There were obviously many facets, but I think one of the turns was due to DWDM. You no longer needed a pair for every circuit. That then contributed to the glut of strands.
----- Mike Hammett Intelligent Computing Solutions http://www.ics-il.com Midwest-IX http://www.midwest-ix.com ----- Original Message ----- From: "Dave Taht" <dave.t...@gmail.com> To: "Internet-history" <internet-hist...@elists.isoc.org>, "Network Neutrality is back! Let´s make the technical aspects heard this time!" <nnag...@lists.bufferbloat.net>, "NANOG" <na...@nanog.org>, "bloat" <bloat@lists.bufferbloat.net> Sent: Sunday, November 12, 2023 9:48:46 AM Subject: The rise and fall of the 90's telecom bubble Aside from me pinning the start of the bubble closer to 1992 when commercial activity was allowed, and M&A for ISPs at insane valuations per subscriber by 1995 (I had co-founded an ISP in 93, but try as I might I cannot remember if it peaked at 50 or 60x1 by 1996 (?) and crashed by 97 (?)), this was a whacking good read, seems accurate, and moves to comparing it across that to the present day AI bubble. https://www.fabricatedknowledge.com/p/lessons-from-history-the-rise-and In the end we sold (my ISP, founded 93) icanect for 3 cents on the dollar in 99, and I lost my shirt (not for the first time) on it, only to move into embedded Linux (Montavista) after the enormous pop redhat's IPO had had in 99. The company I was part of slightly prior (Mediaplex) went public December 12, 1999 and cracked 100/share, only to crash by march, 2000 to half the IPO price (around $7 as I recall), wiping out everyone that had not vested yet. I lost my shirt again on that and Montavista too and decided I would avoid VCs henceforth. I am always interested in anecdotal reports of personal events in this increasingly murky past, and in trying to fact check the above link. So much fiber got laid by 2000 that it is often claimed that it was at least a decade before it was used up, (the article says only 2.7% was in use by 2002) and I have always wondered how much dark, broken, inaccessible fiber remains that nobody knows where it even is anymore due to many lost databases. I hear horror stories... The article also focuses solely on the us sector, and I am wondering what it looked like worldwide. I believed in the 90s we were seeing major productivity gains. The present expansion of the internet in my mind should not be much associated with "productivity gains", as, imho, reducing the general population to two thumbs and a 4 inch screen strikes me as an enormous step backwards. (I have a bad habit of cross posting my mails to where older denizens of the internet reside, sorry! If you end up posting to one of my lists I will add a sender allows filter for you) -- :( My old R&D campus is up for sale: https://tinyurl.com/yurtlab Dave Täht CSO, LibreQos
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