Keep Making Those Buggy Whips

There is some lawyer who I had critiqued a while back for her lack of technical acumen. Lawyers often have that problem, even some who have technical backgrounds. After all they are lawyers.

As she states in Backchannel:

Fiber is the best — the only  — alternative, and it could win subscribers in areas where cable exists. But we’re not building these networks. Verizon sold its FiOS lines in California, Texas, and Florida, and AT&T’s GigaPower fiber plans are (with small exceptions, where the company feels the pressure of genuine competition) mostly “fiber to the press release.” AT&T is most likely to continue playing defense by further squeezing the capacity of its existing copper lines, which means that only densely packed apartment buildings that are very close to AT&T’s central offices will see the advantage of the company’s work on its copper connections, as signals can’t travel very far over copper. (By contrast, signals can go for dozens of miles over fiber without being boosted.) And despite all the hype, Google Fiber is predicted to reach no more than 10 million homes over the next few years — although Google’s recently announced plans to consider Chicago and Los Angeles may change that part of the picture.Some of the problem with building fiber networks is that the needs of these profit-grabbing companies diverge from the public good, which requires long-term investments where the gains accrue to the economy in general.

Now to the facts. 

1. No, fiber is not the only alternative. In fact it is the last.

2. 4G allows 10 bps/Hz and with hundreds of KHz available that is lots of Gbps deliverable by wireless.

3. Data rates for video are dropping like bricks so the demand for bandwidth per user is dropping.

4. 5G adds adaptive antennas and increases the bps/Hz another factor of ten.

5. Wireless is relative cheap and the infrastructure is already there.

6. Mobile is taking over. You cannot drag a fiber around with you! I have tried.

The list goes on. She totally misses the point. The problem with fiber is not greedy companies, it is that is NOT the technical solution. But then again she has apparently never examined this issue.

What I find with her followers, read the comments, is a religious fervor of the socialist, devoid of facts and replete with belief. I remember well, my grandmother headed the Socialist Party in New York.

How long will we have to hear these specious arguments? Why is Verizon delaying an aggressive move in wireless? Well, the answer, it is still the phone company!

And oh by the way, CATV companies do not use copper pairs.