After looking at your examples, all of them (except the video chat at a consumer level) are things that are business specific. And you know what? Part of running a business is the idea that the business is located where the services needed by the business are available. This is why you don’t see places that import goods from overseas in the midwest, you see them in San Diego, Los Angeles, Miami, New York City, etc. Places with major ports. Pharmeceutical companies are concentrated in New Jersey and Delaware due to the concentration of scientists and the proximity of other pharmecuetical companies (talent raiding). Technology startups tend to be located in “Silicon Valley” and “Silicon Alley” because of the availability of talent, funding, and infrastructure. And so on. If you want to run a business that requires network infrastructure, *located your business in an area with network infrastructure*. As George said, Japan, Taiwan, etc. (and for that matter, the Boston/NYC/Philly/DC axis) are much, much cheaper to wire up due to density. You could probably give broadband to 1,000 people in a city for the cost to bring broadband to a family farm in the middle of nowhere to service 5 people.

For the record, the Facebook problem is a matter of poor programming, not insufficient bandwidth. If the software is written right, it shouldn’t care how long the batch itself takes to transfer, so long as bits are flowing. The “average college student”… well, the average college student lives on campus. Many college campuses have had to severely restrict bandwidth to their students, because they can’t afford the “average interactivity of a college student!” The fact is, those kids sending videos and pictures all over the place are *crushing* college networks. They aren’t “broadband users”, they are primarily users of gigantic lease lines over a very large LAN. And for those living off campus, well, most college towns (except for really small colleges in rural areas) have access to broadband already.

There’s something else which you guys are forgetting here. If you want more bandwidth, you can usually get it! You just need to pay more. For example, I have a server at my house. I have heavy bandwidth requirements (I manage systems remotely). I have a “business class” cable modem from Time Warner. They give me 7 down, 1 up service, more than ample for my needs. It also gets me a static IP, an SLA for my bandwidth (my speed is *guaranteed*, not “best effort” like consumers get), and once my traffic gets to the CO, it goes onto an entirely different backbone than consumer traffic. Oh, and I am guaranteed an onsite dispatch in the next 4 hour service window (call before noon, get a tech by 5, call after noon, get a tech by noon the next day). All for $94.90/month including tax (that’s the total bill). At our main office, we have a FiOS line at like 50 down 20 up, 63 static IPs, and good customer support for something like $300/month.

And if you don’t live in a “broadband” area, I am sure you can get a telco to run a lease line (T1, T3, etc.) out to your premise. It will be expensive, of course, but again, *that’s the cost of doing business*.

I think that somewhere along the line, this discussion got very muddled. Are we talking about broadband for consumers? Or broadband for businesses? If we *are* talking about business usage, I say that my “put the business where the service is” arguements are quite valid. If it is for consumers, I say, “there’s not even usefulness to justify it”. Even the video chat example… well, you can do video chat on 56.6 dialup. It might not be HD quality, but unless you are willing to go to where the services are, it’s a bit much to expect the government and/or the other service users to subsidize your limited use scenario.

J.Ja

First of all, what makes you think I’m not standing on my own and speaking my mind? Do you honestly believe that anyone who may disagree with you isn’t standing up for what they believe in? It’s one thing if you want to disagree with me on any particular point, and you have a right to disagree, but please don’t insult me like this.

Also, let’s me explain something to you. Digital Society and I don’t base our technology policy based on political parties. We call it like we see it an we won’t hesitate to criticize or praise policy decisions from either side of the political aisle.

I’ve been standing up for the engineering, the economics, what’s right on the Internet since 2006 when I fought against those who would hide behind slogan of Net Neutrality. I’m not going to stand by and let a bad law pass in the name of Net Neutrality when I know it’s wrong, and when even the most staunch Net Neutrality proponents like Larry Lessig and Tim Berners-Lee knows the legislation on Net Neutrality is wrong.

I don’t change colors because of peer pressure. I don’t go against my principles like Tim Berners-Lee who says he’s in believes in the freedom and necessity of having differentiated services yet he endorses the very bills that would ban that right. I’ll stand up for my principles and what’s right. Those who favor Net Neutrality legislation hide behind the phony slogans and duck the real debate on whether we in a free society have the right to differentiated services and a free and innovative market. I’ll keep fighting for these principles till the very end.

I wasn’t even aware of your affiliations with DigitalSociety. After I read your response article: “We need to be reasonable about broadband usage caps“, I can finally see the connections.

This is coming from a friend, and honestly, a long time reader of your postings since your zdnet days. I think that it is probably better to stand up on your own sometimes and say something that makes sense, instead of appeasing to big time corporations.

Back in the Zdnet days, you always had the linkage to Intel, Microsoft, although they were in fact doing some amazing things back then. Now, there is a much stronger political taste in your posting.

I am still going to read this blog once a while after this. But I encourage you to seek alternate venues. There are a lot of smaller, but very awesome companies to talk about out there. If you picked a few of them with high potentials, and focused on the consumers, and why they may benefit from game changers, then people will come to read your blogs more often. If you still insist on pumping large corporations’ agendas, then you better be sure you are on the right side, especially considering the current political climate.

To be honest, given the current political composition of the country, going against net-neutrality is like standing in front of a train, getting ready to commit suicide. The broadband bill is pretty much a done deal, the only question remains is how aggressive it will be. Think about it. As a blogger about technology for mortals, going against technological trends is probably not a wise choice at this moment.

Have a good night. I will check back in a week.

Hmm, so you run a hotdog stand selling $3 hotdogs that cost you $2.5 to make in material, labor, and rent assuming you’re lucky enough to sell sufficient volume. Now the government steps in and says they’re going to add a $2 hotdog tax. Are you telling me that you’re not going to “choose” to pass on that tax?

And guess what? Bandwidth cost will continue to fall when major networks upgrade to 10Gbit Ethernet gear at the distribution layer, and 100Gbit gear at the core.

http://www.lusfiber.com/custom/?id=12

George, USF is not a tax. It’s a fee charged to telecom companies. They choose to pass it on to customers (which generally presents Cell customers an easy way to get out of their contracts, since it often changes).

As for U.S. broadband….just move to Lafayette La:

10 Mbps (Symmetric) $28.95
30 Mbps (Symmetric) $44.95
50 Mbps (Symmetric) $57.95
All connections come with a Symmetric 100mb p2p connection to any other Subscribers. 100MB is available, but they don’t publicly offer it to consumers.

The result is faster/cheaper broadband for Lafayette. And of course it lit a fire under COX and AT&T’s asses. I don’t think AT&T has officially announced they’re deploying their U-Verse (or whatever it’s called) broadband, but it’s that or they have to pack up in the area, because Cox is deploying their first Docsis 3 network in the city.

Amazing what competition will do….of course it wouldn’t have happened if the voters hadn’t opted for Municipal fiber first.
So what else happened? Well Cox decided that they had to upgrade their infrastructure PDQ if they wanted to keep pace and thus little old Lafayette got Cox’s first Docis 3 network in the U.S.

How AT&T is considering upgrading in Lafayette….why? Because they have no choice. Nevertheless, they all cost more than the municipal system and provide less.

100Mbps can only be gotten from colocation. There are no residential offerings to home users that I know of that is at price parity compared to colocation. Your 50Mbps Comcast numbers and 20 Million FIOS numbers are nothing but your guestimation. Yeah, by the time Comcast has 100mbps, Japan and South Korea would have had 1Gbps running to their homes, so really it is not solving the issue here. BTW, the issue is relative e-penis size if you haven’t figured out.

What I “leaked” to you is a bunch of hearsay. Ha. Oh well, I guess you wouldn’t believe your eyes until you see the documents that show you how much those cell phone minutes are really worth. The price of entry is about 5 million minutes for $5000 dollar blocks. I have seen it. Do the math. You could almost cover your entire life’s worth of cell phone usage with $5K one time charge. That’s why it is hard to get those coveted MVNO licenses, because nobody knew how valuable they are. It built RIMM an empire before Apple and Google figured out the game play.

I guess we will just leave it at that.