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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

#261

Post by FireBeyond »

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

Weren't you an attorney for a telco lobbying organization? Seems like that's a relevant disclosure, no?

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

#262

Post by FireBeyond »

ogre_codes wrote: post #96
muststopmyths wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't think this is a Dem versus Rep thing. Local corruption issues like this usually end up boiling down to following the money. Many municipal broadband projects end up being scrapped after lobbyists $$ get involved regardless of who is running the show.

Realize that the person you are replying to has worked as an attorney precisely for telecom "industry associations" when you're processing his perspective...

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

#263

Post by FireBeyond »

treis wrote: post #109
gnopgnip wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's just not true. Depending on what you count as broadband 60-90% of households have two or more fixed options: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/06/50-mi...

Yeah, if 1 household has an option greater than what, 5mbps, that whole census block is considered as having options...

For my home, 2.5mi from the Capital Building in Washington State, I'm offered four wired broadband providers: 1. Comcast, "advertised 100mbps to 1gbps" (true enough, although you can only get 150mbps, so I'm not sure if that's bracketing) 2. CenturyLink, "25-50mbps" (CenturyLink's own website says "Our systems indicate that our High Speed Internet is not currently available at your service address." I tried several other streets in the area that indicated that none of them had availability either.) 3. Platinum Equity LLC, "10-25mbps" (err, Platinum Equity is an investment firm - oh, one of their portfolio offers "T1 and Bonded T1" lines to businesses and after further investigation would offer me 192K SDSL as a residential offering) 4. Integra Telecom Holdings, "3-6mbps" (a Vancouver telco that does business fiber). So there's one - Olympia, WA.

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

#264

Post by toast0 »

jandrese wrote: post #198
exabrial wrote: post #177

The problem is the proposed solutions really just entrench existing providers, specifically net neutrality policies: They legalize monopolies as long as they're "following the rules!" _You_ _cannot_ _legislate_ _good_ _behavior_ _into_ _monopolies_. So while I appreciate the spirit of Net Neutrality rules, the solution is fundamentally flawed. Let's say you want to open an ISP in your neighborhood. Based on their his…

My water company is pretty well behaved. Sewer too. Trash pickup is without headaches although I don't know the cost. Even my power company is ok now. They had a bad part in the early 2000s when they were trying to semi-privatize and Enron was trying to horn in on the management, but once they went back to being an ordinary utility the bad behavior stopped.

Water, sewer, trash pickup, and power have very easy to understand quality metrics, and can be easily regulated.

An internet connection is not so easy to measure. You could have a very well provisioned and maintained local loop, and poor connectivity from there. I strongly support local loop unbundling --- you can regulate the local loop in simple terms, and let competition manage the messy network interconnection bit.

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

#265

Post by FireBeyond »

Karunamon wrote: post #144
kinjba11 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is expensive to wire rural areas up. That is why the [government is paying for it]( https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/08/att-g... ). Why isn't this a utility again? Comcast and Charter essentially have a [duopoly]( https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/07/comca... ) over much of the United States. Where is the competition? The actual competition is in lobbying local governments to m…

> Where is the competition? 60 to 90 percent of households have access to two or more options for fixed (wired) broadband[1] depending on how you classify broadband, and that's not even counting the wireless options. That, to me, seems as about as competitive as you're reasonably ever going to get across a medium that is a natural monopoly without putting the government in the same line of business, which quite frank…

For my home, 2.5mi from the Capital Building in Washington State, I'm offered four wired broadband providers: 1. Comcast, "advertised 100mbps to 1gbps" (true enough, although you can only get 150mbps, so I'm not sure if that's bracketing) 2. CenturyLink, "25-50mbps" (CenturyLink's own website says "Our systems indicate that our High Speed Internet is not currently available at your service address." I tried several other streets in the area that indicated that none of them had availability either.) 3. Platinum Equity LLC, "10-25mbps" (err, Platinum Equity is an investment firm - oh, one of their portfolio offers "T1 and Bonded T1" lines to businesses and after further investigation would offer me 192K SDSL as a residential offering) 4. Integra Telecom Holdings, "3-6mbps" (a Vancouver telco that does business fiber). So there's one - Olympia, WA.

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

#266

Post by xnyan »

sneak wrote: post #226
jandrese wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My water company is pretty well behaved. Sewer too. Trash pickup is without headaches although I don't know the cost. Even my power company is ok now. They had a bad part in the early 2000s when they were trying to semi-privatize and Enron was trying to horn in on the management, but once they went back to being an ordinary utility the bad behavior stopped.

I extremely do not want the situation where the state owns and operates the communications infrastructure of the general population. That's turnkey tyranny, censorship both ways (what you can send, what you can read). Right now it's just expensive, but you can still use a few different (overpriced and anti-competitive) providers. If the state decides you're a threat and unplugs you, it could be months or years before…

ISPs give the US government absolutely anything they want. You have no real protection from the government because of private ownership, the only difference is now both private organizations AND the government make decisions about your internet access. You also pay more for less vs most countries with more regulated infrastructure or state owned infrastructure.

I'm happy to look at any evidence you have, but everything I have seen indicates US internet is vastly worse than more public-oriented systems, unless you own internet infrastructure.

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

#267

Post by pkaye »

mastazi wrote: post #239

As a non-American, the first time I heard about the situation with broadband monopolies in the US, it was hard for me to believe! Apparently in huge parts of the country you can only choose one single provider? Is that true just in "regional areas" or in suburbs and urban areas too? Are there stats about how much of the population has no choice? Edit: the article gives numbers in terms of how many people have access…

This the FCC statistics on broadband availability.

https://broadbandmap.fcc.gov/#/area-comparison?version=jun20...

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

#268

Post by zbentley »

swiley wrote: post #178
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-…

>effectively-unlimited I mean, that's what everyone in the US has. I've heard enough stories of people in SE Asia having to pay by the megabyte to know that it's not the same everywhere.

In 10-15 major cities, or a handful of high-throughput areas (if mobile). The US's internet quality is not great.

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

#269

Post by sneak »

xnyan wrote: post #266
sneak wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I extremely do not want the situation where the state owns and operates the communications infrastructure of the general population. That's turnkey tyranny, censorship both ways (what you can send, what you can read). Right now it's just expensive, but you can still use a few different (overpriced and anti-competitive) providers. If the state decides you're a threat and unplugs you, it could be months or years before…

ISPs give the US government absolutely anything they want. You have no real protection from the government because of private ownership, the only difference is now both private organizations AND the government make decisions about your internet access. You also pay more for less vs most countries with more regulated infrastructure or state owned infrastructure. I'm happy to look at any evidence you have, but everythi…

Yes, but if the state is the only game in town, you can't pop down to the next shop and buy a new SIM card, or order an install from a different provider.

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

#270

Post by pkaye »

dekhn wrote: post #141

I'm a bit of a weirdo but at the current time, my gigabit is provided by a company whose name histortically was associated with a monopolistic company (AT&T) but really was cobbled out of the bones of several large dead telecom companies and is now a monopoly again. It costs $100/month, is delivered by fiber straight to my house from a pole, works as described (in terms of latency and speed tests), and I don't want i…

I've read somewhere that AT&T is only doing this as part of an deal for the approval of the Dish Networks sale. So they will just upgrade only the place that make economic sense and only to the degree needed to satisfy that deal.
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