Putting The Fiber Glut In Historical Perspective 95
securitas writes: "This editorial over at the New York Times makes a good case for the optical network buildout being an essential infrastructure project like the railroads, telegraph lines and interstate highways were of previous generations. These projects stimulated new inventions and applications and helped build a great nation. So if you lost a ton on JDS Uniphase, Ciena, Corning, Nortel and the rest, rest easy that you have helped build the future and inspire innovation."
porn :o) (Score:5, Funny)
Without NYT Registration (Score:5, Informative)
Q: could Slashcode be modified to transpose these URLs automatically?
FYI (Score:3, Informative)
Login: password
Password: password
Re:FYI (Score:1)
DMCA (Score:1)
Re:FYI (Score:2)
UID: 12345678
Password: 12345678
Enjoy!
Re:Without NYT Registration (Score:1)
It's once again a way to cover from legal problems, same as all of the legalese written on the bottom of the page.
Broadband infrastucture will run TV (Score:2, Insightful)
Now it seems this standard is already on it's way out, and to top it all off, the consumer products needed to actually watch digital TV aren't really available yet...
Just imagine how much better off we could have been if all that money had been spent on a broadband infrastructure for transporting any data, including TV. ARGH.
Re:Broadband infrastucture will run TV (Score:1)
I mean, most of our products are from Nokia
Re:Broadband infrastucture will run TV (Score:1, Insightful)
One thing that the fiber revolution has proved is that its not necessary for the government to get involved in infrastructure investments. The private sector handles even this type of investments more efficiently than any government.
Does the swedish government still want to control the content of digital cable, even though no one wants to pay to receive politically correct, state controlled cr*p tv?
Re:Broadband infrastucture will run TV (Score:1)
The best is if the goverment puts down the fiber, but they don't handle what information goes through the fiber. Handling an infrastructure of this size is nothing the industry can handle right now. Just look at "bredbandsbolaget", how well is the private sector handle it? It's the same with Telia, they should only have handled the infrastructure, owned by the state, and all the services should have become a separate new company, owned by private investors.
Re:Broadband infrastucture will run TV (Score:3, Informative)
Similar in the UK. The gubmint claims that it's a top priority to make the UK a world leader in broadband access, then does... nothing. No tax breaks, no investment, no intervention, nothing. "The regulator will decide. We have complete faith in their judgement." So, we ask the regulator what they're doing, and the answer if (of course): "The market will decide. We're reactive, not proactive. That's gubmint policy!"
So, the incumbent monopoly decides that the market is just fine the way it is and staggers blindly on, screwing up DSL, blocking local loop unbundling, and basically making the whole thing more trouble than it's worth for both competitors and Joe Public. At last count, the entire UK has less than 100 local loop lines unbundled from the incumbent monopoly, and potential competitors are just shrugging their shoulders and walking away from the whole deal.
The cable companies have indeed crippled themselves to put in a competing network (competing with the huge, taxpayer funded one that the monopoly telco was gifted when it was privatised). They then piss away yet more money undercutting the telco monopoly for broadband access, all the while putting on the happy face and relying on the (non-existent, IMHO) holy grail of selling content on the back of broadband, rather than charging realistic, sustainable amount for access and letting us find and create our own content. Idiots. They rightly deserve to get reamed, I'm just glad to be hitching a ride as they go down in flames.
The digital TV companies provided a profitable service that people actually want (channels! more! more!) but are now tacking on proprietary interactive services (read: shopping), crippled walled garden web browsing (read: shopping) and L4M3-0-W1Z email on top, producing a sort of clunky circa 1992 experience. Takeup has been (their words) "disappointing". No shit, Sherlock.
Meanwhile, the real tax payer money goes (via the license funded BBC) towards... widescreen. Not to broadband, or interactive digital services, but to producing 16/9 widescreen content. Apparently this is what we want. Not better quality content, just wiiiiiiiiiider content.
All this time, the gubmint keeps on with the "all is well" message, claiming that they are on target to get all government services online by 2005. When pressed, they admit that "online" covers non-written access, including the web, but also including... the telephone.
Yes, switched on <strike>broadband</strike> widescreen UK is bravely dragging itself into the 20th century. Yay us!
Re:Broadband infrastucture will run TV (Score:3, Informative)
Maybe, but a network built for TV can take a lot of short cuts that a generic data network can't. So a TV style network will be a lot less expensive then a generic data network (and also less useful).
The TV network can assume that there are a small number of transmitters, and a large number of listeners, and that the listeners don't need to ACK traffic. So something like a T3 (about 45Mbits/sec) could transmit about 30 channels (assuming 1.5Mbit/sec of MPEG2 data) to any number of listeners. You can set up the network as a tree and get full use of the bandwidth from the head end out to the listeners with very very little back channel (for ordering Pay Per View, or you can do that fully out of band).
A generic data network wouldn't be able to assume a single source point for all the traffic, so they can't be built like a giant tree. They have to be built like more of a web. Much more costly. Of corse it is more useful as well, but not everyone is willing to pay extra money to be able to do more then just watch TV.
Re:Broadband infrastucture will run TV (Score:1)
There are a lot of technical problems, but spending money on a proprietary system compared to taking a little more risk and planning in the long run seems an awful waste... I have to pay tax for this in any case!
Re:Broadband infrastucture will run TV (Score:2)
Well, the problem is it is a lot of money. I don't know enough about building a CATV network (I know a lot more about building big IP networks), but it could cost more then ten times as much to build a data network to carry TV then it would to build a TV network.
Since I don't have any use for a CATV network (I have a dish), the CATV network isn't worth one tenth the price of an IP network to me. However I expect most people would rather pay $30 a month for TV over a CATV network then $300 for TV over an IP network. In fact I would rather have a smaller IP network so I could pay more like $100 to $150...
Of corse there is the chance to design a IP network with traffic shaping and multicast allowed only for some senders. Then you might come closer to the cost of a CATV network, but it will be a pretty bad IP network, and still cost more then a CATV network.
In the USA most places grant a cable company a ten (or longer) year monopoly in exchange for part of the take. It gets us kind of crappy CATV (no competition), and expensive service (again, no competition). However for people that don't care about the CATV, it is totally free. In fact it is a slight negative tax.
In a very few parts of the USA no monopoly is granted, or a very limited number of providers (say, two) are allowed. They tend to have better service, and cheeper. The local government doesn't get as much of the take though. Even though I don't have CATV I think that's a better method. I might not even have a dish if CATV were cheaper and better...
Fiber Glut (Score:4, Insightful)
Personally, I can't wait to have my own 100mb connection to the net.
dave
Re:Fiber Glut (Score:3, Insightful)
This is true, but my guess is that one the places where this dark fiber is going to be used eventually is in subscription-based streaming audio and video. And if you think where the most likely place for something like "Online Blockbuster" to set itself up, you'll see that a big city (with lots of customers close by) is the most logical starting point.
Connectivity, bandwidth and service almost always find their way to the rural areas last. It's a trade off when choosing a place to live: In the middle of the city with honking cars and lots of people and a choice between DSL, Cable and Sat; or a nice house with some land in the quiet country and nothing but 56K dialup that might give you 41K if you're lucky. It was a hard choice, but I opted for the quiet country and 56K dialup. But I hear that someday we might actually have cable modem!!
Re:Fiber Glut (Score:1)
Of course, with the coastal mindset that the midwest is just this empty wasteland that's flown over to get to the other coast, it's not surprising.
Re:Fiber Glut (Score:1)
Re:Fiber Glut (Score:3, Interesting)
Two things
Me neither. I fact I can't wait to trade up my crappy IDSL back in for something more like 256Mbits/sec like I use to have.
Re:Fiber Glut (Score:2, Interesting)
Where I live, north Florida, my best connect speed is 26K pots. No DSL, No ISDN, No Cable, No 56K. About 10 miles from my place is a Level-3 light-regen facility. They have 12 1.25" ID ducts in the ground (3 or 4 of which I believe have fiber in them). Rumor has it, there is cage space available over there (I have not verified this yet). Hmmm 10 miles away... hmmm 802.11b... hmmm I wonder if they would sell me a DS-1 and be partial to hosting a short tower... hmmm.
Cosmic Ray
"another one, not like the other one"
Re:Fiber Glut (Score:2)
Offtopic FYI (Score:1, Funny)
X-Fry: I don't regret this, but I both rue and lament it.
X-Fry: I refuse to testify on the grounds that my organs will be chopped up in to a patty.
X-Bender: Bender's a genius!
X-Fry: There's a lot about my face you don't know.
X-Fry: Nowadays people aren't interested in art that's not tattooed on fat guys.
X-Fry: I learned how to handle delicate social situations from a little show called 'Three's Company.'
X-Bender: Fry, of all the friends I've had
X-Bender: The laws of science be a harsh mistress.
X-Bender: Care to contribute to the Anti-Mugging-You Fund?
X-Fry: I heard one time you single-handedly defeated a hoard of rampaging somethings in the something something system.
X-Bender: In the event of an emergency, my ass can be used as a flotation device.
X-Bender: Oh no! Not the magnet!
X-Bender: There's nothing wrong with murder, just as long as you let Bender whet his beak.
X-Bender: Honey, I wouldn't talk about taste if I was wearing a lime green tank top.
X-Bender: Want me to smack the corpse around a little?
X-Bender: Like most of life's problems, this one can be solved with bending.
X-Bender: Oh, so, just 'cause a robot wants to kill humans that makes him a radical?
X-Bender: A woman like that you gotta romance first!
X-Bender: Hey Fry, I'm steering with my ass!
X-Bender: My full name is Bender Bending Rodriguez.
X-Bender: Oh, no room for Bender, huh? Fine. I'll go build my own lunar lander. With blackjack. And hookers. In fact, forget the lunar lander and the blackjack! Ah, screw the whole thing.
X-Bender: Well I don't have anything else planned for today, let's get drunk!
X-Fry: That's it! You can only take my money for so long before you take it all and I say enough!
X-Fry: How can I live my life if I can't tell good from evil?
X-Fry: Well, thanks to the internet I'm now bored with sex. Is there a place on the web that panders to my lust for violence?
X-Fry: But this is HDTV. It's got better resolution than the real world.
X-Fry: I'm flattered, really. If I was gonna do it with a big freaky mud bug, you'd be way up the list.
X-Bender: Forget your stupid theme park! I'm gonna make my own! With hookers! And blackjack! In fact, forget the theme park!
X-Fry: These new hands are great. I'm gonna break them in tonight.
X-Bender: OK, but I don't want anyone thinking we're robosexuals.
X-Bender: Bite my shiny, metal ass!
X-Bender: I hate people who love me. And they hate me.
X-Bender: Well I don't have anything else planned for today, let's get drunk!
X-Bender: My life, and by extension everyone else's, is meaningless.
X-Fry: Would you cram a sock in it, Bender? Those aren't even medals! They're bottle caps and pepperoni slices.
X-Fry: Leela, there's nothing wrong with anything.
X-Fry: I'm gonna be a science fiction hero, just like Uhura, or Captain Janeway, or Xena!
X-Fry: I'm never gonna get used to the thirty-first century. Caffeinated bacon?
X-Fry: I must be a robot. Why else would human women refuse to date me?
X-Fry: To Captain Bender! He's the best!
X-Fry: He's an animal. He belongs in the wild. Or in the circus on one of those tiny tricycles. Now that's entertainment.
X-Fry: Hey look, it's that guy you are!
X-Fry: Augh, I am so unlucky. I've run over black cats that were luckier than me.
X-Fry: No, no, I was just picking my nose.
X-Fry: That doesn't look like an "L", unless you count lower case.
X-Fry: Professor, please, the fate of the world depends on you getting to second base with Mom.
X-Fry: Leela, Bender, we're going grave-robbing.
Re:Offtopic FYI (Score:1)
Minor nit-picking (Score:2, Informative)
The only time these companies would have benefited from your investment was when they offered primary and/or secondary IPOs. After that, buying their stock only raises the value of the stock for the people who own it (mainly executives, institutions, and joe public).
Re:Minor nit-picking (Score:2)
Re:Minor nit-picking (Score:1)
I'm sure there's an interesting parallel with HP-Compaq, but it's probably just OT.
yes and no - but mostly no (Score:2)
The upward trend of price makes people willing to work for (very little + stock options); and until you have the big price drop they normally keep working there. This can save a company a lot of money.
It makes it easy for them to buyout other companies in a stock swap. CSCO did this so successfully they're getting sued.
There are intangibles too, it generally makes it easier to push around your suppliers and buyers the bigger and more important they think you are... so, for instance, you can demand Net/30 and pay on Net/120. And people want to go with your product, because you're so successful and your stock price indicates you're going to be around for the long haul... false, of course, but it works.
Long Haul fiber (Score:5, Informative)
The problem with replacing it is that you have to get so many permits and studies just to replace one section of line that it is not feasable to do so. When congress de-regulated the phone industry they forced the local telco to give this last mile to the public domain. Any carrier can provide service over that mile of copper wire, be it DSL , POTS (Plain old telephone service), or long distance. This causes the eminent maintainer (the local telco) not to be interested at all in replacing any of it. Why replace it for other people? Monopolies are bad, but it does help to have someone who are directly responsible for maintaining a service.
Free peice of advice for the day BTW. If you have a 56K modem it really helps to reduce the number of analogue to digital conversion (56K can only stand one) If you are having signal problems call and have caller ID added to your list of services for a month. This forces the telco to move you from older equipment to the new digital equipment they are installing. This will provide better signal to you. After the month cancel the service, they won't bother to switch you back and you will keep the performance increase.
Excellent advice (Score:2, Informative)
Another tip: If your connection is slow, try taking other devices off the telephone line.
Sometimes old phones or answering machines have an electrical component called a capacitor placed across the telephone line even when the phone is not being used. This will limit the speed of your connection. Just unplug the telephone or answering machine or bell or other device to test.
Re:Long Haul fiber (Score:1)
Some telcos (eg telstra) offer "half price second telephone lines" which actually consist of a digital line to the home, and a "splitter" in the home.
My pppd uptimes went from 3day averages to over 30day averages on my 56k. Well worth it (in a country where local calls are untimed but not free)!
Re:Long Haul fiber (Score:1)
A bellsouth tech told me about those once, they use them in extreme cases where there are insufficient cable pairs to get the second subscriber line out to the house. Turns out that it is some kind on specific application ISDN unit. Only run from the SLC to the customer premises, so they can piggyback two subscriber lines on one pair of copper.
Ray
Re:Long Haul fiber (Score:1)
"The reason for this is simple, Age. In most places the copper in the ground has been their since the 1950's and in some cases longer. It is of different specs than are ideal and is corroding."
Lots of copper is on poles as well as in the ground, and cable modem HFC cabling also counts as part of the last mile. Corrosion and "different specs" aren't an issue in any event.
"you have to get so many permits and studies just to replace one section of line that it is not feasable to do so."
Phone companies and cable companies can readily maintain their lines without studies and permits. Judging by how often the street by my office is dug up, the permit and study process to lay fiber underground in downtown San Francisco isn't too strenuous, either.
"When congress de-regulated the phone industry they forced the local telco to give this last mile to the public domain. Any carrier can provide service over that mile of copper wire, be it DSL , POTS (Plain old telephone service), or long distance. This causes the eminent maintainer (the local telco) not to be interested at all in replacing any of it. Why replace it for other people? Monopolies are bad, but it does help to have someone who are directly responsible for maintaining a service."
I don't think there's any government body with the authority to nationalize the carriers' assets in the local loop. The 1996 Telecom Act stipulated that incumbent LECs should *resell* their facilities or "unbundled network elements", but anyone who tries to compete with the ILECs has to pay, and it's clear that the ILECs can extract costs by hassling canditate competitors for everything from cage space to parking spaces. Of course, the cable providers don't have to resell their facilities at all.
The ILECs are still in the voice business. It's a little implausible to think they'll stop maintaining their network because they have to resell lines to their competition, especially since much of the competition is rapidly going bankrupt.
It's hard to believe drivel like this is rated 5. Based on the credibility of the first two paragraphs, I'd be skeptical of the helpfulness of ordering caller ID in order to improve your 56k performance.
High speed homes (Score:1)
The problem is people are not buying. The situation here in australia is that you get your cable (optus or telstra) TV and then you have to pay extra (a lot extra) to get internet. Also they charge ANOTHER installation fee...
Anyway people won't buy broadband if they don't have a need for it, or can't benifit from it. How is your typical email using, instant chat inDUHvidual going to need boradband?
Now if comapanies (the cable ones) offered igh speed services that used the capacity of the cable.. it would start taking off
Re:High speed homes (Score:3, Funny)
I can't imagine what a fully rounded member of society with interests outside the technological circlejerk might do with a broadband internet. I've certainly noticed that my father has hated having it installed, and has never used it to author articles on World War I aviation in magazines around the world. I've also noticed that my mother hasn't moved to telecommuting a couple of times a week, giving her no end of stress relief by cutting out the daily commute.
Now riddle me this: what use does a loser, no-life geek have for broadband? After all, they can't talk to people, both because they have nothing to say and because everyone hates them; they can't use it for music, video or literature as their tiny little rail-guided tech-obsessed minds are incapable of appreciating the beauty and unpredictability of art; and they certainly can't use it for any sort of creative endeavour as all their life has been dedicated to a soulless cul-de-sac leaving them creatively dead. The only thing I can think of is porn, which these dweebs are in desperate need of in lieu of real women.
Re:High speed homes (Score:2, Interesting)
Voyager Point is a new suburb of Sydney (and not a great distance out compared to some suburbs), with hundreds of new homes full of young couples, where each home is worth a bare minimum of AU$400k. The perfect market! Yet not an inch of fibre in sight! Oh, and adsl isn't available either, anywhere in the suburb. More satelite dishes than any suburb I've seen is oz.
Perhaps they (the telcos) seem to have given up on new fibre broadband.
Oh good... (Score:1, Funny)
"Oh look, I'm inspiring innovation!!!
I'm the magical future building man
Who lives in a gumdrop house on lollipop laaanne..."
BTW,I'm being sarcastic...
After my stock went south I had to sell the gumdrop house and move. I now live in a ramen noodle house on vinegar st.
Eh? (Score:1)
Re:Eh? (Score:2)
Well, the question is not whether it will be used up eventually, but whether it it will be used up before technological innovation makes the current infrastructure obsolete.
Fiber Glut? (Score:5, Funny)
OK, I understand how my daily All-Bran helps with "stimulating new inventions". And "Inspire innovation"? Fair enough, it's happened to me a few times. But "helped build a great nation"?
Wow. I'm gonna have another breakfast.
Re:Fiber Glut? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Fiber Glut? (Score:1)
but what do you expect, I was on the pooper.
Not really (Score:2)
I don't think this is like the railroad system at all. When they built those railroads, you could actually buy a train ticket and USE them. I'm curious as to how anyone could use the Dark fiber that we now have a glut of.
Without the equipment on both sides lighting it up, dark fiber is useless.
Re:Not really (Score:1)
Well obviously, any metaphor interpreted as a direct comparison will eventually shear (thank you Neal Stephenson [cryptonomicon.com]) when you take it too far. But as far as I'm concerned, the glut of fiber currently has more in common with the rails than the pavement. (Though that doesn't have to remain the case.)
The ongoing build-up of highway mileage in the US is under the direction of our various governments, from local to national. Commercial gain in construction doesn't come into the picture until it is time to bid out the building contracts. The only real area for speculation has been in the economic potential of land in proximity to the proposed public thoroughfare.
By contrast, the century-ago boom in railroad construction really was that if-you-build-it-they-will-come type of speculation by private moneyed interests. Eventually, consolidation followed the boom, as smaller and over-extended lines failed, or were snapped up by the larger, better managed, or just plain more politically powerful lines. Redundant lines were closed [dot.gov]. Unprofitable areas were abandoned [nitl.org].
I can think of only one freeway that has been torn down because the municipality thought it was a mistake [keynews.org] that didn't serve the public's needs. With few exceptions, are no "dark" highways. Despite what your local politicians may say, roads aren't widened to relieve congestion. They are built to increase capacity. Congestion just means that they haven't been widening them fast enough.
You want to see dark fiber light up, socialize the network and make access to it free to the individual, just like the US highway system. Latency may increase, but only because the volume has exploded. And underexploited resources will NEVER be a problem again.
But as things are going now, we'll soon be needing a something like Rails to Trails [railtrails.org] for glass wire.
Railroad bubble -- fiber bubble (Score:2, Informative)
'Investing in railroad companies (RC) cannot be wrong,
because they are the future'.
What about replacing RC with FCC (fiber cable company)?
Go to your local Amazon store and read and enjoy The Devil Takes the Hindmost [amazon.com].
Re:Railroad bubble -- fiber bubble (Score:1)
NYT Account (Score:2, Informative)
cowboyneal2001
cowboyneal2001
the full article (Score:1, Insightful)
Your uncle's tales may be worth recalling, now that we are faced with a glut of long-haul fiber optic lines installed by companies eager to cash in on the Internet boom. Something like 100 million miles of these lines were laid in the last two years, and the great bulk of this capacity is unused.
For investors who put up the estimated $35 billion to pay for all this, it has been a disaster. Many companies involved are awash in red ink, and bandwidth brokers report plummeting prices for long-distance telecommunications capacity. Even worse, such a presumably gross misallocation of capital is bad for the entire economy; had the money been directed more profitably, output and employment would be higher and everyone would be better off. Now that the economy is weakening, America is starting to look like a high-technology Gulliver, tied down by costly Lilliputian threads of glass.
But was this really such a wholesale misallocation? Will society really suffer for the misguided enthusiasm of fiber optic investors and entrepreneurs? History suggests not. Again and again, investors have gone hog wild over new networking technologies, spent a fortune to install them and found themselves with vast overcapacity and ruinous competition. Yet eventually the capacity was always used, often for purposes never foreseen when it was installed. And in the long run, the economy was the better for it.
"The turbulence in this market is entirely predictable," said Richard R. John, a communications historian at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He noted that the American telegraph system was unprofitable for its first 15 years, and that in the early 20th century many felt that it had too much capacity, partly because it was built to accommodate huge peak loads during business hours. At first, the telegraph network was not used for what would become a main function: managing the railroad system.
"Almost all of the big-mileage railroads, once you get west of the Missouri, were built in advance of demand," said Maury Klein, a University of Rhode Island historian. Despite serious investor losses, a staggering increase in national wealth would result. "The rail network completely transformed the West," Professor Klein noted. "It created cities where none existed, and businesses where none existed."
Long ago, the railroad historian Julius Grodinsky summed up the process in words that would apply just as well to fiber optic networks today: "The story is typical of a growing industry in its pioneering stage. Competition then and now works itself out in a similar fashion. Some businessmen gain, some lose -- but the public benefits."
In another example, the parkways of the New York area were built to give city residents a way to reach outlying beaches and state parks. But these roads also abetted the suburban development boom and soon were filled to capacity with commuters.
There are many reasons to believe that the vast new fiber optic network will similarly call forth unforeseen new applications. Adventis, an information industry consulting firm in Boston, predicts an "inferno" of bit-burning applications once high-capacity networks overcome the last-mile bottleneck -- the delay in hooking up a high-speed Internet network to homes or businesses. If that happens, it will not be the first time that communications overcapacity turned into a shortage. When telephone numbers were first allocated, who imagined that we would ever run out? And once upon a time, a million shares was considered enormous volume on the New York Stock Exchange.
And that misallocation of capital? True, the money could do something else as we wait for all that bit-burning. But history shows that this is the American way. Many European postal systems, telegraph lines and railroads were built with government money, and sometimes with insufficient capacity. But in the United States, instead of burdening taxpayers, we sell investors the equivalent of high-priced lottery tickets each time one of these technologies arrives.
The proceeds from these speculations -- the capital paid for stocks and bonds -- may seem misspent. In the long run, the results are called infrastructure, and they are what economies are built on.
Not just in America (Score:1)
I live in Barcelona, Spain, and there are six different telcos putting fibre optic cables in the ground outside my office window as I type this.
Like many countries in Europe, Spain has gone from an inefficient state-owned telecomm monopoly to hyper-competition in just a few years. I have ADSL at home at the moment - it was really easy to get installed and the monthly fees are very low. And with all this competition it should get better really quickly.
Is the optics industry glasses rose-colored? (Score:1)
Cisco last week said that they are starting to see a stabilization in their sales and expecting things to look up by end 2002. What I wonder is with all of the
I mean I would expect that the telcos had upgraded their infrastructure and was coping with the increase in data transfer across their networks from all of the flourishing
So do you think that Cisco's claims are basically fortunetelling and isn't really based on truth? So then comes end 2002 and they will be still suffering along with the rest of the optics manufacturing industry and will see their stocks plummet again.
I knew I would get on topic somewhere!
A small issue of profits... (Score:3, Interesting)
Which, come to think of it, sounds pretty much like the situation in the data communications business right at the moment. The only difference being that since investors are a lot faster to pull the trigger on businesses that they perceive as having poor future returns, the telecomm companies will probably never get the chance to establish themselves that the railroads had 1860-1920.
So what happens when all the money pulls out, and all the telecomm providers (except the RBOCs) collapse?
sPh
Nortel and the Rest... (Score:2, Funny)
My stock options are worthless...
The stock price lost 90%.....
BUT I Believe in Nortel...Great company in a bad time. Amazing technology.
Sounds like he misread and misattributed my SIG. (Score:1, Offtopic)
Sounds like he misread and misattributed my signature.
Tisk...
Indeed, an interesting parallel... (Score:4, Interesting)
When you have to operate a business (running trains) over a vast territory, you have to have reliable, foolproof and positive communication to synchronize the operations of all those trains.
Proper communications were essential to avoid those dreaded "cornfield meets" (head-on collisions).
Railroad signalling also has been a cutting-edge environment too; signal interlocking plants (where complex railroad junctions are controlled) have been from the start crude mechanical computers, where conflicting train routes are avoided by mechanical (then electric and now computerized - but with extremely wierd and exotic kinds of technologies) computers, all to boost safety.
Actually, 100 years ago, railroads were the high-tech industry, and it is striking to see the parallels between the railroads 100 years ago, and the computer/internet scene today...
Failure of Fiber Businesses (Score:1)
What's extremely interesting, is that the government subsidized initial railroad developments. Hundreds of thousands of acres were given away for free to railroad companies, and many of them failed! But a failed railroad company leaves behind tracks, and so the railroad system was built.
The difference between now and then is that instead of being entirely government subsidized, venture and stock capital are what helped to lay fiber across America and the World. I predict that, within the next two decades, fiber will become commonplace; not run to our houses -- are railroads run to your house? -- but enough so that any neighborhood will have at least a T3 backbone. (Yes, I know that it's a lot easier to run fiber than it is railroad, but I think that you can't expect everyone to get modern wiring (telephone and electic), much less fiber. Rural people and people who live in poorer areas will simply be treated worse. That socioeconomic problem will persist regardless of bandwidth, though. More well-to-do neighborhoods will most likely get an OC-3 at their doorstep, but the average guy in Newark, New Jersey or Gnaw Bone, Indiana won't.)
Ever optimistic,
Mike Greenberg
Wait a minute here, isn't rail not so important? (Score:1)
I mean with the mass production of cars and trucks; how much do we even need rail? All it takes is one guy tampering with the tracks and we all go tumbling off the tracks together!
Re:Wait a minute here, isn't rail not so important (Score:2)
During the 1970's, shippers in North America tried to switch everything over to trucks.
Sometime in the 1980's, two things happened: (a) railroads improved their efficiency (b) someone did some simple division and realized that for shipments over x miles (I forget exactly, but it is around 500), transport by rail has about 1/20 the cost of transport by truck.
So since 1990, about 90% of long distance, inter-city tranport again moves by rail (not to mention coal and the Panama Canal bypass, which are separate issues).
Most of the small sidetracks and short lines are gone, though, giving the impression that there is less rail than in the past. In terms of tonnage, not true.
sPh
Re:Wait a minute here, isn't rail not so important (Score:2)
-dB
Compare and contrast (Score:1)
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/06/25/163
To be honest, I think the NYT article is telling us just what we want to hear. The above referenced article reminds us that there was a lot of useless rail capacity built on speculation. Which way si ti going to happen? We'll be sure, it's going to be good for the rich people, and it might be good for us working stiffs.
Cities Make More Sense Now (Score:1, Interesting)
When the railroad was invented, cities sprouted up along rail lines. These are the cities that got big. Previously you had to be on a major water way to get big.
When the car was invented, personal transportation was possible. This allowed the creation of the suburbs. Which ruined the city.
Now that data connectivity is critical, a city makes sense again. Big cities will spring up around fat bandwidth. They'll need connectivity out to other cities, which is where the glut is. Then they'll need fat connectivity within the city.
Detroit was one of the hardest hit cities by urban sprawl and the automobile. Now Detroit is evolving again by putting in 100Mbps-to-the-home connectivity within its downtown area. People are flocking to lofts, apartments, and condos in the downtown.
Don't rest easy just yet... (Score:1)
Such means included bribing government officials (even entire legislatures), sabotoging competitors' operations, illegally appropriating land through manipulation of the legal system, paying workers rock-bottom wages while showing reckless disregard for basic safety, and firing and brutalizing workers who had the temerity to join a labor union.
Perhaps an ominous reminder of all this, many cables today are in fact laid down alongside (you guessed it!) railroad tracks.
No shortage in Appalachia (Score:1)
As a suggestion, we should lobby our congress-critters to put some $ into expanding Broad-Band to rural areas, as well as generally expand IT in the Public Sector. Besides helping underserved areas, it makes sense as a Fiscal measure to stimulate our anemic economy!