"Too cheap to meter"

[Timothy C. May]

At 2:38 AM 5/16/96, Alan Horowitz wrote:
>Hey, let's build faster and faster fiber-optic networks. Let's create
>bandwidth so cheap that it won't even pay to meter it.

"Too cheap to meter"? Wasn't that what nuclear power promised in the 1950s?

(I'm actually a supporter of nuclear power, for a variety of reasons, so
this is not meant as just a cheap shot against nuke plants. But this was
one of the "selling points" of nuclear, later shown to be a falsehood.)

Alan's irony is well-placed. The most egregious repetition of the "too
cheap to meter" nonsense is George Gilder's "dark fiber" vision...a vision
of "infinite bandwidth" to all users.

Guess what? If Gilder's "dark fiber" is ever built, there are a lot of
folks who will "fill it" rather quickly. Canter and Siegel were just the
beginning. "Too cheap to meter" goes away pretty quickly.

--Tim May

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