171–180 of 284 posts
https://media.netflix.com/en/company-blog/how-netflix-works-...
Apparently a lot of people (internally too) called them out it was unnecessary but it's paying dividends back now.
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The next step beyond the mail was the telegraph and then the telephone. Those were built out by private companies, but operated under a regulatory regime called "common carrier," which protected the network owner from liability so long as it charged and carried traffic from all parties equally. These days, that concept is called "net neutrality" in the context of the Internet, and I suppose you may have heard it ment…
I think your point is generally spot on, but I wanted to nitpick at this one: > airlines needed it No, they didn't. Regulation of fares, routes and market entry of new airlines kept prices artificially high until airlines were deregulated in the late 70s. Quoting from Wikipedia ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airline_Deregulation_Act#Effec... ): "A 1996 Government Accountability Office report found that the average f…
Another strategy to this (not exclusive of other strategies) is to encourage municipal ISPs, or even go further and roll out federal ISP infrastructure ala the federal highway system. I've always thought that this would be well within the rubric of the USPS. The constitutional mandate for a postal service was drafted at a time when the internet could not have been conceived of. I would argue that the intent of the co…
This could be done even at a block association level with 5G/wifi or maybe even 4G. 4G/5G/Wifi is critical to undermining the incumbent ISPs. Urban and heavy to medium suburban rollout could be rapid. Perhaps google should buy T-Mobile to get access to cell towers as a start... take the licenses from Nextel/Sprint for ISP-level data delivery, and keep T-Mobile for regular coverage. Of course, I haven't tracked the st…
This the end of innovation in online videos: "When companies like Netflix, which today closed with a market cap of almost $158 billion, can’t necessarily get enough negotiating power to ensure that consumers have direct access to them, no startup can ever hope to compete. America may believe in its entrepreneurs, but its competition laws have done nothing to keep the terrain open for them. Those implications are just…
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If there is more demand for cell service the cell companies will build more towers. Lower the power levels and use higher frequency bands to reduce interference. By your numbers, 200 clients x $50/mo $10k revenue per mo for a tower. A new cell tower costs $150k, so it pays for itself in 15 months.
It can take years in the UK to add a new cell tower. Apply to the local govt for planning, then more applications to dig the road up for fibre. And then you need a power connection which often aren't trivial or quick to get. $150k sounds unbelievably low.
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The idea that the industry should self-fund universal coverage is massively distortionary. If we want everyone to have electricity and broadband (an admirable goal), that's fine. The government should build electricity and broadband to places that don't have it (and I'd posit they should do it in a cost efficient way, e.g. with wireless). Forcing the places that do have it to subsidize the places that don't have it,…
How exactly would the government do it without "forcing the places that do have it to subsidize the places that don't have it?" Taxes are how the government funds those sorts of things, and taxes are collected from everybody. So the subsidization still happens.
Take tobacco taxes, for example. We put special taxes on tobacco because we don't want people to smoke, and we want to discourage people from smoking. Taxing tobacco effectively raises prices, which reduces demand. Various governments employ similar taxes to discourage things like soda, sugary foods, etc. This is a well-understood concept: you put extra taxes on things you want to discourage (relative to the rest of the economy).
Paying for rural telecom by putting a special tax on telecom service achieves exactly the same effect. It increases the price of service, reducing demand and reducing investment (relative to the rest of the economy, which does not bear that tax). But in theory, telecom infrastructure is something we want to encourage, not discourage.
It's even worse when you impose a general public obligation on individual service providers. For example, instead of paying for universal healthcare with general tax dollars, you could simply direct hospitals to treat poor people for free. Nobody does that--they pay for the broad public benefit with equally broad public taxes. But we do it for telecom--we tell companies that in order to be allowed to offer any service in a city, they must shoulder the burden of building out infrastructure even to neighborhoods where few people could afford to subscribe (i.e., neighborhoods that can only be served at a loss). That essentially makes it impossible to have a "minimally viable ISP." You can't compete with an incumbent by stealing away customers neighborhood-by-neighborhood. If the government simply let companies build infrastructure where it was profitable, and built subsidized infrastructure itself using general tax dollars where it was not, you could have that sort of competition.
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This type of comment implies you think the world is static. I'm not saying that this good, but what makes you so sure market and social forces won't produce a better model? To me this is just a temporary setback, and a reminder why we need to focus on developing new technologies, like a "truly decentralized internet", blockchain, cryptography, and more. It almost feels like a the death throws of a monster that will d…
None of those technologies matter when your access to them is blocked. When it comes to access, you have copper, fiber, and radio. The latter is not really competitive to the first two, both of which require significant up-front investments with no promise of revenue to pay those investments back. Remember Google Fiber? Where's that now? Shut down with a marketing-speak comment that says "its purpose was fulfilled."
Netflix seems to be hedging their bets by partnering with T-Mobile, the company aiming to bring 5G wireless to the US. As for Alphabet, I'm submitting this comment via my 1Gbps synchronous Google Fiber internet connection. Google seems to have stalled rollout of Fiber, however.
My understanding of Google Fiber is that they ran into to many headaches from existing telecom companies while trying to expand their fiber infrastructure. Instead of continuing to fight such an uphill battle they are trying to make a wireless approach work. I haven't heard much recently from their more standard wireless attempts (other than Loom being used in Puerto Rico) but they did invest (jointly with Fidelity)…
Since I work for a startup ISP I am praying that AT&T will be dumb enough to prioritize their content over others. You're going to make TNT fast and Netflix slow? You've got to be kidding. The amazing PR team at Netflix will be all over this and users will revolt. It will open up opportunities for the small guys to compete. By all means big ISPs, please cripple a huge part of your service that is very important to yo…
> The amazing PR team at Netflix will be all over this and users will revolt. That theory is not supported by history. Netflix will pay, because they can. New video streaming companies will have no chance. https://consumerist.com/2014/02/23/netflix-agrees-to-pay-com...