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A tech antitrust problem no one is talking about: US broadband providers

arstechnica.com

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Re: A tech antitrust problem no one is talking about: US broadband providers

#81

Post by yaacov »

baq wrote: post #54
Robotbeat wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is odd that Starlink isn’t mentioned in the article. Starlink has impressive speed and latency and the potential to compete to some degree in every market in the US. Twitter angst aside (some of which is fair but much seems to be either dishonest or ignorant, even by those who should definitely know better), SpaceX has also done a remarkably good job of addressing the light pollution problem such that the satellit…

starlink cannot compete in densely populated area because the sats have comparatively (to dsl, fiber, etc.) limited total bandwidth to spare, just like any other shared medium. musk himself was very open about this. starlink is a game changer where the last mile is prohibitively expensive i.e. sparse/rural areas a few dozen miles away from population centers.

Currently urban broadband costs are high in part because they’re subsidizing rural areas, right?

So if starlink can cover the rurals for less costs can hopefully come down for everyone

Re: A tech antitrust problem no one is talking about: US broadband providers

#82

Post by gnopgnip »

treis wrote: post #70
gnopgnip wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There's usually at least two wired options Per https://www.fcc.gov/internet-access-services-reports approximately only about 25% of census blocks have two or more providers for wired internet. Often within a census block most households will only have one option.

Census blocks aren't equivalent to households. Most of those census blocks are going to be rural with few people living there.

That is true, and you can look at the data in different ways. But still most households don't have at least two different high speed internet providers.

Re: A tech antitrust problem no one is talking about: US broadband providers

#83

Post by techsupporter »

gnopgnip wrote: post #80
redisman wrote: post #5

It's true. I'll never stop being amazed at how in Helsinki 10 years ago I had a 500/500Mbps connection for $29/mo and in Seattle I have a 200/10Mbps connection for $59/mo. I won't even get to mobile plans since at least there it's somewhat plausible that I must subside the rural cellphone towers since it's a huge (in area) network.

There are at least 5 ISPs that offer gigabit service in Seattle. Wave is as low as $50. Atlas is $59. Century link is $65 as a promotional period. Google Fiber is $70, Comcast is $100+.

Not all in the same place. WaveG and Atlas and Google (WebPass, not Google Fiber) buildings do not overlap. Nor do WaveCopper-not-WaveG and Comcast except for a small part of Beacon Hill and Lower Queen Anne.

And CenturyLink does not offer fiber-to-the-home, or fiber-to-the-node-with-gigabit (and FTTN upload is limited to a paltry 10Mbps) in about 35% of the city, including places like Ballard, most of the Central District, Hillman City, or Crown Hill.

Re: A tech antitrust problem no one is talking about: US broadband providers

#84

Post by WalterBright »

muststopmyths wrote: post #31
crazygringo wrote: post #6

Seriously, I feel like I say it every time it comes up: WHY aren't people taking action against ISP monopolies? It seems like such a cut-and-dried political issue: they're utilities and they overcharge you whether you're a Republican or Democrat. And taking action doesn't require new antitrust concepts, because it's just your garden-variety utility. It's the same established principles as electric or natural gas. Yet…

It's only baffling if you didn't bother to read the party platforms. The Democratic party platform explicitly talks about removing barriers to municipal broadband as a goal, which is the only way you are going to get competition where ISPs have a monopoly. At least in the current landscape where it's cost-prohibitive for a competitor to enter a region. Also (emphasis mine), > Democrats will restore the Federal Commun…

> The Democratic party platform explicitly talks about removing barriers to municipal broadband as a goal

Since the cities are generally under solid Democratic control (there's not a single Republican in elective office in Seattle, for example), there's something else going on.

Re: A tech antitrust problem no one is talking about: US broadband providers

#85

Post by rayiner »

nostromo wrote: post #64
rayiner wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Democratic party platform explicitly talks about removing barriers to municipal broadband as a goal, which is the only way you are going to get competition where ISPs have a monopoly. At least in the current landscape where it's cost-prohibitive for a competitor to enter a region. It's only "cost-prohibitive for a competitor to enter a region" because of build-out requirements which are broadly supported by Dem…

We see this so often now I'm starting to think it's an intentional strategy. Step 1: create conditions that prevent capitalism from solving a problem. Step 2: declare that capitalism has failed and call for government solutions.

I don't know about intentional, but I think it's unfortunately common. I think housing is the most egregious example. I live in a neighborhood filled with millennial parents who have their own detached homes and fairly modest jobs (mix of college/non-college). Meanwhile, my lawyer friends earning six figures feel like they can't afford homes or to start families. The difference is that they live in heavily regulated cities, and I live in an unincorporated part of a fairly rural county a few miles away from a small city. (But still in a blue state!)

I'm not a hard-right libertarian--I think healthcare probably has some examples of market failures and maybe we need something like universal catastrophic insurance. But yeah, some of these problems, like housing costs, really are self-inflicted.

I think the other approach is to shift blame or sweep under the rug problems with services that are entirely publicly run. If you have a problem with the schools or police in your blue city/state, 90% of your energy should be directed to your own state and local officials! (Instead of railing against Jeff Bezos or Donald Trump.)

Re: A tech antitrust problem no one is talking about: US broadband providers

#86

Post by lotsofpulp »

treis wrote: post #75
lotsofpulp wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Low latency, low packet loss, high upload and download bandwidth, unmetered internet service is certainly a monopoly. None of this is possible with wireless. You're lucky if you live in a place with symmetric gigabit fiber service. There's only one provider. And quite frankly, there's no need to string multiple fibers to every house. Everyone else has a subpar coaxial connection from Comcast/Cox/Spectrum.

If you segment any market enough eventually you end up with a monopoly. And your segment is unreasonable. Very very few people need symmetric gigabit fiber. Using that as the criteria is like saying Lamborghini has a monopoly on cars because they're the only one that makes one that goes 200 mph.

If you're laying fiber, it costs next to nothing to make it gigabit versus 10Mbit.

The issue is that fiber internet itself is a much better product than non fiber internet. And tell the people who have kids and are also working from home that they can't stream video because an HD video stream is 3Mbps+ and 4 people in a house streaming at the same time at high quality is basically impossible.

Some people also have security cameras streaming upload too. The applications for increased bandwidth are numerous. Remote doctor visits can use high quality video, you can stream things from your home NAS, backups are quicker.

Re: A tech antitrust problem no one is talking about: US broadband providers

#87

Post by nitrogen »

Fellshard wrote: post #37
crazygringo wrote: post #6

Seriously, I feel like I say it every time it comes up: WHY aren't people taking action against ISP monopolies? It seems like such a cut-and-dried political issue: they're utilities and they overcharge you whether you're a Republican or Democrat. And taking action doesn't require new antitrust concepts, because it's just your garden-variety utility. It's the same established principles as electric or natural gas. Yet…

Because Net Neutrality was the angle that brings more money their way. Net Neutrality assumes the monopoly will stay, that no alternatives are available, and that top-down control is the best bet. If you focus on the monopoly instead, different ISPs could offer different advantages based on the consumer's requirements: gaming, video consumption, media upload, basic light browsing - you could tailor engineering costs…

Offering consumer-controlled latency prioritization doesn't violate net neutrality. Giving that control exclusively to the ISP, or to third parties who pay the ISP, does.

Re: A tech antitrust problem no one is talking about: US broadband providers

#88

Post by thotsBgone »

rayiner wrote: post #49
thotsBgone wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the result of government corruption. For example: the government paid ISPs $400 billion dollars (!) to create a nationwide fiber network, and the ISPs pocketed the money and didn't do it. No investigation into what happened or anything. The money is just gone. Clearly corruption is the only explanation. Politicians have been bought. Why voters don't know/care is another issue, but it might have something to d…

> For example: the government paid ISPs $400 billion dollars (!) to create a nationwide fiber network False: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7709556

It wasn't in taxes or tax breaks, but the ISPs were given exemption to regulation on prices in exchange for deploying a fiber network they never deployed. This basically happened twice, which is why I talk about 400 billion when the link you gave only talks about the first 200.

https://www.natoa.org/events/BrokenPromisesGarcia.pdf

BTW the logic in your link doesn't make sense. The $200 billion number is "based on taking what ISP profits would have been had they been regulated as a utility", yes, but the only reason we didn't regulate them as a utility is they promised us the fiber networks!

Re: A tech antitrust problem no one is talking about: US broadband providers

#89

Post by WalterBright »

burlesona wrote: post #8
crazygringo wrote: post #6

Seriously, I feel like I say it every time it comes up: WHY aren't people taking action against ISP monopolies? It seems like such a cut-and-dried political issue: they're utilities and they overcharge you whether you're a Republican or Democrat. And taking action doesn't require new antitrust concepts, because it's just your garden-variety utility. It's the same established principles as electric or natural gas. Yet…

It's a good question, but I think one of the issues is that physical networks are a natural monopoly in the same way as most public utilities, so it's not just about enabling more competition but about establishing a regulatory framework around that competition, much like exists with airports and railways. OR, alternatively, changing to a public sector provision model like plumbing or roads. What actually bothers me…

> one of the issues is that physical networks are a natural monopoly

When telephones were first installed, competing telephone companies stringing wires sprang up everywhere. Regulation put a stop to that.

Re: A tech antitrust problem no one is talking about: US broadband providers

#90

Post by kinkrtyavimoodh »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #26

This is such a weird thing. After spending time in SE Asia, where bandwidth is cheap and plentiful (in the cities), it's painful coming back to Europe (and Australia). I'm in Berlin atm, and the wifi is shit, bandwidth is expensive and unreliable. And the phone plans suck. I was in Perth (Australia) before that, and access there is terrible. In Cambodia, 120Gb (per week) of download cost me US$1 (per week) over good-…

European cafes won't even give you tap water (even if you have bought other stuff) for free, let alone free wifi.
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