[Tfug] broadband opts

Fri Jun 24 14:11:52 MST 2005

Chris,

Funny that you mention it, I have had a wifi setup in mind for some time now 
and have even designed a whole range of repeaters and routers for the 
network, however, the thing that now comes to play is the cost of deploying 
such technology; i.e., the cost of the hardware, the ISP line costs and the 
rental of the space to place the aerials and such. Whereas I would love to 
do something like this, I would have to say after doing the research on this 
idea that the current providers would have this sort of thing priced way 
lower, even with the current costs that Cox, Comcast, and Qwerst have. 
Another thing that you would have to take into consideration is the 
technology its self... The setup that I have in would be is 802.11b, and 
what do we have now that's newly emerging -- 802.16 AKA WIMAX. Now, what 
does this have to do with anything, if you looked at the spec for wimax you 
would notice that the speeds and the distance are much greater than anything 
that I could even think of trying to do with the same amount of hardware 
that it would require, now I know that you are thinking 'But that's not even 
a common technology' which at the present is true, but I expect that 
sometime in the next 6 months to a year, that ALL the major Vendors and OEMs 
will have this card most if not all of the laptops on the market, which now 
means that if I would want to stay competitive, I would have to upgrade the 
whole network again, in my mind, while this is a wonderful idea on paper, 
its impractical since all the incumbent companies would 1) able to price me 
out of business and 2) deploy their hardware a ton faster than I could ever 
think of it.

Matt

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Chris Hill" <ubergeek at ubergeek.tv>
To: <Vaca at GrazeLand.COM>; "Tucson Free Unix Group" <tfug at tfug.org>
Sent: Friday, June 24, 2005 11:09 AM
Subject: Re: [Tfug] broadband opts

> How about: TINSTAAFM
>
> There is no such thing as a free market. :)
>
> I'm not looking for a free lunch, but I would like to see a competitive 
> market where there is a more balanced set of options to choose from. But 
> all I see is Cox living it large and a bunch of other guys trying to get 
> in via the only way they can. I just moved from the UK, and while the 
> speeds aren't up to snuff, you have a lot (and I mean a lot) of people you 
> can buy service from. I had cable over there, and it was very competitive 
> with the dsl, while as here its a different story.
>
> I don't know the inner workings of telecom and cable deregulation, but 
> there is an obvious imbalance between price and features between the 
> different providers. A huge one. How can such a huge gap exist? Or to 
> rephrase, why is one lunch so much more expensive than another?
>
> I would be interested to see what kind of rates we would get if Cox were 
> forced to resell their bandwidth wholesale, or if a company came along 
> offering wi-fi service to Tucson.
>
> Peace
> C
>
>
> tkilian at dakotacom.net wrote:
>
>>I believe that the overall lesson is from Econ 101: TINSTAAFL.
>>
>>People complain about service levels being low, e.g. Tech Support is busy 
>>or incompetant, the service breaks several times a month, the CPE stinks, 
>>or the software packages "destroy" hard drives.
>>
>>People then sit around and demand 5 Mbps for less than $50.00 a month. 
>>Well, that money comes from somewhere.  A *highly* regulated utility like 
>>Qwest, even in non-regulated services, has a bear of a time moving their 
>>resources around to fix a DSL line.  1FR can eat a tech for an entire 
>>day...and your DSL doesn't get done.  Cox has other problems, but it all 
>>comes down to the basic economics of you get what you pay for.  Things are 
>>improving as I see it, so keep on chuggin!
>>
>>What is the end result?  A savvy user can go out and buy broadband 
>>relativly cheaply and have relativly few problems.  This is good!  Sure, 
>>once in a while a CPE will go bad, or there will be some strange issue 
>>that needs to be communicated to an inept tech support department, but 
>>usually things go well.  Even for *most* regular users, the process works 
>>fine.  Of course, the less savvy you are on the technical side, the more 
>>issues you have, but that's always the case with Internet service.
>>If you want better customer service, you can pay a little more and go with 
>>a local provider like Dakota or The River.  You'll get more support than 
>>you will from Cox or Qwest direct, but you won't pay the same rate. It's 
>>up to each user to weigh their support of local business, tech support, 
>>and cost.  No matter what you decide, keep in mind how little you're 
>>paying for how much you get.  I'm not suggesting that anyone should expect 
>>horrific service and I encourage people to report bad service to their 
>>provider.  I merely caution to be realistic with expectations on a service 
>>offering bandwidth for $10/Mbps. :)
>>
>>All of this is, of course, IHMO.
>>
>>
>>_______________________________________________
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>>tfug at tfug.org
>>http://www.tfug.org/mailman/listinfo/tfug
>>
>
> -- 
> _________________________________________
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> <  |  |  / /_/  > ubergeek at ubergeek.tv    >
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