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No, my math is right. It takes a lot more effort and money to move a large mass. > Kindly explain how some foreign countries with highly regulated or state-op

No, my math is right. It takes a lot more effort and money to move a large mass. > Kindly explain how some foreign countries with highly regulated or state-operated telecommunications companies already have faster internet connections than major American cities. Because their infrastructure decisions come after our infrastructure decisions. It takes N years to "wire" a large city like Los Angeles. After that you have to get your money back. Yes, that is not a criminal act. Meanwhile country "X", many years later, looks at what was done in Los Angeles, checks out the more current technological offerings and installs a system that yes, probably leapfrogs what the average customer in Los Angeles has. The true test would be the next evolutionary step. When a city like Los Angeles is ready to make the next big shift in connectivity it will be really neat. Country "X" will then fall behind and it will probably be very, very difficult for them to make the next leap 'cause, well, they have to pay for the investment just as well. The technology that is going to make a huge difference is fiber to the home. We already have it in certain places in Los Angeles. I happen to know that there's fiber in the telco box right outside my house. Why? I saw it being installed fifteen years ago. Not lit yet. It will be, eventually. Fiber is great in that you can greatly enhance transmission rates by driving it differently. There's probably a few more evolutionary steps ahead of us before fiber bandwidth is tapped out. There's another issue a lot of people might not consider when thinking about upgrading the infrastructure of a country like the US. If tomorrow we all had 1Gb/s service at home and at work it would probably crash the Internet. The infrastructure required in order to support something like that at our scale is massive and cost a ton of money. I don't know if costs are geometric or exponential. They are huge. A small country has advantages here as well. No, government and regulation is not the solution. It never is.

AnthonyMouse 14y ago
>No, my math is right. It takes a lot more effort and money to move a large mass. Please explain how it costs more per house to install fiber when you can buy materials in bulk and have a larger number of customers to spread fixed costs over. >It takes N years to "wire" a large city like Los Angeles. After that you have to get your money back. They did that decades ago. The cost of installing copper has been paid. The reason they don't install fiber (and make no mistake, they have all but stopped) is that they have no incentive to do it -- increasing average bandwidth reduces their ability to engage in price discrimination against users who are currently willing to pay a premium to reach a threshold level of bandwidth that would become the new baseline. Scarcity raises prices. Why would they ever pay money to upgrade technology that doesn't increase their revenues? The answer in a free and competitive market would be competitive pressure, but they have no effective competition. >The true test would be the next evolutionary step. Explain what provides the local incumbent with any incentive to be the first to take that step. > If tomorrow we all had 1Gb/s service at home and at work it would probably crash the Internet. The infrastructure required in order to support something like that at our scale is massive and cost a ton of money. I don't know if costs are geometric or exponential. Rubbish. The costs are sub-linear. A user who gets a connection which is 100 times faster doesn't automatically transfer 100 times more stuff. The predominant cost of installing fiber to the home has nothing to do with bandwidth or networking equipment and everything to do with paying line workers in bucket trucks to dig holes and string fiber. >No, government and regulation is not the solution. It never is. Do you even hear yourself? Telecommunications is a regulated industry. It's right up there with power transmission and commercial construction. No one is even suggesting changing that. If you went to AT&T and asked them whether they would be in favor of repealing all the telecommunications legislation that applies to them, thereby disallowing them from using eminent domain and providing unlicensed access to all comers to the entire radio spectrum, they would laugh you out of the building. The only question is whether the regulations we impose are ones that benefit the public or the incumbents, e.g. by causing fiber to the home to be installed sooner vs. later (or never).

AnthonyMouse 14y ago

>No, my math is right. It takes a lot more effort and money to move a large mass. Please explain how it costs more per house to install fiber when you can buy materials in bulk and have a larger number of customers to spread fixed costs over. >It takes N years to "wire" a large city like Los Angeles. After that you have to get your money back. They did that decades ago. The cost of installing copper has been paid. The reason they don't install fiber (and make no mistake, they have all but stopped) is that they have no incentive to do it -- increasing average bandwidth reduces their ability to engage in price discrimination against users who are currently willing to pay a premium to reach a threshold level of bandwidth that would become the new baseline. Scarcity raises prices. Why would they ever pay money to upgrade technology that doesn't increase their revenues? The answer in a free and competitive market would be competitive pressure, but they have no effective competition. >The true test would be the next evolutionary step. Explain what provides the local incumbent with any incentive to be the first to take that step. > If tomorrow we all had 1Gb/s service at home and at work it would probably crash the Internet. The infrastructure required in order to support something like that at our scale is massive and cost a ton of money. I don't know if costs are geometric or exponential. Rubbish. The costs are sub-linear. A user who gets a connection which is 100 times faster doesn't automatically transfer 100 times more stuff. The predominant cost of installing fiber to the home has nothing to do with bandwidth or networking equipment and everything to do with paying line workers in bucket trucks to dig holes and string fiber. >No, government and regulation is not the solution. It never is. Do you even hear yourself? Telecommunications is a regulated industry. It's right up there with power transmission and commercial construction. No one is even suggesting changing that. If you went to AT&T and asked them whether they would be in favor of repealing all the telecommunications legislation that applies to them, thereby disallowing them from using eminent domain and providing unlicensed access to all comers to the entire radio spectrum, they would laugh you out of the building. The only question is whether the regulations we impose are ones that benefit the public or the incumbents, e.g. by causing fiber to the home to be installed sooner vs. later (or never).