OT: Even More Proof That PC's Are Dying

[Renegade 13]

I can't disagree with any particular point you make this time

dogscoff said:
Eventually, there will be either a huge leap forward in wireless that will allow fast access absolutely everywhere, or the first world will have to pull its finger out of it collective arse and actually start digging holes and laying down some fricking fibre optics.

The only thing holding it back is state-owned and state-sanctioned monopolies on the various national telecoms networks. The UK and US are particularly badly pwned in this respect. As long as BT and AT&T don't have to face any actual competition, they will continue to charge more for crappier services on crumbling copper networks built by public money and handed over to them by corrupt politicians. Give it another decade and maybe we will wake up to the fact that people in Korea have 100meg broadband at home (yes, I said 100meg, right now, today) and that the global digital marketplace is all happening in Asia and the rapidly-developping "third world". Maybe then public and business and industry will demand that something be done. The public engineering projects to create the new digital infrastructure will be on a scale not seen since the late 1800s, when train networks and sewage networks and water networks and the like were being built on a scale and that proabably dwarfs any investment before or since. This boom will drive down the costs of laying fibre to such an extent that even remote farmouses in the arse end of Alaskan nowhere will get direct cable to their living room.

You can add Canada to the list along with the US and UK of nations where telecom companies hold absolute monopolies, and thus have no incentive or competition to compel them to upgrade infrastructure that's existed for the past century. This is a particular point that really makes me angry; I'm sitting here connected on a bloody ancient dial-up line connected at 28.8kbps...yep, we can't even get 56k internet here because the profiteering monopolizing provincial telecom company can't get off it's lazy *** and upgrade the infrastructure to something remotely modern. After all, there's no competition to lose business to!

I long for the day when they're either required to by government or competition forces them to upgrade. After all, it's unlikely they'll do it on their own; oh no, that'd cut into their massive profit margins

/endrant