Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style
George Bonser wrote:
What would any provider think if a city said "sure, you can have access to our residents' eyeballs. It will cost you $5 per subscriber per month". Would Comcast or anyone go for that?
Dave Temkin wrote:
These are exactly what Franchise Agreements are for. Yes, cities charge MSOs and LECs for access all the time.
I've been lurking on this thread for awhile, but I feel a need to weigh in here. There are some critical distinctions between a city imposing conditions on access to its property and a telecommunications company imposing conditions on access to its network. There are also some important limitations to the cases in which cities can indeed impose any access restrictions, which prompt the question of why parallel policy limitations do not necessarily apply to last-mile companies. First, the justification for cities requiring things of companies in order to gain access to the local market are grounded in practical and policy considerations. On a very concrete level, putting wires in the ground requires permission from the city for rights-of-way (and such activities have genuine costs for the city). This permission comes in the form of the "Franchise Agreements" that Dave refers to. From a policy perspective, the city has an interest in ensuring that it gets the greatest value for its citizens out of the valuable last-mile concessions it grants to private parties. Historically, this meant that last-mile rights-of-way were a hook for enforcing customer service requirements, disciplining pricing, ensuring universal service, and supporting diversity of programming and "public access." Negotiating these terms with each municipality was the price that companies had to pay for monopoly access to local markets. What I think George's comment does not completely appreciate is that (ideally) cities are imposing such requirements at the behest of and for the benefit of the (local) public, whereas private constraints on local access are (by design) motivated by profit. Now, all of these requirements apply to providers of cable video content under the terms of the Cable Act of 1984 (which created a new Title in the Communications Act). None of them applied to LECs, which traditionally had a blanket permission to build out for their telecommunications services. The exception is for LECs that have started to offer video services. In that case, the same requirements kick in (for the video portion of those services). The exception to THAT is for states in which the LECs have successfully lobbied the state government to give them a blanket license to deploy video services statewide without negotiating locally (Michigan, for example, as opposed to Massachusetts). Whether or not you think such statewide agreements are a good thing tends to be a funciton of who you represent. In any event, the FCC has also further weakened localities' ability to impose requirements on even the video portion of these services (22 FCC Rcd. 5101 and 22 FCC Rcd. 19633). Importantly, for the NANOG crowd, none of these local controls applies to the broadband portion of such services. This all goes back to our artificially siloed Communications Act and some decisions made by the FCC almost a decade ago. The 2002 Cable Modem Order said that localities had no power to exercise authority over the broadband portion of such services. That means that they cannot demand payment for access to rights-of-way for broadband services, but it also means that they cannot impose public interest requirements on the provision of that service... for example that such service be provided universally to all citizens or that access to different types of content be provided on a non-discriminatory basis. The reasoning was that these services were not the video services envisioned in the Cable Act of 1984, but rather broadband services that the FCC was newly classifying as "deregulated." The 2002 Cable Modem Order was in fact the event that precipitated the 2005 "Brand X" Supreme Court decision that cemented the FCC's authority to reclassify last-mile broadband services not as common carriers but rather in a vaguely deregulated service. This helped lead to our modern debate about net neutrality. These jurisdictional turf wars are also at the heart of fights to allow cities to create municipally owned broadband networks that may then be leased on equal terms to all comers. It is also the reason that cities do not have the legal authority to compel "open access" or "non-discrimination" requirements on private networks within their boundaries. Broadband providers have understandably sought to gain near-exclusive control over their customers, and the legal framework helps them to avoid municipal networks and other requirements. Whether or not you believe that the local franchising regime that emerged in the 1980s makes sense for internet access today (not that it applies to broadband anyway), you must at least admit a fundamentally different incentive model compared to that of private companies. Whereas localities must now provide equal access to all companies that wish to do a physical buildout, those companies do not have any locally imposed requirement to provide equal access of use of their networks. Regards, Steve
On 12/17/2010 2:51 AM, Steve Schultze wrote:
Negotiating these terms with each municipality was the price that companies had to pay for monopoly access to local markets.
I've seen it apply to CLEC access into a market as well; running as a true CLEC and not just borrowing LEC lines. Deals can include anything, including profit sharing, free service to the municipality, etc (and can be very bad if your negotiator is poor). Jack
What I think George's comment does not completely appreciate is that (ideally) cities are imposing such requirements at the behest of and for the benefit of the (local) public, whereas private constraints on local access are (by design) motivated by profit.
I wasn't really talking about franchise agreements as those are different and in many cases stipulate things like there can be no monopoly, etc. What I was talking about was what if a city simply decided to charge an Internet provider an "access fee" to the city's people. An "eyeball fee". The city says, "hey, you are making millions selling ads that these people view and the more eyeballs you have the more money you make, so we are going to charge you for those eyeballs". Which is basically what Comcast is doing ... charging content networks for access to eyeballs. What if they themselves got charged for the same thing. Would they think that is "fair"? And what if the city had its own community high speed internet that paid no such charge?
Regards, Steve
Thanks, Steve.
George Bonser wrote:
What I think George's comment does not completely appreciate is that (ideally) cities are imposing such requirements at the behest of and for the benefit of the (local) public, whereas private constraints on local access are (by design) motivated by profit.
I wasn't really talking about franchise agreements as those are different and in many cases stipulate things like there can be no monopoly, etc.
What I was talking about was what if a city simply decided to charge an Internet provider an "access fee" to the city's people. An "eyeball fee". The city says, "hey, you are making millions selling ads that these people view and the more eyeballs you have the more money you make, so we are going to charge you for those eyeballs". Which is basically what Comcast is doing ... charging content networks for access to eyeballs. What if they themselves got charged for the same thing. Would they think that is "fair"? And what if the city had its own community high speed internet that paid no such charge?
They do already. It's called HBO, Showtime, HDNet Sports, etc. - they get charged per eyeball for those networks, and so they pass the charge on per eyeball to the customer. Nothing is new here.
George Bonser wrote:
They do already. It's called HBO, Showtime, HDNet Sports, etc. -
they
get charged per eyeball for those networks, and so they pass the
charge
on per eyeball to the customer.
Nothing is new here.
The municipality charges the cable company per HBO subscriber?
The municipality gets a cut of that in a profit sharing agreement. The point was, everyone gets their tax or toll along the way. -Dave
On 12/17/10 12:08 PM, Dave Temkin wrote:
George Bonser wrote:
The municipality charges the cable company per HBO subscriber?
The municipality gets a cut of that in a profit sharing agreement. The point was, everyone gets their tax or toll along the way.
Dave, perhaps you would be kind enough to tell us where you operate a network and what municipality is able to charge "the cable company" based on a "profit sharing agreement". That would be against the law in Michigan. And I've never heard of any cable company revealing its profits on a per municipality basis....
The franchise fees in many markets are based on gross revenue. 5% is a fairly standard percentage charged by municipalities to cable companies for right of way access, etc. Not sure if I would call this a profit sharing plan, but it's not too much of a stretch. Today with local agreements somewhat going by the wayside for statewide franchising, I'm not sure how the fees are charged. Phil On 12/19/10 5:16 PM, "William Allen Simpson" <william.allen.simpson@gmail.com> wrote:
On 12/17/10 12:08 PM, Dave Temkin wrote:
George Bonser wrote:
The municipality charges the cable company per HBO subscriber?
The municipality gets a cut of that in a profit sharing agreement. The point was, everyone gets their tax or toll along the way.
Dave, perhaps you would be kind enough to tell us where you operate a network and what municipality is able to charge "the cable company" based on a "profit sharing agreement".
That would be against the law in Michigan. And I've never heard of any cable company revealing its profits on a per municipality basis....
In a message written on Sun, Dec 19, 2010 at 05:16:27PM -0500, William Allen Simpson wrote:
That would be against the law in Michigan. And I've never heard of any cable company revealing its profits on a per municipality basis....
Google finds some: http://www.cityofpaloalto.org/civica/filebank/blobdload.asp?BlobID=7364 "The Franchise Agreement requires AT&T to pay the City $0.88 per residential subscriber per month to maintain and enhance PEG access services provided by MPAC. AT&T has chosen to pass this $0.88 fee on to subscribers, which it is not prohibited to do under Federal law." http://www.montgomerycountymd.gov/mcgtmpl.asp?url=/content/cableoffice/june9... "Payment to County. Each year during the Franchise term, as compensation for use of Public Rights-of-Way, the Franchisee shall pay to the County, on a quarterly basis, a Franchise fee of five percent (5%) of Gross Revenues, including any Franchise fee owed to the Participating Municipalities." http://www.cityofsouthfield.com/Government/CityDepartments/AC/Cable15/Franch... "Franchise fees are calculated as a percentage of your bill. Southfield's fee is eight percent of gross revenues." Googling "Franchise Fee" turns up thousands of other documents. This is also why, when speaking to folks at the cable and iLEC companies I remind them that when it comes to network neutrality I do regard them as different from CLEC's and independant companies. They have been granted a monopoly by the local government for wireline services, and in exchange for that monopoly need to act in the public's interest. In the TV world this is things like running the local community interest channel, and paying a franchise fee. In the IP world we're still developing the criteria, but it's not unreasonable to think they might have some government imposed requirements there as well. -- Leo Bicknell - bicknell@ufp.org - CCIE 3440 PGP keys at http://www.ufp.org/~bicknell/
On 12/19/2010 20:09, Leo Bicknell wrote:
They have been granted a monopoly by the local government for wireline services, and in exchange for that monopoly need to act in the public's interest. In the TV world this is things like running the local community interest channel, and paying a franchise fee. In the IP world we're still developing the criteria, but it's not unreasonable to think they might have some government imposed requirements there as well.
The government granting a monopoly is the problem, and more lame government regulation is not the solution. Let everyone compete on a level playing field, not by allowing one company to buy a monopoly enforced by men with guns. -- Bryan Fields 727-409-1194 - Voice 727-214-2508 - Fax http://bryanfields.net
On Sun, Dec 19, 2010 at 08:20:49PM -0500, Bryan Fields wrote:
The government granting a monopoly is the problem, and more lame government regulation is not the solution. Let everyone compete on a level playing field, not by allowing one company to buy a monopoly enforced by men with guns.
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 sense to have 5 different competing water companies trying to service your house, etc. This is where government regulation of the entities who ARE granted the monopoly status comes into play, to protect consumers against abuses like we're seeing Comcast commit today. Personally I think the right answer is to enforce a legal separation between the layer 1 and layer 3 infrastructure providers, and require that the layer 1 network provide non-discriminatory access to any company who wishes to provide IP to the end user. But that would take a lot of work to implement, and there are billions of dollars at work lobbying against it, so I don't expect it to happen any time soon. :) -- Richard A Steenbergen <ras@e-gerbil.net> http://www.e-gerbil.net/ras GPG Key ID: 0xF8B12CBC (7535 7F59 8204 ED1F CC1C 53AF 4C41 5ECA F8B1 2CBC)
Personally I think the right answer is to enforce a legal separation between the layer 1 and layer 3 infrastructure providers, and require that the layer 1 network provide non-discriminatory access to any company who wishes to provide IP to the end user. But that would take a lot of work to implement, and there are billions of dollars at work lobbying against it, so I don't expect it to happen any time soon. :)
-- Richard A Steenbergen <ras@e-gerbil.net> http://www.e- gerbil.net/ras GPG Key ID: 0xF8B12CBC (7535 7F59 8204 ED1F CC1C 53AF 4C41 5ECA F8B1 2CBC)
I agree. The "highway" model of commerce is better than the "railroad" model of commerce.
On Dec 19, 2010, at 5:50 PM, George Bonser wrote:
Personally I think the right answer is to enforce a legal separation between the layer 1 and layer 3 infrastructure providers, and require that the layer 1 network provide non-discriminatory access to any company who wishes to provide IP to the end user. But that would take a lot of work to implement, and there are billions of dollars at work lobbying against it, so I don't expect it to happen any time soon. :)
-- Richard A Steenbergen <ras@e-gerbil.net> http://www.e- gerbil.net/ras GPG Key ID: 0xF8B12CBC (7535 7F59 8204 ED1F CC1C 53AF 4C41 5ECA F8B1 2CBC)
I agree. The "highway" model of commerce is better than the "railroad" model of commerce.
Australia is actually experimenting with something like that as we speak. Owen
On 19/12/10 5:48 PM, Richard A Steenbergen wrote:
On Sun, Dec 19, 2010 at 08:20:49PM -0500, Bryan Fields wrote:
The government granting a monopoly is the problem, and more lame government regulation is not the solution. Let everyone compete on a level playing field, not by allowing one company to buy a monopoly enforced by men with guns. 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 sense to have 5 different competing water companies trying to service your house, etc.
This is the argument the government uses to keep first class mail service as an exclusive monopoly service for the USPS, claiming you wouldn't want 50 different mail carriers marching up and down your walk every day. Yet we aren't seeing a big problem with package delivery. Currently you have 3 choices, USPS, UPS, and FedEx. The market can't support more than 3 or 4 package delivery services (e.g. we had 4 with DHL, which didn't survive the financial melt down). Why not open up the market for telco wiring and just see what happens? There might be 5 or perhaps even 10 players who try to enter the market, but there won't be 50 - it simply won't make financial sense for additional players to try to enter the market after a certain number of players are already in. And there certainly won't be 50 all trying to service the same neighborhood. And if a competing water service thought they could do better than the incumbent, why not let them put in a competing water project? If they think they can make money after the cost of the infrastructure, then they may be onto something. We don't have to worry that too many would join in, the laws of diminishing returns would make it unprofitable for the nth company to build out the infrastructure to enter the market. jc
On Dec 19, 2010, at 4:12 PM, JC Dill wrote:
And if a competing water service thought they could do better than the incumbent, why not let them put in a competing water project?
Because they'd have to dig up the streets, people's yards, etc. to do it. There really are some natural monopolies. Regards, -drc
On Sun, Dec 19, 2010 at 06:12:02PM -0800, JC Dill wrote:
And if a competing water service thought they could do better than the incumbent, why not let them put in a competing water project? If they think they can make money after the cost of the infrastructure, then they may be onto something. We don't have to worry that too many would join in, the laws of diminishing returns would make it unprofitable for the nth company to build out the infrastructure to enter the market.
The laws of diminishing returns have already set the bar for the point at which it's not profitable for a new company to enter the market and try to compete. Right now the number is roughly 2, cable and dsl, give or take a few outliers. I do believe the point would be to encourage a little more competition than that. :) -- Richard A Steenbergen <ras@e-gerbil.net> http://www.e-gerbil.net/ras GPG Key ID: 0xF8B12CBC (7535 7F59 8204 ED1F CC1C 53AF 4C41 5ECA F8B1 2CBC)
On 19/12/10 6:25 PM, Richard A Steenbergen wrote:
And if a competing water service thought they could do better than the incumbent, why not let them put in a competing water project? If they think they can make money after the cost of the infrastructure, then they may be onto something. We don't have to worry that too many would join in, the laws of diminishing returns would make it unprofitable for the nth company to build out the infrastructure to enter the market. The laws of diminishing returns have already set the bar for the point at which it's not profitable for a new company to enter the market and
On Sun, Dec 19, 2010 at 06:12:02PM -0800, JC Dill wrote: try to compete. Right now the number is roughly 2, cable and dsl, give or take a few outliers. I do believe the point would be to encourage a little more competition than that. :)
This is true but ONLY in the current climate where the incumbents have a monopoly on the ability to put in cabling for the last mile to homes. I live in an area where there are 2 ILECs (AT&T, Verizon) in nearby proximity. Both are putting in fiber to some homes in their respective areas. Imagine what would happen if they could both put in fiber in the other areas. Then they would be *competitors* for those customers. Right now, they don't compete - they each have a territory and in their territory they are the predominant telco player (competing with the cable incumbent - usually Comcast). jc
On 12/20/2010 12:05 AM, JC Dill wrote:
On 19/12/10 6:25 PM, Richard A Steenbergen wrote:
The laws of diminishing returns have already set the bar for the point at which it's not profitable for a new company to enter the market and try to compete. Right now the number is roughly 2, cable and dsl, give or take a few outliers. I do believe the point would be to encourage a little more competition than that. :)
In other words; it's an economic problem. Not Technical or regulation.
This is true but ONLY in the current climate where the incumbents have a monopoly on the ability to put in cabling for the last mile to homes.
I live in an area where there are 2 ILECs (AT&T, Verizon) in nearby proximity. Both are putting in fiber to some homes in their respective areas. Imagine what would happen if they could both put in fiber in the other areas. Then they would be *competitors* for those customers. Right now, they don't compete - they each have a territory and in their territory they are the predominant telco player (competing with the cable incumbent - usually Comcast).
There is no monopoly. They've already experimented with that and (apparently) decided that it wasn't worth it. http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/bus/ptech/stories/DN-verizon_17b... My theory is that everybody is just waiting around for things like 'network neutrality', 'broadband stimulus', and 'USF reform' to finally get decided before the Big Guys start to spend any money on upgrades. -- Dave
On 20/12/10 2:15 PM, David Sparro wrote:
There is no monopoly. They've already experimented with that and (apparently) decided that it wasn't worth it.
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/bus/ptech/stories/DN-verizon_17b...
* Tuesday, June 17, 2008 Do you have any cites saying that this was actually rolled out? Or did the project get cut during the financial crisis, and never actually rolled out? The issue I have with all these "cites" is that none of them are for services that are up and running. They are all press releases about something that will supposedly get built, maybe. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_Nukem_Forever jc *
On Dec 20, 2010, at 8:51 01PM, JC Dill wrote:
On 20/12/10 2:15 PM, David Sparro wrote:
There is no monopoly. They've already experimented with that and (apparently) decided that it wasn't worth it.
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/bus/ptech/stories/DN-verizon_17b...
*
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Do you have any cites saying that this was actually rolled out? Or did the project get cut during the financial crisis, and never actually rolled out?
The issue I have with all these "cites" is that none of them are for services that are up and running. They are all press releases about something that will supposedly get built, maybe.
Maybe I've lost the thread context, but if you're talking about FIOS it most certainly is running, in many places (http://www22.verizon.com/Residential/aboutFiOS/Overview.htm?CMP=DMC-CVS_ZZ_Z...). My town has it; Comcast's responsiveness improved dramatically after FIOS was rolled out.... Speeds are good, prices less so, and if memory serves they charge something like $40/mo extra for static IP addresses. --Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb
On 12/20/10 9:07 PM, Steven Bellovin wrote:
On Dec 20, 2010, at 8:51 01PM, JC Dill wrote:
Do you have any cites saying that this was actually rolled out? Or did the project get cut during the financial crisis, and never actually rolled out?
The issue I have with all these "cites" is that none of them are for services that are up and running. They are all press releases about something that will supposedly get built, maybe.
Maybe I've lost the thread context, but if you're talking about FIOS it most certainly is running, in many places (http://www22.verizon.com/Residential/aboutFiOS/Overview.htm?CMP=DMC-CVS_ZZ_Z...). My town has it; Comcast's responsiveness improved dramatically after FIOS was rolled out.... Speeds are good, prices less so, and if memory serves they charge something like $40/mo extra for static IP addresses.
Heck, we've also had earlier pointers in the thread to competing cable providers! Where I founded an ISP, we used to have 2 competing cable providers, until one bought out the other over a decade ago. In Oakland County, Michigan, various pockets have WOW and Comcast and ATT. My family members there have WOW, having switched from Comcast or ATT. (IMnsHO, the only thing worse than Comcast is Ameritech/SBC/AT&T.) Once upon a time, I compared pricing with Ann Arbor (Washtenaw County), where Comcast (previously Media One) had no broadband competition. In Oakland County, Comcast prices were 20% or so less. Eventually, WOW raised prices to be just a little bit less than competitors -- just as Chrysler and GM used to raise prices following Ford -- and Comcast has gradually reduced the price difference between Oakland and Washtenaw. JC's supposition that competition functions at this level over the long term is egregiously fallacious. Fundamentally an oligopoly. As to "responsiveness", in my experience WOW (and Vonage) have *much* better customer service departments than Comcast or AT&T. Faster, friendlier, and more technically savvy. Comcast call centers apparently don't bother to check for multiple service outages in the same node, resulting in 5 (or more) truck rolls last week before they were finally fixed. Apparently, dispatchers don't have access to the NOC status information from modems, and only respond to actual repair calls from customers. If the customers cannot call because their VoIP is down, then there's nothing wrong?!?! But that's another gripe for another time. :-(
On 12/20/2010 8:51 PM, JC Dill wrote:
On 20/12/10 2:15 PM, David Sparro wrote:
There is no monopoly. They've already experimented with that and (apparently) decided that it wasn't worth it.
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/bus/ptech/stories/DN-verizon_17b...
*
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Do you have any cites saying that this was actually rolled out? Or did the project get cut during the financial crisis, and never actually rolled out?
The issue I have with all these "cites" is that none of them are for services that are up and running. They are all press releases about something that will supposedly get built, maybe.
I still think that the link shows that the factors are more economic than regulatory. As you point out, even where the regulatory obstacles have been overcome, it is not clear that Verizon ever actually did their overbuild to become a third triple-play provider. -- Dave
In a message written on Tue, Dec 21, 2010 at 12:47:45PM -0500, David Sparro wrote:
I still think that the link shows that the factors are more economic than regulatory. As you point out, even where the regulatory obstacles have been overcome, it is not clear that Verizon ever actually did their overbuild to become a third triple-play provider.
It's not so simple. There are pure regulatory issues, like getting a franchise license to provide video services. There are pure economic issues, like being able to afford the fiber and optics and such. Then there is a mess in the middle. For instance in the early 2000's DC changed its rules for permitting duct installation. Previously if you wanted to dig up a street you applied for a permit and did just that. However too many streets were being dug up too many times in a row, and residents screamed. The city changed it so to dig up a street you had to post what you were going to dig up like 90 or 180 days in advance, and if someone else wanted the same route you were required to install conduit for them in the same trench at cost when you did it. [My understanding is the rules have since been altered again, so I'm likely not up to date.] Is that a regulatory obstical, since it's government rules? Is that an economic obstical, since it just raises costs? -- Leo Bicknell - bicknell@ufp.org - CCIE 3440 PGP keys at http://www.ufp.org/~bicknell/
On 12/19/10 6:12 PM, JC Dill wrote:
On 19/12/10 5:48 PM, Richard A Steenbergen wrote:
On Sun, Dec 19, 2010 at 08:20:49PM -0500, Bryan Fields wrote:
The government granting a monopoly is the problem, and more lame government regulation is not the solution. Let everyone compete on a level playing field, not by allowing one company to buy a monopoly enforced by men with guns. 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 sense to have 5 different competing water companies trying to service your house, etc.
This is the argument the government uses to keep first class mail service as an exclusive monopoly service for the USPS, claiming you wouldn't want 50 different mail carriers marching up and down your walk every day. Yet we aren't seeing a big problem with package delivery. Currently you have 3 choices, USPS, UPS, and FedEx. The market can't support more than 3 or 4 package delivery services (e.g. we had 4 with DHL, which didn't survive the financial melt down). Why not open up the market for telco wiring and just see what happens? There might be 5 or perhaps even 10 players who try to enter the market, but there won't be 50 - it simply won't make financial sense for additional players to try to enter the market after a certain number of players are already in. And there certainly won't be 50 all trying to service the same neighborhood.
And if a competing water service thought they could do better than the incumbent, why not let them put in a competing water project? If they think they can make money after the cost of the infrastructure, then they may be onto something. We don't have to worry that too many would join in, the laws of diminishing returns would make it unprofitable for the nth company to build out the infrastructure to enter the market.
Contrary to popular belief the average person tend to severely dislike all forms of road construction or having their yard repeatedly torn up. I know it's all happy fun times to say "let's have 10 water/electrical providers and you can select which molecules/electrons you want!", but there's a practical limit as to how much stuff one can pack under a street's limited right of way. If you look at what's under there right now it's actually quite crowded. We just don't see it because it's buried. ~Seth
On Sun, Dec 19, 2010 at 06:41:09PM -0800, Seth Mattinen wrote:
Contrary to popular belief the average person tend to severely dislike all forms of road construction or having their yard repeatedly torn up.
I know it's all happy fun times to say "let's have 10 water/electrical providers and you can select which molecules/electrons you want!", but there's a practical limit as to how much stuff one can pack under a street's limited right of way. If you look at what's under there right now it's actually quite crowded. We just don't see it because it's buried.
True indeed. My employer, the Oklahoma Dept. of Transportation, is a major owner, but not the only one, of right-of-way in the state. We have severe problems with trying to wedge into our rights-of-way all the things that people want to wedge in around our structures and drainage: pipelines, fiber, etc. It is beginning to look as though we will have to increase the ROW width in the future, just to make it possible to run everything necessary. The lawmakers were not particularly happy about this, but I understand that they were shown some cross-section maps of places where things are quite dense, and most of them came around. -- Mike Andrews, W5EGO mikea@mikea.ath.cx Tired old sysadmin
Once upon a time, JC Dill <jcdill.lists@gmail.com> said:
Why not open up the market for telco wiring and just see what happens? There might be 5 or perhaps even 10 players who try to enter the market, but there won't be 50 - it simply won't make financial sense for additional players to try to enter the market after a certain number of players are already in.
Look up pictures of New York City in the early days of electricty. There were streets where you couldn't hardly see the sky because of all the wires on the poles.
And there certainly won't be 50 all trying to service the same neighborhood.
And there's the other half of the problem. Without franchise agreements that require (mostly) universal service, you'd get 50 companies trying to serve the richest neighborhoods in town, and none, or maybe one high-priced vendor, serving the poorer areas.
And if a competing water service thought they could do better than the incumbent, why not let them put in a competing water project?
There is limited space, and most people don't want the road and their yard being dug up because their neighbor wants different water service. Also, the more people digging, the more breaks you'll have in existing services (and if there are fibers from 10 different companies cut, they'll be pointing fingers for blame and all trying to get in the hole at the same time to fix theirs first). -- Chris Adams <cmadams@hiwaay.net> Systems and Network Administrator - HiWAAY Internet Services I don't speak for anybody but myself - that's enough trouble.
On 19/12/10 8:31 PM, Chris Adams wrote:
Why not open up the market for telco wiring and just see what happens? There might be 5 or perhaps even 10 players who try to enter the market, but there won't be 50 - it simply won't make financial sense for additional players to try to enter the market after a certain number of players are already in. Look up pictures of New York City in the early days of electricty. There were streets where you couldn't hardly see the sky because of all
Once upon a time, JC Dill<jcdill.lists@gmail.com> said: the wires on the poles.
Can you provide a link to a photo of this situation?
And there certainly won't be 50 all trying to service the same neighborhood. And there's the other half of the problem. Without franchise agreements that require (mostly) universal service, you'd get 50 companies trying to serve the richest neighborhoods in town,
No you wouldn't. Remember those diminishing returns. At most you would likely have 4 or 5. If you are player 6 you aren't going to spend the money to build out in an area where there are 5 other players already - you will build out in a different neighborhood where there are only 2 or 3 players. Then, later, you might buy out the weakest of the 5 players in the rich neighborhood to gain access to that neighborhood when player 5 is on the verge of going BK. It's also silly to think that being player 6 to build out in a "richer neighborhood" would be a good move. The rich like to get a good deal just like everyone else. (They didn't *get* rich by spending their money unwisely.) As an example, I will point people to the neighborhood between Page Mill Road and Stanford University, an area originally built out as housing for Stanford professors. They have absolutely awful broadband options in that area. They have been *begging* for someone to come in with a better option. This is a very wealthy community (by US national standards) with median family incomes in the 6 figures according to the 2000 census data. Right now they can only get slow and expensive DSL or slightly faster and also expensive cable service. The city of Palo Alto has sonet fiber running right along the edges of this neighborhood. (see, http://poulton.net/ftth/slides.ps.pdf slide 18.) It's a perfect place for an ISP to put in a junction box and build a local fiber network to connect these homes with fiber to the Palo Alto fiber. But apparently the regulatory obstacles make it too complicated. THAT is what I'm talking about above. Since the incumbents don't want to provide improved services, get rid of those obstacles, let new players move in and put in service without so many obstacles. jc
There were streets where you couldn't hardly see the sky because of all the wires on the poles. Can you provide a link to a photo of this situation?
come to tokyo. or hcmc. or ... it's an art form.
C 1925 when each subscriber (or party line) had their own pair: http://www.sfgate.com/blogs/images/sfgate/beltran/2009/07/24/Tina_modott i_wires447x625.jpg Vietnam: http://constructionknowledge.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/tangled_power_w ires_vietnam.jpg Nepal: http://constructionknowledge.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/tangled_power_w ires_nepal.jpg Location unknown: http://constructionknowledge.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/tangled_wires_t oilet.jpg India: http://pinkbunnyears.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/telephone-pole.jpg
http://pinkbunnyears.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/telephone-pole.jpg
true beauty that only a perl code maintainer could fully appreciate
On 19/12/10 10:55 PM, George Bonser wrote:
There were streets where you couldn't hardly see the sky because of all the wires on the poles. Can you provide a link to a photo of this situation? come to tokyo. or hcmc. or ... it's an art form. http://www.sfgate.com/blogs/images/sfgate/beltran/2009/07/24/Tina_modotti_wi...
This is not the result of many different providers, it's the result of one provider stringing many lines to supply service. I'm guessing this was before they figured out how to run trunk lines and then split out the calls from the trunk into individual lines closer to the end user's location - or how to bundle lines together, etc. So each wire we see in that photo is a *single* wire running from the central office to one subscriber (or party line).
India:
http://pinkbunnyears.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/telephone-pole.jpg
Department of Telecommunications (DoT), is the monopoly operator in India. That photo isn't due to a situation where there were numerous different providers, it's due to ONE provider with a monopoly, doing a half-assed job. I checked the first and last links you posted, and neither of them had anything to do with the topic of "50 providers stringing lines to every house". I'm not going to waste my time checking the rest of the links - especially since you can't even bother to properly format them so they don't break and they have to be pieced together to work. jc
On Mon, Dec 20, 2010 at 2:15 PM, JC Dill <jcdill.lists@gmail.com> wrote:
Department of Telecommunications (DoT), is the monopoly operator in India. That photo isn't due to a situation where there were numerous different providers, it's due to ONE provider with a monopoly, doing a half-assed job.
DoT is the regulator - kind of like the FCC The monopoly provider (still a very large one) was called BSNL [Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd - India Telecom Company, Ltd] as opposed to VSNL / Videsh ... (Videsh = Foreign) VSNL was privatized some years back as you all know .. and as for local phone service you can buy that from at least 4 or 5 nationwide landline providers, besides several cellphone providers. "Monopoly" is what there was like a decade back. -- Suresh Ramasubramanian (ops.lists@gmail.com)
On Dec 20, 2010, at 3:45 AM, JC Dill wrote:
On 19/12/10 10:55 PM, George Bonser wrote:
http://www.sfgate.com/blogs/images/sfgate/beltran/2009/07/24/Tina_modotti_wi...
This is not the result of many different providers, it's the result of one provider stringing many lines to supply service. I'm guessing this was before they figured out how to run trunk lines and then split out the calls from the trunk into individual lines closer to the end user's location - or how to bundle lines together, etc. So each wire we see in that photo is a *single* wire running from the central office to one subscriber (or party line).
http://pinkbunnyears.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/telephone-pole.jpg
That photo isn't due to a situation where there were numerous different providers, it's due to ONE provider with a monopoly, doing a half-assed job.
It should be noted that running an individual line from the central office to the subscriber can be a good thing when done in a sensible fashion. Amsterdam's Fiber-to-the-Home project called Citynet is an excellent example of this. The city ran a fiber line to each subscriber, which facilitates competitive open access to each line (and makes for maximum long-term bandwidth per subscriber). http://opticalreflection.com/2009/02/amsterdam-citynet-scores-a-home-run-for... "However, the first decision the Citynet project made was more fundamental: should it deploy a passive optical network (PON) architecture or what Wagter calls “home run” fibre, which is a point-to-point topology. PONs share fibre and equipment near the head-end of the network, which does result in some cost savings. But infrastructure sharing does not allow unbundling (allowing other service providers to put their equipment into the local exchange). PONs have a 1:32 splitter in the street cabinet, which means that those 32 customers get locked into the same service provider — and that didn’t fit with the city’s plan to have an open-access network. (Regulators have proposed bitstream access as a solution to this problem, but it’s more complicated to implement.)" See also: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/03/how-amsterdam-was-wired-for-...
On Sunday 19 December 2010 22:25, JC Dill wrote:
On 19/12/10 8:31 PM, Chris Adams wrote:
Look up pictures of New York City in the early days of electricty. There were streets where you couldn't hardly see the sky because of all the wires on the poles.
Can you provide a link to a photo of this situation?
It wasn't the earlier days of electricity persay, it was the early days the telegraph (late 1800s and early 1900s). Dozens, if not hundreds, of different telegraph companies raced put up different wires and poles to claim the market (and sometimes cut-down each others wires). Fraught with fear of completely losing any view of the sky and the dangers of so much shoddy work over citizens heads (wires would frequently fall in storms and such), New York and many other cities began restricting the number of providers that could service a given area. The "classic" New York telegraph wiring nightmare image: http://www.vny.cuny.edu/Search/search_res_image.php?id=363 Other images: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/onceandfutureweb/database/seca/case3-artifacts/photos... http://www.maggieblanck.com/NewYork/SU.html http://ephemeralnewyork.wordpress.com/2009/12/12/when-the-city-was-criss-cro... http://www.islandnet.com/~see/weather/graphics/photos0708/blizzard_1888h.jpg Adrian
On 20/12/2010, at 12:25 AM, JC Dill <jcdill.lists@gmail.com> wrote:
On 19/12/10 8:31 PM, Chris Adams wrote:
Why not open up the market for telco wiring and just see what happens? There might be 5 or perhaps even 10 players who try to enter the market, but there won't be 50 - it simply won't make financial sense for additional players to try to enter the market after a certain number of players are already in. Look up pictures of New York City in the early days of electricty. There were streets where you couldn't hardly see the sky because of all
Once upon a time, JC Dill<jcdill.lists@gmail.com> said: the wires on the poles.
Can you provide a link to a photo of this situation?
And there certainly won't be 50 all trying to service the same neighborhood. And there's the other half of the problem. Without franchise agreements that require (mostly) universal service, you'd get 50 companies trying to serve the richest neighborhoods in town,
No you wouldn't. Remember those diminishing returns. At most you would likely have 4 or 5. If you are player 6 you aren't going to spend the money to build out in an area where there are 5 other players already - you will build out in a different neighborhood where there are only 2 or 3 players. Then, later, you might buy out the weakest of the 5 players in the rich neighborhood to gain access to that neighborhood when player 5 is on the verge of going BK.
It's also silly to think that being player 6 to build out in a "richer neighborhood" would be a good move. The rich like to get a good deal just like everyone else. (They didn't *get* rich by spending their money unwisely.)
As an example, I will point people to the neighborhood between Page Mill Road and Stanford University, an area originally built out as housing for Stanford professors. They have absolutely awful broadband options in that area. They have been *begging* for someone to come in with a better option. This is a very wealthy community (by US national standards) with median family incomes in the 6 figures according to the 2000 census data.
Right now they can only get slow and expensive DSL or slightly faster and also expensive cable service.
The city of Palo Alto has sonet fiber running right along the edges of this neighborhood. (see, http://poulton.net/ftth/slides.ps.pdf slide 18.)
It's a perfect place for an ISP to put in a junction box and build a local fiber network to connect these homes with fiber to the Palo Alto fiber. But apparently the regulatory obstacles make it too complicated. THAT is what I'm talking about above. Since the incumbents don't want to provide improved services, get rid of those obstacles, let new players move in and put in service without so many obstacles.
jc
Having lived through the telecom bubble (as many of us did) what makes you believe that player 6 is going to know about the financial conditions of players 1-5? What if player two has a high-profile chief scientist who, on a speaking circuit, starts telling the market that his bandwidth demands are growing at the rate of 300% per year and players 6-10 jump into the market with strong financial backing? While I believe in free-market economics and I will agree with you that the situation will eventually sort itself out; thousands of ditch-diggers and poll-climbers will lose their jobs, but this is "the way of things." I do not agree that the end-consumer should be put through this fiasco and I am confident that the money spent digging more ditches and stringing more ugly overhead cables would be better spent on layers 3 and more importantly on services at layers 4-7. My perception of the current situation in the USA? We have just gone through an era in which the FCC and administration defined "competition" as having more than one provider able to provide service (200 kb/s or better) within a zip code. A zip code can cover quite a large area. This left the major players to their own devices and we saw them overbuild TV and broadband services into the more lucrative areas (because as established providers they actually do have a pretty good idea of the financial condition of their competitors within an area). Quite often 'lucrative' did not equal affluent, lucrative is more a measure of consumption (think VoD) than median household income. The point is that the free-market evolution of broadband has produced a patchwork of services that is hard to decipher and even harder to influence. The utopian solution (pun intended) would be to develop a local, state, federal system of broadband similar to the highway system of roads. Let those broadband providers who can compete by creating layer 3 backbones and services at layers 4-7 (and layer 1-2 with wireless) survive. Let the innovation continue at layers 4-7 without constant saber-rattling from the layer 1-2 providers. And as a byproduct we can stop the ridiculous debate on Net Neutrality which is molded daily by telecom lobbyists.
On 20/12/10 9:19 AM, Jeffrey S. Young wrote:
Having lived through the telecom bubble (as many of us did) what makes you believe that player 6 is going to know about the financial conditions of players 1-5? What if player two has a high-profile chief scientist who, on a speaking circuit, starts telling the market that his bandwidth demands are growing at the rate of 300% per year and players 6-10 jump into the market with strong financial backing? While I believe in free-market economics and I will agree with you that the situation will eventually sort itself out; thousands of ditch-diggers and poll-climbers will lose their jobs, but this is "the way of things."
Apples and oranges. The telcom bubble didn't involve building out *to the home*. The cost to build a data center and put in modems or lease dry copper for DSL is dramatically lower than the cost to build out to the home. It was financially feasible (even if not the best decision, especially if you based the decision on a provably false assumption on market growth) to be player 6 in the early days of the Internet, it's not financially feasible to be player 6 to build out fiber to the home.
I do not agree that the end-consumer should be put through this fiasco and I am confident that the money spent digging more ditches and stringing more ugly overhead cables would be better spent on layers 3 and more importantly on services at layers 4-7.
The problem is getting fair access to layer 1 for all players. If it takes breaking the monopoly rules for putting in layer 1 facilities to get past this log jam, then that may be the solution.
The utopian solution (pun intended) would be to develop a local, state, federal system of broadband similar to the highway system of roads. Let those broadband providers who can compete by creating layer 3 backbones and services at layers 4-7 (and layer 1-2 with wireless) survive. Let the innovation continue at layers 4-7 without constant saber-rattling from the layer 1-2 providers.
But how do we GET there? I don't see a good path, as the ILECs who own the layer 1 infrastructure have already successfully lobbied for laws and policies that allow them to maintain their monopoly use of the layer 1 facilities to the customer's location.
And as a byproduct we can stop the ridiculous debate on Net Neutrality which is molded daily by telecom lobbyists.
Yes, that would be nice. But where's a feasible path to this ultimate goal? jc
On Monday, December 20, 2010 01:22:17 pm JC Dill wrote:
But how do we GET there? I don't see a good path, as the ILECs who own the layer 1 infrastructure have already successfully lobbied for laws and policies that allow them to maintain their monopoly use of the layer 1 facilities to the customer's location.
The 'last mile' is the key, and is where 'net neutrality' and natural monopoly interests collide. He who owns the last mile owns what the user can and can not do.
On 20/12/2010, at 1:22 PM, JC Dill <jcdill.lists@gmail.com> wrote:
On 20/12/10 9:19 AM, Jeffrey S. Young wrote:
Having lived through the telecom bubble (as many of us did) what makes you believe that player 6 is going to know about the financial conditions of players 1-5? What if player two has a high-profile chief scientist who, on a speaking circuit, starts telling the market that his bandwidth demands are growing at the rate of 300% per year and players 6-10 jump into the market with strong financial backing? While I believe in free-market economics and I will agree with you that the situation will eventually sort itself out; thousands of ditch-diggers and poll-climbers will lose their jobs, but this is "the way of things."
Apples and oranges. The telcom bubble didn't involve building out *to the home*. The cost to build a data center and put in modems or lease dry copper for DSL is dramatically lower than the cost to build out to the home. It was financially feasible (even if not the best decision, especially if you based the decision on a provably false assumption on market growth) to be player 6 in the early days of the Internet, it's not financially feasible to be player 6 to build out fiber to the home.
I do not agree that the end-consumer should be put through this fiasco and I am confident that the money spent digging more ditches and stringing more ugly overhead cables would be better spent on layers 3 and more importantly on services at layers 4-7.
The problem is getting fair access to layer 1 for all players. If it takes breaking the monopoly rules for putting in layer 1 facilities to get past this log jam, then that may be the solution.
The utopian solution (pun intended) would be to develop a local, state, federal system of broadband similar to the highway system of roads. Let those broadband providers who can compete by creating layer 3 backbones and services at layers 4-7 (and layer 1-2 with wireless) survive. Let the innovation continue at layers 4-7 without constant saber-rattling from the layer 1-2 providers.
But how do we GET there? I don't see a good path, as the ILECs who own the layer 1 infrastructure have already successfully lobbied for laws and policies that allow them to maintain their monopoly use of the layer 1 facilities to the customer's location.
And as a byproduct we can stop the ridiculous debate on Net Neutrality which is molded daily by telecom lobbyists.
Yes, that would be nice. But where's a feasible path to this ultimate goal?
jc
the point of the bubble analogy had more to do with poor speculation driving poor investments than it had to do with the nature of the build outs. I don't really think it would be far-fetched to see it happen again in broadband (perhaps in a better economy), but then it's only my opinion, everyone has them. the deeper point I was trying to make: all of this (the market evolution) has a detrimental effect on the Internet-consuming public and while the rest of world leads the USA in broadband deployment (pick any category) we debate, lag, and are currently driving policies that only further the patchwork of deployment and ineffective service we already have. jy
On 20/12/10 12:00 PM, Jeffrey S. Young wrote:
the point of the bubble analogy had more to do with poor speculation driving poor investments than it had to do with the nature of the build outs. I don't really think it would be far-fetched to see it happen again in broadband (perhaps in a better economy),
A "bad economy" is the RIGHT time to build out. Labor is much cheaper and more readily found, and money is harder to come by which means your business plan gets more thorough review before you get funding. The booming economy is when money is spent unwisely and labor costs skyrocket. jc
On 12/19/2010 06:12 PM, JC Dill wrote:
And if a competing water service thought they could do better than the incumbent, why not let them put in a competing water project? If they think they can make money after the cost of the infrastructure, then they may be onto something. We don't have to worry that too many would join in, the laws of diminishing returns would make it unprofitable for the nth company to build out the infrastructure to enter the market.
On this point I would like to add some anecdotal information that may or may not be relevant: Where I used to live, a rural community in northern california, the township was the exclusive provider of water service to the community. The cost of water service was obscene compared to urban water service, and in fact we had to put up with drought conditions due to insufficient water storage in system and no connections to other water systems. They went ahead and passed laws that made it illegal for you to have your own water storage tanks on your own property (which is something the local population has easy access to and would be considered normal for the area). Furthermore, the lack of available 'water permits' severely restricted the abillity of land owners to build the properties they bought, and drove down property values since you couldn't find a buyer for land you can't develop (in that area). A second water / sewer provider would have set the township govt' on it's ear, to the benefit of the residents and property owners....
On Dec 19, 2010, at 6:12 PM, JC Dill wrote:
On 19/12/10 5:48 PM, Richard A Steenbergen wrote:
On Sun, Dec 19, 2010 at 08:20:49PM -0500, Bryan Fields wrote:
The government granting a monopoly is the problem, and more lame government regulation is not the solution. Let everyone compete on a level playing field, not by allowing one company to buy a monopoly enforced by men with guns. 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 sense to have 5 different competing water companies trying to service your house, etc.
This is the argument the government uses to keep first class mail service as an exclusive monopoly service for the USPS, claiming you wouldn't want 50 different mail carriers marching up and down your walk every day. Yet we aren't seeing a big problem with package delivery. Currently you have 3 choices, USPS, UPS, and FedEx. The market can't support more than 3 or 4 package delivery services (e.g. we had 4 with DHL, which didn't survive the financial melt down). Why not open up the market for telco wiring and just see what happens? There might be 5 or perhaps even 10 players who try to enter the market, but there won't be 50 - it simply won't make financial sense for additional players to try to enter the market after a certain number of players are already in. And there certainly won't be 50 all trying to service the same neighborhood.
You can send letters just as well as packages via the other carriers. The "USPS monopoly" on first class mail is absurd. In fact, FedEx, UPS, et. al could offer a $0.44 letter product if they wanted to. They could not call it mail. They could call it "first class document delivery." However, the reality is that they probably couldn't sustain their business at that price point. The USPS doesn't have an actual monopoly so much as ownership of the term Mail almost like a trademark. What they do have is an infrastructure built at taxpayer expense that creates a very high barrier to entry for competition at their price points.
And if a competing water service thought they could do better than the incumbent, why not let them put in a competing water project? If they think they can make money after the cost of the infrastructure, then they may be onto something. We don't have to worry that too many would join in, the laws of diminishing returns would make it unprofitable for the nth company to build out the infrastructure to enter the market.
The point is that the cost of the infrastructure usually exceeds what you can recoup if you only have part of the population in a given area as your customers, thus, creating natural monopolies. Owen
On 19/12/10 8:44 PM, Owen DeLong wrote:
You can send letters
Technically, this is illegal. You can send "documents" via FedEx and UPS.
just as well as packages via the other carriers.
The "USPS monopoly" on first class mail is absurd. In fact, FedEx, UPS, et. al could offer a $0.44 letter product if they wanted to.
No, they can't. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_Express_Statutes
They could not call it mail. They could call it "first class document delivery."
However, the reality is that they probably couldn't sustain their business at that price point.
The USPS doesn't have an actual monopoly so much as ownership of the term Mail almost like a trademark.
It's not just a trademark, it's the class of service. Just try starting up a regular mail service, and see how far you get before they SHUT YOU DOWN.
What they do have is an infrastructure built at taxpayer expense that creates a very high barrier to entry for competition at their price points.
FedEx entered the package delivery market even though there was a very high barrier to entry, and they succeeded. jc
You can send letters just as well as packages via the other carriers.
The "USPS monopoly" on first class mail is absurd. In fact, FedEx, UPS, et. al could offer a $0.44 letter product if they wanted to.
There are certain legalities involved with first class mail that is not the same with other forms of transit of written material. Intercept requirements are different, for one thing, as are other privacy requirements. For example, it is a federal crime to tamper with a US mail box or with US mail, not so sure if that is so for a FedEx box. First class mail enjoys certain "expectations of privacy" that other forms of letter transport may not enjoy.
On 2010-12-19 at 20:44:21 -0800, Owen DeLong wrote:
On Dec 19, 2010, at 6:12 PM, JC Dill wrote: The "USPS monopoly" on first class mail is absurd. In fact, FedEx, UPS, et. al could offer a $0.44 letter product if they wanted to.
Like JC said, the Private Express statutes prevent you from being a common mail carrier. The government created USPS and brought us slow bureaucratic mail delivery. The private sector (FedEx/UPS, etc...) brought us overnight delivery where USPS couldn't... ...and next-day air ...and freight delivery ...and package tracking that reports more than just "We don't know where it is/It's at the post office" When was the last time USPS delivered you a 100 pound UPS unit over night from across the country while letting you track it's progress? -A
On Mon, Dec 20, 2010, Aaron C. de Bruyn wrote:
The private sector (FedEx/UPS, etc...) brought us overnight delivery where USPS couldn't...
...and next-day air ...and freight delivery ...and package tracking that reports more than just "We don't know where it is/It's at the post office"
When was the last time USPS delivered you a 100 pound UPS unit over night from across the country while letting you track it's progress?
Trouble is, now they can't. Why? Because they'd be threatening the jobs of hard working Fedex/UPS/etc. employees. :-) Adrian (only half tongue in cheek here.)
In a message written on Tue, Dec 21, 2010 at 10:18:25AM +0800, Adrian Chadd wrote:
On Mon, Dec 20, 2010, Aaron C. de Bruyn wrote:
When was the last time USPS delivered you a 100 pound UPS unit over night from across the country while letting you track it's progress?
Trouble is, now they can't. Why? Because they'd be threatening the jobs of hard working Fedex/UPS/etc. employees.
It's crazier than you think. http://www.usps.com/news/2001/press/pr01_015.htm Express, Priority, and First Class mail flies FedEx, and has since 2001. I's part of a larger deal which is also why you now see a FedEx drop box at every post office. I guess it's coopertition. I think I just made up a word. :) So if it's illegal for you to put a letter inside a FedEx box, what's the penalty for moving all the first class mail in a FedEx airplane. :D Oh yeah, FedEx can now deliver to APO and P.O. Boxes as well. http://fedex.com/us/smartpost/ -- Leo Bicknell - bicknell@ufp.org - CCIE 3440 PGP keys at http://www.ufp.org/~bicknell/
Evidently this list is interested in telecommunications law. I was worried it would be considered OT, but since people are talking about it, here are some clarifications... On Dec 19, 2010, at 8:20 PM, Bryan Fields wrote:
On 12/19/2010 20:09, Leo Bicknell wrote:
They have been granted a monopoly by the local government for wireline services, and in exchange for that monopoly need to act in the public's interest. In the TV world this is things like running the local community interest channel, and paying a franchise fee. In the IP world we're still developing the criteria, but it's not unreasonable to think they might have some government imposed requirements there as well.
The government granting a monopoly is the problem, and more lame government regulation is not the solution. Let everyone compete on a level playing field, not by allowing one company to buy a monopoly enforced by men with guns.
On Dec 19, 2010, at 9:12 PM, JC Dill wrote:
Why not open up the market for telco wiring and just see what happens?
There are no government-enforced monopoly rights on cable or copper/fiber these days. The exclusivity for the telcos went away in the Bell breakup and the Telecommunications Act of 1996. See, for example, the section of the Act codified at 47 USC 253: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode47/usc_sec_47_00000253----000-.... Congress went so far as to force ILECs (the incumbents) to lease their lines to competitors for awhile, with the idea that it would lead the competitors to build out their own "facilities-based" lines. Even with those incentives, line-based competition failed to materialize to any substantial degree. The exclusivity for cable providers went away with the Cable Television Consumer Protection and Competition Act of 1992, which you can read about in the Background section of the FCC's 2007 Order Implementation of Section 621(a)(1) (the first of two orders that sought to further remove local control over many aspects of the franchising process): http://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2007/03/21/E7-5119/implementation-of... On Dec 19, 2010, at 8:37 PM, George Bonser wrote:
What I am concerned with happening is a cash-strapped city seeing Comcast (or any provider, really) trying to charge for access to subscribers and then the city saying "wait a minute, who are you to sell access to our people to a third party? If you are going to charge third parties for access to those eyeballs, then you can pay us, in turn for that access." And from there it all goes down hill.
Cities currently do not recoup anything from telephone and internet services. Cities are capped at 5% of gross revenue from video services, and the definition of what they can recoup has been consistently narrowed by the FCC, as I noted here (in response to the first message in which you raised this concern): http://mailman.nanog.org/pipermail/nanog/2010-December/029444.html
Cities currently do not recoup anything from telephone and internet services. Cities are capped at 5% of gross revenue from video services, and the definition of what they can recoup has been consistently narrowed by the FCC, as I noted here (in response to the first message in which you raised this concern):
http://mailman.nanog.org/pipermail/nanog/2010-December/029444.html
As someone who has a "City Telephone Tax" on both my cellular and wireline bills, I beg to differ. Owen
On Dec 20, 2010, at 1:09 PM, Owen DeLong wrote:
Cities currently do not recoup anything from telephone and internet services. Cities are capped at 5% of gross revenue from video services, and the definition of what they can recoup has been consistently narrowed by the FCC, as I noted here (in response to the first message in which you raised this concern):
http://mailman.nanog.org/pipermail/nanog/2010-December/029444.html
As someone who has a "City Telephone Tax" on both my cellular and wireline bills, I beg to differ.
Fascinating. You appear to be right. For some reason I thought this was standardized at the federal level by the FCC, but it seems to vary depending on the state. For example, it seems that such taxes are prohibited in Oregon: https://www.oregonlaws.org/ors/305.823 But permitted in New York: http://www.dps.state.ny.us/TelecomTaxesSurcharges.html ("Not to exceed 1% except in Buffalo, Rochester and Yonkers, where the rate may not exceed 3%.")
On Monday, December 20, 2010 12:20:37 pm Steve Schultze wrote:
There are no government-enforced monopoly rights on cable or copper/fiber these days.
Unless you qualify as a 47USC153(37) 'Rural Telephone Company' and then there are. Example being 253(f). Until recently I was served by such an ILEC. Recently being November 2010.
In a message written on Mon, Dec 20, 2010 at 12:20:37PM -0500, Steve Schultze wrote:
Congress went so far as to force ILECs (the incumbents) to lease their lines to competitors for awhile, with the idea that it would lead the competitors to build out their own "facilities-based" lines. Even with those incentives, line-based competition failed to materialize to any substantial degree.
They did, I had my $300 T1 for a while years ago, and Covad/Megapath et all did a very good business buying the local lines (as UNE)'s and selling DSL services over them. While I don't think the model was the success I had hoped for, I think it was a success. However through a series of steps the iLEC's have effectively shut these folks out of the market. They lobbied, and won, that Fiber is not part of the requirements. Want to buy UNE "FIOS" fiber? Verizon won't sell it, the government won't make them. The AT&T's of the world went and installed "FTTN" (Fiber to the Node), where a node serves a small neighborhood. This allows them to be less than 1m from the house and offer up to 24Mbps DSL. The other providers sued saying they need space in the nodes, and lost. So Covad gets to be in the CO, with 20kft of copper, while AT&T gets to be in the node with 3kft of copper to the user. So from about 1996 to 2000 we had competition. They then figured out how to rig the system so there is no effective competition, and so far the government has been A-Ok with that.
The exclusivity for cable providers went away with the Cable Television Consumer Protection and Competition Act of 1992, which you can read about in the Background section of the FCC's 2007 Order Implementation of Section 621(a)(1) (the first of two orders that sought to further remove local control over many aspects of the franchising process):
http://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2007/03/21/E7-5119/implementation-of...
And yet, I don't know of any location in the US with two cable operators. You see, these rules weren't changed to provide for a second cable TV plant to be put in the ground, even in the FCC knew that cost too much. Rather, if you read carefully the problem was that Verizon, AT&T, and Bell South (all mentioned by name in the article) wanted to deliver video over FIOS/DSL. Most areas had coverage rules, to be a cable provider you had to pass 95%+ of the houses or such, and these folks didn't meet many of the local rules and went to the government for help. So the government did the minimum to get folks who already had infrastructure in the ground the rules to use it to provide this service. The result is not competition, but a government sponsored duopoliy. This didn't bring more players to the table, it just let those already at the table offer a full set of overlapping services. Likely a good step, but not the same as getting new entrants into the market. -- Leo Bicknell - bicknell@ufp.org - CCIE 3440 PGP keys at http://www.ufp.org/~bicknell/
On Dec 20, 2010, at 11:16 AM, Leo Bicknell wrote:
In a message written on Mon, Dec 20, 2010 at 12:20:37PM -0500, Steve Schultze wrote:
Congress went so far as to force ILECs (the incumbents) to lease their lines to competitors for awhile, with the idea that it would lead the competitors to build out their own "facilities-based" lines. Even with those incentives, line-based competition failed to materialize to any substantial degree.
They did, I had my $300 T1 for a while years ago, and Covad/Megapath et all did a very good business buying the local lines (as UNE)'s and selling DSL services over them. While I don't think the model was the success I had hoped for, I think it was a success.
However through a series of steps the iLEC's have effectively shut these folks out of the market. They lobbied, and won, that Fiber is not part of the requirements. Want to buy UNE "FIOS" fiber? Verizon won't sell it, the government won't make them. The AT&T's of the world went and installed "FTTN" (Fiber to the Node), where a node serves a small neighborhood. This allows them to be less than 1m from the house and offer up to 24Mbps DSL. The other providers sued saying they need space in the nodes, and lost. So Covad gets to be in the CO, with 20kft of copper, while AT&T gets to be in the node with 3kft of copper to the user.
The argument being made is that the CLECs could run their own copper from their own COs to the residences. I don't buy that argument, but, that is the argument being made. Personally, I think that enforced UNE is the right model. If you sell higher level services, you should not be allowed to operate the physical plant. The physical plant operating companies should sell access to the physical plant to higher level service providers on an equal footing. Unfortunately, the market forces have way too much invested in the status quo and the lobbyists will block this at every turn. A grass roots consumer movement could probably change that, but, it would require an impractical level of consumer education on the subject.
The exclusivity for cable providers went away with the Cable Television Consumer Protection and Competition Act of 1992, which you can read about in the Background section of the FCC's 2007 Order Implementation of Section 621(a)(1) (the first of two orders that sought to further remove local control over many aspects of the franchising process):
http://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2007/03/21/E7-5119/implementation-of...
And yet, I don't know of any location in the US with two cable operators. You see, these rules weren't changed to provide for a second cable TV plant to be put in the ground, even in the FCC knew that cost too much. Rather, if you read carefully the problem was that Verizon, AT&T, and Bell South (all mentioned by name in the article) wanted to deliver video over FIOS/DSL. Most areas had coverage rules, to be a cable provider you had to pass 95%+ of the houses or such, and these folks didn't meet many of the local rules and went to the government for help.
I think that I recall encountering one or two such places in the past, but, I cannot recall them to make a specific citation. Certainly it is the exception and not the rule. Owen
On 12/20/2010 1:30 PM, Owen DeLong wrote:
On Dec 20, 2010, at 11:16 AM, Leo Bicknell wrote:
And yet, I don't know of any location in the US with two cable operators. You see, these rules weren't changed to provide for a second cable TV plant to be put in the ground, even in the FCC knew that cost too much. Rather, if you read carefully the problem was that Verizon, AT&T, and Bell South (all mentioned by name in the article) wanted to deliver video over FIOS/DSL. Most areas had coverage rules, to be a cable provider you had to pass 95%+ of the houses or such, and these folks didn't meet many of the local rules and went to the government for help.
I think that I recall encountering one or two such places in the past, but, I cannot recall them to make a specific citation. Certainly it is the exception and not the rule.
Owen
Cedar Rapids, IA is served by both Mediacom (incumbent/original cable company) and Imon (spinoff from McLeodUSA where they used to be called McLeodUSA ATS). As well as having Qwest for telco service. ATS started as an overbuild to compete at the local level in MCLD's hometown. They were started circa 1997, and are still in business today, so they survived the last 2 bubbles. And they caused Mediacom to keep prices down, and compete to offer additional services in Cedar Rapids long before they were available in other cities in their footprint. So examples of competitive overbuilds being successful do exist. Maybe Google's fiber build will inspire some other companies to try to compete in this fashion. Full disclosure: I worked for MCLD from 98-05, and in the ATS division from 00-05. Jeremy
So, we seem to circle the same points: 1. Who pays for the infrastructure to support the increased bandwidth requirements? Comcast and most ISPs want the content provider to do so, since they are collecting fees for the service and they are not, but still have to pay for the bandwidth (maintenance and upgrades). The customer is being billed twice: First to get access to the Internet to reach services, and then for the service offered by the content provider. The concern is that all customers, regardless of the services they select, will end up paying for the upgrades if the ISP has to/does raise rates. This makes the customer using the bandwidth-intensive application happy, and the other customers not using it unhappy. The content provider pays for Internet access, and in some cases puts in proxies to cache closer to the source. They do not pay the end customer ISP for service (assuming different providers in play). The content provider receives revenue for its services. The problem is still that someone has to support and build infrastructure. Some believe that Internet streaming video is the direction we are headed in, and that does appear to be true. But there are still a lot of customers that are not using this service, effectively subsidizing the customers using this service. This can be irksome, because most customers are unwilling to go back to a "pay for what you use plan" after having unlimited access. I think that would really put the pressure on both customers and content providers alike to be more efficient. I understand that the goal is for the customer to get what they want on demand, but that will never be a reality, for anyone, anywhere. I'd love to see content providers continue the push towards more efficient technologies and architecture, but there is no impetus for them to do so unless they have a financial reason. The same is true for the ISP and the customer. Bottom line: Customers need to think about the purchase of content (considering each one as a transaction that has value) more. Not as a worrisome, "bill will be enormous" way, but assigning value to it nonetheless. Content Providers need to continue upgrading methodologies, compression, and technologies in order to make their service a smooth, efficient "essential object." This will help keep any one service from overwhelming the rest, which is the bane of every service provider/transit provider. Service/Transit Providers need to re-evaluate their bandwidth offerings to customers, their relationships with content providers, and with each other. The model is very inefficient and political. The only way to be competitive seems to be, as someone said, to provide a solid Layer 1-3 platform that will drive innovation at layers 4-7. At least, that's my perspective on it. Sincerely, Brian A . Rettke RHCT, CCDP, CCNP, CCIP Network Engineer, CableONE Internet Services -----Original Message----- From: Jeremy Bresley [mailto:brez@brezworks.com] Sent: Monday, December 20, 2010 12:52 PM To: nanog@nanog.org Subject: Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style On 12/20/2010 1:30 PM, Owen DeLong wrote:
On Dec 20, 2010, at 11:16 AM, Leo Bicknell wrote:
And yet, I don't know of any location in the US with two cable operators. You see, these rules weren't changed to provide for a second cable TV plant to be put in the ground, even in the FCC knew that cost too much. Rather, if you read carefully the problem was that Verizon, AT&T, and Bell South (all mentioned by name in the article) wanted to deliver video over FIOS/DSL. Most areas had coverage rules, to be a cable provider you had to pass 95%+ of the houses or such, and these folks didn't meet many of the local rules and went to the government for help.
I think that I recall encountering one or two such places in the past, but, I cannot recall them to make a specific citation. Certainly it is the exception and not the rule.
Owen
Cedar Rapids, IA is served by both Mediacom (incumbent/original cable company) and Imon (spinoff from McLeodUSA where they used to be called McLeodUSA ATS). As well as having Qwest for telco service. ATS started as an overbuild to compete at the local level in MCLD's hometown. They were started circa 1997, and are still in business today, so they survived the last 2 bubbles. And they caused Mediacom to keep prices down, and compete to offer additional services in Cedar Rapids long before they were available in other cities in their footprint. So examples of competitive overbuilds being successful do exist. Maybe Google's fiber build will inspire some other companies to try to compete in this fashion. Full disclosure: I worked for MCLD from 98-05, and in the ATS division from 00-05. Jeremy
On Dec 20, 2010, at 12:16 PM, Rettke, Brian wrote:
So, we seem to circle the same points:
1. Who pays for the infrastructure to support the increased bandwidth requirements?
Comcast and most ISPs want the content provider to do so, since they are collecting fees for the service and they are not, but still have to pay for the bandwidth (maintenance and upgrades).
What do you mean they are not? I'm paying Comcast $100/month to deliver the internet content I want to my home. They damn well are getting paid to do so.
The customer is being billed twice: First to get access to the Internet to reach services, and then for the service offered by the content provider. The concern is that all customers, regardless of the services they select, will end up paying for the upgrades if the ISP has to/does raise rates. This makes the customer using the bandwidth-intensive application happy, and the other customers not using it unhappy.
I don't use particularly bandwidth-intensive applications. However, I do think that access networks should cover the costs of delivering the content I request from the fees I pay. All that happens if you let them bill the content provider and double-dip is that the content provider has to pass those fees on to the service I'm using (at a markup, of course) who then passes the cost on to me (again at a markup). I'd much rather pay the cost directly to my access provider without the double (or more) markups, thank you.
The content provider pays for Internet access, and in some cases puts in proxies to cache closer to the source. They do not pay the end customer ISP for service (assuming different providers in play). The content provider receives revenue for its services.
IMHO, this is as it should be.
The problem is still that someone has to support and build infrastructure. Some believe that Internet streaming video is the direction we are headed in, and that does appear to be true. But there are still a lot of customers that are not using this service, effectively subsidizing the customers using this service. This can be irksome, because most customers are unwilling to go back to a "pay for what you use plan" after having unlimited access. I think that would really put the pressure on both customers and content providers alike to be more efficient.
If you don't need broadband, subscribe to narrow-band services. They are still available in most areas for less than broadband.
I understand that the goal is for the customer to get what they want on demand, but that will never be a reality, for anyone, anywhere. I'd love to see content providers continue the push towards more efficient technologies and architecture, but there is no impetus for them to do so unless they have a financial reason. The same is true for the ISP and the customer.
There are already good incentives for the content provider. It's called "user experience". If the content is close, i get a good user experience. If it is far away, I get a poor user experience and I move on to a different content provider. If there were meaningful competition in the access market, I could do the same thing. Unfortunately, there is not where I live and not in most locations.
Bottom line:
Customers need to think about the purchase of content (considering each one as a transaction that has value) more. Not as a worrisome, "bill will be enormous" way, but assigning value to it nonetheless.
I think I do this already.
Content Providers need to continue upgrading methodologies, compression, and technologies in order to make their service a smooth, efficient "essential object." This will help keep any one service from overwhelming the rest, which is the bane of every service provider/transit provider.
I think that is already happening and will continue to happen.
Service/Transit Providers need to re-evaluate their bandwidth offerings to customers, their relationships with content providers, and with each other. The model is very inefficient and political. The only way to be competitive seems to be, as someone said, to provide a solid Layer 1-3 platform that will drive innovation at layers 4-7.
I think you need to separate Transit Providers from Access Providers here. The reality is that there are four classes of players present without clear delineation: Content Providers (including Content Provider Hosting Networks) Content Delivery Networks Transit Networks Access Networks If there are any pure players in any one space above left, I would be surprised, but, each of these four spaces comes with a different set of tradeoffs and desires. Traditionally, Level3 has been a Transit Network with some Access and some Content Provider aspects. Now they are adding Content Delivery. Traditionally, Comcast has been a pure Access Network with some Transit. Now they are adding more Transit and also doing Content Provider things. As the lines blur, it's going to become increasingly more difficult to define non-peers among these networks. Frankly, IMHO, the right answer is to stop doing so. Recoup your costs from your customers and recognize that whatever packets {enter/exit} your network {to/from} a customer, most likely the other {entry/exit} is NOT a customer, but, a peer. I know that perspective is probably very unpopular, especially among Access Networks, but, I think it is the right approach overall. I also think that it is where the market would drive things if we had actual competition for access services. Owen
On Mon, Dec 20, 2010 at 11:16:30AM -0800, Leo Bicknell wrote: [snip]
So from about 1996 to 2000 we had competition. They then figured out how to rig the system so there is no effective competition, and so far the government has been A-Ok with that.
You also miss the part about the capital markets being effective closed after the bubble burst closing that window. [snip]
And yet, I don't know of any location in the US with two cable operators. [snip]
Everywhere that had enough paying-humans-per fiber-mile, so primarily the Northeast corridor (Metro DC through Metro Boston). Parts of the SF Bay, Chicago, Cleveland, Denver, Detroit... google "cable overbuilder" (RCN, WOW and several others). Nontrivial capital is required for the build-and-maintain of physical plant, so most all have shrunk since the bubble popping. Cheers, Joe -- RSUC / GweepNet / Spunk / FnB / Usenix / SAGE
On 20/12/10 11:31 AM, Joe Provo wrote:
On Mon, Dec 20, 2010 at 11:16:30AM -0800, Leo Bicknell wrote: [snip]
And yet, I don't know of any location in the US with two cable operators. [snip]
Everywhere that had enough paying-humans-per fiber-mile, so primarily the Northeast corridor (Metro DC through Metro Boston). Parts of the SF Bay, Chicago, Cleveland, Denver, Detroit... google "cable overbuilder" (RCN, WOW and several others).
Can you name/locate the part of the SF Bay Area where this has happened? jc
On 12/20/2010 11:44, JC Dill wrote:
On 20/12/10 11:31 AM, Joe Provo wrote:
On Mon, Dec 20, 2010 at 11:16:30AM -0800, Leo Bicknell wrote: [snip]
And yet, I don't know of any location in the US with two cable operators. [snip]
Everywhere that had enough paying-humans-per fiber-mile, so primarily the Northeast corridor (Metro DC through Metro Boston). Parts of the SF Bay, Chicago, Cleveland, Denver, Detroit... google "cable overbuilder" (RCN, WOW and several others).
Can you name/locate the part of the SF Bay Area where this has happened?
In a message written on Mon, Dec 20, 2010 at 02:31:09PM -0500, Joe Provo wrote:
Everywhere that had enough paying-humans-per fiber-mile, so primarily the Northeast corridor (Metro DC through Metro Boston). Parts of the SF Bay, Chicago, Cleveland, Denver, Detroit... google "cable overbuilder" (RCN, WOW and several others). Nontrivial capital is required for the build-and-maintain of physical plant, so most all have shrunk since the bubble popping.
Interesting, I figured a few major cities would have a second provider, being able to high a large high rise or apartment complex might make the economics make sense. From the first google result for "cable overbuilder" (http://www.satelliteguys.us/live-industry-news-feeds/62015-cable-overbuilder...) cuz "I'm feeling lucky". :) As the biggest cable overbuilder and the 12th largest MSO in the U.S., RCN now boasts about 409,000 overall customers in its large urban markets, which include Boston, New York City, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles. So if you cherry pick for where an overbuild makes sense, you get 409k subscribers. To compare, Comcast has 23 million subscribers (video only, see http://www.cmcsk.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=523403) and in fact lost 275,000 _in the third quarter_ alone (http://broadcastengineering.com/news/comcast-loses-subscribers-internet-take...). Which brings us back to the argument at hand, the problem is a combination of factors, regulatority (franchise issues), physical (plant in ground, and cost) and money (no one will finance it), but the net result is that even just adding one provider makes sense in only the smallest fraction of the country. Allowing more folks to put plant in the ground is simply not useful to getting real compeition to the vast majority of American homes. We need to share the plant that is already there.... -- Leo Bicknell - bicknell@ufp.org - CCIE 3440 PGP keys at http://www.ufp.org/~bicknell/
On Mon, Dec 20, 2010 at 11:46:10AM -0800, Leo Bicknell wrote:
In a message written on Mon, Dec 20, 2010 at 02:31:09PM -0500, Joe Provo wrote:
Everywhere that had enough paying-humans-per fiber-mile, so primarily the Northeast corridor (Metro DC through Metro Boston). Parts of the SF Bay, Chicago, Cleveland, Denver, Detroit... google "cable overbuilder" (RCN, WOW and several others). Nontrivial capital is required for the build-and-maintain of physical plant, so most all have shrunk since the bubble popping.
Interesting, I figured a few major cities would have a second provider, being able to high a large high rise or apartment complex might make the economics make sense.
Different problems; the property management adds another administrative layer to the sequence (locality/district/ward; city/town; state; federal) which has varying powers for exclusivity. Which of course vary by (locality/etc; city; state). [snip]
Which brings us back to the argument at hand, the problem is a combination of factors, regulatority (franchise issues), physical [snip]
An assertion which was false; you can discuss the 'practicality' or whatever the experience has taught us as a nation, but to say "there are no" are "this datum generalizes for all" in most all of this and sister threads is a major error. There is no national scope, and the jury is still out if statewide scope [fpr video] is a good or bad thing. Sorry to muddy with facts, please resume pontificating. -- RSUC / GweepNet / Spunk / FnB / Usenix / SAGE
In a message written on Mon, Dec 20, 2010 at 03:02:05PM -0500, Joe Provo wrote:
An assertion which was false; you can discuss the 'practicality' or whatever the experience has taught us as a nation, but to say "there are no" are "this datum generalizes for all" in most all of this and sister threads is a major error. There is no national scope, and the jury is still out if statewide scope [fpr video] is a good or bad thing.
Sorry to muddy with facts, please resume pontificating.
Facts are good. It appears there are more areas with two or more cable TV providers than I thought, and that knowledge is useful. I still maintain that the current set of regulation, laws, and economic realities have lead to insigifnicant compeition in that area, but that's purely an opinion. You are also correct that there is a lack of context in these threads. There is a federal role (FCC, congressional), a state role (state PUC's), and a local role (county/city/town PUC's). Looking from the perspective of a town it's clear some have cable compeition, for example. Look at it nationally, and it's a really small percentage (on the order of under 2%, best I can tell so far). One man's everyone is another's no one. I guess the question is, if these overbuilds work out so well in the cities where they do exist, why don't they exist more places? -- Leo Bicknell - bicknell@ufp.org - CCIE 3440 PGP keys at http://www.ufp.org/~bicknell/
Once upon a time, Leo Bicknell <bicknell@ufp.org> said:
And yet, I don't know of any location in the US with two cable operators.
Huntsville, AL has Comcast and Knology (originally CableAlabama) cable available at virtually every address (except for some apartment complexes, which tend to only be wired for one cable plant and negotiate a deal with one company or the other). I believe some of the surrounding areas have overlap between Knology and Mediacom. A number of years ago (15 or so?), CableAlabama wanted to sell out to Comcast, and the city refused to allow it under the franchise agreement. CA sued and eventually won a settlement, but didn't end up merging (and became or was bought out by Knology). IIRC the settlement was 50% off of the franchise fee for 20 years or so. For a long time, we had the lowest cable prices in the country because of the competition, but I don't think that's the case anymore (Comcast, being the big corporate entity, doesn't care about competition with Knology, and Knology just raises their prices to keep up). -- Chris Adams <cmadams@hiwaay.net> Systems and Network Administrator - HiWAAY Internet Services I don't speak for anybody but myself - that's enough trouble.
The result is not competition, but a government sponsored duopoliy. This didn't bring more players to the table, it just let those already at the table offer a full set of overlapping services. Likely a good step, but not the same as getting new entrants into the market.
-- Leo Bicknell - bicknell@ufp.org - CCIE 3440 PGP keys at http://www.ufp.org/~bicknell/
"Back in the day" people used to get their email, usenet, maybe even hosting their web page, from their ISP. When DSL came about, many of these services migrated to the portals and the ISP became less of a "services provider" and more of a "transport provider". The "problem" with operations like the cable providers is that they seem to want to fight tooth and nail not to allow the video services a person consumes becoming an a la carte service where the end user picks and chooses from what amounts to "video portal" sites. An analogy from the old days might be an ISP trying very hard to prevent users from getting Yahoo! or Google mail or outside web hosting. The cable providers apparently aren't keen on simply being an ISP and allowing end users to get their video content from wherever they choose. In other words, they see themselves as a video content provider that also provides internet service while the market is trying to move them to an internet provider that also offers video content. This is made worse when the content distributor is also the content producer. The migration toward the "siloing" of entertainment content means this problem will just get worse. What's next? AT&T buying Disney and Verizon buying National Amusements? So now you have the company that produces the product also owns the railroad that delivers the product and charges fees for competitors shipping their goods on that railroad that makes the others less competitive. So the competing railroads simply buy up their own freight producers and do the same thing. Or do we create a "highway" that allows any number of freight shippers to operate to ship goods from any number of buyers to any number of sellers. I suppose what it boils down to is making the companies decide what they are. Are they an "internet service provider" or are they an "entertainment content provider" because being both at the same time seems to be a built-in conflict of interest from the consumer's point of view.
And yet, I don't know of any location in the US with two cable operators.
We have 2 separate cable providers in our town. One of them is a division of the local telephone company, but it is still CATV plant. The telco also operates a FTTH service with IPTV video as well. The result is that the big national CATV provider had incredibly good rates for a long time, and even after they were more than doubled, are still really good. -Randy
Where I live, about 50 miles south of Atlanta down I-85, there is no consumer broadband at all. Satellite, Cellular, and T-1, those are my options. A mile away, there are choices, but not here. I am sure we aren't the only neighborhood in this situation, even today. On Mon, Dec 20, 2010 at 6:06 PM, Randy Carpenter <rcarpen@network1.net>wrote:
And yet, I don't know of any location in the US with two cable operators.
We have 2 separate cable providers in our town. One of them is a division of the local telephone company, but it is still CATV plant. The telco also operates a FTTH service with IPTV video as well.
The result is that the big national CATV provider had incredibly good rates for a long time, and even after they were more than doubled, are still really good.
-Randy
I faced a similar challenge. If you have line of sight to something, you can do fixed wireless for maybe 200-400 depending on the gear and frequencies involved. Check out the ubnt 365 or m5 gear. Cheap as in disposable. Works quite well. Then order a Comcast business connection there and call it a day. 16/2 or 50/10 for less than a t1 loop as long as your facility fees on the other side colo aren't too high. Sent from my iThing On Dec 20, 2010, at 6:14 PM, Dorn Hetzel <dhetzel@gmail.com> wrote:
Where I live, about 50 miles south of Atlanta down I-85, there is no consumer broadband at all.
Satellite, Cellular, and T-1, those are my options.
A mile away, there are choices, but not here. I am sure we aren't the only neighborhood in this situation, even today.
On Mon, Dec 20, 2010 at 6:06 PM, Randy Carpenter <rcarpen@network1.net>wrote:
And yet, I don't know of any location in the US with two cable operators.
We have 2 separate cable providers in our town. One of them is a division of the local telephone company, but it is still CATV plant. The telco also operates a FTTH service with IPTV video as well.
The result is that the big national CATV provider had incredibly good rates for a long time, and even after they were more than doubled, are still really good.
-Randy
Check out http://www.wispdirectory.com Go to Contact Us and fill out the form. If you are only a mile away from a WISP, there is a chance they will build out to you. On 12/20/2010 6:14 PM, Dorn Hetzel wrote:
Where I live, about 50 miles south of Atlanta down I-85, there is no consumer broadband at all.
Satellite, Cellular, and T-1, those are my options.
A mile away, there are choices, but not here. I am sure we aren't the only neighborhood in this situation, even today.
On Mon, Dec 20, 2010 at 6:06 PM, Randy Carpenter<rcarpen@network1.net>wrote:
And yet, I don't know of any location in the US with two cable operators. We have 2 separate cable providers in our town. One of them is a division of the local telephone company, but it is still CATV plant. The telco also operates a FTTH service with IPTV video as well.
The result is that the big national CATV provider had incredibly good rates for a long time, and even after they were more than doubled, are still really good.
-Randy
-- Scott Reed Owner NewWays Networking, LLC Wireless Networking Network Design, Installation and Administration Mikrotik Advanced Certified www.nwwnet.net (765) 855-1060
On 12/20/2010 3:14 PM, Dorn Hetzel wrote:
Where I live, about 50 miles south of Atlanta down I-85, there is no consumer broadband at all.
Satellite, Cellular, and T-1, those are my options.
A mile away, there are choices, but not here. I am sure we aren't the only neighborhood in this situation, even today.
I live 27 miles out of Seattle, WA and have those same limitations. - josh
one of the most interesting things about coming to Australia (after working in the USA telecom industry for 20 years) was the opportunity to see such a proposal (the NBN) put into practice. who knows if the NBN will be quite what everyone hopes, but the premise is sound, the last mile is a natural monopoly. I believe that 'competition' in the last mile is a red herring that simply maintains the status quo (which for many broadband consumers is woefully inadequate). I agree with you that the USA has too many lobbyists to ever put such a proposal in place, the telecoms in a large number of states have even limited or prevented municipalities from creating their own solutions, consumers have no hope. one has to wonder how different the telecom world might have been in the USA if a layer 1 - layer 2/3 separation was proposed instead of the at&t breakup and modified judgement jy On 19/12/2010, at 8:48 PM, Richard A Steenbergen <ras@e-gerbil.net> wrote:
On Sun, Dec 19, 2010 at 08:20:49PM -0500, Bryan Fields wrote:
The government granting a monopoly is the problem, and more lame government regulation is not the solution. Let everyone compete on a level playing field, not by allowing one company to buy a monopoly enforced by men with guns.
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 sense to have 5 different competing water companies trying to service your house, etc. This is where government regulation of the entities who ARE granted the monopoly status comes into play, to protect consumers against abuses like we're seeing Comcast commit today.
Personally I think the right answer is to enforce a legal separation between the layer 1 and layer 3 infrastructure providers, and require that the layer 1 network provide non-discriminatory access to any company who wishes to provide IP to the end user. But that would take a lot of work to implement, and there are billions of dollars at work lobbying against it, so I don't expect it to happen any time soon. :)
-- Richard A Steenbergen <ras@e-gerbil.net> http://www.e-gerbil.net/ras GPG Key ID: 0xF8B12CBC (7535 7F59 8204 ED1F CC1C 53AF 4C41 5ECA F8B1 2CBC)
I believe that 'competition' in the last mile is a red herring that simply maintains the status quo (which for many broadband consumers is woefully inadequate). I agree with you that the USA has too many lobbyists to ever put such a proposal in place, the telecoms in a
large
number of states have even limited or prevented municipalities from creating their own solutions, consumers have no hope. one has to wonder how different the telecom world might have been in the USA if a layer 1 - layer 2/3 separation was proposed instead of the at&t breakup and modified judgement
jy
I like the *idea* of having the infrastructure separate but I am not sure how well that could work unless there was a national infrastructure company that could spread costs over the entire customer base. If you look at what AT&T did in Fairbanks after the 1964 EQ, it was amazing what they were able to do in such a short time. They could draw on resources nationally and spread those costs over the entire operation. A local infrastructure company couldn't do that. I think it would have to be a national layer1 company. Maintaining infrastructure is costly and charges for services help subsidize infrastructure expansion/repair. Then you get to the finger pointing problem where the service provider points at the wire company and vice versa. Then you have to ask yourself ... is the current system really all that broken? The *only* problem I see with the current system is a lack of competition for broadband in many areas. Address that problem and I think the other problems work themselves out. Even if there are only two choices, that is much better than one provider only.
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. The reason we will not see competitive facility builds to residences is they have a very long ROI scale. Everything in the traditional telecommunications world did. Many POTS customers still pay a fee for DTMF or "touch tone dialing", because when their phone company invested in new cards and software to support DTMF signalling, they passed those expenses on to consumers. These upgrades cost on the order of a thousand dollars per phone line, but consumers could get the benefit of DTMF by paying a couple dollars per month. See also: call waiting, caller ID, and so on. I don't know about you, but I was still using an "ATDP" dialing string until cable and DSL became available to me at home (in about 2002) because I did not want to pay the extra fee for touch tone dialing or other features I didn't need on a dedicated modem line. ;) We see examples of more choice available to business consumers than residences, due to economies of scale, every day. A business, apartment community, or neighborhood association can choose from multiple dumpster-tip services for trash collection. Most residents do not have enough trash volume to justify a bulky dumpster, so their only practical choice is whatever curb-side trash collection company has an agreement with their local government. -- Jeff S Wheeler <jsw@inconcepts.biz> Sr Network Operator / Innovative Network Concepts
On 12/20/2010 06:55 AM, Jeff Wheeler wrote:
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.
Yes and no, we tried that way back when but found out that there were rules in place allowing only 3 lines on a pole (Elec, tele, cable), basically the rules are there to stop poles from have a gazzillon lines on them; a throwback from the early 1900's. Back then there were numerous Telephone companies competing for the same customer and poles became a nightmare with wires. It was common for competitors to cut other competitors lines back then. Sure CLEC's could go underground, but outside of the expense, the permit's process would be a nightmare. Where there was conduit available we'd go that route, but Verizon would give us a hard time about it.
-----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.
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
On Monday, December 20, 2010 03:44:33 pm Owen DeLong wrote:
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.
FWIW, I'm at 14-15 kilofeet from the CO, and am getting a solid 7Mb/s down and 512kb/s up. The ISP has three tiers of DSL, and I'm at the lowest (which is probably the one that will work at my distance). They also provide a 9M down / 768k up, and a 11M down / 1M up for slightly higher rates. I'm told that the 11 down/1 up will work up to 12 kilofeet by their engineering. I'm running a secondary administrative DSL at my employer's location at the full 7/.5 rate at a distance of nearly 18 kilofeet, the last 2 kilofeet being our inside plant of CAT3 CALPETH. That is on a Cisco ADSL WIC in a 2651; show dsl interface atm0/0 shows a downstream rate of 6.8Mb/s and an upstream of 640kb/s. Not bad for the distance. Margins are good on both directions, being 12dB upstream and 8.5dB downstream. My experience is that the downstream is mildy oversubscribed, and the upstream less so. Their copper in my area is nearly new, they have spent the last five years or so refreshing and updating their copper outside plant.
On 12/20/2010 3:47 PM, Lamar Owen wrote:
Their copper in my area is nearly new, they have spent the last five years or so refreshing and updating their copper outside plant.
This makes a huge difference. At a little over 18,000 feet, I had to drop to 3m down .5 up to stabilize my DSL connection long term; especially during storms. It could push up to 6 down, .75 up but wouldn't hold stable when I needed it to. Of course, since then, we dropped a system roughly 200 feet from my house and 100 symmetric is possible. Jack
On Dec 20, 2010, at 1:47 PM, Lamar Owen wrote:
On Monday, December 20, 2010 03:44:33 pm Owen DeLong wrote:
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.
FWIW, I'm at 14-15 kilofeet from the CO, and am getting a solid 7Mb/s down and 512kb/s up. The ISP has three tiers of DSL, and I'm at the lowest (which is probably the one that will work at my distance). They also provide a 9M down / 768k up, and a 11M down / 1M up for slightly higher rates. I'm told that the 11 down/1 up will work up to 12 kilofeet by their engineering.
Those are all still sub-T1 on the uplink and well below normal CMTS service speeds. Low-end CMTS is around 15Mbps/7Mbps.
I'm running a secondary administrative DSL at my employer's location at the full 7/.5 rate at a distance of nearly 18 kilofeet, the last 2 kilofeet being our inside plant of CAT3 CALPETH. That is on a Cisco ADSL WIC in a 2651; show dsl interface atm0/0 shows a downstream rate of 6.8Mb/s and an upstream of 640kb/s. Not bad for the distance. Margins are good on both directions, being 12dB upstream and 8.5dB downstream.
I'm happy for you. The AT&T cable plant in my neighborhood is unable to sustain any better than 1.5mbps/384k on ADSL.
My experience is that the downstream is mildy oversubscribed, and the upstream less so.
Their copper in my area is nearly new, they have spent the last five years or so refreshing and updating their copper outside plant.
That helps a lot. It still doesn't compete with CMTS which was my point. Owen
On Monday, December 20, 2010 06:36:03 pm you wrote:
Those are all still sub-T1 on the uplink and well below normal CMTS service speeds. Low-end CMTS is around 15Mbps/7Mbps.
Yeah, at least with the T-1 you aren't oversubscribed. One company for whom I consult was going to go from their T-1 to an 11/1 DSL, but they do streaming audio and video, and I was able to talk them out of it. I've been asking the provider to sell that place a matched pair; give me an 11/1 DSL, and then give me a 1/11 reverse ADSL on a different pair, and I'd be a happy camper.
The AT&T cable plant in my neighborhood is unable to sustain any better than 1.5mbps/384k on ADSL.
Their copper in my area is nearly new, they have spent the last five years or so refreshing and updating their copper outside plant.
That helps a lot. It still doesn't compete with CMTS which was my point.
Interestingly enough, we've tried to do H.323 with some folks on a CMTS connection, and have yet to succeed in smooth video. My testing on my home DSL, back when it was 1.5M/.5M (we got two free upgrades; the first one was to 5/.5 and the second to 7/.5) and our main link was an OC3 to a different provider, went well. Never really figured out what it was causing the problems with the CMTS users; the effect was that the H.323 session would start up and negotiate at 384Kb/s, and a few seconds of video would traverse fine, and then the link would start dropping more and more frames until it died entirely; my testing on my slower DSL didn't have this problem, and traceroute showed an equivalent number of hops between. The CMTS connection in use was an 8M down 1M up link. And I don't have cable available to me at all. So it's DSL or nothing at home; even Verizon's 3G, which works fairly well at work, doesn't work at all at home, 1,200 feet away (terrain issues). And I don't have visibility to the most common data satellites on the Clarke Belt.
Sincerely, Brian A . Rettke RHCT, CCDP, CCNP, CCIP Network Engineer, CableONE Internet Services "-----Original Message----- From: Lamar Owen [mailto:lowen@pari.edu] Interestingly enough, we've tried to do H.323 with some folks on a CMTS connection, and have yet to succeed in smooth video. My testing on my home DSL, back when it was 1.5M/.5M (we got two free upgrades; the first one was to 5/.5 and the second to 7/.5) and our main link was an OC3 to a different provider, went well. Never really figured out what it was causing the problems with the CMTS users; the effect was that the H.323 session would start up and negotiate at 384Kb/s, and a few seconds of video would traverse fine, and then the link would start dropping more and more frames until it died entirely; my testing on my slower DSL didn't have this problem, and traceroute showed an equivalent number of hops between. The CMTS connection in use was an 8M down 1M up link." The problem is probably not the connection speed, but congestion on the CMTS. If the downstream is saturated (too many people watching Netflix on a node) the available shared bandwidth may not be enough to support your real-time traffic. Which is a pretty good archetype for the discussion anyhow.
On Tuesday, December 21, 2010 11:26:48 am Rettke, Brian wrote:
The problem is probably not the connection speed, but congestion on the CMTS. If the downstream is saturated (too many people watching Netflix on a node) the available shared bandwidth may not be enough to support your real-time traffic. Which is a pretty good archetype for the discussion anyhow.
Well, at the time we did this test NetFlix was still just a DVD by mail outfit; this has been a couple or three years ago. Congestion == oversubscribed. I would love to see a public posting or notice or something on my ISP's website showing current flows and congestion (the Cacti driven Network Weathermap is one such tool I've seen networks use; one of my providers used to have one publicly available, and it was very useful). Would make it much easier to make informed decisions on my part. But this CMTS subscriber wanting to do medium-low bandwidth H.323 never had trouble seeing our stream to him; that was the funny thing. It was always the return stream from him to us that broke up. And it didn't act like congestion; it acted like some sort of filter in place that would only allow the full upstream briefly, and then would die for some period of time, and then would allow another burst of traffic. (I've received one private reply mentioning a possible technology to do this....) Many if not virtually all residential broadband subscribers are under the impression that they really get the full use of the advertised bandwidth; it is a shock to most when they learn about oversubscription practices and QoS congestion management.
--"Congestion == oversubscribed. I would love to see a public posting or notice or something on my ISP's website showing current flows and congestion (the Cacti driven Network Weathermap is one such tool I've seen networks use; one of my providers used to have one publicly available, and it was very useful). Would make it much easier to make informed decisions on my part. But this CMTS subscriber wanting to do medium-low bandwidth H.323 never had trouble seeing our stream to him; that was the funny thing. It was always the return stream from him to us that broke up. And it didn't act like congestion; it acted like some sort of filter in place that would only allow the full upstream briefly, and then would die for some period of time, and then would allow another burst of traffic. (I've received one private reply mentioning a possible technology to do this....) Many if not virtually all residential broadband subscribers are under the impression that they really get the full use of the advertised bandwidth; it is a shock to most when they learn about oversubscription practices and QoS congestion management."--- I'm not sure you can speak for the majority of all subscribers, but it's fair to assume that people who are not used to "checking under the hood" before making a purchase are of that mind. And congestion does mean oversubscribed, but that's a rather narrow argument. You are buying a shared service, which never guarantees full use of anything. The reason that you pay ~$100 instead of 5-10 times that amount is that you are buying a time share. You do not own or lease any part of your connection. It is the advertising and marketing of such things that generally leaves the consumer clueless unless they do their own research. Being that this is NANOG, and the expectation is that this community is the cognoscenti, I'd say we can dispense with the marketing. If you use a cable modem or DSL service, your expected use is entertainment. Depending upon your neighborhood, and the amount of people that latch onto a trend, you will see oversubscription, because no one ever builds supply that will far exceed demand in an instantaneous manner. If you expect your service to not be oversubscribed, you need to drop your modem for a leased line service. The SLA guarantees you get what you pay for. If the contrary argument is that you pay enough for your service, we need to define the costs of implementing your end-to-end service, and the difference between that and what you pay.
On 12/20/2010 06:36 PM, Owen DeLong wrote:
I'm happy for you. The AT&T cable plant in my neighborhood is unable to sustain any better than 1.5mbps/384k on ADSL. And mine (older Baltimore-area, ex-bell atlantic, now verizon) won't sustain 384x384 at 15k ft, it works with about 10% packet loss when dry and dies altogether when wet (actually, often even POTS won't work when wet in the last year or so; wires are getting worse). VZ won't do anything about it (well, they *did* finally (5 yrs later) get around to wiring for fios.) VZ *tells* you that 1.5x384 will work. Little do
<snip> they know about older outside plant... -- Pete
On Dec 19, 2010, at 5:48 PM, Richard A Steenbergen wrote:
Personally I think the right answer is to enforce a legal separation between the layer 1 and layer 3 infrastructure providers, and require that the layer 1 network provide non-discriminatory access to any company who wishes to provide IP to the end user. But that would take a lot of work to implement, and there are billions of dollars at work lobbying against it, so I don't expect it to happen any time soon. :)
+1 on this - it is the source of a huge number of problems in the industry.
In a message written on Sun, Dec 19, 2010 at 08:20:49PM -0500, Bryan Fields wrote:
The government granting a monopoly is the problem, and more lame government regulation is not the solution. Let everyone compete on a level playing field, not by allowing one company to buy a monopoly enforced by men with guns.
While I like the concept, reality doesn't allow it. When speaking about the folks who actually run fiber/copper/coax to the home there are a number of physical, real world issues. Rights of way specifically easements, poll space and similar are limited quantities. There is both a finite number of folks who can put in resources in any reasonable way, and an expoentially increasing chance of them damaging each other as they pack in closer and closer. There is also the problem that most residents get really upset if the road between home and the grocery store is torn up this week by AT&T, next week by Comcast, the following week by Level 3, the next week by Cogent and is then a rutted potholed mess. Many cities are requring carriers to do joint physical duct builds to keep from digging up streets repeatedly, but due to the inconvenience factor but also because it reduces the lifespan of the streets, and thus raises costs to residents. After looking at many models I think Australia might be on to something. The model is that a quasi-government monopoly provides the last mile physical wire, but is unable to sell services on it. Basically they only provide UNE's. Then, at the switching center any ISP can pick up those UNE's and provide services. Competition to the end user, while the last mile is always a single povider limiting the issues above. Many cities are trying the same with electric service, one companie provides the transport infrastructure and when you select a generation provider. Simply put, physical real world issues means there will never be individual residences in most places where there are 6-10 wired infrastructures coming in, so the user can select one and 5-9 can go unused. Huge waste, lots of problems running it that add cost and create conditions users don't like. I dream of a day where we have municipal fiber to the home, leased to any ISP who wants to show up at the local central office for a dollar a two a month so there can be true competition in end-user services. -- Leo Bicknell - bicknell@ufp.org - CCIE 3440 PGP keys at http://www.ufp.org/~bicknell/
On Sun, Dec 19, 2010 at 05:58:26PM -0800, Leo Bicknell wrote:
I dream of a day where we have municipal fiber to the home, leased to any ISP who wants to show up at the local central office for a dollar a two a month so there can be true competition in end-user services.
Take a second and think about what THAT would do to the ratio wars. Imagine if any hosting/content provider, with potentially hundreds or thousands of gigabits of unused inbound capacity on their networks, could easily get into providing IP service to eyeballs. Even ignoring the existing 95th percentile silliness like "free inbound transit", which would no doubt rapidly evaporate under this kind of model, the difference in efficiencies between the highly competetive hosting world and the highly non-competetive last mile world are simply staggering. For many content networks, it would be an opportunity to start making money on their bits instead of paying for them, and networks without content expertise would be in serious trouble. I personally can't think of a single thing with more potential for massive disruption to the business models of incumbent providers. There are so many billions of dollars at stake protecting the status quo that it's not even funny, which IMHO is why you'll never see any of this happen in the US, in any kind of scale at any rate. :) -- Richard A Steenbergen <ras@e-gerbil.net> http://www.e-gerbil.net/ras GPG Key ID: 0xF8B12CBC (7535 7F59 8204 ED1F CC1C 53AF 4C41 5ECA F8B1 2CBC)
On Dec 19, 2010, at 6:21 PM, Richard A Steenbergen wrote:
On Sun, Dec 19, 2010 at 05:58:26PM -0800, Leo Bicknell wrote:
I dream of a day where we have municipal fiber to the home, leased to any ISP who wants to show up at the local central office for a dollar a two a month so there can be true competition in end-user services.
Take a second and think about what THAT would do to the ratio wars. Imagine if any hosting/content provider, with potentially hundreds or thousands of gigabits of unused inbound capacity on their networks, could easily get into providing IP service to eyeballs. Even ignoring the existing 95th percentile silliness like "free inbound transit", which would no doubt rapidly evaporate under this kind of model, the difference in efficiencies between the highly competetive hosting world and the highly non-competetive last mile world are simply staggering.
You say this as if having such a disruption would be a bad thing.
For many content networks, it would be an opportunity to start making money on their bits instead of paying for them, and networks without content expertise would be in serious trouble.
I'm not seeing the problem here. Like any business in a changing climate, they would have to either develop expertise or perish.
I personally can't think of a single thing with more potential for massive disruption to the business models of incumbent providers. There are so many billions of dollars at stake protecting the status quo that it's not even funny, which IMHO is why you'll never see any of this happen in the US, in any kind of scale at any rate. :)
Yes... This is where the "market makes it best" philosophy fails. When the market has become entrenched in one way of doing things, a better way can face serious opposition because of this very fact. Personally, I don't see such a disruption as a down-side. I think it would be the introduction of a relatively level playing field in an area where the playing field has long been very uneven. Owen
Yes... This is where the "market makes it best" philosophy fails. When the market has become entrenched in one way of doing things, a better way can face serious opposition because of this very fact.
The problem is that we don't *have* a market in many places. We have a monopoly provider and the people have no alternative in too many places, what we need in those places is a market. One provider does not a "market" make. It is a "company store" at that point.
On Sun, Dec 19, 2010 at 6:21 PM, Richard A Steenbergen <ras@e-gerbil.net> wrote:
On Sun, Dec 19, 2010 at 05:58:26PM -0800, Leo Bicknell wrote:
I dream of a day where we have municipal fiber to the home, leased to any ISP who wants to show up at the local central office for a dollar a two a month so there can be true competition in end-user services.
Take a second and think about what THAT would do to the ratio wars. Imagine if any hosting/content provider, with potentially hundreds or thousands of gigabits of unused inbound capacity on their networks, could easily get into providing IP service to eyeballs. Even ignoring the existing 95th percentile silliness like "free inbound transit", which would no doubt rapidly evaporate under this kind of model, the difference in efficiencies between the highly competetive hosting world and the highly non-competetive last mile world are simply staggering. For many content networks, it would be an opportunity to start making money on their bits instead of paying for them, and networks without content expertise would be in serious trouble.
http://www.google.com/appserve/fiberrfi Uh...yeah, I think they've already been thinking about that for a while now.
I personally can't think of a single thing with more potential for massive disruption to the business models of incumbent providers. There are so many billions of dollars at stake protecting the status quo that it's not even funny, which IMHO is why you'll never see any of this happen in the US, in any kind of scale at any rate. :)
Unless of course, it's a content company with even more billions of dollars that decides it might just be worth it to be able to balance out some of their ratios, and make use of all the idle inbound capacity... Matt
----- Original Message -----
From: "Leo Bicknell" <bicknell@ufp.org>
After looking at many models I think Australia might be on to something. The model is that a quasi-government monopoly provides the last mile physical wire, but is unable to sell services on it. Basically they only provide UNE's. Then, at the switching center any ISP can pick up those UNE's and provide services. Competition to the end user, while the last mile is always a single povider limiting the issues above. Many cities are trying the same with electric service, one companie provides the transport infrastructure and when you select a generation provider.
That's what I've been advocating, what Verizon *really* *REALLY* doesn't want to happen (to the point that they've been agitating -- successfully in some cases -- for state laws to forbid it), and what I think, based on not a lot of evidence, Google is quietly encouraging with their Big Secret Project. Last mile fiber *really is* a Natural Monopoly. And yeah, that's roughly how power competition was handled as well. Cheers, -- jra
Google finds some:
http://www.cityofpaloalto.org/civica/filebank/blobdload.asp?BlobID=7364
"The Franchise Agreement requires AT&T to pay the City $0.88 per residential subscriber per month to maintain and enhance PEG access services provided by MPAC. AT&T has chosen to pass this $0.88 fee on
to
subscribers, which it is not prohibited to do under Federal law." ...
If you look at that agreement, you will see that it specifically does not apply to Internet services, and it specifically prohibits any monopolies. This is simply a charge for access to "public right of way" or a payment to the city for stuff the city has to maintain to support AT&T's infrastructure. For example, if AT&T undergrounds cables under a street, this increases the maintenance cost of that street because they must now be sure to avoid AT&T's cables when they dig and must take those cables into consideration for any civil engineering work they do. I don't see that as an "access fee for subscribers". What I am concerned with happening is a cash-strapped city seeing Comcast (or any provider, really) trying to charge for access to subscribers and then the city saying "wait a minute, who are you to sell access to our people to a third party? If you are going to charge third parties for access to those eyeballs, then you can pay us, in turn for that access." And from there it all goes down hill. Comcast charges for access to eyeballs and then the cities turn around and charge Comcast an "access" fee and then it becomes ubiquitous and cities start charging all ISPs for "eyeball" access as a revenue source. It is the opening of a box that is better left closed, in my opinion.
On Dec 17, 2010, at 11:46 AM, Dave Temkin wrote:
George Bonser wrote:
What I think George's comment does not completely appreciate is that (ideally) cities are imposing such requirements at the behest of and for the benefit of the (local) public, whereas private constraints on local access are (by design) motivated by profit.
I wasn't really talking about franchise agreements as those are different and in many cases stipulate things like there can be no monopoly, etc.
What I was talking about was what if a city simply decided to charge an Internet provider an "access fee" to the city's people. An "eyeball fee". The city says, "hey, you are making millions selling ads that these people view and the more eyeballs you have the more money you make, so we are going to charge you for those eyeballs". Which is basically what Comcast is doing ... charging content networks for access to eyeballs. What if they themselves got charged for the same thing. Would they think that is "fair"? And what if the city had its own community high speed internet that paid no such charge?
They do already. It's called HBO, Showtime, HDNet Sports, etc. - they get charged per eyeball for those networks, and so they pass the charge on per eyeball to the customer.
Nothing is new here.
Sure, the content providers charge Comcast per eyeball, but localities do not. Part of nearly every franchise agreement is a percentage of gross revenue from video services that is paid to the city. In recent years the FCC has capped this at 5% and subsequently introduced further constraints on what counts and how it is collected. Cities typically use these funds to support public resources related to video (public, educational, and governmental video channels, equipment, and networks). However, I think they have the freedom to use it to fill potholes if they so choose. None of this implicates the revenues from broadband service, because the 2002 Cable Modem Order removed those from the purview of localities. What about bundled "triple-play" style services? This is a mess, and I believe someone has to arbitrate what the percentages are. What about people playing video over their internet connection? Not included. As you can see, if the regulatory dichotomy between video and broadband services ever made sense, it clearly doesn't today. George's concern about a last-mile provider competing with municipal broadband parallels the most common argument made against such efforts: Although private companies do not have to pay any local fees that municipal broadband does not have to pay, the companies argue that municipal efforts have the unfair advantage of being built on taxpayer support and existing outside of the competitive marketplace. Of course if the "competitive marketplace" is a natural near-monopoly, these arguments are less compelling.
participants (40)
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Aaron C. de Bruyn -
Adrian Chadd -
Bret Clark -
Bryan Fields -
Choprboy -
Chris Adams -
Dave Temkin -
David Conrad -
David Sparro -
Dorn Hetzel -
George Bonser -
Jack Bates -
Jared Mauch -
Jay Ashworth -
JC Dill -
Jeff Wheeler -
Jeffrey S. Young -
Jeremy Bresley -
Joe Provo -
Josh Miller -
Lamar Owen -
Leo Bicknell -
Matthew Petach -
Michael DeMan -
Mike -
mikea -
Owen DeLong -
Pete Carah -
Phil Bedard -
Randy Bush -
Randy Carpenter -
Rettke, Brian -
Richard A Steenbergen -
Scott Reed -
Seth Mattinen -
Steve Schultze -
Steve Schultze
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Steven Bellovin -
Suresh Ramasubramanian -
William Allen Simpson