Agreed, the payback time on the investment of miles of fiber optic cable
would be very long given the relatively low income stream that the service
will generate. Before high-speed internet came along, the cable TV
industry had a very high debt load and couldn't afford to upgrade there
systems from coax to fiber. With the additional revenue, I think that has
changed somewhat, but it is still a very expensive proposition. This
illustrates one of the possible negatives of the the additional competition
which may come from PLC. If a third player is thrown into the mix, that will
most likely mean even lower prices for high speed service (a good thing).
Unfortunately, it may mean less money will be available in the long term
for one of the players to bring fiber-to-the-home. Of course one could
argue that the inherent bandwidth limitations of PLC could be the
carrot that incentivises one of their competitors to bring fiber-to-the-home
as this would allow for a premium level of service (higher bandwidth) that
PLC could not deliver. Its not clear to me however that people would be
willing to pay for this extra bandwidth if they already have DSL like
performance. Its hard to say how all this will shake out.
BTW, I am curious why nobody has tried exploiting the MMDS band
(2.5 to 2.7 GHz) for broadband service. Fixed costs are probably
on par with PLC, but bandwidth would be higher. Unlike LMDS (28 GHz)
the frequency is still low enough that there are no rain fade effects.
73 de Mike,
W4EF.......................................................................
----- Original Message -----
From: "George K. Watson" <watson@sierracmp.com>
To: <RFI@contesting.com>
Sent: Thursday, June 05, 2003 6:04 AM
Subject: RE: [RFI] alternative to PLC
> >> Why on earth do power companies want to send data signals over power...
>
> Simple business. The difference between leverageing their existing wire
> infrastructure and having to string thousands of miles of fiber would be
> tremendous.
>
> George K. Watson
> K0IW
> Managing Director,
> Magnolia Road Internet Cooperative
> www.magnoliaroad.net
>
> _______________________________________________
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> RFI@contesting.com
> http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/rfi
>
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