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:
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
smd@clock.org (Sean M. Doran) wrote: providers, and small-quantity pricing.