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A Domain Registrar Is Starting a Fiber ISP To Compete With Comcast
Jason Koebler writes: Tucows Inc., an internet company that's been around since the early 90s — it's generally known for being in the shareware business and for registering and selling premium domain names — announced that it's becoming an internet service provider. Tucows will offer fiber internet to customers in Charlottesville, Virginia — which is served by Comcast and CenturyLink — in early 2015 and eventually wants to expand to other markets all over the country. "Everyone who has built a well-run gigabit network has had demand exceeding their expectations," Elliot Noss, Tucows' CEO said. "We think there's space in the market for businesses like us and smaller."
They are not taking on Comcast. They are taking on Charlottesville, Virginia. And Comcast has to be careful how it fights them or it can lad itself in trouble in ALL of it's other markets. (Or worse, regulated more than it is now.)
Tucows to bind them
Filthy shameless spammer. Still a better love story that Twilight... ^H I mean still a better choice than Comcast.
We live with DSL speed from a local ISP rather than deal with Comcast or AT&T. We'd be plenty happy to see a gigabit service from another provider!
Ah...Tucows...
Download anything from them and it will be loaded with extra adware with a very tricky sequence of clicks to not install any of it. Yes, this even means not agreeing what looks like a license agreement, but is actually an offer to install crap.
I'd probably take even Comcast over them.
Tucows is still around??? I remember downloading crap from them in 1995. A quick google shows that not much has changed in the intervening 19 years.
Does their fiber service come with the signature bloatware as well?
(Side note, it's interesting to see internet companies that ostensibly have no reason to exist, yet are still alive and .. sorta-kinda-maybe-kicking today. Lycos for example. I'm frankly gobsmacked that they might wind up outliving their labby mascot. Or askjeeves, no quasi-witty joke needed.)
And Comcast has to be careful how it fights them or it can lad itself in trouble in ALL of it's other markets.
There is one simple way Comcast can fight them.... deliver a better service with better support at lower cost to the consumer, and do it in a way that makes the customers happier and more excited about their service than Tucows.
It does mean Comcast has to probably offer the 1 Gigabit or better service at a lower price than what Tucows is rolling out.
If Comcast uses any other method to fight them, then Comcast deserves to be more tightly regulated.
Of course if Comcast actually gets competitive and causes Tucows to fail fair and square, then once there is no effective competition once again, Comcast could raise their prices or take other new actions as a result of becoming a monopoly ---- in that case, I would expect the regulators to tighten their reigns heavily and create a cap on Comcasts' revenue and requirements similar to the Telco regulations requiring the phone companies to build-out and service all customers (no cherrypicking high-revenue customers; no excluding the "Top or Bottom 2% of users" who have been deemed unprofitable customers).
I.e. if Comcast uses excess profits from everywhere else to provide ridiculously low priced service (aka walmart breaking into a new market until the competition goes out of business).. then Tucows can't win.
I think the lines need to be built by and maintained by one company or by the municipality and the service provided by competition.
There are good and bad points to excluding customers. It's ridiculous to run a 20 mile fiber to one person's house or even a group of five or six houses and charge them the same as everyone else. If they want cable- they should live with the rest of civilization.
OTH, left to their own devices providers will cut "less" profitable customers over "highly profitable" customers. Which doesn't work with something that is basically a public utility.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
If comcast provides better quality for lower price in Charlottesville, they're basically admitting that they sell overpriced, low-quality in the rest of the nation, which provides legal ammo to those opposed to them.
Ofcourse, all of this would be good for consumers, competitors and pretty much everybody... except Comcast themselves.
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I vaguely recall their early tagline as being "The Ultimate Collection Of Winsock Software" before branching out to things like being a registrar.
Bark less. Wag more.
General Atomics and the original AT&T were the other parts of InterNIC, but only Network Solutions provided registration services (rs.internic.net). IIRC, AT&T's role was to supply Directory services and General Atomics were to supply some services that they failed miserably at, which got them booted out of the contract.
Wasn't the original head of Tucows (The Ultimate Collection of Winsock Software I believe it stood for) a guy named Scott? Is he still there?
Save Maine's economy: write stuff down. All comments are exclusively my own, not my employer.
I think the lines need to be built by and maintained by one company or by the municipality and the service provided by competition.
I totally agree with you. Of course, that means that we start to treat broadband like a utility and not a private business, which is fine by me.
There are good and bad points to excluding customers. It's ridiculous to run a 20 mile fiber to one person's house or even a group of five or six houses and charge them the same as everyone else. If they want cable- they should live with the rest of civilization.
I think you need to think that thru a little more. Going by that logic, you're saying that farmers (who grow your food) and others who just like small town life don't deserve high-speed internet. I'm not sure what word I want to apply to that, but you don't come out looking so nice there.
Now, if you want to say that those who live further out will need to pay a bit more because of their situation, I think most of us could agree to that. Of course, with the advent of putting access points on water towers and other high places and then a receiver/transmitter dish on the person's house so that lines don't have to be run to individual houses, even those of us not in "the big city" can get better speeds at mostly reasonable prices.