| reply to rradina
Re: Whitacre was on to something There's a reason why analogies which compare limited resources (like clean water) to unlimited resources (like bandwidth) never work well... bandwidth renews itself every second of every minute of every hour [etc. etc.] for no additional cost, while clean water requires more and more money for every ounce of every gallon [etc. etc] that gets "created". (Point: ISPs have no financial justification for UBB... they merely want to create a 'false scarcity' in the minds of their customers [translation: they lie].)
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"Sorry for not responding to your post, but either I haven't seen it yet, or what you said was so devoid of substance that I found it utterly uninteresting." |
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 LinklistPremium
join:2002-03-03
Longport, NJ
kudos:5 | Bandwidth is not unlimited. It is limited by the infrastructure available and the costs of that infrastructure. The routers, wiring, fiber, switches, buildings, electric power, rights of way, etc all put limits on bandwidth available. |
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| Using the analogy (since you weren't paying attention), you're confusing the amount of water per second that can flow through the spigot with the total amount of water in the well. The "well" of bandwidth is absolutely unlimited. The costs involved with establishing the infrastructure are fairly fixed (and the infrastructure has already been paid for--ignoring CAPEX for the moment). The costs of operating the infrastructure are covered many times over by the money that customers already pay each month.
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"Sorry for not responding to your post, but either I haven't seen it yet, or what you said was so devoid of substance that I found it utterly uninteresting." |
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| reply to Linklist
said by Linklist:Bandwidth is not unlimited. It is limited by the infrastructure available and the costs of that infrastructure. The routers, wiring, fiber, switches, buildings, electric power, rights of way, etc all put limits on bandwidth available.
Those things you mentioned are fixed costs that have nothing to do with provisioning higher bandwidth. Providing higher speeds requires only replacing old equipment at the ends of the lines, and is relatively very cheap. If it weren't, this Korean ISP wouldn't be creating its own personal IPTV service.
In case you were wondering, this is a blatant violation of Net Neutrality. |
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rradina
join:2000-08-08
Chesterfield, MO | reply to mod_wastrel
Look past the merit of whether or not UBB can be justified and the use case fitness of a particular analogy. With my comment, I wanted to draw attention to the fact that only entities faced with little or no competition can act this way. My hope is to point out how ridiculous it is for a successful Bubble Bath company to fund the expansion of the water company. By blocking the activity, the water company is exhibiting influence that only a coercive monopoly can wield. This is exactly the type of situation that the US anti-trust laws control.
Since the ISP in Korea is allowed to wield this same power, they either don't have similar laws or their equivalent of the U.S. Attorney General/Department of Justice chooses to look the other way. Regardless, I find it particularly disgusting. For those that claim "welcome to capitalism", this isn't the form of capitalism encouraged here in the U.S. |
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