On Dec 19, 2010, at 6:21 PM, Richard A Steenbergen wrote: > On Sun, Dec 19, 2010 at 05:58:26PM -0800, Leo Bicknell wrote: >> >> I dream of a day where we have municipal fiber to the home, leased to >> any ISP who wants to show up at the local central office for a dollar >> a two a month so there can be true competition in end-user services. > > Take a second and think about what THAT would do to the ratio wars. > Imagine if any hosting/content provider, with potentially hundreds or > thousands of gigabits of unused inbound capacity on their networks, > could easily get into providing IP service to eyeballs. Even ignoring > the existing 95th percentile silliness like "free inbound transit", > which would no doubt rapidly evaporate under this kind of model, the > difference in efficiencies between the highly competetive hosting world > and the highly non-competetive last mile world are simply staggering.
You say this as if having such a disruption would be a bad thing. > For many content networks, it would be an opportunity to start making > money on their bits instead of paying for them, and networks without > content expertise would be in serious trouble. > I'm not seeing the problem here. Like any business in a changing climate, they would have to either develop expertise or perish. > I personally can't think of a single thing with more potential for > massive disruption to the business models of incumbent providers. There > are so many billions of dollars at stake protecting the status quo that > it's not even funny, which IMHO is why you'll never see any of this > happen in the US, in any kind of scale at any rate. :) > Yes... This is where the "market makes it best" philosophy fails. When the market has become entrenched in one way of doing things, a better way can face serious opposition because of this very fact. Personally, I don't see such a disruption as a down-side. I think it would be the introduction of a relatively level playing field in an area where the playing field has long been very uneven. Owen