What's wrong with Internet in NZ? Since Chorus rolled out their cabinets all over the place, a lot of the population has access to VDSL (usually for about $10 more or even at the same prices as ADSL in some cases), and the FTTH/UFB network is coming along alright I guess, but the point is that for the most part, upload speeds are no longer arbitrarily restricted.to 1mbit/s.
Additionally, data caps are less of an issue than they were a couple of years ago, with many providers offering significantly more data for the same amount of money than they used to, and "unlimited" plans are even available again after 5 or so years of nobody having them.
When they are running their links (peered or not) at 100% for 24 hours a day, you bet your ass they should upgrade. ESPECIALLY if someone else offers to foot the bill.
Will it be a permanent fix as bandwidth demands increase? Hell no, but that's what operational expenses are.
In some countries, if an ISP's links are running at more than a certain percentage of their capacity for more than a certain percentage of the day and they are doing nothing about it, they would be found to be falling afoul of the regulations and could very well be fined. Additionally, in some countries if an ISPs contention ratio gets too high, that's also going to cause an issue with the regulator (even though it's a bullshit measurement for so many reasons).
If US ISPs here were told they couldn't have a ratio of more than 50:1 (1mbit/s per 50 mbit/s sold) it might help - you get sold a 50mbit/s line, so your ISP has to have at least 1mbit/s of bandwidth at the border.
For example: 2 million subscribers each with 50mbit/s means only 2 million mbit/s (2 terabits) at the network border, which is very doable - even a pair of Juniper T1600s will do that - and that's a 3 or 4 year old model. An ISP with that many subscribers should definitely be present at more than 1 IXP, so if we assume 8-10, you're only looking at 200-250gbit/s in each.
Comcast in particular already announces that it has traffic levels exceeding 1Tbit/s, so they surely already have the equipment to do it (just not the incentive, I guess).
For your use case you're right, but this is not necessary to every single Internet subscriber in every single home.
Also, your neighbours fence company was stupid for digging without calling/planning/checking locates etc first and at least in some states (like Illinois) would have had an ass-kicking from the city.
Also, the core claim that the US spends the most per student - if we are talking about primary and secondary students - not college - is not true although it is on the high end. Switzerland, Norway and Luxembourg spend more, and Austria and Denmark are almost same.
But they get far more for their money, and (if I had to guess) in those countries that *probably* includes university tuition, not just grades 1-12.
They wouldn't be granted a visa for employment in India at such a wage (AKA "local wages").
To be eligible for a visa, the company must pay a minimum wage for foreign workers which, although are quite low by western standards (as of 2012, it was US $25,000/year or about 15 lakh rupees), it does mean foreign workers will earn a wage that would still be above the poverty line for a 4-person household in the US (http://aspe.hhs.gov/poverty/14poverty.cfm) and will be quite comfortable living in most parts of India.
While I haven't looked in to the US visa program myself (except *for* myself - we hire local workers where we operate: in the US, I'm required to hire a certain number of US residents; and in India I'm only allowed to have a certain percentage of my total workforce be foreign workers) perhaps the US visa program needs to take a page from India's and: 1. Prescribe a base salary for foreign workers (if it doesn't already) so that these companies who many of us recognize are blatantly abusing the system will no longer be able to save money by importing "cheap labour" in the way that they have been doing and 2. Perhaps there could be a limit on the percentage of a company's workforce which can be foreign citizens (people who gain residency/green-cards on their own merits would not contribute to this percentage), but it could prevent companies filling seats with H1-B workers.
**I'm personally not a citizen of either the US or India but we operate in these and other countries, and I'm *definitely* not anti-immigration -- but the solution *might* solve quite a lot of the issues with the H-visa abuse. It might also have the side-effect of killing TCS/Infosys business models.
While most of what you say works in suburbia, it's not true for a highway and could be considered complete fallacy.
There's no reason an Interstate couldn't/shouldn't be de-restricted or at least have a "reasonable" limit of 90-100MPH, but I suspect either you Americans have no idea how to build, maintain or use a highway or your domestic vehicles can't handle those sorts of speeds properly.
Without going to the obvious territory of German (or French or Austrian or Italian, for that matter) roads, I've driven on highways in places like Romania and Turkey that are smoother and more suited to high speeds than much of what is available around where I'm based when I'm in America - route 13 in Southern Illinois has traffic lights on it for petes sake, and the Blue-Ridge parkway in Virginia has limits from 25-45MPH.
For what reason exactly?
There sure as hell shouldn't be any children playing on these roads, nor any side-streets for anyone to pull out from (this goes back to the aforementioned "y'all don't know how to build a highway"). And while you're moving at high speeds you probably shouldn't be answering the phone or fiddling around with CDs or checking a map or TURNING AROUND to yell at the kids? SERIOUSLY? Come on now, that's just irresponsibility on your part - having the state decide on frustratingly low speed limits for those of us that drive properly is not a good solution to any of these.
[nitpick] You can't transition from H1-B to resident/green-card.
H1-B is a non-immigrant visa and is not a "path to immigration". It has an expiry date and AFAIK is not renewable. It does not entitle the holder to many things that someone on an immigrant-path visa would get, such as a drivers license or SSN (though due to driving laws, many states have a "temporary" drivers license, valid for up to 3 years for those on visas including but not limited to H, L & J).
The genuinely good immigrants come to the US on something like an E or O visa, which, among a couple of other categories, *are* considered a path to a green card. [/nitpick]
It's a big status thing when your company relocates you to the US (even on a temporary basis), but it doesn't necessarily mean you're any good. I say this as a native-English speaking white male who just so happened to come to the US (I'm not on H1-B) after living in India and some other countries before that.
I definitely do not feel that India(ns) present any realistic competition when it comes to my work, partly because I'm reasonably good at what I do and partly because I'm not in software.
To be fair, Windows 7 isn't exactly a champ in this respect either - unplugging headphones or USB audio devices etc can cause the sound to just disappear and you have to fiddle around to get it back. I'm have a Core i7-based HP Probook that exhibits this sort of behaviour sometimes (but not all the time).
Perhaps you create a new monopoly, but if it's owned by the municipality or some other "non-profit" style entity, it's less of a problem - so long as it's possible to enforce a cap on the rates charged to the retail ISP, it should be OK.
Franchise agreements, on the other hand, are non-exclusive and have been for years (it is my understanding that exclusive agreements are illegal). The problem is getting municipalities to agree to another company digging OR getting the owner of the poles to charge a reasonable rate for attaching the cables.
Where I am (in IL, by the way) there are at least 7 companies trenching fiber (that I know of), all of it for enterprise use (although Frontier is *supposed* to have been deploying a pilot GPON network for "residential gigabit service", so far as I can tell nothing has been done along the routes I was told they would be building since they got awarded the money 14 months ago).
The thing that is really annoying the public works director is that Clearwave (who has the largest underground fiber deployment in the area) seems to just... take advantage of the leniency extended to them by way of their franchise agreement and digs pretty much where ever they like and/or the sub-contractors don't always follow the plans exactly as specified which has meant things like intrusions on other city services (such as water)...
I second the Mikrotik devices as well. At home I have one set up with a private network and a guest hotspot (WiFi) with one port going to my computer, another port going to a switch and another port to my WAN (which is currently a cable modem with a 100mb+ connection until I can wrangle some fiber). Still have a few ports free but I'm leaving them that way for now.
I usually get 115-120 down, 10-15 up from the Internet (depending on where and when) and LAN file transfers are pretty quick - it saturates the network cards in some of the older laptops around the house anyway.
They play much nicer now than they did a year or so ago - now you can configure a UniFi server address right there in the DNS so all the APs will more or less self-configure (no more having to detect the device and set them up - good if you're installing a lot of them).
Generally speaking, Indians don't tend to get in to debt... as a cash-based society they scrimp and save until they can pay for what they want.
Things like credit and mortgages are really quite a new phenomenon there, let alone credit reporting. Depending on your banking history, if you want a loan or anything like that, usually you're going to have to put up serious collateral.
I agree with most of that - I like GPON very much and I am pushing for fiber in pretty much every way I can, ALTHOUGH, ADSL2+ and VDSL in urban environments is reasonably effective if the telco installs cabinets (like Chorus did in NZ).
VDSL is also often used to supplement a GPON deployment in an FTTB scenario and is quite effective because the last mile is only a matter of a few hundred feet so you can usually get most of (or even all of) the speed. Moreover, with G.FAST hopefully making waves it might be a while before it [DSL] dies properly.
Chorus NZ now offering VDSL services with up to 100mbit/s (70 or 80mbit/s practical) in most of the country, which isn't too bad - the reason they did it, of course, is as a stepping stone toward the currently-being-constructed national fiber network so there's no reason telcos here can't follow suit (they're going to be putting in cabinets for GPON anyway).
I think my previous point remains valid, though - whether DSL, Cable or Fiber, why should there be 2 or 5 or 10 companies each deploying their own last miles and overbuilding?
There's no reason they [Comcast/TWC/Cox/etc] can't open their lines to competition. As I already mentioned, it already happens on DSL (not very effectively) and there there is at least 2 wholesalers providing resale access to Comcast/TWC/Cox/etc that I know of, but the pricing and whatnot is not particularly favourable.
So, what I'd like to see is open access at a fair and reasonable price whether the infrastructure is DSL or Cable (or even Ethernet or Fiber) based, and there is no reason it can't be done.
As far as peering goes, yeah, it's screwed here in the US, in part because there isn't enough real competition.
I agree (partially) with both sides of the Netflix/ISP debates - I understand that ISPs doesn't want to give Netflix free traffic and I understand that Netflix wants what it pays for. And rightly so. But if I were (for example) Comcast and I noticed that Netflix links were running at full-tit all the time, I'd be working with them to figure out how we can either 1. reduce the load or 2. what is required to increase the load (or even 3. both) - my customers are paying me for Internet service which includes watching Netflix, so if I need to maintain or upgrading my infrastructure, that's a cost of doing business. It may be a cost I can share with Netflix, but you have to spend money to make money, and the amounts required to upgrade are (in the scheme of things) pretty trivial.
Bandwidth, no (at least not for free). Bandwidth (whether transit or peering) at a fair rate to keep up with demand, yes.
Surely good network management involves policies such as "if you're using more than 80% of your pipe consistently, we'll upgrade you and charge you accordingly" - so if Netflix needs 10gbit/s 1 month and 20gbit/s the next month, if hosting an OpenConnect box really is out of the question, just provision it (and they can bloody well pay for it).
But what I'd really like to see is access to the infrastructure, yes (but still not for free).
Why would 2 or 5 or 10 different companies be running cables (whether overhead or underground)? Overbuilding is not necessary (upgrades notwithstanding). Moreover, why should a startup have to deal with running cables and the nightmare that is permitting? Surely it would be easier if I could just utilize an incumbents access network up to a certain point where it just gets routed to my data center instead of theirs.
Local loop unbundling, as this would normally be called (at least as it applies to DSL... I don't know what you'd call it on Cable), is a good thing.
Let's say that arbitrarily the wholesale cost of infrastructure is set at say $0.30/mbit/month/subscriber (so a subscriber on a 50mbit plan has a wholesale cost of $15 to any ISP that is offering services on the infrastructure), or maybe there are fixed tiers (eg 10mb for $10, 20mb for $18, 50mb for $25, 100mb for $40).
The retail prices charged by any given ISP can be whatever they like and the services may be as limited (or unlimited) as they like, so the way services are sold change from "you live at this address, and you have either ISP X or ISP Y" to a "You can choose any one of 10+ different ISPs based on factors such as price, customer service, bandwidth caps or lack thereof, throttling etc" basis instead, leading to some actual competition.
Market forces will pretty much dictate that ISPs will remain within a few dollars of each other, price drops by one ISP will often be reflected rather quickly by others in that market, as will speed upgrades, and if customer service sucks, the ability to take your money elsewhere speaks volumes.
I've seen it happen - just not in America... yet - but there's no reason it couldn't.
(just in case it isn't clear, there would still be 2 companies - one would be wholesale/infrastructure only and they don't deal with the public, the other retail only)
I am in favour, providing certain stipulations are in place.
I would argue that merging the infrastructure of both companies in to one, and then the retail operations of both companies in to one could be beneficial, if it was also mandated that said infrastructure be made available to other, competing retail ISPs at some regulated fair and equal cost.
For one, it would mean the retail operations of Comcast would now be competing with other retailers so they'd have to stop being dicks to customers because now customers could shift to a retailer that has decent customer service.
Something akin to this happened in NZ just under a decade ago when Telecom NZ became Chorus and Telecom (now Spark) and while it hasn't been perfect, overall it seems to have worked out reasonably well - even though the tariffs haven't really dropped that much (for the most part), what subscribers get for their money has improved pretty substantially - especially in the last 3 or 4 years.
I'd really like to see what would happen if all of a sudden consumers had 5 or 10 or 35 retail ISPs to choose from (even though it would all be delivered on the same infrastructure).
45 minutes checkin? Really? Were you on an international flight?
When I lived there, I used to fly between Matsuyama and Tokyo/Fukuoka about twice a week. Arrive at the airport about 10 or 15 minutes before the flight (even at Haneda), pop my JAL or ANA card in the machine, get my boarding pass and walk to the gate. And they'd scan my drink at the gate if I had one.
I'm a non-smoker, never have been a smoker except for a brief stint when I was a teenager. I'm not a fan myself.
I'm not really sure it was an insurance thing or what (I may be wrong, at least partially) BUT I'm given to understand that: When smoking was allowed on flights, they used to pump in fresh air (a couple of minutes to refresh the whole cabin with new air). When smoking was banned on flights, this allowed them to recycle air. Other than everybody's body odours and excretions being effectively recycled through the system, you now get less fresh air than you should. BUT, as a result of recycling air instead of giving us the real thing, the airlines save a bunch of fuel... somehow. So, arguably, it almost looks like a cost-cutting measure (or to keep up with fuel-economy regulations even with older aircraft?)
Rather weirdly, when I first flew on an A380, I noticed it had ashtrays... Why did they even bother installing them in the first place?
On that note, anyone know if they've made a decision on e-cigarettes/vapourizers on flights yet? Those aren't entirely unpleasant (as compared to tobacco, anyway) and so I wouldn't object too much if they were allowed.
There's probably a good reason for that. AA simply refuses to take my money, and on the occasions that they do, they don't fly.
In the last 18 months, I've booked 3 flights with AA to/from various parts of the world, however I have flown with them precisely zero times in that same time period. I have, however, booked and flown on numerous other routes with numerous other airlines without any issues, so I've pretty much given up on even trying AA.
From what I hear, I'm not missing out though... so fuck 'em.
In most countries, if your salary is $5k per calendar month, you'll only see (for example) $3,500 in your bank account each month because your taxes are already deducted at the income source and you don't have to worry about filing anything (or writing a cheque) unless you're self employed or have done something significant that requires it.
Not to mention that those taxes have already paid for your healthcare and education of you or your children, and when you buy something the price on the sticker is what you hand over to the cashier. I've been in and out of America for nearly 2 years now and I still get pissed off paying sales tax separately... but noooo, sales tax conveniently varies by state/county/city and sometimes even suburb... I'd rather see shops tell me something is $10.83 or whatever than tell me it's $10 plus tax.
The only time I would normally care about "plus tax" is when I'm working out my own sales tax liabilities (taxes collected on goods sold - taxes paid on goods purchased = sales tax liability... how hard is that really?) in which case, if you must insist on having taxes vary by state/county/city/suburb instead of acting like a proper country and having a flat percentage, include the tax amount (or the appropriate percentage) on the receipt so my accountant can sort it out.
My tax paperwork in the US has more pages and is more intrusive (thus requiring more effort and expense) than in 3 other countries *combined* - and 2 of those countries rank rather well when it comes to being in the world's least corrupt countries and for the ease of doing business. Frankly, I'm beginning to see why so many American companies have offshore "subsidiaries" - it's not just the dollar amounts, it's just so complicated. I'm extremely glad I'm not a US citizen (or even a "US person" as defined by the IRS).
Why on earth would you want a dozen competing fibers? Why not just one fiber which any ISP can use to sell services on, and changing ISP basically means the infrastructure provider simply changes the port your fiber is connected to or the VLAN your physical port uses, and the authentication credentials on your ONT?
Similar to how it works in places where the DSL loop is unbundled (NZ/AU etc)
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What's wrong with Internet in NZ? Since Chorus rolled out their cabinets all over the place, a lot of the population has access to VDSL (usually for about $10 more or even at the same prices as ADSL in some cases), and the FTTH/UFB network is coming along alright I guess, but the point is that for the most part, upload speeds are no longer arbitrarily restricted.to 1mbit/s.
Additionally, data caps are less of an issue than they were a couple of years ago, with many providers offering significantly more data for the same amount of money than they used to, and "unlimited" plans are even available again after 5 or so years of nobody having them.
Australia on the other hand... well... yeah.
Now *this* post, actually makes sense and I fully agree with it. We have to explain this to people //all//the//time//.
When they are running their links (peered or not) at 100% for 24 hours a day, you bet your ass they should upgrade. ESPECIALLY if someone else offers to foot the bill.
Will it be a permanent fix as bandwidth demands increase? Hell no, but that's what operational expenses are.
In some countries, if an ISP's links are running at more than a certain percentage of their capacity for more than a certain percentage of the day and they are doing nothing about it, they would be found to be falling afoul of the regulations and could very well be fined. Additionally, in some countries if an ISPs contention ratio gets too high, that's also going to cause an issue with the regulator (even though it's a bullshit measurement for so many reasons).
If US ISPs here were told they couldn't have a ratio of more than 50:1 (1mbit/s per 50 mbit/s sold) it might help - you get sold a 50mbit/s line, so your ISP has to have at least 1mbit/s of bandwidth at the border.
For example: 2 million subscribers each with 50mbit/s means only 2 million mbit/s (2 terabits) at the network border, which is very doable - even a pair of Juniper T1600s will do that - and that's a 3 or 4 year old model. An ISP with that many subscribers should definitely be present at more than 1 IXP, so if we assume 8-10, you're only looking at 200-250gbit/s in each.
Comcast in particular already announces that it has traffic levels exceeding 1Tbit/s, so they surely already have the equipment to do it (just not the incentive, I guess).
For your use case you're right, but this is not necessary to every single Internet subscriber in every single home.
Also, your neighbours fence company was stupid for digging without calling/planning/checking locates etc first and at least in some states (like Illinois) would have had an ass-kicking from the city.
Also, the core claim that the US spends the most per student - if we are talking about primary and secondary students - not college - is not true although it is on the high end. Switzerland, Norway and Luxembourg spend more, and Austria and Denmark are almost same.
But they get far more for their money, and (if I had to guess) in those countries that *probably* includes university tuition, not just grades 1-12.
They wouldn't be granted a visa for employment in India at such a wage (AKA "local wages").
To be eligible for a visa, the company must pay a minimum wage for foreign workers which, although are quite low by western standards (as of 2012, it was US $25,000/year or about 15 lakh rupees), it does mean foreign workers will earn a wage that would still be above the poverty line for a 4-person household in the US (http://aspe.hhs.gov/poverty/14poverty.cfm) and will be quite comfortable living in most parts of India.
While I haven't looked in to the US visa program myself (except *for* myself - we hire local workers where we operate: in the US, I'm required to hire a certain number of US residents; and in India I'm only allowed to have a certain percentage of my total workforce be foreign workers) perhaps the US visa program needs to take a page from India's and:
1. Prescribe a base salary for foreign workers (if it doesn't already) so that these companies who many of us recognize are blatantly abusing the system will no longer be able to save money by importing "cheap labour" in the way that they have been doing and
2. Perhaps there could be a limit on the percentage of a company's workforce which can be foreign citizens (people who gain residency/green-cards on their own merits would not contribute to this percentage), but it could prevent companies filling seats with H1-B workers.
**I'm personally not a citizen of either the US or India but we operate in these and other countries, and I'm *definitely* not anti-immigration -- but the solution *might* solve quite a lot of the issues with the H-visa abuse. It might also have the side-effect of killing TCS/Infosys business models.
I would +1 you if I had modpoints.
While most of what you say works in suburbia, it's not true for a highway and could be considered complete fallacy.
There's no reason an Interstate couldn't/shouldn't be de-restricted or at least have a "reasonable" limit of 90-100MPH, but I suspect either you Americans have no idea how to build, maintain or use a highway or your domestic vehicles can't handle those sorts of speeds properly.
Without going to the obvious territory of German (or French or Austrian or Italian, for that matter) roads, I've driven on highways in places like Romania and Turkey that are smoother and more suited to high speeds than much of what is available around where I'm based when I'm in America - route 13 in Southern Illinois has traffic lights on it for petes sake, and the Blue-Ridge parkway in Virginia has limits from 25-45MPH.
For what reason exactly?
There sure as hell shouldn't be any children playing on these roads, nor any side-streets for anyone to pull out from (this goes back to the aforementioned "y'all don't know how to build a highway"). And while you're moving at high speeds you probably shouldn't be answering the phone or fiddling around with CDs or checking a map or TURNING AROUND to yell at the kids? SERIOUSLY? Come on now, that's just irresponsibility on your part - having the state decide on frustratingly low speed limits for those of us that drive properly is not a good solution to any of these.
[nitpick]
You can't transition from H1-B to resident/green-card.
H1-B is a non-immigrant visa and is not a "path to immigration". It has an expiry date and AFAIK is not renewable. It does not entitle the holder to many things that someone on an immigrant-path visa would get, such as a drivers license or SSN (though due to driving laws, many states have a "temporary" drivers license, valid for up to 3 years for those on visas including but not limited to H, L & J).
The genuinely good immigrants come to the US on something like an E or O visa, which, among a couple of other categories, *are* considered a path to a green card.
[/nitpick]
It's a big status thing when your company relocates you to the US (even on a temporary basis), but it doesn't necessarily mean you're any good. I say this as a native-English speaking white male who just so happened to come to the US (I'm not on H1-B) after living in India and some other countries before that.
I definitely do not feel that India(ns) present any realistic competition when it comes to my work, partly because I'm reasonably good at what I do and partly because I'm not in software.
To be fair, Windows 7 isn't exactly a champ in this respect either - unplugging headphones or USB audio devices etc can cause the sound to just disappear and you have to fiddle around to get it back. I'm have a Core i7-based HP Probook that exhibits this sort of behaviour sometimes (but not all the time).
Perhaps you create a new monopoly, but if it's owned by the municipality or some other "non-profit" style entity, it's less of a problem - so long as it's possible to enforce a cap on the rates charged to the retail ISP, it should be OK.
Franchise agreements, on the other hand, are non-exclusive and have been for years (it is my understanding that exclusive agreements are illegal). The problem is getting municipalities to agree to another company digging OR getting the owner of the poles to charge a reasonable rate for attaching the cables.
Where I am (in IL, by the way) there are at least 7 companies trenching fiber (that I know of), all of it for enterprise use (although Frontier is *supposed* to have been deploying a pilot GPON network for "residential gigabit service", so far as I can tell nothing has been done along the routes I was told they would be building since they got awarded the money 14 months ago).
The thing that is really annoying the public works director is that Clearwave (who has the largest underground fiber deployment in the area) seems to just... take advantage of the leniency extended to them by way of their franchise agreement and digs pretty much where ever they like and/or the sub-contractors don't always follow the plans exactly as specified which has meant things like intrusions on other city services (such as water)...
I second the Mikrotik devices as well. At home I have one set up with a private network and a guest hotspot (WiFi) with one port going to my computer, another port going to a switch and another port to my WAN (which is currently a cable modem with a 100mb+ connection until I can wrangle some fiber). Still have a few ports free but I'm leaving them that way for now.
I usually get 115-120 down, 10-15 up from the Internet (depending on where and when) and LAN file transfers are pretty quick - it saturates the network cards in some of the older laptops around the house anyway.
They play much nicer now than they did a year or so ago - now you can configure a UniFi server address right there in the DNS so all the APs will more or less self-configure (no more having to detect the device and set them up - good if you're installing a lot of them).
These are not the only countries to have open last miles.
Generally speaking, Indians don't tend to get in to debt... as a cash-based society they scrimp and save until they can pay for what they want.
Things like credit and mortgages are really quite a new phenomenon there, let alone credit reporting. Depending on your banking history, if you want a loan or anything like that, usually you're going to have to put up serious collateral.
It is both a good and a bad thing.
I agree with most of that - I like GPON very much and I am pushing for fiber in pretty much every way I can, ALTHOUGH, ADSL2+ and VDSL in urban environments is reasonably effective if the telco installs cabinets (like Chorus did in NZ).
VDSL is also often used to supplement a GPON deployment in an FTTB scenario and is quite effective because the last mile is only a matter of a few hundred feet so you can usually get most of (or even all of) the speed. Moreover, with G.FAST hopefully making waves it might be a while before it [DSL] dies properly.
Chorus NZ now offering VDSL services with up to 100mbit/s (70 or 80mbit/s practical) in most of the country, which isn't too bad - the reason they did it, of course, is as a stepping stone toward the currently-being-constructed national fiber network so there's no reason telcos here can't follow suit (they're going to be putting in cabinets for GPON anyway).
I think my previous point remains valid, though - whether DSL, Cable or Fiber, why should there be 2 or 5 or 10 companies each deploying their own last miles and overbuilding?
There's no reason they [Comcast/TWC/Cox/etc] can't open their lines to competition. As I already mentioned, it already happens on DSL (not very effectively) and there there is at least 2 wholesalers providing resale access to Comcast/TWC/Cox/etc that I know of, but the pricing and whatnot is not particularly favourable.
So, what I'd like to see is open access at a fair and reasonable price whether the infrastructure is DSL or Cable (or even Ethernet or Fiber) based, and there is no reason it can't be done.
As far as peering goes, yeah, it's screwed here in the US, in part because there isn't enough real competition.
I agree (partially) with both sides of the Netflix/ISP debates - I understand that ISPs doesn't want to give Netflix free traffic and I understand that Netflix wants what it pays for. And rightly so. But if I were (for example) Comcast and I noticed that Netflix links were running at full-tit all the time, I'd be working with them to figure out how we can either 1. reduce the load or 2. what is required to increase the load (or even 3. both) - my customers are paying me for Internet service which includes watching Netflix, so if I need to maintain or upgrading my infrastructure, that's a cost of doing business. It may be a cost I can share with Netflix, but you have to spend money to make money, and the amounts required to upgrade are (in the scheme of things) pretty trivial.
Bandwidth, no (at least not for free).
Bandwidth (whether transit or peering) at a fair rate to keep up with demand, yes.
Surely good network management involves policies such as "if you're using more than 80% of your pipe consistently, we'll upgrade you and charge you accordingly" - so if Netflix needs 10gbit/s 1 month and 20gbit/s the next month, if hosting an OpenConnect box really is out of the question, just provision it (and they can bloody well pay for it).
But what I'd really like to see is access to the infrastructure, yes (but still not for free).
Why would 2 or 5 or 10 different companies be running cables (whether overhead or underground)? Overbuilding is not necessary (upgrades notwithstanding). Moreover, why should a startup have to deal with running cables and the nightmare that is permitting? Surely it would be easier if I could just utilize an incumbents access network up to a certain point where it just gets routed to my data center instead of theirs.
Local loop unbundling, as this would normally be called (at least as it applies to DSL... I don't know what you'd call it on Cable), is a good thing.
Let's say that arbitrarily the wholesale cost of infrastructure is set at say $0.30/mbit/month/subscriber (so a subscriber on a 50mbit plan has a wholesale cost of $15 to any ISP that is offering services on the infrastructure), or maybe there are fixed tiers (eg 10mb for $10, 20mb for $18, 50mb for $25, 100mb for $40).
The retail prices charged by any given ISP can be whatever they like and the services may be as limited (or unlimited) as they like, so the way services are sold change from "you live at this address, and you have either ISP X or ISP Y" to a "You can choose any one of 10+ different ISPs based on factors such as price, customer service, bandwidth caps or lack thereof, throttling etc" basis instead, leading to some actual competition.
Market forces will pretty much dictate that ISPs will remain within a few dollars of each other, price drops by one ISP will often be reflected rather quickly by others in that market, as will speed upgrades, and if customer service sucks, the ability to take your money elsewhere speaks volumes.
I've seen it happen - just not in America... yet - but there's no reason it couldn't.
(just in case it isn't clear, there would still be 2 companies - one would be wholesale/infrastructure only and they don't deal with the public, the other retail only)
I am in favour, providing certain stipulations are in place.
I would argue that merging the infrastructure of both companies in to one, and then the retail operations of both companies in to one could be beneficial, if it was also mandated that said infrastructure be made available to other, competing retail ISPs at some regulated fair and equal cost.
For one, it would mean the retail operations of Comcast would now be competing with other retailers so they'd have to stop being dicks to customers because now customers could shift to a retailer that has decent customer service.
Something akin to this happened in NZ just under a decade ago when Telecom NZ became Chorus and Telecom (now Spark) and while it hasn't been perfect, overall it seems to have worked out reasonably well - even though the tariffs haven't really dropped that much (for the most part), what subscribers get for their money has improved pretty substantially - especially in the last 3 or 4 years.
I'd really like to see what would happen if all of a sudden consumers had 5 or 10 or 35 retail ISPs to choose from (even though it would all be delivered on the same infrastructure).
45 minutes checkin? Really? Were you on an international flight?
When I lived there, I used to fly between Matsuyama and Tokyo/Fukuoka about twice a week. Arrive at the airport about 10 or 15 minutes before the flight (even at Haneda), pop my JAL or ANA card in the machine, get my boarding pass and walk to the gate. And they'd scan my drink at the gate if I had one.
Forget that - how does *starting* at 32 make any sense at all?!
I'm a non-smoker, never have been a smoker except for a brief stint when I was a teenager. I'm not a fan myself.
I'm not really sure it was an insurance thing or what (I may be wrong, at least partially) BUT I'm given to understand that:
When smoking was allowed on flights, they used to pump in fresh air (a couple of minutes to refresh the whole cabin with new air).
When smoking was banned on flights, this allowed them to recycle air. Other than everybody's body odours and excretions being effectively recycled through the system, you now get less fresh air than you should.
BUT, as a result of recycling air instead of giving us the real thing, the airlines save a bunch of fuel... somehow. So, arguably, it almost looks like a cost-cutting measure (or to keep up with fuel-economy regulations even with older aircraft?)
Rather weirdly, when I first flew on an A380, I noticed it had ashtrays... Why did they even bother installing them in the first place?
On that note, anyone know if they've made a decision on e-cigarettes/vapourizers on flights yet? Those aren't entirely unpleasant (as compared to tobacco, anyway) and so I wouldn't object too much if they were allowed.
There's probably a good reason for that. AA simply refuses to take my money, and on the occasions that they do, they don't fly.
In the last 18 months, I've booked 3 flights with AA to/from various parts of the world, however I have flown with them precisely zero times in that same time period. I have, however, booked and flown on numerous other routes with numerous other airlines without any issues, so I've pretty much given up on even trying AA.
From what I hear, I'm not missing out though... so fuck 'em.
Or do it like most reasonable countries: PAYE.
In most countries, if your salary is $5k per calendar month, you'll only see (for example) $3,500 in your bank account each month because your taxes are already deducted at the income source and you don't have to worry about filing anything (or writing a cheque) unless you're self employed or have done something significant that requires it.
Not to mention that those taxes have already paid for your healthcare and education of you or your children, and when you buy something the price on the sticker is what you hand over to the cashier. I've been in and out of America for nearly 2 years now and I still get pissed off paying sales tax separately... but noooo, sales tax conveniently varies by state/county/city and sometimes even suburb... I'd rather see shops tell me something is $10.83 or whatever than tell me it's $10 plus tax.
The only time I would normally care about "plus tax" is when I'm working out my own sales tax liabilities (taxes collected on goods sold - taxes paid on goods purchased = sales tax liability... how hard is that really?) in which case, if you must insist on having taxes vary by state/county/city/suburb instead of acting like a proper country and having a flat percentage, include the tax amount (or the appropriate percentage) on the receipt so my accountant can sort it out.
My tax paperwork in the US has more pages and is more intrusive (thus requiring more effort and expense) than in 3 other countries *combined* - and 2 of those countries rank rather well when it comes to being in the world's least corrupt countries and for the ease of doing business. Frankly, I'm beginning to see why so many American companies have offshore "subsidiaries" - it's not just the dollar amounts, it's just so complicated. I'm extremely glad I'm not a US citizen (or even a "US person" as defined by the IRS).
Why on earth would you want a dozen competing fibers? Why not just one fiber which any ISP can use to sell services on, and changing ISP basically means the infrastructure provider simply changes the port your fiber is connected to or the VLAN your physical port uses, and the authentication credentials on your ONT?
Similar to how it works in places where the DSL loop is unbundled (NZ/AU etc)