Kevin Graeme wrote: >>One of these days soon, the bottom will drop out of the broadband market >>.. And it'll be as easy to get as a quart of milk. > > > I wish. Unfortunately, the trends in dial up don't seem to support that > wish. Prices in dial up access have been gradually rising over the past > several years. It used to be that $5/month unlimited access was common. > Heck, NetZero and others were actually free. Now the average price is back > to $20/month and AOL charges $24 unless you take restrictions or pay for > your own dial up seperately. > > I love my broadband connection. If I had to go back to dial up, I probably > would just forego the Internet entirely. I just don't see prices coming down > significantly any time soon.
Depends on where you live I suppose. Some of the developments in the UK are quite interesting, with BT investigating the possibility of offering DSL in CO's where only 16 lines are desired (used to be 200+). If you look at the new DSL hardware lines of Zyxel and Siemens you might notice that they now feature Ethernet interfaces instead of the usual ATM interfaces. That means that the investment for a BBRAS ($150,000 for 1 Gbps) and the associated management infrastructure is no longer needed. In fact, it means goodbye to all ATM except for the DSL line itself. And if you compare the prices for commodity ATM hardware (STM-1 or STM-4) wih those of commodity Ethernet hardware (GbE) you will see a significant price difference there as well (while the Ethernet is even faster). And it supports multicast :) On the other hand we have emerging GigaMAN infrastructures in many places. Basically a shared GbE infrastructure in metropolitan areas with a limited number of connection points (a.k.a. the Stockholm model). That means that fiber is becoming more and more available in the vicinity of mini-CO's. Put all this together and we are talking VDSL for prices comparable to current ADSL in metropolitan areas. The question is if there is any telco left with the money to do this, and an interest in it (it would compete with their existing DSL offerings). But the opportunities are there. Except in the US of course, where the FTC recently ruled that ILEC's are not required to give CLEC's access to the local loop. Did I mention already that tracking the DSL market is a hobby? Check out http://spike.oli.tudelft.nl/adsl/maps.cfm?name=latest_b for the latest results in the Netherlands. Jochem ______________________________________________________________________ Get the mailserver that powers this list at http://www.coolfusion.com Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/index.cfm?sidebar=lists
