----- Original Message ----- From: "Erik Reuter" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Saturday, October 26, 2002 12:31 PM Subject: Re: corporations
> On Sat, Oct 26, 2002 at 11:30:45AM -0500, Robert Seeberger wrote: > > > LOL......I never thought I'd see Eric take the side of > > authoritarianism. Right now we have an extreme bandwidth glut with > > about a third of all fiber sitting in the ground "unlit". > > LOL.....I never thought I'd see someone make so many mistakes in > a couple sentences. First of all a free market does not equal > "authoritarianism", it is the invisible hand which is almost the > opposite and usually quite superior to government control. Not at all what I meant Erik (sorry bout the mispelling, I seem to do that a lot). I wasnt refering to politics at all. I refered to the attempt to *control* the market. Markets that are influenced by non-economic forces (Greed frex) are not free markets. > Second, > you don't know me as well as you think, one symptom of which is that > you can't even spell my name correctly. Third, the price of providing > service to the home is only partially correlated with unlit fiber, since > the "last mile" is almost all copper pairs or coax cable, as well as the > expenses of maintaining switches and routers and/or renting space in > a telecom central office. I got fiber within 50 feet of me and most of us here in Houston are within 100yards. Finally, what a silly thing for you to say > regardless of the above, since if there is really a glut of bandwidth, > then charging free market prices based on bandwidth used is the best > thing that can happen for the consumer since it will result in lower > prices. Any evidence of that happening in this situation? > > > Any bandwidth shortage is entirely manufactured and is a symptom of > > "Debeers" type cartelism. > > LOL.....there you go again making entirely ridiculous claims without > having a shred of credible evidence or even having done some numbers > yourself. You been peeking on my PC? Following me around on the net? > > Perhaps you failed to notice that the backbone providers for DSL > and cable-modems have been losing money and going bankrupt left and > right? Do the names of companies like Flashcom, Zyan, FastPoint, > Rhythms, Northpoint, or Covad mean anything to you? All DSL arent they? > > http://news.com.com/2100-1033-271697.html?tag=rn > http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news/article.php/3_861601 > http://www.broadbandweek.com/news/010806/010806_telecom_rhy.htm > http://www.internetnews.com/isp-news/article.php/8_532831 > http://www.internetnews.com/isp-news/article.php/8_863941 > > Do you know how much a T1 line (1.544Mb/s) costs? The best price I've > seen recently is about $500/month. Why hasnt the free market brought *that* price down? > Most ISP's charge about $50/month > for service. Even if they had no overhead and didn't make a profit, > the best they can do is 10 people per T1 at that price. On average, > each person can only get 154Kb/s of bandwidth, only about 4 times what > a conventional modem can get. I regularly get between 400 - 500 Kb/s according to the tests you see online. >That is not what people expect from > a broadband connection, they expect 10 to 100 times better than a > conventional modem. And you know exactly why they are led to expect this. >So something has to give. What happens now is that > many people aren't saturating their connection 24/7. If only 1 person > is using the T1 at a time, they can get 1.5Mb/s. But if the marginal > cost of bandwidth is free, then more people will use it more often (the > "bandwidth hogs" the article talks about, but I think the problem is not > that people are using bandwidth, just that they expect to use it and > not pay a fair price) The fair price is what they contracted to pay. > and you approach the point of people saturating > their connection 24/7 (peer-to-peer programs often do this). In other > words, there is a limited resource that needs to be divided up in some > way. Price set by supply and demand and the free-market is the most > efficient way to do this, as has been proven time and again. But again this is not supply and demand, its investor profit taking. Investors dont seem to like waiting for the profit to arrive. They want it now. > > You might argue that the natural monopoly of last-mile ISP's over phone > or cable lines makes the free-market less than efficient. But this > argument is not as strong as it is for services like electricity or > gas, because there are a number of broadband alternatives: telephone > line, cable lines, some recent housing developments running fiber to > the home, satellite, and wireless can all compete for the "last-mile" > providers. And for this argument to work, you have to show that the > monopolists are making a killing at the consumers expense, but quite the > contrary, they've been going bankrupt. It costs a lot of money to build > the networks to the home that provide the bandwidth and reliability that > people expect. > Basicly true. But not all markets are operating under the same conditions. the large markets are well wired for the most part and should be generating revenues. The rural markets may never be completely fibered before newer tech becomes available. xponent Complexities Maru rob _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
