Archive for January, 2010

iPad

Sunday, January 31st, 2010

I’ve always been a bit of an apple fanboy (fanboi) since the 1980’s, having found ways to do interesting things with the Apple ][e //c etc’s at school, and programming pascal on the Plus/Classic with my friend MacsBugs in the MacOS 6 days. Having an iPhone has simplified some aspects of my life significantly and allowed me to keep on-task and on-schedule in an increasingly hectic day.

WIth the months of rumors of pricing, features, etc.. leading into this past weeks announcement, I figured if a tablet was launched, we would get one for my wife.

With the prospect of the platform not being a success and just hype, I read everyone dumping on the lack of flash and other capabilities. (Personally, I hope this helps kill Flash, it’s usually improperly and overly used to navigate websites. Those developers should be put out to pasture). I’m now convinced that it will be a success. Why? My father is going to get one. He’s a techie, sure, but not in the traditional tear the hardware apart and overclock the cpu with the right water cooling system. He’s a techie that reads books. He’s one that sees the value in the device.

I suspect that if the naysayers start polling their parents, they will find a similar pattern. Something cheap, immune to malware and with the possibility of $15 or $30/month for mobile E-Mail, a value for them. They were not going to get an iPhone/Blackberry/Android phone anyways.

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Broadband to displace POTS

Monday, January 4th, 2010

AT&T has asked the FCC to set a sunset date for Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS) in recent FCC Filings. They reportedly see the light in the wisdom of multiplexed data streams in this fancy IP networking that you are reading.

This has some interesting prospects (and caveats). They call out those that are unwilling to build to profitable areas, yet also imply cost as a reason they are unable to deliver services. They are not allowed to recoup market rates in poorly populated areas due to the nature of State and Federal regulation.

Me? I see it as the same situation being played out that Verzion did in the northeast. They determined that some areas were unprofitable to service. They sold these assets to Fairpoint. Fairpoint has since declared bankruptcy. This also could bolster the AT&T argument, as if they could truly charge what the service cost, would VZ have sold the business lines? Would Fairpoint have filed?

I see this as the need to build another wire to homes. Most homes have phone lines and Power. These existing right-of-ways should always have fiber placed in them. I’m actually in favor of banning new builds of any outside copper plant in the US. This does not mean that I own stock in Fiber optic cabling companies, but that there needs to be a competitive landscape. Where it’s not driven by pure market forces, consumers should get together and build their own infrastructure.

DOCSIS 1.1 and 2 equipment can be had for “cheap” on the secondary market. Even if you build coaxial cables, the cost of delivering services can be quite low.

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