Interesting People mailing list archives
Re: Hope for Wireless Cities. (revised for clarity)
From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2008 07:52:55 -0700
________________________________________ From: Miles Fidelman [mfidelman () meetinghouse net] Sent: Monday, March 31, 2008 10:48 AM To: David Farber Cc: ip Subject: Re: [IP] Hope for Wireless Cities. (revised for clarity) David Farber wrote:
From: ken () new-isp net [ken () new-isp net] Sent: Monday, March 31, 2008 6:24 AM To: David Farber A century of uninterrupted telecommunication would beg to differ with you. While no one here is defending the telco business model as perfect, the reality is that is has served us well, albeit expensively, and it should be pointed out that you and I are communicating through this medium in this discussion.
Something that keeps getting lost in the discussion: The economics of networking look very different when looked at from an enterprise network perspective, vs. a carrier perspective. The Internet largely grew up as an enterprise network for academics, government, and industry, and only later became something more like a carrier. The philosophies and economics are VERY different: For an enterprise network: - the costs of computers, switches, wires, leased circuits, etc. are small when compared to other business costs (materials, manufacturing, sales, marketing, shipping, etc.) - ROI is measured at the bottom line: if the network increases revenue or reduces operating costs, it's a win - it's cheaper to deploy the latest equipment, everywhere (highest common denominator), because you don't know who's going to be in which office, when, or what they're going to need, and it's a lot cheaper to pull wire once, than to open the walls again - it's costly if a user doesn't have the capabilities they need to do their job For a carrier: - the carrier doesn't see benefits or costs to the end users - ROI is measured against sales of network services and maybe of content - deployment is driven by the mass market: deploying a lowest common denominator network has a higher ROI, even if it doesn't meet the more specialized needs of the top end of the market It's no wonder that we have gigabit ethernet in our homes, offices, and campuses, but the carriers are only deploying megabit services. The economics drive things that way. That's why I'm always driven to municipal and cooperatively owned networks as the only way to get to enterprise level services for small users. Essentially a municipal network is a very large campus network, owned by the taxpayers in a community. The economics work for streets and waterworks. Municipal electric utilities have proven pretty effective (avg. cost of electricity is 18% less than from commercial power). The model should work for networks - and does in some communities: the only projects deploying gigabit FTTH seem to be those being pursued by municipal electric utilities, which provide another example to draw from. Miles ------------------------------------------- Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/247/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/247/ Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Current thread:
- Hope for Wireless Cities. (revised for clarity) David Farber (Mar 31)
- <Possible follow-ups>
- Re: Hope for Wireless Cities. (revised for clarity) David Farber (Mar 31)
- Re: Hope for Wireless Cities. (revised for clarity) David Farber (Mar 31)