On 2010-09-13 13:51, Adam Tauno Williams wrote:
On Mon, 2010-09-13 at 13:02 +0200, Per Jessen wrote:
Ilya Chernykh wrote:
3. such networks grew to become local providers, then merged to become a city-wide provider Yep, that I have understood and that makes sense. What I still can't quite see is how a few nerds wiring up their apartments developed into every or virtually every apartment building being fully wired for ethernet, but I'm obviously missing the bigger picture.
Easy; with facilitation from local governments. Which is why what he is talking about isn't applicable other places - it just won't happen in most places due to non-technical reasons; and it is probably criminal, or at least prohibited [the USA*], in many places,.
(here) it is forbidden to share a connection, unless you ask the ISP for a connection that you are going to share between several households - I think. Some small villages here (Spain) experimented with free WiFi for the entire village, to give all the inhabitants free access to internet (free means, of course, a shared connection paid by the council). Soon the Telcos became angry, and severed the Internet connection. I believe some negotiated and got a shareable connection, which was, of course, more expensive. Or something like that, I don't the current status.
* government entities are often restricted form 'competing' with the 'private sector' (note that both those terms are used in a very tongue-in-cheek manner). If a local government installs something like a fiber-loop you can start the count-down until they are sued by the telopolies.
I know of some local goverments here that started their own small telco company, in order to bypass that >:-) -- Cheers / Saludos, Carlos E. R. (from 11.2 x86_64 "Emerald" GM (Elessar))