From: Brian D Williams (talon57@well.com)
Date: Mon Jul 02 2001 - 11:35:15 MDT
>From: "Robert J. Bradbury" <bradbury@aeiveos.com>
>In this article:
>http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20010628.html
>Robert Cringely documents how he uses telescopes, Apple
>Airports and radio 802.11b to get himself a DSL link in
>what would otherwise be an unreachable location.
>(If you go back through my old posts, I predicted this...)
>Expensive to setup for him, but we know the technology curve.
An interesting solution to a temporary limitation, probably only
applicable to other extremely well-to-do techies living on mountain
tops.
I noticed that he completely ignored the cost of his considerable
labor in this experiment.
>Prediction: In the long term, with sufficient investment
>in infrastructure, communications (at bandwidths unaugmented
>humans are capable of generating or absorbing) will be free.
It's that considerable "sufficient investment in infrastructure"
that's the sticking point. The low ball figure I see is about 250
billion dollars. Whoever puts that up is going to want a
substantial return on investment, then of course there's
maintenance.
TANSTAAFL, I don't see a substantial return on 250 billion yielding
free service.
>There is a brilliant paper to be done in the analysis of
>when the declining costs of communications infrastructure
>cross-over what the telephone companies charge for service and
>the public recognizes they can be their own "common carrier".
>At that point you want to be short-selling Telco stock.
The costs of communications aren't declining, they are on a fairly
steep increase. What we are getting is more bandwidth for every
buck invested, but that is completely different from lower costs.
Under the current PLEC system costs to the consumer will soon be
going up rather than decreasing.
Brian
Member:
Extropy Institute, www.extropy.org
National Rifle Association, www.nra.org, 1.800.672.3888
SBC/Ameritech Data Center Chicago, IL, Local 134 I.B.E.W
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