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SBC Planning 15-25Mbps DSL Networks
Tuxedo Jack writes "The Register reports that SBC has begun planning a massive network upgrade which will push fiber connections deeper into subdivisions and neighborhoods than before, resulting in incredibly fast DSL speeds for home users. Their current estimate for down/up speeds are 15-25mb/s down and 1-3mb/s up (mega_bits_, not bytes). SBC's press release goes into depth about this."
The MPAA is going to love this, NOT. I can imagine the day already where they will convince ISP's (or lobby the right people) to slow down network speeds in order to curb piracy (just like most cars have speed governors, eventho it is mostly for safety reasons).
With all those zombies mailing out spam, I have to wince at the possibility of removing the 128k upload bottleneck. Stay in your seats, more spam is on the way. On the good side, with a static IP address you can now host an (amateur) radio/video site from home, thats important to me and my band.
Just because there isn't a need now doesn't mean there won't be in the future. If they have the money to upgrade their networks, let them! Let them plan for the future. What harm can it do?
Bundling broadband is a travesty
I don't disagree. However, the FCC decision was aimed at not forcing service companies to unbundle broadband from their other offerings.
Sigs cause cancer.
Anyone who doesn't know the difference between MB/s and Mb/s shouldn't be reading Slashdot. I kid. I kid!!
Un-news
If you think Michael Powell is deregulating to benefit the consumer, you're drinking too much of the Koo-aid...
That same FCC decision, IIRC, also allowed the local baby-Bells to charge whatever they want for access to their networks by other carriers. That effectively *destroys* competition for last-mile service.
I have yet to see a decrease in consumer prices in any such circumstance...
I have something in common with Stephen Hawking...
I mean, it's great that we are making progress in bandwidth and reducing cost to get from the phone office to the house, but with connectivity to the backbone still costing as much as it does, do we honestly believe that the effective bandwidth to what we now call "the Internet" backbone will be so cheap that we can ignore it?
I see this as just a way for the phone companies to become another media company and sell the usualy junk on commercial and cable TV, with the phone company now getting some of the profits (where some == "as much as they can gouge the user for").
Just me being cynical.
Actually, if history has proven anything it's that deregulation in a telecommunications industry decreases overall expansion.
The idea is that, outside of regulation, telecommunications tend to settle on "safe" levels of service, where margins are highest but R&D suffers. With regulation, that same level becomes unsafe as margins decrease and competition on the regulated low-end service becomes stagnant. The thought process goes something like this: We are regulated. We have to charge a specific price for baseline service, where both the price and the baseline are mandated. Therefore, if we want to raise revenues, we will need to create a demand for a more expensive service ABOVE baseline, and we will need to push our boundaries into new territories. The cable industry developed cable broadband, digital cable, addressable cable and on-demand pay-per-view as means to maximize profits during their strong regulation period (from 1992 on).
Of course, if you're in a regulated industry it's hard to see the forest for the trees. It looks like the government is forcing you to do what you don't want to do, and that's lose money on a cheap baseline service (many cable companies broke even on regulated "basic" cable). Therefore, when you exit regulation the natural reaction is to raise prices, let service fall off and enjoy your freedom. Some say this is what killed various airlines after THEY became dereg'd.
Anyhow, it's good to see SBC upping their network. But I'd say that deregulation of fiber had little to do with the decision. I'd also like to point out that regulating all broadband providers to offer 512/128 service at $30 would create a ton of very profitable high speed options at the same price we pay now for that speed. Prices stay the same, but service goes up...or did you think SBC's new supercoolfast DSL was gonna be $50?
Hey freaks: now you're ju
Correct me if i'm wrong, but isn't that just 3meg down and .2meg up?
Thats good i suppose, but i have cable and thats pretty standard.
and COST
The thing you have to bear in mind about the services that the telcos provide is that the price you pay doesn't actually have much relation to the cost to the telco. So just because an X bps connection costs Y today, doesn't mean that 10xX bps connection will cost 10xY tomorrow. At least where I am, the streets are full of dark fiber (fiber optic cable that is not being used).
I have yet to see a decrease in consumer prices
What planet have you been living on? I used to pay $90 for what now costs me $29/mo. And who cares what Powell's motives are. As long as it *does* benefit the consumers, isn't that the most important thing?
I think parent is a tiny part flamebait.
Out here in the more rural areas of our nation, we're still struggling to get halfway decent modem connections. Deregulation may be helping people in the city get boatloads of bandwidth, but those of us unfortunate enough to live in the boonies have to fend for ourselves.
"The United States has no right, no desire, and no intention to impose our form of government on anyone else." - Bush 05
These ISP should consider blocking incoming ports for homes, minus ports need to say run an IP over phone service. Of course smart people will use the port, but if the port is actually rated differently then they might not.
This would stop the spread of viruses, because no one could be connected to. I'm behind a firewall, and except for my Overnet forwarded ports I have no need ( and you know that I really don't need Overnet ).
This would be the biggest difference between home and business accounts. On the home side opening up a port for their IP phone based service would be key. They could allow unlimited calls in their network, and charge lower fees for others.
If made standard enough then a whole slew of other companies could compete against each other. You pay SBC for the open port, then pay the other provider for the phone services. 5 bucks a month for the port, and then the rest based on usage with the actually phone company. Phones calls made to other Voice-IPs on a different network are rated lower, then those with a normal POT line.
At the same time they should allow ports to be opened, and then charge bandwith. So you could run a web server they open up port 80, at the same time you actually get a free firewall of sorts.
Piracy would not happen so much if the entertainment industries would get there heads out of their buts and offer good digital forms of albums and movies at affordable prices. The fact that no one has come up with a good "record" file that contains all the tracks of a record is proof of this.
Being able to download movies that are playing in the theatures for 15 bucks is essentially the same thing as going to theature. Yes you loose some money when two or more people see it, but you don't have to pay to distribute it, or take cuts from the venues themselves.
Chances are you might loose some DVD sales, but people buy DVDs to have a permanent high quality copy of video. I'd still buy the DVDs so I could then encode them to Tivo like device ( at the least my current favorites ) and then be able to do it again when I upgrade, or the hardware fails.
Backing up 100s of movies can be kind of a daunty task for a technical person, and impossible for your average consumer.
Even if the viewer program deleted the file after 2 weeks that would keep most people from keeping them forever, most people feel better about doing something the right way.
In short I think we need to find a balance. The wild west days of the internet need to stop for better security, and better QOS. Yes I think we need the ability for people to distribute information more freely, but that is what bloggs are doing. How many of use really need to run a web server on the internet anymore, especially with all the blogs, and free web space provided by ISPs. The answer is your really don't, except that it feels like freedom is being taken away by not having them. Freedom comes with cost, and the cost of this freedom has shown to be great, the cost has been spam and worms.
Bundling is *not* the antithesis of a free market. Not being able to offer bundled services is.
Now, that one can't find what they're looking for like unbundled and cheaper services, as in this case, that suggests that the market is young and not enough competition has moved into town. Also, keep in mind for these larger providers that providing someone with one service in addition to the other, both of which they are mass providers, may not add much to their overhead; so to debundle and offer something at half the price might narrow their profit margin.
So, if you think there are enough people like you who are getting the shaft and that there is demand for what you want, start your own ISP or whatever and tap that market yourself. If you do and you don't make money, well, it looks like the ISPs were making the right business decision regarding their pricing models for their services.
It's the same bogus promises the telcos have been making for years. If only they were given unregulated monopoly power, they'd provide more bandwidth.
Here's SBC's announcement of fibre to the home in 2002. Where is that now?
No flame at all.
And you don't think that price decrease is because the technology is pretty much ubiquitous and widely used? Sorry bub, but deregulation has exactly *zero* to do with the decreased price of broadband.
Just look what deregulation did for California's electricity customers...
I have something in common with Stephen Hawking...
apples and oranges my friend. try to see beyond your political biases and give classic free market economics a real chance.
No, that has very little to do with it. Competition drives prices down, not whether or not the technology is widely used. If it were widespread usage that drove prices down Windows would be cheaper than Linux. :)
Horsepucky.
California did something they called "deregulation," but it was actually screwed-up re-regulation. They actually forbade local power companies from entering into long-term contracts. This forced them into the spot market, where prices rise fast. Enron took advantage of that -- they were under no long-term contracts for that power, so let the buyer beware. Negotiated, long-term contracts would have saved the CA public $Billions, but the legislature said "no,"
The government set the rules in a way that ensured somebody would get rich off the taxpayers. Isn't that how it always works?
Don't blame "deregulation" when real deregulation had nothing to do with it.
READ the US Constitution, the Bill of Rights and the other amendments! http://lcweb2.loc.gov/const/const.html
While that may be the trend, it's because of lack of competition more than anything else. Historically, there's been very few ways of getting information into people's homes. At first there was only phone lines, then cable came along and more recently wireless has started to show up.
Ultimately if you control those pipes and you are the only game in town, you have no incentive to innovate. Why upgrade your network to charge another $5/month for services when you can just charge another $5/month.
I don't believe regulation in the sense that you are suggesting would be a benefit. What you'd have it a bunch of people trying to hit that 512/128 sweet spot. So you'd end up with having that bandwidth being about as cheap as possible, but anything more than that would be terribly expensive.
Frankly, I think the best form of regulation would be to say that any company providing a pipe into a home cannot offer service itself but can charge a percentage of the retail price of the services that go over their network. So, for example, you get DSL service, you pay $40/month and SBC get's 10%. Now, why would SBC have an incentive to improve their network? Well, if they do that, your DSL provider can charge you $60/month, and everybody is happier.
Putting them in the position of just running the pipes gives them incentive to be open with their network and to provide the best service possible to the carriers who run over their pipes.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
And what allowed the competition to traverse the last-mile lines? The regulation forcing the baby-Bells to give access to the competitors at wholesale rather than market rates.
Now that the last-mile price barrier has been removed, I expect to see prices increase.
The baby-Bells inherited a local monopoly. You can't very well take it away. But you can otherwise force them to allow for competition by forcing wholesale rates.
Your "Windows" analogy doesn't work at all. It actually proves my point, because Microsoft has a monopoly on consumer OS products, and has been allowed to keep it (despite overwhelming evidence of illegal predatory marketing practices).
I have something in common with Stephen Hawking...
"I'd also like to point out that regulating all broadband providers to offer 512/128 service at $30 would create a ton of very profitable high speed options at the same price we pay now for that speed." That's a joke right? As I CLEC I know 1st hand what the costs are involved with delivering DSL. $30 for 512/128 might work for the ILECS, but we're charged $28/mo per copper loop to deliver DSL, now that the FCC has taken Line-sharing out of our hands the telso's won't provide it (because the no longet have to). Think about it all but $2 of your proposed price point just cover loop charges. $2/mo isn't a lot of money to cover bandwith/staff/co-location facilities. Now before the FCC stepped in and diluted the 1996 telco act we could get loops for ~$9/mo and lineshare at $0/mo and would have been happy to provide DSL at damn near dial-up prices, instead we're locked into 256/1500 @ $40/mo with slim margins (dial-up is more profitable at $15/mo) The only way we can increase margins now is to bundle it with our local phone service. Too bad we just got a letter from the ILEC saying that they will no longer allow that practice in 6 months, we can however resell their service for a (substansially) higher cost. Bottom line, if you're not Verizon,SBC, other ILECs, the FCC has made it so you can't play ball only 8 years after making it look like you could.
Pacific Bell (well, SBC but I still like to call them by their old name) was forced to offer their services to wholesalers at giveaway rates to produce "competition". Considering that the same network was being used, I'm unsure as to what kind of benefits this really provides; it's still SBC's lines and network no matter who you use, and lower rates for the free-riders like MCI make it harder for Pac Bell to invest and maintain their network. The only real consequence of this "competition" is marginally lower prices and annoying telephone calls asking you to switch your local service.
If there was some way we could encourage parallel networks to be built and create real competition, I'd encourage it - and in fact, we have this with telephone and cable companies fighting for our business with separate networks.
This massive investment proposed by Pacific Bell gives me real hope for huge speeds right to my door, letting me run a serious web server farm or whatever else I wanted to do. (And yes, that's permitted under their DSL contract for my $79.95 a month static IP, 1.5/256 service). If I could get 25mb/3mb service instead, you can bet I'd be pleased as punch. And you bet I'd be grateful for the suspension of this "competition" rule that allowed SBC to make this enormous investment.
Although I know SBC is a wretched monopoly, I've always thought it as best of the Bells. Their DSL technical support may be abysmal, but service and speeds are a heck of a lot better and cheaper than I got with Covad.
At least from my point of view, Hurrah for the Evil Monopoly - sometimes, even thought we may hate to admit it, they're better than their competition!
D
of ANY kind to my house--I don't care what speed. I'm stuck with ^%&*#$ CableOne internet for $45 a month, and DSL isn't supported on my line. Qwest just started offering unbundled DSL service for about $15 a month (plus a few bucks for a cheap ISP), and I can't get it!
This is Boise Idaho, so we're not exactly on the leading edge of technology.
We may experience some slight turbulence and then...explode. -Capt. Mal Reynolds
Do any DSL companies offer DSL in a "reversed" asymmetry? For instance, 256Kb down, 1.5Mb up?
It would be nice for those of us who want to serve (legitimate) files, as opposed to download tons of stuff.
AT&T was given a government mandated monopoly. They were given access to public ways often for free. They were given all sorts of benefits with the aim to provide telephone service to every last house in the nation. I find it difficult to feel that it is 'their' network.
Today, the network built over the last century belongs to the dwindling number of Baby Bell (RBOC) descendants of AT&T. The public deserves to get something back in return for all the benefits accrued to the RBOCs over nearly a century. Mandating that that network be shared in order to promote the public interest is an insignificant price to pay.
Agreed, however, PUC mandated rates are sometimes too low, sometimes too high. Public commissions deciding tariff rates is a problem.
An infinitely better solution would have been structural separation years ago: force the Bells to separate into multiple companies. One which manages the physical network infrastructure and charges all competitors the EXACT SAME rate for access to that network, and other company(ies) that provide services to business and consumer customers.
The fact is that for a long, long time, competition was ILLEGAL. RBOCs had a protected monopoly. Forcing other companies to build parallel networks rather than forcing the sharing of the existing network built with public legal protection and often public funds along the limited public right-of-way in our alleys, along our railroads, and beneath our roads is just wrong. It is a viewpoint which is oblivious to the history of the regulated and subsidized telecommunitions history of this nation. The Bells were given those protections because it is terribly expensive to build those networks. Same for the monopolies given to cable companies. Yet now we expect new entrants to the market to incur those network costs, sans the decades of monopoly protection to recoup the investment?
The only saving grace is that wireless technologies will be able to provide competition without needing to string wires all across the nation again. Hopefully it will be true competition, among multiple nimble local/regional competitors, not national goliaths like Comcast or SBC, which will be only too happy to stamp out all other competition and maintain a duopoly.
And one last comment. SBC in Illinois claimed that the POTS line (UNE-P) lease rate of about $12/mo paid by CLECs was *FAR* below their cost, and they lost big money every month on that. Looking at my SBC bill, I pay $5.61 for my line charge, and $4.50 for my "federal access charge" which is actually money SBC gets but they get to call it that. Everything else on my bill is option and tax (though some of that goes to SBC too).
Yet, did SBC lobby the PUC to raise the tariffs for what they charge me? No. They're apparently at least content with my $10.11 a month. I'm sure they make most profit on the extra optional services, but I'm also sure they squeak out at least a little from my $10.11.
So what did SBC attempt to get the CLEC UNE-P lease rate set to? Nearly TWENTY FIVE DOLLARS per month. Well over twice what SBC charges me, the consumer. My total phone bill, for TWO lines, including local long distance, with caller id, name display, second ring tone, taxes and fees is less than $35 a month from SBC. With SBC's proposed rate hike, a competitor would have had to charge me nearly $50/mo, BEFORE extras, taxes, fees and so on to provide the same.
In the end, the rate hike was to $19/mo. Meaning that a competitor would have to charge a bare profitless minimum of $38/mo to pay SBC for what SBC gives me for $35/mo total.
Yes, I feel so sorry for poor, poor SBC.
Larry