

OPEC 2.0: Bandwidth is the New Oil - pierrefar
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/30/opinion/30wu.html?hp

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biohacker42
I can't upmod this enough.

The higher telco profits come at a great cost to the economy as a whole.
Bandwidth is today just as important to economic growth as any other basic
infrastructure.

The geographic challenge of the US is a red herring. Monopolistic laws,
regulations and just plain old collusion, along with very high barriers to
entry (regulations again) are responsible for the sorry state of US bandwidth.

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davidw
I wasn't very impressed. Comparing bandwidth to oil seems like a silly way to
start (hint: bandwidth isn't something that you have to pump out of the ground
in faraway lands), even if the rest of it actually contains some good points
before returning to the contrived comparison in the conclusion: "Americans are
as addicted to bandwidth as they are to oil. The first step is facing the
problem."

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byrneseyeview
It's easy to find holes in the analogy. But part of his point is that this is
an easier problem to fix, because the scarcity is artificial. If we could
legislate more oil into existence, that would be an easy problem to solve,
too.

I'm not sure how serious an issue bandwidth really is, though. It doesn't seem
to be the limiting factor in many activities.

~~~
davidw
> It's easy to find holes in the analogy.

That's the sign of a bad analogy. He should have just made his point (a
sensible one) and got on with it, without what to me looks like attention-
grabbing hand waving.

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electric
This is not a very good comparison.

Oil is a finite resource. You can increase infrastructure to get more but in
the end there is no more than a finite amount of oil on the planet.

'Bandwidth' on the other hand is infrastructure dependent. Increase the number
and width of pipes (or tubes! :) and you increase data throughput.

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jonmc12
No resource is infinite. Technically, we could make more oil too. Just build
some carbon lifeforms and give them the right environment for a few million
years. In fact there is plenty of oil in the earth that we just can't get to
because of the cost of retrieval.

The point is, once the cost of adding bandwidth exceeds the value to the
market due to shortages of materials, energy, real estate, maintenance, etc
you run into the same situation. Bandwidth availability has an s-curve like
any other resource, and once you pass a certain threshold its just too
expensive to add more pipes. It may not happen soon, but it will happen
eventually. Its the same problem on a different time scale.

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robg
An example of that S-curve today - my only possible "broadband" connection
these days is satellite. And I'm only 100 miles from Boston.

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robg
I'm dealing with a satellite connection because state and local governments
don't yet understand the role of IT infrastructure as an alternative to
highway infrastructure. Problem is, the flow of highway tax dollars doesn't
include IT either. I've seen some calculations to suggest how much oil could
be saved if office workers were allowed to tele-commute one or two days a
week. The debate is moving in the right direction, but this failure is a clear
instance where the federal government needs to take a much more active role -
just like with the Interstate Highway System.

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mdasen
The article is just flat out wrong.

What makes oil special is that it cannot be produced. It is finite. Bandwidth
can be produced. While we might be dominated by a few companies, there is
nothing stopping you from raising money and building out your own fiber. Yes,
it's a massive undertaking to build a fiber network, but it can be done.

With oil, we can't make more of it as demand increases. We can lay more fiber.
Likewise, a country without oil can't turn itself into a country with oil
while a company without fiber can make itself into a company with fiber.

While we don't have a plethora of people owning fiber, if the price ever
starts going up like oil, more producers will enter and the prices will stay
in check. That isn't the case with oil.

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noonespecial
This part is somewhat bogus however:

 _Many “owners” of spectrum either hardly use the stuff or use it in highly
inefficient ways. At any given moment, more than 90 percent of the nation’s
airwaves are empty.

The solution is to relax the overregulation of the airwaves and allow use of
the wasted spaces. Anyone, so long as he or she complies with a few basic
rules to avoid interference, could try to build a better Wi-Fi and become a
broadband billionaire._

That's like saying that 90% of the sky is empty so air traffic control is not
doing its job well enough. Just give everyone a pilot's license and tell them
to watch out for other planes...

The empty spaces are _important_.

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senthil_rajasek
Too many hypothetical arguments, "likely..." "almost..." "if we are not
careful..." etc.,

Today, I am able to watch instructional/recreational videos at a reasonable
download rate with my cable connection, I do not want to digress and go into
how much I am or should be paying for it (read FREE).

Luckily, I still remember the Web 1.0 bubble days and here is an article about
a company (Enron :-) ) that wanted to trade bandwidth.

<http://www.internetnews.com/xSP/article.php/8_253861>

Also, if I have to speak for the Internet backbone providers alone, then it is
certainly not a cartel.

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MaysonL
No: bandwidth is the new Windows.

