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

To: TimF who wrote (35439)	9/3/2010 4:20:57 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 46821

Measured broadband versus advertised broadband ranking Tweet By George Ou 9 October 2009 10 Comments It’s one thing to have pretty graphs and fancy charts, but substance should always trump superficial looks. Unfortunately, too many people are citing the latest estimated broadband rankings without analyzing what the numbers mean or ever question if the numbers are right to begin with. When we compare real-world Akamai results versus synthetic speedtest.net tests versus 2008 estimates from ITIF, we see a huge disparity in the numbers. Note that all costs are based on ITIF estimates. ITIF costs appear to be underpriced for countries like Japan so the actual cost per Mbps delta between Japan and the US is far smaller than this chart suggests. Akamai is the world’s largest CDN which alone handles 20% of the world’s Internet traffic. It is a real-world test because it’s measuring how fast people are getting the files they are actually looking for and use. Speedtest.net uses short synthetic sample files and the results may be inflated since ISP’s often leave speedtest.net traffic alone because there is no need to deprioritize short burst traffic. Some even theorize that this is done by ISPs to make their service look better than they actually are though I haven’t seen anything that confirms this theory. As for the ITIF estimated bandwidth, they seem extremely inflated compared to any measured results. Another interesting statistical artifact is that when we compare the top 10 individual states in the U.S. to Europe or compare U.S to Europe, Europe comes out behind in both cases. Does that mean it’s time to celebrate in the U.S.? No, because it is just another statistical artifact. But the fact of the matter is, comparing individual European Union states to the United states as a whole is really no different than comparing the United States as a whole to individual EU states. That’s why it makes little sense to put too much emphasis on any of these statistics. Another factor that isn’t considered is how the pricing data is gathered. Most of the time, they don’t factor in usage caps and the U.S. has some of the most generous usage caps in the world. So if we factored in price caps by using Mbps/dollar/GB, the results would push the U.S. way up over most other nations (except Japan and Korea) because U.S. broadband providers typically offer 4 or more times usage allowance. But this metric would be just as inflated as the Mbps/dollar metric because larger usage cap plans will always score much higher but at the expense of everyone paying a little more. Countries like Korea and Japan which have accelerated broadband deployment will always have lower Mbps/dollar because broadband service tends to stay at the same price when speeds go up. The U.S. and Europe will be following similar trends in the next few years in adopting faster broadband connections and this will affect the Mbps/dollar metric. But again, let’s not get too hung up on statistics. What’s important is that we continue to grow at a reasonable rate. ... George Ou (author) said: Paul, I even said that my graphs and statistics shouldn’t be taken too seriously. The point I was trying to make was that my graphs and statistics make as much sense as the other graphs and statistics. And while these numbers are useful in some ways, we should not put too much weight into them. ... digitalsociety.org -------------------------------------------- Governments Privatizing Public Utilities Even As Some Want to Convert Internet Into One blog.pff.org

To: TimF who wrote (35439)	9/3/2010 4:32:54 PM
From: axial	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 46821

Coase, LOL? This is article is based on discredited hypotheses. The premises are ideology in disguise of economics, disproven by 40 years of macro decline and increasing debt. As applied to telecomms, the argument is fallacy, disproven by Japan, Sweden, and South Korea among others. Jim

To: TimF who wrote (35439)	9/3/2010 6:05:10 PM
From: Frank A. Coluccio	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 46821

Hi Tim, Not for nuttin', as they say in Canarsie, but the author of that commentary framed his entire argument around precepts that are arguably flawed at their roots. Sure, he's going to land exactly where he wants to land, because he's using analogies that fit his purpose, like sidewalks and roads, in order to invoke parallels in Internet, but the problem here, as I've been yelling about for the past ten years, is that the Internet is neither a railroad track, nor an air route, nor a highway, nor a system of tubes. It's different, in that connectivity is a form of liberating capability in as many ways as the former analogies are captive and self-constrained. During pre-Internet days AT&T was notorious for putting their next generation models through as many as ten to fifteen years of prototyping, pretesting, trialing and piloting, all on the backs of ratepayers, with nary a public-facing efficiency to show for it except to be able to show off some new gimmickry and charge higher prices for services that were often specious on their face. So what?, I would ask, if some municipalities fail in the open for all to see, even if on the backs of local citizens who approved them in the first place? The same muni Wifi technologies that failed in Philadelphia are now coming to AT&T's rescue in Times Square, Chicago and elsewhere. Incidentally, I don't see this as a public-vs-private matter, because from my vantage point both of those are in cahoots in more ways than they are not. Where do most muni-Inets receive their fiber, for example? Through amenities (extortion) in exchange for franchising privileges. And in what manner do municipalities attempt to avoid the pitfalls endemic to the architectures of incumbents, which serve to keep capacity scarce and asymmetrical? In the vast majority (I'd say greater than 95%), they don't. In fact they mimic in their final designs the very types of limitations that they fight so hard to escape. Likewise, the rules are usually rigged in such a way that initiatives that are begun by not-for-profits and private citizens' groups can hardly gain access to public rights of way in the same way that either of the former two can, unless, of course, the initiative were to subscribe to one of them in the first place. But there's lots of hazy shades of gray here, too many to be calling anything more white than black. FAC ------