Slashdot Mirror
Comcast Planning 2Gbps Service, Starting With Atlanta
joemite points out a PC Mag article which begins "There's been a lot of talk about Google's 1Gbps "gigabit" Internet service, but Comcast said today that it is planning a 2Gbps service, beginning in Atlanta," and writes: All of the ISPs seem to be "out-doing" each other in terms of offering faster and faster service, but why can't they compete on reasonable rates for "slower" speeds? My 5Mbit service from Comcast is currently costing me $50/month, about what it was 10 years ago. Seems that if they can push a 2 Gigs for a few hundred dollars, I could get at least get 50Mbit for what I'm paying now.
And internet access in the US is so slow compared with everywhere else....
The 2 Gb is just an electrical connection speed. The delivery of actual information is FAR slower. It's a dishonest way of drawing attention away from the real issues.
Sweet. Now you can hit the data cap in your "Unlimited" plan in 15 minutes instead of 30!
It isn't insane. We should have thousands of mom and pop ISPs. Run the cable in the city conduit/poll and pay whatever the fee is for leasing some space there.
Yes, it would be messy if there were a LOT of cable running there, but then the fees would pay for a conduit and it would all go underground.
We don't need these ISP monopolies. Open it up for competition. Then if the ISPs behave like assholes, you just go to a competitor offering you a better deal to get your business.
In my area there are two ISPs like in most of America. One for DSL and one for Cable. No one is allowed to run cable but the phone company and the cable company.
And that is why the speeds suck. If you could have someone else also allowed to run cable it would force the ISPs to compete or die.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Didn't Comcast get the memo that Title II regulations meant that they were suppose to stop all investments in broadband?
I live in a very remote area, out in the country, the grocery store is 45 miles away. The telephone cooperative has fiber to my house and I pay 30 bucks a month for 50 meg internet. I couldn't imagine paying 50 a month for 5 meg. That's insane. Several years ago I was paying 50 bucks a month for 20 meg internet from suddenlink, back when I lived in the city.
You'll pay whatever Comcast says you should pay, and you're probably not paying nearly enough. That's how it works in America.
Doubt they're offering DOCSIS modems with 10GbE connections
My spped hasn't changed but its price in real dollars, has steadly declined.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
so call the cable company and threaten to cancel unless they up your service or lower your price.
oh wait... you're a pussy who would rather whine on the internet. no wonder people take advantage of you, idiot.
I currently have FIOS from Verizon, I pay $105 a month for 150 megabit down and up.
AT&T this month is in the process of installing their new GigaFiber service.
They are offering 1 gigabit up and down for $120 a month, but with a data cap of 1 TB per month and $20 per additional TB.
We use a lot of data in our house, with a connection speed about 6 times faster, I imagine we'll use even more.
1 TB is a lot, but frankly isn't THAT much when you consider 4k streaming and 1 gigabit to share among 5 tech heavy users.
Verizon currently doesn't have a cap, at least not a published one. If they have a soft or hidden cap, I've never felt or seen it.
---
Then the issue comes up... Do I NEED gigabit? Well, I once would have thought that 150 meg was nuts, and today I love it, so I'm sure I'll find a use for it. But honestly, I'm not sure it is worth the bother.
What I'm hoping is that Verizon will price match, or offer something close. Currently they want something crazy like $300 a month for 500 up/down, if they offered me that for $120, I'd take it in a heartbeat.
Even 300/300 would be enough for $120, but time will tell.
The net neutrality laws that you all cheered for are only going to make that kind of thing harder than ever.
What is with people associating random statements with a specific person? Nothing in Karmashock's statement advocates Title II regulation. Can you point to previous statements from Karmashock advocating Title II regulation? No? So, would it really be that hard to phrase your statement as:
The new net neutrality laws that are only going to make that kind of thing harder than ever.
Then we can actually address the efficacy of Title II regulation.
moderators. Boy, they really do rule here. Anyone that posts something negative about Comcast get hammered down as a troll like this guy. Comcast really does control this site.
I too live in Seattle and am on dial-up. DSL works in the lower floors of my building, but where I live it doesn't work at all. The phone lines under the street are more than fifty years old so there's hope that one decade they'll be replaced so that CenturyLink can start offering DSL to the neighborhood. Comcast doesn't offer service at all to the block. The city's laws prevent anyone else from offering service so we're stuck without cable TV or Internet access.
Even in the setup you are describing, everyone is still connecting to a single city hub, which would count as a monopoly if it were private. Pretty much no matter what you do, you are going to run into the issue of eventually require use of some public property that we don't want in the hands of a for-profit company.
Why not just expand the public portion of the public internet service to include the cables as well? Then you don't need a disorganized and inefficient mess cables going to the central hub.
Of course Comcast could make a profit selling you 50Mbps for $50, if you lived in a high population density area. But they won't because they can maximize profits by charging you more. The problem is a lack of competition. There is a lack of competition because Comcast controls the physical cables which take advantage of public right of way (much of which was granted for a different purpose altogether.... power lines). That's why cable companies should be treated as the utilities they are. They should be forced to share right-of-way (even better it they have to share the actual cables) with competitors. Then you would see real competition based on efficiency, quality of service, and PRICE.
It's amazing that the big American corporations like to talk about the virtues of free enterprise and capitalism.... but they don't seem so fond of the most important ingredient in free enterprise, which is competition.
"He took a duck in the face at 250 knots." -- William Gibson, Pattern Recognition
For dialup 56k service. It's the most cost effective way of doing things here in Washington DC.
Sure, the politicians can afford DSL or better, but the little people...we're still using these crummy old modems.
So, after years of providing overpriced, shitty service, Google steps up and puts the fear of God into Comcast. Comcast responds by announcing higher speeds, lower prices, and (hopefully) improved customer service. All without a single government mandate or regulation. Somebody remind me again why capitalism never works?
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Everyone also has 4 cell providers and 2 satellite providers to choose from. Depending on what people need, they make sense in some cases.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
The ISP's cost of delivering service includes network upgrades, network maintenance, customer service, and bandwidth costs (plus others such as marketing and G&A costs).
The network upgrades are generally not "per customer" but "per area" so if you have the higher speed available, the ISP has already paid the costs of the network upgrades and you just are not yet buying that service but they are hoping you will. You, of course, are using that upgraded network (perhaps resulting in better latency and reliability even though you don't buy additional speed). If the ISP makes the lower tiers cheaper, less people will switch to the higher tiers. Human nature is to be resist large price jumps and accept small ones -- for example, someone who is paying $80 for 150MBPS is probably more likely to jump to paying $120 for 1GBPS service as "it's only 50% more cost" while someone who was paying $30 for 40MBPS service would experience 400% increase in cost to move to $1GBPS and that's an enormous jump. Until they start losing customers to some competitor who is offering 40MBPS for $30, they have little motivation to offer that deal.
Customer service costs are probably about the same for 5MBPS customers as 2GBPS customers -- both complain vocally when their service is down and both require a truck roll to fix a lot of problems.
Bandwidth costs, of course, are probably higher for customers with high bandwidth service, but that isn't probably the main cost to the ISP.
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
Don't blame me, I didn't ask for them to be cited as utilities. I've been saying they should let more people run cable for years. :)
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
So I'm going to need a fancy server motherboard with dual gigabit ports to use it? or perhaps even one with a 10G port?
It isn't insane. We should have thousands of mom and pop ISPs. Run the cable in the city conduit/poll and pay whatever the fee is for leasing some space there.
Yes, it would be messy if there were a LOT of cable running there, but then the fees would pay for a conduit and it would all go underground.
We don't need these ISP monopolies. Open it up for competition. Then if the ISPs behave like assholes, you just go to a competitor offering you a better deal to get your business.
In my area there are two ISPs like in most of America. One for DSL and one for Cable. No one is allowed to run cable but the phone company and the cable company.
And that is why the speeds suck. If you could have someone else also allowed to run cable it would force the ISPs to compete or die.
Here's the problem:
Do we really want 20 ISPs all running their own cables all over town. And digging up every street to do it? That is something which is neither desirable nor practical. You admitted yourself that it would be a mess.
We have already wired the entire country. Twice. Once for phone and again for cable. Spending hundreds of billions of dollars (and a couple decades) doing it all over again makes no sense. The answer is local loop unbundling. Make the monopoly phone and cable companies open up their networks. Allow competitors to connect to their networks at a reasonable price and use the wiring that is already in place.
This creates genuine competition and forces everyone to compete on price, speed and service. Overnight, speeds will go up, prices will go down and data caps will disappear.
But it will never happen because the phone and cable monopolies have bought all the politicians and regulators needed to make it happen.
So go ahead and address it then. What's stopping you?
Competition is the key.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Mostly a regulation issue. I mean, why do we only have 4 cell phone companies? Because those 4 bought all the spectrum and no one else can have it no matter whether those companies use it or not. So lets say you have a small town somewhere with no cell phone coverage at all... can you throw up your own tower? Be the cellphone provider of Bob's town? Nope. Can't do it. Federal law. Forbidden.
Absent that, you'd have lots of cell phone providers. Thousands. And while some people are going to offer up myopic technical problems like "how could all those things interact with each other"... roaming works right now between the major cell companies so long as your device is compatible with their frequency. So I see no reason why people couldn't roam amongst those providers. And here someone will say "the roaming fees are so high though"... yes, under the current system because there are only 4. If there were lots and they all had limited individual coverage and relied upon the coverage of the other companies to fill it out, the roaming fees would have to be something reasonable.
Everyone is so locked into these tautologies of "everything has to be this way because this is the way things are now"... I mean by that logic how did democracy happen? I mean, we have lords and kings and ladies and then suddenly some grubby peasants said "I'd rather rule myself, thanks"... Could you say, "democracy can't work because we don't have democracy right now?"... obviously not. And neither can you say that it wouldn't work with lots of companies simply because we don't have lots of companies. It is circular logic.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Unless they raise their caps, all faster speed does is get you there faster....
2Gbps eh?
Coming soon: Google to start offering 3 razor blades...errr I mean 3Gbps internet service.
Do the math. With 3% annual inflation and you are still paying $50 for service ten years later?
You are actually paying about $36 compared to the $50 dollars you were paying in 2004 dollars. Not that I'm ever going give Comcast any props, but they are giving you the same service for less money.
Just like going large for just a quarter more, the base cost for each customer is basically the same whether they order 1 Big Mac meal or 5 of them. Comcast has some fixed costs whether you buy the base package of the "drink from the firehouse" bandwidth package. Seems that cost is about $50.
You want the big bump in bandwidth you are going to have to pay them more than the minimum. Typically you don't see any real nice jumps in speed until you get to the $75-100 packages. I've had $100 FIOS package for a while and they seem to be throwing more bandwidth at me every 6-12 months. My service is rated at 165/165Mbps officially, but speed tests show it somewhere closer to 190/190Mbps.
Last time I checked ISP's in the US aren't competing to out-do each other at all in most markets. A few places have fiber and catch internet headlines but most don't. The phone companies are sticking to slow 20mbps ADSL2+ tech while the cable companies put the fiber a little closer to you so that they can offer 100mbps service but the cable internet fees are ridiculous from top to bottom.
I actually have worse speeds than I did 15 years ago because of my distance from the CO but at least my ISP (Sonic) is one that won't hand out my info to anyone that asks. Sonic has been rolling out fiber in a few markets over the past years and has incredibly affordable rates for fiber ($40/mo 1gbps with no hookup fee or "free" 5mbps if you pay a $300ish hookup fee) but their ADSL2+ speeds are limited by your distance to the CO since that is the closest they put their DSLAMS to you.
Not really, small towns might have on hub but medium to large cities have many. And there is not only no reason for them to be centralized but they're not centralized. In a small town if there were one connection through the trunk then you'd have just one there. But that only applies in that one case.
And even then the prices for back end bandwidth are far far cheaper. Current backbone network saturation is less than 30 percent. Lots of capacity. And the likes of L3 don't care who they connect to. They're very happy to sell connections to anyone that can pay and their fees are cheap.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Responding to your own troll posts with more trolling again. When will you grow up?
Each order of magnitude of network speed increase matters less than the one before it as more stuff is trivial, and there's less stuff that is still problematic. There are things out there for which gig is a noticeable improvement over 100mbit, but not many. As time goes on and things grow it'll matter a little more, but still not a huge amount.
Eventually we may find that something is "enough" for end users and further upgrades aren't needed, perhaps in the 10gibt range. That even when we are doing all kinds of things with it, it ends up being fast enough, and not having any real benefit to go higher.
Right now, 20mbits or so is "enough" for most users. If you get multiple users in a household, or like to download large games or something, more can be needed. However even for that, 100mbit ends up being "enough". Moving to something higher isn't real noticeable. Steaming works no better, webpages are already fast, all you get are a bit less time on large DLs but you didn't spend much time anyhow so no big deal.
It's fun for sure, and I'll probably go to gig when it comes to my area (I have 150mbps now) but only because I'm a geek who likes shiny toys. When I stepped up from 30mbps to 150mbps I noticed no difference at all except for Steam downloads, it is a luxury, not anything that really matters.
I live in Seattle, my apartment building was just wired up by a company called condo internet... So now, in addition to the crappy Comcast & Century Link options, I can get $60 100 Mbps or $80 gigabit service. The company is fantastic, I can quickly reach knowledgeable representatives and they never give me a hard sell on anything.
Cancelling Comcast was an obscenity laden 45 minute long ordeal, but I couldn't be happier.
They said Internet access, 2gbps both directions.
What does this mean? Not much, except a great peak rate.
Best case, I can talk to anybody else on the Internet at the min or their access speed ane mine. (VERY unlikely.)
Worst case, occasionally, I can run an Oocla speed test to a Comcast server without exceeding my Bytes/month cap. (VERY likely works.)
Hopefully, Title II will require them to cut through the marketing and provide a clue as to what they are selling, aside from peak access rate.
I've been pushing for conduit for years. The problem is that cities generally don't want to add any more liabilities (like maintaining conduit) and the fees they collect would go towards maintaining conduits for about 30 days before the mayor decides to use them to build a new park in his/her name with a giant golden statue. A company probably could get themselves established as the conduit provider in town (see also the cable company or the telephone company), but after spending millions to billions laying empty conduit, the stockholders are going to want results pretty fast, better that they install their own fiber to start so they have subscribers and revenue out of the gate, but now they're running afoul of the incumbents exclusivity, and you better believe they'll play dirty to protect it.
Okay, respectfully, you're citing problems that only exist because we don't have a system set up to handle all those companies.
Effectively, your argument is "we can't do this because we're not doing this".
I know that isn't how you see your argument. However, your "I don't want people digging up the street" comment only makes sense if you assume no one would work out a reasonable way to do it.
For example, conduits. You just have a pipe that goes down the side of the street with regular access points. No digging up the street after the conduit is in the ground. It sits there like a water pipe or a gas main and people can run new cable or remove old cable without damaging the street.
Okay? Not a big deal. you can run 20 different independent cable networks at once through the same conduit... no problem.
They each pay a fee. Have the conduit supplied by the city. I think that is a legitimate utility, the supply of conduits and polls. But the cable should be private because the cable changes. It is subject to technological advance in a way that water or power isn't quite so much. I mean, electricity is electricity. Water is water. But bandwidth is not bandwidth. There have been huge advances in communications cable. It used to all be copper wires and now it is fiber optic cable.
If I ran a new ISP, I'd run nothing but fiber optic cable. It is cheaper than other cables, is longer ranged, and has higher bandwidth. Anyone laying copper cables at this point is either trapped into some legacy bullshit or an idiot.
As to the cost, you're looking at the cost of a whole roll out like it is one project. It won't be. We're talking about thousands of small companies all exploiting local markets to deliver superior service in their area. You say "but it is redundant"... so is your pizza maker... I'm sure there are multiple pizza people in your area. Yet many of them saturate the same market. Starbucks goes so far as to put coffee shops on adjoining corners.
You say we've wired the country twice like that is a lot. We can wire them over and over again. And if the consumer is willing to switch to my service because I'm faster at a cheaper rate... then I win.
The cost of these things only sounds huge when you factor the whole country. A lot of people have a hard time with large numbers. Over a certain number things just turn into infinity. You have to appreciate that communications is a big industry. We spend about 75 billion dollars per year on video games. How many billions do we spend on cat food? So you say running cable is going to cost hundreds of billions? It doesn't matter so long as the market can finance it.
And I'm not suggesting public subsidies for this project. No cheap loans from the government. A guy will wake up one morning, figure out what it will cost to run a fiber optic cable from the trunk to his own substation in a given neighborhood, then what it will cost wire the first hundred houses or so. He'll canvas the neighborhood with some advertisements he made himself. And he'll knock on doors, leave fliers in mail boxes... and other small business stuff. And if he gets enough people in the area to commit to it, then he figures out his pay off time. Then it is just a matter of running that fiber optic cable. And again, fiber optic cable is cheap. And bam... he has a tiny ISP.
As to allowing other people to use the cable company's or phone company's cable...
No.
FUCK NO.
NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO.
NO.
Why? Because their cable is shit. And if you force me to use their shit copper cable than the best service I can provide is shit service.
So no.
It also does not create genuine competition because you're forcing me to use their shitty cable. The primary means of out competing these bastards will be running better cable. If I have to share their shit cable then how can I offer better service? They're also going to set the rates for use of their cable. Which means the labor etc for that is something I have to pay for... so if their labor policies are crap, I have to subsidize them. And beyond that, I'm funding my fucking competitor. No.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Sorry I misread your post, so my reply doesn't make any sense. I will amend my reply.
In your example, the government still owns the conduit. Rather than simply providing conduit, why not provide the conduit and the wires in the conduit as a public service? The government is in a unique position to do this *efficiently and fairly.
*I don't mean to imply that governments are always efficient and fair, but merely that they are capable of being efficient and fair in a way that for profit corporations can not be. The government has more resources in terms of creating infrastructure and it is accountable to voters rather than shareholders.
I have no problem with that. I really don't care who runs the thing so long as they don't fuck it up.
I'd love a company to do it as well. Because you can fire a company. Can't fire government. :(
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
2Gbps over fiber is a speed I associate with GPON, which is a fiber loop that connects dozens of endpoints on a single fiber, just like the existing copper cable system. The 2Gbps figure is then derated for overhead, and finally split between all the users on that loop.
Google on the other hand is apparently doing home-run fiber from each house to a central location, where it can aggregate the bandwidth into ludicrously fast switches and hand it off to 100Gbps etc backhauls. That means that (with guessed but plausible numbers) instead of e.g. 50 houses sharing each 2Gbps for an average of 40Mbps with Comcast, you would have 1000 houses sharing 100Gbps for 100Mbps average with Google. Yeah, the "peak theoretical" is higher, but the actual effective available bandwidth is very different.
Then there's the fact that with a home-run fiber to each house, Google can easily upgrade their aggregation equipment and backhaul links in order to boost total shared bandwidth, without having to go out in trucks and mess with fibers again. Comcast OTOH would have to go around and split all their GPON loops in half and hope they can get those new sub-loops run back to their agg points. Heck, there's nothing stopping Google from upgrading the transceivers at each end of the fiber for a given house to make use of more advanced optical techniques, because the fiber isn't shared.
GStreamer - The only way to stream!
I don't mind them providing the conduit. I do mind them providing the cable. the cable you must appreciate will change. there will be innovation.
it isn't like water or power or roads.
Road technology hasn't change much in the last 100 years. If your car had to drive on a paved road build to 19th century standards, it wouldn't be a big deal. They had asphalt back then.
Water is water is water. The fucking Romans could pipe water to your house and it would be about as good as what you get from the city. The biggest difference is that the water pressure would be a lot lower. But otherwise, it would be the same. All you would have to do to compensate would be to have a water tank over your house to pressurize the water. That's it.
Electricity hasn't change remarkably in the last 100 years. If I wired your house to the standards of 1910, you might have issues with some high voltage appliances but otherwise you'd mostly be fine especially if you had some surge protectors or some UPSs.
Network cable however is a moving target. It has changed remarkably in just the last 10 years to say nothing of the last 100. So no, I don't want to give it to the government because I'm pretty sure they'll sit on their asses once they get it working. It is generally what they do.
I do trust them to run a conduit though. It is just a pipe. Conduit technology hasn't changed remarkably in thousands of years. So... totally fine with them running the conduit. But not the cable.
That has to be private. I also question whether they'll offer the service at a competitive rate. Often government services only seem cheap because they're taking lots of money from someone else and charging you less. But the actual average fee is quite a bit higher than you'd imagine.
I'd also direct you to pot holes, spotting education systems, spotty police services, and other issues that the government has been doing a bad job at running lately. Here is my biggest problem with government.
You can't fire them. Yes, you can have an election but that doesn't really trigger a clean sweep does it? No. All you can do is vote for the red team or the blue team. And most people will only vote for the red or the blue and never the other. And most areas are solid red or blue which means they can pretty much do whatever they want and they won't even lose an election much less strip them out of power.
Part of the issue is that the government is very much a "too big to fail" system. Everything is combined. So if I don't like my internet service which you want the government to run, does that mean I vote for another mayor even though the only thing the current mayor is bad at is running the communication service? See the issue?
I don't want them to run it. I am fine with them running the conduit but never the cable.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Living in one of comcast's "test" cities for data caps, i'd be happy to just go back to my "slow" speed with no cap.
Makes one wonder what the cap will be for 2Gbps....all the speed in the world is worthless if you only get to use it for 20 minutes before your charge overage fees.
I don't mind them providing the conduit. I do mind them providing the cable. the cable you must appreciate will change. there will be innovation.
1. I think the conduit probably does need to change from time to time although I wouldn't call those changes the same kind of innovation traditionally associated with technology.
2. The government doesn't have to be the one doing the innovating in order to provide the cables. They can just pay consultants to research which new technologies for cables should be used, and voters can decide if the government officials are doing a good job of hiring the right consultants. I am not saying this system is foolproof, but I think it's a better system than one which requires people to run their own cables.
Like I said. I am not saying I think the government will always do an amazing job running cables. I am saying that it will surely be better than the cluster fuck that will happen if you let each person run their own cables.
Part of the issue is that the government is very much a "too big to fail" system. Everything is combined. So if I don't like my internet service which you want the government to run, does that mean I vote for another mayor even though the only thing the current mayor is bad at is running the communication service? See the issue?
I didn't say the government would "run" the internet service. I said they would provide the conduit and cables. Presumably you could have competing ISPs at some central location and switch ISPs would be like switching circuits at an old telephone switch board or something.
I'm only saying that the government should own the infrastructure rather than telecoms and people, but use market competition when it is practical.
Comcast doesn't offer service to many areas of the city. With the age of the phone wiring and the limited number of COs, most people can't get reliable DSL either. This city is stuck with dial-up in much of the city, and the Comcast shills defend that? I thought this place would be pro-Internet rather than pro-Comcast.
1. No the cable wouldn't need to change. The British are currently running fiber through Victorian sewer pipes. So... no. The conduit doesn't need to change. All it needs is enough space in it. That's it. So the only thing that could happen is that the could run out of room. But that is something you could upgrade the next time you do road maintenance.
2. As to the government not needing to do the innovation, they would need to approve things.
Look, the government providing my internet access is a non-starter. You've seen all the privacy abuse stuff they've done already. If they actually own the cables it will be even worse. And that is just ONE reason amongst many. It is a bad idea.
No.
As to letting each person run cable, I'm not saying that 10 million people run cable. I'm saying that you let small ISPs run the cable if they pay the conduit fee.
There is always this notion that anything but the government controlling it means chaos. Give me a break.
As to the government not running the internet but running the cable... the cable determines the bandwidth and much of the quality of service. So no.
The government can own and run the pipe the cable runs in... that's it. I'm not trusting them with anything beyond that.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
People love to reinforce their own "me vs the world" mind set. Makes themselves into the rebels they always wanted to be.
"Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin to slit throats." - H.L. Mencken
And they should. Comcast should provide service to their entire monopoly area before being allowed to make upgrades to wealthier areas. Here in Seattle, white neighborhoods like Northgate have both cable TV and cable Internet. Areas like where I live in the International District or Beacon Hill where I grew-up, do not have either available. Both are minority areas so Comcast doesn't offer service. Of course they don't since it isn't as profitable, but their franchise agreements need to start requiring them to offer service over their entire monopoly area. Giving me my first Mbps would mean so much more than a few more tens of Mbps to people that already have a very fast connection. We need to start making sure Internet access is available in all cities. Given that Seattle is considered the tech capital of the world by some and I don't know anyone with faster than 1.5 Mbps DSL, that is sad.
What good is very fast last mile when their peering is crap AND their routers are dropping traffic?
I meant the "conduit" would not need to change. Not the cable. The cable obviously needs to change with some frequency. But the conduit so long as it was large enough could remain the same for hundreds of years.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
This is Comcast trying to squelch Google. You are most likely to see them "roll out" Gb+ Internet in areas that Google Fiber is being rolled out, and the reason is *only* to make sure that Google can't make money at it and quit altogether.
This is called "cutting off their air supply"; the assumption is that Google can't fund a literal roll out nationwide. Welcome to the the end-game for your most "free markets" - a monopoly.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
1. As long as it always has enough space and never degrades it will never need to change (i.e. it will eventually need to be changed just like everything else).
As to the government not needing to do the innovation, they would need to approve things.
yeah that's what they do. It would be what they would be doing in your system too (approving individuals to rent space in the conduit)
Look, the government providing my internet access is a non-starter. You've seen all the privacy abuse stuff they've done already. If they actually own the cables it will be even worse. And that is just ONE reason amongst many. It is a bad idea.
I didn't say they would provide internet access. I said they would provide cables. And yes I have seen all the stuff they've done already, and the fact that a handful of companies own all the cables is actually a much worse situation than if city and state governments owned the cables. Even if each individual person owned their own cable, are you going to police your cable to make sure it's not being snooped by the NSA?
There is always this notion that anything but the government controlling it means chaos. Give me a break.
A notion which I have not invoked, so I don't see why it's relevant.
As to the government not running the internet but running the cable... the cable determines the bandwidth and much of the quality of service. So no.
And since the government isn't making the cables, but buying and installing the same cables that anyone else could put in, the only difference is who owns them.
The government can own and run the pipe the cable runs in... that's it. I'm not trusting them with anything beyond that.
wouldn't government owned conduit just give the NSA even easier access to personal data? /s
I feel like you have a very arbitrary set of standards regarding this matter.
One day I will be able to get high speed at my house in the sticks. Until then I am stuck with the 1meg I get from Sprint PCS 3g. Or the 28.8 kbps from Century Link.
Joys of the country life.
Would you like some cheese with that w(h)ine? Perhaps some Limburger?
1. Again, the english are running cable in pipes that are over a hundred years old. So give me a break please.
Okay... last time.
CABLES DETERMINE BANDWIDTH.
Also for all you know they'll splice something into the cable... a wire tap of some description. I'm not keen on it.
As to you not invoking the notion that without the government running it there would be chaos. *facepalm* That is exactly your argument. Tell me right now why we can't have 20 companies running cable and do not anywhere infer that it will be chaotic. Double dog dare you.
As to the only difference being who owns them, wrong. Because if they own them and no one can compete with them, what is to stop the government cables from just staying old and shitty forever? They could do it and what would you do about it? Nothing. Because you'll have given up all control to them. You going to vote for the red team instead of the blue team because the existing mayor won't change the cable? Probably not. Which means he doesn't give a shit.
No. It is a too big to fail cluster fuck.
As to the government controlled conduit giving the NSA better access... not really. They already tap lines as it is... However, if they don't own the line then if and when they do tap the line any technition could remove their bullshit. If the city own the cable then only the city could disconnect the NSA.
Given what we're seeing with stingrays, I trust the companies more than I trust the cities. The city police departments will be offered FBI support in return for installing their bullshit which will just be stuff the NSA handed them. And boom. You're fucked.
This is not a profitable discussion. You've got no reason for wanting the city to have control. You just DO want them to have control.
Either cite the reason for wanting the city to be in control of it without referring chaos or order because you said that wasn't your argument... or what exactly are you fighting this so hard for? Why?
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
If the author wants more reasonable rates for slower speeds, why is he asking for more speed for what he's paying for, instead of a reduction in rates for his 5 mbps to reflect the disproportionately higher speeds Comcast is offering now?
Also is the author in Atlanta? Comcast in one part of the country isn't really the same Comcast in another. They may have the same name and all be traded on the NYSE under the same symbol, but in a practical sense they are apples and oranges. They are administered and run on a local level and pricing is set to reflect local market conditions. They are really different providers between regions. Just with an extra layer of middle management and the CxO's on top getting their salaries.
Again, the english are running cable in pipes that are over a hundred years old. So give me a break please.
So you think 100 years == forever?
Okay... last time. CABLES DETERMINE BANDWIDTH.
I never said they didn't. I don't know why you think I did.
As to you not invoking the notion that without the government running it there would be chaos. *facepalm* That is exactly your argument.
No it is not. And it is obviously not, because my plan involves private ISPs.
As to the only difference being who owns them, wrong. Because if they own them and no one can compete with them, what is to stop the government cables from just staying old and shitty forever?
I did not make the argument that government always works, but you seem to be making the argument that government never works...except for conduit.
This is not a profitable discussion. You've got no reason for wanting the city to have control. You just DO want them to have control. Either cite the reason for wanting the city to be in control of it without referring chaos or order because you said that wasn't your argument... or what exactly are you fighting this so hard for? Why?
The reason I want the city to own the cables is (like I already said) efficiency. It is efficient to have government controlled infrastructure. There is a reason we don;t have private water pipes and electricity lines. It is inefficient. Having 5 different lines from your house to 5 different ISPs just to satisfy your desire to have the option to use all 5 is inefficient.
You have plenty of reasons for wanting public conduit and multitudes of private cables, they have all just been dumb reasons so far.
nobody will pay to make a conduit for competition that won't happen. you just don't understand how the economic factors are at work, clearly.
State of the art for DSL (VDSL2) is roughly 200M downstream per subscriber line. Here's the Wiki page that explains that bit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Very-high-bit-rate_digital_subscriber_line_2
HFC networks in the US are generally configured for a small percentage of bandwidth on the upstream and a huge percentage on bandwidth on the downstream, wiki page is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOCSIS
The main difference that I see people missing here (and almost all Cable Co. related threads here on Slashdot) is that Cable TV plant is a shared medium for the last mile where xDSL is not.
This distinction between shared and dedicated medium is what rules out ideas of "sharing the lines" with competitors. xDSL lines go direct from the subscriber, back to a "facility" that may be on the curb down the street, or the CO downtown. Your telco is offering you a twisted pair that can do dial tone, and something around this 200M limit that exists with the current state of the art technology. Your cable company is dumping roughly 160 channels @ 38.8 Mbit to your outlets in your home. There are generally 3 (maybe 4?) upstream channels with roughly the same per channel capacity available per segment (HFC node) for your standard US CATV system.
Current state of xDSL technology: 200M downstream, 100M upstream (only at optimal range, if you end up with a 4 km loop length, the result is massively slower links of just 4M downstream).
Current state of HFC technology: 6.4 Tb downstream (almost all MPEG video today with a small percentage devoted to the Internet product), 120M upstream (proposed changes to the HFC plants in the US will raise this upstream bandwidth by 2 or 3 times by sacrificing some of that huge download) - these speeds are available so long as you stay within the DOCSIS specification that is something like 80 miles from the DOCSIS termination router (CMTS).
Personally, I'm going with the 6.4. Tb downstream shared infrastructure for the win. I never plan to watch 4 screens of 4k video while simultaneously uploading 4 different 4k video channels of me watching said Netflix content.
wow... so you're saying that if the city has to do a rebuild on the conduit once every 100 years that is a deal breaker for you?
that's idiotic. I'm not saying you're an idiot. I'm saying you said something that was very stupid. Please don't do that.
As to admitting that cables determine bandwidth, then you are admitting that the government could control internet speed simply by being lazy about upgrading cables.
As to arguing that government never works, I did not say that. I just said I don't want to be held hostage to their incompetence if and when they fuck up. Is that unreasonable? Or does everything have to be a too big to fail government clusterfuck?
Really? you think the government is efficient? In what way is the government ever efficient when compared to private enterprise.
Name anything the government does that the private sector does and we'll go through the cost figures.
The government literally is always less efficient. Without exception.
The only way it ever is made to APPEAR more efficient is when they cook the books by not counting payroll for a given department or pensions or whatever. So sure, if you exclude a lot of costs that the tax payers pay for a given thing, at some point it will be cheaper if you exclude enough of them. However, you can't exclude any of them because the people pay for it all regardless.
After the budget crunch, many cities ran out of money. Some cities privatized large portions of city services and without exception saved a lot of money by doing it. They privatized stuff like park maintenance, ambulances, fire departments, etc. And the cities in some cases saved so much money by doing that in the middle of a deficit that they were able to actually expand and improve services with the savings.
No, government is not more efficient. it is a necessary evil. It exists because you need someone to act as judge. You need someone to make laws. And you need someone to hire people to point guns at other people that break the laws.
That is what you NEED government for. Everything beyond that tends to be a circle jerk.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
wow... so you're saying that if the city has to do a rebuild on the conduit once every 100 years that is a deal breaker for you?
You are even worse at reading comprehension than I am. At no point did I say or imply that. I think conduit needs to be replaced far more often than every 100 years, and even being changed every 100 years does not contradict my statement that it will eventually need to be changed.
As to arguing that government never works, I did not say that. I just said I don't want to be held hostage to their incompetence if and when they fuck up. Is that unreasonable? Or does everything have to be a too big to fail government clusterfuck?
I'm a libertarian...
Name anything the government does that the private sector does and we'll go through the cost figures. The government literally is always less efficient. Without exception.
This is something that an ideologue says.
Here is something the government does more efficiently than the private sector. Dealing with the problem of "tragedy of the commons". Markets solve a lot of problems efficiently. They don't solve *every* problem efficiently. If you really thought the government was *always* less efficient than the private sector, you would be an anarachist, and you would not even want them in charge of the conduit.
After the budget crunch, many cities ran out of money. Some cities privatized large portions of city services and without exception saved a lot of money by doing it. They privatized stuff like park maintenance, ambulances, fire departments, etc. And the cities in some cases saved so much money by doing that in the middle of a deficit that they were able to actually expand and improve services with the savings.
So instead of Of the city hiring people to do jobs, the city hired people to hire people to do jobs and it was better? What is that supposed to prove? That governments are really good at saving money when they need to?
Notice the cities did not actually transfer the jobs of governing (deciding what needs to be done) to the private sector. They didn't hire an outside consultant to be the mayor.
No, government is not more efficient. it is a necessary evil. It exists because you need someone to act as judge. You need someone to make laws. And you need someone to hire people to point guns at other people that break the laws.
You don't need someone to act as judge. You don't need someone to make laws. You don't need a justice system. Society is more efficient when we have those things. We can all concentrate on being productive when we don't need to spend all our time defending ourselves.
That is what you NEED government for. Everything beyond that tends to be a circle jerk.
We don't *need* government for roads, bridges, electricity, water, emergency services, etc. We can have private companies that make toll roads, and private fire departments that charge monthly subscriptions. In fact, many libertarians want exactly that.
Government works better for *some* things even some things we don't *need* government to do. I advocate using the government for the things it does better, no more no less.
The difference between me and you, is that you use a lot of "always"s and "never"s, and I use a lot of "some"s. I think my view of the world is more accurate, and my plan more practical because of that.
Tautology... you can't have competition if you don't allow it to exist.
You say we won't have it because we don't have it and we don't have it because you've made it illegal.
the economics of the issue are besides the point. You've made it illegal.
If you felt that the economics were sufficient to stop competition... which you clearly hate... then you wouldn't feel it was further required to make competition outright illegal.
The simple fact that you think you need to make it illegal means that you fear that it could happen if you didn't make it illegal. Which means you're selling me some kind of bullshit.
Logic. You will respect it. ;)
Here is the thing. If your economics argument were at all valid, you wouldn't need to make competition illegal. The economics alone would stop it. So... put your money where your mouth is here... say you're okay with people doing it because you know they won't because of the economics.
I'll accept that. I'm quite happy to let the market decide. I am not willing to accept the government just shitting all over the situation and then blaming the shit it just spread all over the place on other people or economics or some other bullshit.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
$108/month for 16/3 from Comcast in metro ATL. No TV. No phone. Just ISP with 5 static IPs.
Having 2Gbps available for $400/month isn't really "available."
ISPs need to be treated like a utility with high, but not obscene pricing. Every 6 months, I look at what other similar areas of the world pay for internet. Looks like we should have 500/50Mbps service where I live for $50/month. There is fibre to my curb (comcast) and has been for almost 8 yrs. Their box is on my property.
Comcast already offers a 505Mbps option, but it costs an unbelievable ~$400 a month (https://www.comcast.com/505). So, my guess is that although they are going to offer a 2Gbps option, it's pricing will be extremely high with additional charges past some a data tier. If their price point isn't comparable to that of Google's 1Gbps offering, this announcement is just Comcast blowing smoke because they can't guarantee the through-put, especially the through-put above 1Gbps.
No, I'm not bad at reading. I'm just not cooperating with your attempts to control my argument or strawman me.
The conduit will require maintenance. So what? Everything does. That is no excuse not to have it. the cost of maintaining it will be cheap. it is a fucking pipe. I don't want to hear you whining about what the conduit will cost to maintain again.
That portion of the discussion is done.
As to you being a libertarian, then why are you so in favor of putting the government in charge of everything? No libertarian is going to say that the government can maintain something like that because they're more efficient. That makes no sense.
As to your allegation that I must be an anarchist, no... I said the the government is needed for laws, police, and courts. That automatically means I'm not an anarchist. Nice try strawmanning me, but I saw that one coming and headed it off in the previous discussion.
You didn't read that though or process it which renders you claim that I am bad at reading LAUGHABLE.
In regards to what hiring private firms proves, it proves the private sector is frequently more efficient. You're not a libertarian... that's obviously a lie. You're sitting there arguing a statist position.
Give me a break. You're about as much a libertarian as Bill Maher. He also claims to be a libertarian. Never met a government regulation he didn't like though.
And at the end you start arguing randomly that all public services can be handled by private companies.
Okay, why not the fucking cables in the conduits then? Because that's all I'm asking for here.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
2 Gig service, of course it'll be down 40% of the time...
This may be good for those of us who can't get Google Fiber.
But like I said, crazy geek. What would I recommend to people? Probably 20mbps for individuals, 100mbps for families or power users.
So how do they expect you to get 2gbps into your computer? i know 10gpbs Ethernet is not likely to be used in home settings.
Great! Now I'll be able to hit my Comcast data cap in 20 minutes! I think I would prefer to stick with my regular old crappy Comcast service so I can savor every byte of my 300GB monthly limit.
I am horrified again how backwards is the land of Internet when it comes to Internet. I pay in my "underdeveloped" Estern-European country $18/month for my 500Mbps/25Mbps (download/upload) Internet. If I want I can move to the competition and for $30/ month have a 1Gbps/100Mbps connection.
I had to buy a new router for my home and I had big problems to find a consumer router that can cope with my Internet, 70% of the consumer routers are to crappy to handle more than 300Mbps. I ended up with an Ubiquity EdgeRouter that os able to handle some 900Mbps.
Can only imagine what that monthly bill would look like and I bet when you speed test the promised 2Gbps, you would really have 87Mbps up and 35Mbps down.
We have already wired the entire country. Twice. Once for phone and again for cable.
Almost right. Once for electricity and then for phone. There are many places still without without cable lines and will probably never get them now that TV signals are digital.
That being said, you shouldn't need a cable to get good quality internet. If I were King for a day, I'd mandate ubiquitous and free wireless for all.
That their service will still suck and they'll probably keep enforcing the 300GB monthly data cap. Now you can it it in the first minute!
here you go talking about the magical conduit again.
we've covered this before.
you're wrong and unrealistic.
forcing open access to existing cable works and forces competition and is all it takes.
how do we know? because we've done it before with long distance service (remember all the 10-10-220 services?...it was so effective that now long distance is essentially free for everyone now with a cell phone, and no one even remembers paying for long distance anymore. and which is how the main telcos killed off the sudden influx of competition).
and the Europeans still continue to do it with internet and is a primary reason they have better service and better rates.
the last mile of cable is perfect for natural monopoly type rules, which means either run it as a utility, or mandate competitive access to it.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
you don't have to run separate cable for every company.
in fact there is zero benefit to doing so, regardless of your belief that the cable is some sort of magical substance that must be replaced in order to enable better service and competition. (your belief is in fact the same belief that causes people to buy Monster cables)
just mandate open access to the wire and you get your competition.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
I have no problem with that. I really don't care who runs the thing so long as they don't fuck it up.
I'd love a company to do it as well. Because you can fire a company. Can't fire government. :(
Ah well, there's your mistake.
Apparently you don't live in a location with democracy and elections, but do live in an area with multiple telcos competing for business.
The rest of us live in America which has the reverse situation: we vote and can thus fire our city governments and influence our public utilities, but can't fire Comcast unless we're willing to go without internet.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Here's the problem:
Do we really want 20 ISPs all running their own cables all over town. And digging up every street to do it? That is something which is neither desirable nor practical.
We had a lot of choices when modems were the best we had. They all shared the same lines.
My (frontier) plan was fine @ 1MBPS a few years ago, which (after other hidden fees) costs about $70. per month. This was force updated to me to get 3MBPS by them (without telling me) and raising my monthly bill to $90. When I called in to get answers (and request to be back on my signed 1MB plan they stated it wasn't available any longer. Even though I never actually use more than 750KBPS, and average 350KBPS all day long, seems like a huge money-grabbing scam to me. All I do is youtube, social media, google searches, and a few forums... no VPN, no need for anything more than 1MB but they forced a higher rate on me without actually getting me faster speeds... it just says I now have 3mbps (which it can spike at that...but if we monitor all the traffic, all the time (as gkrellm does) than you can easily see you're never getting those speeds from websites... it's just the "testing sites" allow a short lived spike, or "ping"s to make us all feel like happy sheep on a green knoll. to me, the problem is constant increases in billing, and less service, more advertisements, and a lower quality overall... however, If there is any ISP that provides 100% pure internet (no advertising), then I would gladly pay for it, again at 1MBPS (which is all I need (atm)). I don't know the future of connection fees, but
happy trials
No, I'm not bad at reading. I'm just not cooperating with your attempts to control my argument or strawman me.
As to you being a libertarian, then why are you so in favor of putting the government in charge of everything?
Evidence of your lack of ability to read.
As to your allegation that I must be an anarchist, no... I said the the government is needed for laws, police, and courts. That automatically means I'm not an anarchist.
I specifically pointed out that you were not an anarchist for that same reason.
More evidence of your lack of ability to read.
You're not a libertarian... that's obviously a lie. You're sitting there arguing a statist position.
My voting history: 2000: Harry Browne, 2004: Harry Browne, 2008: Ron Paul, 2012: Gary Johnson.
It's retards like you that are giving a bad name to libertarianism. You take a very reasonable ideology and turn it into something completely irrational and closed-minded.
I look at the FCC.
If everyone's home wifi equipment was a mesh networking system that interfaced with 10s of neighbors, then every side of that neighborhood would be a connection. This would all connect to "Central" City-based hardlines for faster routes around the world (because this most-resembles the roadway system, which is paid-for similarly).
The result:
- Cheaper prices (just the cost of peering with other cities).
- Faster Peering/Torrenting: Someone in-town has the file? Then it's just a network copy.
Competition would connect you to more fast-routes, not exclusive ones. Your choice to peer those are up to you (but would be the default for hardware).
Science & open-source build trust from peer review. Learn systems you can trust.
Correction: I voted for Michael Badnarik in 2004, and I even donated $200 to his campaign.
Without eminent domain most roads and transmission lines would be imposable or ruinously expensive to build. That one pass you need to go through is owned by a man who's great grand pappy is buried there and he wont move. Going around that mountain is going to cost you. What we have mostly works, when it doesn't, that's what courts are for. Broadband internet has become a needed utility. All but the most isolated should have affordable access.
I have no problem with that except for the assertion that we need the government to provide the hub links.
A universal mesh network would be nifty. But we don't need a city, state, or federal hub owned and run by the government. Replace that with a link from Qwest communications or L3 and you're fine with me. :)
That's who owns most of the cable at this point anyway. Big backbone ISPs. The prices are cheap for bandwidth, there is lots of bandwidth to be had... again, saturation in the backbone is less than 30 percent. That is they have 70 percent of the cable free for expansion as of now. Why would I cut those guys out of the loop when they've never been the problem, they have the cable in place already, and they have more than enough bandwidth for all of us to get 1 gigabit connections tomorrow?
Inserting the government in that relationship is pointless and counter productive. the government would just have to contract with these companies anyway because they are the ones that actually run the cable between cities. Yes, the cities could buy or run their own cable between each other... but why? The existing companies doing that are not charging high rates and are not offering poor service.
Why cut them out of the loop when they're doing a good job?
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Yes, because a pipe is magical.
As to us covering it before, then you were wrong before likely.
And as to me being wrong or unrealistic... prove it.
As to forcing access to the cable being competition... no.
1. The cable can be shit which means you're competing over shit cable. Often this cable is a copper legacy cable that is garbage. If competitors could run cable, they'd run fiber. It is cheaper and better.
2. Cable sharing means that I am doing two things I don't want to do. First, I am forced to pay for their maintenance of the cable and the way they do that. And if they're incompetent asshats that have a bad system that is inefficient then I have to pay the premium mark up price to subsidize their incompetence. The second thing I don't want to do is subsidize my competitor at all. I don't want to subcontract through someone I want to put economic pressure on. I want to give them ZERO dollars.
Your concept is unacceptable on those grounds.
As to last mile cable being perfect for natural monopolies... you're saying those words but you're not defending the position at all.
You could as easily say "last mile cable is full of unicorns and elves"... You need to provide a falsifiable argument. Say "it is better for these reasons"... then I'll go through your reasons one at a time, prove they're not true, that will invalidate your argument, and my position will be sustained.
Just a window into the future for you.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
You're being naive. Most areas in the country are locked down by one of the major political parties. The red party or the blue party. And the most active voters will only vote for red or blue.
What is more, the issues a government is elected on are so diverse that any one issue is not going to cause the government to lose its job even if it were in a purple area where people could go either way.
When you're in charge of health, crime, roads, schools, parks, water, power, etc.... any one thing is not going to cause you lose your position even in a competitive district.
Which means every time you add an additional responsibility to the government, their accountability for that issue and every other issue is reduced. The less responsibility government is, the more accountable they are for their actions.
Do you see?
So you say I don't live in a democratic area and you live in America... tell me your city right now and I'll demonstrate your situation is either precisely as I have described or I'll show it to be a statistical outlier with the majority of the country living in gerrymandered districts dominated by the red or blue team and where even if it is purple no one is going to vote the existing government out of power simply because they've fucked the internet up.
If you don't think I know what I am talking about, you are in for a rude shock.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
I don't disagree with you. But I would differ slightly on the point about "All but the most isolated should have affordable access."
I would prefer a system where every person pays rates in proportion to the costs of providing them service (i.e. rates can be cheaper in the city and more expensive in rural areas)
I think this is the best way to incentivize people to live in areas with more efficient infrastructure. There is no good reason we should be subsidizing service in rural areas while taxing those who live in urban areas, as it unnecessarily encourages people to live in those areas.
Even if we wanted to help poor people afford service(e.g. people who can't afford to live in urban areas), a better way to help those people would be to increase their income to be able to compensate for higher prices. This would provide the same benefit with minimal market distortion.
That's true, you don't need to run seperate cable for every company. I'm totally there with you. But I want to be able to do it if I want to do it. If your beef with me is that I'm not for sharing cable bandwidth... I'm actually okay with your idea as well, so long as you're not blocking my idea at the same time. I don't see why we can't have both ideas at once. Force them to share cable bandwidth... fine... but let a company run its own cable if the existing cable operator has shitty copper cable.
See? Your argument is that it would be stupid financially and logistically to do it. Okay... but why are you making it illegal to do it? The government doesn't make things illegal because they're uneconomical.
Yet you're saying they do... that doesn't make any sense. Why would the government make running competing cable illegal simply because they think it is uneconomical? they dont' do that with anything else.
I am arguing that in fact it has nothing to do with economics and everything to do with small town politics, pay outs, handouts, and kickbacks. To the extent that economics are involved, it appears to have more to do with corruption.
It is that or a misunderstanding that the cable is a utility simply because it is running a pipe under the street. Not all things that go through pipes are inherently utilities.
I don't get why we can't treat the conduits like roads or streets. A private person or company can run a car or a truck down the street whenever they want. You need a driver's license and you need to pay some taxes. But if you do that, you can drive down the road whenever you want. I want the conduits to be that way.
I want the city to issue a license and charge a fee for anyone that wants to run the cable in their conduit. And if you've done both, then you should be able to run a cable down the street with full right of way in that pipe. And when you get to a house or business that needs to be connected to that pipe, I want to be able to break out of that pipe a regular access or output point... and then connect to that business or residence directly without having to go through any other interlocutor.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.