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Broadband Bermuda Triangle
An anonymous coward sent in: "Mike from Techdirt has written an article in Salon.com about how he is the bermuda triangle of broadband, and how the government should kick him out of the country if they really want to save the broadband industry. Apparently, he's been kicked off 4 or 5 different broadband networks in the past year alone as each company went bankrupt or gave up the business."
Mmmmmmm. Floor pie!
It's a shame broadband internet services cant seem to turn a profit. I'd like to see a cable provider provide me with an IP address, and thats it. I'll take care of my email and other services. Something like 'Broadband for Nerds. Simplicity Matters.' or.. something like that...
Don't Tread on Me
Other powerful interests opposed to the future are large publishers, governments, advertisers and all others want to tell you what to think. Free speech is not what these folks want. They want broadcast and money. If you don't consider propaganda and money equivalents, consider what a green piece of paper is really worth.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
I submitted an order with an ISP for DSL service 8 months ago and nothing came of it until one day a couple of techs from a business network provider came by my house and said, "Here's your IDSL router." After a quick hookup and entering the DNS variables provided by the ISP's homepage, I was on the Internet @ 144k both ways. I called the ISP and asked what I should do about payment and their response was, "Ummm... we cancelled your order so you're not in our computer." I called the busines network provider and they said, "Talk to your ISP." So I called the ISP a few more times and then they went bankrupt. Their DNS died, and so did my Internet access, for the 2 minutes it took for me to enter a DNS for a nearby college that now resolves all my queries. So the ISP no longer exists and I can't pay them, and the business internet provider that is my first hop says they don't do residential accounts so they won't take my money. Meanwhile, I have a Lucent router I've never paid for, an install I've never paid for, and continuing IDSL service that I've yet to pay for going on 2 months now. I'm wondering that if this could last indefinitely, perhaps I can turn it over as a feature when I sell the property...
"3 bedrooms, 4 baths, 2 car garage, free Internet access for life..."
For the LECs (local exchange carriers like Verizon) that is. What you don't realize is that $30-$35 of your monthly $50-60 DSL fee you paid Northpoint, Rythms, or currently Covad went to the LECs. That's right, 50%+ goes to the Baby Bells because of their monopolies on the local loop. Get some competition on the local loop and the Baby Bells won't be able to squeeze out the profit margins from DSL providers.
"We're sorry, but the website you're trying to reach has been disconnected."
Fuck local loops. The Bells will never open it up. IP laws will ease up around the same time this happens.
Let's treat internet infrastructure as infrastructure (aka roads) and have the govt lay the lines. We can fully fund this with the 70+ billion ca$h from the War on Terrorism. Remember, the Interstate highway system was built from Defense dollars during the Cold War, and that's why their symbol is a little shield. If bush can justify handing IBM a check for 1.3 billion in the name of homeland defense, then this should be a congressional walkover.
After that, let private ISP's bid to operate the lines (i.e. maintenance, routers, cacheing, etc.) and make money on service not bandwidth. Competing on the quality of service is more productive than getting into infrastructure wars -- suing who owes what to whom. You can then run your mail/web server and pay only the costs of administering your account, which should be billing you, electricity, and checking that no one cut the line to your house accidently. Shouldn't be too much. Those who want webmail and funky desktop icons which guide you through the internet search process can and should pay extra. Also, I think more people will sign up if there's a fiber optic line heading to just about every home in the major urban areas. As an extra plus, it'll give silicon valley a shot in the arm.
For those whom just can't stand the thought of govt. spending on public infrastructure, you can always just privatize the thing once the lines are laid and enough cutomers have signed up to make it profitable.
When in doubt, have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand.
The problem as I see it is the weird split between the monopolistic line owners and the purely competitive ISPs in the broadband arena. The traditional dial-up ISP business didn't have this problem since everyone had pretty much the same cost structure so profitability, even though relatively low, was pretty much the same across the board, and competetition could occur on features and the dreaded "ease of use" (AOL drool-proofing).
DSL has monopolistic ILECs and generally monopolistic CLECs (you can use Covad or Rhythms, but it's fixed based on your choice of ISP and location usually). Cable has monopolistic line owners. Because ILECs (I'm thinking Verizon here) can be ISPs too, they will naturally take a price gouging on their ISP service to get business and avoid having to share profits with a seperate company. This allows them to drive ISPs out of business and become the "last man standing". At that point they can price service however they damn well feel. See: Microsoft, monopoly. Cable modem service is different in that you have no choices as the consumer, but because the ISP business is basically a commodity, the separation is farcical: the Cable companies own the pipe, and will abuse the ISP until the ISP leaves the business, realizing they can't make a buck, or just goes out of business. Now again the Cable modem company is the last man standing - or they just find some other drooling ISP to give them el cheapo contract, who they will slowly abuse and tighten a noose on until the same happens again.
I've seen more than enough people leave a otherwise technically competent ISP due to impossible service through their customer service department.
Surprising, this doesn't seem to be as big an issue with the dialup ISPs.
If you are *are* going to set up an ISP, get the bookkeeping down first before you buy any of the connectivity equipment. Getting technical help to your customers first is a priority, but knowning whom your customers are is more important than that!
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
Disclaimer: This may read like an ad for Internet America. While it is somewhat of a testemonial, I am just a satisfied customer, and receive no financial compensation for saying nice things about them.
In days gone by, I'd dream of an ISDN connection, or even dedicated 56k. But the price/performance just wasn't there: around $100/month for the physical line and connectivity. DSL, of course started to look attractive. I'd never been a fan of cable modems, what with the shared media, dynamic IPs, and generally draconian TOS.
When I moved to a Dallas suburb, I priced various offerings, and ended up with Internet America. I stayed in a month-to-month apartment for about 6 weeks until I bought and closed on a house, and the following factors were important:
I needed dial up access for a short time, month-to-month while I was at the apartment.
I wanted to make sure that the TOS were reasonable. Some are downright insane: pinging remote hosts, even with consent, was considered "hacking" and could get your account suspended. Running any server, even an smtp sink (non-relaying, of course) was verbotten, and forget about a static IP. Often there were stingy traffic quotas.
Naturally, I wanted to make sure that service was likely available in the area where I'd be buying a home.
Internet America fit this bill nicely: dial-up and DSL, reasonable TOS ("Oh, things like SMTP are fine, even a Web server as long as you don't saturate the uplink -- we're geeks, we understand" from tech. support), and various access plans (fast, faster, and fastest, er, duh, I guess).
I was a bit out of range from the CO (15.6 kft) so they couldn't piggyback on the existing POTS service. But, for an extra $15 a month, they'd lease a dry pair and add the cost to my bill. Bottom line is that I've got 768 kbps down by 384 kbps up on a dedicated pair for $74.99 a month, plus tax ($81.18). Not exactly cheap, but they don't appear to be going out of business.
The big plus, though, is service. Static IP? No problem, I get one free. Their tech people admitted to having looked at PPPoE over ATM, and having held their noses, decided it wasn't the way to go. I had a few glitches with billing (like not dropping the dial up charges when I get DSL), and the odd 15 minute outage but these were resolved (actually we're still looking at the outage but as it happens so rarely it isn't a real problem and is hard to track down -- they suspect their DSL modem). They even back-credited me for 2 months of dialup charges while I had DSL -- many providers won't do that under any circumstances, being so eager to nickel and dime their customers.
Now, like most slashdotters, I'm not your typical "one computer plugged into the DSL modem" guy: I've got a headend with the DSL modem, a 10/100 Mb/s 8 port Linksys firewall/router doing NAT, with wired drops to rooms all over the house. I run [GNU/]Linux, sink my own email, plan to provide SSH access, and might run a non-advertised web server (on other than port 80). In short, I use the DSL line as a shared connection for the whole house's traffic, eventually with 3 or 4 computers behind the firewall. As long as I don't excessively saturate the uplink, Internet America is "O.K." with this.
Basically I get DNS delegation (for my domain) from register.com, DNS and secondary MX from iicinternet.com, and am very pleased.
Compare this with my neighbor across the street is in Southwestern Bell Hell: he pays $49.95 a month for draconian TOS with PPPoE. He gets dropped at the strangest times (not just when idle), and his DSL modem requires frequent power cycles because it loses sync. His service is down so much that he retains a dial-up modem and needs it weekly. I'm over there about once every 2-3 weeks resetting his DSL modem, or reconfiguring his networking options. He isn't using a firewall (oops), and I hope his box does not get r()()73d, as they say ('course it's just running Windoze).
Is the extra $25 a month that I pay worth it? Obviously I think so.
Again, this is just a review of my experience with a particular provider. I've heard grumblings about them from others, but am satisfied myself. Naturally, YMMV.
You could've hired me.