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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.'"
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.
I'm also not sure a return to the time when the company that runs the physical layer has no reason to upgrade to allow more bandwidth is in our best interest.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
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...
Are you sure they are upgrading bandwidth now, for _our_ best interests?
At least if there is competition the old monopoly will have to come up with some reason to choose them over the next guy.
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
The point of having a different company run the physical layer is that anyone can build a new line, and rent it out to any ISP at a fair rate. As it is, we have mutually exclusive lines, owned by only one or two companies in most towns. So they're happy to add more bandwidth, but they don't have to because you don't have the option of using someone else's cable. The value behind this is that it doesn't matter who runs the physical layer, anyone can build new lines and sell them to multiple providers. As it is, if you build a new line, you can only sell to the company that runs the physical layer (which is also the company that runs the upper layer.)
I'm also not sure a return to the time when the company that runs the physical layer has no reason to upgrade to allow more bandwidth is in our best interest.
'return to'? As far as I can tell, in most places the company running the physical layer already has no incentive to upgrade since he faces no competition. Generally speaking I'm all for a free market, but in cases where the entry costs are so high as to make new entry impractical free market capitalism breaks down, and the government needs to intervene. About the least intrusive way the government can intervene here is to make sure the entry costs to competitors are low, and it seems to be working pretty well everywhere they've tried it.
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"
Americans simply don't understand how bad they have it. Right now, I pay $22 per month for 2MB DSL in Jamaica. I can get 16MB Cable for $30 but decided I need the extra bandwidth less than I need the $8. Either way, it's free modem and 3 month or shorter initial contract. This is in Jamaica, a "3rd World country".
Meanwhile I am shopping for internet in Southern NJ and haven't been able to find anything close to that price range. Sure I can get 30MB access for $65, but that's like buying a 40 seat bus to carry your family of 4. More than you need is great if you don't have to pay for the extra.
And for those who are wondering why an old Slashdoter would ever think he doesn't need more than 2MB. I work at an ISP, I have a pretty good idea about internet usage patterns and I know that my own pattern is such that I stop using the extra speed once I get past 768K. There was a time when I needed more. Not now.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
Yet during the time when we did do that, they were upgrading, consumers were getting more options and more services, and costs were competitive. Since they closed out that requirement, we've receded back to the point where we're only able to get the service the telco chooses to offer, and they have absolutely no incentive to upgrade because there's no reason to.
mod +1 insightful and correct: infrastructure is defined as the basis for an economy and society. It is not in public interest to run more than one gas line, water supply line, or sewer line. It is impossible to run separate highways -- and outsourcing mgmt of same is proving as ridiculous as govt mgmt -- so why then do we allow the pretense of the last mile?
The problem is a historical outsourcing of this infrastructure component to a regulated monopoly (AT&T). NYC circa 1911 had hundreds of indie wires connecting buildings; granting a monopoly to AT&T with open-access covenants solved this and cleaned up the problem. Today, the problem is largely solved but the divorce of managing the infrastructure versus providing services on it did not take place. In other words, break up Verizon and SBC and every other last-mile provider, separating the physical transport from the value-added services.
Just think of it this way: Verizon or some other company contracts with a muni or county to provide last-mile service. Taxes pay for the connectivity, the wires, the fiber, what have you. Verizon provides -- and only provides -- a central office space with connections to the local infrastructure. Your services are provided by people leasing space in the CO and interconnecting. Last mile is provided by your town or county. Services are provided by whoever can lease a spot on the floor and cover operating costs.
I mean, we don't run Main Street any differently, do we?
-BA
Not to mention that the single company running the physical layer is already GROSSLY OVERSELLING the existing bandwidth. How can they sell what they have already OVERSOLD.
My addiction: Arguing with idiots. AKA Slashdot!
Government intervention CAN be A reason free market capitalism SOMETIMES broken down. Ever tried to compete against Microsoft in the free market? Yep, that knife in your back hurts, doesn't it. Government regulation is what helps keeps bad pharmaceuticals off the "free market". Now, we could let the market decide, after awhile...when enough people have died...the company pushing the bad drugs gets no customers. This is a case of the free market not putting a value on human life that most of us, at those of us who aren't free market nutjobs, would like it to. There are many other examples.
The "free" in free market refers to freedom of entry and exit, it doesn't necessarily refer to freedom from government regulation. Government regulation is necessary because of monopolies although lately it seems to have fallen off the job. The reason the economy went over the cliff wasn't because of regulation, it was pure capitalistic greed. More regulation is necessary or else we wind up again in the situation where companies are too big to be allowed to fail. Here again, the free market is not valuing competition the way we need it to.
I literally wept in my cornflakes thinking about the plight of these poor downtrodden telco/cable companies you describe.
You are too stuck in the self destructive monopoly run mindset to understand what I just said. No, the government should NOT provide data services. the government should provide a pipe to each home. I mean a real honest to goodness cylinder. When I say like your sewer line, I mean LIKE YOUR SEWER LINE. A pipe about the same size would be just fine to allow several dozen different companies pull cables into your home. Local governments know how to run pipes to homes. They do not know how to run data lines to homes. A pipe is a low tech device that would not need to be changed for at least a hundred years. Data lines are high tech, and need to be upgraded regularly.
Again, the word "PIPE" is being used literally as a in the same kind of pipe that the city runs water and sewer through. "PIPE" in this context is NOT a euphemism for a data cable.
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