

Why Isn't the Price of Broadband Obeying Moore's Law? - ca98am79
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/mimssbits/25748/?p1=A4

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frgbhnmnjh
Because the cost of digging up sidewalks, laying fiber, installing routers and
switches has F __* all to do with transistor density?

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frgbhnmnjh
Although strangely it does seem that the size of hamburgers does follow
Moore's law.

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mooism2
And the Burger King quarter-tonner is particularly tasty.

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koepked
I wish the author hadn't decided to use Moore's Law as a standard to measure
the price against. It takes away from the point, or maybe is the wrong point
entirely. I do feel prices are higher than they need to be for the consumer,
and I very much feel this is because I as a consumer (at least where I live)
have only one choice in the matter, cable or DSL. I wish we were debating that
and not discussing why Moore's Law doesn't apply to this situation.

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eru
Have a look at the comments on that site. Very US centric. People are
proposing all sorts of theories, while ignoring the data point from outside
the US. And the article itself points those things out.

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f1gm3nt
Because Moore's Law does not apply to broadband.

"Moore's law describes a long-term trend in the history of computing
hardware." - <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_law>

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fleitz
Because Moore's law speaks to transistor density, mentions nothing of price,
let alone broadband price, and the last mile of the broadband market is
dominated by the market forces of regulatory capture and cartels. Also, the
dominant technology in the last mile is copper wire, not silicon.

I used to pay $30 a month for dial-up (14.4 Kbps), and now pay $40 for 7.5
Mbps, thats a doubling factor of 8.6 over ~20 years which is roughly 2.3 years
per doubling, thats awfully close to Moore's law. The reason prices aren't
decreasing is that new applications are coming out which consume the extra
bandwidth and that people value the decreased time to load more than the
reduced amount of money. It's the same reason that a processor still costs
$200.

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Tamerlin
I wish more people would take the small amount of time required to find out
what Moore's Law really is. Since it only addresses increases in transistor
budgets (due to density), it has nothing to do with price.

Another point that more people need to understand is that price = cost +
margin. In a competitive market, that margin is determined by perceived value,
so if you managed to convince someone that your widget is worth more than the
next guy's, you can charge them a higher price... even if you originally
bought the widget from the same supplier as the next guy.

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fleitz
The other issue to consider is how much price affects the perception of value.

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Tamerlin
Good point.

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pmjordan
My Shannon–Hartley theorem applied to a pair of copper wires trumps your
Moore's law.

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Groxx
Simple.

 _Because it doesn't have to_ (in the USA). The market drives price, not
Moore, and people are willing to pay the relatively cheap cost to get internet
in most locations.

And because the long tail to distribution in the USA is _very_ long indeed,
due to all the space, and that takes a lot of time and money which is sucked
from the people who have it / can afford it.

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makmanalp
What makes me curious is why transistor density _does_ follow Moore's law. My
theory is that it sets a benchmark to manufacturers.

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JoachimSchipper
It's well-known that Intel roadmaps are influenced by the expectations created
by Moore's law, yes.

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makmanalp
Now I'm _really_ interested, could you show me a press release or a news
article or something that mentions this? I've long suspected that this was the
case but I can't really prove it.

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klipt
There are a couple of references here:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_law#As_a_target_for_i...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_law#As_a_target_for_industry_and_a_self-
fulfilling_prophecy)

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3pt14159
Because of the cost of digging up sidewalks etc (as mentioned:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1694456>)

But ALSO because of the massive teaming people calling their cable company
when their wireless network doesn't work. Ever wonder why they give away
wireless networks with data plans? It's to streamline the service they give to
their buyers. It isn't just anybody that can setup a router or diagnose a DNS
problem from a loss of connectivity one.

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hitonagashi
Perhaps because of increasing amounts of people wanting broadband, and it
being viewed as a civil right, the prices have to be held in order to support
the network expansion to the more rural areas?

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eru
Perhaps. But you should look at what the companies are really spending their
money on. That argument only works if the share of (rural) investment in
infrastructure is sufficiently high.

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inboulder
Why Isn't the Price of Sheep in Sudan Obeying Moore's Law?

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michaelhalligan
I pay $2,500/month for full use of a 1gbps circuit at one of my datacenters.
10 years ago I would have paid about $250k/month for that sort of capacity
(and another $100k for a router/firewall that could handle it).

Bandwidth has definitely gotten significantly cheaper, which of course doesn't
solve the broadband problem. If you live in the suburbs, or on a farm, then
you've chosen a lifestyle which is inherently wasteful & inefficient, too much
so to facilitate rapid infrastructure upgrades. Move to a city if this matters
to you. Here in SF I pay $33/month for a synchronous 100mbps ethernet
connection.

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timr
Who do you use for the 100mbps connection?

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michaelhalligan
<http://web-pass.com/> .. We actually found our apartment complex by calling
up every building on their list of lit buildings and asking if they had any
condos or apartments for rent. Turned out that there are at least 3 other
geeks here I know!

My friend John has a similar offer in Seattle too, at
<http://condointernet.net/>.

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timr
Yeah, that's what I figured. Unfortunately, I'm not willing to move for an
internet connection.

(For those who are wondering, this is an extremely special case -- most home
bandwidth in the bay area is in the <10Mbps range, asymmetric. The OP is using
a service that's available at only a handful of SF apartment buildings.)

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michaelhalligan
It's growing, quickly. Others are entering this space, their main obstacle
(besides the cost of running fiber) is that so many buildings have signed
exclusivity agreements with comcast which have questionable legality. The
economics make it easier to do in a city.. pay $20k to run fiber to a building
with 1100 units, sell 25% of those units at $35/month, you gross $120k/year
from that building. You probably have another $10k-$12k in equipment costs per
building as well, but this sort of a network is quite simple to run.

This sort of connectivity will never be feasible in the suburbs without
massive government subsidies (something I had hoped our current administration
would see the value in).

