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It's never obvious why a technology is valuable before someone invents an application for it. No one knew what to do with broadband before VoD and digital deliv

by mkr-hn 13y ago

It's never obvious why a technology is valuable before someone invents an application for it. No one knew what to do with broadband before VoD and digital delivery (Steam, GoG, app stores, etc.) came along, and we're only a few years into widespread adoption of those technologies. Anything could happen on the 5-15 year time scale we're talking about here. Gigabit Internet and the places that have it could look very appealing once the technology that puts it to work starts to gain traction.

muzz 13y ago
> No one knew what to do with broadband before VoD and digital delivery (Steam, GoG, app stores, etc.) came along, and we're only a few years into widespread adoption of those technologies Napster, then other file-sharing services (Morpheus, Kazaa), Bittorrent, etc. This was ~25% of internet traffic in the mid-00s
- mkr-hn 13y ago
  25% of 5% of the current population of Internet users isn't much. It wasn't that long ago that people wondered if the Internet had staying power. Few people believed it had much influence outside itself before the 2008 elections. The greatest period of Internet growth was post-YouTube. The greatest growth in build out and adoption of gigabit Internet will be post-whatever takes advantage of it. My point still stands: > No one knew what to do with broadband before VoD and digital delivery (Steam, GoG, app stores, etc.) came along, and we're only a few years into widespread adoption of those technologies
mhurron 13y ago
Ah yes, more and more consumption is just such a great thing.
lsc 13y ago
>Gigabit Internet and the places that have it could look very appealing once the technology that puts it to work starts to gain traction. I certainly agree that gigabit internet will be more valuable in the future than it is now. But, will that make property way more valuable? maybe. thing of it is, compared to silicon valley property values, getting fiber in to multi-family dwellings isn't all that expensive. You are gonna need like 50 neighbors to make the ongoing cost reasonable, so that's harder with single-family homes, but not impossible. Install costs are high, but not that high; generally $5-$15K one-time to trench from the street into a property and splice in, so if you can talk all your neighbors into blowing 10K+ each on the install, plus your $50 each ongoing, well, you could totally do it. The whole project is way more appealing than, say, moving your ass to Sacramento or Kansas or somewhere else you probably don't want to live.
- mkr-hn 13y ago
  Imagine moving to a place without cable, DSL, or even a wireless provider. Now imagine 5-6 very popular services depend on gigabit speeds in the same way YouTube or Steam depends on cable, DSL, and wireless. How many people would buy a house without a gigabit link in that environment? My point is that if something changes the SV market situation, like an exodus of investors to Texas or another Google Fiber location, housing prices are going to fall fast as the money leaves.
  - lsc 13y ago
    tl;dr: the fiber will come to the consumer, not the other way around. You misunderstand. I'm not saying that gigE isn't great. Certainly within the next decade, (and hopefully sooner) nearly all of us are going to demand gigE to the home. My point is just that the economics of the situation are such that the presence of gigE lines isn't going to move the price of real-estate all that much. In expensive areas, the cost of real-estate utterly dominates the cost of getting gigabit network connections, if all your neighbors want the same speed. The main reason gigabit to the home is unaffordable right now is due to low density of demand, and as you point out, that is going to change.
chollida1 13y ago
> It's never obvious why a technology is valuable before someone invents an application for it. Well that's just provably false:) Before flight people knew why flight would be useful. And before broadband people already knew that it would be important. I remember my mom in 1995 saying how useful she thought the internet would be once it was fast enough to transfer videos and pictures of her grand kids.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]

by mkr-hn 13y ago

muzz 13y ago

> No one knew what to do with broadband before VoD and digital delivery (Steam, GoG, app stores, etc.) came along, and we're only a few years into widespread adoption of those technologies Napster, then other file-sharing services (Morpheus, Kazaa), Bittorrent, etc. This was ~25% of internet traffic in the mid-00s

mkr-hn 13y ago
25% of 5% of the current population of Internet users isn't much. It wasn't that long ago that people wondered if the Internet had staying power. Few people believed it had much influence outside itself before the 2008 elections. The greatest period of Internet growth was post-YouTube. The greatest growth in build out and adoption of gigabit Internet will be post-whatever takes advantage of it. My point still stands: > No one knew what to do with broadband before VoD and digital delivery (Steam, GoG, app stores, etc.) came along, and we're only a few years into widespread adoption of those technologies

mhurron 13y ago

Ah yes, more and more consumption is just such a great thing.

lsc 13y ago

>Gigabit Internet and the places that have it could look very appealing once the technology that puts it to work starts to gain traction. I certainly agree that gigabit internet will be more valuable in the future than it is now. But, will that make property way more valuable? maybe. thing of it is, compared to silicon valley property values, getting fiber in to multi-family dwellings isn't all that expensive. You are gonna need like 50 neighbors to make the ongoing cost reasonable, so that's harder with single-family homes, but not impossible. Install costs are high, but not that high; generally $5-$15K one-time to trench from the street into a property and splice in, so if you can talk all your neighbors into blowing 10K+ each on the install, plus your $50 each ongoing, well, you could totally do it. The whole project is way more appealing than, say, moving your ass to Sacramento or Kansas or somewhere else you probably don't want to live.

mkr-hn 13y ago
Imagine moving to a place without cable, DSL, or even a wireless provider. Now imagine 5-6 very popular services depend on gigabit speeds in the same way YouTube or Steam depends on cable, DSL, and wireless. How many people would buy a house without a gigabit link in that environment? My point is that if something changes the SV market situation, like an exodus of investors to Texas or another Google Fiber location, housing prices are going to fall fast as the money leaves.
- lsc 13y ago
  tl;dr: the fiber will come to the consumer, not the other way around. You misunderstand. I'm not saying that gigE isn't great. Certainly within the next decade, (and hopefully sooner) nearly all of us are going to demand gigE to the home. My point is just that the economics of the situation are such that the presence of gigE lines isn't going to move the price of real-estate all that much. In expensive areas, the cost of real-estate utterly dominates the cost of getting gigabit network connections, if all your neighbors want the same speed. The main reason gigabit to the home is unaffordable right now is due to low density of demand, and as you point out, that is going to change.

chollida1 13y ago

> It's never obvious why a technology is valuable before someone invents an application for it. Well that's just provably false:) Before flight people knew why flight would be useful. And before broadband people already knew that it would be important. I remember my mom in 1995 saying how useful she thought the internet would be once it was fast enough to transfer videos and pictures of her grand kids.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]