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This is a sub-selection from It doesn't have to be FREE

jester121
Premium Member
join:2003-08-09
Lake Zurich, IL

1 recommendation

jester121 to karlmarx

Premium Member

to karlmarx

Re: It doesn't have to be FREE

Except that the scenario you describe has never been accomplished by a government entity, ever, in the history of the universe.

It always costs more than we thought, or doesn't work quite as well, or has other problems.

karlmarx
join:2006-09-18
Moscow, ID

1 recommendation

karlmarx

Member

What? I beg to differ. What about the national highway system? What about rural electrification? What about clean water? What about NASA? Everything I am describing of course, is a NATIONAL problem that needs to be solved. Name ONE private company that has solved a NATIONAL problem? Give up? That's right, because there never has been, and there never WILL be, due to the nature of a NATIONAL solution. You may quote the railroads, or the phone system.. Hmmm, how well did a monopoly system work then? Oh, wait, we had to break them up, BECAUSE their was a profit motive, and they became abusive.

What I propose is that the government OWNS the backbone, and RENTS it out to private industry to provide service. The phone companies of today would not exist if it wasn't' for the TRILLIONS of dollars of subsidies we gave them over the years. I have calculated that we could run FIBER to every single home in America for under 200 Billion dollars. That's FAR LESS than we gave to the fat cat bankers with our bailout. That's LESS than the cost of the screwed up Iraqi war.

Here's my modest proposal. Let the government take over all the existing fiber, phone lines, cable lines. Replace them all with Fiber to the home, and build a highly redundant, extremely powerful backbone, wiring every single home that has electricity with a fiber line capable of support 1gb/sec. THEN, charge $10.00 a month 'access fee' (used to pay off bonds to finance this, as well as maintenance and whatnot). THEN, let private companies lease bandwidth to provide services. What will that accomplish? An awful lot. A-la-carte tv service, virtually free phone service.

Super high speed internet at a very low price. Let comcast SELL TV subscriptions if they want to, providing bundles of channels, BUT let the channels sell directly to the customer if they want to. If you want to buy a bundle from comcast, comcast will rent bandwidth (very cheap), and provide you with what you want. It's time to replace the legacy copper and coax pipes that run through the US with a REAL NETWORK. Every company that wants to sell their services would be able to. This would effectively reboot the american industry, and provide much needed jobs, and more importantly, KEEP the jobs in the US. We don't manufacture very much anymore, (that's another issue alltogether), but given the importance of information today, it's time we had a NATIONAL solution to a NATIONAL problem.
BPLSUCKS9
join:2006-04-26
Grand Ledge, MI

BPLSUCKS9

Member

What's happening now with broadband is the same thing that happened with electricity and phones back in the day. Your modest plan will probably happen eventually. I would tweak it though. Personally I would do the build-out and have every CO manned after the build-out. Talk about the ultimate public works project. That kind of build-out would be a huge employment booster. Similar to when every home in the U.S was outfitted with telephone lines and power lines.

However I personally would NOT replace the telephone lines with fiber. The reason being is that in a power outage (yes they still happen in places) POTS lines still work as they are powered by the CO back-up generators right down the line to the end user. Fiber does not have that ability unless you have a back-up on the ONT or ran a twisted pair along the fiber jacket to provide that back up power. The backbone should be fiber but the connection to the house doesn't have to be for POTS.

For internet and cable you would need the fiber. Also if you are going to do that massive of a fiber build-out why not just re-do the backbone completely with the OC-768 lines in redundancy?

The other problem you are going to run into is network management. To manage an inter-connected network that size takes a lot of staff. Your best bet to be honest would be to keep all the current company staff and put them under the Fed umbrella as network managers.

One more thing. The cost of the content is going to be out of sight. You think you pay a lot now for CABLE? What are you going to do when you have to pay not only your $10 access fee to get hooked up but your $20 for phone service, $60 for the T.V you want, and an extra $20 in fees from the phone/cable company? At that rate I'd be better off just getting Internet, T.V, phone from the current system.

Ideally what should happen is you pay for connection fee and get internet...plain and simple. If you want things like cable, telephone, etc on top then you pick your company and their package and pay for it. For example lets say Comcast has a channel package I like that has everything I want except one channel but TWC has the same package with that channel...I can pick TWC over Comcast. The only difference the end-user sees is maybe a different logo when they turn on their set-top box.

Same for phone. Let's say verizon has a better package than AT&T. You call up verizon...tell them you want your service. They send a signal to the ONT to direct your phone traffic to their equipment (if its fiber...if its not then they switch it at the CO).

On the ISP end you would just contract someone to have a massive DNS network (eying you google) that could handle the load.

There is a reason I miss MA bell. At least with MA Bell it was regulated and everyone got everything at the same time. We wouldn't have this problem. Think about this. MA Bell before it broke up was getting ready to start deploying basic DSL and ISDN. I can almost guarantee that by now we'd all be on fiber lines or at the very least VDSL2 with complete fiber backbone or even FTTC/FTTP.

marigolds
Gainfully employed, finally
MVM
join:2002-05-13
Saint Louis, MO

marigolds to jester121

MVM

to jester121
said by jester121:

Except that the scenario you describe has never been accomplished by a government entity, ever, in the history of the universe.

It always costs more than we thought, or doesn't work quite as well, or has other problems.
You mean other than by about 2 dozen cities in Iowa?
APG
Premium Member
join:2007-01-13

APG to karlmarx

Premium Member

to karlmarx
said by karlmarx:

What I propose is that the government OWNS the backbone, and RENTS it out to private industry to provide service.
Ponder this: Time Warner Cable or Comcast or whomever finds another service they want to provide... and trust me when I tell you that a lot of things are being developed at this very moment. Alas, some of those things will require significant changes to the infrastructure; it's not going to be stuff that only requires sending a signal to the consumer...

Under the current system, the cable company decides that spending the money to change the infrastructure is worth it and proceeds.

Under your system, the government decides whether or not to make those changes. Maybe they will, maybe they won't. It's pretty much up to the whim of the times.

Question is, do you want these decisions made by politicians, many of whom are utterly clueless about technology, or the visionaries who will actually pony up their own money?

wifi4milez
Big Russ, 1918 to 2008. Rest in Peace
join:2004-08-07
New York, NY

wifi4milez

Member

said by APG:

Question is, do you want these decisions made by politicians, many of whom are utterly clueless about technology, or the visionaries who will actually pony up their own money?
Thats really not a fair statement, I mean just look at how efficient the DMV and Post Office are!

marigolds
Gainfully employed, finally
MVM
join:2002-05-13
Saint Louis, MO

marigolds

MVM

said by wifi4milez:
said by APG:

Question is, do you want these decisions made by politicians, many of whom are utterly clueless about technology, or the visionaries who will actually pony up their own money?
Thats really not a fair statement, I mean just look at how efficient the DMV and Post Office are!
Ever dealt with a privatized DMV state like Missouri? If you think government DMVs are bad, private run DMVs are even worse.
marigolds

marigolds to APG

MVM

to APG
said by APG:

Under the current system, the cable company decides that spending the money to change the infrastructure is worth it and proceeds.

Under your system, the government decides whether or not to make those changes. Maybe they will, maybe they won't. It's pretty much up to the whim of the times.
In theory. In practice, nearly all cable upgrades happen because the LFA mandates it. Without LFA mandates, 90%+ of cable systems out there would still be 13 channel analog with a handful of trapped premium channels.
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