Re: Internet access in Japan (was Re: BitTorrent swarms have a deadly bite on broadband nets)
On Oct 24, 2007, at 8:11 PM, Steve Gibbard wrote: On Wed, 24 Oct 2007, Rod Beck wrote: On Wednesday 24 October 2007 05:36, Henry Yen wrote: On Tue, Oct 23, 2007 at 09:20:49AM -0400, Leo Bicknell wrote: Why are no major us builders installing FTTH today? Greenfield should be the easiest, and major builders like Pulte, Centex and the like should be eager to offer it; but don't. Well, Verizon seems to be making heavy bets on replacing significant chunks of old copper plant with FTTH. Here's a recent FiOS announcement: Linkname: Verizon discovers symmetry, offers 20/20 symmetrical FiOS service URL: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071023-verizon-discovers- symmetry-of fers-2020-symmetrical-fios-service.html While probably more good than bad, it is my understanding that when Verizon (and others) provide FTTH (fiber to the home) they cut or physically disconnect all other connections to that residence. so much for any choice... Exactly. And because they installed fiber, the FCC has ruled that they do not have to provide unbundled network elements to competitors. It's this last bit that seems to be leading to lots of complaints, and it's the earlier pricing of unbundled network elements at or above the cost of complete service packages that many CLECs and competitive ISPs blamed for their demise. Some like to see big conspiracies here, but I'm not convinced that it wasn't just a matter of bad planning on the parts of the ISPs and CLECs, perhaps brought on by bad incentives in the law. The US government decided there should be a competitive market for phone services. They were concerned about the big advantage in already built out infrastructure the incumbent phone companies had -- infrastructure that had been built with money from their monopolies -- so they required them to share. This meant it was pretty easy to start a DSL company that used the ILEC's copper, but seemed to provide little incentive for new telecom companies to build their own last mile infrastructure. Once the ILECs caught on to the importance of this new Internet thing, that meant the ISPs and the new phone companies were entirely dependent on their biggest competitor for services they needed to keep functioning. The new providers were vulnerable on all sorts of fronts controlled by their established competitors -- pricing, installation procedures, service quality, repair times, service availability, etc. The failure of the new entrants seems almost inevitable, and given that they hadn't actually built any infrastructure, they didn't leave behind much of anything for those with better plans to buy out of bankruptcy. Consider the implications of this line of reasoning. A rational would-be competitor should expect to build out a new, completely independent parallel (national) facilities platform as the price of admission to the market. Since we've abandoned all faith in the use of of laws or regulation to discipline the incumbent, we should expect each successive national overbuild to be accomplished in a very hostile environment (Robert De Niro's role in the movie Brazil comes to mind here). A rational new entrant should plan to deliver service that is substitutable -- i.e., can compete on cost, capacity, and performance terms -- for services delivered over one or more incumbent optical fiber networks -- artifacts of previous attempts to enter the market. The minimum activation requirements for the new/ latest access facilities platform will create an additional increment of transport capacity that is vast (infinite would be only a slight exaggeration) relative to all conceivable end user demand for the foreseeable future. The existence of (n) other near-infinite increments of parallel/substitutable access transport capacity should not be considered when assessing the expected demand for this new capacity. A rational investor should understand that capex committed to this new venture could well be a total loss, but should be reassured that the new nth increment of near-infinite capacity that they help to create will be useful in some way to whomever subsequently buys it up for pennies on the dollar. The existence of (n) other near-infinite increments of parallel access transport capacity should not be considered when estimating the relative merits of this or future access facility investments. Every household will become equivalent to a core urban data center, with multiple independent entrance facilities -- unless of course the new platform owner determines that it would be it more rational to rip the new facilities -- or the old facilities -- out. (Any apparent similarity between this arrangement and Mao's Great Leap Forward-era backyard blast furnaces is purely coincidental). A rational government should welcome the vast increase in investment created by successive
Re: Internet access in Japan (was Re: BitTorrent swarms have a deadly bite on broadband nets)
On Tue, Oct 23, 2007 at 09:20:49AM -0400, Leo Bicknell wrote: Why are no major us builders installing FTTH today? Greenfield should be the easiest, and major builders like Pulte, Centex and the like should be eager to offer it; but don't. Well, Verizon seems to be making heavy bets on replacing significant chunks of old copper plant with FTTH. Here's a recent FiOS announcement: Linkname: Verizon discovers symmetry, offers 20/20 symmetrical FiOS service URL: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071023-verizon-discovers-symmetry-offers-2020-symmetrical-fios-service.html -- Henry Yen Aegis Information Systems, Inc. Senior Systems Programmer Hicksville, New York
Re: Internet access in Japan (was Re: BitTorrent swarms have a deadly bite on broadband nets)
I did consulting work for NTT in 2001 and 2002 and visited their Tokyo = headquarters twice. NTT has two ILEC divisions, NTT East and NTT West. = The ILEC management told me in conversations that there was no money in = fiber-to-the-home; the entire rollout was due to government pressure and = was well below a competitive rate of return. Similarly, NTT kept staff = they did not need becuase the government wanted to maintain high = employment in Japan and avoid the social stress that results from = massive layoffs. Mmm hmm. That sounds somewhat like the system we were promised here in America. We were told by the ILEC's that it was going to be very expensive and that they had little incentive to do it, so we offered them a package of incentives - some figure as much as $200 billion worth. See http://www.newnetworks.com/broadbandscandals.htm You should not assume that 'Japanese capitalism' works = like American capitalism. That could well be; it appears that American capitalism is much better at lobbying the political system. They eventually found ways way to take their money and run without actually delivering on the promises they made. I'll bet the American system paid out a lot better for a lot less work. Anyways, it's clear to me that any high bandwidth deployment is an immense investment for a society, and one of the really interesting meta-questions is whether or not such an investment will still be paying off in ten years, or twenty, or... The POTS network, which merely had to transmit voice, and never had to deal with substantial growth of the underlying bandwidth (mainly moving from analog to digital trunks, which increased but then fixed the bandwidth), was a long-term investment that has paid off for the telcos over the years, even if there was a lot of wailing along the way. However, one of the notable things about data is that our needs have continued to grow. Twenty years ago, a 9600 bps Internet connection might have served a large community, where it was mostly used for messaging and an occasional interactive session. Fifteen years ago, a 14.4 bps was a nice connection for a single user. Ten years ago, a 1Mbps connection was pretty sweet (maybe a bit less for DSL, a bit more for cable). Things pretty much go awry at that point, and we no longer see such impressive progression in average end-user Internet connection speeds. This didn't stop speed increases elsewhere, but it did put the brakes on rapid increases here. If we had received the promised FTTH network, we'd have speeds of up to 45Mbps, which would definitely be in-line with previous growth (and the growth of computing and storage technologies). At a LAN networking level, we've gone from 10Mbps to 100Mbps to 1Gbps as the standard ethernet interface that you might find on computers and networking devices. So the question is, had things gone differently, would 45Mbps still be adequate? And would it be adequate in 10 or 20 years? And what effect would that have had overall? Certainly it would be a driving force for continued rapid growth in both networking and Internet technologies. As has been noted here in the past, current Ethernet (40G/100G) standards efforts haven't been really keeping pace with historical speed growth trends. Has the failure to deploy true high-speed broadband in a large and key market such as the US resulted in less pressure on vendors by networks for the next generations of high-speed networking? Or, getting back to the actual situation here in the US, what implications does the continued evolution of US broadband have for other network operators? As the ILEC's and cablecos continue to grow and dominate the end-user Internet market, what's the outlook on other independent networks, content providers, etc.? The implications of the so-called net neutrality issues are just one example of future issues. ... JG -- Joe Greco - sol.net Network Services - Milwaukee, WI - http://www.sol.net We call it the 'one bite at the apple' rule. Give me one chance [and] then I won't contact you again. - Direct Marketing Ass'n position on e-mail spam(CNN) With 24 million small businesses in the US alone, that's way too many apples.
Re: Internet access in Japan (was Re: BitTorrent swarms have a deadly bite on broadband nets)
On Wednesday 24 October 2007 05:36, Henry Yen wrote: On Tue, Oct 23, 2007 at 09:20:49AM -0400, Leo Bicknell wrote: Why are no major us builders installing FTTH today? Greenfield should be the easiest, and major builders like Pulte, Centex and the like should be eager to offer it; but don't. Well, Verizon seems to be making heavy bets on replacing significant chunks of old copper plant with FTTH. Here's a recent FiOS announcement: Linkname: Verizon discovers symmetry, offers 20/20 symmetrical FiOS service URL: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071023-verizon-discovers-symmetry-of fers-2020-symmetrical-fios-service.html While probably more good than bad, it is my understanding that when Verizon (and others) provide FTTH (fiber to the home) they cut or physically disconnect all other connections to that residence. so much for any choice... -- Larry Smith SysAd ECSIS.NET [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Internet access in Japan (was Re: BitTorrent swarms have a deadly bite on broadband nets)
In the future, people are not going to believe that we permitted this to happen. Coming soon: your plumbing will be disconnected. But never fear: an Evian vending machine will delivered to every deserving household... TV On Oct 24, 2007, at 2:39 PM, Larry Smith wrote: On Wednesday 24 October 2007 05:36, Henry Yen wrote: On Tue, Oct 23, 2007 at 09:20:49AM -0400, Leo Bicknell wrote: Why are no major us builders installing FTTH today? Greenfield should be the easiest, and major builders like Pulte, Centex and the like should be eager to offer it; but don't. Well, Verizon seems to be making heavy bets on replacing significant chunks of old copper plant with FTTH. Here's a recent FiOS announcement: Linkname: Verizon discovers symmetry, offers 20/20 symmetrical FiOS service URL: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071023-verizon-discovers- symmetry-of fers-2020-symmetrical-fios-service.html While probably more good than bad, it is my understanding that when Verizon (and others) provide FTTH (fiber to the home) they cut or physically disconnect all other connections to that residence. so much for any choice... -- Larry Smith SysAd ECSIS.NET [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Internet access in Japan (was Re: BitTorrent swarms have a deadly bite on broadband nets)
While probably more good than bad, it is my understanding that when Verizon (and others) provide FTTH (fiber to the home) they cut or physically disconnect all other connections to that residence. so much for any choice... At least around here, if you tell the installer you have an alarm system they'll leave the copper alone, since your alarm system is generally using phone lines with no dial tone to connect to the monitoring station. -- Dave Pooser, ACSA Manager of Information Services Alford Media http://www.alfordmedia.com
RE: Internet access in Japan (was Re: BitTorrent swarms have a deadly bite on broadband nets)
Here's timely article: KDDI says 900k target for fibre users 'difficult' http://www.telegeography.com/cu/article.php?article_id=20215email=html Frank -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of David Andersen Sent: Monday, October 22, 2007 9:21 PM To: Leo Bicknell Cc: nanog@merit.edu Subject: Internet access in Japan (was Re: BitTorrent swarms have a deadly bite on broadband nets) On Oct 22, 2007, at 9:55 PM, Leo Bicknell wrote: Having now seen the cable issue described in technical detail over and over, I have a question. At the most recent Nanog several people talked about 100Mbps symmetric access in Japan for $40 US. This leads me to two questions: 1) Is that accurate? 2) What technology to the use to offer the service at that price point? 3) Is there any chance US providers could offer similar technologies at similar prices, or are there significant differences (regulation, distance etc) that prevent it from being viable? http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/28/ AR2007082801990.html The Washington Post article claims that: Japan has surged ahead of the United States on the wings of better wire and more aggressive government regulation, industry analysts say. The copper wire used to hook up Japanese homes is newer and runs in shorter loops to telephone exchanges than in the United States. ... a) Dense, urban area (less distance to cover) b) Fresh new wire installed after WWII c) Regulatory environment that forced telecos to provide capacity to Internet providers Followed by a recent explosion in fiber-to-the-home buildout by NTT. About 8.8 million Japanese homes have fiber lines -- roughly nine times the number in the United States. -- particularly impressive when you count that in per-capita terms. Nice article. Makes you wish... -Dave
RE: Internet access in Japan (was Re: BitTorrent swarms have a deadly bite on broadband nets)
On Wednesday 24 October 2007 05:36, Henry Yen wrote: On Tue, Oct 23, 2007 at 09:20:49AM -0400, Leo Bicknell wrote: Why are no major us builders installing FTTH today? Greenfield should be the easiest, and major builders like Pulte, Centex and the like should be eager to offer it; but don't. Well, Verizon seems to be making heavy bets on replacing significant chunks of old copper plant with FTTH. Here's a recent FiOS announcement: Linkname: Verizon discovers symmetry, offers 20/20 symmetrical FiOS service URL: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071023-verizon-discovers-symmetry-of fers-2020-symmetrical-fios-service.html While probably more good than bad, it is my understanding that when Verizon (and others) provide FTTH (fiber to the home) they cut or physically disconnect all other connections to that residence. so much for any choice... Exactly. And because they installed fiber, the FCC has ruled that they do not have to provide unbundled network elements to competitors. I expect that when you look at the population of broadband users, it is only a tiny percentage that really need fiber to their residence. Let's remember that one of the main reasons that broadband displaced dial up was that it is always available and does not interfer with phone service. - R.
Re: Internet access in Japan (was Re: BitTorrent swarms have a deadly bite on broadband nets)
Frank Bulk wrote: Here's timely article: KDDI says 900k target for fibre users 'difficult' http://www.telegeography.com/cu/article.php?article_id=20215email=html KDDI isn't the only ftfth provider... NTT east/west (flets), usen, softbank/yahooBB and others all play in that space. 100/100 from softbank appears to be ~7200 yen while 50/12 dsl is about 4500 yen if you have a phone line as well... ;) Obviously if you live out in the boonies like Jared, even in japan your options are pretty slow. The Onsen I visited in fuji-hakone 2 years ago had only 3Mb/s for example. Frank -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of David Andersen Sent: Monday, October 22, 2007 9:21 PM To: Leo Bicknell Cc: nanog@merit.edu Subject: Internet access in Japan (was Re: BitTorrent swarms have a deadly bite on broadband nets) On Oct 22, 2007, at 9:55 PM, Leo Bicknell wrote: Having now seen the cable issue described in technical detail over and over, I have a question. At the most recent Nanog several people talked about 100Mbps symmetric access in Japan for $40 US. This leads me to two questions: 1) Is that accurate? 2) What technology to the use to offer the service at that price point? 3) Is there any chance US providers could offer similar technologies at similar prices, or are there significant differences (regulation, distance etc) that prevent it from being viable? http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/28/ AR2007082801990.html The Washington Post article claims that: Japan has surged ahead of the United States on the wings of better wire and more aggressive government regulation, industry analysts say. The copper wire used to hook up Japanese homes is newer and runs in shorter loops to telephone exchanges than in the United States. ... a) Dense, urban area (less distance to cover) b) Fresh new wire installed after WWII c) Regulatory environment that forced telecos to provide capacity to Internet providers Followed by a recent explosion in fiber-to-the-home buildout by NTT. About 8.8 million Japanese homes have fiber lines -- roughly nine times the number in the United States. -- particularly impressive when you count that in per-capita terms. Nice article. Makes you wish... -Dave
RE: Internet access in Japan (was Re: BitTorrent swarms have a deadly bite on broadband nets)
On Wed, 24 Oct 2007, Rod Beck wrote: On Wednesday 24 October 2007 05:36, Henry Yen wrote: On Tue, Oct 23, 2007 at 09:20:49AM -0400, Leo Bicknell wrote: Why are no major us builders installing FTTH today? Greenfield should be the easiest, and major builders like Pulte, Centex and the like should be eager to offer it; but don't. Well, Verizon seems to be making heavy bets on replacing significant chunks of old copper plant with FTTH. Here's a recent FiOS announcement: Linkname: Verizon discovers symmetry, offers 20/20 symmetrical FiOS service URL: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071023-verizon-discovers-symmetry-of fers-2020-symmetrical-fios-service.html While probably more good than bad, it is my understanding that when Verizon (and others) provide FTTH (fiber to the home) they cut or physically disconnect all other connections to that residence. so much for any choice... Exactly. And because they installed fiber, the FCC has ruled that they do not have to provide unbundled network elements to competitors. It's this last bit that seems to be leading to lots of complaints, and it's the earlier pricing of unbundled network elements at or above the cost of complete service packages that many CLECs and competitive ISPs blamed for their demise. Some like to see big conspiracies here, but I'm not convinced that it wasn't just a matter of bad planning on the parts of the ISPs and CLECs, perhaps brought on by bad incentives in the law. The US government decided there should be a competitive market for phone services. They were concerned about the big advantage in already built out infrastructure the incumbent phone companies had -- infrastructure that had been built with money from their monopolies -- so they required them to share. This meant it was pretty easy to start a DSL company that used the ILEC's copper, but seemed to provide little incentive for new telecom companies to build their own last mile infrastructure. Once the ILECs caught on to the importance of this new Internet thing, that meant the ISPs and the new phone companies were entirely dependent on their biggest competitor for services they needed to keep functioning. The new providers were vulnerable on all sorts of fronts controlled by their established competitors -- pricing, installation procedures, service quality, repair times, service availability, etc. The failure of the new entrants seems almost inevitable, and given that they hadn't actually built any infrastructure, they didn't leave behind much of anything for those with better plans to buy out of bankruptcy. I don't think this was what was intended. My impression is that the wholesale copper was supposed to be a temporary bridge to allow the new entrants time to build infrastructure of their own. That's why the rules about sharing didn't apply to infrastructure built by the ILECs later. But new entrants building their own infrastructure generally didn't happen. Instead, the end-user ISP operators I was dealing with at the time generally seemed outraged that the evil phone companies, which should have been there to sell wholesale services to them, were instead competing in their markets. Unfortunately for them, the phone companies not only undercut them on cost, but generally built better networks. Given the impending obsolescence of the phone companies' traditional businesses, what else would the phone companies have been expected to do? The exception to this was the cable companies. They already had some physical plant of their own, but they invested a lot of money in a lot of new construction. Many of them didn't do financially well on the deals, but even those who ran out of money left behind infrastructure that is now effectively competing. This isn't to say the original encouragement of CLECs using ILEC copper in the 1996 telecommunications act wasn't without benefits. I rather doubt the ILECs would have gotten as interested in DSL as they did, if there hadn't been the threat of losing the business to competition. But given that improvements in speed since the initial crushing of the upstarts have been mostly limited to trying to match the capabilities of the cable companies, perhaps it wasn't the best strategy for the long term. If those who want to compete need to build some infrastructure of their own, and if anybody is successful in doing so, that should have a much bigger impact in terms of putting long term pressure on the ILECs to provide better service. -Steve
RE: Internet access in Japan (was Re: BitTorrent swarms have a deadly bite on broadband nets)
Exactly. And because they installed fiber, the FCC has ruled that they do not have to provide unbundled network elements to competitors. It's this last bit that seems to be leading to lots of complaints, and it's the earlier pricing of unbundled network elements at or above the cost of complete service packages that many CLECs and competitive ISPs blamed for their demise. Some like to see big conspiracies here, but I'm not convinced that it wasn't just a matter of bad planning on the parts of the ISPs and CLECs, perhaps brought on by bad incentives in the law. I don't think this was what was intended. My impression is that the wholesale copper was supposed to be a temporary bridge to allow the new entrants time to build infrastructure of their own. That's why the rules about sharing didn't apply to infrastructure built by the ILECs later. But new entrants building their own infrastructure generally didn't happen. Instead, the end-user ISP operators I was dealing with at the time generally seemed outraged that the evil phone companies, which should have been there to sell wholesale services to them, were instead competing in their markets. Unfortunately for them, the phone companies not only undercut them on cost, but generally built better networks. Given the impending obsolescence of the phone companies' traditional businesses, what else would the phone companies have been expected to do? The exception to this was the cable companies. They already had some physical plant of their own, but they invested a lot of money in a lot of new construction. Many of them didn't do financially well on the deals, but even those who ran out of money left behind infrastructure that is now effectively competing. This isn't to say the original encouragement of CLECs using ILEC copper in the 1996 telecommunications act wasn't without benefits. I rather doubt the ILECs would have gotten as interested in DSL as they did, if there hadn't been the threat of losing the business to competition. But given that improvements in speed since the initial crushing of the upstarts have been mostly limited to trying to match the capabilities of the cable companies, perhaps it wasn't the best strategy for the long term. If those who want to compete need to build some infrastructure of their own, and if anybody is successful in doing so, that should have a much bigger impact in terms of putting long term pressure on the ILECs to provide better service. That's where I disagree. The economic argument is that it is more efficient to share the Last Mile subject to rate of return constraints than for a dozen carriers to build their own Last Mile facilities. In fact, it is extremely naive to think that long term all these carriers would actually build their own Last Mile facilities. It is not economically sustainable or efficent to have massive overbuilding. Simply put, if the ILEC loses a customer to the competition, why not use the ILEC copper pair to reach that customer? Given copper pairs do have the ability to provide the services most residential customers want (except for a bloggers who insist every needs a 10 gig wave to their home), why waste scare econonomic resources to do overbuilding? In Europe unbundling has worked well and led to a highly competitive market where no such market would exist in its absence. All of this suggests that the problem was not the 1996 Telecom Act, but the ability of the incumbents to use the Courts to undermine (which they did quite successfully) and a lack of political will. You can't get away with bizarre legal interpretations on this side of the Atlantic like you can in the States. If European regulatory agencies want unbundling, they get it and the PTTs make sure it works or they are subject to more than Mickey Mouse fines a la FCC. And there is no expectation that this a stop gap measure. Unbundling will exist as long the competitors want to exist. Regards, Roderick.
Re: Internet access in Japan (was Re: BitTorrent swarms have a deadly bite on broadband nets)
On Monday 22 October 2007 19:20, David Andersen wrote: Followed by a recent explosion in fiber-to-the-home buildout by NTT. About 8.8 million Japanese homes have fiber lines -- roughly nine times the number in the United States. -- particularly impressive when you count that in per-capita terms. Recent? NTT started building the FTC buildout in the mid-90s. At least that's when the plans were first discussed. They took a bold leap back when most people were waffling about WANs and Bellcore was saying SMDS was going to be the way of the future. Now they reap the benefits, while some of us are left behind in the bandwidth ghettos of North America. :-( cheers, --dr -- World Security Pros. Cutting Edge Training, Tools, and Techniques Tokyo, Japan November 29/30 - 2007http://pacsec.jp pgpkey http://dragos.com/ kyxpgp
Re: Internet access in Japan (was Re: BitTorrent swarms have a deadly bite on broadband nets)
On Oct 23, 2007, at 9:33 AM, Dragos Ruiu wrote: On Monday 22 October 2007 19:20, David Andersen wrote: Followed by a recent explosion in fiber-to-the-home buildout by NTT. About 8.8 million Japanese homes have fiber lines -- roughly nine times the number in the United States. -- particularly impressive when you count that in per-capita terms. Recent? NTT started building the FTC buildout in the mid-90s. At least that's when the plans were first discussed. They took a bold leap back when most people were waffling about WANs and Bellcore was saying SMDS was going to be the way of the future. Now they reap the benefits, while some of us are left behind in the bandwidth ghettos of North America. :-( Actually rollout didn't begin until 2002. TV cheers, --dr -- World Security Pros. Cutting Edge Training, Tools, and Techniques Tokyo, Japan November 29/30 - 2007http://pacsec.jp pgpkey http://dragos.com/ kyxpgp
RE: Internet access in Japan (was Re: BitTorrent swarms have a deadly bite on broadband nets)
I did consulting work for NTT in 2001 and 2002 and visited their Tokyo headquarters twice. NTT has two ILEC divisions, NTT East and NTT West. The ILEC management told me in conversations that there was no money in fiber-to-the-home; the entire rollout was due to government pressure and was well below a competitive rate of return. Similarly, NTT kept staff they did not need becuase the government wanted to maintain high employment in Japan and avoid the social stress that results from massive layoffs. You should not assume that 'Japanese capitalism' works like American capitalism. It doesn't. NTT only reveals financial statistics at the aggregate level; the cross subsidies between divisions is completely hidden and this enables them to pursue the government's social objectives. Moreover, it is not clear that you should desire broadband rollout at any cost. Presumably broadband access should be justified as satisfying some net benefit criterion (benefits minus costs). A better model is the French model which generates very high broadband penetration rates and is economically rational. France has successfully forced the ILEC to open up the central offices and you now have two highly successful and publicly traded DSL providers, Neuf Cegetel and Free. The US effort failed because of silly arguments based on the equally silly notion that private property is an absolute right and that forcing the ILECs to share facilities even when they are receiving a fair return of return in a form of 'confiscation'. As always, these comments are mine and not the position of Hibernia Atlantic. Roderick S. Beck Director of EMEA Sales Hibernia Atlantic 1, Passage du Chantier, 75012 Paris http://www.hiberniaatlantic.com Wireless: 1-212-444-8829. Landline: 33-1-4346-3209. French Wireless: 33-6-14-33-48-97. AOL Messenger: GlobalBandwidth [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] ``Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.'' Albert Einstein.
Re: Internet access in Japan (was Re: BitTorrent swarms have a deadly bite on broadband nets)
Yup, matches my experience (designing/deploying AOL's swan song JP network infrastructure) during the same period. The ILECs were artifacts of the Japanese regulators' 1997 effort to relieve the last mile facilities death grip on services, ala the (1984) US MFJ / ATT breakup. The new c. 2001 pressure was possible because the Japanese gov was still NTT's largest shareholder. The same pressure that prompted FTTH rollout also delivered the metro and access facilities unbundling that begat YahooBB and ubiquitous 20-100Mbps to the home over conventional facilities -- the latter mandate being similar in form the US Telecom Act of 1996, with the minor exception that it actually worked there... TV On Oct 23, 2007, at 9:42 AM, Rod Beck wrote: I did consulting work for NTT in 2001 and 2002 and visited their Tokyo headquarters twice. NTT has two ILEC divisions, NTT East and NTT West. The ILEC management told me in conversations that there was no money in fiber-to-the-home; the entire rollout was due to government pressure and was well below a competitive rate of return. Similarly, NTT kept staff they did not need becuase the government wanted to maintain high employment in Japan and avoid the social stress that results from massive layoffs. You should not assume that 'Japanese capitalism' works like American capitalism. It doesn't. NTT only reveals financial statistics at the aggregate level; the cross subsidies between divisions is completely hidden and this enables them to pursue the government's social objectives. Moreover, it is not clear that you should desire broadband rollout at any cost. Presumably broadband access should be justified as satisfying some net benefit criterion (benefits minus costs). A better model is the French model which generates very high broadband penetration rates and is economically rational. France has successfully forced the ILEC to open up the central offices and you now have two highly successful and publicly traded DSL providers, Neuf Cegetel and Free. The US effort failed because of silly arguments based on the equally silly notion that private property is an absolute right and that forcing the ILECs to share facilities even when they are receiving a fair return of return in a form of 'confiscation'. As always, these comments are mine and not the position of Hibernia Atlantic. Roderick S. Beck Director of EMEA Sales Hibernia Atlantic 1, Passage du Chantier, 75012 Paris http://www.hiberniaatlantic.com Wireless: 1-212-444-8829. Landline: 33-1-4346-3209. French Wireless: 33-6-14-33-48-97. AOL Messenger: GlobalBandwidth [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] ``Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.'' Albert Einstein.
Re: Internet access in Japan (was Re: BitTorrent swarms have a deadly bite on broadband nets)
In a message written on Mon, Oct 22, 2007 at 10:20:49PM -0400, David Andersen wrote: The Washington Post article claims that: [snip] b) Fresh new wire installed after WWII I have to wonder what percentage of the population is using phone lines installed before WWII? I live in a suburb that didn't exist 20 years ago other than maybe 50 buildings around the train depot. My neighborhood did not exist 10 years ago, it was a cow pasture. Where's all this old cable? While I'm sure you can find some row houses in $big_city that have old copper I find it hard to believe that pre WWII wire is holding us back. Wasn't it Sprint back in like 1982 or 1984 made a big deal about their entire long haul network being converted to fiber? In a message written on Mon, Oct 22, 2007 at 09:44:34PM -0500, Frank Bulk wrote: A lot of the MDUs and apartment buildings in Japan are doing fiber to the basement and then VDSL or VDSL2 in the building, or even Ethernet. That's how symmetrical bandwidth is possible. Considering that much of the population does not live in high-rises, this doesn't easily apply to the U.S. population. While the US does not have as high a percentage in high rises, let's look at the part that is in the right place. What percentage of US high rises have fiber to the basement and high speed Internet offered to residents? Shouldn't NYC be on par with Tokyo by this point? Chicago? Miami? Doesn't the same model work for low rise apartments, the kind found in suburbia all across the US? Why don't any of them have building provided services, rather relying on cable modems for ADSL all the way back to the CO? Why are no major us builders installing FTTH today? Greenfield should be the easiest, and major builders like Pulte, Centex and the like should be eager to offer it; but don't. -- Leo Bicknell - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - CCIE 3440 PGP keys at http://www.ufp.org/~bicknell/ Read TMBG List - [EMAIL PROTECTED], www.tmbg.org pgpNxh4Oz1PEV.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Internet access in Japan (was Re: BitTorrent swarms have a deadly bite on broadband nets)
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On Oct 23, 2007, at 3:20 PM, Leo Bicknell wrote: In a message written on Mon, Oct 22, 2007 at 10:20:49PM -0400, David Andersen wrote: The Washington Post article claims that: [snip] b) Fresh new wire installed after WWII I have to wonder what percentage of the population is using phone lines installed before WWII? I live in a suburb that didn't exist 20 years ago other than maybe 50 buildings around the train depot. My neighborhood did not exist 10 years ago, it was a cow pasture. Where's all this old cable? While I'm sure you can find some row houses in $big_city that have old copper I find it hard to believe that pre WWII wire is holding us back. Wasn't it Sprint back in like 1982 or 1984 made a big deal about their entire long haul network being converted to fiber? In a message written on Mon, Oct 22, 2007 at 09:44:34PM -0500, Frank Bulk wrote: A lot of the MDUs and apartment buildings in Japan are doing fiber to the basement and then VDSL or VDSL2 in the building, or even Ethernet. That's how symmetrical bandwidth is possible. Considering that much of the population does not live in high-rises, this doesn't easily apply to the U.S. population. Ever been in an earthquake in Japan? The population density is indeed much higher, but it's not primarily because of concentration in very large highrises, but rather because of much smaller floorspace per capita, and no yards to speak of. You're mixing JP up with places like HK and KR... TV While the US does not have as high a percentage in high rises, let's look at the part that is in the right place. What percentage of US high rises have fiber to the basement and high speed Internet offered to residents? Shouldn't NYC be on par with Tokyo by this point? Chicago? Miami? Doesn't the same model work for low rise apartments, the kind found in suburbia all across the US? Why don't any of them have building provided services, rather relying on cable modems for ADSL all the way back to the CO? Why are no major us builders installing FTTH today? Greenfield should be the easiest, and major builders like Pulte, Centex and the like should be eager to offer it; but don't. -- Leo Bicknell - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - CCIE 3440 PGP keys at http://www.ufp.org/~bicknell/ Read TMBG List - [EMAIL PROTECTED], www.tmbg.org -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.7 (Darwin) iD8DBQFHHf7PUHTO4sHEFsERArHEAJ9rx0Qu5NxAMZVLxQUllnMT+KpUdQCeNZsG DtZM0QTtIajf1Hp7AEFVjjo= =sMNp -END PGP SIGNATURE-
Re: Internet access in Japan (was Re: BitTorrent swarms have a deadly bite on broadband nets)
David Andersen wrote: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/28/AR2007082801990.html snip Followed by a recent explosion in fiber-to-the-home buildout by NTT. About 8.8 million Japanese homes have fiber lines -- roughly nine times the number in the United States. -- particularly impressive when you count that in per-capita terms. Nice article. Makes you wish... For the days when ATT ran all the phones? I don't think so...
Re: Internet access in Japan (was Re: BitTorrent swarms have a deadly bite on broadband nets)
On Oct 22, 2007, at 11:02 PM, Jeff Shultz wrote: David Andersen wrote: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/28/ AR2007082801990.html snip Followed by a recent explosion in fiber-to-the-home buildout by NTT. About 8.8 million Japanese homes have fiber lines -- roughly nine times the number in the United States. -- particularly impressive when you count that in per-capita terms. Nice article. Makes you wish... For the days when ATT ran all the phones? I don't think so... For an environment that encouraged long-term investments with high payoff instead of short term profits. For symmetric 100Mbps residential broadband. But no - I was as happy as everyone else when the CLECs emerged and provided PRI service at 1/3rd the rate of the ILECs, and I really don't care to return to the days of having to rent a telephone from Ma Bell. :) But it's not clear that you can't have both, though doing it in the US with our vastly larger land area is obviously much more difficult. The same thing happened with the CLECs, really -- they provided great, advanced service to customers in major metropolitan areas where the profits were sweet, and left the outlying, low-profit areas to the ILECs. Universal access is a tougher nut to crack. -Dave PGP.sig Description: This is a digitally signed message part
Re: Internet access in Japan (was Re: BitTorrent swarms have a deadly bite on broadband nets)
Once upon a time, David Andersen [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: But no - I was as happy as everyone else when the CLECs emerged and provided PRI service at 1/3rd the rate of the ILECs Not only was that CLEC service concetrated in higher-density areas, the PRI prices were often not based in reality. There were a bunch of CLECs with dot.com-style business plans (and they're no longer around). Lucent was practically giving away switches and switch management (and lost big $$$ because of it). CLECs also sold PRIs to ISPs based on reciprocal compensation contracts with the ILECs that were based on incorrect assumptions (that most calls would be from the CLEC to the ILEC); rates based on that were bound to increase as those contracts expired. Back when dialup was king, CLECs selling cheap PRIs to ISPs seemed like a sure-fire way to print money. -- Chris Adams [EMAIL PROTECTED] Systems and Network Administrator - HiWAAY Internet Services I don't speak for anybody but myself - that's enough trouble.
