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Feature: The Broadband Wars
The Broadband Internet Wars
byDonald Weightman,
attorney-at law,
Washington, DC, USA
The broadband wars, which are being fought right now, will determine whether, when, and on what conditions you will be able to reach broadband applications on the Internet for years to come; things like gaming, large downloads, and streaming media. If you have a multimedia or data-rich Web site, the broadband wars will decide which audiences you can reach, and whether you have to strike deals with intermediaries to reach them. If you are an ISP these battles will likely decide whether you can offer broadband services. If you work in the Internet economy, the battle is about how to break through the "last mile" bandwidth bottleneck, and sustain the Net's growth.
Put it this way: being able to choose your broadband ISP is just as important as being able to choose the operating system for your computer. If you lose that choice, and your ISP is bundled with the cable modem, you lose control over what you can and can't do with the Net, just as having no choice of OS means losing control over what you can and can't do with the box.
The players in the broadband wars are looking for a mix of legislation and regulations which will give them an advantage in the race to control that delivery point.
One camp consists of AOL, some other ISPs, consumer groups, and a few state and local political leaders. Their battle cry is "open access." They claim that just as you can choose your ISP for 28 and 56K dial-up, you should be able to choose your ISP for cable modem or any other high-speed Net access service. AOL has emphasized lobbying and grassroots organizing and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on campaign contributions during the 1997 - 1998 election. Election records suggest that it has stepped up the flow of money to lawmakers since then.
AOL is the major force behind the Open Net Coalition headed by well- connected lobbyists Greg Simon and Rich Bond. (After a heavy telemarketing campaign directed at ISPs, the coalition announced recently that since the Portland decision against AT&T, its membership has doubled.) AOL wants new legislation requiring ISP choice, no matter who owns the pipe through the last mile, and supports a bill sponsored by home-state Virginia legislators Rich Boucher and Robert Goodlatte that would do just that.
AOL and its allies argue that the Internet has succeeded as an open platform, while cable, including Internet cable, has always been a closed system. They say that innovations like browsers, eBay, and Yahoo would not have been feasible if they had to negotiate entry through a monopoly bottleneck.
AOL and company add that competition, which has served the Net well, should be sustained in broadband. After all, there are now 40 million American Net users in part because AOL saturated the country with floppy discs, and because local ISPs competed with each other to walk new users through the set-up process. The open access camp adds that the additional sales channels like AOL and the independent ISPs may kick-start broadband deployment.
Charles Brewer of MindSpring thinks that Net access is the core telecom service of the future. He claims that access will have three critical features: consumer-friendly price, 'always on' two-way connectivity, and true broadband throughput. Wireless NET will fail to meet at least one of these criteria for foreseeable future; therefore broadband equals wireline. A competitive broadband wireline market requires open access. Brewer concludes that non-discrimination requirements presently imposed on telephone service should apply to two-way cable Net access as "telecommunications service."
You will also see this group says a lot about consumer choice. Sometimes they will add another dig at cable video, where consumers have lacked choices. Cable operators have long been charged with price gouging and anticompetitive conduct. The open access camp concludes that the risk of such problems in broadband should not be ignored with a "wait and see" approach.
The other camp is headed by cable TV industry giant AT&T, which kicked out $3 million in Congressional campaign funding in 1997 - 1998. It has former FCC Commissioner Reed Hundt as part of its lobbying team. It uses lawsuits like the one At&T filed against Portland, Oregon when that city mandated open access, and it is the major force behind Hands Off the Net.
The cable industry claims that investment in system upgrades needed to bring near-universal cable modem access will come only if it can guarantee returns under a business model with assured users and proprietary content. The cable industry argues that with only 600,000 broadband users, it cannot be said to dominate a market with 40 million American Internet users. Sometimes their publicity tries to demonize AOL, pointing out that any company with 17 million customers shouldn't be allowed to say that it is being bullied. After all, they say, if AOL wants broadband access, why doesn't it just buy some?
The cable industry also says that open access regulation is not necessary because competing technologies, including DSL over telephone lines, wireless transmission, and satellite delivery will provide consumer choices. Somewhere in here you will also hear and read a lot of anti-government rhetoric. There is also a technical argument: the cable modem platform envisions a sort of neighborhood area network, where introducing multiple ISPs would create serious coordination and service problems.
The regional phone companies, eager to put a stick into AT&T's spokes and slow down cable's Internet momentum, rely on former Senators Bob Packwood, Larry Pressler, and and Bennett Johnson, and have hired ex-White House spokesman Mike McCurry to lead iAdvance. They claim that deregulating them will give them competitive parity with the cable companies, and that deregulation will allow them to reach under-served farm country and other communities with high-speed access using DSL technologies. (Reaching the under-served communities where there is little Net use, an issue known as the "Digital Divide," is a current political hot button.)
The telcos are pushing legislation proposed by Senate Commerce Committee Chairman (and Presidential candidate) John McCain, and Representatives John Dingell and Billy Tauzin. The telephone industry spent $14.2 million during the last election cycle. Some key lawmakers have received hundreds of thousands of dollars each in campaign money from the telcos over the last five years.
There is another, much smaller player on the scene, one with a slightly different take. Startup broadband ISP Internet Ventures has a cable-down telco-return platform, and wants to use Section 612 of the cable statute to argue that Internet video is "video programming" under that provision, which requires cable companies to lease channels to their competitors.
I represent Internet Ventures, and I have been lobbying for it. It has made no campaign contributions, and rather than seeking new legislation, has filed with the FCC for a ruling under that, under present law, ISPs have the right to lease access from the cable companies.
Internet Ventures' main argument is that this platform can be deployed quickly using today's infrastructure. The balance of its arguments parallel those used by the open access camp, with a different take on the digital divide. Internet Ventures claims that leased access gives consumers more choices, will promote broadband competition, and also help break the last mile bottleneck. The part on the "Digital Divide" is that leased access can be delivered to under-served communities now, at a price comparable to or lower than that charged by other Internet access and cable television service providers.
The cable operators respond that this is stretching the "leased access" provision too far, that they are doing a fine job, and that leased access for ISPs will hurt demand for and investment in upgrading cable systems for high speed interactivity.
The broadband wars started with the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which said that the local telephone companies would be allowed to offer long distance, but only on condition that they open their home markets to competition. None of the local phone monopolies has done so, and many of them have used their lawyers to delay the competitive process by litigating every regulatory issue whenever and wherever possible.
Closed out of local telecom markets, and worried about the long-range viability of stand- alone long-distance service, AT&T has gone on a $120 billion shopping spree, acquiring cable companies TCI and MediaOne. These acquisitions gave it practical control over cable ISP @Home (now Excite@Home), and a minority stake (with media conglomerate TimeWarner and others) in the other major cable ISP, RoadRunner. The business model calls for a closed platform, with preferred space (on viewers' screen and cached on local servers) given to paid advertisers and proprietary content. The closed platform would eventually deliver television, telephone, interactive video as well as broadband Net.
The outcome of the mergers is that AT&T, which claims 80 million customers worldwide, has now added from 20 to 40 million cable customers, depending how you count. Even before gearing up the marketing drive that goes with delivery of Internet interactivity, cable has a base of 67 million broadband (video) customers, which makes this group (cable plus AT&T's long distance customers), with a customer base in nine figures, nearly equal in size to all U.S. local telephone companies combined.
The telcos have about 150 million telephone lines to work from. Pursuing an objective of unifying local, long-distance, wireless, and, belatedly, Internet through a single provider for every customer, the Bell companies did not seriously try to deploy their broadband DSL technology until the threat of cable modems kicked them into action. And DSL has some handicaps. It cannot serve users who are more than three miles or so from the nearest company office, and it cannot be offered over some phone lines at all. As many as a third of American homes may never be able to get DSL.
Cable, too, has its problems. As the number of users on a neighborhood node increases, congestion soon follows. In fact, Excite@Home has had to impose a 128 Kbps limit on uploads because of heavier home-user traffic than expected. Add to this the still-unresolved security problems which make cable Internet unattractive for business, and the picture resolves to technologies which are still developing.
The other thing to keep in mind about the 1996 statute is what it didn't do: address where we are now, when many players from different industries all seek to offer some mix of broadband Net, telephone and television, but on different technological platforms. Aside from some language which has given the lawyers room to maneuver in their arguments, a critical piece left out was the status of Internet delivered over cable. This has meant that the FCC is left to deal with the relevant policy questions without much of a lead from Congress. The resulting vacuum is a major reason for all the lobbying now going on.
Another factor which kept broadband in the background until last year is that, as long-time computer industry observer John Dvorak points out,
"Neither the phone company nor the cable company is used to the pace of the computer industry. Worse, they have no interest in getting used to the pace."The AT&T merger with TCI, which gave Internet-over-cable's closed business model its prominence, helped bring broadband issues to the front of the stage. AT&T had to pass regulatory muster with the Justice Department and the FCC in Washington. It also had to get permission from the hundreds of cities and other local governments which had granted local franchises to TCI. Last December, the Portland, Oregon City Council required, as a condition of the merger, that AT&T open its broadband network to competitors.
In the meantime, AOL, thwarted in talks with cable operators, formed the OpenNet Coalition and lobbied hard to push open access to the top of the FCC's regulatory agenda, both in the agency's review of the AT&T/TCI deal, and in a separate proceeding on "advanced" (i.e. broadband) services. After fierce resistance from AT&T, the effort failed on both fronts, and the FCC decided, for the time being, to take a hands-off approach to cable access. The FCC tried to justify this refusal to act by finding that AT&T and cable broadband delivery generally were not in a position to dominate the markets for these advanced services. It indicated, however, that it might revisit the issue if it looks like cable is gaining a monopoly position.
One result of the FCC's "hands-off-cable" decision was that AT&T and other cable stock prices spiked on the assumption that they would be able to get turbo-charged returns on their closed systems and captive eyeballs. This spike gave the companies a lot of new market capitalization to play with. Instead of using the inflow to fund the $30 billion needed to upgrade the cable infrastructure for full two-way high-speed connectivity, the industry spent the new money on another wave of mergers, including the recent AT&T acquisition of MediaOne and some other, smaller deals. If the consolidations are approved, AT&T will own access to about 30% of the cable subscriber base, with a partial interest in systems reaching another 30%. This threat to control broadband has prompted the telephone company counterattack.
But the monopolists don't always win. In early June, a federal judge ruled that Portland was within its rights in imposing the open access requirement. AT&T has appealed, but this ruling has encouraged other local governments to reopen similar cases. Last week, Canadian cable regulators issued rules requiring cable companies there to open their networks to independent ISPs. And earlier this week, Broward County, Florida voted to require AT&T to open its system to competing ISPs.
But these are just a few battles. The war continues -- in the courts, in Congress, in State Legislatures, in front of local cable TV regulators, and most importantly, at the FCC.
If you think the open access issue is important, then you should know that the best way to get the FCC off the dime is a show of genuine popular support. And if you want to help, here are some places to start:
www.nogatekeepers.org
www.opennetcoalition.org
www.ivn.net/strat/access.html
www.handsofftheinternet.org
www.iadvance.org
jesus. nice that someone can argue the pre-deregulation rants of the telco industry in reference to cable. Costs too much to allow competition! Well shit, what about US West having to open it's trunks to Cox in Phoenix??? You think Cox isn't making a fucking killing off of that? Why shouldn't the cable companies, who are digging into telecoms and getting a free ride while doing it, have to shell out some of their own infrastructure for the sake of a competitive marketplace?
... there was one baby bell for your region, they carried your last mile traffic, and if you wanted a phone you paid them. The cable system has had this deal forever. If I want channels that my local monopoly won't provide, I'm fucked. Why should a non-competitive environment like that even be allowed into telecoms without loosening it's own stranglehold on customers a little?
Remember pre-deregulation
I totally agree with this post. These cable companies have invested billions in infrastructure and now that everyone can see it's going to pay off, they want in too. Too bad AOL. You should have bought a cable company when you had the chance but ATT beat you to it. This market economy is supposed to reward risk takers who bet correctly not whiners.
Another point he was hinting at in that article had to do with the "digital divide". I bet we all end up paying more every month so the people in the sticks can get cable modem or dsl. That stinks. When you choose to live out in the boonies you get some bennies like no traffic and fresh air. You should have to live with the drawbacks like no dsl or cable modem.
Its not that easy.
Most cable companies have a government granted monopoly franchise in the local areas they serve. To run a competing service is simply impossible.
With that logic, only the phone companies should be able to provide internet access.
Because they laid down the capital to put down the network for you to get to your ISP....
Like it or not...
Tom
Ya and look how fast phone companies are upgrading your lines. You still have the same crappy copper twisted pair that you've always had. The cable companies saw an opportunity and laid fiber all over my city. If they're not allowed to make their money back, they'll be just as responsive as the phone company next time. Great. Just great.
The trouble with that argument is that cable and telephone wiring tend to be "monopoly-inducing." Just like the electric, gas and water companies all tend to be single providers in an area.
The reason for this is that not only does it take a lot of capital to layout the infrastructure, it also takes a lot of politics to get permission to put that infrastructure on public and private land.
Part of the compact between the people and the infrastructure builders is that the people give permission to the builders in exchange for builders providing for the public good. In effect, the infrastructure is not owned by the builders, but rather by the public. Therefore it is important that the infrastructure be used to benefit the people.
Proprietary systems do not benefit the people.
For those of us "lucky" enought to have @home cable modem service, in the last year the AUP has changed from servers at your own risk to no servers, from unlimited upstream to 128k tops, and up until a week ago, service in my area did not get any better. It looks for all intensive purposes like a bait and switch. But why should @home care, they have no competition. Quite frankly, their servers suck. Why put up a webpage when you have a transfer cap, anything above and you are slapped with a fee?
I would venture to say that most of the people who are saying AOL should not get in there do not have to worry about someone like @home. If @home had some competition, they would not be tightening their AUP. In addition to what the article said about AT&T investment, I have heard rumors of making people be forced to use their proxy server. It all makes sense now.
Cable companies do not have competition. In addition, most of the backbone laid down for @home in town was done so by the cable company, for interactive television. It did not pan out, but @home figured out what to do with it. So, my ass about @home having to spend big bucks to get the cable laid... it was already there for them.
I checked on running a T1 to my house and the companies I've talked to tell me they won't do it because such broadband is not a "Residential" service. Well fuck them. Lets get together and use some of these babies to build our own network. Since they only have a range of a few kilometers (but apparently up to 10gbps speeds) we can use high speed DSL or some other glue at the edges of the areas where we can't find similarly inclined geeks to set up links. This would be the credit union to the ISP's banks, almost entirely owned by the users setting them up.
Lets just jump right in.
/.
ISP's should have the right for cable drops.
Cable companies have been doing the same thing to telco's for awhile right now. Look at all the 10-10-220 and 1-800-collects. Who is the major pusher of reselling of long distance? Cable companies. Who's lines are they using? Telco's. These cable companies are using the infrastructure that phone companies laid down. By law the telcos must lease these line to other companies so that these companies may undercut THEM! what?! So now ISP's want to lease cable lines and undercut them. How is this different from what LD companies are doing to telco's?
Secondly noone should worry about cable. Fast bandwith is going to be all about routing in the future. The kings of routing are the telco's. All ISP's should go ADSL and just stick their noses at cable anyways.
My two cents in less than a few lines. thanks for the space
Jase
Can the water company claim to own the water? Can the phone company claim to own all lines and kick off competing LD carriers? Since data lines run over PUBLIC lands they are a PUBLIC resource just like water lines, power lines, and phone lines. So the phone company, and recently, power companies are being forced to lease lines and cables to competitive businesses. All must SHARE the PUBLIC resource. Cable TV is no different, the wire is a public resource and therefore cannot be 'owned' and grubbed up by anyone. And such public resources must be regulated by local utility commissions and made available to all. AOL should know this before they start any investing. If they feel like like they stubbed their toe on reality, I feel no pity for them. Learn the rules before you play. This rule works for lots of things.
If we are willing to give up broadband we could set up private networks using any one of several cheaper wireless technologies with throughputs of 33.6 to 128k. All we need is local 'anchors' with full time access and everyone else in the area buying the same transievers.
Anyone remember fidonet? If the geeks could do it once, we could do it again.
I just want to point out a few things. First of all, my uderstanding (and I think this was mentioned in the article) is that ADSL is available to *nowhere near* 98% of the population. I believe the article said that 1/3 of the people in the US can not get ADSL because of the limitations of that technology.
Second, the question is really whether or not the service should be tied together with the physical lines. Maybe we should look at the telephone industry as a precedent. I am not sure, but I believe that long distance companies have at least some of their own networks (at least for satellite transmission, if not landline). On the other hand, in the markets where multiple companies compete for local access, they all share the same physical lines installed long ago by the various Bell companies. What you are saying -- just make AOL install their own lines -- is similar to saying 'Make a company install its own telephone infrastructure before they can compete for local service.' To me, if you take it to this extreme, it seems a bit illogical.
>If there's no monopoly, there's no case
But forget OPEC, they're not bound by US law. Actually, there are lots of ways that supposedly separate and competitive businesses can collectively act like a monopoly. Gas prices? Health care costs? CD prices? None of the companies providing these good/services are considered to be monopolies, but they sure appear to collude together to act like one.Name me any restaurant where patrons can buy either Coca-Cola *or* Pepsi. So much for the free market.Simply not being a monopoly does not get you off the hook from DOJ lawsuits. There and many other ways to operate dishonestly.
20 or 30 years ago, one had to rent one's phones from the phone company. And they charged an arm and a leg. Today I can go out to K-mart and buy a phone for US$10. And my phone bills run in at about $12/month.
My electric and gas companies offer me a choice of where I buy my power and gas from. They charge me for delivery over their network. But I can choose whether I want "Green" or "Nuclear" power. Or which "brand" of gas to buy...
The cable company, on the other hand, has an unregulated monopoly. Over the past five years, prices have risen steadily by about 70%. I am eagerly awaiting the outcome from congress regarding carrying local TV stations over those little satellite dishes. If I could get my local stations, I'd switch in an instant. (My cable company claims that those dishes only support a single TV. In contrast to cable, where my signal is so weak that most of my unscrambled channels come through garbled with static, ghosts, and interference patterns. Unless I use their cable converter, which they rent to me by the month....)
As we enter the next decade, I see broadband arising as the next essential utility. No one is suggesting that cable companies share their networks without some sort of compensation. But I fail to see why I should be required to submit to their ISP's, rules, and regulations when a free market solution is feasible and viable.
Consider ADSL: BellAtlantic charges $40 for their ADSL wires and $10 for their ISP. They used to charge $30 for their ISP. But they opened the ISP choice up to competition. And prices dropped.
Now granted, Bell does a lot of other nasty things to inhibit competition. (The price for installation jumps from $200 to >$500 if you don't use Bell's ISP for the first year.)
But if Bell ever does really nasty things like dropping linux compatibility, outlawing servers, etc. I'll switch ISP's in a second.
That's my power as a consumer. It's the power of competition. And it allows me, the consumer, to dictate the marketplace instead of being keel-hauled by a company that's just out to make a fast buck.
EVERYONE seems to want to become an essential, irreplacable, exclusive, UNREGULATED part of our information infrastucture. Microsoft has come closest of anyone so far. If Linux hadn't popped up gaining notariety when it did, MS may well have succeeded. They still might, but it's much less likely, now.
But considering the potential pitfalls of this situation, it's horribly ANNOYING and disgraceful that we're doing nothing to prevent our falling into the same trap in other information infrastructure areas.
Right now cable systems are closed to everyone except the owners. Even if AOL wanted to pay fees to access the cable's lines, they can't because the cable companies won't let them. These cables companies want the lines for themselves and their pocketbooks.
On the telephone side it is different. The local telcos pay to have a line pull to your house. Then it let other telcos like the long distance companies uses those lines for a small fee. I assume that's what AOL and the likes want to see happen with cable. If the local telcos were to adopt the same idea as the cable companies, every single phone company that wants to access your house will have to pull a new line. How's that?
Face it. Cable is monopolistic. When was the last time you got a call from a competting cable company offering service in your area? You might have gotten around cable with satellite and such but that is still not as cheap as cable.
Here's one possible solution:
Give the cable company that spent the money to set up the system a time limited monopoly on the system. Say five years. That is plenty of time to get their money back and make a HUGE profit. After the five years (that is five years from the time a particular area was up) the system is opened up to any ISP that wants to sell access, at reasonable rates. The cable company would still make money, only at a slightly lower rate.
Austin has much more modern network infrastructure than your average city, as well as the need for it. I bet you live in North Austin, as well. Ack.
Yeah, and know why you can drive between cities at 70 mph? The interstates. Like the level of regulation it entails or not, the interstate highway system has drastically increased the quality of roads between and in major population centers. Do you think local governments could afford to build giant 6 lane highways through the city? Government regulation is not always bad for us.
(First of all, I'm not an anonymous coward, just on a public terminal and my password is not springing nimbly to mind.)
My outlook on this is one of inevitability. If I may remind people, in the 19th century, the consensus was that industry was going to keep integrating. Today it is doing the opposite. The major telecoms and cable companies like AT&T and AOL are leftovers from an old fad.
I note that many on here are saying that if you want to sell connections over broadband, you should put in broadband. In this case, I have to agree: that is exactly what the ISP where I work is slowly trying to put into effect. We have v.34 and v.90 running right now, but have started work on wireless. In our area, that may be one of the better options (out in the boonies, but surprisingly well connected).
The issue is a sticky one, but I have to say that the best solution is to keep on hacking. It's gotten us through before, it will get us through now, and it will continue to carry us along no matter what those silly people in the government and the massive companies think. After all, hacking on various subjects has been going on since man first started trying to improve his fire pit. The nation state that is considered so normal by western civilization today is a bare couple hundred years old. The barbarians are at the gates...and they're leaving.
let me guess...a quote from Mein Kampf ? where *do* people like you come from anyway ?
This isn't really that hard. If you don't mind having lots of lines into your house, then you should support companies and ISPs running their own lines. Seems sort of cumbersome making the cable provider run a line to your house, and an ISP run another, and a telephone company run a third, but that *is* one way (the current way).
The other is to have a single line (better be fiber and IP over DWDM). This *requires* a single infrastructure provider who has a monopoly over that single line to your house.
How do you get a happy outcome from this? You separate the infrastructure from the content. The infrastructure provider has to open up access to the network - anyone who wants to provide content can do so (telephone, TV, pay-per-view sports, web sites, etc.), The infrastructure provider is restricted from offering content, of course.
This will be a long time coming because anyone with a stake in it will fight it (What would be the point of ISPs? Telcos? at least the cable people have content to sell (Xena anyone?)). Sigh... Logic sucks, eh?
>Name me any restaurant where the owner is _FORCED_ to sell either Coke or Pepsi.
You have no clue how vicious the soft drink industry is do you pal? Well, here's a crash course. If an establishment wants to sell Pepsi only they get a 50%+ discount on their supply of syrup from Pepsi. If they go Coke only, Coca-Cola makes a similar discount offer. But if they want to sell both, Pepsi takes away their discount. So does Coke. The result is huge gouging monetary penalties by both sides, so the owner has to raise his soda prices making the consumer say "What's with these high prices? Your restaurant sucks." No business selling to a customer should be able to base pricing on wheather or not that customer also buys a competitor's product. What if Microsoft told Dell, Compaq, Gateway, etc. that if they have a Linux option on their machines, that they'll yank the Windows license for the entire company. Would that be okay with you too?
I can't pick my cable provider. I'm stuck with who I've got and if I don't like it, I don't get cable. That is the definition of a monopoly. You're right, if there is no monopoly there is no case. But there is a monopoly, so there is a case.
A look at what may be going through the minds of many cable executives about now:
Hmmm. I've invested millions laying fiber in my service area under the assumption that I would be able to offer internet access for an additional $20-$50. Now I'm under pressure to allow others to lease that bandwidth at a fraction of that price to offer the same service to my customers. That's not good for my ROI....or my stock price.
Do I have any alternatives? Hmm...
Wait a minute! What about that video on demand idea that's been floating around for a while? I have the bandwidth for it now. I just need to arrange for content. That shouldn't be too hard. I can leverage the relationships I use to offer Pay-Per-View. A lot of viewers would love it and I could get a better ROI than I could if I used that bandwidth for internet access...and since I don't offer internet service, I wouldn't have to lease my bandwidth to competitors in the near future.
Eventually, we might be forced to lease, but I'll have taken a better position by then. Let my successor deal with that when/if it happens.
Is this so far-fetched? I think not. Cable companies, like any other corporation, are driven by the bottom line. If cable providers can improve their bottom line by offering something besides internet service along those big fat pipes they just ran, you can bet they will.
Personally, I think competition is a wonderful thing. Once a service is available. Give the cable cos a couple years to get everything in place and make back some of their investment before we jump in and force competition. Otherwise they may choose not to offer the service at all.
For one thing, AOL would be *paying* AT&T for the use of the lines. They would not be paying you for the priviledge of running lines through your yard.
How many times do you want your yard dug up because someone else decided to offer broadband? And don't forget, AOL would be doing that even if you weren't on their service, if they had to go through your yard to get to someone else.
AOL *is* providing ISP services over ADSL. The problem is that this not provide total coverage, as 30-40% of homes will not be reachable by ADSL.
No, you're wrong. In order for someone to be able to get ADSL access, the *wire* to the Central Office must be less than 3 miles. Since the wire is not a straight line, it often means that you need to be less than a mile from the CO. Moreover, even if this condition is met, there are other technical reasons why the ADSL service might not be available. The end result is that a large portion of the population *cannot* get ADSL service.
Who said that AOL would be 'hitching a ride'? They would have to pay AT&T for usage of the cable to provide their service.
because congress says they can't charge an arm and a leg for cable.
if it weren't for regulations, you'd be paying a lot for your cable.
I would rather see no regulation but competition forcing the price of cable to stay competitive.
You're naive if you think an investment by AOL in AT&T will result in AT&T giving AOL any spectrum space.
Your argument is a bit like the following:
I'm a Jew, and I wan't what's in my best interest. I'm not for the Allied or the Axis.
This is pure stupidity. Of course you'd be for the Allied troops to win, otherwise, you're dead.
The whole problem is that the line is *already laid*, so having them split the cost wouldn't work. That's almost like saying that they can lay their own line, just for 1/5 the price. It's the line that's already there that's valuable, not the line that'll cost billions to lay and take many years to complete.
The article mentions that Canada just opened up cable access to ISPs. This was news to me, but it turns out to be true. Here's the news release from the CRTC (the Canadian FCC).
/ D998_1.txt
http://www.crtc.gc.ca/ENG/TELECOM/DECISION/1999
The @Home service in Canada goes for $40/month (about $25 US). Is the competition going to be any cheaper than that?
I'm NOT willing to give up broadband, though. I should be able to get gigabits per second in a local area and megabits per second worldwide, and it should be a hell of a lot less expensive than it is right now. If the "industry" doesn't want to push things along at a rate I think is reasonable (And Dvorak nailed it when he said the industry has no intention of doing so) then they can go to hell. If I can't run wires, I'll go wireless. If enough of my neighbors band together on the wireless transcievers mentioned in the parent post then getting a T1 or T3 somewhere down the way should be pretty reasonable, and we can play quake real fast in the local area. And it'd be under our control, no more worrying that your ISP is going to start peering with some mickey mouse backbone like Alternet. Some cacheing tricks and news hosting and all of a sudden the community has a little network connected to the big network at a lot less expense over the long haul.
If you're in a position to lose $1500 a day to online trading, but shy away from a $30/monthly backup dialup for emergencies, you deserve to lose. I mean it. No way could I afford my lifestyle if people like you had FDIC-level protection.
I almost agree with you, but your logic is broken.
If your cable co. agrees to let AOL serve as an alternete ISP on the network, you should have no problem with the "AOL leeches".
The only reason that I can see for you (seemingly) being so adamantly opposed to such an arrangement is that you are certain that the sheer increase of users on the cable co.'s net will bring it to it's knees.
This increase is inevitable on xDSL and cable networks. I think a big point of this article was that nobody should trust that either network will adapt well to these changes. You seem to agree.
There is practically no headache setting up mail server with linux. Provided you start using it.
I hate Libertarian revisionism. Prior to the Federal Communications Act, radio stations would deliberately migrate into the frequencies of rivals with weaker transmitters to drown them out. There was one colorful West coast radio evangelist (with a beaucoup powerful transmitter) who lobbied against the act (and after its passage, the FCC) as being the work of Satan for preventing him from disrupting the communications of his rivals.
I totally agree! Cable and DSL are only
0 448.html
interim solutions, why legislate at this
point in time? Let's keep the motivation
in the market for some companies to offer
true broadband connectivity.
More than six years ago when my sister's house
was being built, they laid fiber optic as part
of the infrastructure. It was a forward looking
move since there was nothing to connect it
to! They've being doing in high-speed
internet tests in her city (Canberra, Australia)
as well. http://www.wired.com/news/news/technology/story/2
What are the chances of PG&E or EBMUD laying
fiber to my home any time soon?
I don't think William Kennard, Donald Weightman, or anyone else in Washington, D.C. has anything good for the Internet. Let the feds stick to stuff they have a clue about...like duping idiot voters into re-electing them.
...can I run a cable from my house to my neighbor's? Can I do it somehow over the street (laser/microwave/shiny red LEDs/ultrasonic encoding)? And if I can, could I gather everybody in the neighborhood, and use NAT to provide direct inet access to everyone via a dedicated NAT server with DSL/ISDN/packet radio to a random upstream provider?
If I can, things would get interesting here...
Name me any restaurant where the owner is _FORCED_ to sell either Coke or Pepsi.
Pizza Hut, KFC
AOL would want us to believe that they are the champions of "openness"? Hahaha ROTFL.
Give me a break! AOL is the last bastion of proprietary content. It can't even be considered an integral part of the Internet.
Cable connections on the other hand are totally open. Pay $40 a month and get a fixed IP address with a permanent 3Mb/s downlink. That's it.
There is no proprietary anything that you have to use. Of course you can install @home's customized Netscape if you want, and even occasionally look at their default front page, but you don't have to. That's not what you pay for either. You pay for that open, juicy fat pipe.
Cable access (at least with @home) is NOTHING like a "closed, proprietary system". AOL is.
The truth is, AOL had their chance and they blew it. Now they are afraid to loose their dominant, quasi-monopolistic position based on their prorietary content. If their content is so good, the cable comany will want to offer access to it. AOL won't be as rich as now, but hey, that's life.
- Ricky Dulous
Most railroad tracks were built by private companies who spent lots of money to do so.
The gov. paid for it many times what it cost them (in land).
They can buy up but in most cases it is illegal for them to build their own.
The facts are that cable companies were given a government sponsored monopoly. When you have a government sponsored monopoly, you receive the following non-substantial benefits:
1) easy to write a coherent business plan
2) reduced difficulty in raising $$$ (investors/lenders love monopolies)
3) assistance in getting right of way over
public and private land
4) most importantly--you get a captive
customer base
Quite simply: it's a pretty much no-lose proposition. Taking it a step further, I would be willing to bet $$$ to donuts that they _wouldn't_ have made these huge investments without a government granted monopoly.
I would agree with you if the cable companies had never been granted monopolies, but since they were they must play by a different set of rules.
--Brad
The only fair system is to lock the bandwidth-providers OUT of the market for content. You don't get phone-sex for free with your local line charges, and it is grossly unfair to make people who don't want phone-sex to pay for it just to have a phone. It is just as grossly unfair to force people who don't want the cableCo's "content" to pay for it just to get bandwidth. Bandwidth and content should be sold separately; any ISP can put dial-ins on the telephone network, and any ISP should have equal access to the bandwidth on the cable network.
Just a thought --
If AT&T, Sprint, and MCI are all converting their backbones to IP, and moving to a Voice over IP structure, then why can't the Bells do the same with the last mile?
Because they have too many existing broadband services out there that they can get too much profit from (T1s, T3s, ISDN, etc). There is no monetary incentive to deploy any real broadband solutions, because people have no choice. What do you think would happen if the Bells let Residential customers get cheap broadband, and continued to charge other businesses the same huge monthy rates they do now?
We now have the cable companies in the mix as well. With AT&T buying up all these guys, do you really think that AT&T (a traditional phone company) cares about video? Not really. It's the Media companies who are trying to convert the Net into something they can understand: push technologies with paid advertising. These two forces are fighting their own battle, generally out of the public eye. However, AT&T is looking to use the cable Internet plant to deliver other things: like their own brand of local phone service, so that they can get a bigger share of the profits that CLECs have.
Bottom line here is that everyone in the mix has a different agenda, and lots of money flowing to the lawyers to try to keep making the most money with the lease effort in infrastructure.
The best thing to do is to get the CLECs and cable plants to compete on the same basis: IP routing services. If everything was IP based (like voice is moving to), then all the physical plants would require is a broadband IP routing structure that charges a fee based on actual usage and top bandwith requirements. This is close to the "pay-as-you-go" internet mentioned by a rather prominent Net Pundit.
this plan would solve a lot of the issues that are being fought over today, but it's not likely that it will come to any kind of fruition because it would force all parties involved to abandon their "easy-profit" pasts, and concentrate on forming a single infrastructure shared by everyone.
I want more fact-free posturing. More demagoguery. More pandering to 'geeks'. In short, what I want is Jon Katz, not this crap.
From the comments I've read here, it seems most people have missed the point. Yes, big megacompanies have invested serious money in developing broadband service, but if other ISPs don't have access of some kind to this network, the megacompanies will ultimately control what we see and discuss on the net. Time Warner already owns several movie companies, cable companies, cable stations, HBO, publishing companies, etc., just to name one mega-media company. If Time Warner, for example, has exclusive control over the last mile of broadband to my house, what's to stop them from controlling Internet content I have access to and what content I want to contribute to the net.
We should be talking more about open access for individual users (like most of us) rather than open access for ISPs and AOL. Yes, we need to close the Digital Divide and improve broadband services, but not at the cost of individual, internet liberty. The freedom we now enjoy on the Net is already being erroded by the telcos, cablecos (which is which?) and FCC special interest ineptness. When do we stop being multimedia sheep?
What I'd expect (or perhaps what I'd like) to happen is in the future, is a regulated service in which all a being gets is access and a routable IP address, and the creation of a market for value-added services, like web hosting, email, usenet, and AOL.
With radio, you had a wide open field, and the government stepped in to restore order. That is certainly not the case here. Here you have a few companies who are using their government created local broadband wire monopolies to butt into the internet business. Basically, the government is already hip deep in the issue, before it even was an issue.
So think of the current situation not as free enterprise, because it's not. It's government created monopolies on local broadband internet access. This is regulation. If the government decides to do nothing else, it's still regulating the industry.
I'm undecided as to which side of the issue I'm on. The only sane solutions still keep the cable companies in charge of bandwidth, so if third parties are allowed to lease access to broadband customers, they will still be at the mercy of the cable companies. This isn't necessarily better than the current situation, particularly when you add the extra administrative and infrastructure costs of such a solution.
----
Open mind, insert foot.
Well, one thing is sure: we wouldn't be reading ANY of this if Comcast and excite@home had their way. Six months ago, here in Maryland, they closed down their "subscribers only" bulletin boards when they started to fill up with posts from people tired of crappy service, as in mail and member page servers going down as often as once a day, a problem that still continues and probably will until they have competition from another broadband Internet pipeline, which they don't currently have and are unlikely to have for several years in this part of the country.
:)
Those of you who support the monopolists have a right to your opinion, but if the monopolists manage to take control of your 'net access, you'd better keep on taking their side, because open debates like this one will stop.
I encourage competition and free speech. If you disagree with my opinion, that's fine. You and Bill Gates now have something in common.
Probabally not as easily as you think. Laying cable is prohibitivly expensive, so the barriers to entry in the cable industry are quite high. This is why many local cable companies have effective monopolies in their areas. So far the only real competition comes from the Digital satellite people, but look how much legisation the local TV stations and cable companies managed to get passed against them. In my area, they are not shy about advertising the effects of this legislation either (YOUR LOCAL TV RECEPTION WILL BE TERRIBLE IF YOU GO WITH THE GODLESS EVIL SATELLITE COMPANIES! YOUR CABLE COMPANY LOVES YOU! SUBMIT!)
I read the internet for the articles.
I can't believe Rob let this guy who is an admitted lobbyist for one of the interested parties to just come in here and write this editorial. That disclaimer is pure shit. I sure hope that he allows AT&T and others to respond. Otherwise I can only assume that this does represent slashdot (or andover.net's?) official position on the issue. Let this guy purchase ad banners if he's looking for a way to get across his message.
I don't get it. You don't want to give AOL the right to "tresspass" on your property, but you think it would be great if AOL had the right to tresspass on AT&T's? Why is AT&T's property any different than yours?
1). AOL could become certified as a CLEC and lease copper from the local phone company. This also gives them access to telephone poles and other structures to lay their own wires if they want.
2). AOL could get a competitive cable franchise and lay their own cable. The days of monopoly cable franchises is on the way out.
3). AOL could actually invest in AT&T's cable venture and actually risk a little of their own money. If AOL agreed to help finance this network, I'd guess AT&T would be happy to give them spectrum space.
You are correct! AOL could have approached AT&T like businessmen and said, "Let's make a deal". With AOL's huge market value, they could easily have afforded to sink a little money into this and be a partner in the venture. Look at the $5 billion MS investment for an example of how this works. Instead, they went whining to the gov't demanding a handout.
a) How do endusers receive EMAIL? Hint: look at my EMAIL address. Also check out http://www.airnews.net for how they recieve news (and possibly EMAIL).
b) How does the enduser get support? There's lots of places to get support. Your local computer store, for example, is happy to provide support (for a price!).
c) how do I handle routes and stuff? Well, you're right -- your Internet service provider has to provide you with your gateway and IP address. See UUNET for an example of how this works in practice (UUNET does provide some services, but you have to run or find your own EMAIL etc. providers).
All in all, though, I don't have much sympathy for those who would regulate cable Internet access. I'm posting this via my cable modem, and I never even SEE that @home site, use their EMAIL server, or use their news server. If they did not have that revenue from their home page, they'd have to hike my rates -- or else I'd have to pay two bills (one for my cable network, one for my ISP) that would add up to more than my current bill. Dollars and cents -- cable companies are in business to make money, and if they make less from one source, they have to raise rates on the network service to compensate.
One last thing: These cable companies are NOT computer geniuses. My cable modem is provided by @Home, and is run by people who don't know much about what they're doing. Asking them to add even more complexity to a network they don't fully understand in the first place is NOT going to help the quality of my cable network service.
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
Posted by Lord Kano-The Gangst:
In my state cable co's have exclusive domain over individual municipalities. I have Adelphia, two miles south or nortn of me people have TCI. You get no choice.
If your cable co doesn't offer broadband (like mine does not) you should be able to get it from someone else who does (like TCI two miles south east of me).
Maybe I'm selfish, but that's my take. In other states where you can choose freely they spent the to deploy broadband nearly two years ago.
LK
Posted by Lord Kano-The Gangst:
>But, in the next few years, IPv6 is expected to take off, providing enough IP addresses for every man, woman and child to have several dozen. (I'm not sure of the exact ratio, but it's big.) In that case, there's no reason to borrow IP addresses at all, and the only remaining reason for ISPs to exist goes away.
A few points...
1. Dynamic IPs give us limited protection from DOS attacks. If that asshole OP on #whatever always has the same IP I can nuke the crap out of him every time I feel like it.
2. ISPs have news servers. I changed ISPs because of news server volume. My current ISP has the largest volume news server in my state.
3. ISPs provide tech support for idiots. AOL would have been out of business 3 years ago when there was unlimited dialup for $20/mo if it were not for the idiots who NEED their service to be able to access the internet. There will always be idiots and either ISPs or consultants will be needed to care for them.
LK
Posted by Solar Jetman:
The argument here is not whether AOL will be able to compete. If AOL's group loses, AOL will be able to find SOME way to profit from broadband, whether it be laying its own lines, or (I think) paying an existing cable company to offer AOL services, which I think could be profitable for both companies given AOL's marketing. They just don't WANT to pay.
On the other hand, we don't see the names of other ISP's in AOL's coalition. Why? Because they are small companies. They can't afford to lay enough lines to offer their own service, and they can't afford to work with multi-billion dollar cable companies (and small cable companies are hard to come by these days). So they will be squeezed out as broadband replaces modem.
A defeat of AOL's coalition will result in an oligopoly (is that a real word?) of cable internet service, between the cable companies and a weaker but still large AOL.
Yuck.
Posted by Lord Kano-The Gangst:
What I'm saying is that either should be allowed. That they should either be allowed to put the cables in place OR lease access to the lines from Adelphia.
What's wierd is that over two years ago Time Warner Cable whou bought out Cablevision put fiber optics in the area. We have cable that will and does support two way transmissions. I can order pay per view eventsfrom the box withouth using a phone line. It's because they're only spending the time putting cable modems in areas where rich and influential politicians live that I don't have one.
LK
Posted by Lord Kano-The Gangst:
What I'm saying is that either should be allowed. That they should either be allowed to put the cables in place OR lease access to the lines from Adelphia.
What's wierd is that over two years ago Time Warner Cable who bought out Cablevision put fiber optics in the area. We have cable that will and does support two way transmissions. I can order pay per view eventsfrom the box withouth using a phone line. It's because they're only spending the time putting cable modems in areas where rich and influential politicians live that I don't have one.
LK
Posted by Lord Kano-The Gangst:
>I have to give you this, you have a slight point.. But the catch is that other companies also have access to that property, just like the cable company does..
Actually in my state you'd be incorrect. The cable companies come to agreements with municipalities to establish exclusive rights to sell their service within it.
TCI is NOT ALLOWED to sell their services to me because I don't live two miles south east of where I currently live.
Adelphia has chosen not to offer broadband internet access where I live in order to persue the more affluent communities to to the north of Pittsburgh.
This is screwed up. I should have had broadband TWO YEARS AGO. Time Warner put the fiber optics in place then because they were planning to do it but Adelphia bought them out and is stalling.
LK
As I see it, the purpose of opening the lines to competition is to keep the lines from being a source of profit in and of themselves.
Why should a company have to let others use the network it paid for? Because years of government-granted monopoly have allowed said companies to lay the wire...Because it is inefficient and wasteful to rebuild a huge infrastructure over and over again just to allow market economics to take place...Because the idea of profiting from the *wire* is as silly and anachronistic as toll roads are today.
We may bitch and moan that current open-access resources (like roads) are poorly maintained and managed, but almost all of us would prefer to hop in our cars and drive from A to B over having to pay a new toll/tax/maintenance fee every time we make a turn, and to get out of our cars and hike whenever we leave a particular Road Service Area.
The wire should be a commodity today. No more reaping huge profits while ignoring the consumer, as every utility monopoly has done for years. These huge companies should still have to earn their profits, rather than resting on the laurels of a decades-old accomplishment. Deregulating the network would shift these jerks' attentions to customer service and support, which is where it belongs anyway.
I don't feel sorry for the wire-owners at all. It isn't like they wouldn't be compensated for their lines--the poor babies would just have to compete in an open market for once.
Let's try not to let fact interfere with our speculation here, OK?
It is more than just that.
I forget how far I live from the CO, but it isn't that far. The problem is that my phone lines were installed in the 80s. Everything is multiplexed out the wazoo. All those A-D conversions mean that I cannot connect my POTS modem faster than 26k and xDSL is out of the question. If you will, the wiring is too advanced for xDSL. I'd love to have a vintage 50s pure copper line into the CO.
I think that this whole thing is a bit more complicated that you imagine. I wish that you were right, but that isn't the case.
Perhaps that could be part of the solution. Take the existing networks away from the monopolies. Give them the same access to them as everybody else.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
P.S. I would like to choose ISPs to connect to via my cable. But I don't think it is right (in general) for me (or us collectively) to use the government to force companies (or people) to do what I (we) want.
Those companies wouldn't have the power and control that they have now if OUR GOVERNMENT hadn't given it to them on a silver platter. The government put them in the position where they could afford to build the massive networks. If they hadn't been guaranteed a monopoly for a period of time, they never would have been able to build those networks. Don't think that these guys are just brilliant entrepreneurs that built their companies and networks from scratch. They had a lot of help from the government and we the taxpayers. I think they've had their free ride and now it's time to do what's in the best interests of the consumer.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
In addition to the other reply to your post, I would like to add that you are utterly incorrect about 98% of the population being within reach of ADSL. You must be within approx. 3 miles of a switch to get ADSL service. Let me quote from the phone company's DSL FAQ:
"Are there restrictions to getting Southwestern Bell DSL service?
Yes, due to restrictions of the currently available technology, customers must live within about 17,500 feet of their central telephone switching office, and their telephone line must be qualified to carry the DSL signal. Not all customers serviced by DSL-equipped central offices will qualify for DSL service. In addition, host networks must be connected to Southwestern Bell's Fast Packet Network service to ensure quality and throughput of Southwestern Bell DSL connections.
My entire neighborhood doesn't get ADSL because of this. Neither do a couple other neighborhoods nearby. It's not poor lines. It's distance. It could be fixed, but just try to get the phone company to do it. They aren't gonna do it if nobody makes them do it. I call and they tell me that I cannot get ADSL. I ask when I will be able to get it. They say they don't know. That leads me to believe they don't have any plans to fix my problem anytime soon. My local cable company has not offered cable modems in my area yet either. They have been telling me that they will be out in a couple months for a year and a half.It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
The companies that own the lines NEVER TOOK ANY RISK! They were given a monopoly by the government. Plain and simple. It's time for their free ride to end and for the government to make sure that they do what's best for the consumers. The same people who paid the taxes to the goverment that gave them their monopoly in the first place.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
They don't burrow through my yard to give me choices in the supermarket.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
How is that going to happen without government intervention? They made the mess with legislation... it'll take more legislation to alter (hopefully for the better) the mess.
Unrestricted access to consumers? OK. That won't happen unless the cable/phone companies have to offer their lines at a competitive price to other access providers. How do you propose to get them to do that?
Then, we would also have to do something about the government passing out monopolies like they were candy. I would hope that they've learned their lesson, but I doubt it.
Some things are good for everyone, but require enormous capital to get started. Do you think 5 separate companies could raise that kind of capital without some kind of guarantee of a decent return? Prolly not.
I think that the government should sponsor certain projects and declare them to be public property and regulate them as such. Anyone can use them, but they must not prevent others from using them as well. There would probably be other terms to such a deal as well... I don't plan to attempt to think the whole thing out right now though.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Actually it makes a lot of sense. Those companies can't afford to not offer Windows. There is a very big demand for it. That shouldn't mean that they should suffer the loss of their Windows customers just because they want to searve customers who want Linux as well.
Unfortunately that's exactly what happens. Microsoft has threatened Compaq this way. I believe they threatened Gateway as well. Those are just the ones we know about. It's quite likely that it is (or was, at least before the DOJ lawsuit) a standing threat to all OEMs. Of course, they've used the licensing price as a club as well, so you're correct about that.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
So? I don't see you even bothering to look for it. If there does happen to be an anomoly or two, that still doesn't change things for the rest of the country and it doesn't make your argument any stronger. Who knows what will happen to the competing company in a year or two. Maybe they won't be able to recoup the initial investment and will end up bankrupt.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
You still don't get it. These companies never took any risk. They got it all laid out for them by the government and have been making fat profits for years and years. It's time for their free ride to end. Just as with the Bells and the electric utilities, the grid should be made available for competion to provide service. Why should new companies have to make the investment in running new lines without the same guarantees and priviledges that the government gave to the existing companies?
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
My point wasn't that they should get subsidies too. My point was that it was a bad idea in the first place and that the government should be doing something to bring competition back in a way that it actually has a chance. They deregulate cable. Are there any new companies in my area? Nope. Are there any moving into any other areas? Extremely few. Simple deregulation doesn't work. Those networks that the government helped them build should be open to all for competition. If the existing company provides the best service and prices, then fine, customers will stay with them. If not, then at least the customer can choose another company.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
I won't be convinced by sketchy claims that don't do much to support your argument anyway. So what if a couple areas out of the entire company have a competing company trying to do some business? Overall, the deregulation has failed since the incumbent companies don't have to let the new companies in unless the local government makes them. So, in the end, it comes down to government intervention. They created the problem and they have an obligation to fix it.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
How do you think they got rich in the first place? Because the government gave them all kinds of breaks and exclusive privileges. That ended up screwing consumers in the long run since there was no competition and rates just keep going up. Now the government has every right and even the obligation to do what's necessary to fix the problem. That means opening things up for competition without giving the incumbents leverage over the newcomers. They're gonna have a hard enough time as it is. Technical issues are another matter. That's something for the experts to deal with. I don't know how they will do it, I just know that without competition, consumers will continue to get screwed by the cable companies.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
I'm going to make an analogy here to the railroad industry. Most railroad tracks were built by private companies who spent lots of money to do so. However, the railroads do (and this is probably required by law) allow other railroads to run on their tracks for a price. For example, the tracks in the Washington, DC area are all owned by CSX Transportation. However, Amtrak (national passenger rail) as well as MARC and VRE (commuter rail) all run trains on these tracks.
If your logic was applied to the railroad industry, all of these people would have to build seperate sets of tracks. If this were the case, the costs of starting a new business would be so prohibitive that we wouldn't have Amtrak or the local commuter rail.
If you had 1/4 a brain, you'd realize the comment was a joke and implied that it was a good article.
The cable companies SHOULD be required to lease their lines to others. Supposedly, that's part of the price for getting a government granted monopoly (They don't provide public access channels out of kindness, I assure you). Otherwise, we all get to have 5 poles in our front yards to hold all of the lines.
In return, the cable companies are entitled to fair compensation for their bandwidth. After all, the Bells have to do it.
Two companies who collectivly have a monopoly on right of way can be just as bad as a single company. It's not necessarily collusion, just two companies who are used to having a monopoly, and want to keep it that way.
AOL could stride in and lay fiber fairly easily..
And mindspring and uunet and nortel, and earthlink...
How many times do you want your front yard dug up?
Lines on poles aren't much better. MediaOne managed to knock the power out twice last week stringing up their cable. The last thing we would need is to give five more providers a crack at it. That's not even considering that we'd need new poles to hold it all. BTW, MediaOne got to take advantage of the Poles Ga. Power paid to put in the ground. Should they have been forced to install their own poles? Bell uses those poles as well. Perhaps we need three sets of poles. Furthermore, Mindspring didn't pay to install the phone system, why don't they just install their own (with poles) instead of leeching off of MaBell?
The reason is that nobody wants 20 poles in their yard, and the economy can't support the waste of 20 seperate communications grids.
I'm not saying the cable companies aren't entitled to compensation for their expenses, just that they are not entitled to have an exclusive arrangement and a ten year head start.
In that case, I was definatly underestimating the laying cost. With revised figures (retail cost of materials multiplied by 10), I get $300 per customer to lay brand new fiber. Where DSL is available, it is offered for $50/month (in Atlanta). The bandwidth itself should be no more that $10 per month which leaves 40/month.
If we ignore support costs it would take 7.5 months to pay for that. If we allocate $15/month/customer in support costs, break even happens at 12 months.
In practice, there will be nowhere near 100% customer buy in for the service. However, the ILECs have an economy of scale that I have not considered in my calculations at all.
That's with all new hardware and lines. Since DSL uses existing copper, the expenses will be lower for the phone company.
The roadblocks to all of this to a newcomer are many. There's establishing a relationship with local government to get right of way, establishing a reputation, getting the up front capital, etc. The ILECs have all of that already.
Short summary: the price of DSL service is in line with other business, but the foot dragging is inexcusable. Complaints about the cost of the upgrades (by the ILECs) are nonsense.
My estimates were based on the retail price of a gigabit fiber from my home to my office downtown (where multiple T3s are available for uplink). The setup was 1000baseSX cards on each end with media converters from multimode to singlemode w/ repeaters every 5km. This would be completely seperate from the phone system.
Since It was only a pipe dream, I did not consider right of way costs. I estimated the cost of running the fiber based on doubling the retail cost of hardware (which another poster pointed out was too low).
After I totaled it up and got a surprisingly low figure, I compared to the cost of unlimited 2B channel ISDN and saw a payback just under 5 years. Since a gigabit is a 'bit' excessive, I considered the possabilities of cost shareing with neighbors.
Finally, I compared to DSL, and reasoned that even if my cost estimates were off by 2 orders of magnitude (according to the other poster who has more experiance, they were, in fact, off by about one order of magnitude), once I factored in the cost sharing, the payback would still be under 5 years, which is often the golden number for business investment.
In summary, my figures aren't quite solid enough to call a business plan (but could be firmed up), but they are enough to raise the question "why isn't Bell moving on this?" and "Why is ISDN so expensive here?".
As I see it, there is no competition at all right now. All Bell will tell me is that DSL is not available in my area (I KNEW that!). MediaOne has been saying Real Soon Now (TM Pat. Pend) since 1995. All are drastically exagerating the costs of setting up the infrastructure.
I did some rough calculations the other day for the cost of running my own fiber from home to work vs. the monthly charge for allways on ISDN. At retail cost for the hardware, and doubling that figure to account for labor (perhaps the labor should be higher), I came up with a payback just under 5 years. The catch is, I priced running Gigabit fiber vs. 128Kbit ISDN with no adjustments. If you take into account that a gigabit line can carry 833 ADSL connections with no overcommit (and 8330 with a typical overcommit) The payback would be under a year (allowing for the additional cost of neighborhood switches). Add into that that Bell could get the fiber much cheaper than retail. Finally, add in that many customers (especially the early adopters) would be willing to pay an installation fee up front, and there is no cost excuse to not provide fast access.
The real reason has to be that they are still too busy selling over priced T1 and ISDN services.
MediaOne, seeing that they have no worries from Bell, are in no big hurry to establish broadband in this area (though they are making more visable progress than Bell even though they have to run all new cables while bell can re-use what they have).
As far as open access goes, They are inflating the cost figures as an excuse to get customer lock-in. I don't buy the argument that third party ISPs would confuse things, about half the ISPs out there lease their dial-up banks, bandwidth, and rack space from other providers anyway (all they actually own is a couple of servers co located elsewhere). All of that is available NOW for $1790/month with a 1 year contract. Somehow, the colo providers manage not to be confused, and manage to make a profit without lock-in.
My car is paid for, but I'm not obligated to car-pool, rent it out, time-share it, or even let a friend ride in it.
You were never given an exclusive right to buy a car in your area. You also were never given the right to park on a strip of your neighbor's yard (whether your neighbor liked it or not). The cable companies ALL were given a very valueable exclusive right to provide cable in their area. And the right to dig up anyone's front yard without notice or consent. That considerably reduced their risk (as a captive audience always does).
If you doubt the value of those grants, consider how expensive (and difficult) it would be for you to purchase the right to dig up your neighbor's front yard at any time you needed to and multiply by ONE MILLION.
Being required to lease their cables to others is NOT a very high price to pay for all of that.
When has regulation been the solution to questions of access? Consider radio. The FCC was started under the erroneous principle that radio stations would drown each other out in the absence of regulation, even though that wasn't happening and showed no signs of happening. (In fact, FM technology makes it pretty hard for radio stations to interfere with each other in normal operation -- the capture effect, as someone mentioned in comments to another article recently, prevents that.) And what has the FCC done? It's increased the cost of radio stations doing business so that average people can't start their own commercial radio station -- the licensure costs too much! It's restricted speech on the airwaves (ever heard of the Pacifica case?). And it's granted government more and more power, power it has no business wielding.
The government does not need to take a stance on the Internet business, any more than it needed to take a stance on the radio business. If it does so, it will only proceed to violate people's rights the way it has in radio -- restricting speech, limiting control to those who are rich enough to pay for a license. (Should you have to be licensed to run an ISP? To operate a Web site? How much will that license cost you? What restrictions will come with it? Ham radio operators aren't even allowed to say "shit", or to discuss politics, on the air...)
The government does not need to create competition; it needs to stop endowing monopolies like the monopolies so many cable companies have. (Many people seem to think that government is opposed to monopolies, because of antitrust laws. As it happens, antitrust is the exception; almost always, where there is a monopoly, it was created by the government. Just consider NSI...)
If AOL wants to offer broadband, then they can invest in the capital to lay down the network, plain and simple..
Companies like Media One spent a good deal of money bring broadband to the house, and now everyone and their mother wants access to those lines.. Well..
TOUGH LUCK.. If AOL wants access to the livingrooms, they should have to deal with the company that took the risk, and actually stuck their neck out to do it, and pay them hansomely for it..
-- I'm the root of all that's evil, but you can call me cookie..
So what's to stop the cable companies from running Fiber to your doorstep? It has nothing to do with the cable companies.. ADSL and many, MANY other technologies exist to do it.. People are just jumping on the cable companies becouse they happened to DO IT FIRST, and now they want an undeserved cut of the action..
-- I'm the root of all that's evil, but you can call me cookie..
And they should be able to lay their lines another two miles to get to your house, but if your saying they should be able to use Adelphia lines, then we part company.. Imagine a law stating that you had to share your bathroom with the guy next door becouse he didn't have one, BY LAW.. ;-P
-- I'm the root of all that's evil, but you can call me cookie..
Then we agree on one fact.. Allow others to lay lines as well...
My problem is that there are several ways that companies COULD access broadband, but they seem to be targetting the Cable companies, simply becouse they managed to do it first.. AOL could contract for full ADSL dialin for all customers, and cover 98% of the population of the US.. But that'd require an investment on their part, hence, 'Open the Lines, oh, and cheap, please..'..
-- I'm the root of all that's evil, but you can call me cookie..
I have to give you this, you have a slight point.. But the catch is that other companies also have access to that property, just like the cable company does..
-- I'm the root of all that's evil, but you can call me cookie..
But companies like AOL could have rolled out xDSL a LONG time ago.. We've had full ADSL access in NH thru Vitts network for some time.. You don't see AOL hollering at them, now do you.. Why one would ask? ADSL service is accesible to 98% of the US population.. There's no leveraging of a monopoly there.. Media One and Vitts do compete with each other, on different lines.. Where is there a monopoly? We've got the same laws.. Copper can provide the same service that the coax can..
-- I'm the root of all that's evil, but you can call me cookie..
ISP's provde a WHOLE lot more then simply doling out IP numbers..
ISP's provide a network that has a connection to other networks, which, as a whole make 'the internet'. ISP's connect to ISP's, and they MAKE the internet what it is..
The internet isn't this network provided by NSI, you know.. It's a whole lot more then that..
-- I'm the root of all that's evil, but you can call me cookie..
This is about Internet access, NOT CABLE TELEVISION ACCESS.. CABLE is NOT the ONLY WAY to provide broadband access..
-- I'm the root of all that's evil, but you can call me cookie..
Agreed!! They seem to think that everyone should be giving them access to their physical assest, regardless.. Nothing is stopping AOL from buying up/building, but they seem to have NO interest in doing this, simply in having someone else provide the line..
They already DO have access to these customers.. It's called IP..
-- I'm the root of all that's evil, but you can call me cookie..
This already exists.. AOL has a 9.95 'no dialup, IP only' option.. But it's not enough for them.. They want SOLE CONTROL.. They want to be able to beam multimedia (Aka, TV, music) into your house, and circumvent telco and cable laws..
-- I'm the root of all that's evil, but you can call me cookie..
97% of the US population lives with several miles of a network switch, which is the ONLY thing required for ADSL capabilities in an area.. It's not Central Office, it's Switch..
-- I'm the root of all that's evil, but you can call me cookie..
98% of the population lives within several miles of a Network Switch, which is the requirement for ADSL service.. Granted, there is still a matter of old, decaying lines, but hey, if allowing everyone access to the lines is such a good thing, I guess this isn't happening.. ;-P
Anyway, I'm NOT saying that everyone should 100% have to lay their own lines, but at the same time, the government should NOT FORCE companies to literally give away access to something that they spent the money to lay originally..
-- I'm the root of all that's evil, but you can call me cookie..
You've contradicted youself.. Why is cable so cheap, if the cable companies have it all locked in, and can charge anything they want on their lines? If there is no competition, WHY IS it so cheap?
-- I'm the root of all that's evil, but you can call me cookie..
Ok, so are they going to bring their own fiber to the neiborhoods? Everyone doesn;t run off the coax.. It only runs there locally, till it rides onto fiber to the local neiborhood..
-- I'm the root of all that's evil, but you can call me cookie..
Same with Cable Modem usage.. You can't just thwack cable modems onto coax and have it work.. It all has to be terminated, etc..
-- I'm the root of all that's evil, but you can call me cookie..
The trial (of approximately 200 homes in one suburb of Canberra) is due to finish on the 31st of July, with a decision made about whether to roll out the network to the rest of Canberra to be made hopefully by the end of August.
It's interesting as Canberra was bypassed by the two major telephone companies laying cable (Telstra and Optus) - most of Australia's major cities have two identical, side by side cable networks which are heavily criticised as unecessary and expensive duplication of services. Canberra has a relatively small popluation of approx. 350,000 but has a higher rate of computer ownership and internet access than the rest of Australia. I can't wait for the whole network to be rolled out! Video on demand, satellite TV feed, internet access, quake, quake and more quake! (-:
Check it out at: http://www.transact.actew.com.au/
Here are the facts:
1. Cable and telcos have a government given permission to lay cabling on YOUR property.
2. Cable and telco companies are using these government given rights to deploy high-speed/broadband services to their customers.
3. AOL is complaining because they can not get their hands onto that wiring owned by telcos and cable companies.
4. AOL also can't get rights to deploy their OWN wiring to these customers. (Cable/telcos have a monopoly here)
5. AT&T says shutup AOL you should have bought a cable provider.
Here's the problem:
1. If AOL buys a cable provider then they will have a monopoly on service in the cable company's service area. (AT&T will have monopoly in their service area.. etc etc). This is bad for the consumer.
Solutions?:
1. Allow AOL or any other ISP to have land rights to lay their own high-speed infrastructure in your back yard. (I don't think that will go over well with most homeowners)
2. Ignore it. Stick it to AOL and assume that the telco companies (xDSL) and Cable companies with overlapping service areas will compete.
3. Regulate. Have the cable/telco only provide a basic IP service (for a fee) and then allow AOL or another ISP to handle the e-mail, news, etc services. (Also allow the telco/cable co to provide these services)
What's the best / fairest solution in reality?
IMHO #3 would be the best for the consumer, but only if the regulation was done well enough and for a very tiny cost to both the consumer and the service and cable provider. The fact is that #3 is what modem users are doing right now and it works quite well.. so why change it? You pay for the phone line and for the ISP seperately. Many telco's have their own ISP service (USWest), but allow you to choose any you want. But that's just my opinion.
Ex-Nt-User
Many folks seem to be standing up for one side
or the other (cable co, or ISP). Many have
pointed out that expensive infrastructure has
been laid out by the cable co's. Tough.
What I am concerned about is my best interest -
not the companies.I personally think that today,
cable lines are better suited to delivering
content than the traditioanl copper technology
(DSL or not). So I want to use those lines to
gain access to the outside. Would I like to have
my cable company as the sole high bandwidth
provider, or would I like to have a choice?
I would rather that multiple high bandwidth
access providers fight for my $'s to deliver
content to my home over cable line; the cable
companies may not like this - but i am not
here to fill their wallets (heck they already
take my money with their exagerrated cable bills).
I have no sympathy for either side of this
argument. I want whats best for me regardless of
who gets screwed (as long as its not me - but the
odds are against it - i dont have the $'s to sway
congress).
Telco's do NOT have a monopoly over DSL. Half the country that has DSL wouldn't have it if they did. For example here in Connecticut, SNET/SBC have been dragging their feet for years with DSL. We've had (and probably still have) the highest ISDN prices in the country.
In the last six months here, and the last year or two nationwide, some companies have choosen to bypass the telco and purchase alarm circuits between their facility and their clients, and provide DSL that way. Some times it works, sometimes it doesn't.
Kind of silly that joe-blow ISP can get DSL working and a telco monopoly can't.
Let me get this straight.... The local government paid the cable companies to lay the cable? I don't think so... If anything, the cable co. had to pay the government to allow them to use the land. The only outside money that the cabel co's have is investor money. These investors get their money back from the cableco as it profits.
On top of this, the cable company is paying the government taxes (not the other way around) on its take.
I'm not a fan of cable companies... they price gouge, offer lousy service and support, usually, and are a general pain in the ass to deal with. However, its their cable. The fact that its paid for already doesn't mean a thing. My car is paid for, but I'm not obligated to car-pool, rent it out, time-share it, or even let a friend ride in it.
If people were required to share their major purchases and acquisitions when someone else needed access to them, what would be the incentive to actually buy or build anything? Why should I buy a car? I can just use yours. Why should I put a driveway in at my house... my neighbor's is next to my door anyway, I'll use his. Why should I even buy a house... etc.
Requiring community access in this fashion is a huge leap towards communism. We all saw how well that worked.
The cableco's took the risk of spending on laying the cable, they own it and can do with it as they please. period.
They're not going to deploy fiber to the home until, like with the local telcos and xDSL, they're squeezed nearly out of existance by real competition from something else. I'd give it quite a while before you see it- at least the same proportion as it took for us to see what we're being "promised" now. Something like 5 years or so.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
I can relate to ISP's providing service. When I had problems with my ISDN service not working and getting the runnaround from BellSouth for a week and logging 6 hours on my cellphone trying just to get a tech to check out my non service, I gave up and called my ISP Saturday night. They had a few guys over at my house checking the line out and made a few heated calls to the telco. I had a BellSouth repairman from Alabama drive over to my Mississippi house that Sunday morning and the cable to my house was fixed.
What did my ISP charge me? Nothing. It was all in the monthly service and they enjoyed the challenge. BellSouth did not charge me as the problem was on their end, but I ended up with $110 on air time for their insisting it was my problem on my end. An ISP put a stop to that nonsense.
My first encounter with the internet was in 1986, when I first went to college. And, the university's ISP was... Well, I suppose it was the university itself, but in reality, we had a "direct connection" to the internet. ISPs didn't exist because at the time 2400 baud modems were the fastest available, and 2400 baud just isn't fast enough for IP.
Fast forward a few years.... Modems get faster, and people start using them to make IP connections across phone lines. Still not incredibly fast, but still somewhat convenient. At this point, most IP addresses were still assigned to specific machines.
With invention of the World Wide Web, interest in the internet started to grow, and a cottage industry erupted around being able to provide IP access to people at home. About the same time, protocols became established to provide temporary IP addresses to a dialed-in machine. Voila! The ISP was born. And, as ISPs grew, they began to offer more services to their customers: e-mail, usenet news, web server space, and so on.
So, ISPs began as a solution to a problem: Nobody had the money for a direct internet connection to their home, but a lot of people wanted internet access. As a result, the primary purpose of an ISP is to provide a place where people can dial their modems and connect to the internet. The other big thing that ISPs do is provide a method for client machines to obtain IP addresses. All the other services ISPs provide: Mail server, news server, web space and so on are not intrinsic to the ISP itself -- it's perfectly possible and reasonable for a person to use one company to dial into the 'net, another company as their mail server, and a third company as a usenet server.
So, let's suppose for a second that it was possible and economically feasible for a person to have a "direct connection" to the internet from their home -- what does the ISP provide?? The only thing that I see that they still do is hand out IP addresses. And, for a short time, that would be useful. But, in the next few years, IPv6 is expected to take off, providing enough IP addresses for every man, woman and child to have several dozen. (I'm not sure of the exact ratio, but it's big.) In that case, there's no reason to borrow IP addresses at all, and the only remaining reason for ISPs to exist goes away.
I would argue that 'always on' internet access, via cable modem and DSL is, in fact, a direct connection to the internet. And, with that, nobody needs an "Internet Service Provider," because they already have internet service.
My opinions. Not my employer's.
Is Jed-Eye Gates going to breath heavy and wear a black costume as his evil empire takes over in the coming episode: Internet II?
Or is Linus ( along with Jed-Eye master Eric Raymond ) going to defeat the M$Dark-Side with a small rebel force of fanatic cute little stuffed penguin-like-creatures that live in the woods, and free us from the M$-Menace?
Will RMS-Solo help out?
Will there be any girls at all in these episodes? ( That are not related of course.. sisters etc.. that sucks )
I guess we will have to wait and see.
In the mean time Jar Head Binks will provide some comic relief. ( If you like fingernails on the chalkboard that is. )
Ken Broadfoot
Bitcoin pyramid: Join here: http://www.bitcoinpyramid.com/r/1427 it's FREE!
Sounds to me that that would break down in densely populated areas (if the numbers are distributed more or less evenly).
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
I like this idea. So I guess that first, we'll need a sovereign. I nominate myself.
I agree on the nasty way that the govt. grabs for more power by using federal funding as leverage. Awful thing, that.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
That's not the point. I know there are an ungodly number of IPv6 addresses. But geographic distribution is not the best way of allocating them. One of the reasons that IPv4 is having trouble, despite a large number of addresses, is because back in the day millions of addresses were handed out to nearly anyone. The phone system in the US is having all kinds of problems because of blocks of numbers being assigned in an inefficient fashion, resulting in the geographic coverage of area codes shrinking, new codes being put into place, etc.
Here in the Boston area, we used 617 until just recently. Then it shrank and 781 was introduced to take up the slack. Now both are being split again.
A better distribution method would be a great preventative step from having to roll out IPv16 in thirty years.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
I still find it disturbing that most of the companies whining about the lack of broadband access are not interested in running their own cabling system. AOL is probably the biggest offender in this regard. The cable companies have spent an enormous amount of money to get the infrastructure in place so that they could profit from the result. Then along come other "service providers" who complain that it is not fair that they don't have access to the new system.
I'm not a huge fan of cable companies. But to require them to open up access to everyone else is to ignore the importance of capital spending on infrastructure. It becomes a huge disincentive to spend on such things if you have to allow your competitors access. And if the telephone lines are used as a comparison, keep in mind that they have been expensed for decades already. The telcos are regulated, and appear reluctant to do much to improve infrastructure.
There are plenty of connectivity options. Dial-up access is probably the most common. But wireless, cable, and DSL are also options that are spreading out. This is no time to have government meddle with broadband access.
While I agree about the unlikelyhood of other companies laying new pipe alongside the old pipe, I don't agree that it would be a bad thing. I'd love to have five pipes to choose from. I'd like for other companies to be allowed to do this if they chose to. Then, at least, I'd know that if I only had one choice it was because the market wasn't big enough and not because the monopoly made a deal with the local government.
Competition produces duplication, but this is not a bad thing. You're not troubled by your choice in supermarkets are you?
The cable network and the telephone network are different. The telephone network was already set up to connect two arbitrary nodes (caller -> callee). When you dial up an ISP, you're using the telephone network in the normal way. The cable network was set up to connect all nodes to one source. Connecting you to your ISP is not the normal use for this network.
P.S. I would like to choose ISPs to connect to via my cable. But I don't think it is right (in general) for me (or us collectively) to use the government to force companies (or people) to do what I (we) want. (I know I went crazy with parentheses)
Cable down, telco up is not the technology that I want for my broadband access. If I wanted that kind of asymetric access, I would already have one of those DirectPC setups. But that's not what I call "broadband" since it's only fast in one direction. I would argue that nobody who reads Slashdot is even remotely interested in 1.5 MB/sec if the upstream rate is only 28.8 KB/sec.
A lot of the technology that true broadband could offer won't even work with such a slow uplink. I want video conferencing! I want to be able to send huge files quickly! I want to be able to transmit real-time, high fidelity audio.
I expect the owner of the pipe is going to be required to to lease access to other services, just like the RBOCs have to lease their plant to the CLECs. But like another comment stated, who needs an ISP when you have a dedicated high speed connection? AOL needs to focus on selling content, not connections. ISPs that don't add any value other than the internet connection (such as Mindspring) are in real trouble. They need to focus on other services, such as email, www service, file service, etc. ISPs as we know them today will go the way of the Icehouse in the day of refrigeration.
there are 3 kinds of people:
* those who can count
there are 3 kinds of people:
* those who can count
* those who can't
(I am not speaking for AT&T)
No-one has said that AT&T won't lease access to the cable lines it lays and upgrades for internet access. Do you have any idea how many long distance phone companies there are in the US? There are hundreds, and many of them lease transport capacity from AT&T at a discount and resell it under their own brand name.
The same thing will happen with cable. If AOL calls up AT&T and offers $1 billion for access to some reasonably large number of customers' homes AT&T is not likely to say no. AOL can then bundle cable service into their package just like Joe Shmoe's Telco bundles AT&T long distance into their package.
The "Open Access" debate is not about the ability to purchase capacity at a bulk discount and resell it. It's about getting the government set rates according to AOL's idea of what they want to pay rather than based on a negotiation between AOL and AT&T.
The key fact to recognize though, is that if laws are passed forcing to AT&T to resell cable access at AOL's prefered rate AT&T is simply not going to pour its money into upgrading the cable lines. If the opportunity for profit is not there, it just isn't worth the investment.
amazing, i'm supportive of aol.
at the point where at&t suggested aol buy some broadband infrastructure and quit whining, i agreed to some degree. it would be cool if aol bought out some broadband infrastructure and cooperatively built it out for competition.
cooperative competition is not an oxymoron. it's a business model that i see redhat, mandrake, debian, and all the other free software linux distro's following.
and then i read that his company is essentially trying to force the cable industry to do just that. way to go. it's not perfect, the cable/phone mix sucks, but it's a step in the right direction.
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The vast majority of cable companies in the US have been granted monopoly status by local governments (often by making sweetheart deals with family members of local officials...) Had these local governments not done this in the first place, we wouldn't have the issue of open cable Net access today.
Here is the solution: Cable companies can maintain a monopoly access to their system ONLY where local governments allow cable competition.
I don't think it's in any American's best interest to let the cable companies anywhere NEAR their net access.. Isn't it bad enough that cable modem and webtv based technologies are tracking every packet you send, every channel you watch, how long you watch it, etc.. etc.. all nice and Ralph's Card style? What happened to privacy? However, I digress..
These lobbyists, and legislators don't seem to understand that though the 50,000 foot view doesn't portray any one cable company as having a monopolistic grip on the industry, they *do not* promote, offer, or even *allow* competition across certain lines.. The Cable companies seem to have learned their business practices from the Mafia.. I don't know anyone in the Southern California area (ie San Fernando Valley, Simi Valley, Agoura/Westlake, Santa Clarita, Burbank(tm), L.A., Hollywood, ad nauseum) that HAS a choice of cable companies. Nobody. It doesn't mean all that much to me, I haven't owned a TV in years.. But if that brand of Bullsh!t is threatening -MY- internet connection, -MY- ability to TX as fast as I can RX, raising the price without due justification, -not- giving me a choice of ISPs; -I- personally will act. See, funny thing about Internet technologies, they're two way streets.. Cable/Telco companies don't seem to understand that we the users can have as much effect on their networks as their own employees.. If the government won't regulate fair connection policies, the users.. the victims.. will.
+$0.02
VT
US$0.02++
Unfortunately, in most US communities there is no choice of cable service providers. In college, the small cable provider kept promising cable modem service but never delivered ("next quarter...we promise"), while in the next town over, a different cable company was starting to roll it out. Here in Houston, cable companies seem to have their "turf". If I could choose my cable company, I definately would switch since Optel's service sucks. My cable has been out for a lil' over a week and I haven't been able to get through to a human for an answer. I finally got through Friday (one week out) but by the time someone will get to my apartment (Friday cause I can't take off for a whole day any other time), it will have been two weeks. Grrr. Do we really want the people responsible for our cable service which tends to go out or fade or get interference during any decent amount of rain responsible for our lifelines to the 'net?
"Dogs and cats, living together...it's mass hysteria!"
Where are you getting this figure? DSL has severe distance limitations which put large portions of the population out of range.
In each of the places I've lived recently, there has been ADSL service available in the area, but not to my home because I was too far from the central office. This means that everyone around me, and everyone else equally far from the office, couldn't get DSL service. I didn't count, but I'm pretty sure this was more than 2% of the population.
The enemies of Democracy are
Phone companies already can't deliver what they themselves have an unrestricted monopoly over: DSL and ISDN. It just isn't in their economic interest to offer anything more than crappy dialup or fantastically expensive leased lines when their invesment horizon is over 30 years. By comparison - in markets where there is competition for cellular service all the competitors offer pretty much the same service at pretty much the same price so consumer choice is moot. And that says nothing for great areas of the country where all of these wonderful services aren't even offered because there just aren't enough people to make it pay [note that this is not a rural issue - most small cities of 200,000 have 0 to 1 local provider].
Conversely cable companies do not grok competition, customer service, reliabilty, SLA's, or flexible pricing because they don't have to and as long as they are permitted local monopolies by bribing - I mean kicking back - I mean access licence fees to local governments - that won't change.
No - future is very dark and will look like this:
Broadband Telco access only to other Telco access customers of the same brand else you will pay extreme 'crossover' fees like you do today when crossing a call among different telcos. You will get real time telemarketing through the Net.
CLCCs will talk about offering cheaper faster better service sometime after the sun is a cold dark cinder if the local monopoly would only play fair and let them.
There will be fewer than 6 branded ISPs and all will be quasi-closed networks like AOL - happily managing the content for you so you don't have to think.
Cable companies will do what they do - sell movies and sports programming and in a desperate attempt to fool people that they bring anything else to the table they'll sell you a set top box that goes to their own portal which is canned front end for one of the 6 remaining ISPs [see above] - Think wrestling pay-per-view viewed through a browser. While CNN blares on the ticker.
There will be a hue and cry through out the land to subsidize access for those millions of people who can't afford it on their own and the most reasonble solution will be for libraries to dispose of all books and become publicly funded places-to-portal [family friendly content only, thank you].
There will be recalcitrant users who insist on using dialup service to get around the gatekeepers. Meeting one will be a quaint experience like going to visit the last living Shakers.
With all due respect, _what_ risk? If there's ever been a sure thing, high speed 'Net access is it. Communities with DSL or cable are seeing customers jumping on board like mad; @Home had to institute upstream limits because folks want to run their own servers; newsgroups, chat rooms, and message boards are hammered with "Why on God's Green Earth will my telco/cableco/ISP/alien overlord not give me HSA?"
We live in a very different world from that of a decade ago. Communications (voice, audio, video, data) are converging -- it's all bits and we gotta get _our_ bits into _that_ machine as fast as possible. The faster we can move bits, the more bits we want to move. When companies roll out something that will let us move our bits faster, whether it's a 56k modem, a DSL adapter, or a honkin' big T3 running through the living room with a tap hanging off the side, customers come and they come with checkbooks open.
If you build it, they will come. It's undeniable.
Learn to spell: nickel, missile, lose, solely, amendment, speech, kernel, probably, ridiculous, deity, hierarchy, versus
Perhaps I'm misunderstanding what "open access" means. Let's look at this hypothetical situation and you can tell me where my thinking is astray, if in fact it is:
BigPhoneCo runs fiber all over my little town of Los Alamos, NM. I face the prospect of having HSA. Now, since BigPhoneCo wants to make all kinds of cash, they launch a subsidiary ISP company with the innovative name of BigPhone.net. I am quite happy getting my internet goodies from my own ISP, call 'em WeeISP.com.
As I understand it, "open access" means that BigPhoneCo can't require me to use BigPhone.net as my ISP -- that is, that they have to make it possible for me to continue with WeeISP.com. Also as I understand it, BigPhoneCo is able and expected to charge WeeISP.com for the use of BigPhoneCo's new fiber line. BigPhoneCo will still make money and profit from the decision to lay fiber; they just won't make as much as if they were allowed to force me to use BigPhone.net.
Unless I'm mistaken in the above premise, rolling out the infrastructure for HSA _is_ going to be a profit-making activity for whatever company has the foresight (and more to the point, the available cash-on-hand) to do the rolling.
As for the issue of "Why should we do something that will make a lot of money if The Man won't let us make an obscene amount of money", that's a problem with corporate America that precedes the rise of the 'net by more than a century -- and in all that time, we haven't yet figured out a solution.
Learn to spell: nickel, missile, lose, solely, amendment, speech, kernel, probably, ridiculous, deity, hierarchy, versus
The reason BigPhoneCo doesn't wait for some other big company to install fiber is because no one is telling them they have to sell to all comers at a loss. Maybe I'm just a rube in the woods but I just don't see how a competent board of directors can turn down a nice profit just because it isn't a mind-blowing profit.
As for my trying to force BigPhoneCo into selling a service, I suppose you're right. I guess I'm looking at BigPhoneCo as being akin to a company that builds and maintains toll roads: they get a big chunk of dough up front to build the roads and they get to collect a fee from users of the roads, but they don't get to ban someone running a "ferry" service with a flatbed truck loaded with people in their cars. Charge 'em extra, yes, but ban 'em, no.
Learn to spell: nickel, missile, lose, solely, amendment, speech, kernel, probably, ridiculous, deity, hierarchy, versus
While I agree about the unlikelyhood of other companies laying new pipe alongside the old pipe, I don't agree that it would be a bad thing. I'd love to have five pipes to choose from. I'd like for other companies to be allowed to do this if they chose to.
For what it's worth, we have this situation in some parts of Australia with cable TV (only one of the two companies actually offers cable modem service, the other will Real Soon Now). Maybe it's nice to have the choice... but look at this from the article:
We have this "proprietary content" here too. If you want to watch, say, NHL and rugby, you'll find that if you want the two channels they're on, you need to subscribe to both cable companies. So you're up for about $80 every month if what you choose to watch doesn't all happen to be owned by the right cable company.
So it's not really that good to have competing cables, because it encourages the "Coke or Pepsi" situation mentioned elsewhere in the thread.
I miss Meept.
Lufkin will probably be getting cable within the next few months, but not Nacogdoches.
TCA suck ass.
The copper bosses killed you, Joe. 'I never died', said he.
Bundling access with the ISP is unnecessary. Breaking that in two has nothing in common with the "regulation" you decry. Keeping the two bundled would be exactly the same as requiring your 56K modem ISP or your DSL ISP to be the local phone company.
Unbundling them wouldn't cost the cable company a dime. No one has ever said they should provide free access, only that they shouldn't charge the same price for bundled access and unbundled access. The cable companies screams that they can't afford to deploy cable modems if they don't reap the rewards are completely bogus -- they simply shift the ISP portion of their costs from your cable bill and to the ISP.
Please be more precise when you complain of regulation. You sound like the kind who thinks stop signs and signal lights are too much regulation.
--
Infuriate left and right
10 or 15 years ago, there was a company trying to break the city chartered cable monopolies. They wanted to bury their own cable and claimed they could make money doing so. The existing chartered cable monopolies screamed bloody murder. A pox on cable companies. They complained when someone tried to show they weren't a natural monopoly, and now they're screaming for a new monopoly. I especially detest AT&T. They intentionally got themselves regulated 80 years ago to ward off lawsuits over all their smelly business practices, they got split up and were absolutely inept at all normal business practices, and now they are buying into a new monopoly and want government protection. I say the hell with them. Maybe it's time for some new baby bells.
--
Infuriate left and right
As much as I can see the intuitive logic in the "Lay you own cables" arguement, I think there are several arguements against it.
(1) Price: Laying any sort of network is incredibly expensive. Weather it's gas pipes, electrical cables, or phone/data wiring, it's expensive to access rural areas, and complicated and disruptive in urban areas. This was, of course, the initial logic in giving regulated monopolies in the gas, electrial and telephone markets. The only way to insure that this expensive infrastructure was installed was to make it profitable, and the only way to do that was to give a monopoly to the company that did the installation. Of course, with deregulation, the same barriers remain to people who want to build new networks (without the same degree of rewards), and the already entrentched companies are free to use their (de facto) monopoly base to encroach into other businesses (like ISP's).
(2) Legality: There's a concept called essential facility. Back in the late 1800's, there was one railroad bridge across the Missisipi near St. Louis, and was the only practical river crossing for that region. The company which owned the bridge, a rail company, would allow access (for a fee) to other railroad companies. However, there came a point where the company owning the bridge began preventing some of their competitors from using the bridge. In an antitrust case, it was decided that the bridge was an "essential facility", and as such, had to be made available, at a reasonable fee, to all comers. We've seen the same sort of thing in the telephone industry, where your local phone company MUST give you the long distance service you desire.
The bundling of ISP services with bandwidth services, is totally counter to everything we've seen so far. Bell Atlantic will provide me with an ISDN line, but can't require me to use their ISP. (that would be tying, exactly what Microsoft is accused of doing, might I add). As long as service and bandwidth are connected, we won't be able to turn bandwidth into a commodity, just like rice or paper.
[Note: I am not a lawyer. I learned about essential facility from a variety of sources, and I believe I've gotten the core of essential facility correct.]
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Competitive networks were originally the norm for electricity and phone service. And it was traditional for cable in many areas as well, simply because it took a while for the usual level of graft and rent-seeking to show up. You only get monopoly after government at some level grants monopoly. Consumer's Digest magazine did a survey of cable competition sometime around 1986 where they matched up similar localities where one had two or more competing cable companies and the other had a monopoly provider. The areas that allowed competion had about a third more cable channels available and charged just about half the price-per-channel of the monopoly regions.
If the arguments for monopoly were correct you'd expect competitive regions to have higher costs because there's more duplication of effort. But in fact the arguments for monopoly are not correct, and the proof of this is that competitive utility providers actually have lower costs than monopoly providers pretty much everywhere anybody has bothered to make the comparison.
Last I heard, the city of Lubbock, Texas still has two competing electricity providers, both of whom have the entire town wired. If you're not happy with your service you can just call in and have them change the meter to connect to the other line. And costs are low, because the cost of the wires is a tiny portion of the total cost of providing such a service and competition leads to vast efficiency improvements in all areas of production that more than make up for losses due to duplication in this one area.
And don't forget that when you're talking about a basic utility, having some level of duplication of effort is a big win; it means that people who are really concerned with reliability can subscribe to BOTH networks and be assured of continuous service.
(Isn't it horribly inefficient that most newspapers have their own separate overlapping distribution chains? It might plausibly be more efficient if we passed a law granting the first newspaper who buys all those trucks and hires all those drivers an exclusive right to sell newspapers in a given area. But this would be stupid. Likewise for cable.)
I play Nerd-Folk!
What if Microsoft told Dell, Compaq, Gateway, etc. that if they have a Linux option on their machines, that they'll yank the Windows license for the entire company. Would that be okay with you too? This analagy makes no sense. Now if Windows said that they would double the price of its license if Linux was used, then it would make more sence. And this probably happens a lot more than you think, and not just at Microsoft.
AOL could have approached AT&T like businessmen and said, "Let's make a deal".
AT&T would have laughed in their faces. The issue here isn't one of paying for bandwidth. @HOME is a content-provider, not just an ISP. It competes directly with AOL for "eyeballs" (i.e. ad revenue). AT&T has no incentive to share bandwidth for just the cost of that bandwidth, since it means they no longer can force subscribers to use their software and come to their portal.
Said another way, AT&T wants to invade AOL's territory, but exclude AOL from theirs by buying control over access. At stake are tens of (US$) billions in projected revenue over the next few years.
But where does a "direct connection" go? It's not like there is some central router in the set of networks known as the internet. Two things:
1) Yes, everyone can have their own IP address... But where are they going to buy it from? Single IP addresses, scattered across the internet, just don't work. There is no router that could keep up with that kind of routing table. While an ISP may no longer be needed to loan you an IP address, you're still going to want them to sell you one. If there's no route to you, then being on the internet is useless.
2) The other major service that the ISP's provide, is a good connection to the networks you want to get to. Sure, you have an ADSL connection to Bell Atlantic, or another physical-layer provider, but wouldn't it be nice to be connected to usefull networks? You need an ISP because you don't have the money to connect into UUNET's backbone or MAE-EAST.
There are many internet users who have never used an ISP for anything more than getting an IP address, and connecting to the networks that make up the internet. This hasn't changed, and it doesn't look like it's going to soon.
Adam Pennington
Carnegie Mellon University
Would you do it for some scoobie crack?
where *do* people like you come from anyway?
A little enclave of South American Nazis produces these people, as part of their ongoing efforts to produce a Master Race.
As you can see, the process is still in alpha testing. The brain in particular is very difficult to get just right, but they say they'll have the IQ up to 50 Real Soon Now...
If they'd only open up their processes and code to peer review and outside bug-fixing, they'd be farther along.
We could correct those unintended social gaffes ("The evil Jewish conspiracy is everywhere! run!") although the process is akin to "fixing" Mozilla's original layout engine...
Jay (=
There are many other ways to get high speed access besides cable. If AOL & friends want to get in to the high speed access industry they will have to build their own networks, just like everyone else.
If cable access were gov't owned we'd still be using ducks to send IP packets.
I can remember that time well. That was back when Gopher still used real gophers.
FinkPloyd
I'm sure history repeats itself. Has anyone here spent any time on studying how TV and Radio became what it is here today? I'd be interested to know what they think.
-Rich
I, also, would like to see competition rather than regulation controlling the price of cable service. The problem is, I have yet to see a proposal for doing so that I would be prepared to defend as workable.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
There's also the question of how many groups of folk you WANT to have the right to dig up your front/back/side yard whenever they feel like it.
As in:
I just got that clover growing nicely after (fill in name) dug it up and now (fill in another name) comes through!
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I haven't yet seen any evidence that a cable company will lay cable without being granted the status of a monopoly. Certainly, the three companies that were talking about laying cable (around here [SF California]) in the 60's all refused to do it without being granted a monopoly. (Of course they were calling it CATV [Community Antenna TeleVision].) And they also demanded fee guarantees, that would ensure being profitable. Not big risk takers. That's my experience. YMMV.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Bah...you shouldn't be moderated down because you're incorrect...but you are incorrect. :)
At least here where I live...the cableco (Intermedia in my case) *is* definitely monopolistic...they are the only cableco available to get service from where I live. While the franchise is not an exclusive franchise...meaning that other cableco's could come in and compete...that certainly hasn't happened and general consensus is that it won't happen...
So...cableco's in most places (I think most have similar franchise agreements) are monopolistic.
Further...I find most of the cableco arguments (AT&T and the like) to be flakey at best...perhaps I'll expound on my thoughts in a later post...don't have time at the moment.
Jeff
Really, I feel no sympathy. Get a utility license and lay your own lines. Sure the equipment is expensive and it costs a lot. But seriously, how the hell can companies like MediaOne pay for it if they make a few cents here and there by leasing their lines?
I use MediaOne, I love it. But they are having problems enough getting the service up and running 2 way without having idiots claiming that their LAN (YES, it is a LAN) should be opened.
I ask you this. What do you know about technology. Or how about, TCP/IP? Do you realize that what is being asked is not cheap?
The routers on the cable lines only look for MediaOne subscribers. So do their DNS servers and everything else. If you were to tie another ISP downstream, their service wouldn't work anyways!
The only way for that to work would be a lot of expensive equipment that the cable companies would buy to solve it. I beleive they shouldn't have to.
Go DSL if you want to be a cry baby. Get a satilite firm. Put in your own wires. We don't need companies like you hurting the infrastructure. Telco's already have shown that because of deregulation, parts of their services can hurt or cost more.
Here is another solution.
Provide services!
Online content for **gasp** a local portal, not a global one. Or think of something else.
Really..."Let us use their cable because we can't afford to put a similar system in place" What a bunch of morrons.
Dan Guisinger
www.atacomm.com - The Leader in VoIP Product Distributi
This is not like Ma'Bell people. Ma'Bell had a true monopoly.
What does this ensist of?
They OWNED the patents on the phone forcing people to use their service, as no other service could not even exist!
That is correct people, another phone company couldn't rent back then because they couldn't even own a phone....
On the other hand, you can buy cable modems, MediaOne can rent lines if they please, BUT no one is required to sell a service that they don't offer! The only requirement is that someone sells something they offer to someone paying the price.
You idiots who think that AOL should get a free ride should be taken out from your LSD filled worlds and realize: The infrastructure wouldn't be there if it wasn't for the companies providing it. They intend to make enough money to pay for it....that is a must. I have cable access, I love it, its great, and MediaOne is improving on it.
But, it is not an essencial for life either. CableTV NEVER HAS. There for it has been regulated differently. In the 20th century telephones have been considered essencial so the fact that they are deregulated makes sense.
But CaTV lines should never be on the reason of broadband. Why?
First of all, you have many ways to get TV.
Broadcast is free
then there is CaTV and Satalite.
Why not ask the government to open up satalite access if they will CaTV? Its in internation territory, and it costs alot to put into place...so why not open that up? Its a stupid idea, if you want to broadcast, you can for free!
Second of all, there are multiple forms of Internet connections....Cable, DSL, Wireless, etc
They should have no problem getting people onto their service somehow or another. DSL is open ended because it uses the existing phone network with just a few changes.....
There is no problem in my mind or the minds of many others in leaving the door closed on these services unless the owner decides to lease them.
Its their private property, paid for by them. They should not be told they have to sell access to it for a purpose that their networks were not designed or implimented for.
Dan Guisinger
www.atacomm.com - The Leader in VoIP Product Distributi
The way it works is each cable company gets control of the local cable network. Unless they LET someone compeate with them you have no choice.
Normally the only way you can change your cable company is to move into the service area of your cable provider of choice.
Even if someone is allowed to compeate it's only becouse the primary cable company allows it so in a sence even then there is a monopoly. Do it our way or we won't let you provide service.
Think about how it would be if everyone had to strike a deal with Microsoft to make operating systems. Thats basicly what you have with cable companys.
I don't actually exist.
My guess will be nobody, if I were a company why would I invest in running very expensive fiber and the associated equipment if companies such as AOL will be allowed to jump on with no investment. It will cause all sorts of logistical problems. My Return On Investment now drops and I'll have more trouble getting investors to help with the funding.
It weakens my business decision to build such a facility.
Neil Cherry - Linux Smart Homes For Dummies
IMHO (hey I'm no expert on this) Open Access will happen but will it be that every municipality will create it's own regulations or will there be a national set of regulations? If it's the latter then competition will work, it it's the former then AOL and other large ISPs will benefit from the confusion that will occur (OK it sounds like a conspiracy but in business they do occur).
Are users able to get to AOL now though the dialups of their local ISP (cable, telco, ro satelite)?
I think the answer is yes.
Isn't it an addition service that they pay for in addition to their ISP rates?
I think the answer is yes.
And if the user doesn't want the extra ISP charges can they not just use AOL dailups?
Yes
And if it's not local to the user do they not pay additional fees for that access? Heck are we not paying for the local access call in some form of rate plan (or at least we can)?
Yes & Yes
So AOL can then be accessed via the cable, DSL, Satelite or DSL. Am I missing something here?
Neil Cherry - Linux Smart Homes For Dummies
That's funny -- I didn't realize I was entered in any "competition" where I needed an "attitude" to "win." Did somebody sign me up for a 10K race or as an investor in an IP-over-cable deal while I wasn't looking?
Oh, please. If cable companies are made to open access like ILECs have, you can count on them charging an arm and a leg for those co-location privileges (like the ILECs do). That's hardly "stealing."
Boo hoo hoo. The cable companies are the ones who submitted to "nationalization" in the first place, by accepting monopoly status, and getting government help for rights of way. Part of the deal of being a de jure monopoly is that you get government oversight and some obligation to serve the public interest.
Well, now the definition of what constitutes public interest has changed to involve competition at the service level. That's hardly "nationalization", just a change in the business environment. No one has proposed making cable or telco a state-owned enterprise.
"Steal," "nationalize," ... let's be careful throwing those loaded words aroud ...
"Big Business and State Socialism are very much alike, especially Big Business." -- G. K. Chesterton
Your faith in "free" market competition to serve the public interest is touching, but it's not one I share. Last time I checked, companies exist to serve the private interest of the owners/shareholders. One hopes that companies can do well by doing good, but it's simply a happy side effect when that private interest and the public interest coincide.
Per the American Chesterton Society quotes page, this is from G.K.'s Weekly, 10-April-1926. I confess to not having read the context of that particular essay. However, I have recently read all of What's Wrong with the World and The Outline of Sanity, in which Chesterton makes an extended case that Capitalism and Socialism are, rather than opposites and mortal enemies, nearly twins. So I rather doubt that I'm taking him out of context.
(TOoS is Chesterton's tract on Distributism, the political philosophy he advanced with Hillare Belloc against both Capitalism and Socialism. It advocates the widespread distribution of property into many independant enterprises, such as family farms, local stores, and cottage industries, as a bulwark against the encroaching power of both State (Socialism) and Corporation (Captialism).)
"It may be very difficult for modern people to imagine a world in which men are not generally admired for coveteousness and crushing their neighbors; but I assure them that such strange patches of an earthly paradise do really remain on earth." -- G. K. Chesterton, The Outline of Sanity
"From the standpoint of any sane person, the present problem of capitalist concentration is not only a question of law, but of criminal law, not to mention criminal lunacy." -- G. K. Chesterton, The Outline of Sanity
"Too much capitalism does not mean too many capitalists, but too few capitalists." -- G. K. Chesterton, The Uses of Diversity
An excellent and informative essay.
There are a few points that I hope slashdot posters will keep in mind (as I see that the cable company apologists are already out in force):
While today there is beginning to be some miniscule amount of competition between cable providers, the overwhelming majority of cable has been installed and run as a de jure monopoly (just as the telephony and electrical infrastructure was built).
The classic architecture for a cable system (coax-based) is lousy for providing IP services. Basically, it's non-trivial to take something that was built for 100% push, all users getting the same content, and change that to a system that gives good upstream bandwitdth. Cable companies with older cable plants are basically screwed, and will need to spend $$$ to be able to offer broadband internet that scales beyond the first few early adopters. Companies that deploy their plant now have a huge advantage, because they can make their initial investment in hybrid fiber-coax (HFC), which does work better to provide both classic CATV and broadband internet.
AFAIK, there are no serious plans by anybody to set up competing cables to the curb. Those lucky companies that are building cable plant with new HFC are those that are wiring up areas that are newly built or just never had a cable rollout yet.
In the two other major monopolies (telephony and electrical power) that have been opened to competition, there is no rollout of new distribution infrastructure. In the telco case, access at the central office has been mandated (leaving a single physical plant for the last mile). Also, the power companies are not planning on building competing grids, but will compete on delivering power over the existing grid. So, for telephony, the ILECs (Incumbent Local Exchange Carriers) have to open up physical space and wiring in the CO, plus have interoperability for the number databases, and the incumbent power companies will need to figure out how to do something similar with shipping power around the grid.
As you can probably guess, my sympathy is not exactly with the cable companies. I have yet to see a good argument why they ought to get to keep a service monopoly on their plant while folks like the RBOCs (Regional Bell Operating Companies) and electric utilities don't. Just like Ma Bell and the public utilities, they managed to grow huge as a legally protected monopoly. Now, that "competition will make it all better!" has become the new fad, they would like to protect their little fiefdom. Of course they would.
"Big Business and State Socialism are very much alike, especially Big Business." -- G. K. Chesterton
As I understand the situation, cable companies are powerful, but still have competition from other cable companies. If that's the case, then surely the ISPs' complaints are groundless?
As long as a cableco isn't acting as a monopoly, there should be no requirement on them to lease lines to anyone that would horn in on their action. I'd be pissed off if I, acting as a legitimate business guy running a computer consultancy in competition with other consultants, was required to teach other people how to give technical support. It's a tenuous analogy to be sure, but a valid one (I thinK).
All this, of course, is dependent on my understanding of US cable companies. If I'm wrong, I'll understand if I'm moderated to oblivion. In fact, I'll be delighted if it means fewer people seeing me acting the gobshite.
Things aren't always that simple. This is pretty much a replay of equal access act where customers are allowed to use a different telephone company as their long distance carrier, bypassing the local telephone company (but not without a fee sometimes). The money that was spent installing lines (cable or otherwise) was not cableco's alone. It also came from taxpayers, the local government and various entities. These companies make use of public land and will therefore have to stand the same treatment. Cable subscribers also have already paid much the costs as part of their monthly fees. So down with the bloody monopolies!
unfortuently antennae don't awlays work. When I lived in NYC, we had cable (but no cable channels) only because it was impossible to get anything but fuzz. When I lived on long island if i didn't have cable the only stations i could get were the garden city pbs and one conneticut v station.
trust me I tried to use all sorts of antannae before we signed Cablevision's contract (the evilest bastards in the world until recently, when they've acutally improved things and upgraded all of the island to a fiber optic line (the cable modem's great))
------- Oh damn.... the Sigfile escaped... -Great OM
I'm intrigued by your hypothetical ISDN replacement. How did you estimate the cost of laying the fiber? Did you put it on poles or underground? What hardware does the "bridging" (or whatever they do) from the DSL media in your house to the nearest fiber switch? Did you figure in the cost of getting the local zoning committee to approve all your new developments? Did you figure in the cost of getting permits for any new wiring? Did you figure in the cost of making sure installing the new hardware wouldn't break existing phone service?
I'd like to believe it's just greed that's holding us back, because that means that a less greedy group of individuals might be able to break down the barriers and even make money at it. However, I don't think this is strictly the case.
The payback figures here are wildly optimistic. It's been many years since I was involved in installing communications cabling, but the cost of the materials was so low compared to the cost of labor and of getting permission to run the cables that we would typically run two to four times as much capacity as needed. The figure I recall is that material costs are less than ten percent of the total cost of laying cables.
Information is not Knowledge
Or "Hear, hear!". Whichever you like...
MJP
Don't try that "protecting the children" shit you people use to keep the tits and bad words off my TV. --Seanbaby
Name me any restaurant where the owner is _FORCED_ to sell either Coke or Pepsi.
So much for your theory about the free market.
MJP
PS. Diamond Shamrock sells both Coca-Cola and Pepsi. Nyah-nyah...
Don't try that "protecting the children" shit you people use to keep the tits and bad words off my TV. --Seanbaby
I live in a rural area, and can't get faster than 28.8kbps (V.90 even craps out).
So, someone, please tell me why I should give a rip about this when the phone and cable companies can't be bothered to get me any broadband solution.
(Yeah, I know that it's probably not worth their time and money to fix me up. It still sucks.)
Pretend there is some witty statement here.
END USER -----DSL-->TELCO-->AC------> ISP1 -----> RADIUS
(connect this to the AC... ./ doesn't allow for tags) -----> ISP2
(imagine more connections to the AC...)
So the X is the end user. He/She connects to the telco using the DSL line. The DSL connects (some details have been left off) to the Telco (i.e. Ameritech where I'm at). The Telco has something called an AC. The AC is the Access Concentrator. Think of it like a router. Then connected to the AC are a bunch of big ISP's that have provisioned lines, Value added features, etc.
So, how does PPPOE work? You run a PPPOE client on your machine. And lets say for this example that you have selected ISP1 as your ISP. When you login (using name and password), a PPPOE packet is sent down the DSL. The Telco routes the PPPOE packet based upon the ISP you select. The PPPOE packet eventually makes its way to a PPPOE server (not shown) and that server authenticates you through RADIOUS (which all the ISP's have been already using and know how to bill from, etc.)
So, once you are authenticated, you get an IP address from the ISP! Any traffic to that address goes through the PPPOE server, down the DSL line encapsulated within PPPOE packets and eventually your machine. The advantages to this system are that:
- The Telco doesn't have to do any real work. They just wait for the ISP's to provision lines, and then the ISP's pay them to have access to the AC. The end user ends up shelling out money for the DSL line.
- The ISP's know Raidus really well. They have been using it for years and do all of their accounting/billing from it.
- Unfortunately, this also means that they will be able to charge for a "network login", i.e. for each machine you have. Granted you could (and probably will) run a Linux machine and NAT all the rest of your machines.
- Right now DHCP has a drawback that there isn't a really good way to authenticate someone before handing them an IP (without making everyone register their MAC addresses...what a pain.)
-Jeff Ballard (jballard@nwc.com.nospam)Good Fast Cheap. Pick any two.
Cable, and DSL already provide Static IP addresses, infact my old Dialup provider used to have Static IPs for people who requested them(years ago)... 206.29.126.231, delmoi.ames.net.... *sigh*
_
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Well, the southern baptests can bitch all they want, but If @home tried to do somthing like that, they'd be royaly screwed. All the Constitution thumpers (not to mention nazi perves) would come out of the woodwork. I don't belive that's a relistic posibility
/. or anything, but your not going to be able to run your own Server
on the other hand, things like the 128k upstreme limit are a lot more insidious then they look at first. They are basicaly only alowing you to be a passive member of the net. Its not going to stop you from posting to
_
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Well, TV was always a comerial, passive medium. but radio was not, infact much of the current thought about the Internet applied to radio. a wonderfull, democratic *two way* communications medium
then people relized they could make money off it....
_
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
you know, it used to be that Local television was broadcat through the air, and you could just put antenas onto your television and watch them.
wait... they still are. go to radioshack and buy a pair of TV antenas, the cost about $5. you can switch from satilite to TV with your remote
_
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
I think there may be a little confusion on the subject of equal access here. There was no 'equal access act'. There was the MFJ which split up the bell system, creating (8, I think) regional bell operating companies (rboc) and creating a separation between local and long distance phone service.
You cannot get dial-tone service from a long distance company to bypass your local phone service provider. Your local provider has to allow you equal access to the LD provider of your choice.
There really isn't a parallel here, that I see. The added value of AOL in its proprietary content is not similar in any way I can think of to long distance service.
What I gather the central issue here is that when you get broadband service from a cable company, the $40 you pay each month is supposed to be for access and content. AOL wants to be able to sell its content to you and wants your cable ISP to reduce your monthly access by some amount if you don't use their content?
Maybe I'm just confused here. I'm paying $40 a month to MediaOne for an 'always on' high-speed connection. If they have content, I don't use it. If they started restricting the services available to me because they are providing a monopoly service and I have no option to go elsewhere, that is one thing. If I'm locked into something besides my connection at $40 a month, I don't really care so much.
No, but consider this: access/server providers, though having little incentive to disrupt current net standards, have very high incentive to create exclusive content and services only availabe on their own networks. And they have incentive to curtail or at least manipulate the formation of new standards. The browser wars have already demonstrated this behavior.
So, in effect, there may be a time when you must use a certain ISP to receive certain types of messages from some people.
Competition *should* keep this sort of thing to a minimum, but there are many places with only one option available for high speed access. And even where there are a handful of competing services available, there is still no guarantee that they won't collude to keep a strong grip on the options available, like say, not allowing servers even when bandwith is plentiful. They all have a shared interest in keeping people away from things that aren't "industry sanctioned" content, because they make more money from that than they do from customers who want to run servers.
Not that I think the old style regulation is a good idea, but the "you lay the wire, you control the access" approach could prove equally disasterous.
And you forgot the economic reason for state-sanctioned monopolies: the cost of building infrastructure is so high that a regulated monopoly is more efficient than competition. I don't remember all the details why, but I imagine that competition in the utilities market creates a lot of redundancy and reduces economies of scale.
Civics lesson:
FCC != Justice Dept. != Congress != local government
I hate to burst your bubble, but the government is not one grand conspiracy. It is composed of many parts with competing agendas, both within and between those parts, and in most cases those agendas are set by people not employed by the government.
And the government is multi-tiered. The local government that grants one cable company a local monopoly is not the same as the one that forces another to open it's lines to ISPs.
The whole point of this article was to show that there is a battle going on by very powerful billion dollar industries, and government policy is as much their battleground as the market. There are no clear good guys, there are no clear bad guys, there are simply competing interests, and those interests may or may not jive with the interests of us, the consumers.
(And really, how effective do you think radio would be if people could broadcast on the same frequencies? Who wins in that situation, the independant station or the wealthy congolmerate?)
It is not as easy as one would suspect to go and lay fiber. The problem is the following:
To do so you have to either bury the cable (how many localities are going help out with that one, and how many property owners are going to fight that when it comes to digging up _their_ backyard. They yeilded for gas, then the railroads, then electric, then the telephone, then highways, but will they consider AOL an important enough service to not fight the disruption of their lives and property?)
The other option is to lay them along phone poles, which the phone company owns, and i'm sure they'd want a big piece of the pie, or to lay them on the roads, which means that each city, county, etc... would have to okay that, and it's hard to get a municipality to okay something that involves a lot of traffic-causing construction.
The big advantage of the cable modem is that it works over an _existing_ infrastructure, already belonging to and operated by companies who put the system together when they were still government regulated/protected monopolies.
It is unreasonable to expect others (even AOL) to compete unless they are given the same assistance and protection to lay their lines and build their network. Is that what we really want to spend our taxpayer dollars on? Building a new network for everybody who wants to communicate?
I would also like to point out that when the pone system was new, every phone company had their own incompatable system set up, and if you wanted to call anybody not in your phone system, it was a big deal with lots of patches and kludges and negotiations and such. Shall we learn from our previous mistakes, or shall we do it all again?
---
Play Six Pack Man. I
There's a great example of open broadband net (and even CATV) here in my home town ( Ashland, OR)
The city decided it wasn't going to wait for the big broadband 'net-access carriers to get around to servicing this area, so they're laying Fiber Gigabit Ethernet throughout the whole town! (It's called the Ashland Fiber Network)
What they've got going with the local ISP's is this:
There is another local broadband net provider around here, the local cable co, Falcon, has a internet service. It's interesting to note that the City competes w/ Falcon doubly. Falcon has it's Cable-TV infrastructure, which they also offer net service over, and the City has it's Internet infrastructure, which they also offer digital cable TV over.
So, we have both, the ISP's competing w/ each other and sharing the City's cables, and the City and Falcon competing with each other, each with their own cables.
-- -- The Dragon De Monsyne
too far from the switch. Phone company
intends to remedy this when Hell freeezes
over. Time Warner/Roadrunner could put in
cable modem tomorrow if they felt like it,
but since they have monopoly access to that
wire that are in no rush over it. Looking
a Roadrunner's rollout the only thing I
can say for sure is it won't be before
the end of 2000.
practically speaking I don't care who
provides me with better access - as long
as someone can. 56 dialup with terrible
quality phone lines is driving me crazy.
If open access will put the fear of god
into roadrunner and make them try to get my
business first - I'm all for it.
garyr
-- your Web browser is Ronald Reagan
As for the contention that no one would invest in "common carrier" cable infrastructure because someone else could come along and "steal" that investment, I'm quite sure that some enterprising businessman would get the idea to lay down a cable infrastructure then lease his entire bandwidth out to competing companies. Why bother run your own cableco and worry about content when you can let others do all that work and just collect the rent?
Hell, you'd hardly even have to do maintenance, it's not like my cable company actually does anything that I can see
Many ISPs are already going modemless. Local telco's have been encouraging ISPs to co-locate or rent modems with/from them. The modems (56k, ISDN, xDSL, what have you) are located at the telco's central office. The result is that telco's don't have to run lines to the ISP's office and ISP's don't have to physically maintain their modems. As long as they can trust eachother, it is a good arrangement. xDSL _has_ to be co-located, so it is one that ISPs better get used to anyways.
As things move in this direction, as I suspect they will, or further to the always on access, ISPs will mostly just run servers and will mutate into portals.
So, in a way you are right, ISPs as we know them today will disappear. Instead they will become portals, someone to digest the internet a little for end-users. ISPs can still offer a community feel, whether it be physical or virtual community. The cool part is that people get to pick their community and readily visit others.
IP numbers should be assigned in blocks to geographical areas. Routers can easily handle this. Networks should be based on geographical areas as well. With IPv6 it will be possible to have geographical networks. For those who will need them, it will also be possible to claim additional blocks for their own private networks.
Not with IPv6, which I think works out to an IP for every cell in every man's body. It wouldn't be like the telephone system, which has an incredibly small address space. Well not really (is there an upper limit on telephone numbers?), but the US space is only 10 digits, with 1 and 0 ruled out for the 4th digit (because within an area code you leave out the first 3 digits). It used to be even worse: area codes had a middle digit of 0 or 1 and the 5th digit also was constrained to 2-9.
But IPv6 has an incredibly huge address space.
The fundamental problem here is similar to that of utilities like water, telephone and electricity: every home must be connected, and it costs a fairly large amount of money to connect. The problem is that a) no-one would ever spend the money to connect a consumer who will jump ship next week and b) no consumer will pay the money to be connected. $10/ft. (or whatever the going rate is) is a lot when you're 2 miles from the nearest station. But once you're connected your neighbor can connect from you, which is maybe 10 yards.
The approach taken with the roads often fails to work, as anyone who lives here in Colo. knows. If cable access were gov't owned we'd still be using ducks to send IP packets. Government programs have their own perverse incentives which mess things up.
The approach taken with utilities often fails as well. Monopolies have little incentive, esp. with a product which is needed (like water) or perceived as needed (such as electricity or net access). The monopolist, no matter how pure his heart may be, will find himself shafting the consumer due to the perverse incentives of his situation.
The free market approach is v. difficult. How do companies compete over a common territory for which they share responsibility? How can they differentiate from the competition? What incentives do they have to upgrade their lines (note how low-quality telephone lines still are; there's no incentive to change them)? The solution is non-obvious.
I am reminded though, of the way roads (a network is more like a road than a water line; it carries traffic from one point to another, not a product from source to recipients) were handled in the middle ages: each parish was responsible for maintaining its own roads, with the sovereign's roads in between cities. Perhaps such a solution would work with networks. Each area of a city would be responsible for funding and maintaining its own network. The area networks of a city would connect together, and the state governments would maintain the intercity lines. States would handle connexions to neighboring states. The terms would change for other countries (e.g. province instead of state), but the process would remain the same.
Such a system would need to be independent of the government, because then it would become one more pawn, like schools and roads are today (Know why we have a drinking age of 21? Because of the national highways), as well as becoming prone to the negative effects of a beauracracy. Of course, it prob. still wouldn't work, but at least it'd have a chance. Nothing involving corporations would benefit everyone. Nothing involving government would benefit everyone. Maybe something involving everyone would benefit most everyone.
Let's face it -- we need fiber optics to the home. It's the only way to get real broadband to the home. And if companies have to allow their competitors have open access, who's going to take the risk of installing that fiber optic cable?
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
This friend speaks my mind!
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
And nobody's going to risk dollar one in trying to compete, with your kind of attitude. Who, in their right mind, who invest the kind of dollars needed to do facilities-based competition if they know they can just steal access from the cable company?
The only way you're going to get competition is if you let the cable companies make a ton of money, AND it's clear the secure property rights will reign. Who would put up any kind of investment if they think the government is going to waltz in and nationalize it??
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
... I think, was that in this business, first to market is last to market. This has less to do with the cost of laying fiber than market penetration. For most of the market, there is little to no incentive to switch to a new cable company laying fiber. That company can then not justify the cost of laying fiber for a small proportion of customers who _do_ need the improved service, etc.
That said, I think the difficult situation here is that we have two different products - the provision of communications infrastructure (fiber/cable to your doorstep) and the provision of internet service/content. Now, what we've got is a company that has a monopoly (regardless of how it got it) in the home broadband communications infrastructure and cable television content provision markets. This company is attempting to leverage its monopoly in these markets in order to obtain a monopoly in home broadband Internet/content services.
...that the fiber/copper is in the ground _because_ of government interference - that the reason the Bells and Cable companies have all of the fiber/copper in the ground is because of government interference.
I am not suggesting that the government should force these companies to _give_ away access to the lines. I _am_ saying, however, that the companies with fiber/copper in the ground have not been very forthcoming in giving fair prices for use of the infrastructure.
My point is very simple. You still have not addressed it.
There are two products here - the infrastructure and the services provided on that infrastructure. The companies with the infrastructure are using it to block out the companies that only want to provide the services. The same situation is there whether you're talking about cable companies and copper or phone companies and fiber - the only reason the phone companies let anyone else onto their network is because they were ordered to.
When it comes to phone service, the old argument for a state monopoly on organization / chartering / close regulation was threefold (at least;)):
The result is that a single carrier was chosen, and given a shorter leash on how much it could gouge the public.
A better result (I assert) would have come out of unfettered competition. If only one company provided service, but was not legally protected from competition, it would have no laurels to comfortably rest upon.
Why all this talk about phone companies? Because it deeply affects ISPs, Internet access, broadband, etc. The problem with regulating anything is that by doing so, you tend to define the parameters of what it contains, consists of, appears as, etc. Laws that would govern exactly how Internet service should be delivered might look good for a year or so, but they would also serve as blinders to other alternatives.
Who knows what Internet access is "best"? No one and everyone. For some people, dialing up their friend's modem once a day with SLIP to check email and a stock quote or two might be best. For others (right now), a cable modem might be the best value of bandwidth for cash in a 24-hour access device. But ten years from now, maybe you'd rather have a fiber-optic cable strung straight into your house.
Do you want a moribund, tightly regulated market, or a more robust, inventive one? Look again at the threefold argument for regulation of phone service and decide whether the three apply well to Internet access.
1) Multiple ISPs? Yes, and multiple delivery systems along that Last Mile already. To my door in Austin, Texas, USA, Earth there are at least four possibilities: ISDN, POTS, DSL and Cable (RoadRunner / Time Warner). Note that the first three of them are controlled to some degree by Southwestern Bell.
2) Usurious rates: I don't think so, at least in Austin. (High speed access via DSL starts around $40, plus startup fees). There certainly might be if there were not three high-speed competitors, plain-ole phone lines and wireless all available. But again, that's an argument against rather than for competition. "Reasonable" rates can never be effectively determined without real competition.
3) Does anyone on Slashdot buy the argument that we should all be on the same ISP in order to receive messages from each other?;)
In sum, my worry with regulation of Last Mile, First Mile, or Any Mile in Between is not as much what would be established, as what potential developments would be squashed as a result. I'd love to see a few kiosks at the corner with switching equipment and a touchscreen each urging me to switch instantly ISP service and enjoy a lower rate, but that sort of flexibility is the antithesis of regulation by the Well-Meaning.
Ask yourself one last question: would you rather buy tickets at current, less-regulated prices or, say, 1980 prices adjusted for inflation?
That is all. This took so long to write, I bet I'm not first poster by a long shot anymore.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
1) I meant to say "instantly switch ISPs" rather than "switch instantly."
2) I should have said "airline" in front of "tickets."
Other than that it is perfect. Golden. Without flaw. Unimpeachable. Undeniable. (heh!)
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
;) Guilty (at least that's where the cable modem is) but I just moved South into an Airstream trailer.
But even at the RV park, the SouthWestern Bell DSL page indicates that DSL is available, and preliminary nosing says cable should be available as well.
And as far as Austin being atypical
Suburbia is fairly well-provided with cable television, and in many areas that means cable modem as well. DSL is slowly spreading further from telco main offices, and residential ISDN service is no longer rare (though it is less of a reasonable option most places
But yes, Austin does have an embarrassment of riches when it comes to connecting to the Internet. This city has plenty of faults, but if you want 24/7 connectivity, hard to beat. Ranked #2 is someone-or-others recent list of "Most Wired Places in America," behind SF. At the same time as all this, though, most of those in South and East Austin (the poorer sections) have few places to connect from. No 'Public Telepresence Points" like in a Bruce Sterling novel I just read. But where is this not true?
Also, what's typical now is perhaps not what will be typical in 10 or even 5 years, too. Though it has some oddball flaws and requirements, the hybrid phone / satellite Internet service you can get from Hughes brings high-speed access to quite rural places. Expensive for one person, but shared by several it seems like a possibility. Once those satellites are up, it's in their interest to get more people feeding off them.
All I'm saying is, bring on the divergent and at-best-semi-compatible standards for transmission, use compatible-as-possible file formats, and let the shakedown begin!
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
I see your point, and I'd love 5 cables to choose from as well, but not at the cost that that would entail. If all the companies had to pay to maintain their own pipe, while making no profit from leasing bandwidth, can you imagine how much more expensive your cable/phone bill would be?
Michael Gentili
- He's just some guy, you know?
A little enclave of South American Nazis produces these people, as part of their ongoing efforts to produce a Master Race.
As you can see, the process is still in alpha testing. The brain in particular is very difficult to get just right, but they say they'll have the IQ up to 50 Real Soon Now....
/.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
Yes, FCC content regulation suck bigtime, and are grounded in no rightful authority. But that doesn't mean that technical issues are non-existent. Same with broadband data access; there are issues of physical network structure (namely, where the hell do the cables run) that are best dealt with by one central agency.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
ya think if the gov didn't break up ma bell, then could we get low long distance taday?
think of what the cablecos will do after they lured ya on the bait? They'll chew on ya ass won't let go.
:. Ultimate Control Dedicated/VM Servers
The real problem as I see it is a lack of choice. If cable operators get their way, we'll all be sitting behind packet-filtering, port-blocking firewalls, forced to use some badly configured WWW proxy, and unable to do ANYTHING other than browse and email.
As an internet applications developer who works at home, I desperately need real IP service. Bandwidth is actually less important.
The solution: I pay $40/mo to my technically superior ISP. My ISP pays $20/mo to the cable company to "rent" the access. Nobody has to deal with non-contiguous IPs in the neighborhood, and my ISP can negotiate real IP service for me.
The result: the cable company get $20/month for doing nothing but laying the cable and my ISP continues to make money providing tech support, mail, usenet, webspace, dns, global dialup roaming , etc.
The dollars amounts and percentages will surely differ, but you get the point.
-Loopy
Look, the REAL reason that AOL is pushing this whole "open cable" stuff is NOT some higher morality, but in fact, cold, hard cash. AOL makes many millions of dollars a MONTH by charging all the AOL'er's 19.95 for dial-up access. And if these same people suddenly decide that they want to go cable modem instead, well, guess where AOL is going?
Now, don't get me wrong, the cable companies are no bunch of winners either. Cable companies have been the most old-boy, back-door, cowboy run outfits for years(IMHO). The fact that AT&T got in there is actually a good thing for the common consumer, since now they've got an actual corporation to push tech. advancements. One thing keeping the cable modems and everything else out of your homes is that installing this stuff is extremely expensive. Cable systems were not designed for two way, originally, and getting them up to spec means running new cable, changing repeaters, cleaning the return path, and re-configuring head-ends (that's where all the signals come together, and get put onto the coax, or fiber). And why should cable companies pay for that, if we're all happy paying the $50 or so a month for Skinemax?
Maybe AOL & gang could get with some of the smaller groups, and pony up some change to help, in exchange for access? Microsoft did it, with Rogers cable in Canada, didn't they? It would push the cable companies to get the system up and running, and AOL could "run" the show, and everyone would be happy. Except the consumer, but who cares about them?
p.s. I noticed in the article that there was a (glaring?) ommission about how much AOL& that group was paying off (I mean contributing, sorry) Congress, while the numbers for AT&T were well stated.
After reading that article (what a wind bag) the main thing impressed on me was John Dvorak's quote
"Neither the phone company nor the cable company is used to the pace of the computer industry. Worse, they have no interest in getting used to the pace."
So no matter what the FCC decides, the telco & cable companies will be dragging their collective feet behind the leaps and bounds of the computer industry. I assume this argument will be more valid when Fiber is taken to the home - who will be behind that effort?
Water Spider
Tonight, I'm going to take over the world... Brain
Heh, actually, the way net access goes over coax is through one 6mhz channel. Therefore they would only need one 6mhz channel. It would also not interfere with other channels. So if AOL wanted to offer cable internet, they would only need one 6mhz channel. If they wanted to offer phone service also, they may need another -- if they can't find a good way to do it over that first ip tunnel.
Alot of people here have suggested that companies such as AOL quit whining and lay their own cable. While this sounds nice - do you realize that this means giving AOL an easement (the right to trespass on your property). Its bad enough the electric company, phone company, and the cable company can waltz onto my property when it suits their fancy. I'll be damned if I'm going to grant an easement to any dinky little company that decides to offer broadband service.
bjg
Imagine it, everyone has fiber right into their P3.
Problem is, the sum of everyone's fiber would vastly exceed the capacity of the networks' to handle it. Laying the 'last few feet of fiber' into your house and to your pc is cheap, compared to the cost of building the network capacity. That's why cheap fiber can't be 'allowed'. It would grind the networks and switches into the ground.
The game designers would build games that run at fiber speeds and web sites would offer realtime streaming audio and video. Indeed, You would set up a video camera at home, feed the output through your PC and monitor your place in a window on your desk top, all day, every day. etc. Until the pipe fills up and everything seems to come to a hault.
I'm sitting here slack-jawed and confused. Bob Packwood is still alive and lobbying for net access? Less restrictions = more porn. Good work Bob!
If I'm not mistaken, most rural areas in the United States didn't have electrical power because it wasn't profitable for the power monopolies of the day to hook them up. The government then made it easy for local community-owned power companies to put up their own poles, buy power at government mandated low rates from the large power company, and sometimes have a government subsidy.
/. think that the system that gave my area power long ago could be re-created so that somebody would find it profitable (or even feasibe) to sell me broadband access?
I want DSL access or cable internet access, but I live out in the country where neither are available. Does anyone on
Yeah, it's 2AM and this is my first post. I shoud cut back on the coffee...
From my point of view, the main problem with trying to force a cable company to "open up its lines" is that these lines are nothing like telco lines. The reason that you can choose your local telco is that there is a single pair of wires running from your house to the CO, and those wires can be moved from Company A's switch to Company B's switch with relatively few problems. In a cable system, however, the individualized wire only runs about 100 feet before it starts recombining into a single wire that feeds an entire neighborhood. A standard cable plant looks something like:
(Apologies for bad ASCII diagram)
[U]---[Tap]--\
[U]--/ |
[Node]---[+Other Nodes]--[HeadEnd]
[U]--\ |
[U]---[Tap]--/
Where instead of a single signal going from your house to the headend (the cable equivalent of a CO), your signal is combined with those of your neighbors at the tap, and the entire block (or more) is pushed onto a single pair of fibers running from the node (which is basically a Light-to-RF converter and amp) out to the headend. At the headend, inside the CMTS (Cable Modem Termination System - it converts Ethernet into RF signals), several nodes are then combined into a single "laser group" on the CMTS, which converts the signal back into Ethernet and sends it on its way. Therefore, this leaves only three options for open access:
1) ISPs must sell service on a node-by-node basis only. If all your neighbours want AOL, then you're gettin' AOL whether you like it or not.
2) Replace _all_ other CMTS devices with Cisco uBRs (which retain all of the routing functionality of a standard 7200), and route different customers accordingly. Of course, this means that either all ISPs manage the uBR simeultaneously (lawsuit city) or agree to have one company manage it for all of them (yeah right).
3) Rebuild the cable system infrastructure in such a way that instead of being a broadcast system, it's a unicast system like the local telco. This is far more money than anyone (IMHO) is willing to spend, and if you're bringing fiber to the house, why bother with a cable modem?
I honestly do not see any of these three as a feasable possibility. Maybe in a few years' time, the cable system might be able to distiguish one person from another and allow just that signal to be pulled from a node, giving eneryone total choice as to what they want, but not with existing technology.
What I see in AOL's "Noble Crusade Against Evil Ma Bell(tm)" is an attempt to force AT&T to adopt option 1, thus using their already huge presence in the marketplace to dominate cities by neighborhood. If you were to go to each of your neighbors and ask them which ISP they use (or would want to use when/if they got an ISP), the majority would answer AOL, simply because they are (like it or not) the easiest for those new to computers to use. AOL is currently the biggest fish in the ISP pond. In trying to force open access, they're trying to make it a smaller pond.
-NOC Monkey (OOK!) Experience is what allows you to recognize a mistake the second time you make it.
Cable ISPs route your IP packets to the Internet, where they can reach any information providers you want.
:-)]
An ISP isn't a monolithic service, if in fact it ever was. ISPs provide several important services:
- Getting your packets to and from the Internet
- Sending you a bill every month covering the costs of service plus a profit
- Selling eyeballs of happy customers to advertisers and content providers.
Other service providers use the Internet to provide content, web hosting, or mailbox hosting.
AOL, in fact, provides AOL content service to people who use other ISPs to get dial access, and charges less for it than for content-plus-dial, and you can use this even faster over cable than over dial. The problem is whether users think of them selves as happy AOL users, which AOL can sell to advertisers, or whether they think of themselves as Internet users or hotmail users or Geocities users or Metricom users.
The right way* to provide cable modem service, technically, is to use the cable as a neighborhood Ethernet and use some combination of bridges and routers to get the IP packets to the outside world. How close the routers get to the end users and how much bridging you tolerate in the network are engineering and/or religious issues.
How much concentration happens before you connect to something other than the Cable ISP's router network is a service quality issue, and there's probably a market need for different service quality / price options. For anything other than a local cable company, it makes sense to have multiple peering points, whether private or NAP-based peering, to provide better performance and reliability.
But AOL and its friends aren't arguing about technology - they're not trying to get separate frequency channels to run their own cable modems over, and they're not arguing about how much bandwidth exists between end users and AOL's peering points or saying that they should provide the wires to provide regional concentration to every cable head end. They're arguing about whether Excite@Home provides you an email mailbox that doesn't have advertising banners on it along with your IP service (as opposed to Excite providing you an email mailbox with advertising banners) because that makes you a happy (or disgruntled) @Home customer and a couple bucks from your cable modem bill pay for it, rather than you being a Happy AOL Customer that uses uninteresting cable modem the way other Happy AOL Customers use the uninteresting phone company to reach AOL.
[* There are some people who think that running ATM from the cable modem to the head end or from the head end to the various service-provider routers is a better technical approach, similar to the way DSL services run. I don't agree with them, but they're not part of the fundamental AOL-vs-Cable squabble here, though their technology is a better match to a multi-provider model.]
[Disclaimer: I work for one of the affected companies, though not in that part of the organization. If this were their opinion, they'd have herds of lawyers and lobbyists and PR people saying it, instead of the apparently less convincing things they've been saying over the past six months
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
a lot of people here say that aol should just run their own cable. well, it's not really that simple...
:)
in most areas, it's effectively illegal. don't you love government granted monopolies?
there's no way local governments will foot the bill to lay more cable for every isp that wants it, like they did for the cable companies.
the cable companies make most of their money on tv. isp's (in theory at least) don't care about tv. you want them to run cable to every house for just one service, and pay for it themselves, without the steady return of money for tv?
the way i see it, all the isp's want to do is put a router of their own on the cable lan. then the whole bunch of isp's can each take a subnet on the network, and have their routers only listen to their customers. very simple. a hell of a lot less hassle then watching the street get torn up constantly.
relax and let them fight it out. and stop whining about their whining