Somehow I don't think we're living in the same Capitalist America,
DId I mention America anywhere?
No, but in the context of the conversation, it would be easy to assume that this was the implication. My bad for assuming, however, the point still stands that none of these things are guaranteed in capitalism. Arguably, in the case of America, it's quite the opposite.
It also appears you have never lived in Europe
I grew up in Europe and lived half my life there (in different countries).
OK, let me add the word "recently" to that. Having also lived in many parts of Europe, there are a number of aspects that I miss now that I'm in the US.
I had 100/100 way back in late 2005/early 2006 in Helsinki (after an upgrade from 10/10) and internet was and is even easier to find than in the states
Helsinki is about as representative of Europe as Loudoun County, VA is of the US.
Fair comment, but keeping within the context of the conversation (regarding Internet proliferation/quality/speed) my friends in France, Netherlands & Sweden weren't far off even back then and are easily as good now. All sorts of countries like Estonia, Romania and Bulgaria are also doing pretty well now. So is Georgia (if you want to count that as part of Europe). Last time I looked, most European countries save for a few of the southern states are doing reasonably well when it comes to the quality of the Internet access.
Plus, there most certainly is *not* any of the things you state as far as I've observed over the time I've been here.
Living as an American expatriate in Europe is a very positive experience. It isn't representative of what normal Europeans experience.
This sentence was interestingly separated from the first one, but I think I already replied above. In any case, having never lived as an American expatriate anywhere in the world, I wouldn't know what it's like to live as one - I just so happen to hang my hat somewhere in the states at the moment and that's about it. I'm actually from the southern hemisphere, and the point I'm really trying to drive home is that, while Europe wasn't all fun and games and certainly isn't perfect in many aspects, the Internet access was/is far superior in many places compared to what I've seen in other parts of the world, including this part - both then and now.
The insurance companies are still private entities and as part of their fiduciary duty must act in the best interests of their shareholders, but now they are being "forced" to carry policies for high-risk people and so on that they didn't have to before.
So, if we assume a nice round number of $10B profit last year, in order to keep that same $10B level of profit (or higher), they have to raise prices despite all the new customers and whatnot simply because now they have to pay out more, as well - rather than just banking on the fact that when they could pick and choose who they covered, their customer base was - for the most part - pretty healthy, and so didn't cost them much.
Yes, it screws the wrong people, but from their view, the customer doesn't have much of a choice anyway so they still make bank, whereas if they kept the prices the same, their expected financials and forecasts are lowered, share values drop, investors move their money elsewhere for a better return. What company wants that?
The problem with the ACA is, therefore, that it isn't strictly a government-run thing. Yes yes certain groups of people can bitch about how inefficient government run things are BUT since they don't have to maximize shareholder value in the same way that a corporation does, they can offer better/cheaper premiums or worst case scenario, premiums that are the same price as they used to be from the private entities.
That's my view, anyway - until I came to the US, I'd been living in numerous countries, most with national healthcare systems - and I've never had a problem with them. When my mother had an aneurysm several years ago, my folks weren't bankrupted by it even though they weren't particularly well-off at the time. If they'd been living in America... who knows... but she probably wouldn't be insurable under the old system.
Capitalism: state guarantees free markets, equality before the law, and freedom from physical violence, and the rest is up to you.
Your/EU vision: state forces people to do things and buy things "for the good of the people" and for the good of corporations in bed with the state.
Somehow I don't think we're living in the same Capitalist America, and that you don't have a clue what a truely free market is. Plus, there most certainly is *not* any of the things you state as far as I've observed over the time I've been here.
It also appears you have never lived in Europe: I had 100/100 way back in late 2005/early 2006 in Helsinki (after an upgrade from 10/10) and internet was and is even easier to find than in the states - you could even plug in via Ethernet if your laptop didn't have wifi at some places since WiFi still meant a PCMCIA card or USB dongle on some laptops, and smartphones weren't really a thing yet (except for the glorious Nokia E-series and later the higher-end N-series).
Of course, if we look at countries like Albania or Montenegro, yes, some of those places leave much to be desired when it comes to Internet access/speeds, much like we would see if we focused only on states like Kentucky and Idaho.
Used to have 100/100 symmetrical fiber, but then I moved out of my service area. Luckily, I have been able to get 105/15 with 999GB limit in Southern IL for $54.95, broadband only - I think we're doing about 600GB a month on average at the moment. I purchased my own DOCSIS 3 modem and a separate router so as to not pay the $5/month for theirs. Netflix and such seems to work fine on whatever resolution we have it set at.
Used to have a dual-play TV/Internet bundle with 50/5mbit/s and a 350GB limit but somehow managed to get a decent price out of them when I told them I hadn't turned on the cable box in months and I wanted it out of my house - I think it was supposed to be $69.95 or so.
A little bit scared to move to another city or state now because of all the horror stories about Comcast et al.
Except that SSL/TLS is no longer reliable and has not been for some time as reported by previous Slashdot stories -- it seems to be the consensus that some of the "trusted" root certificates/CAs are compromised by some entity (governmental or not) or another.
If other stories are to be believed, SSL etc is just another smokescreen and the only trustworthy certificates are (presumably) the of the self-signed variety (assuming you trust the signing party in the first place) - perhaps a touch of irony, but the kind of SSL certificate that will cause your browser to go "EEEEK! THIS MIGHT NOT BE SO GREAT" are *probably* *in some cases* *maybe* more secure than a regular certificate.
I feel the same way - I've had chips in my Finnish bank cards since 2005 (when I first arrived in Finland) and my NZ bank cards since around 2010, and I got a contactless (NFC-style) debit card from one of my NZ banks in 2011.
In Japan I had a magstripe-less ATM card way back in 2001 - I have no idea how it read the card, probably some kind of RFID. My passbook had a magstripe on it, though.
Meanwhile, my US bank issued me a fresh visa debit card earlier this year and it still doesn't even have a chip in it, but neither does my Indian card... and I'd NEVER used a cheque in my life until I moved to India (and later the US) - so I guess that's what I can equate America's banking system to.
Some US banks are currently advertising "WE NOW HAVE INTERNET BANKING!!!!!!!" on the electronic billboards outside their branches, while I've been banking online since about 1996/97 or so. It really felt like I was taking a step back when I got here - it's kind of sad, really, and I do miss some of the features that I've gotten so used to elsewhere.
A tax is just one way to look at removing some of the incentives for companies hiring H1Bs. Ensuring the wages can't be suddenly dropped to damn-near-slavery is another.
It's not really that we want to stop it - overall, immigration is a good thing - but we should want to create a more level playing field and have the companies actually look at local talent first, rather than going to H1Bs as the first step which **seems** to be how they go about it now - short term savings and share gains.
This is one of the reasons I hate MBAs and try not to hire them: they can't see past the next dollar, and it leads to some stupid decisions.
It gets better (or worse) -- in our industry, we also have to buy domestically manufactured equipment as well (IIRC the minimum is 30% of our annual spend). Of course, we don't use it (because it's the shittiest shit that you can imagine - if you think a Comcast STB is bad, crikey, some devices I've encountered are just atrocious), but we still have to buy it. It either goes in to the trash or gets re-sold.
In any case, personally I'm OK with *some* restrictions on foreign workers - I am one myself, I have immigrated to a few different countries over the past few years, and I am even currently in the US. I prefer the idea that a foreign worker should have to provide some actual value, not just be a warm bum in a chair.
Of course it also depends on the industry, too - the software industry is a cut-throat one (one of the reasons I stopped bothering with it nearly a decade ago - I'm not willing to compete on price when it means competing with folks willing to work for $5 an hour). Sure, if I was living in some random country in SE Asia or something like that, maybe I might once have considered that kind of money, but otherwise, no.
At the root of the problem America(ns) seem(s) to be facing, there are two mindsets at play, I think: one is the American mindset of "maximize profit" and the other is (in a lot of cases) the Indian mindset of "how can we circumvent/ignore/re-interpret/bend this law/regulation?" especially when we're talking about TCS, Infosys and that lot.
There are probably a lot of ways the H1B "problem" could be solved, but it will require a change in how you think about the problem in the first place... the rules will need to be explicit and the penalties swift and severe, for a start - maybe "prevailing wage" isn't the right term because that means so many different things to so many different people, but maybe an H1B should be required to earn as much as the local worker s/he replaced; or if the position is new, it has to be paid according to some similar position, and there is a significant tax at least on the first year (from year 2 the tax could "normalize").
Or it could be like Europe where there would be some kind of waiting period whereby the company has to try and fill a position with a local worker first OR someone who has a visa already OR someone who doesn't need one (and be able to show documentation of interviewees), after which the search is allowed to extend to countries which don't require such visas (Canada, Mexico), then the rest of the world can follow. A possible exception to this rule might be if the worker is world-renowned in his/her field (in which case they're probably going to be coming in on an O visa or something anyway).
Hell, could even require that the company pays for settlement costs (house, car, tickets etc) as well... basically make it sufficiently expensive (either monetarily or in terms or paperwork) to get workers that they have to *REALLY* want the workers and not just some cheap labour.
They do something like that in India - in many types of companies, you're not allowed to have your foreign workforce exceed a certain percentage of the company's body count (it's much much lower than 50%, too).
Additionally, foreign workers are required to earn above a certain threshold, and thus, pay a certain amount of tax (The minimum salary works out to about US$25k/year or so, which isn't too bad, even in Mumbai).
In my case, I'd probably need to hire about 50 or 60 more local workers before I would be allowed to recruit another foreigner.
Could we put it past Sony to fake such a letter so as to, say, prompt some additional action on the part of law enforcement or even to try and preempt war on someone or something?
(Not saying this is the case, merely speculating at the possibility of the injured party disseminating, for lack of a better word - "propaganda" - to try and garner sympathy from regular people because OH NO H4CK3R5 R BAAAAAAAAAD).
When I got cable installed at my house in small-town Illinois in June, we got TV + 50mbit/s Internet with a 350GB FUP for about $62 with modem rental.
I've since purchased my own (better) modem and dropped the TV in August (after about 3 weeks of putting up with ads, we stopped bothering and didn't even turn the cable box on), so I now pay $54.95 for 100mbit/s down, 10mbit/s up with a 1TB FUP, and I am able to exceed this (my record is about 120mbit/s down/17mbit/s up I think) most of the time.
All things considered, it's not too bad, but I'm probably extremely lucky because I'm not with Comcast or Time Warner (or even my own company because we don't have our infra here yet). I'm a little bit scared to move to another state for fear of being forced to subscribe to and/or battle one of those 2... I may have to choose my next residence based on my current provider being available there!
Exede (a Satellite provider covering North America with several reseller brands as well) is a lot cheaper than $180/mo for a lot more than 2GB. I've used it at my SO's parents house in rural Michigan and for satellite it doesn't seem to be too bad.
It really doesn't. The individual providers don't have to do jack, the single entity that owns, operates and maintains the plant does. That's how it works in many countries, and it works just fine.
Want to change providers? Call the new provider, they organize what essentially amounts to a software change from old provider's circuit ID to theirs and voila - takes about as much effort as changing the VLAN ID on a managed switch**
**May be oversimplifying it a bit, but the fact of the matter is, no additional cable needs to be laid, switching is easy and usually painless, and providers have to compete on grounds other than "we own this address".
I'm guessing you've recently paid a visit to the United States.
Having lived in Finland (although not being from there), and having lived in the US (among several other countries over the course of the last 15 years, but not being from any of those either), I do much prefer Finland to, say, the US, what with it's price-includes-taxes methodology to processing payments and tipping-what-the-fuck-is-tipping attitude.
I'm in the US now and I have the same irritations you express, weird as it is for a Finn to be expressive;)
I will prove you trivially wrong by disputing it. Handwriting as a physical skill has been shown more effective than typing in aiding the retention of correct spelling. The studies showing this may not be absolutely 100% conclusive, but they do indeed dispute the assertion that handwriting is a waste of time.
Fortunately, Finnish is a phonetic language and it's difficult to spell things incorrectly because sounding it out works very well in that respect.
Speaking Finnish with a foreign tongue, on the other hand... that's a different story.
This is the difference between the USA and the rest of the world - the general assumption is that there is any money changing hands at all, as opposed to the ISP merely obtaining a direct link to the other network or installing a caching server in the NOC so as to maximize the user experience even if for no other reason than bragging rights.
Did So-Net in Japan *have* to 1-up all the gigabit offerings popping up around the world by being the first to offer a 2gbit/s service? Hell no, but it's bloody awesome that they do, and I can get behind a provider that wants to push the limits of what they can offer.
If a company like Netflix wanted access to my network, they wouldn't have to pay me and I should hope that I wouldn't have to pay them anything over and above whatever the cost of connectivity is (even if the we shared it) - my thinking would simply be that now my network can become the preferred network for those wanting to watch Netflix.
Are you suggesting that provider A would sell access to the infrastructure at the same price to a retail customer as they would a wholesale customer (who is in turn the retail provider)?
No, I said "But they have to charge end-customers even more, because otherwise provider B would not have a sustainable business."
No they don't. They haven't spent any money on CAPEX, just a monthly lease for each end user connection: why would they charge more if the costs to them work out to be the same? If I spend the equivalent of $20/month on my own infra instead of $20/month using someone elses, my prices are probably going to be the same.
Arguably, the competition factor would squeeze the prices (and thus, the margins) because they would actually have to, you know, compete.
One has to consider that regulations would not permit simply undercutting the competition simply because they own the infra.
If you are going to regulate prices anyway, then like I said, this is just an economic welfare project for B, C, D. They aren't providing "competition" that is lowering prices... your regulation is lowering prices.
I didn't say anything about regulating prices, I said regulating to prevent undercutting.
The situation as it is now is that I can buy a DSL line for my subscriber at a cost of (say for example) $35, and sell it for some price above that. The owner of that DSL line (AT&T or Frontier or whoever) can come along and offer that same line for $20* (introductory rate, but still) which creates a problem for me, because my customer can switch over and save himself $16+ a month.
The regulation would therefore be that the infrastructure provider either has to give me a line at less than $20, allowing me to compete with the introductory rate OR that they cannot offer the line at less than my wholesale cost (eg $35).
Yes, those providers are still captive HOWEVER they still have their own core networks and connections to other ASNs - the thing being leased in such a scenario is L2 or L3 access on some form of last mile infrastructure, we're not talking about VISPs or white-label providers or anything.
Yes but whether it's white-label or "real" access is irrelevant because it's still provider A that owns the infrastructure and makes the decisions. Look at the stuff going on with net neutrality. Comcast can just say "Ok, we're not upgrading this peering connection until Netflix pays us extra." And that screws Netflix and the other Level 3 customers trying to use that congested link.
In your scenario, why would it be any different (except apparently your price regulations would prevent Comcast from even being able to ask for more money). Let's say my neighborhood has crappy phone lines and low speed DSL, and I'm like screw provider A, I'm switching to B. When I switch from A to B, A still makes money. When I switch from B to C because of course the network still sucks, A still makes money. When I switch to D, thinking "My God, so many ISPs in this town.. surely one of them must be better" then A continues to make money. A has no incentive to upgrade my neighborhood's phone lines or reduce prices or anything, and the other providers aren't able to upgrade my neighborhood's phone lines or reduce prices below what A charges (plus their own overhead).
Oh, unless you regulate improvements as well as prices... in which case, like I said, the "competition" aspect of the situation is a sham.
Not really: conceptually, it's similar to each provider having it's own VLAN. If a customer is with Provider B, the traffic will go over Provider A's phone lines to some switching office where traffic is put on Provider B's network completely transparently - there is no indication that Provider A is even involved in the transaction: the next hop from the customer's modem is a node on Provider B's network.
I still don't see the point. Provider A made the investment, and has to charge provider B enough to still be profitable. But they have to charge end-customers even more, because otherwise provider B would not have a sustainable business. So in other words, you've artificially increased the cost to the end-customer, just for the sake of giving provider B a job mimicking provider A.
Are you suggesting that provider A would sell access to the infrastructure at the same price to a retail customer as they would a wholesale customer (who is in turn the retail provider)? That wouldn't make any sense, nor is there any corresponding increase in tariff as a result: the retail provider(s) would previously have had to sink a bunch of money in to building (or overbuilding) but now they don't have to. That money would have been spent anyway.
And *IF* provider A was allowed to compete in the retail market, what it means is that they now have to compete properly: while they'd still be making some money from providing wholesale access, they wouldn't be making *as much* as they would if they had all the retail market, so the incentive is to be better. One has to consider that regulations would not permit simply undercutting the competition simply because they own the infra.
In your second scenario, where provider A is fully prohibited from selling to the end-customer, how is the network situation any better than now? Provider A still has captive customers... instead of me and you, the captive customers are providers B, C, D, and E. What incentive does provider A have to upgrade their network? I don't see how it's any better than now.
Providers B C D and E are not buying regular-old broadband, they're buying with CIRs and SLAs and whatnot. Yes, those providers are still captive HOWEVER they still have their own core networks and connections to other ASNs - the thing being leased in such a scenario is L2 or L3 access on some form of last mile infrastructure, we're not talking about VISPs or white-label providers or anything.
And in this situation you're still imposing an artificially high cost on the consumer. What value-add does provider B give the end-consumer? If it's actually *worth* the extra charge, then there's no need to prohibit A from dealing with end-consumers, because presumably they'd choose B anyway. And if it's not worth it, then you're forcing the end-consumer to pay extra for a service that isn't worth it.
Lets imagine for a moment that you could get all the benefits of what Comcast advertises that they offer, without having to deal with Comcast and all the things that come with being a Comcast customer: you could be living in a Comcast service area with say for example Sonic.net as your ISP.
The only real competition is when multiple companies have multiple lines going to your house, and you can totally switch your business between them. For things like water, sewer, and maybe electricity, the costs are so high that it can't realistically happen. But for internet, look, we already have coax cable and copper phone. Why not add another fiber? The costs obviously aren't that high for running a little cable -- as Google showed in their deployments. So let them compete from the very ground up.
I'm not sure you've ever seen real competition, and it would appear that you've never lived abroad (especially in a country where you have a 1-2 providers dealing with infrastructure and a multitude of retailers to choose from), have you?
Using a very similar example to the one above: imagine you're not a fan of Google because of privacy or whatever, but live in one of their service areas and want the speeds they have. If Google's infrastructure were open, you could have Sonic.net as your ISP on Google's fiber.
In this case the consumers get the benefit because they have a choice between 2 (or more) service providers who actually have to compete on factors other than "we have a wire to your house and they don't".
If provider A builds a network and is required to make it open, provider B doesn't get use of that network for free, it has to pay some wholesale cost, meaning that provider A is going to make money whether it (provider A) has 100% of the customers or has to share 50% of those customers with provider B.
Provider A will still have the means to upgrade their network (because it can't well be expected to wholesale to provider B below cost), as well as the incentive (provider A can try to win provider B's customers by providing superior customer service and/or speeds & services).
Better still, if provider B is joined by providers C, D and E as competing retailers on provider A's infrastructure, then the market gets somewhat more interesting. Ideally, however, if provider A is a wholesaler/infrastructure provider, it shouldn't also be allowed to be a retailer (simple layer 2 or layer 3 access provider only). This type of arrangement is working reasonably well in NZ.
If that really was the case, how come wireless ISPs are able to deliver so much more data for about the same price?
WISP is a totally different technology with a different cost structure. Apples to baseballs type comparison.
I think I mentioned that part... they still need towers and connectivity, but the base stations are cheaper and range may or may not be the same (granted, a WISP has the advantage of being able to put a strong receiver at the customer premises which probably doesn't move). Other than a couple of details, the cost structure isn't so vastly different.
If the spectrum costs say $1b for a nationwide 20 year lease and there are say 10 million subs, that's only $100/sub, or $5/sub/year.
It is more than that. For example the AWS-3 auction (which wasn't much bandwidth) has a $10.5b reserve (i.e. below that price the government wasn't selling) and sold for $19.6b.
Right, but I also indicated a customer base of 10m subs. AT&T has about 115m subs which almost brings my guess to within a margin of error ($1b to $11b, 10m subs to 115m subs). Even at the price it was sold, it affects the cost per subscriber per month only by about $4 per month if we still assume a 20-year term on a typical spectrum auction (yes, I saw something about the 12-year term but it can be extended by another 10 so that still brings it pretty close to my guess).
In addition to the bandwidth there is the cost of the many towers in terms of maintenance. That is a big expense. Finally I gotta tell you the towers I've seen no way are they under $20k. I don't know what they are paying but I'd expect hundreds of thousands. OTOH they serve way way more than 1000 subs.
Base station equipment != tower. A medium-sized base station cost (as of a few years ago) roughly $20k on average. My understanding is that a similar device is now closer to $10k - I don't recall whether that included the cost of the sectoral antennas or not but you could probably add some money for those, which on a cost/subscriber/month basis probably wouldn't be that much. Yes, there are $100k base stations as well but not as many: if I buy 10x $2,000 devices, 5x $10,000 devices and 1x $100,000 device to service my network, my average cost is... whaddya know, under $11k.
I did make allowances for the average tower to be about $100-150k each (towers and leases at about $60k/year each - since a tower should last about 20-25 years easy, $5-8k a year should about do it easily, with leases and other such expenses making up the other $50k or so per year; and that's a real top-end assumption - many towers don't cost nearly that much).
Plus, many towers are shared by multiple carriers, so even if AT&T builds a tower for $150k, some other carrier is going to end up contributing about half that cost over the lifetime of the tower by leasing space on it.
All in all, my numbers, while crude, still probably exceed the actual cost to the carrier by some unknown percentage. The rule of thumb of accounting I used basically splits the cost to the end user in to 3: cost to buy/run, taxes and overheads (such as staffing & fixed costs). Yes, it's rough, I'll admit, but it's quick, and very approximately fits the pricing model, the only thing being that considering the amount they *could* allocate to each customer versus how much they do allocate... well, the customers could be seen to be getting a raw deal. I'd be interested to see what the load averages are on the devices.
- how is it that expensive in the US but so comparatively cheap even in tiny island nations like mine where bandwidth is still quite expensive per mbit, or, say, any country in Europe?
In Europe you have a lot of people in very dense regions and then very dispersed regions. In the USA because of the car culture you
Are you sure? If that really was the case, how come wireless ISPs are able to deliver so much more data for about the same price?
If the spectrum costs say $1b for a nationwide 20 year lease and there are say 10 million subs, that's only $100/sub, or $5/sub/year.
And while WISP equipment is much cheaper (few hundred per base-station, but they have a lifespan of about half that of a cell tower), cell equipment is no longer as absurdly priced as it used to be (it used to be $20k+ for a 3G base station, 4G stuff is much cheaper).
Given a base station probably serves 1,000 subs in an urban area and 100 subs in a less dense area, you're probably looking at an average CAPEX of about $10/sub/year and OPEX of about $5 to $7/mbit/month (based on bandwidth prices as delivered in Southern Illinois at the 100/200mb levels).
Adding the cost of towers and land leases you're probably looking at an average of say $60/sub/year. Extrapolating the costs to include rural areas we can probably average that out to be a lifetime costs about $1,000 per sub, considering a towers range is likely a radius of at least 10mi.
Anticipating a lifespan of 5 years on equipment and 10 years on leases etc that brings us to monthly costs of $5 spectrum + $5 bandwidth + $1 equipment + $5 towers etc = $16/subscriber/month cost. Which fits pretty closely with $45/month pricing if we follow "typical" accounting rules-of-thumb BUT we're sharing say 200mb tower bandwidth between a median of about 500 subscribers which gives us an effedtive bit rate of about 512k/sub -- or a practical limit of 160GB/month or so.
So your suggestion of $4-7/GB seems ludicrous - how is it that expensive in the US but so comparatively cheap even in tiny island nations like mine where bandwidth is still quite expensive per mbit, or, say, any country in Europe? - but I share the sentiments of my fellow./ers even if my numbers are way off (in this post, they're mostly educated guesses).
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DId I mention America anywhere?
No, but in the context of the conversation, it would be easy to assume that this was the implication. My bad for assuming, however, the point still stands that none of these things are guaranteed in capitalism. Arguably, in the case of America, it's quite the opposite.
I grew up in Europe and lived half my life there (in different countries).
OK, let me add the word "recently" to that. Having also lived in many parts of Europe, there are a number of aspects that I miss now that I'm in the US.
Helsinki is about as representative of Europe as Loudoun County, VA is of the US.
Fair comment, but keeping within the context of the conversation (regarding Internet proliferation/quality/speed) my friends in France, Netherlands & Sweden weren't far off even back then and are easily as good now. All sorts of countries like Estonia, Romania and Bulgaria are also doing pretty well now. So is Georgia (if you want to count that as part of Europe). Last time I looked, most European countries save for a few of the southern states are doing reasonably well when it comes to the quality of the Internet access.
Living as an American expatriate in Europe is a very positive experience. It isn't representative of what normal Europeans experience.
This sentence was interestingly separated from the first one, but I think I already replied above. In any case, having never lived as an American expatriate anywhere in the world, I wouldn't know what it's like to live as one - I just so happen to hang my hat somewhere in the states at the moment and that's about it. I'm actually from the southern hemisphere, and the point I'm really trying to drive home is that, while Europe wasn't all fun and games and certainly isn't perfect in many aspects, the Internet access was/is far superior in many places compared to what I've seen in other parts of the world, including this part - both then and now.
I have it on good authority that the FBI give plenty of shits about Tor.
The insurance companies are still private entities and as part of their fiduciary duty must act in the best interests of their shareholders, but now they are being "forced" to carry policies for high-risk people and so on that they didn't have to before.
So, if we assume a nice round number of $10B profit last year, in order to keep that same $10B level of profit (or higher), they have to raise prices despite all the new customers and whatnot simply because now they have to pay out more, as well - rather than just banking on the fact that when they could pick and choose who they covered, their customer base was - for the most part - pretty healthy, and so didn't cost them much.
Yes, it screws the wrong people, but from their view, the customer doesn't have much of a choice anyway so they still make bank, whereas if they kept the prices the same, their expected financials and forecasts are lowered, share values drop, investors move their money elsewhere for a better return. What company wants that?
The problem with the ACA is, therefore, that it isn't strictly a government-run thing. Yes yes certain groups of people can bitch about how inefficient government run things are BUT since they don't have to maximize shareholder value in the same way that a corporation does, they can offer better/cheaper premiums or worst case scenario, premiums that are the same price as they used to be from the private entities.
That's my view, anyway - until I came to the US, I'd been living in numerous countries, most with national healthcare systems - and I've never had a problem with them. When my mother had an aneurysm several years ago, my folks weren't bankrupted by it even though they weren't particularly well-off at the time. If they'd been living in America... who knows... but she probably wouldn't be insurable under the old system.
Somehow I don't think we're living in the same Capitalist America, and that you don't have a clue what a truely free market is. Plus, there most certainly is *not* any of the things you state as far as I've observed over the time I've been here.
It also appears you have never lived in Europe: I had 100/100 way back in late 2005/early 2006 in Helsinki (after an upgrade from 10/10) and internet was and is even easier to find than in the states - you could even plug in via Ethernet if your laptop didn't have wifi at some places since WiFi still meant a PCMCIA card or USB dongle on some laptops, and smartphones weren't really a thing yet (except for the glorious Nokia E-series and later the higher-end N-series).
Of course, if we look at countries like Albania or Montenegro, yes, some of those places leave much to be desired when it comes to Internet access/speeds, much like we would see if we focused only on states like Kentucky and Idaho.
Used to have 100/100 symmetrical fiber, but then I moved out of my service area. Luckily, I have been able to get 105/15 with 999GB limit in Southern IL for $54.95, broadband only - I think we're doing about 600GB a month on average at the moment. I purchased my own DOCSIS 3 modem and a separate router so as to not pay the $5/month for theirs. Netflix and such seems to work fine on whatever resolution we have it set at.
Used to have a dual-play TV/Internet bundle with 50/5mbit/s and a 350GB limit but somehow managed to get a decent price out of them when I told them I hadn't turned on the cable box in months and I wanted it out of my house - I think it was supposed to be $69.95 or so.
A little bit scared to move to another city or state now because of all the horror stories about Comcast et al.
Except that SSL/TLS is no longer reliable and has not been for some time as reported by previous Slashdot stories -- it seems to be the consensus that some of the "trusted" root certificates/CAs are compromised by some entity (governmental or not) or another.
If other stories are to be believed, SSL etc is just another smokescreen and the only trustworthy certificates are (presumably) the of the self-signed variety (assuming you trust the signing party in the first place) - perhaps a touch of irony, but the kind of SSL certificate that will cause your browser to go "EEEEK! THIS MIGHT NOT BE SO GREAT" are *probably* *in some cases* *maybe* more secure than a regular certificate.
I feel the same way - I've had chips in my Finnish bank cards since 2005 (when I first arrived in Finland) and my NZ bank cards since around 2010, and I got a contactless (NFC-style) debit card from one of my NZ banks in 2011.
In Japan I had a magstripe-less ATM card way back in 2001 - I have no idea how it read the card, probably some kind of RFID. My passbook had a magstripe on it, though.
Meanwhile, my US bank issued me a fresh visa debit card earlier this year and it still doesn't even have a chip in it, but neither does my Indian card... and I'd NEVER used a cheque in my life until I moved to India (and later the US) - so I guess that's what I can equate America's banking system to.
Some US banks are currently advertising "WE NOW HAVE INTERNET BANKING!!!!!!!" on the electronic billboards outside their branches, while I've been banking online since about 1996/97 or so. It really felt like I was taking a step back when I got here - it's kind of sad, really, and I do miss some of the features that I've gotten so used to elsewhere.
A tax is just one way to look at removing some of the incentives for companies hiring H1Bs. Ensuring the wages can't be suddenly dropped to damn-near-slavery is another.
It's not really that we want to stop it - overall, immigration is a good thing - but we should want to create a more level playing field and have the companies actually look at local talent first, rather than going to H1Bs as the first step which **seems** to be how they go about it now - short term savings and share gains.
This is one of the reasons I hate MBAs and try not to hire them: they can't see past the next dollar, and it leads to some stupid decisions.
It gets better (or worse) -- in our industry, we also have to buy domestically manufactured equipment as well (IIRC the minimum is 30% of our annual spend). Of course, we don't use it (because it's the shittiest shit that you can imagine - if you think a Comcast STB is bad, crikey, some devices I've encountered are just atrocious), but we still have to buy it. It either goes in to the trash or gets re-sold.
In any case, personally I'm OK with *some* restrictions on foreign workers - I am one myself, I have immigrated to a few different countries over the past few years, and I am even currently in the US. I prefer the idea that a foreign worker should have to provide some actual value, not just be a warm bum in a chair.
Of course it also depends on the industry, too - the software industry is a cut-throat one (one of the reasons I stopped bothering with it nearly a decade ago - I'm not willing to compete on price when it means competing with folks willing to work for $5 an hour). Sure, if I was living in some random country in SE Asia or something like that, maybe I might once have considered that kind of money, but otherwise, no.
At the root of the problem America(ns) seem(s) to be facing, there are two mindsets at play, I think: one is the American mindset of "maximize profit" and the other is (in a lot of cases) the Indian mindset of "how can we circumvent/ignore/re-interpret/bend this law/regulation?" especially when we're talking about TCS, Infosys and that lot.
There are probably a lot of ways the H1B "problem" could be solved, but it will require a change in how you think about the problem in the first place... the rules will need to be explicit and the penalties swift and severe, for a start - maybe "prevailing wage" isn't the right term because that means so many different things to so many different people, but maybe an H1B should be required to earn as much as the local worker s/he replaced; or if the position is new, it has to be paid according to some similar position, and there is a significant tax at least on the first year (from year 2 the tax could "normalize").
Or it could be like Europe where there would be some kind of waiting period whereby the company has to try and fill a position with a local worker first OR someone who has a visa already OR someone who doesn't need one (and be able to show documentation of interviewees), after which the search is allowed to extend to countries which don't require such visas (Canada, Mexico), then the rest of the world can follow. A possible exception to this rule might be if the worker is world-renowned in his/her field (in which case they're probably going to be coming in on an O visa or something anyway).
Hell, could even require that the company pays for settlement costs (house, car, tickets etc) as well... basically make it sufficiently expensive (either monetarily or in terms or paperwork) to get workers that they have to *REALLY* want the workers and not just some cheap labour.
Food for thought, anyway.
They do something like that in India - in many types of companies, you're not allowed to have your foreign workforce exceed a certain percentage of the company's body count (it's much much lower than 50%, too).
Additionally, foreign workers are required to earn above a certain threshold, and thus, pay a certain amount of tax (The minimum salary works out to about US$25k/year or so, which isn't too bad, even in Mumbai).
In my case, I'd probably need to hire about 50 or 60 more local workers before I would be allowed to recruit another foreigner.
Could we put it past Sony to fake such a letter so as to, say, prompt some additional action on the part of law enforcement or even to try and preempt war on someone or something?
(Not saying this is the case, merely speculating at the possibility of the injured party disseminating, for lack of a better word - "propaganda" - to try and garner sympathy from regular people because OH NO H4CK3R5 R BAAAAAAAAAD).
This is how it works in a lot of countries - NZ, Australia, some parts of India, most of Europe etc.
I prefer it as well, but Americans just don't seem to get it.
Ouch, sounds harsh.
When I got cable installed at my house in small-town Illinois in June, we got TV + 50mbit/s Internet with a 350GB FUP for about $62 with modem rental.
I've since purchased my own (better) modem and dropped the TV in August (after about 3 weeks of putting up with ads, we stopped bothering and didn't even turn the cable box on), so I now pay $54.95 for 100mbit/s down, 10mbit/s up with a 1TB FUP, and I am able to exceed this (my record is about 120mbit/s down/17mbit/s up I think) most of the time.
All things considered, it's not too bad, but I'm probably extremely lucky because I'm not with Comcast or Time Warner (or even my own company because we don't have our infra here yet). I'm a little bit scared to move to another state for fear of being forced to subscribe to and/or battle one of those 2... I may have to choose my next residence based on my current provider being available there!
In America?
Exede (a Satellite provider covering North America with several reseller brands as well) is a lot cheaper than $180/mo for a lot more than 2GB. I've used it at my SO's parents house in rural Michigan and for satellite it doesn't seem to be too bad.
It really doesn't. The individual providers don't have to do jack, the single entity that owns, operates and maintains the plant does. That's how it works in many countries, and it works just fine.
Want to change providers? Call the new provider, they organize what essentially amounts to a software change from old provider's circuit ID to theirs and voila - takes about as much effort as changing the VLAN ID on a managed switch**
**May be oversimplifying it a bit, but the fact of the matter is, no additional cable needs to be laid, switching is easy and usually painless, and providers have to compete on grounds other than "we own this address".
I'm guessing you've recently paid a visit to the United States.
Having lived in Finland (although not being from there), and having lived in the US (among several other countries over the course of the last 15 years, but not being from any of those either), I do much prefer Finland to, say, the US, what with it's price-includes-taxes methodology to processing payments and tipping-what-the-fuck-is-tipping attitude.
I'm in the US now and I have the same irritations you express, weird as it is for a Finn to be expressive ;)
BTW onnellinen itsenäisyyspäivä (ensi viikolla).
and cursive writing indisputably does.
I will prove you trivially wrong by disputing it. Handwriting as a physical skill has been shown more effective than typing in aiding the retention of correct spelling. The studies showing this may not be absolutely 100% conclusive, but they do indeed dispute the assertion that handwriting is a waste of time.
Fortunately, Finnish is a phonetic language and it's difficult to spell things incorrectly because sounding it out works very well in that respect.
Speaking Finnish with a foreign tongue, on the other hand... that's a different story.
This is the difference between the USA and the rest of the world - the general assumption is that there is any money changing hands at all, as opposed to the ISP merely obtaining a direct link to the other network or installing a caching server in the NOC so as to maximize the user experience even if for no other reason than bragging rights.
Did So-Net in Japan *have* to 1-up all the gigabit offerings popping up around the world by being the first to offer a 2gbit/s service? Hell no, but it's bloody awesome that they do, and I can get behind a provider that wants to push the limits of what they can offer.
If a company like Netflix wanted access to my network, they wouldn't have to pay me and I should hope that I wouldn't have to pay them anything over and above whatever the cost of connectivity is (even if the we shared it) - my thinking would simply be that now my network can become the preferred network for those wanting to watch Netflix.
Are you suggesting that provider A would sell access to the infrastructure at the same price to a retail customer as they would a wholesale customer (who is in turn the retail provider)?
No, I said "But they have to charge end-customers even more, because otherwise provider B would not have a sustainable business."
No they don't. They haven't spent any money on CAPEX, just a monthly lease for each end user connection: why would they charge more if the costs to them work out to be the same? If I spend the equivalent of $20/month on my own infra instead of $20/month using someone elses, my prices are probably going to be the same.
Arguably, the competition factor would squeeze the prices (and thus, the margins) because they would actually have to, you know, compete.
One has to consider that regulations would not permit simply undercutting the competition simply because they own the infra.
If you are going to regulate prices anyway, then like I said, this is just an economic welfare project for B, C, D. They aren't providing "competition" that is lowering prices... your regulation is lowering prices.
I didn't say anything about regulating prices, I said regulating to prevent undercutting.
The situation as it is now is that I can buy a DSL line for my subscriber at a cost of (say for example) $35, and sell it for some price above that. The owner of that DSL line (AT&T or Frontier or whoever) can come along and offer that same line for $20* (introductory rate, but still) which creates a problem for me, because my customer can switch over and save himself $16+ a month.
The regulation would therefore be that the infrastructure provider either has to give me a line at less than $20, allowing me to compete with the introductory rate OR that they cannot offer the line at less than my wholesale cost (eg $35).
Yes, those providers are still captive HOWEVER they still have their own core networks and connections to other ASNs - the thing being leased in such a scenario is L2 or L3 access on some form of last mile infrastructure, we're not talking about VISPs or white-label providers or anything.
Yes but whether it's white-label or "real" access is irrelevant because it's still provider A that owns the infrastructure and makes the decisions. Look at the stuff going on with net neutrality. Comcast can just say "Ok, we're not upgrading this peering connection until Netflix pays us extra." And that screws Netflix and the other Level 3 customers trying to use that congested link.
In your scenario, why would it be any different (except apparently your price regulations would prevent Comcast from even being able to ask for more money). Let's say my neighborhood has crappy phone lines and low speed DSL, and I'm like screw provider A, I'm switching to B. When I switch from A to B, A still makes money. When I switch from B to C because of course the network still sucks, A still makes money. When I switch to D, thinking "My God, so many ISPs in this town.. surely one of them must be better" then A continues to make money. A has no incentive to upgrade my neighborhood's phone lines or reduce prices or anything, and the other providers aren't able to upgrade my neighborhood's phone lines or reduce prices below what A charges (plus their own overhead).
Oh, unless you regulate improvements as well as prices... in which case, like I said, the "competition" aspect of the situation is a sham.
Not really: conceptually, it's similar to each provider having it's own VLAN. If a customer is with Provider B, the traffic will go over Provider A's phone lines to some switching office where traffic is put on Provider B's network completely transparently - there is no indication that Provider A is even involved in the transaction: the next hop from the customer's modem is a node on Provider B's network.
Pro
Kiwi in a similar boat. Of course, it's not just Chocolate that tastes awful in this country -- I have quite a list :D
I'm not in Utah, but I'd be interested in getting some both for my own consumption and maybe even for corporate gifts.
When in the US I'm based in IL - the email address 3a5b9235@opayq.com should do the trick.
I still don't see the point. Provider A made the investment, and has to charge provider B enough to still be profitable. But they have to charge end-customers even more, because otherwise provider B would not have a sustainable business. So in other words, you've artificially increased the cost to the end-customer, just for the sake of giving provider B a job mimicking provider A.
Are you suggesting that provider A would sell access to the infrastructure at the same price to a retail customer as they would a wholesale customer (who is in turn the retail provider)? That wouldn't make any sense, nor is there any corresponding increase in tariff as a result: the retail provider(s) would previously have had to sink a bunch of money in to building (or overbuilding) but now they don't have to. That money would have been spent anyway.
And *IF* provider A was allowed to compete in the retail market, what it means is that they now have to compete properly: while they'd still be making some money from providing wholesale access, they wouldn't be making *as much* as they would if they had all the retail market, so the incentive is to be better. One has to consider that regulations would not permit simply undercutting the competition simply because they own the infra.
In your second scenario, where provider A is fully prohibited from selling to the end-customer, how is the network situation any better than now? Provider A still has captive customers... instead of me and you, the captive customers are providers B, C, D, and E. What incentive does provider A have to upgrade their network? I don't see how it's any better than now.
Providers B C D and E are not buying regular-old broadband, they're buying with CIRs and SLAs and whatnot. Yes, those providers are still captive HOWEVER they still have their own core networks and connections to other ASNs - the thing being leased in such a scenario is L2 or L3 access on some form of last mile infrastructure, we're not talking about VISPs or white-label providers or anything.
And in this situation you're still imposing an artificially high cost on the consumer. What value-add does provider B give the end-consumer? If it's actually *worth* the extra charge, then there's no need to prohibit A from dealing with end-consumers, because presumably they'd choose B anyway. And if it's not worth it, then you're forcing the end-consumer to pay extra for a service that isn't worth it.
Lets imagine for a moment that you could get all the benefits of what Comcast advertises that they offer, without having to deal with Comcast and all the things that come with being a Comcast customer: you could be living in a Comcast service area with say for example Sonic.net as your ISP.
The only real competition is when multiple companies have multiple lines going to your house, and you can totally switch your business between them. For things like water, sewer, and maybe electricity, the costs are so high that it can't realistically happen. But for internet, look, we already have coax cable and copper phone. Why not add another fiber? The costs obviously aren't that high for running a little cable -- as Google showed in their deployments. So let them compete from the very ground up.
I'm not sure you've ever seen real competition, and it would appear that you've never lived abroad (especially in a country where you have a 1-2 providers dealing with infrastructure and a multitude of retailers to choose from), have you?
Using a very similar example to the one above: imagine you're not a fan of Google because of privacy or whatever, but live in one of their service areas and want the speeds they have. If Google's infrastructure were open, you could have Sonic.net as your ISP on Google's fiber.
In this case the consumers get the benefit because they have a choice between 2 (or more) service providers who actually have to compete on factors other than "we have a wire to your house and they don't".
If provider A builds a network and is required to make it open, provider B doesn't get use of that network for free, it has to pay some wholesale cost, meaning that provider A is going to make money whether it (provider A) has 100% of the customers or has to share 50% of those customers with provider B.
Provider A will still have the means to upgrade their network (because it can't well be expected to wholesale to provider B below cost), as well as the incentive (provider A can try to win provider B's customers by providing superior customer service and/or speeds & services).
Better still, if provider B is joined by providers C, D and E as competing retailers on provider A's infrastructure, then the market gets somewhat more interesting. Ideally, however, if provider A is a wholesaler/infrastructure provider, it shouldn't also be allowed to be a retailer (simple layer 2 or layer 3 access provider only). This type of arrangement is working reasonably well in NZ.
WISP is a totally different technology with a different cost structure. Apples to baseballs type comparison.
I think I mentioned that part... they still need towers and connectivity, but the base stations are cheaper and range may or may not be the same (granted, a WISP has the advantage of being able to put a strong receiver at the customer premises which probably doesn't move). Other than a couple of details, the cost structure isn't so vastly different.
It is more than that. For example the AWS-3 auction (which wasn't much bandwidth) has a $10.5b reserve (i.e. below that price the government wasn't selling) and sold for $19.6b.
Right, but I also indicated a customer base of 10m subs. AT&T has about 115m subs which almost brings my guess to within a margin of error ($1b to $11b, 10m subs to 115m subs). Even at the price it was sold, it affects the cost per subscriber per month only by about $4 per month if we still assume a 20-year term on a typical spectrum auction (yes, I saw something about the 12-year term but it can be extended by another 10 so that still brings it pretty close to my guess).
In addition to the bandwidth there is the cost of the many towers in terms of maintenance. That is a big expense. Finally I gotta tell you the towers I've seen no way are they under $20k. I don't know what they are paying but I'd expect hundreds of thousands. OTOH they serve way way more than 1000 subs.
Base station equipment != tower. A medium-sized base station cost (as of a few years ago) roughly $20k on average. My understanding is that a similar device is now closer to $10k - I don't recall whether that included the cost of the sectoral antennas or not but you could probably add some money for those, which on a cost/subscriber/month basis probably wouldn't be that much. Yes, there are $100k base stations as well but not as many: if I buy 10x $2,000 devices, 5x $10,000 devices and 1x $100,000 device to service my network, my average cost is... whaddya know, under $11k.
I did make allowances for the average tower to be about $100-150k each (towers and leases at about $60k/year each - since a tower should last about 20-25 years easy, $5-8k a year should about do it easily, with leases and other such expenses making up the other $50k or so per year; and that's a real top-end assumption - many towers don't cost nearly that much).
Plus, many towers are shared by multiple carriers, so even if AT&T builds a tower for $150k, some other carrier is going to end up contributing about half that cost over the lifetime of the tower by leasing space on it.
All in all, my numbers, while crude, still probably exceed the actual cost to the carrier by some unknown percentage. The rule of thumb of accounting I used basically splits the cost to the end user in to 3: cost to buy/run, taxes and overheads (such as staffing & fixed costs). Yes, it's rough, I'll admit, but it's quick, and very approximately fits the pricing model, the only thing being that considering the amount they *could* allocate to each customer versus how much they do allocate... well, the customers could be seen to be getting a raw deal. I'd be interested to see what the load averages are on the devices.
In Europe you have a lot of people in very dense regions and then very dispersed regions. In the USA because of the car culture you
Are you sure? If that really was the case, how come wireless ISPs are able to deliver so much more data for about the same price?
If the spectrum costs say $1b for a nationwide 20 year lease and there are say 10 million subs, that's only $100/sub, or $5/sub/year.
And while WISP equipment is much cheaper (few hundred per base-station, but they have a lifespan of about half that of a cell tower), cell equipment is no longer as absurdly priced as it used to be (it used to be $20k+ for a 3G base station, 4G stuff is much cheaper).
Given a base station probably serves 1,000 subs in an urban area and 100 subs in a less dense area, you're probably looking at an average CAPEX of about $10/sub/year and OPEX of about $5 to $7/mbit/month (based on bandwidth prices as delivered in Southern Illinois at the 100/200mb levels).
Adding the cost of towers and land leases you're probably looking at an average of say $60/sub/year. Extrapolating the costs to include rural areas we can probably average that out to be a lifetime costs about $1,000 per sub, considering a towers range is likely a radius of at least 10mi.
Anticipating a lifespan of 5 years on equipment and 10 years on leases etc that brings us to monthly costs of $5 spectrum + $5 bandwidth + $1 equipment + $5 towers etc = $16/subscriber/month cost. Which fits pretty closely with $45/month pricing if we follow "typical" accounting rules-of-thumb BUT we're sharing say 200mb tower bandwidth between a median of about 500 subscribers which gives us an effedtive bit rate of about 512k/sub -- or a practical limit of 160GB/month or so.
So your suggestion of $4-7/GB seems ludicrous - how is it that expensive in the US but so comparatively cheap even in tiny island nations like mine where bandwidth is still quite expensive per mbit, or, say, any country in Europe? - but I share the sentiments of my fellow ./ers even if my numbers are way off (in this post, they're mostly educated guesses).