RE: [MLUG - DISCUSSION] DSL in the area ??

[Jonathan King <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

On Thu, 7 Jun 2001, Spurling, Shannon  wrote:

> That's because Verizon owns the phone line. Problem is that the phone
> line is a wire. It's not cost effective for another company to have to
> run a whole new system of phone wires in order to compete (not in this
> area), seeing as how it has taken about 75 years to get to this point.

Well, it's expensive to run the connections, but this argument is a bit
weird.  I mean, the cable system has essentially installed a comparable
system in waaay less than 75 years.  Indeed, part of the problem with the
phone line, vis-a-vis offering DSL, is that the system was painfully
accreted over a 75 year period.  If there were a phone-line-eating virus
out there that wiped out the Columbia phone system, the whole thing could
(and would) be replaced at a lower year 2001 cost than the original.  But
maybe not all in copper...

I think the real problem these days is that there is almost no real money
to be made on anything that you can do over phone wires no matter who you
are.  Cable might look good for the moment, but in reality, I don't
think that is going to end up in much better shape.

> Besides, how many sets of phone wires would you want running to your
> house.

I'm betting that in the not-so-distant future, the answer might be: zero.

> It's like the water company or sewer. Hey, lets deregulate sewer next!
> :-)

That's been done, of course; it's called a septic tank. ;-)  More
seriously, sewers are going to end up being a big growth industry for the
city.  There's a lot of Columbia that's not actually "in" Columbia yet
because developers tried to save a few bucks and cobble up local sewer
solutions back in the 70s (or whenever).  This turned out to be a, um,
crappy idea.

Water is an obvious utility around here because the stuff is as cheap as
water.  In California, however, it turns out to be a different story.  In
San Diego, water comes down in a pipeline from LA, or (soon) across in a
pipeline from the Imperial Valley.  Even the threat of the second source
for municipal water was enough for San Diego to get a better deal than
they previously had.

> Some things just lend them selves to being utilities.
> Lets privatize and deregulate the road system, all the way down to
> your drive way... Then try and get a different road provider. :-)

I'm not sure what you mean here.  Right now, I only have one road
provider, and it STINKS! I want another one, please. :-) OK, so the
provider for highways stinks. Personally, I live on the same street as Ray
Beck, and our street is beautiful. :-)  Anyway, turnpikes have
historically been pretty good moneymakers.

In all seriousness, the classical determinants of whether something is a
reasonable candidate for being a public utility are big infrastructure
costs and the requirement of universal access.  Note that "broadband"
internet access isn't really universally available in town; that should
probably piss people off more than it seems to.  Affordability is also
often given out as a reason, but that's more a question of who (or
whether) you subsidize than whether something is a utility or not.

So local piping and wiring is always going to be a big problem.  But
central supply (or water or long distance or cable programming or internet
access) is often quite a different matter.  Now, my biggest peeves with
the current cable system is that you get no choice in who provides what
programming.  Yeah, there will always be a "last mile" cost here, but
suppose there were another content provider out there who charged less for
what you'd ordinarily get or offered channels more ala carte.  This would
be a cinch to do over the current generation of cable systems, but the
fact this competition would substantially lower prices means that no cable
company will do this unless compelled to.

[big snip, now about stringing new copper]

> In some large cities, that's a possibility. In the Columbia area? You
> can forget it until you get about the size of Springfield. It's not
> really crazy, it's kind of how things have to work.

Is anybody really going out to rewire Springfield in copper?  That would
totally surprise me.

jking

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