[Davisgig] Thoughts on "why the average user needs this"

[Steve McMahon]

Good questions.

The economics of gigabit are different from cable/dsl. Cable/DSL is dealing
with very low bandwidth connections to the premises. They have to optimize
for a particular purpose, and for consumers they make it asymmetric with a
very strong bias to downloads. (Their business model also pictures homes as
media consumers, not producers -- like cable.) They sell a different
package to businesses, often needing to provide special connections higher
fixed and variable costs.

Very high bandwidth connection to premises as infrastructure changes the
economics. It's no longer the fixed capital component that's the limiting
factor. In an open-access model, different Internet connection providers
compete in their Internet connection offerings mainly based on their
variable costs. So, the fixed cost for a house and a business aren't much
different, though the business might pay more for higher bandwidth use. So,
the competing open-access providers may offer different packages to
consumers vs business, but the infrastructure cost is the same.

That said, this does really affect how we look at municipal financing. If a
tax is based on living units, that would leave businesses out. If we had to
use such a tax to bootstrap the infrastructure bill, it would then
certainly be appropriate to have different connection terms for anyone who
didn't invest via their taxes.

If municipal infrastructure was financed by a city bond, paid back via
monthly charges for those using the service, then there's no economic
reason for charging businesses differently for their part of the fixed
costs.

By the way, these arguments only apply to municipal gig; they would have
nothing to do with financing of high-speed connections to new business
parks.

Steve



On Mon, Mar 30, 2015 at 11:37 PM, Shneor Sherman <szsherm at yahoo.com> wrote:

> If there really are 6,000 busineses in Davis, all could benefit from
> having high-speed internet - browse a store visually with data available at
> the touch of a finger, for retail, for example. The burden should be shared
> by businesses, not just paid for by homeowners.
>
> Shneor Sherman
> --------------------------------------------
> On Mon, 3/30/15, Steve McMahon <steve at dcn.org> wrote:
>
>  Subject: Re: [Davisgig] Thoughts on "why the average user needs this"
>  To: "davisgig at list.omsoft.com" <davisgig at list.omsoft.com>
>  Date: Monday, March 30, 2015, 3:14 PM
>
>  I just
>  wanted to pitch in that I think Wes' argument is very
>  important. Connections made available via the local duopoly
>  are generally very asymmetric. They are about (passive or
>  semi-passive) consumption of media, not production or
>  participation. We can do better.
>  On Mon, Mar 30, 2015 at
>  2:58 PM, Wes Hardaker <wes at hardakers.net>
>  wrote:
>
>
>  I'm a geek, I run lots of stuff from my house and I know
>  there has been
>
>  discussions that this is not good enough for the average
>  user.  So I've
>
>  been thinking a lot about this and thinking about why does
>  the average
>
>  person might want a super fast network.  Then I started
>  thinking of the
>
>  kids (those kids that stand on my lawn all day).
>
>
>
>  The one huge thing that has been taking off lately is the
>  usage of
>
>  uploading video content to youtube, vimeo, etc.  But
>  it's not just
>
>  video-streaming for hangouts/skype/etc (which you can do
>  over a minimal
>
>  connection).  It's high quality videos of
>  screen-sharing videos that
>
>  kids are creating that take forever to upload.  For
>  example, my son
>
>  has created a bunch of minecraft tutorials and even though
>  the videos
>
>  themselves were only 10-20 minutes long, he complained
>  greatly when he
>
>  learned they'd take an hour each to upload or so.  And
>  I have about the
>
>  fastest DSL rate you can get to my house.  And he's not
>  the only
>
>  teen-ager doing this kind of thing.  It seems to be fairly
>  popular to do
>
>  right now and would be a good data point for our efforts
>  here.
>
>
>
>  And I suspect more and more of the population will be doing
>  these sort
>
>  of things, like recording and uploading family videos,
>  etc.  And having
>
>  to tie up the connection for hours is just frustrating.
>  One way to lead
>
>  the pack is to advertise that we could enable long distance
>  connection
>
>  sharing and family history archiving better via the new
>  speeds.
>
>
>
>  ...  random thoughts
>
>
>
>  --
>
>  Wes Hardaker
>
>  My Pictures:       http://capturedonearth.com/
>
>  My Thoughts:       http://pontifications.hardakers.net/
>
>  _______________________________________________
>
>
>
>  Please ref our wiki for details, documents and contacts:
>
>
>
>  http://www.dcn.davis.ca.us/~help/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=start
>
>
>
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>
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>
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>
>
>
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>
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>
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>
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>
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