Low distribution (bandwidth) cost

The cost of communication technology is falling rapidly.

Home connectivity in excess of ten mbps at low cost is increasingly available.

Symetric connectivity is required if people are to be thought of as information producers as well as consumers.

Peer to peer may hold the key for keeping individual broadcast bandwidth requirements down, but large numbers of people have to be willing participants if it is to succeed. Two examples are:

1. Chinese peer-peer TV requiring roughly 6 mbps symetric connectivity: http://www.pplive.com/

2. Bit torrent: downloading a 541 MB movie took over ten hours using Bit Torrent. During that time, data transfer rate ranged from around 3 to 50 MB/second. Note that Bit Torrent is uploading and downloading at the same time. The system rewards those who rapidly upload data with faster download speed.

Neighborhood mesh networks may come to pass one day -- who will own the last mile -- the people, the municipality or the telephone/cable company?

Performance improvement

Something on dwdm progress

under construction

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