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

To: ftth who wrote (12967)	1/15/2006 9:19:49 PM
From: fred g	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 46821

Cable and farms don't get along well. There are some places better served wirelessly, which, in the case of premium broadcast delivery, probably means satellite. Actually, once the DTV transition takes over, the DTV channels could run premium and specialty (cable channel) streams on their subchannels, giving many more off-the-air options, but they still won't offer as much as satellite. One problem is simply that coaxial cable has a lot of attenuation, so you can't go very far. Attenuation rises with frequency, so a 550 MHz (early HFC, obsolete by today's standards) system goes farther than a 750 MHz system, etc. Fatter coax has less attenuation but costs more per foot. So when you get to places where subscribers are spread out, you end up needing to bring fiber all the hell over the place, and the total cost/subscriber is just too high. Another way of putting it is that cable plant has a cost per mile, not per subscriber, so farms just don't have enough subs/mile to be worth passing. High-speed rural Internet is a fine application of higher-powered point-to-multipoint radio. A 3G cell tower can serve several miles' radius, as can other licensed-power data radios. Of course the FCC has locked up pretty much all of the frequencies, assigning rural areas to the same licenses as urban areas, so the licensees concentrate on the most profitable urban areas, which accounted for most of the auctioned value. Their licensing policies are almost perfectly calculated to keep rural areas from being served. Rural ILECs, on the other hand, get huge subsidies from the FCC, as well as enforced monopolies, so they end up with the whole pie. And it's paid for by the rest of us, regardless of newer technologies that would be lower-cost options if made available.

To: ftth who wrote (12967)	1/15/2006 9:57:31 PM
From: Frank A. Coluccio	Respond to of 46821

"I wouldn't really call it a barrier to entry." You've never had to deal with the NY City Bureau of Franchises. To obtain the rights for even a single street cut could be a major undertaking, never mind a cable tv franchise. Your reference is probably directed primarily at the financial aspects of franchise approval, which indeed could be appreciable in more ways than one, but that is far from all that is involved if one is seeking to place cables in public rights of way. Even to those who could afford it it's not as much a barrier as it is, like you say, a major hassle. In any event, this discussion has taken many divergent paths, and I understand and even agree with most of the points you made concerning the telcos. One consideration being sought by rural citizens that is getting lost here is that they are not in need of program video services as much as they are in need of the HSI service that is often a byproduct of present-day cable operators' systems. Otherwise, like you've suggested, they could, and I'm sure in many cases they actually do, subscribe to DBS.