Could someone elaborate on this?
Does this mean that if I were to go to Asia, everyone everywhere -- wealthy and poor, urban and rural, democracy and dictatorship -- all have a nice 100MBPS hookup at their disposal?
Somehow I don't think that's the case. Now I don't know the utility situation in Asia (which is a pretty huge land area), but I suspect a heck of a lot of people don't even have electricity nor telephones, let alone this high speed connection.
Actually, I suspect the telecom situation in the U.S. -- overall -- is better than in Asia. Undoubtedly a few parts of Asia (such as very wealthy people or countries) have some fancy hookups. But I suspect the great masses do not.
Consequently, I think the use of "500 times more powerful" is a littnle exaggerated hyperbole.
I am not familiar with the issues adequately he raises to comment on them. But over the years articles against the "big evil Big Guy" tended not to be not so reliable. Perhaps significant facts were left out or inappropriate issues emphasized. For example, back during the early MCI-AT&T fight the issue of cream skimming, lack of rural service, mandated cross subsidy, and local connection cost was ignored by AT&T critics.
I was searching thru the telecom archives and found a post criticizing the Bell Systems' PBX offerings of 1969 as being junk. I personally saw some modern good systems in use in those days and a check of the Bell Labs history confirms the offerings. To put it another way, how much computer horsepower could you buy back in 1969 for $2,000? Today you get quite a bit and people say it's easy to make your own PBX from that. But back then I don't think you could hook up a string of Altair's and make an ESS out of it, and real computers of that era cost a heck of a lot more. But people seem to expect that the Bell System would have offered cheap yet powerful electronic systems in those days, long before the technology even existed to make it happen. (Sorry, offering a few ICs at the local hobby store doesn't count.)
All I know is that when Verizon was finally allowed to offer long distance my costs went down and service quality went up. The "consumer advocates" wouldn't let Verizon do that in order to "protect me". How they protected me from those restrictions I don't know nor understand. LIkewise, I'm not sure painting today's big telcos as bad is necessarily in the consumer's interest.
[public replies, please]