[632] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: Perhaps dismissal of packet radio in the classroom is unwarranted
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Bill Gunshannon)
Thu Apr 25 08:03:21 1991
From: bill@tuatara.uofs.edu (Bill Gunshannon)
To: lws@capybara.comm.wang.com (Lyle Seaman)
Date: Thu, 25 Apr 91 8:02:11 EDT
Cc: com-priv@psi.com
In-Reply-To: <9104242231.AA00699@capybara.comm.wang.com>; from "Lyle Seaman" at Apr 24, 91 6:31 pm
According to Lyle Seaman:
>
> At any rate, if cable is used, then what are the regulatory
> issues?
The regulatory issues are greatly outweighed by the technical ones. Most
cable TV setups are not nearly a good enough quality to support data. A
few have tried (Boulder, CO comes to mind) and have found the return is
to far in the future to hold their interest. Also most cable TV setups
are uni-directional. The cost of replacing all those amps with bi-directional
amps is more than any cable company would be willing to try. The only
exception I know of right off hand is the cable along Route 9 near Poughkeepsie
New York. IBM paid the cost of replacing the amps on a couple miles of that
cable in a deal that let them use the cable for a LAN to tie together all the
buildings they had between Poughkeepsie and Fishkill.
>
> Here's another idea, not as useful, but cheaper and easier to
> start up. Lots of TV stations go off the air for several hours
> early in the morning. What about buying that time from a station
> for data transmission? That corresponds nicely with peak hours
> for news transmission. It wouldn't solve the network access
First, again, it isn't theirs to sell, and I would be against the idea of
even planting the idea in their minds that they OWN a frequency. Also,
that's a band-aid. We need a real solution. The technology and the resources
are there, all we need is a forward thinking company to put it to use.
> Many areas (well, most of them are cities)
> have a community access cable channel, which might well be unused
> for a considerable amount of time in the early morning, and the
> use of *that* for our purposes is almost exactly what community
> access cable is all about.
Again, this is uni-directional. It meets one need (USENET News) but it
doesn't solve the long term problem of getting networking to the masses
at a reasonable price.
bill
--
Bill Gunshannon | If this statement wasn't here,
bill@platypus.uofs.edu | This space would be left intentionally blank
bill@tuatara.uofs.edu | #include <std.disclaimer.h>
