On Dec 20, 2010, at 11:37 AM, George Bonser wrote:
-----Original Message----- From: Jeff Wheeler [mailto:jsw@inconcepts.biz] Sent: Monday, December 20, 2010 3:55 AM To: nanog@nanog.org Subject: Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style
On Sun, Dec 19, 2010 at 8:48 PM, Richard A Steenbergen <ras@e- gerbil.net> wrote:
Running a wire to everyone's house is a natural monopoly. It just doesn't make sense, financially or technically, to try and manage 50 different companies all trying to install 50 different wires into every house just to have competition at the IP layer. It also wouldn't make
What no one has mentioned thus far is that CLECs really are able to install their own facilities to homes and businesses if they decide that is a good way to invest their finite resources. This is why we see several options for local loops in the "business district" of every sizable city, as well as in many newly-developed areas such as industrial parks. These infrastructure builds are expensive, the CLECs had limited logistical capabilities and could only manage so many projects at once, and obviously, they focused their efforts on the parts of town where return-on-investment was likely to be highest. Businesses often do have several good choices for voice, data, Internet, and so on. Cogent is an example of an essentially Internet-only service having some degree of success at this without even offering voice, or initially even transport, products.
Also, there are two ways in to most urban and suburban home. There is the telco and there is the "cable" company. There is no reason those two paths should not compete for the same services, and they do across an increasing area of the US. The rural areas, though, are a completely different story.
In the vast majority of cases, these are not equal competitors. The vast majority of residences are more than 5,000 and a good majority are more than 10,000 cable feet from the CO. This means that average DSL speeds are sub-T1. Most cable systems can deliver at least 10mbps/3mbps. That's not competition unless your internet needs are extremely modest and you are willing to accept some rather severe limitations. I remember when I was on top of the world because I had T1 service to my home and I used an average of 200kbps. Those days are long gone. Today I get more than 200kbps in SPAM traffic. Owen