From: Reason (reason@exratio.com)
Date: Fri Sep 27 2002 - 20:55:03 MDT
-->Brian Atkins
> I believe one of the main problems is that the last mile of the Internet
> was left to rot. Ok, not to rot, but certainly its capabilities were
> unable for one reason or another to keep up with anywhere near the rate
> of doubling of bandwidth capabilities of the Internet core. I believe
> the demand is there if the last mile would be "opened up" properly.
<hat:wirelessCTO>
Capabilities unable to keep up? Hah. The major telcos simply refused to
cooperate meaningfully with anyone who wanted to agressively wire the last
mile. An ungodly amount of money was poured into connectivity businesses
over the boom years. Every city in the US should look like Singapore,
broadband in every home, if you compare money invested vrs population.
A number of reasons for the network operator/telco behavior: 1) they could
starve the broadband upstart companies so as to leverage their existing
market share in this new market later on, 2) they saw VoIP + always-on
connections killing the current lucrative long distance revenue model very
quickly, 3) building out had uncertain/poor ROI, as compared to not building
out, 4) wiring broadband is (fairly plausibly) supposed to eat into
prospective-but-never-materialized wireless data market.
Of course, all of that benefits people like me who are in the
better-ROI-with-small-innovations-in-current-technology business. Still, I'd
prefer to be in a world in which we'd just gone direct to broadband. Mind
you, if you have the inclination you can set up high bandwidth
100-square-mile mesh networks right now using existing basestations, devices
and software. I'm waiting for one of the major cities to be covered by WiFi
by a single enterprising group using a few large basestations...then it'll
get interesting. Sometime within the next 12 months, I'm guessing. 24 if
regulators step in.
</hat:wirelessCTO>
Reason
http://www.exratio.com/
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