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A Step Closer (Or Not) To Cable ISP Diversity
Tom Veil writes: "Yahoo! posted a story saying that AT&T Broadband and Comcast have both made agreements to work with other ISPs in order to allow them to provide service through cable systems. The Earthlink/AT&T deal appears to be set at this point, but they haven't received FCC approval. Don't suppose this means we'll be seeing free NetZero cable, but hopefully competition will kick in and make things more affordable for cheapskates like me." Bear in mind that both companies provide cable Internet service and are seeking regulatory approval for a merger. They have good reason to sidestep suspicions that the result would be a strangling monopoly.
...but looks like FP opportunity! Why the hell not? . . .
:wq
I remember the deregulation of the market in Germany when Deutsche Telekom had to open their phone and Internet services. Lots of competition popped up. INITIALLY. Many of them are gone by now, because they sold under their own cost (read: under the price that Telekom was charging them). That cannot be healthy over time (see .gone bubble). By now everybody is about the same, they all raised prices and there a happy few. Did it do much for the consumer? Not really as I recall (but I do not live there anylonger). The only differentiator (basically) is service now. So maybe it is a good thing ...
open cable systems are nice but what we really need are high power UBW satellite systems that have bandwidth equal to or greated than the measly things offered by cable and DSL systems. We have been stuck at (relatively)( low speeds for nearly ten years now.While i'm not a fan of big gov't, it would be nice if they came in and helped fund emerging network technologies.
i guess there is probably too much of a national security risk in high speed wireless, right now though.
I hear ya. I fear stangling monopolies too, most notably because I haven't the foggiest idea of what it means to be stangled. How stange...
but you'll have to forgive me for not believing it. On the one hand, open-minded businesses will act to create a marketplace for this type of service. However, the reality is that the expenditures necessary to maintain this kind of network will, in the long run, favour only the well-heeled. By definition, they will be few in number. Counted on one hand with a couple of fingers missing.
I don't think the corporate partners mentioned will make it easy for a 'ecosystem' of different ISPs to arise.
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I'm posting a fresh hotmail address here to see how much spam becomes of it. slashpost@hotmail.com I'll reply to this post with the results in a day or so.
Don't Bogart the fish sticks
Ok, I've never posted to /. complaining about spelling before. In fact, I've modded down people complaining about spelling errors. I could care less. As long as I understand what taco means, it's no problem.
But what the #&%$! did you mean by "stangling," timothy? I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that you meant to say "staggering." Upon careful examination of my keyboard, I cannot begin to imagine how you made that particular typo. It involves at least three key misses, all of which you must have typed with the *wrong* *hand*.
Someone please explain this to me. Is "stangling" some new kind of slang word? Am I completely out of the loop? That would make a lot more sense.
Either that, or timothy is even more drunk than I am... Nah.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
As more competition arise, ISP will be forced to lower prices to stay competitive. SO who will get scrweed at the end? Technies like us, who knows that 300k/sec @ 40 bucks a pop is far better than 50k/sec at 30 bucks a pop.
You know guys, more competition means crappier services for all of us.
kawai
I think the cable broadband providors are doing this just as a dog-and-pony show so they don't get regulated or classified in a fashion where there will be real competition.
I think what we'll see will be that it will always be less expensive to go with the larger carrier than with their 'allowed' competitors.
I glanced at this the other day and noticed they are allowing Earthlink and AOL in addition to their Road Runner. RR has been really good in this area but it might be interesting to test out earthlink because it is $4/mo cheaper. I just hope I don't get forced into AOL cable though..
Sorry, but network technology really isn't my strong point :P
Is the system they're proposing something like the electricity selling programs that some states are doing now? I mean when you can choose among a variety of utility companies but all of the electricity comes over the same wires.
i work for one of the isp's thats going to get a shot at at&t's cable lines, and i have heard that we are going to be offering about 500k faster down, and 128k faster up than what at&t is currently offering, for a little bit less than what at&t is offering it. keep in mind, this is still in beta testing in a few places, and it might change between now and then. but from what i have heard it will be at least faster speeds for the same price as at&t is offering.
Avoid The Rush, Start Thinking NOW!
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Any Spelling Or Gramatical Errors In This Post Are There On Purpose.
At&t has been saying they will open up their network for several years. The name of the project was "Broadband Choice"; and, in fact, I believe it has been tried in both Boulder, Colorado and Boston, MA (although the project name has changed).
Part of the reason for the "strategy" was the Media One merger - and the regulators requesting that AT&T open up their network.
Another reason is that AT&T wants to move away from supporting the end users on things such as email, news, etc. They'd rather concentrate on the network, and let someone else deal with DHCP servers, email servers, etc. (When they were @Home, AT&T was still the first 3 tiers of tech support, and it costs them a large amount of money) Because, let's face it - Many Users Are Dumb.
@Home had an exclusive contract with all the cable providers for 5 years (although @Home went bankrupt a tad early - the contract didn't expire until June 2002). The cable providers had been wanting out of the contract for a while, either to do things on their own, or to open up their network to other ISPs. AT&T could escape the contract in some areas (Boulder and Boston) because the contract was for a certain footprint, and those areas were outside of the footprint.
Incidently, the attbi network is largely WorldNet personnel behind the scenes when it comes to DHCP, email, news, etc. The network itself is run by AT&T Broadband personnel, but the servers and user administration was designed and run by a combination of WorldNet and AT&T Broadband personnel.
I currently use Time Warner Road Runner after trying Earthlink's cable over Time Warner's line after being a Road Runner customer previously. "Competition" is about the worst word you could possibly come up with. Let me give some background.
In early 2000 I signed up for Road Runner. I liked the product but not the service, Road Runner customer service was awful. Last year as part of the AOL Time Warner deal, AOLTW had to open their cable lines to other providers, and Earthlink was the one they chose to go with in my area. Since I'd had problems with Road Runner I decided to give the Earthlink over TW cable a shot. I called to make the arrangements.
Signing up was easy enough. Within a week I had Road Runner taken off my cable bill and was going through Earthlink. At first the only difference was a new mailbox and new DNS servers. Then I started getting outages, downtime almost every week. Without failure I was getting days every week when there was simply no cable modem service. When I called up the Earthlink number they said they had no known problems and told me to call my cable company. So when I called Time Warner they didn't even want to talk to me since I wasn't really their customer.
My experience was much worse with Earthlink than with Road Runner. In my opinion, Time Warner was doing something to interrupt the Earthlink service over their cable lines. Earthlink support people were very nice and sympathetic but they literally had no power to do anything about my problem. And Time Warner, well they could give a shit because I was paying Earthlink and not them. They didn't want to help me. While I can't prove it I am positive that it was intentional. Time Warner did something to make Earthlink over TW Cable FUBAR while Road Runner over TW Cable was running OK.
The end result. My connection using Earthlink over TW cable lines was up and down, flaky at best. Outages lasting a day at a time, every week. Earthlink wanted to help but they couldn't, because it was a physical problem with the cable (supposedly) that they couldn't control. But Time Warner DIDN'T want to help because I was Earthlink's customer instead of Road Runner's. I wound up cancelling the Earthlink and going back to Road Runner after less than a month. And naturally I wound up losing money in the deal because I had to pay Earthlink for the full month that I didn't use, then I had to resubscribe for Road Runner.
If you think using another provider over your cable company's cable is a good idea, think again. It's the same shit as DSL. Just like the phone companies make it about impossible to get DSL service from someone else, and just like the phone company and your third party DSL provider keep sending you back and forth when you have a tech problem.. the cable company will do the same thing if you try to get another provider over the cable lines.
Don't bother. It's still a monopoly plain and simple. Offering "competition" is a bullshit guise, because it's still the local cable company's fiber, and if there are physical problems, the local cable co does NOT want to help you!!
You think that's sexual ecstasy, you should try a spaghetti sauce jar with lube coating the hole. Hump yourself furiously, rinse, repeat.
A man after my own heart.
By purchasing a resale cable modem service you are setting yourself up for an enormous disappointment. There are many telco companies that re-sell Verizon service, on Verizon lines. If something goes wrong and you need a tech to come out, the company that takes your money can't touch your lines, they have to have Verizon come out and fix your problem, which will almost always take at least 2 weeks to fix. If AT&T sells cable modem and your service goes out, it will be weeks before you are back up. If you think the 3 day wait you get angry about now is bad, you will be in for a wake up call. Trust me on this one. It will make AT&T look like the good guys. They will be able to boast that "their" service is better, even though it is identical. Your tech support will not have access to the UBR's to check the power levels or see what your modem's IP is. They will not be able to clear the host on the UBR's if you want to switch computers, they will not be able to see you coming online. The will just have you power-cycle your modem, and if that doesn't work the only thing for them to do is to send an AT&T tech to your home 2 weeks later, and the problem might not even be with the service. It would be a nightmare choosing a service that uses AT&T's lines.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. The story is a dupe, the topic is boring, the facts weren't checked. WE GET IT!!
Out of curiosity, I looked up *stangling*, thinking it was some new kind of monopoly that Slashdot might be giving clue to. Nope, just another misspelling.
*SRU
While this may be a little off-topic, competition definitly could improve customer service. I'm getting at&t cable internet hooked up, and it's amazing the way at&t operates. Most of their web site doesn't even work correctly, and the tech support leaves much to be desired. One didn't know what NAT was, and if at&t considered it acceptable use. There's no mention of it on their web site. Not to mention the worst automated telephone menu system i've heard in a while. Hopefully the competition will bring prices down as well, as 50 bucks a month is a little steep. Unfortunatly there's not many other options. I suspect it will come down to the fees that other companys will have to pay to use the infrastructure. Otherwise it'll never be a fair competition.
We have three (or is it now two) cable providers in southern Ontario, each in their nice little zones. Where I am, there's Rogers Cable, with horrible cable internet access since before @Home died. Cogeco, out in the boonie areas (Niagra, Belleville, other places like those) provides access too, better from what I've heard, but then again, I'm not in a Cogeco zone. Shaw, the company that seems to have all but vanished, never provided cable internet access, at least not when they had control of the zone I live in.
So my only alternative is to go with Bell/Sympatico for broadband access, or get a T1. Considering what either costs, compared to hellish cable or my so-so dialup, I'll stick to Primus, thanks very much.
Let's see real cable competition in Ontario, followed by _working_ (as opposed to spotty) cable internet access.
Chris 'coldacid' Charabaruk Meldstar Entertainment
AOL/Time WArner was forced to open their cable systems in my area to other ISP's as part of their merger agreement. Now I have a choice between AOL, Roadrunner and Earthlink. Prices aren't any different. I know of one local ISP trying to get into the action, but I already know that they are going to have to charge more than the other three to do it. "Open" systems just mean that they will "open" them to select partners, keeping their monopoly through backroom deals. I can't even beleive that they consider AOL and Roadrunner different ISP's at this point.
A T1 costs a lot more than $39/mo so I wouldn't expect competition to be price battling, it's going to be about QoS, not price. I see it all the time. "My cable modem is slower than my modem!"
or, "It started out so fast but now it's so slow. What a rip off."
If anything prices will probably start going up.
Just look at the original press release announcing the merger When you see things like In conjunction with the transaction, Microsoft Corporation has agreed to convert the $5 billion of AT&T subsidiary trust convertible preferred securities into 115 million shares of AT&T Comcast Corporation. and ...AT&T's interests in cable television joint ventures and its 25.5 percent interest in Time Warner Entertainment you know MSN and AOL are going to be included somehow.
As a Comcast customer, they're offering the bare minimum in value added (ISP) services - and and I don't think they have any interest in it. When MSN AOL and the Internet Scientology Provider come aboard, then Comcast can focus on what it believes to be it's strength - infrastructure.
I run an internet provider with dial, wired, and wireless access products. We charge $34.95 for a plain ol' dial account and I don't think its enough.
/29 will be available for those that want to firewall without NAT, and we'll do proper DNS for them as well. We *will* cap their monthly throughput if it gets excessive - I'm not selling 1.2 mbit throughput for $80/mo - its meant to be used in a burstable fashion.
Yes, you heard right, $34.95. Of course, we only aggregate customers 4:1 on the inbound T1 and the path to the net is set up to treat them very well. People who *need* dial up, I mean really need it for a VPN or Citrix session, don't mind $34.95 at all - they're thrilled to get something that works.
When Cox opens their net to us we'll be pushing something like a $80/mo cable connection to our network for home users. It'll have a single static public IP, a
The real big motivation in opening the network isn't competition in the realm of low prices - cable service is plenty cheap at $50 and I'd be happy if Cox unfornicated their peering/latency issues and charged 50% more. I'm excited about it because I can provide premium service on a layer 2 link that costs $30/mo and reaches places DSL and wireless will never go.
I am very easy to get along with, but I don't have time to waste being nice to people who are being stupid. -Theo
why should telco providers be required to sell cheaper to their own competition. It doesn't make sense unless you are a communist.
I'm also a Time-Warner/Road-Runner customer. I was excited when Time-Warner sent me the inital propaganda telling me I was about to receive "choice". Then a few weeks later I got the oppotunity to have "choice" -- at $5 more per month than I was paying now. So instead of Time-Warner's "ISP" service for $45 / mo I could have Earthlink's "ISP" service for $50 / mo. Great choice! "We'll offer you choice, but you have to pay for it." What happened to choice driving prices DOWN!
What I want is _JUST_ and IP and bandwidth. I use my own hosted e-mail server, my own hosted website and my own DNS from where I work (it's faster than TW's even though it's 12 hops away). I'd go w/ DSL, but that presents its own problems since my teleco is Ameritech and they have about as bad a reputation as anyone. Good luck AT&T and Comcast users! Let us know how much you have to pay for "choice".
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I see they moded down my posts. Hehehehe.. I'm so glad it didn't affect me.
- NaveWeiss
Well, Comcast just sent me a notice stating as of May 1, they'll be charging me $10 US/month MORE (this is *after* they cut my bandwidth). Hopefully I'll actually get a choice of ISPs soon (would love to try out Earthlink, since they seem to offer better throughput rates).
According to the Louisville Courier-Journal: A Jefferson Circuit Court judge has turned back Insight Communications' effort to block the Louisville franchise given to a competing cable company, KnologyCQ, of West Point, Ga.
Steve Magruder, Metro Foodist
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"Broadband" is FAR cheaper in Europe than over here. Having lived in Denmark there's nothing I'd rather do than get a connection like I had there. 512K/512K DSL with static ip for around $60 flat a month. 2048K/512K for $120 flat a month. It certainly isn't here you can get that. And in Germany they have 768K/128K for around $30 a month. Beat that. Telco charges are paid by the provider and are not based on your speed. Who would want to pay $100 to qworst for a line they say can do 1Mbit when you have to pay for service on top of that. Certainly not me.
But what's the point of giving a dialup 1/4 of a T1?
You misunderstood. 4:1 aggregation means that you buy enough upstream bandwidth to saturate the lines of 1/4 of your customers. This means 120 modems (at 50 kbps each, total of 6 Mbps) per T1 (at 1.5 Mbps).
Will I retire or break 10K?
Well, why is it so hard to compete with the cable companies? Because the cable industry isn't being regulated as tightly as it should be! And as long as it isn't, the only competition you'll see in cable internet are the bones they're throwing to the FTC while they're trying to get approval for another megamerger.
Earthlink [yuck] already offers service over my Road Runner [not AT&T - TW].
Of course one has to ask a few questions.
I know where my mail and news servers are. If needed I could go and break into the office if I sent out an e-mail I didn't want to. The servers on the network [proxy, mail, news etc] are about 5 miles from my newer place and only a mile from my old place.
Not only are they geographically closer but are about 5 hops away [remember the cable modem itself is a hop].
Why the fuck would I switch to Earthlink which holds their servers in another state. I know closer isn't better - already some on our ISP have complained [uhhmm, whine'd] about the news servers and would like to use one in Kansas City [still a TW RR server].
I don't see the problem but people are switching over.
I see these deals as not monopolizing but doing what is required by law. Hopefully the cable comes in but there are many choices.
Of course you can get AOL too....
...[actually that isn't all to bad considering its over cable none the less. New customers or current AOL customers would like that setup 10 times better.]
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Time Warner Cable currently offers two additional ISP's on top of the usual Road Runner ISP they usually offer. It should come as no suprise that all cable companys will be forced to have other ISP's offered. The current rule stipulates that Time Warner must carry three additional ISP's above Road Runner. This is now being passed on to other cable companys.
Time Warner Bee
What about AOL Time Warner? Having AT&T diversifying like this is nice, but AOL is the largest provider (and also the only people I can get cable service from). I'd like to see some diversification from them to show that they aren't complete fuckoffs.
[insert witty comment here]
But then, there's AOL.
It also means more competition over jobs. IMNSHO the market needs more retail transparency more than it needs more suppliers.