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The article mentions that, "France has four major mobile and internet operators and nine low-cost offshoots. Britain has more than 50." I'd appreciate if somebo

The article mentions that, "France has four major mobile and internet operators and nine low-cost offshoots. Britain has more than 50." I'd appreciate if somebody could explain something here because that doesn't seem to make any economic sense. Let's assume that France/Britain have absolutely rigid and perfectly enforced net neutrality. That means internet service providers can compete only on price/speed as everything else is supposed to be otherwise identical. 13 different companies, let alone 50? How? Users would simply pick the company with the lowest price for their desired speed. And the cheapest service is going to tend to be the largest due to economies of scale. The end result is a natural trend towards monopolization when companies are allowed to only compete on price/speed. I mean you might decide to pass on a "low-cost" alternative in most industries as there is often an implied "low-quality" qualifier attached. But with strong net neutrality, this is not supposed to be the case. They state a speed, they state a price. Everything else is identical. So what gives? I find it disappointing that the NYT did not even bother to even consider this obvious question since it seems to cut to the core of this issue!

mdekkers 9y ago
In the UK, there are only two or three providers actually providing last mile, and the majority of the 50 mentioned simply re-brand the BT/OpenReach product. All you need to become and ISP is a browser and some clients. Some of the larger ones have their own backbone, to an extent, but the majority simply re-brand
- philjohn 9y ago
  And it works, because OpenReach are heavily regulated by the government, in light of the fact that they have a monopoly when it comes to copper last mile infrastructure (ignoring KCOM for the sake of simplification, and they're only in Hull). You do have LLU where internet companies put their own DSLAMs in an OpenReach exchange, once again, this is because of heavy regulation. That has become less common of late as more people move away from ADSL to VDSL, where once again OpenReach have a monopoly in the streetside DSLAMs. The move to Fibre though is an interesting one, as we now have several options (Depending on where you live) such as GigaClear, Hyperoptic and some business only providers. There's also rural fibre in the case of B4RN and boutique wireless providers where OpenReach has failed to install a decent service. There's also Virgin Media, who provide last mile triple play over cable, but they don't have 100% coverage. Finally, the government has given out large block grants to local authorities to help pay for rollout of "Super" and "Ultra" fast broadband to places OpenReach initially deemed financially unviable. The thing about competition, is it only works when any part of the equation that is a monopoly, or near monopoly, is regulated as a utility.
  - mdekkers 9y ago
    Nice comment, thanks. GigaClear etc are new to me. I left the UK 5 years ago, but was heavily involved in the telco business. Agree with your statement (and benefits) of heavily and fairly regulated monopolies.
rebolek 9y ago
The important point here is mobile operators. This kind of practice usually does not happen with non-mobile ISPs.
- Symbiote 9y ago
  There are about 60 ISPs (fixed line and mobile, some do both) in the UK. Mostly you're choosing the top pure of connection and the customer service. https://www.thinkbroadband.com/isps https://www.thinkbroadband.com/isps
StephenAmar 9y ago
Regarding France, you do end up with a ton of options. For instance, in Paris, you have multiple DSL providers, multiple fiber providers and typically one cable provider. The French Government laid out ton of dark fiber in the past decades across the entire country and ISPs are using it (http://www.telcite.fr/?lang=en http://www.telcite.fr/?lang=en for instance). Network performance may vary between ISPs (ex https://gigaom.com/2013/01/02/youtube-sucks-on-french-isp-free-french-regulators-want-to-know-why/ https://gigaom.com/2013/01/02/youtube-sucks-on-french-isp-fr...) Most French ISPs throw in TV and home phone for free, so depending on which ISPs you pick, you'll get different set of channels. You can also bundle mobile phone service etc.
khedoros1 9y ago
Judging from the Wikipedia list of UK ISPs[1], providers use a variety of different technologies, have different coverage areas, lease lines to smaller ISPs, provide different bundles with other services that they provide, and so on. Maybe one service is known to optimize for throughput, while another offers slower speeds, but also lower latency for gaming, or something. There are a lot of services besides just the internet connection that ISPs could provide to their customers (or not provide, and market themselves as the more economical option). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_broadband_providers_in_the_United_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_broadband_providers_in...
- freeflight 9y ago
  > Maybe one service is known to optimize for throughput, while another offers slower speeds, but also lower latency for gaming, or something. This isn't just reserved to UK ISPs, afaik the situation in Germany is kinda similar. Fun tidbit about the monetization of features: When ADSL just became "a thing" it introduced higher latency compared to ISDN. Quickly people figured out that certain ISPs could toggle something on called "fastpath", which would reduce the latency quite a bit if you called the support hotline and asked for it. Took a couple of months until one of the major ISPs (Telekom) started charging 5€ monthly extra for it on the lower speed ADSL tariffs, luckily that stopped being a thing with VDSL.
- petepete 9y ago
  All major ISPs in the UK are resellers of the same fibre infrastructure, run by OpenReach[0], a subsidiary of BT (formerly the national telco, now one of the larger ISPs). OpenReach has to provide equal access to other ISPs by law, so the playing field between them is very even. The only major outlier is Virgin Media, who own the cable (as in cable TV) network covering some built-up bits of the county; their fibre network is entirely separate. [0]https://www.openreach.co.uk/ https://www.openreach.co.uk/
  - KaiserPro 9y ago
    Its not fibre. Its copper. Everything is copper. BT/openreach own all of the last mile infra, apart from a few cases in villages and Hull. Its only the last mile that they provide at any scale. the rest is arranged by the ISP
seszett 9y ago
For France, the four major operators compete primarily on antenna coverage for mobile, and for home internet they each provide different technologies, bundles of TV channels, telephone plans, and set-top boxes. They don't really compete on speed as nowadays almost every operator just provides the max that can be offered by the technology that connects the home. The low-cost operators usually provide about the same thing as their parent major operator, but with very reduced support, no brick-and-mortar offices you can go to when you have a problem, and less bundled services.
- r00fus 9y ago
  Damn this sounds so much like it was supposed to be in the US until internet regulations got axed in 2002. Anecdotally, my observations align (at least on our recent visits).
KaiserPro 9y ago
We don't have net neutrality, we have competition. That is the key point, net nuetrality is a moot point because if an ISP were to do something like charge for iplayer (BBC catchup service) which was mooted a few years ago, they'd all move to a different ISP. Because we have for the moment a roughly open market. There are parts that are controlled by a monopoly, but thats the people who provide the last mile infrastructure. They have strict regulations saying that they must charge a fixed price for rental of the infrastructure with no obligations other than to pay for the last mile. (they can choose to be a pure virtual operator, just skinning the service, or almost entirely run its own infra, save the last bit of copper) Also, the people that run the last mile monopoly are not the people providing backhaul. That is mostly an open market too. More open than the last mile copper at least. Linx/lonap are all coops, where you pay a membership fee, and the cost of powering your equipment, any interconnect arrangements are up to you and your peers. In short, we have a much more open market, but with no net nuetrality. what america needs is competition, and the seperation of last mile, ISPs and backhaul. None of which you are going to get in present times.
- croon 9y ago
  Slight clarification: We have an open market explicitly because we have tight last-mile regulation. If we didn't we'd all have local monopolies. I don't know specifically where you are, but it's true in most of Europe.
  - philjohn 9y ago
    We do have one local monopoly, KCOM in Hull.
  - rayiner 9y ago
    Some of Europe has tighter last mile regulation, but it’s not necessarily better. Take France, for example. France applies unbundling to copper telephone lines and fiber, but not cable. It subsidises fiber backhaul for DSL. Overall, it’s got similar fiber deployment to the US (about 10%) but overall much slower speeds (according to Akamai, 11 Mbps average in France versus 19 Mbps in the US). But there is lots of ISP competition in DSL, like there was in the US in the early 2000s. But most people don’t have access to faster cable alternatives, because subsidization of the DSL network killed competition. Is this better?
distances 9y ago
Economies of scale do not really happen for ISPs when there's strong regulation allowing for virtual operators. If you grow very large, you are expected to provide more user support, public relations, advertising, and other similar functions that just cost extra. Small virtual ISPs can operate close to the actual costs. It's basically a two-tier market: a few expensive name brands, and lots of low-cost, low-support brands.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  Back when DSL was regulated that way, it was pretty much the reverse; the big name brands wrode on being the obvious default choice with horrible user support, while the independent resellers often had stellar support (less slick advertising, but probably higher advertising cost per user, because of economies of scale.)
  - distances 9y ago
    Well, "more user support" doesn't mean it's better, just that they need more of it. The big names have all the basic users who likely call much more even for basic things like Windows problems, while the small ones get to concentrate on relevant issues with more knowledgeable user base.
    - calgoo 9y ago
      Well, here in spain the difference was that once the virtual providers came in, i could actually get technical support versus the big providers where it was next to impossible. The installation time also went from 90+ days to 5+ days, and the big providers had to improve as well.
GuB-42 9y ago
Competition in France is driven by: - price and pricing structure - coverage, most important for mobile and in low density areas - mobile data - speed but not so much, ISPs often offer you the fastest speed available, even for low tiers - service level And because most landlines are triple-play, VoIP and TV service are also a deciding factor. Some ISP also provide bundles with additional service, like subscriptions, subsidized phones and other stuff. It is fine with net neutrality as long as there is no preferential treatment when it comes to internet service, though there may be issues with product tying laws. To counter monopolies, large ISPs are required to rent their infrastructure to other players at a reasonable price.
ksk 9y ago
>That means internet service providers can compete only on price/speed as everything else is supposed to be otherwise identical. 13 different companies, let alone 50? How? Users would simply pick the company with the lowest price for their desired speed. And the cheapest service is going to tend to be the largest due to economies of scale. The end result is a natural trend towards monopolization when companies are allowed to only compete on price/speed. They won't be identical, because every ISP will have different peering and transit arrangements. And depending on those arrangements the access speeds for netflix/hulu/youtube will differ. Traffic that's internal to the ISP's network will always be the cheapest. Which is why an ISP can subsidize streaming services if they are hosted internally. I have had this debate with some NN supporters, and they do not seem to appreciate this basic commercial angle.

mdekkers 9y ago

In the UK, there are only two or three providers actually providing last mile, and the majority of the 50 mentioned simply re-brand the BT/OpenReach product. All you need to become and ISP is a browser and some clients. Some of the larger ones have their own backbone, to an extent, but the majority simply re-brand

philjohn 9y ago
And it works, because OpenReach are heavily regulated by the government, in light of the fact that they have a monopoly when it comes to copper last mile infrastructure (ignoring KCOM for the sake of simplification, and they're only in Hull). You do have LLU where internet companies put their own DSLAMs in an OpenReach exchange, once again, this is because of heavy regulation. That has become less common of late as more people move away from ADSL to VDSL, where once again OpenReach have a monopoly in the streetside DSLAMs. The move to Fibre though is an interesting one, as we now have several options (Depending on where you live) such as GigaClear, Hyperoptic and some business only providers. There's also rural fibre in the case of B4RN and boutique wireless providers where OpenReach has failed to install a decent service. There's also Virgin Media, who provide last mile triple play over cable, but they don't have 100% coverage. Finally, the government has given out large block grants to local authorities to help pay for rollout of "Super" and "Ultra" fast broadband to places OpenReach initially deemed financially unviable. The thing about competition, is it only works when any part of the equation that is a monopoly, or near monopoly, is regulated as a utility.
- mdekkers 9y ago
  Nice comment, thanks. GigaClear etc are new to me. I left the UK 5 years ago, but was heavily involved in the telco business. Agree with your statement (and benefits) of heavily and fairly regulated monopolies.

rebolek 9y ago

The important point here is mobile operators. This kind of practice usually does not happen with non-mobile ISPs.

Symbiote 9y ago
There are about 60 ISPs (fixed line and mobile, some do both) in the UK. Mostly you're choosing the top pure of connection and the customer service. https://www.thinkbroadband.com/isps https://www.thinkbroadband.com/isps

StephenAmar 9y ago

Regarding France, you do end up with a ton of options. For instance, in Paris, you have multiple DSL providers, multiple fiber providers and typically one cable provider. The French Government laid out ton of dark fiber in the past decades across the entire country and ISPs are using it (http://www.telcite.fr/?lang=en http://www.telcite.fr/?lang=en for instance). Network performance may vary between ISPs (ex https://gigaom.com/2013/01/02/youtube-sucks-on-french-isp-free-french-regulators-want-to-know-why/ https://gigaom.com/2013/01/02/youtube-sucks-on-french-isp-fr...) Most French ISPs throw in TV and home phone for free, so depending on which ISPs you pick, you'll get different set of channels. You can also bundle mobile phone service etc.

khedoros1 9y ago

Judging from the Wikipedia list of UK ISPs[1], providers use a variety of different technologies, have different coverage areas, lease lines to smaller ISPs, provide different bundles with other services that they provide, and so on. Maybe one service is known to optimize for throughput, while another offers slower speeds, but also lower latency for gaming, or something. There are a lot of services besides just the internet connection that ISPs could provide to their customers (or not provide, and market themselves as the more economical option). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_broadband_providers_in_the_United_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_broadband_providers_in...

freeflight 9y ago
> Maybe one service is known to optimize for throughput, while another offers slower speeds, but also lower latency for gaming, or something. This isn't just reserved to UK ISPs, afaik the situation in Germany is kinda similar. Fun tidbit about the monetization of features: When ADSL just became "a thing" it introduced higher latency compared to ISDN. Quickly people figured out that certain ISPs could toggle something on called "fastpath", which would reduce the latency quite a bit if you called the support hotline and asked for it. Took a couple of months until one of the major ISPs (Telekom) started charging 5€ monthly extra for it on the lower speed ADSL tariffs, luckily that stopped being a thing with VDSL.
petepete 9y ago
All major ISPs in the UK are resellers of the same fibre infrastructure, run by OpenReach[0], a subsidiary of BT (formerly the national telco, now one of the larger ISPs). OpenReach has to provide equal access to other ISPs by law, so the playing field between them is very even. The only major outlier is Virgin Media, who own the cable (as in cable TV) network covering some built-up bits of the county; their fibre network is entirely separate. [0]https://www.openreach.co.uk/ https://www.openreach.co.uk/
- KaiserPro 9y ago
  Its not fibre. Its copper. Everything is copper. BT/openreach own all of the last mile infra, apart from a few cases in villages and Hull. Its only the last mile that they provide at any scale. the rest is arranged by the ISP

seszett 9y ago

For France, the four major operators compete primarily on antenna coverage for mobile, and for home internet they each provide different technologies, bundles of TV channels, telephone plans, and set-top boxes. They don't really compete on speed as nowadays almost every operator just provides the max that can be offered by the technology that connects the home. The low-cost operators usually provide about the same thing as their parent major operator, but with very reduced support, no brick-and-mortar offices you can go to when you have a problem, and less bundled services.

r00fus 9y ago
Damn this sounds so much like it was supposed to be in the US until internet regulations got axed in 2002. Anecdotally, my observations align (at least on our recent visits).

KaiserPro 9y ago

We don't have net neutrality, we have competition. That is the key point, net nuetrality is a moot point because if an ISP were to do something like charge for iplayer (BBC catchup service) which was mooted a few years ago, they'd all move to a different ISP. Because we have for the moment a roughly open market. There are parts that are controlled by a monopoly, but thats the people who provide the last mile infrastructure. They have strict regulations saying that they must charge a fixed price for rental of the infrastructure with no obligations other than to pay for the last mile. (they can choose to be a pure virtual operator, just skinning the service, or almost entirely run its own infra, save the last bit of copper) Also, the people that run the last mile monopoly are not the people providing backhaul. That is mostly an open market too. More open than the last mile copper at least. Linx/lonap are all coops, where you pay a membership fee, and the cost of powering your equipment, any interconnect arrangements are up to you and your peers. In short, we have a much more open market, but with no net nuetrality. what america needs is competition, and the seperation of last mile, ISPs and backhaul. None of which you are going to get in present times.

croon 9y ago
Slight clarification: We have an open market explicitly because we have tight last-mile regulation. If we didn't we'd all have local monopolies. I don't know specifically where you are, but it's true in most of Europe.
- philjohn 9y ago
  We do have one local monopoly, KCOM in Hull.
- rayiner 9y ago
  Some of Europe has tighter last mile regulation, but it’s not necessarily better. Take France, for example. France applies unbundling to copper telephone lines and fiber, but not cable. It subsidises fiber backhaul for DSL. Overall, it’s got similar fiber deployment to the US (about 10%) but overall much slower speeds (according to Akamai, 11 Mbps average in France versus 19 Mbps in the US). But there is lots of ISP competition in DSL, like there was in the US in the early 2000s. But most people don’t have access to faster cable alternatives, because subsidization of the DSL network killed competition. Is this better?

distances 9y ago

Economies of scale do not really happen for ISPs when there's strong regulation allowing for virtual operators. If you grow very large, you are expected to provide more user support, public relations, advertising, and other similar functions that just cost extra. Small virtual ISPs can operate close to the actual costs. It's basically a two-tier market: a few expensive name brands, and lots of low-cost, low-support brands.

dragonwriter 9y ago
Back when DSL was regulated that way, it was pretty much the reverse; the big name brands wrode on being the obvious default choice with horrible user support, while the independent resellers often had stellar support (less slick advertising, but probably higher advertising cost per user, because of economies of scale.)
- distances 9y ago
  Well, "more user support" doesn't mean it's better, just that they need more of it. The big names have all the basic users who likely call much more even for basic things like Windows problems, while the small ones get to concentrate on relevant issues with more knowledgeable user base.
  - calgoo 9y ago
    Well, here in spain the difference was that once the virtual providers came in, i could actually get technical support versus the big providers where it was next to impossible. The installation time also went from 90+ days to 5+ days, and the big providers had to improve as well.

GuB-42 9y ago

Competition in France is driven by: - price and pricing structure - coverage, most important for mobile and in low density areas - mobile data - speed but not so much, ISPs often offer you the fastest speed available, even for low tiers - service level And because most landlines are triple-play, VoIP and TV service are also a deciding factor. Some ISP also provide bundles with additional service, like subscriptions, subsidized phones and other stuff. It is fine with net neutrality as long as there is no preferential treatment when it comes to internet service, though there may be issues with product tying laws. To counter monopolies, large ISPs are required to rent their infrastructure to other players at a reasonable price.

ksk 9y ago

>That means internet service providers can compete only on price/speed as everything else is supposed to be otherwise identical. 13 different companies, let alone 50? How? Users would simply pick the company with the lowest price for their desired speed. And the cheapest service is going to tend to be the largest due to economies of scale. The end result is a natural trend towards monopolization when companies are allowed to only compete on price/speed. They won't be identical, because every ISP will have different peering and transit arrangements. And depending on those arrangements the access speeds for netflix/hulu/youtube will differ. Traffic that's internal to the ISP's network will always be the cheapest. Which is why an ISP can subsidize streaming services if they are hosted internally. I have had this debate with some NN supporters, and they do not seem to appreciate this basic commercial angle.