IP: Re: The Broadband Economy

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

> Sender: larry () BMRC Berkeley EDU
> Date: Sun, 16 Dec 2001 18:05:07 -0800
> From: "Lawrence A. Rowe" <Rowe () BMRC Berkeley EDU>
>
>
> Hi Dave -
>
> If the cost is $1.5K to get high-speed symmetric connectivity to my
> house, I'll write the check tomorrow. Please call me at the phone number
> below.  I won't hold my breath!
>
> Problem is no one is willing to take my check.  As noted in the original
> article all(?) the 3rd party broadband providers are out of business and
> what we're left with is the cable companies and the RBOC's.  Sadly, they
> make more money using the fiber connection to my house offering me the
> "3rd version of a home shopping network" and near VOD.
>
> So, what's the problem.  Unfortunately, the scarce resource here is
> bandwidth and no one wants to sell bandwidth -- everyone wants to sell
> me content. Sorry, I'm not interested in your content, I'm interested in
> other content - let me use the bandwidth for what I want, not what you
> think I will pay money for.  In other words, no one wants to be in the
> "commodity bandwidth" business because they perceive, probably
> correctly, that they can't make money.  Sounds like we need a new social
> compact -- award a monopoly to someone to provide commodity bandwidth.
> I'll gladly pay them a premium to make sure they survive, but give me
> symmetric high bandwidth, not "AOL chat rooms," "home shopping network,"
> "3 copies of PBS," and so forth.  At this point, I'd be happy with a
> symmetric 25 Mbs, although I really think the target should be symmetric
> 100 Mbs.
>
> The solution will likely be a grass roots effort to build a consumer
> network service.  Palo Alto has started down this path by buildiing
> community fiber to the home.  All the discussion of 802.11 as a
> foundation for a neighborhood Internet service is another path.  What
> the earlier writer missed about the 90+% of dark fiber is that it
> doesn't go where the people are located.  Sadly, the cash cow in the
> telcom business is long distance service.  No wonder ATT broadband
> continues to pester me with offers to use cable telephony (I'm an old
> TCI customer).  And, no wonder SBC, who now owns PacBell, is paying for
> full-page newspaper ads advocating that the Calif PUC open up long
> distance to this RBOC.  And of course, I'm not paranoid when I wonder
> why streaming media from ATT Broadband doesn't work -- humm, kill
> Internet telephony so you can sell me a cable telephone?  I have to give
> @Home credit - they did support streaming media.
>
> BTW, it's interesting to compare the ATT cable telephony service to the
> RBOC service.  Costs roughly 15% less if you buy a bundle of services
> (i.e., call forwarding, caller id, etc.), which works out to roughly
> $30+/month, but it's 30% more if you just buy simple phone service.  Ok,
> let's see, buy telephone service at roughly 2X the cost of a simple
> phone service, and you will have a service that won't work when the
> power fails which tends to happen 3-5 times a winter in the country
> where I live.  Yep, just what I want...
>
> I can only hope for one of two possibilities.  First, either the owner
> of the fiber will sell bandwidth not static allocation of content.  This
> would open up a lot of interesting possibilities.  Home shopping might
> be happy with 1.5 Mbs MPEG2 like the subchannels on a digital cable and
> NBC might pay for 20 Mbs so it can present ER or Fraser in HD, rather
> than SD. The fundamental idea is to use dynamic allocation of bandwidth
> and let me the consumer choose with my dollars.  NAB and the local
> stations won't like it, but why should we subsidize the inefficient, and
> today unnecessary over-the-air broadcasters. (BTW, remember that 75%+ of
> the homes have cable or satellite dishes and 100% of the homes in
> America are passed by cable.  OTA broadcasters are no longer required,
> except for the local content they produce which is basically news.) And,
> please, fix the must-carry rules so I don't get multiple copies of the
> same content.
>         Larry
> --
> Professor Lawrence A. Rowe          Internet:  Rowe () BMRC Berkeley EDU
> Computer Science Division - EECS       Phone: 510-642-5117
> University of California, Berkeley       Fax: 510-642-5615
> Berkeley, CA 94720-1776            URL: http://bmrc.berkeley.edu/~larry

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