[GRLUG] NOT LINUX - LUS

[Michael Mol]

On Fri, Feb 18, 2011 at 12:10 AM, Adam Tauno Williams
<awilliam at whitemice.org> wrote:
> On Thu, 2011-02-17 at 14:25 +0000, Michael Mol wrote:
>> > And what's possible is a whole lot cheaper
>> > than the big players are suggesting. Comcast
>> > just came out with a 100 Mbps down, 10 Mbps
>> > up service tier, and it's over $400 a month.
>> > Hardly full duplex, and definitely not cheap.
>> > Yes, T1 lines were over $1,000 a month not
>> > so many years ago.  But technology has moved
>> > on, and LUSFiber shows just how much.
>> > For reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LUSFiber
>> >   -- Bob
>> How many people have paid for that system, versus how many people get
>> service? In other words, who's subsidizing it so who else can use it
>> cheaply?
>
> If you believe your connection from Verizon/AT&T/SBC/Comcast is not
> subsidized then you are mistaken.

Certainly it's not uncommon for a diversified company to use the
greater profit from one sales stream to cover losses in another
business unit. Look at any organization with a large R&D department
(as Bell Laps once had, and Microsoft and Cisco have now), or the core
business model of any major game console sold in the last twenty
years. That's one example of subsidization, but probably not the kind
you're referring to.

Any sufficiently large company or industry will receive government
subsidy. That's the nature of lobbying.

>
> <personally>If I'm going to subsidize something I'd *MUCH* prefer it to
> be subsidized as a public/municipal service than turning over money to
> commercial entities who promise [almost always with no binding terms] to
> do nice things (which is exactly what has happened multiple times with
> AT&T and the like)</personally)
>
> But I think it is clear that [regardless of the reasons why, sound or
> not] the LUSFiber 'model' is a non-starter and going nowhere.  Thus,
> while interesting, it is irrelevant.
>
>> It also says that LUSFiber is a subsidiary of a local utility company.
>> Can you say "municipally-granted monopoly"? You can blame *that* for
>> why Comcast is so large; Comcast is built on a coax infrastructure
>> built by dozens of cable companies which had municipally-granted
>> monopolies in their local area.
>
> Without which none of that coax infrastructure would exist in the first
> place.

Would you make the same assertion of the POTS infrastructure? (I'm not
saying that is or isn't the case wrt POTS, mind you, I'm just curious)

I don't know whether or not "the coax infrastructure wouldn't exist"
is a useful argument. There are *ethernet* ISPs in places like Chicago
and New York which I don't believe depend on municipally-granted
monopoly. The population density there is high enough to support those
economics. If coax hadn't made it big, satellite certainly would have,
and while satellite wouldn't be able to handle the kinds of data
workload that coax does, something else (such as data wireless, or
common usage of BRI and copper pair aggregation)

I'm not denying cable and coax has led to important contributions;
it's not [as] tightly regulated for content by the FCC, and, at a
technical level, it's a marvelous piece of infrastructure.

>
>> The combination of municipally-granted monopolies and utility
>> companies reminds me of a recent story in West Michigan where a guy
>> was {fined|evicted|home condemned} (I don't recall which) because he
>> wasn't attached to municipal utilities in his area. It wasn't that his
>> home was unsanitary, unsafe, or polluting nearby areas, he just wasn't
>> attached to the grid, law required that he be attached to the grid,
>> and so he got in trouble.
>
> I have no problem with this [given the lack of details].  Above a level
> of population density it is virtually impossible to have a modern
> dwelling [of reasonable cost] that is sanitary, safe, non-polluting,
> *and* off-the-grid.  His waste water and excrement have to go somewhere.
> I have zero problem with my local municipal authorities running these
> people straight out of town.  There are sound reasons I can't raise pigs
> in my 1/2 acre back yard two miles from downtown.

I can't find the article, but I recall this guy had a motorhome, a
drainage field (much like my parents have, as do some friends of mine
just on the west side of Kenowa Ave), and a piece of property large
enough to have a river come through it, which was where he obtained
his water.

>
>> Also, do you know why T1 lines are so expensive? They're regulated.
>> You get a kickass SLA to go along with that 1.544Mb/s connection, and
>> someone will be woken in the middle of the night to repair it for you
>> if it goes down. *That* costs. Even if he wasn't unionized, the guy
>> you woke at 2AM because your T1 went down wouldn't charge unskilled
>> labor rates.
>
> There are also technical issue beyond bandwidth: latency, for one.  I've
> had a fair amount of experience with interactive [ssh/telent/etc...]
> over DSL and other connections verses boring and poky old T1
> connectivity.  The T1 very often feels faster.

-- 
:wq

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