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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."
In b4: "No, you don't understand, we don't have real capitalism yet, it's not perfect, we must copy the true scottish model".
Avantgarde Hebrew science fiction
Cheating bastards. They need their loopholes closed NOW.
We've had this story in the news in one form or another for a decade. Why hasn't something been done?
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!
Broadband is broken, we have known this for YEARS.
The problem is that we have GOVERNMENT regulation preventing competition (Franchise Agreements) and until we figure out a way to get out of them, and allow for more competition over the last mile, we're going to be stuck with ever increasing government rules and regulations trying to fix the problem of government's own making.
My solution, is fairly simple, yet radical. The Local Municipality owns and operates the LAST mile itself (like a road), then the problem will remain. There are ways to bring competition to the marketplace, allowing consumers to choose who their provider, rather than the one size fits all approach government tends to bring.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
The Trump administration will say this report is fake news and claim, fasely, that America has the best broadband.
Touch-Once-Make-Ready will get put in to place at a national level and we soon find "the big boys" interfering with local competition by "damaging" lines.
Either way we're screwed.
This is why AC posting should not be a thing.
I think taxpayers have plowed something like $4B into rural broadband, it is time for Ajit to call Comcast and Charter and ask for a refund. $2B each.
Or, municipalities could just grow their own, oh wait, they can't, every time they try Comcast and Charter sue them.
despite years of federal subsidies and many state grant programs.
But if you just give us some more money, we'll get Right On That. Oh, did we mention our last contribution to your election campaign?
I was an AT&T customer 2 decades ago. I had ISDN at home (work paid, dial-up was just too slow) and they were rolling out Pronto, their higher-speed system in my area "in 6 months or so." After calling like every 6 months, I gave up after 5 years.
I now (different house) have Comcast Business Internet, 30MBit. It works, no caps, I can call and get an actual tech in 30-60 seconds that can speak bits and DHCP. It's great, but I'm sure I'm paying for it.
Before that I had AT&T DSL at 1.5Mbit with caps. It was funny, they charged me for going over my monthly limit which I did every month -- at a cheaper rate than my normal monthly bill. Instead of being a penalty for me, it was almost a bonus.
If the universe is someone's simulation -- does that mean the stars are just stuck pixels?
This is actually a perfect example of government regulation run amok.
This is not surprising considering these guys lobby the government to consider broadband deployments acceptable at 50% of a large swath of an area. Really, the entire system is broken, not just the telecom industry but the way we do business altogether in America.
I live 20 miles from the apple headquarters in silicon valley and can not get broadband to my house. I would bet that the majority of people who cant get broadband live less then 20 miles from the nearest available broadband but for one reason or another (topography) can not. Telcos could fix these blind spots but wonâ(TM)t unless forced.
I live in a fairly rural town- 20 square miles, 4,300 people- and Comcast's cable modem service is fine. I'd prefer to pay less, but $93 a month for internet service that's fast enough to stream is adequate. They respond to the occasional service call well enough; I've no complaints.
The only theoretical competition is the telephone company, however, and they're pretty broke. DSL service is terrible- few houses live close enough to the central switch to make it possible- and they just don't have the money to lay fiber everywhere. Sure, they're doing it in chunks here or there, but I've been here for seven years and they're finally installing fiber a couple streets over.
I can see how the telco is in a bind. The area was sold off by verizon a few years ago and the buyout was leveraged. The phone company is in the poor position of competing against comcast phone service, VOIP, and cell phones. They do some TV bundling with satellite providers but it's a tough business. Basically they need to roll out fiber to keep money coming in, but they need money coming in to roll out fiber because they've already borrowed to the hilt.
Now that I'm checking as I write this comment, the telco has been purchased by another company.... so we'll see what happens!
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
I'm tired of articles and statistics with speeds that make no logical sense.
From the governments own legal mumbo jumbo (47 USC 1302)
"The term âoeadvanced telecommunications capabilityâ is defined, without regard to any transmission media or technology, as high-speed, switched, broadband telecommunications capability that enables users to originate and receive high-quality voice, data, graphics, and video telecommunications using any technology."
Notice in the description there is no preference of any kind expressed as to directionality. The phrase used is "originate and receive"... not receive only or primarily receive. If 3mbit up is able to do ALL of these things then why the asymmetry? Why is 3mbit good enough for upstream but 25mbit required for down?
Definitions seem awfully specific to the properties of Cable Internet with high downstream and crappy upstream just high enough down to discount much DSL and fixed wireless yet still remain crappy enough to excuse Cable Internet failure to provide acceptable upstream rates.
Personally I would gladly trade in my 150/5 service for 10/10 any day. I don't consider 3mbit up good enough. Others may be happy with 1000/1. Everyone has different needs and value judgments and people can argue all day about what baseline should be. Yet whatever that is should be determined based on objective metrics that fit the characteristics of underlying definition not picking winners and losers by deliberately selecting whatever intentionally fits profile of cable based broadband.
should any of those rural counties wish to create their own broadband services Comcast will be happy to send in lawyers to point out that there are state laws explicitly prohibiting municipal broadband services in there area. I mean, "abandoned" implies they'd be left alone...
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20 miles is pretty far, that's alot of wire.
Cheap storage VM.
Le vin et les aliments sont magnifique
Let's get our priorities right!!
Without AC posting, plenty of us would be too afraid of losing our jobs to say what we really think.
Yeah, morons use it too. But if you only hear from those who, under whatever system is in place, are not afraid to speak, then you will only hear what is *safe* to be said.
The problem is they grant this monopoly in exchange for the ISP promising to give broadband to rural communities. The ISPs promise, they get their monopoly in the lucrative cities, then drag their heels and do as little as possible to support the rural parts of the state. The state doesn't take them to task for this, and believes their promises of 'some day soon'. Or perhaps they don't believe the ISP, but believe they have no way to break the monopoly.
A federal 'Your Service Sucks Tax"
love is just extroverted narcissism
Regardless, allowing municipalities to create their own infrastructure would encourage competition and render the "Net Neutrality" debate largely moot; there would be more ISPs to choose from and cities could rule that their infrastructure is only usable by those who follow NN ideals. ...assuming, of course, the idea would be to merely provide the infrastructure and not the internet connectivity, reserving that for companies to come in and provide.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
In the recent past, whenever a story would come up here about how poor the broadband service is in America, there would be posters here proclaiming "Fiber? Feh! Luddites stuck in the 20th Century! America is far ahead in wireless broadband which totally superior in every way!". But thus far (with 70 posts) there is not one of these wireless corporate shills around.
Perhaps it is because TFA is not pointing the superior service and pricing in many other countries. That is what often seemed to trigger the trollish claims of US wireless being "more advanced" and superior to fiber.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
DBS (Direct Broadcast Satellite services) provide rural America with HDTV and High-Speed slow-ping Internet services... this is vital to farms and large yard houses out in the midwest where cable doesn't reach well.
The problem is the restrictions on installing wires/cables in the ground. High-quality service would be available everywhere If anyone who wanted to could install in-ground wires/fiber/cable along public right-of-ways.
The requirements/limitations should be as few as possible.
Something along the lines of:
* To trench, if equipment is 50HP, must carry $100,000 liability insurance at the time. If over 50HP, $1 mill liability insurance is required.
* $150 fee to the state or town to register a Cable Installer Number
* Must attach small plastic labels with the Cable Installer Number every 25'
* Wires/Fiber/Cable diameter cannot exceed 3/8"
* State or town road crews are not responsible for notifying you of work impacting your cables, nor for cutting them
* To trench across a road, the cut in the road-surface must be 5/8" width, and may only be performed between 7:05pm and 8:55pm Tue through Thu. The cuts in the road surface must be sealed with suitable road repair material designed to last at least 10 years.
* Ownership can be claimed of any abandoned (both ends disconnected for a year) cable/fiber by paying $150 to the state or town to take ownership of it.
Net neutrality accomplishes NOTHING. I mean nothing. It is a true red herring that is taking us away from the real issue: that of basically unregulated monopolies controlling America's broadband.
/. and the net in general to quit listening to the idiots that push the net neutrality red herring and fight to get REAL broadband.
These companies have absolutely NO reason to upgrade. They have monopolies that allow them massive profits. Comcast is small compared to Disney. Disney is in massive number of different businesses all over the world. Comcast only services about 1/10 of America. Thats it. And yet, Comcast competes against disney to buy whatever business they want.
What is needed is to destroy the monopolies. We need to have them compete against each other. In addition, we need to allow all local gov to compete against these companies if they want to. Right now, the GOP has pushed a number of laws that prohibits that, but it really makes sense that fiber to the home be owned by the closest gov (city, county or possibly state), while services are provided by a number of competing companies. If Comcast or Charter wish to go into an area and run their own fiber, let them. The same is true of any of the RBOCs, or CLECs. BUT, regardless, they have to provide open services. IOW, other companies can offer TV, internet, etc over the same fiber.
It is time for ppl on
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
The free market also fail to provide electricity to many rural areas. Rural electrification was a big thing after World War II -- government subsidized wiring up of areas that were not cost effective for private industry to serve. Rural areas got telephone service because there was one big monopoly that could be ordered by the government to do the job and charge all the same rate, but that means they were subsidized by urban areas. Rural areas will only get fast modern internet if there is a subsidy. The real cost of delivering these services to rural areas is too high for most rural dwellers.
ISP bad. Silicon Valley good.
Heroes die once, cowards live longer.
"If they want better internet they should move to where it exists." - And contribute to further pollution, traffic and overcrowding of large cities? I don't see how that helps at all. Besides, this is classic blaming the victim reasoning. The problem is not that I chose to live in a rural area. The problem is that the broadband monopolies did not live up to their end of the bargain.
I'll give you an example. Where I live every lot is zoned at one acre minimum. Less than 5 miles away some developer is building a subdivision with thousands of houses shoehorned one beside the other. I choose not to live in an HOA managed neighborhood where the next house is 10 feet from my lot line. The HOA is getting high speed broadband while the acre dwellers are left to fend for ourselves. Luckily, I have a fixed wireless provider that provides about 25MB/sec and that's good enough for Netflix. But I can't get Gigabit speed because Cox Communications won't expand the service to the "rural" area - 5 miles away.
As others have pointed out, the TelCos have been granted this virtual Oligopoly in part because they agreed to service rural areas. They have not held up to their end of the bargain and our governments appear to do nothing about it. Yet another example of a problem caused expressly by our elected officials.
Uh, I don't?
I merely meant that in this rare instance, I don't advocate for a free market solution, but rather more government involvement ( as previously specified ).
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
I'm asking this as a serious question.
We have similar problems here in Germany where "outlandish"areas have less connectivity (albeit at a laughable scale compared to the US). Upping infrastructure isn't that easy here for the simple reason that many areas are developed already which means tearing up existing infrastructure to upgrade the old. Very annoying and expensive.
Anyway, what I'm actually asking is this: do we all have to be able to stream game of thrones at 4hd at the same time or could it be that 6mbit DSL might be enough for most regular households? I've basically be happy with what's available for me as a privat Person ever sind DSL came along and replace ISDN in the 90ies. Yeah, remember that? *That* was slow. Everything above a stable 5mbit for 1-2 people online at the same time is luxury IMHO.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
The problem is the same for rural areas worldwide, not just in the US.
And there's also a lack of redundancy so that whenever there's a natural disturbance it can cause a lot of headache. A small wildfire taking out one site can cause a number of links to go down and effectively kill a much larger area than what the wildfire actually impacts.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
I seem to remember when my (small) city got cable back in 2001 or so. I'd been reading about DSL and cable a few years before that and desperately wanted either one. My impression back then was always that DSL was only slightly slower than cable, but dependent on your distance from the phone company.
And thankfully now we can get way faster internet and I'm no longer a 15 year old thinking about online gaming and ...videos.
Internet access is no longer a luxury item that the few can tinker with in their free time. It's how we work, do business, shop, research, and perform a million different tasks.
It's usage more mirrors an electric, gas, or water supplier, rather than an ISP of the olden days. Competition is dead in many areas and dying in more. With M&A occurring at high rates, we can expect to see fewer and fewer alternatives in the future.
We're best off treating it as a utility, and remove the profiteering from the equation.
Based on tech advancement, I suspect that wireless/cell providers will start to eat up more wired business soon enough, as their speeds and reliability increase, while prices become more reasonable.
Aging cable infrastructure will eventually join land lines as antiquated and unneeded.
This affects my parents' house. Their only wired internet option is 3 Mbps AT&T DSL (AT&T claims it's only 1.5 Mbps but it provisions at 3). No cable lines. Luckily I managed to get them an unmetered, unthrottled LTE "hotspot" plan, so I have an LTE modem connected to their router. They get 15-30 Mbps through it despite a very poor signal (5x5 carrier, theoretical max of 37.5 Mbps), because literally no one else is on their sector of the tower.
The wireless industry has the potential to disrupt this, assuming they actually deploy with enough capacity and offer the plans. The plan I have them on is kind of a loophole through a reseller, so it's a bit challenging to get. Supposedly though this is a priority for a merged Sprint and T-Mobile, but they might just be saying that to get approval.
I live 5 miles from the telco central office (Verizon), and they were charging $88 for the cheapest land line. Finally we got off that and use a $5 a month VoIP, but pay Spectrum for internet. We have never in the 44 years we've been here, had cable TV so we can't cut that cord - it runs our internet! Our other (sucky) option is satellite. That's it. DSL is "too far".
Here in NY they gave Spectrum 60 days to get the hell out and pass their customers on to someone else. Gonna get interesting.
Oooh, 5 digit user id says the AC. Well excuse me your highness. I've been reading /. since 2003 you d-bag. I know all about the culture of the place and I've always hated that AC's could constantly post stupid crap. I also don't give a flying f**k about how many digits your user id has you loser.