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Comcast, Charter Dominate US; Telcos 'Abandoned Rural America,' Report Says (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Comcast is the only choice for 30 million Americans when it comes to broadband speeds of at least 25Mbps downstream and 3Mbps upstream, the report says. Charter Communications is the only choice for 38 million Americans. Combined, Comcast and Charter offer service in the majority of the U.S., with almost no overlap. Yet many Americans are even worse off, living in areas where DSL is the best option. AT&T, Verizon, and other telcos still provide only sub-broadband speeds over copper wires throughout huge parts of their territories. The telcos have mostly avoided upgrading their copper networks to fiber -- except in areas where they face competition from cable companies. These details are in "Profiles of Monopoly: Big Cable and Telecom," a report by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR). The full report should be available at this link today. "The broadband market is broken," the report's conclusion states. "Comcast and Charter maintain a monopoly over 68 million people. Some 48 million households (about 122 million people) subscribe to these cable companies, whereas the four largest telecom companies combined have far fewer subscribers -- only 31.6 million households (about 80.3 million people). The large telecom companies have largely abandoned rural America -- their DSL networks overwhelmingly do not support broadband speeds -- despite years of federal subsidies and many state grant programs."
This is one of those areas where I advocate for more government involvement. Allow cities/counties to build out their own local infrastructure, and allow regional ISPs to then piggyback on it ( for a maintenance fee ) and provide services.
Internet access ranks up there with utilities anymore, so let's start treating it as such.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
Fiber has become cheap enough that overhead/aerial service can be competitive pretty easily on a local scale with an average distance between passed homes of ~300' and 30% penetration, as long as the utility owning the poles will be cooperative. A 1-mile aerial "spur" is competitive with an $800 installation fee, using existing poles.
About the only people that cannot be competitively served are those that can't pool 100 customers in a 10-mile radius.
When there aren't utility poles that can be used, the density requirement generally doubles, and if you need to go underground (in a rural area), the cost doubles again.
And, wireless has gotten to the point that offering competitive "broadband" speeds works well if you have the terrain to support it.