FCC Seeks To Increase ISP Competition In Apartment Buildings (arstechnica.com) 67
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Exclusive deals between broadband providers and landlords have long been a problem for Internet users, despite rules that are supposed to prevent or at least limit such arrangements. The Federal Communications Commission is starting to ask questions about whether it can do more to stop deals that impede broadband competition inside apartment and condominium buildings. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai yesterday released a draft Notice of Inquiry (NOI) that seeks public comment "on ways to facilitate greater consumer choice and to enhance broadband deployment in multiple tenant environments (MTEs)." The commission is scheduled to vote on the NOI at its June 22 meeting, and it would then take public comments before deciding whether to issue new rules or take any other action. The NOI discusses preempting local rules "that may expressly prohibit or have the effect of prohibiting the provision of telecommunications services" in multi-unit buildings. But one San Francisco regulation that could be preempted was designed to boost competition by expanding access to wires inside buildings. It's too early to tell whether the FCC really wants to preempt any state or city rules or what authority the FCC would use to do so. The NOI could also lead to an expansion of FCC rules, as it seeks comment on whether the commission should impose new restrictions on exclusive marketing and bulk billing arrangements between companies and building owners. The NOI further seeks comment on how "revenue sharing agreements and exclusive wiring arrangements between MTE owners and broadband providers may affect broadband competition" and "other contractual provisions and non-contractual practices that may impact the ability of broadband providers to compete in MTEs." The NOI also asks whether the commission should encourage cities and states to adopt model codes that promote competition in multi-unit buildings, and the document asks what practices those model codes should prohibit or mandate.
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Who do you think has more money to throw around up on The Hill? The telcos, or the landlords? Isn't it technically illegal for the landlord to be getting a kickback for granting exclusive use, anyway? So, in theory, they'd have nothing to lose, anyway?
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Unfortunately that comes down to local zoning regulations which has nothing to do with the FCC.
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No, my parents building in Burlington charges an extra 15/mo to every tenant that wants internet, but it's unlimited. Not sure which company they're with think it's a local.
Damn good deal, though you can't get it any other way if you live there unless you're using your phone data or satellite.
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I'm guessing Verizon hasn't been doing as well as other ISPs at making shady backroom deals with landlords.
FCC Seeks To Increase ISP Competition In Cities (Score:5, Interesting)
The headline you will never see.
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Agreed. Or competition anywhere. Where I live (dense neighborhood) there are only two choices... local cable or DSL... where DSL is only available if you purchase a commercial business account. This is what happens when your utilities are underground.
Irony?
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/04/one-broadband-choice-counts-as-competition-in-new-fcc-proposal/
Re:FCC Seeks To Increase ISP Competition In Cities (Score:5, Insightful)
You really need to figure out if your state public utility commission or some local body is preventing competition.
I live in a semi-rural area outside of a small town. (town is ~2500 pop year-round, 2x 15k pop 20 miles in opposite directions, 120k pop 40 miles away, and a major metro 80 miles away) I have two fiber plants in my yard. Plus DSL available, plus long range wifi, plus cellular - but I don't consider them practical options. One of the fiber ISPs is a new-ish cable company. They have financing locked in and already have plans drawn up to build a new fiber plant in every town and city in the area they aren't already in.
What is holding them back is not the allegedly insurmountable expense of building brand new fiber plant. It isn't a need or desire to only hit high density areas. No, the only thing holding them back is monopoly franchise agreements the incumbents hold with the local governments. Every time they kill one of those, not only do they build a new plant in that area, but the incumbent does too. Sometimes the incumbent announces their plans a month or so after swearing (to the city board or whatever) that it is too expensive to do.
Figure out what is really preventing competition in your area, and fix it if you want things to get better.
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The FCC can only do so much. It seems to me if we want to make Net Neutrality a non-issue, we need to get cracking at the local level.
consumer choice options (Score:5, Interesting)
I recently lived in a brand new complex that was designed without traditional POTS, plain old telephone system wiring. That was because the local cable company arranged an exclusive contract with the property owner- they would provide TV, internet and telephone for all the residents. It was very difficult for any competitor to reach that building.
Now I live in an older building with POTS & cable wiring. I had cable for internet, but they raised the price beyond reason. The telephone company had nothing competitive. Fortunately Google (a subsidiary called WebPass) came to the rescue. They offer a high speed internet connection at a reasonable price; less than $600/year for nearly 100Mbps. Fortunately my property manager invited this service to our building.
This service utilizes the old POTS wiring already available to give ethernet connections to each unit while still allowing telephone service for those who want it. They install a microwave antenna on the roof to connect to a source for internet backbone.
For several months I've had excellent service from WebPass. They are in limited cities now but expanding. This microwave connection seems practical, affordable, and for many people the only alternative to the criminal oligopolies commonly available. If the Google/WebPass service isn't available, ask for it or find or create your own alternative.
The concept of microwave transmission of internet across rooftops is viable in most cities. It will offer alternatives to millions of users.
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The only problem with microwave links is that if the area is subject to frequent rain, you will have frequent brown-outs due to signal fade. I know people in Seattle on normally-great microwave-linked apartment connectivity which goes to shit in bad weather.
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That CAN be a problem, but it depends on a great many things: frequency used, antenna gain, path loss, to name a few. A good design should not suffer frequent outages, but these days everybody is a data head and knows very little to nothing about r.f. propagation.
I suspect the bigger impediment would be the rules and regulations and outright underhanded shenanigans by the incumbent stakeholders to keep out new competition.
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Good point. I'm in San Diego (where it never rains), no problem for the last 6 months despite an unusually rainy winter. My brother in Seattle experiences a lot of rain, but it's mostly light drizzle- is that a problem? I ask because I really think this is a generally viable solution to the oligopoly that could be helpful to many people. Thanks.
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It's true. I have a WiFi link from a local WISP and it used to go through some trees and it was just as you describe. They put up another tower, though, and I have better LoS to that with no trees in the way.
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> microwave antenna on the roof
Yuck. Had that in two places. While the 56k POTS line I have now has 125 ms of latency, microwave was much worse. Typically it was 300 or more ms with peaks of up to over a full 1,000 ms when it rained. Since I live in Seattle, that was pretty often.
The 125 milliseconds of latency with a voice band POTs connection is from the echo cancellation filters; they have to be that long to remove the longest duration echos.
The microwave link should be much better so whatever they were doing was just broken.
Just remember... (Score:1)
he'll take any suggestion that he isn't being told to ignore. ;)
Meaningless (Score:2)
>"FCC Seeks To Increase ISP Competition In Apartment Buildings"
Seriously? As if most of us even have a choice OUTSIDE apartment buildings? I don't know about you, but here there is only one choice for ISP, and it is the cable company. It doesn't matter what kind of building in which we reside.
How about increasing ISP competition, period.
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Monopolies inside an apartment building are the result of a franchise agreement between the cable company and the building owner.
Monopolies outside an apartment building are the result of a franchise agreement between the cable company and the municipal government.
Whatever tool they come up with for the first problem should apply equally well to the second.
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It's already illegal. In reality though, you'd be shocked how many landlords blatantly defy the law on this one - and get away with it.
FCC is not 100% evil then? (Score:2)
So, does thia mean that current FCC is not 100% evil.
This is really easy to solve. (Score:2)
This is really easy to solve.
Have the city/county own the links, and have the ISP's offer service over the municipal infrastructure.
You want email? Talk to an ISP. You want television? Talk to an ISP. You want VOIP service? Talk to an ISP.
All ISP's have equal access to the market over the common infrastructure.
I should be able to live in Alaska, get my phone service from Utah, get my email from Virginia, and get my television channels from 6 or 7 places, unbundled.
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Bandwidth is not unlimited everywhere.
I could get behind a "last mile" access rights law, however, with mandatory slots for at least 20 competitors.
Bandwidth is not limited in the way it is charged, either.
Specifically, an idle router takes no more electricity than a router operating at it's maximum rated capacity. Yet we get charged more for more use, even when there is idle capacity, rather than the capacity being fairly apportioned between subscribers.
This is primarily due to "oversubscription", which is a code word for "we're selling more bandwidth than we provide, because we expect you to consume content, rather than producing it".
This idiocy is
My really easy solution. (Score:1)
Just drive around LA and issue a hefty fine to any apartment building without any DirecTV dishes on the roof.
Competition is doable but... (Score:2)
I used to work for a cable system in a competitive area. The two companies always tried to get an exclusive deal with the buildings, but through various court orders and lawsuits a compromise was reached: The drop coax going from the equipment demarcation box was owned by the building owner. A competitor had to "release" the line within 48 hours of getting an order from the other. The actual demarc was 1 foot outside of the box in the case of single family homes.
Where it got tricky was when there was a bad
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The real solution is to get 5G up and running.
What price per gigabyte or per device-month should we expect?
How about ... (Score:2)
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Overreach (Score:2)
Clearly overreach by the FCC. Let the invisible hand of the free market manage this. Ajit Pai should know better.
I suppose I should enclose that statement with a sarcasm tag.