Here's your net neutrality!

[Guest 6.8 AR]

"3 different types of Government backed monopolies don't make a free market in my book. These exclusive deals are the root cause of this problem... If Comcast, Charter, and BillyBobs Cable could go head to head in the same town/city/county for the same customers, then you'd have choice... and I'd be 100% in agreement this regulation is not needed, and would only do harm. But, the VAST majority of customers have 2 choices, government backed telephone company X and government backed cable company Y, in some rarer cases government backed electric company Z... Why is it these companies can't handle have another direct competitor fighting them for the same customers?"

Good questions, JayC, but these are questions best asked of your local municipality. I'll bet you

some of the answer lies in their business plans. Charter tends to hit the smaller communities. Now,

if Billy Bob wants to open up a cable provider, that's fine, but I doubt he'd want to. Smaller companies

tend to compete where they can find a niche market to grow. They understand already that they

don't need to compete until they grow enough to offer competition. That's how you get your foot

in the door. It just isn't right thinking you are owed something by Comcast, Charter, Billy Bob or other

party to think competition would be better. If an ill capitalized company came in just for the sake of

competition, they would lose by default. That is your government getting in the way.

Your government gets in the way of competition every time it enacts a law regulating such. I thought we

mostly would rather see government shrink than grow. Any nationwide broadband legislation that could

offer that service to everyone would cost so much and be so owned by the government, it would be

worthless, just so "every nappy headed kid would have the internet". That's not a racial slur by me before

anyone gets offended. It's a comment by that black FCC commissioner on that video I posted earlier.

The telephone company(aka Ma Bell) probably should have been left alone, except that the break up made

quite a few extra millionaires. Nothing wrong with that. It did give niche markets to new companies that

nurtured them while some still failed. I wonder if, with the evolving technology called the internet, would

would have grown differently without the break up? I guess we'll never know, will we?

If it wasn't for creative minds, outside the government, you and I might still be using our Hayes 300 baud

modems on a damned bulletin board trying to figure out who typed last. I think mine is still around here,

somewhere.

If someone wants regulation, move to Europe. America is based on rugged individuals taking chances and

being allowed to succeed or fail. It's what built this country.

Put regulations in to limit that and we all lose. Regulations pick winners and losers by their design. Just look at

Google, Verizon and Comcast, negotiating for their piece of the pie in the legislation. Co-opting themselves

into government regulations is wrong.

I wonder what Thomas Jefferson would think about this topic?

[mikegideon]

I'll let you guys continue to argue the politics, but there's one thing you have to keep in mind. With today's technology, true broadband is delivered by wire. Ownership has been redistributed, but there are only two infrastructures. Those two, phone and cable, are operating on right-of-ways that have been there for decades. Stated simply, the poles are full in most locations, so a third infrastructure won't happen.

Technology marches on, but there are serious bandwidth limitations with wireless. It will get better, but they will always have to fight the physics of wireless delivery. Most bandwidth increases take a lot of time (usually years), and sooner or later, they're gonna run out of spectrum. Wireless requires towers and antennas, which amounts to a lot of engineering, and a lot of zoning hassles. Very costly, and the bandwidth is limited by allocated spectrum. There are a lot of ways to get to the Internet, but there are only two real good ones.

[Guest 6.8 AR]

I can buy that!

[leroy]

Mike:____________

....With today's technology, true broadband is delivered by wire. Ownership has been redistributed, but there are only two infrastructures. Those two, phone and cable, are operating on right-of-ways that have been there for decades. Stated simply, the poles are full in most locations, so a third infrastructure won't happen. ...

Do you think that new providers might go undeground and plow or trench in fiber lines. I know we ran lots of fiber for powerplant controls thru conduit in cable vaults. I THINK (...i dont know...) that the railroads have plowed in some fiber lines along their RR ROW.

Leroy

[mikegideon]

Mike:____________

Do you think that new providers might go undeground and plow or trench in fiber lines. I know we ran lots of fiber for powerplant controls thru conduit in cable vaults. I THINK (...i dont know...) that the railroads have plowed in some fiber lines along their RR ROW.

Leroy

Getting from point a to point b... probably not a big deal. Plowing in to every house in a city is a whole nother animal. I'm not sure you could afford to build the existing infrastructures from scratch these days, even with the right-of-ways in place. Cable systems have been dealing with population spread for years. They won't extend backbone until they have enough subscribers to offset costs. In most cases, the right of way is available, but you have the ugly return on Investment in the way. Once you build the billion dollar infrastucture (after 10 or 15 years of pure hell and overruns), how are you going to lure customers from Telco and cable? Lower price? Their stuff is already paid for.

[Guest Lester Weevils]

Getting from point a to point b... probably not a big deal. Plowing in to every house in a city is a whole nother animal. I'm not sure you could afford to build the existing infrastructures from scratch these days, even with the right-of-ways in place. Cable systems have been dealing with population spread for years. They won't extend backbone until they have enough subscribers to offset costs. In most cases, the right of way is available, but you have the ugly return on Investment in the way. Once you build the billion dollar infrastucture (after 10 or 15 years of pure hell and overruns), how are you going to lure customers from Telco and cable? Lower price? Their stuff is already paid for.

Electric Power Board in Chattanooga has been running lots of fiber, and has a fiber-customer plan with lots faster data than adsl or cable, + TV + Telephone. The EPB price for optical internet lots faster than AT&T, plus equivalent TV as comcast, and equivalent Telphone service as Bellsouth, is noticeably cheaper than the total of what I pay Bellsouth plus Comcast.

A power company is somebody else who has historical right of way to exploit. EPB claimed they had to run a lot of fiber for their own power management uses, so why not turn it into a profit center at the same time?

I'm gonna switch over whenever I get to take a vacation in the next month or two. Gotta clean up the basement before I can let an installer down there. Otherwise he might break his neck tripping over the the basement clutter.

Edited December 12, 2010 by Lester Weevils

[mikegideon]

Electric Power Board in Chattanooga has been running lots of fiber, and has a fiber-customer plan with lots faster data than adsl or cable, + TV + Telephone. The EPB price for optical internet lots faster than AT&T, plus equivalent TV as comcast, and equivalent Telphone service as Bellsouth, is noticeably cheaper than the total of what I pay Bellsouth plus Comcast.

A power company is somebody else who has historical right of way to exploit. EPB claimed they had to run a lot of fiber for their own power management uses, so why not turn it into a profit center at the same time?

I'm gonna switch over whenever I get to take a vacation in the next month or two. Gotta clean up the basement before I can let an installer down there. Otherwise he might break his neck tripping over the the basement clutter.

Didn't think about that, but yes, a power company has all the right of ways, and minimum spacing isn't a big issue with fiber. It will still be interesting to see how much of the area they actually build out, and how long it takes.

[Oh Shoot]

Getting from point a to point b... probably not a big deal. Plowing in to every house in a city is a whole nother animal. ....

How did other countries do it?

We're good ways down the list for broadband speed and saturation for some time now.

- OS

[Guest 6.8 AR]

Mike:____________

Do you think that new providers might go undeground and plow or trench in fiber lines. I know we ran lots of fiber for powerplant controls thru conduit in cable vaults. I THINK (...i dont know...) that the railroads have plowed in some fiber lines along their RR ROW.

Leroy

You're correct, Leroy. Been there for years. All over the country.

[JayC]

How did other countries do it?

We're good ways down the list for broadband speed and saturation for some time now.

- OS

The vast majority of Internet service is provided by a state owned company, and they play a lot of games with the Internet traffic... There are a number of countries where getting VOIP telephone service is illegal, and lets not even get started on the great firewalls American companies have built for dictators and oppressive governments.

Japan, is a success story that we can look at, while there are a lot of differences between Japan and the US, bandwidth costs are MUCH lower, 50Mbits/s DSL runs about $35 a month, and 100 Mbits/s Fiber runs about $50 a month (costs here in the US are more than 3 times that, if the service is even available)... The biggest reason is last mile infrastructure is open to any company who wishes to enter the market... The competition drove the price of Internet service down, and has kept it down for over a decade (has your Internet bill been going up or down for the last 10 years?)...

Since companies share last mile infrastructure, they create peering points much closer to the end users, and as such backhaul Internet costs are much lower... by comparison, here in the United States less than 100 true peering points exist for the entire country.

South Korea would be another example where many different companies have been given access to the last mile, and there is a lot of competition, which drives prices lower... by 2005 50% of the population had access to broadband speeds. South Korean cost for basic DSL 8Mbits/s is about $32 a month, half to a third the price of here in the US, with VDSL coming onto the market for ~$50 (50Mbits/s)... So why is Korea so successful (keep in mind they have a much lower income level than we do, ~$10,000 per household)

They've separated the infrastructure from the ISP... So company A builds the infrastructure and maintains it (NSP), and then sells service to a VSP or SSP (we'd call it an ISP)... Since the NSP just builds and maintains the infrastructure, and not provide service they don't have control over the data... VSP's are largely unregulated (they do have to basically announce to the government they're in business)... it's easy to switch between providers, and therefore VSPs have to be very customer focused and competitive. Cable service is ever similar to the phone service described above... there are 77 regional cable providers, who have exclusive deals similar to what we have here in the US, but they are prohibited from providing Internet service, they can lease access out to ISPs, who in turn provide service... thus splitting infrastructure from provider again like in Japan.

The long term key here is to either A> unlock last mile access, or B> prohibit cable and telephone companies from running both the infrastructure and the Internet service... As Mike has pointed out, A is highly unlikely, B is a much more attractive alternative and much more probable. If we required the two to be separate and prohibited exclusive deals between new ISPs and infrastructure providers... prices would dropped quickly, and there would be dozens of ISPs available to each customer, and we'd see a fairly free market.

Also, another thing we could do... require that Telephone and Cable companies who are receiving BILLIONS in "Internet Infrastructure Taxes", be required to spend that money on capital infrastructure upgrades, instead of padding their profit margins like they do today.

[JayC]

You're correct, Leroy. Been there for years. All over the country.

The issue isn't these types of fiber lines... there is so much dark fiber like you describe for sale cheap it's not funny... it's the last mile of infrastructure that is the hard part... all of our problems stem from exclusive deals prohibiting competition for decades in that arena, and now cable and telephone providers are abusing the government monopoly they've been given.

[Oh Shoot]

The vast majority of Internet service is provided by a s....

... all of our problems stem from exclusive deals prohibiting competition for decades in that arena, and now cable and telephone providers are abusing the government monopoly they've been given.

Wow, thanks for such a prompt overview that seems relatively both concise and comprehensive at the same time!

- OS

[RinTN]

... and now cable and telephone providers are abusing the government monopoly they've been given.

Yup, and they are fighting anything that would put them in the position of a pipe-only provider tooth and nail. The pipe isn't where they want to make the money, the content is - even when they have no right to the content.

[mikegideon]

The issue isn't these types of fiber lines... there is so much dark fiber like you describe for sale cheap it's not funny... it's the last mile of infrastructure that is the hard part... all of our problems stem from exclusive deals prohibiting competition for decades in that arena, and now cable and telephone providers are abusing the government monopoly they've been given.

This