Mailing List Archive

smd@clock.org (Sean M. Doran) wrote:

> Examining this a bit more closely, since undersea capacity is
> terribly expensive, when there is adequate capacity available
> to a large aggregate of sites people want to get to, there will
> be an obvious market for access to that capacity.

Actually, i do not understand why undersea capacity is so
expensive. Cable is more expensive, yes; but the paths
are much straighter, and there's no need to purchase
rights of ways (except for shore-side strips). There's
no need to dig trenches -- you just drop the cable off the
boat.

I guess the real problem with undersea capacity is more in the
fact that it was always considered a low-volume service (which
it is, in terms of voice traffic); so there's no many competitive
providers, and small-quantity pricing.

--vadim

Undersea capacity is expensive for 3 reasons:
1) It's under the ocean
2) It's under the ocean
3) It's under the ocean

For more information than you ever wanted and a great read check out Neal
Stephenson's article:
http://wwww.wired.com/wired/4.12/motherearth/

Transoceanic cables are actually designed with massive capacity. They're
terribly expensive to lay and maintain though, and demand for
communications has kept good pace with available space - keeping the
price of transit high.

You're right about the lack of competition. To undertake laying
a cable PTT's will join together and divy out capacity, management
responsibilities, etc., in proportion to their investment. This doesn't
leave room for small-quantity pricing, as you'd have to aggregate "massive
quantities" to reach the economies of scale necessary.

--
JMC

On Sat, 31 May 1997, Vadim Antonov wrote:
> smd@clock.org (Sean M. Doran) wrote:
> > Examining this a bit more closely, since undersea capacity is
> > terribly expensive, when there is adequate capacity available
> > to a large aggregate of sites people want to get to, there will
> > be an obvious market for access to that capacity.
> Actually, i do not understand why undersea capacity is so
> expensive. Cable is more expensive, yes; but the paths
> are much straighter, and there's no need to purchase
> rights of ways (except for shore-side strips). There's
> no need to dig trenches -- you just drop the cable off the
> boat.
> I guess the real problem with undersea capacity is more in the
> fact that it was always considered a low-volume service (which
> it is, in terms of voice traffic); so there's no many competitive
> providers, and small-quantity pricing.

> smd@clock.org (Sean M. Doran) wrote:
>
> > Examining this a bit more closely, since undersea capacity is
> > terribly expensive, when there is adequate capacity available
> > to a large aggregate of sites people want to get to, there will
> > be an obvious market for access to that capacity.
>
> Actually, i do not understand why undersea capacity is so
> expensive. Cable is more expensive, yes; but the paths
> are much straighter, and there's no need to purchase
> rights of ways (except for shore-side strips). There's
> no need to dig trenches -- you just drop the cable off the
> boat.

From what I've read, it's quite difficult to lay undersea cable. There
was a nice article in the Dec. 1996 issue of WIRED covering the FLAG
(Fiberoptic Link Around the Globe) project, written by (of all people)
Neal Stephenson. Online at:

http://wwww.wired.com/wired/4.12/features/ffglass.html

Daniel
~~~~~~

Vadim Antonov writes:
> Actually, i do not understand why undersea capacity is so
> expensive.

Largely because to run a cable, you need to get permission from the
government at the far end to land the thing, and they don't give out
permission that freely.

> Cable is more expensive, yes; but the paths
> are much straighter, and there's no need to purchase
> rights of ways (except for shore-side strips). There's
> no need to dig trenches -- you just drop the cable off the
> boat.

Not really that true -- you should read the "Hacker Tourist" article
by Neil Stephenson in "Wired" from last summer in which he followed
the laying of the FLAG cable. This was perhaps the only worthwhile
article in "Wired" in the last two years...

Perry

Actually if you read that article (and everyone should..) the hardest
part was the overland routes. That would indicate that it is much
easier to lay cable under the ocean...

Brian

On Sat, 31 May 1997, Jesse Caulfield wrote:

> Undersea capacity is expensive for 3 reasons:
> 1) It's under the ocean
> 2) It's under the ocean
> 3) It's under the ocean
>
> For more information than you ever wanted and a great read check out Neal
> Stephenson's article:
> http://wwww.wired.com/wired/4.12/motherearth/
>
> Transoceanic cables are actually designed with massive capacity. They're
> terribly expensive to lay and maintain though, and demand for
> communications has kept good pace with available space - keeping the
> price of transit high.
>
> You're right about the lack of competition. To undertake laying
> a cable PTT's will join together and divy out capacity, management
> responsibilities, etc., in proportion to their investment. This doesn't
> leave room for small-quantity pricing, as you'd have to aggregate "massive
> quantities" to reach the economies of scale necessary.
>
> --
> JMC
>
> On Sat, 31 May 1997, Vadim Antonov wrote:
> > smd@clock.org (Sean M. Doran) wrote:
> > > Examining this a bit more closely, since undersea capacity is
> > > terribly expensive, when there is adequate capacity available
> > > to a large aggregate of sites people want to get to, there will
> > > be an obvious market for access to that capacity.
> > Actually, i do not understand why undersea capacity is so
> > expensive. Cable is more expensive, yes; but the paths
> > are much straighter, and there's no need to purchase
> > rights of ways (except for shore-side strips). There's
> > no need to dig trenches -- you just drop the cable off the
> > boat.
> > I guess the real problem with undersea capacity is more in the
> > fact that it was always considered a low-volume service (which
> > it is, in terms of voice traffic); so there's no many competitive
> > providers, and small-quantity pricing.
>
>

Hello Miguel,

> Yes, the demand far outstrips the supply of bandwidth, we
> are having that problem right now. Never mind that the we
> can afford the > $60,000/month for a measly T1 to the US -
> we are currently back-ordered as there is not enough available
> channels across the Pacific.

Actually, there is plenty of bandwidth coming out of the Philippines. The
problem is that the telco you are working with did not do their bandwidth
forecast correctly. Hence, they did not buy the enough allocations from the
cable consortiums. This is why you are waiting. Your telco is waiting until
the next cable consortium bidding cycle (June) to get more bandwidth
allocated so they can sell it to you.

The telco could get you your T1 now, but they would have to buy the
capacity "out of cycle." This is expensive since they either have to buy
the bandwidth off one of the other telcos in the region or at "out of
cycle" rates from the cable consortium - both are very expensive.

[lots deleted]

> > or start coming to the same understanding: access to trans-oceanic
> > capacity while it continues to be hiddeously expensive should be
> > paid for at both ends, since both sides benefit.
>
> How do we come up with a settlement model?

First you need the tools to measure flows. They did not exist several years
ago. Today, with the work in RTFM (Real Time Flow Metering WG in IETF),
Caida, Netflow, and other tools, the technical foundation required to
create settlement agreements similar to the ones in the voice world are now
possible.


--
--
--
Barry Raveendran Greene | || || |
Senior Consultant | || || |
Consulting Engineering | |||| |||| |
tel: +65 738-5535 ext 235 | ..:||||||:..:||||||:.. |
e-mail: bgreene@cisco.com | c i s c o S y s t e m s |

| Worldcom and Cable & Wireless are in the process of laying a 20 Gbps

Thanks for the ad. Now to try to make this more operations-relevant...

Vadim Antonov and I had a brief exchange wherein I pointed out
that the biggest costs (noted in part by others) of trans-oceanic
cables are, principally, insurance, rental of cable-laying fleets,
ongoing management and repairs, acquisition of landing rights,
and restoration-bargaining.

SDH (I know of no trans-oceanic SONET deployments, however people
have been discovering that some ADMs don't care while others light
up like Christmas trees when one is used instead of the other) helps
reduce the costs of bargaining for restoration capacity, since a
properly engineered route _ought_ not to fail across both paths
for the most common reasons, however, even really well planned
SDH loops will fail from time to time. This sort of technology
(TAT-12/TAT-13 for example) is a huge plus.

CWI has an "in" on fleet rental and on ongoing management, however
it does not reduce the price to zero as CWI and its partners
(e.g. SPRINT in PTAT Systems Inc.) can attest.

Landing rights to London are relatively inexpensive. However, London
isn't the only place in Europe, and it will be interesting to see how
Worldcom manages keeping costs down on end-to-end international private
lines between the U.S. and Europe.

The technical aspects of the Gemini cable deployment
between NYC and London are staggering. I expect that clever
ISPs (UUNET anyone?) could arrange trial services on the
first path when (if?) it becomes available at the end of 1997
or the start of 1998. However, it would be insane to bet
one's business on the cable being fully reliable for some time,
and doubly insane to bet on not needing a full restoration contract
in place until several months after the second path comes up
probably about a year later.

AFAIK there are no practical means yet to acquire as much restoration
capacity as there is bandwidth on Gemini and until other paths
are brought on line an operator should consider acquiring backup
either at the IP level or by spending real $ on a restoration
contract.

What would be dead keen, however, is people getting together
to use whatever is available on Gemini initially as a size-large
battle net to test out the next generation of IP routers and the
like in a relatively public fashion.

| All this means that we should see a significant drop in trans-
| atlantic bandwidth (and even intra-europe) charges in the near
| future.

Intra-Europe charges will fall for many reasons beyond MFS's
deployments. I would be interested in a formal and binding assertion
that the Gemini owners will substantially undercut their competition's
pricing structures, otherwise, frankly, this seems like the kind
of hubris one shouldn't plan real networks around.

Finally, for the "bandwidth-is-free" crowd, this only amounts
to maybe 8 STM-16s (maybe more if people take chances and parallelize
across the two paths rather than use the two paths for redundancy),
which means this cable is really not that far ahead of the apparent
bandwidth-demand curve. Consequently, don't expect the current
model of being shy of taxable short-term high-capacity deals to stop as
Gemini becomes available.

On the other hand, that CWI is willing to continue taking large
risks in developing private submarine cable systems and is able to
find investment and risk partners bodes well for being able to
continue terrestrial growth, and maybe alot less well for LEOs and
similar technologies. This is good news for people building parts
of the global Internet. Of course, a cream-skimming path that's
being built, so perhaps I overestimate the degree of risk perceived
by the two Gemini partners...

Sean.

Barry has an excellent point, and I'm glad that someone with
his, um, background is helping undersea cable operators and
Internet operators understand each other better.

The not very extensive history of private undersea ventures
has revolved around "cream-skimming" -- taking high-revenue
high-capacity traffic from consortium-built cables -- and
bandwidth appreciation. Essentially the private cable operators
want to walk a line between having to depreciate their assets
due to lack of revenue and having enough spare capacity for
those times when consortium partners run short.

That is, if you have a private cable, you don't want to
sell all your capacity to end users because you are hoping
that your competitors will run short on bandwidth, allowing
you to jack up your prices. If and when you sell capacity
you want it in long-term contracts, preferably for restoration
of other paths so that if someone builds a competing cable
or the accountants start demanding some return on investment
you can do short-term "as-available" deals with government-funded
research networks.

Unfortunately this model does not tend to drive down prices
substantially for most users, and particularly not for most
users looking for an easy growth path (any kind of easily-tuned
end-to-end TDM in theory should change this).

Even turning unused capacity over for internal commercial purposes
(and it is unclear whether UUNET would be an "internal purpose"
given the joint ownership of the Gemini company) would be a
huge risk as it involves tying capacity to a revenue stream,
which means making hard decisions when someone wants to pay
real money for that capacity when they run into a crunch.

Terrestrial capacity politics have some similarities, btw,
however the acquisition of rights-of-way in some places is
so difficult that alot of the cross-leasing games revolve
around trading capacity along various paths as much as
playing the you're out of bandwidth pay us lots of money
games (which AT&T does remarkably well, btw, in the U.S.).

What becomes interesting is alot of new rights-of-way opening
up and making it possible to offer dark fibre along them. This
directly threatens the price escalation model as well as the
managed-services pricing schemes bell-heads like. This is good
for people building parts of the Internet.

Sean.

Hello Jesse,

> Undersea capacity is expensive for 3 reasons:
> 1) It's under the ocean
> 2) It's under the ocean
> 3) It's under the ocean

Actually, based on first hand experience, the cost of installing a oceanic
cable is _not_ the driving factor that makes oceanic bandwidth so
expensive. The key factors involve the relationship between the partners of
any one of the cable consortiums. Each of the partners are telcos. Telcos
who compete with each other in the region do not have each other's interest
at heart. Hence, when they set the prices for the cable capacity, the
prices get jacked up.

When ever one telco mis-forecasts and runs out of capacity on a cable, the
other "partners" jack up their prices even further and sell it to the
unfortunate "partner" who ran out of capacity. These pricing games between
the telcos over oceanic bandwidth is one of the key factors for the high
cost end customers experience.

The problem with all of this is there is little information available that
explains how oceanic bandwidth politics. This is why we've got a couple of
blocked out sessions during APRICOT that covers oceanic and space segment
(satellite) technology and politics.

IMHO - Education is the best weapon to lowering the cost of oceanic
bandwidth.

Barry


--
--
--
Barry Raveendran Greene | || || |
Senior Consultant | || || |
Consulting Engineering | |||| |||| |
tel: +65 738-5535 ext 235 | ..:||||||:..:||||||:.. |
e-mail: bgreene@cisco.com | c i s c o S y s t e m s |

Hello Chris,

> Worldcom and Cable & Wireless are in the process of laying a 20 Gbps
> transatlantic sonet (DWDM) system which they claim doubles the current
> transatlantic capacity. The southern route should be done by November
> of this year with the first capacity available for the end of the year.
> The northern route, which will close the ring, will be done in '98.

Only 20 Gbps? KDD is putting a 100 Gbps around Japan. Due in 1998. ;-).

Barry
--
--
--
Barry Raveendran Greene | || || |
Senior Consultant | || || |
Consulting Engineering | |||| |||| |
tel: +65 738-5535 ext 235 | ..:||||||:..:||||||:.. |
e-mail: bgreene@cisco.com | c i s c o S y s t e m s |

"Miguel A.L. Paraz" <map@iphil.net> writes:

> There can be two ways of looking at it, from the WWW/content point of
> view:
>
> * "They're unlucky enough to be outside North America, but they want
> American content anyway. So they have to suffer with poor
> performance and high prices."
> * "These folks outside America don't get to appreciate our content.
> Their numbers are growing. Thus we have to invest in the delivery
> infrastructure."

Of course that leads to:

* We have to worry about international copyright issues as
overseas ISPs begin duplicating our content to save on
IPL bandwidth

* We should deploy duplicate servers in other parts of the
world so that we don't have to deal with the problems of
shortages of IPL bandwidth

On the other hand I argue that the fundamentally
interesting thing about the Internet is that traffic
patterns shift substantially at little notice through the
development and deployment of new technology. Moreover,
in in Internet whose origins were "every client is also a
server" and where, with proxying and the like, that is
still essentially practical, a strict content:consumer
mindset is a very short-sighted business approach.

> But, the Independent Big Network people will still have to get
> their own IPLs - which may end up with BT/MCI, Sprint/Global One,
> or AT&T? What's the difference between becoming an IP customer
> and just a leased line customer?

Independent Big Network people are working on a simple
risk statement: traditional bandwidth-owning telcos are
too slow to keep up in the Internet marketplace,
particularly when they're distracted by what various bits
of deregulation are doing to their traditional income,
creating an opportunity for the Independents either to
thrive on their own or to be strong acquisition targets.

Moreover, one might bet on partnerships with organizations
competing with established telcos on other fronts which
are becoming more like commodity products (most notably
raw bandwidth).

> How do we come up with a settlement model?

Ultimately this depends on what everyone's real costs are.
Alot of what is perceived as "cost" is due to
misapplication of technology. A settlement model that
encourages all parties to do the right thing to sustain
the industry's growth is really what's needed.

The problem is getting such a model agreed to and put into
effect other than bilaterally among clever operators.
Hahaha, good luck if there are American lawyers involved.

> And more providers should be hauling in their own high-capacity pipes and
> putting up their own overseas POPs instead of having the local folks
> drag their lines to the US, and charge a lot for slow
> connections.

It's coming. The problem is that the people most likely
able to do this are also the people earning half-circuit
revenues from the large numbers of IPLs that would get
aggregated into an IPL where both half-circuits would be
paid by the provider entity. This is especially touchy
when money for one of the half circuits is paid to another
telco.

In this way large capacity-owning telcos are in a bind
about competing with a lucrative revenue stream (IPLs)
whenever they do this and also when they compete against
non-telco Independent Big Networks who might buy IPLs at
market value. To make up for lost revenue (and maybe real
cost) from the internally-deployed IPL, lots of traffic
would have to be aggregated. This kind of massive
overselling of capacity is still somewhat alien to the
managed services mindset and even if it didn't it doesn't
make it all that much easier for them to compete on
"quality of service" profitably just now without some
magic extra-high-quality pricing bullet.

Sean.

The bottom line throughout this discussion is that neither the techies or
the capacity planners really make the divisions. The economics of running
cable is only a small factor. It goes to supply and demand. Scarcity
creates higher pricing. Look at the recent bids on the new cable???
Everyone wants a piece and some carriers would like to monopolize as much
bandwidth as possible to control the flow. The accountants and the
marketing types look to optimize their return early in the game.

What does that mean for the Internet? The overseas ISPs are building up
their resources. The only ISPs that can really afford to stay in the game
in a big way "over the long haul" are now the carriers themselves. The end
result??? The marketing and pricing strategies of the ISP and market are
being commercialized and in the overseas markets looking more like the
pricing strategies of the typical telephone service offering.The cost for
overseas cables are not going to be coming down in a big way over the next
couple of years. They will more likely go up. At least for our foreseeable
future. The next few years. The pent up demand is to great.

My humble opinion.

Mark T. Ansboury
Virtual Resources Inc.
Virtual Communications Inc.
E-mail: mark.ansboury@yesvirtual.com

Undersea cable was expensive - the cable economics were geared to a return
on investment linked to a high investment risk and relatively slow uptake of the
cable,due to a linear phone growth model and an E1 cable transaction unit.

More recent cable projects have large increase in available capacity for essentially
the same project cost - which will trigger a steady decline in the lease price
once the large cables come on line.

Geoff


>
>Actually, i do not understand why undersea capacity is so
>expensive. Cable is more expensive, yes; but the paths
>are much straighter, and there's no need to purchase
>rights of ways (except for shore-side strips). There's
>no need to dig trenches -- you just drop the cable off the
>boat.
>

Hi all,

I have been following this thread with some interest. A few months ago a
friend of mine from Fore Systems told me about the 'ACTS' project. NASA and
Ohio-State and quite a few others were doing research into the Gigabit
Satelite Network. There was a test between Sony in Japan and I 'BELIEVE'
JPL in Pasadena of hight def video transmissions over an OC-3 circuit. I
heard something about a quasi commercial deployment of another ACTS
project. Anybody heard anything about this? If enough birds like ACTS were
sent up, this could be a boon for ISP's maybe. Of course I live in this
ideal world where everybody is reasonable, intelligent, and well yea I know
things are just quite the opposite.

If MCI/AT&T/NTT/GTE put this into motion then were doomed, but if Hughes
(read someone who doesn't own an ISP yet) put one up, it might be a bit
more promising. Who knows...

comments, rants, flames?
----
From: Mark Ansboury <mansboury@yesvirtual.com>
To: Sean M. Doran <smd@clock.org>; avg@pluris.com; bgreene@cisco.com;
jesse@netthink.com
Cc: map@iphil.net; nanog@merit.edu; smd@clock.org
Date: Saturday, May 31, 1997 7:34 PM
Subject: Re: connectivity outside the US

>The only ISPs that can really afford to stay in the game
>in a big way "over the long haul" are now the carriers themselves. The
end
>result??? The marketing and pricing strategies of the ISP and market are
>being commercialized and in the overseas markets looking more like the
>pricing strategies of the typical telephone service offering.The cost for
>overseas cables are not going to be coming down in a big way over the
next
>couple of years. They will more likely go up. At least for our
foreseeable
>future. The next few years. The pent up demand is to great.
>

Now where is Judge Green (is he retired ?) when you need him?! Feds are
sleeping as usual....I usually don't like the Feds sticking their noses
into places, but I loath the telcos and their continuing lies and extortion
of consumers and businesses. Ack. I can't tell you how many times GTE
screwes everything up!




Chris "Don't get me started bitching about telcos/carriers"

$500M for building a 20G system trans-Atlantic ready foir service Dec 97
with the next system scheduled for commissioning 12 months down the track
risky?

I think not - its about the best way I know to turn $500M to $1.2B in about
18 months.



At 06:14 PM 31/5/97 -0700, Sean M. Doran wrote:
>
>On the other hand, that CWI is willing to continue taking large
>risks in developing private submarine cable systems and is able to
>find investment and risk partners bodes well for being able to
>continue terrestrial growth, and maybe alot less well for LEOs and
>similar technologies. This is good news for people building parts
>of the global Internet. Of course, a cream-skimming path that's
>being built, so perhaps I overestimate the degree of risk perceived
>by the two Gemini partners...
>
> Sean.
>
>
>

Supply and demand - the cables which are being commissioned in late 98 and
99 look to be 100G loop designs in bot the Pacific and Atlantic
environments. The system price looks like remaining pretty constant -
around $500M give or take a few hundred mil - despite a 50 fold increase in
capacity. Its reasonable to expect a radical bottoming out of unit price
for IRUs sometime in 99 for these cables. What does that mean? The scarcity
premium in cable price which will be evident through 98 will be eliminated
in 99 and insterad you'll see a return to a technology-indexed unit price,
where the price will reflect the basic project costs And given the increase
in cable capacity due to WDM deployment you can expect a unit price drop.



At 12:18 PM 1/6/97 +1000, Mark Ansboury wrote:
The cost for
>overseas cables are not going to be coming down in a big way over the next
>couple of years. They will more likely go up. At least for our foreseeable
>future. The next few years. The pent up demand is to great.

On Sun, 1 Jun 1997, Circuit wrote:

> comments, rants, flames?

Do satellites really stand a chance against fibre? Most people think not,
and more specifically that their competitiveness shall continue to decline
as time progresses. Not exactly the kind of thing one wants to lay out
large capital expenditures on...

Of course, I'm just a tool of conventional wisdom, as poorly conveyed by
the media, when it comes to these issues. Sean, if you're still a jobless
bum then you should consider starting your own newsletter. 8^)

--
Todd Graham Lewis MindSpring Enterprises tlewis@mindspring.com

> A few months ago a friend of mine from Fore Systems told me about
> the 'ACTS' project. NASA and Ohio-State and quite a few others were
> doing research into the Gigabit Satelite Network.

> Anybody heard anything about this?



The Advanced Communications Technology Satellite (ACTS) provides
for the development and flight test of high-risk, advanced communications
satellite technology.

http://kronos.lerc.nasa.gov/acts/acts.html

What you are describing is reasonable in a truly open market environment.
However, the cost of committing to $650K to $800K for E1s limits the field
significantly. Especially when the carriers bid on a large portion of the
available bandwidth. The availability of 100G loops will be diminished by
the more financially sound carriers (i.e., Telstra). I think you know those
guys. When you look at the demand between now and the year 2000 and you
guys will be looking at consuming +200M of the bandwidth for IP services
and God knows how much for the more traditional services.

Even though the investment has remained relatively constant the market
pricing has not.

I don't see it being a game for the faint hearted. And the massive
consumption from the likes of AT&T, BT/MCI and Worldcom will greatly
influence the pricing. You may see a trend towards reducing the price for
the bulk buyers/investors, but it will not likely come down as fast as your
predict for the low to moderate users. Your assessment may be right, but I
am not so sure we will see it before the year 2000.

Mark
----------
> From: Geoff Huston <gih@telstra.net>
> To: Mark Ansboury <mansboury@yesvirtual.com>
> Cc: Sean M. Doran <smd@clock.org>; avg@pluris.com; bgreene@cisco.com;
jesse@netthink.com; map@iphil.net; nanog@merit.edu; smd@clock.org
> Subject: Re: connectivity outside the US
> Date: Sunday, June 01, 1997 6:04 PM
>
> Supply and demand - the cables which are being commissioned in late 98
and
> 99 look to be 100G loop designs in bot the Pacific and Atlantic
> environments. The system price looks like remaining pretty constant -
> around $500M give or take a few hundred mil - despite a 50 fold increase
in
> capacity. Its reasonable to expect a radical bottoming out of unit price
> for IRUs sometime in 99 for these cables. What does that mean? The
scarcity
> premium in cable price which will be evident through 98 will be
eliminated
> in 99 and insterad you'll see a return to a technology-indexed unit
price,
> where the price will reflect the basic project costs And given the
increase
> in cable capacity due to WDM deployment you can expect a unit price drop.
>
>
>
> At 12:18 PM 1/6/97 +1000, Mark Ansboury wrote:
> The cost for
> >overseas cables are not going to be coming down in a big way over the
next
> >couple of years. They will more likely go up. At least for our
foreseeable
> >future. The next few years. The pent up demand is to great.
>

>I have been following this thread with some interest. A few months ago a
>friend of mine from Fore Systems told me about the 'ACTS' project. NASA and
>Ohio-State and quite a few others were doing research into the Gigabit
>Satelite Network. There was a test between Sony in Japan and I 'BELIEVE'
>JPL in Pasadena of hight def video transmissions over an OC-3 circuit. I
>heard something about a quasi commercial deployment of another ACTS
>project. Anybody heard anything about this? If enough birds like ACTS were
>sent up, this could be a boon for ISP's maybe. Of course I live in this
>ideal world where everybody is reasonable, intelligent, and well yea I know
>things are just quite the opposite.

Which type of satellite network was talked about? If we're talking the
big, far-away GEO satellites, my guess is that the latency involved
would kill such a project. OTOH, LEO satellites could work (see:
Teledesic), but involve a massive investment and lots of satellites.

- Jakob

Well . . . most people may not think satellites stand a chance but Bill
Gates and Craig McCaw seem to think they do. Teledesic is planning
build a long-haul communications network based on low earth orbit birds.
In the past neither of these guys have been too stupid so I wouldn't
rule out satellite communications just yet.

Just my .02 worth,
Chad

------------------------------------------
Chad Skidmore
VP Operations & Engineering
Data Source, L.L.C.
http://www.dsource.com
cskidmore@dsource.com

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Todd Graham Lewis [SMTP:lists@reflections.eng.mindspring.net]
> Sent: Sunday, June 01, 1997 1:07 AM
> To: Circuit
> Cc: North American Network Operator Goobers
> Subject: Re: connectivity outside the US
>
> On Sun, 1 Jun 1997, Circuit wrote:
>
> > comments, rants, flames?
>
> Do satellites really stand a chance against fibre? Most people think
> not,
> and more specifically that their competitiveness shall continue to
> decline
> as time progresses. Not exactly the kind of thing one wants to lay
> out
> large capital expenditures on...
>
> Of course, I'm just a tool of conventional wisdom, as poorly conveyed
> by
> the media, when it comes to these issues. Sean, if you're still a
> jobless
> bum then you should consider starting your own newsletter. 8^)
>
> --
> Todd Graham Lewis MindSpring Enterprises
> tlewis@mindspring.com

> $500M for building a 20G system trans-Atlantic ready foir service Dec 97
> with the next system scheduled for commissioning 12 months down the track
> risky?

AFAIK Gemini is a 48 pair fibre ring. Initially it will be run without
Wave Division Multiplexing, so using the most boring of boring kit that's
48 x 2.4Gb = 115Gb. However it's not too hard these days to get 4.8
Gb down a fibre without WDM, and WDM could give up to a 16x increase
(cable is built for WDM just no point deploying it initially). This
would give 7360Gb. Alledgedly technolody that supports this is "in the labs".

Alex Bligh
Xara Networks

At 04:06 AM 6/1/97 -0400, Todd Graham Lewis wrote:
>On Sun, 1 Jun 1997, Circuit wrote:
>
>> comments, rants, flames?
>
>Do satellites really stand a chance against fibre? Most people think not,
>and more specifically that their competitiveness shall continue to decline
>as time progresses. Not exactly the kind of thing one wants to lay out
>large capital expenditures on...

High orbit, geosyncronous sattelites do not stand much of a chance against
land lines as the latency on the links is quite high. Low orbit
satellites, however, can be quite effective competition assuming that they
have enough satellites to get coverage. These types of satellites are the
ones that Gates is thinking of launching as well as several other
companies/consortiums. When we can all have > 1MB/sec connectivity
wireless to our laptops/video portable phones, with global coverage,
satellites will rule the day.

Justin "I still like land lines" Newton
Justin W. Newton
Senior Network Architect
Priori Networks http://www.priori.net
ISP/C, Director at Large http://www.ispc.org