Paradigm shift is hard, I understand. However, it always amazes me how so many smart people are eager to continue spending money / making money on technologies they know are broken; and are slack-jawed shocked when the inevitable catastrophe happens. All their analogies, intentions and excuses lay shattered on the floor then. If you know that something is less than perfect (i.e. it's broken such as DNS, Email, etc.), set about fixing it. Sure, the money matters, the resources matter. But it's not an argument about "Shall we implement?", it's an argument about "When will we have this finished?"
Rural America is without these services, but not because the copper is bad. Small xDSL pops can be placed outdoors, in proximity to ILEC remote equipment, gaining access to the local loop. In rural areas, they are prohibited from doing so, by the ILEC - or, perhaps more correctly, by a narrow interpretation of the regulations by the ILEC. Nevertheless, I successfully fielded xDSL in a town of 900 people, located 80 miles from the nearest metropolitan market. However, serving customers on the edge of the small town, about 5 miles away, I was never able to do. I wasn't allowed to do so by the ILEC.
The ILEC told the schools and local gov't that the copper wasn't high enough quality, and had analysis to show it, but got real quiet when I leased an alarm circuit to the school (2.5 miles away) and had them running at 1.2mbps.
Honestly, I have a degree in Physics, and know all about the signal losses, blah, blah, blah...if companies would hook things up and try it, we'd have cheap broadband in most places now.
The telcos (ILECs) don't want broadband and they control the local loop (it competes with more lucrative digital services). The other players (ISPs/CLECs) want to put broadband all over the place, and it only costs a few hundred dollars per subscriber and a small chunk per POP.
I've successfully founded a CLEC and an ISP, and I can tell you the problem lies squarely with the firms that control the local loop.
Think about it a second...shouldn't you, as a consumer, take control of your loop? There should be an effort in our government to move control of the loop to the consumer.
Before anyone hollers "the price! the price would be too high!", realize that I've paid to bury cable, and run fiber. It's not that expensive, and there already are government programs to build the infrastructure (they were used to run the copper cables to put telecos in rural areas long ago), and amortize these costs over a long period of time.
However, a network running parallel to the one already established at the local level would be a logistic nightmare, a regulatory nightmare, and open easily-duped consumers to a lot of potential abuse by the CLECs/ILECs. That's a big reason the government won't fund a parallel network being built. It's a duplication of service that the government already funded (a long time ago), and it creates a huge potential for abuse.
Still, I sure would like to control my own loop, and have it show up at some neutral switching center so that any carrier/any service could connect to it.
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Paradigm shift is hard, I understand. However, it always amazes me how so many smart people are eager to continue spending money / making money on technologies they know are broken; and are slack-jawed shocked when the inevitable catastrophe happens. All their analogies, intentions and excuses lay shattered on the floor then.
If you know that something is less than perfect (i.e. it's broken such as DNS, Email, etc.), set about fixing it. Sure, the money matters, the resources matter. But it's not an argument about "Shall we implement?", it's an argument about "When will we have this finished?"
Rural America is without these services, but not because the copper is bad. Small xDSL pops can be placed outdoors, in proximity to ILEC remote equipment, gaining access to the local loop. In rural areas, they are prohibited from doing so, by the ILEC - or, perhaps more correctly, by a narrow interpretation of the regulations by the ILEC. Nevertheless, I successfully fielded xDSL in a town of 900 people, located 80 miles from the nearest metropolitan market. However, serving customers on the edge of the small town, about 5 miles away, I was never able to do. I wasn't allowed to do so by the ILEC.
The ILEC told the schools and local gov't that the copper wasn't high enough quality, and had analysis to show it, but got real quiet when I leased an alarm circuit to the school (2.5 miles away) and had them running at 1.2mbps.
Honestly, I have a degree in Physics, and know all about the signal losses, blah, blah, blah...if companies would hook things up and try it, we'd have cheap broadband in most places now.
The telcos (ILECs) don't want broadband and they control the local loop (it competes with more lucrative digital services). The other players (ISPs/CLECs) want to put broadband all over the place, and it only costs a few hundred dollars per subscriber and a small chunk per POP.
I've successfully founded a CLEC and an ISP, and I can tell you the problem lies squarely with the firms that control the local loop.
Think about it a second...shouldn't you, as a consumer, take control of your loop? There should be an effort in our government to move control of the loop to the consumer.
Before anyone hollers "the price! the price would be too high!", realize that I've paid to bury cable, and run fiber. It's not that expensive, and there already are government programs to build the infrastructure (they were used to run the copper cables to put telecos in rural areas long ago), and amortize these costs over a long period of time.
However, a network running parallel to the one already established at the local level would be a logistic nightmare, a regulatory nightmare, and open easily-duped consumers to a lot of potential abuse by the CLECs/ILECs. That's a big reason the government won't fund a parallel network being built. It's a duplication of service that the government already funded (a long time ago), and it creates a huge potential for abuse.
Still, I sure would like to control my own loop, and have it show up at some neutral switching center so that any carrier/any service could connect to it.