Hi Mike, too much demand for a small and finite resource is not a good thing when you have neither the ability to raise prices (though that would certainly curtail the demand) nor the ability to create more supply at-will. That was the point of the 7-11 ticket sales analogy. If they ignore the reaching of the service quality limit and continue to add subs, they will lose more subs through disgust than they would have had if they had stopped at the critical level. *Everybody* feels the service quality breach when this happens, not just the newly-added subs. Would you pay the same price for a reduced service quality? How long would you put up with promises to make it better and claims of “it’s in the works?”
re: "why can't they just upgrade"
Upgrade to what, and paid for with what money, and over what timeframe, and using what proven architecture that also considers any new services you intend to add (e.g voice, open access, VoD)? Lightwire is just an experiment, and just T's experiment at that. It is also just a bandaid, giving the system a little more life. Each MSO would have to architect, debug, and deploy similar experiments in small numbers, and tweak, adjust, and modify over the course of several years from design concept to "ready to deploy." *Then* they could start the actual deployment, which will take years beyond that point. Adding a little "lightwire-like" experiment for a small region onto your network is a far cry from deploying it network-wide. To do that will require new equipment upriver from the experiment, in addition to the new equipment that the node splitting requires.
So in summary, the laws of physics, time, resources, and financing are not friendly to the idea. |
