There is a world of difference between merely prioritizing on-net VoIP traffic (such that third-party VoIP apps are given the same priority as, say, generic http traffic) and actively blocking access to third-party services. I have no objection at all to the former, but have quite significant objections to the latter, especially when providers don't specify that such restrictions exist in their TOS.
(Note that in most PacketCable deployments that I know of, on-net VoIP runs on a separate RF/data channel from general Internet traffic and is *not* just mixed in with general Internet traffic and prioritized to the head of the queue. Some small MSOs who are not using PacketCable and are contracting with third parties like Net2Phone to provide turnkey services may do the latter, though.)
BTW, it apparently isn't even cable companies doing this...it's rural phone companies. I posted the following to BBR earlier:
This is not an issue with companies like Comcast blocking or degrading alternative VoIP providers to get people to use their VoIP; it's apparently rural ILECs trying to keep LD traffic on their PSTN networks so they can continue to rake in access charges. From the [AdvancedIPPipeline] article:
"According to Powell, his understanding is that the blocking is not coming from major service providers, but from rural Local Exchange Carriers (LECs)."
Keep in mind that rural ILECs, unlike RBOCs and the largest independent ILECs (the former GTE side of VZ, Sprint LTD, Frontier Rochester, etc.) pretty much live off USF subsidies and access charges from LD calls, and many (but not all) will do virtually anything in their power to keep from losing their cash cows.
This absolutely, postively does NOT affect ISP "superPOP" services in any way whatsoever. (I'm a network engineer who specializes in telecom at a major ISP and who is very well known in telco circles -- if this had any effect on any of the services we use, I'd be one of the first to know.)
This ONLY affects situations where toll charges are waived on cell phone numbers located in rate centers that are otherwise toll (e.g., if you can call cell phone numbers in the Widgettown rate center as "local", but all other numbers in the Widgettown rate center are toll.) In areas served by BellSouth landline, I don't believe any such cases exist at all, thanks to relatively large local calling areas (Atlanta, FL Keys, etc.), massive EAS expansions, regulators requiring that all intra-county/parish calls be free, etc.
1) Cingular and VZW hate each other. 2) More than likely all carriers offering "no-roaming" plans would exclude plane-based calls from such plans. Cingular already excludes calls placed on the Gulf of Mexico offshore systems (Petrocom and Coastel, who use satellites for the backhaul between cell site and switch and charge around $2.50/min.), and many carriers exclude calls placed in Alaska outside the larger towns (and last I checked, one small Alaska carrier -- Bristol Bay -- didn't roam with anyone at all.)
Then JetBlue violated FCC rules... (note I said FCC, not FAA)
You can't use cell phones in a hot air balloon that's off the ground! Obviously, there's no concern about avionics there -- the concern is about interference to the cell sites on the ground.
More than likely, anyone who would do something like this wouldn't get roaming agreements with other carriers, who are much more sensitive to roaming costs nowadays than they used to be. (Of course, they could force people to "credit card roam".)
There is currently one very small carrier in the US -- Commnet Wireless -- that essentially provides roamer-only coverage to scattered rural areas literally all over the country (they backhaul calls from cell sites in Tennessee, among other places, to a switch in Arizona); most of the major carriers that can do analog roaming (with the possible exception of Cingular, who seems to be playing roaming agreement hardball with everyone lately) roam with them, but many smaller carriers don't. But, AFAIK, Commnet doesn't charge AT&T Wireless, Verizon Wireless, Sprint PCS, etc. $4/min...:)
by ridiculous business policies involving phones, such as:
- locking phones so that they can't be used with other carriers (some carriers, such as T-Mobile, will unlock on request after customers have been a customer awhile, but others, such as Sprint PCS, will not unlock under any circumstances) - refusing to activate phones not specifically sold for use on their network (Sprint PCS again) - forcing customers to upgrade phones simply to change rate plan (in some cases, such as one being discussed in alt.cellular.verizon right now, carriers are requiring customers who want "local-only" plans to upgrade phones that allow the carrier to incur lower roaming costs -- when the customer doesn't want to roam and/or the plan the customer wants doesn't support roaming!)
The mishmash of cell/PCS technologies used in North America (AMPS, IS-136, CDMA, GSM, iDEN), most IS-136 carriers changing to GSM or (rarely) CDMA, the upgrades by the CDMA and GSM carriers to 2.5G and 3G technologies, etc. only exacerbate the problem...
CV's digital service has really been nothing but a beta test anyway; not only is CV the last MSO to offer digital at all, they decided to go with the oddball (among other things, they didn't work with TiVos for awhile and still may not), "not proven in the field" Sony boxes instead of the Motorola or S-A boxes that ALL other MSOs use.
I use Mozilla almost exclusively (on various flavors of Windows and Linux and on Mac OS X) and aside from online banking sites, have no or only minor (misaligned text, etc.) problems with most web sites. Even a Java- and JavaScript-heavy company tool that was designed for *ONLY* Netscape 4 for Windows (it doesn't work with Netscape 4 on Linux or Mac OS 9/X, or WITH IE!) works fine with recent Mozilla builds combined with JRE 1.4.0_01!
The worst offenders by far when it comes to supporting non-IE browsers are online banking sites -- one I know of won't work AT ALL with Mozilla (it returns a "use IE or NS 4" message and allows no other access); another works OK, but a lot of services don't work because of JavaScript problems. The other banks I deal with have sites that are less reliant on JavaScript and other cruft and work fine. I've managed to get around the two problem sites with Quicken and one of the Yodlee-based aggregator sites, but still...
basically figured out a way to reuse spectrum already in use (for DBS -- DirecTV and Echostar/Dish) by having customer antennas face north instead of south as the dishes do.
Anyway...the idea of wireless cable is nothing new. Many if not most old MMDS wireless cable systems have been adapted for broadband by a combination of new technology and looser FCC restrictions (i.e., allowing two-way transmission.) Sprint (Broadband Direct) and WorldCom (who, in typical Bernie fashion, offers only business-class service via MMDS) have bought most of the small analog wireless cable companies (Wireless One, Heartland, etc.); BellSouth and PacBell had digital MMDS TV-only systems but they've shut them down. The Northpoint idea just opens up more bandwidth...
I don't see anything *technically* wrong with that idea.
Unfortunately, if you go wired and own your own fiber, you'd open yourself to cable regulation.:( That said, if you were to contract with a telco to handle the fiber interconnects between properties, you'd PROBABLY avoid cable regulation. (This is based on the FCC's ruling regarding ECI in Lansing, MI, which did the latter; IIRC, the FCC ruled that because of the way ECI built their sytem they were not subject to cable regulation.) Most "private cable" systems (that's basically what you'd be building) use 18 GHz licenseed microwave to interconnect properties as a result.
Of course this is a carrier-class product.:) That said --
Ameritech IS a phone company -- and SBC has gotten *OUT* of the cable business (sold the Ameritech overbuilds to WideOpenWest, and shut down the Pac*Bell Tele-TV wireless service in L.A.) Verizon apparently wants to shut down GTE's overbuilds in Clearwater, Camarillo, etc; OTOH, Qwest and BellSouth, as well as some small independent ILECs, really DO want to compete with the cable companies (Q with VDSL and BLS with FTTC/"IFITL"/etc. Both Q's and BLS's deployments are far more than "prototype", but they are still quite limited to newly-built mid-to-upper-income suburban subdivisions.
Except for WINfirst in Sacramento, who's having major financial problems, no US MSO is even close to true FTTH -- and AIUI, WINfirst is using the fiber for Internet and phone only, not for TV (they still use good old coax for that.) "100 homes to a node" does not FTTH make.
Summary: IMO the ILECs (at least Q and BLS -- SBC and VZ can't even get POTS right, let alone DSL, T1's, or anything else wired; SBC can't even get wireless [Cingular] right) are much closer to FTTH and the MSOs.
As for "liking cable" -- here in Atlanta, people love BellSouth and *HATE* AT&T Broadband (mainly because of customer service problems, not technical issues; most people's TV rarely goes out, and their phone service gets few complaints), Charter, and Adelphia -- and hate the "private cable" outfits some apartment and condo complexes contract with even worse.
Can't be -- Sprint owns no MMDS spectrum in Atlanta; BellSouth owns it all. (BS used to offer "wireless cable" using the spectrum, but shut that system down a few months ago.)
In general, pricing for basic POTS phone service and ISDN BRIs (all leased lines, T1's, PRIs, etc. are considered "business" services; pricing for certain services such as remote call forwarding and POTS PBX trunks varies from telco to telco) is determined by the LOCATION where the service is installed (a home or apartment vs. a office, warehouse, or store), not by the USE of the service. Two exceptions: If you want in the yellow pages, or (at least in some areas) require special facilities construction to get all the lines you want, you have to get "business" service. In my experience, business POTS tends to get about the same priority as residential as far as repair is concerned (unless all lines are out); if you want a true SLA you usually have to spring for a T1.
The same goes for cable TV and satellite services -- installation at a business costs more than at a residence (mainly because cable companies normally don't wire commercial zones, and more eyeballs are available to view TV at a business vs. a residence. Also, if the TV service is only for employees you pay less than if it's for "public" viewing -- that "eyeballs" thing again.)
For utilities (gas, electric, water), commercial customers almost always pay less *per (therm, kwh, gallon)* simply because they're higher volume users.
As far as Internet services go, for the most part pricing for plain old dialup accounts is the same for residential and business customers (those ISPs that have separate pricing tend to offer "more" to business customers, such as more email addies, ability to support multiple logins, etc.) Web hosting tends to cost the same no matter what you use the web space for.
Only in broadband does there seem to be the odd distinction that any "business use" should cost more than strictly "recreational use", even for services installed in a home -- despite the fact that "recreational" users downloading warez, pr0n, mp3s, etc. often use up much more bandwidth than most "business" users (who tend to just use the net to check work email and transfer files from time to time, and who aren't so interested in pr0n, warez, mp3s, etc.) ever would. (Not to mention the strange view held mostly by telco ".net" DSL ISPs that all servers of any kind, regardless of content or access control, harm the network, especially when their backbone traffic is often very unbalanced [all of it going toward users, little to none going away from them.] I believe that cable and MMDS-based wireless companies do have legitimate issues with limited upstream bandwidth, therefore I have to defend no-server policies on cable and MMDS-based wireless. I completely disagree with them for DSL, shared ethernet/T1 as found in many apartment complexes and dorms, 802.11b-based wireless, etc.; I believe that users that cause network issues by running servers on such networks should have upstream capped, but servers should not be banned entirely.)
The whole situation with VPNs on @Home ISPs seems to be something perpetuated by @Home itself (the bizarre idea that "cable modems are designed for 'recreational' use only, telco-based services are for any business use at all") that most @Home MSOs aren't letting go of even as @Home dissolves.
Until recently, most if not all MSOs associated with @Home didn't/don't offer *any* level of "commercial" service over cable plant (AT&T Broadband certainly didn't/doesn't); they promoted the @Work suite of SDSL, T1's, etc. for business use. Of course, @Work products have far less reach into residential areas than cable plant, and are severely overpriced to boot. OTOH, for the most part, MSOs _not_ associated with @Home (Time Warner, Adelphia, Charter/HSA, and the vast majority of smaller companies) don't give a hoot about VPNs on residential service (TW doesn't seem to care about servers either, at least in some markets), and no DSL providers I know of -- including telco ".net" ISPs -- care either (the situation with telco.net DSL is probably a result of various regulatory rulings that cause pricing for POTS, for the most part, to be based on the *location* of service than the *use* of the service, provided that the phone number isn't published in the yellow pages, etc.)
As for servers, which tend to get brought up in AUP discussions, cable companies have legitimate concerns about limited shared upstream bandwidth; DSL providers don't.) (That said, I find it odd that ILEC.net ISPs usually don't allow servers but most CLEC and independent DSL ISPs don't care or even explicitly allow them; it seems that the ILEC.net ISPs are trying to protect their T1 business from both end users and web hosting providers [remeber, ILECs don't usually sell SDSL!] and nothing else.)
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(Note that in most PacketCable deployments that I know of, on-net VoIP runs on a separate RF/data channel from general Internet traffic and is *not* just mixed in with general Internet traffic and prioritized to the head of the queue. Some small MSOs who are not using PacketCable and are contracting with third parties like Net2Phone to provide turnkey services may do the latter, though.)
BTW, it apparently isn't even cable companies doing this...it's rural phone companies. I posted the following to BBR earlier:
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This absolutely, postively does NOT affect ISP "superPOP" services in any way whatsoever. (I'm a network engineer who specializes in telecom at a major ISP and who is very well known in telco circles -- if this had any effect on any of the services we use, I'd be one of the first to know.)
This ONLY affects situations where toll charges are waived on cell phone numbers located in rate centers that are otherwise toll (e.g., if you can call cell phone numbers in the Widgettown rate center as "local", but all other numbers in the Widgettown rate center are toll.) In areas served by BellSouth landline, I don't believe any such cases exist at all, thanks to relatively large local calling areas (Atlanta, FL Keys, etc.), massive EAS expansions, regulators requiring that all intra-county/parish calls be free, etc.
-SC
Why digital doesn't work but analog does: you're going too fast for the digital standards' precise timing to handle.
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1) Cingular and VZW hate each other.
2) More than likely all carriers offering "no-roaming" plans would exclude plane-based calls from such plans. Cingular already excludes calls placed on the Gulf of Mexico offshore systems (Petrocom and Coastel, who use satellites for the backhaul between cell site and switch and charge around $2.50/min.), and many carriers exclude calls placed in Alaska outside the larger towns (and last I checked, one small Alaska carrier -- Bristol Bay -- didn't roam with anyone at all.)
-SC
On a lot of older planes (e.g., Delta's now-retired L1011's), there are wall-mounted "payphones" located near the lavs, galley, etc.
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At least on Delta, last time I flew them (last month):
- Airfone (domestic flights): $3.99 connection fee + $3.99/min for voice calls (data calls were cheaper)
- Telenor (intl. flights): don't remember the connection fee, but the "airtime" rate was $10/min(!!!)
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Then JetBlue violated FCC rules... (note I said FCC, not FAA)
You can't use cell phones in a hot air balloon that's off the ground! Obviously, there's no concern about avionics there -- the concern is about interference to the cell sites on the ground.
-SC
More than likely, anyone who would do something like this wouldn't get roaming agreements with other carriers, who are much more sensitive to roaming costs nowadays than they used to be. (Of course, they could force people to "credit card roam".)
:)
There is currently one very small carrier in the US -- Commnet Wireless -- that essentially provides roamer-only coverage to scattered rural areas literally all over the country (they backhaul calls from cell sites in Tennessee, among other places, to a switch in Arizona); most of the major carriers that can do analog roaming (with the possible exception of Cingular, who seems to be playing roaming agreement hardball with everyone lately) roam with them, but many smaller carriers don't. But, AFAIK, Commnet doesn't charge AT&T Wireless, Verizon Wireless, Sprint PCS, etc. $4/min...
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by ridiculous business policies involving phones, such as:
- locking phones so that they can't be used with other carriers (some carriers, such as T-Mobile, will unlock on request after customers have been a customer awhile, but others, such as Sprint PCS, will not unlock under any circumstances)
- refusing to activate phones not specifically sold for use on their network (Sprint PCS again)
- forcing customers to upgrade phones simply to change rate plan (in some cases, such as one being discussed in alt.cellular.verizon right now, carriers are requiring customers who want "local-only" plans to upgrade phones that allow the carrier to incur lower roaming costs -- when the customer doesn't want to roam and/or the plan the customer wants doesn't support roaming!)
The mishmash of cell/PCS technologies used in North America (AMPS, IS-136, CDMA, GSM, iDEN), most IS-136 carriers changing to GSM or (rarely) CDMA, the upgrades by the CDMA and GSM carriers to 2.5G and 3G technologies, etc. only exacerbate the problem...
-SC
CV's digital service has really been nothing but a beta test anyway; not only is CV the last MSO to offer digital at all, they decided to go with the oddball (among other things, they didn't work with TiVos for awhile and still may not), "not proven in the field" Sony boxes instead of the Motorola or S-A boxes that ALL other MSOs use.
-SC
NJ == Nanny Jersey...what do you expect?
-SC
I use Mozilla almost exclusively (on various flavors of Windows and Linux and on Mac OS X) and aside from online banking sites, have no or only minor (misaligned text, etc.) problems with most web sites. Even a Java- and JavaScript-heavy company tool that was designed for *ONLY* Netscape 4 for Windows (it doesn't work with Netscape 4 on Linux or Mac OS 9/X, or WITH IE!) works fine with recent Mozilla builds combined with JRE 1.4.0_01!
The worst offenders by far when it comes to supporting non-IE browsers are online banking sites -- one I know of won't work AT ALL with Mozilla (it returns a "use IE or NS 4" message and allows no other access); another works OK, but a lot of services don't work because of JavaScript problems. The other banks I deal with have sites that are less reliant on JavaScript and other cruft and work fine. I've managed to get around the two problem sites with Quicken and one of the Yodlee-based aggregator sites, but still...
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basically figured out a way to reuse spectrum already in use (for DBS -- DirecTV and Echostar/Dish) by having customer antennas face north instead of south as the dishes do.
Anyway...the idea of wireless cable is nothing new. Many if not most old MMDS wireless cable systems have been adapted for broadband by a combination of new technology and looser FCC restrictions (i.e., allowing two-way transmission.) Sprint (Broadband Direct) and WorldCom (who, in typical Bernie fashion, offers only business-class service via MMDS) have bought most of the small analog wireless cable companies (Wireless One, Heartland, etc.); BellSouth and PacBell had digital MMDS TV-only systems but they've shut them down. The Northpoint idea just opens up more bandwidth...
-SC
I don't see anything *technically* wrong with that idea.
:( That said, if you were to contract with a telco to handle the fiber interconnects between properties, you'd PROBABLY avoid cable regulation. (This is based on the FCC's ruling regarding ECI in Lansing, MI, which did the latter; IIRC, the FCC ruled that because of the way ECI built their sytem they were not subject to cable regulation.) Most "private cable" systems (that's basically what you'd be building) use 18 GHz licenseed microwave to interconnect properties as a result.
Unfortunately, if you go wired and own your own fiber, you'd open yourself to cable regulation.
-SC
Of course this is a carrier-class product. :) That said --
Ameritech IS a phone company -- and SBC has gotten *OUT* of the cable business (sold the Ameritech overbuilds to WideOpenWest, and shut down the Pac*Bell Tele-TV wireless service in L.A.) Verizon apparently wants to shut down GTE's overbuilds in Clearwater, Camarillo, etc; OTOH, Qwest and BellSouth, as well as some small independent ILECs, really DO want to compete with the cable companies (Q with VDSL and BLS with FTTC/"IFITL"/etc. Both Q's and BLS's deployments are far more than "prototype", but they are still quite limited to newly-built mid-to-upper-income suburban subdivisions.
Except for WINfirst in Sacramento, who's having major financial problems, no US MSO is even close to true FTTH -- and AIUI, WINfirst is using the fiber for Internet and phone only, not for TV (they still use good old coax for that.) "100 homes to a node" does not FTTH make.
Summary: IMO the ILECs (at least Q and BLS -- SBC and VZ can't even get POTS right, let alone DSL, T1's, or anything else wired; SBC can't even get wireless [Cingular] right) are much closer to FTTH and the MSOs.
As for "liking cable" -- here in Atlanta, people love BellSouth and *HATE* AT&T Broadband (mainly because of customer service problems, not technical issues; most people's TV rarely goes out, and their phone service gets few complaints), Charter, and Adelphia -- and hate the "private cable" outfits some apartment and condo complexes contract with even worse.
-SC
Can't be -- Sprint owns no MMDS spectrum in Atlanta; BellSouth owns it all. (BS used to offer "wireless cable" using the spectrum, but shut that system down a few months ago.)
-SC
In general, pricing for basic POTS phone service and ISDN BRIs (all leased lines, T1's, PRIs, etc. are considered "business" services; pricing for certain services such as remote call forwarding and POTS PBX trunks varies from telco to telco) is determined by the LOCATION where the service is installed (a home or apartment vs. a office, warehouse, or store), not by the USE of the service. Two exceptions: If you want in the yellow pages, or (at least in some areas) require special facilities construction to get all the lines you want, you have to get "business" service. In my experience, business POTS tends to get about the same priority as residential as far as repair is concerned (unless all lines are out); if you want a true SLA you usually have to spring for a T1.
The same goes for cable TV and satellite services -- installation at a business costs more than at a residence (mainly because cable companies normally don't wire commercial zones, and more eyeballs are available to view TV at a business vs. a residence. Also, if the TV service is only for employees you pay less than if it's for "public" viewing -- that "eyeballs" thing again.)
For utilities (gas, electric, water), commercial customers almost always pay less *per (therm, kwh, gallon)* simply because they're higher volume users.
As far as Internet services go, for the most part pricing for plain old dialup accounts is the same for residential and business customers (those ISPs that have separate pricing tend to offer "more" to business customers, such as more email addies, ability to support multiple logins, etc.) Web hosting tends to cost the same no matter what you use the web space for.
Only in broadband does there seem to be the odd distinction that any "business use" should cost more than strictly "recreational use", even for services installed in a home -- despite the fact that "recreational" users downloading warez, pr0n, mp3s, etc. often use up much more bandwidth than most "business" users (who tend to just use the net to check work email and transfer files from time to time, and who aren't so interested in pr0n, warez, mp3s, etc.) ever would. (Not to mention the strange view held mostly by telco ".net" DSL ISPs that all servers of any kind, regardless of content or access control, harm the network, especially when their backbone traffic is often very unbalanced [all of it going toward users, little to none going away from them.] I believe that cable and MMDS-based wireless companies do have legitimate issues with limited upstream bandwidth, therefore I have to defend no-server policies on cable and MMDS-based wireless. I completely disagree with them for DSL, shared ethernet/T1 as found in many apartment complexes and dorms, 802.11b-based wireless, etc.; I believe that users that cause network issues by running servers on such networks should have upstream capped, but servers should not be banned entirely.)
-SC
The whole situation with VPNs on @Home ISPs seems to be something perpetuated by @Home itself (the bizarre idea that "cable modems are designed for 'recreational' use only, telco-based services are for any business use at all") that most @Home MSOs aren't letting go of even as @Home dissolves.
.net DSL is probably a result of various regulatory rulings that cause pricing for POTS, for the most part, to be based on the *location* of service than the *use* of the service, provided that the phone number isn't published in the yellow pages, etc.)
.net ISPs usually don't allow servers but most CLEC and independent DSL ISPs don't care or even explicitly allow them; it seems that the ILEC .net ISPs are trying to protect their T1 business from both end users and web hosting providers [remeber, ILECs don't usually sell SDSL!] and nothing else.)
Until recently, most if not all MSOs associated with @Home didn't/don't offer *any* level of "commercial" service over cable plant (AT&T Broadband certainly didn't/doesn't); they promoted the @Work suite of SDSL, T1's, etc. for business use. Of course, @Work products have far less reach into residential areas than cable plant, and are severely overpriced to boot. OTOH, for the most part, MSOs _not_ associated with @Home (Time Warner, Adelphia, Charter/HSA, and the vast majority of smaller companies) don't give a hoot about VPNs on residential service (TW doesn't seem to care about servers either, at least in some markets), and no DSL providers I know of -- including telco ".net" ISPs -- care either (the situation with telco
As for servers, which tend to get brought up in AUP discussions, cable companies have legitimate concerns about limited shared upstream bandwidth; DSL providers don't.) (That said, I find it odd that ILEC
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