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FCC Sides With Google Fiber Over Comcast With New Pro-Competition Rule (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The Federal Communications Commission today approved new rules that could let Google Fiber and other new [ISPs] gain faster access to utility poles. The FCC's One Touch Make Ready (OTMR) rules will let companies attach wires to utility poles without waiting for the other users of the pole to move their own wires. Google Fiber says its deployment has stalled in multiple cities because Comcast and AT&T take a long time to get poles ready for new attachers. One Touch Make Ready rules let new attachers make all of the necessary wire adjustments themselves. Comcast urged the FCC to "reject 'one-touch make-ready' proposals, which inure solely to the benefit of new entrants while unnecessarily risking harm to existing attachers and their customers." FCC Chairman Ajit Pai rejected this argument, saying that startups are unnecessarily delayed when they have to wait for incumbent ISPs before hanging wires. Here's what Pai had to say: "For a competitive entrant, especially a small company, breaking into the market can be hard, if not impossible, if your business plan relies on other entities to make room for you on those poles. Today, a broadband provider that wants to attach fiber or other equipment to a pole first must wait for, and pay for, each existing attacher to sequentially move existing equipment and wires. This can take months, and the bill for multiple truck rolls adds up. For companies of any size, pole-attachment problems represent one of the biggest barriers to broadband deployment."
For once anyways.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
I feel dirty. Good for him though; I guess they're really trying to make good on that whole expand competition thing.
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... About now is a good time to realize that world isn't fucked up beyond recognition. We take steps forward and back all the time. Let's celebrate that the FCC took a huge step forward. They've done enough back steps recently...
...just where is the real Ajit Pai and what have you done with him?
What are you doing? First you vote against the Sinclair-Tribune merger and now you side with Google.
Stop trying to make me like you.
Zebras don't change their stripes. Ajit Pai is an asshole, clearly and objectively, therefore Google must have bribed him in some way to get this 'ruling'. The question remains: how much?
except that they don't want to eat you (a one-time benefit) they want to milk you month after month, so the analogy breaks down pretty quickly.
Let's try a car analogy. You gotta buy gas, but you get to choose which station to use of the ones near by. The more stations are in the area, the more they have to avoid pissing you off to get your business.
Don't worry - Pai isn't suddenly getting a conscience. Remember that Pai is basically beholden to Verizon (where he will end up at after his "public service"). Verizon is not a wireline provider (like AT&T, Comcast, Cox etc...) When 5g starts to roll out, one of the key battles is going to be over telephone poles. There are going to be tens of thousands of mini-cells mounted on poles to support this rollout - and if you don't own the poles (like Verizon), you're going to be at a disadvantage compared to the companies who do (like AT&T)
This vote isn't pro-internet or pro-freedom or anti-monopoly - it's entirely about ensuring that Verizon isn't at a competitive disadvantage in rolling out their 5g network.
Karma: SELECT `karma` FROM `users` WHERE `userid`=138474;
Or it just fits a philosophy of less regulations and promoting an environment where market forces determine outcome.
What if the dingaling for New Guy Cable causes an outage for my whole neighborhood
How about holding the new Guy responsible to repair or pay for repairing the damage when they do that ?
In most cases the people running lines for New Guy Cable will have former employees of the Incumbent cable provider, or may even be the same contractors that the incumbent provider uses; so the only question then is about shady contractors who screw something up ----- which can happen even if they don't use the poles and decide on directional drilling instead -- This is why permitting is required, and if the contractor starts causing too much disruption, the municipality can order them to pause or suspend their activities for a time, until what's going wrong can be investigated.
By the way, I believe if the incumbents are THAT concerned, they have the opportunity to do the work themselves, if they don't delay ---- the problem is those arseholes use delaying tactics to try and stop new competition coming in.
there is a fairly large risk to have someone move someone else's equipment and/or wires .... doesn't have the same training, or cuts corners, and messes something up
Either you haven't investigated this or you're spreading FUD. The OTMR rules require the utility pole owners to designate qualified contractors to do the work. Only these contractors are eligible to move or add anything. The poles won't be swarmed by unaccountable bozos wrecking everything.
With change comes risk. Try not to be a sackless coward, prattling on about the parade of horribles inside your head. They're just wires on poles. We can cope with them as we have for 150+ years now. The only actual problem with any of this is that it's at least twenty years overdue.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
Yeah, sure. You're an antelope and you're in a room full of lions, and tigers, and cheetahs, who are arguing over who gets to eat you. Do you really think they're going to unanimously agree to not eat you? At worst, they kill each other off until one is left, who then proceeds to eat you. At best, they agree to split the kill; then they all eat you, they just get a little less. In the latter scenario, they further agree to split all future antelope. Welcome to CAPITALISM.
I think you just described democracy:
“Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote!” Benjamin Franklin
"Tempers are wearing thin. Let's just hope some robot doesn't kill everybody." --Bender
you mean like net neutrality?
...and if you don't own the poles (like Verizon)...
Verizon, the telephone company, does not own telephone poles? That seems...wrong.
To be fair, they own a lot less than they used to.
I live ze unknown. I love ze unknown. I am ze unknown.
Car analogy
No, that's Old and Busted. Let's try a vampire analogy instead:
You're in a room full of vampires, and they're goddamned thirsty. They could fight each other over who gets to drain you. Or they could decide to tie you up, put a feeding tube down your throat, and install a valve on a handy vein, so the can drain you regularly. Which do you think they're going to do? Oh and don't forget that thye're not giving you a choice in any of this.
Net Neutrality as mandated by the GOVERNMENT isn't "competition" of the free market. Quit pretending it is.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
And the representative from Comcast appears...
The people in a position to pose the question are local bureaucrats. They have long-running "relationship" with the cable monopolies and would never do, what you wish them too. Earlier laws and regulations have kept them in power to do that, while ya'll rioted for nationalizing Internet service-providers.
Good to see Trump Administration addressing this problem too.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Comcast will just cut their competitors' cables anyway.
FC Closer
Pretty sure Verizon is focused on doing wireless service now and any physical lines they would love to just do away with.
No, capitalism is you have the freedom to simply say "no" and walk out of the room full of predators.
Or you can negotiate with each predator one at a time to determine who wish to sit with (and define what their limits are as well).
Fascism (or a dictatorship) is when the Government locks the door and FORCES YOU to make a choice of which predator will eat you, because it's in the best interest of the common good (meaning - the folks who locked the doors and the predators).
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
You are conflating the monopoly-style abuses of individual companies managing their sites with the arbitrage abuses of ISPs.
The first are (at least somewhat) addressable via market mechanisms, as consumers can redirect their traffic to other sites more in line with their views.
The second are not addressable via market mechanisms because the arbitrage happens out of the sight of the consumers. This means that the ISPs get to choose winners among content providers. This is why Netflix sued Comcast. Net neutrality regulation is designed to prevent this second kind of abuse.
Mixing these two problems up just impedes the conversation.
Google and facebook can't violate net neutrality because they are not ISPs. No one is letting them off the hook. Net neutrality is about having free and open access to the internet pipe. It says that an ISP can't give preferential treatment to Netflix or penalize bittorrent. It's a work in progress as plenty of ISPs violate it with zero rating and other nonsense but facebook and google aren't the offenders