One question from me, in the "Is Console Gaming Dead?" article, why does it say "People in rural Wyoming" instead of "People in Arkansas" as in this thread???
~Cyrix
I did that just to shake things up and catch you off guard. You scratching your head now is all a part of my master plan.
Or I wanted to one-up Arkansas and pick a state that's even more empty and behind-the-times. No offense, Wyoming, I love you, but I could never live there.
A bit off-topic, but didn't they buy up huge quantities of fiber optics lines a few years back?
Yes, but that was, at the time, rumored to be to create high-speed interconnects between their node datacenters, since they were starting to branch out of hosting everything out of Google HQ, if memory serves. Dunno how much is still around.
Apropos: Ars Technica just had an article today, which illustrated that the FCC's National Broadband Plan was aspiring to give rural and urban America 4Mbit and 100Mbit down, respectively, by 2020.
Urban America will be 10 years behind other western nations, while rural America will be almost 20 years behind.
Can we all consider a key factor here. You can have 100mbits data rate now on some technology. It's not new. But it will be throttled back because your few dollars or pounds a month won't cover the wholesale transit costs to the tier-1 carrier your ISP buys bandwidth from. Your ISP is an AS (autonomous system). So each AS needs to peer (mutual agreement to swap traffic and advertise summaried networks) to multiple other AS providers for upstream access to other networks outside of their own (thus giving global reach). The tier-1 vendors with global reach don't peer to anyone but themselves, they charge transit to all the other networks that are on the Internet.
Internet is not just about interface speed. It's about a complex set of agreements to define who pays for what to provide what to who at what. Lots of unlit fiber means nothing at all, lots of transmission means nothing. Not unless you have the connections into the key public peer points, geographic peering and tier-1 wholesale transit. All which has its costs.
Thats a gigabit a second in TN. Yes its expensive, yes its in a limited market, but I think it shows that my optimistic view for the future of broadband in the USA is not completely unfounded.
Big minds are working on it. It will happen, and sooner than you think.
350/mo for Gb/s connection doesn't seem so bad really. I mean, that breaks down to $0.35/mo per Mb/s... By comparison my AT&T DSL connection is $25/mo for 1.5Mb/s which comes out to a whopping $16.67/mo. per Mb/s. If nothing else, hopefully this will inspire some ISPs to offer a competitively priced middle ground service.
There was a study out recently that showed while speeds get faster, the rough cost of broadband has stagnated across all providers. That's why I love corporations... price competition hasn't happened in decades. It may happen eventually, and probably will, but it'll take a long time for true adoption of ANY level of broadband across the nation, never mind this glorified tech demo.
As an example of places not wanting to up the ante for areas I lived in Hagerstown, MD for the better part of 4 years. The local cable internet provider JUST RECENTLY started providing 6 mbps connections. Up until that point it was 1.5 mbps.
This is an area that has something on the order of 120,000 people living in it. About an hour from Baltimore and DC. There was absolutely no service that offered more than 6 mbps down. None anywhere. We don't even have 3G access. (Note: Non-business class access. There are some business class access options available that offer more. They're also $130+/mo)
I just don't see how we're going to go from 6 mbps (that just got pushed out in the past 18 months) to fast enough to push 1080p content in its entirety in 10 years. This is a fairly urban area, not far from an already existing set of infrastructure.
*looks at the state of internet "competition" in the US (ethnocentric-ally excluding everyone else because we're number 1 goooooo free market weeeee)*
Just saying ...
For example, price of FiOS in Dallas has gone up $20 from $46 to $64 for internet only, mostly because they are trying to force you into a bundle at a nearer price point. I can't imagine trying to play this stuff on Time Warner.
But here is the thing @Tushon - If you are a gamer, you are paying for it. Virtually every gamer has some kind of dedicated broadband connection because its nearly a requirement. Sony is going to invest and go all in. The days of going to GameStop to buy a disk will be over sooner than later. Could I make an argument that a fat 75 megabit down 35 megabit up pipe is worth $70 a month to me (current cost of one of the local FIOS options here)? Honestly, for me yes. Sure I'd prefer it to cost less, but I want these streaming services, and I'll pay to have them. It's only going to get better in time.
OnLive and Gaikai should both function fine at around 10Mbit depending on what else you're doing on your network.
Through Charter, I have 30/3 service and it's more than enough for me to run an OnLive game while my kids are streaming Netflix on 2 portable devices and my wife is browsing or whatever it is that chicks do on the Internet.
I would pay that much for that service. The FiOS option here for the price I cited is 30/25. "in time" is the key part of your entire post and my point entirely
Just sayin' :P (not that it necessarily has anything to do with the overall viability of a service like this, but the bandwidth caps/availability is still a huge issue for adoption)
Hopefully they manage to hold it together. I really enjoy the service and use it quite extensively (both through the microconsole and the windows client).
If we (being those who like and use the service) are lucky, this is just a needed housecleaning and reorganization (with or without the buyout) to keep things rolling smoothly.
Comments
I did that just to shake things up and catch you off guard. You scratching your head now is all a part of my master plan.
Or I wanted to one-up Arkansas and pick a state that's even more empty and behind-the-times. No offense, Wyoming, I love you, but I could never live there.
Yes, but that was, at the time, rumored to be to create high-speed interconnects between their node datacenters, since they were starting to branch out of hosting everything out of Google HQ, if memory serves. Dunno how much is still around.
Urban America will be 10 years behind other western nations, while rural America will be almost 20 years behind.
Damn... very sobering news, even though I'm not at all surprised.
Internet is not just about interface speed. It's about a complex set of agreements to define who pays for what to provide what to who at what. Lots of unlit fiber means nothing at all, lots of transmission means nothing. Not unless you have the connections into the key public peer points, geographic peering and tier-1 wholesale transit. All which has its costs.
He has the exact same opinion as me: The graphics are sub-par, and you can clearly see the compression artifacting at 1920x1200.
It looks bad, plain and simple.
Thats a gigabit a second in TN. Yes its expensive, yes its in a limited market, but I think it shows that my optimistic view for the future of broadband in the USA is not completely unfounded.
Big minds are working on it. It will happen, and sooner than you think.
I rest my case.
It won't be forever. They roll it out in more places, it will drive some competition.
I'm just saying, its a small reason for a little optimism for America's broadband future. Its good news.
This is an area that has something on the order of 120,000 people living in it. About an hour from Baltimore and DC. There was absolutely no service that offered more than 6 mbps down. None anywhere. We don't even have 3G access. (Note: Non-business class access. There are some business class access options available that offer more. They're also $130+/mo)
I just don't see how we're going to go from 6 mbps (that just got pushed out in the past 18 months) to fast enough to push 1080p content in its entirety in 10 years. This is a fairly urban area, not far from an already existing set of infrastructure.
Hagerstown just stopped doing their business in the outhouse about ten years ago. It may be a little too soon for high speed internet.
Just sayin.....
Just saying ...
For example, price of FiOS in Dallas has gone up $20 from $46 to $64 for internet only, mostly because they are trying to force you into a bundle at a nearer price point. I can't imagine trying to play this stuff on Time Warner.
Through Charter, I have 30/3 service and it's more than enough for me to run an OnLive game while my kids are streaming Netflix on 2 portable devices and my wife is browsing or whatever it is that chicks do on the Internet.
/thread
Just sayin' :P (not that it necessarily has anything to do with the overall viability of a service like this, but the bandwidth caps/availability is still a huge issue for adoption)
If we (being those who like and use the service) are lucky, this is just a needed housecleaning and reorganization (with or without the buyout) to keep things rolling smoothly.
A wealthy venture capitalist now controls the company, where the service will live on, but not with the employees or scale it has today.
Just sayin'
OnLive lost: how the paradise of streaming games was undone by one man's ego at The Verge.