On Wed, 22 Jan 2003, Hewitt Tech stated in their Email: hewitt> From: Hewitt Tech <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> hewitt> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] hewitt> Date: Wed, 22 Jan 2003 19:26:40 -0500 hewitt> Subject: Re: Email hosting (was: ATTBI/Comcast rant) hewitt> hewitt> Ah yes, but why, after a pile of telecommunications companies hewitt> went bankrupt laying thousands of miles of buried fibre-optics hewitt> cables are we still talking about dial-up connections? What hewitt> *does* it cost to deliver high speed? For that matter, I think hewitt> copper/fibre is passé. It should be possible to use wireless hewitt> and it ought to be dirt cheap. When Mediaone delivered hewitt> cable-modem service in our area they thought they'd be doing hewitt> well if they got a 3% penetration. One of their techs told me hewitt> that in fact they were achieving 17% and higher depending on hewitt> the town they were operating in. I know there has been a big hewitt> improvement in the speed of connections over the last few hewitt> years but we're not exactly using 110 baud modems anymore are hewitt> we? Should I expect to pay $100k for a shiny 2.8 gig P4 hewitt> computer? Ah the good old days, not!
Oh yeah - I remember buying an AT&T 8MHz 8086 PC, twin floppies, no HDU, mono (green) monitor, 640KB RAM, and I paid twice what I just paid for a shiny new Athlon with 512MB DDR memory (another 64MB on video card), 60GB HDU, CD-burner, 19" flat-panel... but I have to admit, I still have that old 8086 ;) hewitt> hewitt> -Alex hewitt> hewitt> P.S. What we're seeing here is a consolidation of providers hewitt> who can get away with high prices because they are monopolies. hewitt> Verizon hasn't exactly pushed DSL and most of the companies hewitt> that depended on them to provide the lines were driven out of hewitt> business. These guys really aren't competing. I saw a hewitt> discussion on the Libranet mailing list recently where some hewitt> Canadians were relating the cost of DSL and cable-modem in hewitt> their areas. They were paying about 1/3 of what we pay. This is beginning to sound like a broken record! First it was prescription drugs - up north the senior citizens have buses which transport them to Canada to fill their prescriptions (some companies are even opening up "store fronts" to eliminate the trip), and now it's the hi-tech world. While I agree with Ben on how drastic the cuts have been for higher speed connections, it's not like the telco's are constantly paying out funds to totally upgrade their systems. Once a community is wired/rewired (be it phone or cable), it's wired. There are repairs associated with the new equipment, and the usual upgrades from some central point to "the world", but the initial outlay of funds to wire the community, the lion's share of the costs, is done. And I thought the break-up of MA-BELL was supposed to increase competition and decrease prices... ;) dlr hewitt> hewitt> ----- Original Message ----- hewitt> From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> hewitt> To: "Greater NH Linux User Group" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> hewitt> Sent: Wednesday, January 22, 2003 7:00 PM hewitt> Subject: Re: Email hosting (was: ATTBI/Comcast rant) [... snip ...] -- "Linux: Because a PC is a terrible thing to waste." -- As seen on the 'net -- _______________________________________________ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
