subject:"RE\: Some truth about Comcast \- WikiLeaks style"

- Original Message -
 From: Leo Bicknell bickn...@ufp.org

 After looking at many models I think Australia might be on to
 something. The model is that a quasi-government monopoly provides
 the last mile physical wire, but is unable to sell services on it.
 Basically they only provide UNE's. Then, at the switching center
 any ISP can pick up those UNE's and provide services. Competition
 to the end user, while the last mile is always a single povider
 limiting the issues above. Many cities are trying the same with
 electric service, one companie provides the transport infrastructure
 and when you select a generation provider.

That's what I've been advocating, what Verizon *really* *REALLY* doesn't 
want to happen (to the point that they've been agitating -- successfully
in some cases -- for state laws to forbid it), and what I think, based on
not a lot of evidence, Google is quietly encouraging with their Big Secret
Project.

Last mile fiber *really is* a Natural Monopoly.

And yeah, that's roughly how power competition was handled as well.

Cheers,
-- jra

Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style

- Original Message -
 From: JC Dill jcdill.li...@gmail.com

 On 19/12/10 8:31 PM, Chris Adams wrote:
  Look up pictures of New York City in the early days of electricty.
  There were streets where you couldn't hardly see the sky because of
  all
  the wires on the poles.
 
 Can you provide a link to a photo of this situation?

Sure, though they're a bit harder to find on the web than you'd
think; it took me almost 20 minutes to find this one when I 
wrote the piece:

http://baylink.pitas.com/#LASTMILE

Cheers,
-- jra

Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style

2010-12-23 Thread Andrew Koch

On Thu, Dec 23, 2010 at 10:03, Jay Ashworth j...@baylink.com wrote:
 - Original Message -
 From: JC Dill jcdill.li...@gmail.com

 On 19/12/10 8:31 PM, Chris Adams wrote:
  Look up pictures of New York City in the early days of electricty.
  There were streets where you couldn't hardly see the sky because of
  all
  the wires on the poles.
 
 Can you provide a link to a photo of this situation?

 Sure, though they're a bit harder to find on the web than you'd
 think; it took me almost 20 minutes to find this one when I
 wrote the piece:

 http://baylink.pitas.com/#LASTMILE


Those look more like power lines, with a substation in the background.

Try this:
http://www.copper.org/publications/newsletters/innovations/1998/05/images/historical001.jpg
from 
http://www.copper.org/publications/newsletters/innovations/1998/05/evolution.html

or a drawing:
http://blog.silive.com/sinotebook/2008/12/Broadway-1885.jpg

Andrew

Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style

2010-12-23 Thread Andrew Koch

On Thu, Dec 23, 2010 at 10:14, Andrew Koch andrew.k...@gawul.net wrote:

 Those look more like power lines, with a substation in the background.

Helps to read the whole thing; you were talking about power lines.  I
missed a few messages when this took a turn off from last mile
communications access.

Anyway, found one more from Bangkok, which shows what you might be
asking for with competing last mile technologies.

http://www.vibrant.com/images/cables/bangkok-wires-nurmi.jpg

Andrew

Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style

- Original Message -
 From: Robert Bonomi bon...@mail.r-bonomi.com

 Overbuild is practical *ONLY* where: (a) the population density is
 high,lowering 'per customer' costs, and (b) service 'penetration' is high
 enough that the active subscriber base (as distinct from 'potential'
 subscribers) sufficient to support the 'overhead' of two complete, parallel,
 physical plants. This tends to be 'self-limiting', to up-scale, high-density
 housing, neighborhoods. The 'raw economics' of the situation may well be
 distorted by local government 'intrference' -- e.g., requiring a provider 
 serve
 _all_ households within arbitrary boundaries, rather than just 'low hanging
 fruit' areas.

Yup.

And that's just another argument in favor of muni fiber -- since it's municipal,
it will by definition serve every address, and since it's monopoly, it will
enable competition by making it practical for competitors to start up, since
they'll have trival access to all comers.

And since D-CATV is pretty much delivered over IP these days *anyway*,
it won't even be technically difficult for cable providers to hook up
customers over such a backbone.

Gee... I wonder if the teeny little town I live in wants to be the first
in our county to do that.  :-)

Cheers,
-- jra

Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style

2010-12-23 Thread Joel Jaeggli

On 12/23/10 9:19 AM, Jay Ashworth wrote:
 And that's just another argument in favor of muni fiber -- since it's 
 municipal,
 it will by definition serve every address, and since it's monopoly, it will
 enable competition by making it practical for competitors to start up, since
 they'll have trival access to all comers.

Muni-fiber builds do not by definition serve every address.

Municipalities have their own priorities which tend to involve
police/fire water treatment/waste handling. Having worked on
fiber-builds/swaps with a couple of municipalities, and the corporations
that they set up to manage their facilites it's one thing when it runds
down the street in front of your building and quite another when you
want to extend a spur to some far flug location on the edge of town. The
fact that I can get a wavelength to county dump in Eugene OR the
composting facility in Palo Alto doesn't really do anything for the
residential access market.

Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style

2010-12-23 Thread John Osmon

On Thu, Dec 23, 2010 at 10:17:46AM -0800, Joel Jaeggli wrote:
[...]
 The fact that I can get a wavelength to county dump in Eugene OR the
 composting facility in Palo Alto doesn't really do anything for the
 residential access market.

Why not?

You have to start with connectivity *somewhere*.  If the economics work
out, *someone* will build the residential access market from those 
access points. 

The first phone in a community was boon to everyone.  Later, the local
communications were build out to encompass others.  The last mile ended
up getting regulated to ensure everyone had access to the new
technology.

Unfortunately, the regulatory regime got based on the service (voice)
rather than the infrastructure -- because no one ever guessed that
the two would be separable.

Some places could have local infrastructure monopolies run by
municpalities, others might be run by local co-ops, the state, county,
or even the feds.  And they all might start with municipal fiber to
the city dump that allows others access lamdas...

Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style

- Original Message -
 From: John Osmon jos...@rigozsaurus.com

 On Thu, Dec 23, 2010 at 10:17:46AM -0800, Joel Jaeggli wrote:
 [...]
  The fact that I can get a wavelength to county dump in Eugene OR the
  composting facility in Palo Alto doesn't really do anything for the
  residential access market.
 
 Why not?
 
 You have to start with connectivity *somewhere*. If the economics work
 out, *someone* will build the residential access market from those
 access points.

Well, I think Joel's real point was that it's not necessarily a given that
just because fiber's being installed by (or under contract to) a city or
other municipality, that it will necessarily be run to *every single premise*
in that municipality.

And of course he's right, but there are lots of good reasons to do it that
way; buildings often change occupancy and purpose, and the dump, of course,
is *run* by the municipality very often, and you want all your official
facilities connected up anyway.  And doing it all as one build probably
makes it easier to finance.

My personal favorite reason to do this is that it *increases the 
property values in the municipality*, an assertion for which I have
no documentary evidence or studies.  :-)  (To clarify there, by this 
I mean muni fiber in general, not necessarily passing every premise,
though Metcalfe's Law probably applies here as well...)

Cheers,
-- jra

RE: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style

2010-12-23 Thread Frank Bulk - iName.com

Uhm, D-CATV is not IP just quite yet.  Sometimes I wish that's the case, but 
it's still very much RF.  

There are several vendors that sell GPON solutions that support RF over fiber, 
and there's always IP TV.

Frank

-Original Message-
From: Jay Ashworth [mailto:j...@baylink.com] 
Sent: Thursday, December 23, 2010 11:20 AM
To: NANOG
Subject: Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style

snip

And since D-CATV is pretty much delivered over IP these days *anyway*,
it won't even be technically difficult for cable providers to hook up
customers over such a backbone.

snip

Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style

2010-12-22 Thread Josh Miller


On 12/20/2010 3:14 PM, Dorn Hetzel wrote:

Where I live, about 50 miles south of Atlanta down I-85, there is no
consumer broadband at all.

Satellite, Cellular, and T-1, those are my options.

A mile away, there are choices, but not here.  I am sure we aren't the only
neighborhood in this situation, even today.


I live 27 miles out of Seattle, WA and have those same limitations.

- josh

Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style

2010-12-21 Thread Tim Franklin


- Owen DeLong o...@delong.com wrote:

 Personally, I think that enforced UNE is the right model. If you sell
 higher level services, you should not be allowed to operate the physical
 plant.  The physical plant operating companies should sell access to the
 physical plant to higher level service providers on an equal footing.

To all intents and purposes what we have in the UK.  BT, the old, formally 
government-owned, then privatised, effective last-mile monopoly, was split up.  
(I believe in return for some more government cash to build infrastructure, but 
I could be wrong on the order of events).

BT OpenReach is now responsible for wires on poles / in the ground, CO space 
etc, and has to sell access to these to other divisions of BT (Wholesale, 
Residential) in the same arms-length way they sell them to other ISPs.  It 
doesn't always work *quite* like that, especially in respect of actually 
getting space and power in COs, but the framework is there...

Regards,
Tim.

Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style

2010-12-21 Thread Lamar Owen

On Monday, December 20, 2010 06:36:03 pm you wrote:
 Those are all still sub-T1 on the uplink and well below normal CMTS service
 speeds. Low-end CMTS is around 15Mbps/7Mbps.

Yeah, at least with the T-1 you aren't oversubscribed.  One company for whom I 
consult was going to go from their T-1 to an 11/1 DSL, but they do streaming 
audio and video, and I was able to talk them out of it.  I've been asking the 
provider to sell that place a matched pair; give me an 11/1 DSL, and then give 
me a 1/11 reverse ADSL on a different pair, and I'd be a happy camper.

 The ATT cable plant in my neighborhood is unable to
 sustain any better than 1.5mbps/384k on ADSL.
 
  Their copper in my area is nearly new, they have spent the last five years 
  or so refreshing and updating their copper outside plant.  
 
 That helps a lot. It still doesn't compete with CMTS which was my point.

Interestingly enough, we've tried to do H.323 with some folks on a CMTS 
connection, and have yet to succeed in smooth video.  My testing on my home 
DSL, back when it was 1.5M/.5M (we got two free upgrades; the first one was to 
5/.5 and the second to 7/.5) and our main link was an OC3 to a different 
provider, went well.  Never really figured out what it was causing the problems 
with the CMTS users; the effect was that the H.323 session would start up and 
negotiate at 384Kb/s, and a few seconds of video would traverse fine, and then 
the link would start dropping more and more frames until it died entirely; my 
testing on my slower DSL didn't have this problem, and traceroute showed an 
equivalent number of hops between.  The CMTS connection in use was an 8M down 
1M up link.

And I don't have cable available to me at all.  So it's DSL or nothing at home; 
even Verizon's 3G, which works fairly well at work, doesn't work at all at 
home, 1,200 feet away (terrain issues).  And I don't have visibility to the 
most common data satellites on the Clarke Belt.

Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style

2010-12-21 Thread Jared Mauch

I faced a similar challenge. If you have line of sight to something, you can do 
fixed wireless for maybe 200-400 depending on the gear and frequencies 
involved. Check out the ubnt 365 or m5 gear. Cheap as in disposable. Works 
quite well. Then order a Comcast business connection there and call it a day. 
16/2 or 50/10 for less than a t1 loop as long as your facility fees on the 
other side colo aren't too high.

Sent from my iThing

On Dec 20, 2010, at 6:14 PM, Dorn Hetzel dhet...@gmail.com wrote:

 Where I live, about 50 miles south of Atlanta down I-85, there is no
 consumer broadband at all.
 
 Satellite, Cellular, and T-1, those are my options.
 
 A mile away, there are choices, but not here.  I am sure we aren't the only
 neighborhood in this situation, even today.
 
 On Mon, Dec 20, 2010 at 6:06 PM, Randy Carpenter rcar...@network1.netwrote:
 
 
 
 And yet, I don't know of any location in the US with two cable
 operators.
 
 We have 2 separate cable providers in our town. One of them is a division
 of the local telephone company, but it is still CATV plant. The telco also
 operates a FTTH service with IPTV video as well.
 
 The result is that the big national CATV provider had incredibly good rates
 for a long time, and even after they were more than doubled, are still
 really good.
 
 -Randy

Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style

2010-12-21 Thread Scott Reed


Check out http://www.wispdirectory.com
Go to Contact Us and fill out the form.  If you are only a mile away 
from a WISP, there is a chance they will build out to you.


On 12/20/2010 6:14 PM, Dorn Hetzel wrote:

Where I live, about 50 miles south of Atlanta down I-85, there is no
consumer broadband at all.

Satellite, Cellular, and T-1, those are my options.

A mile away, there are choices, but not here.  I am sure we aren't the only
neighborhood in this situation, even today.

On Mon, Dec 20, 2010 at 6:06 PM, Randy Carpenterrcar...@network1.netwrote:


And yet, I don't know of any location in the US with two cable
operators.

We have 2 separate cable providers in our town. One of them is a division
of the local telephone company, but it is still CATV plant. The telco also
operates a FTTH service with IPTV video as well.

The result is that the big national CATV provider had incredibly good rates
for a long time, and even after they were more than doubled, are still
really good.

-Randy




--
Scott Reed
Owner
NewWays Networking, LLC
Wireless Networking
Network Design, Installation and Administration
Mikrotik Advanced Certified
www.nwwnet.net
(765) 855-1060

Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style

2010-12-21 Thread William Allen Simpson


On 12/21/10 1:42 AM, Robert Bonomi wrote:

Bzzt!  It's -not- illegal to put a letter inside a FedEx box.  It just has
to have the appropriate (USPS) postage on it, _as_well_ as paying the FedEx
service/delivery fee.  This is true if it is just the letter you're sending,
or if it is a sealed letter -inside- a box/package being shipped..

Now _live_scorpions_, on the other hand, are someting that the USPS _will_
delive, but AFAIK no 'express' service will handle.  (One discovers some
of the strangest things when one actually sits down and *reads* the _complete_
rules/regulation on a subject.  In this case, it's the Domestic Mail Manual.
Scorpions are 'addressed' in 601.9.3.10)


Kudos to you!  It's been 20+ years since I've had a copy of the DMM!

To bring this back to the topic at hand, the USPS has worked pretty well
and fairly efficiently for 200+ years.  It provides universal service to every
(US) destination at uniform rates for all content, with some variation by size.

Its competitors provide cherry-picked service only to specific areas, and even
then at variable rates, by distance *and* by volume.  As noted, FedEx simply
doesn't deliver some types of content.

The lesson here is that we need to decided what it is we are offering.  As an
ISP, we never offered different rates by distance or for different types of
traffic.  We did offer different rates for different sized pipes (aka volume).
That is, we offered more USPS-like than FedEx-like service.

And we certainly never expect to make more money from wealthier deliveries,
because their content is possibly more valuable!  AFAIK, FedEx doesn't either.

The Comcast proposed business model is simply wrong, and unsustainable without
essentially being a protection racket.  Pay us more money or your service will
be kneecapped

We have laws against extortion.

Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style

2010-12-21 Thread Owen DeLong


On Dec 21, 2010, at 2:42 AM, Tim Franklin wrote:

 
 - Owen DeLong o...@delong.com wrote:
 
 Personally, I think that enforced UNE is the right model. If you sell
 higher level services, you should not be allowed to operate the physical
 plant.  The physical plant operating companies should sell access to the
 physical plant to higher level service providers on an equal footing.
 
 To all intents and purposes what we have in the UK.  BT, the old, formally 
 government-owned, then privatised, effective last-mile monopoly, was split 
 up.  (I believe in return for some more government cash to build 
 infrastructure, but I could be wrong on the order of events).
 
 BT OpenReach is now responsible for wires on poles / in the ground, CO space 
 etc, and has to sell access to these to other divisions of BT (Wholesale, 
 Residential) in the same arms-length way they sell them to other ISPs.  It 
 doesn't always work *quite* like that, especially in respect of actually 
 getting space and power in COs, but the framework is there...
 
 Regards,
 Tim.

Yeah... I'd rather see it done in such a way that there is a prohibition of 
common ownership
or management. Essentially, require that the stock be split and each current 
owner receives
one share in each company with any shareholders who own more than 3% of the 
companies
having 180 days to divest from one company or the other, or, reduce their total 
investment in
both below 3% with a requirement that the infrastructure provider not retain 
any portion
of the name of the original company and no relationship other than supplier to 
the service
provider company.

Obviously, this probably won't happen. The Telcos in the US have far too 
powerful a
lobbying force, but, I think that would be the best thing for the consumers.

Owen

Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style

2010-12-21 Thread Owen DeLong

 
 
 The Comcast proposed business model is simply wrong, and unsustainable without
 essentially being a protection racket.  Pay us more money or your service will
 be kneecapped
 
 We have laws against extortion.

We also have laws against warrantless wiretaps. Comcast seeks retroactive 
immunity
like what was granted to there Telco brethren.

Owen

Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style

2010-12-21 Thread William Allen Simpson

On 12/20/10 9:07 PM, Steven Bellovin wrote:

On Dec 20, 2010, at 8:51 01PM, JC Dill wrote:

Do you have any cites saying that this was actually rolled out? Or did the
project get cut during the financial crisis, and never actually rolled out?

The issue I have with all these cites is that none of them are for services
that are up and running. They are all press releases about something that will
supposedly get built, maybe.

Maybe I've lost the thread context, but if you're talking about FIOS it most
certainly is running, in many places
(http://www22.verizon.com/Residential/aboutFiOS/Overview.htm?CMP=DMC-CVS_ZZ_ZZ_E_TV_N_X001).
My town has it; Comcast's responsiveness improved dramatically after FIOS was
rolled out Speeds are good, prices less so, and if memory serves they
charge something like $40/mo extra for static IP addresses.

Heck, we've also had earlier pointers in the thread to competing cable
providers! Where I founded an ISP, we used to have 2 competing cable
providers, until one bought out the other over a decade ago.

In Oakland County, Michigan, various pockets have WOW and Comcast and ATT.
My family members there have WOW, having switched from Comcast or ATT.

(IMnsHO, the only thing worse than Comcast is Ameritech/SBC/ATT.)

Once upon a time, I compared pricing with Ann Arbor (Washtenaw County),
where Comcast (previously Media One) had no broadband competition. In
Oakland County, Comcast prices were 20% or so less. Eventually, WOW
raised prices to be just a little bit less than competitors -- just as
Chrysler and GM used to raise prices following Ford -- and Comcast has
gradually reduced the price difference between Oakland and Washtenaw.

JC's supposition that competition functions at this level over the long
term is egregiously fallacious. Fundamentally an oligopoly.

As to responsiveness, in my experience WOW (and Vonage) have *much*
better customer service departments than Comcast or ATT. Faster,
friendlier, and more technically savvy.

Comcast call centers apparently don't bother to check for multiple service
outages in the same node, resulting in 5 (or more) truck rolls last week
before they were finally fixed. Apparently, dispatchers don't have access
to the NOC status information from modems, and only respond to actual
repair calls from customers. If the customers cannot call because their
VoIP is down, then there's nothing wrong?!?!

But that's another gripe for another time. :-(

RE: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style

2010-12-21 Thread Rettke, Brian



Sincerely,

Brian A . Rettke
RHCT, CCDP, CCNP, CCIP
Network Engineer, CableONE Internet Services


-Original Message-
From: Lamar Owen [mailto:lo...@pari.edu]

Interestingly enough, we've tried to do H.323 with some folks on a CMTS 
connection, and have yet to succeed in smooth video.  My testing on my home 
DSL, back when it was 1.5M/.5M (we got two free upgrades; the first one was to 
5/.5 and the second to 7/.5) and our main link was an OC3 to a different 
provider, went well.  Never really figured out what it was causing the problems 
with the CMTS users; the effect was that the H.323 session would start up and 
negotiate at 384Kb/s, and a few seconds of video would traverse fine, and then 
the link would start dropping more and more frames until it died entirely; my 
testing on my slower DSL didn't have this problem, and traceroute showed an 
equivalent number of hops between.  The CMTS connection in use was an 8M down 
1M up link.

The problem is probably not the connection speed, but congestion on the CMTS. 
If the downstream is saturated (too many people watching Netflix on a node) the 
available shared bandwidth may not be enough to support your real-time traffic. 
Which is a pretty good archetype for the discussion anyhow.

Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style

2010-12-21 Thread Tim Franklin


- Owen DeLong o...@delong.com wrote:

 Yeah... I'd rather see it done in such a way that there is a
 prohibition of common ownership or management. Essentially,
 require that the stock be split and each current owner receives
 one share in each company with any shareholders who own more than 3%
 of the companies having 180 days to divest from one company or the
 other, or, reduce their total investment in both below 3% with a
 requirement that the infrastructure provider not retain any portion
 of the name of the original company and no relationship other than
 supplier to the service provider company.
 
 Obviously, this probably won't happen. The Telcos in the US have far
 too powerful a lobbying force, but, I think that would be the best
 thing for the consumers.

Presumably for both the consumers *and* every company involved in network 
services who doesn't have the luck of a historical last-mile monopoly.

Regards,
Tim.

Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style

2010-12-21 Thread David Sparro


On 12/20/2010 8:51 PM, JC Dill wrote:

On 20/12/10 2:15 PM, David Sparro wrote:



There is no monopoly. They've already experimented with that and
(apparently) decided that it wasn't worth it.

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/bus/ptech/stories/DN-verizon_17bus.State.Edition1.f7543b.html



*


Tuesday, June 17, 2008


Do you have any cites saying that this was actually rolled out? Or did
the project get cut during the financial crisis, and never actually
rolled out?

The issue I have with all these cites is that none of them are for
services that are up and running. They are all press releases about
something that will supposedly get built, maybe.


I still think that the link shows that the factors are more economic 
than regulatory.  As you point out, even where the regulatory obstacles 
have been overcome, it is not clear that Verizon ever actually did their 
overbuild to become a third triple-play provider.


--
Dave

Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style

2010-12-21 Thread Leo Bicknell

In a message written on Tue, Dec 21, 2010 at 12:47:45PM -0500, David Sparro 
wrote:
 I still think that the link shows that the factors are more economic 
 than regulatory.  As you point out, even where the regulatory obstacles 
 have been overcome, it is not clear that Verizon ever actually did their 
 overbuild to become a third triple-play provider.

It's not so simple.

There are pure regulatory issues, like getting a franchise license to
provide video services.

There are pure economic issues, like being able to afford the fiber and
optics and such.

Then there is a mess in the middle.  For instance in the early
2000's DC changed its rules for permitting duct installation.
Previously if you wanted to dig up a street you applied for a permit
and did just that.  However too many streets were being dug up too
many times in a row, and residents screamed.  The city changed it
so to dig up a street you had to post what you were going to dig
up like 90 or 180 days in advance, and if someone else wanted the
same route you were required to install conduit for them in the
same trench at cost when you did it.  [My understanding is the rules
have since been altered again, so I'm likely not up to date.]

Is that a regulatory obstical, since it's government rules?  Is
that an economic obstical, since it just raises costs?

-- 
   Leo Bicknell - bickn...@ufp.org - CCIE 3440
PGP keys at http://www.ufp.org/~bicknell/


pgpCGTMDlB1qw.pgp
Description: PGP signature

Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style

2010-12-21 Thread Lamar Owen

On Tuesday, December 21, 2010 11:26:48 am Rettke, Brian wrote:
 The problem is probably not the connection speed, but congestion on the CMTS. 
 If the downstream is saturated (too many people watching Netflix on a node) 
 the available shared bandwidth may not be enough to support your real-time 
 traffic. Which is a pretty good archetype for the discussion anyhow.

Well, at the time we did this test NetFlix was still just a DVD by mail outfit; 
this has been a couple or three years ago.

Congestion == oversubscribed.  I would love to see a public posting or notice 
or something on my ISP's website showing current flows and congestion (the 
Cacti driven Network Weathermap is one such tool I've seen networks use; one of 
my providers used to have one publicly available, and it was very useful).  
Would make it much easier to make informed decisions on my part.

But this CMTS subscriber wanting to do medium-low bandwidth H.323 never had 
trouble seeing our stream to him; that was the funny thing.  It was always the 
return stream from him to us that broke up.  And it didn't act like congestion; 
it acted like some sort of filter in place that would only allow the full 
upstream briefly, and then would die for some period of time, and then would 
allow another burst of traffic.  (I've received one private reply mentioning a 
possible technology to do this)

Many if not virtually all residential broadband subscribers are under the 
impression that they really get the full use of the advertised bandwidth; it is 
a shock to most when they learn about oversubscription practices and QoS 
congestion management.

Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style

2010-12-21 Thread Brett Frankenberger

On Tue, Dec 21, 2010 at 12:42:09AM -0600, Robert Bonomi wrote:
 
  From: Leo Bicknell bickn...@ufp.org
 
  So if it's illegal for you to put a letter inside a FedEx box,
 
 Bzzt!  It's -not- illegal to put a letter inside a FedEx box.  It just has
 to have the appropriate (USPS) postage on it, _as_well_ as paying the FedEx
 service/delivery fee.  

Bzzt!.  It is, in general, as a practical matter, completely legal to
send letters overnight via FedEx, without paying any US postage.  Under
the Extremely Urgent exception, any shipment for which the shipper
pays more than the greater of $3 and twice what the USPS would charge
to send it first class, is deemed extremely urgent (whether or not it
reallt is) and is excemt from the requirement to use the USPS or pay
USPS postage.

Except in some pretty rare cases, any shipment of letters sent via
FedEx is going to cost more than $3 and more than double what the USPS
would have charged to sent it first class.

 This is true if it is just the letter you're sending,
 or if it is a sealed letter -inside- a box/package being shipped..

Actually, if the sealed letter relates to the cargo in the box/package,
it's legal to include it, under an exception separate from the
Extremely Urgent exception listed above.

 -- Brett

RE: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style

2010-12-21 Thread Rettke, Brian

--Congestion == oversubscribed.  I would love to see a public posting or 
notice or something on my ISP's website showing current flows and congestion 
(the Cacti driven Network Weathermap is one such tool I've seen networks use; 
one of my providers used to have one publicly available, and it was very 
useful).  Would make it much easier to make informed decisions on my part.

But this CMTS subscriber wanting to do medium-low bandwidth H.323 never had 
trouble seeing our stream to him; that was the funny thing.  It was always the 
return stream from him to us that broke up.  And it didn't act like congestion; 
it acted like some sort of filter in place that would only allow the full 
upstream briefly, and then would die for some period of time, and then would 
allow another burst of traffic.  (I've received one private reply mentioning a 
possible technology to do this)

Many if not virtually all residential broadband subscribers are under the 
impression that they really get the full use of the advertised bandwidth; it is 
a shock to most when they learn about oversubscription practices and QoS 
congestion management.---

I'm not sure you can speak for the majority of all subscribers, but 
it's fair to assume that people who are not used to checking under the hood 
before making a purchase are of that mind. And congestion does mean 
oversubscribed, but that's a rather narrow argument. You are buying a shared 
service, which never guarantees full use of anything. The reason that you pay 
~$100 instead of 5-10 times that amount is that you are buying a time share.  
You do not own or lease any part of your connection. It is the advertising and 
marketing of such things that generally leaves the consumer clueless unless 
they do their own research.

Being that this is NANOG, and the expectation is that this community is 
the cognoscenti, I'd say we can dispense with the marketing. If you use a cable 
modem or DSL service, your expected use is entertainment. Depending upon your 
neighborhood, and the amount of people that latch onto a trend, you will see 
oversubscription, because no one ever builds supply that will far exceed demand 
in an instantaneous manner.

If you expect your service to not be oversubscribed, you need to drop 
your modem for a leased line service. The SLA guarantees you get what you pay 
for. If the contrary argument is that you pay enough for your service, we need 
to define the costs of implementing your end-to-end service, and the difference 
between that and what you pay.

RE: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style

2010-12-21 Thread George Bonser

 
  Obviously, this probably won't happen. The Telcos in the US have far
  too powerful a lobbying force, but, I think that would be the best
  thing for the consumers.
 
 Presumably for both the consumers *and* every company involved in
 network services who doesn't have the luck of a historical last-mile
 monopoly.
 
 Regards,
 Tim.

Well, I really don't see this whole thing as about Comcast, per se.  It is 
bigger than that.  Generally, I have no problems with a network doing whatever 
it wants to do when there is competition for the end users.  The problem in my 
mind comes in when the buyer has no realistic alternative.  So I believe the 
regulations should be at the local level where the actual users are because 
what is true in Omaha might not be true in Wichita.  Attempting to make one 
size fits all regulations at the federal level generally doesn't turn out 
well, even if done with the best of intentions, because there are just too many 
one-off situations.  Places that, for example, have competition for high-speed 
triple-play services where the users can vote with their feet if a provider's 
policies don't serve their needs probably need a lot less regulation than a 
place with only one provider of that sort of service.

This shouldn't devolve into a bash Comcast session so much as it should 
address how single player markets are handled regardless of the provider 
involved.

Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style

2010-12-21 Thread Pete Carah

On 12/20/2010 06:36 PM, Owen DeLong wrote:

snip
 I'm happy for you. The ATT cable plant in my neighborhood is unable to
 sustain any better than 1.5mbps/384k on ADSL.
And mine (older Baltimore-area, ex-bell atlantic, now verizon) won't
sustain 384x384 at 15k ft, it works with about 10% packet loss when dry
and dies altogether when wet (actually, often even POTS won't work when
wet in the last year or so; wires are getting worse).  VZ won't do
anything about it (well, they *did* finally (5 yrs later) get around to
wiring for fios.)  VZ *tells* you that 1.5x384 will work.  Little do
they know about older outside plant...

-- Pete

Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style

2010-12-21 Thread ML


On 12/21/2010 10:49 AM, Owen DeLong wrote:



Obviously, this probably won't happen. The Telcos in the US have far too 
powerful a
lobbying force snip

Owen




Sad that we can admit this fact so freely.

Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style

2010-12-21 Thread Bryan Fields

On 12/21/2010 10:19, William Allen Simpson wrote:
 The lesson here is that we need to decided what it is we are offering.  As an
 ISP, we never offered different rates by distance or for different types of
 traffic.  We did offer different rates for different sized pipes (aka volume).
 That is, we offered more USPS-like than FedEx-like service.

This gives me an awesome idea for an IP to VH coordinates look-up with volume
recorded.  Interface it to the billing system, and we've just created a new
revenue source.

This if effin genius.
-- 
Bryan Fields

727-409-1194 - Voice
727-214-2508 - Fax
http://bryanfields.net

Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style

2010-12-21 Thread mikea

On Sun, Dec 19, 2010 at 06:41:09PM -0800, Seth Mattinen wrote:

 Contrary to popular belief the average person tend to severely dislike
 all forms of road construction or having their yard repeatedly torn up.
 
 I know it's all happy fun times to say let's have 10 water/electrical
 providers and you can select which molecules/electrons you want!, but
 there's a practical limit as to how much stuff one can pack under a
 street's limited right of way. If you look at what's under there right
 now it's actually quite crowded. We just don't see it because it's buried.

True indeed. 

My employer, the Oklahoma Dept. of Transportation, is a major owner, but
not the only one, of right-of-way in the state. We have severe problems
with trying to wedge into our rights-of-way all the things that people want
to wedge in around our structures and drainage: pipelines, fiber, etc. It
is beginning to look as though we will have to increase the ROW width in
the future, just to make it possible to run everything necessary. The
lawmakers were not particularly happy about this, but I understand that
they were shown some cross-section maps of places where things are quite
dense, and most of them came around. 

-- 
Mike Andrews, W5EGO
mi...@mikea.ath.cx
Tired old sysadmin

Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style


 On 19/12/10 10:55 PM, George Bonser wrote:

There were streets where you couldn't hardly see the sky because of

all

the wires on the poles.

Can you provide a link to a photo of this situation?

come to tokyo.  or hcmc.  or ...  it's an art form.

http://www.sfgate.com/blogs/images/sfgate/beltran/2009/07/24/Tina_modotti_wires447x625.jpg

This is not the result of many different providers, it's the result of 
one provider stringing many lines to supply service.  I'm guessing this 
was before they figured out how to run trunk lines and then split out 
the calls from the trunk into individual lines closer to the end user's 
location - or how to bundle lines together, etc.  So each wire we see in 
that photo is a *single* wire running from the central office to one 
subscriber (or party line).

India:

http://pinkbunnyears.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/telephone-pole.jpg


Department of Telecommunications (DoT), is the monopoly operator in 
India.  That photo isn't due to a situation where there were numerous 
different providers, it's due to ONE provider with a monopoly, doing a 
half-assed job.


I checked the first and last links you posted, and neither of them had 
anything to do with the topic of 50 providers stringing lines to every 
house.  I'm not going to waste my time checking the rest of the links - 
especially since you can't even bother to properly format them so they 
don't break and they have to be pieced together to work.


jc

Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style

2010-12-20 Thread Choprboy

On Sunday 19 December 2010 22:25, JC Dill wrote:
   On 19/12/10 8:31 PM, Chris Adams wrote:
  Look up pictures of New York City in the early days of electricty.
  There were streets where you couldn't hardly see the sky because of all
  the wires on the poles.

 Can you provide a link to a photo of this situation?


It wasn't the earlier days of electricity persay, it was the early days the 
telegraph (late 1800s and early 1900s). Dozens, if not hundreds, of different 
telegraph companies raced put up different wires and poles to claim the 
market (and sometimes cut-down each others wires). Fraught with fear of 
completely losing any view of the sky and the dangers of so much shoddy work 
over citizens heads (wires would frequently fall in storms and such), New 
York and many other cities began restricting the number of providers that 
could service a given area.

The classic New York telegraph wiring nightmare image:
http://www.vny.cuny.edu/Search/search_res_image.php?id=363

Other images:
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/onceandfutureweb/database/seca/case3-artifacts/photoslg/photo1.jpg
http://www.maggieblanck.com/NewYork/SU.html
http://ephemeralnewyork.wordpress.com/2009/12/12/when-the-city-was-criss-crossed-by-wires/
http://www.islandnet.com/~see/weather/graphics/photos0708/blizzard_1888h.jpg


Adrian

Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style

2010-12-20 Thread Jeff Wheeler

On Sun, Dec 19, 2010 at 8:48 PM, Richard A Steenbergen r...@e-gerbil.net 
wrote:
 Running a wire to everyone's house is a natural monopoly. It just
 doesn't make sense, financially or technically, to try and manage 50
 different companies all trying to install 50 different wires into every
 house just to have competition at the IP layer. It also wouldn't make

What no one has mentioned thus far is that CLECs really are able to
install their own facilities to homes and businesses if they decide
that is a good way to invest their finite resources.  This is why we
see several options for local loops in the business district of
every sizable city, as well as in many newly-developed areas such as
industrial parks.  These infrastructure builds are expensive, the
CLECs had limited logistical capabilities and could only manage so
many projects at once, and obviously, they focused their efforts on
the parts of town where return-on-investment was likely to be highest.
 Businesses often do have several good choices for voice, data,
Internet, and so on.  Cogent is an example of an essentially
Internet-only service having some degree of success at this without
even offering voice, or initially even transport, products.

The reason we will not see competitive facility builds to residences
is they have a very long ROI scale.  Everything in the traditional
telecommunications world did.  Many POTS customers still pay a fee for
DTMF or touch tone dialing, because when their phone company
invested in new cards and software to support DTMF signalling, they
passed those expenses on to consumers.  These upgrades cost on the
order of a thousand dollars per phone line, but consumers could get
the benefit of DTMF by paying a couple dollars per month.  See also:
call waiting, caller ID, and so on.  I don't know about you, but I was
still using an ATDP dialing string until cable and DSL became
available to me at home (in about 2002) because I did not want to pay
the extra fee for touch tone dialing or other features I didn't need
on a dedicated modem line. ;)

We see examples of more choice available to business consumers than
residences, due to economies of scale, every day.  A business,
apartment community, or neighborhood association can choose from
multiple dumpster-tip services for trash collection.  Most residents
do not have enough trash volume to justify a bulky dumpster, so their
only practical choice is whatever curb-side trash collection company
has an agreement with their local government.

-- 
Jeff S Wheeler j...@inconcepts.biz
Sr Network Operator  /  Innovative Network Concepts

Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style

2010-12-20 Thread Suresh Ramasubramanian

On Mon, Dec 20, 2010 at 2:15 PM, JC Dill jcdill.li...@gmail.com wrote:
 Department of Telecommunications (DoT), is the monopoly operator in India.
  That photo isn't due to a situation where there were numerous different
 providers, it's due to ONE provider with a monopoly, doing a half-assed job.

DoT is the regulator - kind of like the FCC

The monopoly provider (still a very large one) was called BSNL [Bharat
Sanchar Nigam Ltd - India Telecom Company, Ltd] as opposed to VSNL /
Videsh ... (Videsh = Foreign)

VSNL was privatized some years back as you all know .. and as for
local phone service you can buy that from at least 4 or 5 nationwide
landline providers, besides several cellphone providers.

Monopoly is what there was like a decade back.

-- 
Suresh Ramasubramanian (ops.li...@gmail.com)

Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style

2010-12-20 Thread Bret Clark


On 12/20/2010 06:55 AM, Jeff Wheeler wrote:

What no one has mentioned thus far is that CLECs really are able to
install their own facilities to homes and businesses if they decide
that is a good way to invest their finite resources.


Yes and no, we tried that way back when but found out that there were 
rules in place allowing only 3 lines on a pole (Elec, tele, cable), 
basically the rules are there to stop poles from have a gazzillon lines 
on them; a throwback from the early 1900's. Back then there were 
numerous Telephone companies competing for the same customer and poles 
became a nightmare with wires. It was common for competitors to cut 
other competitors lines back then.


Sure CLEC's could go underground, but outside of the expense, the 
permit's process would be a nightmare. Where there was conduit available 
we'd go that route, but Verizon would give us a hard time about it.

Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style

2010-12-20 Thread Robert Bonomi

 From nanog-bounces+bonomi=mail.r-bonomi@nanog.org  Sun Dec 19 23:31:25 
 2010
 Date: Sun, 19 Dec 2010 21:30:45 -0800
 From: JC Dill jcdill.li...@gmail.com
 To: NANOG list nanog@nanog.org
 Subject: Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style

   On 19/12/10 8:44 PM, Owen DeLong wrote:
  You can send letters

 Technically, this is illegal.  You can send documents via FedEx and UPS.

  just as well as packages via the other carriers.

  The USPS monopoly on first class mail is absurd. In fact, FedEx, UPS,
  et. al could offer a $0.44 letter product if they wanted to.

 No, they can't.

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

  They could not call it mail. They could call it first class document 
  delivery.

  However, the reality is that they probably couldn't sustain their business
  at that price point.

  The USPS doesn't have an actual monopoly so much as ownership of
  the term Mail almost like a trademark.

 It's not just a trademark, it's the class of service.  Just try starting 
 up a regular mail service, and see how far you get before they SHUT YOU 
 DOWN.

Actually, the gov't -won't- shut you down in that situation.  They *WILL*,
however make you pay -them- the statutory first-class postage rate for
each such piece you carry.

Aside: put a 'personal' sealed envelope communication inside a FedEx/UPS/
whatever shimpent, and you are _supposed_ to (a) 'declare' it on the 
outside of the package, and (b) put the appropriate postage stamps on
the package.

The FedEx' 'overnight letter' (and other carrier equivalents) is a really
cute case of threading the needle between what does and does not require
first-class postage.  It makes _interesting_ reading to review the actual
tariffs and express service 'rules' on what you can send via that service.

Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style

2010-12-20 Thread Steve Schultze

On Dec 20, 2010, at 3:45 AM, JC Dill wrote:
 On 19/12/10 10:55 PM, George Bonser wrote:

 http://www.sfgate.com/blogs/images/sfgate/beltran/2009/07/24/Tina_modotti_wires447x625.jpg
 
 This is not the result of many different providers, it's the result of one 
 provider stringing many lines to supply service.  I'm guessing this was 
 before they figured out how to run trunk lines and then split out the calls 
 from the trunk into individual lines closer to the end user's location - or 
 how to bundle lines together, etc.  So each wire we see in that photo is a 
 *single* wire running from the central office to one subscriber (or party 
 line).
 
 http://pinkbunnyears.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/telephone-pole.jpg
 
 That photo isn't due to a situation where there were numerous different 
 providers, it's due to ONE provider with a monopoly, doing a half-assed job.


It should be noted that running an individual line from the central office to 
the subscriber can be a good thing when done in a sensible fashion.  
Amsterdam's Fiber-to-the-Home project called Citynet is an excellent example of 
this.  The city ran a fiber line to each subscriber, which facilitates 
competitive open access to each line (and makes for maximum long-term bandwidth 
per subscriber).

http://opticalreflection.com/2009/02/amsterdam-citynet-scores-a-home-run-for-fibre/

However, the first decision the Citynet project made was more fundamental: 
should it deploy a passive optical network (PON) architecture or what Wagter 
calls “home run” fibre, which is a point-to-point topology. PONs share fibre 
and equipment near the head-end of the network, which does result in some cost 
savings. But infrastructure sharing does not allow unbundling (allowing other 
service providers to put their equipment into the local exchange). PONs have a 
1:32 splitter in the street cabinet, which means that those 32 customers get 
locked into the same service provider — and that didn’t fit with the city’s 
plan to have an open-access network. (Regulators have proposed bitstream access 
as a solution to this problem, but it’s more complicated to implement.)

See also:
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/03/how-amsterdam-was-wired-for-open-access-fiber.ars

Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style

2010-12-20 Thread Jeffrey S. Young



On 20/12/2010, at 12:25 AM, JC Dill jcdill.li...@gmail.com wrote:

 On 19/12/10 8:31 PM, Chris Adams wrote:
 Once upon a time, JC Dilljcdill.li...@gmail.com  said:
 Why not open up the
 market for telco wiring and just see what happens?  There might be 5 or
 perhaps even 10 players who try to enter the market, but there won't be
 50 - it simply won't make financial sense for additional players to try
 to enter the market after a certain number of players are already in.
 Look up pictures of New York City in the early days of electricty.
 There were streets where you couldn't hardly see the sky because of all
 the wires on the poles.
 
 Can you provide a link to a photo of this situation?
 And there certainly won't be 50 all trying to service the same neighborhood.
 And there's the other half of the problem.  Without franchise agreements
 that require (mostly) universal service, you'd get 50 companies trying
 to serve the richest neighborhoods in town,
 
 No you wouldn't.  Remember those diminishing returns.  At most you would 
 likely have 4 or 5.  If you are player 6 you aren't going to spend the money 
 to build out in an area where there are 5 other players already - you will 
 build out in a different neighborhood where there are only 2 or 3 players.  
 Then, later, you might buy out the weakest of the 5 players in the rich 
 neighborhood to gain access to that neighborhood when player 5 is on the 
 verge of going BK.
 
 It's also silly to think that being player 6 to build out in a richer 
 neighborhood would be a good move.  The rich like to get a good deal just 
 like everyone else.  (They didn't *get* rich by spending their money 
 unwisely.)
 
 As an example, I will point people to the neighborhood between Page Mill Road 
 and Stanford University, an area originally built out as housing for Stanford 
 professors.  They have absolutely awful broadband options in that area.  They 
 have been *begging* for someone to come in with a better option.  This is a 
 very wealthy community (by US national standards) with median family incomes 
 in the 6 figures according to the 2000 census data.
 
 Right now they can only get slow and expensive DSL or slightly faster and 
 also expensive cable service.
 
 The city of Palo Alto has sonet fiber running right along the edges of this 
 neighborhood. (see, http://poulton.net/ftth/slides.ps.pdf slide 18.)
 
 It's a perfect place for an ISP to put in a junction box and build a local 
 fiber network to connect these homes with fiber to the Palo Alto fiber.  But 
 apparently the regulatory obstacles make it too complicated.  THAT is what 
 I'm talking about above.  Since the incumbents don't want to provide improved 
 services, get rid of those obstacles, let new players move in and put in 
 service without so many obstacles.
 
 jc
 
 
 
Having lived through the telecom bubble (as many of us did) what makes you 
believe that player 6 is going to know about the financial conditions of 
players 1-5?  What if player two has a high-profile chief scientist who, on a 
speaking circuit, starts telling the market that his bandwidth demands are 
growing at the rate of 300% per year and players 6-10 jump into the market with 
strong financial backing?  While I believe in free-market economics and I will 
agree with you that the situation will eventually sort itself out; thousands of 
ditch-diggers and poll-climbers will lose their jobs, but this is the way of 
things.  

I do  not agree that the end-consumer should be put through this fiasco and I 
am confident that the money spent digging more ditches and stringing more ugly 
overhead cables would be better spent on layers 3 and more importantly on 
services at layers 4-7.  

My perception of the current situation in the USA?  We have just gone through 
an era in which the FCC and administration defined competition as having more 
than one provider able to provide service (200 kb/s or better) within a zip 
code.  A zip code can cover quite a large area.  This left the major players to 
their own devices and we saw them overbuild TV and broadband services into the 
more lucrative areas (because as established providers they actually do have a 
pretty good idea of the financial condition of their competitors within an 
area).  Quite often 'lucrative' did not equal affluent, lucrative is more a 
measure of consumption (think VoD) than median household income.  The point is 
that the free-market evolution of broadband has produced a patchwork of 
services that is hard to decipher and even harder to influence.   The utopian 
solution (pun intended) would be to develop a local, state, federal system of 
broadband similar to the highway system of roads.  Let those broadband 
providers who can compete by creating layer 3 backbones and services at layers 
4-7 (and layer 1-2 with wireless) survive. Let the innovation continue at 
layers 4-7 without constant saber-rattling from the layer 1-2 providers.

And as a byproduct we can stop

Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style

2010-12-20 Thread Steve Schultze

Evidently this list is interested in telecommunications law.  I was worried it 
would be considered OT, but since people are talking about it, here are some 
clarifications...

On Dec 19, 2010, at 8:20 PM, Bryan Fields wrote:
 On 12/19/2010 20:09, Leo Bicknell wrote:
 They have been granted a monopoly by the local government for
 wireline services, and in exchange for that monopoly need to act
 in the public's interest.  In the TV world this is things like
 running the local community interest channel, and paying a franchise
 fee.  In the IP world we're still developing the criteria, but it's
 not unreasonable to think they might have some government imposed
 requirements there as well.
 
 The government granting a monopoly is the problem, and more lame government
 regulation is not the solution.  Let everyone compete on a level playing
 field, not by allowing one company to buy a monopoly enforced by men with 
 guns.

On Dec 19, 2010, at 9:12 PM, JC Dill wrote:
 Why not open up the market for telco wiring and just see what happens?

There are no government-enforced monopoly rights on cable or copper/fiber these 
days.  The exclusivity for the telcos went away in the Bell breakup and the 
Telecommunications Act of 1996.  See, for example, the section of the Act 
codified at 47 USC 253:

http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode47/usc_sec_47_0253000-.html

Congress went so far as to force ILECs (the incumbents) to lease their lines to 
competitors for awhile, with the idea that it would lead the competitors to 
build out their own facilities-based lines.  Even with those incentives, 
line-based competition failed to materialize to any substantial degree.  

The exclusivity for cable providers went away with the Cable Television 
Consumer Protection and Competition Act of 1992, which you can read about in 
the Background section of the FCC's 2007 Order Implementation of Section 
621(a)(1) (the first of two orders that sought to further remove local control 
over many aspects of the franchising process):

http://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2007/03/21/E7-5119/implementation-of-section-621a1-of-the-cable-communications-policy-act-of-1984-as-amended-by-the#p-21

On Dec 19, 2010, at 8:37 PM, George Bonser wrote:
 What I am concerned with happening is a cash-strapped city seeing
 Comcast (or any provider, really) trying to charge for access to
 subscribers and then the city saying wait a minute, who are you to sell
 access to our people to a third party?  If you are going to charge third
 parties for access to those eyeballs, then you can pay us, in turn for
 that access.  And from there it all goes down hill.

Cities currently do not recoup anything from telephone and internet services.  
Cities are capped at 5% of gross revenue from video services, and the 
definition of what they can recoup has been consistently narrowed by the FCC, 
as I noted here (in response to the first message in which you raised this 
concern):

http://mailman.nanog.org/pipermail/nanog/2010-December/029444.html

Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style

On Dec 20, 2010, at 7:02 AM, Robert Bonomi wrote:

 From nanog-bounces+bonomi=mail.r-bonomi@nanog.org  Sun Dec 19 23:31:25 
 2010
 Date: Sun, 19 Dec 2010 21:30:45 -0800
 From: JC Dill jcdill.li...@gmail.com
 To: NANOG list nanog@nanog.org
 Subject: Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style

  On 19/12/10 8:44 PM, Owen DeLong wrote:
 You can send letters

 Technically, this is illegal.  You can send documents via FedEx and UPS.

 just as well as packages via the other carriers.

 The USPS monopoly on first class mail is absurd. In fact, FedEx, UPS,
 et. al could offer a $0.44 letter product if they wanted to.

 No, they can't.

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

 They could not call it mail. They could call it first class document 
 delivery.

 However, the reality is that they probably couldn't sustain their business
 at that price point.

 The USPS doesn't have an actual monopoly so much as ownership of
 the term Mail almost like a trademark.

 It's not just a trademark, it's the class of service.  Just try starting 
 up a regular mail service, and see how far you get before they SHUT YOU 
 DOWN.

 Actually, the gov't -won't- shut you down in that situation.  They *WILL*,
 however make you pay -them- the statutory first-class postage rate for
 each such piece you carry.

 Aside: put a 'personal' sealed envelope communication inside a FedEx/UPS/
 whatever shimpent, and you are _supposed_ to (a) 'declare' it on the 
 outside of the package, and (b) put the appropriate postage stamps on
 the package.

 The FedEx' 'overnight letter' (and other carrier equivalents) is a really
 cute case of threading the needle between what does and does not require
 first-class postage.  It makes _interesting_ reading to review the actual
 tariffs and express service 'rules' on what you can send via that service.

Like I said... Once you untangle all the regulations, the net effect is not
a monopoly so much as a byzantine set of laws and regulations designed
to make it look like you have to pay USPS no matter what when in
reality that's not the case.

For all practical purposes, the post office faces what competition is
practical.

Owen

Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style

2010-12-20 Thread Michael DeMan


On Dec 19, 2010, at 5:48 PM, Richard A Steenbergen wrote:

 
 Personally I think the right answer is to enforce a legal separation 
 between the layer 1 and layer 3 infrastructure providers, and require 
 that the layer 1 network provide non-discriminatory access to any 
 company who wishes to provide IP to the end user. But that would take a 
 lot of work to implement, and there are billions of dollars at work 
 lobbying against it, so I don't expect it to happen any time soon. :)


+1 on this - it is the source of a huge number of problems in the industry.

Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style

 
 Cities currently do not recoup anything from telephone and internet services. 
  Cities are capped at 5% of gross revenue from video services, and the 
 definition of what they can recoup has been consistently narrowed by the FCC, 
 as I noted here (in response to the first message in which you raised this 
 concern):
 
 http://mailman.nanog.org/pipermail/nanog/2010-December/029444.html

As someone who has a City Telephone Tax on both my cellular and wireline
bills, I beg to differ.

Owen

Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style


 On 20/12/10 9:19 AM, Jeffrey S. Young wrote:


Having lived through the telecom bubble (as many of us did) what makes you believe that 
player 6 is going to know about the financial conditions of players 1-5?  What if player 
two has a high-profile chief scientist who, on a speaking circuit, starts telling the 
market that his bandwidth demands are growing at the rate of 300% per year and players 
6-10 jump into the market with strong financial backing?  While I believe in free-market 
economics and I will agree with you that the situation will eventually sort itself out; 
thousands of ditch-diggers and poll-climbers will lose their jobs, but this is the 
way of things.


Apples and oranges.  The telcom bubble didn't involve building out *to 
the home*.  The cost to build a data center and put in modems or lease 
dry copper for DSL is dramatically lower than the cost to build out to 
the home.  It was financially feasible (even if not the best decision, 
especially if you based the decision on a provably false assumption on 
market growth) to be player 6 in the early days of the Internet, it's 
not financially feasible to be player 6 to build out fiber to the home.

I do  not agree that the end-consumer should be put through this fiasco and I 
am confident that the money spent digging more ditches and stringing more ugly 
overhead cables would be better spent on layers 3 and more importantly on 
services at layers 4-7.


The problem is getting fair access to layer 1 for all players.  If it 
takes breaking the monopoly rules for putting in layer 1 facilities to 
get past this log jam, then that may be the solution.



  The utopian solution (pun intended) would be to develop a local, state, 
federal system of broadband similar to the highway system of roads.  Let those 
broadband providers who can compete by creating layer 3 backbones and services 
at layers 4-7 (and layer 1-2 with wireless) survive. Let the innovation 
continue at layers 4-7 without constant saber-rattling from the layer 1-2 
providers.


But how do we GET there?  I don't see a good path, as the ILECs who own 
the layer 1 infrastructure have already successfully lobbied for laws 
and policies that allow them to maintain their monopoly use of the layer 
1 facilities to the customer's location.

And as a byproduct we can stop the ridiculous debate on Net Neutrality which is 
molded daily by telecom lobbyists.


Yes, that would be nice.  But where's a feasible path to this ultimate goal?

jc

Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style

2010-12-20 Thread Steve Schultze

On Dec 20, 2010, at 1:09 PM, Owen DeLong wrote:
 Cities currently do not recoup anything from telephone and internet 
 services.  Cities are capped at 5% of gross revenue from video services, and 
 the definition of what they can recoup has been consistently narrowed by the 
 FCC, as I noted here (in response to the first message in which you raised 
 this concern):
 
 http://mailman.nanog.org/pipermail/nanog/2010-December/029444.html
 
 As someone who has a City Telephone Tax on both my cellular and wireline
 bills, I beg to differ.

Fascinating.  You appear to be right.  For some reason I thought this was 
standardized at the federal level by the FCC, but it seems to vary depending on 
the state.  

For example, it seems that such taxes are prohibited in Oregon:
https://www.oregonlaws.org/ors/305.823

But permitted in New York:
http://www.dps.state.ny.us/TelecomTaxesSurcharges.html
(Not to exceed 1% except in Buffalo, Rochester and Yonkers, where the rate may 
not exceed 3%.)

Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style

2010-12-20 Thread Lamar Owen

On Monday, December 20, 2010 12:20:37 pm Steve Schultze wrote:
 There are no government-enforced monopoly rights on cable or copper/fiber 
 these days.  

Unless you qualify as a 47USC153(37) 'Rural Telephone Company' and then there 
are.  Example being 253(f).

Until recently I was served by such an ILEC.  Recently being November 2010.

Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style

2010-12-20 Thread Lamar Owen

On Monday, December 20, 2010 01:22:17 pm JC Dill wrote:
 But how do we GET there?  I don't see a good path, as the ILECs who own 
 the layer 1 infrastructure have already successfully lobbied for laws 
 and policies that allow them to maintain their monopoly use of the layer 
 1 facilities to the customer's location.

The 'last mile' is the key, and is where 'net neutrality' and natural monopoly 
interests collide.  He who owns the last mile owns what the user can and can 
not do.

Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style

In a message written on Mon, Dec 20, 2010 at 12:20:37PM -0500, Steve Schultze
wrote:
Congress went so far as to force ILECs (the incumbents) to lease their lines
to competitors for awhile, with the idea that it would lead the competitors
to build out their own facilities-based lines. Even with those incentives,
line-based competition failed to materialize to any substantial degree.

They did, I had my $300 T1 for a while years ago, and Covad/Megapath
et all did a very good business buying the local lines (as UNE)'s
and selling DSL services over them. While I don't think the model
was the success I had hoped for, I think it was a success.

However through a series of steps the iLEC's have effectively shut
these folks out of the market. They lobbied, and won, that Fiber
is not part of the requirements. Want to buy UNE FIOS fiber?
Verizon won't sell it, the government won't make them. The ATT's
of the world went and installed FTTN (Fiber to the Node), where
a node serves a small neighborhood. This allows them to be less
than 1m from the house and offer up to 24Mbps DSL. The other
providers sued saying they need space in the nodes, and lost. So
Covad gets to be in the CO, with 20kft of copper, while ATT gets
to be in the node with 3kft of copper to the user.

So from about 1996 to 2000 we had competition. They then figured out
how to rig the system so there is no effective competition, and so far
the government has been A-Ok with that.

The exclusivity for cable providers went away with the Cable Television
Consumer Protection and Competition Act of 1992, which you can read about in
the Background section of the FCC's 2007 Order Implementation of Section
621(a)(1) (the first of two orders that sought to further remove local
control over many aspects of the franchising process):

http://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2007/03/21/E7-5119/implementation-of-section-621a1-of-the-cable-communications-policy-act-of-1984-as-amended-by-the#p-21

And yet, I don't know of any location in the US with two cable
operators. You see, these rules weren't changed to provide for a
second cable TV plant to be put in the ground, even in the FCC knew
that cost too much. Rather, if you read carefully the problem was
that Verizon, ATT, and Bell South (all mentioned by name in the
article) wanted to deliver video over FIOS/DSL. Most areas had
coverage rules, to be a cable provider you had to pass 95%+ of the
houses or such, and these folks didn't meet many of the local rules
and went to the government for help.

So the government did the minimum to get folks who already had
infrastructure in the ground the rules to use it to provide this
service.

The result is not competition, but a government sponsored duopoliy.
This didn't bring more players to the table, it just let those already
at the table offer a full set of overlapping services. Likely a good
step, but not the same as getting new entrants into the market.

--
Leo Bicknell - bickn...@ufp.org - CCIE 3440
PGP keys at http://www.ufp.org/~bicknell/

pgp6Dxc1z68eG.pgp
Description: PGP signature

Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style

2010-12-20 Thread Joe Provo

On Mon, Dec 20, 2010 at 11:16:30AM -0800, Leo Bicknell wrote:
[snip]
 So from about 1996 to 2000 we had competition.  They then figured out
 how to rig the system so there is no effective competition, and so far
 the government has been A-Ok with that.

You also miss the part about the capital markets being effective closed
after the bubble burst closing that window.  

[snip]
 And yet, I don't know of any location in the US with two cable
 operators.  
[snip]

Everywhere that had enough paying-humans-per fiber-mile, so primarily
the Northeast corridor (Metro DC through Metro Boston).  Parts of the
SF Bay, Chicago, Cleveland, Denver, Detroit... google cable overbuilder
(RCN, WOW and several others).  Nontrivial capital is required for the 
build-and-maintain of physical plant, so most all have shrunk since the 
bubble popping.

Cheers,

Joe

-- 
 RSUC / GweepNet / Spunk / FnB / Usenix / SAGE

Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style

On Dec 20, 2010, at 11:16 AM, Leo Bicknell wrote:

In a message written on Mon, Dec 20, 2010 at 12:20:37PM -0500, Steve Schultze
wrote:
Congress went so far as to force ILECs (the incumbents) to lease their lines
to competitors for awhile, with the idea that it would lead the competitors
to build out their own facilities-based lines. Even with those
incentives, line-based competition failed to materialize to any substantial
degree.

The argument being made is that the CLECs could run their own
copper from their own COs to the residences. I don't buy that argument,
but, that is the argument being made.

Personally, I think that enforced UNE is the right model. If you sell higher
level services, you should not be allowed to operate the physical plant.
The physical plant operating companies should sell access to the physical
plant to higher level service providers on an equal footing.

Unfortunately, the market forces have way too much invested in the
status quo and the lobbyists will block this at every turn. A grass roots
consumer movement could probably change that, but, it would require
an impractical level of consumer education on the subject.

http://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2007/03/21/E7-5119/implementation-of-section-621a1-of-the-cable-communications-policy-act-of-1984-as-amended-by-the#p-21

I think that I recall encountering one or two such places in the past,
but, I cannot recall them to make a specific citation. Certainly it is the
exception and not the rule.

Owen

RE: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style

2010-12-20 Thread George Bonser

 -Original Message-
 From: Jeff Wheeler [mailto:j...@inconcepts.biz]
 Sent: Monday, December 20, 2010 3:55 AM
 To: nanog@nanog.org
 Subject: Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style

 On Sun, Dec 19, 2010 at 8:48 PM, Richard A Steenbergen r...@e-
 gerbil.net wrote:
  Running a wire to everyone's house is a natural monopoly. It just
  doesn't make sense, financially or technically, to try and manage 50
  different companies all trying to install 50 different wires into
 every
  house just to have competition at the IP layer. It also wouldn't
make

 What no one has mentioned thus far is that CLECs really are able to
 install their own facilities to homes and businesses if they decide
 that is a good way to invest their finite resources.  This is why we
 see several options for local loops in the business district of
 every sizable city, as well as in many newly-developed areas such as
 industrial parks.  These infrastructure builds are expensive, the
 CLECs had limited logistical capabilities and could only manage so
 many projects at once, and obviously, they focused their efforts on
 the parts of town where return-on-investment was likely to be highest.
  Businesses often do have several good choices for voice, data,
 Internet, and so on.  Cogent is an example of an essentially
 Internet-only service having some degree of success at this without
 even offering voice, or initially even transport, products.

Also, there are two ways in to most urban and suburban home.  There is
the telco and there is the cable company.  There is no reason those
two paths should not compete for the same services, and they do across
an increasing area of the US.  The rural areas, though, are a completely
different story.

Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style


 On 20/12/10 11:31 AM, Joe Provo wrote:

On Mon, Dec 20, 2010 at 11:16:30AM -0800, Leo Bicknell wrote:
[snip]

And yet, I don't know of any location in the US with two cable
operators.

[snip]

Everywhere that had enough paying-humans-per fiber-mile, so primarily
the Northeast corridor (Metro DC through Metro Boston).  Parts of the
SF Bay, Chicago, Cleveland, Denver, Detroit... google cable overbuilder
(RCN, WOW and several others).


Can you name/locate the part of the SF Bay Area where this has happened?

jc

Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style

In a message written on Mon, Dec 20, 2010 at 02:31:09PM -0500, Joe Provo wrote:
Everywhere that had enough paying-humans-per fiber-mile, so primarily
the Northeast corridor (Metro DC through Metro Boston). Parts of the
SF Bay, Chicago, Cleveland, Denver, Detroit... google cable overbuilder
(RCN, WOW and several others). Nontrivial capital is required for the
build-and-maintain of physical plant, so most all have shrunk since the
bubble popping.

Interesting, I figured a few major cities would have a second
provider, being able to high a large high rise or apartment complex
might make the economics make sense.

From the first google result for cable overbuilder
(http://www.satelliteguys.us/live-industry-news-feeds/62015-cable-overbuilders-stage-comeback-near-death.html)
cuz I'm feeling lucky. :)

As the biggest cable overbuilder and the 12th largest MSO in the U.S.,
RCN now boasts about 409,000 overall customers in its large urban
markets, which include Boston, New York City, Philadelphia, Washington,
D.C., Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles.

So if you cherry pick for where an overbuild makes sense, you get
409k subscribers. To compare, Comcast has 23 million subscribers
(video only, see http://www.cmcsk.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=523403)
and in fact lost 275,000 _in the third quarter_ alone
(http://broadcastengineering.com/news/comcast-loses-subscribers-internet-takes-toll-20101101/).

Which brings us back to the argument at hand, the problem is a
combination of factors, regulatority (franchise issues), physical
(plant in ground, and cost) and money (no one will finance it), but
the net result is that even just adding one provider makes sense
in only the smallest fraction of the country. Allowing more folks
to put plant in the ground is simply not useful to getting real
compeition to the vast majority of American homes. We need to share
the plant that is already there

--
Leo Bicknell - bickn...@ufp.org - CCIE 3440
PGP keys at http://www.ufp.org/~bicknell/

pgprM3GlAc4NT.pgp
Description: PGP signature

Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style

2010-12-20 Thread Seth Mattinen

On 12/20/2010 11:44, JC Dill wrote:
  On 20/12/10 11:31 AM, Joe Provo wrote:
 On Mon, Dec 20, 2010 at 11:16:30AM -0800, Leo Bicknell wrote:
 [snip]
 And yet, I don't know of any location in the US with two cable
 operators.
 [snip]

 Everywhere that had enough paying-humans-per fiber-mile, so primarily
 the Northeast corridor (Metro DC through Metro Boston).  Parts of the
 SF Bay, Chicago, Cleveland, Denver, Detroit... google cable overbuilder
 (RCN, WOW and several others).
 
 Can you name/locate the part of the SF Bay Area where this has happened?
 

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=cable+overbuilder+san+fransisco

Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style

2010-12-20 Thread Jeremy Bresley


On 12/20/2010 1:30 PM, Owen DeLong wrote:

On Dec 20, 2010, at 11:16 AM, Leo Bicknell wrote:

And yet, I don't know of any location in the US with two cable
operators.  You see, these rules weren't changed to provide for a
second cable TV plant to be put in the ground, even in the FCC knew
that cost too much.  Rather, if  you read carefully the problem was
that Verizon, ATT, and Bell South (all mentioned by name in the
article) wanted to deliver video over FIOS/DSL.  Most areas had
coverage rules, to be a cable provider you had to pass 95%+ of the
houses or such, and these folks didn't meet many of the local rules
and went to the government for help.


I think that I recall encountering one or two such places in the past,
but, I cannot recall them to make a specific citation. Certainly it is the
exception and not the rule.

Owen



Cedar Rapids, IA is served by both Mediacom (incumbent/original cable 
company) and Imon (spinoff from McLeodUSA where they used to be called 
McLeodUSA ATS).  As well as having Qwest for telco service.


ATS started as an overbuild to compete at the local level in MCLD's 
hometown.  They were started circa 1997, and are still in business 
today, so they survived the last 2 bubbles.  And they caused Mediacom to 
keep prices down, and compete to offer additional services in Cedar 
Rapids long before they were available in other cities in their footprint.


So examples of competitive overbuilds being successful do exist.  Maybe 
Google's fiber build will inspire some other companies to try to compete 
in this fashion.


Full disclosure: I worked for MCLD from 98-05, and in the ATS division 
from 00-05.


Jeremy

Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style

2010-12-20 Thread Jeffrey S. Young


On 20/12/2010, at 1:22 PM, JC Dill jcdill.li...@gmail.com wrote:

 On 20/12/10 9:19 AM, Jeffrey S. Young wrote:
 
 Having lived through the telecom bubble (as many of us did) what makes you 
 believe that player 6 is going to know about the financial conditions of 
 players 1-5?  What if player two has a high-profile chief scientist who, on 
 a speaking circuit, starts telling the market that his bandwidth demands are 
 growing at the rate of 300% per year and players 6-10 jump into the market 
 with strong financial backing?  While I believe in free-market economics and 
 I will agree with you that the situation will eventually sort itself out; 
 thousands of ditch-diggers and poll-climbers will lose their jobs, but this 
 is the way of things.
 
 Apples and oranges.  The telcom bubble didn't involve building out *to the 
 home*.  The cost to build a data center and put in modems or lease dry copper 
 for DSL is dramatically lower than the cost to build out to the home.  It was 
 financially feasible (even if not the best decision, especially if you based 
 the decision on a provably false assumption on market growth) to be player 6 
 in the early days of the Internet, it's not financially feasible to be player 
 6 to build out fiber to the home.
 I do  not agree that the end-consumer should be put through this fiasco and 
 I am confident that the money spent digging more ditches and stringing more 
 ugly overhead cables would be better spent on layers 3 and more importantly 
 on services at layers 4-7.
 
 The problem is getting fair access to layer 1 for all players.  If it takes 
 breaking the monopoly rules for putting in layer 1 facilities to get past 
 this log jam, then that may be the solution.
 
  The utopian solution (pun intended) would be to develop a local, state, 
 federal system of broadband similar to the highway system of roads.  Let 
 those broadband providers who can compete by creating layer 3 backbones and 
 services at layers 4-7 (and layer 1-2 with wireless) survive. Let the 
 innovation continue at layers 4-7 without constant saber-rattling from the 
 layer 1-2 providers.
 
 But how do we GET there?  I don't see a good path, as the ILECs who own the 
 layer 1 infrastructure have already successfully lobbied for laws and 
 policies that allow them to maintain their monopoly use of the layer 1 
 facilities to the customer's location.
 And as a byproduct we can stop the ridiculous debate on Net Neutrality which 
 is molded daily by telecom lobbyists.
 
 Yes, that would be nice.  But where's a feasible path to this ultimate goal?
 
 jc
 
 

the point of the bubble analogy had more to do with poor speculation driving 
poor investments than it had to do with the nature of the build outs.  I don't 
really think it would be far-fetched to see it happen again in broadband 
(perhaps in a better economy), but then it's only my opinion, everyone has them.

the deeper point I was trying to make:  all of this (the market evolution) has 
a detrimental effect on the Internet-consuming public and while the rest of 
world leads the USA in broadband deployment (pick any category) we debate, lag, 
and are currently driving policies that only further the patchwork of 
deployment and ineffective service we already have.

jy

Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style

2010-12-20 Thread Joe Provo

On Mon, Dec 20, 2010 at 11:46:10AM -0800, Leo Bicknell wrote:
 In a message written on Mon, Dec 20, 2010 at 02:31:09PM -0500, Joe Provo 
 wrote:
  Everywhere that had enough paying-humans-per fiber-mile, so primarily
  the Northeast corridor (Metro DC through Metro Boston).  Parts of the
  SF Bay, Chicago, Cleveland, Denver, Detroit... google cable overbuilder
  (RCN, WOW and several others).  Nontrivial capital is required for the 
  build-and-maintain of physical plant, so most all have shrunk since the 
  bubble popping.
 
 Interesting, I figured a few major cities would have a second
 provider, being able to high a large high rise or apartment complex
 might make the economics make sense.

Different problems; the property management adds another administrative
layer to the sequence (locality/district/ward; city/town; state; federal)
which has varying powers for exclusivity.  Which of course vary by 
(locality/etc; city; state).

[snip]
 Which brings us back to the argument at hand, the problem is a
 combination of factors, regulatority (franchise issues), physical
[snip]

An assertion which was false; you can discuss the 'practicality' or
whatever the experience has taught us as a nation, but to say there
are no are this datum generalizes for all in most all of this 
and sister threads is a major error.  There is no national scope, 
and the jury is still out if statewide scope [fpr video] is a good 
or bad thing. 

Sorry to muddy with facts, please resume pontificating.

-- 
 RSUC / GweepNet / Spunk / FnB / Usenix / SAGE

RE: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style

2010-12-20 Thread Rettke, Brian

So, we seem to circle the same points:

1. Who pays for the infrastructure to support the increased bandwidth 
requirements?

Comcast and most ISPs want the content provider to do so, since they 
are collecting fees for the service and they are not, but still have to pay for 
the bandwidth (maintenance and upgrades).

The customer is being billed twice: First to get access to the Internet 
to reach services, and then for the service offered by the content provider. 
The concern is that all customers, regardless of the services they select, will 
end up paying for the upgrades if the ISP has to/does raise rates. This makes 
the customer using the bandwidth-intensive application happy, and the other 
customers not using it unhappy.

The content provider pays for Internet access, and in some cases puts 
in proxies to cache closer to the source. They do not pay the end customer ISP 
for service (assuming different providers in play). The content provider 
receives revenue for its services.

The problem is still that someone has to support and build infrastructure. Some 
believe that Internet streaming video is the direction we are headed in, and 
that does appear to be true. But there are still a lot of customers that are 
not using this service, effectively subsidizing the customers using this 
service. This can be irksome, because most customers are unwilling to go back 
to a pay for what you use plan after having unlimited access. I think that 
would really put the pressure on both customers and content providers alike to 
be more efficient.

I understand that the goal is for the customer to get what they want on demand, 
but that will never be a reality, for anyone, anywhere. I'd love to see content 
providers continue the push towards more efficient technologies and 
architecture, but there is no impetus for them to do so unless they have a 
financial reason. The same is true for the ISP and the customer.

Bottom line:

Customers need to think about the purchase of content (considering each one as 
a transaction that has value) more. Not as a worrisome, bill will be enormous 
way, but assigning value to it nonetheless.

Content Providers need to continue upgrading methodologies, compression, and 
technologies in order to make their service a smooth, efficient essential 
object. This will help keep any one service from overwhelming the rest, which 
is the bane of every service provider/transit provider.

Service/Transit Providers need to re-evaluate their bandwidth offerings to 
customers, their relationships with content providers, and with each other. The 
model is very inefficient and political. The only way to be competitive seems 
to be, as someone said, to provide a solid Layer 1-3 platform that will drive 
innovation at layers 4-7.

At least, that's my perspective on it.



Sincerely,

Brian A . Rettke
RHCT, CCDP, CCNP, CCIP
Network Engineer, CableONE Internet Services


-Original Message-
From: Jeremy Bresley [mailto:b...@brezworks.com]
Sent: Monday, December 20, 2010 12:52 PM
To: nanog@nanog.org
Subject: Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style

On 12/20/2010 1:30 PM, Owen DeLong wrote:
 On Dec 20, 2010, at 11:16 AM, Leo Bicknell wrote:
 And yet, I don't know of any location in the US with two cable
 operators.  You see, these rules weren't changed to provide for a
 second cable TV plant to be put in the ground, even in the FCC knew
 that cost too much.  Rather, if  you read carefully the problem was
 that Verizon, ATT, and Bell South (all mentioned by name in the
 article) wanted to deliver video over FIOS/DSL.  Most areas had
 coverage rules, to be a cable provider you had to pass 95%+ of the
 houses or such, and these folks didn't meet many of the local rules
 and went to the government for help.

 I think that I recall encountering one or two such places in the past,
 but, I cannot recall them to make a specific citation. Certainly it is the
 exception and not the rule.

 Owen


Cedar Rapids, IA is served by both Mediacom (incumbent/original cable
company) and Imon (spinoff from McLeodUSA where they used to be called
McLeodUSA ATS).  As well as having Qwest for telco service.

ATS started as an overbuild to compete at the local level in MCLD's
hometown.  They were started circa 1997, and are still in business
today, so they survived the last 2 bubbles.  And they caused Mediacom to
keep prices down, and compete to offer additional services in Cedar
Rapids long before they were available in other cities in their footprint.

So examples of competitive overbuilds being successful do exist.  Maybe
Google's fiber build will inspire some other companies to try to compete
in this fashion.

Full disclosure: I worked for MCLD from 98-05, and in the ATS division
from 00-05.

Jeremy

Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style

2010-12-20 Thread Chris Adams

Once upon a time, Leo Bicknell bickn...@ufp.org said:
 And yet, I don't know of any location in the US with two cable
 operators.

Huntsville, AL has Comcast and Knology (originally CableAlabama) cable
available at virtually every address (except for some apartment
complexes, which tend to only be wired for one cable plant and negotiate
a deal with one company or the other).  I believe some of the
surrounding areas have overlap between Knology and Mediacom.

A number of years ago (15 or so?), CableAlabama wanted to sell out to
Comcast, and the city refused to allow it under the franchise agreement.
CA sued and eventually won a settlement, but didn't end up merging (and
became or was bought out by Knology).  IIRC the settlement was 50% off
of the franchise fee for 20 years or so.

For a long time, we had the lowest cable prices in the country because
of the competition, but I don't think that's the case anymore (Comcast,
being the big corporate entity, doesn't care about competition with
Knology, and Knology just raises their prices to keep up).

-- 
Chris Adams cmad...@hiwaay.net
Systems and Network Administrator - HiWAAY Internet Services
I don't speak for anybody but myself - that's enough trouble.

Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style

2010-12-20 Thread Seth Mattinen

On 12/20/2010 12:20, Alex Rubenstein wrote:
 Amazing how that worked, even spelling fransisco (sic) wrong.
 

One letter off:

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=cable+overbuilder+san+francisco

RE: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style

2010-12-20 Thread George Bonser

 The result is not competition, but a government sponsored duopoliy.
 This didn't bring more players to the table, it just let those already
 at the table offer a full set of overlapping services.  Likely a good
 step, but not the same as getting new entrants into the market.
 
 --
Leo Bicknell - bickn...@ufp.org - CCIE 3440
 PGP keys at http://www.ufp.org/~bicknell/

Back in the day people used to get their email, usenet, maybe even
hosting their web page, from their ISP.  When DSL came about, many of
these services migrated to the portals and the ISP became less of a
services provider and more of a transport provider.  The problem
with operations like the cable providers is that they seem to want to
fight tooth and nail not to allow the video services a person consumes
becoming an a la carte service where the end user picks and chooses from
what amounts to video portal sites. 

An analogy from the old days might be an ISP trying very hard to prevent
users from getting Yahoo! or Google mail or outside web hosting.  The
cable providers apparently aren't keen on simply being an ISP and
allowing end users to get their video content from wherever they choose.
In other words, they see themselves as a video content provider that
also provides internet service while the market is trying to move them
to an internet provider that also offers video content.  This is made
worse when the content distributor is also the content producer. The
migration toward the siloing of entertainment content means this
problem will just get worse. 

What's next?  ATT buying Disney and Verizon buying National Amusements?
So now you have the company that produces the product also owns the
railroad that delivers the product and charges fees for competitors
shipping their goods on that railroad that makes the others less
competitive.  So the competing railroads simply buy up their own freight
producers and do the same thing.

Or do we create a highway that allows any number of freight shippers
to operate to ship goods from any number of buyers to any number of
sellers.  I suppose what it boils down to is making the companies decide
what they are.  Are they an internet service provider or are they an
entertainment content provider because being both at the same time
seems to be a built-in conflict of interest from the consumer's point of
view.

Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style


 On 20/12/10 12:00 PM, Jeffrey S. Young wrote:


the point of the bubble analogy had more to do with poor speculation driving 
poor investments than it had to do with the nature of the build outs.  I don't 
really think it would be far-fetched to see it happen again in broadband 
(perhaps in a better economy),


A bad economy is the RIGHT time to build out.  Labor is much cheaper 
and more readily found, and money is harder to come by which means your 
business plan gets more thorough review before you get funding.  The 
booming economy is when money is spent unwisely and labor costs skyrocket.


jc

Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style


 On 20/12/10 12:23 PM, Seth Mattinen wrote:

On 12/20/2010 12:20, Alex Rubenstein wrote:

Amazing how that worked,


or didn't


  even spelling fransisco (sic) wrong.


One letter off:

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=cable+overbuilder+san+francisco


Did either of you actually *look* at the search results?

Lets take a quote from the first result:

www.broadbandmarkets.com/articles/fiberDeep2.htm

With franchises in two communities and others pending, it has begun 
building an HFC network that will eventually deliver bundled services 
to roughly 280,000 residents and businesses in Contra Costa County in 
the East Bay area of San Francisco.



OK, let's google for THAT.

http://www.google.com/search?q=overbuild+network+contra+costa+county

No data, just references back to the initial press releases.  I can't 
find any data that the overbuild *actually took place*.



Your lmgtfy link's search finds 5 year old press releases about 
discussions to PLAN overbuilding in various locations.  What I want are 
the Names of Specific Locations (in the SF Bay Area) where such 
overbuilds are currently in place and serving customers.


jc

Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style

On Dec 20, 2010, at 11:37 AM, George Bonser wrote:

 -Original Message-
 From: Jeff Wheeler [mailto:j...@inconcepts.biz]
 Sent: Monday, December 20, 2010 3:55 AM
 To: nanog@nanog.org
 Subject: Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style

 On Sun, Dec 19, 2010 at 8:48 PM, Richard A Steenbergen r...@e-
 gerbil.net wrote:
 Running a wire to everyone's house is a natural monopoly. It just
 doesn't make sense, financially or technically, to try and manage 50
 different companies all trying to install 50 different wires into
 every
 house just to have competition at the IP layer. It also wouldn't
 make

 What no one has mentioned thus far is that CLECs really are able to
 install their own facilities to homes and businesses if they decide
 that is a good way to invest their finite resources.  This is why we
 see several options for local loops in the business district of
 every sizable city, as well as in many newly-developed areas such as
 industrial parks.  These infrastructure builds are expensive, the
 CLECs had limited logistical capabilities and could only manage so
 many projects at once, and obviously, they focused their efforts on
 the parts of town where return-on-investment was likely to be highest.
 Businesses often do have several good choices for voice, data,
 Internet, and so on.  Cogent is an example of an essentially
 Internet-only service having some degree of success at this without
 even offering voice, or initially even transport, products.

 Also, there are two ways in to most urban and suburban home.  There is
 the telco and there is the cable company.  There is no reason those
 two paths should not compete for the same services, and they do across
 an increasing area of the US.  The rural areas, though, are a completely
 different story.

In the vast majority of cases, these are not equal competitors.

The vast majority of residences are more than 5,000 and a good majority
are more than 10,000 cable feet from the CO.

This means that average DSL speeds are sub-T1.

Most cable systems can deliver at least 10mbps/3mbps.

That's not competition unless your internet needs are extremely
modest and you are willing to accept some rather severe limitations.

I remember when I was on top of the world because I had T1 service
to my home and I used an average of 200kbps. Those days are long
gone. Today I get more than 200kbps in SPAM traffic.

Owen

Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style

In a message written on Mon, Dec 20, 2010 at 03:02:05PM -0500, Joe Provo wrote:
 An assertion which was false; you can discuss the 'practicality' or
 whatever the experience has taught us as a nation, but to say there
 are no are this datum generalizes for all in most all of this 
 and sister threads is a major error.  There is no national scope, 
 and the jury is still out if statewide scope [fpr video] is a good 
 or bad thing. 
 
 Sorry to muddy with facts, please resume pontificating.

Facts are good.  It appears there are more areas with two or more
cable TV providers than I thought, and that knowledge is useful.
I still maintain that the current set of regulation, laws, and
economic realities have lead to insigifnicant compeition in that
area, but that's purely an opinion.

You are also correct that there is a lack of context in these
threads.  There is a federal role (FCC, congressional), a state
role (state PUC's), and a local role (county/city/town PUC's).
Looking from the perspective of a town it's clear some have cable
compeition, for example.  Look at it nationally, and it's a really
small percentage (on the order of under 2%, best I can tell so far).
One man's everyone is another's no one.

I guess the question is, if these overbuilds work out so well in the
cities where they do exist, why don't they exist more places?

-- 
   Leo Bicknell - bickn...@ufp.org - CCIE 3440
PGP keys at http://www.ufp.org/~bicknell/


pgpbUNjA0n7hq.pgp
Description: PGP signature

Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style

2010-12-20 Thread Joe Provo

On Mon, Dec 20, 2010 at 12:46:39PM -0800, JC Dill wrote:
[snip]
 Your lmgtfy link's search finds 5 year old press releases about 
 discussions to PLAN overbuilding in various locations.  What I want are 
 the Names of Specific Locations (in the SF Bay Area) where such 
 overbuilds are currently in place and serving customers.
 
original question was and I know at least rcn. astound bought 
out their SF operation when I was leaving but a trivial search
show they still service where we did and have added.  

-- 
 RSUC / GweepNet / Spunk / FnB / Usenix / SAGE

Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style

2010-12-20 Thread Seth Mattinen

On 12/20/2010 12:46, JC Dill wrote:
 
 Your lmgtfy link's search finds 5 year old press releases about
 discussions to PLAN overbuilding in various locations.  What I want are
 the Names of Specific Locations (in the SF Bay Area) where such
 overbuilds are currently in place and serving customers.
 

Or conversely, they tried and failed.

I found Astound Broadband through the lmgtfy link (yes, I did look and
read, thanks) and they appear to be alive. But I don't live in
California to verify that personally.

~Seth

Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style


On Dec 20, 2010, at 12:16 PM, Rettke, Brian wrote:

 So, we seem to circle the same points:
 
 1. Who pays for the infrastructure to support the increased bandwidth 
 requirements?
 
Comcast and most ISPs want the content provider to do so, since they 
 are collecting fees for the service and they are not, but still have to pay 
 for the bandwidth (maintenance and upgrades).
 
What do you mean they are not? I'm paying Comcast $100/month to 
deliver the internet content I want to my home. They damn well are getting paid 
to do so.

The customer is being billed twice: First to get access to the 
 Internet to reach services, and then for the service offered by the content 
 provider. The concern is that all customers, regardless of the services they 
 select, will end up paying for the upgrades if the ISP has to/does raise 
 rates. This makes the customer using the bandwidth-intensive application 
 happy, and the other customers not using it unhappy.
 
I don't use particularly bandwidth-intensive applications. 
However, I do think that access networks should cover the costs of delivering 
the content I request from the fees I pay.
All that happens if you let them bill the content provider and double-dip is 
that the content provider has to pass those fees on to the service I'm using 
(at a markup, of course) who then
passes the cost on to me (again at a markup). I'd much rather pay the cost 
directly to my access provider without the double (or more) markups, thank you.

The content provider pays for Internet access, and in some cases puts 
 in proxies to cache closer to the source. They do not pay the end customer 
 ISP for service (assuming different providers in play). The content provider 
 receives revenue for its services.
 
IMHO, this is as it should be.

 The problem is still that someone has to support and build infrastructure. 
 Some believe that Internet streaming video is the direction we are headed in, 
 and that does appear to be true. But there are still a lot of customers that 
 are not using this service, effectively subsidizing the customers using this 
 service. This can be irksome, because most customers are unwilling to go back 
 to a pay for what you use plan after having unlimited access. I think that 
 would really put the pressure on both customers and content providers alike 
 to be more efficient.
 
If you don't need broadband, subscribe to narrow-band services. 
They are still available in most areas for less than broadband.

 I understand that the goal is for the customer to get what they want on 
 demand, but that will never be a reality, for anyone, anywhere. I'd love to 
 see content providers continue the push towards more efficient technologies 
 and architecture, but there is no impetus for them to do so unless they have 
 a financial reason. The same is true for the ISP and the customer.
 
There are already good incentives for the content provider. 
It's called user experience. If the content is close, i get a good user 
experience. If it is far away, I get a poor
user experience and I move on to a different content provider. If there were 
meaningful competition in the access market, I could do the same thing. 
Unfortunately, there is not
where I live and not in most locations.

 Bottom line:
 
 Customers need to think about the purchase of content (considering each one 
 as a transaction that has value) more. Not as a worrisome, bill will be 
 enormous way, but assigning value to it nonetheless.
 
I think I do this already.

 Content Providers need to continue upgrading methodologies, compression, and 
 technologies in order to make their service a smooth, efficient essential 
 object. This will help keep any one service from overwhelming the rest, 
 which is the bane of every service provider/transit provider.
 
I think that is already happening and will continue to happen.

 Service/Transit Providers need to re-evaluate their bandwidth offerings to 
 customers, their relationships with content providers, and with each other. 
 The model is very inefficient and political. The only way to be competitive 
 seems to be, as someone said, to provide a solid Layer 1-3 platform that will 
 drive innovation at layers 4-7.
 
I think you need to separate Transit Providers from Access Providers here. The 
reality is that there are four classes of players present without clear 
delineation:

Content Providers (including Content Provider Hosting Networks)
Content Delivery Networks
Transit Networks
Access Networks

If there are any pure players in any one space above left, I would be 
surprised, but, each of these four
spaces comes with a different set of tradeoffs and desires. Traditionally, 
Level3 has been a Transit
Network with some Access and some Content Provider aspects. Now they are adding 
Content
Delivery.

Traditionally, Comcast has been

Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style

2010-12-20 Thread Lamar Owen

On Monday, December 20, 2010 03:44:33 pm Owen DeLong wrote:
 The vast majority of residences are more than 5,000 and a good majority
 are more than 10,000 cable feet from the CO.

 This means that average DSL speeds are sub-T1.

FWIW, I'm at 14-15 kilofeet from the CO, and am getting a solid 7Mb/s down and 
512kb/s up.  The ISP has three tiers of DSL, and I'm at the lowest (which is 
probably the one that will work at my distance).  They also provide a 9M down / 
768k up, and a 11M down / 1M up for slightly higher rates.  I'm told that the 
11 down/1 up will work up to 12 kilofeet by their engineering. 

I'm running a secondary administrative DSL at my employer's location at the 
full 7/.5 rate at a distance of nearly 18 kilofeet, the last 2 kilofeet being 
our inside plant of CAT3 CALPETH.  That is on a Cisco ADSL WIC in a 2651; show 
dsl interface atm0/0 shows a downstream rate of 6.8Mb/s and an upstream of 
640kb/s.  Not bad for the distance.  Margins are good on both directions, being 
12dB upstream and 8.5dB downstream.

My experience is that the downstream is mildy oversubscribed, and the upstream 
less so.

Their copper in my area is nearly new, they have spent the last five years or 
so refreshing and updating their copper outside plant.

Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style

2010-12-20 Thread David Sparro

On 12/20/2010 12:05 AM, JC Dill wrote:

On 19/12/10 6:25 PM, Richard A Steenbergen wrote:

The laws of diminishing returns have already set the bar for the point
at which it's not profitable for a new company to enter the market and
try to compete. Right now the number is roughly 2, cable and dsl, give
or take a few outliers. I do believe the point would be to encourage a
little more competition than that. :)

In other words; it's an economic problem. Not Technical or regulation.

This is true but ONLY in the current climate where the incumbents have a
monopoly on the ability to put in cabling for the last mile to homes.

I live in an area where there are 2 ILECs (ATT, Verizon) in nearby
proximity. Both are putting in fiber to some homes in their respective
areas. Imagine what would happen if they could both put in fiber in the
other areas. Then they would be *competitors* for those customers. Right
now, they don't compete - they each have a territory and in their
territory they are the predominant telco player (competing with the
cable incumbent - usually Comcast).

There is no monopoly. They've already experimented with that and
(apparently) decided that it wasn't worth it.

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/bus/ptech/stories/DN-verizon_17bus.State.Edition1.f7543b.html

My theory is that everybody is just waiting around for things like
'network neutrality', 'broadband stimulus', and 'USF reform' to finally
get decided before the Big Guys start to spend any money on upgrades.

--
Dave

Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style

2010-12-20 Thread Jack Bates




On 12/20/2010 3:47 PM, Lamar Owen wrote:

Their copper in my area is nearly new, they have spent the last five
years or so refreshing and updating their copper outside plant.


This makes a huge difference. At a little over 18,000 feet, I had to 
drop to 3m down .5 up to stabilize my DSL connection long term; 
especially during storms. It could push up to 6 down, .75 up but 
wouldn't hold stable when I needed it to.


Of course, since then, we dropped a system roughly 200 feet from my 
house and 100 symmetric is possible.



Jack

Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style

2010-12-20 Thread Randy Carpenter


 
 And yet, I don't know of any location in the US with two cable
 operators.

We have 2 separate cable providers in our town. One of them is a division of 
the local telephone company, but it is still CATV plant. The telco also 
operates a FTTH service with IPTV video as well.

The result is that the big national CATV provider had incredibly good rates for 
a long time, and even after they were more than doubled, are still really good.

-Randy

Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style

2010-12-20 Thread Dorn Hetzel

Where I live, about 50 miles south of Atlanta down I-85, there is no
consumer broadband at all.

Satellite, Cellular, and T-1, those are my options.

A mile away, there are choices, but not here.  I am sure we aren't the only
neighborhood in this situation, even today.

On Mon, Dec 20, 2010 at 6:06 PM, Randy Carpenter rcar...@network1.netwrote:


 
  And yet, I don't know of any location in the US with two cable
  operators.

 We have 2 separate cable providers in our town. One of them is a division
 of the local telephone company, but it is still CATV plant. The telco also
 operates a FTTH service with IPTV video as well.

 The result is that the big national CATV provider had incredibly good rates
 for a long time, and even after they were more than doubled, are still
 really good.

 -Randy

Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style


On Dec 20, 2010, at 1:47 PM, Lamar Owen wrote:

 On Monday, December 20, 2010 03:44:33 pm Owen DeLong wrote:
 The vast majority of residences are more than 5,000 and a good majority
 are more than 10,000 cable feet from the CO.
 
 This means that average DSL speeds are sub-T1.
 
 FWIW, I'm at 14-15 kilofeet from the CO, and am getting a solid 7Mb/s down 
 and 512kb/s up.  The ISP has three tiers of DSL, and I'm at the lowest (which 
 is probably the one that will work at my distance).  They also provide a 9M 
 down / 768k up, and a 11M down / 1M up for slightly higher rates.  I'm told 
 that the 11 down/1 up will work up to 12 kilofeet by their engineering. 
 
Those are all still sub-T1 on the uplink and well below normal CMTS service
speeds. Low-end CMTS is around 15Mbps/7Mbps.

 I'm running a secondary administrative DSL at my employer's location at the 
 full 7/.5 rate at a distance of nearly 18 kilofeet, the last 2 kilofeet being 
 our inside plant of CAT3 CALPETH.  That is on a Cisco ADSL WIC in a 2651; 
 show dsl interface atm0/0 shows a downstream rate of 6.8Mb/s and an upstream 
 of 640kb/s.  Not bad for the distance.  Margins are good on both directions, 
 being 12dB upstream and 8.5dB downstream.
 
I'm happy for you. The ATT cable plant in my neighborhood is unable to
sustain any better than 1.5mbps/384k on ADSL.

 My experience is that the downstream is mildy oversubscribed, and the 
 upstream less so.
 
 Their copper in my area is nearly new, they have spent the last five years or 
 so refreshing and updating their copper outside plant.  

That helps a lot. It still doesn't compete with CMTS which was my point.

Owen

Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style


 On 20/12/10 2:15 PM, David Sparro wrote:



There is no monopoly.  They've already experimented with that and 
(apparently) decided that it wasn't worth it.


http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/bus/ptech/stories/DN-verizon_17bus.State.Edition1.f7543b.html 



*


 Tuesday, June 17, 2008


Do you have any cites saying that this was actually rolled out?  Or did 
the project get cut during the financial crisis, and never actually 
rolled out?


The issue I have with all these cites is that none of them are for 
services that are up and running.  They are all press releases about 
something that will supposedly get built, maybe.


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

jc
*

Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style

2010-12-20 Thread Steven Bellovin


On Dec 20, 2010, at 8:51 01PM, JC Dill wrote:

 On 20/12/10 2:15 PM, David Sparro wrote:
 
 
 There is no monopoly.  They've already experimented with that and 
 (apparently) decided that it wasn't worth it.
 
 http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/bus/ptech/stories/DN-verizon_17bus.State.Edition1.f7543b.html
  
 
 *
 
 
 Tuesday, June 17, 2008
 
 
 Do you have any cites saying that this was actually rolled out?  Or did the 
 project get cut during the financial crisis, and never actually rolled out?
 
 The issue I have with all these cites is that none of them are for services 
 that are up and running.  They are all press releases about something that 
 will supposedly get built, maybe.
 
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_Nukem_Forever
 
Maybe I've lost the thread context, but if you're talking about FIOS it most 
certainly is running, in many places 
(http://www22.verizon.com/Residential/aboutFiOS/Overview.htm?CMP=DMC-CVS_ZZ_ZZ_E_TV_N_X001).
  My town has it; Comcast's responsiveness improved dramatically after FIOS was 
rolled out  Speeds are good, prices less so, and if memory serves they 
charge something like $40/mo extra for static IP addresses.


--Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb

Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style

2010-12-20 Thread Aaron C. de Bruyn

On 2010-12-19 at 20:44:21 -0800, Owen DeLong wrote:
 On Dec 19, 2010, at 6:12 PM, JC Dill wrote:
 The USPS monopoly on first class mail is absurd. In fact, FedEx, UPS,
 et. al could offer a $0.44 letter product if they wanted to.

Like JC said, the Private Express statutes prevent you from being a
common mail carrier.

The government created USPS and brought us slow bureaucratic mail
delivery.

The private sector (FedEx/UPS, etc...) brought us overnight delivery
where USPS couldn't...

...and next-day air
...and freight delivery
...and package tracking that reports more than just We don't know where it 
is/It's at the post office

When was the last time USPS delivered you a 100 pound UPS unit over night from 
across the country while letting you track it's progress?

-A

Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style

2010-12-20 Thread Adrian Chadd

On Mon, Dec 20, 2010, Aaron C. de Bruyn wrote:

 The private sector (FedEx/UPS, etc...) brought us overnight delivery
 where USPS couldn't...
 
 ...and next-day air
 ...and freight delivery
 ...and package tracking that reports more than just We don't know where it 
 is/It's at the post office
 
 When was the last time USPS delivered you a 100 pound UPS unit over night 
 from across the country while letting you track it's progress?

Trouble is, now they can't. Why? Because they'd be threatening the jobs of
hard working Fedex/UPS/etc. employees.

:-)



Adrian
(only half tongue in cheek here.)

Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style