Hundreds of Cities Wired With Fiber, But Telecom Lobbying Keeps It Unusable 347
Jason Koebler writes: 'In light of the ongoing net neutrality battle, many people have begun looking to Google and its promise of high-speed fiber as a potential saving grace from companies that want to create an "internet fast lane." Well, even without Google, many communities and cities throughout the country are already wired with fiber — they just don't let their residents use it. Companies like Comcast, Time Warner Cable, CenturyLink, and Verizon have signed agreements with cities that prohibit local governments from becoming internet service providers and prohibit municipalities from selling or leasing their fiber to local startups who would compete with these huge corporations.'
Annoying. (Score:5, Insightful)
The core issue is whether a government should be providing a service. But that should not be an issue.
The government should provide the pipes (fibre or copper or whatever) to the houses that it covers. Paid for by taxes.
The pipes terminate at a government facility that the government leases space at to ANY AND ALL companies that want to provide ISP services over those pipes. As cheap as possible but without allowing one company to lease ALL the space.
Then switching between ISP's should be as simple as moving a patch cord.
Your taxes pay for the pipes and their maintenance and the facility and its maintenance (minus the lease revenue).
Re:Annoying. (Score:5, Insightful)
The core issue is whether a government should be providing a service.
Is a road, street lighting or waste disposal a 'service'?
Is intarwebs a service?
Re:Annoying. (Score:4, Insightful)
In cases like this with unclear optimal solutions, the government gets out of the way and lets private industry pick the horses. The government provides the easement for placing the lines, but responsibility for constructing and maintaining the lines rests with the private companies. That way a wide variety of solutions are tried, not on the government's dime, and over time it becomes clear which solutions are superior.
At this point though, it's pretty clear that fiber to the home is the future. There's still some uncertainty about exactly the type of fiber interfaces, but for the most part changing those won't require burying completely new cable. So while I think it was necessary to have the intermediate step where private companies offered different types of Internet service, I can also agree with now having the government provide Internet service over fiber lines. (Well, provide the fiber lines. The service itself along with any peering agreements should be offered by private companies, since it's not at all clear what arrangement of peering agreements is optimal.)
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>he thinks the NSA doesn't already have black boxes in private datacenters already.
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I'm SOOO glad that AT&T operates room 641A and not the city of San Francisco. That makes it all so much better. Plus it costs more! Another bonus (for somebody).
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You are aware of course that about every ISP already has those capabilities, right?
(legal or otherwise).
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I would say you have a far better chance of your local government standing up to the NSA goons. It's a states rights vs fed rights pissing match. Your local government has it's own goons with guns (and lately a token APC), so you have a far better chance of things getting worked out by the courts than guys with guns. Elected officials often have shield laws protecting them from incarceration/civil suit for doing what they were elected to do. They have big pockets by way of taxes to fight in the courts.
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The core issue is whether a government should be providing a service. But that should not be an issue.
It's not an issue because providing whatever internet connection is popular this year is not what government is for.
see iProvo (Score:2, Informative)
Provo, Utah tried this approach: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IProvo [wikipedia.org]. Unfortunately, it didn't work out too well, and Google had to come save the day...
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Why taxes? My water bill pays for the pipes, my phone bill pays for the phone line, my electric bill pays for the electric wires, and my cable ISP pays for the coax. Should someone who doesn't use the service be forced to help pay for it through their taxes?
No, just require that anyone who provides the pipes has to allow third party ISPs to provide service over them and charge them a fair p
Re:Annoying. (Score:5, Interesting)
Because with taxes it will be cheaper, the people will have a larger say, and it is beneficial to all people.
Interesting anecdote:
I worked for a Water Bureau. The number clearly show that taxing people instead of having a water bill would be substantially cheaper for everyone.
I mean 20% cheaper, if not more.
But if you mention it to the public, when they hear 'taxes', the well off scream bloody murder when though it would also be cheaper for them as well.
With taxes, you no longer need a billing system. So you loose the expense of that, the infrastructures for that, the expense of maintaining PCI compliance, accountants, taking people to court who don't pay there bills, cut down on meter reading, paper.
" Should someone who doesn't use the service be forced to help pay for it through their taxes?"
you mean like the taxes used as subsidies for you phone infrastructure?
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That's what wealthy people often claim when they advocate for regressive taxes. Anyway, would I be correct in guessing that water was not very scarce in that area?
If you are correct that taxes collect themselves, then why couldn't billing use the same technology?
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I think the point is that there is a tax collection system in place already. Adding a line item on the form to cover water is not going to increase the cost and complexity of the system.
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I think the point is that there is a tax collection system in place already. Adding a line item on the form to cover water is not going to increase the cost and complexity of the system.
Does that tax collection system meter water usage and adjust the tax bill accordingly? It's the metering and allocation of costs to individual households that's the expensive part, regardless of whether you do it on the tax form or via another billing system.
Note that I don't object to municipal fiber, but this argument about water via taxes rather than monthly billing is silly.
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I know several people, living in just modest houses with very small lawns, who pay well over $100/month for their water bill, here.
Not watering the lawn here doesn't mean less-frequent mowing, it means not having a lawn at all.
A big chunk of the US is some degree of desert.
T
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Fiber, because CDWM is cheap and lets multiple ISP's connect to everybody at the same time. Hell it lets the muni potentially deliver a shared layer 2 to allow multiple ISP's to provide services with just a single connections to the muni. Businesses and people could mesh together allowing for new innovation. A default L3 network could let people reach the muni, schools, libraries, each other and local businesses.
Re:Annoying. (Score:5, Informative)
The core issue is whether a government should be providing a service. But that should not be an issue.
The government should provide the pipes (fibre or copper or whatever) to the houses that it covers. Paid for by taxes.
The pipes terminate at a government facility that the government leases space at to ANY AND ALL companies that want to provide ISP services over those pipes. As cheap as possible but without allowing one company to lease ALL the space.
Then switching between ISP's should be as simple as moving a patch cord.
Your taxes pay for the pipes and their maintenance and the facility and its maintenance (minus the lease revenue).
This is how my fiber network [utopianet.org] is operated. The 15 member cities contributed to the network and their residents are seeing the benefits. I can choose what ISP I want (but I would probably never change because I LOVE my ISP) and any ISP, telephone or TV provider can provide service over the network. If my ISP starts any Comcast-style extortion shenanigans with service providers then I can simply switch, there aren't constraints on who owns the wire like private cable/telco networks.
If course Comcast and US West/Qwest/Century Link fought tooth and nail against the network and they are fighting it still. I think the last tactic was getting a bill introduced in the state legislature to prohibit the Utopia network from selling any network service in cities that border Utopia cities. This is just a long line in bills written by the cable lobbyists but so far the cities have resisted [crosses fingers].
So if 15 cities can get something like this done in Republican dominated, pro-business Utah then what's your city's excuse? It's not that hard to get something done on a city level if you can get a few voters on board. The Internet has quickly become an almost indispensible part of life and a majority of a person's day-to-day business (paying bills, communicating with friends, scheduling appointments, etc.) is conducted over the network. It has become important enough that cities should treat it like the utility that it is. Put pressure on your local elected officials to get your own network and bypass the attempted takeover of the Internet by Comcast.
Re:Annoying. (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, for starters, they could try using the billions they've been giving to providers to upgrade their damn equipment even though they never do...
Re:Annoying. (Score:5, Insightful)
Where is the government going to come up with the billions of dollars to buy out the investors in those companies?
Who gives a shit? It's not the government's responsibility to coddle obsolete industries and their investors. Or at least, it SHOULDN'T be the government's responsibility.
Re:Annoying. (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you are a little bit confused on what the "backbone" is. It is not the same as the "last mile" which is what I am discussing.
In my suggestion, each of the ISP's that were leasing space would also need a connection to an "upstream" provider. Whether that was one of the backbones or an intermediary would be up to each company.
All the government does is provide access to the pipes from the government site to the houses.
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Right. The last mile is prone to natural monopoly. It doesn't make sense to install multiple fibers.
So the core decision is preference between handing the last-mile monopoly over to a private company, or to the government. A pretty good case can be made for the government solution. I'd sure like more than one choice (aka no choice) in provider for my cable Internet.
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Yes, the last mile needs to be government run, but with minimum standards, so that yes it is mostly a matter of moving a patch cord, save you should not even have to do that. For the most part the providers equipment should just be on fast links to the rest of the system and everything configured in software. You would also include a satelite link that provides emergency service should the primary links be down. Emergency service might be a basic news site with some cached video/audio along with a way to
Re:multiple cell towers too, or grocery stores (Score:4, Insightful)
This is why there would be multiple ISPs AT THE DATACENTER.
Do you have ten different sets of plumbing running to your house so you can pick and choose between the best supplier of fresh water? A dozen different power cables so you can switch power company easily?
Re:Annoying. (Score:5, Informative)
A business called "BT Wholesale / aka OpenReach" operates as a corporate entity in its own right, that the government regulates. They more of less have last mile monopoly over the old British Telecom (which used to be the incumbent single telephone operator that was originally a public entity). So this was made private maybe 20 years ago but with certain caveats.
Such as a uniform pricing policy to all other telecom operators wishing to buy their wholesale services. Think like FRAND, as opposed to scheming and back office deals to maintain pricing.
Such as not offering the full package, i.e. only offering wholesale services. A regular home or business consumer never buys directly anything from the wholesale division. The end customer buys from the many (more than 500 in our little island) brand names, who in turn pay the wholesale rental fees out of your subscription.
Such as allowing politicians to have influence (through regulation) over certain aspects of governance. This is a good thing when there is a last mile monopoly, there is at least some kind of elected accountability. Especially when the government paid for the original construction of the network.
There is of course a parallel cable network now, that also have their own independent last mile. So in almost all urban/suburban locations another option exists, but BTs copper POTS network has a much higher coverage.
There also exists some areas (such as Kingston and Hull) which ended up with their own last mile services that operate their own telecoms independently.
Here in the UK now (with BT wholesale) the whole country is getting more street side cabinets (to within of 100 meters of every urban and suburban location) and fibre optics installed to those cabinets back to the local exchange site. The last 100 meters is still largely delivered over copper but at speeds around 80MBit/20Mbit, but I'm sure further speed increases will take places like ADSL/ADSL2/ADSL2+ in the future. This national roll out is over half way through and I'm sure within the next 3 years the original plan will be complete.
There are still issues with many rural locations being on dialup quality, hopefully as cellular like technology improves this could be utilized as back haul for rural locations. Rural in the UK might mean just being 8 miles out of town.
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Even if you are talking last mile there still is a lot of investment in that last mile. Who will pay the investors?
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universal SLIC
Forcing phone companies to upgrade them to digital SLICs would do more to speed up Internet access as a percentage of current capacity than any other thing the government could do.
For those that don't know, SLIC stands for Subscriber Line Interface Circuit, and they are typically used to take a few POTS (plain old telephone service, a standard analog phone line) lines from a CO (central office) and multiplex them to all of the homes in a neighborhood. This allows the phone monopolies to sell many more phon
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"Where is the government going to come up with the billions of dollars to buy out the investors in those companies?"
We found more than that to fund killing people in the middle east for more than 10 years... It would not be hard at all to find the funds to buy up all the backbone companies.
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Different budgets different objectives. National defense is a much better sell than nationalizing companies.
Re:Annoying. (Score:5, Insightful)
"Nationalize" ... whatever.
How is it what we have all that different from nationalized net access when 99% of users are locked into one of three major providers who then use that money to buy legislation and ordinances which favor them making even more money.
In the choice between a monopoly or nationalization, nationalization is a no brainer, because out of it might spring real competition as a GP poster pointed out, by leasing the pipes to any and all ISP wannabes. In contrast, monopolization leads to fat profits at users' expense, poor service, and crappy laws and it can never ever get better. Obviously, a free market would be better than either the other two, but we have a free market in net services like N. Korea has a free and open society.
Secondly -- exactly who invested in the network? I know I saw a recent article about cable companies taking Federal money to build out their networks and then claiming those lines aren't covered by common carrier rules --- a corollary to "socialize losses, privatize profits" would thus be "socialize expenses, privatize profits." I did find this about Comcast using $40m of public funds to build itself an office building Philly:
http://newslanc.com/2014/01/16... [newslanc.com]
Also how these assholes are making competition illegal: http://arstechnica.com/tech-po... [arstechnica.com]
Or what about the fact that to lay all this wire, they are using public utility rights of way. If they aren't going to be a public utility they should have no right to use that right of way -- it's a kind of robbery of the commons -- a robbery of every American.
Until these monopolies start actually using their own money for stuff, the whole cry for the investors shit is just that, fetid stinking steaming shit. Cry a river of it. Then go swimming.
Re:Annoying. (Score:5, Informative)
Here's another example.
1. Claim common carrier status
2. Get access to public rights of way
3. Raise rates
4. Say you aren't a common carrier
5. Profit.
there is no ?
http://www.theverge.com/2014/5... [theverge.com]
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If they aren't going to be a public utility they should have no right to use that right of way
Is cable TV a public utility? They use those right of ways. There are many companies that use public right of ways and are not publicly owned. Tell me the city you live in and I can probably give you examples.
Until these monopolies start actually using their own money for stuff,
So the cables, switches, maintenance, power etc to run the infrastructure cost nothing?
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Compared to tunnels, poles, and especially land, yeah, those things cost absolutely nothing.
Secondly, as to your first point, see this link: http://www.theverge.com/2014/5... [theverge.com]
It explains how these companies claim to be common carriers to get access to those rights of way ... until they start providing services and then they claim they aren't.
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Because I'm not a common carrier.
Here's the deal as referenced in the article I linked to above:
1) Claim common carrier status (this puts them under title II and they would have to lease out the lines they install to competitors) as a prerequisite for
2) getting access to public rights of way, and then once built,
3) Claim they are not common carriers and thus not subject to title II.
It's a scam on the public.
Re:Annoying. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Are you willing to pay for it in higher taxes?
Re:Annoying. (Score:4, Insightful)
Pipes aren't service (Score:2)
The service itself, equipment to transport information on and off, and policies would be privately owned and maintained, and competition required.
It's little different than rails or roads which have cars and service operated by competing carriers on the same transport infrastructure.
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Talk about a goofy assed response. Companies own those assets because they generate an income that justifies their capital value. Hence it is no different for the government to own those assets and generate an income from them, of course people like you would complain, as oh no the government is taxing us. Which leads to another question, are privatised corporations simply elements of the government privatised and those fees including those inflated profits, simply privatised taxes, especially with regard
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No the backbone stays intact were talking about the last mile. This is where we dot not want many parallel wiring plants as it's inefficient, ugly, and provides no value while using public space.
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I really wanted to moderate but this bullshit changed my mind.
When the companies are openly bribing politicians to create monopolies and regulating the possible competition out of business it has become the responsiblity of government to step in. The situation we have with Cox, Comcast, AT&T, and Time Warner as ISPs easily constitutes a larger set of monopolies than ever existed when AT&T telco was broken up. There is no competition in San Diego, where I live. The choices you have are screw you an
Verizon (Score:2)
What are you talking about? Comcast, Verizon, and others are not backbone providers that would be places like Level 3 Communications
The scary thing is that Verizon is a Tier 1 provider. When they bought MCI several years ago, they got UUNET too.
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Please, it was no worse then any equally scaled effort by anyone, private or public.
The government runs a lot of services very well.
Make it a utility. (Score:3)
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Re:Make it a utility. (Score:4, Informative)
Oddly enough electricity providers in parts of Texas and not completely monopolies. There is still a company that maintains the lines and infrastructure but you buy your electricity from one of several providers who compete with each other on price and plans like "nights or weekends free." So that's great.
However, the phase of the development in which I live only has DSL. Two streets down or over and they also get the option of cable. Not on my street though. Not sure how that happened.
The city has a municipal monopoly on garbage collection
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choice of cable, DSL, or wireless.
Cable: I can have TV and broadband. But in spite of advertisemsnts for a bundle of three services, telephone is not available in my area. Agreement with the telco.
DSL: Not offered for years. FiOS was coming. When it finally arrived, broadband and telephone was available. But the TV offered was les extensive than what my rabbit ears pick up. Agreement with the cable company.
Wireless: Too slow and intermittent for streaming video or VoIP. Broadband is slow, but useable for simple web pages. I'm not supposed
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The "monopoly" (which is not what it is at all) is the only way a phone company can be profitable and the only way they will maintain the network. If the city doesn't like it they're welcome to maintain it themselves. Several have tried and after bankrupting the city re-signed their carrier agreements. Copper networks are hugely expensive to maintain. The only way they are profitable is because the phone company can spread the rates out to everyone in town. The people in the cheap areas to server pay more t
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Business as usual (Score:3)
Screw the consumer. Its how barely regulated (virtual) monopolies, that are out of control, operate.
Break them up, jail the board of directors. Return control to the people.
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Screw the consumer. Its how barely regulated (virtual) monopolies, that are out of control, operate.
Break them up, jail the board of directors. Return control to the people.
Barely regulated? The telecom industry is one of the most heavily regulated industries in the country. I work for a telco. We've got an entire floor of people dedicated to regulatory compliance. It's a huge cost to every telco out there.
Cable companies, however, are barely regulated at all. That's real problem. You need to either regulate them or deregulate telcos. If you don't most telcos will be bankrupt in a decade or two. Every major Telco out there is selling off exchanges as fast as they can. They're
A war well waged (Score:5, Insightful)
Government Actively Keeping Fiber Dark in My Town (Score:2)
I'm not saying that Comcast lobbied hard and spent a lot of money to get this rule enforced, but obviously this kind of barrier to entry benefits Comcast or any incumbent ISP
Yup (Score:2)
Who will invest in the Internet infrastructure that we badly need, indeed [slashdot.org], and who will go out of their way to hinder its operation?
the "agreements" cover more than fiber... (Score:4)
Community Wifi is also targeted with this. My experience was from Comcast targeting the one community WiFi project we had running and was shut down.
we were illegally providing internet service for free without paying franchise fees to the local government to the tune of $10K a month.
It's a fucking Mobster kickback is what it is...
And Outside the U.S. (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm moving and my new place has 200Mbps down/100Mbps up fiber, so that's an upgrade from the 100Mbps I've had for about 15 years. And the price is going down to about US$38/month. Not bad, huh? I could choose 1 Gbps, since everywhere has been upgraded with it for years now, but it would only be useful for content inside the country. The infrastructure is far more advanced than the U.S.
Of course there are no caps and no provider-conspired speed throttling. I've never had a provider-caused outage in 20 years of internet service.
That's that service level and pricing that competition has created over time in Japan. I'm in a small town, so don't even think about the "U.S. is too big" reply. Every time I go the U.S. I'm shocked at the level of service. You are really under the thumb of the internet provider mafia.
You need to vote in representatives that will actually to start representing you. I don't see any hope for you without that.
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ah no (Score:2)
Again with this one-sided uninformed bullshit. Why did the city sign those agreements? A gift to the telecom? It's a joke. City after city trys to install their own network and gets their ass sued by their local telecom. And they lose... every time. Why? Because it's breach of contract.
Those telecoms agreed to maintain the cities aging copper network in exchange for no direct competition for teleco services. Maintaining that network is hugely expensive. The city comes in and plans to install fiber which wi
they want to get rid of copper and replace 4g/lte (Score:2)
they want to get rid of copper and replace it with 4g/lte with low caps and $10 a gig for going over.
Re:speaking of FCC (Score:5, Informative)
crap. linked to my g+. Sorry, my bad.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Re:speaking of FCC (Score:5, Funny)
That's like going to Slashdot to read the articles. Sure, you COULD, but...
Government of the people ? (Score:5, Insightful)
When I first came to America I was very impressed with the idea that America has a government of the people, by the people and for the people
For a kid from a Communist country, I can't tell you how much awe I had for the notion that a government is actually on the side of the people !
But then ... I was naive
It turns out that the government of the United States is not what I imagined to be
The government of China is definitely NOT on the side of the people - and they do not have to be, because they never say that they are a democracy
But in the United States of America, we are supposed to be a Democracy, which means that the government has to rely on the VOTES of the people in order to be formed
So, what the fuck has gone wrong ???
Re:Government of the people ? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Government of the people ? (Score:4, Insightful)
And here's why they win. They've convinced Americans that the battle lines are "left vs. right", "republican vs. democrat", "liberal vs. socialist".
This keeps people fighting amongst themselves, arguing whether their shade of grey is the "right" way to run a government.
It's pretty obvious to an outsider what the power division is in America. It's pretty obvious if you look at america's decline over the past decades & see how authority has been consolidated & maintained. It's pretty obvious if you look at how fear and uncertainty are utilized by the government to herd the population in the direction they want them to go.
The battle lines are: "rich vs. poor". They almost always have been.
Until people understand that, and as long as people believe that stupid side issues like minor health care reforms (and yes, they are quite minor), gay marriage, abortion, gun ownership, immigration reform, etc are what is going to ruin / save the country, the longer the people in power stay that way.
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It violates monopoly laws:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Re:Noncompetition (Score:5, Insightful)
but at what point does it violate the law?
It started violating Federal and State antitrust laws many, many years ago.
The deeper question you should really be asking is: why haven't they been called on it?
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but at what point does it violate the law?
The point at which they stop giving campaign contributions and spending so much on lobbying. Unfortunately, that will never happen. We've passed the point where the influence public opinion could outweigh the influence of campaign contributions.
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You have no clue what net neutrality is, do you? OR maybe you do ant you want 1 company dictating what people can see and do?
"Stop trying to make rules for how the Internet works. "
sense, you make none. The internet functions on rules.
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Net neutrality as was originally defined was that packets shouldn't be treated any different than any other packet. The idea was to prevent traffic shaping. I pointed out, quite awhile ago, that no shaping had to be done. All a company would have to do is let some ports get congested and upgrade ports that serviced their preferred services. Few seemed understood this point. I also wondered exactly how this would be regulated since peering is an integral part of how the Internet works. Fast forward to presen
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If it's implemented as you imply, I'd be fine with fast lanes too. I just don't think it will be.
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Re:Government ISP? (Score:4, Interesting)
I want competition, not government ISP.
You're (probably intentionally) ignoring a huge point. As pointed out in the summary, the agreements also prohibit the leasing of the already existing fiber lines:
and prohibit municipalities from selling or leasing their fiber to local startups who would compete with these huge corporations.
So it's not just that the government can't operate an ISP, it's that nobody else can. And before you try and say it's not fair that the cable company had to run their own lines, while the government ran them for these other ISPs, keep in mind these points:
1. The competing ISPs would still have to pay for the lines.
2. The cable companies have received huge subsidies from the government.
Personally, I *want* "fast lanes" because they remove popular traffic off the main transit links.
Okay, now I know something's up. I also see that all of your recent comments pro-big-corporate-ISP. What you're pretending to not understand is that "fast lane" doesn't mean fast lane, it means everything else is slow lane. They're not talking about building out new faster infrastructure. And it's not simply about peering, it's about charging providers extra to provide this "fast lane" which amounts to "give us money or we're gonna slow you down."
My home town, Burbank, CA has metro fiber for businesses. Studios love it. The fiber is actually owned by the cable company. Heh!
See! You think fiber is okay if it's the cable company making a profit on it, but not if it's a competing ISP.
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I want competition, not government ISP.
You're (probably intentionally) ignoring a huge point. As pointed out in the summary, the agreements also prohibit the leasing of the already existing fiber lines:
and prohibit municipalities from selling or leasing their fiber to local startups who would compete with these huge corporations.
So it's not just that the government can't operate an ISP, it's that nobody else can. And before you try and say it's not fair that the cable company had to run their own lines, while the government ran them for these other ISPs, keep in mind these points: 1. The competing ISPs would still have to pay for the lines. 2. The cable companies have received huge subsidies from the government.
Personally, I *want* "fast lanes" because they remove popular traffic off the main transit links.
Okay, now I know something's up. I also see that all of your recent comments pro-big-corporate-ISP. What you're pretending to not understand is that "fast lane" doesn't mean fast lane, it means everything else is slow lane. They're not talking about building out new faster infrastructure. And it's not simply about peering, it's about charging providers extra to provide this "fast lane" which amounts to "give us money or we're gonna slow you down."
My home town, Burbank, CA has metro fiber for businesses. Studios love it. The fiber is actually owned by the cable company. Heh!
See! You think fiber is okay if it's the cable company making a profit on it, but not if it's a competing ISP.
I'm not pro-big-ISP, I'm just skeptical of FCC regulation. There is a difference. I am also convinced that most people have no idea how the Internet works. My comment about Burbank just a funny thing. It works just like you want. Burbank doesn't own the fiber, it is owned by the "evil" big-ISP. They just sub-out to the cable company for maintaining a neutral network that all businesses can connect to. Transit is optional and doesn't have to be provided by the cable company. Burbank had a huge incentive to d
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Stop trying to make rules for how the Internet works.
but this is precisely what the corporate lobbyists are doing. do you have ANY solution that will stop these lobbyists from undermining actual competition? this is where government CAN step in, to stop these shenanigans and enforce an equitable, competitor-filled marketplace. otherwise, an unregulated "free" market quickly becomes anything but, full of Comcast-esque fiefdoms.
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do you have ANY solution that will stop these lobbyists from undermining actual competition? this is where government CAN step in, to stop these shenanigans and enforce an equitable, competitor-filled marketplace.
Are you listening to yourself, at all?
...the government has already stepped in, or else you wouldn't have a problem with the lobbyists. You do understand who lobbyists lobby, right?
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Last mile utilities are natural monopolies. If you want 4 companies to run fiber past your house your price will reflect running the fiber four separate times. The entire reason broadband costs in this country are triple or more those of the rest of the developed world is we are paying to run the same wires multiple times.
They beauty of not recognizing the natural monopoly is that two things will happen, the first is that if you are a high enough density with wealthy enough customers you might get a singe o
Niggle: one polices one's monopolies and crooks (Score:2)
Actually one "polices" them rather than "regulating" them. It's called the "police power of the state", and refers to a lot more than the cops. Anything that gets you dragged in front of a magistrate or board who can punish you is policing
Regulation is a technical term for bylaw-like legislation, is misleading as heck, and historically is a term that lots of people in the 'States and Canada viscerally hate.
Re:Government ISP? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Because it's unfair competition. These guys whine like you are proposing to waterboard them at the hint of *fair* competition, so you can imagine how they feel about unfair competition.
And it really is unfair competition. The private ISP has to charge enough to cover their costs, a government has options to subsidize the service and charge less than they are actually spending on it, among other advantages.
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In Los Angeles, there is a heck of a lot of fiber. I remember talking down the sidewalk in Burbank. Three man holes a few feet apart. One said "MFN 20K" (which is now AboveNet), another "ATT 20K", and another "Layer3 20K".Admittedly, these are obviously backhaul links, but they were on the same street as the muni sewer. Given how they were laid out, they were probably using the same conduit. Fiber is not the same as water, sewer, etc. It can be done and is already being done. I'm pretty sure AT&T and C
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" The tax paid agency has no incentive to not lose money. "
they actually do.
becasue
" All they need to do is spend their budget."
that will go away.
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becasue
" All they need to do is spend their budget."
that will go away.
... at the end of the fiscal year.
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that will go away.
If they don't spend it. Anyone in the supply industry knows about March madness where government departments spend their budget whether they need to or not. If they go over budget they get a bigger one next time.
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you're on drugs if you think your local government will upgrade their networks every time netflix doubles their data that they send. it might seem good now but 5-10 years in the future if local governments run the ISP's out of business they will laugh at you when you complain you can't stream 8K or whatever the next one is. they will act like any other local utility and tell you to wait 5 years until they gather enough data that there is a demand for it, then take another few years to study the problem, the
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
You're on drugs if you think you have to upgrade fiber to increase bandwidth.
It is TRIVIAL to supply 100Mbit/100Mbit to every home and that is more tan enough for running 20 netflix feeds per home. In fact the gear for 100Mbit is dirt freaking cheap and all over the place used.
The entire City Plant can be 100/100 and the only hard part is the Internet POP. so you need a couple of fibers to the next town. In fact if you do it right every town has a 2 fibers off to the next town to create a web like the in
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I would really not want the muni to have any networking gear. We need to back away from ugly refrigerators on telephone polls. Cheap optics are good for 40km that is far more larger than any town.
Re:Level playing field (Score:4, Informative)
they will act like any other local utility and tell you to wait 5 years until they gather enough data that there is a demand for it, then take another few years to study the problem, then spend another 5 years begging for money in the budget and finally upgrading the network
Utilities don't get funded through the general budget.
They petition the PUC/PSC/etc with a plan, it gets approved (or not),
then the utility either raises prices the approved amount to cover the direct cost
or the utility issues bonds... and then raises prices the approved amount to cover the bonds.
And AFAIK there's no such thing as a government utility, only government chartered corporations.
They are self funding and mostly independent of government, except where they have to interact with the Public Utilities Commission, like any other utility.
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"And AFAIK there's no such thing as a government utility,"
there are many.
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they will act like any other local utility and tell you to wait 5 years until they gather enough data that there is a demand for it, then take another few years to study the problem, then spend another 5 years begging for money in the budget and finally upgrading the network
Actually, go check out Wilson, North Carolina. They embarrassed Time Warner so badly, Time Warner strongarmed the state into making municipal broadband illegal. It creates a lot of cognitive dissonance with the "government can't do anyth
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That is why you split the difference, muni fiber only handing off CWDM. Fiber has been pretty standard for a LONG time and not expected to change. With CWDM/DWDM your ISP gets to determine the speeds the muni is just passing light back and forth, it literally has nothing that requires power with a CDWM network.
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This allows them to not pay for right of way access, for building tunnels, installing poles, etc. etc. It's a "socialize expenses, privatize profits" thing -- essentially leveraging the worst parts of socialism to further the worst parts of capitalism.
Re: Allow Virtual ISPs or Last Mile (Score:5, Interesting)