Decius wrote:
] Jeremy wrote:
]
] ] * Acknowledge that non-Internet communications equipment ...
]
] ] is economically obsolete ...
]
] I'm interested in hearing what other people on the site think
] about this.
]
] I agree with many of the things being said here, but I've
] stopped short of recommending this in the past. There seems to
] be an irrational undercurrent in this that wants to say "my
] stuff is better then your stuff" in an absolutist and
] unthinking way. There are certainly serious problems and
] limitations with the Internet Protocol suite, and in the last
] few years the quality of the "standards" the IETF and similar
] bodies have been producing has dropped dramatically.

you're correct in this regard. Simply replacing old stuff with new stuff doesn't help anyone. If anything, it causes prices to go up, because telecom infrastructure is expensive and the depreciation rates are much faster than they've ever been due to new technology cycles. I don't agree with sitting on 100 year old plant and milking it, but I don't agree with pulling fiber to the home either. Both are a waste of application and BOTH are responsible for the current problems in telecom.

The article misses the most key point in the whole situation. Investor sentiment. The Fail Fast philosophy might be helpful to get rid of the pain quicker, but ultimately, the same problem will exist, and that is that investors are not likely to return to the telecom industry because of all the pain and suffering that has already occured.

Expectations were too high for new competitors entering the market (and time frames too short), and now investors are fleeing RBOC investment because of their shoddy debt and eroding margins. Face it: investors aren't going to get excited about spending Billions of dollars on plant and infrastructure, only to get gross margins in the teens in 5 years. Fail fast is not an answer in and of itself.

] IP didn't win because its the most capable solution. It won
] because it existed in an environment where the telecom
] monopolies were actively trying to stall the development of
] digital networks, and IP was the hardest solution to control.

it also worked with everything as a design philosophy (ie, it was the opposite of proprietary).

] Hard to control doesn't always been optimal. Gnutella is not
] more efficient then napster.

neither does 'winner'. Look at everything around you. The optimal solution is rarely the 'winner' in the marketplace. This is why I don't believe in the standard (and inaccurate) interpretation of Darwin's theories. The 'best' answer to a problem rarely ends up being the one implemented. Look at Microsoft. Look at the automotive industry. The music industry. Even the HTTP protocol sucks (from an engineering standpoint) but a huge revolution has been built upon it.

] Having said that, I think its clear that IP has "won" and that
] with the deployment of IP being so ubiquitous that any future
] development must, at least, interoperate with it in order to
] be useful. I don't think we're going to replace it with
] something else anytime soon.

agreed. not even with IPv6.

] I raise this counter point only to provide the perspective
] needed to see what I think the FCC ought to be doing, which is
] that they ought to be agnostic. The FCC should no more prefer
] IP based solutions then other solutions. What it should do is
] create an environment where its possible for different
] solutions to be made available... an environment where it is
] possible to innovate. I don't want the government choosing a
] technological direction, and a future where non-IP based
] solutions are simply not possible is as much a threat to
] innovation as a future where the only technologies that are
] allowed are the ones that benefit the telecom companies.

I'll go even further than that. The FCC needs to do one thing and one thing only: keep the field open to fair competition. They did a good job with cellular, but why wireline seems to be such a problem is beyond me. Letting the RBOCs into LD is a joke. They haven't lived up to their end of the bargain. And if this is Powell's way of sending the message to investors that everything is going to be okay, then it's pretty lousy. RBOC investments will never ever have the growth potential of a competitor because of the ingrained culture present at all monopolies. Even if all things were equal (in terms of plant and revenue), they would still squander most of their profits and do zero R&D.

If we are to save one of the most important industries for our society, we MUST cultivate and nurture competition. The only way to do that is to ease the process of capitalization.

RE: The Paradox of the Best Network