6 ms·

Exactly this happened to me about a month ago. I switched from Provider_A to Provider_B. Provider_A totally sabotaged the connection hardware when it disconnect

Exactly this happened to me about a month ago. I switched from Provider_A to Provider_B. Provider_A totally sabotaged the connection hardware when it disconnected the service. Provider_B's technician had a very hard time redoing the connection hardware. It's amazing to me that all these connections are still physicial (as opposed to some software-defined switching between providers). Something akin to software-defined networking.

Analemma_ 9y ago
> It's amazing to me that all these connections are still physicial (as opposed to some software-defined switching between providers). Something akin to software-defined networking. What you're describing is called "local loop unbundling". Lots of other countries do it, it works great, and it would solve most if not all of the problems with the telco market in the US... so naturally these companies lobby hard to make sure it'll never happen.
pjc50 9y ago
> Something akin to software-defined networking What you want is "local loop unbundling". It's how this works in Europe where you have artificial non-free markets with real price competition, rather than natural monopolies without price competition as in the US.
- masklinn 9y ago
  AFAIK in LLU cases the (unbundled) ISP still needs to install their connection hardware at the local loop. VNO is the fully software one.
- moriarty-s3a 9y ago
  This used to be the case in the US after the Telecom Act of 1996. However, the FCC decided on their own to give the ILECs a grace period of a year to implement LLU and then kept extending the grace period. After the dot com bust and the following recession in the early 2000s, most of the CLECs went out of business and Congress gave up and removed that requirement in 2006. The state PUCs didn't do much enforcement either, but the FCC deciding not to enforce the law killed it.
  - toast0 9y ago
    I'm not sure you have the history quite right; at least in Califonia, the mandated LLU was alive and well[1] for incumbent telephone carriers (ILECs), but the FCC had decreed that it applied to ILECs and not cable operators; and eventually (after much complaining and lawsuits from ILECs) decided it applied to noone, because ILEC + Cable + Satellite + Power line (hah) was a competitive marketplace. [1] not exactly well -- when the ILEC regularly offers individual customers service at rates under the wholesale rates; and the regulators don't do anything; that's not really working well.
- rayiner 9y ago
  None of the big European countries (Germany, the U.K., Spain, France, and Italy) require unbundling cable lines: http://www.oecd.org/sti/broadband/2-7.pdf http://www.oecd.org/sti/broadband/2-7.pdf. Unbundling of POTS in the US was not much of a boon, because DSL was a dead-end technology even then. What Europe does isn't really a good benchmark for how to structure a telecom market, because all the big European countries have slower broadband than in the US: https://www.akamai.com/us/en/multimedia/documents/state-of-the-internet/q4-2016-state-of-the-internet-connectivity-report.pdf https://www.akamai.com/us/en/multimedia/documents/state-of-t... (the U.S. beats the U.K., Germany, Spain, France, Italy--which accounts for 2/3 of the population of the EU).
  - andy_ppp 9y ago
    If this is true why is my Virgin Media fibre pretty damn fast and reliable and every American seems to constantly whinge about their cable provider?
    - rayiner 9y ago
      What do you mean, "if this is true?" I linked my sources (Akamai and OECD)--you can see for yourself. As far as that perception goes, my suspicion is that it has to do with the tech press/readership skewing young and urban. The U.S. is highly unusual in making the actual building of wires largely a state/local issue, and also in treating cities as ghettos instead of national priorities. Maryland, where I live, is a microcosm: if it were a country, it'd be just below Finland for broadband speeds. But it's only major city (Baltimore) is impoverished, and doesn't have fiber even though all the counties around it do. My neck of the state is pretty rural--large parts of it don't even have public water/sewer. But it's had fiber for a decade. Meanwhile, New York and Boston are just now getting fiber, and San Francisco still mostly doesn't have it.
      - andy_ppp 9y ago
        So what you’re saying is averages don’t give the whole picture?
- ferongr 9y ago
  LLU still requires connecting the "loop" from its original termination point in the exchange to the space your ISP rents for its DSLAM racks (usually the next room or the same room, just a couple of corridors away).
doctorshady 9y ago
Back when I lived in the northwest, something similar happened; I had Comcast for a year for phone and internet, didn't like it, and decided to switch back to Centurylink. During the Comcast install, I watched the guy physically break a part of the telephone network interface box. I just sorta assumed he was incompetent and fat fingered it, but the Centurylink guy who fixed it put some sort of weird plastic mold in place of the part that the Comcast guy broke. Ever since that happened, I've sorta half wondered whether that happens more often than not.
Spooky23 9y ago
It's amazing that traditional phone companies could do this in like 1995, and cable companies in New York could do this in 2000. (I had Earthlink service on Time Warner because my parents had a camp with phone but no cable service, and Earthlink gave you both)

Analemma_ 9y ago

> It's amazing to me that all these connections are still physicial (as opposed to some software-defined switching between providers). Something akin to software-defined networking. What you're describing is called "local loop unbundling". Lots of other countries do it, it works great, and it would solve most if not all of the problems with the telco market in the US... so naturally these companies lobby hard to make sure it'll never happen.

pjc50 9y ago

> Something akin to software-defined networking What you want is "local loop unbundling". It's how this works in Europe where you have artificial non-free markets with real price competition, rather than natural monopolies without price competition as in the US.

masklinn 9y ago
AFAIK in LLU cases the (unbundled) ISP still needs to install their connection hardware at the local loop. VNO is the fully software one.
moriarty-s3a 9y ago
This used to be the case in the US after the Telecom Act of 1996. However, the FCC decided on their own to give the ILECs a grace period of a year to implement LLU and then kept extending the grace period. After the dot com bust and the following recession in the early 2000s, most of the CLECs went out of business and Congress gave up and removed that requirement in 2006. The state PUCs didn't do much enforcement either, but the FCC deciding not to enforce the law killed it.
- toast0 9y ago
  I'm not sure you have the history quite right; at least in Califonia, the mandated LLU was alive and well[1] for incumbent telephone carriers (ILECs), but the FCC had decreed that it applied to ILECs and not cable operators; and eventually (after much complaining and lawsuits from ILECs) decided it applied to noone, because ILEC + Cable + Satellite + Power line (hah) was a competitive marketplace. [1] not exactly well -- when the ILEC regularly offers individual customers service at rates under the wholesale rates; and the regulators don't do anything; that's not really working well.
rayiner 9y ago
None of the big European countries (Germany, the U.K., Spain, France, and Italy) require unbundling cable lines: http://www.oecd.org/sti/broadband/2-7.pdf http://www.oecd.org/sti/broadband/2-7.pdf. Unbundling of POTS in the US was not much of a boon, because DSL was a dead-end technology even then. What Europe does isn't really a good benchmark for how to structure a telecom market, because all the big European countries have slower broadband than in the US: https://www.akamai.com/us/en/multimedia/documents/state-of-the-internet/q4-2016-state-of-the-internet-connectivity-report.pdf https://www.akamai.com/us/en/multimedia/documents/state-of-t... (the U.S. beats the U.K., Germany, Spain, France, Italy--which accounts for 2/3 of the population of the EU).
- andy_ppp 9y ago
  If this is true why is my Virgin Media fibre pretty damn fast and reliable and every American seems to constantly whinge about their cable provider?
  - rayiner 9y ago
    What do you mean, "if this is true?" I linked my sources (Akamai and OECD)--you can see for yourself. As far as that perception goes, my suspicion is that it has to do with the tech press/readership skewing young and urban. The U.S. is highly unusual in making the actual building of wires largely a state/local issue, and also in treating cities as ghettos instead of national priorities. Maryland, where I live, is a microcosm: if it were a country, it'd be just below Finland for broadband speeds. But it's only major city (Baltimore) is impoverished, and doesn't have fiber even though all the counties around it do. My neck of the state is pretty rural--large parts of it don't even have public water/sewer. But it's had fiber for a decade. Meanwhile, New York and Boston are just now getting fiber, and San Francisco still mostly doesn't have it.
    - andy_ppp 9y ago
      So what you’re saying is averages don’t give the whole picture?
ferongr 9y ago
LLU still requires connecting the "loop" from its original termination point in the exchange to the space your ISP rents for its DSLAM racks (usually the next room or the same room, just a couple of corridors away).

doctorshady 9y ago

Back when I lived in the northwest, something similar happened; I had Comcast for a year for phone and internet, didn't like it, and decided to switch back to Centurylink. During the Comcast install, I watched the guy physically break a part of the telephone network interface box. I just sorta assumed he was incompetent and fat fingered it, but the Centurylink guy who fixed it put some sort of weird plastic mold in place of the part that the Comcast guy broke. Ever since that happened, I've sorta half wondered whether that happens more often than not.

Spooky23 9y ago

It's amazing that traditional phone companies could do this in like 1995, and cable companies in New York could do this in 2000. (I had Earthlink service on Time Warner because my parents had a camp with phone but no cable service, and Earthlink gave you both)