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Comment Fix (Score 4, Interesting) 91

I have a 100% fix for the last mile problem.

Local Utility Company, that owns and maintains fiber.

All fiber brought back to a COLO facility where Vendors offer their services to the local utility customers, directly AT the COLO facility. Choice to the Consumer. The COLO and Fiber are maintained with fees extracted as part of the rental agreement between the vendors and the local Utility CO.

A consumer purchases service from the vendor(s) of their choice directly, based on their desires and needs. No Government needs to be involved. Increase Options creates competition.

Its a wonder smart people haven't figured out that Government Franchise Agreements has stagnated the status quo into doing nothing.

Comment Re:Whaaa? (Score 1) 14

The article actually does a good job of talking about this. It even mentions recent problems that they had in Alaska with a cable that got cut because the ice got thicker than they thought possible. I actually think that this is a pretty cool idea (pun totally intended), and I am glad to see these guys making 23 million euros to look into it. Good on them for getting paid to study a very interesting problem.

However, I would be surprised if the cable actual got laid, assuming that the current forecasts are remotely accurate. This fiber optic cable is already forecast to cost 4 times as much as a cable that took the conventional route. It is also going to be considerably more expensive to maintain. The main selling point appears to be that it is less likely to sabotaged (unless your adversary has access to nuclear submarines, I guess), and it is also less likely to be cut by an errant anchor.

There's a reason that so many of the undersea cables follow essentially the same routes. That reason is cost. No one wants to sink hundreds of millions of dollars into a cable that is going to have a serious price disadvantage.

Comment Re:Whaaa? (Score 4, Informative) 14

Not to be a wet blanket, but no investment decisions have been made. If you read the article carefully you will realize that they aren't even to the survey stage yet. What they have done is that they have hit the EU up for 23 million euro in funding.

So far the estimated costs of the project are 1 billion euro, and that's projected to be considerably more costly than non-Arctic routes. So they have a lot of fund raising to do if they want to actually make this happen. And, let's face it, the easy money has already been raised. The EU is more than happy to pay 23 million euro, much of which will end up in Nokia's hands, to study this. Actual business people, spending their own money, are likely to be more skeptical. Especially considering the fact that comparable cable that doesn't take this route would only cost 250 million euros.

This article is really just a fancy advertisement for something that is probably not a good idea. The article actually does a good job of covering that part of the story. You have to read down a ways, but it is worth it. True to form the EU has already invested heavily in this project. I personally think that says more about EU spending than on the viability of the Northwest Passage for fiber optic cables.

If, on the other hand, you felt strongly enough about the direction that the climate was headed on this planet that you wanted to make a big bet on the Northwest Passage becoming a viable route for fiber optic cables, I suspect that their is an opportunity here to put your money where your mouth is. These people are going to need a lot more money than they currently have if this is to get off the drawing board.

Comment Re:Oh Now. Those dark arges are coming back.. (Score 1) 159

I had both. University link in the late 80s/early 90s, 14.4 Linelink E modem. Was just a lot more fun and a lot less corporate. Yes trolls existed but there were less or could be controlled with kill files in Usenet. Netiquette was still a useful word. Was just more fun.

Comment Re:Copyright owners can change the license (Score 1) 120

Free Enterprise.

More regulation rarely fixes the problems and creates more problems that only large multinational government tied corporations can comply. Example, the repeated problems with the Banking industry, one of the most regulated industries that has been repeatedly bailed out of bad banking by taxpayers. Filed under "too big to fail"

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