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... but then, there is no place on earth where you couldn't "sign up and recieve service" if you have a few billion to spare.

mynameisvlad 9y ago
We both know this is a disingenuous argument, because average households don't have a few billion to spare.
- zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago
  And neither do many households have a few thousand or even a few hundred bucks to spare, which is precisely why the argument "available access is if you could sign up" that I was responding to doesn't work. There is no place where you couldn't get broadband internet, and in most places within developed countries for a lot less than a billion, but that doesn't mean households could actually reasonably afford it. You would at least have to specify some price limit for availability.
ghaff 9y ago
You don't need to make such an extreme argument. I'm not sure what dollar threshold I would use but I don't think I'd get much of an argument saying that, if it costs $10K to get a hookup somewhere, the average household in that area doesn't really have access to broadband.
tialaramex 9y ago
From who? I admit that "a few billion" which is clearly beyond what I was suggesting might open doors, but not by just signing up somewhere. For example, the cable TV company offers Internet service to many people in my city, and indeed on my road. They put unsolicited advertisements through my door every week. But, despite the insistence that I could have "Super fast fibre-based Internet" tomorrow, in fact I can't, my building isn't connected and the owners of the building (an opaque off-shore property holding corporation) would need to sign off on work to change that, which they won't do even if I wanted it. Now sure, I could buy all the flats in the building, then leverage control of those flats to force the current owner to sell me the building, and then I'd have the right to get that work done. That means now I'm paying maybe £2-5M to get their merely "super-fast" broadband to my flat in a major city. Short of your "billions" but not by so many orders of magnitude... Or another example, for a few years the incumbent telco technically offered FTTP to any customer who could get their existing FTTC product, for a fee they'd work out what it cost them to run the extra cables and so on, add a percentage and if you agreed you'd pay that to get FTTP. The service was weakly advertised but immediately over-subscribed and it was effectively cancelled altogether without more than a handful of deployments. A few billion wouldn't do much about that I think, you'd need tens of billions to buy that incumbent telco and "change their minds" about the priority of such bespoke services that way.
- zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago
  > From who? From someone? > I admit that "a few billion" which is clearly beyond what I was suggesting might open doors, but not by just signing up somewhere. Well, but what does "sign up somewhere" really mean? If you called a major telco and made it clear that you have a few billion to spend and you wanted a gigabit internet link, you don't think they would find a way? I mean, think Bill Gates calling ... you think he would have to do much more than order what he wants to get it delivered in a reasonable time frame? > Now sure, I could buy all the flats in the building, then leverage control of those flats to force the current owner to sell me the building, and then I'd have the right to get that work done. That means now I'm paying maybe £2-5M to get their merely "super-fast" broadband to my flat in a major city. Short of your "billions" but not by so many orders of magnitude... And really, you wouldn't have to do any of that. For one, you don't have to buy it, you simply have to tell them that you pay them a billion bucks to sign off on things, and secondly, the telco will happily do that for you. But also, they wouldn't have to sign off on anything. The telco could just as well install an LTE cell just for you, or a laser link from across the street, ... > A few billion wouldn't do much about that I think, you'd need tens of billions to buy that incumbent telco and "change their minds" about the priority of such bespoke services that way. Erm ... what's the yearly profits of that telco? What's a few billion in comparison to that? You don't think they'd take a substantial increase in profits for a few days of work for some of their technicians?

mynameisvlad 9y ago

We both know this is a disingenuous argument, because average households don't have a few billion to spare.

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago
And neither do many households have a few thousand or even a few hundred bucks to spare, which is precisely why the argument "available access is if you could sign up" that I was responding to doesn't work. There is no place where you couldn't get broadband internet, and in most places within developed countries for a lot less than a billion, but that doesn't mean households could actually reasonably afford it. You would at least have to specify some price limit for availability.

ghaff 9y ago

You don't need to make such an extreme argument. I'm not sure what dollar threshold I would use but I don't think I'd get much of an argument saying that, if it costs $10K to get a hookup somewhere, the average household in that area doesn't really have access to broadband.

tialaramex 9y ago

From who? I admit that "a few billion" which is clearly beyond what I was suggesting might open doors, but not by just signing up somewhere. For example, the cable TV company offers Internet service to many people in my city, and indeed on my road. They put unsolicited advertisements through my door every week. But, despite the insistence that I could have "Super fast fibre-based Internet" tomorrow, in fact I can't, my building isn't connected and the owners of the building (an opaque off-shore property holding corporation) would need to sign off on work to change that, which they won't do even if I wanted it. Now sure, I could buy all the flats in the building, then leverage control of those flats to force the current owner to sell me the building, and then I'd have the right to get that work done. That means now I'm paying maybe £2-5M to get their merely "super-fast" broadband to my flat in a major city. Short of your "billions" but not by so many orders of magnitude... Or another example, for a few years the incumbent telco technically offered FTTP to any customer who could get their existing FTTC product, for a fee they'd work out what it cost them to run the extra cables and so on, add a percentage and if you agreed you'd pay that to get FTTP. The service was weakly advertised but immediately over-subscribed and it was effectively cancelled altogether without more than a handful of deployments. A few billion wouldn't do much about that I think, you'd need tens of billions to buy that incumbent telco and "change their minds" about the priority of such bespoke services that way.

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago
> From who? From someone? > I admit that "a few billion" which is clearly beyond what I was suggesting might open doors, but not by just signing up somewhere. Well, but what does "sign up somewhere" really mean? If you called a major telco and made it clear that you have a few billion to spend and you wanted a gigabit internet link, you don't think they would find a way? I mean, think Bill Gates calling ... you think he would have to do much more than order what he wants to get it delivered in a reasonable time frame? > Now sure, I could buy all the flats in the building, then leverage control of those flats to force the current owner to sell me the building, and then I'd have the right to get that work done. That means now I'm paying maybe £2-5M to get their merely "super-fast" broadband to my flat in a major city. Short of your "billions" but not by so many orders of magnitude... And really, you wouldn't have to do any of that. For one, you don't have to buy it, you simply have to tell them that you pay them a billion bucks to sign off on things, and secondly, the telco will happily do that for you. But also, they wouldn't have to sign off on anything. The telco could just as well install an LTE cell just for you, or a laser link from across the street, ... > A few billion wouldn't do much about that I think, you'd need tens of billions to buy that incumbent telco and "change their minds" about the priority of such bespoke services that way. Erm ... what's the yearly profits of that telco? What's a few billion in comparison to that? You don't think they'd take a substantial increase in profits for a few days of work for some of their technicians?