Broadband Obstacles

Strange Beer writes: "The Washington Post is running a story discussing many of the roadblocks and speedbumps that Telcoms and ISPs have encountered while trying to rollout broadband. Not surprisingly, most of the obstacles were built by them." The government approach is dysfunctional. Broadband prices are going up - 25% or more in the last six months. Simultaneously rollouts have stopped except in metropolitan areas, and the Bell monopolies are busy finishing off the last independent DSL providers. This is the "free market" in action (government-sponsored monopolies crushing independents), and therefore unquestionable in the US today, and it's also the reason why people aren't getting high-speed access. The only solution suggested in this article is to essentially browbeat citizens into overpaying for high-speed service that they don't want and probably isn't offered in their area, solely so that the MPAA can sell us movies on demand, if they ever decide to do so. What exactly is the thought process here?

Comments

You /. people really like the word "monopoly"

[skrowl]

don't you?

In a free market system, monopolies NATURALLY result from good business practices. Having a monopoly is NOT illegal. What is illegal is using unfair trade practices to keep others out of the market, thereby extending or maintaining a monopoly. The bell DSL providers are doing better because they provide the service at a lower cost to them, with higher quality service.

I'd also like to point out that rr.com is doing pretty well for itself, despite being national. Why was it not mentioned?

No it's not!

[Perrin-GoldenEyes]

This is the "free market" in action (government-sponsored monopolies crushing independents)

No...it is not. The idea of a "government-sponsored monopoly is anathema to the free market. The whole idea of a free market is that the government keeps its dirty hands OUT of the market. No sponsoring business. No squashing it with excessive tax burden. This doesn't seem to difficult to understand.

Re:No it's not!

[Chris Feddern]

That's why he put the phrase "free market" in quotation marks. Can you say, "sarcasm"?

Broadband

[Heem]

We as the 'power user' community, ie, the 3% that the companies talk about that actually USE the product that they sell to us, need to be heard on the issue. If a company could provide us with and IP address, and a relatively high speed pipe, for a fair price, we could keep the cost to them down by not needing any of the BS that they waste so much money on. I don't need someone to sell me 'video email, only with this company' blah blah, i can do video email with any company, AOL if i wanted to. Rediculous. Put a wire in my house with an IP address. I'll pay what it is worth. The only reason I'm upset about paying $50 for the cable service I have now is that they whine and cry about every little thing I do. I'd easily pay $100 for something that was under my control, I could have control over the dns, etc. 4 sets of numbers. That's all I want/need to ever hear from the provider.

What free market?

[stripes]

This is the "free market" in action (government-sponsored monopolies crushing independents)

How can it be a free market operation when it includes government-sponsored monopolies? This is pretty much not a free market, it involves those government-sponsored monopolies controlling most of the resources, and government regulations that in theory force them to share. (And I'll note that is mostly in theory, not practice)

This isn't a failure of the free market any more then Microsoft attempting to port the GIMP to MacOS and failing would be a failure of the open software community.

Waiting Period

[nzhavok]

I think one of the largest problems is the waiting period. Realistically people just don't want to have to wait so long to get up and running with a broadband service.

My personal experience was with satellite broadband, I had to wait 4 weeks before the dish can be installed and then the installer couldn't configure the card properly in my PC.

The second problem I've encountered has been bandwidth caps. I'm back to a 56K now since the satellite company put a download cap of 500MB/month (yes MB). which meant I could blow through the monthly cap in about, oh, 40 minutes!

The end result from this is that people who have had experiences like me will recommend that others don't get broadband because it's not worth the hassle right now.

Free market

[sql*kitten]

This is the "free market" in action (government-sponsored monopolies crushing independents), and therefore unquestionable in the US today

It's not a free market. A free market would mean that government-sponsored monopolies would have been stripped of their protected status, and had to compete on equal terms with wholly-private enterprises. The matter is somewhat complicated by the fact that a lot of the existing infrastructure was created and is controlled by the state monopolies. There's no straightforward way to transfer that to the private sector, and no straightforward way to replace it, because that would mean that every operator would have to lay their own cable infrastructure. That's just not economically viable.

I suspect that the majority of the bad press free market capitalism gets is because people bandy the term about without understanding it. This isn't a problem of the free market, it's a problem of the government. But somehow, the free market gets blamed and the government called to intervene - again. And it's odd that the GPL-loving slashbots would oppose free - not as in speech or as in beer, but freedom to enter into business relationships - just as important.

What good is free speech, Mr Andersen, if you can't act on your words?

And did you really mean "unquestionable"?

It's the Last Mile.

[Masem]

IMO, it's that last mile, from the CO to your home, that's the most critical in the broadband arena. Right now, the problem is that that last mile is owned by the same people that want to sell you services over it, and thus are going to do as much in their power in order to make sure only their service is used over their wire.

What needs to be done is to force these phone companies to divest themselves of the last mile ownership, and instead treat that as a utility, thus which may be handled by a city, or by a small company or the like. Because it's a utility, the only care they have is to hook one end to your house, and provide several outlets at the other end (phone, cable, broadband, etc); you then simply sign up for the services at that other end, paying the phone or cable or broadband company for that service. This way, the last mile utility cannot control what goes in that pipe, only that you pay to maintain it, and that suddenly phone companies will find themselves in competition again with other service providers. That would clear up the pseudo-monopoly that phone co's have right now, *and* may be incentive enough to get fat pipe to every household in American by some means, including urban and rural areas. This could also mean the development of wide-area wireless communication hubs that might serve a small, rural city, since effectively that's much easier to get the last mile than wiring it.

Again, the key here is that the only service that the last mile utility can be concerned with is to make sure that what goes in one side of the last mile wire comes out the other. They cannot provide a service lest they give up their right to control that pipe, otherwise we're right back to square one.

Re:It's the Last Mile.

[scoove]

are going to do as much in their power in order to make sure only their service is used over their wire.

Not only is this very true, but the same people are making sure their wire is the only way to get any service to your home or business.

We've seen numerous legislative efforts pop up to block tower construction projects and were surprised at the apparently sudden interest in "protecting property values," "saving children from evil RF rays" (as claimed by a Missouri congressional fool) and "preserving the environment."
What seemed odd was that while communication towers of any height were targeted, high power transmission lines were not. If RF "evil waves", property values and environmental issues were the focus, you'd expect transmission lines to be at the front of the list.

Then we started to see an interesting parallel: the same congressional sponsors were receiving outstanding support from incumbant local telephone companies. In one case, research briefs used by the congresscritter were prepared by a southwestern bell staffer.

The conclusion? Incumbant telephone companies were attempting to kill cellular and fixed wireless broadband competition, while pushing legislation in various states claiming that there was no way they could upgrade their ancient network without taxpayer money.

Once a monopoly, always a monopoly, apparently. The best we can do is watch these corrupt pols and work to throw them out (or at least expose them) when we discover they're using their position to redirect our tax money for the protection of these incumbants.

*scoove*

Re:It's the Last Mile.

[scoove]

...treat that as a utility, thus which may be handled by a city, or by a small company or the like

I'd be very cautious about the "handled by a city" part - this is often done via a municipal arrangement which sounds well intentioned, but ends up really mucking things up.

In my parts, there are a few municipals that were chartered initially to provide a utility (usually electrical and/or water). Because of the way municipals are managed, the lack of accountability to the city (you typically can't elect/fire them, you can't affect their budget, etc.), they tend to normalize as a mini-monopoly agency with no profit focus and no accountability.

Most in our parts have taken on service after service due to the eagerness for more revenues, power and control. They'll add natural gas service, propane delivery, fuel oil, then migrate into communications: cellular, telephone, cable TV and broadband Internet.

Unfortunately, as they're not market-driven entities, they don't have the natural correcting forces that ensure efficiency. They make up for inefficiency by subsidizing them in their other monopoly areas - e.g. electric rates.

One municipality in the area has hiked their electrical rates to about $0.12/kilowatt hour, whereas the electricity offered just outside town by a coop is $0.06 (with discount programs offering $0.03).

The impact to the town doesn't stop there, either. All of the municipal's services are lousy, but since they have such an established base and the ability to subsidize from their other products, competitors have simply stayed away. The result is quite comperable to the goals of socialism: everyone is equally miserable.

So... get yourself some competitors in your community. Make it easy for them to get in, and don't buy from them if they are lousy. But don't lock yourself into one solution either through the error of municipals or by denying entry via towers and right of ways.

*scoove*

Re:All I want is the connection

[verbatim]

That's a very good point and explains the downfall of @home: spending money on useless services that nobody wants/needs/uses.

An ISP should provide:
connectivity, POP/SMTP/NNTP/DNS (things that NORMAL people don't host themselves), and some form of customer support.

An ISP should not provide:
Portal services (there are enough out there as it is), custom browsers (that they either won't support or require FOR support), and anything that is a useless extension that can be found elsewhere. Don't bloat the bill.

But these big companies are used to being a one-stop-wh0ring... umm... shopping place for all your Internet needs. In fact, they'd probably ship the Internet to you on CD or DVD if you asked nicely enough.

Re:The economics of monopolies

[mpe]

Absolutely. A monopoly simply means that a company has essentially an entire market segment to itself. That doesn't mean, however, that other companies can't try to compete in the same space. It's harder, to be sure, but in the end, consumers will vote with their dollars

It may well be impossible for a startup utility to compete against an already existing utility. Not only do they have to make a huge investment before they have anything to sell they also have to convince land owners (and government) to let them install pipes, cables, etc. When they are likely to get the response "there already is electricity, gas, drinking water, telephone,etc there".

Re:The economics of monopolies

[MindStalker]

Not as long as there is sufficent regulation to allow compition, you can currently set up solar panels to generate more electricity than you need, and you will get paid for the extra electricity that gets pumped into the system. Anyone, and I mean Anyone can start their own long distance company, there are even a few competitors in local phone service. There is absolutly no reason there can't be compitition in broadband markets, sharing the same lines. But the regulations to force the big providers to open up their lines don't exist yet.
"there already is electricity (been done), gas (been done), drinking water (could be done, but why?), telephone (been done),etc (working on it) there".

The thought process? "Make em pay to breathe."

[Moderation abuser]

Basically they want money for nothing. You can see the mentality as companies divest themselves of pretty much everything physical and become "Intellectual property owners" with multiple levels of subcontractors, each taking a cut.

I believe it's to do with the rise of the MBA. People who know nothing but the theory of business but not real business, just, the way they wish it could be.

Anyway, why aren't people buying broadband? Because it's too fucking expensive with the telcos trying to force their blended, homogenised crap "content" which they think is so wonderful down our throats.

I want a fast line to everything. I don't want to be forced to an ISP, I don't want "premium entertainment", video on demand but only from the tel/cable co. I don't give a flying fuck about 500 TV channels. Give me the fucking line and then get out of my way.

Basically, I want infrastructure. All the rest is frothy shit on top. Unfortunately, commercial organisations aren't very good at providing infrastructure. All they can think of is the frothy shit.

Re:All I want is the connection

[medcalf]

An ISP should provide:
connectivity, POP/SMTP/NNTP/DNS (things that NORMAL people don't host themselves), and some form of customer support.

No, an ISP should not provide connectivity. That should be handled by any one of several competing entities (the phone company(s), cable company, satellite, wireless - whatever), while the ISP provides services. Then I, as a consumer, can select connectivity from the best provider of connectivity and services (if I need them) from the best provider of services.

Balkanization of the market

[cryptochrome]

The competitive aspects of the market are generally a great way to drive innovation and ensure that individual companies within an industry offer good value for the price. But at the same time, if such companies have any sort of monopoly (and in the telcom business they most certainly do have local ones) they always overcharge, and that same competitiveness can cause balkanization of the market where those monopolies are granted, and thus holding back innovation and usefullness of the industry. Therefore, the government should always consider setting standards where monopolies are granted. And they out to step in now and take action. The US has fallen embarrassingly far behind other countries in the usefullness of high tech.

The broadband market is a good example - companies were allowed to merge with wild abandon, and the quality of service only went down. Users have little or no choice of service, and it's expensive. The other key example is the mobile, wireless, and broadcasting markets - several companies with incompatible systems (so that even SMS won't work together), including legacy systems that are no longer desirable but are kept around for backwards compatibility, using up the fundamentally limited resource of EM bandwidth with gross inefficiency. It would be far more efficient might actually be CHEAPER if the government were to step in, set up a couple of modern standards for local and long-range one-way and two-way communication (perhaps using 802.11 or UWB, and satellites, Metropolitan Area Networks, and ad-hoc adaptive wireless networks using directional antenna), and subsidize the transition for all households. Just think how much bandwidth you could free up for communication if you eliminated the TV and radio bands and delivered those via satellite instead.

Lack of compelling broadband content.

[Restil]

This is probably the biggest issue. People aren't eating up broadband in droves because simply there just aren't that many legitimate needs for it.

Note I point out "legitimate". I know of plenty illegitimate uses for broadband which would be difficult if not impossible without it. Excessive mp3 downloading, movies, tv shows, software. Broadband makes these activities simple.

The problem is, because of the RIAA and MPAA and others' stalling, these services simply aren't offered in a way that makes any sense, and those of us who have the means would rather do it our own way, even if that means that the feetdraggers miss out on the opportunity.

Granted, not everyone who has broadband is using it illegally. A lot of people like the always-on capability. A lot of people like their webpages loading super fast. But fact of the matter is, most of those people don't NEED it. Its merely a convienence, and they wouldn't hesitate to move somewhere that it isn't available, where thats the first question I ask after "how much does it cost?"

-Restil