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Rob_
@rcn.com
| Re: Old data and biased source - the CWA who hate telecom mgt Sorry there are multiple other countries with lower population densities than the US that have higher broadband speeds. (Checkout Norway) They have governments or state run companies that are pushing broadband forward as fast as they can. We are just plain dumb.
We get the worst of both worlds. No real competition and no organized approach to getting everybody broadband. Some places have 3 complete infrastructures (rich zipcodes) and some none (rural zipcodes). We would have been better off building one and leasing it to all takers.
Minimizing infrastructure duplication enable upgrades to be done quickly Three is not as bad as cellular that built 5 different wireless infrastructures and is still worse than all of Europe, Japan, Korea and many third world countries
(The US bought Analog, CDMA, GSM, TDMA and Nextel wireless infrastructures). At least with LTE, we may be done buying wireless infrastructures (if WiMax dies).
The best approach is build one infrastructure, upgrade it as often as you can and treat it like a national highway system open to all.
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|  iansltx
join:2007-02-19
Golden, CO
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| Re: Old data and biased source - the CWA who hate telecom mgt Call me hypercapitalist but I don't want MY tax dollars paying for a system that may well fail, not be upgraded to support demand or supply, etc.
We've seen what has happened to muni wireless. The only "success story" cost taxpayers $5 million and serves only city employees. These employees could likely have been better served by a private entity...pay the entity $40 a month per wireless line and you give that company enough money tuo upgrade their infrastructure. With such a large customer, the wireless companies would compete and thus have a better network for everyone.
Last I checked, competition is good for the economy, and all that. The problem is that there is no competition, or very little int the internet market, not that there isn't a government-run network. I'd rather pay $50 a month for internet access to a private company than pay $55 a month extra in taxes to the government, who would then contract a private ompany to build a network. Uh, no thanks.
Also, the whole "one network" thing doesn't work. Fiber will only reach so far before the cost becomes prohibitive, or at least more prohibitive than a wireless setup. By the way, WiMax is here right now and LTE isn't, and WiMax can support 70 Mbps symmetric, so what's the big push to kill it off? LTE I'm sure can adapt their standard to be compatible...
If you want government-subsidized internet, move to a country that has it. Then realize that you're paying extra in taxes for this subsidy. Disconnect, anyone?
Though on a slightly different angle the government would do well to foster any competitors, especially small ones, that look to have a working product as far as 'net access goes, to keep the megacorps in check. Sort of like how Grande Communications provides cable competition in areas near (60 miles away or more) me.
Also, I have no problem with calling 768 kbps internet broadband. Everyone can agree that it's not great speed and all but you can watch online video, use VoIP and do gaming over such a conection, provided it has decent latency. Oh, and 256 kbps upload speed is broadband too, I'd say. Or if you want to be picky make it 384. Though everyone agrees that 200 kbps is NOT.
Another problem with the 2/1 broadband requirement is that it would mean a T1 connection isn't broadband. Which is a load of baloney.
Also, the US didn't buy ANY wireless infrastructures that you spoke of, Rob_. That was the wireless carriers. At the beginning of things there was actually one standard, AMPS. Then features were added and CDMA came out. GSM followed later and had more features, but at the same time CDMA got some upgrades. Now we're down to two networks. Sure they're incompatible, but so are cable and DSL. People can compete with proprietary technologies as long as those technologies allow access to the same types of (unfettered) service: voice, video and internet data.
So please by all means let the government come in and stir up competition by fostering new internet service providers opening up for inexpensive license wireless bands to take backhaul out of the hands of the LECs. But I don't want to pay extra taxes just so my internet *might* be faster.
Then again, I plan to solve the internet problem in my area, so I guess that's why I don't like armchair debate. | |
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