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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?
Good thing we gave them $200 Billion http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20060131/2021240_ F.shtml
Libertarian Leaning Political Discussion Forum.
I am sure once more "City Folk" move out by where I live, broadband will come flying in and those poeple will only have waited maybe a year and think it is "Amazing how fast broadband came here!"
You're sitting outside the broadband donut, but the same problem exists inside the donut hole. We're apparently never going to have our lines upgraded to support DSL, etc.
Apparently, our subdivision is too close to low-income areas. We were among the very last in town to get cable internet access, and we were literally right across the street from the cable company's center of operations. (I could have run ethernet through the storm drains and not been out of spec!)
Yes, because every other technological country that has significantly higher broadband coverage than we do(by a wide margin) can't innovate because of it.
Has anybody here successfully negotiated a franchise agreement which specifies universal coverage, especially in more rural communities?
A friend pointed out to me that the companies running these networks only have so much money to invest, so to the extent that they're allowed to, they will *always* invest money in areas with higher returns over areas with lower returns, which means there's *never* going to be rural investment while they have other opportunities and no requirements. Phone service and electric service are everywhere because they have to be and that's good for society. This is one case where the guiding hand seems to be important.
I know innumerable folks around here who would happily pay the monthly bill, if only the [cable/phone] company would run a cable up the street. The streets aren't that long, the population isn't that sparse, and the net is short-term profitable -- only it's less profitable than running FiOS in urban centers.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
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!
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
Funny, thing, though. Those middle class and poor people are paying subsidies to bring connection (phone, power, other utilities) to outside "remote" areas, which, ironically includes many of the newer "rich people" home groups.
No one said anything about forcing them to alter their business plan. We just want to see what our tax dollars are helping to fund, especially since almost all carriers have a legalize monopoly over areas.
If I were a company with business practices like you said, I'd be terrified of the data, too. If it were easily discernible that an area had lackluster coverage in a way provable to local and state governments, their monopolies will be threatened. If it is easy and clear for a new company to say, "We will provide affordable TV and Internet connections to these four poor areas of your city if you allow us to operate next to [Monopoly Cable Company]." What responsible city would deny that?
So the TVA and other Rural Electrification movements weren't necessary? I mean, eventually the cost to run power lines into Appalachia would have dropped dramatically and demand for electricity would have brought it to those poor people eventually, right?
Or to pick a Republican backed notion: The wealthy would have created the highway system for their own use, right? And eventually, it would have been affordable to ordinary folks.
To put it another way: Don't start your argument with ad hominem attacks.
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
the unreleased raw FCC penetration data
I just snagged a torrent of Unreleased Raw Penetration Data 7. It was amazing.
>The way that technology becomes available is that it is first offered to the rich.
Except, of course, the Telcos weasled a huge $200 billion out of the government so they could provide this service to everybody. There is a long standing public utility business model in the US. There is also a free-market capitalism business model. The guys want to have it both ways; switching back and forth depending on which gives them the most money today.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
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.
Absolutely. One of the major problems in today's society is that it is almost impossible to have a debate about modern technology, including Internet access technologies such as DSL, cable, and WiMAX, without the heavy involvement of leftist groups such as the Shining Path guerrillas of Peru, the Red Army Faction terror group in Germany, and the infamous OSI so-called "freedom fighters" of the US. Widely known for recruiting young, naive, soldiers in universities, brainwashing them into beliefs such as the moral superiority of forced redistributions of wealth, the bourgeois imperialist bankrupsy of representative democracy, and the superiority of a socialist, common ownership, share and share alike, model for the development of computer software, these groups cause immense damage to progress, which ironicly they hold up by preventing the trickle down effect, the engine of all progress, from having any realistic possibility of success.
While left wing terror groups continue to make their extreme, anti-economic, demands, politicians merely appease them and their demands. Some countries, for example, have initiated welfare state programs, guaranteeing a minimum level of living, while others have promised equal access to health care regardless of income. The state of Massachussets has gone one step better and actually forced their already over-burdened citizens to use open document formats to exchange information in a blatant attempt to pacify the OOO, the infamous breakaway faction of the OSI. In all these cases, state involvement has merely crippled the trickle down effect and made it impossible for billionaires to buy DSL connections.
Such actions have prevented progress, and as such have actually helped the leftist groups by allowing them to exploit the lack of progress as some kind of fault of crapitalism.
This quagmire of progress both being prevented by leftist groups, and the resulting lack of it helping those same groups not disappear by itself. Resources need to be devoted, and unless people are prepared to actually act, not just talk about it on Slashdot, nothing will ever get done. Apathy is not an option.
You can help by getting off your rear and writing to your congressman or senator. Tell them that leftist threats to progress is an issue that is important to you. Tell them that you appreciate the work being done by right-wing terror groups such as the Contras, Al-Qaida, the KKK, and the BSA but that unless something stronger is done to tackle leftism you will be forced to use less and less secure and intelligently designed alternatives. Explain the concerns you have about freedom, openness, and choice, and how the impedement of progress from leftist groups harms all three. Let them know that this is an issue that effects YOU directly, that YOU vote, and that your vote will be influenced, indeed dependent, on their policies on left wing terrorism.
You CAN make a difference. Don't treat voting as a right, treat it as a duty. Remember, it was thanks to ordinary people like YOU that we are now seeing such innovations as SMP in OpenBSD. Keep informed, keep your political representatives informed on how you feel. And, most importantly of all, vote.
KMSMA (WWBD?)
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)
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,'
hehehe. "You see, senator, perfect information is a fundamental underpinning of efficient capitalism. That is because perfect information supports perfect competition. That perfect competition, while great for the consumer, would harm us. That is, it would bring competitive harm, to us, the people who buy you boats."
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
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
My parents live a very rural part of Idaho. 22 miles from the nearest town (and by town, I mean one of 700 people. The next closest is 36 miles in the other direction. Albion telephone provides the phone service to the area. I figured he would never see broadband before 2010... and even then it would have to be in some wireless/satellite form. The good folks of Albion telephone spent some serious time putting on and taking off various things in the phone switching boxes in the path to the house. Long story short, they figured out how to get DSL broadband stretched several miles beyond the normal limit. And the cost? Same as if he had been in town. Where he used to be lucky to get a 26.4k connection, it's nearly 500k.
The small companies know how to treat small customers. They know you personally and care. To Verizon/Sprint/AT&T - you're just a number with a dollar sign behind.
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.
Considering I live in MD, Southern MD, to be specific, I would LOVE to know what broadband providers are nearby. Comcast has an exclusive lock on my region, and to make things worse, we have an ongoing return-path/upstream signal issue that has, so far, been traced back to the main tap that they've grudgingly done a few tweaks to. Likely just to get us to shut up. Yet the problem keeps coming back. Verizon and their vaunted Fios service is no where to be found. Hell, we don't even have DSL from Verizon available. When I actually called them up on this, the decision was made to avoid upgrading our local CO and go straight to a fiber upgrade in another few years.
Really, Verizon could come down here and own Comcast simply because it'd give people a choice for once. Choice is a GoodThing(TM). So what are they waiting for?
Guess I'll have to write my reps on this one...
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.
I don't understand why everyone is concentrating on the economic factors and nothing else. Watching Canadian society change in the last 10 years as our regulated telcos and cable companies rolled out thousands of Gbps in bandwidth across the country to all but the most rural farms has been simply amazing. The Internet is a medium. Just like it's a benefit to a government to have televisions and radios in every house in the country, it's a benefit to have high-speed Internet as well.
My lifestyle has changed significantly. Other than the time my employer pays me to be in the office, I do what I want when I want. I don't have to worry about remembering to record a television program I'm not around to watch; someone else will do it and I can download it later. Or go to the video store and rent it on DVD. I don't tune into the evening news; RSS feeds come straight to my desktop. The CBC has become the same Juggernaut on the Internet as it remains on public airwaves. Public transit is filled with people texting and e-mailing each other on the way to work: even commuting time is productive now. Our society truly does work smarter, not harder. Using my PC and network and a few automated tasks has made keeping current a natural state, not something you need to work at.
But American society seems stuck in it's rut of being a TV Nation. Sorry, but television is too slow and prescriptive. I need to watch the show at the same time as everyone else and be exposed to the same mind-numbing advertising (or remember to set up my recording device). Political campaigns stick to traditional media, as do the pollsters who monitor the results of the campaign. Plus, there's no good search feature. There's a whole new medium to conquer for the government who's progressive. Ours already owns our Internet and the results have been truly beneficial, IMO. America as a whole can certainly afford to catch up with the rest of the world in a big hurry. Unfortunately, your wealthy have decided to bicker and negotiate for top dollar rather than take the opportunity to provide a new opiate to the masses.
"Please describe the scientific nature of the 'whammy'" - Agent Scully