December 15, 1998

from the Friends-of-the-Revolution dept

Observations from 30,000ft

By Brian Day - December, 1998

Premise
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I am currently at 35,000ft on a late night flight from New York to San Fransisco and a couple of things are becoming clear to me.
 
1. Digital Subscriber Lines (DSL) will win out over Cable Modems.
2. eCommerce will be larger than current predictions.
 
 (this is what I do... :-) )
 
Background
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DSL is the telecom solution to high-speed bandwidth into the home.  It uses your existing twisted pair copper wiring and pushes data at previously unheard of rates (1.5MB/sec).  In contrast, Cable companies are re-wiring homes to support two way communication, since they never expected content to be heading in the opposite direction.  Both are beginning to be offered in regional areas for around $50/month.
 
Substantiation
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No I am not on my 6th beer, and no the altitude is not affecting my judgement.  Rather I can see the millions of lights stretching across the country.  These light are the millions of households that will need to be re-wired to support Cable modems.  These are also the same houses that are already wired for DSL service.  There are a lot of lights out there!  Cable companies don't stand a chance.
 
Once these houses are connected to the Net at high speeds with permanent connections people are going to start buying lots of stuff over the net (many people already are).  It is very obvious from here.  I can see all the cars on the road (traffic -- bad).  I can see all the houses (lots of people -- good).  Its going to be huge!  Oh yeah... I saw Nicholas Negroponte speak and he agrees with me on this point.
 
Conclusion
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Point 1 and 2 are true.  Oh yeah... 3. Why do airlines try so hard to make good food?  I would prefer for them to give me two Snickers bars than to eat what they call beef. 

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Friends of the Revolution
by Brian Day

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