On Sun, Feb 3, 2019 at 2:43 PM Keith Lofstrom <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Sat, Feb 02, 2019 at 04:50:45PM -0800, Russell Senior wrote: > > There is fiber in Portland now. I have gigabit fiber to my house (since > > 2015). Most of the footprint of Portland has it available right now. How > > complex was that to install? Not so complex that they didn't manage to do > > it. > > THEY did it, WE did not. Expertise has its rewards. > Expertise isn't involved. Despite your many, many words, this is off-the-shelf technology today. *Investment* is what has its rewards. I am suggesting that end users make that investment, and stop renting on dictated terms. The vendors that sold CenturyLink the hardware to build their network are more than willing to sell the same hardware to a public utility. > When you pay your monthly internet fee, you aren't just paying > for your fiber, you are paying to increase the capacity of > the ENTIRE INTERNET. The reality is that long-haul upstreams are cheap. Retail connections are expensive because the carriers have market power, not because they are good at technology. Also, the reality is that increasing local link speeds doesn't generate substantial increases in aggregate data transmission. This was reported by Sonic in the Bay Area when they helped pilot the Google Fiber project at Stanford University. People were watching the same movies as before, they were just having a better experience. The SandyNet experience is that a few people try to fill their pipes for a little while, but eventually their hard disks fill up. No one else pays any attention, except that they are happy that they have much better service than before at much lower prices. My primary argument is that we need to solve the monopoly problem. It would be fine and probably adequate to break up vertically integrated companies, there is just zero chance that policy is going to come out of the captured federal regulators (FCC and Congress). There are exactly two choices: a) continue to shovel money at the Cable and Telephone companies and live with their dysfunction and arbitrary rule; or b) become owner of the infrastructure and operate it in our own interests. You can vote for whatever it is you want, I'm voting for (b). As it happens, fiber is the best long-term investment to do what I want. -- Russell Senior [email protected] _______________________________________________ PLUG mailing list [email protected] http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
