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The beginning of the end for copper wire

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Re: The beginning of the end for copper wire

#81

Post by abalashov »

saas_co_de wrote: post #17
maltalex wrote: post #11

Pardon the possibly ignorant question, but what do the telecom companies have to gain by destroying their own infrastructure? I feel like I'm missing something about the US telecom market here. Aren't these companies making a profit on this infrastructure? Are they selling more profitable services and they want users to switch over? Are the maintenance fees that high?

In the U.S. rural telecoms access has always existed because of government mandates supported in part by government subsidies and taxes. It would definitely be more profitable to drop support for large parts (land mass, not population) of the U.S. entirely.

> In the U.S. rural telecoms access has always existed because of government mandates supported in part by government subsidies and taxes.

Indeed, and the same is true of other places where wireline telephone service is universal or substantially universal.

Wireline telephone service is something that should be thought of as akin to electrification or public transportation. It is unlikely to have happened guided solely by private sector profit imperatives.

Re: The beginning of the end for copper wire

#82

Post by abalashov »

Zenst wrote: post #74
abalashov wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TA96 rules mandate number portability. But you can't port a number outside of a rate centre. To put it simply, to port a number to a new carrier, the carrier has to be able to pick the call up somewhere, by way of the appropriate connections to the incumbent's "tandem" offices (think of it as a kind of hub for the spokes that are Bell central offices). The underlying PSTN origination supply chain for the VoIP industr…

So they end up locking you into a call forwarding service, which entails you end up paying for them to do very little, with any maintenance liability already covered by existing liabilities. Starting to see why they wanted the change now.

Pretty much, yeah.

For a CLEC, interconnecting in any given LATA[1] is a complex and costly endeavour—I mean the actual interconnecting, not opting into an interconnection agreement (ICA) for one purpose or another. CLECs are not beholden to any universal service obligations or similar social policy objectives, and will only connect in higher-density metro-type markets in which there is profit in doing so. The business case has to be there, and that generally comes in the form of downstream VoIP service providers having customer demand in that area.

So, hyper-rural folks are deeply out of luck. We deal with this scenario all the time in my line of work: "hey, anyone know someone who can port a number in this $LOCAL_YOKEL territory out in $NEVER_HEARD_OF_IT?"

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_access_and_transport_are...

Re: The beginning of the end for copper wire

#83

Post by twunde »

abalashov wrote: post #72
asmithmd1 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Luckily phone companies cannot do this. Because AT&T was granted a monopoly, each state has Public Utility Commission that sets the rate the AT&T "Baby Bell" phone companies can charge: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_utilities_commission

A lot of times, the process looks more like: - AT&T declares the rate it will charge in its [Red State] PSC tariff filing; - [Red State] PSC stamps it. But yes, it is certainly true that they cannot just charge capricious and whimsical rates that change daily at their pleasure, or anything like that.

You can remove the red state. It applies to blue states as well for telecom and energy

Re: The beginning of the end for copper wire

#84

Post by lucio »

ztjio wrote: post #77

It seems like a lot of commenters don't understand the problem. The issue is not about whether that copper wire can be useful. It's not about whether there exist alternatives to provide in places where the copper is too expensive to maintain. The point is that regulations previously required the telco provide an alternative service that works just as well as the existing copper before they are allowed to stop maintai…

Then that will be a good market for a startup, or other players. Are the telcos obliged to provide you with telecommunication?

Re: The beginning of the end for copper wire

#85

Post by rayiner »

dashundchen wrote: post #79
droopybuns wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you hear telco execs talk about “the copper plant,” they are referring to all of the underground copper. This wire is laid out in sheathed bundles of excess pairs that can be used to replace a pair that has a short. When they eventually run out of pairs, the only solution is to dig trenches and replace bundles. It is filthy, expensive work for a feature that no longer generates the revenue that funded the deploy…

> Maybe we could have afforded a national deployment of fiber. Verizon and other telcos already learned they can get billions in subsidies for building fiber networks, and never follow through with it with no consequences. https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20131012/02124724852/decad... At this point I think municipal run ISP utilities are the future we should be shooting for.

Verizon never got subsidies from New York. Verizon pays the city for the right to wire it up (5% of gross revenues).

Re: The beginning of the end for copper wire

#86

Post by maxerickson »

lucio wrote: post #84
ztjio wrote: post #77

It seems like a lot of commenters don't understand the problem. The issue is not about whether that copper wire can be useful. It's not about whether there exist alternatives to provide in places where the copper is too expensive to maintain. The point is that regulations previously required the telco provide an alternative service that works just as well as the existing copper before they are allowed to stop maintai…

Then that will be a good market for a startup, or other players. Are the telcos obliged to provide you with telecommunication?

Historically, yes, telcos have been obliged to provide service. The post you replied to mentions this:

The point is that regulations previously required the telco provide an alternative service that works just as well as the existing copper before they are allowed to stop maintaining the copper. But that is no longer the case as of this vote.

Re: The beginning of the end for copper wire

#87

Post by chx »

lucio wrote: post #84
ztjio wrote: post #77

It seems like a lot of commenters don't understand the problem. The issue is not about whether that copper wire can be useful. It's not about whether there exist alternatives to provide in places where the copper is too expensive to maintain. The point is that regulations previously required the telco provide an alternative service that works just as well as the existing copper before they are allowed to stop maintai…

Then that will be a good market for a startup, or other players. Are the telcos obliged to provide you with telecommunication?

Under current rules yes and they are paid for it. Check Connect America Fund

Re: The beginning of the end for copper wire

#88

Post by Zaita »

mrmondo wrote: post #28

While the Australian right wing govt scrapped all the fibre to the home work that was underway and decided that copper from the node to the house was a great upgrade. The internet in Australia is so bad I had significantly better in New Zealand a decade ago.

Yea Australia have ruined the NBN. In New Zealand (a small island with 5 million people) I have 1Gbps. Had Fibre at 100Mbps+ for 4+ years now. It makes a massive difference when compared to ~10-20Mbps DSL2/VDSL.

Re: The beginning of the end for copper wire

#89

Post by jackvalentine »

walshemj wrote: post #59
mrmondo wrote: post #28

While the Australian right wing govt scrapped all the fibre to the home work that was underway and decided that copper from the node to the house was a great upgrade. The internet in Australia is so bad I had significantly better in New Zealand a decade ago.

FTC Fibre to CAB and using existing coper for the drop to the house makes sense as you can get good performance with VDSL over 20MBS at a 2K yards

This chart suggests at 1800m you can expect below 20mbps

https://www.increasebroadbandspeed.co.uk/2013/chart-bt-fttc-...

Which is both slower than the fibre that had already been planned, and slower than the then incoming government's "25mbps for everyone by end of 2016" promise (which they missed).

It also doesn't have a good cheap upgrade path and assumes that the copper is good and doesn't need to be replaced (it isn't, and it does in many places).

Re: The beginning of the end for copper wire

#90

Post by dsfyu404ed »

twunde wrote: post #83
abalashov wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of times, the process looks more like: - AT&T declares the rate it will charge in its [Red State] PSC tariff filing; - [Red State] PSC stamps it. But yes, it is certainly true that they cannot just charge capricious and whimsical rates that change daily at their pleasure, or anything like that.

You can remove the red state. It applies to blue states as well for telecom and energy

This. Nobody has a monopoly on corruption and back room dealing.
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