re: adsl

[David Farber <farber@central.cis.upenn.edu>]

Posted-Date: Mon, 13 Dec 1993 08:51:42 -0500
Date: Mon, 13 Dec 93 08:50:16 -0500
From: shap@viper.cis.upenn.edu (Jonathan Shapiro)
To: farber@central.cis.upenn.edu
Cc: interesting-people@eff.org
Subject: Re: ADSL


   The scary thing was that the Pac Bell plan for fiber is not a data highway,
   but a CATV plant! At least according to the person I talked to, it will be
   500 channel delivery system with relatively little back channel capability.
   They are blinded by the Video on Demand market (even though 500 channels is
   not enough for that even).


   Robert J. Berger
   InterNex Information Services, Inc.


Pac Bell is a strange case.  You would think that they would have
among the highest demand for such services because of Silicon Valley,
but just the opposite is true.  There are several things going on in
Silicon Valley that reduce demand:


1) Presence of BARRNET makes telco provision of service redundant for
   now, and most customers do not plan ahead on facilities.


2) Largest potential customers (HP, DEC, IBM) have internal private
   networks.


3) Ease of access to ADN means midrange customers have no need of the
   telco-provided service.


4) Incompetent implementation of ISDN (lots of islands) has led customers
   to conclude that the best service is to be had by cutting the telco
   out of the loop, or by using ISDN to a local POP provided by their
   company.  Also ISDN cost is still prohibitive.


5) Ample supply of expertise for companies that wish to go their own
   way means people do.  The valley is an area where *individuals*
   have sufficient expertise in sufficient numbers that offering
   dial-up IP to end customers can be a profitable business.


Also, the availability of dial-in POPs, and the cheap cost with which
companies can install company-specific POPs within the valley
essentially means that the demand is nil.


So there is less demand for backbone infrastructure in the computing
community in the Bay Area than anywhere else, and a Telebit running
V.42 is quite a satisfactory way to run an X terminal or a (slow)
dial-up NFS link.




Jonathan