Can the US Actually Cultivate Local Competition in Broadband? 135
New submitter riskkeyesq writes with a link to a blog post from Dane Jasper, CEO of Sonic.net, about what Jasper sees as the deepest problem in the U.S. broadband market and the Internet in general:
"There are a number of threats to the Internet as a system for innovation, commerce and education today. They include net neutrality, the price of Internet access in America, performance, rural availability and privacy. But none of these are the root issue, they're just symptoms. The root cause of all of these symptoms is a disease: a lack of competition for consumer Internet access." Soft landings for former legislators, lobbyists disguised as regulators, hundreds of thousands of miles of fiber sitting unused, the sham that is the internet provider free market is keeping the US in a telecommunications third-world. What, exactly, can American citizens do about it?
One upshot, in Jasper's opinion (hardly disinterested, is his role at CEO at an ISP that draws praise from the EFF for its privacy policies) is this: "Today’s FCC should return to the roots of the Telecom Act, and reinforce the unbundling requirements, assuring that they are again technology neutral. This will create an investment ladder to facilities for competitive carriers, opening access to build out and serve areas that are beyond our reach today."
Bennett is the plan with all the ideas! (Score:1, Funny)
What does Bennett Haselton think about this? I can't form an opinion until he weighs in. He's a frequent contributor.
Split Comcast in two (Score:5, Interesting)
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Take yer dirty communism some where else! *cocks shotgun*
-Average Tea Party dipshit
Re:Split Comcast in two (Score:5, Insightful)
That may be only a temporary solution. Remember Ma Bell? split up into AT& for long distance and regional 'baby Bells'. The regional companies eventually all morphed back together again, like the liquid-metal terminator. Long-distance rates dropped because companies like Sprint & MCI were allowed to sell services over AT&T's wires (AT&T was forced to allow this). Now we don't quite have a situation of a total monopoly, but it's clear that there's not enough competition, especially at the local level--the service maps are basically gerrymandered districts.
Nothing is permanent. The breakup of Ma Bell did allow for exciting technology such as 2400 baud modems and telephones that had features. It's unclear if the Internet as we know it would exist today if Ma Bell were still alive. Now that the Bell System /SBC has reincarnated itself in AT&T / Verizon it's unclear if the Internet can continue as we know it for much longer.
So I would agree with the the premise of Mr. Jasper - we have to cut the head off the new Zombie before it completely engulfs us. If successful (which I rather doubt), it may set the monster back another decade or two but it will always be there. Under the bed. Hungry. Waiting.
Re:Split Comcast in two (Score:4, Interesting)
Nothing is permanent? You're right, and it shouldn't be. Time is money - those years after the breakup were worth it. Now do it again.
My local internet options are Terrible vs Atrocious. Competition is a decade late. Time matters. Now or never!
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prove it
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And yet we have a KENYAN in the oval office. Lmfao, at least Arnie is honest about where he was born.
[citation needed]
Sorry, I know that "citation" is a big word to Tea Party types. No, it's not the thing you get for speeding.
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You mean birther types. There are plenty or Tea Party types who do not challenge his birth- which is a premise originating from democrats.
This difference is significant unless your goal is to make shit up that you know little about and hope it sticks. Perhaps you are just the ignorant target of someone like that.
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Ted Nugent? He was a draft dodger too btw.
Re: Split Comcast in two (Score:2, Insightful)
This. In all markets, the biggest players almost always win. Not the best. Sooner or later some company starts buying the competitors instead of actually competing. That's when the system fails and the products or services degrade. By then, the company is so big that its focus shifts into changing legislation in its favor becomes more interesting than to innovate. What mechanisms exist to stop this except the extremely weak monopoly laws?
Re: Split Comcast in two (Score:4, Informative)
This is only practical where there are local or regional monopolies MANDATED by local governments. Cities, towns and counties have allowed, even encouraged, sweetheart deals between the regulators and the regulated. Eliminate cable and telephone monopoly powers, and allow other players into the market, and we might get internet service that's as good as South Korea's.
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The is only possible if the hardware layer is separated from the rest of the business. The hardware layer is a natural monopoly, in the same way that water pipes are. The ISPs have created monopolies by packaging the hardware layer together with the communication services. They MUST be separated. Even wireless has it's limits, though cellular can get to pretty small cells in dense populations. But that's a part of the hardware layer, as are cable and fiber (and for that matter flocks of pidgeons).
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The is only possible if the hardware layer is separated from the rest of the business.
A lot of people don't know this, but that's why "Ma Bell" was broken up, way back when. In order to hold onto their position as a regulated monopoly, they had been enjoined by Federal court from participating in the hardware business. But for 20 years, they got away with controlling telephone hardware via their wholly-owned subsidiary Western Electric. Nobody could compete in the phone hardware business because Ma Bell made you have one of their techs install a "compatibility box" on the wall wherever one w
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Telecommunication like any last mile utility service is a natural monopoly. The infrastructure build out costs are so much and the pay off time so long that competition is naturally discouraged. Not only that but the first person in the market can put such heavy economic pressure on an over-builder that it is almost impossible to get investment money to do so.
Ma-Bell was broke up about 30 year ago, the baby bells were encouraged to enter each others markets. In that time with free reign to do so how many o
Already was split geographically, local monopoly f (Score:2)
Your first sentence somewhat saves the post from your subject line. It should be remembered that Comcast already was split up. Last year, half the company was called Time Warner. Comcast has bought lots of cable operators and they sucked when they were seperate. They sucked because they could - each little company had a government franchise over a particular area, an enforced monopoly ensuring no competition. If they were split like the baby Bells were formed from ma Bell, we'd have exactly the same s
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This is true, but even at half the cost it still takes a *lot* of capital.
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First things first, assets purchased with tax dollars should belong to the citizens. Municipal governments should manage access to taxpayer-funded infrastructure, and it's a little late to worry about socialism because the fiber sitting unused was bought an
Agreed, agreed, tried that - didn't work (Score:2)
> Telecoms should never have been given both tax dollars to build infrastructure and ownership of that infrastructure.
Absolutely agreed. The extent to which that has occurred has been VASTLY overstated by people with a particular political agenda, but most people can agree it did happen to some extent and it shouldn't have.
> it's a little late to worry about socialism because the fiber sitting unused was bought and paid for by the people as it is.
It's not too late. You _can_ have politicians trying to
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Separate the ownership of the infrastructure (fibers, wires) and the ownership of the service providing regardless of area/company.
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Separate the ownership of the infrastructure (fibers, wires) and the ownership of the service providing regardless of area/company.
Yep. Make the infrastructure a public utility. That is the only solution that makes sense in a market where a natural monopoly exists. With a truly robust infrastructure in place, true competition can exist, on a level playing field. Of course, the so called "conservatives" will resist this at every turn, because they don't really believe in free markets, they just like to give lip service to it because it sells votes in Tea Party land like nobody's business.
That worked out well for AT&T (Score:2)
Re:That worked out well for AT&T (Score:5, Informative)
AT&T did not buy everything back up. In fact, AT&T lost it all. AT&T is gone.
It was the baby bells that merged, most aggressive was Southwestern Bell Corporation (SBC) which picked up the completely failing AT&T in 2005 and took over its name.
AT&T is dead. Long live AT&T.
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Re: Split Comcast in two (Score:3)
No, require them (and all other fixed broadband access network operators) to wholesale their access network at regulated prices.
Many countries which have access network monopolies (e.g. UK where BT is almost the only provider of access lines) follow this approach.
If you allow competition over the existing infrastructure, you won't have to regulate the service providers, the market will.
I thouhht America was the land of the capitalists (where competition can result in better products and services as long as
Re: Split Comcast in two (Score:1)
For more info UK regulators officially mock US over ISP âoecompetitionâ [arstechnica.com]
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I just brought in WOW for my personal experience. If this goes well, I will also consider WOW for my business environment.
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better yet... split comcast, TW and any cable based ISP into two. One is the ISP, the other is the infrastructure company. The infrastructure company sells access tot he ISP and now we have a company that has an incentive to sell access to multiple ISPs and upgrade/properly maintain interconnects.
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Give both access to their current cable network. Watch service improve and prices drop.
This might work. I live in an area where we only had Comcast and the speeds were 10mbps up and 5mbps down with a price around $55 or $99 with triple play package per month. You never received anything close to those speeds and at certain times the service was unusable. Three years ago Verizon FIOS came to the area and we signed up right away to service of 25mbps up and 15mbps down for less than Comcast was charging $89 per month with the triple play package and less fees. Now our rates have not gone up with
Split last-mile from ISP (Score:5, Interesting)
Competition in the last-mile is infeasable, but connecting customers at a CO to the internet is a much more competition-friendly possibility.
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legally, Comcast and AT&T are already utilities. We do need competition in the last mile, and there are ways to do that for most areas including mobile broadband
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Yes, talking about making more competition in that space for Verizon outside the big players
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The entire pipe should be public works, like the interstate and any other public infrastructure. The service providers can compete for management positions.
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I don't know about where you live but in my area the public transportation infrastructure managers (City Works, County Road Commissions and State Transportation) are under quite a bit of fire for mismanagement, waste and failing infrastructure. They recently blew well over $300k to extend a turn lane a few hundred feet that no one seems to see as necessary. A bridge replacement (which probably only requires a culvert anyways) was delayed to do an idiotic study on rerouting a minor creek, they decided it w
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I don't know about where you live but in my area the public transportation infrastructure managers (City Works, County Road Commissions and State Transportation) are under quite a bit of fire for mismanagement, waste and failing infrastructure.
Where I live, the public transportation infrastructure managers are so good, they proactively solve problems with the roads while they're still developing, instead of waiting around for a failure or serious damage to accumulate.
For instance, they've spent the past several years converting a stretch of road with grade access into a limited access highway. This required putting in a slew of new bridges (which have been done for some time now). The new bridge I use every day started to suffer subsistence adj
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Of course if word gets out, they may have a late night visit by their counterparts from other states to discuss their recent "performance issues".
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Purely a reflection of the peoples' favorite candidates. As long as no one has a gun to their heads during election season, the solution seems obvious to me.. There's not much else to say. I see no sense in trying to overcomplicate things. Majority rule is the game of choice, and the rules are simple.
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There are times when it might be necessary to just grab somebody and put them in the seat, and tell him all he has to do is sign procurement papers for the next couple of years.
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Competition in the last mile was necessary (past tense). When Cable Internet was first rolling out, it wasn't at all obvious what was the best way to do it. Cable TV is easy - you transmit a bunch of signals over a wire, and each house taps into it. It's basically broadcast over wires. But with cable Internet, you have to be able to transmit different signals to each house, and each house also needs to be able to send signals back along the same wire. You've n
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That's what worked for DSL with the 1996 telecommunications act. The physical logistics of copper telephone wires worked out well for that. Just a cross connect to the competitor's DSLAM (Digital Service Line Access Multiplexor) which occupied space in the CO. It only really worked though, when the rates for the last mile were fixed at low rates.
I'd be very interested to know how the logistics of doing something like that for Cable could work out.
I don't have a clear idea of the equipment at the cable compa
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Make all ISPs common carriers... (Score:1)
AND unbundle services.
Let the competition be local.
What, exactly, can What, exactly, can do about it? (Score:1)
Don't you mean what could have American citizens done about it? The answer was right in front of their noses. It's not complicated people.. You're only confusing yourselves with all your silly philosophies.
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RE: Subject line
Don't ask... It's a mystery to me too..
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I don't care who does it. It just has to be done, and if somebody has to step because the locals won't handle it, all the better. Screw the complainers.
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I don't care who does it. It just has to be done, and if somebody has to step because the locals won't handle it, all the better.
Going to be rude here because you deserve it. You are the fucking locals.
What you are saying is that you wont fucking handle it, so someone else better handle it for you, and you dont care one bit who gets hurt in the process of you not handling your own shit.
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Okay, if you prefer, I can kill off the yahoos that vote against me. So, should I form up a militia to battle the corrupt sheriff so I can bury some internet tubing on my street? Personally I wouldn't care for the resulting property damage. If some bigger muscle can come in to keep the peace, then that's what should be done. In the same fashion of the "War of Northern Aggression". The lawyers have no place here... I'm not interested in infantile philosophizing by a bunch of crazy baldheads that are only ste
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And how exactly are you going to have more sway than a couple of multi-billion dollar conglomerates?
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"Small government" is really just code word for "the government should only get involved for the issue I want them involved in". It's why the "small government" people see no irony in the government getting involved in regulating marriage, people's health care choices, what substances they can put in their body, etc.
It's the same as "judicial activism". For the right, "judicial activism" is just code for "decision I don't agree with". Now when the the court strikes down or re-interprets laws in the way they
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What stops you from competing with an ISP in the last mile? You could do it right now..open your own competing cable internet/copper wire internet/fiber internet provider to the premises.... except of course that's currently illegal in most parts of the U.S.
Last mile is not a natural monopoly... if it was, the government wouldn't have to make it illegal to try, people just wouldn't be willing to waste their money trying without any possibility of success.
Are there first mover advantages in many of the last
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Competition doesn't magically solve everything - that's why there should be both competition and legally defined minimum standards.
Compare it to food safety. Back before there was an FDA, food companies would often sell unsafe and even deadly food, because it was profitable to do so. And competition didn't stop them. What was effective is laws making it illegal to use unsafe practices in food production, combined with audits and penalties. And competition serves to improve things above that level, so that s
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Last mile is not a natural monopoly...
Yes, it is. Unregulated last mile wiring looks like this [ggpht.com]. It's a "natural monopoly" because the alternative is a dangerous, unmaintainable eyesore.
Yes, I know, a happy medium is at least theoretically possible, but in practice it's still subject to human nature. The correct solution is for the city to install full height concrete cable tunnels everywhere, with trays along the walls, and lease out space in the trays to all comers, including power companies. But despite the fact that humans will always wa
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Except of course, as best as I can tell, your image appears to be from India, where the companies responsible for those poles are chosen as regional monopolies heavily regulated by the government. That short of undercuts your argument....
I agree that a co-op is a decent middle ground, especially in rural areas where the residents may be more interested in the ser
3 tier separation (Score:5, Interesting)
You either:
- own the cables.
- provide internet access to consumers.
- sell content.
exclusively. No combinations allowed.
No, but yes (Score:4, Interesting)
Due to a well known law of headlines I'd reply No, but if you copy Europe the answer will be Yes. In this case Europe has the advantage of a fragmented market. Different countries, different languages, different operators and different regulations led to competition. No pan-European monopolist.
I don't know if this is widespread (I think it is) but where I live (Italy) unbundling is mandatory and we have new operators using the cables of the former monopolist. In some areas the former monopolist is using the cables of newer companies. There are at least three different fiber networks, unfortunately not particularly fast. 100 Mb/s download and 10 Mb/s upload is the norm for fiber (ADSL goes up to 20 or 30 Mbps with the usual caveats of that technology). I got the feeling that the operators agreed to settle on that and save some money. Fiber was at 10/10 Mb/s 14 years ago. Competiion is never enough.
So, I don't recommend breaking up the US and switching to lots of different languages :-) but maybe you might break down your monopolists, create operators at state level and force unbundling. I read what happened to the Baby Bells and it seems that it worked well for a while. Do it again and by 2020 you'll evaluate what happened and adapt the legislation.
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Due to a well known law of headlines I'd reply No, but if you copy Europe the answer will be Yes. In this case Europe has the advantage of a fragmented market. Different countries, different languages, different operators and different regulations led to competition. No pan-European monopolist.
That would still fail to explain why they're actually competing with each other and not just segmenting the market, like mini-monopolies. A key point is that many European copper networks are leftovers from government monopolies and so they've been forced to provide access to other companies that want to deliver phone/xDSL service at regulated prices. That has also lead to competitive prices from cable that is a mostly equivalent technology. That is changing considerably with fiber networks, which is genera
Ideal gas vs Perfect gas vs Real gas (Score:4, Interesting)
Same way the ideal gas situation of FCC doing its stuff and the invisible hand of the free market doing its stuff and presto you got fantastic internet speed at the low low price of 9.99$ a month. The real gas situation is, all these companies raking money hand over fist lobby the politicians, the FCC, create misinformation campaign and they continue to exploit their customer base. Pressure builds till some disruptive technology comes in, cherry picks the customers and they leave in droves.
One possibility: It could be cell phone companies stringing up fiber up to street corner pillar boxes, and do the last 100 yards over the air with WiFi or a femto-cell network or something. The only true advantage the cable/phone ISPs have is the actual wire to different parts of the home via cat5 cable. But most homes use a router and use WiFi anyway. Someone could run fiber up to street corner pillar boxes, install a WiFi router per customer and cherry pick lots of customers who don't need more than a few WiFi devices. Wireless in the loop is quite well known and is actually deployed in many parts of India and Africa. My old prof Ashok [wikipedia.org] has been talking about it for a long time.
But there could be other such technologies that peel of some serious segments of the captive market of the cable giants. Cable giants too would not sit idle. They would be the first to spot the threat and possibly buy these companies, or adjust their prices in different markets to keep these dogs chomping at their heels just out of reach. Somehow or the other, where such technologies are viable prices would come down. Where it is not viable, the customers would be at the mercy of these corporations
FedEx and UPS are not serving 80% of the country (by area, probably 10% by population). But at least they get US Postal Service. But the current generation of ISPs are suing to make sure government does not provide an alternative even to the market they don't want to serve.
Don't know where you live (Score:2)
The problem with relying on Fiber to save us is the same one we have with Oil & Gas right now. By the time competition is viable we're already paying so much that it impacts our overall Standard of Living ($4/gallon gas anyone?); and by then the monopolists have such massive war chests they can start off a price war the newbies can't hope to win ($2.50/gallon gas anyone?).
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One possibility: It could be cell phone companies stringing up fiber up to street corner pillar boxes, and do the last 100 yards over the air with WiFi or a femto-cell network or something.
Here's the problem with that story: the cell phone companies can't string the fiber, the telcos have the monopoly on doing that, and anywhere they don't, the cable companies do — or the two of 'em split a monopoly on running fiber.
What we really need is a mesh network that lets the endpoints be the carrier fabric, acting as repeaters for one another. But we aren't going to get it from the cellphone companies, because they are nothing without centralization. We're going to have to build it ourselves, a
Make providers publish their prices. (Score:2)
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The fundamental problem is that they're over-billing, the problem is that they've got a monopoly on a utility, generally with extremely weak oversight. So, as happens for hundreds of years, they use their control to extract money from everyone else. That's why it's a terrible idea to run utilities as unregulated, for-profit corporations. That's why whenever monopoly utilities are deregulated the prices go up while quality of service goes down. Competition only works if there is real competition.
Can government solve government problems? (Score:5, Interesting)
Legally, only one ILEC is allowed to run copper pairs to my property. They have no interested in upgrading their plant.
They have a protected monopoly.
In many jurisdictions, only one cable company can put coax in the ground.
They have a protected monopoly.
IP protections, like copyright, are a government protected monopoly.
Frequency allocations, overseen by the FCC, are a government protected monopoly.
Access Easements on private property for incumbent wire owners (e.g. the cable company can put a truck or a box on your property if they like) are a government grant of special privilege.
Given all of the government collusion with the current infrastructure, asking if government can address its own problems seems a bit silly. Of course it could. It could stop enabling all of the stuff it currently enables, for one.
If you try to factor the residential broadband problem into an OSI-type layer model, perhaps what makes sense is to limit vertical integration.
E.g. if there is physical plant, IP transit, content delivery, and content production, it would be problematic to allow, for instance, SONY, to own all 4 of those layers in some specific area.
Ideally there would be robust competition at each layer.
Another action the government could take would be to stop approving merger/consolidation deals that have the net effect of consolidating layers and/or markets in such a way that overall marketplace competition suffers.
In some communities, public utility ownership of layer 1 (physical plant) would make a lot of sense and would be voter supported. In others, it wouldn't, and wouldn't. Both models are worth trying.
As you go up the stack, there are lots of opportunities for different business models. Community owned IP transit? Why not? This is, in some regards, the case at current internet peering points. The members co-own the exchanges. It is in some respects like the agricultural co-ops that are so common in rural America - the land of rugged individualists.
People are, after all, not opposed to working in groups when they like the group and when the cooperation makes sense (as opposed to being coercive in nature)
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Frequency allocations, overseen by the FCC, are a government protected monopoly.
Frequency competition has the most clear natural limits on competition of any of the carriage technologies you mention, but they exist for all of them. If more than one carrier uses the same slice of spectrum, they all degrade. Laissez-faire does a horrible job of maximizing production with wireless spectrum. Easements for wires and the natural barrier to entry of sinking new cables create a similar problem with wired carriage.
T
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Why does Verizon have the right to saturate my property with 700mhz energy?
I didn't sell that to them.
If they want to shoot 700mhz energy across (and through!) my house, why don't they have to buy rights to that? If they are preventing me from being able to do anything in my own home with 700mhz because of their harmful emissions, why don't I have any recourse against them?
Nobody would let me park across the street from your house and shine lasers or even flashlights into your windows.
Why is Verizon given
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An ILEC is a local telephone company. Non-ILECs have no such requirement.
Also, what do you expect in North Dakota? We shouldn't make laws for everyone based on conditions in North Dakota.
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My ILEC is CenturyLink, a national company. The neighboring ILEC is actually a locally owned company that is much smaller and is providing much better service.
The point is, even if I wanted wired IP service from a competing ISP, that's not possible because the ILEC owns the copper to my property and the ILEC cannot provide L2 connectivity over its existing infrastructure, and has no plans to upgrade that infrastructure.
Meanwhile, a neighboring, locally owned ILEC is running FTTH to its rural customers...
I
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You can expect some disadvantages from living in North Dakota.
One actual advantage is that you have elected government beholden to a small number of people. If you can get a few neighbors together, you can probably get a meeting with your local officials who deal with CenturyLink. Get them to pressure CenturyLink to do upgrades or to find an alternate solution for you. You might actually get part of what you want if you work at it a little.
Meanwhile, in japan (Score:1)
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I am near the edge of my ILEC's territory. If I wanted a different ILEC from a neighboring territory to be able to provide service at my address, I would need to petition for the two ILECs in question to agree to "hand me off" from the current ILEC to a different one.
This comes directly from the state public service commission in my state (North Dakota).
Easy (Score:5, Interesting)
STOP GIVING OUT CABLE MONOPOLIES.
That's really all you have to do. There is no competition in most markets because competition is banned by government decree.
I live in a town with two cable companies. Actually, I live 5 miles out of town. Both cable companies have fiber optic networks here, both have great customer service, high speeds, low prices, etc.
The city I lived in previously had granted a monopoly to Charter. Charter has a coax network, lousy customer service, low speeds, high prices, etc.
Cable + DSL is not a meaningful competition, so having 2 monopolies is not the way to go. Stop granting cable monopolies and you will have competition.
P.S. Both companies have fully developed fiber networks in the ground (and on poles in some places) so don't try claiming that the monopoly is necessary for physical reasons. It isn't.
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Uh... no (Score:5, Insightful)
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My town's politicians were bought out by the cable monopoly in the Chicago suburbs and those towns whose politicians didn't sell out got the same fiber network built throughout just like everyone else. We have to pay higher prices here, because there's a guaranteed monopoly granted by corrupt politicians.
There is no black and white choice of monopolies or socialism, we just need to pass better laws to prevent monopolies we have, because capitalism doesn't work without protection from monopolies. Monopolies
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. It was too expensive to build out the infrastructure w/o a guaranteed profit
Complete bullshit, multiple levels of ignorance.
First level: It was not too expensive to build out the infrastructure without guaranteed profits because there are plenty of fucking places that didnt grant guaranteed profits but still got cable companies that wanted in You are basically lying right now. You are saying something thats not true in order to justify an argument that doesnt have true justifications that you can easily sell to us.
Second level: Businesses that have guaranteed profits are not p
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Do you think some enterprising company will run cable to the sticks because they think it's going to be worthwhile?
If not, should taxpayers subsidise development of those areas somehow?
If not, should we
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Bullshit. "We" gave out cable monopolies because even 50+ years ago "our" politicians were bought and paid for by the cable companies, they just cared more about hiding it back then.
If th
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"The city I lived in previously had granted a monopoly to Charter."
Um, no they didn't. Or at least, haven't had a legal monopoly at all recently. That's been illegal by Federal law since the Telecommunications Act of 1996.
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"The city I lived in previously had granted a monopoly to Charter."
Um, no they didn't. Or at least, haven't had a legal monopoly at all recently. That's been illegal by Federal law since the Telecommunications Act of 1996.
I think what GP means is that the local government (as happens in most of the US) granted a local franchise, which gives Charter preferential access to rights-of-way in exchange for [something]. That something might be agreeing to wire the whole city or it it might be paying off the politicians or it might be something else. As for "monopolies" being illegal, enforcement has been quite spotty -- but that doesn't advance your argument, so you ignored it.
No (Score:2)
What is with this "my city" or "my town"? (Score:2)
I see this all the time in submissions on Slashdot, when people talk about personal experience with ISPs in their local areas. Few people want to mention *where the hell they are* when they comment. Why are so many people afraid to mention where they are from? Post anonymously if you're so afraid of being identified, but without a location, your story is far, FAR less useful!
If we knew what city you are talking about, we'd be able to find out more information about what happened and how the citizenry ove
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I completely agree (Score:3)
Self-competition (Score:2)
The easiest way to increase competition in monopolistic settings is to encourage/enforce self-competition. Who is Microsoft's most difficult competition? Previous versions of its own software! Similarly, if net neutrality unhappily fails, then ISP have to offer both plans with audited kickback differences only affecting pricing.
Net neutrality is misunderstood by both sides. There is no "fast lane" -- everything travels as fast as possible. The only way ICS to implement a non-neutral net is to buffer/dr
USA - Last Concern for Oligarchs (Score:1)
What do you expect from US oligarchs and corporate executives?
They vacation together with Russian oligarchs and Saudi families. Kids go to the same Swiss schools.
Do you think they give damn about rural America and availability of broadband?
Competition gets sued (Score:2)
Local Competition in Broadband - Never happen (Score:1)
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But its not just Congress. We have the laws [wikipedia.org] in place to thow these bums in prison. What we don't have is law enforcement and prosecutors wiling to make a case [wikipedia.org].
We need to bring charges against the DoJ for turning a blind eye toward these sorts of activities and maybe throw a few of these people in their own prisons for refusing to uphold the Constitution and the law of the land. Perhaps then we'd get some movement on thes issues. But we have to ask permission from the government to bring charges against it.
OLDarg: Fibre to the Belly again (Score:2)
Follow GOOG, if they can't embrace, extend and deploy broadband beyond testbed, realworld deployment in very select environments? Who thinks they are smarter, richer and better positioned to profit on fibre to the belly.
It is very easy. (Score:2)
Interstate commerce clause on communications networks allowing small operators to run their own cable to someone's door with ONLY vital regulation and AT COST taxes.
That is, they should only have to deal with regulation that is actually needed. Basic common sense stuff that is obvious. Short of that... none.
As to the taxes, they should only have to pay their share of REASONABLE expenses the cities go through to provide them conduit/pole space for their cables. Those expenses must not exceed costs and those
The Answer is "No". (Score:1)
No, US cannot.
Not because there are no ways to do it.. there are plenty. It's a pure corruption issue. There is no political will to do *anything* to reign in the abuses of the corporate oligarchy. None. Because 99% of people in politics are completely bought and paid for by the giant corporations that make up that oligarchy. It's pointless and stupid to even ask the question.
Our "political leadership" does as it is bidden by their corporate masters, and pay no attention to what is best for the population.
Re: (Score:2)
Write to your city government and ask why they continue to sign these exclusive deals...
I suspect the answer will be "without the exclusive deal Comcast has said it wont invest into its network" (which is probably true)