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US Broadband: Still No ISP Choice For Many, Especially at Higher Speeds (arstechnica.com)
Despite things getting better with adoption -- however slow -- of Google Fiber in several regions of the United States, the broadband market has gotten slightly less competitive since 2013, says a new report from the FCC. The report adds that, as a result, Americans still have little choice of high-speed broadband providers (PDF). From an ArsTechnica report: At the FCC's 25Mbps download/3Mbps upload broadband standard, there are no ISPs at all in 30 percent of developed census blocks and only one offering service that fast in 48 percent of the blocks. About 55 percent of census blocks have no 100Mbps/10Mbps providers, and only about 10 percent have multiple options at that speed. At the 10Mbps/1Mbps threshold -- which captures slower DSL technology in addition to cable and fiber -- about 90 percent of census blocks have at least two providers. These numbers exclude satellite, which is available nearly everywhere but has high latency and often low data caps. Even these numbers overstate the amount of competition, because an ISP might offer service to only part of a census block. The percentage of households with choice is thus even lower.
Should they expand? Expanding into an area with no high speed internet is more profitable than competing with an existing one.
"10Mbps/1Mbps threshold -- which captures slower DSL technology." No. A lot of people are still on G.lite especially in the city Seattle. Must of the city is still limited to 1.5 Mbps DSL, if that is even available. Where I live:
http://imgur.com/WgSvnA5
There's a good reason for this - broadband infrastructure is crazy expensive to build. Some of the incumbents received big government subsidies to build their systems, but those days are gone and new companies can't compete. If they stole customers from the incumbents everyone would go bankrupt because nobody can afford to build these systems and only pick up a fraction of the homes passed as customers. We need to have the government build the infrastructure once, and then lease space on it to any ISP who wants to compete. It's the only way that makes any sense and the only way that will ever allow any form of competition in this space.
And the reasons cannot be more obvious. I needn't say anything more.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Most of North Georgia has one provider - Windstream. Between regular days-long (yes, days-long) outages, slow crappy DSLAMs and high prices, it's like a third-world here for internet.
ok you can't play games on it, if the government helps promote it, I think its a viable option.
With Google Fiber coming to areas in Utah, it's interesting to see Comcast start to push heavy contracts but at a discounted price. I think they want to make sure that people are at least locked in from changing to Google Fiber for a couple of years. Seems like a last-ditch effort to protect market share in the face of an obviously much superior competitor.
Just because I can hook a shark from a boat, I do no offer to wrestle it in the water.
Why not designate some of those blocks of wireless frequency for fixed wireless internet instead of letting mobile carriers sit on them to keep out competition. I have literally 3 or so fixed wireless providers in my area but none of them can get a signal to me because they're saddled with the crap frequencies that can barely get through the walls of your house let alone a few trees. Sure it wouldn't help in cities but in rural areas where it is difficult to justify a bunch of new (expensive) cabling it would make sense.
First, FDR, the beloved Illiberal icon, still dizzy from success of gold-confiscation, gives us FCC — providing for AT&T phone monopoly among other niceties.
Then, in 60-80ies, they allowed local governments to regulate cable-TV providers — which suffocated competition. By the time of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 was passed — increasing competition among its stated goals — it was too late. The cable-TV and telephone giants were already too big. Vast behemoths, they are too slow and unwieldy to go after each other, and too entrenched to be successfully challenged by newcomers. Their unwholesome relationships with local governments providing for the stagnation.
More recent attempts at regulation — such as "net neutrality" or minimum bandwidth requirements — are more of the same vein: helping the incumbents (who'll use their lobbying muscle and access to politicians to avoid any effects), while stifling competition.
Why is my real account disabled?
Competing for two million customers in Queens (where there is one existing provider) would be much more profitable than expanding to underserved areas of New York state, such as parts of Hamilton County. Most underserved areas are underserved precisely BECAUSE they are unprofitable.
However, it's ILLEGAL to compete by bringing faster service to Queens. The franchise board assigns each neighborhood to a single provider. The map of assigned providers is gerrymandered in weird ways, too. A company might be allowed to serve 110th street and 112th street, but not 111rh.
as in this foul year of our lord 2016 bandwidth is apparently as limited as rations during the great war, Ive a few tips to preserve what little interactivity many of us have with the internet.
1. use adblock and noscript to prevent wasteful and potentially dangerous content from hijacking your limited resources.
2. null-route known advertisement servers. in a traditional model of internet access, content is sponsored and supplemented with advertisements. However, due to Americas constrained bandwidth and limited access to choice of provider many will have to go without advertisements. These servers are simply too wasteful and prevent a timely rendering of normal content.
3. Use torrents as they maximize efficient and quick access to content. netflix may fail to properly render, and other streaming services may include advertising content thats simply too costly to render for american internet users. Whereas torrents can be downloaded and stored for repeat access without delay or cap.
4. Make sure to avoid cloud services that can require access to high bandwidth internet that might not be available in your market.
Good people go to bed earlier.
If you're providing only wireless service, that means cell towers and crowded radio spectrum. The phone companies are already doing this, so expanding from 3G to 4G to 5G is basically a hardware upgrade at designated points (unless someone tries WiMax 2.0).
Cable companies spent *decades* building out coax networks, and then 20 more years upgrading to digital cable (ie, fiber to area). Most fiber in use nowadays still goes over fiber that was laid down (or over paths that were originally built out) during the dot com era, the creation of which led to many of those companies' bankruptcy. Speaking of dot com, we tried the ILEC sells circuits to CO-provider which is resold by an ISP to provide consumer competition market and it collapsed along with everything else back then. (Thanks, COVAD.)
So aside from wireless upgrades, everything else requires a last mile physical path to homes. New homes can be built with whatever in an urban or suburban area, but existing homes outside of downtown cores, and rural homes of any type, don't justify additional, non-unified wireline build-outs for the cost. If you're hitting 25Mbps, you should ask yourself how much more you're willing to pay to go up to 50 or 100Mbps. Then, add in all of your neighbors and divide by the cost of the build-out. If the math doesn't work, you won't get it. If the math does work, a local provider should step in. If no one steps in, go to a bank and do it yourself and make a profit.
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
We need to have the government build the infrastructure once, and then lease space on it to any ISP who wants to compete. It's the only way that makes any sense and the only way that will ever allow any form of competition in this space.
I would suggest a simpler solution is to basically force a separation of pipe providers from ISPs. All that would require is for companies like Comcast to spin off one operation from the other. Having a single regulated private company providing the pipe is far less of a problem if there are multiple service providers competing for the data that goes across that pipe. Right now we have companies like Comcast being the line provider and the data services provider which gives them way more control than is beneficial to customers.
Time for government to take it over
Why do you THINK we mostly have only one reasonable choice of iSP? It's because of government regulation!
If you want better ISP options you want LESS government, not an incompetent government that will certainly monitor and record all traffic after taking over your ISP.
Come of think of it, posting AC is a little too easy for someone from the CIA isn't it? You could have at least spent a few years working up some kind of believable Slashdot persona. You guys are getting lazy.
Some of the incumbents received big government subsidies to build their systems
That's all long-haul stuff, most of which has a lot of capacity or ability to add capacity easily (think empty conduits just waiting for fiber). The ISP stuff is less capital intensive, you just need permission to run cables out to a location... the sad thing is I had vasty superior internet speeds some fifteen years ago via fiber to the curb, which was booted out because Comcast didn't like it All I can get now is cable modem (Comcast of course).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Despite things getting better with adoption -- however slow -- of Google Fiber in several regions of the United States
Really? It's in six fucking cities. Slow doesn't describe that. Google Fiber doesn't exist. Please stop sucking the Google dick.
It's not illegal at all - how do you think Verizon is rolling out FiOS? If you wanted to launch the Raymorris Cable Company, and deploy service in NYC, you could certainly do so, provided you (a) could show you had sufficient financial backing to be a viable concern, and (b) agreed to cover at least a large portion of the city, if not all, and weren't just going to cherry-pick affluent neighborhoods.
However, it's ILLEGAL for franchise contracts to establish geographical monopolies, since the Telecommunication Act of 1996.
What the real problem is, is that installing wires takes millions of dollars, and modern capitalists can't invest that much capital without an ROI measured in quarters or their stock takes a dive. Thus we have Google (who has billions of dollars in spare change lying around) doing installs, and even then they're only doing it where they can get concessions on right-of-ways to keep the cost down.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Exactly this.
I get tired of hearing that $municipality has given a particular vendor a monopoly on cable TV/Internet. It simply isn't true. This has been illegal for 20 years, but still the myth persists.
If you want better ISP options you want LESS government, not an incompetent government that will certainly monitor and record all traffic after taking over your ISP.
That's cute that you think deregulation of Comcast and AT&T would result in more competition and/or better service. Honestly I have more control over the government than I do over a monopoly utility company. (not that I have much control over either) I very much desire the government to serve as a watch dog when monopolies are involved.
You don't need to have government involved beyond playing referee and setting the ground rules. There is no problem with private companies providing the services. What SHOULD happen however is that companies that provide the wires to your house should never be allowed to be the same companies that provide data over those lines. It's economically inefficient to have numerous lines to the house so that needs to be a single company or preferably two companies that are regulated closely. But there is no reason that we cannot have multiple companies competing for whatever services are provided over those lines. Same for wireless. AT&T can provide the LTE signal but I see no reason for them to be allowed into the data and content business as well.
It's not illegal at all - how do you think Verizon is rolling out FiOS? If you wanted to launch the Raymorris Cable Company, and deploy service in NYC, you could certainly do so, provided you (a) could show you had sufficient financial backing to be a viable concern, and (b) agreed to cover at least a large portion of the city, if not all, and weren't just going to cherry-pick affluent neighborhoods.
Oh, you mean like Google, who is being fought at every turn, by incumbent carriers as it seeks to expand into those underserved markets. I'll say it, Internet service is a utility. It should be treated as such and regulated as such. There a many ways to do this, some better than others. If we look at electricity, for example, the public utility model is demonstrably the best. The operators of the utility are beholden to the ratepayers/electorate, not stockholders, and that makes all the difference in the world.
The franchise monopolies are based on access rights through public easements. It's unrealistic for a private company to negotiate with every property owner for the right to string up a cable through each property, so the government sets up easements which cut through private property. (From the public's standpoint, it's also more efficient to have a single cable for each service, instead of a dozen different cables belonging to different companies all providing the same thing.) The government then controls who gets access to these easements, and frequently sets conditions on that access. For cable TV, it was usually required coverage in poor (unprofitable) areas in exchange for being the only cable TV company allowed to put wires in the easement.
Phone and Cable TV are considered different services and use different wire (twisted pair and coax). Hence they don't violate these government-granted monopolies. LIkewise, FIOS is fiber optic cable, not copper coax, and is not considered to be violating the coax cable monopoly rights granted to a cable TV company.
Not all municipalities grant monopolies. When I lived in Arlington, MA, it started off with a cable monopoly. But eventually the city got fed up with the poor cable service and altered the rules. They allowed a second cable company to put their wires through the easement (on power poles in Arlington; in some places it's in underground pipes and conduit). The week before the second cable company started offering service, the original cable company cut all its prices by about 15% and began rolling out approx 50% speed increases.
(a) could show you had sufficient financial backing to be a viable concern
What are the common ways for startups to show (a)?
(b) agreed to cover at least a large portion of the city, if not all, and weren't just going to cherry-pick affluent neighborhoods
Is a franchisee allowed to propose a multi-year plan to cover "a large portion of the city", using revenue from one neighborhood to fund expansion into adjacent neighborhoods, or does it have to be at least borough-wide from day one?
back when 25/3 was the max speed, it was seamless.
Now that I downgraded to 25/3, I get a 2-3 second lag before youtube videos start.
Comcast is messing with to make it have poor performance.
it's okay, I can still watch multiple videos while downloading and playing boom beach. But there is that 2-3 seconds of lag at the start.
No lag before web browsing.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
These numbers exclude satellite, which is available nearly everywhere but has high latency and often low data caps.
I think its a viable option.
Satellite Internet has monthly caps comparable to cellular. Would you want to drop your wired Internet and switch solely to mobile broadband, and then just eat the overage on each of your PCs when Microsoft or Canonical pushes the big six-month upgrade? Just because others are doesn't mean it's a good idea.
You gotta love anti-capitalist idiots with no understanding of market forces...
The REALITY is that running new lines is easy enough, and the rewards high enough, that companies will do so if they can.
I know this is the case, because I saw it happen - I had a provider (WideOpenWest) that was willing to pay to run fiber to the curb, they did so, and so for a few years I had faster (MUCH faster) internet speeds than my cable modem offers today at the top end of what I could even buy. And was pushed out of Colorado by local telco and cable companies.
I know this is the case, because where they can Google is doing this today. But they are rolling out slowly because in each case they have to fight local government and a very powerful and very UNNatural cable monopoly in each location, that is maintained and supported by government regulation.
I'm not sure why you have any problems with what I'm saying because it's plain from the real world this is the case, and it's equally plain form the real world how utterly incompetent the government is at things it takes over - the TSA being a more recent example of private services being moved into government hands. If you want TSA level quality of internet by all means sign up for some NSA funded ISP but I'd rather endure Comcast than go back to 56k modem quality internet service...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Those aren't franchise monopolies. Franchise monopolies have been illegal for around 20 years. FiOS doesn't violate cable monopoly rights because those rights don't exist, not because of the physical medium Verizon chose to use. You're absolutely right about the easements (and, more importantly, rights of way on public property). Again, if you want to start a competing service, you're welcome to do so, but the municipality won't just let you build what you want, where you want (i.e. you can't just cherry pick serving densely populated rich neighborhoods), just as the cable and Telco provider weren't allowed to only serve part of the municipality.
(a) could show you had sufficient financial backing to be a viable concern
What are the common ways for startups to show (a)?
Show cash on hand, show borrowing capacity, show a business plan.
(b) agreed to cover at least a large portion of the city, if not all, and weren't just going to cherry-pick affluent neighborhoods
Is a franchisee allowed to propose a multi-year plan to cover "a large portion of the city", using revenue from one neighborhood to fund expansion into adjacent neighborhoods, or does it have to be at least borough-wide from day one?
It can be a phased rollout (don't need to have the entire network built to light it up), but reasonably rapid, and not just "attractive markets first." (can't say "we'll do Richguy Heights in 2016, and then 2% of Poverty Falls per year for the next 50 years").
Expense doesn't play into this. If it were too expensive, it simply wouldn't be built. That it's being built means customers are willing to pay for that expense, and it's worth doing.
First, you have to understand why this happened. It's unrealistic for a private company to string up cables or run pipes throughout a city. There's just too much private property, and it would take forever to negotiate for access rights with each property owner, never mind the few loonies who will never grant those rights regardless of price. In response, the government sets up easements - a narrow strip of land which slices straight through private property where service providers are allowed to string up cables or bury pipes. Legally the land remains the property owner's, but the government has the right to grant access to that land for certain limited purposes.
Once the government has the easement, they don't want to grant access to just anybody running a utility or cable company. That can result in unsightly and dangerous wiring. It makes more sense to select a single provider, and grant them sole rights to offer service for an entire area. That way you minimize the number of cables that need to be put up. But giving a single company a monopoly creates a lot of problems - you're stripping away a lot of the protection mechanisms that a free market provides (like lowering prices). So you create a public utilities commission which monitors consumer complaints about the service and has the power to require changes or institute fines. Many of them also have the power to view the company's internal accounting books and have to approve price increases before they can be rolled out. Along the way, the government also decided to add some other conditions, like requiring coverage of poor areas (otherwise unprofitable). In the somewhat corrupt city I used to live in, the government also required the cable company give them kickbacks ($x from each customer's monthly bill was sent to the city treasurer to pad the city's budget).
Why select a private company? Why doesn't the government build the cables? Because back in the 1980s and 1990s, we didn't know the best way to implement cable TV and later cable Internet service. Do you run the cables using a star topology? A ring? A grid? A combination of these? What sort of equipment do you use? How do you encode the signals? How much do you allocate to download vs. upload bandwidth? These are the sorts of questions the government is really bad at answering (government workers lack incentives to improve things), but the market is very good at answering. So different communities allowed different cable companies to implement different systems. The ones which didn't work so well went bankrupt. The ones which worked well thrived and grew, bought up the contracts for the bankrupt cable companies, and implemented their successful cable networks in these other communities.
That brings us to today. We're down to about a half dozen successful cable companies, all of whom use the exact same system (standardized to allow the use of the same cable boxes and DOCSIS cable modems across different networks). Looking towards the future, it looks like fiber to the home is the end game here. Now that the market has found the optimal solution and there are no foreseeable changes on the horizon, that's when it's time for the government to step in and take over and convert this into a utility. They should grant a cable maintenance contract to a single company which lays down and maintains the cable, but is not allowed to sell any content over those cables. They make all their money from the government contract. Any cable TV and Internet service provider is allowed to buy access to these cables f
There's absolutely nothing wrong because we have a free market, amd the free market is perfect and good! All hail the free market. *ignites self on a pyre to the free market*
Franchise agreements - look it up sometime. And yes established ISPs work against new ISPs from entering. Again look up Google and AT&T and Verizon. Moron.
I Love morons: AT&T sues Louisville over law that would make it easier for Google Fiber to move in http://www.theverge.com/2016/2...
Do some research before posting.
We get overcharged, get less service per dollar, and can't even buy 250 Mbps or 1 Gbps in most major cities, when virtually all first world socialist countries can buy faster internet for less cost.
At least some of us can get 40 Gbps at widespread Internet 2 campus ports, or 100 Gbps at a few Internet 2 campus ports, but it must suck for the 99.99 percent of America that doesn't have that.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
and after building it handed to private companies for free. After that Government paid $500 Billion to various telecoms for high speed internet and they never delivered.
I'm all for letting the gov't manage critical infrastructure we all want and need. I don't want Facebook & Google building my roads. But why lease it out so that some lucky a-hole can skim 20% off the top? Just socialize it already and be done with it. Trying to privatize stuff like this doesn't lead to efficiency, it just lets some rent-seeker get paid some scratch in exchange for adding no value.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
So, you think that an article about the Louisville city government possibly overstepping its authority in an attempt to make it EASIER for Google Fiber to enter the market is evidence that there are local monopoly franchises? Intriguing. Do you also view the sunrise as evidence to support your theory that we are doomed to eternal darkness?
The 1996 Act says that a city may not *unreasonably* grant *new* exclusive monopolies *if* the new competitor will be offering the exact same service under the exact same terms, and the new change will not impact (huge list of excuses).
A great example is New York City. One company has a franchise for one side of the street, the other gets the other side, with no overlap allowed.
The cable companies wrote into the law a huge number of number of ways to maintain exclusive monopolies. Here's one obvious and stupid example. The prohibition only applies if the competitor agrees to offer the same service as the existing service - TWC has the Sprout Channel, the potential competitor has Disney Junior; not the same service, it can be denied.
Initially the 1996 was supposed to put an end to exclusive franchises, or at least it was pitched as trying to do that. Didn't happen that way. See the New York City cable franchise map for some ridiculous examples of not just exclusivity, but gerrymandered exclusivity based on the franchise fees paid to the city.
The 1996 Act says that a city may not *unreasonably* grant *new* exclusive monopolies *if* the new competitor will be offering the exact same service under the exact same terms, and the new change will not impact (huge list of excuses).
In NYC, one company has a franchise for one side of the street, the other gets the other side, with no overlap allowed.
The cable companies wrote into the law a huge number of number of ways to maintain exclusive monopolies. Here's one obvious and stupid example. The prohibition only applies if the competitor agrees to offer the same service as the existing service - TWC has the Sprout Channel, the potential competitor has Disney Junior; not the same service, it can be denied.
So why doesn't someone like Google (who would probably make a lot of money if they were able to roll out Google Fiber in an area like NYC) throw a bunch of lobbying dollars at the relavent governments so the governments will end the monopolies?
Or would Google be unable to out-bid the incumbent in such a situation?
I had Centurylink try to sell me 1M DSL when I moved into an old apartment (a downgrade of about 15M that I had with Centurylink before), so I bit the bullet and got Xfinity internet (no phone, no cable) for about 30M. More than I wanted to spend, but it isn't sucktastic in speeds.
Still waiting for Google Fiber to move into the neighborhood.
No! It's a *SIG*. Keep the Special Interest Groups away! (Con joke!)
Google, and some of the cable overbuilders, have been quite clear that they'll focus first on cities where they don't *have* to out-bribe the incumbent. Why spend a ton of money and many years trying to be allowed to build in Seattle when you can build in Austin *today*?
For this reason, Austin now has as many as four high-speed providers competing, Seattle has none.
AFTER they've built out their networks in areas where the govt allows them to without undue restriction, then it might make sense to start looking at Seattle and NYC.
Oh really! Then why is the municipality that I live in has given Time Warner an exclusive contract that bars anyone else from providing service?
Missouri resident here. 0.6 Mbit/sec download, and it costs $90 a month. Thanks for strangling my wallet totalhighspeed.net!