On Dec 4, 2013, at 13:43 , Mikael Abrahamsson <swm...@swm.pp.se> wrote:
> On Wed, 4 Dec 2013, Owen DeLong wrote: > >> Nope... I look at the consumer side pricing and the fact that cellular >> providers by and large are NOT losing money. I assume that means that the >> rest of the math behind the scenes must work somehow. > > Cost != price. > Price from the suppliers perspective absolutely = cost from the consumers perspective. > Also, wireless providers are not delivering the same service as wireline > providers. How many gigabytes per month do you usually get for the same money > on wireline compared to wireless? Depends on your carrier. From AT&T, I have $29 unlimited and I have definitely cranked down more over that (faster) LTE connection in some months than through my $100+ cable connection. From VZW, I'm paying $100+/month and only getting 10GB over LTE, but I rarely exceed 10GB per month from my (again slower) cable connection. T-Mo is offering unlimited LTE for something like $100/mo IIRC. (Their plans change so often and so quickly right now that it's hard to keep up). Several of the MVNOs offer unlimited for $40/month. >> Yeah, I'm sure there are all kinds of ways that wireline could be made >> cheaper, etc. However, I'm talking about comparing consumer pricing, not >> behind the scenes costs as the former is relatively easy to compare on even >> footing while the later is far to obfuscated by far too many parties to ever >> have a rational debate. > > Consumer pricing often have nothing to do with cost in a dysfunctional > market. It a functional market, cost and price are more closely related. Who cares? I'm talking about cost to the consumer which is absolutely equivalent to price from the supplier since they are one and the same. >> I said nothing about what was possible... I only comment on what is actually >> happening. If you know how to achieve a functioning market in the US, I'm >> all ears. In the mean time, dysfunction is all I have available to work with. > > Well, there would have to be a huge amount of changes, and most likely only a > portion of them would be implemented and then the changes would be deemed a > failure. > > Make it administratively fairly easy to put fiber in the ground. Make > municipalities/utilities put in fiber along other infrastructure and make > them rent it out at pricepoints that are related to cost. > > If it's possible to rent dark fiber, then you can all of a sudden get > competition instead of having a few huge companies dominate the market. > > Access to possibility of renting or installing L1 infrastructure to the > block/cabinet is the key. Sure, I'd love to see all of that. I'd also love to see L1 providers prohibited from engaging in L2 and higher level service provision and require L1 providers to accept all comers on an equal price and service basis (fiber from the MMR to any given subscriber costs the same per strand no matter who you are, no matter how many you buy, etc.). However, just like the mythical isotropic radiator, I don't expect any of that to happen any time soon. So, in the meantime, wireless bandwidth cost (from an end-user perspective) is rapidly approaching wireline bandwidth cost as I said before. This is the reality that we currently live in, regardless of how dysfunctional it may be. Owen
