i completely understand that acquisition is a common and valid means to grow a business. however, with closed peering as a way of life for our industry, a lot of deals are done which only make money for the investment bankers and don't actually "grow business". closed peering is all about greed and not about service levels, competitive pricing, or overall sector health.
The reason we have this industry alive is investment bankers. Had we not had it, there would not have been abundance of fiber, abundance of competition and easy accessibility of IP. Like it or not, without these games we would have still though of a T1 as of a huge pipe.
This is getting off topic, but... I think this is putting the cart before the horse. We were getting upgraded bandwidth capabilities, fiber put in the ground, etc from traditional Telcos prior to the rise of the Internet; they were finding cheaper ways to run phone service around. The rise of the Internet as a telecom bandwidth demand driver attracted the attention of investment bankers and capital, which then became somewhat of a set of complex feedback loops (capital going into all sorts of internet industries, infrastructure, etc, partly because it appeared to be good business and partly because of hype). The result was that speculation and hype drove overcapacity. Before anyone had invested serious money in any of the internet infrastructure companies, people were building out 10 megabit, T3 backbones and were talking to telco gear providers about what it would take to do 155 megabit and 622 megabit backbones and so on and so on. It was clear to those of us in the late 80s and early 90s that if demand kept pulling, we needed to keep creating bandwidth. It was not clear at all that demand would keep pulling until 2000 at the same rate it had been... people kept proposing the growth curve and then everyone would discount it as ludicrous. But in no way can you claim that it took a terabuck in capital push to make it happen. Demand pull was fully operational and working just fine before ISPs started being snapped up by phone companies and visa versa, and the huge money came into play. Hype might have been lower and growth somewhat slower, but I can easily see the set of people who were building out backbones with T-1s and the early fiber links having grown them up to networks capable of today's traffic. And they'd probably make a lot more topological and engineering sense and run more smoothly, to bring it back to an operational point here at the close ;-) -george william herbert gherbert@retro.com
I think this is putting the cart before the horse.
We were getting upgraded bandwidth capabilities, fiber put in the ground, etc from traditional Telcos prior to the rise of the Internet; they were finding cheaper ways to run phone service around.
This is totally incorrect. Ask anyone who had been in this business from the beginning of nineties, not late nineties. Telcos, while upgrading their systems, happily pointed at the PUC filings and sold you DS1 that went two blocks for $700 per month, that being inside a city.
The rise of the Internet as a telecom bandwidth demand driver attracted the attention of investment bankers and capital, which then became somewhat of a set of complex feedback loops (capital going into all sorts of internet industries, infrastructure, etc, partly because it appeared to be good business and partly because of hype). The result was that speculation and hype drove overcapacity.
This again is incorrect. The rise of content attracted investment bankers.
Before anyone had invested serious money in any of the internet infrastructure companies, people were building out 10 megabit, T3 backbones and were talking to telco gear providers about what it would take to do 155 megabit and 622 megabit backbones and so on and so on.
This is again incorrect. The people that you are talking about were UUNET and MCI, and we are talking 1994.
It was clear to those of us in the late 80s and early 90s that if demand kept pulling, we needed to keep creating bandwidth.
There had not been demand in 80. Neither had there been demand in the beginning of 1990s.
But in no way can you claim that it took a terabuck in capital push to make it happen. Demand pull was fully operational and working just fine before ISPs started being snapped up by phone companies and visa versa, and the huge money came into play.
Yes I can. It did take terrabucks to get this industry rolling.
Hype might have been lower and growth somewhat slower, but I can easily see the set of people who were building out backbones with T-1s and the early fiber links having grown them up to networks capable of today's traffic.
Are you talking about Net99 here? Alex
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George William Herbert