakers irl, so I'm quite familiar with what people find acceptable, at least here in Sweden/Scandinavia.
I've played mostly Quake1/QuakeWorld and Quake3Arena, so this might not be applicable to other games, it certainly isn't to games in other genres, like StarCraft/BroodWar etc.
My experience is that people's view of lag/ping times is much the same as with fps (and pretty much anything, i suppose) It all depends on what they're used too, back when Quake first came out, we were all quite happy playing it with 20fps/keyboard/high ping. Then - as we got better computers/mice/connections - we got more and more fastidious. After we had played on LANs we were no longer content with our modem connections, when we got faster computers, going back to playing on slower ones (like in school) was no longer as fun.
Of course - as with anything - sooner or later you get to a point where you're satisfied, better ping/fps doesn't make much difference any longer, and this is what's interesting, we don't want the lowest that's acceptable, we want it good enough so we don't have to go around wishing we had better connections/fps/whatever...
The magical point when you get content - however it may vary from person to person - seems to be around 70 fps and 20 ping. I'm sure a lot of people will disagree with me here - I probably would have a few years ago - but most of those haven't tried playing with those conditions, and playing with 25 ping as opposed to 50 really is a big advantage
I had some other really clever points thought out, but I'm too tired to remember them. (which might also be the cause of my somewhat incoherent rambling =)
If You want to flame me, discuss ping times/the qw scene or whatever, feel free to reply/mail me/contact on irc(#qh on quakenet(irc.quakenet.eu.org)) I'm almost allways online...
Too tired to leave some witty closing line, gonna sleep now, later...