I said more, not exclusively. I'm sure even you would accept that cities could be better covered if 'coverage' instead of 'zoning rights' was the primary consideration for tower placement.

10/9/2009 1:54:56 PM

Your hardon for Hayek has really started to scramble your brain.

10/9/2009 2:03:12 PM

I don't think Hayek has ever addressed the conflict between the telecommunications industry and zoning restrictions. That said, being as smart as he was, he probably would if given the chance

10/9/2009 2:47:30 PM

$10 billion takes fiber to every school, hospital in the US
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/10/gates-foundation-hopes-to-bring-fiber-to-school-hospitals.ars

10/9/2009 7:34:47 PM

Does fiber need to be trenched? Is there a reason you wouldn't just slap it on the power pole along side cable and telephone? Or is it a right-of-way problem?

10/10/2009 9:43:40 AM

you have to get a joint use agreement with the local utility in order to attach to their poles, and that's going to run you about $15 per pole per year. the fiber optic cable alone costs a little over a dollar a foot from the manufacturer and you're going to double that cost per foot with the mounting hardware and splice hardware. you have to put in a splice point about every two miles because that's the limitation of what you can get on a reel. the splicing costs about $35-50 a fiber, so a 96 count fiber is going to run you about $4,000 or so. labor costs for pulling in fiber and clipping it in is going to run you about 80% of the material cost.

you can plow in fiber in eastern north carolina for about the same cost as aerial installation, but it has it's own set of problems.

Quote :

"Now that we have long-range last mile in the 700Mhz band, this can be combined with microwave relay technology to blanked the country with middle-speed wireless internet service."

you really think spending three quarters of a million dollars to get OC3 speeds that will be shared between 1000 people is a good business model? microwave isn't even all that reliable either.

10/10/2009 11:46:02 PM

I still don't get this.

We're Americans. We used to get shit done.

Let's get this shit done and move on.

We're still talking millions, kids. Millions ain't shit especially when it's a worthy cause.



Come on. Don't act like you grew up fucking poor or some shit, fucking superdigital internet nerds.

10/11/2009 2:44:24 AM

TDS had a pretty excellent interview that highlighted how access to information via the Internet provides a drastic increase to learning compared to mere books most of us grew up with (skip to the end if you only care about that part…).

Kids definitely learn stuff faster these days than we did, thanks to technology.

link to interview:
http://newsone.com/nation/good-news-nation/good-news-jon-stewart-interviews-ingenious-african-inventor/

10/11/2009 2:53:55 AM

10/15/2009 1:34:14 PM

Quote :

"We're still talking millions, kids. Millions ain't shit especially when it's a worthy cause."

Wait, so spending millions is a good idea only because it is a worthy cause, even though it could not in any way accomplish the worthy cause and is probably going to make things worse?

10/15/2009 4:07:34 PM