Google Fiber's Latest FCC Filing: Comcast's Nightmare Come To Life 221
An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from BGR: What's every incumbent ISP's worst nightmare? If we had to guess, it looks something like the filing that Google just made with the Federal Communications Commission. As The Wall Street Journal reports, Google this week told the FCC that reclassifying broadband providers under Title II of the Telecommunications Act would have a big side benefit for Google Fiber because it would give Google Fiber the same access to utility poles and other key infrastructure currently enjoyed by Comcast, AT&T and other big-name ISPs.
One fiber to rule them... (Score:5, Interesting)
Why not just run one fiber, ditch all the copper, terminate it at the local POP and then allow various vendors access to that fiber and compete for my business?
Re:One fiber to rule them... (Score:5, Insightful)
Where's the monopoly rent in that setup?
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if google is going to massively deploy their fiber service, then many more computers will be infected with malware. can anybody recommend a good antivirus software package?
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With the government.... could be a great new revenue stream for the cities if they would get their heads out of their ass.
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It's not just about the fiber, it's about the utility poles and whatnot.
Yes, let's not forget about the Whatnot. There's good taxes to collect on that.
And don't forget to put a few more middlemen in the mix with their hands out for the Things and Stuff too.
After all, we wouldn't those extra 277 layers of bureaucracy to come crashing down just for the sake of common sense.
Re:One fiber to rule them... (Score:4, Insightful)
Just ask the Australian Electricity Industry.
There's significant coin to be made in renting poles and charging municipalities large sums for "maintenance costs"
eg: http://www.smh.com.au/business... [smh.com.au]
^^^ this. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:One fiber to rule them... (Score:5, Insightful)
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We have buried cables here, they get water in them.
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Infrastructure like that should be buried - out of reach of weather, reckless drivers, etc.
Of course that makes it a target for buried cables natural enemy - the backhoe.
Re:One fiber to rule them... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not being derogatory. Other countries which have similar schemes have better internet for less money than most of the U.S. That's part of what Title II is all about: having a semi-"public" infrastructure, with equal access to it. In other words, actual competition.
REAL proponents of free market capitalism should have no problem with that idea. Those who do are those who either (A) don't understand that currently we have an oligopoly not a free market, or (B) want to protect their privileged position.
Re:One fiber to rule them... (Score:4, Informative)
Net Neutrality means that the traffic comes through unimpeded, not everyone gets the same. If Aunt Marry doesn't want Netflix then she can keep 1.5MBit, if she wants to use Netflix she'll have to buy 4 to 5Mbit minimum service to use it. Netflix doesn't force bandwidth on people, nor would they pay to get it to Marry.
Someone who pays for 20Mbit, gets close to 20Mbit someone who pays for 40Mbit gets close to 40Mbit.
It's how each user chooses to use their XXMbit bandwidth that is the focus of net neutrality. Preventing AT&T or Verizon from throttling Netflix or VOIP services to eek out more money.
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Net Neutrality means that the traffic comes through unimpeded, not everyone gets the same.
No, it doesn't mean that, it means "all traffic (and in some variations, of the same type) should be impeded to the same degree"
Someone who pays for 20Mbit, gets close to 20Mbit someone who pays for 40Mbit gets close to 40Mbit.
Whether you get the speed you pay for or not (assuming all traffic is as fast or slow) is unrelated to Net Neutrality.
It's how each user chooses to use their XXMbit bandwidth that is the focus of net neutrality.
No. It may be about whether the ISP can influence how the user chooses to use their bandwidth or not, and to what degree.
Preventing AT&T or Verizon from throttling Netflix or VOIP services to eek out more money.
Ah, yes, *this* is a Net Neutrality issue.
But, Net Neutrality rules won't fix all the silly problems you Americans have because of lack of compet
you don't need 4mbits for netflix (Score:2)
it'll stream on 1.5.
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Nothing would stop netflix from paying for Aunt Mary's now higher bill for a higher tier of service but why would netflix want to pay? I'd guess that they'd have to pay more then they take in for Aunt Mary's subscription.
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Because the coming time warner / comcast behemoth will be the ISP for a huge portion of the us. I have seen estimates between 30% and 50% percent of US Internet subscribers. Being the gateway to the Internet for that many people, and frequently the only choice in an area for high-speed Internet access, they will have tremendous leverage in negotiations with video providers, like Netfilx and Hulu. TWC/Comcast will have the power to pick winners and losers, and have already started flexing their muscles.
Th
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The internet has never been a two-sided market where services have to pay for access to people that want to use them.
There are a number of ISPs in other countries which implemented the 'sponsored bandwidth' model a few years ago already, where the content costs more than the delivery, and to assuage concerns from users (in most cases users on Mobile data) about out-of-bundle costs, the content distributor pays for the bandwidth so that the user can be at ease in using large volumes of traffic to consume the content.
Re:One fiber to rule them... (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure. The only problem with that world is that literally the immediately obvious next step is to degrade service pending a payment. This is already happening in literally every place that has such a scheme as the one you describe. That's the problem with non-neutrality - once an ISP realizes they can get paid for better service, they will do everything in their not inconsiderable power to force every provider's hand.
Re: One fiber to rule them... (Score:2)
Not to mention that a "content providers pay for access" scheme would benefit large companies over small ones. maybe Netflix would be able to afford it, but would NEW_VIDEO_STARTUP with their disruptive technology?
Over time, the only options would be entrenched businesses. Technology would stagnate, prices would rise, and service would suffer.
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Yeah, the first one was left over from editing, my mistake. I meant to move it to the second for emphasis but forgot to remove the first usage - I cringed a bit when I saw that it was still there.
And I did mean 'actually true in all cases' - to my knowledge, at least, every provider that has implemented some sort of payment for better service has ended up degrading service for non-payees. Even if only passively by foregoing needed infrastructure upgrades unless somebody else foots the bill.
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I think your comprehension of the issue is the problem. Not my reading comprehension.
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Or (C) think they should be able to sell faster access to some and or priority services to some.
The whole problem with net neutrality is that it wants everyone to be the same even though everyone doesn't want to be the same. Suppose your Aunt Marry only checks email and recipes on the internet so she decided to get the cheapest version of braodband she could. Now suppose netflix says I want to service her but she only has a 1.5 meg connection and needs a 4 meg connection to use our service effectively. So they pay to have her services increased for the packets that stream from their services so they do not have to convince Aunt Marry to not only pay the monthly rate to them, but to pay their provider more for faster service.
So now Aunt Marry can keep her slow service that she likes and still have netflix for those nights when the cats and cable TV just isn't enough. But Net Neutrality proponents say they don't want that. Aunt Marry will have to pony up all the money herself.
Except Title II isn't about net neutrality. Title II is about allowing more companies to access the physical lines so that there's competition. So that even if priority access is a thing the market wants, the ISP's won't get to overtly abuse their ability to have paid priority lanes. It's about encouraging more competition (similar to anti-trust laws) such that market forces can work.
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If Aunt Marry is paying for 1.5 meg, then she should get 1.5 meg. If she's paying for 20 meg, she should get 20 meg. You get what you pay for. The problem is when ISPs throttle certain services to speeds lower than what the customer is paying for. If Aunt Marry is paying for 20 meg, then her Netflix streams shouldn't be throttled to 4 meg.
Re:One fiber to rule them... (Score:4, Informative)
.. because you've just exactly outlined why it's a bad idea.
If you as a service provider can afford to pay, you will. If you're a new service trying to get a foothold, now you have to meet those costs too if you want to play. Those costs aren't fixed and behind general transit/interconnect/infrastructure fees, they're behind whatever-the-telco-decides-is-a-good-match.
Australia went through this. We have and had phone plans that have/had free access to certain services and not others. Guess what? It sucked. It may be great if you upload lots of photos to facebook, but it means you can't at all start a new service that competes without having to get individual agreements with individual telcos and service providers. You'd have to negotiate those deals individually and your business will only exist as long as they don't alter the deal. They can then alter the deal just to you but not to their favourites.
It doesn't work the way you outline it.
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as long as they don't alter the deal.
Lando: You said they'd be left at the city under my supervision!
Darth Vader: I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further.
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It should be, but it's a damned hard thing to prove without comprehensive traffic analysis and the ISPs know this. Your ISP is going to point the finger at Netflix for the slow speeds (because their own VoD services work just fine, thank you), and to their service commitment that says "best effort", and the combination of those
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This is why I love my home ISP - it is a telco (windstream) and I'm far enough out that anything more than the 1.5mb service is unreliable (chronic disconnects) but they don't block any ports, and if I connect to a server capable I can download at the full 1.5mb speed (and/or upload at the 384k speed) as long as I want, or at least have tested downloading ISOs from my linode, etc.
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Your handle fits you.
Here's how the real world works instead of your bubble of entitlement: If I want to fill my pool using 50 Gallons/second flow instead of the 10 Gallons/minute flow that comes out of my regular tap, I'm going to be calling my Fire Department to schedule a time for them to come out and fill my pool from the Fire Hydrant(service not available in all municipalities YMMV) ...WHILE PAYING A PREMIUM PRICE!
If I want to serve up Gourmet Russian Caviar coated Sushi instead of pigs in blankets at
Re:One fiber to rule them... (Score:5, Insightful)
then allow various vendors access
Because that would eliminate the monopoly control outfits like Comcast have over the last mile. Cable TV would devolve into each service like HBO having their own streaming site available on the 'Net. And Comcast would have no reason to exist.
It's not like they (Comcast) still don't have a major head start over Google in terms of installed equipment that they could use and go into this same business. But they are too slow to shift their business plan over to the new model. Google knows this and is licking its chops like a tiger watching a crippled deer.
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Comcast would still have a reason to exist: To provide last-mile access to such sites as, say, hbo.com.
Just like any other Internet provider.
*shrug*
Re: One fiber to rule them... (Score:2)
You will need the content delivery networks to rent space for good performance and Netflix is against paying a cdn or hosting fees.
And someone will have to pay for the direct connections to the other content providers
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umm... No they aren't. Comcast and Verizon sent all the Netflix traffic through a single switch to their networks and held Netflix hostage for the deal that Verizon and Comcast wanted to make rather than allowing Netflix to just buy the equipment and pay for maintenance....Level 3 has had the same problems with Verizon and Comcast.
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Level 3 has had the same problems with Verizon and Comcast.
Here we see an ignorant net neutrality drone that doesnt know the whole history....
Cogent wanted a free peering arrangement with Level 3 when Cogent was sending more data to Level 3 than Level 3 was sending to Cogent. Level 3 outright refused.
Now Level 3 wants a free peering arrangement with other people when Level 3 is sending more data to them than they are sending to Level 3. These others are refusing.
You wonder what caused Level 3 to completely change direction on the issue? Well I'm going to clu
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All it takes is a small modification to Netflix client software. Make it upload at 80% uplink capacity of EVERY SINLGE customer - BAM, overnight Netflix traffic stops being one way, all peering problems are over. Do you spot the problem? Peering agreements are stupid and easy to manipulate, its strange no one did it on this scale yet.
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The fact that consumer ISPs are access providers means they will never meet the definition for free peering agreements. They are all consumption services. Asshats can't seem to get it that these companies are just trying to set up a two-sided market and that is the only reason any of this is an issue.
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No...Neither wanted a free peering agreement. BOTH were willing to PAY for the install of the hardware and the maintinance of that hardware in the Comcast Colo. Comcast said no. That is the fact.
ISPs charge netflix to do that (Score:2)
I like how the ISPs charge netflix to do that. Install local servers.
IIRC it was just about getting Netflix to pay the power to run the servers.
Which was not as inflammatory as I thought so I went back to checking my eggs.
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I like how the ISPs charge netflix to do that. Install local servers.
IIRC it was just about getting Netflix to pay the power to run the servers.
Which was not as inflammatory as I thought so I went back to checking my eggs.
Seriously? If it was just about power to run servers Netfilx would have sent them 100 bucks a month and called it a day.
Netflix gives the caching servers away for free, and once it's in place the ISP saves money on transit charges with the tier 1 backbones, Netflix saves money on transit charges, Netflix customers get better service because the video is served locally, and non-Netfilx subscribers get better service because congestion on peering connections is reduced. It's a win - win - win - win situati
I suggested that in the late 90s (Score:2)
use SNAP headers or similar to handle billing, etc. but you know, it just looks like providers want every drop of the gravy themselves.
That is called (Score:2)
we tried that. Ma Bell, or Boost, Cricket, Sprint (Score:3)
We already tried that. There was one set of communication lines, and various companies had access to them, at rates set by the government. Somebody had to maintain the infrastructure of course, and their rates and profit margins were heavily regulated. The company managing the infrastructure was called Bell.
Under that model, calls could cost a dollar per minute. We then tried a different model, and immediately rates went to 10 cents per minute. Later, we now have four different compani
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so you have a landline?
who has a landline? more like landmine. get off my lawnline!
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Works fine in Japan. Look up the FLETS system.
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Actually that model works very well. In many countries the internet provision is better and cheaper with more ISPs to choose from than in the US.
I live on a small island with 80000 inhabitants. We have an incumbent telecom company which owns the last mile, but they must sell that last mile wholesale. As a result, we have not one but four ISPs we can choose from at a decent price, and you can get at least 50Mbit/sec service pretty much everywhere despite the rural spread-out nature of our population.
We don't
DOCSIS 3.0 (Score:2)
I mean I'm pretty happy with DOCSIS 3.0, I don't see why we need to ditch the copper, I just want unlimited off-peak-hours.
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This is what some counties have tried to do. Municipal owned cabling which anyone can use to deliver their services.
Comcast and others blocked these with lawsuits over competition and promises of increasing their capabilities and capacity.
In the UK - BT Openreach operate the cabling and ANY ISP/Phone company can provide their services over these cables. The ISP/Phone company can also use their own backhaul with their own equipment sited in the exchange. Other companies also provide their own cable &
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I like your plan. But only if the homeowner owns the fiber to the CO. The plan if being hostage to a utility isn't desireable. You have to for power and water because those are shared in a pipe to the house, and metered there. Fiber is dedicated and private to the POP (unless you go GPON, less performance, essentially same cost). So you can "own" your access to the shared point, same as power and water, though the shared point for t
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Anyone else won't touch it because they don't own it.
Poles are already publicly owned in many areas and are fixed in mere hours.
Re:One fiber to rule them... (Score:5, Insightful)
What city do you live in where its acceptable to go 2 months without city provided services? Do you live in some third world country or something? No city thats is going to have fiber is going to behave like that for critical infrastructure.
Heres the reality: The important things get fixed quickly, regardless of how shitty you think you city performs. Your phone gets repaired quickly now not because the phone company wants to, but because they are legally REQUIRED TO ... BECAUSE of the way they are classified. Same goes for power and water. Guess who requires them too ... DA EBIL GUBMENT.
Some things aren't important so going extended periods without fixing them is intelligent management of resources. Sorry the pothole that pisses you off didn't get filled quick enough or the street light that went out takes a while to get repaired, but critical services just don't work that way in any city in America. Villages, maybe. Towns ... not likely. Cities, no fucking way.
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Meanwhile, after changing Comcast service to a new address, it took four days of modem swap theater and griping at them for refusing to send out a tech. before they realized the service was physically disconnected and there was no way I was going to be able to complete the setup myself. Something they could have figured out the day I went to their crummy office to do the address change.
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What city do you live in where its acceptable to go 2 months without city provided services?
I hear that's the average 911 response time in some areas of Detroit these days.
Re:One fiber to rule them... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:One fiber to rule them... (Score:4, Insightful)
^ This, times ten...
In my city, you call about a street light out (the power company is responsible for them actually), they are usually fixed within a day.
City trash? I've called them before about items not picked up (bulk trash days), the same afternoon a guy in a truck came out and took care of it.
Fire and police? 3 min response time, personal experience with this due to accident of child falling down and not breathing, the fire dept had paramedics there in like 3 minutes, it was wonderful... (living 1 mile from them helps)
We have great city services, even sidewalks get fixed within a week or two, just call and ask.
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Same experience. People give the government a lot of crap, but to be honest I've only ever had easy and friendly service from government agencies. Every time I've had trouble with my state taxing authority or the IRS their representatives have been friendly and helpful. My DMV is speedy and friendly, too.
Perhaps the federal government is a bloated mess, but local services tend to be fine. I think people either project their libertarian fantasies onto the government, or maybe they just have really shitty cit
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I just looked up our city manager...
He makes $271,000...
Which means that we can afford to hire someone who knows how to run a city. It probably sounds like a lot to people who make less, but our city has over a quarter of a million people and our city runs well with great services. So we're all paying a dollar each to have a good CEO of the city.
The water is always on and it works.
The streets are clean and repaired.
Trash is picked up.
Trees are trimmed, parks are clean.
It is a nice place to live...
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As a follow up to my own post... We pay the city manager of a city with about 300k people $271K to run it.
Yet we pay the President of the United States $400K to run our whole nation.
$400k is really volunteer money for that job, so we only get people who want the job for other reasons.
Perhaps we should pay the President $100 million and members of Congress $20 million and we'd get people qualified to actually do a good job.
Thoughts?
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If they actually did a good job, they'd deserve it.
I see people get butthurt about high salaries for administrators of non-profits*. I work at a non-profit hospital and our CEO gets $2 million/year. Well, we have 12,000 employees, and under his leadership we're growing (unlike many other facilities), hiring more people, building a new tower, opening more clinics... If we took his entire salary and divided it amongst the employees, we'd all get $167. Yeah. No thanks. I'll gladly give my CEO $167/year to keep
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cool story bro. what's this got to do with being a white guy in a majority-black city?
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In the area I live in, we have a utility of power generation and a separate utility power supply. On our power bill, we have the power supply charging for the utility of bring the power to us. This includes maintenance of the poles that carry any of the rest of the utilities, but each have their own height on the pole they are allowed to use. As such, the power supply company maintains for example a high strength wire at the top of the poles, so that a tree is unlikely to hit the lines below it (often we
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The same municipality that repairs things when a car crashes into a pole and takes out your power lines. In most cases, temporary repairs on the power lines are done by the municipal services in a matter of hours.
The cable company that provides my internet access, on the other hand, spent two days blaming my cable modem when I could see the damn line laying on the ground two blocks up the street. Then they dicked around for a few more days before sending a crew to fix the line. Then the line repair was a
Re: One fiber to rule them... (Score:4, Interesting)
Municipalities charge taxes for roads, garbage, schools etc. At least where I live it's the power company or the phone company that fixes their own damaged equipment when lines come down, not the city. And you bet your ass the city won't lift a finger to fix anything unless they are generating revenue from it.
What GP is proposing is some sort of "public" trunk that everyone can then attach to at the end points and sell from there. OK. What GP has not mentioned is that someone has to own and maintain this "public" line and if it's the city, you bet your ass they are going to charge you for it one way or another. It's not a city service otherwise, is it?
As for private industry being the only one that can fix anything no, that's simply not true. The city will charge you an arm and a leg to fix something, do a shitty job and call what they bilk you for it "taxes". Private industry will charge you an arm and a leg, do a shitty job, and call the difference profit. But unless it's a life or death service, governments tend to take their sweet time about things. Feasibility studies have to be done, committees have to meet and decide, and finally the 2 guys responsible for actually fixing anything that goes wrong in the whole town have to fit it into their schedule. Or does your town not have potholes, burst pipes, etc? If those get fixed overnight please tell me where you live so I can move there. Private industry tends to be a bit quicker because they want the money ASAP. The city already has your money. Try not to pay them and see what happens.
Re: One fiber to rule them... (Score:5, Insightful)
Cities have something that private companies don't - a degree of accountability to the voters. Around here, if city-maintained infrastructure (water, sewer, etc.) went down and wasn't fixed within a very short time, the mayor, city manager, and city council would start hearing about it, and they're well aware that a substantial portion of the folks here do vote in local elections. If that's not the case where you live, you have larger problems than the city taking too long to fix stuff.
What GP has not mentioned is that someone has to own and maintain this "public" line and if it's the city, you bet your ass they are going to charge you for it one way or another.
I'm not sure I see a problem with that, so long as all ISPs are charged pole rent on an equal basis.
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You obviously don't live in any major American city. With very few exceptions, they are all bastions of single party rule (primarily Democratic) so there is little accountability other than the occasional revolt over some truly monumental screw-up (usually involving the police or amazing levels of corruption).
In my wonderful city of Chicago, the mayor's office is generally a sinecure for the current generation of Daley with a few placeholders when the next generation isn't quite old enough to take over. The
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This is exactly the system we have in the UK and it works extremely well.
Comcast's Nightmare?? (Score:2)
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Thanks for that insightful comment, Dick.
I guess we should make sure to append "in the USA" to every sentence for the sake of clarity. We wouldn't want people coming to a US site to discuss news about the opinions of a US corporation on potential policies of a US government agency to get confused about it being relevant only to those in the USA.
Also, I'm really glad the English language only uses literal interpretations and never relies on context to alter the meaning of words. That could be very confusing
Well if it's bad for comcast... (Score:5, Insightful)
... it can only be good for us...
Government Permission Should Not Required (Score:5, Insightful)
Why does anyone have to be classified, by the government, as a provider, under title, yada yada?
Poles, conduits, rights-of-way should belong to the local authority, managed and maintained by the lowest bidding contractor. Anyone or any company then has the right to use, for any commercial or non-commercial purpose, said infrastructure to run their cable or fiber, upon payment of a reasonable fee to cover the upkeep.
I am not a fan of eminent domain, but if the incumbent says "We installed these poles, they belong to us" then they should be bought out.
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That's kind of funny, in a sad sort of way. Have you never read the stories about techs who drill through walls into electrical wires and start fires? Or fall asleep at the customer's home? These are low-paid workers - you don't get great service with rock-bottom prices.
If you go for the lowest bidder, I can guarantee you that maintenance will become a worse and worse issu
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Why make 100,000 towns and cities file 100,000 court cases when the federal government can do it in one fell swoop?
Because the other 100,000 towns, the ones you failed to mention at all, arent interested.
Stop promoting greater tyranny in order to solve lesser tyranny.
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Stop promoting greater tyranny in order to solve lesser tyranny.
Telling a tiny minority of people to stop being asshats to the vast majority of us is not tyranny. It's what democratic government is FOR. If you don't like it, go on and keep pushing your oligarchy's interest. It will end in blood, like it has plenty of times before. Or have you not noticed history?
A thousand years ago people tolerated oligarchies for generations, because they were the anointed of God. These days, not so much. Comcast is run by oligarchs. A lot of us are getting really tired of it.
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Telling a tiny minority of people to stop being asshats to the vast majority of us is not tyranny.
Its tyranny because not all of us have asshat ISPs because not all of us have let our local government fuck us. You let your local government fuck you and now you, as the solution to your apathy on local matters, want the federal government to fuck me too.
Not everyone has your problem because not all of us allow ourselves to get so fucked by our local government. Your problem is that you didnt pay any fucking attention in civics class. Now you're living in a toilet because you let people shit in your hom
Weighing the Pros and Con... NEVERMIND (Score:3)
You know what, at this point I don't care if Google vows to sell every single bit of traffic I send through them, or changes the business vow to "Do Evil Whenever Possible", I want Google Fiber regardless of the cost to any freedoms or privacy I may enjoy now.
I had fiber years ago and have missed it ever since, living under the Rule Of Comcast... so I don't care what happens anymore, just let Google consume all network providers everywhere.
THANK YOU (Score:4, Interesting)
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Every free-market preaching tool that has said "The next Google FIber won't happen with Title II!" Can now procede to eat crow.
The first preaching tools were mouthpieces of Comcast, and only using the "free market" phrase as a cloak, an insta-pass to get into the consciousness of the 36% of the population that has successfully been conditioned to respond to it like Pavlov's dogs. Including that part of the media that barks on command when those words are uttered. The barking will continue precisely as before. They can't hear anything else. They certainly can't hear this filing. It doesn't fit in their worldview, therefore it d
Meanwhile in civilized world (Score:2)
Meanwhile in civilized world (Europe): Poland/Warsaw, Regulatory body prevented UPC Cablecom, European cable giant, from completely taking over local competitor. UPC was forced to sell hardware infrastructure gained in the merge, and obligated to lease it for at least 12 months after the sale.
"In May 2013 Netia acquired from UPC Polska a part of former Aster cable operator’s network, which was classified for resale according to the decision of the President of the Office of Competition and Consumer Pr
uh huh (Score:2, Interesting)
Yes, the... what? 5000? 10,000? people that have Google Fiber will be very excited about this. lol
It's all well and good to install fiber in some of the easiest areas in the country to service. But almost all of those places already had multiple choices for ISPs. When Google starts rolling out fiber in rural Idaho, where the need really is, then it'll be interesting. But I have a feeling that'll never happen.
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When Google starts rolling out fiber in rural Idaho, where the need really is, then it'll be interesting. But I have a feeling that'll never happen.
Why would it, when people in rural Idaho think it's a moral imperative to shoot at people from the California Bay Area? They're afraid "teh gey" will get on them and make them all sticky.
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When Google starts rolling out fiber in rural Idaho, where the need really is, then it'll be interesting. But I have a feeling that'll never happen.
Never is a mighty long time. Mighty long. Life has been evolving from protein chains for billions of years... and that is a drop in the bucket to forever. Never is longer than forever.
yes definitely need that 4k webcam corn field feed (Score:2)
When Google starts rolling out fiber in rural Idaho, where the need really is
what?
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Google might have fiber in rural Idaho already. They bough up a shitload of dark fiber a few years back. There doesn't seem to have been too much talk about it since 2007 or so. I think that the fiber was originally laid down by MCI prior to the bursting of the .com bubble in the early 2000s. I was unable to find a map for what areas could actually be reached by the dark fiber if it was lit up. If Google still has plans for all that dark fiber, they seem to be shrouded in secrecy.
A New Kind Of Monopoly (Score:2)
There is another approach. To my knowledge, it has never been used anywhere in the world.
One monopoly could own, operate, and maintain the poles, wires and fibers. They would be a public utility and be answerable to the public service commission for tarrifs and meeting reliability and availabilty requirements. But they would not provide any consumer service at all. Their customers would be the electric power and communications companies that rent use of the facilities. Perhaps even natural gas and wat
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Not exactly the same, but local loop unbundling was done in the US after the break-up of Ma Bell. For a while, long distance telephone service was unbundled from the local loop. Any company could offer long distance service and the local incumbent phone service had to provide access to their infrastructure at a fixed cost.
We had an explosion of LDS providers and the price dropped like a stone. Within a decade, LDS was so cheap that all the LDS providers started failing and it just got rebundled into the loc
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This law exists mainly so conditions could be placed on service providers that forced them to serve areas that would not be profitable for them. It started with phone, electric, and TV services but the phone and Cable TV operators found ways to expand their business by offering data communications over the same lines they already had access to.
This meant they could effectively use their privilege of serving an entire population center and the already installed infrastructure to deliver something that would
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How much does it cost to wire up a town for high speed internet access? Why would a company invest that unless they were confident they'd get a profit? That's why the town offers a special deal and access that the ISP otherwise has no right to.
You think anybody should be allowed to use whatever city infrastructure they like?
Not that I actually want to defend the mess that is the current system. Perhaps the obvious solution is to allow cities to put in their own ISP struct
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The entire purpose of public property is for public use, it if wasn't we would be communists. To try to deny access to anyone to public property is a violation of equal protection. Anyone and everyone that wants to start a public utility of whatever sort they want should have equal access to public property as anyone else does. Exclusive agreements for public property access have been struck down every single time someone tri
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Perhaps the obvious solution is to allow cities to put in their own ISP structure, but then that's government using it's advantage of force to compete unfairly with private business, which is the reasonable argument for some states to prevent such competition.
Not necessarily. A local municipality could build out a fiber network, maintain just the last mile connections and the layer 2 switching infrastructure, and lease that infrastructure to one or more ISPs who would link to the Internet and provide TV and phone service. US cable and phone providers don't rent out their infrastructure to other ISPs like this, at least not for general consumers, so there is no private business for the local municipality to to compete with.
Another option is to break up the loca
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Correction, that should read "eminent domain"
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It depends. I had a quote for a place I used to work for about $22,000 to run fiber out to our location in an outer suburb. The ISP eventually did a project where they ran fiber down the street, and it cost us only 9 grand to tap into it. It should have been a lot less, but they ended up having to bore underground for 1/8 of a mile to get the fiber into our facility. The local power company wanted to charge an unreasonable amount of money to attach to the poles on our own property.
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Re:What rules prevent them from doing this already (Score:5, Interesting)
Back in the 80s and 90s lots of smaller cable companies lobbied local governments and were granted easement access to install their poles, wires, and equipment. Many poles belonged to various utility companies and Ma Bell and access was also negotiated with them. This is a very long process with lots and lots of red tape.
Bigger companies like Comcast bought these smaller companies primarily for these rights. Anywhere smaller companies overlapped the wires were pulled off of poles to prevent any chance of a competitor gaining easy access to these rights. Any new competitor would now need to start from the very beginning like the smaller companies did in the 80s and 90s in obtaining access.
In my city we had a choice of Dimension Cable and Cable America in the 80s and 90s. Both of these smaller companies did all of the busy work for Cox which gobbled both of them up and dismantled the redundant perfectly good infrastructure of Cable America.
Comcast did this on a much larger scale.
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Any new competitor would now need to start from the very beginning like the smaller companies did in the 80s and 90s in obtaining access.
No, it wouldn't be like back then at all. Back then, they didn't have to fight a huge company with lots of money for lobbying and lawyers.
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You are right. It is much worse now.
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I really wish cities would run fiber like they do water and sewer pipes. It does make much more sense. I'm a bit uncomfortable having government manage the data though. I'd be worried about censorship issues and such. Having private companies compete to provide data over these lines may work though.
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Comcast has their cable monopoly that allows them to use the poles as part of the contact with the cities they are in. They use this as a means to prevent competition through graft and exclusive contracts...Title II would prevent cities from blocking right of way access to competition like Google.
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Federal law states that:
"A utility shall provide a cable television system or any telecommunications carrier with nondiscriminatory access to any pole, duct, conduit, or right-of-way owned or controlled by it." (47 USC 224)
Comcast has this right by virtue of being a "cable television system". The major phone companies have it because they are "telecommunications carriers". But facilities based ISPs like Google Fiber are currently (and incorrectly) classified as neither so they are out of luck until sanity