5 ms·

So DC doesn't have 3 different broadband options. Select parts of DC do. Go to the middle or upper class areas and you might be spoiled for choice, but how much

by s73ver 10y ago

So DC doesn't have 3 different broadband options. Select parts of DC do. Go to the middle or upper class areas and you might be spoiled for choice, but how much choice is there in the lower income areas, where it probably matters more? Also, wireless can be nice, but it is in no way a competitor to wired internet.

rayiner 10y ago
Broadband deployment is all about math: you calculate the per subscriber cost, and see if how much you can charge for the service is high enough where, after subtracting costs, you make a return Wall Street is happy with. The math doesn't care about social justice. And you cannot "opt out" of this math through municipal regulation. Because most of the cost of build-out is passing the house, your per-subscriber cost is driven by your uptake ratio: actual subscribers divided by houses passed. If you force providers to build in a lot of neighborhoods where few people can afford the service, you drive down the uptake ratio and drive up the per subscriber cost, making the investment unattractive. Take a city like Baltimore: it has too many poor neighborhoods for competitors to commit to a city-wide build-out. It's also too poor for the government to be able to afford to build its own fiber network. The alternatives are some competition in wealthier areas (with hopefully knock-on effects everywhere else) or no choices at all. If broadband deployment to poor neighborhoods is an important issue, then raise taxes and pay for it. Trying to get private companies to pay for it just creates a special tax on broadband. You impose extra taxes on products you want less of, like cigarettes or alcohol, not products you want more of. As to wireless, it is absolutely a competitor to wired. Throughout Verizon's FiOS footprint, its uptake rate is under 40%. That means 60% of people who can get it choose to get cable instead, even though FiOS is vastly superior. (I don't know why--I think people like the TV packages better on cable.) 5G fixed wireless is absolutely as good as cable--hell, even LTE-A has better upload speeds than cable. Wireless doesn't have to be better than fiber to be a meaningful competitor; it just has to be good enough that it's a viable option for many people.
- corford 10y ago
  >As to wireless, it is absolutely a competitor to wired. Is latency comparable? Whenever I use mobile data the latency sucks (might be my provider though rather than a technical limitation). Also, how reliable is it during torrential rain?
  - rayiner 10y ago
    In the strip mall near my house, I can get 140 down/20 up/25-30 ms ping. 5G is supposed to bring that into the gigabit range and ping times below 10 ms: http://www.droid-life.com/2017/01/04/att-5g http://www.droid-life.com/2017/01/04/att-5g. Obviously you're not going to get that on your phone in a crowded mall. But for fixed deployments you're talking about having about as much shared bandwidth per subscriber as cable at similar if not better latency. At vastly lower cost.
    - corford 9y ago
      Ok, I'm sold!
- intended 9y ago
  Weren't tax break and incentives given to American telecom firms to solve the problem you described here? I remember it being couched more in terms of far flung houses in rural america than poor suburbs, so I could be mixing things up.
  - rayiner 9y ago
    Some,[1] but by and large the opposite is true: they pay extra taxes. The primary "subsidy" for rural deployment comes from a special 18% tax on telecommunications services. Additionally, there is typically a 5% gross revenue tax that goes to the municipality. Telcos are expected to pay for building out to lower income neighborhoods in urban or suburban areas through cross subsidies (everyone pays the same price even though customers in neighborhoods with high uptake ratios cost much less to connect than customers in neighborhoods with low uptake ratios). [1] There is a "$200 billion" number floating around that's completely false.
    - pseudalopex 9y ago
      The only source I've found for 18% is a report from the Tax Foundation.[1] That includes all federal, state, and local taxes and fees. Do you have a source for your numbers? [1] https://files.taxfoundation.org/legacy/docs/Record%20High%20Taxes%20and%20Fees%20on%20Wireless%20Consumers%20in%202015%20[FINAL]_0.pdf https://files.taxfoundation.org/legacy/docs/Record%20High%20...
      - rayiner 9y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Service_Fund https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Service_Fund. The 18% rate is paid on some part of the total bill that the FCC deems to be related to interstate voice, with additional state USF fees paid on intrastate services. Historically, telcos didn't pay money into the USF for broadband (except to the extent they're offering telephone service over it), but historically they also couldn't get money out of it for broadband. Under Obama the USF started conversion into a broadband fund, and USF taxes on broadband will likely follow.
- pseudalopex 9y ago
  You said recently that the UK model (regulated last-mile monopoly) works well.[1] Is there a reason it wouldn't work well in the US? 5G fixed wireless is just entering trials. Maybe it'll be a game-changer, but relying on new technologies to create competition is why there isn't effective competition now. FiOS upload speeds are vastly superior, but some Comcast plans offer higher download speeds at cheaper prices. Typical LTE-A upload speeds seem to be worse than cheaper cable plans.[2] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14207640 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14207640 [2] http://www.tomsguide.com/us/best-mobile-network,review-2942.html http://www.tomsguide.com/us/best-mobile-network,review-2942....
  - rayiner 9y ago
    > You said recently that the UK model (regulated last-mile monopoly) works well.[1] Is there a reason it wouldn't work well in the US? Two reasons. First, BT Openrearch was originally a government-owned monopoly that was later privatized under specific terms. U.S. networks, in contrast, were built almost entirely with private money in the first instance. Second, the U.K. policy was designed and implemented by smart regulators at a national level, who did a lot of theoretical work on balancing the need to ensure adequate investment with the need to protect consumers. U.S. policy, in contrast, split up between the FCC and state/local regulators. The latter are the same folks responsible for our roads, subways, and other infrastructure being worse than those in comparable European countries.

by s73ver 10y ago

rayiner 10y ago

Broadband deployment is all about math: you calculate the per subscriber cost, and see if how much you can charge for the service is high enough where, after subtracting costs, you make a return Wall Street is happy with. The math doesn't care about social justice. And you cannot "opt out" of this math through municipal regulation. Because most of the cost of build-out is passing the house, your per-subscriber cost is driven by your uptake ratio: actual subscribers divided by houses passed. If you force providers to build in a lot of neighborhoods where few people can afford the service, you drive down the uptake ratio and drive up the per subscriber cost, making the investment unattractive. Take a city like Baltimore: it has too many poor neighborhoods for competitors to commit to a city-wide build-out. It's also too poor for the government to be able to afford to build its own fiber network. The alternatives are some competition in wealthier areas (with hopefully knock-on effects everywhere else) or no choices at all. If broadband deployment to poor neighborhoods is an important issue, then raise taxes and pay for it. Trying to get private companies to pay for it just creates a special tax on broadband. You impose extra taxes on products you want less of, like cigarettes or alcohol, not products you want more of. As to wireless, it is absolutely a competitor to wired. Throughout Verizon's FiOS footprint, its uptake rate is under 40%. That means 60% of people who can get it choose to get cable instead, even though FiOS is vastly superior. (I don't know why--I think people like the TV packages better on cable.) 5G fixed wireless is absolutely as good as cable--hell, even LTE-A has better upload speeds than cable. Wireless doesn't have to be better than fiber to be a meaningful competitor; it just has to be good enough that it's a viable option for many people.

corford 10y ago
>As to wireless, it is absolutely a competitor to wired. Is latency comparable? Whenever I use mobile data the latency sucks (might be my provider though rather than a technical limitation). Also, how reliable is it during torrential rain?
- rayiner 10y ago
  In the strip mall near my house, I can get 140 down/20 up/25-30 ms ping. 5G is supposed to bring that into the gigabit range and ping times below 10 ms: http://www.droid-life.com/2017/01/04/att-5g http://www.droid-life.com/2017/01/04/att-5g. Obviously you're not going to get that on your phone in a crowded mall. But for fixed deployments you're talking about having about as much shared bandwidth per subscriber as cable at similar if not better latency. At vastly lower cost.
  - corford 9y ago
    Ok, I'm sold!
intended 9y ago
Weren't tax break and incentives given to American telecom firms to solve the problem you described here? I remember it being couched more in terms of far flung houses in rural america than poor suburbs, so I could be mixing things up.
- rayiner 9y ago
  Some,[1] but by and large the opposite is true: they pay extra taxes. The primary "subsidy" for rural deployment comes from a special 18% tax on telecommunications services. Additionally, there is typically a 5% gross revenue tax that goes to the municipality. Telcos are expected to pay for building out to lower income neighborhoods in urban or suburban areas through cross subsidies (everyone pays the same price even though customers in neighborhoods with high uptake ratios cost much less to connect than customers in neighborhoods with low uptake ratios). [1] There is a "$200 billion" number floating around that's completely false.
  - pseudalopex 9y ago
    The only source I've found for 18% is a report from the Tax Foundation.[1] That includes all federal, state, and local taxes and fees. Do you have a source for your numbers? [1] https://files.taxfoundation.org/legacy/docs/Record%20High%20Taxes%20and%20Fees%20on%20Wireless%20Consumers%20in%202015%20[FINAL]_0.pdf https://files.taxfoundation.org/legacy/docs/Record%20High%20...
    - rayiner 9y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Service_Fund https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Service_Fund. The 18% rate is paid on some part of the total bill that the FCC deems to be related to interstate voice, with additional state USF fees paid on intrastate services. Historically, telcos didn't pay money into the USF for broadband (except to the extent they're offering telephone service over it), but historically they also couldn't get money out of it for broadband. Under Obama the USF started conversion into a broadband fund, and USF taxes on broadband will likely follow.
pseudalopex 9y ago
You said recently that the UK model (regulated last-mile monopoly) works well.[1] Is there a reason it wouldn't work well in the US? 5G fixed wireless is just entering trials. Maybe it'll be a game-changer, but relying on new technologies to create competition is why there isn't effective competition now. FiOS upload speeds are vastly superior, but some Comcast plans offer higher download speeds at cheaper prices. Typical LTE-A upload speeds seem to be worse than cheaper cable plans.[2] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14207640 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14207640 [2] http://www.tomsguide.com/us/best-mobile-network,review-2942.html http://www.tomsguide.com/us/best-mobile-network,review-2942....
- rayiner 9y ago
  > You said recently that the UK model (regulated last-mile monopoly) works well.[1] Is there a reason it wouldn't work well in the US? Two reasons. First, BT Openrearch was originally a government-owned monopoly that was later privatized under specific terms. U.S. networks, in contrast, were built almost entirely with private money in the first instance. Second, the U.K. policy was designed and implemented by smart regulators at a national level, who did a lot of theoretical work on balancing the need to ensure adequate investment with the need to protect consumers. U.S. policy, in contrast, split up between the FCC and state/local regulators. The latter are the same folks responsible for our roads, subways, and other infrastructure being worse than those in comparable European countries.