5 ms·

I think you’re mis-interpreting the overbooking ratios. My understanding is that a 20:1 ratio means that for 1 mbit you can serve 20 customers 1 mbit. Your poi

I think you’re mis-interpreting the overbooking ratios. My understanding is that a 20:1 ratio means that for 1 mbit you can serve 20 customers 1 mbit. Your point still stands though. That means if 1 mbit cost $1 then it costs $0.04/customer. The real cost is in deploying the wires and countless studies have shown the ROI on that, especially given the exorbitant rates, is typically 5 years or less per hookup. Can you imagine how much Comcast etc have made per house they’ve run coax to? The ROI must be mind boggling.

walshemj 9y ago
That ignores that the USO does require some mind blowingly expensive links I doubt that laying new local plant is a positive roi in 5 years.
- bronco21016 9y ago
  According to NRTC [1] fiber deployments to the premises cost approximately $800/deployment. Ignoring uptake, operational expenses etc that’s $13/mo per deployment to recover cost in 5 years. I have no idea what the average consumer pays their residential provider but I would estimate it’s over $100/mo on average. It seems like it would be fairly easy to get return in 5 years. These are numbers for fiber. [1] https://www.nrtc.coop/rural-connect/cost-of-rural-ftth-deployment-is-dropping https://www.nrtc.coop/rural-connect/cost-of-rural-ftth-deplo...
  - rainbowmverse 9y ago
    Less of that three digit cable bill goes to the company than you might expect. Content providers don't give it away for free. ESPN is notorious for eating a huge % of the bill.
    - notmetoday3426 9y ago
      Not just content, also peering and data transit; you pay at the IPX, or you have no internez for selling. You need a customer services organisation - perhaps minimal, but people will write to the CEO so you need some way of handling contact. You need billing, you need security, you need repair and diagnostics, and you need capital ready to meet unexpected expenses, like storm damage, or power surges. Oh Oh I forgot, power, power costs also. But true point: none of the above is competitive in the current market. To compete you need content, many customers are willing to pay for football. Some customers don't give a toss about football, but not enough customers don't care about content and do care about good internet to make things work. Believe me - it makes me sad.
    - loooooooooooool 9y ago
      And the fuckers will not sell you internet without you also buying their useless phone and/or TV services...
  - wahern 9y ago
    In San Francisco Sonic charges $50 + taxes for 100Mb/s fiber service, and they're profitable. IIRC, the CEO of Sonic has hinted their connection cost per house is closer to $400 (at least during a roll-out in an SF suburb), though I can't find any references. They forced AT&T's hand, which began rolling out their service in the city about a year later. AT&T charges $70 or more, I think. It's cheaper to do this stuff than the big companies let on. The problem is that they can make even _more_ money investing in other services and products, like cellular and cable TV. Worse, fiber eats into their cable TV profits and jeopardizes their wet dreams about 5G cellular data plans. [1] It's $40 + $10 router rental, or $50 if you have your own router. But $50 for the service alone isn't promotional, whereas the $40 + rental is technically promotional and might become $50 + rental down the road.
Jemmeh 9y ago
But we taxpayers already paid $400 billion to have fiber ran throughout the US, just never happened. ISPs took payment but didn't deliver. https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6c5e97/eli5_how_were_isps_able_to_pocket_the_200_billion/ https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6c5e97/e...
- toomuchtodo 9y ago
  Right. So what can be done about telcos taking that money, and giving it to shareholders instead of delivering the infrastructure they committed to? Very little. That money is gone.
  - otakucode 9y ago
    It can be observed that they are a hostile party who have no place in our local communities and are not welcome. They can have their exclusive contracts to pole access and provision of telecom services revoked by municipalities who then construct an ISP as a regulated public utility like water or power. A private company runs the utility, one legally required to base their fees upon the actual cost of providing the service (which guarantees it drops as fast as tech costs drop - fast), has to appeal to a utilities commission if they wish to raise rates, while providing legitimate justification based upon an increase in the cost of providing the service, etc. Overnight government would be able to mandate universal service availability, and count on citizens having Internet access. That would mean being able to close physical government offices and let the clerks work from home. Billions saved right off the bat. It would mean less spying, as municipal people are not going to just bend over when the feds show up, they will actually demand to see a warrant - unlike any large American company who derives large amounts of their own income from being granted government contracts. It would mean no ridiculous upcharging for "business" connections (just like we don't charge restaurants more for tap water because they make soup out of it and sell it). It would also mean no more asynchronous connections which only exist to prop up the expensive business connections. It would mean an ISP that serves as infrastructure that improves society in a multitude of ways rather than a luxury good fed off of by a greedy tick that was lucky enough to hold exclusive sway over pole access rights and telecom rights when their single biggest competitor, the Internet, appeared on the scene. Letting companies like Comcast, Time Warner, etc run ISPs is sheer madness. They are media distribution companies. Their empires were built on that. And the Internet makes media distribution worthless. Any clever kid can run circles around them and provide a better service. And we let them have their hands on its throat?
sp332 9y ago
Right, 20:1 ratio means for 20mbit of bandwith to consumers you buy 1 mbit of bandwidth from a upstream provider. I don't think you're disagreeing.
Retric 9y ago
The marginal cost of a new 20Mbit customer when you have 500+ customers is 1 Mbit upstream bandwidth. However, you can't really get just 1 Mbit at those scales so it's closer to 100 extra customers cost 100Mbit.

walshemj 9y ago

That ignores that the USO does require some mind blowingly expensive links I doubt that laying new local plant is a positive roi in 5 years.

bronco21016 9y ago
According to NRTC [1] fiber deployments to the premises cost approximately $800/deployment. Ignoring uptake, operational expenses etc that’s $13/mo per deployment to recover cost in 5 years. I have no idea what the average consumer pays their residential provider but I would estimate it’s over $100/mo on average. It seems like it would be fairly easy to get return in 5 years. These are numbers for fiber. [1] https://www.nrtc.coop/rural-connect/cost-of-rural-ftth-deployment-is-dropping https://www.nrtc.coop/rural-connect/cost-of-rural-ftth-deplo...
- rainbowmverse 9y ago
  Less of that three digit cable bill goes to the company than you might expect. Content providers don't give it away for free. ESPN is notorious for eating a huge % of the bill.
  - notmetoday3426 9y ago
    Not just content, also peering and data transit; you pay at the IPX, or you have no internez for selling. You need a customer services organisation - perhaps minimal, but people will write to the CEO so you need some way of handling contact. You need billing, you need security, you need repair and diagnostics, and you need capital ready to meet unexpected expenses, like storm damage, or power surges. Oh Oh I forgot, power, power costs also. But true point: none of the above is competitive in the current market. To compete you need content, many customers are willing to pay for football. Some customers don't give a toss about football, but not enough customers don't care about content and do care about good internet to make things work. Believe me - it makes me sad.
  - loooooooooooool 9y ago
    And the fuckers will not sell you internet without you also buying their useless phone and/or TV services...
- wahern 9y ago
  In San Francisco Sonic charges $50 + taxes for 100Mb/s fiber service, and they're profitable. IIRC, the CEO of Sonic has hinted their connection cost per house is closer to $400 (at least during a roll-out in an SF suburb), though I can't find any references. They forced AT&T's hand, which began rolling out their service in the city about a year later. AT&T charges $70 or more, I think. It's cheaper to do this stuff than the big companies let on. The problem is that they can make even _more_ money investing in other services and products, like cellular and cable TV. Worse, fiber eats into their cable TV profits and jeopardizes their wet dreams about 5G cellular data plans. [1] It's $40 + $10 router rental, or $50 if you have your own router. But $50 for the service alone isn't promotional, whereas the $40 + rental is technically promotional and might become $50 + rental down the road.

Jemmeh 9y ago

But we taxpayers already paid $400 billion to have fiber ran throughout the US, just never happened. ISPs took payment but didn't deliver. https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6c5e97/eli5_how_were_isps_able_to_pocket_the_200_billion/ https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6c5e97/e...

toomuchtodo 9y ago
Right. So what can be done about telcos taking that money, and giving it to shareholders instead of delivering the infrastructure they committed to? Very little. That money is gone.
- otakucode 9y ago
  It can be observed that they are a hostile party who have no place in our local communities and are not welcome. They can have their exclusive contracts to pole access and provision of telecom services revoked by municipalities who then construct an ISP as a regulated public utility like water or power. A private company runs the utility, one legally required to base their fees upon the actual cost of providing the service (which guarantees it drops as fast as tech costs drop - fast), has to appeal to a utilities commission if they wish to raise rates, while providing legitimate justification based upon an increase in the cost of providing the service, etc. Overnight government would be able to mandate universal service availability, and count on citizens having Internet access. That would mean being able to close physical government offices and let the clerks work from home. Billions saved right off the bat. It would mean less spying, as municipal people are not going to just bend over when the feds show up, they will actually demand to see a warrant - unlike any large American company who derives large amounts of their own income from being granted government contracts. It would mean no ridiculous upcharging for "business" connections (just like we don't charge restaurants more for tap water because they make soup out of it and sell it). It would also mean no more asynchronous connections which only exist to prop up the expensive business connections. It would mean an ISP that serves as infrastructure that improves society in a multitude of ways rather than a luxury good fed off of by a greedy tick that was lucky enough to hold exclusive sway over pole access rights and telecom rights when their single biggest competitor, the Internet, appeared on the scene. Letting companies like Comcast, Time Warner, etc run ISPs is sheer madness. They are media distribution companies. Their empires were built on that. And the Internet makes media distribution worthless. Any clever kid can run circles around them and provide a better service. And we let them have their hands on its throat?

sp332 9y ago

Right, 20:1 ratio means for 20mbit of bandwith to consumers you buy 1 mbit of bandwidth from a upstream provider. I don't think you're disagreeing.

Retric 9y ago

The marginal cost of a new 20Mbit customer when you have 500+ customers is 1 Mbit upstream bandwidth. However, you can't really get just 1 Mbit at those scales so it's closer to 100 extra customers cost 100Mbit.