On 23/09/2008, at 10:41 AM, Juha Saarinen wrote:
Matthew Poole wrote:
The easy answer at this point is that people keep on deluding themselves into thinking that wireless will be capable of replacing fibre as a fast, scalable service "real soon now"[tm]. Which is constantly proven to be testicles, but it muddies the waters just enough to confuse the lay observers.
Yes... where are our GPRS and CDMA wireless local loops? [1]
I'm pretty sure you can get them now can't you? I seem to recall Vodafone offering semi-portable GSM home phone thing. Woosh phone is the same sort of deal. Anyway, imagine if we hadn't had years of uncertainty about unbundling/ bitstream, and now both Labour and National promising money for fibre roll outs at some point in the future? If the government had just kept out of it, my bet is the serious ISPs and so on would have got on with it, instead of waiting for the next quick buck. Why do a fibre roll out when if you wait a year or two the govt might fund it for you? Why care about fibre at all when you can get to most of your customers with the only capital cost being an ATM PA for your Cisco box (bitstream)? Why pay any capital cost when you can wholesale from Orcon, and then wait a few years and sell them your customer base? How much of their HFC network has TelstraClear expanded since unbundling went in to place? How much of their own copper have they rolled out since bitstream came along? How much fibre/copper have ANY other providers rolled out since 2003? I'm not sure, but I think I put the blame for this state of affairs equally on Government and the ISPs - ISPs for pushing for unbundling for so long[1], and Government for entertaining the idea. Anyway, this sort of discussion isn't really appropriate for a strictly network operations mailing list, something like member-discuss(a)internetnz.mumble would be better or if you prefer, off-list flaming is welcomed. [1] We could probably narrow this down to several individuals. I mean, what regulatory liaison at an ISP is going to recommend to his upper management/board that unbundling is a waste of time and put himself out of a job? -- Nathan Ward