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Comcast has a lot to lose if municipal broadband takes off

arstechnica.com

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Re: Comcast has a lot to lose if municipal broadband takes off

#111

Post by loeg »

linsomniac wrote: post #63

Comcast and CenturyLink: You've shown you do not want to invest in fiber to the home, so you don't have any right to stop the city from doing it. I don't hate Comcast as much as others, but I'm really looking forward to Fort Collins starting the process of doing municipal fiber. Comcast and CenturyLink have neglected upgrading infrastructure for decades, and so if they aren't going to do it I don't see why the city s…

CenturyLink has finally rolled out fiber to my home (Seattle area). It's taken a long damn time and until they did, they weren't remotely competitive with Comcast. But now I get about 600 Mbps down and 900 Mbps up for $100/mo, which beats Comcast slightly.

Re: Comcast has a lot to lose if municipal broadband takes off

#112

Post by loeg »

Johnny555 wrote: post #107

They already face competition in higher density housing. I live in an apartment in the Seattle area with WaveG broadband (www.wavebroadband.com)-- 100mbit (up+down) for $60/month. In some buildings they offer gigabit speeds for $80/month. I've been pretty happy with them, reliable service and provisioning is easy -- placed an online order and 2 days later the ethernet jack in my apartment was turned on. No modem or a…

They pretty much only serve large apartment buildings in or very near downtown. CenturyLink's gigabit has a bit broader reach, though it certainly doesn't cover all of Seattle.

Re: Comcast has a lot to lose if municipal broadband takes off

#113

Post by jancsika »

asdfaefasdf wrote: post #65
eldavido wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think people misunderstand Comcast. They're arguably more in the business of retailing/financial services than anything having to do with TCP/IP or DOCSIS. Americans as a whole are horrible at managing money. They don't pay their bills on time, have tons of credit card debt, etc. This isn't my opinion, it's cold hard reality: look at the subprime crisis, debt burden, charge-offs/delinquencies, etc. Frankly, the cro…

I have literally no idea how you could have reached the idea that you would be an indentured servant/bill collector. Is this some sort of post-truth propaganda?

I understand why people are greying out that comment. On the other hand, the idea that municipal services lead residents to literally collect payment from their neighbors is such a novel complaint that I'd love to hear more details.

eldavido- can you give some more information about any news stories that cover this happening?

Re: Comcast has a lot to lose if municipal broadband takes off

#114

Post by toast0 »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #68
phil21 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I argue going one step further, even at the loss of some theoretical efficiency. Split layer 1 from layer 3. I want a fiber pair from my house to the central office, where I can then patch to any provider who decided to pay the cost-recovery based co-location connection fee. Basically I should be able to tell this wireline provider to plug my patch cord into service provider X and they do it within a reasonable timef…

Having helped shepherd municipal broadband initiatives along, I'm sorry to say that your requirements are a hill too far for almost all consumers. They don't care about the level of provider selection you want, they simply want The Internet (Netflix, Youtube, Google Gmail, et al) at the lowest possible cost (and reliable to boot). > many networks will likely be built out and then left to languish long-term if there i…

I understand that most consumers don't understand, or don't care or whatever, but it's so frustrating.

The internet is not a dumb pipe -- making the right routing decisions and connections in the right places makes things better. On the other hand, the last mile is actually a place where things can be pretty dumb (fair allocation of shared mediums not withstanding).

I would love to pay an ISP for better routing and transit, but I can't afford to pay them for overbuilding in an area already served by a phone company and a cable company. I don't expect a municipality to spend the time and effort to get great routing and transit either; I expect they'll get service from one, maybe two big transit providers, and maybe network appliances from Google and Netflix, and call it a day.

Re: Comcast has a lot to lose if municipal broadband takes off

#115

Post by super-serial »

ksk wrote: post #54
mgaruccio wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't HAVE to be super political, there are municipal water, sewer, electric, and gas utilities all over the country and they are very rarely politicized. If you consider broadband a basic need (I do) then it makes sense for it to be provided by the community just like those other utilities.

What isn't and is politicized is not a logical deduction, nor is it rational. Its emotional. >If you consider broadband a basic need (I do) then it makes sense I don't think having such a simple gating mechanism for prescribing government policy makes much sense. I also consider food to be a basic need, but I don't want a government cheeseburger. Like I said, I'm all for the public owning the last mile and then the p…

Funny you should say that because you are getting a government cheeseburger... "sixty three percent of the U.S. government food subsidies go directly or indirectly to subsidize the meat and dairy industries. Less than 1 percent goes to fruit and vegetable cultivation." (1)

I don't personally eat red meat or dairy. So people like me are basically paying for everyone else to go to McDonald's with my taxes.

(1) - http://usmfreepress.org/2013/04/29/meat-subsidies-strip-othe...

Re: Comcast has a lot to lose if municipal broadband takes off

#116

Post by rayiner »

erentz wrote: post #108
rayiner wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Municipal broadband is accountable to its local citizens or stakeholders, depending on the model used to develop it (government owned or non-profit owned). If it languishes, it will only do so because its citizens or users allow it to. I don't find this comforting. Citizens regularly allow public services to languish, through a combination of a myopic focus on cutting costs/taxes and lack of accountability. When I…

> One of the things the environmental law clinic at Northwestern does is identify municipal water/sewer systems that are not in compliance with the Clean Water Act and Safe Drinking Water Act. There are many such systems, and invariably they remain out of compliance because citizens are unwilling to raise water/sewer rates to fix the infrastructure. Err. That just seems like it’s the fault of the regulators refusing…

These are municipal water utilities. The EPA can't force municipalities to raise water rates. And imposing fines on already cash-strapped entities would result in political disaster if anything bad happened.

Re: Comcast has a lot to lose if municipal broadband takes off

#117

Post by ksk »

super-serial wrote: post #115
ksk wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What isn't and is politicized is not a logical deduction, nor is it rational. Its emotional. >If you consider broadband a basic need (I do) then it makes sense I don't think having such a simple gating mechanism for prescribing government policy makes much sense. I also consider food to be a basic need, but I don't want a government cheeseburger. Like I said, I'm all for the public owning the last mile and then the p…

Funny you should say that because you are getting a government cheeseburger... "sixty three percent of the U.S. government food subsidies go directly or indirectly to subsidize the meat and dairy industries. Less than 1 percent goes to fruit and vegetable cultivation." (1) I don't personally eat red meat or dairy. So people like me are basically paying for everyone else to go to McDonald's with my taxes. (1) - http:/…

>So people like me are basically paying for everyone else to go to McDonald's with my taxes.

I suppose then you also take personal responsibility for the bombs dropped in Syria?

Re: Comcast has a lot to lose if municipal broadband takes off

#118

Post by rayiner »

techsupporter wrote: post #110
erentz wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would prefer the wholesale network to be owned by the communities or states but I don’t see it being a completely necessary starting point. For example it would be relatively simple to craft a law that requires this split for all such telecommunications access networks regardless of existing or new builds or cable vs copper vs fiber. Immediately that would level the playing field because Comcast has to sell access…

We did craft a law: Telecommunications Act of 1996. The Bush FCC killed the line sharing rules.

The implementation of the unbundling rules was "disastrous" (according to the center-left Brookings Institute: www.pff.org/events/eventpowerpoints/022207BrusselsComm/Crandall.ppt, see slide 3). Unbundling can work, but requires a steady hand in setting rates. The FCC said "screw telcos" and set rates very low, which made telecos basically give up on improving their DSL infrastructure. In contrast, unbundling has worked well in the U.K. There, the government put in place a rate structure that allowed BT OpenReach (the entity that owns all the phone lines) to actually be comparable in profitability to Comcast or TWC.

Re: Comcast has a lot to lose if municipal broadband takes off

#119

Post by adventured »

mmanfrin wrote: post #62

I would gladly pay double what I'm paying to Comcast for the same speed with almost any other company, but I have literally zero options above 25mbps. And I live in the original home of the internet , Berkeley (which had one of the first 4 'IMPS').

What has kept Berkeley from forming its own municipal Internet access service? I would have expected Berkeley, due to its culture, to be aggressively in favor of doing that and booting Comcast.

Re: Comcast has a lot to lose if municipal broadband takes off

#120

Post by justicezyx »

toast0 wrote: post #114
toomuchtodo wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having helped shepherd municipal broadband initiatives along, I'm sorry to say that your requirements are a hill too far for almost all consumers. They don't care about the level of provider selection you want, they simply want The Internet (Netflix, Youtube, Google Gmail, et al) at the lowest possible cost (and reliable to boot). > many networks will likely be built out and then left to languish long-term if there i…

I understand that most consumers don't understand, or don't care or whatever, but it's so frustrating. The internet is not a dumb pipe -- making the right routing decisions and connections in the right places makes things better. On the other hand, the last mile is actually a place where things can be pretty dumb (fair allocation of shared mediums not withstanding). I would love to pay an ISP for better routing and t…

Internet is dumb if you make it so. Like Chinese totalitarianism government did. They even build national firewalls.

If you allow private entities to freely monopolize, then they will make them complicated. Do you forget how ula executive being fires because he admit cost cannot match spacex?

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