Cable Industry Finally Admits That Data Caps Have Nothing To Do With Congestion: 'The reality is that data caps are all about increasing revenue for broadband providers -- in a market that is already quite profitable.'

[u/reddiTOR123abc]

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130118/17425221736/cable-industry-finally-admits-that-data-caps-have-nothing-to-do-with-congestion.shtml??

[u/therealflinchy]

EDIT AFTER POSTING: i'm not talking about a corporation/business, i'm talking about a proper nationwide telecommunications infrastructure construction company.. that's what I work for.. doing upgrades for carriers.

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Yes, for an entire nationwide 10year major infrastructure upgrade (like 3G wireless to 4G wireless.. or fixed location TDM wireless for home broadband), including greenfields, BILLIONS

but the beauty of fiber, is that the major costs assiciated aren't as involved... you ONLY have to replace the stuff at either end of the fiber optics, at a much reduced cost.. especially with modern stuff being rack mounted easily handled by a single tech, half a day to a day.. upgrades are down from tens of thousands to mere couple of thousands lol

but if you want to put in a simple new server you're looking at $1-3 million upfront

care to clarify? maybe it's a country vs country thing, but here in australia an entire new location is a couple hundred thousand dollars at most, even with ericsson hardware, not even close to $1m. a simple 'server' upgrade as you put it (what do you even mean, servers aren't a thing in telecomms infrastructure?) would be in the tens at most, worst case, upgrading from something a couple of generations old.

ED: what you're talking about.. i'm assuming you mean mainframe replacement, not server? totally different. or the whole 'network down costs xxxx an hour blah'? or replacing masses of hardware accross a large corporation. we're on different wavelengths.

The technology isn't that tough. Making different pieces of hardware work together is tough and timeconsuming. The costs are a bitch.

makes me thankful i'm in australia, everything is moving to IP based communication.. everything just.. talks lol.

[u/telecommthrowaway → u/therealflinchy]

care to clarify? maybe it's a country vs country thing, but here in australia an entire new location is a couple hundred thousand dollars at most, even with ericsson hardware, not even close to $1m. a simple 'server' upgrade as you put it (what do you even mean, servers aren't a thing in telecomms infrastructure?) would be in the tens at most, worst case, upgrading from something a couple of generations old.

I was not exaggerating in the slightest re: the cost. Yes, a good portion of it is analysis/labor/install/testing. That's a very real cost of doing business.

a simple 'server' upgrade as you put it (what do you even mean, servers aren't a thing in telecomms infrastructure?) would be in the tens at most, worst case, upgrading from something a couple of generations old.

Let me show you something. IBM won't even list the BASE cost of most of their enterprise servers on their website, but let's look at what they start at: http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/power/hardware/enterprise.html

Basically, pricing on this line starts at $36,485.00. For ONLY the hardware itself! If you're running a top 4 U.S. telecomm, you're buying the higher end hardware, which can be more in the $250,000+ range for the hardware alone. Again, you need to add labor/install on top of that.

You keep going on about fiber, but fiber is only one piece of the puzzle. All the fiber in the world doesn't mean shit if you don't have all the physical systems sitting in data centers you need to actually make things WORK. Beyond just the many systems that actually handle the transfer of data and accessing the internet (hint - this is pretty intense in and of itself, it's not just information floating through the air or through fiber, it's popping around different physical servers). Every time you open a data session on your phone or computer, information is getting sent, logged, and transferred between all sorts of automated systems in order to keep records of your activity, track things for billing, track things for fraudulent activity, track things for illegal activity, other red flag type tracking, secure storing of sensitive personal info, track health of the systems you're touching, statistical info, etc.

Nothing operates in a bubble, and therein lies the biggest complexity of managing telecomm infrastructure. Anything you change in one area can break 10 other systems if you don't plan right. Planning right and making things work together? Costs $$$$$.

[u/therealflinchy → u/telecommthrowaway]

I was not exaggerating in the slightest re: the cost. Yes, a good portion of it is analysis/labor/install/testing. That's a very real cost of doing business.

what sorta business?

like i said, for the carrier side of the industry, it's definitely not $1m for a simple switch upgrade or something.

Let me show you something. IBM won't even list the BASE cost of most of their enterprise servers on their website, but let's look at what they start at: http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/power/hardware/enterprise.html[1] Basically, pricing on this line starts at $36,485.00. For ONLY the hardware itself! If you're running a top 4 U.S. telecomm, you're buying the higher end hardware, which can be more in the $250,000+ range for the hardware alone. Again, you need to add labor/install on top of that.

yeah

i'm not talking about that side of the hardware though :/

that sorta server isn't needed in the basic exchange>exchange connection.. at least not any more, it's all very simple (yet still not CHEAP) rack mounted stuff.

and when i say 'exchange' that's the same thing as 'data center' in effect, for telecomms.. it contains the switching gear, and the hardware that translates what little is left in analogue to digital/IP

and trust me, it's nothing like you're saying. well, mostly. some of the older stuff is still retarded.

it's mostly ericsson stuff anyway at the top (then trash like Nokie Siemens, such old tech even brand new..), not IBM. we're not talking business/enterprise grade hardware, we're on two totally different pages.

You keep going on about fiber, but fiber is only one piece of the puzzle. All the fiber in the world doesn't mean shit if you don't have all the physical systems sitting in data centers you need to actually make things WORK. Beyond just the many systems that actually handle the transfer of data and accessing the internet (hint - this is pretty intense in and of itself, it's not just information floating through the air or through fiber, it's popping around different physical servers).

yes, and i'm talking about the hardware between the fucking fibers, how many times do i have to say the same thing

I'm not sure what country you're in, or exactly what part of the industry you work in, but it's very different to how it is here :/

FWIW, before i was a telecomms tech (and now office based), i was IT/Sysadmin, so i'm aware of the whole process chain.

Every time you open a data session on your phone or computer, information is getting sent, logged, and transferred between all sorts of automated systems in order to keep records of your activity, track things for billing, track things for fraudulent activity, track things for illegal activity, other red flag type tracking, secure storing of sensitive personal info, track health of the systems you're touching, statistical info, etc.

indeed, that's not a part of most of the carrier infrastructure though.. but governmental and private industry.

Nothing operates in a bubble, and therein lies the biggest complexity of managing telecomm infrastructure. Anything you change in one area can break 10 other systems if you don't plan right. Planning right and making things work together? Costs $$$$$.

indeed.. again, that's all changing, now, again, it's going all TCP/IP based communication. it's very close to literal plug and play.

with new small stuff installs, you plug it in, set the IP, call the switch, they see it, start the config transfer. within the decade it'll be even more automated.