this will become the death knell for dialups, as they will need 10Mbs or better for HULU viewing of the TV shows, Gaming, video downloads from other sites. This is a good LONG stock to invest into the future.
As many other companies will invest into the fiberoptic lines and upgrading the transmission networks
My DSL have 6Mbs now, if I add dishnetwork to it they will boost it to 15 Mbs

My gut says long.

My gut says, "No for Christ's sake you've had enough brownie batter! That stuff has raw eggs in it!...oh yeah, most telecoms are gearing up for infrastructure updating soon, so go long. You've got 4 years anyway..."

Great G.I. systems think alike.

...We've had troops in Japan and Germany for over 60 years. Does that mean we LOST WWII ?!?!?...

Looking at the timeframe, I would say long...

If one looks at the providers at what they are offering, they are all trying push highspeed internet.....

Also, there is heavy investment in the new fiber optic cales to bring superfast internet.....I just got Fios myself....

The only problem is that the Fios though considered highspeed internet comes in 2 sppeds... One is the 5 Mbps and the other would be a faster 10 Mbps.....

Not sure which one people will prefer....though I think most people will go with the 10 because with increasing video content in Web 2.0, they will need a much faster internet...

I think this one will take off pretty quick. Fifty popbucks may be the cheapest price this prop may ever see for the long position. Later, after the price has risen to ninety popbucks, one may be able to pick up the short position for a bargain.

This proposition will pay out at POP$100 if at least 33 million households in the U.S. have 10 Mbps or faster broadband connections by January 1, 2012 as reported by Parks Associate or an similarly knowledgeable and reliable research firm.

I can not for the life of me figure out why anyone would consider this a short.

If you look back historically at broadband, Nielsen//NetRatings had 39 Million US broadband users in 2003, and they projected about 61 million broadband users by 2008.
http://www.internetworldstats.com/articles/art030.htm

Yet when 2007 rolls around, we have 129 million people on broadband and 81 million watching video over broadband
http://www.nielsen.com/media/pr_070717.html

We already have over 5 million people that have 10Mbps or faster, that's already 15% of what it takes to satisfy the prop.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080304-report-10mbps-broadband-in...

Not to mention "with Verizon's FiOS running it directly to the home and AT&T stopping at the node with U-Verse. Combined, the fiber projects of the two telecoms will pass well over 30 million homes by 2010". Which means that 10Mbps or faster will be available to enough people to satisfy the prop TWO FULL YEARS before the prop expires.

Does anyone see any reason this trend would reverse? Are Americans going to suddenly stop wanting the next best thing? Remember, this prop is for UNITED STATES usage. The articles posted about slow adoption of broadband in EUROPE don't apply. They don't drive many SUV's in Europe either.

Go long on this, in THREE YEARS that number will look like a conservative estimate, just like the the numbers for regular broadband turned out to be

ejcassel

Nice info, ejcassel. Good position and sources too.

new
chrisitux
03/21/08 at 8:43 am

The cost of ISDN is cost prohibitive for an average home user , (It is still an anaolg service) it costs $65 a month . It is generally cheaper to buy DSL(digitial service) nowdays, it is cost comparative to current dial-up prices without waiting for the time of the dialup connection time and DSL is at least 12x(up to 1000x) faster than basic dial-up.
Millions of people ,who formerly had dial-up have switched over to broadband by Cable or DSL (I was one of those) and the # of users on dial-up is quickly is going down as the users got fed up with dial-up speeds(It is too slow and takes about 2 to 5 min to load a single web page, the size(average) of the web page had gone up from a measly 20Kb to 280Kb and sometimes as big as 1Mb)
Downloading 1MB on dial-up takes about an hour, they avarage 40 to 50Kbps. THe ISDN average 64Kbps to 128Kbps. while on Dsl Lite(768Kbps to1.5Mbps which costs between 15 to 20 a month) will only take about a minute on a 1Mb file.

I have provided a few links about the transmission speeds and a basic description of other stuff

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialup
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_device_bandwidths
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadband
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Subscriber_Line

This proposition will pay out at POP$100 if at least 33 million households in the U.S. have 10 Mbps or faster broadband connections by January 1, 2012 as reported by Parks Associate or an similarly knowledgeable and reliable research firm

This Prop is about AT HOME SERVICE not cellphone service.

Christux, first about your sources, I hope you might have heard at school Wikipedia is not a reliable source......Though i do not refute the facts presented...
Also, I would like to push you to realize that there are millions of people who want highspeed internet and who do heavy web browsing.....
As the average consumer gets more dependent on new web 2.0 function (video etc...) he is going to realize that DSL is not good enough anymore jsut like dial-up.
I myself am a former DSL user who switched to the Fios package and its really great and cost effective withtheir triple bundle.....

So i think in terms of cost the faster internet is coming down rapidly, though it willnever meet the same price as maybe DSL......

The question to ask is this: When will the average consumer demand for web 2.0 resources reach a point when DSL cannot back it up?

That I think is happening at a rapid pace as people get more educated about using the cloud to do various functions such as skype. I might add skype on DSL isnt as good as sype on highspeed Fios.

I can understand the recent drop in the IPO because I think 33 million is wel within a conservative estimate over the next 3 years and as mentioned previously, we already have 5 million.....

The only problem i see is the US economy cutting back on spending, but I dont think it will have such a huge degree of an affect, that not even 33 million people have highspeed internet....

I would appreciate any coments/thoughts.....

Another point is that High speed fios(Fiberoptic) can not be switched back to normal service, You are stuck with it for the rest of the life.
Verizon also offers analog service, or POTS, over FiOS. The common model optical network terminals have 2 or 4 analog phone jacks. Verizon does not do anything that would affect or disable the pre-existing copper lines that carried phone service or DSL, though the official company policy is that customers cannot retreat back to copper service without higher level management approval[citation needed]. However, there have in fact been reports in various markets that Verizon has physically deinstalled the copper lines at the time that FiOS was installed, effectively removing any "path of retreat" to copper based services.[6] Verizon is required by law to share copper media with competing service providers, but no such requirement exists for fiber media
.(or add a regular phone line(twisted copper pairs and drop the fiber optic package completely))
I do use skype on DSL, it was fantastic (I have 6MbpsVDSL, which only costs me $30 a month) and it was very good on web 2.0, video downloads and other stuff (1.5Mbps DSL is borderline) If you had checked the Wiki list there are several different types of DSL services available (ADSL,HDSL,HDSL2,SNDSL,VDSL,VDSL2, the oldest type to the newest really depends on the age of the phone lines that was installed) the newest prefers the new lines(as they are rated for it)

I know Wiki is not a good source, but the basics are there, which is true

thank you for clarigying your DSl connection and as you just siad you pay 30 bucks a month, and i pay 33 bucks a month and get Fios, so i don t know where you are, but you might be getting ripped off.

Also, The prices of the highspeed internet are going to come down with extensive investment in fiber optics... and Verizon had to make a decision the stop the copper cabling......becasue frankly by upgrading you are getting a much better product...

I dont understand why downgrades should be such a big issue....

You should also keep in mind that we need 33 million, not hte whole country to have 10MBPS and I think that are plenty of people along the coasts (east and west) who would prefer 10Mbps connections..........

People are just riding waves here, so people who are long just ride them through....

the VDSL that i get uses fiberoptic to the base station then use the regular phones lines out to the subscribers ,They are slowly upgrading the service. I got the VDSL just 2 years ago and was offered in my area for the first time, I took it I live way out in the country(7+ miles from the nearest town)

Like if you want to switch carriers(local providers) ,You can't . You are stuck with Verizon

I guess that could explain why DSL might be a better option for since you live out in the country, but for people in metropolitan areas i think Fios or cable is definitely going to take over....

About the thing about switching carriers, I think you might be misinformed because I am rather sure that I can switch to cable if I still want. I would be breaching my 2 year contract, but I could for a fee and after 2 years I can change without a fee......

You might want to check up on that because I am not too sure about where you got your information...

Also, btw I never heard of VDSL where I live the best DSL we have here is 1.5- 3 Mbps...

Really cool to have the new VDSL in the country areas because its expensive to lay down fiber cables and in the country, it would be a bad investment with very few people, VDSL serves well there....

They will still use the main copper lines for voice and DSL but add a fiberoptic lines to it for boosted DSL capacity and tv channels .. the VDSL max capacity is 30 something Mbps per line(subscriber) they still have room for us to expand by increasing the package plan to a higher Mbps.

Cable or Fios is highly recommended for cities. DSL is okay in cities but it is the best for areas that do not have Cable service.

Another service provider can not use the Fios line left there by Verizon because they use different equipment and protocols and the original equipment have to be returned to Verizon

I understand they cant use the equipment used by verizon, but Verizon doesnt completely remove the original lines form your house it simply disconnects it, so you can go back to comcast with cable or something similiar.....

Who hoo South Africa has finally joined the uncapped world of internet, about bloody time! Now all we need is a one price all for ADSL Broadband Internet Access through our mobile networks! Then we are rocking, although my provider www.mrmail.co.za is pretty cool