Pushing the Net to the brink → Go figure.....

I don't see how this should even be an issue. They should be expecting this and planning for it way before it becomes a problem.

Yes, somehow I don't see Cisco worrying about an explosion in internet growth. Nortel must have been burnt so bad last time that its upper management has crawled in to its shell and is afraid to come out.

Considering people I know call them "NorHell," who really cares? Backbone is being added all the time or it would have crashed already.

I fully agree with you there...not a great place to be for this company.

Network equipment and fiber vendors were hit hard by the dot com bust. I think things are different now. Demand is growing at a steady rate as more broadband services are rolled out and the average broadband speed is increasing. Vendors always walk a fine line - too much capacity/new product and have to eat unsold inventory. Too little investment in new product development and watch your competitors walk away with your market.

Service usage is changing. Browsing is very bursty so aggregate demand on first-mile and backbone provider is modest. Streaming media, both audio and video, places much greater demand on network resources because connection persists for very long periods of time.

Hopefully one will see similar performance increase vs price decrease in Internet access as in the PC market.

/Tom

""The telecom equipment giant is taking a cautious approach to the demand for more bandwidth after recent losses. ""

Yea.. it's an issue alright. The telephone company, for one, in it's effort to gain market share away from cable has priced itself into those losses by selling their service for $14.95 a month.

I do NOT feel sorry for telco at all. Their own greed, and yes, selling the service at a low cost is being done for PURE greed in numbers, is going to be their end.

Broadband service should be at a $30 price point, AT LEAST... Dial up was always about $20 on average, that was for 56k and a single user. Speeds of 3.0/512 benefit more than one user and are 100 times faster than dial up.

Phone has priced themselves too low as their hook to gain the customer and in the end they will cry foul because they have no money, need some sort of a tax payer bailout and when that day comes I say "let them die".. There is a reason why cable and other providers charge what they do for broadband.. because they need to. It's not about today and current operating expenses, it's called future investments.. something cable has done over and over in it's time.. and phone?

So, then we see news posts like this ...

All of the equipment makers got burnt rather badly by the dot.com collapse. They got hosed in returns on leased equipment, suddenly having to readjust financial performance expectations, and in having to scale back all of the capacity they'd had to add to accommodate the last demand-spurt.

-tom

Some of them shouldn't have acted like venture capitalists instead of equipment vendors (e.g. Lucent). By stepping out of their roles in desperate attempt to win sales of equipment over their competition, that Dot Com bust was a double-decker.