7 ms·

In general I agree, but in practice certain nominal prices can be monotonically decreasing due to improved technology lowering prices faster than inflation rais

In general I agree, but in practice certain nominal prices can be monotonically decreasing due to improved technology lowering prices faster than inflation raises them. For instance, in terms of $/GB, data storage costs have been strictly decreasing in nominal terms even with the existence of inflation. That said, I am not sure how much innovation is going into the costs of maintaining a fiber network, so it’s possible that it won’t decrease as fast as 2-3% a year on average. I would be really interested if someone had those numbers!

saagarjha 7y ago
Of course, people are going to expect more as technology improves.
- CameronNemo 7y ago
  Exactly this. I work at a research and education network (a regional ISP), and we are asked to perform upgrades and new deployments constantly. If it is just residential use, the upgrade path will be more predictable. However, business and municipal users can scale quite unpredictably and the 10GE links allocated in 2019 might need to be 100GE in 2025.
- toomuchtodo 7y ago
  APM Marketplace [1] just had a researcher on the program the other day sharing that most Americans don’t use more than 20Mbps of bandwidth, and paying for anything above that as a typical internet user is throwing your money away. Power users, businesses, researchers, and others might expect more, but not the majority of residential users. Muni fiber investments will last quite a while. [1] https://www.marketplace.org/2019/08/27/for-faster-internet-do-you-really-get-what-you-pay-for/ https://www.marketplace.org/2019/08/27/for-faster-internet-d...
  - wlesieutre 7y ago
    One reason for getting a faster link is that most broadband connections in the US are not symmetric. Comcast in my area doesn't even make claims of upload speed anymore, but my recollection of when they used to is that it was about 10% of the download speed. If you want more than 2 Mbps upload, that 20 Mbps plan wouldn't cut it.
    - toomuchtodo 7y ago
      I don't disagree that asymmetric speeds are a problem, but I think there's this bubble where tech professionals think that once everyone has gigabit up and down, your average Joe is going to be demanding 10 gigabit and up, and the data isn't proving that out. People are happy to stream a couple of views of Netflix at once and that's it (even if you're thinking everyone is going to do live syncing of block volumes to the cloud; everyone might use iCloud for their Mac backups once Apple supports it natively for Time Machine, but even then deduplication and off peak transfers will do the heavy lifting).
      - wlesieutre 7y ago
        Agreed with that, my connection is plenty fast. It would be nice to have a faster one, but not enough that I'm going to pay more for it. I think I'm around 50 Mbps and it could be used much more heavily, but it doesn't make any sense on YouTube's end to send me a 50 megabit video stream. It's a the storage and upload costs on the provider side limiting that. Even if you pay extra for Netflix's 4K support, that only needs 25 megabits. It's compressed to hell compared to a 4K bluray, but if we all had faster internet I don't know if that would change. It's lot harder to market the actual visual quality of a video compared to talking about how many pixels it has. Maybe we'll see whole new services that need the bandwidth, but most stuff that sends a lot of data could be downloaded in advance if you don't mind waiting 5 minutes instead of having it instantly accessible. How many billion dollars are we willing to spend to build out faster networks to avoid that? What's the selling point for very fast streams, we go back to cloud mainframes and all of our devices are dumb terminals that stream our games and the whole OS from an AWS datacenter?
      - gwright 7y ago
        Why is asymmetric speeds a problem? I don't think there is anything inherently wrong with having multiple types of service for different use cases. That is true with other utilities (electric, water, gas) and is part of general infrastructure planning in those areas. Of course the actual pricing, availability, etc are also important but I don't think there needs to be a one-size-fits-all model for Internet bandwidth.
  - grogenaut 7y ago
    I purposely limit my usage because my connection goes to shit when it's over used. My family all understands this as well. If I had better connection id be consuming way more bandwidth. And I can't even get a faster more pricy connection because my legacy contract gives me upload speeds I don't get till I add 50% to my bill
crumpets 7y ago
Two things: - data costs for bandwidth costs hasn't gone down at the same rate - A big chunk of an ISP is labor costs, which do not go down over time
- parliament32 7y ago
  >labor costs It depends. If you're constantly doing new customer setup/teardown, yeah that'll cost man-hours. But once your network is up and running it really doesn't take much work to keep it running. My ISP is a very small local outfit. They have a "few thousand" customers... and the whole thing is run by literally two dudes, doing everything from netops to hw installs to billing and support. Yeah I'll have a few hour outage once every few months, but overall the service is great and it really doesn't take that much effort to keep things ticking.
  - Teknoman117 7y ago
    Are you willing to share what the ISP is called? Sounds like it may be a fun read.
    - parliament32 7y ago
      They don't have any written material, this is just from talking to the guys. Turns out starting an ISP isn't hard if you can lease last mile from one of your local big boys (and here, by law, they have to make last mile available for lease at a reasonable price). Basically rent a quarter cab in a colo, get a router (or two), a switch (or two), and a server (or two). Negotiate with last mile provider and a pair of upstreams. Get your DC to x-connect you to your upstreams and last mile provider. Do some marketing (elevator ads in residential apt buildings are apparently basically gold). Buy a pallet of cable modems, spend a few weeks configuring your crap... $50k later, you have an ISP, and you can offer service at 50% of the big boys' rates while still raking in a substantial profit.
- chimi 7y ago
  Isn't this article and the discussion precisely about the reason why costs for bandwidth haven't gone down? That is, the infrastructure providers are keeping the costs high because they can.

saagarjha 7y ago

Of course, people are going to expect more as technology improves.

CameronNemo 7y ago
Exactly this. I work at a research and education network (a regional ISP), and we are asked to perform upgrades and new deployments constantly. If it is just residential use, the upgrade path will be more predictable. However, business and municipal users can scale quite unpredictably and the 10GE links allocated in 2019 might need to be 100GE in 2025.
toomuchtodo 7y ago
APM Marketplace [1] just had a researcher on the program the other day sharing that most Americans don’t use more than 20Mbps of bandwidth, and paying for anything above that as a typical internet user is throwing your money away. Power users, businesses, researchers, and others might expect more, but not the majority of residential users. Muni fiber investments will last quite a while. [1] https://www.marketplace.org/2019/08/27/for-faster-internet-do-you-really-get-what-you-pay-for/ https://www.marketplace.org/2019/08/27/for-faster-internet-d...
- wlesieutre 7y ago
  One reason for getting a faster link is that most broadband connections in the US are not symmetric. Comcast in my area doesn't even make claims of upload speed anymore, but my recollection of when they used to is that it was about 10% of the download speed. If you want more than 2 Mbps upload, that 20 Mbps plan wouldn't cut it.
  - toomuchtodo 7y ago
    I don't disagree that asymmetric speeds are a problem, but I think there's this bubble where tech professionals think that once everyone has gigabit up and down, your average Joe is going to be demanding 10 gigabit and up, and the data isn't proving that out. People are happy to stream a couple of views of Netflix at once and that's it (even if you're thinking everyone is going to do live syncing of block volumes to the cloud; everyone might use iCloud for their Mac backups once Apple supports it natively for Time Machine, but even then deduplication and off peak transfers will do the heavy lifting).
    - wlesieutre 7y ago
      Agreed with that, my connection is plenty fast. It would be nice to have a faster one, but not enough that I'm going to pay more for it. I think I'm around 50 Mbps and it could be used much more heavily, but it doesn't make any sense on YouTube's end to send me a 50 megabit video stream. It's a the storage and upload costs on the provider side limiting that. Even if you pay extra for Netflix's 4K support, that only needs 25 megabits. It's compressed to hell compared to a 4K bluray, but if we all had faster internet I don't know if that would change. It's lot harder to market the actual visual quality of a video compared to talking about how many pixels it has. Maybe we'll see whole new services that need the bandwidth, but most stuff that sends a lot of data could be downloaded in advance if you don't mind waiting 5 minutes instead of having it instantly accessible. How many billion dollars are we willing to spend to build out faster networks to avoid that? What's the selling point for very fast streams, we go back to cloud mainframes and all of our devices are dumb terminals that stream our games and the whole OS from an AWS datacenter?
    - gwright 7y ago
      Why is asymmetric speeds a problem? I don't think there is anything inherently wrong with having multiple types of service for different use cases. That is true with other utilities (electric, water, gas) and is part of general infrastructure planning in those areas. Of course the actual pricing, availability, etc are also important but I don't think there needs to be a one-size-fits-all model for Internet bandwidth.
- grogenaut 7y ago
  I purposely limit my usage because my connection goes to shit when it's over used. My family all understands this as well. If I had better connection id be consuming way more bandwidth. And I can't even get a faster more pricy connection because my legacy contract gives me upload speeds I don't get till I add 50% to my bill

crumpets 7y ago

Two things: - data costs for bandwidth costs hasn't gone down at the same rate - A big chunk of an ISP is labor costs, which do not go down over time

parliament32 7y ago
>labor costs It depends. If you're constantly doing new customer setup/teardown, yeah that'll cost man-hours. But once your network is up and running it really doesn't take much work to keep it running. My ISP is a very small local outfit. They have a "few thousand" customers... and the whole thing is run by literally two dudes, doing everything from netops to hw installs to billing and support. Yeah I'll have a few hour outage once every few months, but overall the service is great and it really doesn't take that much effort to keep things ticking.
- Teknoman117 7y ago
  Are you willing to share what the ISP is called? Sounds like it may be a fun read.
  - parliament32 7y ago
    They don't have any written material, this is just from talking to the guys. Turns out starting an ISP isn't hard if you can lease last mile from one of your local big boys (and here, by law, they have to make last mile available for lease at a reasonable price). Basically rent a quarter cab in a colo, get a router (or two), a switch (or two), and a server (or two). Negotiate with last mile provider and a pair of upstreams. Get your DC to x-connect you to your upstreams and last mile provider. Do some marketing (elevator ads in residential apt buildings are apparently basically gold). Buy a pallet of cable modems, spend a few weeks configuring your crap... $50k later, you have an ISP, and you can offer service at 50% of the big boys' rates while still raking in a substantial profit.
chimi 7y ago
Isn't this article and the discussion precisely about the reason why costs for bandwidth haven't gone down? That is, the infrastructure providers are keeping the costs high because they can.