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FCC Considers Opening Up US Broadband Access
An anonymous reader writes On October 14, the FCC issued a call for public comments on a study (PDF) done by Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society about whether the US should require the telephone and cable companies to open their networks to competitors so that independent ISPs could begin offering broadband, much in the way it was done back in the days of dialup access. The study found that open-access in virtually every other country 'is playing a central role in current planning exercises throughout the highest performing countries,' noting: 'While Congress adopted various open access provisions in the almost unanimously-approved Telecommunications Act of 1996, the FCC decided to abandon this mode of regulation for broadband in a series of decisions in 2001 and 2002. Open access has been largely treated as a closed issue in US policy debates ever since. We find that in countries where an engaged regulator enforced open access obligations, competitors that entered using these open access facilities provided an important catalyst for the development of robust competition which, in most cases, contributed to strong broadband performance across a range of metrics.'"
I'm not sure that a charge-by-minute scenario for high-speed is really in my best interest.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
It is bad enough that we pay astronomical amounts just for internet access. This will be a great opportunity for competition, and an overall better product.
The government has say in certain things like trash collection for efficiency. Internet access has become such a commodity in the modern world that allowing competition can only broaden our capabilities. Oh, and knock some off my bill every month!
One question: who do the new warrants go to for interceptions? The provider or the infrastructure provider?
Something witty.
This is a practice Canada currently uses. And we are ditching it. Estimates are that prices will almost double and dozens of companies will go broke as a bell monopoly forms and dominates the ISP market in Canada. Its like doomsday.
I think it is safe to say that if the US implements it you will see lots of competition and halving of prices if this is implemented in the US. The idea that all countries don't do this is ridiculous. And the only people it hurts are entrenched corrupt monopolists.
Which is why it probably won't happen.
a-compelling-study-on-a-slow-moving-possible-future-outbreak-of-common-sense
I've got to say that--for all the many, many other ways the Obama administration has disappointed me and failed to delivery--the recent changes at the FCC and it's new more pro-consumer bent has truly pleasantly surprised me. Between pro-consumer moves like this, their slap down of Apple/AT&T, and their support of net neutrality, they're taking a remarkably progressive (and sorely needed) approach to communications issues. It's too bad the telecommunications giants will probably just bring in their many whores in Congress to pass laws to override the FCC in the end.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Can they do this with cell phone networks too? Not only to stop the Verizon "Can you hear me now", but I imagine that would focus on better phones rather than commercials about a fscking map.
Just wonderin'
~Mekkah
I remember when you could get DSL from various competitive providers over the same bare copper wires, which the Bells were required to share access to. ("Remembering" this isn't hard, since it only requires going back to 2000 or so, before the Bush administration gutted the rules and gave Verizon its monopoly back.) It wasn't exactly "balkanization," nor is that an honest description of the situation in many other countries where line-sharing rules exist.
Frankly, that sounds like telco FUD. There's no advantage, to the customer, of having only one choice of ISP per wire coming into their house. The only one who benefits from this are the cable and telcos, because it effectively means that in order to compete with them, you need to independently solve the last-mile problem. It makes the startup costs of being an ISP immense, thus eliminating competition.
Back when the line-sharing rules were abolished, the telco apologists said that ending line-sharing would result in more physical last-mile options. Instead of just cable coax and Bell copper, we'd have IP over water mains, gas lines, sewer pipes, wireless mesh networks, etc. Of course, it's now 2009, we've had no mandatory line-sharing for the better part of 10 years, and none of those alternatives have materialized. Because, as it turns out, running the last mile is really, really hard. And we can look at other countries, ones who didn't happily take the collective dick of the phone companies in their mouth, and see that shared infrastructure seems to work better, on the whole.
It's not a choice between monopoly and balkanization, it's a choice between having four or five companies try -- and most of them fail -- to provide paltry broadband service to your house, duplicating effort with each other all the way, versus having one or two good, high-speed links to your house and then having those same four or five companies compete to provide transit over that shared infrastructure.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Funny story. When I first got DSL, back in 1999 or 2000, I (a) really wanted to stick with my cool existing dialup ISP, and (b) really wanted a static IP. My landline provider, Verizon, was happy to sell me DSL for $49/mo, but with dynamic IP and none of the awesomeness my current ISP provided (static IP, shell access to the email/Web host, etc, etc). Fortunately, thanks to the laws then in place, my ISP was able to offer DSL access over my Verizon line -- still giving me static IP, and letting me keep my existing accounts, all at the same $49/mo.
UNfortunately, Verizon back-charged my ISP something like $32.50/mo. for DSL access, so my ISP was suddenly getting $17.50/mo from me for an always-on DSL line's worth of traffic, where before they'd been getting $25/mo for a most-of-the-time-on dial-up connection's worth of traffic. They got to keep a faithful customer, so yay, but they lost revenue and increased expenses. I'm not sure how many others followed in my footsteps, or how much of a difference it made to the company, but they finally folded up and stole away in the wake of an ice-storm in 2002.
So, open access sounds like a great thing for consumers -- assuming the entrenched monopolists/duopolists can't find a way to make it economically untenable, while still complying with the letter of the law. Of course, the only way that could happen is if the telcos and cablecos could somehow exert influence over the content of said law. Good thing that never happens.
Wait... Are they trying to say ... that competition is ... good? What a novel idea! Why didn't someone think of that sooner!
sigh...
Open access already is required by law, but the FCC isn't enforcing it. Why? Well, getting past the "It's all Bush's fault" crowd, the law was so poorly written that it was practically unenforceable. The ILECs "opened" their lines to competitors, and then used paperwork, "reasonable" delays, and low level sabotage to ensure that their competitors didn't keep the clients they could get.
The problem isn't the FCC; the problem is a Congress that writes laws consist of
1) broad but vague edicts that are left to the Executive branch to complete ("Stimulus" Plan), and
2) "Disease of the Week" laws that are extremely narrow in response to whatever is in the news right now (banning ANY lead in childrens' items, no matter the exposure risk).
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
OK, who are you going to believe: Harvard, Adam Smith, and a bunch of empirical evidence, or the oligopolists who have monopoly rents to defend? Competition never did anything good for anyone who was in charge of an existing monopoly. Competition may be one of the fundamental tenets of free market capitalism, and may be a principle requirement for maximization of both GDP and a society's ability to satisfy wants, but it simply does not guarantee those who have attained wealth and power that they will be able to continue their acquisition of it without trying very hard.
Ask yourself what is really important here: The principles of economics which are supposed to be the bedrock of our superpower status, or the rights of a few CEOs to do a poor job and charge whatever they want?
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
Let me remind everyone of how things were back in the golden age of the internet.
You had dozens of ISPs to choose from. In a major city, perhaps hundreds. You could instruct your computer to connect to any one of those ISPs, regardless of who was your local telephone company. If you didn't like your ISP, then you could switch to another one that same day. No installers, no custom modems rented from the phone company or ISP. Just a standard device.
Back then, we never worried about network neutrality, or traffic filtering, or censorship. There were no sites like ESPN that could only be accessed by certain ISPs. Internet was really really really cheap ($9.99) and "unlimited" really was unlimited.
The reason things changed is because when we used dial-up over telephones, phone companies were legally required to be neutral carriers. When we switched to broadband that was no longer the case. Basically, the phone companies found a legal loophole that killed competition. It has taken congress and the FCC 10 years to understand this. Hopefully they won't get lobbied by the new oligarchy and kill this proposal to fix things.
Verizon installed a fiber node this past year in my neighborhood, yet I cannot get FiOS because "it's not done".
To make matters worse, I cannot use my preferred ISP (Speakeasy) because of the infrastructure hurdle mentioned above.
In my mind, this is anti-competitive behavior by a monopoly (Verizon, obviously) to prevent me from choosing a different ISP. I really wish I could because Verizon's service and reliability is absolutely horrible.
One point of irony in all of this is that when the Verizon tech tested the copper line, the automated voice is still "Welcome to Bell Atlantic", the PREVIOUS established monopoly. (and it was James Earl Jones' voice no less.)
As Nobel Laureate Dr. Paul Krugman noted today in his column, competition is always a good thing.
I'm a 2000 man.
So wait, what you're saying is that lines which were built with huge amounts of public money, by companies with a publicly mandated monopoly should be... open? to the public?
This is gonna blow my mind to chunks to the milky way.
What we (the people) should do is tell comcast and ted turner to go suck a fat one, take back the lines that we paid for, and turn them over to co-ops who actually want to give us better service at a lower price.
Ze Atomic Device! It iz Ztolen!
Norway, Finland, Sweden & Denmark are all among the top nations in the world, for both cell phone & broadband coverage, and among the lowest prices in the world for cell phone use.
A key part of bringing this about here in Norway has been that the physical access layer ("last mile copper"/gsm cells) has to be available to competitors, with government-controlled rates.
I.e. when I got ADSL about 8 years ago, I got it from NextGenTel, a competitor to Telenor who owns my regular phone circuit.
On the GSM side we have two physical operators (Telenor and Netcom), both my kids get their cell phone service from one of many virtual operators (Tele2) which uses the Netcom infrastructure. Their monthly bills are usually so low that the operator will wait 3 months between each bill to reduce billing overhead. (I'm paying less than $10/month for each of them.)
Tele2 btw used to be based on the Telenor network, they got an even better deal (i.e. probably lower than government-mandated rates) from Netcom so overnight they simply moved everything across. My kids had to reset their phones to reconnect to the new set of towers, everything else just worked.
Terje
"almost all programming can be viewed as an exercise in caching"
I've noticed many cases where the physical line owned by the local provider is capable of MUCH MORE bandwidth than they're willing to sell. They simply refuse to sell you the faster connection.
AT&T is a good example. With ADSL2 my current pair is rated at being able to go up to nearly 20 megabits down and 2 megabits up. Yet they will only sell me 6 megabits down and HALF a megabit up.
Allowing competition in this area would rock; it wouldn't be long before another provider offers the higher speeds on AT&T's own lines, and then AT&T would have to up their own offerings as well in order to not look like fools.
So I see this as going either way. More competition is usually a good thing in the end.
I'm not sure how it is for the rest of you, but 15 years ago I had about 3 companies (Covad, Birch, AT&T, etc) that I could choose from to get a 1.5M SDSL line for roughly $60/month. Fast forward to today and I have a 768K for $60. Upgrade options? Sure I got em, I can get a 1M ADSL for $79 or a 1.5M fiber line with forced TV and Phone for over a $100. It's pathetic that over a 15 year period, not only do I lose speed, but I also have to pay more for essentially the same service. I hear about FiOS, but it's not offered where I'm at. I have one option and that's AT&T.
I remember when the government removed the requirement that the telco's offer market rates to competitors and immediately I knew that this was a bad thing. I'm sure that the telco's cried about increased bandwidth, greases the right pockets, etc. But what it really boils down to is greed. So over a 15 year period, they CHOOSE not to upgrade the backbone, but instead they choose to put more restrictions on the customers.
I have no sympathy for them whatsoever. I hope the government bitch slaps them for what they have done. I keep hearing that the telco's received around $300 Billion to improve the system, but I don't see it. Where did that money go? How come this question isn't being persued. If AT&T, Verizon or whoever, starts bitching about being forced to offer this, then I hope the FCC opens up a probe into where this money went and start demanding that they pay it back.
The real Sig captains the Northwestern. This one captains
I remember all too well the days of multiple DSL providers sharing Bell's copper wiring.... You had to deal with retaliation by Bell workers who didn't like the other providers encroaching on what they saw as "their territory". Your DSL order via Covad or Nothpoint, for example, would often have big delays before installation was complete, compared to the same type of order direct from your local Bell company. Issues with errors on the circuit were rampant, too - especially when a Bell worker would do things like stealing the "tested good" copper pairs in a box for Bell service, leaving the "questionable" ones for the people ordering the 3rd. party DSL services.
Even when things proceeded normally with a new installation, there was always the extra hassle of knowing your ISP was just a "middle man" in the equation. Every time you reported an outage or issue to them, they'd have to turn around and open a trouble ticket with Bell, and work things through with them before reporting any progress back to you.
I'm not saying opening up the lines to competition is a bad thing ... but there are problems inherent with doing so, when the party owning the physical connections doesn't get as much financial incentive to maintain the circuits when a 3rd. party is running THEIR data over them.
Bullshit. I wasn't talking about the Brand X case, where the FCC held the position that cable ISP's were not telecommunications providers. In fact, the Brand X case only arose BECAUSE the 96 law was so effed up.
The point of the 95 act was to get ILECs (the Baby Bells) to open up their lines on a "reasonable and non-discriminatory" basis. But they let the ILECs decide what that meant. So, Verizon could price access so that competitors were at a disadvantage. The FCC tried to challenge that and lost in court. But, to make matters worse, the ILEC's engaged in all sorts of skullduggery to kill off the companies that WERE managing to compete, and the FCC did jack shit to stop them. Clinton's FCC, btw.
So, the cable companies stepped into competitive vacuum that the FCC's neglect had created. The case you cite was a suit by Brand X to treat the cable lines in the same manner as phone lines. Do I agree with the position the FCC took on it? Not really, but it was consistent with that of the previous administration's. And the case was 6-3 - hardly a squeeker. I read the opinions, and the concurrences, and the majority opinion is tortured precisely BECAUSE the underlying law wasn't clear enough. And it's not like Bush's FCC was any great friend to the cable companies in general, but how reasonable is it to force the cable companies to open up their lines when the telcos got a free ride?
Clinton's administration did a LOT of damage to the telecommunications system in the US that we are still dealing with.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
It's actually very easy to convey the idea you are trying to convey, if your name happens to be Mark Twain. You forgot an important caveat in your philosophy, People only do what brings them satisfaction in the moment. They may hate themselves later. They may, in that moment, decide never to do it again. But the person we will be even a minute in the future is not this person right now, present-self can't really speak for that person in the future. Future-self may have reasons for wanting to do what present-self said he will, but they are his reasons. Twain's What is Man? explains this all in about 20 pages.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton