Disqus - Latest Comments for plunkman

Re: SXSW PanelPicker

Craig Plunkett — Tue, 01 Sep 2015 09:41:39 -0000

The public needs to be educated on how broadband is delivered, so they can understand how to get the best network for their citizens, or at least understand why they're living with the status quo.

Re: Has Google Fiber set the pace for 1 Gig FTTH pricing?

Craig Plunkett — Sat, 21 Sep 2013 01:36:07 -0000

It will be fun to be a part of, on both the consumer and network building sides. And I remembered where I heard that unfair advantage quote so long ago. https://www.youtube.com/wat...

Re: Has Google Fiber set the pace for 1 Gig FTTH pricing?

Craig Plunkett — Fri, 20 Sep 2013 17:50:31 -0000

True enough. Google is getting sweetheart deals like those in Utah, ( $1 for all that fiber infrastructure?!) but can you blame the governments for trying anything to get better product to their citizens?

In natural monopolies like Water, Sewer, Electricity and Telecom Infrastructure, it is never a purely market driven decision. Politics always plays a part, and incumbents have invested heavily in politicians at every level of government and defending their markets, creating high barriers to entry. Both MSOs and ILECs have been at this for a very long time and are formidable competitors. I don't know who said it, but "I'll take all the unfair advantage I can get" was spot on, for both incumbents and Google alike.

And who's to say the sub $100 price point will last. When Cablevision first introduced DOCSIS 1.0, in the late 90's they priced it at $19.95 per month, the price point of flat rate dialup. It was a no brainer to go to for internet users on Long Island at the time. I was happy to replace my ISDN line! ( VZ is still sending me $0 dollar mailed paper bills for an orphan SPID for at least 15 years now, crazy. )

Now Cablevision has over 2 million customers for broadband, paying at least double that and are in a churn war with VZ's FiOS. So if you've got deep pockets, you start with teaser rates till you build up your subscriber base, then start "boiling the frog slowly" until you get to that magical cash flow machine that is broadband service!

And you just hope that your PACs and the heavy CAPEX costs keep your competitors at bay for as long as possible. This will allow you to sweat your assets until you have to compete on price and performance.

Re: Has Google Fiber set the pace for 1 Gig FTTH pricing?

Craig Plunkett — Fri, 20 Sep 2013 14:15:46 -0000

John,
FiOS has the same access to Rights of Way that its Cable competitors and the Municipals have. The sub $100 price for broadband is sustainable if you can build scale and maintain the low OPEX for pole rental and other RoW physical assets that you need.

The actual cost for IP transport isn't what kills you, its the CAPEX for the buildout.

Just like MSOs used their existing HFC video delivery system and associated subscriber bases to layer on IP and Telephony as product line extensions, there's no reason electric utility providers can't do the same, whether Muni or private. If Broadband over Powerline had worked at scale, then they wouldn't have had to do much to their physical plant to deliver IP transport.

But FTTH is the future, even CMCSA knows that. You just need to have competition to drive that fiber further to the network edge, and balance your infrastructure investment with the profits/dividends that the stock market demands.

Re: Verizon's Fire Island FTTH move shows demand for wireline bandwidth

Craig Plunkett — Fri, 13 Sep 2013 18:37:10 -0000

What drove VZ's change of heart was arm twisting by NY's senior senator, not economics. There are 4 WISPs serving Fire Island. I founded one of them, Fire Island Wireless. Granted, none of them can handle the old technology needed by alarms and faxes. There are some very prominent, well connected citizens with vacation homes out there, that want what they want when they want it.

Politics drove this change of heart, not economics. Believe me, if you think it's taking a long time for VZ to recoup the CAPEX from the mainland FiOS deployment, you don't want to look at the spreadsheets for Fire Island's ROI. With 3000 homes that only have a 100 day season, and only 300 year round residents, this will be a money pit for years to come, as the POTS plant has been.

Fire Island spans two towns, one of which VZ does not have a video franchise in for FiOS, so it can only offer the double play.

VZ has been replacing destroyed copper in Manhattan with fiber. Perhaps it would have been best if the PSC investigated helping the smaller alternative access providers like WISPs with rebuilding Fire Island's telecom infrastructure, but that might have been a bit too innovative for New York State Government.

Re: NFL on stadium Wi-Fi: 'Technology just isn't where it needs to be'

Craig Plunkett — Fri, 06 Sep 2013 14:07:47 -0000

It is really a funding problem, not a technology problem. Paul's comments in the CNN story are spot on.

Re: Google IO: Google Is the New Microsoft

Craig Plunkett — Thu, 16 May 2013 11:18:45 -0000

Talk about building on-ramps, look at the cherry picking of neighborhoods and the insanely favorable terms for Google Fiber deployments. So far, the communities that adopt Google Fiber look like they are trading one monopoly for another. That's a 7-layer OSI cake when combined with the rest of the Google stack.

Re: Scott Rafer's Blog : After Just Two Years, Nearly Half of Verizon's Data Traffic Is on LTE - John Paczkowski - Mobile - AllThingsD

Craig Plunkett — Fri, 11 Jan 2013 19:05:06 -0000

Cellular for Mobility, Wi-Fi for heavy lifting.

Re: http://rafer.net/post/23795788063

Craig Plunkett — Fri, 01 Jun 2012 15:31:02 -0000

Yes and our thread made me wonder where your line of reasoning was coming from. It doesn't matter that less than half of the fans have smartphones. Unless you're going to corral them into a "smartphone section" or make them walk to 1st generation "hotspots" , you won't be able to tell where they are in the venue so you have to build out the whole facility.

You also have to build out dense coverage because mobile devices have such low-power radios. In a full stadium or any other large venue, Wi-Fi is absorbed by the tens of thousands of human bodies, so you have to bring the access points closer to the devices regardless of how many there are or how often they are used.

The labor costs of installation are such that it is cheaper over the 5 year time frame to build it out once rather than bring crews in two or three times to add coverage piecemeal, during which time the user experience will be awful.

Re: http://rafer.net/post/23795788063

Craig Plunkett — Fri, 01 Jun 2012 12:29:47 -0000

Avg NFL stadium capacity = 70,216. $3MM/ avg capacity = $43/seat. Sounds like a reasonable starting point to me. Phasing in APs is the worst way to deploy in a large venue. Works here but not there? Users expect Wi-Fi to be better than cellular.

Re: Open Garden

Craig Plunkett — Fri, 25 May 2012 15:42:19 -0000

Open Garden is really great app for configuring ad hoc wireless networks so that multiple devices can share exit and entry points to the internet, but I fail to see how it will disrupt the internet service providers, either mobile or fixed.

To do that, one needs to create physical and TCP/IP routing paths from your end devices to an internet exchange point without using existing ISPs to transport your traffic. Disrupting ISPs is a real estate play and regulatory task. Open Garden does not help with this.

Definitely nifty and hides a lot of configuration tasks from a consumer, but not disruptive to ISPs. It appears to be a feature purchase that a consumer communications hardware manufacturer would find attractive in improving their user experience.

Firms that provide alternative methods of internet access in the USA like Towerstream and NetBlazr are closer to disrupting ISPs than Open Garden.

Re: Getting broadband in Manhattan

Craig Plunkett — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 16:30:33 -0000

I'd be happy to chat. You can find me @nwc fairly often. E-mail or DM @plunkman and we can set something up.

Re: Getting broadband in Manhattan

Craig Plunkett — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 12:29:34 -0000

Yes, In Manhattan, its the last 50 feet from the manhole in the street into the building's basement. It is expensive to to do and you have to have some assurance of cost recovery, which means cooperation with the landlord/management company, and a dark fiber provider with a presence in the closest manhole. There are workarounds to the fiber problem, but not to the landlord issue.

Re: Getting broadband in Manhattan

Craig Plunkett — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 10:59:10 -0000

I think you really need to think of this as a utility, and as such, you do need regulated distribution infrastructure, the same as electricity distribution. Delivering bits to fixed endpoints is essentially the same as delivering amps.

Re: Revenue Based Financing

Craig Plunkett — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 14:27:25 -0000

This sounds like a great method of financing for scaling a utility business like a Wireless ISP.

Re: dmr

Craig Plunkett — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 12:50:07 -0000

Thanks for letting us know about Dennis' passing. I still have my copy of K&R, but no time to code in any language... I'll have to fix that soon.

Re: How Foursquare and ESPN Ended Up on the Same Team

Craig Plunkett — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 12:02:00 -0000

The bad app and voice experience in sports venues is beginning to change as venue owners start to deploy robust Wi-Fi networks. A good neutral host network can create happy fans and be accretive to venue revenue if run well.

Re: Cell Phone Suggestions For Europe Trip

Craig Plunkett — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 08:30:24 -0000

You might want to try this US based company: http://www.wirelesstraveler...

You don't have to run around looking for prepaid SIMs in country, and can have the equipment sent to you before you leave.

Re: A Frightening Week

Craig Plunkett — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 15:36:00 -0000

The Egyptian network operators simply shut down the routes inside and out of their country. If any traffic transited Egypt on its way to another place, the core routing protocols of the Internet simply found the next least cost path. Standard operating procedure, no magic necessary.

However, if the US shut its borders, Asia and Europe would be cut off from each other largely, because the majority of that traffic passes through the US. Other submarine fiber nets that link Europe and Asia via Africa and South America would be overwhelmed.

Re: A Frightening Week

Craig Plunkett — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 15:24:06 -0000

Agreed! Prohibiting the freedom to communicate? Proposed by two senators? Talk about heading the country in the wrong direction.

Re: Vodafone ‘obliged’ to suspend service in Egypt

Craig Plunkett — Sat, 29 Jan 2011 14:16:08 -0000

It doesn't really matter whether Vodaphone was "right" or not, they don't have a choice, unfortunately. The question is not for Vodaphone, it is for the Egyptian government.

Re: Talent and Bandwidth

Craig Plunkett — Sat, 08 Jan 2011 09:54:12 -0000

Theoretically they should be able to get 100Meg up and down, but that will be at a prohibitive cost for such a small company.

Reliability really depends on operational execution of the WISP. YMMV, but generally smaller providers are more responsive than those that have scaled up.

Fiber to the premise is the ultimate answer. The current last mile constructors of this, Metro Ethernet providers are undergoing a rollup phase right now. The enablers of new Metro E entrants, Ethernet Exchanges, are proliferating. What is really needed is patient money and cooperative local governments to allow the buildout of provider neutral dark fiber. Access to streets and poles and capital for the buildout is the only thing that is holding this back.

The public doesn't need to own the dark fiber, the public needs to permit access to the streets and poles. It is the same thing as making more spectrum available to private builders of wireless networks.

Re: Talent and Bandwidth

Craig Plunkett — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 10:48:29 -0000

Hi Fred,

Your young Navy Yard startup can choose from three wireless providers to bring high bandwidth services to their location. Probably better performance than TWC and faster provisioning.

Re: The World’s Facebook Relationships Visualized [PIC]

Craig Plunkett — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 23:04:37 -0000

It would be interesting to see this data overlaid onto a similar visualization of the end user bandwidth available in each city for both wired and wireless connections. I wonder what physical aspect of connectivity most strongly correlates to social connectivity if there is a correlation. Population density, car ownership/mass transit availability, cell tower density, etc, etc.

Re: The Future of Television & The Digital Living Room

Craig Plunkett — Sun, 24 Oct 2010 20:21:54 -0000

Actually, both are correct. A bum fight is between two drunk derelicts with no future, and is a pathetic spectacle to witness. The smartest hardware manufacturers and MSOs won't be bums, but the dumb ones will be, and that battle will be gruesome to watch as they get left behind by the smart ones.