Expensive Dark Fiber Becoming Cheap Lit Fiber
from the bandwidth-boost dept
During the last telco bubble, which was pretty closely related to the dot com bubble, one of the big speculative areas concerned just how much bandwidth was going to be needed -- leading to a number of companies spending billions on laying fiber optic cables all over the world. Of course, like plenty of other big infrastructure plays (remember Iridium?), these are incredibly risky ventures. You have to judge the market right, have the technology work properly and get the timing right -- all in a way to make sure you can get a return on a tremendous capital outlay. In the case of all this fiber, much of it has been laying "dark" over the last few years -- allowing some companies to snap it up cheaply (again, similar to Iridium). Of course, unlike Iridium, it seemed pretty obvious that eventually bandwidth needs would increase, and that dark fiber would become pretty handy. Om Malik reports that more and more dark fiber is being lit up, and the "bandwidth glut" is starting to decrease. There's even talk of laying more fiber across the Pacific. Still, it is interesting to see yet another case where a speculative boom funded the infrastructure that later becomes quite useful for pennies on the dollar. Update: And just like that, Level 3 has snapped up ICG's fiber.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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Nice
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Re: Nice
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Re:
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Want to raise speeds? Stop using your cell phone as a primary phone for your house. The local phone companies lose money that way...they own the infrastructure. and when you don't give them minutes, the universal service fund doesn't get replenished and they can't afford upgrades.
However, I have 45 mbps at home and work, and i could do all of the same things on 7 or 8 mbps. Greedy Telecos? how about greedy consumers.
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Re:
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Lag = Sucks
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Re: Rhett
remember the day when people said, "Who on earth needs a 1 gig hard drive". ... uhm... times change and if you make it available, people WILL FIND WAYS to use it.
and when the phone company can give me a POT without the all the add ons or forcing me into a "package steal" (oops deal) then i will get a line again. i actually want one but i refuse to pay those prices for services i dont want or need.
and yes, i work in the telecom industry.
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sounds an awful lot like...
"640K ought to be enough for anybody."
which apparently was NOT attributed to Bill Gates as has been rumored.
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I'm not sure what individuals would buy 100mbps connections for or who they would impress. Though a few years down the road I can see wanting 100mbps to download a high definition movie off of iTunes.
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UK
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Basically
If you think 100mbit up/down to your house is excessive, you are a fag and I will rob your house.
There, is that ignorant enough for you Rhett!
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More bandwidth buy no increase in upload speed for
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Bandwidth Hungry Games
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it's not the cost of the fibre!
thus, when the specialist companies who spool cables do it, it's always worth putting many more fibres in than will be necessary, especially to ensure that if there's damage you'll hav redundancy.
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Remember...
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Re: Remember...
Sorry folks, ILM and Pixar just announced that they are going out of business...
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Rhett
How can you boo hoo someone who sees a better value per dollar?
I work in telco, and see this attitude all the time. The attitude itself will soon be extinct due to the fact that wireless is making leaps and bounds and the old "We have the pipe what're you gonna do about it" mentality is going to put my company out of business...
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Re: Rhett
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Re: To All This Bandwith Deboggle
Give me the power and I'll put it to good use....oh, but that would put me on the RIAA radar though Doh!!!!!
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Botnets
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UCFmethod, that's the funniest thing I've read all day. :)
Thanks for the laugh.
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Mr. Pickles
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What a waste
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HAHAHA
Just kidding. I just love to get these geeks all wired up because I myself am one and I would definitely find a use for 100mbit up/down
>UCFmethod, that's the funniest thing I've read all day. :)
>Thanks for the laugh.
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Holy Crap
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The Sticks
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100 MB need here
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Telco vs 100MBps
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....
100 MB need here by al on Apr 17th, 2006 @ 8:00pm
yes not one pc can use up to 100MB but i have over 10 pc at my house that 6 to 8 mb each. i can use it up fast.
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Out of curiousity.. what would you have these 10 pc's doing?
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And connect them to What?
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rhett
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