[Gllug] Screen I just have to share

[Vincent AE Scott]

Mark Lowes(hamster at korenwolf.net)@Thu, May 16, 2002 at 12:59:09PM +0100:
> On Thu, 2002-05-16 at 12:39, Vincent AE Scott wrote:
> 
> > looking forward tho, i'd expect the QoS of *dsl to improve.  once a
> > technology reaches the mass market enough people will come to accept it
> > as a guaranteed service.  one thats always available.  think about how
> > no one these days expects to have an unreliable telephone.  but 10 years
> > ago calling international was hit and miss sometimes.
> > expectations change, and with that so will the service offered.  i just
> > wish it was sooner rather than later.
> 
> At which point the costs will rise or there will be charges for usage of
> the adsl service, while bandwidth costs have come down they still are a
> significant portion of the ISP running costs and they need to be covered
> and from the ISP point of view ADSL is an expensive service with a low
> cost to the consumer.  As many ISPs and carriers are proving you can't
> provide the service at less than it costs to provision without joining
> the queue for ch11 protection.

not necessarily.  the cost may go up in the short to middle term, but in
the long term it may well drop.  the cost of calling international on
PSTN used to be prohibitive.  today tho, you can call the US for a
fraction of the cost that BT charges for national calls.  

now, if we can just skip straight over to the long term, then we can
have a cheap, fast and reliable service.  But thats not going to happen.

I have seen mention on otehr lists about the charges ISP's face for
bandwidth from hungry *dsl users.  it doesnt look good for the end
users.  BT have already cut their 'anytime' dial up service down to 16
hours a day.  and starting in june (IIRC) it'll be 12 hours, oh, and
they upped the price by 100p aswell.

if projects like consume ever take off big, i.e. reach the mass market,
then maybe we'll have a really good free service.  effectively removing 
the incumbant telco's from the loop.  problems will arrise with having
wide area links over long distances, but thats where saturation will be
important.  alas it's a chicken and egg situation, as long as the ball
keeps rolling, there is still hope for a truly free[1] internet.

-v

[1] other than the personal costs for powering nodes and the time to
admin them.

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