[ale] OT: Craig Newmark of Craig's List on Net Neutrality

[Jim Popovitch]

David Corbin wrote:
> On Thursday 22 June 2006 05:50 pm, Jim Popovitch wrote:
>> David A. De Graaf wrote:
>> Comcast isn't in the business of predicting the network needs
>> 20 years from now, what do you think they will need for per-household
>> bandwith in 5, 10, 15, and 20 years?  See, it ain't easy.
> 
> But they are.  As soon as they decided to sell internet bandwidth/access, the 
> initiate the business of predciting network needs.

My point was that it costs money to put effort behind that sort of 
analysis, and that area of growth is so indeterminable (compared to 
forecasting wireline usage) that I doubt it is given enough weight by 
the share holders.

How many man-hours would it take to determine average per-household 
Internet bandwidth requirements in the year 2017 in the markets of 
Charlotte, Jacksonville, and Atlanta?  See, it's near-impossible to just 
figure out how much to spend to analyze the need, let alone actually 
performing the analysis.  Even then, (IMHO) it's just a gamble at best, 
so why throw a million man-hours at it versus a few hundred?

-Jim P.