On Mon, Sep 04, 2000 at 08:27:39PM -0400, Ken Hornstein wrote:
> >three years. You all probably live in much more densely populated,
> >less remote and more civilized parts of the world than I do, and you
> >expect less than this to enter your home over this time period? Ok, I
> 
> Yes.  I live approximately 5-10 miles from MAE-east, and I don't
> think there will be any reasonable competition for the local loop
> at my house for the next 5 years, minimum.
> 
> Should there be?  Yes.  _Will_ there be?  I am not hopeful.  I think
> this is a US-specific problem, though.
I thought the same three years ago living in the Netherlands,
paying for each connection setup and high per second rates for my ISDN 
line. Was very jealous at the flatrates that were commonplace in the US for a
long time already, and such luxury just didn't seem to come to the
Netherlands or Europe any time soon. I thought then this was a
Europe-specific problem, and although there was lots of talk about
Cable and ADSL at the time¸ it was clear that the players in the field
had just no incentive whatsoever to provide 1Mbs bandwidth or more to
the home at a reasonable price (of course you could get a T1 at home,
but at about a 1000 (!) times more expensive than in the US at the time).

Still also over here most people use dial-up modem or ISDN and don't
have flat-rates, but Cable and sometimes ADSL service is often
available now too, and things are changing very fast now. I wouldn't have
imagined this three years ago, and see now that three years is an
amazingly long time and that the landscape can change dramatically
during the course of 3 to 5 years. It takes just one guy that's crazy
enough to start a new ISP with the idea that ISDN, ADSL or Cable is
just not good enough, and start digging with fiber. So, we'll see what
happens but I'm not to pessimistic. Hope we'll meet again in three
years both at the end of a piece of fiber ;-).

Feico.