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Technology Stocks : Frank Coluccio Technology Forum - ASAP -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: George Dawson who wrote (1265)	3/8/2000 1:24:00 AM
From: Frank A. Coluccio	Respond to of 1782

>I think what may be the relevant perspective from a political standpoint is the issue of access at a specified bandwidth.< Maybe at one time, when all she wrote was 2.4 kb/s. That wasn't so long ago when you think of it, actually at about the same time that these notions of fair distribution were first getting started, just prior to Andreesen. About eight years ago, yes modems could go at 19.2 kb/s with some special care and handling (actually using two 9.6s in some instances to make it work), but the on line service providers such as Compuserve, Prodigy and AOL at that time were not set up to support POCs (plain old citizens) like us yet at those blisterinly higher speeds (up to 9.6 kb/s). I suppose at that time we could have envisaged something like 2.4 being a least common denominator of sorts, which would have satisfied your question, then. But not now. The bandwidth landscape is too lumpy now to support such a rule. Imagine, in a neighborhood that is supported by CableModem and DSL, telling a would be entitlement recipient (entitlee?) that they would have to be satisfied with a a mere ~56k V.90 modem operation, when all along the cost of an additional copper line to support that V.90 and the access charge for the ISP probably costs more than the incremental cost of a piggybacked dsl or cable modem service. Wireless? Well that's another story. Unless it is being used as a substitute, as in a lifeline wireless local loop service. Oi.