Re: peter lothberg's mother slashdotted

[Steve Gibbard <scg () gibbard org>]

On Thu, 12 Jul 2007, Paul Vixie wrote:

> http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/07/12/1236231
>
> http://www.thelocal.se/7869/20070712/

For those who haven't followed the links, the story is that Peter's 
mother, a first-time computer user, now has a 40 Gb/s Internet connection 
to her house.  It is described as the world's fastest residential 
Internet connection.  It was done as a demonstration project by Peter and 
the local city council "to persuade Internet operators to invest in faster 
connections."  It goes on to say that "Peter Lothberg wanted to show how 
you can build a low price, high capacity line over long distances."

So, I'm curious here.  The only thing specific the article says about the 
price is that Cisco contributed the equipment, but there may be economies 
of scale that could make one end of this more affordable in larger 
volumes.  Data transmission at that sort of speed is certainly a topic 
Peter knows a lot more about than I do.

The thing I found more curious was the article's emphasis on the distances 
data can be transmitted over fiber:

"The secret behind Sigbritt's ultra-fast connection is a new modulation 
technique which allows data to be transferred directly between two routers 
up to 2,000 kilometers apart, with no intermediary transponders."

Does this make residential connectivity (or at least, residential 
connectivity on a large scale) any easier?  Wouldn't residential fiber be 
expected to radiate out from neighborhood break-out boxes, or at the 
longest from a central office in the middle of town, rather than having 
some central point where enough individual strands of fiber converged to 
serve everybody in a 2,000 kilometer radius?

So, Peter, are you reading this?  I'm curious what the real story on the 
economics here is.  How affordable is affordable?  What should we be 
learning from this that would let those of us backwards people with DSL 
connections cheaply move into the modern world?

-Steve