Still Little To Do About a Bad ISP

theY4Kman writes "The Washington Post reinforces the grim situation on Net Neutrality and limited ISP choices faced by Americans: 'The FCC's research shows that 78 percent of American households have access to only two land-based broadband providers and that 13 percent have one. Don't expect that to improve. Many competing DSL services have left the market, spurred by the end of line-sharing in 2005 and other corporate consolidations. A few months ago, for instance, AT&T elected to close its WorldNet DSL service. Meanwhile, technologies that were once promoted as alternatives to phone and cable-based services have flopped. City-wide WiFi access ... turned out to be a business bust. The power-line broadband that then-FCC Chairman Michael Powell lauded as having "great promise" in 2004 fared no better: Last week, Manassas voted to unplug its pioneering service. ... We have a situation full of lawyerly jargon, with risks that can't be dramatized by putting a sick kid on a stage. I hope you like your Internet provider, because you may be stuck with it for a while.'"

Comments

Of course.

[lalena]

Given that "data" must be transmitted over the same mediums used by existing monopolies for decades (cable, phone, fiber, satellite), how could anyone expect anything different. I'm thankful I have at least 2 choices. It took a long time for me to have 2 choices for phone or TV.

Re:Of course.

[Anonymous Coward]

What this country needs (will never happen) is for FttH from a municipal owned central office. Your local town owns the fiber from your dwelling to the central office. Then the municipality allows "vendors" into the CO to provide service to its residents over said fiber. Voice, Video, Data all runs over this fiber and "vendors" get to compete house to house for your money. You then pay a small fiber fee each month for the municipality to maintain the fiber and the CO, like a water bill. No more coax, no more copper.

Separate the wire carrier from the content provider.

Of course

[TheSpoom]

All of the shutdowns, buyouts, prohibitive laws, monopoly over the lines, and other occurrences that killed competitors had nothing at all to do with the incumbent providers...

Regulation would fix this. The cost of entry into the broadband market is so prohibitively high that only the largest companies (e.g. Google) can even consider laying down a new broadband access grid. Line sharing is supposed to allow for open competition. But as usual, the ability of companies to donate millions of dollars, through various means, to campaign committees means our representatives listen to them, not us, and not common sense when their lobbyists put forward an anticompetitive bill.

Fix Washington, fix this. Like just about everything else.

Re:Of course

[drinkypoo]

How quickly we forget. Regulation created this mess; I highly doubt that regulation will be able fix this mess.

Bad, incompetent, non-oversighted, half-assed regulation which was never intended to serve the customer created this mess. But it's impossible for these businesses to exist in the absence of regulation, so clearly some form of regulation is necessary. Since the courts have repeatedly demonstrated a lack of interest in nailing down corporations for their false claims (like "unlimited" internet) it seems as though it is especially necessary. Corporations are granted access to public right-of-way in order to provide these communications services; it seems as though they should provide for our needs in communication. Today that means high-speed internet access, and providing it to every citizen ought to be a priority. Further, permitting competition supports the consumer. Line sharing ought to be mandated once again, and corporations which have used technologies which make it difficult ought to be considered to have shot their own foot.

Re:Of course

[Anonymous Coward]

How quickly we forget. Regulation created this mess

Bad regulation did. Here in the Netherlands we have a lot of regulation, and there are at least a dozen providers I can choose from. 20 MBit downstream connections cost ~20 Euro per month, and some providers offer up to 50 MBit downstream/5 MBit upstream over TV cable.

Re:Of course

[Spad]

Regulation of a market only works if the regulation is free from the influence of those operating in the market; in this case, as with the Banking sector, regulation doesn't solve anything because any corporations with something to lose will simply lobby to shape the regulation to their liking.

Broadband regulation has, on the whole, worked pretty well in Europe - here in the UK, forcing BT into LLU has led to an extremely competitive broadband market and so far, every time BT have looked to take advantage of the situation, OFCOM have smacked them down. If the government hadn't stepped in, we'd be in pretty much the same situation that the US is in; Cable via Virgin Media (where available) or ADSL via BT.

Re:Of course

[shentino]

It's not even confined to the federal level.

In one case, a city tried to implement its own network, and then got sued by the local ISP just long enough for them to beat the city to the punch.

In another case, an ISP threw such a tantrum about competition that it went to the state capital and whined the lawmakers into outlawing municipal networks.

Re:Of course

[drinkypoo]

Sorry, I don't have all the answers. The only thing I know for certain is that complete deregulation is not the answer. It's obvious that communications can't exist in the absence of regulation; the need to run wires and/or to not step on each other's slices of radio spectrum demands some level thereof. The land belongs to the people via the nation. The spectrum, likewise. If the corporations are to be granted their use, then that use must serve the people. My motivation not to tear down the ugly telephone poles is based on two things, their value to me, and society's punishment for damaging them. My motivation not to tear down the radio towers that make RF communications less available to me is that they indeed permit me to use them under terms which are not too onerous to me, and of course, that punishment thing again. So to reiterate, telecommunications interests cannot exist without regulation. Why should this regulation not serve the people? Do you really believe that past failures to intelligently and usefully regulate suggest that we should give up trying? If we do, then we end up without telecommunications, or with customers converted into consumers whose only purpose is to serve corporations, as has already happened with television; consumers are the product, and they are sold to advertisers who are the customers; they bring their custom to the television network, and purchase our eyeballs from them.

Or in short, deregulation is a myth; there are only degrees of regulation. We can argue over the degree, but arguing over the need is meaningless.

Re:Of course

[krull]

Well, as a resident of lovely Boston I can attest that we have the same two poor offerings here (DSL or Cable).

Split Fiber ownership and ISPs!

[Manip]

Perhaps it is time to split these big companies into two operations - ISPs and network operators.

After you have done that you can then mandate that the company sell back bandwidth on its network to its self as well as the competition. So for example let's say MyISP.Net own all of the cable in Texas, that network provider would have to sell bandwidth on its cable back to its self and any third parties that want to offer Internet in Texas for the same price with the same T&Cs.

That way you open up the network in that area to lot's of competition which encourages lower prices and better quality of service. Plus in addition to that you might spawn new companies who only want to built new cable without having to manage an ISP.

Re:What about other services?

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

The difference is all the utilities you mention are highly regulated and in some cases run by the local government. If my local water supplier is delivering poor quality or too low of volume or their prices are outrageous I have two different options. One, I can elect a different mayor and city council who will fix the problem or two I can call the feds who heavily regulate water companies and require certain levels of purity and quality of service as well as pricing. When my electric supplier want so raise their rates, they have to ask the feds and they can't exclude my buying power over their distribution lines from the wind farm down the way instead of from the coal plant owned by the distributor. For that matter if I throw up a windmill they are required by law to pay me for what electricity I add to the grid.

Utility companies in general are often monopolies because of practical limitations to the infrastructure, but they're also traditionally very heavily regulated to keep them from abusing that position and because they are considered necessary services. So far internet access is not considered a necessary service and is not highly regulated at all. Companies aren't required to provide service to everyone in the area like phone companies are and they aren't prevented from leveraging those monopoly or duopoly situations by bundling other services.

No kidding

[Shaltenn]

We had problems with our Optimum Online cable service for 3 months. 3 months. We called them twice a week for 3 months, each month they would say "Your nodes are over-saturated and we are working on it." A tech would come out, look at our lines, say they are fine, and agree that we are in an over-saturated area. For 3 months. We were paying for 30/5 service and getting 1/.5. Finally after 3 months of dealing with this non-existent internet access (you try sharing 1/.5 amongst a house of 8 people) they get it fixed and we call up asking for some sort of credit for 3 months of basically non-working service. Optimum said they could give us a week. A week! A week for 3 months of non-working service. Finally after being on hold for an HOUR they agreed to give us one month and then promptly hung up on us. We would have gone elsewhere if there was a choice, but there really isn't.

The Best Government Money Can Buy Did This

[SwedishChef]

I operated a small ISP for nearly 8 years and was finally driven out of business by my upstream provider (a municipality in the form of a PUD) which illegally subsidized a competitor and illegally created another competitor. This PUD had invited a competitor into the area and created fake "contracts" that covered up a secret agreement to repay the competitor for 110% of its costs to compete with me. The competitor created invoices for "work performed" under the contracts that just happened to cover their costs; plus ten percent. The PUD also sent their own employees to work on the competitor's systems. This was (and is) actually against the state constitution, not just illegal. Unfortunately no state entity was willing to investigate this activity or prosecute the perpetrators and when we tried to sue we discovered that municipalities are protected from pesky problems like anti-trust and racketeering so the suits were dismissed.

Only four of the managers of the PUD were discharged over this and no one went to jail or was even prosecuted despite having substantial written evidence provided by whistle blowers inside the PUD (who released documents before the PUD could act to cover them up).

We sold out for pennies on the dollar of our investment and felt lucky to get even that because by the time we bailed virtually all the other smaller ISPs had also been driven out of business.

Would regulation have helped me? There was (and is) plenty of regulation but there was not even a token attempt to enforce them. We were told, off the record, by a state investigator that the problems were so big that it would have been economically disastrous to the entire state if they regulations were enforced.

This, mind you, in the state (Washington) which has had numerous scandals involving public utility districts; including the infamous Washington Public Power System repudiating $200 million in municipal bonds some 30 years ago. (WPPS still exists under a new name.)