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About 500,000 households, or 0.4% of Americans, have cable overbuild accessible to them. That is, a second cable system that was built and installed in the same area another cable company was already operated. This isn't surprising really, since even though many municipalities already signed exclusivity agreements, it's still expensive as hell to build duplicate infrastructure for cable. Here are the service areas of the top 10 cable companies, as of 2011:  The white area represents either no cable service at all (this is the case for most of the least densely populated areas) or service by a company smaller than the big 10. Now the interesting thing to note here is that a full merger of Comcast and Time Warner Cable would first not reduce any choice - because they have not held competing cable systems at any territory since back in the early 2000s - mostly due to arranged buyouts and transfers of systems between the two companies, certain predecessor companies, and other independent providers. It would also only have ~36% of the cable internet and TV markets, and the initial plan involves selling off a few million customers from both to other systems which would shrink that slightly. And Time Warner Cable as an ISP has pulled plenty of bullshit operating on its own. Stuff like being hostile/slow to allow sites like Netflix to place edge caching stuff in their service centers while Comcast and other ISPs have been more than happy to for the combination of mild revenue from allowing the stuff in, as well as reduced traffic from outside their owned networl to customers because major sites have servers within the network. So really, "everyone's going to get Comcast shoved down their throats"? No way. People who already have TWC would, but TWC is currently providing among the poorest service of a cable provider while Comcast is among the best, according to FCC data: http://www.fcc.gov/measuring-broadband-america/2013/February Also keep in mind that Time Warner Cable's been trying to get someone to buy them in whole or in part recently, and the only other serious suitor was Charter, current 4th largest cable network in the country but has also been performing about the same as Comcast, which is why it'd be able to afford to buyout TWC - such a transaction would result in combined Charter-TWC being a good 20%-40% larger than Comcast is now depending on how you measure. Edit: As an aside I ask you all to consider the situation of the phone network in the US immediately post-AT&T "breakup". Many people view it as creating 7 competing Baby Bells, and the eventually merger of most of them with others as "reducing competition". But the Baby Bells each had solidly defined non-overlapping territories, and did not actually compete with each other in 99% of their business. And of course the AT&T long distance network pre-split remained almost entirely in the hands of the remaining "AT&T" company after the big split for local phone service!  original split split as of about 2009 - Qwest is now CenturyLink, most of the Connecticut territory was sold from AT&T to Verizon, and Frontier now is the main operating company in West Virginia due to a sale.Both of these maps do gloss over the fact that a lot of rural areas and some urban areas had and have the actual operating company different fromt he overall statewide, like how Verizon has all of the former GTE (a non-old-AT&T provider) territory in places like California, or how Frontier operates a lot the telephone service in rural areas within Centurylink, AT&T and Verizon territories. It's a LOT like cable territory, if cable territories had been more contiguous and larger from the start! ToastyPotato posted:I have Cablevision. But my choices for broadband are pretty much Cablevision and Cablevision. FIOS for some reason isn't available in my part of the city, my building has banned satellites, and DSL is kind of lovely at this point. To say that competition is weak seems like an understatement. It is only legal for your building to ban satellite dishes or standard OTA antennas if any of these conditions are met: 1) The dish is over a meter in size (DirecTV and Dish offer dishes under this size for their modern satellite systems) 2) The building is covered by being a registered historic place and the placement of satellite or normal antennas would detract from that historic character 3) The antenna would reach higher than 12 feet off the roof 4) The building has a full TV antenna on the roof and wiring into each unit that would allow you to receive all or most local over the air channels. Anything else, rules deriving from the Telecommunications Act of 1996 mean they can't disallow you from mounting satellite dishes or standard TV antennas, and this includes allowing them to be placed on the roof if placing them out a window or on a balcony would not allow the proper line of sight to orbiting satellites or proper reception of local market TV stations. Call 888-225-5322 and the FCC can help you force the owners to allow you to get a dish or antenna up. (Of course satellite internet is in no way competition for broadband, just saying your building's owners are lying when they say you can't have satellite and if they ever prevented you from doing it they broke the law! Even if the cable tv/internet was included in your rent, they're still obligated to allow you to have satellite or regular antennas) Nintendo Kid fucked around with this message at 19:04 on Feb 15, 2014 |
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Feb 15, 2014 18:39
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FilthyImp posted:Well TWC started charging folks for the cable modems they need to connect to the service like a year ago. Thats a fine start. Time Warner Cable has charged modem rents by default since the time it was primary-branded as "Roadrunner". In fact, that's pretty much the most common way cable modems are paid for?
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Feb 16, 2014 06:25
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The Entire Universe posted:They sell them at Target, so no? That's not the default way to get cable modems. Your average user gets a modem when they get the service, and pays rent on the modem that was installed. Just like most people don't go out and outright buy their digital cable box.
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Feb 16, 2014 06:36
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Forums Terrorist posted:Sounds to me like America should get on the local loop unbundling bus. The local loop has been explicitly unbundled since the Telecommunications Act of 1996. rscott posted:The problem isn't just that comcast will have a large portion of the cable network in the United states, the problem is that Comcast is also a content distributor through its NBC Networks and it's various online CDNs. You combine that with the amount of customers they have and then people outside of that network will be disadvantaged. Comcast isn't going to risk losing money on the other 70%+ of US TV households (here including people who use satellite, over the air, or online tv as well as well as cable) by not letting their owned networks show up or impede their sales. If you ain't in a Comcast or Time Warner Cable area now, they can't get you to switch! rscott posted:No they'll just charge more for it, the laws that say you have to offer the same price to all the cable networks won't matter because it's just moving money from one account to another in the parent company whereas Satellite and other cable providers will have to pay more. Prove it, bud.
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Feb 16, 2014 17:27
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The Entire Universe posted:Both carriers in my area (Cox Cable and Frustration, Centurylink Telegraph and Latency) explicitly offer a choice between purchase or rental arrangement, as well as listing retailers. You're right about it being the default for now, and the modems aren't cheap (>$100 upfront, less from third party retail) but that's changing. I don't know anyone who hasn't bought a modem from a store in the past couple years because they're aware they can get something better than that shitbox surfboard/DSL POS from Target/Best Buy/NFM, etc. Comcast hasn't shown up yet, so at least there's that. Well it's weird that Cox and CenturyLink are both still dealing out super crappy modems as their standard device, but most carriers provide something perfectly fine, and often literally the same as what would be on local store shelves. Not to mention everyone who's already had broadband installed for years and wouldn't see a reason to buy their own modem so long as it still works.
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Feb 20, 2014 02:48
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Silver Nitrate posted:That has absolutely nothing to do with how it is handled in practice unfortunately. If they gently caress with you the FCC will sue them for free, and if they retaliate by eviction or other means it's a criminal offense.
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Feb 20, 2014 03:50
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Xandu posted:Aren't they basically paying for Comcast to host Netflix's content to limit transmission times? Yes. Netflix's current setup with their peering partners has been inadequate, and direct peering is already practiced by companies such as Microsoft, Facebook and Google. For reference there's been ongoing conflict between Level 3, one of Netflix's current peering partners, and Comcast and Verizon due to the fact that having Level 3 suddenly add a bunch of asymmetric traffic to Comcast and Verizon's previously settlement-free peering with Level 3 upset balances, and eventually resulted in Level 3 paying both of those companies for transfer imbalances incurred by Netflix using Level 3. So instead of Netflix pays Level 3 pays Comcast for Netflix's output, it's now Netflix directly connects to Comcast and pays them directly. And incidentally, if it goes through completely Level 3 will probably stop having to pay Comcast and can go back to essentially free of charge settlement-free connectivity. door Door door posted:I haven't been able to find anything on the mechanics of how it will work, just that the deal will lead to better viewing experiences for Comcast customers. The lack of competition is a problem, but I honestly think the real problem will be once there is competition and Netflix has to pay every major ISP a fee for similar services. That will drive subscription costs up and customers who don't subscribe to a big name ISP will be screwed because their providers won't be able to negotiate a deal with the content providers. You seem to be missing that Netflix was already having to pay other companies for internet transit into Comcast's and other ISP's networks. The payments to the intermediary companies now go down at roughly the same rate asthe payments to the ISPs go up. Additionally, Netflix's revised projected costs/revenue info for the upcoming quarter hasn't changed significantly, indicating their costs for direct connection look to be on par with their costs for transit through other providers. And the smaller ISPs/companies don't need to deal with direct peering, because the peering agreements they already have can handle Netflix's traffic just fine. The smaller an ISP gets the less problem they'll have handling their Netflix traffic. Nintendo Kid fucked around with this message at 05:32 on Feb 25, 2014 |
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Feb 25, 2014 05:29
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albedoa posted:http://blog.streamingmedia.com/2014/02/media-botching-coverage-netflix-comcast-deal-getting-basics-wrong.html It doesn't for this reason: net neutrality is meant to refer to "neutrally" treating data flowing between two networks no matter where that data came from. So for example, you don't get to suddenly decide you're going to slow down traffic coming in from Company A over general network connections unless they pay up like Company B was doing, for their traffic that was also coming across general network connections. Directly hooking up your major website to an ISP skips the question of neutrality all together. Now the ISP and the other company have an agreement that is essentially similar to the other company using that ISP as their own ISP - in fact the connection is often accomplished by running a simple large-scale business-class connection out to the other company's various servers or other points of presence. And since that ISP is now acting as the ISP for those systems, they're in the same internal network as you, the guy at home with a residential internet connection, and there's no traversing other networks on the way in. Now obviously in the case of a direct hookup, there is a company now paying the ISP directly for access. However, you always have to pay someone for access - for any internet access both you and the place you're accessing needed to pay for internet access or have someone pay for you - and the ISP being paid is providing access just like the other company's former access provider that also went into the ISP did. ---- Links between ISPs and general peering providers often operate on either a "clearance free" basis where the link in to the other network does about the same traffic as the link out, where no or only minimal charges are billed for keeping the connection going. If a link turns heavily asymmetric, where a whole bunch more data is leaving than is coming in, the peering arrangement will usually switch so that they network receiving the traffic gets paid by the network sending the traffic. Services like Netflix where the data coming into them is very low bandwidth things like basic commands for browsing and play control, and the data coming out is tons of actual video/audio data have a tendency to create solidly asymmetric links out. And any peering network providing transit of their data to customer ISPs is likely to end up with their own overall connections with the ISPs to be asymmetric, leading to eventually losing settlement-free privileges and starting to have to pay for the data volume (and of course they pass this cost on to the service that made them asymmetric when these things happen!) For reference here, an ISP's internal network infrastructure usually has far more capacity available then the peering links between their own network and other networks required to access the rest of the internet. As a simplification, the internal network might be able to handle 100 terabits per second, but the outside links go to outside network A up to 30 terabits per second, outside B for 25 terabits per second, and outside C for 10 terabits per second. Say a Service has an agreement with outside network C to carry a large amount of data for them, and the customers of the ISP use 8 terabits per second from them at peak. So network C tries to transfer through all data from their other clients that people on the ISP want and have to deal with this large load from the Service. This will result in congestion on C's link in that can only handle 10 terabits per second total, which may result in degradation of service for the Service or C's other customers. Both the ISP and C will argue with each other on who should pay for upgrading this link in, but if the Service instead decides to make their own links into the ISP, then suddenly C's bottleneck goes away, Service stops paying C some of the money they were paying to carry data, and Service instead pays ISP to carry data directly. So now instead of overloading one link into the ISP's network, Service's large data flow can easily run through the ISP's network while all the other data links from other networks run uncongested. Payments for data carriage switch based on who's actually carrying the data (it's now ISP itself rather than network C that delivered into ISP), and you seperately have resolved a point of contention between network C and the ISP.
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Feb 25, 2014 19:32
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Redeye Flight posted:Ahh, I think I understand. So the question of neutrality in this case is avoided, because net neutrality is meant to benefit those parties which are using the A, B, and C connections--which is to say, your average forums goon, or a smaller business that can't afford (or indeed require) their own data pipe. Yeah, essentially, Netflix only got into the situation where switching to direct access instead was viable because they were such an overwhelmingly popular service that needs a ton of bandwidth. And the carriers they contracted with to provide that bandwidth had problems handling all that bandwidth getting into all the ISPs necessary. That's a very special case, honestly. Financially, the prices charged for access are probably gonna be about the same between what they were previously and what they are now. Some of the peering carriers that were and are being penalized for Netflix turning their transfers heavily asymmetric will benefit from getting back to settlement free status. And yes, Comcast customers are definitely going to see much better performance, since Netflix will shortly be switching over to directly feeding into the Comcast internal network at several locations. Again as mentioned, companies like Google, Facebook and Microsoft have been doing direct peering too, in order to reap the benefits of going right into the networks. An additional benefit is that since this large amount of usage is being completely redirected out of normal routing, there's less congestion in the internet-at-large. If Netflix brings all of its estimated 30% of American internet bandwidth usage at peak times out to direct ISP feeds, that's a ton of usage cleared off general networks.
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Feb 25, 2014 22:24
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Kalman posted:The possibility of legal liability for this sort of situation (or of being forced to offer every minor website the same terms as Netflix) is one reason why the carriers challenged the net neutrality rules as written. They're certainly not the good guys, but they has reasons for the challenge beyond the mustache-twirling caricature that's sometimes presented. Eh? They do offer the same terms to all comers as they did to Netflix, on the Comcast for Business website you can sign up to direct peer with Comcast just as Netflix is doing. The terms of this is that any company wanting to do this has to be prepared to pay Comcast proportionate fees for the traffic load they'll bring in. Direct peering has never been considered by the FCC to be under the purview of net neutrality regulations, though they have considered regulating it as a separate thing.
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Feb 26, 2014 06:22
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E-Tank posted:I don't suppose anyone here has a suggestion on how to try and get Comcast to stop with this loving idiotic download limit? Short of calling and complaining about their new attitude, or going without internet (The only other provider, AT&T is doing the exact same thing only with an even stricter limit) I am unfortunately unsure what else to do. Question: have you actually exceeded the limit yet, and if so did they actually do anything to you? Essentially the reason they now have to give a number as a limit, is that they used to simply disconnect or ask people to upgrade if they were both using a lot of bandwidth and at the same time causing local network issues. Naturally, this meant that what constituted "a lot of data" varied wildly throughout their service areas. The FCC stepped in and said you have to have an actual number to give out as allowable, because going case by case on this is unfair service. So now Comcast has "300 GB" as the limit, except they enforce it very selectively - in some areas they stick to it tightly, in other areas they'll never ding you for going over the limit. Same sort of deal with AT&T except they enforce the cap in much more areas. For what it's worth though, both Comcast and AT&T offer unlimited internet as part of their "business" plans which can really just be bought for any kind of customer/location. You may have also noticed that ads for their residential services are careful not to directly state you'll get unlimited internet usage these days - they used to when they could get away with not giving any sort of idea for a limit and enforcing arbitrary ones. Edit: Aside from all this though, caps on bandwidth usage by residential customers is rather common across the world. The precise limits vary, but even something like the provider in Japan who sets a 30 GB per day limit (obviously 900 GB in a normal month) is still a limit as much as the DSL providers in Canada that give you 30 GB a month on their high end plans - and 5 GB a month on their lower end plans. Nintendo Kid fucked around with this message at 19:45 on Feb 26, 2014 |
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Feb 26, 2014 19:24
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Kalman posted:Except that "being able to sign up for the same service" doesn't mean paying the same amount - Netflix likely negotiated a discount for the consistent volume and commercial appeal of their service, while Comcast would probably expect MyBob.com to pay more for it MyBob would still not pay anywhere near as much as Netflix is paying though, because they're unlikely to put out anywhere near as much data. For smaller companies, it's usually far more cost-effective to pay rent within multiple ISPs' internal network data centers for the power, data usage, and other facilities needed to co-locate caching servers. The service fees for these are usually the same as co-locating in general-purpose data centers. Direct peering has been done and accepted for well over 20 years though, typically it's been done by two kinds of businesses - one is very large companies seeking to get a better rate/reliability then going through normal transit/peering companies, the other is small time companies where most of the people they need to access them are on the ISP. For the small time people, they'll also be using the ISP to get to other customers outside the ISP. At the most basic level, you literally have a small time business buying typical business internet service for their office and running a server there. The problem would come if there was a pattern of deliberately underbuilding and throttling normal peering connections with general-access networks. But that hasn't actually happened, just peering networks themselves promising their clients more than they can reliably deliver. edit: You might want to look over their terms for settlement-free peering here http://www.comcast.com/peering/ and their terms for paid peering here http://www.comcast.com/dedicatedinternet/?SCRedirect=true http://www.peeringdb.com/view.php?asn=7922&peerParticipantsPrivatesPage=1 Nintendo Kid fucked around with this message at 21:18 on Feb 26, 2014 |
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Feb 26, 2014 20:50
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E-Tank posted:Well apparently as a bonus we get three months per year that they ignore the cap and let us download whatever the gently caress we want, and supposedly from now on whenever we go over it we will be charged for 50 more gig. The limit itself is 300 gig which...well they seem to rather strangely check. previous to this we apparently almost never went over 300 gig, and now we've gone over 300 gig three months in a row. The next month is when they'll actually charge us. Check what they're saying you'll have to pay for going over versus the price it would be to switch to business internet service from them instead. If they'd end up being close, the smart thing to do is to switch over to business because then they among other things set you up with better customer service, priority of repair in case of local outages and other stuff like that, as well as unlimited access.
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Feb 26, 2014 21:20
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Kalman posted:Right, but total payment and payment per bit are totally different metrics - Netflix will beat MyBob on one and be behind on the other. Is that unreasonable discrimination? It's enough to get taken to court on, at least. So far, no one who has entered into direct peering agreements with any major ISPs have taken them to court on basis of payment discrimination, and indeed it's not even made the news before when companies agreed to direct peering. You will get a much better rate per bit if you're pushing through a lot of traffic, but it's for the same reason that Amazon can mail out 1800 pounds of books through the USPS for just $500 while you as a normal mail user would need to pay around $850 for the same mailing - Amazon is shipping massive amounts of books consistently and also obeys certain pre-mailstream sorting and is thus open to contractual service at a much lower per unit rate, while you're just one guy who is going to ship 1800 pounds of books one time. Again, I don't think any ISPs have ever refused a request to directly peer, except where the party requesting it was not meeting the requirements (e.g. to directly peer with us, you must either put up the connection hardware in a designated exchange area yourself, or pay us to bring access out to a place you're in). It'd be a rare thing indeed for a direct peering agreement to not be to Comcast's advantage, outside of edge cases like the new company somehow deliberately abusing the ISP network.
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Feb 26, 2014 21:48
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Kalman posted:The fact that it hasn't happened isn't really that important given that the rules are relatively recent and were in litigation from day one (no one is going to bring an expensive lawsuit when the rules you're relying on to bring it are already being challenged). What specific rules have recently changed on direct peering? Anyone who would put out such consistent delivery loads while doing as much presorting as Amazon is entitled to the same discounts as Amazon is, but currently that's a rather small universe of eligible users. Similarly, Netflix is presenting an unusually large, asymmetric network load out, and by any reasonable standard would not be expected to have the same pricing structure as smaller load, or more balanced load, or combination of the two.
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Feb 26, 2014 23:43
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Kalman posted:The 2010 Open Internet Order. Commonly known as "net neutrality." There's language in there that purports to exclude direct peering from enforcement, but it's not 100% clear how wide that exclusion runs. There was no regulation on direct peering before that, and none there now, and there was none in the middle though. The FCC themselves considers that things that stay on private networks are not really in their purview except if public network connectivity is being abused to force private connectivity deals instead. This makes no sense from a technological perspective. In order to get good service you or the intermediary you pay to get access for you must provide suitable equipment for a good connection. Additionally, asymmetric network loads always result in a payment relationship while symmetrical loads can grant nearly payment-free relationships due to distribution of burdens. Hell, from the reading you're giving, one might argue that it would be illegal to charge more money per month to residential users who want higher speeds - is that not discrimination and differing discounts? Seriously, if that argument could win, it would justify anyone using any ISP's service demanding the right to pay for the lowest offered tier of service and get equal speeds/etc as the highest offered tier. Edit: Really, just about all communication methods such as this work on an assumption that you can always charge lower per unit rates for more massive amounts of units, due to the fact that there is less and less marginal cost to actually provide the service the higher you go. Nintendo Kid fucked around with this message at 00:23 on Feb 27, 2014 |
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Feb 27, 2014 00:15
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Kalman posted:Then why did the FCC feel the need to provide a footnote in OIO saying that traditional peering arrangements wouldn't fall within it, but pay-for-play by edge providers would be pretty much per se barred? Are you saying they added those even though they weren't intending to regulate edge provider contracts? Edge providers involves not direct peering, it involves services utilizing dedicated equipment for certain providers placed within ISP and other networks. Peering arrangements != direct peering. The FCC's primary interest in peering agreements is those between ISPs, transit providers, and other large networks not unfairly prioritizing certain traffic over others on the public internet and in transitions between networks. Kalman posted:"A commercial arrangement between a broadband provider and a third party to directly or indirectly favor some traffic over other traffic in the broadband Internet access service connection to a subscriber ... would raise significant cause for concern. ... It is unlikely that pay for priority would satisfy the "no unreasonable discrimination" standard." Which the FCC is not referring to direct peering over, but rather things like generic transit providers and ISPs colluding to downgrade a specific service's traffic while letting others pass unhindered.
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Feb 27, 2014 01:23
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Kalman posted:"We use 'edge provider' to refer to content, application, service, and device providers because they generally operate at the edge rather than the core of the network." By direct peering I am referring to what Netflix is about to do. What Netflix is about to do is to directly hook into the Comcast network from their own hosting at designated private exchange points, rather than transfer over public peering or hosting edge caching within the Comcast network with backup by way of the public peering. Most major high-bandwidth online services already participate in direct peering arrangements and have since the 90s. An "edge provider" proper is simply any service that exists online and is used. Nintendo Kid fucked around with this message at 01:46 on Feb 27, 2014 |
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Feb 27, 2014 01:40
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Kalman posted:Okay, so we're using the same terms the same way. They said it might be suspect, but they have never called Microsoft's, Facebook's, or Google's into question yet, nor any of the other prior existing ones.
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Feb 27, 2014 01:53
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Aeka 2.0 posted:Within the last couple of weeks my Netflix has taken a poo poo. I have a 100mbs connection and I decided to do a speedtest while streaming "super hd". I got a 98.9mbs test while Netflix is showing something close to DVD quality, it isn't making a dent in the speed test. Same quality while not running the test. There are just too many variables for me to make any conclusions, but the timing is interesting. What ISP, and what time of day? Comcast's peering with Netflix directly is expected to start phasing in this month for what it's worth.
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Mar 6, 2014 04:57
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If the internet was going to be closed from this, it would already be so - this is common practice for the large internet companies.
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Apr 24, 2014 03:07
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History does bear out Kalman's view, because of the fact there's been just about no enforced restrictions on the behavior people seem to fear, yet that behavior has not come to pass over a good 20 years of commercial internet service. It barely even happens in other countries at that (perhaps not at all? but it seems like it must happen somewhere just by sheer volume of cases). Other methods have long been used to do similar things, methods which no one seems to know about or notice, frankly, even though they have major benefits for the parties involved.
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Apr 26, 2014 02:31
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supersnowman posted:Let's say they get firm rules where they cannot throttle any type of content. Don't you guys think they will just up the prices so they can deal with the large increase of money needed to constantly upgrade the architecture because we consume more and more data? Since the US backbone is basically owned by a handful of entities, why would't they just say "gently caress you, your bill will all increase by XX% because we now have to install a shitton more cable/fiber lines" and then everybody is stuck with higher prices? The thing is, any such price increases have already happened, long ago. Also, we have shitloads of unused but relatively easy and cheap to restore backbone connectivity laying about due to overbuilds in the dotcom bubble.
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May 1, 2014 03:13
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Aeka 2.0 posted:They knew, and were given federal money for massive upgrades. They pocketed it instead. They didn't pocket it, they mostly spent it on building out cell phone infrastructure that was sold off to cell companies or used by their own wireless divisions, and much of the rest went into basic infrastructure upgrades that they simply sat on actually using for a long time even though they'd built it.
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May 1, 2014 14:18
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computer parts posted:Don't like 98% of people actually have the level of broadband specified in the act by now anyway? According to the FCC's latest data at least, it's 99.9% of census-Urban residents (80% of the population) and about 90% of the census-Rural residents (which are 20% of the population) for a total around 98%. With much of the remaining 2% having severe location issues leadign to things like satellite being the only "viable" option.
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May 1, 2014 14:38
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FRINGE posted:As posted above this is utter bullshit. They redefined the word "broadband" to make the PR claims become true. No actual deployment was a part of the process. They redefined broadband from the original 256 kilobit symmetrical definition of the 90s to 1.5 megabit down / 768k up, yes. If you use the old definition of broadband from the original 90s laws, then broadband availability is close to 100% without counting satellite (which you shouldn't anyway). The primary areas that still don't meet that are places that don't have fixed link access to anything. FRINGE posted:If you looked (or read the posted links) you would know that this was not the case. Hey, cool article from 2007! That sure is relevant to what service is available 7 years later. PS that article repeats the lie of "redefining broadband" - 200 kilobits was in fact broadband in a world where not even 56k was quite there yet, i.e. when the first laws were written. Here's some info from last year: http://www.fcc.gov/measuring-broadband-america/2013/February http://www.broadbandmap.gov/download/Broadband%20Availability%20in%20Rural%20vs%20Urban%20Areas.pdf Cool bonus: in that PDF, broadband is defined as 3 megabits down and 768 kilobits up! That's a lot different from 200 kilobits I'm pretty sure. hobbesmaster posted:Thats more what I was remembering being described. They charge more for businesses of course. I do hope you realize that that top tier is nowhere near available everywhere in Japan! Meanwhile, you can get similar services in many places in the US from your standard providers. computer parts posted:I care whether they actually followed the law or not, and it sounds like they did. They did violate the spirit of the law, by putting funds into what became broadband by cell phone where it was supposed to be about broadband by wireline, and by spending most of the wireline funds on beefing up backbone connections rather than customer last mile connections. But both of those things led to much better services today. Nintendo Kid fucked around with this message at 22:53 on May 1, 2014 |
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May 1, 2014 22:51
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FAUXTON posted:Not that it accounts for that drastic a disparity but Japan doesn't have the problems the US does with people hating other people so much that they will literally move dozens of miles away from anything resembling civilization and demand those of us without the strange amalgam of agoraphobia and psychopathy that is colloquially known as "white flight" to subsidize modern living for their worthless asses. But the funny thing is that these days over 90% of the rural population has > 6 megabit downlink and > 1.5 megabit uplink service available to them, and this does not count satellite. This of course isn't the same thing as them all actually paying for it.
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May 1, 2014 23:59
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MisterBibs posted:I'm not in a location where I can read all the URLs, but are we talking about actual crimes, or things which were legal and some feel the actions shouldn't have been? ISPs took money intended to build out customer broadband access in the late 90s and early 2000s, and instead spent it to improve their internal networks and cell phone service. This was against the spirit of the law but not against the letter, and both of those things they did spend it on were useful as all hell. And every so often someone's who's angry that their internet is slow brings it up as if the actual implementation of exactly what the original intention was would have helped them - early 2000s broadband standards being what most people consider slow today.
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May 2, 2014 00:52
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FRINGE posted:Still no 45M connections. Yeah I've only got this 60 meg connection in the middle of the Appalachians. It's real horrible I tells ya. Anyway 45 megabit connections to everyone in the country is impossible now and was impossible then. No one with any sense believed that it was going to happen, and it's not even possible in the countries with the best internet service today. Shimrra Jamaane posted:This is about the 10th time over the last 3 years that Net Neutrality has been declared dead. So is it really this time? No, of course not. "Neutrality" is and always will be way more profitable for enough big companies to keep true interference away. Nintendo Kid fucked around with this message at 04:05 on May 2, 2014 |
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May 2, 2014 04:01
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FRINGE posted:Your anecdote totally makes everything different! Well your posts so far have been to whine about how the hyperbolic promise of a CEO in the height of the dot com bubble didn't come true so forgive me for being snarky.  Why, this 8 core CPU doesn't go the full 12 ghz I was promised in 2003 either....
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May 2, 2014 04:06
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FRINGE posted:They could build it (or something more like it) if they wanted to. No you couldn't, it's impractical to do it to everyone. We don't even have the electrical grid out to everyone yet, nor land phone service. FRINGE posted:It was not an advertisement. They made a promise in exchange for fleecing the public. When the fraud was exposed nothing was done. The politicians were not as stupid as you, they did not believe it was going to be that to everyone in the country. You did not vote on it either. Keep freaking out about how you'd totally have slightly faster downloads today though, I'm sure that'll help. Not to mention: the ISPs would have gouged out the rear end for your hypothetical 45 megabit connections back then. Hope you would have liked $1000 a month bills.
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May 2, 2014 04:22
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computer parts posted:Actually after reading that 400 page e-book I noticed after the 1996 Act passed the telco's claim became "we will offer a 45 Mbit option", not "we will get 45 Mbit to everyone". Yep, that's the kind of stuff they actually talked about. Meanwhile promises to provide broadband were under the terms of the day, where ISDN was already considered blazing fast and just at the edge of being broadband.
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May 2, 2014 04:29
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So you're just bolding random sentences at this point and hoping it will convince people of something or what?
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May 4, 2014 01:20
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FRINGE posted:So you're just hoping that a weakly planned Socratic dialogue will make you seem intelligent or what? A socratic dialogue implies that both parties are actually talking instead of one googling random articles, highlighting a sentence every few paragraphs and then posting smug one liners.
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May 4, 2014 01:26
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FRINGE posted:A socratic dialogue implies that the person attacking a topic by attacking the speaker is smart enough to lay consequential traps. Yes you aren't smart enough to do that and I'm calling you out on just highlighting random text and then adding a line of fanfic. Edit: the articles you chose to quote don't even lead to your hackneyed premise, despite your cavalier cutting out of blocks of text. Nintendo Kid fucked around with this message at 01:44 on May 4, 2014 |
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May 4, 2014 01:36
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The internet has had fast lanes for nearly 20 years - it's direct transit arrangements that cut out transit networks and means large companies get the best speeds and latency.
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May 4, 2014 23:01
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CheeseSpawn posted:Most telcos are more interested in paying short term payouts than invest in long term infrastructure. You saw this from Verizon's change in deployment strategy and spinning off their DSL to sucker ISPs. Another example was Qwest aka Centurylink lack of anything due to paying down their debt. A great example of this is how Verizon's sold off tons of their landline phone/dsl/fios territory in rural New England and the whole state of West Virginia to other providers.
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May 9, 2014 03:59
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KernelSlanders posted:Right, but the question is, "will it?" It has been illegal until very recently for the ISPs to discriminate over the last mile and they recently won a court case, wherein they sought just that right. Saying there hasn't been any such discrimination yet is hardly reassuring. Well no, there was a quite long time with no particular rules making last mile discrimination illegal or even just fineable. Then there was a short time where it was explicitly forbidden. It's something that seems like doing it "right" (in this context the isps making sure they can implement it to get more money than setting it up and running it would cost them) is very hard, and thus why no ISPs actually did it in times where the legal aspect would be wide open. They can get most of the benefit by simply convincing various big net businesses to hook up directly, a business pattern that's served them great since the 90s. A TON of the reporting out there conflates that stuff with last mile discrimination, often because the esteemed journalists barely understand what's going on.
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May 12, 2014 19:17
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Thank you for the explanation of exact timelines and status in each time, kalman.
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May 12, 2014 19:28
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icantfindaname posted:So what exactly is the basic reason that broadband is so expensive in the US? Is it that ISPs are unwilling to build new infrastructure because of monopolism, or is it something else? I recently read this article claiming it's local governments setting up barriers to building new infrastructure, however the guys who wrote it run a think tank affiliated with people like the Cato Institute, Heritage Foundation and the usual suspects. IS broadband in America actually expensive compared to most of the world when you adjust prices for buying power in the first place though? And no, you don't get to compare broadband in some random hick town in the US with some major city in another country, which would naturally tend to get the most performance for the least price in that country either.
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May 17, 2014 01:56
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