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if so, then why should the pipes be privatized at all? in that case, the pipes should be built out and maintained at a governmental-level and leased back at a u
by pyvpx 11y ago
if so, then why should the pipes be privatized at all? in that case, the pipes should be built out and maintained at a governmental-level and leased back at a uniform/standardized price to all providers.
- jmngomes 11y agoIt makes sense to me that the government should own "the pipes", and then lease them to competing firms, as these are a vital communication infrastructure.
- allendoerfer 11y agoBecause, you want the pipes to grow.
- sliverstorm 11y agoI wonder if that really matters all that much. It could be my limited perspective talking, but fiber seems pretty future-proof. Nothing is faster than light; the only conceivable improvement would be cables that can handle wider spectrum of light. (The nodes on the other hand, of course, are continually improving) Ethernet cable is a similar story. NICs have advanced tremendously, but Cat5 (defined in 1991) is still usually all you need.
- nly 11y agoFiber is future proof but most people don't have it. The process of getting it is called growth. If it's the case that making the "pipes" a public utility would have hindered growth, then you would never have got fiber. And 100M ethernet over Cat5e is pretty useless. Standard WiFi these days is 150-300 Mbps. I regret not running Cat6 in to my extension just to be safe.
- sliverstorm 11y agoI would run Cat6a if I was building a house, because it's the latest spec and not much more expensive, but Cat5e is still great. Standard WiFi never gets anywhere close to those speeds, is simplex, and I find a 10Mbps Ethernet (powerline) link handily outperforms a 100Mbps WiFi connection for networked file system access. (Probably either an issue with the simplex or dropped packets) P.S. Cat5e can still do 1Gbps, just not over quite as great a distance as Cat6. Although Cat5e definitely isn't rated for 10Gbps (nor is vanilla Cat6 for that matter)
- foldor 11y agoCat5e does do gigabit speeds. You might be thinking of it's predecessor Cat5.
- snowwrestler 11y agoThat is called municipal broadband and quite a few municipalities are looking very hard at it. http://www.businessinsider.com/chattanooga-tennessee-big-internet-companies-terrified-2014-7 http://www.businessinsider.com/chattanooga-tennessee-big-int...
- tw04 11y agoI 100% agree. In my ideal world, the government builds fiber to every house and pulls it back to a central POP where private entities compete to provide service over the top. Thus creating REAL competition and removing the barrier to entry. Unfortunately we've got a lot of people with their heads in the sand that think government is the root of all evil... so I'm working with what I've got :)