Is Comcast Heading the Way of the Dinosaur?

CasualRepartee writes "Comcast has been one of the most successful cable companies in the world; in many parts of the U.S., Comcast sits pretty on huge user bases that don't have many viable high-speed internet alternatives. However, poor customer service, slow speeds and generally poor business practices could make the once-great internet giant another extinct dinosaur, no ice age required. The fact of the matter is this: Comcast is no longer the biggest and the best. Cable is taking a distant back seat to Verizon's FiOS (fiber optic service), which delivers speeds up to 50 Mbps download and 10 Mbps upload speeds. Unlike Comcast, FiOS delivers the full range of bandwidth to each user, whereas Comcast users are forced to share bandwidth with other users on the same coaxial cable, causing speeds to fluctuate dramatically with usage."

Comments

You'll share a pipe somewhere

[Anonymous Coward]

And if the pipe is before your destination, then you're going to be sharing bandwidth, FIOS, Cable or DSL.

Re:You'll share a pipe somewhere

[nxtw]

With HFC (hybrid fiber coax) networks where the "coax" part is shared with more than one customer, you've got one more leg of the connection that's subject to problems -- and not as easy to upgrade. Cable companies already pack as much as they can into their limited bandwidth, balancing analog, digital, and HD channels; they can't just add more bandwidth on the coax for data services without rearraning other things. So they either have to upgrade infrastructure to DOCSIS 2/3 or expand their fiber out so that each HFC node serves less customers.

DSL / Fios services do not share this issue. If congestion happens between the cable/DSL/Fios node and the Internet, operators need only increase the bandwidth available between those locations - which shouldn't be nearly as hard to do, since they'd be adding another connection alongside or better utilizing an existing fiber connection.

Re:You'll share a pipe somewhere

[Anonymous Coward]

OK why are folks just plain stupid.

FIOS connections are shared between a max of 32 home or nodes. They are rolling out GPON which will allow gigabit to the home (though no home will likely have it any time soon)

currently most FIOS users are BPON and could get nearly 100MB bidirectional. As it is Verizon has maxed out currently at 50/20 plans for the home user, and yes you can get full speed 24/7. They have built out the back end to support high speed bidirectional traffic and this can be seen by the lack of complaints by users on sites such as dslreports.com and others. Also they are demonstrating they can migrate from 40 to 100Gbps links with relative ease.

Cable on the other hand will roll out DOCSIS 3.0 later next year....but ...it will cost them 4 6MHz channels....and the resulting channel loss. Sure they will reclaim analog channels as well but FIOS has no such issue. And when FIOS converts over to all IPTV well game up call it day. They will have the ability to use two light streams to the home to manage tv and internet with speeds cable can only dream of with more bonding of channels and high revs of DOCSIS.

So sure do you share a node at some point but for FIOS users its at the CO and not 20 feet from your front door and not likely to be congested.

I know...i can dl from an internet service that cannot be spoken of...at 30mbps any time of day and i get 30mbps every time....

Re:You'll share a pipe somewhere

[Kiaser Wilhelm II]

Of course. However, the difference between coaxial networks and DSL or FIOS is that the coaxial network is in a bus toplogy, meaning that the coax segment you are on is shared with everyone else on that segment. This is a major issue because the total bandwidth over the coax is limited and not very scalable as far as subscriber capacity is concerned. Get a few people maxing our their connection and you will have problems quickly.

DSL and FIOS are examples of star toplogy; you do not share your incoming line with anyone else at all. The bandwidth converges only at the local node where high bandwidth fiber is provided to the node.

Do you see why cable is at a disadvantage here?

Re:You'll share a pipe somewhere

[Kjella]

True, but almost all the time it's the last mile deciding what you can get. I'm capped to rather slow DSL (2Mbit/400kbit) because of the distance from the central, no cable (old system not ready for Internet) and no fiber. If I had a fat pipe to the central, they'd be ready to sell me 20/2 Mbit+ ADSL2/cable, and even then it's the modem speed holding them back. Upgrade cetnral-to-central capacity to offer me another 100Mbit? No problem. Upgrading my end-mile connection to offer me another 100Mbit? Big, big problem. Seriously, if the fat pipe is in place aka the costs are sunk, you bet they'll offer you good speed on it.

Re:You'll share a pipe somewhere

[Covener]

you do not share your incoming line with anyone else at all. The bandwidth converges only at the local node where high bandwidth fiber is provided to the node.

Do you see why cable is at a disadvantage here?

I just pulled the spark plugs out of every car on my block. How much faster will my commute be?

Re:You'll share a pipe somewhere

[budgenator]

Cable on the other hand will roll out DOCSIS 3.0 later next year....but ...it will cost them 4 6MHz channels....and the resulting channel loss.
yeah right we have 95 6 MHz channels, internet and 250 digital channels squeezing through a 500MHz coax do the math we'd need to upgrade to rg-6 that could handle a GHz or two, but what we'll get is more of the ol' "No baby you look sexy in the jeans, just don't go to the potty and you'll be fine"

Re:You'll share a pipe somewhere

[Anonymous Coward]

"OK why are folks just plain stupid."

You are right... EVERYONE should know EVERYTHING about EVERYTHING. I mean if they dont know how networking works and how to perform delicate reconstructive surgery at the same time they are STUPID!

"FIOS connections are shared between a max of 32 home or nodes. They are rolling out GPON which will allow gigabit to the home (though no home will likely have it any time soon)"

Regardless the post you responded to is still a valid comment.

"currently most FIOS users are BPON and could get nearly 100MB bidirectional. As it is Verizon has maxed out currently at 50/20 plans for the home user, and yes you can get full speed 24/7. They have built out the back end to support high speed bidirectional traffic and this can be seen by the lack of complaints by users on sites such as dslreports.com and others. Also they are demonstrating they can migrate from 40 to 100Gbps links with relative ease."

Yes, you are right... I mean having only a few people on the pipes with a high end, very expensive back end will yield no complaints. Where do I insert "DUH"?

"Cable on the other hand will roll out DOCSIS 3.0 later next year....but ...it will cost them 4 6MHz channels....and the resulting channel loss. Sure they will reclaim analog channels as well but FIOS has no such issue. And when FIOS converts over to all IPTV well game up call it day. They will have the ability to use two light streams to the home to manage tv and internet with speeds cable can only dream of with more bonding of channels and high revs of DOCSIS."

So... whats your point?

"So sure do you share a node at some point but for FIOS users its at the CO and not 20 feet from your front door and not likely to be congested."

You always share nodes, thats how the internet works. Thanks! www.howstuffworks.com

'I know...i can dl from an internet service that cannot be spoken of...at 30mbps any time of day and i get 30mbps every time...."

Odd, why cant you name it? Do you perhaps work for them?

Re:You'll share a pipe somewhere

[netcrusher88]

Excellent point.

You missed an interesting thing about GPON/BPON though - the great part of it is that the standard 'push' TV channels - i.e. not on-demand - don't need to be IPTV. The B/GPON specs provide 870 MHz of quasi-analog bandwidth that does not affect the IP traffic (see FiOS Wikipedia page, oddly it's not discussed well on the GPON page), so it's actually most beneficial to avoid IPTV as much as possible. It's a remarkably well-thought-out standard.

Re:You'll share a pipe somewhere

[guywcole]

Shh... you'll ruin the greatest Slashvertisement ever. The best way to fake this word-of-mouth is through "CasualRepartee".

Re:You'll share a pipe somewhere

[yahooadam]

"You are right... EVERYONE should know EVERYTHING about EVERYTHING. I mean if they dont know how networking works and how to perform delicate reconstructive surgery at the same time they are STUPID!"
I think your missing the point

Just because you don't know doesn't make you stupid, but going around telling everyone some crap and claiming its the truth, that does make you stupid (well its just degrading human knowledge, but either way)

Re:You'll share a pipe somewhere

[bennomatic]

> I just pulled the spark plugs out of every car on my block. How much faster will my commute be?

It depends on how big your block is, how many households, how many cars, how many of those cars leave at the same time as you, and the width and condition of the street. Additionally, the total perceived improvement will be based on how much of your commute time is just getting off your block, the number of those cars which go the same route as you, and the capacity and utilization on the rest of your commute. If, for instance, the other cars all turn right where you turn left, and that left turn puts you right into the driveway of your office, the effect of your work will be quite significant.

Of course, it also depends on you sharing the road with them. If you use different infrastructure--by walking, since its so short, or by taking off in your helicopter if you've gotta go a few hundred miles--then there will be zero impact on your commute time from your actions. Of course, you might come home to an angry mob that night.

Re:You'll share a pipe somewhere

[ouachiski]

I cant speak for all cable providers but I as a contractor for the local cable company know that at least in my area, witch is a rural area in the middle of no where, is running fiber to all of its nodes from the head end. The thing is that coax cable is cheap to run and cheap to buy compared to fiber. run fiber to where you are going to see the bigest increases in congestion reduction and run the cheaper coax the "last mile". With that in place it is very simple in the future to run the fiber farther down the lines if demand arises, witch it will. The name of the game is The name of the game is do what the customers want in the most economical way possible while not setting yourself up to be left behind when upgrades to the system are needed at a later date "future proofing".

Re:You'll share a pipe somewhere

[Reaperducer]

And if the pipe is before your destination...

So, the internet is a "pipe" but people who describe it as a "tube" are ridiculed. Typical Gen-Z lunacy.

Re:You'll share a pipe somewhere

[Anonymous Coward]

DSL is limited in distance because it is all copper. Cable and FiOS both run fiber out to a node. They are both shared all the way to the node, but wait, do FiOS nodes contain huge 2000 port patch panels? No! you don't get your own dedicated fiber all the way to the node. It likely goes from the node out to splitters/taps etc. not that different than cable. The biggest difference is using coax from the node is cheaper which means it reaches more rural areas (it is a happy middle ground).

So HFC is separating people on the same physical fiber/copper with frequencies and time slots, and FiOS is doing basically the same thing with light spectrum. With cable the drop from the pole to your house is not shared, with FiOS the fiber goes from your home to where? Probably a drop/splitter on a pole outside. If this is the case they are both "shared" even at the last mile.

Cable has exponential room to grow also. Currently there is about 1GHz available on your copper you are using about 8MHz (0.8%) of it for your cable modem. Even with the technology in place now it could offer much much more bandwidth per subscriber. DOCSIS 3.0 will add more bandwidth and channel bonding. Removing the analog channels will free up spectrum. There is a technology called "switched digital" that basically means broadcasting the channels people are watching instead of all the channels all the time. The technology in place today is not even being used to the full potential (it is cheaper not to especially where the bandwidth in place is not being used) and in theory instead of 8MHz there is nothing stopping DOCIS 5.0 or DOCSIS 6.0 from using 300 or 400 MHz. If end-user bandwidth requirements ever get that high the internet itself would be in jeopardy as the backbone fiber would not be able to sustain that much traffic.

Re:You'll share a pipe somewhere

[Shakrai]

do FiOS nodes contain huge 2000 port patch panels? No! you don't get your own dedicated fiber all the way to the node. It likely goes from the node out to splitters/taps etc. not that different than cable

It is different from cable. One single fiber serves a max of 32 locations, typically less. So, no, you don't have a dedicated last mile all the way back to the CO (you do with DSL/POTS service, albeit copper and slower).

But compared to cable? That single fiber can haul 1.2GBit/s on the upstream and 2.4GBit/s on the downstream (with GPON). That's shared with no more then 32 customers. A DOCSIS 2.0 network by contrast provides for 42.88Mbit/s downstream and 30.72Mbit/s upstream per channel. How many channels they can put on a single node depends on what else they are doing (i.e: how many analog channels, how many digital channels, etc, etc) with their HFC network. In any case, the typical DOCSIS node has at least a few hundred homes on it -- upwards of two thousand at times.

What do you think is better? 2.4GBit/s down w/1.2GBit/s up shared with 32 locations or 42.88MBit/s down/30.72MBit/s up shared with hundreds of locations?

Re:You'll share a pipe somewhere

[Anonymous Coward]

When you are talking about DOCSIS 2.0 you are talking about only 8MHz of ~1GHz available bandwidth. TV channels are outside of this band. With FiOS the TV channels are in band. So you are comparing internet only bandwidth to Internet+TV.

Cable put Internet on a dedicated channel and FiOS shares it with TV.!

As stated before DOCSIS is using just ~0.8% of the available bandwidth. You used DOCIS 2.0 for your 42.88 figure, but DOCSIS 3.0 is 171.52 meg and right around the corner.

Next, while even FiOS is in very few areas and most rural areas will /never/ see it, the deployments today are not using GPON, they are BPON which will only do 100 meg (less than DOCSIS 3.0).

FiOS is more expensive to deploy which means low ROI will prevent it from reaching rural areas like cable does. And for the majority of people DOCSIS 3.0 will be out long before FiOS (BPON) is even available. Both technologies will support as much bandwidth as the back-end links/servers will allow, and one of them does it for less money. I don't like Comcast (or Verizon) either, but DOCSIS is still a flexible technology. Without DOCSIS I'd be getting 56kb (that's 7kB).

Re:You'll share a pipe somewhere

[Anonymous Coward]

PS. The point keeps being made that each FiOS node supports just 32 homes (nodes cost thousands of dollars). This is good for the guy pulling down torrents, but when even during peak times only ~10% of your users are downloading, it is a waste of network resources to not at least have the option of placing more homes per node than a measly 32. Cable can place 32 homes on a node, or 5 homes, or 2000 homes, because the technology is flexible. With fiber you can't simply cut the fiber and splice a new drop into it, because the signal would quickly become crap. I have seen networks where many thousands of users combined only use 20 or 30 meg during peak usage hours. This is because most of the time your computer is idle doing nothing.

So in 99.99% of cases not being able to share a multi gig connection with more than 32 customer is a waste, especially when the users are capped at 5 Mbps/2 Mbps. This extra cost is only going to be passed on to the consumer and as stated before, will prevent FiOS from seeing the light of day in rural areas.

People are saying Comcast is doomed, and at the same time telephone subscribers are moving to VoIP by the millions. Even businesses are putting in VoIP PBX's instead of paying Verizon for a bunch of individual 64k circuits. Verizon is moving to expensive last mile fiber because their circuit switched cash cow is being pulled out from under them and they have no other choice in the matter.

Either way, more competition is good for the consumer. VoIP meant an aggressive push to last mile fiber from Verizon, FTTH (fiber to the home) will pressure cable companies to free up more spectrum for DOCSIS.

Re:You'll share a pipe somewhere

[Shakrai]

When you are talking about DOCSIS 2.0 you are talking about only 8MHz of ~1GHz available bandwidth. TV channels are outside of this band

Uhh, no, they aren't. Your DOCSIS networks can't use all 1Ghz of that coax plant because most of it is being used for analog cable channels. Some is also being used by digital channels. What's left can be used for DOCSIS networks.

I don't like Comcast (or Verizon) either, but DOCSIS is still a flexible technology. Without DOCSIS I'd be getting 56kb (that's 7kB)

Hey, I love my cable connection too. And I've never had any problems from Time Warner. There's been months where I've downloaded hundreds of gigabytes and maxed out my upload the whole while. Never heard a peep from them.

A properly engineered DOCSIS network shouldn't have capacity issues. Yet it's Comcast we see taking steps to reduce bandwidth consumption -- not Verizon.

Re:You'll share a pipe somewhere

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, you're incorrect to contrast DSL and FIOS, together, with cable as something different.

FIOS is a brand name for marketing services, not a networking technology. The underlying technology is BPON, which is an ATM-based passive optical network. A PON uses an optical splitter to combine the laser signals from many subscribers onto the same fiber at the same wavelength, exactly as a cable splitter combines RF frequencies on metal coax cable. They are both point-to-multipoint technologies, and thus "shared" bandwidth. In both technologies, the head end equipment is responsible for scheduling bandwidth to nodes that request service. In both technologies, that head end scheduler can reserve bandwidth, cap the bandwidth, or make it all best-effort. DSL, by contrast, is point-to-point. The physical medium leads to only one customer.

Speeds do not necessarily go down when other users transmit in any of the point-to-multipoint technologies. That's a function of the scheduler and whether or not it reserves bandwidth. Note that a shared medium that does allow access to some bandwidth on a best-effort basis while guaranteeing some bandwidth is preferable to separate media with the same guaranteed bandwidth. You're not worse off in the worst case, can get more bandwidth at some times, and the latency overall drops as you can burst to the full capacity of the medium even when not exceeding a bandwidth cap.

As others have already pointed out, ALL bandwidth is shared pretty rapidly in most networks. As soon as you reach the head end, whether you call it a DSLAM or a CMTS or an OLT, you dump the data on network uplinks which might be heavily oversubscribed, and which take you to a router which might also be heavily overloaded. You're sharing all of those resources with hundreds or thousands of other users, even if you have your "guaranteed" DSL line all to yourself. Performance is really a matter of the network operator's willingness to spend money on their network core, and not of the access technology. The "last mile" has ceased to be the bottleneck that it was in the 80s and 90s.

Re:You'll share a pipe somewhere

[Averyge Joe]

Depends on the size of the block and where these people work...

Re:You'll share a pipe somewhere

[BosstonesOwn]

Fios users are seeing 20/20 speeds now , you might not have noticed it in the past couple weeks but they are becoming a symmetrical provider.

Fios is looking at the future , and gig connections may well become the norm once places like youtube start serving hd content. Verizon has this nailed , they are planning on rolling out a service that will need minimal upgrades for the next 50 years , Comcast isn't.

I have comcast and they are plagued by they just dont care and take customers for granted , i have 0 options besides them because of trees and distance from the co. once Fios is here im gone.

Re:You'll share a pipe somewhere

[liquigel]

Those kids in Japan have been rolling with pretty decent bandwidth for a while now, and inexpensively.

Re:You'll share a pipe somewhere

[EveLibertine]

Ok, I don't think you seriously mean that. (What does Gen-Z mean anyway?) But "pipe" is a pretty widely used term to describe how these internets work. The joke of the matter goes to the instant the work "tube" was uttered by a particular gentleman. Everyone who was familiar with the usage of "pipe" could instantly imagine this poor aging gentleman struggling to understand the complexity of something that he was responsible for, yet so terribly ill-equipped. Imagining him asking a staffer or some consulting agency about how this stuff all works, and having the consultant respond with, "Well, you have these "pipes" here, and this connects to over here, etc...". Then Mr. Stevens comes out of the meeting, overconfident in his new understanding of the intertubes, and baffles the minds of hundreds of thousands of people in one fantastic moment of ineptness. What's not to ridicule? Explaining a joke never works. /shrug

Re:You'll share a pipe somewhere

[drew]

Did you notice how well that argument worked for DSL proponents?

Re:You'll share a pipe somewhere

[buddyglass]

Exactly. The highest bandwidth download I've ever gotten from a site on the "larger net" (i.e. not from someone using my same ISP) was approx. 1000K/s, or 10 Mbit/s. I suppose transferring in parallel (i.e. bit torrent) might allow one to make use of a faster-than-10Mbit last mile, but that's irrelevant for the vast majority of users. I'd prefer 10Mb/10Mb down/up to 50Mb/1Mb down/up any day. Also latency values that are "consistently decent".

Re:You'll share a pipe somewhere

[toonces33]

Customer service with Comcast might be bad (don't know - never had it), but customer service with Verizon is absolutely awful. We had a FIOS service outage, and it took them a over a week to get it corrected. To begin with, they are M-F, 9-5. Secondly, you call someone up, wait on hold for a while, and are told it will be back up within an hour. Nothing happens. Call back, get someone else, get another run-around, same story. Finally are forced to get a new work order to get it turned back on, and they schedule an appointment send someone out. We didn't need any new equipment - we already had everything, so that was a waste of time. And then to top it off, they started billing us for a new router even though we never needed one in the first place. The impression we had of the folks answering the phones was that they didn't know what they were talking about, and they didn't really care very much if they were able to help you or not.

Re:You'll share a pipe somewhere

[snarlydwarf]

I think that like many things it depends on where you live.

Here, my Comcast service is fine and dandy. Works great, never seen any bandwidth issues. A friend in Seattle tells me that she switches between Cable and DSL every few months because it alternates who sucks more, Comcast or Qwest... both have issues with capacity.

I have seen a couple outages in the past year or two, but those were only a few minutes long... when I called Comcast they were polite and friendly. The customer service person said. "We don't have a ticket open on that, but I see that only 50 of the 100 boxes on your node are responding, so something is wrong, I will open a ticket for you."

Polite, professional, and even leaked out the size of my node (nice and small, not the 2000 that some people claim).

Cable companies want small nodes: it gives them more room for PPV which is, really, where the money is. The margins on CATV are dirt-slim (the cable company has to pay money for most channels.. so something like HGTV is getting money from the advertisers -and- the cable company). The margin on Internet is good, but not all that great unless you have a huge network like Comcast to move much of your own data around.

The big margin? PPV.

Comcast makes a killing on OnDemand and PPV programming, and OnDemand requires very small nodes.

(The only other time I have called Comcast support was because I had a cable modem that would randomly reboot... The support person interrupted me and asked what model it was, and I told him... he said, "Oh, yeah, those suck, the power connecter gets loose and stops making a good connection. Just bring it into the cable office and get another model." When I went into the cable office I said, "the support people said this modem sucks, can I have a new one?" She took one look at it, and said ok, and got me a different model.)

Re:You'll share a pipe somewhere

[MetaPhyzx]

Nothing, nothing lasts 50 years. I can point back less than 10 years ago when the bandwidth possibilities of cable were lauded as endless. FIOS might last a bit longer, but as we begin to demand more and more services delivered via global nets in the next few years (provided civilization doesn't oh, collapse), The Next Big Thing will have come to the forefront much sooner than 2060 or so.

Re:You'll share a pipe somewhere

[Some_Llama]

"So, the internet is a "pipe" but people who describe it as a "tube" are ridiculed. Typical Gen-Z lunacy."

yah like how they derided "trucks" to denote the transfer of data, i mean data is sent in "packets" which is analogous to trucks.. right? and everyone know's it's a series of pipes.. not one.

Re:You'll share a pipe somewhere

[BosstonesOwn]

Copper lasted how long ?

If the past is any precedent for the future (history doomed to repeat itself ?) our use and burn type of living will stop soon , and the infrastructure that is now fiber (60's and 70's technology) was replaced to get higher speeds will come full circle , they will upgrade the pon pos soon after higher speed ones are out , at this point short of a physics breakthrough we are going to be with fiber for awhile.

Re:You'll share a pipe somewhere

[Grant29]

Are you sure there are no other options? Look for providers in your state: Broadband Providers

I hate Comcast

[The Breeze]

Dealing with their bureaucracy is a nightmare - especially if you are trying to get a clarification on whether their commercial TOS allows paid WiFI hotspot access. Inconsistent policies, customer service from hell, a pricing structure more suited to the "we're the phone company - we don't care - we don't have to" days...I can only hope that Comcast is indeed due for a long permament swim in a nice tar pit.

Re:I hate Comcast

[Anonymous Coward]

You are not alone. Everyone hates comcast, Even the employees (except for the Executives at VP and above.. and they have at least 180-190 VP's.) I left 2 years ago because I saw a sinking ship, and even then All my coworkers hated the company and it's business practices. They made incredibly stupid decisions like spending freezes on the operations side but the executives could hire new assistants and remodel their offices at $30,000-$50,000 a pop. Customer service is touted all over the place yet when you as an employee try to implement it you are told no. I know of field techs that were let go for trying to make the customer happy.

They seemed to promote the idiots to management and let go those that were valuable to the company. In other words I saw lots of people getting screwed, so I jumped ship. Because the screwing was so bad I could map out and see it was heading for me and my department.

The last straw for me was instead of hiring one of the guys in the department that knew the job and systems or a new manager position they hired a friend of one of the executives for it that did not know squat about the department, what we did, or even the business process. And this is a very common thing at comcast, hiring of managers based on the buddy system not capabilities and knowledge.

Posting anon as peole at Comcast that know me know my Slashdot ID.

Re:I hate Comcast

[pyrrhonist]

Until about two years ago, I had Adelphia cable, and they did and surprisingly good job as an ISP.

Surprisingly good.

Re:I hate Comcast

[goaliemn]

And what does this have to do with comcast? The article was centering on Comcast..

Re:I hate Comcast

[The Analog Kid]

I never had much of an issue with Verizon, although when I upgraded to the 3.0/768k service they switched the line to interleave mode, which increases latency. I called the basic support line and they had no clue what I was talking about, but I found out there was a higher tier tech support line for who ever had the Verizon Freedom package, there was little to no hold time, and they turned off interleave. I also had a problem with them having the wrong distance information for my location from the co, so they only let me have 768k/128 for awhile, but they updated all the distance measurements a month or two after. Other than that no issues, and so far FiOS hasn't given me any problems at all, not once have I lost internet or TV, which was a routine occurrence with Comcast and they don't cap my connection for downloading too much.

Re:I hate Comcast

[nine-times]

Yeah, I hate huge bureaucratic companies that take monopolistic stances, overprice their services, and give crappy customer service. Hopefully Comcast will die and we can all switch to a good company like... Verizon?

Seriously, this all seems pretty slanted. The submission reads more like Verizon astroturfing than a legitimate post. Don't get me wrong, I love the idea of FIOS and hope it comes to my area soon and is cheap. However, I'm not a huge fan of Verizon and don't see how they're much better than Comcast. In the end, I'd rather have the choice between Comcast and Verizon than to have one go out of business and to be completely stuck with either, without any choice whatsoever.

Re:I hate Comcast

[$pace6host]

We had Comcast for years, and they took advantage of their monopoly in this area, raised rates to ridiculous levels, offered poor signal quality, and were slow in improving the infrastructure. My favorite Comcastic tactic is charging your existing customers twice what you charge your new customers -- unless the existing customers threaten to leave. Then they can find it in their hearts to offer an existing customer that price, too. Guess most of their customers don't notice there are two prices. We ended up on DSL instead of cable modem because it took them so long to offer broadband in the area. Now, I won't say Verizon is saintly, at all, but the customer service has been at least equivalent, the picture quality is incredible, we have tons more channels, and we're paying about the same as we used to pay before (for DSL from Vz + analog cable from Comcast). Comcast needs to wake up and smell the competition. We need them to stay around to serve the same purpose to Verizon when Verizon turns around and screws us in a few years. Oh, don't worry, they will. Let's hope the Comcastasaurus can adapt.

Re:I hate Comcast

[porkThreeWays]

Which is a shame because that means one less cable company in the US. They weren't actually half bad. The comcast decline was instant. Since I was switched over I've never been able to get good reception or internet access. In talking with others in my city, I'm not alone. I can't speak for the rest of the country, but here, comcast does a piss poor job compared to Adelphia. Which doesn't really make sense because they were probably using most of Adelphia's old equipment.

Re:I hate Comcast

[pyrrhonist]

I'm not really too upset about it. I think it's worth pointing out that depending on the area, the service was very hit or miss. Some people, like you, had great service, but there were many others that had horrible service. In NH and PA, their service was particularly awful. It may stem from that fact that smaller cable operators that were acquired by Adelphia tended to continue to have the same level of service that they had prior to the acquisition.

Re:I hate Comcast

[ThousandStars]

Incidentally, this is why I mentioned ClearWire last time broadband came up. Some posters responded by pointing out that ClearWire isn't very good either, but given the choice between one unresponsive cable company and an unresponsive but upstart wireless company, I chose the latter. So far, anyway, we've been getting up and down speeds faster than what we had before and for less money.

Granted, I doubt this situation will last forever and suspect that ClearWire is as eager to oversubscribe as cable companies are. The question for me is, which choice of evils will I pick? And why can't I find city council members interested in municipal FIOS?

Re:I hate Comcast

[trogdor8667]

Our area has been monopolized for years by Comcast or pre-Comcast companies. We finally have a competitor coming in offering FIOS type services (though its not Verizon), and Comcast has done their best to tie them up in court for the next 5 years to get them to just forget about it. Fortunately for us, the new company refuses to allow Comcast to bully them!

Re:I hate Comcast

[the eric conspiracy]

The article was centering on Comcast.

The article ALSO made a general statement about cable not being able to compete with FIOS. My comment is a perfectly valid counter-example.

Whoever moderated my post as off-topic was clearly in error.

Re:I hate Comcast

[Theolojin]

Posting anon as [people] at Comcast that know me know my Slashdot ID.

And now I am posting as myself, so mods, feel free to give me the karma I missed while posting anonymously.

+5? :-)

Re:I hate Comcast

[LilGuy]

This seems to be the cable industry's problem in general. Comcast's support procedures mirror Time Warner's. The local cable company here could easily be mistaken for a mini-TW or mini-Comcast. They have the exact same sales promotions and support procedures. I don't understand the homogeneity of the industry, but it doesn't appear to be working out very well.

Re:I hate Comcast

[Fujisawa Sensei]

Everyone hates comcast

But some of us hate AT&T even more than comcrap.

Re:I hate Comcast

[QuietObserver]

I coined a definition to "Comcastic" yesterday: We're going to stiff you, no matter what you try.

My experience with them was a land line my sister signed up for when she lived with my brother and me; when she moved out, we contacted Comcast to have the name on the account changed, and they gave us some bullshit about the issue requiring a "reinstall" that would cost us $20. We weren't about to pay that much for something that could be done in ten seconds, so we just left her name on the account. We finally left them when they decided that they would no longer support the analog service in our area, which was the only thing we have been able to afford at the present (unfortunately, we're now getting our service through Qwest, which is just as bad (their installer didn't even bother to check with us to see if the connection had been made, failed to connect the line to the house, and we ultimately had to fix their mistake ourselves; this led a friend of mine to describe their "Spirit of Service" as "We're the phone company, so f*** you" (I describe it as "Spirit of Disservice".

Re:I hate Comcast

[Paladin144]

This must be the obligatory "I hate Comcast" thread. Well guess what, just like everyone else in the known universe I HATE COMCAST!! Those lying fuckers deserve to go the way of the dinosaur. Here's my story:

Why does Comcast suck? Oh, I'm glad you asked; let me explain. Long ago, in a time known as 2005, things were good. I had a fast internet connection through Time-Warner. It was about 6 Mbps and it set me back about 43 bucks a month.

Then, I get a letter informing me that Comcast swapped all of Time-Warner's Minnesota subscribers (like me) and that I would now be a Comcast customer. Okay, this is where the creepy, ominous music kicks in.

The letter makes clear that there will be no price adjustments. In fact the FAQ is still online, which says exactly:

Will my monthly fee change with Comcast High-Speed Internet?
Price adjustments will not be required because of this change. All prices reflect the increased value of our service, new product enhancements, and investments to continually improve the quality of our network and customer service. Any price adjustments going forward will be planned and communicated to customers well in advance of any change.

You can see where this is headed, can't you?

"Price adjustments will not be required" -- weasel words, if I've ever read them. Fucking liars. Despite the promises, both of stable prices and advanced notice, it turns out that Comcast is run by a bunch of lying, thieving scumbags who exist only to squeeze every last dime out of their unwilling customer base in order to fatten their own undeserved bonuses at the end of the year -- you know the bonuses, I'm talking about. They're 10 times the size of their average employee's yearly salary.

I must say that every Comcast employee I dealt with -- 3 customer service reps and a technician who picked up my modem -- were great. Fine folks, didn't lie to me any more, and were very apologetic. But the fact remains that they work for fascist goons who are planning to rape, pillage and plunder this fresh, unearned subscriber base in an apparent effort to show just how stupid and short-sighted management teams can be. They're going for the gold medal in poor decision-making skills. Bravo.

So, do I even have to tell you what happened? Isn't it obvious from my venom? Well, I'll tell you anyway. Comcast sent me a notice, dated December 26th (yes, the day after Christmas -- "Happy holidays from Comcast! Fuck you!") informing me that my rates were going up to 60 bucks a month -- plus modem rental (3 bucks a month), starting.... February 1st! Yay!

So the lying fuckers tried to squeeze me for 20 bucks more a month and gave me only a month notice. This left me no choice. I wasn't going to stand for this shit. 20 bucks isn't much, but 20 bucks every month adds up to quite a lot. It's almost $250 more per year. I am not that rich, Comcast. But idiotic, greedy ploys like this explain how they can afford to pay their CEO 27.8 million dollars a year. I guess I know where my $250 would've went.

And so, instead of sending them a check for 40-some bucks a month they managed to convince me to send them a whole lot of nothing every month. Congrats, Comcast. Your short-sighted greed and stupidity has only managed to cost you subscribers like me. Fucking morons.

Instead of collecting money from people like me, Comcast managed to piss away subscribers like a drunk after a night of drinking cheap domestic beer. Instead of getting my money every month they've assured Qwest of my business instead. Bravo, fuckheads!

Check out MNspeak for an awesome thread full of pissed off former subscribers. Comcast's goose-stepping management team deserves an award for monumental stupidity. It's hard to motivate internet-addicted people like me to do without and overcome the inertia required to make the switch. But Comcast managed to fi

Re:I hate Comcast

[ericfitz]

If you don't work there anymore and you are telling the truth, why do you care if they know who you are?

A bit dated on the FiOS speeds...

[strredwolf]

Something to note -- Verizon has deployed a symmetric plan. In select areas it's 25Mbps both up and down. In other areas it's 15Mbps up/down. Check dlsreports.com for details.

Re:A bit dated on the FiOS speeds...

[morgan_greywolf]

And despite availability in the Tampa Bay area for quite sometime, FiOS is still not available where I live in Pasco County. But even in Tampa Bay, the primary concern people actually care about is download speed, not upload speed. Unless you're planning on running a server FiOS doesn't have much of an advantage of Bright House Networks, which is the local cable provider for most of the Tampa Bay area. They offer 15 Mbps down, with 512 Kbps up. And, of course, for those of you who are planning on running a server, Verizon isn't going to support you anyway.

Re:A bit dated on the FiOS speeds...

[imasu]

FiOS is still quite slow in comparison to the home fiber options in Japan. NTT's B-Flets is 100Mbit and has been available there for a while for less than $50/mo. Not sure about the upstream, I *think* it's symmetric based upon what friends tell me, but I have no cites to back that up.

Re:A bit dated on the FiOS speeds...

[Smidge204]

In my areas they're offering 50/20 service for $90/mo with annual contract. That's about double what I'm currently paying for Cable, but I only get 15/5 with that (plus the magic bandwidth cap if you dare use all of it for any length of time)

VERY Temping... maybe in the springtime...
=Smidge=

Talk about choosing between two evils.

[COMICAGOGO]

I have at various times been both a Verizon and a Comcast customer. I must say that having to choose between the two for fast internet service is like being give the choice of having you right arm and leg cut off or your left arm and leg (not talking price per say.) You are pretty screwed no matter what you pick.

Any body else have the dubious honor of having been with both of these companies?

Re:Talk about choosing between two evils.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is typical /. flame bait. Comcast is dead like MS is dead. Comcast could lose literally a million customers and still keep going for the foreseeable future. Fiber based service has a long way to go before it offers real competition to cable based services and that can determined simply by looking at the reaction Comcast is making. When they start to feel the pinch enough to lower their prices, then talk to me about their vulnerabilities.

Meanwhile, people 2 miles down the road from me have had FiOS for over a year and the size of the service area hasn't expanded one jot. They had one push when this first group came online where they basically hooked up the neighborhods that are right next to the county's central fiber trunk and then nada. So Verizon has a lot of work to do yet.

Re:Talk about choosing between two evils.

[Avatar8]

I've been with both here in the Dallas, TX area.

Used Comcast cable TV for the first few years when I came to Dallas in 1994. When we could not get service for 50% of the month and customer service said there was nothing they could do, my wife sent them a check for 50% of the bill and we bought DirecTV. Stayed there until FiOS came in.

Jumped onto @Home cable internet service. 10Mb for $45/mth. was pretty good. Then AT&T took over. Speed went to 5Mb and price went to $50. Comcast came in, reduced the speed to 3Mb, raised the price to $55/mth., somehow screwed up the infrastructure so that disconnection was a weekly if not nightly occurance and gave the same crappy customer service as we had with their TV service. We added the phone service regardless and also experienced dropped calls and times when we had no dial tone. Thankfully we were still using DirecTV so we didn't have to suffer the pains of a triple play.

Decided to finally get a mobile phone again in January 2004 and chose Verizon based upon several reports that their service, coverage and customer service was marginally better than all the others. I've never had any issues with my wireless except for one billing mistake that was taken care of with one phone call.

I saw the orange cable in May 2005 and knew what was coming. I kept checking the website and signed up for the e-mail list. Finally when a co-worker who lived near me mentioned that he had FiOS, I called and discovered it was available. December 2005 my Verizon FiOS internet came online and I've never had any trouble with it to this day.

In March 2006 we added FiOS TV. DirecTV was sad to see a 10 year customer depart, but I told them they simply could not compete with the offering, the savings or the fact that I'd never again lose a signal due to a storm. Best purchase I've ever made. HD is freaking awesome, hands down. The DVR has altered how and when I view TV and has actually reduced how much total TV I watch. Live sporting events are the only things I watch on their schedule now.

In May 2006 we finally added a land line back to our house and, of course, chose Verizon. We've never lost a call, the sound quality is great, and all the features we want and long distance are included. It's simply the best phone service we've ever had.

The few times I've had to call Verizon customer service I have always been treated well and in a professional manner. I'm typically surprised by people who complain of Verizon's service, mostly because there are so few reasons to ever call them but also because I've never had a bad call with Verizon support.

I'm a Verizon customer for all their services for the foreseeable future. It will take a major screw up or an outstanding replacement to make me leave.

censorship?

[rpillala]

I realize the tagging is in beta, but why censorship?

Anyway, I'm interested in fiber optic internet too but it's not available in my area and no one seems to have any more information than that. Their price seems pretty competitive (at least against Comcast) and you'd think they'd be interested in rolling it out as widely and quickly as possible. What kind of infrastructure needs to be developed for this? I thought there was already a ton of fiber in the ground that no one was using.

Re:censorship?

[bhima]

Because any subscriber can add whatever ass-stupid shit they want.

Re:censorship?

[stonecypher]

I realize the tagging is in beta, but why censorship?

Because Comcast throttles BitTorrent, and the pirate kiddies can't tell the difference between the right to free speech and the ability to steal. It's pretty sad.

Re:censorship?

[stonecypher]

I wasn't trolling. I was answering grandparent's question, correctly. Metamoderators, on your mark.

Re:censorship?

[maniac/dev/null]

Because Comcast throttles BitTorrent, and the pirate kiddies can't tell the difference between the right to free speech and the ability to steal. It's pretty sad.

You kinda were trolling. There are far more uses for BitTorrent than just piracy. It's the only way I get any large download anymore (game demos, linux isos) if I can help it. And to wrap it all back to the topic at hand, I've never noticed a slow down when getting torrents over my Comcast internet service.

Re:censorship?

[Karzz1]

You were probably modded a troll because BitTorrent does not necessarily equate to piracy.

Re:censorship?

[stonecypher]

You kinda were trolling. There are far more uses for BitTorrent than just piracy.

I never said there weren't. The connection is hoary, I agree - that's why I seemed so put off by it. Nonetheless, what I'm answering is why the censorship tag comes up on a comcast article. I'm not making any commentary on the nature of BitTorrent; you're seeing things that aren't there. All I did was to point out something stupid that a specific group of people think.

Pirates think anti-piracy is censorship. Simple as that. That's just where the tag came in. I'm not saying BitTorrent is about piracy. I'm saying that in a pirate's eyes, Comcast's anti-BitTorrent stuff is censorship. I'm also saying that in reality, that's not censorship at all.

I'm discussing a group's opinion. Please spend less time defending against things I didn't say about BitTorrent.

I've never noticed a slow down when getting torrents over my Comcast internet service.

Most of the pirates pretending anti-P2P is censorship aren't even ComCast customers. I was just answering the question "why is this story tagged censorship?"

I get really tired of BitTorrent non-arguments.

Re:censorship?

[stonecypher]

You were probably modded a troll because BitTorrent does not necessarily equate to piracy.

I never said it did. What I said was that some people think anti-piracy throttling is censorship, about which they're wrong. Please read what I said again - at no point did I make any such suggestion. Both of the people who've replied, and I presume the person who modded me troll, have made that same mistake.

Sometimes I wonder why it is that when I make fun of pirates, so many people go "bittorrent isn't about piracy." All I was doing was pointing out one reason that stupid people might have added a tag to a story. Take off the rose colored glasses and read what I said again.

Re:censorship?

[u-235-sentinel]

Because Comcast throttles BitTorrent, and the pirate kiddies can't tell the difference between the right to free speech and the ability to steal. It's pretty sad.

Actually it felt like you were trolling since 99.99% of all Comcast customers are using the network as Comcast intended. Just ask Comcast :-)

Oh and I didn't see in the article anything about piracy.

It's pretty sad.

Re:censorship?

[Karzz1]

Your original post:

"Because Comcast throttles BitTorrent, and the pirate kiddies can't tell the difference between the right to free speech and the ability to steal. It's pretty sad."

To which I replied "You were probably modded a troll because BitTorrent does not necessarily equate to piracy.".

Now your reply to mine:

"I never said it did. What I said was that some people think anti-piracy throttling is censorship, about which they're wrong. Please read what I said again - at no point did I make any such suggestion."

Now I agree with what you are saying, however you most certainly did insinuate that BitTorrent was only used by pirates in your first post. You just did it again in that post; "What I said was that some people think anti-piracy throttling.."Those committing the theft are not the only ones affected by this. In fact, why mention "pirate kiddies" and "the ability to steal" rather than just say "some people can't tell the difference between the right to free speech and QOS with regard to their internet service" or something along those lines? You made an inflammatory post, regardless of whether or not you were making fun of piracy, with regard to Bittorrent and piracy and were modded accordingly.

Re:censorship?

[nurb432]

That might be true, except not all BT traffic is a IP violation ( note, i didn't say steal, since its not theft, at best its copy right infringement ), lots of 'legal' downloads are disribtued via the BT protocol to reduce load on the original source.

So, throttling legitimate use does border on censorship ( but i agree, its not actually, as a private company really technically cant censor.. only governments can do that )

Re:censorship?

[westlake]

I thought there was already a ton of fiber in the ground that no one was using.

It depends on whether you are talking about Elm Street or a railroad right-of-way from New York to Chicago.

Re:censorship?

[DA-MAN]

Because Comcast throttles BitTorrent, and the pirate kiddies can't tell the difference between the right to free speech and the ability to steal. It's pretty sad. They block more than just p2p applications. I have 5 servers with sequential ip's for an open source project I run. Upon connecting to three of them via ssh in 2 minutes, I was disconnected. I couldn't even connect to the web server running on port 80. I could no longer communicate with the subnet at all, as a friend runs a web server on that subnet I was unable to reach.

I connected to a server on a different isp and I was able to ssh into the servers on the subnet that was unreachable to me. The traceroute between my server and my Comcastic IP reached my ip, and even my traceroute from my ip to the server succeeded. After fifteen minutes or so I was able to connect again.

Where is FIOS?

[ErikZ]

I still have no idea where FIOS is available or what their deployment plan is.

The only thing I know is that it's not available here.

Re:Where is FIOS?

[Tom90deg]

I don't know where it is either, and I believe that to be one of the main, if not only advantage of Cable internet, namely, most everyone has a cable hookup, or at least a way of getting cable simply. Fiber Optics, to my limited knowledge, requires a whole new system to be laid out, new pipes laid and everything. That takes time and money, and that's why we'll probaly still have these old dinosuars for a bit longer yet.

Re:Where is FIOS?

[Anonymous Coward]

Thats the idea. They just want to make noise in the market, but they are NOT about to let their competitors know what they really have. I've had the same 768/356 DSL from Verizon for 10 years. When I call and inquire about FiOS, they REQUIRE I give them my current Verizon account # from my bill to even continue the conversation. I've gone as far as I can up the totem pole to complain about this, but they're sticking to their "policy". The result? It is not available in my area. When will it be available? They don't know. Consider yourself lucky if its available in your area within the next 10 years.

If only we had a map with current FIOS coverage we might be able to put a little fire under their asses. (I will resist ranting about what their CEO got paid last year...)

Anybody up for building an online FIOS coverage registry? I'll handle the backend and page design if someone can workout a nice map app for the whole of the USofA. Perhaps using Google Maps API? (I do have a slashdot account password somewhere...)

Re:Where is FIOS?

[MT628496]

I have FIOS on Long Island, and it really is pretty fast.

Re:Where is FIOS?

[rfunches]

Two sources:

1. http://www.dslreports.com/. Their Verizon Fiber Optics forum is usually updated with information about the latest rollout areas and they also have a Google Maps application where users with FiOS service "pin" their location on the map and offer a user review in some instances. The forums also include some info on overall deployment, but it's usually secondhand info so take it for what it's worth.
2. The Verizon website for your state at http://www22.verizon.com/about/community/. For instance, Verizon Virginia has a monthly FTTP construction list in PDF format.

Re:Where is FIOS?

[rednip]

I live in a county were fios can transmit both internet and tv service, some have had it for more than a year, but I am still waiting for service. I've been checking every week, and looking out for every indication of Verizon work. Finally, it started work here a couple of weeks ago.

First they laid a tension cable on the poles, then a couple of weeks later another crew attached the fiber lines to it. A technician then seemed to do some 'extra' work, most just seemed to do some 'clean up'. Just this past week, they started to do underground work in my neighborhood and used a drilling machine to connect new 'vaults' (apparently the old telephone boxes don't do the trick, but at least they don't stick up out of the ground). Apparently now they will need to connect the closest vault to my home, likely more underground work.

Really, it seems to be a lot of really expensive work, and I can see why it's seems to be taking so long. I'll order it as soon as I can.

Re:Where is FIOS?

[Seumas]

The slashdot submission suggests that Comcast and possibly other cable services are going to become sloth-like old giants that nobody uses anymore, because of supposedly poor customer service, slow speeds, mucking with applications and protocols and iffy-secret-limitations.

The point is -- NONE OF THAT MATTERS. For the same reason people are going to pay five, six or ten dollars a gallon for gas (because they need gas and there's only one source of it), people will continue using Comcast and other cable providers, no matter how terrible the service might be. Why? Because they have no other choice. Unless you're in Tampa or a couple other select areas around the country, you have precisely two options for broadband: Fast-ish comcast (if it's available -- it's not always available in all parts of a zip code) or slower DSL (if it's available - and chances are unless you live just down the street from the CO, it isn't).

The entire problem with monopolies is that there is no competition, so performance and custome service are moot points.

Re:Where is FIOS?

[infosinger]

Agreed, there are large areas of our relatively populated county that have 1 or no choices. The 1 choice is a 800kb connection and basically no customer service. Comcast, from our perspective, looks like an upgrade. In most of the geographical US there is no competition and the sole provider can act as a monopoly and be successful. The problem with companies like Comcast is that they can be slow to recognize when the markets are changing and be caught flat footed. They, because of their size, can also be slow to change. AOL is a classic example of this phenomenon.

It is true that other players will eventually enter the market but the very government regulations that are in place to encourage competition reduce the motivation for the current players to make the investments necessary to give us the dependable high bandwidth that we desire.

Choice of evils

[charlesbakerharris]

As if Verizon's customer service somehow *isn't* atrocious. Ugh. There's no good option here.

Re:Choice of evils

[Copid]

Like all companies, they suck when they have a monopoly. Put two of them together in the same neighborhood and make them compete with each other for customers for a couple of years and see how it goes, though. I was excited about FiOS not because I thought that Verizon was going to save the day. I was excited because I sincerely hoped that Comcast and Verizon would beat the crap out of each other fighting for market share.

Mistakes in reasoning

[Kohath]

This story assumes two things:

1. That FIOS is available for people. The actual availability is limited.
2. That, since you are really interested in the latest Comcast news about P2P, a majority or even a large minority must also be interested. They aren't.

That second one is a hard lesson for people to learn. Just because you care about something doesn't mean anyone else will care or should care. Don't mistake your wishes for reality.

Re:Mistakes in reasoning

[hedwards]

I don't agree. Number 1, you have a good point, I would love to know when FIOS is coming to Seattle, and which parts will receive it first when the service does come available. More likely we're going to be blessed with clearwire, comcast, DSL providers and wimax, with the last one being projected for next year.

I'd love to be able to add FIOS to the list, because all of those suck except for DSL and conceivably wimax when it gets here.

As for number 2, I think the majority of people ought to be interested in this. I wouldn't have cared until they were allowed to buy out the local cable provider and turn the service from pretty good into completely unusable crap. The facts that they feel entitled to charge high prices for garbage service and have a propensity to buy out smaller companies is a good reason to be concerned. Just not necessarily people outside the US, but if we're going that route, there's a lot of news that shouldn't be posted here because it only applies to other countries.

Advertising an always on connection and being wholly unable to make it through a day without interruptions, let alone a week is pretty pathetic. The expectation that we would have to call them daily for a credit was completely absurd. I've never been treated that way by either Earthlink or Qwest.

Re:Mistakes in reasoning

[Anonymous Coward]

"I would love to know when FIOS is coming to Seattle..."

They put FIOS in the Snohomish area last Spring. Now I have a choice between Comcast and FIOS. FIOS uses PPPoE so if you build your own gateway router and don't want to use the one supplied by Verizon you'll have to adjust to that protocol.

Re:Mistakes in reasoning

[cinnamon colbert]

what i was going to post...I am a comcast customer, and could have fios, but I don't care about any thing that is different, so why bother ?

Re:Mistakes in reasoning

[Kohath]

As for number 2, I think the majority of people ought to be interested in this.

The story implied that they are interested, which is false. In fact, this is a concern among a small niche of people, many of whom engage in fringe activities.

It's a lot like smoking bans in bars and restaurants. No one listened to the smokers when they complained. No one cared about their perspective. Why not? Because "yuck, smokers -- screw them".

Well, most folks are going to say: "P2P? Yuck, movie pirates -- screw them."

Re:Mistakes in reasoning

[$pace6host]

That might be only temporary. Out here in PA, they had us on PPPoE briefly, but now we're just DHCPing an address. They screwed up the transition, though, we ended up on the phone w/ customer service -- which was surprisingly good for Verizon, I'll have to say. Much better than my last experience with them when I had DSL (~7yrs ago, I think). They walked me through fixing the router config and resetting.

Re: Mistakes in reasoning

[ThousandStars]

Incidentally, I just made a similar point here. Cable sucks, and WiMax is here -- in Capitol Hill, anyway -- but has its own problems, as the link at my former post demonstrates.

Why censorship?

[neltana]

The article has nothing to do with censorship. I know that there are censorship issues associated with Comcast, but does that mean we have to categorized every Comcast article as such?

I would like to illustrate the ridiculousness of this by making a car analogy, but I can't think of one. Feel free to fill in something suitable in your own minds.

But my experiences with Comcast's customer service have been Kafkaesque at best. We had a glitch with our cable box a few weeks back and it took a loooong discussion to convince the representative that we even had a problem. There was no picture on any channel! How could we be misinterpreting that?

Re:Why censorship?

[TomHandy]

Where do people get the idea that censorship is the sole domain of government? A business/school/church/organization/publication/etc. are all capable of censorship. I've never understood this idea where people come and say "it isn't the government doing it, so it can't be censorship".

Re:Why censorship?

[stonecypher]

Where do people get the idea that censorship is the sole domain of government? A business/school/church/organization/publication/etc. are all capable of censorship.

No, they aren't. Censorship doesn't mean "we choose not to run your piece." Censorship means "you may not run your piece anywhere." No business, church, school, organization or publication can prevent me from publishing my work; all they can do is decline their own involvement. The word comes from the latin "censura" meaning judgement, and became attached to the judgement of morals and ethics in 1592. The role of censura in Roman government was to evaluate whether or not a piece may be distributed: a publisher would go to the censura, and ask whether they may disseminate the author's work, after they'd decided that they wanted to. This was one of the mechanisms of suppressing anti-governmental or anti-praetorian text, and was frequently the means by which revolutions were crushed.

Of course, given that you're insisting that something you believe is true, ignorant of reference work, I'm willing to bet you're a descriptivist, and that you have no idea what descriptivism is. Giant shock: the language doesn't change just because you're no good at it. You can, in fact, be wrong; just because a group of people misuses a word doesn't mean its meaning has changed.

If what you said about censorship was true, then American censorship law would make no sense whatsoever. How could the government say that censorship would never, ever happen in this country, if any random company could censor?

Where do people get the idea that censorship is the sole domain of government?

From having a familiarity with a word borne of literature, legal context, or just knowing what they're talking about. Where do you get the idea otherwise? Your buddy Stan?

Re:Why censorship?

[Dun Malg]

Where do people get the idea that censorship is the sole domain of government? A business/school/church/organization/publication/etc. are all capable of censorship. I've never understood this idea where people come and say "it isn't the government doing it, so it can't be censorship". People hear bits and pieces of things, but never bother to actually figure out exactly what they've heard. The more common misunderstanding of censorship is the notion that censorship is unconstitutional under the first amendment. The correction of this misunderstanding is "it's only unconstitutional if the government is engaging in censorship".

Interestingly enough, what we have here if a second degree of misunderstanding, a misinterpretation of the correction: someone thinking that if the government isn't the one doing it, it's not censorship! As you noted, the correct observation is: "it is censorship no matter who does it, but it is only unconstitutional if it's the government doing it."

Re:Why censorship?

[Soulfader]

You do not have the inalienable right to theft, and don't even bother wasting my time telling me about all the other legitimate uses of BitTorrent which account for less than one tenth of one percent of all BitTorrent activity.

...but which accounts for 100% of my bittorrent activity. I should be complacent and happy to be penalized for the misdeeds of others just because there are a lot of them? Does this philosophy of yours extend to the justice system--most arrested people are criminals, so they can all be imprisoned?

No, it's not even close to the same scale of consequence. But a little intellectual consistency would be nice.

Re:Why censorship?

[TomHandy]

I'm sorry, but what you are talking about is government censorship specifically. But again, my point is, governments are not the only body capable of censorship. It seems like you have a very narrow description of censorship. There are plenty of other scenarios that can be seen as censorship as well; corporations, religious bodies, etc. are all capable of this. And why are you insulting me? Looking this up in any number of dictionaries, encyclopedias, etc. indicates that "censorship" has a broader meaning than what you are referring to.

Re:Why censorship?

[TomHandy]

Just to clarify; censors who examine and modify music/literature/etc. to remove anything objectionable/etc. are clearly engaging in an act defined as censorship. Just because they don't do it on behalf of a government doesn't mean the activity isn't censorship. Censorship and censoring both have clear meanings that refer to any number of acts that have nothing to do with governments specifically.

Re:Why censorship?

[stonecypher]

I find it amusing how you've fallen into the very thing you're discussing. Censorship was an official Roman government post more than two thousand years ago, and there is no language authority which has ever cited it as anything other than a government action. The very notion of censorship is the absolute forbidding of the ability to publish; very rare is the society in which anything other than the Government, or possibly a religious body, would even have the ability to do so.

You and I get along, and you are taking the laudable position of formality and correctness. I invite you to produce an authority (you and I both know that means no wikipedia) which makes any claim to censorship being something other than the centralized forbidding of a publishment across all points, or the explanation of a situation in which something other than government or religious government would have the ability to create such a situation.

The word censere was created for a specific purpose. Unlike most ancient words, we know who coined this term, when, and why. The office "censere" was established by the General Pompeii to restrict the traffic of documents which were spreading the idea that he might rise up against the Caesars, since having that sort of suggestion made about you - even by a third party - was punishable by death (indeed, that's the official reason they crucified Jesus, too, for being the "king of the Jews." Never claim authority in ancient Rome.) Pompeii wanted to make it very clear that he was prosecuting people making those suggestions because he had been entrusted to take a legion and quite a bit of support military to trim up the edges of the empire; you can even see commentary on the importance of the censura in the Biblical discussion of the Maccabees. Read that part of the Bible. It won't make any sense unless it's governmentally driven.

Indeed, none of American censorship law makes sense unless censorship is government-only. It's not enough to say "but they just mean governmental censorship", as the law isn't actually written that way. The law makes plain that no censorship is tolerable in any form. Companies aren't off the hook for law because of some unspoken tacit understanding that "it only means these people" or what have you, and there is no point in the law wherein anything to the effect of "we only mean government censorship" is actually said.

It's great for you to posit alternate theories, and it's great for you to suggest that many of the misunderstandings are the repetition of things that people heard. However, this time that isn't the case. Censorship in the historical context is something I've paid great and diligent attention to. You and I get along because we share a fascination with people who take personal beliefs over reference material when bitterly arguing the denotation of words.

The problem is, I've got history and reference on my side.

You're a smart and a convivial guy. I invite you to find reference that suggests I am incorrect, when I say the following clearly: "The concept of censorship only makes sense when coming from a central authority, such as government or governmentalized religion. Censorship is the act of preventing the publication of material wholesale. A publisher declining a work is simply a business decision, as one can have the work brought to another publisher. No business, school, civic office or similar device in American culture has the privilege of censorship, or even a sensible mechanism therefor."

However, to be plain - and I risk seeming standoffish here - your entire point seems to be that people have a tendency to argue from impression and belief, as opposed to reference, history, context or weighted argument. I put forward the idea that in fact that is exactly what you have done, albeit in a very convincing and interesting fashion. This is, in essence, a red herring: you have used personal misapprehensions about what may or may not be the validity of someone's statement to argue their statement.

You're right - in the previous posting I could have been more thorough. I have now done so. I don't actually see any reference backing you up. Could you be doing what you decry?

Re:Why censorship?

[TomHandy]

From the Britannica Concise Encyclopedia:

censorship Act of changing or suppressing speech or writing that is considered subversive of the common good. In the past, most governments believed it their duty to regulate the morals of their people; only with the rise in the status of the individual and individual rights did censorship come to seem objectionable. Censorship may be preemptive (preventing the publication or broadcast of undesirable information) or punitive (punishing those who publish or broadcast offending material). In Europe, both the Roman Catholic and Protestant churches practiced censorship, as did the absolute monarchies of the 17th and 18th centuries.

So there we have an acknowledgement of religions practicing censorship, not governments.

From the Columbia Encyclopedia:

censorship, official prohibition or restriction of any type of expression believed to threaten the political, social, or moral order. It may be imposed by governmental authority, local or national, by a religious body, or occasionally by a powerful private group. It may be applied to the mails, speech, the press, the theater, dance, art, literature, photography, the cinema, radio, television, or computer networks.

Re:Why censorship?

[TomHandy]

The more I read what you're saying, the more I don't get it, I guess. You seem to be insisting that censorship as a term only refers specifically to a government forbidding the publication of a document. But it seems pretty obvious that censorship as a term and censors exist in plenty of other scenarios. Most dictionary and encyclopedia definitions acknowledge that censorship is not so narrowly defined as you are saying, so why are you insisting on this? Censorship and censors and censoring have clearly come to mean far more than just governments forbidding the publication of documents.

Re:Why censorship?

[stonecypher]

...but which accounts for 100% of my bittorrent activity. I should be complacent and happy to be penalized for the misdeeds of others just because there are a lot of them?

Well, let's see. There are crosswalks because most people don't cross at the middle of the street well. You can't buy cocaine because most people who do it end up becoming violent thieves. You have to have car insurance because most people who couldn't afford to cover someone else's injuries won't stop driving until they've got savings. You have to drive 65mph because most people don't know how to pin a turn at 140 in the rain, which is actually quite safe if you know what you're doing. You're not allowed to mod your generator, even though you could get 3-5% more efficiency out of it by tuning it for a specific fuel, because most people who do that would cause an explosion. You can't read off The Iliad in a movie theater because most people can't yell "fire" without causing a panic - the scene where Ulysses sends the archers at the walls of Troy is stirring, but verboten. You're not allowed to perform an appendectomy on your neighbor, even if you're an ex-surgeon whose license is expired and even if you'd save them more money than switching to Geico, because of the horrible visceral drama that everyman surgery would create.

Don't even get me started on the list of chemicals you're not allowed to buy, what you can't bring on a plane, what you may not say to a cop, the jokes you can't tell about the president, the things you can't do with your DVD collection, what you can say in a head shop, the redactions from your nuclear physics textbook or commentary regarding libel and/or slander.

But, of course, that wasn't my point. You've managed to make a fool of yourself on a complete non-sequitor. My point was about that what ComCast is doing isn't censorship. I think what they're doing is disgusting and reprehensible. I don't disagree with you, that it should not be happening. It just isn't censorship.

Get off the cross until you learn to read what someone else actually said, instead of what you wanted to hear.

Re:Why censorship?

[langelgjm]

The word comes from the latin "censura" meaning judgement, and became attached to the judgement of morals and ethics in 1592.

Actually, according to the OED, the word comes from the Latin censor, not the closely related word censura. If you're going to nitpick so much, you may as well be accurate. There were two censors at any given time, and they had control over the public register, and could choose to omit people from the register based on what they considered to be immoral conduct, among other things. (This is all a bit fuzzy, I had a course in Roman Law several years ago). Thus, even in Latin the word "censor" would have had connotations of judging morality.

Of course, given that you're insisting that something you believe is true, ignorant of reference work, I'm willing to bet you're a descriptivist, and that you have no idea what descriptivism is. Giant shock: the language doesn't change just because you're no good at it. You can, in fact, be wrong; just because a group of people misuses a word doesn't mean its meaning has changed.

Get off your prescriptivist horse for a minute and realize that despite what you may think, language is defined by widespread usage, not by you or some academy or a dictionary. "Censorship" in common parlance simply means "official supervision" over works (again from the OED) - note that there's nothing mentioned about the government there. For example, the Catholic church exercised censorship with its Index Librorum Prohibitorum (which didn't mean that books couldn't be printed anywhere, just that they couldn't be read by good Catholics). A school newspaper can exercise censorship over what is printed in its paper. Such censorship isn't necessarily illegal or unconstitutional, but it is censorship by the common definition of the word. You should note that not all words have the same meaning in all contexts - thus a legal definition of a word might not be applicable in other arenas.

Re:Why censorship?

[stonecypher]

Just to clarify; censors who examine and modify music/literature/etc. to remove anything objectionable/etc. are clearly engaging in an act defined as censorship. Just because they don't do it on behalf of a government doesn't mean the activity isn't censorship.

Er, yes, it does. What you're confused by is that the private individuals are editors, not censors. The reason what they're doing is called censorship is that they are following the rules set by government censors. You get a similar issue around taxation: only the government may tax, whereas private individuals and firms can bill, fee or fine. The general underlying mechanism is the same. The title you use when you're doing it according to law is "taxation." No resteraunt may tax you, but they all impose government taxes.

You don't have to be a member of the government to be the official responsible for carrying out government edicts; this much is true. However, whereas there may be editors within Time Warner engaged in censorship, Time Warner may not itself censor. Time Warner may not, for example, issue a document that says "nobody may use the word fuck." The federal government may, and in limited circumstances (broadcast media in timeframes) has through its FCC regulatory body. There was great debate over whether or not that was censorship; it was settled that the issue was not censorship but rather the ability to limit distribution by default, which is the same basis by which pornography was relegated to behind the desk, in an opaque bag or on the top shelf, like it has been in so many states. They may still publish titty rags, but the titty rags have to be in the back room of the store, and kids can't go back there. (That's New Jersey and Pennsylvania; laws vary, but you get the idea.)

So, here's your clarification. The issue is simple when we use nuclear bomb plans. Nuclear bomb plans were the first document class to be publically and officially censored by the US Government, back in the 1940s. (Other things that lead to awful weapons have been added to the list.) That required a hell of a lot of legal mumbo jumbo, and technically the USA can censor stuff now; we just don't without an enormous hullabaloo.

So. Let's say - and I have to invent a job title here because the job title is in question - but let's say you're a Senior Text Control Officer at some big book publishing firm. Your responsibility is to go through a manuscript after the firm has decided it wants to publish, and to make sure the book can legally be published. You look for libel and slander. You look for threats against heads of state. You look for instructions on manufacturing currency. None of that's there. Good to go. Then you're on the last chapter, and you see this big stack of technical documents. After 30 minutes of flipping through them, to your horror, you realize that this is a set of plans for a breeder reactor. Because of acts from the 1940s, you know your firm cannot publish this book, because of these plans.

What I am suggesting is that in this role, you are not the censor. Rather, I am suggesting that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is the censor. You are an editor. Yes, you are engaged in censorship, but the censor is not under your authority; you are following a proscription, rather than issuing an edict. There is only one censor behind a specific censury, and there are - who knows, maybe thousands? - of people enacting it as editors. People who refer to "tv censors" are similar to people who confuse fusion and fission. Hell, the TV news still calls people "alleged murderers," when the allegation is once you're convicted. You need to understand that most people's use of the language is just piss poor.

It isn't censorship unless it's a broad-spectrum forbidding of publishment. Let's disregard issues of whether or not that has to be a government issue. Practically speaking, Comcast doesn't have the ability to prevent me from putting my book out there. Ho

Re:Why censorship?

[vertinox]

I would agree. The terminology has gotton skewed these days. If you are interested in the history of the word "Censor" it comes from ancient Roman Censors whose job was it was to maintain a census and also to monitor morality violations by the populace. His job wasn't what we think of today as a censor but rather a watchdog.

The term came into modern usage during the 15th and 16th centuries when the printing press went into full swing and the Catholic church was doing its darnedest to suppress non-approved material which it would use the word "Censor" for the title of the Papal official who was in charge of determining if the text was alright with the church. This was later followed by of course secular governments who preferred to restrict texts that did not meet their standards in criticism of the government.

This was of course the intention of the founding fathers because that is what they faced from Europe. Of course if they kept religion out of government and prohibited the government from restricting the freedom of press and speech it could therefore not censor anyone and neither could the church because it didn't have power of the Federal government.

Of course anyone could still "censor" anyone else including themselves (ever hear of self censorship) and currently there are no laws protecting freedom of speech from private organizations.

Sadly, our founding fathers didn't have the foresight to realize that censorship could be done through proxy by those who owned the only forms of mass media and communication and since the private organizations were exerting control over the federal government it was a moot point if Comcast or the Telephone company decided to restrict what you could say, write, or publish because even if you tried to pass a law including freedom of speech to communication technology, multi-million dollar lobbying would put a stop to that legislation in committee before it even got to the floor to vote.

Now, I for one am glad the FCC is only allowing Comcast 30% of the cable market and wish they would break ATT, Verizon, and Comcast up into smaller companies because if they ever did get the FCC to allow more mergers the danger of restricting what is said and who can say it grows ever larger.

And don't put it past them... The whole purpose of a corporation is to earn money and if restricting your speech nets them more profit for their quarterly returns then they will do it no questions asked.

Re:Why censorship?

[TomHandy]

I have provided sources too, and none from Wikipedia. Most every definition I found of censorship and censors indicates that both terms can most definitely be applied to other scenarios besides governments (or even governmentalized religion, as you put it).

Re:Why censorship?

[TomHandy]

Thank you; this is what I was trying to get at, although you explained it much more eloquently than I could.

Re:Why censorship?

[vertinox]

It isn't censorship unless it's a broad-spectrum forbidding of publishment. Let's disregard issues of whether or not that has to be a government issue. Practically speaking, Comcast doesn't have the ability to prevent me from putting my book out there. How could they possibly censor me?

The MPAA, RIAA, and the ESRB have a "board of censors" who do censor and are not government based and are actually completely voluntary by the industry. Perhaps this is out of fear of possible censorship, but it is indeed a set of private organizations censoring works of media. (Man Hunt anyone?)

Re:Why censorship?

[ClamIAm]

Censorship doesn't mean "we choose not to run your piece." Censorship means "you may not run your piece anywhere."

If a government can't do the latter, the job is usually outsourced to those who can do the former. In the US, this is achieved through things like the deregulation of media ownership and weak/unenforced antitrust laws.

It's unfortunate that in societies where this is the case, there are private-ownership-equals-godliness asshats like you that foam at the mouth when anyone cries foul.

Re:Why censorship?

[neltana]

Assuming that you aren't really a troll, merely a guy who has a really, really sensitive hair trigger, let me respond to your criticism of my statement "I know that there are censorship issues associated with Comcast."

First of all, nothing in the definition of the word censorship says that it requires government action. If I had said "there are First Amendment issues" your rant would have made sense, but I'm afraid it is a bit off the mark here. Every one of the major U.S. networks (and this probably applies globally) employ "censors" whose job it is to review content and "censor" it when necessary. I merely offer this example to illustrate that the definition of censorship is broader than you believe.

As far as the throttling of BitTorrent, I'm not sure that I would use the term censorship to describe it. I view it as more of a violation of their implied contract and network neutrality. Why did you assume I was referring to BitTorrent? There have been a variety of allegations of censorship made against Comcast...these are the issues to which I referred.

My point was that this article doesn't belong in the censorship category, since it is completely unrelated to the topic.

Have a super day!

Re:Why censorship?

[Mr2001]

If what you said about censorship was true, then American censorship law would make no sense whatsoever. How could the government say that censorship would never, ever happen in this country, if any random company could censor? Um.. what? The government doesn't say that. Try reading the First Amendment again; it specifically says that Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech (and that prohibition is also applied to the states under the Fourteenth Amendment).

I don't know where you got the idea that there's any "American censorship law" that says censorship will never, ever happen in this country -- there isn't. Sorry, buddy, but you're wrong. Censorship is not the sole domain of the government.

Re:Why censorship?

[QuietObserver]

Excellent point. From The New American Webster Handy College Dictionary, Third Edition p118:

censor n. 1. one empowered to judge the fitness of manuscripts, communications, etc. for publication. 2. one who censures; a fault finder

v.t. judge critically; examine for fitness; delete as unsuitable.

As you and others have pointed out, the definition of censor makes absolutely no mention of government, implicitly or explicitly; "empowered to judge" is a status that can be granted by anyone with sufficient power within a business, church, school, etc. Furthermore, the definition I have provided is a word for word copy of the text within the dictionary I cited; aside from the pronunciation note, I have excluded nothing of relevance (don't believe me, check it out yourself).

In NY and CA maybe, but other places not so lucky

[mdmkolbe]

It's great that in heavy population centers like New York and California we are finally getting fiber to the curb. But in cities that aren't part of the "Top 20 most populous cities in the USA", fiber is still a pipe dream. So cable internet can still keep a rather large user base with heavy losses to FiOS. Until fiber starts deploying to cities of less than 100,000 people, don't try to claim cable internet is dieing.

What is Verizon's Provisioning for FIOS ?

[mbone]

Unlike Comcast, FiOS delivers the full range of bandwidth to each user, whereas Comcast users are forced to share bandwidth with other users on the same coaxial cable, causing speeds to fluctuate dramatically with usage.

This sounds like Verizon press puffery to me. What is Verizon's provisioning on the FIOS back end ? How much do they underprovision ? It is a very safe bet that there is not 10 Mbps of Internet transit reserved for every FIOS customer, so there is still sharing of bandwidth, and still a likelihood of bandwidth reductions during heavy use periods. This could be better or worse than Comcast, but you don't know and can't tell just from the bandwidth of the edge circuit.

Re:What is Verizon's Provisioning for FIOS ?

[AdamReyher]

Don't quote me on this as I was unable to find the source, but from what I last heard (back when the maximum was 30Mbps), Verizon was able to guarantee 28Mbps with their current equipment to every customer if every house in the area was using FiOS and everyone was downloading at the same time. They've since upgraded a lot of their equipment (to provide 50Mbps service), so I wouldn't be surprised if this hasn't been upped as well. The article hints on this as well.

That's something that Comcast just can't guarantee given their current network. Everyone knows that cable services have always had bottlenecking issues. That's the problem that a fully fiber net solves at this point in time.

- Adam

Re:What is Verizon's Provisioning for FIOS ?

[Alrescha]

" Verizon was able to guarantee 28Mbps with their current equipment to every customer if every house in the area was using FiOS and everyone was downloading at the same time."

To me that implies that the bottleneck will be upstream of the local loop. As the previous poster said, it's highly unlikely that Verizon has 28mbs * number of subscribers worth of bandwidth to the general Internet.

A.

Re:What is Verizon's Provisioning for FIOS ?

[stonecypher]

This sounds like Verizon press puffery to me.

Why, of course. If there's something you don't know about, it's got to be a media lie, right? Well, welcome to reality: cable is a shared backbone. It's an artifact of the design of cable television networks, and it's cable's biggest problem. This isn't "press puffery," it's a real problem for these people. Right now it doesn't come up much because the backbones can handle 5 megabit times 1500 customers. However, the big reason it took so long to deploy ADSL2 was because it required the phone companies to gut their infrastructure and lay down more capacity. DOCSIS 3 is going to do the same thing to the cable companies.

Please stop pretending to know things you don't actually know. Grandparent was quite correct - cable is a shared connection, and it's going to hurt the cable companies pretty badly in about two years. This is the nature of the technology. Read a book.

What is Verizon's provisioning on the FIOS back end ?

There's no such thing as a "FIOS back end". Fiber is a discrete network like ethernet. If you and your neighbor have FIOS, and you connect to your neighbor, it goes from you to your phone pole to their phone pole to them. It doesn't go to any "back end". Unlike DSL and cable, it never goes back to a central office, which I assume is what you mean by "back end", since that term does not come up in telecomms infrastructure. Namedropping doesn't make you clueful, even if the word sounds really convincing to you.

How much do they underprovision ?

They don't. It's a brand new network. They won't be cutting bandwidth for at least five years. Also, please stop putting spaces before your question marks. It's obnoxious, it causes problems with line wrapping, and you look like a reject from third grade.

It is a very safe bet that there is not 10 Mbps of Internet transit reserved for every FIOS customer

No.

so there is still sharing of bandwidth

It's a discrete network. Bandwidth sharing isn't possible. You probably mean network bandwidth arbitrage, which is very different. Do you go into your car mechanic and talk about Carnot cycles because you read about it in a slashdot article about engine efficiency? No? Then don't do that here, please, because the only difference is that, unlike the lucky greasemonkey, I am unable to laugh in your face to display for you just how much of an ass you're being. Just because you're used to calling your web server code deployments and your sql choices "back ends" doesn't mean that every time you've imagined yourself up the arbitrary need for some service provision that it's automatically called a backend, nor does it mean that the arbitrary service provision even exists.

Doesn't it bother you to get so high up on a soapbox about a network you know nothing about?

This could be better or worse than Comcast

The only reason you believe that is that you know literally nothing about either technology. Doesn't it bother you to say "because I don't know jack, there is no way to differentiate between the two offers?" Verizon just dumped billions into a brand spanking new network. They hit this choke wall five years ago, because they were running on a much older general case network. Verizon is off of this hook for at least five years, and probably a decade. Comcast is just having the same set of problems that Verizon had in 2001, and the same set of problems that Verizon will have again in (checking crystal ball) approximately 2018.

but you don't know and can't tell just from the bandwidth of the edge circuit.

Jesus H. Christ. NEITHER of these networks has anything even resembling an edge circuit. You have no idea what you're talking about. Why don't you just do us all a favor and stop pretending otherwise? The cable network is a trunk

Re:What is Verizon's Provisioning for FIOS ?

[moosesocks]

I've got FIOS, and I've had no problem saturating my connection to the full 15Mbps, as long as there's been enough bandwidth on the remote end to actually send that much data to a single client.

The theoretical maximum for a 15Mbps connection is 1.875MBps/sec, and I've come close enough to that number on enough occasions to safely conclude that Verizon's advertised speeds are indeed accurate. (No connection actually saturates itself to 100% due to TCP overhead, error-checking/correction, etc...)

If you'll read up on the underlying tech, you'll also see that the FiOS network itself isn't quite as vulnerable to over-provisioning as cable networks are, as a unique optical signal gets sent out to each residence from the CO (plus a broadcast video signal).

32 residences are served via a single fiber extending from the CO or OLT. Each residence has its own set of optical wavelengths, that get passively split out from the main fiber (analogous to the physical layer of a bus topology, although the similarities end there...). In other words, ever residence always has exactly 1/32 of the OLT's bandwidth available to it, regardless of how much bandwidth the other 31 residences are using.

Although this isn't the most efficient way to distribute bandwidth, it is certainly the most equitable, and is also immune to the pitfalls oversubscription, as you can't simply tack on another residence (and then another, and another....) without adding an additional OLT.

This of course, assumes that there is sufficient bandwidth to the CO and OLT, which may not be the case. However, similar bottlenecks exist on every broadband system, and experience seems to indicate that Verizon's backend network is adequately robust.

Cable, on the other hand, suffers the pitfalls of being a "shared" system. Although you could theoretically allocate a massive amount of bandwidth to a single customer, there wouldn't be anything left for the remaining customers attached to that circuit, even if you had an infinite amount of bandwidth at the CO. Plus, every customer that gets added to the circuit decreases the bandwidth available to everyone else.

Assuming that a FiOS CO has infinite bandwidth, there's no difference between maxing out a single connection, or maxing out every connection running out of that CO, as every customer effectively has a direct line into the CO.

Re:What is Verizon's Provisioning for FIOS ?

[DeadChobi]

Sir, I'm writing to inform you that you have the amazing capacity to ream people in quite an amusing fashion. I would like to subscribe to your newsletter/drink your koolaid. Please send me more information.

Re:What is Verizon's Provisioning for FIOS ?

[admactanium]

This sounds like Verizon press puffery to me. What is Verizon's provisioning on the FIOS back end ? How much do they underprovision ? It is a very safe bet that there is not 10 Mbps of Internet transit reserved for every FIOS customer, so there is still sharing of bandwidth, and still a likelihood of bandwidth reductions during heavy use periods. This could be better or worse than Comcast, but you don't know and can't tell just from the bandwidth of the edge circuit.

well, i've recently moved into verizon's fios service area and bought 15/15 service for our new house. it was originally 15/2 until i upgraded a few days ago. from all the speed tests i've done and from bittorrents and large ftp up/downloads i'm getting nearly exactly the promised bandwidth all the time. i've never experienced a time where i was NOT getting 15/2 or 15/15 consistently. i also work from home, so i'm on my computer all day.

from my experience as both a verizon and a former comcast customer there is no comparison. it's not even close. both companies have pretty dismal phone customer service. but i don't talk to them on the phone much and when it works, it works amazingly well.

Re:What is Verizon's Provisioning for FIOS ?

[stonecypher]

Just read through my post history. I do this kind of crap all the time. Also, feel free to friend flag me - it'll take the stuff falsely marked "troll" out of the gutters (which also happens a lot, particularly when I'm making fun of warezers.)

Re:What is Verizon's Provisioning for FIOS ?

[Paradise Pete]

To me that implies that the bottleneck will be upstream of the local loop. As the previous poster said, it's highly unlikely that Verizon has 28mbs * number of subscribers worth of bandwidth to the general Internet.

Well if the majority of the traffic is P2P, and Verizon has enough subscribers, then much of that traffic never makes it upstream of the local loop.

Re:What is Verizon's Provisioning for FIOS ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, you really know what you're talking about. Does that mean you have to be a TOTAL DICK when correcting someone else? I mean every paragraph of your post contained some venomous remark.

You should really try to learn some manners and maybe take an anger management class.

Re:What is Verizon's Provisioning for FIOS ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh oh, sounds like someone's mom came down into the basement and accidentally threw away their limited edition star wars action figures...

You should concentrate on being less of a douche bag than critiquing someone else post.

Re:What is Verizon's Provisioning for FIOS ?

[Anonymous Coward]

There's no such thing as a "FIOS back end". Fiber is a discrete network like ethernet. If you and your neighbor have FIOS, and you connect to your neighbor, it goes from you to your phone pole to their phone pole to them. It doesn't go to any "back end". Unlike DSL and cable, it never goes back to a central office, which I assume is what you mean by "back end", since that term does not come up in telecomms infrastructure. Namedropping doesn't make you clueful, even if the word sounds really convincing to you.

While there's a lot in your post I won't dispute, FiOS network traffic from my house to my neighbor's house does not just go to the pole and back. It goes from the ONT in my house, straight to the CO on one fiber, into the OLU, probably gets handed to a high speed switch of some sort, probably up to some router layer in the switch or to another device, back into the OLU and back on its own fiber to my neighbor's ONT. The critical part is that it probably never hits any link where there isn't enough bandwidth.

Sorry to interrupt, carry on with the verbal abuse.

Re:What is Verizon's Provisioning for FIOS ?

[Anonymous Coward]

"There's no such thing as a "FIOS back end". Fiber is a discrete network like ethernet. If you and your neighbor have FIOS, and you connect to your neighbor, it goes from you to your phone pole to their phone pole to them. It doesn't go to any "back end". Unlike DSL and cable, it never goes back to a central office, which I assume is what you mean by "back end", since that term does not come up in telecomms infrastructure. Namedropping doesn't make you clueful, even if the word sounds really convincing to you."

While I agree with most of your comment, I have to correct you on this point. FiOS is a completely passive system between the CO and the customer. The only interruptions in the fiber you'll find are splices and splitters. There's nothing at all that would/could handle the routing of data between customers, or anything else for that matter, except at the CO. And no, I'm not talking out of my ass here. I happen to be a FiOS I&M technician (who actually paid attention while in training...).

Re:What is Verizon's Provisioning for FIOS ?

[swm]

> If you and your neighbor have FIOS, and you connect to your neighbor, it goes from you to your phone pole to their phone pole to them. It doesn't go to any "back end". Unlike DSL and cable, it never goes back to a central office

ummm...that seems unlikely.

I'm pretty sure that for a packet to go from me to my neighbor, it has to pass through a switch, most likely at the CO.

Re:What is Verizon's Provisioning for FIOS ?

[isdnip]

Puffery is puffery. Let's set the record straight.

The Internet is all about shared resources. Between any two j-random users, there are typically 15-30 hops, all shared.

DSL is an unshared resource from the subscriber to the DSLAM. Then there's a link from the DSLAM to the upstream router. THAT is shared, as is everything upstream. I've personally worked on DSLAMs that had a single T1 (1.5 Mbps) feeding over 90 customers. It worked well enough.

Cable is a shared resource all the way. It usually has about 40 Mbps downstream and 5 to 30 Mbps upstream. Because of the way cable channels were set up in the US (FCC rule), upstream bandwidth is very scarce, so cable companies are pretty parsimonious with it. But they've been reducing the number of subscribers per node, so the net capacity one hop away is typically no worse than DSL. It just moves the bottleneck a bit closer to the subscriber. In practice, the actual cable segment rarely blocks anything; the limit is either in the cable modem's rate limiter (what plan did you pay for?) or upstream (the rest of the way). Cable technology is evolving and cable companies are gradually increasing the amount of fiber optics in their networks.

FiOS is a shared resource too. It just starts with a lot more capacity in the shared link. But then it can still hit the very same blockages one hop away, same as with DSL. Think of a fire hose feeding a garden hose. FiOS is a firehose, but the Internet is often a garden hose, and Verizon.net itself is often the limit. I know people who've done side-by-side comparisons (even have both) and don't see FiOS being better than Comcast in practice.

Re:What is Verizon's Provisioning for FIOS ?

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

>It's a discrete network. Bandwidth sharing isn't possible.

My understanding had been that the OLT, after measuring and equalizing delays to/from the ONTs via PLOAM, issues a "grant" to each ONT of a time interval to transmit, the system being TDMA on both the upstream and downstream link, though upstream is separated from downstream via WDMA, with downstream at 1490 nm and upstream at 1301 nm.

Is my understanding incorrect, and if so in what way? Because if that's correct, then the grant map is allocating bandwidth among the ONTs.

Are you saying that DBA (Dynamic Bandwidth Allocation) simply isn't being used because Verizon hasn't oversubscribed FIOS yet, or are you saying that it's impossible?

Incidentally, "discrete network" is not a well-known term and deserves a definition.

Re:Stuck with the dinosaur?

[nizo]

And here, I have the choice of DSL from Qwest or cable internet from Comcast. Dsl is cheaper, but significantly slower (since I can't get anything but the basic service due to distance issues).

Note to Comcast: I am sorely tempted to switch back to Comcast, but there is no way I will until you quit screwing with traffic; believe it or not, I use torrents to get legit software (linux distros and some commercial software that *gasp* I have paid for), and I can't afford to have this kind of traffic disrupted. So for me, slow dsl is the only viable alternative.

Re:Stuck with the dinosaur?

[ScrewMaster]

Well, I think part of it is because you have the option of DSL. Most people I know that have Comcast as their only ISP tend to have issues. When I have called Comcast support, if I don't get the answer I want to hear I just mention the "D"-word and magically they get more cooperative.

Slashvertisement

[TheSpoom]

Oh, well, I'd better go get Verizon right now!

*sigh*

They don't even really try to hide it any more, do they? This "article" reads exactly like a DSL ad.

Anyway, no, Comcast isn't going anywhere. They have a monopoly in several markets like a lot of other cable companies and so they wouldn't be going anywhere regardless of their level of suck.

Re:Slashvertisement

[goldspider]

Indeed, it sounds right out of the DSL tech support training indoctrination manual. They bullshit their employees even more than their customers, probably because they want their techs to sell service upgrades. That was just one of many reasons why I left after only a few weeks.

Until these companies offer stand-alone ("naked") DSL service, and stop trying to scam their customers ("variable speed" service, look up what that REALLY means) , I won't consider them a viable competitor to the likes of Comcast.

Bah!

[Ben Dayho]

comcast used to not piss me off. Then the other day my hd/dvr 4 year old box died. Now they want to charge me 32.50 to come and fix their equipment.

Re:Bah!

[Professor_UNIX]

Why don't you just take it to their office and swap it out with a new one? Don't tell me they charge you for in-office replacements. If you're asking for a service call then the guy needs to get paid somehow even if he's a glorified UPS driver delivering a package.

Re:Bah!

[stonecypher]

That's easy to fix. Call the business department, or whatever they call the department that deals with signing up new customers. Tell them "I am renting equipment from you, and this equipment is dead. Unfortunately, service people believe that I am liable to pay money to repair rented equipment. Under federal rental law, you are required to come repair your equipment, and I don't have to pay you for the rest of the service that I'm receiving until you've done so; this tactic is used on a regular basis against slumlords to enforce the maintenance of apartment buildings, but unfortunately it seems your service department thinks that that's limited to real estate. I will continue to enjoy my cable and internet at your expense until you've come to repair your equipment. If you shut me off for following my federally guaranteed right to withhold your money until you've fulfilled your obligations, I will inform the state attorney general's office. When may I expect my federally required free serviceperson for my rented equipment, please?"

Don't give them an opportunity to speak until you've gotten to the last sentence. If they try to interrupt you, raise your volume, start anew at the beginning of your current sentence, and speak slower. Every time they try to interrupt you, repeat this behavior. You will get your service for free.

Re:Bah!

[cdrguru]

Good luck with that "withholding rent" strategy. Ever tried it? I doubt it. What you are claiming isn't true and landlords know it. You will find yourself in court with a nice judgement against you and probably evicted as well.

The eviction takes time. The judgement not as long.

Re:Bah!

[Covener]

Good luck with that "withholding rent" strategy. Ever tried it? I doubt it. What you are claiming isn't true and landlords know it. You will find yourself in court with a nice judgement against you and probably evicted as well.

And good luck searching for a new place that doesn't know how to query if you've ever had such a judgement!

Re:Bah!

[mkoenecke]

"Federal rental law?" Chuckle.

Re:Bah!

[lostfayth]

Really? Perhaps state law differs, but I've had to do that myself. The gas furnace in the apartment we were renting died in the middle of winter and my wife was pregnant at the time. Heat and electricity were included in the rent. We withheld rent for 3 months before it got fixed, and the landlord never saw a bit of that money as we weren't going to pay for services not received. Oh, and our rent there was over $1600/month - that's $4800. You'd think the landlord would have taken us to court if he thought he had a snowballs chance in hell of recovering any of that money.

Re:Bah!

[Seumas]

Speaking of the shitty Comcast HD/DVR stuff, here is what I hate about them:

I told it I wanted to record a series.
I told it to record only NEW episodes of the series.

Every day, I go into the DVR menu and there are four, six - maybe eight - episodes of the series. ALL THE SAME EPISODE, recorded over the previous 24hrs. It is such a hassle to deal with that I simply stopped recording such series and I don't even watch those shows anymore. I don't want to be obligated to check the DVR every day just to make sure I haven't hit the 100% limit with 40 copies of the same two shows in the last day or two and I don't want to spend five or ten minutes deleting one show at a time.

Not to mention, the machine is SLOW. You can press a button and it will sometimes respond immediately. Other times it may take 30 seconds for it to register. It makes it really fun trying to seek a point in a recording. You press FF and then hit play, because you're at the point you want to watch . . . . and you wait . . . . and it keeps fast forwarding . . . . and by the time it finally registers that you pressed 'Play', it has forwarded thirty minutes beyond the point you wanted to watch.

I coudl go with Tivo, but I don't care to spend $300+ on a box, plus a monthly fee, PLUS still have to pay $10 to comcast for the CableCARD. Especially since I hear there are still a lot of difficulties with HD Tivo's on cable services.

Re:Bah!

[stonecypher]

Good luck with that "withholding rent" strategy. Ever tried it?

With Verizon, SBC, Equitable Gas, Dusquesne Light, GNAX and two realtors, yes. Once I had to take a utility to court (I am legally unable to discuss whom). Every other utility knew I was in the right and that it wasn't worth wasting the money in court, and ceded the point. It costs them more than $30 to send the message that they need to make a decision what to do, in terms of man-hours and payscale. They're business people, and you may-or-may-not have the law on your side. (You do, but they don't care; it's not worth the money to find out.)

What you are claiming isn't true and landlords know it.

Uh. You should probably check into that. Look for "warrant of habitability" in about two thirds of the states in the US. This is a fundamental provision issue for feudalism, and is the basis on which feudal lords were accountable - in fact, that's why we still use the term "accountable" to mean "to be held to duty," since the feudal lords' accounts were dependant on doing their duties. We inherited this concept from the Magna Carta, and it's still in force today.

Unfortunately, the requirements are different state to state, county to county, and frequently even city to city, so I can't just give you a FAQ on the topic. Most areas require certified notice with a warning period, some areas require regulatory involvement, some areas require a permit, et cetera. I can, however, point you to FAQs for specific areas. The only federal level commentary I can find from an authoritative source is very brief, but it's the American Bar Association, who are responsible for certifying all lawyers and judges, so I'm willing to bet they know their stuff.

1. New York State
2. Boston
3. Oregon State Bar standard withholding form letter
4. Tenant's Legal Guide
5. Pennsylvania housing code

It is worth noting that two states - Illinois and Nevada - do not allow rent withholding. If you live in either of those states, that's probably the origin of your confusion. Illinois has an equivalent mechanism where you may spend your rent money on the repairs directly, which sets a limit both on how much you can withhold (no holding back $1200 of rent on $150 of repairs) and how quickly you may force your landlord's hand (no draining them for $20k in one month on a $1200 rent, even if it's necessary.) Nevada's withholding mechanism is complicated and I don't understand it well enough to comment.

What you are claiming isn't true and landlords know it. You will find yourself in court with a nice judgement against you and probably evicted as well.

I wonder why you would say something like that. This is one of the basic tenets of American law, and shows up in every rental - not just real estate, but also equipment rental, rights rental, and so on. With all due respect, I don't believe that you have legal training. In the meantime, I have actually done this quite a few times, and I've won every time, including the time it went to court.

The eviction takes time. The judgement not as long.

Evictions don't require judgements, champ. Two certified letters and no proof of payment is all the sheriff needs. I wish you wouldn't try so hard to pretend to know things you don't know. It lowers the quality of the experience for all of us.

Comcast will never change

[gatkinso]

Nor will Verizon, which while better than Comcast in the customer service department is still not so great. Not atleast until consumers are offered with more than a boolean choice (Comcast or Verizon, choose your poison).

However, if those two companies built (or bought) the infrastructure, then good luck getting that choice. Maybe some sort of (nonexistant) very fast and long range, not to mention secure, wireless access... but then SOMEONE has got to own the towers or satellites... and I am guess that the owners won't be a group of hippies with altruistic social intentions.

Well, it's all about accessability...

[garcia]

The fact of the matter is this: Comcast is no longer the biggest and the best. Cable is taking a distance back seat to Verizon's FiOS (fiber optic service), which delivers speeds up to 50 Mbps download and 10 Mbps upload speeds.

The fact of the matter is that I *can* get cable (well, not Comcast is this area but Charter instead) but I cannot get FiOS. I still find it hysterical that McLeod fiber runs less than 100 feet from my backdoor (nothing in between me and it) and I cannot get any Internet benefit from that cable.

Unlikely

[bconway]

A.) Comcast has over 12 million High Speed Internet users. They aren't going away anytime soon.
B.) DOCSIS 3.0 roll-outs, which are already started in test areas and expected to hit 25%+ in competitive Comcast markets in 2008, allows 450+ Mbps download and 125+ Mbps upload per channel in a node. For those not in the know, a node is where bandwidth is shared, and can feature many channels. Comcast is already planning to roll out 50 Mbps speeds, followed by 100 Mbps as it becomes competitive.

Bandwidth will continue to be competition-based, and Comcast is far from down and out.

Re:Unlikely

[Lumpy]

The same words were said about @home.

Never underestimate the power of incompetent management. It can take down even a company the size of microsoft.

Re:Unlikely

[Elbarfo]

In my area, @home was simply absorbed by Comcast. Comcast isn't going anywhere anytime soon here. They're the only game in town in 3/4 of the state (TN).

Re:Unlikely

[yo_tuco]

"DOCSIS 3.0 roll-outs, which are already started in test areas and expected to hit 25%+ in competitive Comcast markets in 2008, allows 450+ Mbps download and 125+ Mbps upload per channel in a node."

Comcast emailed me back in August and asked for my feedback. I vented! One thing I said was FIOS was available to me so I wanted a price reduction on their service or a speed boost or I'll see ya later. Here is their response:

"We will also be offering 16/2 Mbps in your area early next year."

So I'll wait and see if that becomes a reality.

Re:Unlikely

[Seumas]

Or, at least, bandwidth will be competition-based . . . . as soon as tax-payer supported monopoly grants are done away with so there can be some competition . . . on which to have a company and sector be . . . uh . . . competition-based. :)

Re:Unlikely

[RobBebop]

Comcast markets in 2008, allows 450+ Mbps download and 125+ Mbps upload per channel in a node.

You'll find that running a business is much more than having the best products.

I've always found cable to be a bizarre industry, though. Because the only differentiating product feature is "most uptime". Recent (dumb) cable TV ads have tried to promote the monopoly they have over local content (i.e. community news and school broadcast channels), but this is silly because local channels would be available (freely) over-the-air if people really wanted them. So yeah... the fundamental problem with Comcast would be their "uptime". With my personal experience, I have recently dropped Cablevision/IO in favor of over-the-air network broadcasts and borrowing wireless internet from a neighbor. Cablevision/IO is absolutely horrible... with "uptime" numbers that barely break into the 90% mark. In all seriousness, it is routine to see digital static jump in and out of the TV and to just get cut off from internet randomly during peak hours.

Maybe Comcast's goal is to be just a little bit better than Cablevision/IO.

Re:Unlikely

[Lumpy]

Really? so comcast in your area went against the SEC rulings and adsorbed them instead of replacing it with their own infrastructure on an emergency budget like they did across the country? (Yes, I worked for comcast at that time so I know what happened with complete detail.)

2 years later the @home SGI servers and other gear were still sitting in most comcast headends waiting for the holding company and liquidator to come and retrieve them. WE could not throw it away or get rid of it because of legal matters. (I really wanted to dispose in my own way the rackmount SGI servers that @home used for proxy servers.)

What area do you live in? They need to be reported for not following the legal and company policies when that happened.

Re:Unlikely

[dufachi]

Unfortunately, there is absolutely no "competition" in my market, so I will be pretty much screwed at a whopping 6 or 8 meg under Comcrust. DSL through the "phone company" is out of the question for me as that maxes out at 6 meg here for $90/month. I am pretty happy with Insight's service 10/1 plan, but since it's being slurped up by Comcast as of 1/1/08, I am heading into the tar pits with a downgrade of service in a Land of No Competition.

Re:Unlikely

[MostAwesomeDude]

Really? so comcast in your area went against the SEC rulings and adsorbed them instead of replacing it with their own infrastructure on an emergency budget like they did across the country? (Yes, I worked for comcast at that time so I know what happened with complete detail.)

2 years later the @home SGI servers and other gear were still sitting in most comcast headends waiting for the holding company and liquidator to come and retrieve them. WE could not throw it away or get rid of it because of legal matters. (I really wanted to dispose in my own way the rackmount SGI servers that @home used for proxy servers.)

What area do you live in? They need to be reported for not following the legal and company policies when that happened.
  Sounds like what happened in Eugene, Oregon, where I lived when they @home was dissolved and subsequently absorbed by Comcast. Our IP didn't even change; one day I just noticed that our gateway reversed to or1.comcast.net (now or.bverton.comcast.net). No cables were moved or relaid, no interruption of Internet or cable TV. The building a mile down the highway, where TCI cable set up shop in the nineties? Now owned by Comcast. Go figure. The only change that my parents cared about was in 2002, when they were notified that their @home.net account would be forwarded to @comcast.net for a few months while they notified their contacts.

Re:Unlikely

[Elbarfo]

Well, who knows what servers they used. Like the other guy's reply, I had no interruption of service. One day it was intermedia@home, the next it was comcast. Hell, it was like 7 years ago. Trying to report it now would just seem kinda useless.

I don't really have any problem with Comcast. I've had cable broadband going on 10 years now. There's nothing else out here in the sticks where I live. DSL is nowhere near available. Before this, I had to pay crazy high prices ($65/mo for the line and $45/mo for the ISP) for an ISDN line just to get something better than 34k or so dialup. I regularly see 10-12Mbps now. There's so few poeple on my node that I rarely if ever see a slowdown. Most of my neighbors are cows. :D

DISTANT backseat...

[Samurai Cat!]

...not "distance". :P

That's odd...

[edunbar93]

It's been my experience that every ancient monopoly with horrid customer service, horrid technical service, and outdated technology typically stays around forever. If their market starts to shrink, they'll just flog the ever-dwindling market harder and harder. It's as if they exist to extract some kind of penance from the populace for sins committed in past lives or something.

I wouldn't bet on it

[leftie]

Comcast is getting OnDemand TV out to their subscribers. They also have their eggs in more than one basket with increasing revenues coming in from arena management and programming with VS. and several regional sports nets challenging Fox Sports Net.

Comcast is my cable provider. I don't like the way they operate, but I'm not switching and losing OnDemand TV and my local NBA team games as a result.

Re:I wouldn't bet on it

[game kid]

Comcast [...] have their eggs in more than one basket with increasing revenues coming in from arena management and programming with VS. [...] but I'm not switching and losing OnDemand TV and my local NBA team games as a result.

For me that would be a reason to switch right away, to say nothing of my feelings about Cablevision--owners of Madison Square Garden--and the West Side Stadium incident where MSG paid for and made TV spots to gain anti-Stadium support.

Comcast CEO sees 160Mbps internet in 2008

[ewilts]

From Engadget:

http://www.engadget.com/2007/11/30/comcast-ceo-sees-160mbps-internet-in-2008/

See also LightReading:

Comcast Closes In on 100 Mbit/s

Comcast may not be the fastest today, but they don't appear to be sitting around doing nothing either.

.../Ed

Re:Comcast CEO sees 160Mbps internet in 2008

[The Analog Kid]

The speeds great and all, but if they cap you for actually using it, what good is it?

This seems a bit jaded

[CatOne]

Especially with the tags.

To answer your question, no, I don't think Comcast is about to go under. I had DSL prior to cable and used to think it was superior. I was rocking along at 1.5 Mbit down/768 up. My buddy had comcast and I asked him what speeds he was getting -- he had used both and noted to me that cable was substantially faster and that he preferred it. This was of course in conflict with all the advertising that SBC had been putting out saying how much the shared network slowed things. So when I moved I got cable to try it out.

Well I use it all day for work, and just ran a test and I get 22 Mbit down/1.5 Mbit up with Comcast's "high speed" plan. I never really notice any big slowdowns during the day (or in the evening), so these fears are really unfounded.

Now I hear about FIOS and that some of my coworkers (who also work remotely) have it and it does seem to be faster, but is it THAT much faster that I'd need it? Not really sure when any Comcast subscriber can get these kinda speeds for $30-$40/month and they already HAVE a cable bill.

"Comcast users are forced to share bandwidth..."

[DragonPup]

"Comcast users are forced to share bandwidth with other users on the same coaxial cable"

To quote Lex Luthor, "WRONG!"

In the Boston area market, the coax switches to fiber at the taps. In other words, outside the customer's house at the pole.

Here we go again.

[TrailerTrash]

One of the most annoying aspects of internet culture is the constant following of this formula:

1) Determine who is the market leader, or at least very large and strong
2) Declare them DEAD. EXTINCT. HISTORY.
3) ???
4) Profit!

How exactly is ComCast supposed to die? Everyone gets rabid about their service, and goes... where? FIOS is only in a tiny percentage of Verizon's US installed base. If you're not in a major metro area, you may never get it.

Cable has solved the last mile problem. DSL is pretty much everywhere, too, because POTS laid the last mile as well. Alternatives? Municipal wireless? Seems to be dying rapidly. Satellite? Very slow.

OK, that's enough. Back to the blind, knee-jerk, ill-fated shrieking of doom already in progress... ("Microsoft? DEAD. MPAA? EXTINCT. RIAA? DINOSAUR. Proprietary software? HISTORY.")

Re:Here we go again.

[TubeSteak]

DSL is pretty much everywhere, too, because POTS laid the last mile as well. You get DSL only if the CLEC/CO/DSLAM is nearby.
I happen to live just outside the service area & cable is the only decent choice.

http://www.dslreports.com/faq/faq/1.2_Struggling_to_get_DSL

Re:Here we go again.

[schnablebg]

Comcast's customer service is horrible. I've had to spend hours on the phone getting them to admit to putting a bogus charge on my bill. Not to mention their inane billing practices; I have services that regularly flip from charging me for the previous month of service to the next month of service.

But they are genuinely afraid of competition. I don't even live in a place where I can get FIOS yet, and anytime I talk to them on the phone and mention any of the words "quit," "satellite," or "Verizon," I get transferred to a "Retention Department" that will end up either adding features for no charge, or rearranging my package to make it cheaper.

The fact of the matter is that acquiring a new customer is much more expensive than retaining an existing one. Comcast is well aware of this, and that is why FIOS is going to have a hard time breaking into mature cable markets.

Re:Here we go again.

[LinuxIsRetarded]

Comcast's customer service is horrible. I've had to spend hours on the phone getting them to admit to putting a bogus charge on my bill. Not to mention their inane billing practices; I have services that regularly flip from charging me for the previous month of service to the next month of service.

I can provide anecdotal evidence showing Verizon's customer service ineptness. Verizon massively overbilled our church for FiOS service. We had the basic low-end internet service installed free-of-charge (allegedly)- including one free wired connection and a free wireless router. What Verizon ended up doing was (1) sending our bill to the wrong city, (2) charging us for two hookups, (3) charging us for the wireless router, (4) terminating our service due to nonpayment (see number 1), and (5) charging us a $200 early termination fee (see number 4). It was no easy task to have Verizon's extremely poor customer service resolve the issue, either. At the end of the day, we are stuck with a very low-speed connection at an unacceptable price (given the competition), poor customer service, and poor technical support (I was told by a FiOS installer that it was impossible to change the WPA key in a wireless router).

Verizon Love Fest

[sciop101]

The author (Triston McIntyre) is a one man love fest with Verizon.

Point To Remember: A blogger IS NOT a journalist.

A blogger IS an editorialist.

A blogger states opinion.

Too bad so many of us live in AT&T land

[Brian Stretch]

Yes, any idiot can see that FTTH is the way to go, but Comcast and AT&T aren't run by just ANY idiots. Running fiber is a one-time expense, a big one to be certain but once it's in place you're good for the foreseeable future. Now, Comcast could get away with milking their hybrid fiber/coax plant for a while longer if they'd simply devote more bandwidth to Internet instead of TV, especially if DOCSIS 3 modems work, but AT&T has no such excuse. Spending lots of money on fancy electronics to get their antiquated copper plant to provide a measly 27Mbps aggregate bandwidth from the fiber node to the home (FTTN) rather than do things right the first time is going to go down in the B-school books as one of the most penny-wise, pound-foolish decisions in history. Hello, regular HDTV feeds are 20Mbps and recompressing those so you'll have enough bandwidth left for Internet, VoIP, and one measly SDTV channel makes HDTV look like an overgrown YouTube video (I exaggerate... slightly).

The sad thing is that the measly 6M/1M "Elite" tier Internet service AT&T U-verse offers is usually superior to Comcast and cheaper too. If they'd have been a little smarter they'd have skipped TV entirely (and those expensive settop boxes, TV channel fees, etc) and used all the bandwidth for Internet... assuming that they absolutely, positively won't run fiber like Verizon.

I have to disagree with the notion that we have to wait for the existing monopolies to correct their rectal-cranial inversion. It is possible for a new company to build FTTH. Having a separate company run fiber that various competing companies can plug into, as CANARIE describes, makes a lot of sense. Such a dark fiber net could be municipally run, or maybe the electric companies would like another revenue stream.

Re:Too bad so many of us live in AT&T land

[Drogo007]

"Having a separate company run fiber that various competing companies can plug into"

What, you mean like Utopia? (utopianet.org) Municipal Fiber system with competeing ISPs all available over the same fiber.

Re:Too bad so many of us live in AT&T land

[Brian Stretch]

What, you mean like Utopia? (utopianet.org) Municipal Fiber system with competeing ISPs all available over the same fiber.

Yes!

Well Fiber is similar to coax....

[Piranhaa]

Unlike Comcast, FiOS delivers the full range of bandwidth to each user, whereas Comcast users are forced to share bandwidth with other users on the same coaxial cable, causing speeds to fluctuate dramatically with usage." Well fiber bandwidth is based around the same idea that coax cable is, except using light. Of course there is a considerable much larger amount of bandwidth to throw down the pipe, but each person on a street (or area) receives a certain timeslot to send down his or her information on. Right now BPON (Verizon's current fiber network running at 622mbit down and 155mbit up) is probably over sufficient, but it does still carry the risk of oversubscription the same way coax does. To fix this issue, Verizon needs to take the next step and upgrade its infrastructure to GPON which provides 2.488gbit/s download and 1.244gbit/s upload (which is what TELUS in Canada is currently testing).

Re:Well Fiber is similar to coax....

[The Analog Kid]

To fix this issue, Verizon needs to take the next step and upgrade its infrastructure to GPON which provides 2.488gbit/s download and 1.244gbit/s upload (which is what TELUS in Canada is currently testing).

They seem to be one step ahead of you because they only use GPON these days although they originally started off with BPON.

Re:In NY and CA maybe, but other places not so luc

[Ralph Spoilsport]

Even in CA, it's not all that it's cracked up to be.

I used to live in San Francisco, right in the middle, on the west side of Twin Peaks. Moved in in 1998. It took 3 years to get DSL to my house. I moved out in June (got tired of the Empire and moved to Canada) and when I left the FASTEST I could get out of my DSL was 384k. !!!! 384k !!!!

A friend of mine in the Haight only 2 km away had DSL and was getting 1.5m.

There I was: literally in the middle of The High Tech City of America, and I couldn't get better than 384k DSL.

The internet infrastructure in the USA seems as haphazard as the electrical system. FWIW, here in Toronto I get 1.5m and it works pretty well. The modem they gave me is flaky as shit - it needs to be repaired or replaced - but when it works (which is 90% of the time) it works fine.

RS

comcast customer service is fairly good

[snsh]

From my experience, the anecdotal complaint about Comcast's customer service is simply not true. Compared to other technology service providers, I'd rate their customer service 'excellent'.

When you move into a building and order Comcast, they get things set up and working that day. When I have a problem and call them, within 2-5 minutes I always get a tech with enough clue to test the line and debug from the command prompt. If my problem requires a truck rollout, I can usually get one the next day. They generally don't finger point. If the problem is their equipment, they end up fixing it.

Compare that with DSL, T1, and even Fios, Comcast makes things very easy. DSL is a hack that seems more likely to not work than work on new setups. T1's are painful to provision. FiOS installation can be really screwy if you don't have a Verizon landline (I had eight tech visits, and one of them even ran a 2nd fiber loop when I added FiOS TV to FiOS internet), if FiOS is available at all.

That's not to say that Comcast's policies (P2P, bandwidth limits), pricing, speed, and monopoly power are not evil. But as far as customer service is concerned, I think they're ahead of the curve.

Re:comcast customer service is fairly good

[slide-rule]

Since you sound like you're trying to buck the majority around here (and no problem with that) you mind sharing where in the country (city/state) you're in? Here in the Houston, TX area, people all generally loathe dealing with them in any form.

Huh? Slow?

[Elbarfo]

I have had cable internet since it was Intermedia back in 1999. FIOS isn't even available in my state (AFAIK, I tried many addresses, even in urban areas, and none came up as available), let alone in my rural area. I regularly get 12Mbps down and 768k up today. The slowest I've ever seen my connection is 4Mbps, and that was years ago. I live so far out that DSL (as slow and wonky as it is) isn't even available to me. Yes, their customer service is a bit crappy, but after going through the hell that is Verizon Wireless for a year (CANCELLED!), Comcast seems like a pretty field, where naked women tend to my every need. Besides, the downstream bandwith I get on my cable modem is equivalent to the FIOS package that would cost me twice what I pay now. I don't really use the up much, so I'm not bothered in the least by it. Sub 30ms latency to 3/4 of the U.S. is pretty nice, too. Was this article written by someone who works for Verizon? They obvioulsly haven't seen anything related to DOCSIS 3. Can't wait for that nice fat pipe to be opened up, for sure....

A technical question

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems that one of the largest expenses in providing FTTH is the digging sidewalks part... Where I live, in Brazil, the gas company is making available the use of "street gas", and the curious part is that they won't be breaking no one's sidewalk, seems they have a machine that, with a 2x2 hole in the ground can simply go down and dig the holes from below. Is this tech used/feasible in fiber deployment?

Time Warner.

[jellomizer]

I have to say for the most part I am happy with Time Warner Cable the only issue is if there is a problem they will be there between 8:00Am-4:00PM meaning you need to take a day off just for them to check your cable. But RoadRunner Internet in my area is at 10Mbs and the speed is mostly consistant. They haven't blocked ports or tried to strong arm me, from using Vonage.

Variablity in customer experience

[StarsEnd]

Some of the posts hear blast comcast support. In the past (2+years ago), their customer support had problems. Their support has been very good, in my opinion since then. I live in their primary region (Philly area), which might explain the customer service variance.

I have had some painful technical problems in the past. They have been able to track down and solve the problems successfully (significant packet loss during gameplay, VOIP problems etc).

I started checking into FIOS in my area (always willing to put pressure on and keep competition alive in the area). What I found kept me from considering the move at this time. In particular, the fact that they require you to use their router (which is only G, so I've been told). Of course, I can use my router behind theirs, but I don't think this is optimal.

Re:Variablity in customer experience

[BitHog]

Verizon Fios does not require you to use their router. I have my linux router connected directly to the Fios. It is PPPoE without a password. For p2p with a couple thousand connections - any residential router goes south. I would hate to be without my Fios.

ppp0 Link encap:Point-to-Point Protocol
inet addr:71.251.73.xx P-t-P:10.38.37.12 Mask:255.255.255.255
UP POINTOPOINT RUNNING NOARP MULTICAST MTU:1492 Metric:1
RX packets:72336944 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:81517486 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:3
RX bytes:518539664 (494.5 MiB) TX bytes:1559355552 (1.4 GiB)

Re:Huh? Slow?

[phillymjs]

Comcast seems like a pretty field, where naked women tend to my every need.

Until you try to seed torrents, then they tie you down and use a strap-on on you.

MOD PARENT UP

[Agarax]

An intelligent and well supported response.

Sir, you do realize you are challenging the Groupthink?

Typical Slashdot sensationalism

[Wister285]

Slashdot posters seem to have a way of skewing things and then the rest of the community just piles on the gang-tackle. Let's get a few things straight here:

- Comcast is still has strong growth
- People underestimate the strength of the Triple Play and how people are more likely to keep their service
- Comcast is working with Sprint to offer a "quadruple play" that includes cell phone service
- Comcast has been signing up telephone customers at a rate of something like 9 for every 1 cable customer that they lose
- DOCSIS 3.0 takes away the advantage that Verizon's FiOS has in the short-term
- Most people can't even use the speed that Verizon FiOS offers
- Most bandwidth bottlenecks are at the server, not the client
- Verizon FiOS isn't even available in most places
- Comcast has a fiber backbone that allows them to run fiber for the "last mile" if they need to offer fiber speeds
- Satillite TV didn't hurt Comcast
- Comcast has many media and sports properties such as E!, The Golf Channel, and the Philadelphia Flyers
- Cable industry companies are friendly towards each other where Verizon has to work with a hostile environment
- Comcast has historically been good at monetizing their assets
- Don't underestimate Comcast's CEO Brian Roberts

The list of positives for the company goes on and on. Don't count Comcast out. Competition will only help them charge forward.

Disclosure: I had an internship with Comcast over the summer. I am also a Comcast shareholder.

Re:Typical Slashdot sensationalism

[Wister285]

Let me correct myself on my one point. I meant to say that satellite TV didn't run Comcast out of town.

Disclosure: I had an internship with Comcast over the summer. I am also a Comcast shareholder.

So stop bitching

[Colin Smith]

And set up your own telecommunications company.

Oh wait... It's easier to sit back and complain.

Re:So stop bitching

[Your Pal Dave]

And set up your own telecommunications company. With blackjack and hookers!

Re:You'll share a pipe somewhere (mod up parent)

[$pace6host]

Thanks for posting this - I was in the middle of posting the same thing. Sure, you share a pipe - but the difference is the size of the pipe and how many other high bandwidth users you're sharing it with (and how oversubscribed it is). Around here (Philly burbs), Comcast offers "Speedboost" or "Powerboost" because they can occasionally allocate you the bandwidth, but they can't possibly give it to you all the time (they don't have it). DOCSIS 3.0 will help, but they're also trying to jam in all those new HDTV channels... FiOS, on the other hand, I NEVER see less than my rated speed, unless I'm going to a slow server or a server on a slow link. I might be sharing my downlink with up to 32 others on the BPON, but whatever they have at the CO and out is definitely not overloaded. My Mom on Comcast, though, sees a slowdown every day when the kids get home from school and log on to Xbox live.

Damn!

[ColdWetDog]

Fifth post and car analogy!

Strong work, sir. Carry on.

Why I can't stand Comcast.

[Gothic_Walrus]

Right now, I'm stuck with Comcast - I live in a college-run apartment building, and that's the only option they offer. Unless I find somewhere else to live next year, I'm stuck with Comcast for at least another year and a half.

But after that, I'm jumping ship as soon as I can, and never returning as long as I've got the choice.

I'm sick of having my internet go down without warning, with no indication as to how long it'll be before I can get back online to finish my homework.

I'm sick of Comcast taking channels for no reason - CSPAN2 and one of the leased access channels vanished a week ago, and the four city-run info channels are about to become digital-only at the end of the year I can't say I ever watched those channels for more than thirty seconds at a time, in passing, but they do have their uses and I know that there isn't a snowball's chance in hell that Comcast is replacing them with new content - over the past year or so, I don't think we've gotten a single new channel, but others keep vanishing, one or two at a time.

I'm sick of the fact that, in a Big Ten college town with one of the nation's most successful and popular football teams, Comcast is not only refusing to carry the Big Ten Network (the only cable or satellite company here that doesn't - but is running a smear ad campaign against them. I'm sorry, but it's hard to sympathize with your cost argument doesn't hold much water when you make over five hundred million dollars in profit. And no, carrying ABC, ESPN, and ESPN2 doesn't count as a response for showing football games - it counts as a basic cable package.

I'm even sick of their advertising. Nine times out of ten, the Comcast ads are so painfully bad that I'll actually stop what I'll doing so I don't have to sit through them. Whether it's the smiling, emotionless Botoxed spokeslady, the "Just Ask Zak" ads where a kid breaks into people's homes to tell them how much better Comcast could make their lives, the previously mentioned Big Ten network attack ads, or the new musical style ads about their phone service (which are so awful that I haven't been able to sit through one of them once), the ads are almost reason enough to jump ship in and of themselves.

We haven't gotten to a point yet where buying shows on demand from iTunes or where watching things online legally is quite a viable option - iTunes is still missing a lot of content I'd like to see and is too expensive to allow for following multiple programs, and the network-run streaming sites have some quality issues. Since other alternatives arenn't available, I'll just have to live with Comcast for now - I need high-speed internet for my engineering classes. But between the service issues and the fact that they seem to go out of their way to make me dislike them even more than I do now, I can't wait until the day when I can finally make sure that Comcast never sees a dime of my money again.

Re:Why I can't stand Comcast.

[Jerf]

I'm sick of Comcast taking channels for no reason - CSPAN2 and one of the leased access channels vanished a week ago, and the four city-run info channels are about to become digital-only at the end of the year I can't say I ever watched those channels for more than thirty seconds at a time, in passing, but they do have their uses and I know that there isn't a snowball's chance in hell that Comcast is replacing them with new content - over the past year or so, I don't think we've gotten a single new channel, but others keep vanishing, one or two at a time.

This isn't really Comcast's "fault". TV is going all digital. Analog service is going away. That's really driven by the FCC mandate more than anything else.

(I am aware that the FCC mandate does not cover cable, but I still think it can't be hurting the move to digital and is probably accelerating it even on the cable side. Comcast wants to move everything to digital that it can, to recover bandwidth, and the fact that over-the-air is going all digital provides good cover for that.)

Re:Why I can't stand Comcast.

[goodmanj]

So, you're furious at Comcast for not providing four channels you admit you've never watched, and one special-interest channel that almost nobody's even *heard* of? Oh, and their ads are annoying? Damn, man, you got some serious grievances. I thought we were talking about internet service, not TV, anyway. The debate is "cable vs DSL" here, I doubt DSL is going to provide you with the Big Ten Network whatever that is.

Allow me to go Old Fogey on you. When I was a kid, we got PBS and CBS. That's it. And we liked it!

Re:Why I can't stand Comcast.

[HockeyPuck]

I'm sick of Comcast taking channels for no reason - CSPAN2 and one of the leased access channels vanished a week ago, Around here (N.California), they called the house or left messages on my answering machine about 3 times over a 2-3month period saying that CSPAN was being eliminated from analog cable and that in order to receive CSPAN you would need to get digital cable.

Thanks for another slashvertisement..

[HockeyPuck]

Funny, how just yesterday we had a story on reviews/studies being funded by companies http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/12/02/0132247 and here we have a "switch to Verizon, Comcast is dying".

In Northern Calif, we have AT&T and Comcast. I'm sure for 99% of the population even offering them 10Gb to the house would not get fully utilized. VOIP doesn't use that much bandwidth. Now of course this is /., where everybody wants to be able to view HDTV over IP (hmm, I'm watching HDTV right now and don't see any degradation in bandwidth). Now I wouldn't mind having ala carte cableTV, but this /. "I need 10Gb to the house, so I can prove my dick is bigger than the next geek's>" is getting old... we did this with processor speed, disk size, cooling method for your 'elite gamer rig'.

Move along nothing to see here. In other news AT&T is dying b/c /. folks use VOIP while most of the US still uses POTS.

Re:Stuck with the dinosaur?

[peragrin]

looks an AC that's an idiot.

Bit torrent traffic can have only legal purposes. you only share back the files you are receiving, or have received. Unlike kazaa where you share everything in a folder, Torrents you have to explicitly share stuff.

One HUGE Difference

[acvh]

is that cable internet access, if available in a community, is available to everyone. Verizon is cherrypicking neighborhoods to maximize penetration.

I would love to subscribe to FIOS. I was the first on my block to get cable internet from comcast 11 years ago. I was the first to switch to DSL with verizon when it became available (mostly for service issues. while my DSL connection has never gone down, cable routinely failed). Yet from the way things look my little neighborhood isn't going to see FIOS for a long time.

cable won't die. there is an advantage for them in that to win the franchises way back when they had to provide availability to everyone. verizon is building a demographically tiered system, for good or ill.

Verizon:Comcast::Eurasia:Eastasia

[internic]

I wouldn't be so eager to welcome your new corporate overlords. Verizon's business model is based on overselling bandwidth just like Comcast (look at the price vs. bandwidth and that's obvious), and in the end that means they're still not willing to really let you use as much as they say they're selling you. If you look in the TOS for that residential FIOS connection you might be eying you'll find that you're not allowed to operate a "server", or use too much bandwidth, which is, of course, never defined. To wit:

The Service may be referred to as, "Verizon Fios Internet Service", "DSL Service", "Verizon Online DSL, "Verizon DSL"...

3.7.5 You may not use the Broadband Service to host any type of server whether personal or commercial in nature...

ATTACHMENT A

ACCEPTABLE USE POLICY

...

3. You may NOT use the Service as follows: ... (n) to generate excessive amounts (as determined by Verizon in its sole discretion) of Internet traffic, or to disrupt net user groups or email use by others; ...

[emphasis mine]

Further, consider that P2P software could be considered a server, which would include the bittorrent client you use to download the latest Linux distro or the Skype software you use to make VIOP calls (something Verizon has reason not to like too much).

My point is simply that if you dislike Comcast because of its unstated caps, traffic shaping, QoS stuff etc. I don't see any reason to think Verizon will be any better in the long term. As for customer service, I've had Verizon as a phone provider and found the customer service poor. Perhaps their better as an ISP, but stories I've heard from others suggest that's not the case.

I've personally been using Speakeasy for years. They seem to be much more honest in their dealings, allow you to run a server, and don't (apparently) block or degrade certain protocols, although their TOS still contain some "excessive usage" weasel words IIRC. The only problem is that it's DSL (and not even cheap DSL), so the bandwidth to price ratio isn't nearly what you'd get from Cable or FIOS. On the other hand, I can't stomach the idea of rewarding those other companies' practices.

Re:Verizon:Comcast::Eurasia:Eastasia

[Xtifr]

I've personally been using Speakeasy for years. They seem to be much more honest in their dealings, allow you to run a server, and don't (apparently) block or degrade certain protocols, although their TOS still contain some "excessive usage" weasel words IIRC. The only problem is that it's DSL (and not even cheap DSL), so the bandwidth to price ratio isn't nearly what you'd get from Cable [...] The bandwidth-to-price ratio isn't nearly what Cable promises. I believe it's pretty competitive with what Cable actually offers, though. Then again, if Comcast keeps going the way they're going, I think avian carriers may start to be competitive! :)

Re:In NY and CA maybe, but other places not so luc

[lonasindi]

I live in Fort Wayne, IN and verizon recently installed boxes in all the apartments in my complex, and FIOS will be available to us in another month or two. Fort Wayne is hardly part of the "Top 20 most populous cities" by any means. It is, in fact, 70th. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Wayne

Re:In NY and CA maybe, but other places not so luc

[Seumas]

Uh. I live in a city with over a million people with massive Intel campuses and Nike Headquarters and considered one of the most wired/wireless cities in the nation. I can choose between comcast or . . . uh . . . yeah, just comcast.

Welcome to America

[billcopc]

If you think Comcast sucks, come up to Canada and try any one of Rogers, Bell or Videotron.

Neither of them have made any significant improvements in over a decade. Bumping up from 5mbit to 7mbit is not what I can progress. DOCSIS 1.0/1.1 isn't very impressive when you consider that 3.0 gear has been available for over 15 months.

What's worse is we can't even get halfway-decent pipe for the office. 768k upload for a web shop is fucking pathetic, but nobody in town does any better. Even datacentres have shitty uplinks. Where's that 50/10 cable link ? And yet I live in what the media tards call "Canadian Silicon Valley".

In light of these facts, I hate all telecoms equally. They're all dinosaurs to me.

Re:Welcome to America

[nebular]

Yes Canada sucks when it comes to data services. Slow speeds on both cable and DSL, cellular data plans that make it cheaper to get a US phone and roam. But there is a big reason for our being behind the times. If you take a look at the customer base for Verison or Comcast, you're looking at a number that is ~60-90% of the ENTIRE canadian population. Those companies have a LOT of cash flowing that makes upgrading the systems to those high speeds a little easier. So a much smaller subscriber base, plus a geographical area that is larger than the US. Not only do they have to beef up their infrastructure in cities, but they also have to beef it up between them as well.
We've been very lucky here in Canada that the advancements of the States have been applied here as well, but our market just isn't enough to keep up anymore.
We could solve this by letting American companies a piece of our telecom market, but with the 50% canadian ownership rules make it a tough sell to them.

I wish our market could justify FTTH, but it's just not there yet.

However Rogers and Bells decision to roll out the WiMax in the areas where broadband was already availalbe rather then in the places where Dial-up was the only option was just stupid.

Re:Welcome to America

[billcopc]

I don't give a crap about market size. The Canadian market is large enough, and we should strive to be at the forefront of technology and communication. We're not just selling bear pelts and maple syrup anymore. If this nation's leaders want to encourage a sense of pride and purpose, they need to play to our strengths: education, innovation, and free thinking. Technological enhancements could catapult our economy and give us an edge over the US and Japan, because there's no shortage of brains, only a shortage of tools.

Re:Stuck with the dinosaur?

[Seumas]

Don't forget that Comcast is supposedly quadrupling their bandwidth (according to recent news and some comments here in this page). Some people see that as a great thing. On the other hand, I just see it as them giving me more potential bandwidth so they can ban me from their service for a year for exceeding their secret limitations -- but now they'll be able to do it 400% faster!

Re:In NY and CA maybe, but other places not so luc

[Fex303]

Hell, I live in NYC and I can't get it. Williamsburg, Brooklyn to be exact - home of the hipsters who couldn't go five minutes without checking their MySpace pages. It seems like the only option is ... Comcast. Oh and it frequently dies for several minutes, killing all traffic in and out. (And by frequently I mean about every 20 mins.)

That said, I'm an Australian, and rather unclear on who offers which services here. In Australia everyone simply uses whirlpool.net.au to check what services are available where. (For those not familiar, it's an unbiased 3rd party that compares broadband services, shows which are available in your area and gives a tool to compare various plans.) Does anything like that exist for the US?

A little bit of disinformation here....

[postbigbang]

FIOS and its proprietary GPON scheme is balanced towards downloads. It's not symmetrical, and was never planned to be. The differences between BPON and GPON are moot in the consumer's context-- they're both *passive* optical networking schemes that use splitters, and that's where I have problems with it. It's inexpensive, and it's a bad long term asset play.

FIOS is one of any number of schemes, and it requires, as does cable, surrendering the consumer possibility of third party provisioning over time. In other words, you're tied to the carrier and its scheme-- Verizon in the case of FIOS.

Although the same thing can be said about cable in most markets, the upstream switch is all important. Those beige cans now sitting in various neighborhoods don't have the concurrent peak throughput you speak of. Open up one of those cans if you like and look inside, then put what you see into a spreadsheet. This is the eventual downfall of FIOS; it's a short term solution, and it's not bi-directionally symmetrical.

Gigabit to the den isn't going to be very practical in FIOS. Worse, Verizon promises a lot of communities FIOS deployments, but then takes years to get started as the capital costs are huge, and Verizon has a weak market cap and can't do everything they promise right away. This has the effect of causing communities to take the bait, then wait years. Look at Ft Wayne IN for a peak of how slow it can go.

Congestion hasn't started because their approach isn't taxed very much yet.

Will Comcast be able to compete? Yes. It's the last mile + the inherent long term viability of the design that makes a difference. Comcast already has great position in easements, rights of way, and a distributed network where 'triple play' is paying the bills. They have the same upstream viability in terms of aggregate/peak throughput that Verizon or (AT&T) DSL has. They don't, however, have the cost of deployment-- which is going down quickly.

Instead of FIOS, we need intermediate/neighborhood distribution infrastructure that allows pure symmetry through the network, if the asset life of the deployment is going to be viable in 20 years.

The added services over time are what will be the ticket; triple/quadruple/quintuple or whatever marketing words that you'd like to describe services with. The anti-cable marketing FUD is just that. Comcast and cable in general has a great chance to win based not only on historical reasons, but because they're not mindless telcos, whose mentality hasn't shifted much since the 1960s. FIOS, in a way, is like ATM: bad technology that looks really good on the surface, but isn't market sensitive. Telcos never are: they're monopolized revenue sensitive.

Re:A little bit of disinformation here....

[jonbrewer]

FIOS a "bad long term asset play?

Having less active equipment in the field is actually the best long term asset play. Active gear in neighborhoods means more grief for the network operator - and more to upgrade down the path. Passive splitters mean that head end and cpe are the only upgrades necessary.

Cable shares this advantage with FIOS. Moving to DOCSIS 3.0 or a new FIOS technology means new a new head end, then new cpe. It doesn't mean touching an outdoor cabinet for every street in the coverage area.

JB

Re:A little bit of disinformation here....

[postbigbang]

It's a bad long term asset play because eventually, it's destined to not have passive splitters, and become a real nodal active network.

In ten years, all that stuff changes-- again!

New CPE (oh yeah, new revenue stream at the last ten feet!).

And new cabinets full of new equipment and revised gear that has to follow a symmetrical, rather than biased asymmetrical model!

Verizon was either visionary, or pulled their design out of Corning's butt, depending whether you're a PR person or a realist.

Re:A little bit of disinformation here....

[netcrusher88]

Mod parent down - GPON is an ITU standard, there is nothing proprietary about it. See the Wikipedia article for GPON.

Re:A little bit of disinformation here....

[postbigbang]

As implemented in FIOS it is. Otherwise, yes, it's an international standard.

Re:A little bit of disinformation here....

[timeOday]

FIOS and its proprietary GPON scheme is balanced towards downloads. It's not symmetrical, and was never planned to be.

Regardless, the summary says FIOS would give me 10 mbps up, which would slaughter my Comcast upstream by a factor of about 30! 10 mbps is enough to stream two rather high-quality video streams. Personally I'm not hung up on symmetry, I just want to have enough in both directions, and currently I don't. Sometimes I can't even upstream an mp3 to myself at work reliably, especially if my wife is home talking on Vonage.

shoot me please...

[lord3nd3r]

I would kill to be able to get rid of Comcast and or Knology as their Internet SUCKS, their support is horrible, and they screw with torrent traffic. Now if only we could get fiber in NW Florida...

Verizon FUD Much?

[Crispin Cowan]

This reads like spam from Verizon attacking a competitor with FUD. Guess what; I've had horrible customer service from Verizon:

1. I sign up for a broadband account.
2. They screw up the billing address, so the bills go to /dev/null instead of me.
3. When they don't get paid, they phone me and tell me that they need payment.
4. I pay them.
5. After I have paid them, they cut off my connection.
6. Then they charge me a reconnection fee.

So they screwed me twice for their mistake. I even took it to the Oregon Public Utilities Commission, and they still demanded that I pay their reconnection fee :-(

I am still on Verizon at that location because there is no alternative. As soon as there is an alternative, I am switching away from Verizon as fast as I can, to anyone, at any price, for any level of service. I will never use Verizon again for anything.

Meanwhile, at another location, I am using Comcast for broadband connectivity, and have had no issues with their customer service. I have even had some technical issues with them, and they have actually been kind-of helpful. The only thing I don't like about their service is blocking inbound port 25 because I like to run my own mail server, but I understand them wanting to reduce rampant spam relays.

So I think this whole story is just a bunch of Verizon-sponsored astro-turfing, trying to FUD against Comcast.

Re:Verizon FUD Much?

[slide-rule]

While semi-OT to submission (Comcast here sucks as badly as anywhere -- just ask my co-worker whose triple-play install cost him a load of money and misery beyond what he expected) I had a recent run-in with Verizon's 'spectacular' customer service in the Houston/Clear Lake (TX) area myself. We had local phone + internet through them at an apartment. Then we bought a house (actually about a mile away, not that it matters a bit). We phoned them ahead of time and said we needed "all our services transferred to $new_address on $move_date" and they said fine. We move in and have local phone, but no internet. They screwed the pooch on it so badly that the reps all told me "we'll have to cancel the old service and re-order it. it'll take a couple of weeks to get the order to go through ... no it cannot be expedited." No amount of being nice or being a jerk on the phone with them mattered. (My wife/I were on the phone over three hours total dealing with this, keeping track of names/and time on the clock.) Finally we gave in. They were just barely nice enough to comp us a free month of dialup (almost useless ... I'd finally eliminated dialup modems from the computers) but of course we had to be sure to phone them back to cancel it. When "the package" came in a couple weeks later, they'd shipped and billed me for *ANOTHER* DSL modem, even though the one from just one year back worked just fine. (And if we happened to be using that old account for e-mail, we'd have had to do the usual song-and-dance with the whole family; thank God our primary access point was google mail.) I just didn't have the time or nerves left to deal with them, so I ate the cost of a new service + new modem ... but I'll *NEVER* forget *OR* forgive them.

Re:Verizon FUD Much?

[LinuxIsRetarded]

Amazing- our experience with Verizon was nearly identical. It's nice to know that they're consistent!

Re:In NY and CA maybe, but other places not so luc

[GeeDog]

Does anything like that exist in the U.S.?

---

http://www.dslreports.com/

Cable can and do use FDM

[flyingfsck]

It is a common internet myth that cable users all share the same bandwidth. Just like fibre optic cables, the available bandwidth of co-axial cable is also almost infinite thanks to the use of Frequency Division Multiplexing - the equivalent of different coloured lasers in fibre. Eventually someone will develop new multiplexers and co-ax bandwidth will increase again.

Dinosaurs

[fm6]

Yeah, dinosaurs are extinct now. But they were around for millions of years before that hypothetical meteor (not an ice age) took them out. We should be so lucky. There's a huge advantage to hugeness, and both Comcast and T. Rex know how to use it.

FIOS is shared

[Wesley Felter]

FiOS is based on PON, which is also a bus topology. But in this case it's 622 Mbps shared by 32 homes, which still gives at least 20 Mbps per customer.

Re:FIOS is shared

[Kirkoff]

According to some other posts, it is actually based on (getting) PWNed.

The density argument again

[symbolset]

Perhaps you're referring to the fiber buildout happening right now it the greater Shelton metroplex or the one that's been in place for years in the Moses Lake metropolitan area. Moses Lake, the larger of the two with nearly 17,000 population certainly qualifies as a vibrant urban economy -- if vast fields of wheat were considered urban living that is.

It's also cheaper

[HiThere]

Setting up a competing ISP with lines, etc. isn't cheap, it takes megabucks. AND political handles on people.

If you just want to set up an ISP, and use someone else's lines, then it's relatively cheap and easy. You just can't make any money at it. Access fees will see to that.

Comcast's Tech Support BS Answer

[Nom du Keyboard]

Whenever Comcast tech support doesn't want to answer a question, a question they well know about (e.g. how do I enable the 30-second forward skip in my Comcast supplied Motorola DVR?) they give you the same B.S. answer:

That wasn't covered in our training.

They may know the answer. They may have been asked it a dozen other times today already, but if it's not in their script you're not going to get any help!

I can't wait for some real competition to arrive because my tiny little corner of Comcast is always the last to be upgraded. For example, we still only get about 200 free On Demand movies, while people from other areas get a thousand, or more -- yet our monthly bill is the same, or higher, than FiOS areas! TiVo DVR's and DOCSIS 3 modems? Ha! I'll be lucky to see all of that 5 years from now, maybe.

very poor installations

[amigabill]

O'm on the board of my neighborhood Homeowner's Association. We're currently putting together a complaint to our county licensing department, the FCC, etc. due to Comcast's very poor installation practices lately. There's a growing number of isntalls in our neighborhood where they not only fail to bury the wire from the junction box to an approved depth to avoid damage from landscaping equipment, they do NOT bury it AT ALL. There's currently, right now, a bright orange wire lying loosely above ground at the opposite end of my townhouse row. This is a) ugly and b) unsafe. Kids playing can trip and get hurt. Our landscaping company is either going to avoid caring fro the lawn right there and let it get ugly and out of hand or risk damaging their equipment.

The wire near my house was installed by a guy driving a Comcast van in Nov 9 2007. I dug ouo tmy camera and took the first pic of this the next day, Nov 10. I just went out and took more pics today, Dec 2.

http://mysite.verizon.net/amigabill/comcast/comcast.html

IMNSHO, Comcast sucks ass and deserves to die.

Re:very poor installations

[Dunbal]

I don't get it - who painted the cable orange? You, so that you wouldn't hit it with your lawnmower?

Re:very poor installations

[amigabill]

Painted?? It's orange insulation instead of the standard black for whatever reason. The only orange paint is in the ground from Miss Utility, marking where other underground stuff is to avoid shovels causing total havoc. Not that these guys seem to need that anymore. :( Not my lawn, not my lawnmower, but as someone dealing with the landscaping co. for our HOA common grounds, which this and other wires do cross, it is my problem.

Re:very poor installations

[Dunbal]

ah ok gotcha, thought the paint on the ground was from painting the cable. Man, that sure sucks ass and is probably illegal in your municipality. Good luck with the fight.

Re:very poor installations

[amigabill]

Comcast replaced the line to my own house a few years ago. They didn't do a "temporary line", they had Miss Utility come out and mark everything, then came and buried a new cable from the start. it took a month for them to connect this new wire to my house, which may not have happened if I hadn't been nagging them by phone to get out, inspect the contractor's wire dig, and put a connector on it. And I'd been complaining for 2 or 3 months about the horrible reception. Why'd they get the ground marked where other wires and pipes are if they weren't going to bury it right then? This has been there almost a month now. (9 Nov to 3 Dec now) Other places have had it that way since who knows how long, I noticed them last spring, and they looked old back then. That's not "temporary". That's BS.

need competition

[HeroreV]

The problem is that there isn't enough competition. If somebody could figure out how to get some competition going, we wouldn't have to deal with this. But how the hell are we supposed to encourage competition in this area? Monopolies form easily in the telecommunications industry and are difficult to bust.

If we really want to fix this industry in the long run, we're going to have to fundamentally rethink something.

Verizon Is A New World Order

[ticklemeozmo]

http://www22.verizon.com/about/images/133x275_english.gif

Comcast = The next Major Corporate Scandal?

[TheHawke]

Gov't has good reason as to why they want to cap their growth; Comcast has over tasked their customer support and public relations in their zeal to expand their horizons. All they have done was make a public spectacle of themselves with lessons as to what NOT to do as a public service company. They need to slow down their expansion efforts and make themselves accountable in customer/client service, tech support (then again, almost all tech support departments need a ton of help) and field support services. Infrastructure cannot be neglected in the face of progress. It's rather like building a bridge without a solid foundation or budgeting for upkeep. It'll fail within a year or two. EECB (Executive Email Carpet Bombing) has brought results for a few of the miffed clients that have problems, but for the majority of the masses that are having problems, they have little recourse but to keep struggling with their customer support.

Let them be punished for their poor decision making processes, I say. The bottom line is that they will have poor ratings and the wrath of the government on their neck, ruining their p/l margins.

Ummm.

[twebb72]

Die Comcast DIE!

what about rural markets?

[Cherveny]

It's nice to be able to switch to someone other than Comcast when the market has more than one broadband provider, but there are still many markets within the US that only have one broadband provider option (and still many with no real broadband option at all).

Re:what about rural markets?

[stinerman]

Yeah, my Grandma lives in the middle of nowhere. She can get dial-up or satellite. Her modem connects at about 26.4 kbps on an average day. At that speed, it's nearly impossible to keep her anti-virus and the like updated.

Re:what about rural markets?

[freedom_india]

She need not fear her XP would be turned into a Zombie.

Re:what about rural markets?

[stinerman]

Which, after I figured out that she'd never be able to keep anything updated, is exactly what I told her.

Also, going the way of the dinosaur?

[einhverfr]

They are evolving into birds?

I think the last thing I want to see Comcast do is dive bomb me because I look like lunch ;-)

Would somebody tell me why...

[Paracelcus]

Anyone would need this kind of speed at home?

Reading Slashdot at .50 GBPS, online gaming?, viewing porn?

Ahhhh, faster botnets!

Re:Would somebody tell me why...

[postbigbang]

Let's see. Why would someone need GBE to the home.

Well, mom's in the kitchen downloading a stream at HD RATES of her favorite show, Oprah 2.0.

Dad's upstairs doing an online improvement of his golf swing.

Junior's in his bed room watching porn, with four MURPGs going, a live video of the away game that the b-ball team is playing, and carrying on audio conversations with 11 people in the game in realtime.

Sis is in the living room, having a virtual pajama party with ten of her friends. Now that the price of gasoline is $91.099/gal, everything's virtual.

Bowser's getting an online MRI scan to see if the surgery went ok. The darn robot's been chasing him around the house, but the house downstairs computer located him by GIS and now his him in the clutches of the MRI machine. Darn dog, anyway.

While some of this is science fiction, so were cell phones, HDTV, MRI units, and multi-user role playing games just 20 years ago.

Your statement reminds me of Bill Gate's declaration that everyone will be fine in just 640K of DRAM. This same madness infects passive optical distribution systems, and one day, there'll be a digital backhoe that'll rip lots of this stuff out to be replaced by non-proprietary, head-in-the-sand, cheapskate infrastructure.

Hell, Corning wins either way.

Article Contains a Faulty Premise

[SquierStrat]

This article's conclusion of FiOS dominance over Comcast's product is based on the theory that FiOS is available to most
Comcast customers. It isn't. While FiOS may be a superior product (for now) it doesn't matter much when few people have access to the product. In fact, much of the current Verizon user base is made up of people who don't have access to DSL or cable modems at all. Where they do compete with cable modems, they may compete with Time Warner, Comcast or insert-company-name-here cable company. Further more they are also in the DSL business. They'll even provide dry DSL to me here in Atlanta (more than once name the most wired city/metro-area in the U.S.) yet I can't get FiOS. The quality I've gotten from Comcast has been topnotch. The only problem I have with them, I can say of every utility company I've ever worked with: they are a pain in the ass to get out here on the very rare occasion that I need them. And I've only needed them once for repairs and really it amounted to an oversight where the previous owner of the house had their account at the house disconnected issueing a disconnect order where as we had already set up our account on the house.

Sorry, until I can actually use Verizon's product, I won't call Comcast or any other company a dinosaur. It just doesn't make sense.

Beware of Verizon

[PuddleBoy]

I work for a regional phone company (CLEC) and we have had years of dealing with the folks at Verizon. They will look for any possible loophole to limit or delay service to us. Techs will claim to be unable to find an address that is a *huge* building, and leave without providing any service. They will re-interpret tariffs to benefit themselves, until our lawyers take it to the PUC.

They are a very aggressive company (in their business practices), so I can't imagine that they are suddenly going to become warm fuzzy kittens to their FIOS customers. Though I have not read them, I would imagine that their TOS (terms of service) probably contain some gotchas that will only surface later, benefiting them over their customers.

I hope their FIOS service is great, stays great, and has happy customers. I just wouldn't be naive enough to take it as a given.

BTW - not all phone companies are dinosaurs or out to screw everyone. Our company offers excellent customer service (a live person when you call!), but, then, we are neither the cheapest nor do we play in the residential space.

PIPE???

[slyn]

I thought they were called Tubes?

Isn't Customer Service the greater issue?

[Somecallmechief]

If I remember correctly, AOL died not from their service speeds but rather from their service. Dial-up would have died eventually anyways, but by overselling their bandwidth, overcharging their customers and underproviding customer support--customers flocked elsewhere to those who were offering better service, faster speeds, shorter wait times. Comcast could stretch out their lifespan indefinitely if they spent more energy helping customers use their bandwidth as their customers wanted, as opposed to trying to thwart their customers.

Why all the Comcast hate?

[fzammett]

I have Comcast, have had them for some time. As a matter of fact, I've had ONLY cable internet and basic cable for a couple of years, I'm not one of the people that gets everything through them, so I would assume I don't rate as highly as others do to them.

I've got *plenty* of speed. I've had a *total* of maybe four hours of down time over the last year or more. I've had to deal with customer service four or five times in that timeframe and each time I received good service. To summarize: I'm quite happy.

Now, it's not perfect: I've never been able to run a web server (can't access it from anywhere but my house), and the Bittorent thing lately bugs me (although I'm an infrequent BT user, usually just to grab The IT Crowd episodes or the odd Linux distro), so that doesn't affect me a whole lot. The price could be a little better, but it's not awful. And while the speed is good, it could always be better (to be fair though, I've seen significant increases in speed over the past two years at no extra cost to me, both up and down speeds). And those hidden caps, while I've never been affected (and I have often downloaded what anyone would consider a lot some months) bug me that they even exist (that's probably my only big complaint with Comcast: just tell me what the magic number is, even though "unlimited" should mean *unlimited*, at least if you make the number public I can live with it, assuming it's high enough).

I don't know, I'm certainly what most would consider a power user, and I have no major complaints. By contrast, Verizon are a bunch of bitches AFAIC... they're selling something that is borderline bogus anyway (so what if I have fiber to my house... what difference does that make when I'm hitting bottlenecks after I get past their gateway anyway?), they make a mess of neighborhoods (have you actually seen the aftermath of a Verizon fiber run? *NOT* pretty) I just don't know what all the Comcast hate is all about. They may not be Mother Teresa, maybe not be perfection incarnate, but what's the big problem exactly, and where's the *clearly* better alternative?

Are speed tests accurate?

[Futurepower(R)]

Quote: "OK why are folks just plain stupid."

Better question: "Why are folks just plain abusive?" Lots of Slashdot readers seem to think that, if they know something someone else doesn't, the other person is stupid. So maybe an even better question is, "Why are some people lacking in social skills?" Social ability can be learned; teach yourself.

"They have built out the back end to support high speed bidirectional traffic and this can be seen by the lack of complaints by users on sites such as dslreports.com and others."

Don't all internet providers test for speed measuring tools and make sure they give them good bandwidth?

--
Remarkable Occurrences Involving the Bush Family

Premature

[Orig_Club_Soda]

I dont know about else where, but here in CA Comcast has a monopoly on the wiring. Until another company can access either the cable or the phone lines Comcast isnt going anywhere. This the specific reason they can rape us with high prices. Satellite is an option, but the transmission has weather interference and limited coverage areas.

Additionally, prices for cable and DSL are going up, not down. Wireless cards are almost twice as much.

Great Service - Where Do I Sign Up?

[nick_davison]

Verizon's FiOS (fiber optic service), which delivers speeds up to 50 Mbps download and 10 Mbps upload speeds. From Verizon's own http://www22.verizon.com/content/consumerfios/packages+and+prices/packages+and+prices.htm

5Mbps/2Mbps - $39.99/month
15Mbps/2 Mbps - $49.99/month
15Mbps/15Mbps - $64.99/month
30Mbps/15Mbps - $139.95/month

If you can't actually buy a service and what you can buy is half that speed and three to four times the cost of cable internet, is it really realistic to compare it?

In other news, theoretically, Ma Bell will extend the internet backbone straight to your house, building a complete server room for you. It costs tens of millions and is in no way generally available. OH MY GOD! VERIZON FIOS TO GO THE WAY OF THE DINOSAUR!!11!!1!!

overpriced, poor service = no competition

[sr8outtalotech]

I started out with the old @Home service which was 10mbps/10mbps. Then TCI took over, then ATTBI took over and finally Comcast took over. I now pay $20 more for ~4mbps/~350kpbs. The last time I called Comcast to complain was when there DNS servers on my segment were down for over 8 hours. They took the easy way out and said because I was using Linux they couldn't offer any support.

What makes it even better is that Comcast disables SNMP on cable modems so you can't even monitor the crappy service. Then there's the whole P2P mess. When Ubuntu 7.10 came out I downloaded it via a torrent and even with 30 peers and a bunch of seeders I was getting 30kpbs. I eventually had to download the ISO via HTTP.

I'm 25,000 loop feet from a CO so no DSL and there's a mountain blocking satellite access.

The FCC needs to step up and deal with Comcast in any market where there is no competition. Oh wait,they already are; DCAS/Cablecards, no more exclusive apartment contracts, 30% market share cap, etc...

Not In Northern New England

[FranTaylor]

Our aging telephony infrastructure is a pain in the ass to Verizon, so they are pulling some crazy crap to totally destroy it, selling our vital infrastructure to debt-ridden yahoos who have no idea how to string wires in the cold and snow. We will be lucky if we even have dial-up service left by the time they are done screwing with us.

Re:That's odd... I feel that way about Verizon!

[N3Bruce]

That's the way I feel about Verizon. Yeah, I'm not particularly happy with Comcast's selection on basic cable that costs me over $100/month with internet, but at least it works decently. I'm in a semi-rural area just about 20 miles from Baltimore, and Verizon's land-line service is a joke! Most calls to other suburbs of Baltimore are long-distance, unless you sign up for one of their bundles, get a plan, or a Baltimore line. Anyway you cut it, it will cost $70/month, more or less just for usable phone service. As far as line quality is concerned, on a good day the line was good for 31.2 kbps when I first got online 12 years ago but it had deteriorated to 24 kbps when it worked at all before I finally was able to give up on dial-up. Often it is so bad it is unusable even for voice communications. The trunks are probably the ones originally installed back in the 1950's, and the ravages of time and repeated lightning strikes along the line render it waterlogged whenever it rains. Except for a couple of small sections of line, I haven't seen them do any upgrades of their lines or equipment along this 3 mile stretch of road in the 15 years I have lived in this area.

Verizon's strategy for dealing with this when you call for service seems to be to schedule an appointment time during the workday at about a week out, which allows time for the line to dry out. Its real tough to navigate their voice menu system when your phone barely works in order to actually schedule an appointment. When the tech arrives he says the line is OK, it must be my wiring inside the house. After repeated attempts, I did manage to get them to swap to a "spare pair" that is just as bad as the original one. After 5 or 6 tries, I gave up and my neighbor and I got together to convince Comcast to run a line down our lane.

We don't even have DSL available in the area, I guess we are at the bottom of the list for FIOS as well. I guess they'll wire the townhouses, apartment complexes, and McMansions owned by their executives first I guess. I told them to email me when FIOS is available, but I'm not holding my breath, they promised us DSL in a year or so 7 years ago. First of the year the land-line gets cut, most people call me on my cell phone anyway.

better, but far from perfect

[smoghat]

A bunch of observations from someone who actually HAS had both services in the last year. Fios feels nice and solid. It's much more like a good line at a university or major corporation than a consumer line. Still, it goes down. Last week, I got nerfed three times in WoW by the line going down. Does it happen often? No, about once every 2 months, but it does happen. Fios feels more symmetrical. I have the typical consumer package and even so I get 15/3 in real-life via dslreports. That's pretty darn good even if it should be 20/5. Work is a small shop in Manhattan and has a shit-ass business DSL line, so if I need to upload something big, I do it from here. That said, it's a simple matter of stringing fiber from the poles in the boonies where I live but much harder to wire under the streets and up wire chases in the city, so my friends (as well as the shop I work at) will not be getting fiber anytime soon. If I ran a small Web shop or was a programmer out on my own and needed the net, I'd be doing it outside the city. Reverse commuting anyone? But Fios has its issues. Some of these are growing pains. They have trouble competing with Comcast on cable. Comcast has On Demand HD, Verizon does not. Verizon's On Demand often fails to start up properly and needs three or four goes before it works. Comcast's works better. Research shows that this is common. Otherwise, the packages are damn near identical. Purportedly more HD On Demand is coming next year. I won't hold my breath. Verizon customer services sucks, even worse than Comcast. It takes forever to get tech support (20-40 minutes). That sucks. Not like this is that different from Comcast, but even with that nice fiber, port 80 is blocked. No home Web servers for you. Is it better? Yes. Is it perfect? Oh God, no.

lousy routers

[smoghat]

Regarding (relative) symmettry. Since port 80 is blocked, you already can't run a Web server but the lousy routers that Verizon gives out (which are necessary if you want On Demand TV...) have small NAT tables. That means that if you're on a torrent, you're going to experience problems. I don't know enough to explain precisely how this works (I THINK that what happens is that errors from the torrents fill up the NAT tables, causing trouble for the lame box), but if I leave a torrent open, my wife's vonage connection is usually shite.

Comcast ads

[Hooptyjr]

Whenever you have cable provided by Comcast, you get slapped in the face hard with their ads. THEY'RE TELLING ME TO USE THEIR SERVICE OVER AND OVER WHEN I ALREADY AM!

Hooray for Slashvertisements!

[Money for Nothin']

Of course, what the slashvertiser-of-the-day didn't tell you is that FiOS isn't available in some major markets -- like, oh, Chicago and its surrounding suburbs (even the very wealthy ones).

Too bad. I'd love to stop giving Ma Be^H^H^H^H^H Comcast my money...

Small Problem with Logic & Analysis

[ancarett]

Comcast /= all cable internet service
Verizon /= all fibre optic service

Until you can understand that a one-off comparison of apples and oranges (the technical promise of Verizon's very small roll-out versus the customer service dissatisfaction with a major broadband offering out of Comcast) doesn't equate to a rigorous comparison of the two technologies OR the overall future of the two companies in their broadband offerings?

*yawn*

Doesn't Matter To Me

[Orodemniades]

I live in rural America, the only access I can get at all is through dialup. Oh, no, if I really want to, I can pay either $60 or $80 a month for up to 1.5M of wireless...but seeing as I've got to eat and put gas in my car, that's not really going to happen anytime this century.

A tale of two cable companies

[kilodelta]

Interestingly Cox has all of Rhode Island while Comcast seems to be dominant in Massachusetts. My friend has Comcast, I have Cox.

He was telling me that Comcast topedoes VPN connections to business entities that originate from residential accounts after four minutes of uptime. Cox does no such thing.

And the arrival of FIOS in RI forced Cox to upgrade their network and they now offer 20/2 net service. That's what I'm using now and its pretty good. Now if only I could find a wireless access point that didn't suck.

Of course I'll never go back into the arms of Verizon. I have such a blind hatred of that company it isn't funny.

This is ridiculous

[shiftless]

FiOS? And just where is this service available? Downtown in large cities? What about the 100+ million people who live in smaller areas? Wake me up when cable (cable *TV* would be a good start) or DSL becomes available at my home in rural Alabama, let alone fiber.

Gimme a break. Look at coverage areas

[Chas]

Ooh! FIOS! WHEE! FIOS!

Can I get FIOS?

Due to regulations, business agreements, etc, the answer is FUCK NO.

FIOS, while probably great, just does NOT have the availability that Comcast's cable internet does.

Comcast coverage in my area is pretty much UNIVERSAL now.

Maybe, some day, FIOS will be a real option for more people.

But until it's actually available in the same way cable internet is, the dinosaur ain't dead yet...

The World?

[ajpalm]

You do know there is more to the world that just USA! I love it when I see comments this like, biggest cable company in the world.... yeah right.

Unlikely and other confusions

[Daveberstein]

Dave Burstein here, not anonymous coward.

Lots wrong with Comcast, but their Internet service will generally be as fast as any of the telcos except Verizon. Most of the U.S. has a slow future.

Comcast's DOCSIS 3.0 in 2008 probably will offer 20-50 megabits downstream and no improvement on the upstream. It's a 120 or 160 megabit shared downstream. This is already deploying heavily in Japan, J:COM, some in Canada (Videotron), UK, France, and Holland. The only chips shipping (TI) are limited to 120 or 160 shared downstream and do nothing for the upstream. Comcast CEO Brian Roberts announced they will offer it to 4 or 5M of their 22M homes. The assumption is Comcast will use it defensively against FIOS and take a long time (years) to bring it to the rest of the country. Other U.S. cablecos seem even further behind.

        The full 3.0 is not available for a while (more likely 2009 than 2008 for any volume). Full 3.0 is a minimum of 160 (shared) downstream and 120 (shared) upstream. Given typical usage patterns, most customers will get 20-50 megabits most of the time. The specification goes up to a shared gigabit, but I don't believe anyone is close to offering that as a product.

        FIOS (or DSL) does not share the local loop, so there's no bottleneck between your home and the ONU (DSLAM) control box. Behind the ONU is shared fiber to the local office and from there to the Internet peering point. It is absolutely possible for that shared connection to become congested, and it was a common problem in poorly designed DSL networks. FIOS backhaul has been built pretty robustly, so as far as I can tell they have close to zero congestion problems, and customers almost always get their promised speed if the other side of the Internet connection can keep up.

        Unfortunately, FIOS is currently only available to about 8 million homes, and Verizon has indicated they will top out at 20M or so in 5 years. The remaining 85M U.S. homes will have a second rate Internet unless and until the high end of DOCSIS 3.0 rolls out widely. (?2012-2015). AT&T and Qwest are planning for 1 meg up and 20 or so down, with most of the downstream used for their IPTV. They call it "Fiber to the node" but it's really DSL with a press release.

        Conclusion: 60-80% of the U.S, will have a second rate Internet for years. I'd love for an uprising that tells Kevin Martin, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Randall Stephenson and the pthers powers that be the U.S. Internet should match world standards. Houston and San Diego should not have slower connections than Paris, Berlin, Geneva, Amsterdam, Tokyo, Boston and New York.

Dave Burstein Editor DSL Prime.

This is stupid.

[briancnorton]

No way I'm defending Comcast (I have COX, just as bad) but articles like this are the exact same kind of asinine propajournalism as "Windows is basically dead" "internet explorer is not as good as FF" and so on and so on

Re:Stuck with the dinosaur?

[nizo]

Actually a few of the software packages I have purchased online can only be downloaded via torrent, as well as software updates. These are typically only downloaded from a select few torrent servers, that as far as I know are only serving up said commercial software. I am planning on gathering a list and sending notes off to the various software companies, so they can express their concerns to Comcast as well.

Let's not forget

[aweiland]

Fios TV has a more complete channel line up for less money. Plus, you get channels as part of the basic package that you either have to pay for on Comcast (ie NFL Network) or just plain don't get. Now if my apartment complex would just get Verizon in here to install equipment I'd be a very happy person.

Practical Problems

[artgeeq]

FIOS does not go everywhere. In Washington, DC, Verizon does not support FIOS. Comcast here is awful from a television perspective, with lots of "server errors", hanging, and extended pauses. I have gotten a better picture by watching a television show off the Internet, using DSL, ironically.

We all hate Comcast - But now we don't need them

[TrekCycling]

We all hate Comcast. I've been trying to figure out how to get disentangled from them for years. But I want the Internet, I like a little TV here and there and I don't want to pay for a phone line I don't need to get DSL. My household is on FIOS now and here is the sequence of events.

Started watching TV shows on DVD. Watched the first season of 5 or 6 shows this way.

Watched the same shows on broadcast and realized we kind of liked watching them on DVD more.

Purchased an HDTV, decided to try a nice, powered antenna. Found out the HD signal with the antenna looked great.

Went to cancel Comcast and Comcast charged us $12 to downgrade our Internet service, something we were forced to do because we no longer had TV with them. And they raised our rates as well. Told the girl at the counter that we were going to go home and look at alternatives. She shrugged her shoulders.

Went home and found out that we could get FIOS at the same speeds for roughly $25 less per month overall plus 1 month free plus a $20 Target gift card (what, no puppy thrown in?).

Walked in this weekend and canceled Comcast.

My point in running down the story is that I'm sure I won't be the first or the last person for whom this is the pattern. Quitting cable is becoming much easier with downloadable TV (just speaking legally through avenues the networks have come up with) and DVDs. If I really have a sporting event I have to watch I'll just go to a sports bar and make an event out of it. So far we don't miss it. We especially don't miss not having the 24-hour news networks.

Re:A tale of two cable companies VPN STORY

[Nom du Keyboard]

He was telling me that Comcast topedoes VPN connections to business entities that originate from residential accounts after four minutes of uptime. Cox does no such thing.

Several years ago Comcast prohibited VPN usage from home accounts. There was no good reason for it. VPN is just data -- 1's and 0's -- like anything else, but they wanted to force you to a higher (read more expensive and unnecessary) business plan. That was dropped at least a couple years back. Your friend should check the current ToS applicable to his account, and if that prohibition isn't in there, call up and give then hell about it.

Re:A tale of two cable companies VPN STORY

[kilodelta]

Interesting that you should mention the TOS. The TOS he read makes no mention of VPN at all but when he talks to Comcast support they in essence tell him to upgrade to a business package, or use another provider.

It'll be a few years before FIOS makes it to his area, though at&t Uverse service may get there before that. Uverse essentially moves the DSLAM from the central office to the neighborhood and then they use a HDSL connection to the subscriber.

Verizon is Doing Bandwidth Cap too

[murnshaw]

I'm not on FioS, but I am currently on Verizon's $18 plan and they do cap bandwidth on it. Every month after a certain threshold my connection goes to shit. I do a lot of World of Warcraft and it tends to be bandwidth intensive. I didn't know what it was at first, so I troubleshooted the connection with Blizzard and with Verizon and both sides insist it's fine on their end. But then I read an article researching the issue and noticed someone else who had connection problems and Verizon admitted to slowing his connection down because he was using too much of the bandwidth. It struck me as making a lot of sense, because both times before, when I had bad latency issues, I'd stop playing for a month. When I get back the connection would be fine again. This has happened on and off since TBC was released in February. I spent last night going through their terms and conditions as well as their acceptable use clause and couldn't find anything about this. I've read the EFF article on how to detect packet tampering but I'm not interested in stripping my computer naked to the world wide web just to confirm what I'm 99% sure to be true. Instead, I called up Time Warner today and will switch to cable. Them's the breaks.

ditto

[DRAGONWEEZEL]

I'd even have D Slow if I could. I just need low latency. Comcast wants damn near $50 a month for internet, anything else requires that i install a phone line(+$10 to any phone based service), which I don't need because I use Cell phones.

effed either way 8'(

Not all Cable is Coax!

[EricTheO]

I live in SSF, CA and some years ago, RCN.com installed a new cable network, they used Fiber Optic cable to get within 800 feet of any home in the network then used a "Node" to translate and carry the signal via Coaxial Cable to homes. It would be no great leap to replace those current "Nodes" with all optical ones and run Fiber to homes. RCN put in an "Overbuilt" fiber system so there is overhead for data useage increases and speed inprovments. RCN in our area was recently aquired by Astound.net and a tech hinted that in the future they may just do the fiber upgrade. It wouldn't even be a last mile cost, it would be far cheaper.