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

[Jeff Wilson]

From: "David Scheidt" <dmscheidt at gmail.com>

> That's not very long distance.  Nor is it very high speed.  Nor is it
> terribly reliable, as directional antennas are sensitive to alignment
> issues (and as range goes up, so does this problem.)  

That's also part of the solution; shorter distances between towers mean 
less alignment problems and much lower power requirements, and the 
reduced marginal cost to add dishes and transceivers to the same tower 
naturally lead to a finer mesh of wireless links.

 > Things have
> improved, sure.  But if it made sense, would T and MCI have turned
> down all their existing (and fully depreciated!) MW backbone?  I've
> got my doubts.  Remember, in the same time period installed fibre has
> had its capacity increase by several orders of magnitude.

None of the MW links around here seem to have been taken down or out of 
service, in fact new ones have been piggy backed on cell towers. 
Meanwhile, unused rail is being taken up and right-of-ways reclaimed 
when they would otherwise make wonderful fiberways.

-- 
Jeff Wilson - jwilson at io.com
< http://www.io.com/~jwilson >