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BBC vs ISPs: Readers blame monkey, organ grinder escapes

Relief for Ofcom, Highfield

Highfield also raised eyebrows with his assertion that "The best technical solution is usually Moore’s law". An oddly ignorant thing to say, since the capacity and price of copper and fibre connections have very little to do with the density of transistors on a semiconductor die.

Finally, a bit of a cuffing for my making fun of Ashley Highfield's assertion that Moore's Law will solve the problem.

The man from the Beeb had a point. Silicon getting faster and cheaper means interwebs get faster and cheaper too, because at the end of the day the big long wire or fibre or chunk of spectrum is the expensive part; there are a *lot* of communications theory people working on maths to make lots of data fit where only a little data used to fit.

Chip lasers
DWDM
single-mode fibre
optical switching
doped fibre amplifiers

All are products of the semiconductor industry.

Jasmine Strong


Andrew,

I would have thought it has everything to do with the density of transistors on a semiconductor die (at least for fibre). The kit you terminate fibre with is where nearly all evolution of networking capabilities lies, and they are largely bound by semiconductor technology. And considering we're largely talking about backhaul, as opposed to local loop capabilities, fibre is all that's really that relevant.

If you know different, do share!

Cheers, Dominic.

Fair enough. But surely, if the price of bandwidth is artificially kept artifically high by BT by keeping dark fibre out of the market, then the cost and capability of semiconducters pales into insignificance?

Any readers care to break this down for us (and Mr Highfield)?

Finally, here's something I never knew before:

You're quite right when you say "Ceci n'est pas un pipe" (it certainly isn't) but I've a feeling you meant to say "Ceci n'est pas un tuyau". Whilst Mr Highfield did show ignorance with his comment applying Moore's law to bandwidth, I'm pretty sure he's aware that it has nothing to do with a blow-job ("un pipe" en francais)!

Keep up the good work (but perhaps let someone else check the translations), Alasdair

Then there's obligatory no-comment comment:

BBC tells ISPs to get stuffed - wot no comments

Fix it please

mdl

Thanks for sharing, mdl. I hope the last two pages explain why. ®

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