Free Bandwidth?

What is this Y2K Steve speaks of?

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holy shit they even nuked that

THEY CALL ME MR. NICEGUY!

I LOVE FEEEEDDDDD

wooo! they were right, its all free now!

At first, yes, it will cost a lot more, but eventually, competition will make it standard and it will be cheap again. And I think they meant it will be \'free\' in the sense in that it won\'t cost the corporations much to implement, due to not having to lay new wires, without remarking on the cost for the end-user. Which is, of course, bad journalism, because most readers are end-users, so you are correct. Also, your job sounds really, really cool!

Yeah! Like this is going to happen during my lifetime.

And us in the Uk are still paying for local calls.

Actually, it\'s true about the \'more streams of light\' fitting on one fiber. That is true, which I can safely verify since I work in R&D in the fiber industry, doing just this. Without getting into the nitty gritty, (and thus breaking confidentiality agreements), there are marketable developments in 40 channels down one fiber, with research and testing in 80 and 160 channels down a single fiber. This is a far cry from a single fiber handling a single channel back in the \'old days\' (oh so long ago <g>), so essentially communications companies are getting massive increases of bandwidth without having to lay any more fiber. Now this is not an infinite process, since there are only certain ranges of wavelengths of light that can travel down the fiber without losses (other wavelengths, or \'colors\' tend to dissipate steeply and can\'t travel far), so the actual usable wavelengths is quite finite, and the trick is to cram many channels into this finite area without them overlapping. Now this is fairly successful, with tricks to reduce wavelength shifts, and dispersions, but I highly doubt that bandwidth will be \'free\'. Companies will always charge for this service, but it will probably continue as it has in the past - today 5Mbps costs under $100 most anywhere in North America (and much cheaper where I live :)), where 10 years ago, that kind of bit rate cost an arm and a leg. Point is, sure our bandwidth will go up quite drastically sometime in the future, but you\'ll also have to pay for it. ZDNet is just full of hype, apparently. Bad journalism, IMO, since they forgot that this IS a capitalist society :).

There is apparently talk about using the existing physical plant of electrical power distribution for this sort of thing. From what I understand that is how power substations and nuclear power plants communicate is via this very same thing. Sorta like DSL where there is a digital carrier present above the range that pure electrical power resides. Hmmm.....

Thanks for pointing out that bullshit is two words, i humbly bow before you grammatical superiority

Thanks for pointing out that bullshit is two words, i humbly bow before you grammatical superiority

Actually \'bullshit\' is one word... Nice try though.

you can already get free access, accept you get a nice little banner that sits on you desktop as long as ur onlin go chk it out at www.netzero.com

No way bandwidth is gonna be entirely free. The closest we might ever see is the same \"free\" from \"free\" web hosting and \"free\" email service. i.e. free with lots of annoying advertisements.

Bandwidth is already virtually free in the US compared with other countrys. I mean $40/month for dsl is nothing and people still complain about that!! Of course bandwidth will be free in the future with network capacity growing exponentially each year companys won\'t be able to charge for low end connections..

more pr0..... um.... Demos of games! yeah!

Two words: \"Bull\" \"Shit\"

Can I comment on the new comment thing??

Much better. Although do you reall want Reaction: to the article?

What do you expect? /me droped his jaw and shit his pants ??

Will my 9600 baud modem work well with the free badwidth?

Bandwidth will act just like processor speeds. As soon as it get faster, someone will use it. Although a major break through could go a long way.

free bandwidth will never happen. zdnet just likes to post crap like that looking for attention (which they just got)

good job zdnet, you communists.

Hehe. One wonders... 8)