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US cable giants calls on FCC to block cities' expansion of high-speed internet

theguardian.com

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Re: US cable giants calls on FCC to block cities' expansion of high-speed internet

#31

Post by danudey »

sitkack wrote: post #27
sehrope wrote: post #4

> Chattanooga has the largest high-speed internet service in the US, offering customers access to speeds of 1 gigabit per second – about 50 times faster than the US average. The service, provided by municipally owned EPB, has sparked a tech boom in the city and attracted international attention. EPB is now petitioning the FCC to expand its territory. Comcast and others have previously sued unsuccessfully to stop EPB’…

Cable could easily offer these rates by using the bandwidth currently occupied by their tv channels. If comcast had a unified digital backbone it wouldn't be a problem. It is only because they have monopoly power. I find it completely distasteful the number of laws that prevent other entities from passing laws in certain domains. Washington state has a law that prevents cities from legislating any form of rent contro…

It's cheaper to lobby the government to prevent competition and maintain the status quo than it is to upgrade your networks.

Re: US cable giants calls on FCC to block cities' expansion of high-speed internet

#33

Post by sitkack »

radicalbyte wrote: post #18
hoilogoi wrote: post #9

Counterpoint: try googling "Volstate EPB". I'm no expert, but I think it would be a shame if small struggling ISPs get the short end of the stick. It's hard for me to make a judgement on this specifically.

OT: this post is the 4th result in Google. Comment on HN indexed within 35 minutes. Crazy. It kind of sucks for companies like that, but competition is good. In an ideal situation you'd have "the people" own the pipes which they then rent at cost to commercial providers. In practice this would usually be via local government, but I'd prefer it via some kind of mutual society (where residents own a share, is open only…

The last mile should be open to the people and supported as infrastructure. I should be able to send packets across town for zero cost.

Re: US cable giants calls on FCC to block cities' expansion of high-speed internet

#34

Post by rayiner »

unethical_ban wrote: post #25
rayiner wrote: post #5

This is a really good example of how lobbying works. On one hand, these telecom companies have a clear interest in not having to "compete" with cheap, publicly funded broadband. On the other hand, their position just happens to tie in with a broader political debate: states and municipalities are on the verge of bankruptcy, and municipal infrastructure projects are a disaster outside a few well-managed cities like NY…

>and municipal infrastructure projects are a disaster outside a few well-managed cities like NY citation needed... I know government has a reputation for being wasteful and corrupt, but weird for you to defend NYC.

The American Society of Civil Engineers says that U.S. infrastructure is underfunded to the tune of $3.6 trillion: http://www.infrastructurereportcard.org. People like to compare municipal broadband to municipal water, but the ASCE gives our water and wastewater systems a grade of 'D'.

I defend NYC because as corrupt as it may be, over the last 20-30 years it has a pretty good record of getting municipal projects done. It has functioning subway, regional rail, etc. It has invested in protecting its water sources, etc.

Most American cities have not done as well as NYC in that regard. E.g. Atlanta's ancient sewer system dumps untreated waste into the city's main river after every heavy rain, and the city's water supply is entirely at the mercy of the water levels in Lake Lanier. After a drought a few years ago, the city came this close to running out of water.

This is not voodoo economics. In the absence of profit motive, you need social consensus and a forward-looking bureaucracy to ensure that public infrastructure receives adequate funding. Most American cities do not have either.

Re: US cable giants calls on FCC to block cities' expansion of high-speed internet

#36

Post by rayiner »

sitkack wrote: post #27
sehrope wrote: post #4

> Chattanooga has the largest high-speed internet service in the US, offering customers access to speeds of 1 gigabit per second – about 50 times faster than the US average. The service, provided by municipally owned EPB, has sparked a tech boom in the city and attracted international attention. EPB is now petitioning the FCC to expand its territory. Comcast and others have previously sued unsuccessfully to stop EPB’…

Cable could easily offer these rates by using the bandwidth currently occupied by their tv channels. If comcast had a unified digital backbone it wouldn't be a problem. It is only because they have monopoly power. I find it completely distasteful the number of laws that prevent other entities from passing laws in certain domains. Washington state has a law that prevents cities from legislating any form of rent contro…

> I find it completely distasteful the number of laws that prevent other entities from passing laws in certain domains. Washington state has a law that prevents cities from legislating any form of rent control.

Are you serious? Rent control laws are awful, destroy the incentive to maintain housing stock or build new housing stock, and ultimately raise rents for everyone except the lucky few who can get rent controlled apartments.

Municipalities are just organs of the state, and state legislatures are entirely justified in preventing them from enacting myopic legislation.

Re: US cable giants calls on FCC to block cities' expansion of high-speed internet

#37

Post by msandford »

rayiner wrote: post #22
raarts wrote: post #19

I think by now it's hard to deny that Comcast & friends are stifling the progress of the US economy. The US is 31st worldwide on bandwidth speed (which really can't be explained by the US's size alone), consumers and businesses are complaining across the board about high pricing, bad service, and lack of options. These companies do the country and its inhabitants a big disservice. I think the only reasonable option f…

> The US is 31st worldwide on bandwidth speed (which really can't be explained by the US's size alone) By what measure? Certainly not Akamai's ( http://www.akamai.com/dl/akamai/akamai-soti-q114.pdf?WT.mc_i... ). The top 10 U.S. states (much of which are in the Northeast and are Comcast territory), would appear comfortably in the top 10 of the global rankings (compare page 14-15 with page 18). On Ookla's ranking, the…

I guess part of it is that there's the idea here in the US that everyone should have access to certain things like power, water, telephone, etc. There are a lot of universal service laws about these utilities and the internet is fast becoming another utility.

Worse is that with the internet you have to be hooked up to the central grid or else it's useless. A farmer in a rural part of Kansas who's tired of not getting enough electricity from the electricity company (not a fast enough connection) and paying power overages (bandwidth caps) has alternatives like solar, or buying a generator or whatever.

But when your internet isn't fast enough you can't just install 10gig copper in your house and solve the problem. Install your 10gig until you've got terabits of bandwidth all over your farm; you still can't use it in what most people would call a meaningful way to interact with the rest of the world.

The idea that some states have good broadband and others have terrible broadband and that this is acceptable is an oft-argued point especially once you take population density into account. And it's not a bad argument. The economics are completely real.

But once you try and make an analogy to power or water or telephone it gets a little easier to see why some folks might be up in arms.

Re: US cable giants calls on FCC to block cities' expansion of high-speed internet

#38

Post by rayiner »

Retric wrote: post #30
rayiner wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The US is 31st worldwide on bandwidth speed (which really can't be explained by the US's size alone) By what measure? Certainly not Akamai's ( http://www.akamai.com/dl/akamai/akamai-soti-q114.pdf?WT.mc_i... ). The top 10 U.S. states (much of which are in the Northeast and are Comcast territory), would appear comfortably in the top 10 of the global rankings (compare page 14-15 with page 18). On Ookla's ranking, the…

Let's see north east US, Main = 14 MBPS or 0.1 MBPS faster than Mongolia woot! Comparing nations to states is ridiculous. However, if you read the report it's damming with faint praise. "the average connection speeds seen in the United States and Mexico remained more than twice as fast as the next fastest country" Sure, if you discount everyone that's better than you then you can call yourself #1 at anything. PS: Not…

Maine has a population density of 43 people per square mile, less than 1/10th the density of the U.K. or Germany. Maine is just Northeast's version of Montana.

Re: US cable giants calls on FCC to block cities' expansion of high-speed internet

#39

Post by rayiner »

Smudge wrote: post #26
rayiner wrote: post #5

This is a really good example of how lobbying works. On one hand, these telecom companies have a clear interest in not having to "compete" with cheap, publicly funded broadband. On the other hand, their position just happens to tie in with a broader political debate: states and municipalities are on the verge of bankruptcy, and municipal infrastructure projects are a disaster outside a few well-managed cities like NY…

> or disproportionately benefit parts of the population Wouldn't more people be able to afford internet access under this municipal connection's pricing than under Comcast/Verizon/Time Warner/etc? I have trouble understanding how that would be a disproportionate benefit.

It disproportionately benefits those who have and use home computers. Almost everyone has a cell phone, but many poor or older people don't have home computers.

Re: US cable giants calls on FCC to block cities' expansion of high-speed internet

#40

Post by quink »

sitkack wrote: post #27
sehrope wrote: post #4

> Chattanooga has the largest high-speed internet service in the US, offering customers access to speeds of 1 gigabit per second – about 50 times faster than the US average. The service, provided by municipally owned EPB, has sparked a tech boom in the city and attracted international attention. EPB is now petitioning the FCC to expand its territory. Comcast and others have previously sued unsuccessfully to stop EPB’…

Cable could easily offer these rates by using the bandwidth currently occupied by their tv channels. If comcast had a unified digital backbone it wouldn't be a problem. It is only because they have monopoly power. I find it completely distasteful the number of laws that prevent other entities from passing laws in certain domains. Washington state has a law that prevents cities from legislating any form of rent contro…

> Cable could easily offer these rates by using the bandwidth currently occupied by their tv channels.

Not exactly. It's true that a coax cable can, over distances of hundreds of metres, carry up to a frequency of 850 MHz at a fairly low attenuation and, at greater attenuation and/or ideal circumstances, up to 1.2 GHz in a useful capacity. This may translate, as per Shannon-Hartley and QAM into a raw bandwidth of multiple Gbps.

However, the topology of most FTTLA deployments doesn't imply that any individual customer is guaranteed this speed. In many deployments the LA - last amplifier - will be shared among hundreds of customers. In some cases, it may be only dozens. In some, it may be in the low thousands.

While the TV multiplexes are always going to take up a huge amount of space, depending on the deployment easily more than the majority, it's also becoming more common, for example, to dynamically switch multiplexes onto the spectrum on demand only.

If you have a healthy contention ratio, quality coax, few people on your LA, it's a good time of the day and you have a sensible provider then yes, it's possible to get a Gbps over coax. But the stars need to align to get that magical moment when with GPON or especially 10GPON it's basically a guaranteed thing.

Comcast isn't rolling out Gbps speeds because they have a monopoly power and want to artificially constrain total bandwidth (well, they kind of are but in a different way), but because it would imply rebuilding their FTTLA deployments deep into the field to basically take them halfway to FTTP/FTTH.

They're not offering Gbps because they're a monopoly and hate selling bandwidth first, they're not offering it because they're a monopoly and hate investing money in infrastructure. After that, it's definitely the hating bandwidth thing.

If it was the former, they'd be able do a far better job competing against municipal broadband deployments and Google Fiber than they are in everyone's mindshare.

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