So long Net Neutrality!

[JPhillips]

I absolutely understand this is about protecting the business model, that's my whole point. Making government networks illegal isn't about protecting taxpayers, it's about protecting telecom profits.

[SteveM58]

Originally Posted by JPhillips

I absolutely understand this is about protecting the business model, that's my whole point. Making government networks illegal isn't about protecting taxpayers, it's about protecting telecom profits.

Thats one way to view it but thats a really narrow lense to see through. It actually is about jobs for NC, as those ISPs won't base engineers there if they are going to get competition from the government. Note that Google fiber (or other private entities) can enter those markets (as freely as anybody else anyway).

If NC thought it was better for them to have a bunch of municipal networks, rather than the jobs and residual economic boost from having highly paid/highly skilled workers, they wouldn't likely have passed that. Thats how these types of things work in every industry looking to base a certain amount of workers.

So no, NC wasn't thinking about corporate profits. They were thinking about growing their tax bvase. And they calculated that it was better to have those private companies than to keep "government freedom" to overbuild & compete with private companies.

I'm sure we fall on very different sides of government intervention & perhaps political ideology. But I don't get the hate on the corporations who play the lobby game, when its the government that creates the game to begin with. We generally have choices in what corporations we pay money to (if any at all), but we don't get choices in what government we pay money to (and there can be only one...to invoke Highlander).

[JPhillips]

The NC bill didn't come out of months of study and hearings. Telecoms had worked with ALEC to write model bill language, when the GOP took over NC, ALEC worked with friendly legislators to introduce the bill, and the bill passed both houses and was signed by the governor. ALEC and the telecoms drove the whole process, as they have done in many states.

I'm not blaming the telecoms for lobbying, it is the system, afterall, but I don't have to pretend that their actions are about anything other than their bottom lines. They aren't evil, but they also aren't on my side.

[SteveM58]

Originally Posted by JPhillips

The NC bill didn't come out of months of study and hearings. Telecoms had worked with ALEC to write model bill language, when the GOP took over NC, ALEC worked with friendly legislators to introduce the bill, and the bill passed both houses and was signed by the governor. ALEC and the telecoms drove the whole process, as they have done in many states.

I'm not blaming the telecoms for lobbying, it is the system, afterall, but I don't have to pretend that their actions are about anything other than their bottom lines. They aren't evil, but they also aren't on my side.

I don't think I've heard anybody say they are on your side, nor should you ever think a corporation is. They are corporations, just like every other industry, acting in their perceived best interests within the (often absurd) rules of the government. And that goes for tech giants as well.

Private industries write the vast majority of industry-specific legislation, especially the more technical it is. You won't hear me argue against the notion that government should immunize itself from lobbying. But in my view, that means the government has to get itself out of industries by and large.

I think municipalities can & should encourage competition to enter where there is none, and perhaps in the most underserved of areas, subsidize a private company to come in and operate if the people want them to. But its not an easy thing to do better than the private sector unless its effectively near-zero. So I get why states that have seen the failings of some municipal network builds would be willing to exchange that for the jobs created by ISPs in that case. Thats not ISPs passing those laws, thats the government.

[RainMaker]

Originally Posted by SteveM58

89% of people had 10 Mbps down & 1 Mbps up from 2 or more fixed providers. Of note there were <1% with no access to 10/1 Mbps. The 10 Mbps jumped to 25 quickly by 2016 and continues to go up every year.

And yes, wired internet is still better for higher bandwidth applications. 5G ha spromise but its still a couple of years from any noteworthy rollout.

10Mbps is perfectly acceptable if we lived in Ethiopia (where they average 10.69Mbps). I'd think we'd strive for more in this country.

[RainMaker]

Originally Posted by SteveM58

First off, Verizon & Comcast did not "throttle" Netflix. They simply refused to upgrade peering links to support Netflix migrating content from A to B location without Netflix footing some of that bill. When a company that supplies as much content as Netflix migrates their origination point, it causes massive shifts in how much traffic comes from where. This saturates links all over the place and requires upgrades quickly to compensate.

When Netflix refused to pay for their impact to peering connections, Comcast & Verizon simply refused to upgrade (specifically for this move) in the places that Netflix caused impact. Its, once again, just a business trying to win the PR game against easy pickins (Comcast & Verizon).

You're right it's a PR game. But Netflix is not Comcast's customer.

You have to admit it's a weird coincidence that Comcast suddenly stopped their long standing position of adding interconnection points with places like Cogent the minute they started pumping through Netflix traffic. It would almost seem like this was a ploy to target one specific company. Especially when customer service reps at Comcast were told to direct their complaints to Netflix.

Comcast made their service worse to their paying customers for a period of time by their inactivity. Now this would be a death knell for a company, but Comcast has a nice little monopoly in the areas they operate. So they knew that they could fuck over their own paying customers to extort a non-customer because those paying customers had nowhere else to go.

But like you said it's a game of PR. And I guess the other side is that Comcast didn't have the resources to do what they had been doing for years (adding capacity to the interconnection points) at the precise time Netflix was using it. But that didn't come up at their shareholders meeting where they bragged about making billions.

[RainMaker]

One other thing, what do you see as a positive in eliminating net neutrality? How does this benefit consumers in the US? How does this better the internet?

That seems like an important question when we're already being lapped by other countries in tech.

[SteveM58]

Originally Posted by RainMaker

10Mbps is perfectly acceptable if we lived in Ethiopia (where they average 10.69Mbps). I'd think we'd strive for more in this country.

Well, 10 Mbps is an old metric by internet standards but if you're interested in actually understanding and not just trolling because you hate your ISP...

1) Those "speeds" you see on numerous international comparisons are access speeds. They are representative of the amount of throughput you have to your ISP, not dedicated throughput to the internet. They do not represent (and I'm not aware of any direct source for this) the oversubscription of those access connections. Thats why you see more lost connections (to websites) during peak times than morning even though a speedtest will show you have plenty of throughput, for instance.

What that means, is if there are 50 customers served by a remote site, and the ISP gives each of them 1 Gbps connections to the remote site (e.g. access speed), that does not mean there is 50 Gbps to the internet between them. Each of them may be able to connect at 1 Gbps at various times, but there is nowhere close to that data rate available if they all start trying to use up their connections at the same time. US speeds are closer to guaranteed (generally) than they are inflated "possibility" speeds. There's arguments for both methods of classifying access speeds, but I prefer actual guaranteed personally.

So if an ISP proclaims 1 Gbps "speeds", thats not saying a lot really (especially for residential, business class is typically dedicated). What you'd want to know is the latency and avg data rates consumed to measure against other countries, because that gives an indication of both consumption/demand and oversubscription which according to most sources of this data puts the US at top 10-15 these days.

Here's Akamai's q1 report from earlier this year. They are about as trustworthy a source you'll find out there publicly. And you'll notice the US is still ahead of Ethiopia.

I can't format the table here but look at the link if this isn't easy to read.

Country/Region Q1 2017
Avg. Mbps QoQ Change YoY Change
– Global 7.2 2.3% 15%
1 South Korea 28.6 9.3% -1.7%
2 Norway 23.5 -0.4% 10%
3 Sweden 22.5 -1.3% 9.2%
4 Hong Kong 21.9 -0.2% 10%
5 Switzerland 21.7 2.1% 16%
6 Finland 20.5 -0.7% 15%
7 Singapore 20.3 0.8% 23%
8 Japan 20.2 3.1% 11%
9 Denmark 20.1 -2.9% 17%
10 United States 18.7 8.8% 22%


2) Population density (the lack of), cost of US fiber construction (you can't construct it in China with Chinese workers), and business/technology readiness cycles of massive investment (you don't rebuild billions of dollars of fiber infrastructure every 2-3 years, you'll go broke). Countries move up & down the list, not surprisingly correlated to their technology upgrade cycles, as you typically develop ways to utilize your technology better unless & until you absolutely can't get anything more out of it (e.g. like the telcos and DSL).

All of these factors are more challenging in the US than in most of the countries higher up on the list. And as I noted earlier, access speeds are not nearly as noteworthy/accurate as the actual consumption rates and latency for comparison to other countries.

[JPhillips]

Originally Posted by SteveM58

I don't think I've heard anybody say they are on your side, nor should you ever think a corporation is. They are corporations, just like every other industry, acting in their perceived best interests within the (often absurd) rules of the government. And that goes for tech giants as well.

Private industries write the vast majority of industry-specific legislation, especially the more technical it is. You won't hear me argue against the notion that government should immunize itself from lobbying. But in my view, that means the government has to get itself out of industries by and large.

I think municipalities can & should encourage competition to enter where there is none, and perhaps in the most underserved of areas, subsidize a private company to come in and operate if the people want them to. But its not an easy thing to do better than the private sector unless its effectively near-zero. So I get why states that have seen the failings of some municipal network builds would be willing to exchange that for the jobs created by ISPs in that case. Thats not ISPs passing those laws, thats the government.

Let me be clear that I'm not arguing for public networks everywhere. I expect they would be good in some places, but not good in others and I don't have the expertise to argue where those places are. I got involved solely to argue against your contention that banning public networks largely came out of a desire to protect taxpayers. Maybe that happened somewhere, but in general those laws came about through telecom lobbying as a way to protect their market shares.

[SteveM58]

Originally Posted by RainMaker

One other thing, what do you see as a positive in eliminating net neutrality? How does this benefit consumers in the US? How does this better the internet?

Honestly, its an irrelevant piece of legislation in the short term. It was in place since 2015 and nothing changed because of it nor in spite of it.

The longer term, and more important to citizens in my view, is that it keeps the
federal government from getting access to ISPs and the data via regulatory threat. It has happened before (phone records from a Title II telco) and people should really find that to be a very concerning overreach.

That seems like an important question when we're already being lapped by other countries in tech.

We're not dude, as I posted above. US ISPs had already deployed infrastructure years ago (we were at the top early 2000s!) and its not practical to just rebuild it all every 3-4 years. Hell, it takes 5-10 years to fully rebuild any given company assuming no volatility that slows that down.

It also takes technology breakthroughs, standardization, and working out the kinks. Its just the timing of it and every country has those same cycles. We've gained on other countries in the past few years immensely & we're not stopping as we've got a lot of investment occurring. Thanks in part to consolidation of the industry (even if I don't personally like it) as it creates massive cost scale. You'll see 5G become viable as a home connection from telcos, you'll see 10Gbps from big cable, and hopefully you'll see the smaller companies leverage those breakthroughs as well (though they have to be more careful, as they can go broke fast making the wrong decisions at the wrong time).

[SteveM58]

Originally Posted by JPhillips

Let me be clear that I'm not arguing for public networks everywhere. I expect they would be good in some places, but not good in others and I don't have the expertise to argue where those places are. I got involved solely to argue against your contention that banning public networks largely came out of a desire to protect taxpayers. Maybe that happened somewhere, but in general those laws came about through telecom lobbying as a way to protect their market shares.

I'm just saying it can be both, depending on who you are talking about.

The driver behind a legislator should be protecting the taxpayer from risky liabilities. And in fact thats happened.

For each state that has such a law, I have no doubt an ISP had influence on the legislators. But thats for government competition (not private) because a government can extract the shortcomings on operating costs/subscriptions from the taxpayer. Its like competing with Amazon or Walmart in their product wheelhouses, you can't compete with somebody who can afford to lose their money putting you out of business.

I'm just saying, there is the other side of that story you don't see in most reports on muni broadband, net neutrality, etc. And while I'll say that most arguments I've found online on the side of the ISPs are terrible arguments and politically driven, its not always some evil ISP trying to do evil things. But they could use some better PR people in my opinion.

[Atocep]

Originally Posted by SteveM58

Thats one way to view it but thats a really narrow lense to see through. It actually is about jobs for NC, as those ISPs won't base engineers there if they are going to get competition from the government. Note that Google fiber (or other private entities) can enter those markets (as freely as anybody else anyway).

If NC thought it was better for them to have a bunch of municipal networks, rather than the jobs and residual economic boost from having highly paid/highly skilled workers, they wouldn't likely have passed that. Thats how these types of things work in every industry looking to base a certain amount of workers.

So no, NC wasn't thinking about corporate profits. They were thinking about growing their tax bvase. And they calculated that it was better to have those private companies than to keep "government freedom" to overbuild & compete with private companies.

I'm sure we fall on very different sides of government intervention & perhaps political ideology. But I don't get the hate on the corporations who play the lobby game, when its the government that creates the game to begin with. We generally have choices in what corporations we pay money to (if any at all), but we don't get choices in what government we pay money to (and there can be only one...to invoke Highlander).

https://muninetworks.org/content/successes-and-failures

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/a...-fiber-network

I feel like you're cherry picking information based on some of the community based failures. If the community builds it's own network it can it can contract those engineer positions out to bring in highly paid/skilled workers.

I also think it's ridiculous to suggest that what state governments pass is always in the best interest of the state and its people. There's nearly an infinite number of examples to dispute that.

[SteveM58]

Originally Posted by Atocep

https://muninetworks.org/content/successes-and-failures

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/a...-fiber-network

I feel like you're cherry picking information based on some of the community based failures. If the community builds it's own network it can it can contract those engineer positions out to bring in highly paid/skilled workers.

Cherry picking in what way? In the conversation with JPhillips I was referring to the failures in the late 90s and early 2000s which drove the legislation you see in some states.

But if you want the expanded critique (not to be confused with criticism)...a community network serving 80,000 customers isn't as likely to get the same level of expertise where you need it like an ISP serving millions will. That's partially because small operators like that wear multiple hats and it distracts them from looking toward the future and making the best decisions rather than reactionary & kneejerk responses. You see the remnants of that when they become insolvent & sell themselves off and you go to integrate them...they often need massive time & investment to untangle the poorly thought out virtual spaghetti they create. Its one thing to build it, its another to maintain it.

And its not the average workers or customer facing people that you have a hard time finding as you can usually pull from the local populace. Its the higher level architects & technologists that are working on your future strategy (to prevent you from the virtual spaghetti) that you'll have a hard time attracting. And a contractor cannot do that as effectively because they aren't entrenched in your business. That's slightly less important in the early going (when you are buying very expensive things from your vendors and their expertise comes with the deal) but it matters when you need to actually scale & upgrade end of life equipment and develop strategies for that. You cannot trust your vendor to have the best solution at the best cost for you (its not in their interest to do so, especially for your 80k customer budget).

But I never said there weren't any successes. Chattanooga is often the example shown. I'd say its successful so far because the municipality is really committed to it. But lets see how it goes and how they fare during an economic downturn, as this is a long game business & incredibly capital intensive.

I also think it's ridiculous to suggest that what state governments pass is always in the best interest of the state and its people. There's nearly an infinite number of examples to dispute that.

I pretty much said this as well. What I said to JPhillips was that short of outright bribery, they calculated that it was better for their state to have the ISPs bring a lot of highly paid jobs to their state. But legislators can also be wrong without being bribed, even when they think they are doing the right thing (though in the NC example, they certainly made the right choice as thousands of jobs came in and that helped the ripple effect for the tri-cities areas for IT).

[RainMaker]

Originally Posted by SteveM58

Well, 10 Mbps is an old metric by internet standards but if you're interested in actually understanding and not just trolling because you hate your ISP...

1) Those "speeds" you see on numerous international comparisons are access speeds. They are representative of the amount of throughput you have to your ISP, not dedicated throughput to the internet. They do not represent (and I'm not aware of any direct source for this) the oversubscription of those access connections. Thats why you see more lost connections (to websites) during peak times than morning even though a speedtest will show you have plenty of throughput, for instance.

What that means, is if there are 50 customers served by a remote site, and the ISP gives each of them 1 Gbps connections to the remote site (e.g. access speed), that does not mean there is 50 Gbps to the internet between them. Each of them may be able to connect at 1 Gbps at various times, but there is nowhere close to that data rate available if they all start trying to use up their connections at the same time. US speeds are closer to guaranteed (generally) than they are inflated "possibility" speeds. There's arguments for both methods of classifying access speeds, but I prefer actual guaranteed personally.

So if an ISP proclaims 1 Gbps "speeds", thats not saying a lot really (especially for residential, business class is typically dedicated). What you'd want to know is the latency and avg data rates consumed to measure against other countries, because that gives an indication of both consumption/demand and oversubscription which according to most sources of this data puts the US at top 10-15 these days.

Here's Akamai's q1 report from earlier this year. They are about as trustworthy a source you'll find out there publicly. And you'll notice the US is still ahead of Ethiopia.

I can't format the table here but look at the link if this isn't easy to read.

Country/Region Q1 2017
Avg. Mbps QoQ Change YoY Change
– Global 7.2 2.3% 15%
1 South Korea 28.6 9.3% -1.7%
2 Norway 23.5 -0.4% 10%
3 Sweden 22.5 -1.3% 9.2%
4 Hong Kong 21.9 -0.2% 10%
5 Switzerland 21.7 2.1% 16%
6 Finland 20.5 -0.7% 15%
7 Singapore 20.3 0.8% 23%
8 Japan 20.2 3.1% 11%
9 Denmark 20.1 -2.9% 17%
10 United States 18.7 8.8% 22%


2) Population density (the lack of), cost of US fiber construction (you can't construct it in China with Chinese workers), and business/technology readiness cycles of massive investment (you don't rebuild billions of dollars of fiber infrastructure every 2-3 years, you'll go broke). Countries move up & down the list, not surprisingly correlated to their technology upgrade cycles, as you typically develop ways to utilize your technology better unless & until you absolutely can't get anything more out of it (e.g. like the telcos and DSL).

All of these factors are more challenging in the US than in most of the countries higher up on the list. And as I noted earlier, access speeds are not nearly as noteworthy/accurate as the actual consumption rates and latency for comparison to other countries.

10Mbps is the metric you chose. I agree it's old which is why I was going by 25Mbps.

Access speeds are what consumers care about. I am happy that the United States has finally cracked the top 10 and hopeful we will be able to catch global power Singapore in time.

I also don't think our ISPs are in danger of going broke. Comcast has a market cap of $185 billion. Charter has a market cap of $81 billion. Both are about to receive an enormous corporate tax cut that will give them billions more. I think they can foot the bill for more of the infrastructure that our tax dollars helped build.

[RainMaker]

Originally Posted by SteveM58

Honestly, its an irrelevant piece of legislation in the short term. It was in place since 2015 and nothing changed because of it nor in spite of it.

So irrelevant that telecoms spent millions lobbying to get it repealed. They did not seem to think this was irrelevant at all.

Originally Posted by SteveM58

The longer term, and more important to citizens in my view, is that it keeps the federal government from getting access to ISPs and the data via regulatory threat. It has happened before (phone records from a Title II telco) and people should really find that to be a very concerning overreach.

This has nothing to do with net neutrality at this time. And that regulatory threat (if it could even pass constitutional concerns) can be done without the current classification.

Originally Posted by SteveM58

We're not dude, as I posted above. US ISPs had already deployed infrastructure years ago (we were at the top early 2000s!) and its not practical to just rebuild it all every 3-4 years. Hell, it takes 5-10 years to fully rebuild any given company assuming no volatility that slows that down.

It also takes technology breakthroughs, standardization, and working out the kinks. Its just the timing of it and every country has those same cycles. We've gained on other countries in the past few years immensely & we're not stopping as we've got a lot of investment occurring. Thanks in part to consolidation of the industry (even if I don't personally like it) as it creates massive cost scale. You'll see 5G become viable as a home connection from telcos, you'll see 10Gbps from big cable, and hopefully you'll see the smaller companies leverage those breakthroughs as well (though they have to be more careful, as they can go broke fast making the wrong decisions at the wrong time).

We're 10th in wired internet as you noted earlier in the thread.

We're 28th in mobile speeds behind Romania, Slovakia, Egypt, Hungary, and even Kenya.

And to get high speeds, we pay significantly more than most of these countries. I'd say the countries that get better speeds for less money are kicking our ass. But some have some low expectations for a country with the power and wealth of the United States.

[RainMaker]

Originally Posted by SteveM58

For each state that has such a law, I have no doubt an ISP had influence on the legislators. But thats for government competition (not private) because a government can extract the shortcomings on operating costs/subscriptions from the taxpayer. Its like competing with Amazon or Walmart in their product wheelhouses, you can't compete with somebody who can afford to lose their money putting you out of business.

Originally Posted by SteveM58

But if you want the expanded critique (not to be confused with criticism)...a community network serving 80,000 customers isn't as likely to get the same level of expertise where you need it like an ISP serving millions will. That's partially because small operators like that wear multiple hats and it distracts them from looking toward the future and making the best decisions rather than reactionary & kneejerk responses. You see the remnants of that when they become insolvent & sell themselves off and you go to integrate them...they often need massive time & investment to untangle the poorly thought out virtual spaghetti they create. Its one thing to build it, its another to maintain it.

These contradict each other. On one hand you're saying it's too difficult for a major ISP to compete with the government. Then in a following post you're saying how much superior a large ISP would be to a municipality.

The municipality also doesn't have unlimited money to throw around. Taxpayers (just like shareholders) don't want to see money wasted. They don't want to see schools closed to prop up a failing service.

It seems you just think the only way ISPs can work in this country is if they continue to have a monopoly in their respected areas. I think there needs to be competition. And if that competition won't come from other private companies, the government should feel free to provide it on their own.

[SteveM58]

Originally Posted by RainMaker

So irrelevant that telecoms spent millions lobbying to get it repealed. They did not seem to think this was irrelevant at all.



This has nothing to do with net neutrality at this time. And that regulatory threat (if it could even pass constitutional concerns) can be done without the current classification.

You asked specifically about positives, and I responded "as a consumer". Did you not read anything I wrote earlier?

Perspective is everything. The ISPs want the ability to monetize user data and advertise to compete with the tech giants for online ads. That alone is worth a lot of money.

Another reason is that being classified as a Title II common carrier allows the government to implement all sorts of rules, fees, and fines that will impact them when & if implemented. Once the government classifies you that way, its easy to find all sorts of new "injustices" to grow a tax base from in addition to what they already extract.

Another positive, which I didn't even bother putting out there because most people think profit is evil, but the more profit ISPs make in non-subscription ways the less your rates go up. You can balk all you want at that but thats how the actual business works. Nobody wants to raise prices more than they have to because of the public reaction it gets from everybody that already knows how much they should pay for something.

We're 10th in wired internet as you noted earlier in the thread.

We're 28th in mobile speeds behind Romania, Slovakia, Egypt, Hungary, and even Kenya.

And to get high speeds, we pay significantly more than most of these countries. I'd say the countries that get better speeds for less money are kicking our ass. But some have some low expectations for a country with the power and wealth of the United States.

We pay significantly more for most services. Especially if you include the things we don't directly pay the full price for by subsidizing.

Thats a metric for consumption_where_mobile_exists. You'd want to understand coverage in any of those countries not to mention the performance/reliability at those mobile speeds. You'd also want to know how well they perform at wired in those areas because some places (mainly 3rd world) just skipped the wired internet in most places and went all in with mobile. So people are using their mobile devices for things we use wired for & therefore the mobile has higher consumption speeds. Maybe they are all better at everything, I can't possibly know that. And neither do you by reading that number.

You should also consider that a single data point does not tell you the full scope of a service like that. Go read the reasons we aren't #1 in wired speeds again because they are similar enough to apply if you actually want to understand challenges for the US that most of these countries don't have.

Guess who hasn't had mobile for 20 years from that list? Greenfield deployment is always cheaper/better when you have no legacy customer base to support.

I get it. You are asking fair questions but you have a narrative already that ISPs & mobile operators are doing a terrible job. All of the 100s of thousands of people every day are being led by idiots & greedy profit-seekers. In some cases I might agree with that a bit, but I know enough to know that the business is complicated at the scale of the US. But I guess if only you or the government could run them, they'd be so much "better".

[SteveM58]

Originally Posted by RainMaker

These contradict each other. On one hand you're saying it's too difficult for a major ISP to compete with the government. Then in a following post you're saying how much superior a large ISP would be to a municipality.

The municipality also doesn't have unlimited money to throw around. Taxpayers (just like shareholders) don't want to see money wasted. They don't want to see schools closed to prop up a failing service.

It seems you just think the only way ISPs can work in this country is if they continue to have a monopoly in their respected areas. I think there needs to be competition. And if that competition won't come from other private companies, the government should feel free to provide it on their own.

Its not contradiction, these are 2 distinct topics.

Where the muni is fully committed to funding no_matter_what....the private company is at a disadvantage competing because the government can lose money & extract from taxpayers the gap. And private companies have no way of knowing the level of funding commitment ahead of a muni deploying (they may have hints, but budget cuts or surpluses can change that). So the market conditions are going to have to be substantial (as in NY, LA, etc.) to even bother. Thats the competing with Walmart or Amazon on toothpaste example.

Whether the muni can attract (and keep) the right talent, get the best price for the best solutions & products is a distinct topic. If they can, they can offer a great product at a great price for a long time. But the odds are significantly lower because their size/budget is small. Its the same challenges a rural ISP faces. But if they fail, that can leave liabilities to the taxpayers as any network is not a zero maintenance cost business just because you build it. You have support/replacement costs on the products you buy, people to fix fiber cuts (happens every day), and constant capacity upgrades in your core.

Thats not to say it can't be done. Atocep pointed out Chattanooga, there's also Bristol and a handful of others. I actually like these and hope they succeed. Selfishly, I'd rather work for a small company than the industry consolidation that you see. But I get the economics behind it. I think its more feasible these days than the early 2000s but of course, technologies change and you can't sit on old technology very long else you will become like a lot of South America where they buy all of our old stuff and use it as well as they can (lots of problems like known security holes in old platforms not to mention unsupported by the manufacturers, etc.).

Edit to add: You mentioned taxpayers are like shareholders. First, no they are not for (hopefully) obvious reasons. Individual shareholders can immediately sell off if they don't like where the business is going. Individual taxpayers cannot, and they also cannot walk away from the liabilities of the business contracts. They are forced owners whether they like it or not. So there is additional incentive to use the muni service rather than use the private company unless the services are grossly in favor of the private company for what you need.

Second...muni's often lump broadband costs in with electric & other muni-supplied utilities like water, gas, etc where they can so that the numbers look better on the whole to taxpayers. Now thats not to say they are cooking the books on it (though it is arguably disingenuous), but it is not always separated so that taxpayers see all of the costs for it. So things like relocating an electric pole for fiber spans gets put into the electric budget...because of course you aren't going to defund electric. That type of thing.

[SteveM58]

Originally Posted by RainMaker

10Mbps is the metric you chose. I agree it's old which is why I was going by 25Mbps.

Access speeds are what consumers care about. I am happy that the United States has finally cracked the top 10 and hopeful we will be able to catch global power Singapore in time.

I also don't think our ISPs are in danger of going broke. Comcast has a market cap of $185 billion. Charter has a market cap of $81 billion. Both are about to receive an enormous corporate tax cut that will give them billions more. I think they can foot the bill for more of the infrastructure that our tax dollars helped build.

I think you're missing the point on 10 & 25.

The 10 Mbps you see in that 2013(or 2015?) report was the standard for "broadband" as defined by the FCC (think it was 5 actually). The FCC then changed it to 25 in 2015. So when you look at the 10 Mbps availability, you can see that as 25 Mbps by late 2015 as (almost) everybody in the major ISPs got bumped to it within a few months. I couldn't find more recent public data that was as in depth which is why I linked to it & tried to explain the way to see it.

Also, as I noted earlier about access speeds, that ~15 Mbps bump (from 10 to 25) didn't mean everybody upgraded core networks to support that. Yes, in some cases that was possibly done where it was likely overdue anyway. But that was a small enough bump to make and in most cases, it wouldn't have improved most people's service that were already satisfied with the 10 Mbps tier.

[RainMaker]

Originally Posted by SteveM58

Another positive, which I didn't even bother putting out there because most people think profit is evil, but the more profit ISPs make in non-subscription ways the less your rates go up. You can balk all you want at that but thats how the actual business works. Nobody wants to raise prices more than they have to because of the public reaction it gets from everybody that already knows how much they should pay for something.

They will charge as much as they feel the can. The idea that they make money in other ways and will decide that's enough money for us, let's lower rates is ludicrous.

Originally Posted by SteveM58

You should also consider that a single data point does not tell you the full scope of a service like that. Go read the reasons we aren't #1 in wired speeds again because they are similar enough to apply if you actually want to understand challenges for the US that most of these countries don't have.

I know there have been excuses for decades in why we lag behind the world. Like I said, I have higher expectations for the US. I don't think we should be happy that we're barely ahead of Mexico in mobile speed.

I think we should be trying to figure out how we can achieve the faster speeds at lower costs that other countries have. Instead of just figuring out how we can hand billion dollar companies more profits for their shareholders.

[RainMaker]

Originally Posted by SteveM58

I think you're missing the point on 10 & 25.

The 10 Mbps you see in that 2013(or 2015?) report was the standard for "broadband" as defined by the FCC (think it was 5 actually). The FCC then changed it to 25 in 2015. So when you look at the 10 Mbps availability, you can see that as 25 Mbps by late 2015 as (almost) everybody in the major ISPs got bumped to it within a few months. I couldn't find more recent public data that was as in depth which is why I linked to it & tried to explain the way to see it.

Also, as I noted earlier about access speeds, that ~15 Mbps bump (from 10 to 25) didn't mean everybody upgraded core networks to support that. Yes, in some cases that was possibly done where it was likely overdue anyway. But that was a small enough bump to make and in most cases, it wouldn't have improved most people's service that were already satisfied with the 10 Mbps tier.

It doesn't matter what metric you want to use. Competition is near non-existent. How many people in this country have one option? How many have more than two? These are monopolies.

I'm in the 3rd most populated city in the country. I have one option for high speed internet. Some people in the city who are near the red line have two, but it's a small percent. This isn't rural Wisconsin, it's Chicago.

[SteveM58]

Originally Posted by RainMaker

They will charge as much as they feel the can. The idea that they make money in other ways and will decide that's enough money for us, let's lower rates is ludicrous.

Are you reading whats written or the strawman you want to erect?

Reducing the rate of increase is what I said. Rates will always go up so long as there is inflation & the innovation curve. If you don't like inflation, stop advocating for government intervention in markets (of all kinds, not just telecom).

I know there have been excuses for decades in why we lag behind the world. Like I said, I have higher expectations for the US. I don't think we should be happy that we're barely ahead of Mexico in mobile speed.

I think we should be trying to figure out how we can achieve the faster speeds at lower costs that other countries have. Instead of just figuring out how we can hand billion dollar companies more profits for their shareholders.

Nobody goes by your definition of "higher" because your definition is flawed. I've spent the last 2 pages ironing out for you & bring the same dead cat with no shovel back every time.

If you think its excuse making then you should point out how to improve it. All you've stated is that businesses aren't spending their money where you want them to. Apply for CEO of a telecom then since you clearly think you have the answers.

[molson]

Have things gotten a lost faster for most people the last 5 years or so? Are the rural averages holding down the averages?

I remember thinking the internet was slow in Idaho when I first moved here 11 years ago. I'm at 119 Mpbs on Cable One right, and I pay for the 100 Mpbs "starter" plan. (there is a cap that I never get close too). I think 5 years ago I was around 50. 5 years before that I think it was closer to 10. The area also has CenturLink as an option, it's cheaper and uncapped but about half the speed.

It looks like as a country we're climbing rapidly in broadband speed but sluggish in mobile speed, which I guess makes sense considering how big and rural the U.S. is. I pretty much only have fast mobile in Boise, outside the city it's either slow or non-existent.

[SteveM58]

Originally Posted by RainMaker

It doesn't matter what metric you want to use. Competition is near non-existent. How many people in this country have one option? How many have more than two? These are monopolies.

I'm in the 3rd most populated city in the country. I have one option for high speed internet. Some people in the city who are near the red line have two, but it's a small percent. This isn't rural Wisconsin, it's Chicago.

I can't say specifically why nobody wants to enter your area to compete. Businesses make ROI determinations on these things all the time. Businesses can also be wrong or make mistakes.

Government regulation is not just about what you can or cannot do though and gets very complicated and costly depending on the area. There are a lot of local areas/franchises that force revenue sharing with them in order to serve the franchise area. Other times a franchise area may mandate you have to build to every customer (or some % anyway). So if an ISP sees a franchise and calculates a minimal ROI already when you factor in they won't get 100% take rates, it has a real impact.

Is this Chicago area you're talking about? I don't have a lot of firsthand knowledge of Chicago local laws & regs but maybe you should #1 call the other provider that you don't have. Even if the answer is lame or generic its logged as "demand" in rollup reports (should be Comcast or AT&T), #2 ask your local representatives for an answer as to why they aren't both serving your area, #3 take the answer you get with some healthy skepticism and inquire about the local regs and what type of burden they are to business.

If you've done those things I'd be curious to know what the outcome(s) were.

[SteveM58]

Originally Posted by molson

Have things gotten a lost faster for most people the last 5 years or so? Are the rural averages holding down the averages?

I remember thinking the internet was slow in Idaho when I first moved here 11 years ago. I'm at 119 Mpbs on Cable One right, and I pay for the 100 Mpbs "starter" plan. (there is a cap that I never get close too). I think 5 years ago I was around 50. 5 years before that I think it was closer to 10.

It looks like as a country we're climbing rapidly in broadband speed but sluggish in mobile speed, which I guess makes sense considering how big and rural the U.S. is. I pretty much only have fast mobile in Boise, outside the city it's either slow or non-existent.

Yeah there's a lot of land out there (the rural parts of the country, not just Idaho). I don't know specifically why areas outside of Boise might be slower to grow capacity. Is the wired internet good outside of the city?

Internet access speeds are generally just a nominal measurement of data capacity to the ISP's core in the area and don't tell the full story. ISPs have been raising them across the board the past few years substantially but thats more about PR because of the way people perceive those speeds. The real noticeable upgrades (outside of a really neglected network) are in the core, peering, and improvements in caching/CDN technologies that have reduced the loads and pushed more content to the edge of networks.

People don't usually know (or believe) this...but US ISPs double their throughput capacity every year for the past 10+ years. Every single year.

[RainMaker]

Originally Posted by SteveM58

Are you reading whats written or the strawman you want to erect?

Reducing the rate of increase is what I said. Rates will always go up so long as there is inflation & the innovation curve. If you don't like inflation, stop advocating for government intervention in markets (of all kinds, not just telecom).

You stated that if they made profits in other areas they wouldn't continue to push for maximum profits in their subscriber rates. It's not a strawman to point out that's not how business works and that it's a ludicrous statement. Comcast will charge customers as much as they can get away with regardless of how much money they make in other divisions.

Originally Posted by SteveM58

Nobody goes by your definition of "higher" because your definition is flawed. I've spent the last 2 pages ironing out for you & bring the same dead cat with no shovel back every time.

You haven't ironed out squat. You jump from one position to the next without any consistency. You say wired speed doesn't matter. You say mobile speed doesn't matter. You say price doesn't matter. The only think you've linked to is an Akamai report that shows us finally cracking the top 10 in wired speed.

I mean there's a bunch of excuses. We're too big. We don't rely on our mobile phones so why do we need to be better than Mexico. We don't have cheap enough labor. Fact is that a lot of countries have similar issues to us and get faster, cheaper internet to their citizens.

Originally Posted by SteveM58

If you think its excuse making then you should point out how to improve it. All you've stated is that businesses aren't spending their money where you want them to. Apply for CEO of a telecom then since you clearly think you have the answers.

You can treat it as a utility like the power and gas companies. ISPs had years to compete with each other and decided they did not want to. Monopolies are bad for the public and should be treated that way.

And I'm not blaming the companies. They have a monopoly. Why bother providing a better service if you don't have to? Why offer a cheaper price if you don't have any competition? They're just doing what the market allows them to. I'm not going to buy their propaganda but I don't blame them for doing what they do.

[RainMaker]

Originally Posted by SteveM58

I can't say specifically why nobody wants to enter your area to compete. Businesses make ROI determinations on these things all the time. Businesses can also be wrong or make mistakes.

Because the few major companies we have in this country that offer high speed internet decided not to compete with each other. It's a better business model to cover 50% of the country with no competition than 100% of the country with competition.

Just take a look at what happens to prices, service, speed, and data caps when a competitor enters the market.

[SteveM58]

More dead cats, misunderstandings, & strawmen RM. You could run for political office with your obtuseness.

You have been educated on an industry of which you have little understanding of the technologies, the actual misinformation of access rates, or drivers behind what makes better internet service. And you have been educated on how actual businesses make very costly decisions in a tech field.

In the end, its up to you to overcome your obtuseness & ego. Its all there for you to reflect on if you ever get serious about thinking about the subject & want to engage with actual questions rather than the talking points from propaganda outlets. Have fun with that.

[cuervo72]

I'd boil it down to this. The ISPs want to do away with Net Neutrality because they want more money. Where is that money going to come from? Do they get a bigger share of the internet money pie at the expense of content providers, or do they just make a bigger pie and extract more money from us, the customer? I don't think it's unreasonable for us to fear the latter. After all, that's pretty much the MO of corporations - to extract as much money from the customer/populace as possible.

[RainMaker]

Originally Posted by SteveM58

More dead cats, misunderstandings, & strawmen RM. You could run for political office with your obtuseness.

You have been educated on an industry of which you have little understanding of the technologies, the actual misinformation of access rates, or drivers behind what makes better internet service. And you have been educated on how actual businesses make very costly decisions in a tech field.

In the end, its up to you to overcome your obtuseness & ego. Its all there for you to reflect on if you ever get serious about thinking about the subject & want to engage with actual questions rather than the talking points from propaganda outlets. Have fun with that.

You just say speed, price, and all sorts of other metrics don't matter. That America is in fact really good without providing a single metric as to why we are.

You brag about all the wonderful things going on behind the scenes that the consumer doesn't care about. All the consumer wants is access to high speed internet at an affordable price. They don't get that in this country compared to others.

You say ISPs can't compete with a muni that can afford to take a loss. Then follow it up saying a muni can't possibly provide the same service a major ISP can.

Heck, the thread is about net neutrality and when asked why you are against it, your reason is privacy concerns that has nothing to do with net neutrality.

You've danced for pages now without providing a single reason why any of this is good.

[RainMaker]

Originally Posted by cuervo72

I'd boil it down to this. The ISPs want to do away with Net Neutrality because they want more money. Where is that money going to come from? Do they get a bigger share of the internet money pie at the expense of content providers, or do they just make a bigger pie and extract more money from us, the customer? I don't think it's unreasonable for us to fear the latter. After all, that's pretty much the MO of corporations - to extract as much money from the customer/populace as possible.

They want money from internet companies like Google, Netflix, Facebook and so on. Those companies will pass costs on to the consumer by either running more ads or charging more for their service. The extra money goes into shareholders pockets.

While I think that's bad for consumers, I think the bigger concern is in how it can stifle innovation and increase censorship. If a really innovative new business can't afford the fast lane, how are they supposed to compete with the bigger companies that can? Companies like Google have actually softened their stance on net neutrality for this reason. The beauty of the internet was someone in their garage could create the next big thing.

And of course now you run into censorship issues. Private companies are susceptible to protests and boycotts. Will we see sites blocked that have controversial political opinions? Will sites that criticize the ISP or offer competing services be slowed down?

[SteveM58]

RM I pay $50/mo for 50 Mbps internet. $55 I suppose with tax. It is far and away as much as I practically need.

I don't need a 1 Gbps connection any more than I need 10 or 100 Gbps...and do you know why? Because its more than I, and 99.99% of the population can use currently.

If they gave me a cosmetic bump up to 1 Gbps tomorrow, it wouldn't change the fact that I and 99% of the country don't need an actual gigabit per second. Thats a capacity metric, 1 Mb, 30 Mb, 50 kb, all do not arrive any "faster" even if you have a legitimate 1 Gbps connection. As evidenced by the Akamai report I showed you earlier to highlight what people actually use. Even people in Japan don't actually use the data rate I have on average.

Thats what you aren't getting. You are saying "I want 1 Gbps for $19.99" like a small child angry about not getting their way. Its nonsense.

I have 15 devices in my house, 3-4 of which are constantly streaming youtube, netflix, or a TV app in addition to normal web browisng, online gaming, email, etc. I have no conventional cable TV box so its all streaming when I (or my family) watch something. And I never exceed my 1024 GB cap a month either (though I come close sometimes). An no I dont work for the company that I have internet with, and I'd guess its the same company you have.

I'm sorry you think your internet is unaffordable or terrible. Call your ISP to fix it, send an "Office of the President" email to your ISP if that doesn't work, or contact your local congressman/rep to get their help if that fails.

But you clearly have a religious belief on this dude. Somebody wronged you I guess. My experiences have not been the same.

[RainMaker]

Originally Posted by SteveM58

RM I pay $50/mo for 50 Mbps internet. $55 I suppose with tax. It is far and away as much as I practically need.

And for less than that you can get 1Gbps with no data cap in South Korea. I don't know why someone wants to pay more for less but to each their own.

Originally Posted by SteveM58

I don't need a 1 Gbps connection any more than I need 10 or 100 Gbps...and do you know why? Because its more than I, and 99.99% of the population can use currently.

And people didn't "need" more than dial-up in the 90's. They didn't "need" more than DSL before streaming video hit.

4K is here. Cloud-based security systems are becoming commonplace. You're going to have 50 devices connecting to the internet in a few years. Maybe speed holds up, but your pointless data cap sure won't.

I don't know why you think it's some personal grudge. I don't like paying more for less. I don't like pointless data caps that discourage internet use and innovation. The internet is pretty important.

Still, none of this really has to do with net neutrality which I still haven't really heard a relevant argument against.

[SteveM58]

Originally Posted by cuervo72

I'd boil it down to this. The ISPs want to do away with Net Neutrality because they want more money. Where is that money going to come from? Do they get a bigger share of the internet money pie at the expense of content providers, or do they just make a bigger pie and extract more money from us, the customer? I don't think it's unreasonable for us to fear the latter. After all, that's pretty much the MO of corporations - to extract as much money from the customer/populace as possible.

Its not unreasonable to be concerned about the potential for blocking traffic. And while its not the goal of ISPs to do that, I wouldn't be surprised to see actual legislation at some point addressing that specifically.

The problem ISPs have had with it thus far is that the FCC has essentially been the author & enforcer for net neutrality. And that it also prevents them from using their networks to take online ad revenue away from the likes of Google, Facebook, etc.

The fastlane stuff already exists in the form of caching. Companies like Google, Netflix, amazon, Facebook, etc already embed cahing servers intop ISP datacenters so their content loads as fast as possible (at least the most popular). This is similar to what akamai does for many of the smaller websites & streaming services that want their stuff to be optimized across large areas.

In the end, it likely doesn't change much for consumers for the better or worse if the economy stays up or stable. Where there is some possible benefit is when downturns happen, ISPs have another revenue source to offset the losses elsewhere. Clearly RM (and others to be fair) don't think that ever affects prices positively, and it may not universally, but it certainly has in the past (e.g. video content costs were offset by internet by a lot of companies during the great depression).

And the last thing I'll point out, and this is a hotbutton thing, but the government having less control (and therefore influence/authority) on a company that they could leverage to do all sorts of spying is a good thing in my view. Others will (wrongly) state that they can do this anyway but thats actually not true. They need a warrant to do that, and thats not the same as "I need all the IPs person X has been assigned in the last 30 days". They will try to use strong language (verbally or written) to get an ISP to comply with releasing customer data but they generally cannot legally force you to without a warrant (caveat for a few instances of national security threat possibly...sorry I'm not the lawyer but I talk to lots of them).

As a matter of fact, ISPs have pushed back turning over customer data on people torrenting illegally (whether thats a good or bad thing). Some ISPs caved into the pressure at one time I believe but not all. I actually sided with Apple's stance on customer data as well. Its not something to take lightly when it comes to the guys with guns who are authorized to shoot.

[RainMaker]

Originally Posted by SteveM58

The problem ISPs have had with it thus far is that the FCC has essentially been the author & enforcer for net neutrality. And that it also prevents them from using their networks to take online ad revenue away from the likes of Google, Facebook, etc.

That's not a problem. Why should an ISP profit off someone else's innovation? Why does Comcast deserve a cut of Front Office Football?

Originally Posted by SteveM58

Clearly RM (and others to be fair) don't think that ever affects prices positively, and it may not universally, but it certainly has in the past (e.g. video content costs were offset by internet by a lot of companies during the great depression).

Companies only lower their price when it benefits them. They don't do it out of the goodness of their heart or because another division makes money. If Star Wars does well, Disney isn't going to cut the carrier fees for ESPN.

I don't know why you think a monopoly would lower their prices when they don't have to. Their goal is to make the most money they possibly can.

Originally Posted by SteveM58

And the last thing I'll point out, and this is a hotbutton thing, but the government having less control (and therefore influence/authority) on a company that they could leverage to do all sorts of spying is a good thing in my view. Others will (wrongly) state that they can do this anyway but thats actually not true. They need a warrant to do that, and thats not the same as "I need all the IPs person X has been assigned in the last 30 days". They will try to use strong language (verbally or written) to get an ISP to comply with releasing customer data but they generally cannot legally force you to without a warrant (caveat for a few instances of national security threat possibly...sorry I'm not the lawyer but I talk to lots of them).

Where in the net neutrality regulations did it say ISPs had to turn over customer data without a warrant?

[SteveM58]

Originally Posted by RainMaker

And people didn't "need" more than dial-up in the 90's. They didn't "need" more than DSL before streaming video hit.

4K is here. Cloud-based security systems are becoming commonplace. You're going to have 50 devices connecting to the internet in a few years. Maybe speed holds up, but your pointless data cap sure won't.

I don't know why you think it's some personal grudge. I don't like paying more for less. I don't like pointless data caps that discourage internet use and innovation. The internet is pretty important.

Still, none of this really has to do with net neutrality which I still haven't really heard a relevant argument against.

Why should you as a consumer care? You'd have to be a radical, like an actual capitalist, to care about it. So there probably is not a compelling argument for you.

I happen to be very involved in 4k and AR/VR. You still won't benefit from a cosmetic 1 Gbps for that, though eventually you will of course. I think you're still missing a key point here though...the cosmetic 1 Gbps is still (a) heavily oversubscribed so you & everybody else wouldn't get it even on Google Fiber if you tried simultaneously, (b) you don't have applications needing 1 Gbps yet, and (c) you assume nobody is working towards that because you don't have it now.

The industry is working towards a legit 1 Gbps solution. I can't speak to the precise extent that Japan, Singapore, or anybody else does, but I promise you it is an oversubscribed 1 Gbps connection. They are out there in the US in small pockets but they are not cheap because they are legitimate 1 Gbps, not cosmetic and oversubscribed. Like everything, the cost will continue to come down and the quality will continue to improve.

[RainMaker]

Well as a consumer I don't like paying more for less. I wouldn't like paying $50 for a shitty steak and then having someone say "well it's the same amount of calories as the high quality steak, who cares?".

If I'm getting a $10 steak, I want to pay $10. If I'm getting 50Mbps and a data cap, I want to pay what that's worth in a competitive market.

[cuervo72]

Originally Posted by RainMaker

That's not a problem. Why should an ISP profit off someone else's innovation? Why does Comcast deserve a cut of Front Office Football?

I'm wondering this too. It seems analogous to the USPS wanting the ability to place ad stickers on top of ads in magazines, because lo, without their service the magazines wouldn't get any ad revenue at all!

[RainMaker]

And why it's important for everyone is that if you are paying $70/month for something you need that should be $40/month, you are out $30/month. You are giving $30/month extra to a company that did not earn it.

This is why monopolies and cartels suck. It's not just money taken from consumers, it's money taken from other industries that deserve it. That $30/month could go elsewhere.

[RainMaker]

Originally Posted by cuervo72

I'm wondering this too. It seems analogous to the USPS wanting the ability to place ad stickers on top of ads in magazines, because lo, without their service the magazines wouldn't get any ad revenue at all!

Comcast, TW, Charter, and others had all the resources available to do what Netflix did. They had the resources to build a search engine and social networking site.

They were not talented or innovative enough to do it and now are trying to piggyback on other's to get a cut they don't deserve.

[Warhammer]

Originally Posted by RainMaker

Well as a consumer I don't like paying more for less. I wouldn't like paying $50 for a shitty steak and then having someone say "well it's the same amount of calories as the high quality steak, who cares?".

If I'm getting a $10 steak, I want to pay $10. If I'm getting 50Mbps and a data cap, I want to pay what that's worth in a competitive market.

Since this has passed, have your rates gone up? Since this has been debated for a while, You’d think the ISPs would have been ready for it.

[SteveM58]

Originally Posted by RainMaker

Well as a consumer I don't like paying more for less. I wouldn't like paying $50 for a shitty steak and then having someone say "well it's the same amount of calories as the high quality steak, who cares?".

If I'm getting a $10 steak, I want to pay $10. If I'm getting 50Mbps and a data cap, I want to pay what that's worth in a competitive market.

Gee...with all that profit for a lesser product you'd think a company would come right in and compete for that easy money.

[SteveM58]

Originally Posted by RainMaker

Comcast, TW, Charter, and others had all the resources available to do what Netflix did. They had the resources to build a search engine and social networking site.

They were not talented or innovative enough to do it and now are trying to piggyback on other's to get a cut they don't deserve.

Yeah guess they were busy using the profits from their video businesses to reinvest in that thing called the internet.

[RainMaker]

Originally Posted by SteveM58

Gee...with all that profit for a lesser product you'd think a company would come right in and compete for that easy money.

The reason there is that profit is because there is no competition. They choose not to compete with one another for this very reason.

It's more profitable to cover 50% of the map with no competition than 100% with competition. That is why Charter isn't coming to Chicago.

[RainMaker]

Originally Posted by SteveM58

Yeah guess they were busy using the profits from their video businesses to reinvest in that thing called the internet.

By internet you mean dividends.

[SteveM58]

Originally Posted by RainMaker

The reason there is that profit is because there is no competition. They choose not to compete with one another for this very reason.

It's more profitable to cover 50% of the map with no competition than 100% with competition. That is why Charter isn't coming to Chicago.

Cable vs cable was a losing proposition in the late 90s and early 2000s when telcos began rolling out competitive services as most markets can't support 3 providers all with the same cost structures and overhead roughly. Telcos also did not compete against other telcos for similar reasons (e.g. cable is already there and 3 is a crowd), though they compete like hell on mobile. Not unlike the tech companies compete & cooperate and occasionally have spats.

So you are saying AT&T chooses not to compete with Comcast in a major city? I'd seriously question the local government bullshit there to get a franchise agreement because they compete all over the place and I can tell you they are not cooperative with each other as businesses, outside of opposing the AllVid nonsense pushed by Google. They absolutely compete with each other on every front & see each other as their biggest threat outside of Google & Amazon. Its the reason Comcast is joining with Verizon on mobile.

Hey I'd love for more competition man. I'm absolutely all for it. Its better for consumers, better for workers, and personally I prefer working for smaller companies. But thats just not the business & economic climate. Its unfortunate, and we'll probably disagree on why that is, but I would argue thats for very large factors outside the scope of telecommunications.

[RainMaker]

Originally Posted by SteveM58

So you are saying AT&T chooses not to compete with Comcast in a major city? I'd seriously question the local government bullshit there to get a franchise agreement because they compete all over the place and I can tell you they are not cooperative with each other as businesses, outside of opposing the AllVid nonsense pushed by Google. They absolutely compete with each other on every front & see each other as their biggest threat outside of Google & Amazon. Its the reason Comcast is joining with Verizon on mobile.

They literally said they don't compete with each other at the TWC-Comcast hearings. Don't you think there was a reason that the two biggest ISPs in the country didn't overlap anywhere?

Their biggest threat is cord-cutters killing off half their business model. It's why they've been so adamant about removing net neutrality. With young people about to kill off half their business model, they need to make up for it somewhere else. And since they aren't particularly innovative companies, they now have to extort or hijack it from others.

[SteveM58]

Originally Posted by RainMaker

They literally said they don't compete with each other at the TWC-Comcast hearings. Don't you think there was a reason that the two biggest ISPs in the country didn't overlap anywhere?

TWC and Comcast didn't compete, sure. But Comcast competes with AT&T in a lot of markets. Jacksonville, San Fran, parts of Texas, and Chicago are right off the top of my head. Probably some areas in the New England areas and a few others I'm sure I'm forgetting.

Their biggest threat is cord-cutters killing off half their business model. It's why they've been so adamant about removing net neutrality. With young people about to kill off half their business model, they need to make up for it somewhere else. And since they aren't particularly innovative companies, they now have to extort or hijack it from others.

Nah, cord cutters aren't a problem so much. I mean its an inconvenience but thats a normal market change that you adapt to.

If they wanted to screw with online video they have NBC, which is a co-owner of Hulu, which has more weight in the online video space. Not having the NBC suite of content is big hole in a competitive offering.

Their real competitor, outside of AT&T (who is still in the acquisition of Time Warner Inc), is Disney. With Disney buying Fox assets thats a big content merge as content is still king. And having control of it is the best way to protect your distribution. Not blocking sites. Thats bad business & the quickest path to Title II classification. They know that.

If anything, you'll see a lot more zero-rating stuff. Thats where they don't count content against your cap (in exchange for payment by a content owner typically). TMobile does this with Netflix as does AT&T with HBO already. More of that, more caching, but not fastlanes unless you consider caching to be a fastlane (some people do), but that already exists.

[RainMaker]

Originally Posted by SteveM58

TWC and Comcast didn't compete, sure. But Comcast competes with AT&T in a lot of markets. Jacksonville, San Fran, parts of Texas, and Chicago are right off the top of my head. Probably some areas in the New England areas and a few others I'm sure I'm forgetting.

You keep saying they compete but the numbers don't lie. 63% of the country has 0 or 1 provider available. 28% of the country has two. Only 9% has 3 or more options available.

When over half the country has 0 or 1 option available, it's pretty clear there isn't much effort being put into competing with one another.

Originally Posted by SteveM58

Nah, cord cutters aren't a problem so much. I mean its an inconvenience but thats a normal market change that you adapt to.

If they wanted to screw with online video they have NBC, which is a co-owner of Hulu, which has more weight in the online video space. Not having the NBC suite of content is big hole in a competitive offering.

Their real competitor, outside of AT&T (who is still in the acquisition of Time Warner Inc), is Disney. With Disney buying Fox assets thats a big content merge as content is still king. And having control of it is the best way to protect your distribution. Not blocking sites. Thats bad business & the quickest path to Title II classification. They know that.

If anything, you'll see a lot more zero-rating stuff. Thats where they don't count content against your cap (in exchange for payment by a content owner typically). TMobile does this with Netflix as does AT&T with HBO already. More of that, more caching, but not fastlanes unless you consider caching to be a fastlane (some people do), but that already exists.

I think you're underestimating how much money cable TV brought in for these companies. The addition of data caps was a direct shot at cord cutters and a sign of their concern. If they didn't care about cord cutters, they wouldn't try to fuck them over for using Sling instead.

As for video, Hulu is still losing money with no end in sight. Streampix flopped. Netflix has such a huge headstart in the space and Amazon can use their streaming as a loss leader.

I agree that we're unlikely to see blocking of mainstream sites. They'll continue to hold sites hostage like they did with Netflix a few years ago unless they pony up.

Their play is likely going to be with data caps. Certain services that pay won't count against. It gives an unfair advantage and will stymie innovation but I'm not sure what you can do if they have a monopoly in the area. Sucks for the consumer but at this point we get what we deserve for letting it happen.

[RainMaker]

And my other concern will be with censorship. We're starting to see politically motivated groups target advertisers of shows/websites/etc these days. We're seeing them target people on social media to get them banned. That's fine because there is competition online.

Now what happens when those mobs move toward the ISP. Let's say some political commentator says something terrible that offends people. Will ISPs bow to pressure from these mobs like TV networks and social media sites do? Will they block a site when we see things like "Comcast supports XXXXXXX" from angry politically motivated people?

Is it far fetched to think an ISP might block an anti-mormon site for it's Utah customers if enough people complain? What about a sensitive financial leak that uncovers crimes but also doxxes people (Panama Papers for instance)? What about extremely violent videos to "protect the kids"?

ISPs had an out when it came to content before. Now they get to be the content police. And when you're trying to sell overpriced internet packages to suburban families, you can't be seen as a company that let's your kid watch beheading videos with a few clicks.

I know they say they won't police content, but many companies have said that before. Reddit was going to be a bastion of free speech until it wasn't. Jack Dorsey proclaimed Twitter was "for freedom of expression and speaking truth to power" until it wasn't. Policing content online is an unwinnable war and when the one doing it now has a monopoly, it makes it even trickier.