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ISPs Fight To Keep Broadband Gaps Secret
Aaron writes "Broadband Reports notes how Maryland was working on a law that would force ISPs to show exactly where they offer service and at what speed. The goal was to help map coverage gaps, since FCC broadband data is worthless for this purpose. Cable and phone company lobbyists have scuttled the plan, convincing state leaders the plan would bring 'competitive harm,' 'stifle innovation,' and even close local coffee shops. Of course the real reason is they don't want the public to know what criteria they use to determine the financial viability of your neighborhood — as they cherry-pick only the most lucrative areas for next-generation services. The Center for Public Integrity is trying to obtain the unreleased raw FCC penetration data, but these companies are also fighting this tooth and nail."
Provide some "test your download speed here" app, collect zip code & ISP of person testing, map results. If one can garner enough mindshare, one could build this map without forcing the ISP's to disclose anything. Reverse engineering, in a manner of speaking.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Shouldn't the ISPs roll out innovative service in areas where it is likely to catch on, and not areas where it is likely to be unused? I'm all for the ISPs having to commit to/document the speeds they're offering, however. Furthermore, can't you call an ISP and ask if they have service in a certain area at the moment?
I wish that people wouldn't be such leftist nidjits (but I repeat myself). The way that technology becomes available is that it is first offered to the rich. The rich pay huge prices to get the latest and greatest technology, which of course signals how rich they are. For example, the Tesla Roadster. The company uses those high prices to pay back the R&D. Unfortunately (for them) they soon run out of rich people to sell to. They then accept lower profit margins (but higher sales) by selling to the middle class and then the poor, in turn.
If you interrupt this process by forcing them to sell at lower profit margins to a wider population earlier, they won't be able to pay for the R&D costs, so they won't bother creating new technologies.
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
And how is any of this "leftist"?
This may be news to you, but the technology is rather old. Look at other countries that have deployed better tech than this YEARS ago.
This is all about squeezing the maximum profit from the minimum investment
Glad to see the world is still convinced that universal broadband is a) cheap, and b) a right. Got news for you, it is neither, and this bill is such a complete and utter waste of time. Want to know why you can't get broadband? Because you live in the middle of nowhere! Here is how it works.
DSL only goes so far along the copper wire from the DSLAM in the phone company central office. If you are past 11-12000 feet, you can kiss ADSL goodbye, past 18000 ft, you can forget about SDSL. If you live further than that, no amount of, "we are expanding into your area" is going to happen. Unless the LEC builds a new CO, closer to you, and has all of your copper terminate there instead of the old place, then, you might be able to get DSL. But for the most part, if you can't get DSL now, you can't get DSL ever.
Cable costs thousands of dollars to grant access to an entire street, whether it has houses on it, or not. Generally, cable companies, in this area at least, have always been willing to build out for any customer with the cash in hand. If it is rural, they want you to help cover the installation cost. Buckeye Cable in NW ohio generally says, "if it is not a densely populated area for us, we need $10,000 up front to guarantee a return on our investment." Heaven forbid they make money, heaven forbid they not build out for one customer, at huge expense to themselves, so they can earn 69.95/month for basic cable and inet service off of one, maybe two customers.
If you live in the middle of nowhere, either find a solid WISP, fork over the cash for expensive telecom, or quit your bitching. It is not the faceless phone company's fault that you can't get the same internet as someone in the burbs can. No amount of putting all this data on a map is going to change any of this.
--Nuintari
slashdot : where an opinion can be wrong.
Then they shouldn't try so damned hard to stop municipalities from providing public service broadband systems!
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I think the point might have eluded you.
No one is saying that broadband providers CANNOT send an ad to people who make over $100,000. That would be an example of targeting a specific market. That is why your attempt at flippancy missed.
What is actually happening is that someone making over $100,000 is trying to find where he can purchase a specific product. And that information is being denied to him. By the companies providing product. And those companies are also trying legal maneuvers to prevent him from finding the product via other channels.
That's very strange behaviour for a company. Usually companies WANT to sell their products.
That behaviour becomes understandable when you look at it from the perspective of trying to extract as much money as possible from the existing infrastructure.
We're supposed to believe in competition and bringing more/better/cheaper products to the consumer. That's not what is happening here.
If this were the case than Manhattan and Beverly Hills and San Francisco would have 100Mb symmetrical fiber connections like the ones that are available in similar places in Japan, South Korea, and Sweden.
Let me provide another example. I live near one of the most expensive colleges in the country, and I'm surrounded by students living off campus. Even though I'm in a small city, you'd expect that I'd have some decent broadband choice, even if I had to pay through the nose. It's a fairly lucrative market: College students with parents rich enough to give their kids brand new luxury cars. You'd think Comcast and Verizon, or some other company, would have come through with fiber ages ago.
However, I have two choices: Comcast's expensive service with decent download speeds but atrocious upload speeds, or Verizon's service with poor download speeds and similar upload speeds.
The evidence simply doesn't support your contention that broadband providers are spreading true broadband, like the stuff that's in other countries, to places as fast as they can. They're dragging their feet and using the outdated telecommunications laws to their advantage. They're even getting state and federal governments to write new laws to support them, like the one last year in PA that made it illegal for a community to provide broadband if Verizon or Comcast are going to provide it within the next year.
What's needed is a push from consumers to understand what would truly be available if we opened up the market and got the government truly dedicated to providing next-generation communications to the people.
P.S. I live in "Amish country" and we don't just have a Gap store, but a Gap outlet, along with dozens of other factory outlets.
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
Secondly, ISPs have no business restricting what can be published about what is provided. Actually, it would be good if we could see not only the performance of the network provided but also how the downstream performance compares with the upstream pipes. (Are they at capacity? Are they oversubscribed, and if so, by how much? What do customers really get for their money? What services or benefits do the ISP get that are NOT passed on to consumers?)
This information can't possibly put them at risk. What puts ISPs at risk is incompetency so great that if anyone actually knew the details, the ISP's customers and possibly shareholders would launch an all-out rebellion. Secrecy for an established service - as opposed to one that is new and vulnerable to the unreasonable and unreasoning excesses of the market - exists only to hide the skeletons in the closet and brush the mountains of dirt under the carpet. It has no legitimate basis.
Now, that's very different from publishing internal documents on why certain decisions were made or other internal matters. Those things probably should stay confidential within the corporation. I think it would be a mistake to confuse information that is of genuine value in making a sensible decision with information that is only useful in slamming others for making what they believe to be sensible decisions.
(Having said that, if a newspaper's investigative reporter digs up such information as part of an investigation into fraud, abuse of consumers, or something similar, then that should be entirely fair game. Companies that use reasonable protections in an seriously unreasonable way - concealing anti-competitive actions, price-gouging, illegal wiretaps, unreasonable denial of service, etc. - then the company's interests should be secondary to the needs and rights of consumers and authorities alike.)
You'll notice I specifically mentioned what the ISP gets versus what the customers get - not just bandwidth but any service or benefit. If the ISP is passing on the costs of their upstream line(s) to their consumers, but the sum total of what the customers get is significantly worse than the sum total of what the ISP gets - whether that is protocols, service guarantees, bandwidth, latency, capabilities, fault-tolerance, or whatever - then the customer should have the right to know that what they are getting is substandard. The customer should not have the automatic right to know why - that should be a private matter for the ISP, unless the ISP decides otherwise. But customers cannot compare two options if they have no metrics by which to make such a comparison, which means there is no real market, no real customers - consumers, yes, but not customers, there are only smoke and mirrors.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Wow. Have a slice of bitter pie.
I've spent more than a decade running ISP services for residential customers. Both big metro and extremely rural areas.
These maps would be a *boon* to the ISP's who want customers, and are willing to invest for them. We had nothing but problems trying to figure out where we COULD find customers, because the rural telco was actually doing well running lines. But they were extremely poor with giving out that information. Heck, I would have taken the information just to know where they put their DSLAMS so I could target OTHER areas they weren't.
Bottom line, rural does not mean "more than 20 miles between humans" - there are areas that have the density to support expansion. The problem is, it is tough to justify.
THAT is the real reason you don't see it going rural. It is indeed a situation of "Hmm I can pay $10k to drop a DSLAM and equipment to service a potential of $20k a month, --OR-- I can drop that SAME equipment, in an area that will support $75k/mo".
The equipment is under-powered and will need to be upgraded, but in every case that situation is a potential I was told: "Well hell my boy, we would LOVE to have that problem"... and when they DID have that problem it took a while to actually fix it.. profits ruled the roost.
As far as I am concerned, compel them to publicly post the information. Without it, there will be nobody providing service in those areas. There is no reason the public has to suffer and wait until they are "ready" (ready in this context means: "we have exploited all of the higher margin areas, time to start scraping the sides & bottom of the barrel")
-bs
You'd be right if it were not for the fact that they got a ton of taxpayer money to assist in rolling out broadband 'everywhere'. Not to mention that in many cases (as with cable) they are granted 'franchises' (read: effective monopoly) in certain regions by local governments.
It's a scam, plain and simple. If they were financing it all themselves in a totally free market then I'd agree that it's just capitalism at work.
The FCC is a tax funded entity. With the exception of data that would compromise national security, they should be obligated to make all data publically available.
Too bad if the data makes the cable companies look bad. It's their fault for making (obstensibly) smart business decisions, now they'll have to defend their decisions.
It would be nice if just once they'd come out and say "Look, that block is a ghetto full of poor people who're on welfare, do you really think we're going to get a return on investment by wiring the whole place? At best we'll end up with tons of people who'll get service and never pay their bills!"
It's not fair and possibly it might not be right, but in a market driven economy, you live by the blade, but die by the bullet.
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
Capitalism also requires open competition and equal information between buyer and seller so that an informed choice can be made. The article is about broadband providers trying to avoid having to provide information to customers. Much like the cellular companies several years ago, where it took a law to force actual coverage maps to be made available, rather than marketing-speak of coverage that may have no bearing on reality.
If they only want to service rich areas, that's fine, just say so. Step aside while another company comes in and takes the lower-margin, higher-volume poorer areas of the market. THAT is capitalism. You can't have it both ways.
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.