4 ms·

The sad part is that on the consumer side, we are still paying what we were paying in 2005, for roughly the same amount of bandwidth. If consumer-side speeds ke

by ajays 14y ago

The sad part is that on the consumer side, we are still paying what we were paying in 2005, for roughly the same amount of bandwidth. If consumer-side speeds kept a similar pace, either the costs should be halving every 18 months (modulo a certain fixed infrastructure cost), or the speeds should be doubling every 18 months at the same price point. Google Fiber is a great first step, but I think the only long-term viable solution is to have Municipal Fiber (in dense cities like SF and NY). There is no reason why we (I live in SF) should not have access to the same speeds as folks in Seoul and Tokyo, at similar prices. There's a nascent effort in SF to bring Municipal Fiber to the City (I am just a mailing list subscriber): http://sffiber.info/ http://sffiber.info/ It could sure use some love.

rwmj 14y ago
Profitability is doubling every 18 months though ...
tedunangst 14y ago
hmm. http://www.comcast.com/About/PressRelease/PressReleaseDetail.ashx?PRID=284&SCRedirect=true http://www.comcast.com/About/PressRelease/PressReleaseDetail... In October 2003, Comcast doubled speeds from 1.5 to 3. $57 is about equivalent to today's 50Mbs plan. In theory, 9 years is 6 doubles (192Mbs), so they're about two doubles short of hitting the 18 month target, but they're actually ahead of schedule if you're willing to grant a two year timeline per double.
ghshephard 14y ago
In the Bay area we are finally starting to see a bit of competition at the $70/month level. Comcast will either deliver you 30mbits/second or AT&T (if they've hooked up your neighborhood yet) - will send you 24mbits/second. I was paying $150/month for 2x64 ISDN in 1998/1999. So, my price went from .85 kilobits/1$ to 434 kilobits/1$. 500x increase in price performance in 13 years, which is a bit better than the expected 256x increase over 13 years. Things have plateaued recently - but I expect to see 1 Gigabit to the home to be pretty standard in the bay area by 2020 for $70 - which is completely in line with 18 month price performance doubling. (33x improvement) - it's just a little bursty.

by ajays 14y ago

rwmj 14y ago

Profitability is doubling every 18 months though ...

tedunangst 14y ago

hmm. http://www.comcast.com/About/PressRelease/PressReleaseDetail.ashx?PRID=284&SCRedirect=true http://www.comcast.com/About/PressRelease/PressReleaseDetail... In October 2003, Comcast doubled speeds from 1.5 to 3. $57 is about equivalent to today's 50Mbs plan. In theory, 9 years is 6 doubles (192Mbs), so they're about two doubles short of hitting the 18 month target, but they're actually ahead of schedule if you're willing to grant a two year timeline per double.

ghshephard 14y ago

In the Bay area we are finally starting to see a bit of competition at the $70/month level. Comcast will either deliver you 30mbits/second or AT&T (if they've hooked up your neighborhood yet) - will send you 24mbits/second. I was paying $150/month for 2x64 ISDN in 1998/1999. So, my price went from .85 kilobits/1$ to 434 kilobits/1$. 500x increase in price performance in 13 years, which is a bit better than the expected 256x increase over 13 years. Things have plateaued recently - but I expect to see 1 Gigabit to the home to be pretty standard in the bay area by 2020 for $70 - which is completely in line with 18 month price performance doubling. (33x improvement) - it's just a little bursty.