Netizen

Wednesday, December 26, 2012

Fast Is Fast

China is ahead of America on clean energy, and China is ahead of America on fast trains. These high speed trains seem to compete with air travel, and I mean in terms of time taken, airport time included. That's fascinating.

I don't see why land acquisition is a problem. The value of land on both sides of the track goes up. Does that not pay for the loss of land?

World's Longest High-Speed Rail Line Opens in China

the world’s longest high-speed rail line, covering a distance in eight hours that is about equal to that from New York to Key West, Florida, or from London across Europe to Belgrade. .... 186 miles an hour ..... Guangzhou, the main metropolis in southeastern China. Older trains still in service on a parallel rail line take 21 hours; Amtrak trains from New York to Miami, a shorter distance, still take nearly 30 hours. ..... China has resumed rapid construction on one of the world’s largest and most ambitious infrastructure projects, a network of four north-south routes and four east-west routes that span the country. ..... the national network has helped reduce toxic air pollution in Chinese cities and curb demand for imported diesel fuel, by freeing up a lot of capacity on older rail lines for goods to be carried by freight trains instead of heavily polluting, costlier trucks ..... Debt to finance the construction has reached nearly 4 trillion renminbi, or $640 billion, making it one of the most visible reasons total debt has been surging as a share of economic output in China, and approaching levels in the West. ..... the high-speed lines, which haul only passengers ..... The high-speed trains are also considerably more expensive than the heavily subsidized older passenger trains. A second-class seat on the new bullet trains from Beijing to Guangzhou costs 865 renminbi, compared with 426 renminbi for the cheapest bunk on one of the older trains, which also have narrow, uncomfortable seats for as little as 251 renminbi. ....... The first line, from Beijing to Tianjin, opened a week before the 2008 Olympics; a little more than four years later, the country now has 9,349 kilometers, or 5,809 miles, of high-speed lines. ...... a country where four-fifths of new cars are sold to first-time buyers, often with scant driving experience ..... Flights between Beijing and Guangzhou take about three hours and 15 minutes. But air travelers in China need to arrive at least an hour before a flight, compared with 20 minutes for high-speed trains, and the airports tend to be farther from the centers of cities than the high-speed train stations.... Land acquisition is the toughest part of building high-speed rail lines in the West, because the tracks need to be almost perfectly straight ...... the 800-seat trains are often sold out as many as 10 trains in advance on Monday mornings and Friday afternoons, even though the trains travel as often as every four minutes, and even lunchtime trains at midweek are often full as well.

Google, Dish And A Trillion Dollars

Seal of the United States Federal Communications Commission. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

There never has been a trillion dollar company. Some people thought Apple was on its way. But I disagreed then, and I disagree now. Apple has run out of ideas. It will ride the iPhone, iPad wave for as long as it can. But that is steam for a few more years max. Apple has peaked. And it is trying to do TV the wrong way.

Mobile hardware is not where it is at. All that is on its way to becoming commodity. Google is an amazing company because it long mastered the most important thing. You can't charge for search, but you can serve ads. That basic mastery will propel it into all major innovations areas.

My bet is Google could hit a trillion dollar valuation by 2020, and if it does not do so by 2020 it will not do it at all. And it will hit a trillion dollar valuation not through search - although search is where the action is - but by entering the global ISP space in a big way, first through mobile and then for all device sizes. Just like the line between Chrome and Android is blurry, what's the difference between your Nexus phone, a Nexus tablet and a Chromebook? There isn't any. They all live on electricity and internet.

Give Me Blazing Broadband, Or Give Me, Give Me

Globally wireless gigabit broadband is what a political and economic unification of the world looks like. Google, of all entities, stands to challenge the nation state, here in America and everywhere else.

Sergey Brin's Is The Right Stand

Google picked a fight with China, America did not. That was quite telling.

Google Wireless Phone Service Coming? Dish LTE Could Help

A few months ago there were multiple reports of Google and Dish having formal talks about offering a wireless network that would rival Verizon and AT&T. Those talks can now fuel a bit more speculation as the FCC has granted approval to Dish to use its AWS-4 spectrum for 4G LTE data services. ..... A network could be built for data only and their services like Google Voice would power traditional conversations. Google has long been rumored to be launching their own wireless service and at a very aggressive monthly price.

Dish gets FCC approval to build next-generation LTE network

Dish Network has gotten approval from the Federal Communications Commission to build a cellular network on spectrum previously allocated to satellite services. Dish has said it plans to build an LTE-Advanced network, which would be much faster than today's LTE service, but the targeted rollout date isn't until 2016. ..... Dish is talking with Google about a wireless partnership .... the future of cellular technology—LTE-Advanced ..... DISH believes it can deploy its network to 60 million POPs [points of presence, or potential users] within four years. .... Dish has 40MHz of spectrum from 2000-2020 MHz and 2180-2200 MHz.

More Wireless Choice May Affect The Big Cellular Carriers

Another approach would be for Google to focus on building smaller Wi-Fi areas, similar to what it's doing with Google Fiber. .... Verizon won that auction on spectrum, but at a price that ensured that it couldn't prevent devices or applications from running on its spectrum. This means it wouldn't be able to block people from using apps such as Google Voice on its network. In fact, the company was fined for preventing people from using its phones as Wi-Fi hotspots. The second rule means that Verizon also has less control over what devices people use on that spectrum, giving people greater choice.

Google exec confirms phone service aspirations were axed

Lately we’ve heard a few reports that Google and Dish were in talks to launch their own Google wireless service, something that would be amazing. Today however it looks like Google’s been looking into offering their own phone services before, but those plans have all since been axed and canceled. ..... Google’s recently launched their high-speed Google Fiber cable service in Kansas, and apparently their phone service was just as close — but never saw the light of day ..... a VoIP service could very well have been a reality already for Google if it weren’t for regulations that blocked them from entering the market. .... The cost of actually delivering telephone services is almost nothing. However, in the United States, there are all of these special rules that apply. ..... Hopefully all this talk with Dish regarding a “data-only” service ends up happening

Dish Network Wins a $9 Billion Spectrum Prize

how slowly regulators have moved to put much-needed airwaves to more valuable uses..... as owners of devices like the iPhone spend more and more time surfing the Web and watching video wirelessly. .... The FCC was growing concerned about the concentration of wireless spectrum among big carriers like Verizon Wireless and AT&T Inc. and commissioners were looking for ways to free up more airwaves to carry cellular traffic. ..... as the FCC's decision frees up more bandwidth for data-hungry devices like smartphones and tablets

Sprint May Partner With Dish For A Joint Wireless Service

will put Dish’s idle satellite spectrum to use in providing a wireless mobile service .... if it agrees to host Dish’s wireless services on its network .... Unfortunately for Sprint, however, it looks like Dish has wireless ambitions of its own. Dish plans to launch its own 4G wireless network using satellite spectrum to provide a land-based wireless broadband service. Lest anyone feel that Dish is touting its wireless ambitions in order to extract maximum value for its spectrum, CEO Charlie Ergen made a statement by stepping down from his post in June to focus on the company’s mobile strategy. Since Dish is serious about entering the mobile space, Sprint will probably not be able to buy the spectrum outright

Google Wants To Grab 90% Of Office Users From Microsoft

“Our goal is to get to the 90 percent of users who don’t need to have the most advanced features of Office.” ..... in 2012, “This was the year where we broke the barrier and got large-scale customer adoption.” This was quite a change from 2011, when Google could barely compete in the enterprise market, awkwardly navigating the bidding process – and often losing. Google even backed out of a bid for Toyota, which ended up going with Microsoft Office 365