Re: Flat Rate Pricing

From: Brian Atkins (brian@posthuman.com)
Date: Thu Jan 18 2001 - 11:28:25 MST


Brian you might want to watch this video:

http://biz.yahoo.com/oo/010117/48967.html

"Former GX CEO Predicts 'Crushing' Restructuring for Telecoms"

Brian D Williams wrote:
>
> From: Brian Atkins <brian@posthuman.com>
>
> >A single optical cable can carry at least 6.4tbit/sec, so 100
> >optical cables can provide all the required dedicated bandwidth to
> >serve the same stuff that all those copper cables do. The cables
> >are there now, and are simply being lit up as needed by the
> >various companies running them. I'm sorry, but the times when the
> >data amounts used for voice seemed big are over. In the relatively
> >near future the data passing over the Net will dwarf what the
> >phone carriers deal with now.
>
> No system being sold runs at anything near these numbers. I
> recently got to play with OC-768 which is a mere 40 GBS. The big

...which runs over a single wavelength of light among many many in a single
fiber. These technologies most certainly ARE commercially available. There
are also terabit routers available to handle the packets (Charlotte's Web,
etc.)

> problem is that while 100 cables can theoretically carry the
> traffic, the reality is that connections will need to be made to
> many thousands of different points. We will need a thousand times
> the Internet we have today. I also stated that these networks will
> need to be built to accomodate QOS which they do not now.

Well this goes back to the old circuit vs. packet switching argument. I think
you just throw more bandwidth at it, and QoS concerns go away. I mean if you
have a 100mbit connection to your home, you really don't have to worry about
making 64kbit phone calls. Do you really think QoS will matter in a world like
that?

>
> As the bandwidth increases, eventually the cost of the bandwidth
> needed to conduct a voice call will be miniscule, but we are
> hundreds of billions of dollars from that point. TANSTAAFL.

Exactly, it ain't cheap to get there. You might enjoy watching this video:

http://biz.yahoo.com/oo/010117/48967.html

"Former GX CEO Predicts 'Crushing' Restructuring for Telecoms"

Translation: switch to IP and fiber or die

>
> The days of saying the phone companies understand voice but they
> don't understand data are over.

We'll see... T not looking so hot lately

-- 
Brian Atkins
Director, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
http://www.singinst.org/



This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Mon May 28 2001 - 09:56:20 MDT