[NNagain] The rise and fall of the 90's telecom bubble

[Mike Hammett]

There were obviously many facets, but I think one of the turns was due to DWDM. You no longer needed a pair for every circuit. That then contributed to the glut of strands. 




----- 
Mike Hammett 
Intelligent Computing Solutions 
http://www.ics-il.com 

Midwest-IX 
http://www.midwest-ix.com 

----- Original Message -----

From: "Dave Taht" <dave.taht at gmail.com> 
To: "Internet-history" <internet-history at elists.isoc.org>, "Network Neutrality is back! Let´s make the technical aspects heard this time!" <nnagain at lists.bufferbloat.net>, "NANOG" <nanog at nanog.org>, "bloat" <bloat at lists.bufferbloat.net> 
Sent: Sunday, November 12, 2023 9:48:46 AM 
Subject: The rise and fall of the 90's telecom bubble 

Aside from me pinning the start of the bubble closer to 1992 when 
commercial activity was allowed, and M&A for ISPs at insane valuations 
per subscriber by 1995 (I had co-founded an ISP in 93, but try as I 
might I cannot remember if it peaked at 50 or 60x1 by 1996 (?) and 
crashed by 97 (?)), this was a whacking good read, seems accurate, and 
moves to comparing it across that to the present day AI bubble. 

https://www.fabricatedknowledge.com/p/lessons-from-history-the-rise-and 

In the end we sold (my ISP, founded 93) icanect for 3 cents on the 
dollar in 99, and I lost my shirt (not for the first time) on it, only 
to move into embedded Linux (Montavista) after the enormous pop 
redhat's IPO had had in 99. The company I was part of slightly prior 
(Mediaplex) went public December 12, 1999 and cracked 100/share, only 
to crash by march, 2000 to half the IPO price (around $7 as I recall), 
wiping out everyone that had not vested yet. I lost my shirt again on 
that and Montavista too and decided I would avoid VCs henceforth. 

I am always interested in anecdotal reports of personal events in this 
increasingly murky past, and in trying to fact check the above link. 

So much fiber got laid by 2000 that it is often claimed that it was at 
least a decade before it was used up, (the article says only 2.7% was 
in use by 2002) and I have always wondered how much dark, broken, 
inaccessible fiber remains that nobody knows where it even is anymore 
due to many lost databases. I hear horror stories... 

The article also focuses solely on the us sector, and I am wondering 
what it looked like worldwide. 

I believed in the 90s we were seeing major productivity gains. The 
present expansion of the internet in my mind should not be much 
associated with "productivity gains", as, imho, reducing the general 
population to two thumbs and a 4 inch screen strikes me as an enormous 
step backwards. 

(I have a bad habit of cross posting my mails to where older denizens 
of the internet reside, sorry! If you end up posting to one of my 
lists I will add a sender allows filter for you) 
-- 
:( My old R&D campus is up for sale: https://tinyurl.com/yurtlab 
Dave Täht CSO, LibreQos 

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