Industry

Making a Connection

Raph said something about telephony that's stuck in my head:

For my setup, I'd want two pieces of hardware. One would be exactly the same hardware as an Apple AirPort, but the phone port would be for voice calls, not for the modem. ... The other piece of hardware is simply A/D and D/A converters, an 802.11b card, and a battery.

Exactly like a typical cordless phone!

One reason why I didn't pay attention, in other than a most minor way, to VoIP was that Internet Telephony, such as it is, required a general-purpose computer with a microphone and a speaker. At work, I don't have a microphone, and at home I'm not constantly in front of my computer. It did not apply to my life.

I had forgotten that protocol implementations are not necessarily tied to specific hardware.

Apple unconsciously extends the comparison: "Like the base station of a cordless phone, the AirPort Base Station uses a physical connection to access the Internet and a wireless connection to communicate with AirPort-enabled computers."

3:35:17 PM # Google It!
categories: Industry

In 1995, NYNEX added a flat-rate regional pricing plan. I jumped on it. Until Verizon raised the rate, I paid $9 per month for unlimited regional calls. Now I pay $14 per month. Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that I paid $14 per month since 1995, the year I began spending a lot of time online — because of the flat-rate pricing.

Cost of Internet Access
	Phone Company	Internet Service Provider
Monthly Cost	$14	$20
Duration (months)	108	108
Total	$1512	$2160

$3672 for 9 years of online time, $408 per year, most of which I used.

In that time, we've moved three times. I've switched ISPs five times, and cable providers twice. The name of my phone company has changed, but it's still the same RBOC.

The cost of providing a clean television signal to my house, over cable or satellite, has risen steadily. The following uses a rough average.

Cost of Cable Television
Monthly Cost	$45
Duration (months)	108
Total	$4860

$4860 for nine years of television, $540 per year, most of which I didn't watch.

Last November, I paid $3200 for a new roof. It's guaranteed for 20 years.

1:58:58 PM #
categories: Industry

It's my experience that people don't mind paying for things, but they do mind feeling cheated.

12:34:11 PM #
categories: Industry

Paying

How do you want to pay for your broadband? Do you want to lease or own?

Suppose it costs $1000 to pull a low-latency, high-bandwidth wire to your house, including labor, the wire, taxes, and profit. Suppose further that it costs $1 to connect that wire to an upstream switch. The cost of maintaining that connection is the cost of not being able to connect another wire, once the upstream switch runs out of ports, and the cost of providing an address for the connection; let's set this cost to $2.

This is a fixed line. Is it necessary to authenticate the connection, to assure that the billed party is the connected party? That the end-points have not changed? I don't think so.

Would you prefer to pay the $1000 cost of pulling the wire when the wire is pulled, or would you prefer to carry the cost over a certain number of months, with an associated finance charge? Once you've paid off the principle, plus any interest, the line is yours. You continue to pay to lease the upstream port and address(es).

What about moves, adds, and changes?

The cost of those would depend on how the facility containing the upstream port is wired. In the best of all possible worlds, no physical change would be necessary.

What if you change to another provider?

Does that provider have equipment in the same facility? Do you need to get another line pulled to a different facility? Is it possible to transfer the address?

Alternatively, you can pay $50 per month, for 36 months, and we'll take care of all the little details, plus you'll get these other features for free. Early cancellation fees apply.

Which would you prefer?

Note: These numbers are fabricated.

12:25:54 PM # Google It!
categories: Industry