re: Verizon's Wellbrock: 100G Is NeededFirst we have Ford and GM getting $25B in taxpayer money because they spent the last 20 years producing ecologically damaging gas guzzlers, paying themselves high salaries and generally putting their heads in the sand. Now that consumers have a choice to buy better cars, they run to Mom because "things changed" so fast.
So now, we also have too few "service providers", whose business plan is really high cost narrowband rather than broadband, who want to limit consumer choice so they can preserve old investments that should have never been made. Instead of owners of promising new technologies getting rewarded for giving buyers what they want, we have tired old monopolists not investing because the world does not to exactly what they want while end markets languish. Some free market!
re: Verizon's Wellbrock: 100G Is Neededmaterialgirl:
I hear what your saying ... I pounded the table at VZ .. and publically criticized them about playing the "milking" game for years. But NOW who are you talking about? The MSO's who refuse to build out the backhaul they need to provide customers with broad pipes up and down ... or the BOC/LECs? VZ is offering fiOS (though limited in scope), and T Uverse. Both offer more/better than MSO/Cable. Who is dragging their feet now?
re: Verizon's Wellbrock: 100G Is NeededPeople hate to hear this, but IMHO in the stupid network era, bandwidth providers are in a very low margin business. They don't provide service as much as raw connectivity. The people who benefit from this connectivity are on the ends, not in the middle.
Thus, bandwidth becomes an "essential service" that must be provided, but is not at all attractive per se. As such, it probably should be provided by the same mechanism as roads, ie by the municipality that can profit from its side effects.
People hate to deal with this, but the current set-up is clearly failing. The sad part is that for the past 8 years, this dichotomy has been evident, yet we have made exactly zero progress in moving to a workable next-gen model. Instead, we have "poured money into the ground" in unworkable, proprietary, closed, controlled, fraudband solutions. This shortcoming is evident in the growing use of the silent usage caps we are now being subjected to. Now, we have no money left (hence the credit crisis), and no network.
So now, we also have too few "service providers", whose business plan is really high cost narrowband rather than broadband, who want to limit consumer choice so they can preserve old investments that should have never been made. Instead of owners of promising new technologies getting rewarded for giving buyers what they want, we have tired old monopolists not investing because the world does not to exactly what they want while end markets languish. Some free market!