Actually the broken device example happens with electricity too. There can be a failed hot water heater. Shorted wires etc. that run the bill way up.
The difference is that people don't leave their hair dryer on 24/7. They know it uses a lot of resources so they turn it off. They will also install heat pumps instead of regular ol' furnaces. They will insulate a house to better conserve electricity, therefore money. With our telecom model of all you can eat for one flat price there is NO incentive for efficiency. People don't care how bad the encryption mechanisms are for that movie they want to download. They don't care how big that Microsoft update is etc. The ONLY ones paying attention to those things are the dial-up users, they have no choice but to watch their usage. Eventually one of two things has to happen. Bandwidth has to become free, you just hook into the system, pay a flat rate and use all you could possibly want. Or it'll be a cost per unit basis, like long distance used to be. And, ahem, everything else in life already is. Know what I think the REAL driver for pay for use will be? Better privacy laws. When companies can no longer data mine your activities and use that for a source of income they'll have to find a better way to make money off of the consumer. Shrug. Something will have to give in the next 5 years. Who knows, maybe some radio company will finally come up with a really good mechanism for spectrum sharing and pushing bandwidth. Then GIVE that technology to the entire industry. How cool would it be to be able to get rid of the wi-fi mechanism while keeping the current hardware pricing models. Here's one for you. I think we should push the FCC to allow AP sync, like what can be done via 5 gig. We should also push for wi-fi radios to include a sync mechanism in them so that we can more effectively avoid interference. Especially with ourselves on our own towers. pondering.... marlon ----- Original Message ----- From: "Travis Johnson" <[email protected]> To: "WISPA General List" <[email protected]> Sent: Sunday, January 10, 2010 9:42 PM Subject: Re: [WISPA] Broadband compared to electricity of the early 1900's Hi, I've kept this email since you sent it out. I just now read the article, and I agree with many things stated there. About two days before you sent this article, it came to my mind (because there was a discussion about metered billing) that electricity is metered... yet, it's so cheap now that people don't worry about leaving their TV or lights on while they are gone from the house for a few hours. I think some day internet access may come to that level as well... but it may be 100 years from now before that happens. The biggest difference with electricity vs. internet service is that all the devices for internet service require two-way communication. Electricity is easy... you put it out on the wires, and people use it as they need it. There are almost no limits on the amount they can use, etc. Internet is different... the biggest difference is that every device that is connected can become infected, have bad hardware, or essentially take on a life of it's own... thus using more resources than what anyone realizes. A user could leave a bittorrent service running for 29 days before it's noticed... and then get a bill for $500 for that month's service... and nobody is happy. I think this is the reason that telco's and cableco's took so long to get internet going... they didn't know how to deal with two-way communication... and having a device on the connection that could cause an entire block, switch, router, etc. to have problems was totally new to them. Cable was easy when it was "download" only... same with telephone... a direct line back to a switch in a CO is easy... either it works or it doesn't. Will the internet evolve to something like electricity? I believe the answer is yes... but that is still a long time into the future... I doubt many of us will see it in our lifetimes. Travis Microserv Brian Webster wrote: > I have been of the thought process that Broadband needs to be compared to > electricity and telephone service expansion and deployments of the early > 1900's. Here is a nice article that draws a direct comparison to > electricity > (and municipal networks). Should be good food for though to all: > > The Killer App of 1900 <http://publicola.net/?p=20687> > by Glenn Fleishman <[email protected]>, 12/11/2009, 11:18 AM > > It’s instructional to look back 100 years, not long after the first > electrical generation plants were built to bring power to towns and > cities, > to assess the situation we find ourselves in with broadband availability > today. > > http://publicola.net/?p=20687 > > Thank You, > Brian Webster > > > -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- > WISPA Wants You! Join today! > http://signup.wispa.org/ > -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- > > WISPA Wireless List: [email protected] > > Subscribe/Unsubscribe: > http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless > > Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/ > > -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- WISPA Wants You! 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