September 25, 2010

via Wired…

1960: USS Enterprise, the first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, is launched in Newport News, Virginia. CVN-65, nicknamed Big E, was the first carrier of its kind, powered solely by its eight nuclear reactors.

With nuclear power to propel it, the Enterprise does not need to carry its own fuel oil and has more room for aircraft and weapons. It routinely carries 70 to 90 planes. The ship measures in at 1,120 feet (about 100 feet longer than the USS Saratoga), with a 250-foot-wide flight deck and 93,970 tons displacement. It relies on a crew of 5,700.

All this came with a price: around $451.3 million (equivalent to $3.3 billion in today’s money), according to Jane’s American Fighting Ships of the 20th Century. The Enterprise came in well over budget and ended up being the only ship in its class. Five other planned ships were not constructed.

According to Wikipedia, the Enterprise is scheduled for decommissioning in 2013.

Yes, it is still on active duty.

So much for unlimited bandwidth on your cell phone.

via Reuters…

It’s the beginning of the end for unlimited data plans on smart phones. Verizon Wireless, the largest U.S. mobile carrier, plans to stop selling unlimited data plans to new customers and instead introduce two service plans with monthly data caps.

They had to see this coming.

If you read the entire article, the author never raises the question of whether or not the carrier needs to drastically upgrade their equipment to handle the extra phones, instead they decide to limit users access to the system.

Carriers have long insisted that their top bandwidth users are at the upper 5% of the spectrum. Sound familiar? The top 5% of wage earners should pay most of the taxes type of thing. Well, in this new scenario the top 5% of the bandwidth users will be paying for the bandwidth.

That is all well and good but it doesn’t address the root problem of poor infrastructure. In a way, the carrier will argue that setting limits will alleviate infrastructure issues and in the short term they will be correct. Unfortunately, people are not going to stop buying smart phones and in fact, they will most likely buy even more.

Without the infrastructure upgrades, this problem will happen again.

Treating the symptoms and not treating the disease; that is all this is.

I wonder if these two stories a could be related?

Hmmm.