why there are no last mile providers like comcast and ATT?
Local governments grant monopolies to Comcast or AT&T.
Level3 is without peer, now what to do?
211–220 of 392 posts
Re: Level3 is without peer, now what to do?
#212There 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…
This is similar to what we have in the UK. The organisation responsible for last mile connections is Openreach, and for all its failings, we in the UK are served rather well by the setup. I have the option of six ISPs, 4 national and 2 local.
The issue with Openreach is the odd situation it has found itself in after several government reshuffles and countless legislation; leaving it under BT Group's umbrella but accountable to the government regulator Ofcom. As such the network has waned and become difficult to upgrade.
Re: Level3 is without peer, now what to do?
#213Earlier quoted context omitted.
L3 is not pushing. I cannot stress that enough. L3 is not pushing. L3 does not push. Pushing is not something L3 does. In the Game of Pushing, L3 is not a player. If you navigate to wikipedia.org/things_which_push, L3 is not on that list. If all the entities of the universe were put into two groups, one labeled "pushers" and one labeled "not pushers", L3 would be in the second group. The ISPs must play ball with L3 b…
Customers are not asking for L3. Customers are asking for content, of which L3 is one of the providers. L3 is pushing L3, even if you say they're not.
L3 is not the provider, Netflix is the provider. Netflix has chosen to contract with L3 so that their customers can receive the content. L3 is also an ISP and so has peering agreements with other ISPs. Netflix has customers who aren't using L3 as an ISP so L3 and these ISPs make use of their peering setup to transmit Netflix's content to the ISPs' customers.
L3 is not pushing, the customers are pulling. The ISPs serving the customers are not able to keep up.
You want pushing? That'd be L3 using (as an example) Comcast to reach customers of TWC. Then L3 would be pushing through Comcast. That's not the (apparent) situation here. The end user is on the other side of this peering divide, not multiple peers away. Customers are pulling data from Netflix which happens to be on L3. Blame the customers and up their rates if that's what's needed to cover the costs. But at $15+ billion a year in profit Comcast can probably afford to use the customers' money to provide them with the promised experience.
Re: Level3 is without peer, now what to do?
#214Re: Level3 is without peer, now what to do?
#215There 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…
Municipal governments should threaten to regulate last-mile ISPs like power companies unless they agree to let competitors use their cables. Virginia requires that competing power companies be allowed to use power lines, why not fiber as well?
Re: Level3 is without peer, now what to do?
#216Since everyone is pitching their own solutions, how about I post mine. Let's take the example of Netflix and Comcast. Instead of no deal with Comcast, and thus giving Comcast Netflix users really slow or no service, Netflix should make the deal for now, and tell subscribers that if you use Comcast the Netflix rental is higher. By passing off the higher costs to the users, Comcast customers are given the incentive to…
Netflix would lose, they have competitors and Comcast (and potentially, in the future, ComcastTWC) has too many customers. Increasing the costs to all of them would result in the loss of too many customers before the dust settled.
Re: Level3 is without peer, now what to do?
#217I like the article overall but I don't understand the author's proposed solution. The issue as it stands is apparently a lack of peering, in that big ISPs are using transit to reach large content providers rather than directly peering to those networks. So how would "kicking them out" for a maxed out connection work? If I buy transit from Level3 and my connection maxes out, I'm no longer allowed to be a customer of L…
I think he is saying that companies like Level3 should kill all peering with Comcast if they refuse to upgrade to more peering. At least temporally to get their attention and that of their customers that is.
Not all peering, just peering at certain key sites (12 specific sites).
Re: Level3 is without peer, now what to do?
#218You would think, okay, if Comcast is terrible at maintaining sufficient peering for it's customers needs -- and if the OP proposal to throw Comcast out of peering exchange points happened, that would certainly lead to increased terribleness for it's customers -- then eventually it's customers would choose a different ISP. The market would solve it. The problem is that in many many markets, Comcast (or another ISP) ar…
> Comcast (or another ISP) are pretty much the only choice. Customers don't have another option
If an entire town is angry, their city councilors will very quickly utilize eminent domain on the fiber in the ground and sell it to a competitor.
Re: Level3 is without peer, now what to do?
#219I've previously interned at one of the mentioned Cable Companies, and I see both sides.
The solution is to make it 'capitalistic'. Change all of our internet contracts from Unlimited (up to 'x' GB/month), to a simple $/gb cost.
It would be in the ISPs best interest to provide their customers the fastest internet connection as possible. E.g, if a customer can stream a 4k video vs SD then the ISP would make more money per unit time.
Think of it this way, if comcast charges $0.25/GB, and a netflix SD show is say 1GB and HD is 4GB, then comcast grosses $1 for HD and $.25 for SD for the same customer streaming request.
Over time its likely the price per GB would decrease, just like it has for cellular.
On a more evil side, this would also stop chord cutters. Pirating content is no longer 'free', and Netflix would cost significantly more than $10/month ($10/month + 'x'GB * $/GB).
As for what rates to expect, if comcast charges in ATL $30-55 for 300GB, that'd be about $.10/GB to $.20/GB. As for speed tiers in a $/gb system, your guess is as good as mine.
Re: Level3 is without peer, now what to do?
#220Earlier quoted context omitted.
Those customers aren't getting depeered, only Comcast.
I'm not sure of a more eloquent way to say this. Comcast's customers are the CDN's customer's customers.
Right, but that relationship, especially as applies to support and subscription, is not transitive.