Putting The Fiber Glut In Historical Perspective 95
securitas writes: "This editorial over at the New York Times makes a good case for the optical network buildout being an essential infrastructure project like the railroads, telegraph lines and interstate highways were of previous generations. These projects stimulated new inventions and applications and helped build a great nation. So if you lost a ton on JDS Uniphase, Ciena, Corning, Nortel and the rest, rest easy that you have helped build the future and inspire innovation."
Without NYT Registration (Score:5, Informative)
Q: could Slashcode be modified to transpose these URLs automatically?
Minor nit-picking (Score:2, Informative)
The only time these companies would have benefited from your investment was when they offered primary and/or secondary IPOs. After that, buying their stock only raises the value of the stock for the people who own it (mainly executives, institutions, and joe public).
Long Haul fiber (Score:5, Informative)
The problem with replacing it is that you have to get so many permits and studies just to replace one section of line that it is not feasable to do so. When congress de-regulated the phone industry they forced the local telco to give this last mile to the public domain. Any carrier can provide service over that mile of copper wire, be it DSL , POTS (Plain old telephone service), or long distance. This causes the eminent maintainer (the local telco) not to be interested at all in replacing any of it. Why replace it for other people? Monopolies are bad, but it does help to have someone who are directly responsible for maintaining a service.
Free peice of advice for the day BTW. If you have a 56K modem it really helps to reduce the number of analogue to digital conversion (56K can only stand one) If you are having signal problems call and have caller ID added to your list of services for a month. This forces the telco to move you from older equipment to the new digital equipment they are installing. This will provide better signal to you. After the month cancel the service, they won't bother to switch you back and you will keep the performance increase.
FYI (Score:3, Informative)
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Railroad bubble -- fiber bubble (Score:2, Informative)
'Investing in railroad companies (RC) cannot be wrong,
because they are the future'.
What about replacing RC with FCC (fiber cable company)?
Go to your local Amazon store and read and enjoy The Devil Takes the Hindmost [amazon.com].
NYT Account (Score:2, Informative)
cowboyneal2001
cowboyneal2001
Excellent advice (Score:2, Informative)
Another tip: If your connection is slow, try taking other devices off the telephone line.
Sometimes old phones or answering machines have an electrical component called a capacitor placed across the telephone line even when the phone is not being used. This will limit the speed of your connection. Just unplug the telephone or answering machine or bell or other device to test.
Re:Broadband infrastucture will run TV (Score:3, Informative)
Similar in the UK. The gubmint claims that it's a top priority to make the UK a world leader in broadband access, then does... nothing. No tax breaks, no investment, no intervention, nothing. "The regulator will decide. We have complete faith in their judgement." So, we ask the regulator what they're doing, and the answer if (of course): "The market will decide. We're reactive, not proactive. That's gubmint policy!"
So, the incumbent monopoly decides that the market is just fine the way it is and staggers blindly on, screwing up DSL, blocking local loop unbundling, and basically making the whole thing more trouble than it's worth for both competitors and Joe Public. At last count, the entire UK has less than 100 local loop lines unbundled from the incumbent monopoly, and potential competitors are just shrugging their shoulders and walking away from the whole deal.
The cable companies have indeed crippled themselves to put in a competing network (competing with the huge, taxpayer funded one that the monopoly telco was gifted when it was privatised). They then piss away yet more money undercutting the telco monopoly for broadband access, all the while putting on the happy face and relying on the (non-existent, IMHO) holy grail of selling content on the back of broadband, rather than charging realistic, sustainable amount for access and letting us find and create our own content. Idiots. They rightly deserve to get reamed, I'm just glad to be hitching a ride as they go down in flames.
The digital TV companies provided a profitable service that people actually want (channels! more! more!) but are now tacking on proprietary interactive services (read: shopping), crippled walled garden web browsing (read: shopping) and L4M3-0-W1Z email on top, producing a sort of clunky circa 1992 experience. Takeup has been (their words) "disappointing". No shit, Sherlock.
Meanwhile, the real tax payer money goes (via the license funded BBC) towards... widescreen. Not to broadband, or interactive digital services, but to producing 16/9 widescreen content. Apparently this is what we want. Not better quality content, just wiiiiiiiiiider content.
All this time, the gubmint keeps on with the "all is well" message, claiming that they are on target to get all government services online by 2005. When pressed, they admit that "online" covers non-written access, including the web, but also including... the telephone.
Yes, switched on <strike>broadband</strike> widescreen UK is bravely dragging itself into the 20th century. Yay us!
Re:Broadband infrastucture will run TV (Score:3, Informative)
Maybe, but a network built for TV can take a lot of short cuts that a generic data network can't. So a TV style network will be a lot less expensive then a generic data network (and also less useful).
The TV network can assume that there are a small number of transmitters, and a large number of listeners, and that the listeners don't need to ACK traffic. So something like a T3 (about 45Mbits/sec) could transmit about 30 channels (assuming 1.5Mbit/sec of MPEG2 data) to any number of listeners. You can set up the network as a tree and get full use of the bandwidth from the head end out to the listeners with very very little back channel (for ordering Pay Per View, or you can do that fully out of band).
A generic data network wouldn't be able to assume a single source point for all the traffic, so they can't be built like a giant tree. They have to be built like more of a web. Much more costly. Of corse it is more useful as well, but not everyone is willing to pay extra money to be able to do more then just watch TV.