nordify

What a bunch of BS.

Not a single operator is going to delay rolling out 5G or decline to invest in 5G due to network neutrality.

Furthermore none of the given use cases are require general Internet access. I don't care what they do with those closed networks and network neutrality does not even apply to closed networks.

For ADSL you define classes. Then for each class (i.e. line speed that you sync at) you offer speed guarantees.

They can offer guarantees for on-net traffic and for traffic to Internet Exchanges.

Obviously nobody can offer any guarantees for off-net traffic.

Even if we go as far as to say that the models are similar, the implementation differs hugely. Especially with regards to telecoms.

This is roughly how it works in Finland, although the maximum speed can be advertised. It works fairly well.

The real kicker is that the regulator has actually defined acceptable minimum speeds.

Minimum speeds can be stated either as an average or a range. Acceptable averages are at least 50% of the advertised maximum speed measured during any 4 hour period. If stated as a range, 40% of the maximum speed as a lower bound at any time is acceptable.

I think you are projecting.

The original discussion was about alternatives to three strikes (which explicitly both of us oppose). Notice the lack of value judgement of rehabilitation vs. punishment.

Secondly we were discussing the concept of proportionality. I expressed the rationality of society's need for proportional punishment. Notice how I did not present my personal views regarding rehabilitation vs. punishment.

So far we have only established that I believe that the punishment for a crime should have an upper bound which is proportional to the offense.

Now, whether the purpose of the prison system should be punitive or rehabilitative is another discussion.

Because society only works when there are some values or rules shared by the people.

Society only obeys the rule of law as long as there is some consensus that the law is fair and just. Basic fairness demands that breaking a rule should result in a punishment.

The punishment is only fair if it is proportional to the offense. Therefore prison time should be proportional to the crimes committed.

It costs society far more to imprison him for life. If we are optimizing for cost to society then it should be possible to find at least one other local minimum between the loss to society of a $5 petty theft and life imprisonment.

Throwing the person into prison for life is obviously the wrong solution, it is not proportional to the crimes committed and it's a net negative for society.

Put the person on supervised release, put an ancle monitor on the person and put the person to community work, until they become a net benefit to society.

Other solutions may apply, but at least the above is better than three strikes.

Well, the $300 or so in universal student grants each month help with the beer.

There is one benefit of incorporating in Estonia: 0% corporate tax on undistributed earnings.

Until the Estonian e-resident can open a bank account remotely (likely later this year when the new law goes into effect), the residency is mostly an interesting curiosity, not much more.

Actually, Estonia just passed a law which will allow remote bank account opening for all e-residents.

> I would love to see the numbers on this.

9.6 kbps is about 3GB per month. That's between $44 (Finland) and $360 (US) in retail prices per year. It adds up to a lot, approximately $880 million to $7.2 billion per million users over a 20 year license. How many millions of subscribers did you want to subsidize?

> It's not clear the plan would incur costs for operators unless there is no room left to optimize their use of the allocated spectrum.

You cannot just consider the marginal costs. You have to take into consideration the fully loaded costs including operating and upgrading the network when you run out of capacity.

> The article also lays out the argument for a value increase in the whole network (granted not limited to each operator) that could offset any costs.

The cellphone companies don't care about imaginary money that does not flow to the bottom line.

> Even with inescapable costs that would be factored into the spectrum bids, why would it no be preferable for that value to be transferred directly to the public, in the form of free internet access, than to have it flow into governments for indirect redistribution?

The answer to this depends on whatever political views you subscribe to.

There's been a lot written on peering. Dr. Peering has a lot on his website, perhaps not so much regarding latency but lots and lots on peering in general. Googling for publications will also get you a lot of interesting stuff.

Somebody still has to pay for it.

If it's the cellphone companies then in the end the payers will be the taxpayers (through subsidies or lower spectrum license fee receipts as the cellphone companies factor in the costs of the free service obligation when bidding) and/or the customers, as costs are passed on to them.

There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.

I almost choked on my coffee before I understood this was written in jest :) Well done!

More seriously one historic contributing factor was probably that Finland had small, local monopolies that provided services locally and each had both local owners and local pride. There wasn't just one large state monopoly as in most other countries. Later competition blossomed quite well once the monopolies were removed.

The hotspots themselves won't do you much good. You'll need backhaul to connect them to the Internet and pay somebody to service and operate them. Then you'll need power for each and every device.

All this costs money. Who pays?

Depends on the provider. 100/10M is a common product, but some offer 100/100M.

EDIT: Half of the dwellings have cable where you can get 350/20M for 45 euros per month. Fiber/FTTB is all over the map, but typical max speed from a large telco is 1000/100M for 52,50 euros per month.

> What's the speed like going out of the country?

Full line rate round the clock.

> Where are the big peering points?

The main local IX is FICIX. The main Swedish IX Netnod in Stockholm is 8 ms away. Netnod is the 10th largest IX in the world. A new direct subsea cable to Germany just got built and it will bring DE-CIX, the largest IX In the world closer.

Russia is also close. Google and Yandex both built datacenters in Finland to serve Russia and Northern Europe. Facebook put theirs in Sweden for the same reason.

> Internet access (and not just HTTP) in Finland (?) is free.

Internet access in Finland is not free. However, everybody in Finland is entitled to Internet service, i.e. each area has a designated universal service provider who is responsible for providing a minimum of 1 Mbps service to everyone in the area.

So, if you want Internet service in Finland, you can always get it. It does not mean it's free, just that it's always available.

Prices for wired service are reasonable, between 30 and 50 euros (average prices for 1M and 100M respectively). Wireless service is cheap and coverage is very good with close to universal coverage. 50M uncapped and unlimited LTE is 15 to 20 euros per month. Prepaid LTE is 20 euros for 10G or 20 euros for unlimited and uncapped service at a low speed for six months.

I want to replace peaker plants with storage. Somehow I don't think the economics work out. Do you disagree?

Even if we rebuild the whole continental US power grid (that's a lot more than $50 billion) to cope with the demands of using storage, it is unclear to me if we can build enough hydro to replace peaker plants. Apparently all other storage technologies other than hydro are cost-ineffective and/or do not have enough scale to solve the problem. Do you know if there is enough geography to go around for all the hydro we need or if there really are any cost-efficient alternatives?

> The main advantage is that energy storage today is more efficient, with new technologies coming out.

But not cheaper or anywhere close to the scale of pumped hydro?

Hydro requires favorable geography and/or rebuilding the grid to cope with the extremely large flows required to keep up with storage.

So, energy storage works, but is not economically feasible other than as research projects outside of hydro?

Looks like peaker plants are here to stay for a very long time.

Your storage system must be able to store enough energy to cover the cumulative output of the peaker plant in order for it to be able to replace the peaker plant.

That's a lot of storage. And you need to have enough overgeneration to be able to reliable fill it up daily. This sounds very expensive. Could it really work from an economic perspective?

So, can we build enough hydro to make a difference and how much will it cost to beef up the grid to handle all the power going into and out of pumped hydro?

> Batteries are becoming cost-competitive as well.

Can you quantify that?

As far as I can tell the Powerwall is about as cost-competitive as battery storage gets and that's still far more expensive than just using grid power.

So, even in a prefect world, it all comes down to whether it's cheaper/better to overgenerate and store or to run peaker plants?

It seems storage has a long way to go as long as gas peaker plants are around 7c/kWh.

Hydro only works if you have geography on your side. Flywheels don't have the capacity to do utility scale demand shifting.

So, excluding hydro, am I right in that the economics of energy storage do not work (yet)?

For the sake of the argument, let's accept the premise that variable demand requires variable pricing.

Is there a technical reason price differentials have to be so large in California? In an efficient market, even with variable prices, would the differences be so extreme and would peak demand prices still exceed the cost of storage?

Is storing power cheaper than using peaker plants? That is, is storing power at scales required to replace peaker plants economically viable?