On 13 Feb 2018 at 0:01, Cian Witherspoon wrote:

> We've been looking at it all wrong:
> TL is a measure of what technology the local infrastructure will
> support. Think about it. Yeah, smartphones are great - but they were
> created to take advantage of the capabilities of already existing
> infrastructure - cell phone towers, wireless internet, data
> communication via cell phone frequencies, the electrical grid...

> Without them, a smartphone is a fancy paperweight. Infrastructure is
> the limiting force on what technology can be feasibly imported. The
> price markups are for obtaining the gear required to create a limited
> scale form of the required infrastructure (or paying for someone else
> having already set it up). SO a noble wants to import a few dtons of
> smartphones onto a low tech world - rewards for local rulers, perhaps.
> Each phone requires: communication infrastructure - either satnet in a
> can, or ground towers. Also requires the equipment needed to actually
> run the network. Data infrastructure - probably bundled into the above
> power infrastructure - gotta charge it somehow and then a server
> loaded with apps and probably a library. Oh, and people to run it all.

Actually if you look at the third world, you see that importing the
higher tech solution is often *cheaper*.

Cell phones took off in the third world because the infrastructure
was both cheaper *and easier to maintain* than the lower tech
equivalents.

Cell sites aren't hugely expensive. And they are *very* portable
compared to a telephone excange.

So it's worth it to a carrier to drop one in a village complete with
a microwave link to another village or to a relay of some sort.

For a small setup (100 phones or less) solar power will do. Or a
generator.

With landline phones you have to string miles and miles of wire *and
maintain it*. And you still need similar amounts of power.

So cell phones *including the infrastructure* are cheaper than
landlines.

the next lower level of communication is old style radiotelephones or
ham radio or the like. Cheaper, but a *lot* less useful.

below that you are back to snail mail and messengers.

It's even cheaper to do cell phones in the cities. You need better
cell site, but they don't need as much range. Also, you only need to
run cables between the sites, not run ones for every single customer
(a *huge* cost when establishing service or doing significant
expansions)

transportation follows similar rules. People lugging things around,
animal drawn carts/wagon, trains, cars/trucks/busses, airplanes.

Sometimes you can re-use the older infrastructure, other times
(trains) you need to build new infrastructure. Or you improve
existing infrastructure. so footpaths become roads and then the roads
get improved (somewhat).

and of course, planes require *some* sort of runway. Even helicopters
need relatively clear spaces to land.

So you get tradeoffs between usefulness, price and costs of
infrastructure. But more often than you'd think the higher tecj stuff
can make it worth skipping over some of the lower tech stages if they
weren't already in place.

--
Leonard Erickson (aka shadow)
shadow at shadowgard dot com