[GRLUG] FiOS -- NOT

[John-Thomas Richards]

On Mon, Mar 29, 2010 at 05:48:50PM -0400, Bob Kline wrote:
[snip]
> Suggesting that the bandwidth world has peaked and then some smacks no
> little of closing the patent office because everything was already
> invented -

That analogy doesn't fit.  It's not an issue of inventing; it's an issue
of incremental improvement.  Does a car today function all that
differently from a car 100 years ago?  It's still internal combustion
that powers it.  Oh?  You have a battery-powered car?  Yeah, those were
around *before* the internal combustion engines were.  Again,
incremental improvement.

> about 1890, in the US.  It matters not what people do with
> the stuff.  Even wasting much of it.  The question is only one of
> cost.  And those at the top tiers of use and innovation will very
> likely keep coming up with new things.  i.e., there's little evidence
> today that development of any of the key computer components has hit a
> wall.

No one is suggesting that bandwidth has peaked.  I fully expect a
gigabit connection in my lifetime.  What I am saying is that the market
is not clamoring for more speed.  Download speeds are sufficient for
most uses today.  Upload speeds could be higher, especially for games
and filesharing, but for most people eight to sixteen megabits of speed
is sufficient.  Hi-def television streaming will require a lot more
bandwidth, but no one is clamoring for it.  Again I point to the
countries with much higher average bandwidth such as Korea and Japan.
Are they demanding more bandwidth?  I don't think so.  They're at
100Mbps in many places.  

When broadband began to expand around the country, people were leaving
dial-up in droves because of the speed improvement.  We're not seeing a
huge push for more of that speed.  Witness the switch to U-Verse.  From
what the salesman told me U-Verse speeds are actually slower than
Comcast's speeds.  If the market is pushing for more speed, people
wouldn't be switching.

Real world usage of bandwidth determines whether more bandwidth is
needed.

> Anyway,  rah-rah.  But I would bet that capacities and speeds with
> continue to increase, and costs will continue to come down.  "Moore's

Agreed.

> law" is nothing more than an extrapolation of the past, but it has
> worked for decades.  If it starts to bite in, then it might be ominous
> for computer component development down the road.  But the fact that
> few can see where this is all going now is nothing more than Groucho
> Marx's comment: "predicting is hard.  Especially the future."  If any
> of us could really see where things are going it would be a fabulous
> opportunity to get very rich.
> 
>     -- Bob

Yeah, rather like Biff with the sports almanac.

A fun discussion; thanks.
-- 
john-thomas
------
I have studied it often, but I never could discover the plot.
Mark Twain, author and humorist, on dictionary (1835-1910)