[gurps] Re: Internet on blue planet and like worlds

[David Scheidt]

On Thu, Jan 1, 2009 at 7:16 PM, Kurt Feltenberger
<kfeltenberger at yahoo.com> wrote:
> David Scheidt wrote:
>>
>> For communication between fixed points, cables will always be cheaper
>> than radio links in the the long run.  They're also faster and more
>> reliable.
>>
>
> I'm not sure I can agree with you unless you specify the distance between
> the fixed points and whether you can rig masts for additional range due to
> LOS issues.
>
> If you have LOS, then point to point wireless communications is much less
> expensive, both in the short run (setup costs) and long run (maintenance
> costs).  If you're looking at distances of several hundred miles and can use
> solar/battery powered relays, then you're still going to be less expensive
> over running cable between the two fixed points.

There's a reason there are no long-distance microwave links anymore:
They're expensive to run (radios consume lots of power), they're
expensive to maintain, they're unreliable, they're weather sensitive,
and they've got seriously limited bandwidth.  (In the 70s, T was
considering building underground microwave waveguides to get around a
lot of these problems.  I've read the proposals; *that* made economic
sense.  Fibre came along and made the idea insane, but it made sense
to do this, and it was just for voice traffic, not data.)  There's a
niche market for short term point-to-point wicrowave links, where
there are problems running cables directly, but it's not very big, and
getting smaller.


-- 
David Scheidt
dmscheidt at gmail.com