Say goodbye to Speakeasy

[Rich Braun]

Anthony Gabrielson <agabriel at home.tzo.org> wrote:
> It gives companies more incentive to develop there infrastructure.  In area
> like Boston it will take away a few options; however in other areas of the
> country in the long run it will increase the options as companies will have
> more incentive to spend the money on there infrastructure.

It won't work like that.  Locally, a company called RCN went out and raised $2
billion to do what you suggest.  It's had some amount of success but I doubt
it's enough to encourage entrepreneurs to toss a few more $billion into
infrastructure development.

The "incentive to invest" argument is always trotted out by PR departments
trying to convince regulators to back off.  It's virtually always a bald-faced
lie.

Jerry again:
> The bottom line on this is that we will need to wait and see how things
> start to fall out. As I mentioned, the states and local communities have
> some jurisdiction over the carriers.

Could you shed some light on what you're thinking of?  Taxation, regulatory
carrots and sticks, what?

Tom Metro <blu at vl.com> wrote:
> It seems we've come full circle. I wonder what the resurgence of
> dedicated line service is due to? Was it in anticipation of this FCC
> ruling, or is it being motivated by changing economics elsewhere in the
> equation?

It costs less to buy a dedicated line, I think.  But I don't know current
wholesale pricing levels.

> RCN now offers
> cable modem service for business (though the terms are a joke), but I
> don't think Comcast ever did.)
>...
> Either [FIOS service operators are] afraid businesses will take
> advantage of the bandwidth
> too much, or they are too excited about being able to sell video
> services to consumers (see above URL for a link to "Fios TV").

I think these are two halves of the same argument, which boils down to this: 
heavy bandwidth applications of the future will be consumer-oriented, not
business-focused.

Look at the PC market.  Today's highest margins are made on souped-up gamer
PCs, and right behind those are "media center" PCs designed to handle HDTV
video.  At some point we will all have wireless LANs delivering a separate
40-megabit HDTV video feed to each room of our house.  Is there any equivalent
for the average non-content-distribution business?  Not really--few businesses
have any reason to install a TV, except maybe a bar or a bowling alley, so why
would they need high-bandwidth Internet?  Is there any surprise that Dell's
small-biz deal-of-the-week is a free 15" flat-panel display bundled with its
$329 Celeron-D desktop?

-rich