Re: [Discuss] Competition of broadband

[Richard Pieri]

On Dec 6, 2011, at 6:08 PM, Bill Horne wrote:
> 
> Well, if Verizon is so eager, why isn't FiOS available in a /very/ well-to-do 
> bedroom community like Sharon?

Because the residents of Sharon as a majority didn't wanted FiOS and rebuffed 
Verizon's FiOS offers.  They liked getting their Comcast franchise fees.  In 
other words, it's exactly the same reason that Boston and Somerville don't have 
FiOS: money.

>From what I gather (I don't live there but I used to live nearby), the 
>residents have finally gotten fed up with Comcast's rising costs and declining 
>service.  The town has reached out to Verizon -- which basically said, "we'll 
>get back to you once we're finished with the towns that didn't shut us out".  
>That's why nearby towns like Easton (where I did live and my brother does 
>live) and Mansfield have FiOS and Sharon does not.


Regarding Verizon Wireless: VZW isn't Verizon.  It's a separate company owned 
in part by Verizon, with separate everything from billing to infrastructure.  
Verizon (aka Verizon Communications) is exclusively wired communications.  It 
would be accurate to say that Verizon *is* the legacy wireline business reaping 
the rewards of a very profitable wireless business and investing those profits 
in expanding the wired business.  I do find it amusing and a bit ironic that 
Verizon is the incumbent telco but the competing cableco.

--Rich P.


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Re: [Discuss] Competition of broadband

[Bill Horne]

On 12/5/2011 7:50 PM, Richard Pieri wrote:

On Dec 4, 2011, at 7:49 PM, Bill Horne wrote:

Two words: time and materials.

Verizon won't compete with Comcast for broadband, because they'd have to 
complete their network with today's labor rates.

Say what?!  Verizon has been very aggressively pushing FiOS.  Perhaps not 
everywhere, but definitely in some of Comcast's strongest markets.


It's definitely not everywhere, nor even "manywhere". Close only counts 
in Horseshoes, hand grenades, and nuclear artillery: it's no good to 
have 50% of the available houses wired, because that means that your 
competition can still survive on the remaining half.



Cities like Boston already have the fibre trunks.  The only work that needs to 
be done is to connect residences to the trunks.  In most cases, Verizon pays 
the communities for the privilege of making those connections in addition to 
footing the bill for the runs, sometimes regardless of households actually 
subscribing.  Case in point, Verizon paid my condo complex $150 per unit times 
334 units just for the privilege of running fibre to each unit, and Verizon 
paid 100% of the cost of actually running all that fibre.  This all within the 
past year.  All that I've paid for out of pocket is for the tech to do the 
interior installation, wire up the ONT and configure the cable box.


Well, if Verizon is so eager, why isn't FiOS available in a /very/ 
well-to-do bedroom community like Sharon? If Verizontal is "aggressively 
pushing" FiOS, how come they've bypassed the profit that's available in 
Sharon and many other suburbs? Logically, in an area where average 
household incomes are over $126,000 per year, I must conclude that there 
are other factors in play.


AFAICT, Verizon now sees itself as a wireless company stuck with a 
legacy line of business called "wireline", which it is doing its best to 
abandon as soon as possible. Compared to wireless, the "wireline" 
business is a millstone around Verizon's neck, and they've been so 
successful with cellular that they just paid several Billion dollars to 
buy out the spectrum that Comcast was threatening to use for a competing 
cellular offering.


Don't forget that "3G" and "4G" (whatever that means) data plans 
contribute immensely to Verizon's profit margins, and I doubt that 
Verizon's actuaries would stack the potential profits from FiOS against 
the immense pay-per-minute-per-byte river of gold that they are standing 
in /right/ /now/.  If FiOS succeeds, then the cellular data margins go 
down, and that means that Verizon is giving FiOS lip-service while doing 
everything it can to maximize cellular income.



Boston and Somerville keep saying "no" to FiOS because of Comcast's 
think-of-the-community lobbying and the threat of renegotiated franchise fees reducing 
the Cities' revenue.  That's the real bottom line, and it's the origin of my subsidiaries 
quip.



The real bottom line (no offense) is that ordinary people never see the 
/real/ bottom line. Local bureaucrats want to be paid for allowing 
anyone to make a profit in "their" community, but cellular bypasses all 
the greedy hands that are out when anyone asks for a right-of-way on 
municipality poles, and that means multi-national corporations can play 
a waiting game, hoping that national elections will deliver a government 
more pliable to their "recommendations" and less concerned with 
appearances than those currently in power.  The U.S. Congress, tied to 
Nineteenth century paradigms of commerce and government, views the 
Internet as a party line where the village idiots go to pretend someone 
is listening, and in a world where the only political currency is 
/actual/ currency, Internet users aren't important[1].


Sorry to bear bad news, but Uncle Sam only cares about you and me if we 
have lots of money to spend. In the meantime, your local library has a 
"high speed" connection, so don't complain.


Bill

1. Although some upstarts have been successful at raising /some/ 
campaign funding via the Internet, contributions from Washington's 
Beltway Bandits dwarf the amounts gathered via the net. In any case, as 
far as Congress is concerned,  the idea of using the Internet for 
fundraising is lumped in with other campaign impedimenta: something 
handled by professionals who return from the beaches of Maui on their  
biennial rounds of the mudpits, where they blithely service their 
benefactors by performing what soon-to-be-former Congressman Barney 
Frank called "Slopping the Hogs".


--
Bill Horne
339-364-8487

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Re: [Discuss] Competition of broadband

[Bill Horne]

On 12/5/2011 7:16 PM, Tom Metro wrote:

The alternate approach taken by European governments was mentioned
earlier in this thread. I highly recommend watching this video on the topic:
http://www.engadget.com/2011/06/28/why-is-european-broadband-faster-and-cheaper-blame-the-governme/

(A variation of it ran on PBS earlier this year.)




I'm the moderator of comp.dcom.telecom and The Telecom Digest 
(http://www.telecom-digest.org/), which is the oldest 
continuously-published e-zine on the net.


This subject, although perhaps a bit OT here, would be perfect for the 
Digest, and I welcome posts from those who would like to have their 
ideas seen be a much wider community of telecommunications experts.


Please send posts to telecomdigestmoderator.at.telecom-digest.org, and 
put "[telecom]" in your subject line for anti-spam processing. I'm be 
happy to obfuscate email addresses if you like: just substitute 
"[obfuscate]" in your subject line.


Thanks in advance!

Bill Horne
Moderator
The Telecom Digest

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339-364-8487

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Re: [Discuss] Competition of broadband

[Richard Pieri]

On Dec 4, 2011, at 7:49 PM, Bill Horne wrote:
> 
> Two words: time and materials.
> 
> Verizon won't compete with Comcast for broadband, because they'd have to 
> complete their network with today's labor rates.

Say what?!  Verizon has been very aggressively pushing FiOS.  Perhaps not 
everywhere, but definitely in some of Comcast's strongest markets.

Cities like Boston already have the fibre trunks.  The only work that needs to 
be done is to connect residences to the trunks.  In most cases, Verizon pays 
the communities for the privilege of making those connections in addition to 
footing the bill for the runs, sometimes regardless of households actually 
subscribing.  Case in point, Verizon paid my condo complex $150 per unit times 
334 units just for the privilege of running fibre to each unit, and Verizon 
paid 100% of the cost of actually running all that fibre.  This all within the 
past year.  All that I've paid for out of pocket is for the tech to do the 
interior installation, wire up the ONT and configure the cable box.

Boston and Somerville keep saying "no" to FiOS because of Comcast's 
think-of-the-community lobbying and the threat of renegotiated franchise fees 
reducing the Cities' revenue.  That's the real bottom line, and it's the origin 
of my subsidiaries quip.

--Rich P.


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Re: [Discuss] Competition of broadband

[Tom Metro]

The alternate approach taken by European governments was mentioned
earlier in this thread. I highly recommend watching this video on the topic:
http://www.engadget.com/2011/06/28/why-is-european-broadband-faster-and-cheaper-blame-the-governme/

(A variation of it ran on PBS earlier this year.)

It seems to show a successful model for creating inexpensive (at least
an order of magnitude cheaper than ours), faster, ubiquitous broadband.

What's less clear is whether this model could successfully be
extrapolated from suburban-density areas to rural areas. (But the video
does cover rural deployments.)


Ben Eisenbraun wrote:
> The only reason network providers build network to unprofitable
> areas, i.e. low-density, rural areas, is because regulations force
> them to.

True. The problem with the purely commercial provider model is that the
company investing in the infrastructure may not see a payback on running
a wire to a distant rural customer for hundreds of years, because the
only return is the $30 or whatever monthly fee they are getting.

If you instead view the problem from the perspective of the community
(town government), you now have much greater opportunity for return on
investment. A well wired town attracts more people, people who can
telecommute and get higher paying jobs, people who spend money at local
businesses, and those conditions also attract employers to the area
(premium property tax revenues).

So the answer seems to be some combination of public-private infrastructure.

Some towns in the US have attempted to build their own fiber plants only
to be thwarted by telecom lobbyists getting state laws passed
prohibiting anyone but the telecoms from doing such a thing.

 -Tom

-- 
Tom Metro
Venture Logic, Newton, MA, USA
"Enterprise solutions through open source."
Professional Profile: http://tmetro.venturelogic.com/
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Re: [Discuss] Competition of broadband

[edwardp]

Jerry Feldman wrote:

On 12/04/2011 05:14 PM, Richard Pieri wrote:

On Dec 4, 2011, at 11:00 AM, Ben Eisenbraun wrote:
My understanding of the spat between Curtatone and Verizon is that 
it stems
from his opposition to Verizon's desire to negotiate video 
franchises on the
state and not city level. Verizon keeps pushing legislation on this 
issue,

e.g:
Verizon keeps pushing this legislation because Comcast continues to 
abuse the existing legislation to maintain its monopolies in much of 
the Commonwealth.  Can't have it both ways, guys.


Regarding the "wholly owned subsidiary" comment, allow me to explain 
the concept of hyperbole:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperbole

Both are large regulated monopolies. Wait until we get Comcast 
Wireless :-)


http://www.comcast.com/About/PressRelease/PressReleaseDetail.ashx?PRID=887

I wonder how the recent deal with SpectrumCo and Verizon will affect the 
above, which the 3G side is on Sprint's network (4G on Clearwire)?


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Re: [Discuss] Competition of broadband

[Jerry Feldman]

On 12/04/2011 05:14 PM, Richard Pieri wrote:

On Dec 4, 2011, at 11:00 AM, Ben Eisenbraun wrote:

My understanding of the spat between Curtatone and Verizon is that it stems
from his opposition to Verizon's desire to negotiate video franchises on the
state and not city level. Verizon keeps pushing legislation on this issue,
e.g:

Verizon keeps pushing this legislation because Comcast continues to abuse the 
existing legislation to maintain its monopolies in much of the Commonwealth.  
Can't have it both ways, guys.

Regarding the "wholly owned subsidiary" comment, allow me to explain the 
concept of hyperbole:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperbole


Both are large regulated monopolies. Wait until we get Comcast Wireless :-)

--
Jerry Feldman
Boston Linux and Unix
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Re: [Discuss] Competition of broadband

[Bill Horne]

On 12/4/2011 6:39 PM, Richard Pieri wrote:

On Dec 4, 2011, at 5:25 PM, Bill Bogstad wrote:

(a monopoly/pork barrel funding).   I'm sure that if Verizon was
willing to pay the same kind of fees that Comcast does that they could
find politicians willing to switch horses.

Two words: franchise fees.



Two words: time and materials.

Verizon won't compete with Comcast for broadband, because they'd have to 
complete their network with today's labor rates. They don't want to 
spend that much money, and are withholding service and making 
non-compete deals with Comcast in the cellular space, so that they can 
continue to wait as long as it takes for Comcast to set a foot wrong and 
scare the pols enough that they dictate favorable terms under which 
Verizon can "compete".


Two more words: common sense.

It's not the second coming, OK? The odds are overwhelming that you 
*still* work in a different place than the one where you live, and so 
long as corporate executives continue to practice "warm body" management 
(if you're body is still warm and you haven't fallen out of your chair, 
you must be productive), there won't be any driver for universal 
broadband or competition, because there is no driver for work-at-home 
capability.


Bill

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Re: [Discuss] Competition of broadband

[Richard Pieri]

On Dec 4, 2011, at 5:25 PM, Bill Bogstad wrote:
> 
> (a monopoly/pork barrel funding).   I'm sure that if Verizon was
> willing to pay the same kind of fees that Comcast does that they could
> find politicians willing to switch horses.

Two words: franchise fees.

--Rich P.

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Re: [Discuss] Competition of broadband

[Bill Bogstad]

On Sun, Dec 4, 2011 at 5:14 PM, Richard Pieri  wrote:
> On Dec 4, 2011, at 11:00 AM, Ben Eisenbraun wrote:
>>
>> My understanding of the spat between Curtatone and Verizon is that it stems
>> from his opposition to Verizon's desire to negotiate video franchises on the
>> state and not city level. Verizon keeps pushing legislation on this issue,
>> e.g:
>
> Verizon keeps pushing this legislation because Comcast continues to abuse the 
> existing legislation to maintain its monopolies in much of the Commonwealth.  
> Can't have it both ways, guys.

One man's abuse is another local politician's source of revenue for
pet projects.  Comcast negotiates with local politicians and they both
get what they want
(a monopoly/pork barrel funding).   I'm sure that if Verizon was
willing to pay the same kind of fees that Comcast does that they could
find politicians willing to switch horses.

Bill Bogstad
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Re: [Discuss] Competition of broadband

[Richard Pieri]

On Dec 4, 2011, at 11:00 AM, Ben Eisenbraun wrote:
> 
> My understanding of the spat between Curtatone and Verizon is that it stems
> from his opposition to Verizon's desire to negotiate video franchises on the
> state and not city level. Verizon keeps pushing legislation on this issue,
> e.g:

Verizon keeps pushing this legislation because Comcast continues to abuse the 
existing legislation to maintain its monopolies in much of the Commonwealth.  
Can't have it both ways, guys.

Regarding the "wholly owned subsidiary" comment, allow me to explain the 
concept of hyperbole:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperbole

--Rich P.


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Re: [Discuss] Competition of broadband

[Matt Shields]

On Sun, Dec 4, 2011 at 9:08 AM, Jerry Feldman  wrote:

> On 12/02/2011 07:44 PM, Richard Pieri wrote:
>
>> I see that Bill H. says that TV service isn't an issue for him, but it is
>> one. In fact, TV service is the root of how broadband is deployed in
>> Massachusetts.
>>
>> Back in the 1970s, when cable TV was new around here, the MA legislature
>> decided to leave service carrier choice up to individual cities and towns.
>>  Most towns then proceeded to pick one exclusive provider, granting the
>> chosen providers a limited monopoly.  The primary reason for this is so
>> that all residents have comparable TV service, particularly in the
>> community access TV channels.  Two different cable companies wouldn't
>> necessarily share community access facilities, after all, thus most towns
>> picked one provider.  My town happened to pick Continental Cablevision.
>>
>> Then Cablevision's assets in MA were acquired by MediaOne.  These assets
>> were acquired in turn by Southwestern Bell along with several other cable
>> companies back in 1999 or thenabouts.  The collected assets were branded
>> "AT&T Broadband".  This marked the end of cable TV competition in MA.
>>  Comcast acquired all of AT&T Broadband when SBC divested itself of the
>> TV/broadband services.
>>
>> This is what many of us are stuck with.  Comcast lobbies the various
>> local governments where it operates with this tactic, "demonstrating" how
>> competing cable TV providers would be detrimental to their communities.
>>  Mayor Tom in particular is very, very "convinced" by Comcast's lobbying
>> efforts.
>>
>>  I believe that AT&T Broadband was divested by AT&T before Southwestern
> Bell acquired AT&T.
>
> In any case, the issue today is that TV, Broadband, and Telephone are, in
> essence, much different today than in the past. Back during deregulation,
> the electric power monopolies were broken up into delivery companies (eg.
> NSTAR), and generation companies. (For instance Pilgrim Nuke is owned by
> Entergy). However, there was a time when broadband companies were required
> to use their cables to allow other services, such as Earthlink over
> Comcast. Additionally, phone and cable companies are handled differently..
> Verizon is a phone provider who offers TV and Internet services, and
> Comcast is a Cable TV company that offers phone and Internet services.
> Additionally, electircal power companies could also use their cables to
> provide services, but federal law prohibits that from back in the days when
> AT&T was the only phone company.
>
> The bottom line is there is a hodgepodge of old laws on the books.
>
> --
> Jerry Feldman
> Boston Linux and Unix
> PGP key id:3BC1EB90
> PGP Key fingerprint: 49E2 C52A FC5A A31F 8D66  C0AF 7CEA 30FC 3BC1 EB90
>
>
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>

I don't believe the internet over power was a federal issue.  FPL in
Florida has been doing this for quite some time, as far back as late 90's
when I lived there.  I do know that at the time they were having other
issues with how the technology worked.  Not to mention it wasn't cheap yet.

For more info see http://www.fplfibernet.com/

Matthew Shields
Owner
BeanTown Host - Web Hosting, Domain Names, Dedicated Servers, Colocation,
Managed Services
www.beantownhost.com
www.sysadminvalley.com
www.jeeprally.com
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Re: [Discuss] Competition of broadband

[Stephen Ronan]

Time to go back to sleep for another 100 years to see if 
anything new develops. ... ZZZz


I'm hoping that NetBlazr  can make a go of 
it... Very fine group trying hard and intelligently, starting in 
Boston, to do so...


Stephen Ronan
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Re: [Discuss] Competition of broadband

[Jack Coats]

And at the basis of the cable laws are telecom laws that are even more
antiquated, and companies like AT&T/Verizon/Sprint are working ever so
hard to keep it that way.

I still can't get high speed connectivity, and yes, we (and everyone
else) pays their $1/connection/month so I can have it.  And after so
many years and millions of $$/month the companies still don't want to
do it.

They still have the old school think of charge more, provide less,
means more profits.  In a broad based commodity market it seems that
provide more, charge less than competition, gains volume which gains
even more profit (as long as expenditures don't go over income, within
reason - providing service at a loss is a predatory technique of
monopolies, then they raise the price even further ... hmm, sounds
like cable and telco consolidation to me... hmmm.)

Time to go back to sleep for another 100 years to see if anything new
develops. ... ZZZz
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Re: [Discuss] Competition of broadband

[Ben Eisenbraun]

On Sun, Dec 04, 2011 at 10:36:56AM -0500, Richard Pieri wrote:
> On Dec 4, 2011, at 9:08 AM, Jerry Feldman wrote:
> > The bottom line is there is a hodgepodge of old laws on the books.
> 
> I say that the bottom line is Mayors Tom and Joe are wholly owned
> subsidiaries of Comcast Corporation.  If you don't like how they're
> handling cable TV deployment then fire them and hire someone you that
> like.

I don't live in Boston, and I don't pay much attention to Menino, but I
haven't seen any evidence that Curtatone is in Comcast's pocket. Somerville
is a "competitive" market for cable service, since it's serviced by both
RCN and Comcast.

My understanding of the spat between Curtatone and Verizon is that it stems
from his opposition to Verizon's desire to negotiate video franchises on the
state and not city level. Verizon keeps pushing legislation on this issue,
e.g:

http://www22.verizon.com/about/community/ma/cable_choice.html

And the town mayors, including Curtatone, have traditionally opposed it.
I suspect that Somerville is able to negotiate high franchise fees from the
providers due to its high population density, and Curtatone is just working
to protect Somerville's ability to negotiate high rates.

Can you point to some evidence to the contrary?

-ben

--
in the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's
there are few.  
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Re: [Discuss] Competition of broadband

[Richard Pieri]

On Dec 4, 2011, at 9:08 AM, Jerry Feldman wrote:
> 
> I believe that AT&T Broadband was divested by AT&T before Southwestern Bell 
> acquired AT&T.

Sorry, yes, that's correct.  I'm not sure why I mentioned Southwestern Bell in 
that since they weren't involved.  Probably just general tiredness.


> The bottom line is there is a hodgepodge of old laws on the books.

I say that the bottom line is Mayors Tom and Joe are wholly owned subsidiaries 
of Comcast Corporation.  If you don't like how they're handling cable TV 
deployment then fire them and hire someone you that like.

--Rich P.

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Re: [Discuss] Competition of broadband

[Jerry Feldman]

On 12/02/2011 07:44 PM, Richard Pieri wrote:

I see that Bill H. says that TV service isn't an issue for him, but it is one. 
In fact, TV service is the root of how broadband is deployed in Massachusetts.

Back in the 1970s, when cable TV was new around here, the MA legislature 
decided to leave service carrier choice up to individual cities and towns.  
Most towns then proceeded to pick one exclusive provider, granting the chosen 
providers a limited monopoly.  The primary reason for this is so that all 
residents have comparable TV service, particularly in the community access TV 
channels.  Two different cable companies wouldn't necessarily share community 
access facilities, after all, thus most towns picked one provider.  My town 
happened to pick Continental Cablevision.

Then Cablevision's assets in MA were acquired by MediaOne.  These assets were acquired in turn by 
Southwestern Bell along with several other cable companies back in 1999 or thenabouts.  The 
collected assets were branded "AT&T Broadband".  This marked the end of cable TV 
competition in MA.  Comcast acquired all of AT&T Broadband when SBC divested itself of the 
TV/broadband services.

This is what many of us are stuck with.  Comcast lobbies the various local governments where it 
operates with this tactic, "demonstrating" how competing cable TV providers would be 
detrimental to their communities.  Mayor Tom in particular is very, very "convinced" by 
Comcast's lobbying efforts.

I believe that AT&T Broadband was divested by AT&T before Southwestern 
Bell acquired AT&T.


In any case, the issue today is that TV, Broadband, and Telephone are, 
in essence, much different today than in the past. Back during 
deregulation, the electric power monopolies were broken up into delivery 
companies (eg. NSTAR), and generation companies. (For instance Pilgrim 
Nuke is owned by Entergy). However, there was a time when broadband 
companies were required to use their cables to allow other services, 
such as Earthlink over Comcast. Additionally, phone and cable companies 
are handled differently.. Verizon is a phone provider who offers TV and 
Internet services, and Comcast is a Cable TV company that offers phone 
and Internet services. Additionally, electircal power companies could 
also use their cables to provide services, but federal law prohibits 
that from back in the days when AT&T was the only phone company.


The bottom line is there is a hodgepodge of old laws on the books.

--
Jerry Feldman
Boston Linux and Unix
PGP key id:3BC1EB90
PGP Key fingerprint: 49E2 C52A FC5A A31F 8D66  C0AF 7CEA 30FC 3BC1 EB90

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Re: [Discuss] Competition of broadband

[Edward Ned Harvey]

> From: Ben Eisenbraun [mailto:b...@klatsch.org]
> 
> The only reason network providers build network to unprofitable areas,
i.e.
> low-density, rural areas, is because regulations force them to. It has
> absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with how much they are charging the
> high-density, profitable areas.

Agreed, but, if the business is more profitable across all types of users
and areas, then there are more profitable regions and the unprofitable areas
are smaller.  So it makes financial sense to expand more into those areas
that otherwise would have been unprofitable.  

So, can you enforce LLU only in the profitable areas, and not in the more
rural areas?  Of course there's nothing theoretically preventing the rules
from being written that way, but it would be interesting to see the state
legislature pass a rule saying that Arlington residents follow this rule,
while Lincoln residents have a different one.  Certainly not impossible -
and could be handled by more localized legislation or zoning etc etc.

Amongst the arguments against net neutrality, in favor of deregulation, is
that when you allow the ISP's to be more profitable, they expand more.  They
provide more services to more people.

Can you enforce net neutrality only in the city, and don't give it to the
country folk?

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Re: [Discuss] Competition of broadband

[Ben Eisenbraun]

On Sat, Dec 03, 2011 at 02:08:52PM -0500, Edward Ned Harvey wrote:
> > From: Dan O'Donovan
> > 
> > In the UK I could get all you can eat BB ADSL at 20Mb (advertised)
> > speeds for £75 == $117 a YEAR (including setup costs).
> > 
> > Here in the US I (can only) get comcast's $60 a month 'deal' which
> > includes TV (which I don't have). I can't get a cheaper deal, and the
> > internet speeds are often lousy. 
> 
> Of course there's a flipside to everything, and here it is.  By lowering
> costs to consumers, of course you're benefitting the consumers and reducing
> the benefit to the providers.  The providers are then not as willing to
> extend out to rural areas as they otherwise would have been.

The only reason network providers build network to unprofitable areas, i.e.
low-density, rural areas, is because regulations force them to. It has
absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with how much they are charging the
high-density, profitable areas.

Local-loop unbundling (as they call it in the UK) is just a way of using
regulations to enforce a free market where providers have to compete on
service, price and features, and can't rely on being the largest company or
first to market or owning the most politicians in order to compete.

-b

--
you must do the thing you think you cannot do.   
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Re: [Discuss] Competition of broadband

[Edward Ned Harvey]

> From: discuss-bounces+blu=nedharvey@blu.org [mailto:discuss-
> bounces+blu=nedharvey@blu.org] On Behalf Of Dan O'Donovan
> 
> In the UK I could get all you can eat BB ADSL at 20Mb (advertised) speeds
for
> £75 == $117 a YEAR (including setup costs).
> 
> Here in the US I (can only) get comcast's $60 a month 'deal' which
includes TV
> (which I don't have). I can't get a cheaper deal, and the internet speeds
are
> often lousy. 

Of course there's a flipside to everything, and here it is.  By lowering
costs to consumers, of course you're benefitting the consumers and reducing
the benefit to the providers.  The providers are then not as willing to
extend out to rural areas as they otherwise would have been.  (They also
employ fewer people, which is a separate issue that often carries political
implications.)  And when you don't service as many people, you don't get in
some cases the same economies of scale - which means they don't grow their
backbone quite as much, etc etc etc.  Simply a less developed infrastructure
overall.

There's always a balance somewhere between two extremes, which is almost
always subjectively positive or negative based on your individual
perspective.

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Re: [Discuss] Competition of broadband

[Richard Pieri]

I see that Bill H. says that TV service isn't an issue for him, but it is one. 
In fact, TV service is the root of how broadband is deployed in Massachusetts.

Back in the 1970s, when cable TV was new around here, the MA legislature 
decided to leave service carrier choice up to individual cities and towns.  
Most towns then proceeded to pick one exclusive provider, granting the chosen 
providers a limited monopoly.  The primary reason for this is so that all 
residents have comparable TV service, particularly in the community access TV 
channels.  Two different cable companies wouldn't necessarily share community 
access facilities, after all, thus most towns picked one provider.  My town 
happened to pick Continental Cablevision.

Then Cablevision's assets in MA were acquired by MediaOne.  These assets were 
acquired in turn by Southwestern Bell along with several other cable companies 
back in 1999 or thenabouts.  The collected assets were branded "AT&T 
Broadband".  This marked the end of cable TV competition in MA.  Comcast 
acquired all of AT&T Broadband when SBC divested itself of the TV/broadband 
services.

This is what many of us are stuck with.  Comcast lobbies the various local 
governments where it operates with this tactic, "demonstrating" how competing 
cable TV providers would be detrimental to their communities.  Mayor Tom in 
particular is very, very "convinced" by Comcast's lobbying efforts.

--Rich P.
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Re: [Discuss] Competition of broadband

[Ben Eisenbraun]

On Fri, Dec 02, 2011 at 04:23:47PM -0500, Bill Horne wrote:
> On 12/2/2011 11:04 AM, Rich Braun wrote:
> > Welcome to the rise of the Chicago School of business thought, which boils
> > down to handing all the marbles to the biggest, most boastful kid with the
> > expectation that he'll create prosperity for all the rest.
> 
> If by "Chicago", you mean "Obama", please say so.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_school_of_economics

-ben

--
you never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough.

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Re: [Discuss] Competition of broadband

[Dan O'Donovan]

>> Fixing the industry to create more competition would be remarkably difficult
>> these days.
> 
> You are assuming that "the industry" needs "fixing", and I don't think "the 
> industry" is
> as monolithic or as in need of repair as you imply.

In the UK I could get all you can eat BB ADSL at 20Mb (advertised) speeds for 
£75 == $117 a YEAR (including setup costs). 

This is because of government enforced 'local-loop unbundling' - LLU - which 
basically means that the company who laid the line to my apartment don't own 
it. This LLU has encouraged competition, and I could get internets (without TV, 
phone and all that) for about the equivalent of $10 a month. AND the price 
would get lower the next year as I didn't need to 'set up'. 

Here in the US I (can only) get comcast's $60 a month 'deal' which includes TV 
(which I don't have). I can't get a cheaper deal, and the internet speeds are 
often lousy. Does the industry need 'fixing'? That's your call - but it could 
definitely work more for the consumer. 

Just my 2p

Dan O'Donovan



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Re: [Discuss] Competition of broadband

[Bill Horne]

On 12/2/2011 11:04 AM, Rich Braun wrote:

Kyle Leslie wrote:

many of the cities signed a contract with Comcast so they
would be the only provider of "Broadband" internet

Edward Ned Harvey  wrote:

This is pretty much the way all broadband is deployed nationwide,
and it's done on a per-town or per-city basis.

Hsuanyeh Chang  noted:

If that is the case, then I might be wrong.  But before AT&T was
pierced apart, how many years have they been running their
anticompetitive business, nationwide.

Welcome to the rise of the Chicago School of business thought, which boils
down to handing all the marbles to the biggest, most boastful kid with the
expectation that he'll create prosperity for all the rest.


If by "Chicago", you mean "Obama", please say so.


Another area where anti-competitive behavior came to play was in the
innovation of wireless gear:  we've all heard about how spectrum has been sold
off by the government to the highest bidder, with obvious consequences for
power of big companies over small ones.  But even before that debacle, big
equipment makers were out buying up and shutting down innovators of
medium-range wireless gear.


Please provide specific examples of the firms that were bought up, the 
innovative
technologies that they were offering or working on, the firms that 
bought them, and

proof that the buyers suppressed the technologies involved.


WiFi is not practical for deployment over large
geographic areas, a fact which some entrepreneurs and city boosters didn't
really grasp until a lot of sweat&  money had been wasted.  Ten to twelve
years ago there were a handful of companies which made gear with ranges of 1
to 15 miles, vastly more practical than WiFi and more comparable to the 3G
gear we see deployed today.  Fastened to the chimney of a house I once owned
in Somerville, you can still see the antenna for one of those gadgets which
brought me home Internet for a brief period back then:  it was line-of-sight
to One Financial Center (the building which symbolically rises over the south
side of today's Occupy Boston site) where one of those little-guy wireless
companies struggled to build a business before folding in the face of the big
guys.


IMNSHO, they folded because they couldn't get their signals to enough 
customers. In
roughly the 1995 time frame, NYNEX Corp. attempted to implement a TV 
distribution
system based on Multipoint-Distribution-System (MDS) types of 
technology. The
corporation took a bath on the project, because New England has too many 
trees
and hills and rocks in the way between Boston and the suburban buyers 
who have

cash to spend on entertainment. Every possible combination of transmitter
location(s) and available paths came up against the same bottleneck: the 
terrain
in the Greater Boston area does not allow for line-of-sight connections 
to a

majority of home-mounted antennas.

As it happens, i could have told NYNEX that from personal experience: I 
was a Founding
Director of the New England TCP Association during it's rebirth in 1994, 
and I spent month
after month poring over topographic charts, trying to find paths for 
microwave data links

between Amateur Radio digital repeater sites. They just aren't there.

The only viable "line of sight" in this area is to the Clarke Belt, and 
that's why

Dish Network and DirectTV are still in business.


Fixing the industry to create more competition would be remarkably difficult
these days.


You are assuming that "the industry" needs "fixing", and I don't think 
"the industry" is

as monolithic or as in need of repair as you imply.

* TV is a non-issue, at least to me: I could care less which tv shows my 
neighbors do, or
don't, have a choice of seeing, whether over-the-air, via-cable, or 
IP-based. Although
I still have a TV antenna and a DTV converter box that I bought with a 
government

coupon, I have my ten-year-old TV on for less than three hours per week.
After a certain age, you will realize that IT'S ALL THE SAME.

* Telephone access is not a factor; since cellular phones still compete 
with regulated
landlines for those who know the value of a dollar, and I could care 
less if some Yuppie
can or cannot watch episodes of "Dancing In The Stable" on his 
Inch-and-a-half screen.


* Internet is the only area of concern to me, but I don't see any 
concentration in that
segment affecting /ME/, because I don't rely on the world-wide-wait for 
anything
that makes money for any media conglomerate.  I don't foresee email 
becoming
restricted to the point that either I or any business user would be 
affected: it's
simply too valuable a tool for business users to tolerate any change 
from the

status quo.


It's common for a big company to buy up and monopolize a piece of spectrum,
creating an artificial shortage, and then to go around to property owners and
write monopolistic contracts controlling all the best antenna and tower
locations.  (Invariably, the company will demand exclusive access:  if a
buil

Re: [Discuss] Competition of broadband

[Rich Braun]

Kyle Leslie wrote:
>> many of the cities signed a contract with Comcast so they
>> would be the only provider of "Broadband" internet

Edward Ned Harvey  wrote:
>> This is pretty much the way all broadband is deployed nationwide,
>> and it's done on a per-town or per-city basis.

Hsuanyeh Chang  noted:
> If that is the case, then I might be wrong.  But before AT&T was
> pierced apart, how many years have they been running their
> anticompetitive business, nationwide.

Welcome to the rise of the Chicago School of business thought, which boils
down to handing all the marbles to the biggest, most boastful kid with the
expectation that he'll create prosperity for all the rest.

The last-mile wiring got handed to big corporations by the Telecom Act of 1996
and by the Bush-43 administration's FCC policies.  At the time I tracked
roughly 100 New England-area providers of Internet access; almost all of them
have been absorbed into bigger companies or shut down once the major carriers
consolidated control over premises access for dry-pair copper, coax and/or
fiber connections. Attempts to create national companies to create clout in
purchases of dry-pair copper went for naught (Covad, Northpoint were squeezed
out by delaying tactics and database inadequacies by the phone companies --
installation and repairs were an utter nightmare).  Similar efforts to work
with cable companies went nowhere.

Another area where anti-competitive behavior came to play was in the
innovation of wireless gear:  we've all heard about how spectrum has been sold
off by the government to the highest bidder, with obvious consequences for
power of big companies over small ones.  But even before that debacle, big
equipment makers were out buying up and shutting down innovators of
medium-range wireless gear.  WiFi is not practical for deployment over large
geographic areas, a fact which some entrepreneurs and city boosters didn't
really grasp until a lot of sweat & money had been wasted.  Ten to twelve
years ago there were a handful of companies which made gear with ranges of 1
to 15 miles, vastly more practical than WiFi and more comparable to the 3G
gear we see deployed today.  Fastened to the chimney of a house I once owned
in Somerville, you can still see the antenna for one of those gadgets which
brought me home Internet for a brief period back then:  it was line-of-sight
to One Financial Center (the building which symbolically rises over the south
side of today's Occupy Boston site) where one of those little-guy wireless
companies struggled to build a business before folding in the face of the big
guys.

Fixing the industry to create more competition would be remarkably difficult
these days.  My state rep hosted a gathering last night (running in a special
election for state senate) and while our discussion touched on a lot of
things, I didn't bring this one up.  The state has its fingers in the pie only
to provide (minimal) regulatory control over last-mile telephone rates and to
tax telephone poles and tangible assets; cities control telephone pole and
underground conduit locations, and establish contracts for cable-company
products including rates; the feds control spectrum, anti-trust law, carrier
"neutrality" which has become a joke, and interstate carrier connections.

It's common for a big company to buy up and monopolize a piece of spectrum,
creating an artificial shortage, and then to go around to property owners and
write monopolistic contracts controlling all the best antenna and tower
locations.  (Invariably, the company will demand exclusive access:  if a
building owner does business with, e.g., Sprint--the contract will be breached
if the owner signs with, e.g., T-Mobile.)  That's why Verizon's wireless
service works best here, and why no amount of money spent by another company
can ever achieve a truly competitive cell-phone offering.  So Verizon can
charge whatever it wants (optimized, as any monopoly does, to pull in the most
consumers can afford before dropping service entirely), and the prices have
nothing to do with the underlying cost of operations.

In order to reform anything, you'd really need to come up with a
national-level policy like in some other countries.  But in this country I
just don't see an even remotely legal or practical way to accomplish that.

-rich


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