if you want to eliminate insurance, then you need to eliminate the liability,
which I don't think you want to do if you want to claim that this is 'life
critical'
David Lang
On Sat, 25 Mar 2023, Robert McMahon via Bloat wrote:
Hi Bruce,
I think you may be the right guy to solve this. I too remember the days of dry
wire sold by the RBOCs.
I found a structured wire fire alarm install to cost $100k for our building or
$20k per unit. The labor and materials is about $25k. The other $75k is
liability related costs, similar to a bike helmet, $10 in parts, $40 in
insurance. So it's not labor nor equipment that drives the expenses. My opinion
is poor people shouldn't have to pay for insurance to insurance companies,
companies that figure figures for a living.
A digression: I could do an LMR 600 passive cable system looped with Wilkinson
power dividers, patch antennas and nests to protect the egress escape ladder
for about $10 to $15K. Don't need an SLA. We've basically priced protecting
human lives to only rich people.
We need to use technology and our cleverness to fix this version of "expense
bloat."
Look at Boston public water for an example. Way too expensive to pipe water in from 15
miles away in the early days. So people who did it claimed alcoholism (and that
"immorality") would be eliminated by providing clean and pure potable public
water. Alcholics would choose pathogen free water over spirits. Rich people got enough
water for themselves and even for their private fountains so society stopped this
initiative.
It was a motivated doctor who taught rich people that their health was tied to
public health. And public health was being impacted because pathogens being
spread to poor people who didn't get potable public water would by addressed by
ubiquitous potable water supplies. The fire chief was put in charge. See Ties
That Bind
https://upittpress.org/books/9780822961475/
Now, in the U.S, most do get potable water even to flush a toilet. It's taken
for granted.
I think it's on us to do similar for digital communication networks. They're
needed far beyond entertainment, and we need to get public safety elements
engaged too.
Bob
On Mar 25, 2023, 2:08 PM, at 2:08 PM, Bruce Perens <[email protected]> wrote:
On Sat, Mar 25, 2023 at 1:44 PM rjmcmahon via Starlink <
[email protected]> wrote:
The point of the thread is that we still do not treat digital
communications infrastructure as life support critical.
When I was younger there was a standard way to do this. Fire alarms had
a
dedicated pair directly to the fire department or a local alarm
station.
This wasn't dial-tone, it was a DC pair that would drop a trouble
notification if DC was interrupted, and I think it would reverse
polarity
to indicate alarm. If DC was interrupted, that would also turn off the
boiler in the building.
Today my home fire alarms are wireless and have cellular back to their
main
Comcast connection, and detect CO, smoke, and temperature. This would
not
meet insurance requirements for a commercial building, they still have
all
of the sensors wired, with cellular backup.
I don't think you are considering what life-support-critical digital
communications would really cost. Start with metal conduit and
fire-resistant wiring throughout the structure. Provide redundant power
for
*every* fan-out box (we just had a 24-hour power interruption here due
to
storms). AT&T provides 4 hour power for "Lightspeed" tombstone boxes
that
fan out telephone, beyond that a truck has to drive out and plug in a
generator, or you are out of luck if it's a wide-are outage like we
just
had. Wire areas in a redundant loop rather than a tree. Supervise every
home so that interruptions are serviced automatically. Provide a 4-hour
SLA.
The phone company used to do what you are asking for. The high prices
this
required are the main reason that everyone has jumped off of using the
legacy telco for telephony.
_______________________________________________
Bloat mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/bloat
_______________________________________________
Bloat mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/bloat
