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Phone Company/Internet Service Executives must have a tough time sleeping at night the day Broadband Services and Network Equipment (e.g. routers, switches, hubs) became affordable. And it is not going to get any easier for them from here onwards.

Today, an article in the International Herald Tribune featured a story about how two companies, Mushroom Networks and WiBoost, are building [separate] prototypes of wireless networks that allows groups of neighbors to combine their DSL or Cable Internet Connections into one Super, High-Speed Connection.

Since most residential broadband subscriptions are 'flat-fee' based (i.e. not charged according to usage or volume), most subscribers leave their 'always-on' internet connections idle. For this reason, residential broadband utilization remains very low. "Less than 1 percent of the total capacity," according to James Baker, President of WiBoost. The idea behind the two new technologies is to combine the idle bandwidth and 'switching' it to users who need it the most.

 

This very communal idea is also the principle of Queuing Theory where an 'acceptably large' number of subscribers will be served by a 'lesser number' of communication pathways at any one 'instance.' In other words, an 'acceptably small' number of people will be 'blocked' because of the insufficient number of pathways for an 'acceptable' amount of time (the terms, 'acceptably large,' 'lesser number,' 'instance,' 'acceptably small,' and 'acceptable amount of time' are all defined by the quality of service required). Except in this case, the subscribers who donated their bandwidth will not be blocked when the bandwidth is needed, but instead will gain more bandwidth, circumstances permitting, and perpetuating Good Internet Karma.

As expected, while some phone companies and internet providers expressed interests in the new idea, most are not too happy with their subscribers sharing bandwidth, especially when there's no money to be made [out of idle bandwidth]. I recently wrote an article opposing 'Volume-centric' Broadband Business Model. It is true we don't live in a 'Charity-based' Economy, but I believe the International Herald Tribune article provided more ammunition against such a pricing strategy.

Read: "Sharing a connection: Will Internet providers allow it?" - International Herald Tribune



This article is by YC from the Technocrat Soapbox - Guest Blogger