From: Frank Bulk (no email)
Date: Mon Jan 21 2008 - 20:21:08 EST
Which of the telecom service providers is moaning about being a provider?
This conversation started with Time Warner's metered trial, and they aren't
doing it in response to people complaining -- I'm pretty sure there was a
financial/marketing motive here.
There are some subscribers who complain about asymmetrical speeds, and some
members of this listserv who fall into that category, but I would hazard a
guess that less than 5% of the entire N.A residential subscriber base would
actually pay a premium to have higher upstream speeds (we provide that
option with our service today for an extra $10 and very few take it). And
for that small base, an operator isn't about to rebuild or overbuild their
network. Oh, they'll keep it in mind as they upgrade and enhance their
network, but upstreams speeds aren't an issue that cause them to lie awake
at night. I think FiOS as a competitive factor will move them more quickly
to better their upstreams, though.
So I don't think telecom providers think they are in the ghettos, and
neither do most customers. As for creative technology, I'll let someone
else buy DOCSIS 3.0 first and drive down prices with their volumes -- I'll
join them in 3-5 years. On the DSL side, the work on VDSL2 demonstrates the
greatest benefits on short loops. I haven't see any technology that serves
fantastic upstream speeds at 1, 2 and 3x a CSA.
Frank
-----Original Message-----
From: [mailto:] On Behalf Of
Sent: Monday, January 21, 2008 5:36 PM
To:
Subject: RE: An Attempt at Economically Rational Pricing: Time Warner Trial
> There are symmetric versions for all of those. But ever
> since the dialup days (e.g. 56Kbps modems had slower reverse
> direction) consumers have shown a preference for a bigger
> number on the box, even if it meant giving up bandwidth in
> the one direction.
>
> For example, how many people want SDSL at 1.5Mbps symmetric
> versus ADSL at 6Mbps/768Kbps. The advertisment with the
> bigger number wins the consumer.
Seems to me that Internet SERVICE Providers have all turned
into telecom companies and the only thing that matters now
is providing IP circuits.
If P2P is such a problem for providers who supply IP circuits
over wireless and cable, why don't they try going up a level
and provide Internet SERVICE instead? For instance, every
customer could get a virtual server that they can access via
VNC with some popular P2P packages preinstalled. The P2P software
could recognize when it's talking over "preferred" circuits
such as local virtual servers or over peering connections that
aren't too expensive, and prefer those. If the virtual servers
are implemented on Linux, there is a technology called FUSE
that could be used to greatly increase the capacity of the
disk farm by not storing multiple copies of the same file.
Rather than moaning about the problems of being a telecom
provider, people could apply some creative technology to get
out of the telecom ghetto.
--Michael Dillon
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