From: Reason (reason@exratio.com)
Date: Fri Sep 27 2002 - 21:41:26 MDT
-->Reason
> -->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.
And I forgot to mention 5) the legislation that makes it near-impossible to
compete with the incumbent government-supported monopolies. US telcos have
little incentive to really innovate or compete with each other with new
technology; it's cheaper for them to buy laws suppressing disruptive
competition and rely on marketing and rebranding to continue to sell the
same poor quality of service.
Reason
http://www.exratio.com/
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