Is Wireless Disruptive? (was: RE: [LINK] Question: volume charges )

[Chirgwin, Richard]

I have to eschew my hyperbolic habits!

Re "what's the capacity of the fibre?", I guess I'm just wary of the way
capacity is added up. Any number for any given fibre is estimated either to
suit a marketing purpose ("this fibre has a maximum capacity of 560G bps"),
a funding lobby purpose ("professor Klerphel said with proper research
funding, his research project could multiply fibre capacity ten times"), a
political lobbying purpose ("Telstra is only using 10% of its fibre
capacity"), or to keep prices high, or ... there are too many competing
claims for me to trust any of them, even when I sympathise with the aims.

A concrete example: Redfern Photonics has a contract to supply
outdoor-installation-rated WDM kit for a vendor to US CLECs. The issue (this
might sound familiar to Linkers) is that the CLEC has fibre to its RIMs, and
that fibre as it stands doesn't deliver enough bandwidth for broadband to
the households. 

Upgrade is a slow and fairly expensive process; you can't just flick a
switch and get ten channels on the fibre. So there's a big gap between that
fibre's theoretical capacity and what the owner can actually do with it.

[An interesting conversation a couple of months back with the CEO, Dr
Richard Lauder. Making a small WDM card that handles outdoor installation
isn't trivial; try keeping a laser stable from below freezing to +60
degrees.]

> Only disruptive technologies like WLAN have the potential to show 
> that bandwidth, whether wired or wireless, is NOT scarce and should 
> not be metered out like food stamps in a world war.

Wireless bandwidth may or may not be scarce, but the capacity of a given
wireless system is limited. One AP serves a given number of users; put
another antenna in the same footprint, you get contention (and we don't have
any mechanism to resolve this contention at the moment, except for "I was
here first!").

I agree with you, George, that bit charging is a dog (although for different
reasons). But the infrastructure has to be paid for somehow.

RC

> -----Original Message-----
> From: George Bray [mailto:listoid@linkalarm.com]
> Sent: Thursday, 21 November 2002 15:46
> To: Chirgwin, Richard; link@anu.edu.au
> Subject: RE: [LINK] Question: volume charges
> 
> 
> At 11:50 AM +1000 21/11/02, Chirgwin, Richard wrote:
> 
> >Skip all that: leave aside the community model for a moment, 
> and address
> >instead the commercial wireless model. There isn't much of a 
> business model
> >at the moment; because you have to reach back into the wired 
> network at some
> >point. Work it out: an access point at (say) 25% loading 
> costs how much to
> >backhaul into the wired network?
> 
> Probably lot$ if the current charging regime continues.  My point was 
> that the telcos want everyone to think bandwidth is scarce but it's 
> not. Not in wireline, not in wireless. Telcos will continue to extend 
> volume charging to commercial wireless infrastructures as they roll 
> out. [You can see this failing now with GPRS]. The grass-roots 
> roll-out of community networks that can be used to their capacity is 
> one light at the end of the volume-billing tunnel, as I see it. It's 
> a long tunnel though.
> 
> Commercial wireless and wireline operators will be competing with 
> free/open/insecure wireless networks. If they're providing value in 
> the form of reliability, roaming, security then the market will 
> decide if these features are worth the price difference.
> 
> As you say, both wired and wireless networks have a certain capacity 
> - one that increases every time some new acronym is invented. But 
> can't we do a better job making use of the capacity we've already 
> built?
> 
> >  > current glass/wire networks (unused decades worth of 
> high bandwidth
> >>  infrastructure) could be "lit" as far as it reaches.
> >
> >This is partly urban myth, George. A lot of people like to 
> say "this fibre
> >has this capacity", but what does that mean? "Whatever I 
> want it to" is the
> >honest answer...
> 
> I really don't agree Richard. I wonder if you have any industry 
> figures on what the utilisation of installed fibre is? You can't tell 
> me T$ are using nearly all of their glass to capacity for the benefit 
> of bringing about equitable broadband access. Similarly, utilisation 
> of existing broadband capacity on copper networks is low due to 
> "marketing" restrictions. They won't sell a 300k/64k ADSL service to 
> Joe Rural, even though the exchange and the line quality permit it. 
> They won't enable the full line speed available to the customer 
> either.
> 
> In a political environment where there is pressure to increase 
> broadband access, you'd think the big brains would enable some of 
> this spare capacity to serve this end.
> 
> Telco's run aggressive businesses and, as we see too often, have 
> disdain for their customers and their obligation to the community. 
> Only disruptive technologies like WLAN have the potential to show 
> that bandwidth, whether wired or wireless, is NOT scarce and should 
> not be metered out like food stamps in a world war.
> 
> Stepping back, looking forward.  Can you see the current charging and 
> delivery models continuing in higher-bandwidth environments? How much 
> to download a DVD, or watch some pay TV in a browser? In broadband's 
> migration across the chasm between first adopters and widespread use, 
> somewhere along the line media owners and telcos need to ditch bit 
> charging to encourage greater participation.
> 
> 
> 	George
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