> Google can afford to start almost any project they want, and they are > in a unique position to negotiate peering and access to a ton of > bandwidth,
... kind of like all the other major incumbents like at&t, Comcast, and all those. Of course, the difference is that at&t, Comcast, etc., all have cable TV offerings, and these companies can all see that inexpensive high speed Internet access has the potential to destroy the lucrative existing TV subscription model that they enjoy. Claims that the US is somehow magically different than other countries sound pretty feeble at this point; service providers like Sonic.net are doing FTTH, and municipal broadband projects are sufficiently scary to incumbents that they've spent years fighting them in court, rather than just letting them get built and then collapse - so apparently the incumbents are pretty certain that these projects would be successful. 250GB/month isn't a whole lot of data when you look at high-def movies. You can exceed 250GB/mo by running a flat 1Mbps. Comcast apparently has a 305Mbps tier (at quite a steep price). Coupled with a 250GB/mo cap, that's what, a few hours of 100% use? :-) Comcast fans need not beat me up, I know there've been some "changes" recently, but I don't know exactly what... It would be nice to see some useful options. I mean, we all hate frame relay, right, but the idea of a CIR with an ability to make use of extra capacity the network might happen to have available makes a certain amount of sense. I don't expect to see anything like that anytime soon for all the obvious reasons. Heh. ... JG -- Joe Greco - sol.net Network Services - Milwaukee, WI - http://www.sol.net "We call it the 'one bite at the apple' rule. Give me one chance [and] then I won't contact you again." - Direct Marketing Ass'n position on e-mail spam(CNN) With 24 million small businesses in the US alone, that's way too many apples.
