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AT&T Pretends It, Too, Will Build A 1 Gigabit Network

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Re: AT&T Pretends It, Too, Will Build A 1 Gigabit Network

#11

Post by shmerl »

robflynn wrote: post #8
mschuster91 wrote: post #5

Is it just European bias or is the US largely near a 3rd world country in terms of internet broadband access?

I don't think its bias. I cannot get DSL, CABLE, Fiber-anything... My choices are: Dialup, Satellite, or wireless internet. I can get 3G cell coverage -- sometimes. My street does have cable television, they just refuse to service the area with internet access. My country has an exclusivity agreement with this cable provider, so no other providers can come into the area. The sickening factor for me is the fact that I…

> I can SEE houses with time warner service from the end of my driveway. They just can't go that extra half mile.

Is there a way to create some local network with people who have access in that half mile? Then you can share the bandwidth accessible from their location.

Re: AT&T Pretends It, Too, Will Build A 1 Gigabit Network

#12

Post by kalleboo »

robflynn wrote: post #8
mschuster91 wrote: post #5

Is it just European bias or is the US largely near a 3rd world country in terms of internet broadband access?

I don't think its bias. I cannot get DSL, CABLE, Fiber-anything... My choices are: Dialup, Satellite, or wireless internet. I can get 3G cell coverage -- sometimes. My street does have cable television, they just refuse to service the area with internet access. My country has an exclusivity agreement with this cable provider, so no other providers can come into the area. The sickening factor for me is the fact that I…

> My county has an exclusivity agreement with this cable provider, so no other providers can come into the area

I see this over and over, and I don't understand WHY a local government would ever do this. What do they get out of these exclusivity deals?

Meanwhile in my old town in Sweden, the city-owned power company built a supplier-neutral fiber network to promote competition (and a price war).

Re: AT&T Pretends It, Too, Will Build A 1 Gigabit Network

#13

Post by noonespecial »

robflynn wrote: post #8
mschuster91 wrote: post #5

Is it just European bias or is the US largely near a 3rd world country in terms of internet broadband access?

I don't think its bias. I cannot get DSL, CABLE, Fiber-anything... My choices are: Dialup, Satellite, or wireless internet. I can get 3G cell coverage -- sometimes. My street does have cable television, they just refuse to service the area with internet access. My country has an exclusivity agreement with this cable provider, so no other providers can come into the area. The sickening factor for me is the fact that I…

We lived with that situation for years. Finally we banded together to start a WISP, signed a few people, and put up some antennas (with the blessing of local government) We then started passing out flyers.

The flyers did it. The a cable company had everyone hooked up in less than 6 weeks. They had previously told the county that geography made this impossible while reupping their exclusivity contract.

Re: AT&T Pretends It, Too, Will Build A 1 Gigabit Network

#14

Post by CaptainZapp »

This reminds me a bit of the situation we had in Zurich. The (city owned) electric utility had a few hundred million reserves and decided to invest it into a fiber network.

Actually - since the utility was owned by the city - the decision was based on a popular referendum, which sailed through. Needless to say that the established telcos and cable providers fought tooth and nail to kill the referendum.

The interesting thing was that Swisscom (the largest telco and ex-federal monopolist) argued that fiber is not necessary and too costly.

After EWZ (the utility) started construction the private providers went into hyperventilation mode and started their own construction. Later the networks merged into one fiber network.

The network is managed, and I think wisely so, in a way that EWZ grants equal access to private ISPs which then compete for customers. They don't act as an ISP.

While in the first step construction was in the most dense areas of the city the network is now extended to the entire city. Extension was also accepted by popular referendum.

Would construction not have been started by a government owned utility (well, that's us the citizens - we don't necessarily see government as the enemy) we could be sure to wait an additional 10 years until private entities would have deemed it profitable enough to step in.

Re: AT&T Pretends It, Too, Will Build A 1 Gigabit Network

#15

Post by lemieux »

51Cards wrote: post #6
mschuster91 wrote: post #5

Is it just European bias or is the US largely near a 3rd world country in terms of internet broadband access?

No, that would be us here in Canada :) Especially on pricing and caps it feels that way sometimes.

Internet prices in Canada are awful... Videotron is charging me 50$/mo for 10 down / 1 up and a supplement of 30$ for unlimited download... and the other provider in Montreal (Bell) has exactly the same pricing scheme... we have a lot of choices.

Re: AT&T Pretends It, Too, Will Build A 1 Gigabit Network

#16

Post by s3th »

When I saw the original press release earlier today, I thought the company name was a typo.

It's clear now that AT&T is making a political statement instead of announcing a premeditated expansion plan. Regardless, this seems like one of the worst possible ways to draw attention to purported "special incentives" that the city of Austin is granting Google. There is a large chance that AT&T won't come through on the plan at all--and when all this has blown over, AT&T is much more likely to be remembered for reneging on their plan than for being a proponent of fair regulatory laws.

Re: AT&T Pretends It, Too, Will Build A 1 Gigabit Network

#17

Post by cmelbye »

mschuster91 wrote: post #5

Is it just European bias or is the US largely near a 3rd world country in terms of internet broadband access?

I'm getting 81 Mbps download speeds right now on my laptop and have 4G on my phone wherever I go, not really near a 3rd world country as far as I know.

Re: AT&T Pretends It, Too, Will Build A 1 Gigabit Network

#18

Post by derefr »

> AT&T's expanded fiber plans in Austin anticipate it will be granted the same terms and conditions as Google on issues such as geographic scope of offerings, rights of way, permitting, state licenses and any investment incentives.

Sounds more like AT&T is expecting to make a deal with Google to resell bandwidth off Google's own fiber after Google puts up all the initial expense to lay it. That would indeed give them "exactly the same terms and conditions as Google."

Re: AT&T Pretends It, Too, Will Build A 1 Gigabit Network

#19

Post by jauer »

TFA talks about favorable deals for telcos. Telcos have received one-time incentives to do things that they may or may not have done, depending on who you read. The recurring incentive is usually to keep phone service working in rural areas.

What Google got (at least in KC) that AT&T wants is no franchies fee (typically cable companies and fiber providers pay the town a percentage of their revenue for the right run lines), no pole-attach fees, and cheap/easy permitting.

The impressive thing that Google has accomplished is not delivering Gig to the home. It is convincing cities, in a budget crisis economy, that the mere presence of gig is important enough to not only give up a traditional revenue stream (franchise fee) but also to give up cost recovery charges like pole-attach and permit fees. Apparently they still have a 5% fee in Olathe, but I'd bet they have other concessions that make up for it.

This: http://techliberation.com/2012/08/07/what-google-fiber-says-... and this:

Re: AT&T Pretends It, Too, Will Build A 1 Gigabit Network

#20

Post by josh2600 »

mschuster91 wrote: post #5

Is it just European bias or is the US largely near a 3rd world country in terms of internet broadband access?

Bias, sort of.

The US is actually two separate but interlinked networks.

On the one hand, residential service is 3rd world in most areas. On the other hand, I would argue that the US has the only first world broadband economy, which is our commercial network. The real networks in the US are very fast, 100gigabit fast at the core, but they slow down when you get to residences. Between Datacenters, the Internet is really amazing.

On the resi side, there was a Bush memo that reclassified resi service as "information services" instead of "Telecommunications services"[1] so they gave up the ability to enforce common carriage which is the term for sharing the last mile access.

In short, that is European bias when talking about our business networks, but quite right when referring to our residential networks.

It's a lot more complicated than this, but that's the gist of US broadband. You can't nationalize it because that's socialism and you can't force companies to build networks because that's fascist, so the telcos only build where there's competition: the datacenter.

[1]http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/11/opinion/11crawford.html?sc...

Edited to add link.

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