"Imagine what our industry, and our society, would look like if we all had 1Gb/s to every premise. The applications and services would be truly something amazing."
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You seem to argue your position a lot from the tremendous societal benefits high speed pipes will have for future generations. Free markets have never been good at promoting societal or public interest.
I am probably not creative enough, but I don't see what these "truly amazing applications" for FTTH are. The only justification I see for such high bandwidths is video, and the only substantial proven recurring revenue model there is television. Video on demand has proven a to be a lot lower recurring revenue model and market penetration. Any new video based business will likely take a long time for significant market penetration to support universal build out.
And as someone already pointed out so well, the RBOCs are going to have a tough time getting into the television business and generating margins at it.
re: Powell Loses FCC VoteWhat is YOUR proposal for making this happen?
Our industry may be able to take a lesson from the hedgehog concept, defining its passion, its economic deonminator, and what it truly can be best in the world at. (Reference Collin's Good to Great)
Here is a proposal. Feel free to help improve upon it.
First, we must build open access, municipal networks with reverence for the social contract of a modern democracy. This includes enabling participation and opportunity for all, supports time and space shifting of freedom of expression while providing for the continuance of the lessons of history. The network will support both realtime and store-and-forward communications.
Second, the economic denominator needs to be motivated by distributing unicast bits of legally and freely consented transactions, in volume.
Third, we must build a world class communications utilityinfrastructure which exceeds in reliability, ubiquity and the provision of bandwidth abundance.
(For those finding it difficult to understand this level of peformance, look to our electrical energy infrastructure for guidance. Also, watching the Blue Planet, best in IMAX, how mankind's electricity lights up the earth's continents during the nights.
We can, and must, light up this world with discovery, knowledge, and understanding.)
Like it or not "right of way" for fiber digs will always require some form of government regulation.
You may be confused your understanding of regulation and the goals of a good government. We all can see that the FCC has become extremely confused, so it is understandable that citizens become confused.
ROWs, or more generally, public goods should not be regulated per se. They should not be used as a proxy tax system nor sold to private interests. The services they support should not price fixed by government. Government's goal is to mitigate rights conflicts as best as possible. And the collective does have rights.
Our best attempt at democracy requires that all have equal opportunity to "represent." Today, it costs on average eight million dollars for an incubmant to pay for an election campaign. (Most of which goes towards broadcast television advertisements.) This Cuba reference has real substance. The question is, can a political figure who must sell his soul for eight million dollars, have any real substance?</b?your>
re: Powell Loses FCC VoteThis is why vertical dis-integration of content and connectivity (i.e. structural separation) makes sense for FTTH.
More importantly, it is the only way for a country that ahderes to a democratic social contract. (Meanwhile, the FCC flaunts its disrespect for our democracy, by not mentioning the importance of structural separation, in its empty support for upcoming fiber overbuilds.)
re: Powell Loses FCC VoteFree markets have never been good at promoting societal or public interest.
This is an understandable but mistaken conclusion, likely driven by the observation that the criminal behavior of too many has escaped the application of justice.
The question is, what other kind of market would you propose? Today, in our communications utility infrastructure, there exists no market at all. So don't be confused by that.
re: Powell Loses FCC Vote"Doubtful, but I guess it depends what you mean by broadband."
I am specifically interested in ethernet over sonet implementations which will be significantly less costly. I understand that in this environment the RBOC's are just plain in a low spending mode.
"Uncertainty in demand, rather than uncertainty in the regulatory environment, is the overriding problem.
"When demand for services is uncertain it is very difficult to justify investing in highly-capital-intensive infrastructure projects using believable business cases."
What is so uncertain about broadband demand? Internet traffic continues to grow rapidly, although perhaps not at quite the levels of the late 1990's. There apparently significant metro bottlenecks. U.S. broadband penetration is relatively low at 15%.
re: Powell Loses FCC Votere: What is so uncertain about broadband demand?
If one's viewpoint is based on the ridiculous exponential growth curves hyped by market research firms, regarding DSL and cable modems as broadband, it's not uncertain.
The point was more in reference to FTTH deployments in the US, since that is what much of the discussion here has been about.
From the RBOC perspective of having DSL available to roughly 70% of their voice subscribers in their territories as of last summer, but only getting single-digit percent subscribers, demand for the value proposition they are offering is not there. Therefore there is little compelling reason for them to deploy FTTH. Plus they have billions in recently-deployed (i.e. in the last 5 years) equipment to provide DSL that isn't paid off yet, which they aren't going to just abandon. The stuff they deployed pre-2000 probably costs 10x what it would cost today.
The rest of the world that deployed DSL later, reaches profitability much sooner (due to much lower eqpmnt costs), and that is a lesson RBOCs won't soon forget.
They will not lead in FTTx because they know the same price dynamic will play out again. Since they were just granted an unregulated monopoly on future FTTx by the FCC, they are in no hurry to deploy.
More than anything, I think that FCC decision will have the opposite of the intended effect (which was to speed/incentivize deployment of FTTx).
The threat of their now-guaranteed monopoly discourages others from deploying, and the guarantee also allows them to sandbag because they now have no future challenges to worry about. They'll hold it in escrow for as long as they possibly can.
re: Powell Loses FCC VoteMore than anything, I think that FCC decision will have the opposite of the intended effect (which was to speed/incentivize deployment of FTTx).
Hopefully somebody at INTC is listening to your wise observations. INTC's recent presss statements about how DSL will stimulate their sales makes one wonder who is running that operation. Maybe INTC and Disney should go ahead and merge now. The lesson in my mind, any tech company wedded to the future of a mouse, originally conceived nearly four score years ago, should rethink their mascot.
re: Powell Loses FCC Votere: INTC's recent presss statements about how DSL will stimulate their sales makes one wonder who is running that operation.
Intel is back on the DSL bandwagon again? Or are they saying that a DSL connection requires a new Pentium [COUGH!]
Do you have a link for the press statement? I'd be interested to read it.
Intel has been in and out of both DSL and cable modems more times than a cat has lives. They tend to hitch a ride on every horse in the race, but can't seem to finish. Maybe WiFi will be their first finish. Also surprising they aren't in FTTH, given that FTTH plays right to their strength of being able to drum up new bandwidth demand for every new Pentium generation, in the face of every analyst saying nobody needs it.
re: Powell Loses FCC VoteWhat does anyone think of Technet and the ideas regarding broadband bonds?
Broadband bonds should be coupled to the reduction of estate taxes, i.e. the only way to defer estate taxes is to buy municipal broadband bonds. That we can fool the "tyranny of the status quo" into doing the right thing, for a change.
Seriously, municipal revenue bonds seems like the preferred approach.
"Imagine what our industry, and our society, would look like if we all had 1Gb/s to every premise. The applications and services would be truly something amazing."
--------
You seem to argue your position a lot from the tremendous societal benefits high speed pipes will have for future generations. Free markets have never been good at promoting societal or public interest.
I am probably not creative enough, but I don't see what these "truly amazing applications" for FTTH are. The only justification I see for such high bandwidths is video, and the only substantial proven recurring revenue model there is television. Video on demand has proven a to be a lot lower recurring revenue model and market penetration. Any new video based business will likely take a long time for significant market penetration to support universal build out.
And as someone already pointed out so well, the RBOCs are going to have a tough time getting into the television business and generating margins at it.