Comment by manofmanysmiles | Hacker News Reader

Comment by manofmanysmiles | Hacker News Reader

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manofmanysmiles

This type of comment implies you think the world is static. I'm not saying that this good, but what makes you so sure market and social forces won't produce a better model?

To me this is just a temporary setback, and a reminder why we need to focus on developing new technologies, like a "truly decentralized internet", blockchain, cryptography, and more.

It almost feels like a the death throws of a monster that will do a lot of damage is it goes down, but will ultimately be overthrown by the better forces in the world.

Edit:

"Truly decentralized internet" is a loaded phrase, so I'll expand a bit. The fact that we see small companies and municipalities beginning to develop their own ISPs is a positive trend in the right direction.

Mesh networking has the potential to happen. Most WiFi chipsets in theory support short range mesh, and the gear from Ubiquity and others, not to mention SDR also have this potential. In fact, I'd hypothesis that the basebands in most cell phones have the hardware capability to participate in mesh typologies. The right software could enable some very interesting things. I could be totally wrong here about the HW capabilities. Anyone care to chime in?

Layer proper digital identities, and something like TOR as a first class citizen, and you start to get a pretty nice picture.

None of those technologies matter when your access to them is blocked.

When it comes to access, you have copper, fiber, and radio. The latter is not really competitive to the first two, both of which require significant up-front investments with no promise of revenue to pay those investments back.

Remember Google Fiber? Where's that now? Shut down with a marketing-speak comment that says "its purpose was fulfilled."

> Remember Google Fiber? Where's that now? Shut down with a marketing-speak comment that says "its purpose was fulfilled."

Is this true? They just started offering services in my city a few months ago. I can't get it yet, but it seems like they're expanding at least in some locales.

"[...] we have reshaped the landscape — these innovations are becoming more commonplace"

"For most of our “potential Fiber cities” [...] we’re going to pause our operations and offices"

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/10/googl...

https://fiber.googleblog.com/2016/10/advancing-our-amazing-b...

They haven't hit play; haven't hinted at hitting play.

Moving away from Google Fiber is starting to look like one of the worst decisions Google has ever made. Time will tell exactly how rough it gets for them without a competitive ISP infrastructure in place.

They might not be expanding, but I wouldn't call it shut down. I have an active account and they're providing my internet service in KC. This was set up this past February.

I was going to reply with some cynical remark about how the hole we are digging is deeper now than ever, and would take radical changes to climb out of, but I really like your positive spin on this. I'll try to consider it from that perspective moving forward.

Remember, we're not meaningfully in a hole "deeper than ever", because there isn't an "ever". As much as it may feel like the Internet has been around forever, this is all new ground, for everybody, and surprises may yet be around the corner. I guarantee you in 2018 that the "FANG" acronym will be out of date. I don't know which of them may or may not be in there, and I don't know who may get added, but the landscape will be different.

I don’t know how knowledgeable you are about this, but if you’re up to scratch, you should hash out some actual ways this could be done..

I don't want to be pedantic, but doesn't this comment imply that there will big changes and hence the world is non-static?

> This type of comment implies you think the world is static. I'm not saying that this good, but what makes you so sure market and social forces won't produce a better model?

They already are: multiple low or modest cost, high speed satellite providers are targeting the US market for deployment in the next four or five years.

The dumber Comcast and AT&T are about the situation, the more money SpaceX is going to make on Starlink. Amusingly, Comcast is probably going to help get us to Mars.

Regardless of the rampant cynicism about competition (plenty of which is warranted), the low earth orbit competition is coming fast. Nothing can stop it at this point.

> They already are: multiple low or modest cost, high speed satellite providers are targeting the US market for deployment in the next four or five years.

Hoping satellite will solve your bandwidth problems is wishful thinking of the worst sort. There simply isn't enough spectrum, and thus bandwidth, to go around.

Can't beat physics.

So your premise is multiple companies, with ultimately a decade of preparation, regulatory effort, and build-out, are set to spend billions of dollars on a non-market. All because they just didn't understand physics can't be beat.

Oh sure, amazon_not, I'll take your word for it. Since when does SpaceX know what they're doing.

I'm not saying there won't be A market. I'm saying there won't be THE market you are hoping for.

Satellite has it's uses, but replacing terrestrial broadband networks isn't one. The satellite industry is littered with roadkill, bankruptcies and wasted billions. It's not the first time somebody would be wrong.

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