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Level3 is without peer, now what to do?

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Re: Level3 is without peer, now what to do?

#281

Post by A1kmm »

Angostura wrote: post #275
ChuckMcM wrote: post #97

There is an interesting unbalance because Comcast has so much leverage by owning the last mile, they can push around Tier 1 providers. I'd like to fix that, mostly by creating a public policy around municipally owned Layer 1 infrastructure between customers in their cities and a city exchange building. Conceptually it would be no different than the city owning the sewers and outsourcing the water treatment plant to a…

Sorry to be dense, but it is not quite clear to me how ownership of the last mile affords such leverage. It would seem that if you need to buy bandwidth for end users, you would be negotiating transit like anyone else - I'm clearly missing something.

Pay us $x to connect our network to Y network to your Z network, our our millions of Y users won't have access to customers on your Z network, and that will make the Z network look bad to your customers.

Of course, it goes the other way - Y looks bad because they can't get to Z's customers - but I suspect the commercial customers on Z might be more likely to ditch Z rather than the end users (who probably don't understand the situation) ditching Y.

Re: Level3 is without peer, now what to do?

#282

Post by whatevsbro »

Nimi wrote: post #257
rcthompson wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anti-trust laws are not ideal, though. They effectively act as thresholds or hard lower limits on allowed competition, but they don't directly address the economies of scale and barriers to entry that push the market toward a monopoly state.

Agreed. I have been looking now for a while for a rigorous treatment of how to deal with monopoly-related problems (hopefully this would be a summary of the current consensus among economists), are you by chance familiar with one?

> I have been looking now for a while for a rigorous treatment of how to deal with monopoly-related problems

http://mises.org/rothbard/mes/chap10a.asp

there are two, and only two, ways to settle what the prices of goods will be. One is the way of the free market, where prices are set voluntarily by each of the participating in­dividuals. In this situation, exchanges are made on terms bene­fiting all the exchangers. The other way is by violent interven­tion in the market, the way of hegemony as against contract. Such hegemonic establishment of prices means the outlawing of free exchanges and the institution of exploitation of man by man—for exploitation occurs whenever a coerced exchange is made. If the free-market route—the route of mutual benefit—is adopted, then there can be no other criterion of justice than the free-mar­ket price, and this includes alleged “competitive” and “monop­oly” prices, as well as the actions of cartels. In the free market, consumers and producers adjust their actions in voluntary co­operation.

Re: Level3 is without peer, now what to do?

#283

Post by fizx »

wtallis wrote: post #269
exelius wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do we know that wired broadband is even the answer? Wouldn't wireless connectivity be more attractive if the goal is social justice? Many lower-income homes don't own a PC, and at this point they probably never will. How attractive is a home PC to you if all you've ever known are smartphones? Wired broadband, to me, is more of an entertainment consumption platform. Wireless serves the needs of low-bandwidth infor…

The laws of physics prohibit wireless from serving current needs in an urban density. It's not a solution for the future.

The http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shannon%E2%80%93Hartley_theorem limits the information that can be transmitted through a given channel. If you want to send more wired data, you add more channels by adding more wires. Wireless doesn't have that luxury.

Re: Level3 is without peer, now what to do?

#284

Post by exelius »

wtallis wrote: post #269
exelius wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do we know that wired broadband is even the answer? Wouldn't wireless connectivity be more attractive if the goal is social justice? Many lower-income homes don't own a PC, and at this point they probably never will. How attractive is a home PC to you if all you've ever known are smartphones? Wired broadband, to me, is more of an entertainment consumption platform. Wireless serves the needs of low-bandwidth infor…

The laws of physics prohibit wireless from serving current needs in an urban density. It's not a solution for the future.

Wired connectivity certainly isn't either. I find myself using my home internet connection almost exclusively for movies and games -- not exactly the great innovative services everyone talks about.

I use my phone for almost everything else: online shopping, communication, news consumption, even work since I tether my laptop to it when I'm on the go. It's a lot more convenient; and the only thing I really need high bandwidth for is media playback.

Re: Level3 is without peer, now what to do?

#285

Post by mokus »

> Nobody paid anybody for the service because it was assumed to be symmetrical: as many bits were going in one direction as in the other so any transaction fees would be a wash.

The justification for peering is not equal traffic, it's equal value - my customer wants to communicate with your customer. Regardless of the direction of traffic, the traffic is equally valuable to both of us because the traffic is the primary thing our customers are paying us for.

Unless, of course, I can get you to pay me for it anyway because of some unrelated advantage such as the fact that your customers can leave you more easily than mine can leave me. Comcast and others are attempting to leverage exactly that - in many regions they have no viable competition whereas Netflix and L3 are much more replaceable in their respective markets. This is a prime example of abuse of a monopoly.

Re: Level3 is without peer, now what to do?

#286

Post by rgbrenner »

morgante wrote: post #83
mattmcknight wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We probably need pricing more directly based on bandwidth consumed, maybe with peak hour pricing, as opposed to just based on "speed" with high bandwidth caps.

Don't buy into the cable PR. They have incredibly high margins and could easily make upgrades without further gouging customers.

"incredibly high"? Comcast and Time Warner have profit margins of 8-10%. For comparison, Target has a profit margin of 3%, and Google's is 21%.

Sounds more mid-range to me.

As for your second point, that they could easily make upgrade without additional charges.. have any numbers backing that up? The last mile is expensive.

Re: Level3 is without peer, now what to do?

#287

Post by sliverstorm »

exelius wrote: post #263
ChuckMcM wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A couple of points, first I talked with a lawyer who works with/for the FCC and established that if the city isn't involved in lighting up the pipes they don't care what they do. The regulations would apply to ISPs using those pipes but it would not apply to the folks maintaining them. He used the example that companies like the old AboveNet which ran dark fiber from place to place and kept it maintained were not lia…

How do we know that wired broadband is even the answer? Wouldn't wireless connectivity be more attractive if the goal is social justice? Many lower-income homes don't own a PC, and at this point they probably never will. How attractive is a home PC to you if all you've ever known are smartphones? Wired broadband, to me, is more of an entertainment consumption platform. Wireless serves the needs of low-bandwidth infor…

Wireless serves the needs of low-bandwidth information consumption quite well these days, and at a significantly lower cost

How do you figure? I pay $30/month each for wireless & wired services. My wired services are unlimited; wireless is capped.

Re: Level3 is without peer, now what to do?

#288

Post by ChuckMcM »

yaddayadda wrote: post #242
ChuckMcM wrote: post #97

There is an interesting unbalance because Comcast has so much leverage by owning the last mile, they can push around Tier 1 providers. I'd like to fix that, mostly by creating a public policy around municipally owned Layer 1 infrastructure between customers in their cities and a city exchange building. Conceptually it would be no different than the city owning the sewers and outsourcing the water treatment plant to a…

Utah already has something like this called UTOPIA ( http://www.utopianet.org/about-utopia/ ). The participating cities run fiber optic lines. The city pays for the fiber optic lines (lots and lots and lots of political controversy about this!) then subscribers can pick and choose what services and from which providers they want. I'm in a participating city and love it! Unfortunately politics, both the governmental a…

That is pretty awesome, I've sent them email to see if we can use some of the work they have done in this space.

Re: Level3 is without peer, now what to do?

#289

Post by letstryagain »

klodolph wrote: post #53
mhandley wrote: post #39

Would be very interesting to see what happened if the big CDN providers just depeered Comcast for 24 hours. Would certainly cost Comcast a fair amount in customer support calls, bad publicity, and properly bring the debate to the general public.

It would also give the CDNs a fair amount in customer support calls, bad publicity, and make their paying customers angry about lost business.

Not nearly as much as Comcast though. If I have my home internet with Comcast and I suddenly can't access Netflix while my friends on other ISPs can access it just fine, then of course I'm going to call Comcast.

Re: Level3 is without peer, now what to do?

#290

Post by ChuckMcM »

exelius wrote: post #263
ChuckMcM wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A couple of points, first I talked with a lawyer who works with/for the FCC and established that if the city isn't involved in lighting up the pipes they don't care what they do. The regulations would apply to ISPs using those pipes but it would not apply to the folks maintaining them. He used the example that companies like the old AboveNet which ran dark fiber from place to place and kept it maintained were not lia…

How do we know that wired broadband is even the answer? Wouldn't wireless connectivity be more attractive if the goal is social justice? Many lower-income homes don't own a PC, and at this point they probably never will. How attractive is a home PC to you if all you've ever known are smartphones? Wired broadband, to me, is more of an entertainment consumption platform. Wireless serves the needs of low-bandwidth infor…

Its a reasonable question, the challenge is spectrum management. As the city would provide layer 1 (connectivity) not any above layers, they would have to become the spectrum manager for wireless base stations. That is percieved to be too complex. Also this has to meet the needs of consumers and businesses alike. Currently fiber scales from 1mbit > 1TBit [1] so it has that flexibility. Maintenance of the fiber is independent of the special laser you would attach to it if you were say, the new LinkedIn headquarters, versus a consumer.

Not that fiber is particularly "easy", looking over street maps and figuring out what sort of bundles/routing you need to get full coverage is quite an exercise in itself.

[1] http://www.lightreading.com/optical/400g-terabit/euronews-bt...

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