tschmidt
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join:2000-11-12
Milford, NH
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| reply to bigbeartech
Re: Its all a dream anyways
said by bigbeartech  :
Jim, the interviewee is an obvious representative of the current 'utilities' providers. So his information needs to be taken with a grain of salt, because obviously, he and his firm are making money off of this.
I agree. That is why I said it would be interesting to have another interview with incumbent Cablecos and Telcos.
said by bigbeartech :
Also, as he states in his first answer the multiple municipal power plants availible in the US, but he neglects to tell you about the multiple privately owned power plants that are still in exsistance today. One would wonder why.
Not sure I understand. Municipal ownership is a rarity so it makes sense to mention it. He also did not mention the sun comes up every day.
said by bigbeartech :
So the second question asks a good question, why is it growing? Probly because people are now becoming impatient with the big corporations upgrades and availibility. Yes, its a big problem. I actually purpously moved to get broadband. About two years later it was availible where I was and where I was was out in the boonies.
I agree people are frustrated at the pace of broadband deployment. But I think the issue is much deeper. People feel a lack of control; faceless bureaucrats and businesses make decisions that affect them. Building a municipal network is about the community regaining a level of control of important infrastructure.
said by bigbeartech :
Then he states that cable is a limited technology. Erm, where does that come from? With a current cable connection, the max someone can get is 22Mbps both up and down. Then when DOCSIS 2.0 comes out it will be 100Mbps and allow VoIP via the same modem. So there is some disinformation thats already displayed by this "representative".
This isnt even covering whats in future for DSL, which I only hear wispers about.
Both Cable DSL Internet service required clever engineering to adapt the networks to do something it was not designed to do. Kudos to the engineers but it results in an ugly dead end design that is only a stopgap. Not sure where the 100 Mbps number came from, Cablelabs the consortium that wrote the DOCSIS spec list the following capability.
said by Cablelabs :
DOCSIS 1 delivers about 45 Mbps down (toward the subscriber) and 5 Mbps up. DOCSIS 1.1 increased upload to 10 Mbps, DOCSIS 2 increased upload to 30 Mbps
These are pretty impressive numbers but one must keep in mind they are shared by 100-500 subscribers on a cable segment. Still pretty impressive for surfing or Voice over IP (VoIP) but woefully inadequate for streaming media or heavy file transfer. This is the main reason the Cablecos demonize “bandwidth hogs” and the Telcos do not. Cable technology places severe constraint on total thru put.
Lets see what happens if demand based streaming services become popular. VoIP requires about 100 kbps for G.711 toll quality encoding. Various type of compression can be used but tend to degrade quality and increase latency. DOCSIS 2 support 300 G.711 voice calls, the limiting factor is upload performance.
Demand based video can be delivered over digital cable or over DOCSIS using IP. A typical cable system has 80 broadcast channels bumping cable bandwidth to 1 GHz providing about 40 additional digital channels. Each digital channel can carry 12 compressed standard TV channels or two HDTV programs. So depending on mix Cable can deliver between 80 – 480 video on demand channels. BTW this is why the Cablecos have been aggressively fighting FCC must carry TV rules. The network is easily swamped if it has to deliver HDTV.
Standard TV requires about 3 Mbps when compressed and delivered digitally, HDTV about 20 Mbps. This means DOCSIS is capable of delivering between 2 and 12 TV channels.
Now lets look at DSL. As it the case with Cable engineers used clever techniques to piggyback digital data on a 100-year-old copper telephone network. Current technical sweet spot for DSL is about 1500 Mbps down and 768 kbps up at about 12-15,000 feet. Work is underway to increase speed at the expense of distance. For example as part of the IEEE 803.3.ah Ethernet in the First Mile specification the goal is 10 Mbps over several thousand feet of voice grade copper loop. As with the Cable discussion this is an impressive engineering achievement but falls woefully short of broadband nirvana of 100 Mbps per household.
These incremental modifications are costly. Money invested in incremental improvements must be recouped before moving to the next stage. Ultimately this approach is much more costly then simply building the next generation network from scratch.
More important is that both the Cablecos and Telcos have strong business incentives to delay and if possible never roll out open high-speed access. In the case of the Calbecos high-speed subscriber access undermines their value a content aggregator. With enough bandwidth content producers could interact directly with the end user. In the Telco case cheap DSL puts tremendous downward pressure on lucrative Business T1 (DS1) and other high-speed services. Service level agreements are important to businesses but so is the 10:1 difference in cost between T1 service and DSL or Cable.
said by bigbeartech :
The fourth question (Third question is being talked about here) is about this fabled "bottleneck". Well lets see. What is going on with the internet now? Multiple people are doing just fine right now with what they have. Who is wanting more? Well lets see, those who want to host servers (if everyone has the same bandwidth and services, why would someone pay you to host a server off your connection?) for gaming, websites, ftps, and whatever else they want. Wont this, in it-self cause this "bottleneck"?
The internet itself can only handle so much bandwidth, but people want to blindly add more so that some people can hog it? Isnt that why ATT @Home died out? Come on use your heads.
This is a catch 22 question. People don’t need faster connections because there are no applications that require them. Developers can’t develop more demanding applications because much of the population has low speed access. Internet access providers interpret this to mean the status quo is fine.
The most expensive bandwidth is short-haul first-mile access. Beyond the first mile network cost per user per Mbps drops and will continue to drop as demand increases. One of the reasons for the Telcom meltdown is long distance providers buried lots of fiber anticipating rapid demand growth that did not happen. Deploying FTTH will help these companies return to profitability.
said by bigbeartech :
BBR: Can't we rely on the private sector to get us to FTTH in the foreseeable future?
So what your saying is, progress comes at a price and it takes time? Wow... what an intuitive comment. This is exactly what causes problems in the USA. People want it now and want it cheap. Would that be why AOL and Microsoft and other companies are sending tech support to India? Damn straight it is. So how could the US economy support itself if all the jobs are in other countries, including municipalities?
What is wrong with wanting it now and wanting it cheap? This is what drives progress. If people were happy with the status quo nothing would change and capitalism would collapse.
said by bigbeartech :
Er, compairing broadband internet to sewers, water, and electricity... What?!?! First of all sewers are in place for sanitary issues, secondly water is in place because it is a basic necessity, and electricity is needed to help with heat, cold, and to run critical things like the tv, radio, and internet which carry warning messages that the government needs to get to the people.
All the services you enumerate were once considered luxuries in many cases only available to the wealthy. As society progressed they became necessities and in many cases citizens decided the best way to deliver them was to have to government do it or private enterprise with close oversight by the government. Internet access will likely follow the same course. Today high-speed access is a luxury used mostly by early adopters. In 10 years it will be difficult to participate in society without it.
said by bigbeartech :
But they do not pay for the radio, the internet, the tv, or the specific electronics that go with them. Why? Because they are entertainment.
The Internet is much more then entertainment. That aside I’d argue the test of whether private or public ownership is most appropriate is whether or not effective competition exists.
Speaking about entertainment there is strong public support for limiting consolidation in the media and entertainment industry. This flies in the face of FCC’s goal to eliminate industry cross ownership restrictions.
said by bigbeartech :
he also states that hospitals and buisnesses need the fiber connection for their buisnesses and to attract buisnesses to them? Er ok... they already have broadband. If the buisness needs it, it will pay for it, fiber install and all. Moot point there Jim.
Business expenses are no less affected by cost as individuals. As businesses become more information intensive the cost of communications becomes an ever larger portion of overall cost. Reducing cost is good for everyone. Businesses move to locations that reduce their cost.
said by bigbeartech :
BBR: How do you answer the charge that municipalities should not compete with the private entities that they regulate?
Holy cow... lets not forget alot of issues that can and will come up from this.
#1, doesnt the state and federal government still carry jurisdicition over towns? I mean you do still pay federal and state taxes in each town.
#2, each town/city has a hearing on renewing the rights for a company to be in their town. Citizens do have control for gods sake, EXERCISE IT
#3, every time a company has to dig or add wiring, they need permission from the city or municipality. Can anyone see an issue here? If not.. read again.
1) It depends, some state allow home rule others not. In some states the only thing towns are allowed to do is what the state specifically allows, in other states local jurisdictions are allowed to do anything not specifically forbidden by to the state. Not sure I understand your tax citation. The town has nothing to do with collecting state and federal taxes.
2) I agree. If citizens want municipal broadband they ought to be allowed to do it.
3) I have no idea what you mean – please explain.
said by bigbeartech :
Im really done with the interview right now... but basicly to sum it up. Underhandedness is not just in the private sector. I mean you see "money" going to politicians all the time. What if a non-profit municipality wanted to enter another city? What do you think will happen?
Local municipality has no standing outside its local jurisdiction. If multiple municipalities want to enter into a cooperative agreement they could structure ownership of the network so each community owns a portion of it. I’m not very familiar with all the business issues of municipal broadband perhaps one of our other members could comment.
said by bigbeartech :
There are alot of "ifs" to be considered.
But the underlying factor here is that, a municipality is government run, it is illegal for the government to compete with private companies (entertainment companies to say the least), and there is no "national security need" for this. It does not help any citizens gain anything except more taxes and headache.
Just give the current municipalities time and note the issues that come up.
There is no inherent prohibition against local or state government competing with private enterprise. Here in “live free or die” New Hampshire we have state run monopoly in the liquor and lottery business.
In some states the Telcos have been successful in getting laws passed that prohibit localities from operating networks.
said by bigbeartech :
Now who am I? I worked in the DSL industry, I worked in the cable industry, I worked in the government industry. I take everything in before I make a judgement call, and I am a person who is in the middle, politically.
Good, as someone in the middle politically I assume maximizing local power is something you are in favor of. In some instances municipal networks may make sense in others private enterprise is a better solution. Let the locals decide. |
