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Technology Stocks : The *NEW* Frank Coluccio Technology Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Frank A. Coluccio who wrote (5591)	6/17/2002 11:54:50 PM
From: Peter Ecclesine	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 46821

Hi Frank and DNS, Well, nobody rides for free. We can think about transport and service as separate accounts, but ultimately somebody has to pay the going rates. A month ago, PAIX in Palo Alto charged ~$6,000 a month for Fast Ethernet connection to the Internet. The cost dynamics [technology trends] of Internet service are very different from residential access - satellite, terrestrial wireless, cable, DSL, power line carrier, CityBot in sewer, etc. As time goes by we will be offered more service bundles, and more unbundled transport. But as you point out, both transport and Internet service must be paid for. petere

To: Frank A. Coluccio who wrote (5591)	6/18/2002 10:47:25 AM
From: ftth	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 46821

re: Offsetting these last two detractors is the possibility that any number of potential innovative wireless mesh network models may emerge and begin to proliferate. These will have the effect of extending the diameter of wireless reach of end users by tying together multiple hubs and/or actual end user nodes. But ultimately, if one wants to reach across the Internet, they must employ an ISP and backbone providers, or a number of ISPs, and those ISPs want to be compensated for "their" upstream link costs (read: T3 lines, OC3s, etc.) and other capex/opex expenditures, just like the ILECs and MSOs do. So again, while communities might be able to sustain free access schemes for their local users, it's the business models of the ISP community and the underlying carriers who provide them with basic connectivity and transmission lines - as well as the backbone providers who span the greater distances - that must be sustained in the end. Not the innovator's local mesh, alone. ========================= I guess the extended-diameter wireless mesh network could be viewed in principle as an unmanaged form of an open-access municipal FTTH, except with mobility and lower bandwidth. Because of the similarity in the operating models, overlaying the two could "complete the mesh" so to speak. If a local user subscribed to the muni FTTH network and an internet connectivity provider, from their home connection, they could wander about and still have access both to the full municipal connectivity, as well as their internet connectivity provider, from any local wireless hotspot, via some form of mobility-enabled authenticated sign-on to the muni FTTH network (via someone else's access node on the other side of town, for example ). It would seem to be a cleaner, more sustainable, and more measurable model than the use of piggy-backed DSL or cable connections for the wireless-to-wired access nodes (whether donor or legitimate). The huge bandwidth of the FTTH access point compared to DSL or wireless would accommodate nomadic, lower data rate wireless devices without much impact to a donor host access node's bandwidth. Of course, QoS is another issue, especially via a donor node. The host's personal traffic would be high priority, non-blocking, while all the ad-hoc wireless traffic would have to settle for best effort. Then again, best effort may be pretty darn good via a 100Mbps access node, and sub-megabit wireless access devices. The issue then becomes how to handle wireless "guests" who are not subscribers to the muni network first, or a co-located internet connectivity provider second (and how to prevent permanent "guests"). 100 minute hot-spot calling card anyone?