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

To: axial who wrote (25779)	3/11/2008 7:50:49 AM
From: axial	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 46821

Frank, one other thing: as we transition to all-IP, the gains are somewhat offset by the loss of former so-called 5 nines reliability. A damaged fibreoptic line may mean no phone, no email - nothing - for a large population. As I understand it, the original ARPANET concept was that in the event of calamity, redundancy and parallelism would allow communication. It follows that even more redundancy and parallelism increases the probability of throughput, no matter what some backhoe operator or ship's anchor does. We're unlikely to regain the fabled reliability of the old system, with its backup blast-hardened microwave towers. But to a very large extent, we can substitute with fibre infrastructure that allows throughput in worst-case scenarios. Jim

To: axial who wrote (25779)	3/12/2008 12:27:42 AM
From: wonk	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 46821

The old linkages between cost and carriage must be broken - constructively. No. Disagree. As you break the link between cost and carriage, you are on the slide to “…whatever the market will bear…” which is fred’s complaint on the middle mile. You cannot escape from the fact that telecom is a capital intensive, high fixed cost industry, which naturally tends towards oligopoly, if not monopoly. That is simply a function of economies of scale and scope. Thus you need regulatory constraints. To concede on net neutrality is to pull the Trojan Horse into your citadel. Where I might offer a concession, is a customer-defined concession rather than a carrier / operator price schedule. In the former case, you grant the power to the carrier to charge you more for hauling gold or Styrofoam nuggets. Again, you give them way too much power and that power will be abused. In the latter case, hypothetically, you maintain common carriage and net neutrality and there is 1 standard rate – a bit is a bit is a bit. I pay the same rate for my bit reading TNFCTF as Morgan Stanley pays for real time financial transactions data. However, you have discounts for delaying consumption that the user can choose – at their option. Maurice, a sometime contributor and maybe not here, perhaps on the Globalstar thread, used to go on about real-time variable pricing “the price is x, now”. Again that is power to the carrier. I change it to, “…the discount is x now...” Power to the consumer, if one is prepared to “delay” gratification. Do I really need all those tabs with RSS feeds open; do I have to look at that Youtube now? Very similar to airline overbooking flights: good for them because they maximize seats, and almost always someone takes the free tickets and delays their flight. Similar to customer's choosing to let the electric utility cycle their AC at peak load. For all practical purposes its no different than peak, off-peak, provided that (a) it universal and (b) we update it for the modern world and make it "real time." Not hard to put a pop-up window on your browser nowadays. Beyond policy change, there must be some macroeconomic adjustments, that will serve the development of true competition and different business models in telecomms. Yes, Agree. But I don’t think you can get there, not given the economic power of the incumbents, the political environment, and the statutory and case law playing field which favors them so greatly. Certainly not in the short term. It will be interesting to watch what comes of 700 MHz C block. Long time ago either here or on the Last Mile thread I threw out that on divestiture we all would have been better served if the RBOCS had been broken into separate and distinct network and retail companies. One company would build, maintain and service the network and one company would have the retail customer relationship. The network company would not have been allowed to have retail customers but would have kept rate of return regulation with a guaranteed profit on deployed capital. The retail company would have NO regulation and would have started off with 100% of the customers, but eventually that would attrit down, unless they continued to innovate and provide value. But because the vast majority of all retail sellers would likely be buying from one network provider, who could not price gouge because profit was capped, the playing field is level. (you probably wouldn't need government mandated common carriage either). It’s no different than what you see with the tower companies. The tower companies are efficient and it is also economically sensible for the carriers as well. However, now that they’ve scarfed up most of the towers, you’re starting to see them exercise market power and charge monopoly rents. That’s where regulation should come in. I’m not going to hold my breath waiting for any of this to happen though.

To: axial who wrote (25779)	3/13/2008 1:16:25 AM
From: Frank A. Coluccio	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 46821

Hi Jim. "WRT your posted link on Net Neutrality, it seems clear that the problem would largely disappear in the presence of sufficient capacity: I mean excess capacity." It might appear that way, but I really don't think so. Supply has repeatedly created (fostered, unleashed, instigated) new demand, and we're still compressing the hell out of the limited number of apps (relative to what's waiting in the pipeline for when much larger pipes become available) that we're still using. I'd therefore be hard pressed to guess when a plateauing effect might occur that was caused by sated demand, as opposed to the usual plateaus we've seen resulting from hitting the proverbial brick wall. And the "excess" capacity to which you refer, by which I presume you are referring to the necessary "headroom" that allows near-real-time best effort apps to function properly, becomes quickly consumed, requiring replenishment. "If an OC48 terminates unused in a given area at zero or minimal cost, how long would it take to develop a business plan for its use? How many ISPs would spring up, willing to extend their reach? " I don't mean to nit more than is necessary, but the capital costs alone to install an OC-48, despite declining price points associated with optical ports, not to mention the level of circuit-order engineering involved, would surprise many here, I think. Also, on occasion I've waited nine months (sometimes longer when facilities re-sale by competitive carriers was involved) to have a single T3 line installed for the nation's largest banks, never mind an OC-48 (the equivalent of 48 T3s). But if we toss the latter issues aside, if these ISPs to which you refer would be willing to pay for placing traffic on this OC-48, then I'd have to assume that they'd have done so already. I guess I'm not seeing your point entirely here. It almost sounds like a cross between a free lunch and a build it and they will come experiment. -- "We all know (now) that we won't soon see the reappearance of Andrew Odlyzko's scholarly research on whether Internet usage is growing. And despite the oft-repeated claim that the Internet is broken it can still support a huge increase in throughput. What's more, any future Internet will still use fibre." Actually, Andrew is quoted several times today expressing such views in the NY Times article that follows (which I post here reluctantly due to its foolish heading): Video Road Hogs Stir Fear of Internet Traffic Jam By Steve Lohr \| March 13, 2008 \| NY Times Cont.: nytimes.com ------