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Because Moore's law speaks to transistor density, mentions nothing of price, let alone broadband price, and the last mile of the broadband market is dominated b
by fleitz 16y ago
Because Moore's law speaks to transistor density, mentions nothing of price, let alone broadband price, and the last mile of the broadband market is dominated by the market forces of regulatory capture and cartels. Also, the dominant technology in the last mile is copper wire, not silicon.
I used to pay $30 a month for dial-up (14.4 Kbps), and now pay $40 for 7.5 Mbps, thats a doubling factor of 8.6 over ~20 years which is roughly 2.3 years per doubling, thats awfully close to Moore's law. The reason prices aren't decreasing is that new applications are coming out which consume the extra bandwidth and that people value the decreased time to load more than the reduced amount of money. It's the same reason that a processor still costs $200.
- carbocation 16y agoInteresting. In Boston I have the pleasure of paying $45/month for 1.5Mbps internet service from Comcast. Sadly, living in the heart of Boston, I am out of range of Mifi and FIOS.
- yummyfajitas 16y agoThere is also a government enforced duopoly in broadband. I doubt we would have seen the same innovation in chip design if the government restricted competition to the two dominant brands (Intel and TI, I think) when the industry was in it's infancy.
- rbranson 16y agoCities do grant permits to place fiber lines to competing companies, but this is seldom done to run fiber into the home. The consumer market requires massive capital to achieve economies of scale that few companies outside of existing utilities can compete with. How do you compete with infrastructure that's been bought and paid for many times over?
- Tamerlin 16y agoI wish more people would take the small amount of time required to find out what Moore's Law really is. Since it only addresses increases in transistor budgets (due to density), it has nothing to do with price. Another point that more people need to understand is that price = cost + margin. In a competitive market, that margin is determined by perceived value, so if you managed to convince someone that your widget is worth more than the next guy's, you can charge them a higher price... even if you originally bought the widget from the same supplier as the next guy.
- BerislavLopac 16y agoActually, Moore's law is all about price -- or, rather, costs. According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_law, its most widely accepted formulation states: The number of transistors that can be placed inexpensively on an integrated circuit has doubled approximately every two years (emphasis mine). Even the quote from the original Electronics Magazine article includes: "The complexity for minimum component costs has increased at a rate of roughly a factor of two per year". Essentially, cost is the whole point of the Moore's observation. And the OP is asking the right question, which I've asked myself (http://berislav.lopac.net/post/495375785/is-there-a-moores-law-for-bandwidth http://berislav.lopac.net/post/495375785/is-there-a-moores-l...) and got no answer. I don't believe that bandwidth should follow the same rate of progress as the transistor density, as there are different sets of constraints at work, but I'm also curious if there has been any recognizable pattern there as well.