Olympus-OM
[Top] [All Lists]

Re: [OM] Image Storage on the Road

Subject: Re: [OM] Image Storage on the Road
From: Nathan Wajsman <photo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 5 Jun 2009 18:01:36 +0200
Hi Ken,

I know all that, having worked in the business as well (B2B rather  
than B2C but still). You are of course right that it is more difficult  
(read expensive) to wire up a more sparsely populated country like the  
US or Canada compared to a small, densely populated place like NL. But  
a place like Sweden is big and has just 9 million people, or Norway,  
just as big with 5 million, and they are more wired than the US. The  
new standard in many northern European countries is to have fiber to  
the home in entire cities.

As for telephone service, when I moved from the US to Belgium in 1995,  
I did not notice any deterioration in service. Same thing when I later  
moved to Switzerland and then to Holland and then to Spain. In any  
event, like most people in my circle of friends and acquaintances,  
fixed-line telephone service is irrelevant these days. I do not even  
remember my home phone number; the only number that matters is my  
cellphone.

Cheers,
Nathan

Nathan Wajsman
Alicante, Spain
http://www.frozenlight.eu
http://www.greatpix.eu
http://www.nathanfoto.com

Books: http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/search?search=wajsman&x=0&y=0
PICTURE OF THE WEEK: http://www.fotocycle.dk/paws
Blog: http://www.fotocycle.dk/blog



On Jun 5, 2009, at 5:47 PM, Ken Norton wrote:

>>
>> The funny thing is that the US has a considerably lower broadband
>> penetration than places like the Netherlands or Scandinavia. I  
>> suspect
>> that the large number of internet cafes in London and other big  
>> cities
>> in the UK is due to the large number of third world immigrants and
>> backpacking types who do not lug a laptop around.
>>
>
>
> Yes, that is fascinating. As a former Internet/DSL product manager  
> for an
> ISP/Telco, I have several observations:
>
> 1. Rural population. Broadband is a distance-limited service and the  
> telco
> and cable-tv networks are predominantly where the greatest population
> density is. In most non-urban regions, up to 40% of the population  
> lives
> outside the circle of coverage. There are new technologies and  
> adaptations
> of existing technologies which are allowing us now to extent that  
> circle of
> coverage much more, but otherwise it requires the placement of  
> broadband
> access equipment (DSLAMS) within 20,000 feet (7000m) of the customer  
> site.
> The cost of equipment and high-speed connectivity back to the core  
> for the
> equipment can run over $30,000 just to serve possibly no more than 24
> customers. We've had places where the costs were completely  
> prohibitive due
> to cable/fiber limitations. It costs $200-$300 per port (customer)  
> to serve
> broadband in high-density locations, and $1000-2000 per port  
> (customer) in
> rural locations. That's just build-out costs, not including ongoing  
> costs of
> 20% per port of original build-out costs per year.
>
> 2. Apartment block demographics. It is unusual in the USA to have  
> apartment
> blocks wired out for broadband to each apartment. With the exception  
> of
> several large cities here, apartment blocks tend to be lower-income
> (sometimes low/no-income). In most cities around the world,  
> apartment blocks
> tend to have a higher income ratio. Also, it is not uncommon to have  
> all
> apartments within the blocks to be wired or broadband ready. Also,  
> one must
> look at what percentage of the general population lives in such  
> apartment
> blocks.  As a case in point, I lived in a community of 40,000+  
> people and
> there was ONE apartment complex with just under 400 units. Other  
> than the
> occasional 4-8 appartment buildings, all else was one or two family  
> houses.
> Also, statistically, there are fewer persons per apartment in the  
> USA than
> other countries.
>
> 3. Cost of traditional telephone service. Until recently, most  
> countries had
> extremely expensive and/or unreliable telephone service. The ability  
> to
> control your own communications costs by utilizing voice-over on  
> broadband
> has been a tremendous advantage. In the USA, the traditional telephone
> service has been excellent and relatively price-stable. However, the
> price-structure is changing as telcos try to retain revenues as people
> migrate over to cell-phones and voice-over IP.  We see this  
> migration on
> residential lines, but any business worth its salt recognizes that
> traditional land-lines are still required.  Because of the quality  
> of the
> telephone network, there hasn't been the pressure to change  
> technologies as
> much as has been in other countries. Voice-over IP really is aweful,  
> but
> when your regular telephone network is bad, what's the difference?   
> (I used
> to travel A LOT to western European countries and I have had sufficent
> exposure to the differences in the quality of telephone service  
> between the
> USA and there--now that I work in the industry I know the specific  
> reasons
> why--but a lot of improvement has occured in the past 15 years).
>
> 4. Television viewing habits. The USA has one of the highest
> time-spent-viewing statistics in the world. Cable-TV (and Satellite  
> TV) have
> actually been quite successful in staving off the initial onslaught of
> broadband-internet demand.
>
> 5. How statistics are calculated.  In the USA, our broadband  
> penetration
> numbers are based on Total Number of Households. Many countries  
> calculate
> the broadband penetration based on Population.  Other countries base  
> the
> statistic on Households Capable of Getting Broadband.  As you can  
> see, it is
> possible to greatly skew the statistics based on method.  For  
> example, if
> you base it on population and 90% of your population lives in densily
> populated areas, you'll get a very high broadband-penetration rate.  
> However,
> if you base it on households, you'll find that there is a skewing of  
> the
> data towards the rural with a much lower broadband-penetration rate.  
> Also,
> since the USA numbers are based on Households, nearly all households  
> are
> capable of telephone service whether they can receive broadband or  
> not, but
> in many countries, there is no telephone service in rural areas at  
> all. It
> is not uncommon for the elderly to not be included in the statistics.
>
> 6. Wireless overlay.  Locations, such as Singapore, have a near  
> total WiFi
> overlay over the entire city. These systems have a two-fold purpose  
> as they
> are built for public-safety (fire, police, rescue) as well as having a
> public-WiFi connectivity. When calculating broadband penetration,  
> anybody
> within the WiFi cloud is usually considered to have broadband  
> whether they
> even own a computer or not.
>
> 7. At work broadband access.  Many times the surveys skew the  
> statistics by
> asking if the user has access to broadband at home AND at work. The  
> USA
> statistics track these seperately.
>
> I believe that you can use your eyeballs to actually get a more  
> accurate
> representation of broadband penetration.  As we've been discussing,  
> in the
> USA we have coffee shops and libraries with WiFi, and the occasional
> community WiFi overlay. But we have next to no Internet Cafes. Why  
> is that?
> Because most people who use computers have their own broadband  
> connection or
> have adequate access elsewhere. Locations where Internet Cafes are  
> popular
> tend to serve a population without computers of their own or without
> Internet access in their own homes. Strangely enough, some of these
> locations with large concentrations of Internet Cafes also report the
> highest broadband penetration.  Which do you believe?
>
> Yet, I will acknowledge that the Netherlands definitely does have an
> inordinate penetration of broadband.  We have a couple of Dutch  
> communities
> here and the funny thing is that they too have extremely high usage  
> numbers,
> so I suspect that it is somehow cultural.
>
> Within the industry, broadband penetration statistics have been a  
> topic of
> discussion for years. We did our own research into this and even  
> adapted the
> numbers based on survey methods. What we found was that the  
> statistics were
> much closer than they appear.  We know, for example, that  
> approximately 30%
> of the population will never be served by broadband unless there is a
> government mandate and taxpayer paid access. This has nothing to do  
> with the
> providers, but the fact that these people either do not want it or are
> financial deadbeats. We know where our topout point is and beyond that
> topout point, growth is limited to population increase or customer  
> swapping
> with other providers.  If our MAXIMUM paying customer penetration is  
> 70%, I
> can't imagine that other countries can be much better, so when you  
> see a
> statistic like 85% penetration, it really makes one wonder.
>
> AG-Schnozz
> -- 
> _________________________________________________________________
> Options: http://lists.thomasclausen.net/mailman/listinfo/olympus
> Archives: http://lists.thomasclausen.net/mailman/private/olympus/
> Themed Olympus Photo Exhibition: http://www.tope.nl/
>

-- 
_________________________________________________________________
Options: http://lists.thomasclausen.net/mailman/listinfo/olympus
Archives: http://lists.thomasclausen.net/mailman/private/olympus/
Themed Olympus Photo Exhibition: http://www.tope.nl/

<Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread>
Sponsored by Tako
Impressum | Datenschutz