Letting The Market Choose Decent Broadband

An Anonymous Coward pointed out this piece on the regulation (and more to the point deregulation) of broadband Internet service. The article takes the viewpoint that solutions possible by relying on "the human spirit of innovation and creativity" are a better antidote than most of the broadband reforms so far proposed by politicians on behalf of lobbying groups. The author takes a stance some people may consider unrealistically optimistic, but makes some good points about the effects of arbitary deregulation.

looking for quotes re:AOL broadband

[Anonymous Coward]

We know now that when the cable industry says
it can't open its network, it really means it
won't.
-- George Vradenburg, AOL senior VP, 1999-06-15

AOL and Time Warner may not open their cable
networks to all ISPs - and that AOL had never
suggested that any cable operator should.
-- George Vradenburg, AOL's senior VP, 2000-02-14

But the second one isn't a direct quote. Anyone got a version which highlights the change in attitude of AOL re: broadband access after they teamed up with TimeWarner?

-- Ender, Duke_of_URL

Re:One possible solution

[jweage]

So instead of a monopoly we have a ... monopoly?

The issue is company owership of the last mile. If it can only be owned by a single company, it is a monopoly.

Unless the infrastructure is rebuilt to allow the ownership of the last mile to change hands, at the request of the end user, we're screwed. The alternative is something similar to the natural gas market, except with a physical wire, it is a little more difficult.

Canada

[freeweed]

Actually, typically what you see in Canada is a multi-monopoly system, legacy of the days when damn-near everything was a Crown Corporation (government owned and run). The phone system just privitized in the last few years here, for example. Net result? No one bothers competing (and in many cases legally still CAN'T), and you have no options.

Long distance rates took years longer to drop than they should have, local service is getting progressively more expensive, and cable (as in TV) just generally stinks. Broadband connections however... you'd have to pay me about 4x what I'm making here to move to the US.

While this goes against everything I believe in, I'll still say it again and again and again: sometimes, LESS choice can mean BETTER service. Of course, this assumes that your #1 priority is your bandwidth. Like me :)

Only Two Things Will Prevent a Monopoly

[namespan]

Only two things will prevent a monopoly and create the kind of free market that will actually evolve towards providing better services:

1) The network is publically administered, giving everyone an
equal opportunity to sell services using it (I think ALL utility
networks should have a public base).

2) Every provider has their own network

There isn't any other way. We made a half-hearted stab at #1, requiring telcos to sell use of their networks to those who wanted to start up, but things haven't been administered fairly enough to bring about the desired results. What the market is sortof lurching towards is #2 -- a cable network, perhaps a few wireless networks, and phone wires.

So our friend is right in the sense that the free market will eventually come up with alternatives down the line of #2. I'm not sure about his treatment of the phone lines. Arguing that the local phone cos have exclusive property rights to the phone networks falls somewhere between semi-reasonable and dubious. For one thing, the networks fly
over or run through public lands and private lands not owned by the phone company. For another, the concept of property is given out by the people/law/government/social contract/shared fiction that we all agree is good and useful to live by in general... but we also have a history of regulating anything that becomes a public utility. With good reason.

Re:Municipal networks

[namespan]

That's an interesting idea.... would municipalities then connect into the telco backbones? Or would the county create its own backbone(s), and those would connect to the state backbone(s), and then to nationwide backbones.....

The other problem.... I think in general that having public networks for ANY vital utility (and then letting lots of companies compete to provide services via that network) is a wise thing. I'm just not sure how the networks get built in the first place... I am a little worried about private expertise vs. public expertise in such things. Then again, cities do it with sewers....

Municipal networks

[Jeffrey Baker]

I've said this before on Slashdot, but I'm not tired of saying it yet. The trick to getting people in cities connected is for the people in the cities to own their network infrastructure via their government. Lay fiber all over the city, punch a connection into each home and business, and run the other end into central offices. Then, let the owner of the home or business hook the central office end of their wire up to whatever they want. Charge service providers rental space in the CO, but do not regulate what can be installed there, nor by whom.

I'm convinced that this is the ideal solution. No company should be allowed to own critical infrastructure. Only the people should be able to dictate what services they want hooked up to their network.

Re:Parallels with British Telecom

[NTSwerver]

British Telecom has a pretty strong grip on the market

Actually, they have the monopoly on the infrastructure (local loop). OFTEL have been limp-wristedly attempting to unbundle the local loop for what seems like eons, but other telcos are still unable to access BT's exchanges.

This has resulted in an very slow and patchy roll-out of DSL

True, however, there are much more attractive looking services available/soon to become available. For example, NTL/Telewest's £25 ($35US) / month cable modem offering [broadband-cable.co.uk] looks pretty good. Later this year, when the local loop is finally unbundled, you can expect to see prices dropping as the telcos start to compete for our custom.

I've been waiting for affordable broadband internet in the UK since 1997. Four years later it's just starting to become available.

Only thing keep DSL $ down is Cable too.

[Shivetya]

It works both ways.

The local paper ran an article showing that BellSouth changed their charge for a dsl line to ISPs to $33.00. This was done so as to "standardize our rate plan" or some other hogwash.

This means that my $49.00 a month DSL is most likely never to go down, as my ISP makes $16.00 over the cost of leasing the DSL line from BellSouth. If anything I fully expect my DSL to cost nearly $60 a month within 2 years.

Until their is a 2-way BB solution that does not require telco cooperation we are going to get jacked.

As far as cable goes, hey, more power to them, while they are available in my local area I can only hope it keeps BellSouth and my ISP from upping my rates.

Re:Sounds like British Telecom's business model

[Dr_Cheeks]

Well, having a single nationalised utility setting up the system can be a good thing - no conflicting standards and roll-out to everyone (not just people in cities, large businesses, etc.). The real problem with BT is that it was privatised. Then it was no longer directly answerable to the public - shareholders and profit came first. And since it was the only telco on the scene at that point it had a monopoly, so it didn't matter what it did - everyone had to use them.

Nowadays, everything beyond the local loop has been opened up to competition, and I'm enjoying much cheaper phone bills thanks to NTL/Cable&Wireless, while BT is acting worse than ever (over priced, poor quality service [it took them a week to un-block calls thru Cable & Wireless from my phone line after they blocked it without any warning]) - acting with all the worst points of it's old days, none of the better points, and simply grasping desperately at any immediate profit.

And last I heard they were in about £30 billion debt. They don't seem to know how to compete, as though the management can't get out of the monopoly mind-set. And, IMHO, that's why BT sucks.

broadband "reforms" really end of lab period.

[philipm]

Actually its funny that this article about "reforms" came up. When you do get to broadband you will find that the earth has already been scorched. Slashdot, like most major media refuses to run stories on how the major broadband ISPs are blocking random ports at random times. In particular lately there have been tons of stories on code red, but nothing about BY FAR its biggest fallout. AT & T has blocked incoming port 80, completely refusing to justify and widely advertise its action.

Those of use that remember, are starting to have painful flashbacks to the times when you had very little choice in phone services. The breakup really did nothing to improve that. It merely replaced regional monopolies with slightly smaller monopolies, while at the same time providing political cover to say something was actually done.

As usual, slashdot, prints random tidbits that some monkey stumbled on, but the only real editor we have is the emotionally unstable John Katz, who helps no-one.

What this article is really talking about is the fact that the REAL plan is to first co-opt broadband to remove interactivity from it, and only then to actually let the public have it. They let a few lab-rat areas have it. Once they figured out how the public will screw them, they have to close off the holes and THEN screw the customer.

The bells are in business

[Enry]

As Cringley said a few months ago, the bells got the advantage of offering long distance in their region if they opened up their lines for broadband. Given the drop in long distance prices, the bells have no incentive to open their lines to competition.

Having a fully open market would be a nice idea, but that's just it - an idea. The Bells have no incentive to open their lines, thus all the DSL companies fall flat on their face (with a bit of help from the Bells) and the Bells can then offer their DSL service. The Bells own the wires, the Bells ran the wires, the Bells can do whatever they want with them. If you want anything different, you either have to buy service from the Bells, which is happening now and obviously failing, or regulate the Bells and force them to open their lines.

I'm within 3 miles of one oh the high-tech centers of the universe - rt 128 in boston. I am about 3 miles (officially, 18k feet) from the CO, thus DSL will not be available. Verizon probably won't be building a new CO to get me DSL service. I'm stuck with the "name of the month" cable service that used to be MediaOne, then AT&T, now AT&T Broadband, soon to be ??. Remind me how deregulation will change my situation...

I personally believe

[linuxpng]

that the government should get more involved with the cable industry. Where I live you can only get cable access for $60 with out another cable subscription. I think the market needs a little competition to drive that price down. That's where the government actually forces time warner to open it's cable networks to other ISPs. DSL is non-existent here for whatever reason, so AOL/Timewarner has a monopoly on this market. Personally, I think it stinks.

One possible solution

[Masem]

Since most of the problems come from the fact that that baby bells own the last mile and get their advantages from this, the solution is rather obvious:

Make it such that the companies that own the COs and the last mile, and parents/subsideraries thereof, cannot offer the consumer any services and are only there to lease the use of their lines to phone, data, or other potental companies. I'd further extend it to cable lines where that is appropriate.

This would require the bells to split off a company to manage those last miles, and they would never be able to merge it back in the future. But this would also prevent a company like Covad (if they had the cash) to buy the last mile out and reverse the tables in order to screw the telcos. Including the cable lines and any future 'electronic transfer lines' that may come about in the future would also possibly open the door for more competition in the cable industry.

Of course, this isn't an overnight thing, and there must be some initial regulation as such that the cost of the 'extra' company beyond the telcos does not impact the fees that consumers already pay. I'm sure the baby bells would whine as well, since that last mile is their current money maker. But this would force a level playing field in that anyone wanting to offer consumer services would not have to worry about ownership of the last mile.