FCCs RFC for the Definition of Broadband

Thu Aug 27 14:52:52 UTC 2009

Once upon a time, Leo Bicknell <bicknell at ufp.org> said:
> When the original
> rural telephone network was pushed ROI's of 50 years were talked about.
> There's plenty of infrastructure built every day with ROI's of 20 years.

How much of that was built in the last 15 years though (where now it
needs to be replaced before it has been paid for)?  In the 1990s,
BellSouth pushed hard here, rolled out fiber to the neighborhoods, and
deployed ISDN-capable equipment everywhere.  ISDN was available at every
single address in town by around 1995 (allegedly we were one of if not
the first moderate-sized city with ISDN everywhere).

Then it turned out ISDN was a flop, and DSL came along, which wouldn't
run over that nice big fiber plant.  They had to start rolling out
remote DSLAMs all over town.  Shortly after they had most of the city
covered, ADSL2 came along, and they had to start upgrading again.

Granted, the cable plant (whether copper, fiber, coax, or avian
datagram) is not quite the same, but the bean-counters look at it as "we
were supposed to have <bignum>-year ROI on project 1, 2, and 3, and we
didn't get it; why should I believe we'll get it on project 4?".

-- 
Chris Adams <cmadams at hiwaay.net>
Systems and Network Administrator - HiWAAY Internet Services
I don't speak for anybody but myself - that's enough trouble.