
Competitor access to telco fiber would fix “net neutrality” - swohns
http://freedomofthought.org/blog/?p=12
======
tzs
I recall watching a documentary that looked at internet access in various
countries. The most interesting was the UK. Their approach is interesting and
successful.

Basically, the government forced local loop unbundling, so that the phone
companies were required to lease space in their equipment centers to competing
ISPs at fair prices and give them access to local loops to offer DSL and other
services.

Of course, the phone companies said this would be disastrous. Turns out it was
not. A huge number of ISPs jumped in to compete in the DSL market, and the
phone companies found they were making more money as landlords leasing out
space for equipment than they had been making from running their own ISP
business.

On the consumer side of things, there was a big increase in choice, with ISPs
jumping in to offer everything from serious power user plans and low latency
plans for gamers to cheap plans for people who just use email.

Amusingly, AT&T and Verizon from the US both wrote to British regulators when
unbundling was under discussion and provided strong arguments in favor of it.
However, when asked if the US should do something similar, they say it is bad
for consumers.

Ahh...found the documentary. It was an episode of the PBS series "Need to
Know". The journalist who did the segment on broadband also writes for
Engadget, and that segment of "Need to Know" and a text version of the story
is available at Engadget: [http://www.engadget.com/2011/06/28/why-is-european-
broadband...](http://www.engadget.com/2011/06/28/why-is-european-broadband-
faster-and-cheaper-blame-the-governme/)

~~~
spindritf
> Basically, the government forced local loop unbundling, so that the phone
> companies were required to lease space in their equipment centers to
> competing ISPs at fair prices and give them access to local loops to offer
> DSL and other services.

Similar idea was implemented in Poland. It mostly means that you can now get
the same crappy DSL connection from a number of providers instead of the
single (formerly national) telecom. The quality probably did increase a
little, and it is fairly affordable but I don't know a single person who's
genuinely happy with that sort of Internet access. Most live in suburbs or
outright rural areas and have no choice (the other options are flaky mobile,
or expensive and high-latency satellite link).

Only real competition leads to improved quality. In large cities where you
have properly separate providers -- cable companies, local area networks,
mobile providers and the large telcos -- actually competing, you can get a
decent TV package, phone with a local number, DVR, 10+MBit (and going as high
as 120MBit) connection and maybe even mobile Internet dongle thrown in for
~$40.

~~~
ferongr
Many European cities lack a cable TV infrastructure, preventing the use of
faster DOCSIS connections like in the US. On the other hand, digging the
densely populated European cities to install extensive optical fibre networks
terminating either to buildings or local cabinets (with the remaining loop
length being under 300 metres) is an extremely costly affair.

For those cases ADSL over PSTN is the only practical choice for broadband
Internet access, but since the incumbent telephone operator (usually an ex-
state owned company) owns the entirety of the PST network and related
facilities like exchanges (subsided over the decades by the state, directly or
indirectly) that puts other providers at a huge disadvantage, being unable to
even offer any service.

That's why the LLU scheme was devised. Providers rent the telephone loop,
rack-space and in some cases backhaul connectivity at the incumbent's
exchange, install their own DSLAMs and provide both telephone and ADSL
service. It's the only practical choice for competition in the ISP field. And
at least for my country, Greece, it has worked marvelously with prices racing
to the bottom and speeds jumping to the maximum of the protocol ever since the
LLU scheme started.

Small steps are being made in many cities where fibre-optic networks are
slowly being deployed, usually (and in our case) subsided by EU funds and
planned to be offered under a scheme similar to LLU but it's a very long time
until population (as opposed to geographical) coverage can reach good levels.

~~~
henrikschroder
> On the other hand, digging the densely populated European cities to install
> extensive optical fibre networks terminating either to buildings or local
> cabinets (with the remaining loop length being under 300 metres) is an
> extremely costly affair.

In Stockholm, the city-owned company Stokab has been doing exactly this for
the past 15 years or so. They started out by laying fibre in the inner city
and leasing it to businesses. They've been pretty profitable, and reinvesting
all their profits into extending their network, moving to less and less
profitable areas.

The last year or so they've started connecting every apartment building in the
entire city, suburbs and all, and they'll be done in a year or so with that.
They hooked up my building last month, for free. And then it's up to us in the
coop to pick an ISP and connect each apartment.

They were also smart enough to put in one fibre per apartment, so in some not-
too-distant future, it should be possible to upgrade the building LAN to
fibre, which means that every apartment gets an unbroken fibre all the way to
their connection point. And _that_ in turn enables the same business model as
we have with DSL now, i.e. each apartment can freely choose ISP, and different
ISP can then compete for the privilege of lighting up my fibre and give me
internet.

Digging up suburbs to lay down fibre is extremely costly as you say, but
renting that out is extremely profitable.

------
josh2600
The common carriage laws are some of the most important laws for the future of
this nation.

One possible solution is public maintained networks which operators could use.
Every carrier would be a virtual network overlaid on top of the public
physical infrastructure.

The problem with this, of course, is that some very large companies have spent
quite a bit of money building out these networks and thus simply nationalizing
them would be unfair.

I contend that an amicable solution to this problem is a fund to help the top
100 metro areas build ubiquitous public backbones and sell access at an agreed
upon (but fair) rate. In reality, there may be very little that any one can do
to disrupt big telcos. It is simply a difficult and slow moving market. You'd
need something like LightSquared to really have a lasting impact.

Time will tell if they get their spectrum swap; here's hoping.

------
cap10morgan
There's a common fallacious argument in here:

A. The corporations that have the most power in this industry have lobbied for
and gotten a consumer-hostile regulatory regime. B. It's the government's
fault that the regulations are less than ideal. Therefore the consumer would
be best served by getting the government out of it.

This is like saying, "The problem with being stranded in the desert is the
lack of water. Therefore water is the problem. Therefore we should remove
_all_ the water from the desert."

~~~
gizmo686
The article is not arguing that we should remove government regulations. It is
arguing that we should re-instate a particular regulation that has been shown
to work for very similar systems (and would already apply if not for a
specific exception).

------
thechut
This is a good idea except for the part where big telco's have more lobbying
power in congress than oil companies and this would never happen

~~~
dfc
_"telcos have more power than oil companies."_ This is demonstrably false.
From opensecrets:

Lobbying money by industry 1998-2012[1]

    
    
      Industry                              Total $
      ---------------------------------------------------
      Pharmaceuticals/Health Products       2,505,357,767
      Insurance                             1,774,111,357
      Electric Utilities                    1,663,072,243
      Business Associations                 1,438,954,214
      Computers/Internet                    1,359,204,389
      Oil & Gas                             1,329,100,727
      Education                             1,159,377,327
      Misc Manufacturing & Distributing     1,147,911,037
      Hospitals/Nursing Homes               1,069,574,050
      TV/Movies/Music                       1,022,160,821
      Civil Servants/Public Officials       1,014,054,831
      Securities & Investment               980,371,025
      Real Estate                           975,927,683
      Health Professionals                  941,438,165
      Air Transport                         896,844,603
      Misc Issues                           773,377,869
      Telephone Utilities                   746,207,234
      Automotive                            732,207,809
      Telecom Services & Equipment          701,829,850
      Defense Aerospace                     647,089,847
      

Lobbying money by industry 2012[2] (Telcos did not even make the list in 2012.

    
    
      Industry                              Total $
      -------------------------------------------------
      Pharmaceuticals/Health Products       180,048,744
      Business Associations                 121,893,383
      Insurance                             113,540,783
      Electric Utilities                    108,068,579
      Oil & Gas                             103,734,662
      Computers/Internet                    96,569,868
      TV/Movies/Music                       89,178,807
      Misc Manufacturing & Distributing     79,921,881
      Securities & Investment               74,038,412
      Hospitals/Nursing Homes               68,677,679
      Education                             67,041,930
      Air Transport                         58,666,778
      Health Professionals                  57,991,637
      Real Estate                           55,517,526
      Civil Servants/Public Officials       54,276,821
      Health Services/HMOs                  50,248,170
      Commercial Banks                      44,376,751
      Automotive                            42,835,629
      Chemical & Related Manufacturing      42,435,792
      Defense Aerospace                     42,398,654
      

Lobbying money by industry 2011[3]

    
    
      Industry                              Total $
      -------------------------------------------------
      Pharmaceuticals/Health Products       241,462,770
      Insurance                             159,878,505
      Oil & Gas                             149,169,677
      Electric Utilities                    145,285,040
      Computers/Internet                    126,911,432
      TV/Movies/Music                       122,898,063
      Misc Manufacturing & Distributing     118,668,254
      Education                             106,246,285
      Business Associations                 106,139,640
      Securities & Investment               101,913,226
      Hospitals/Nursing Homes               100,768,231
      Civil Servants/Public Officials       83,236,247
      Health Professionals                  81,006,752
      Air Transport                         80,773,141
      Health Services/HMOs                  74,033,507
      Real Estate                           67,178,304
      Automotive                            61,776,786
      Commercial Banks                      61,376,654
      Defense Aerospace                     59,702,900
      Telecom Services & Equipment          57,736,688
    

[1]
[https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/top.php?showYear=a&ind...](https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/top.php?showYear=a&indexType=i)

[2]
[https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/top.php?showYear=2012&...](https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/top.php?showYear=2012&indexType=i)

[3]
[https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/top.php?showYear=2011&...](https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/top.php?showYear=2011&indexType=i)

~~~
nitrogen
Your list reports Computers/Internet as a separate category from Telecom
Services & Equipment, and Computers/Internet beats out Oil & Gas on the
1998-2012 list. How much of Computers/Internet should be counted as Telecom?

~~~
dfc
I would like to point out that it is not "my list." I do not want to mislead
anyone, the data was compiled by openserets.org (hence the reference links).

With that being said it is fairly easy to check and see what companies were
included in the Computers and Internet category. The list for 2012 is quite
long so I do not want to paste all the entries. Here are the links for 2012,
2011 and 2010 respectively:

[https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/indusclient.php?id=B12&...](https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/indusclient.php?id=B12&year=2012)

[https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/indusclient.php?id=B12&...](https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/indusclient.php?id=B12&year=2011)

[https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/indusclient.php?id=B12&...](https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/indusclient.php?id=B12&year=2010)

What companies do you think should be included in Telecom? How do they compare
to the top 5 in Oil and Gas?

    
    
      Royal Dutch Shell $10,860,000
      Exxon Mobil       $9,870,000
      Koch Industries   $7,800,000
      Chevron Corp      $7,080,000
      BP                $6,860,000

~~~
nitrogen
Sorry, by "your" I meant "the list you quoted." Thanks for the links to the
breakdowns; they succinctly answer my previous question: "very little."

------
lucian303
Sad but true. America loves to fuck its citizens over, online and offline, for
money. They broke Ma' Bell up into companies that have become monopolies in
their own right. Cable was never actually regulated against monopoly (despite
appearances to the contrary) and neither are new new children Bells (ATT and
Verizon being high at the top of that list).

Monopoly or duopoly or oligopoly. It's all the same. However, this is not a
problem inherent to ISPs and telcos but across the whole American and world-
wide economy.

The next time you buy cereal, soda, water, etc. at a supermarket ask how many
choices you have as far as actual, separate, competing companies making the
product. And if you don't like the choices ... I suppose you can still grow
your own. Good luck with that.

~~~
javert
_Cable was never actually regulated against monopoly (despite appearances to
the contrary) and neither are new new children Bells (ATT and Verizon being
high at the top of that list)._

You've got it backwards. Cable and telephone companies were _granted_ local
monopolies all over America, which is why there is a _legally enforced_
duopoly now all over the whole country.

Monopolies only exist when created by regulation.

By the way, to head off a common concern, by example: People who think
Microsoft _ever_ had a monopoly are using the word "monopoly" wrong. Consumers
were always free to go a different way, or start a competitor (and many did).
In fact, MS would probably be weaker today had regulation not _forced_ it to
improve its self-defeating business practices.

~~~
jauer
Except that _there is no legally enforced duopoly_. By and large the only
legal restriction on building a network in the US are related to construction
permits & zoning. Cable franchises restricted competition for wireline video
delivery but that got tossed a few years back.

If you would like to bury your own wires and use them to deliver Internet, you
can. It is just like any other significant construction effort where the costs
& paperwork may be daunting to some.

~~~
javert
_By and large the only legal restriction on building a network in the US are
related to construction permits & zoning_

I was presuming that when the company agreed to build a local network, it got
an agreement from the local authority that nobody else would be granted a
permit to do so.

That's still a legally enforced duopoly. Or are you saying, that acutally
doesn't happen?

 _Cable franchises restricted competition for wireline video delivery but that
got tossed a few years back._

I am guessing that's because the phone companies also wanted to deliver video
over the wire. So this still wouldn't break the duopoly.

