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And why should content creators also be the ones who control the very last mile of the internet in the USA? You don't think there's something very wrong with th

And why should content creators also be the ones who control the very last mile of the internet in the USA? You don't think there's something very wrong with that arrangement? Back in the day, we used to take a dim look at companies who amassed horizontal or vertical monopolies, and broke them up. Well, they're like the replicators from Stargate SG1 and have reassembled into something even uglier. And yet when we discuss this, you fall back on caps and justification by contention ratio... But why are their services zero rated, eh? Of course we know why - it's to kill the opposing services like Netflix, Hulu, or others... except for their services! Logically, the actual lines should belong to the people (government). The money We've(royal) paid has been above and beyond what it would have cost for a REMC-style internet-ification. I don't want the US or State govts being ISPs themselves, but muni style arrangements have worked out well in the past - except when Comcast and ATT haven't lobbied them out of existence.

rayiner 8y ago
> And yet when we discuss this, you fall back on caps and justification by contention ratio... But why are their services zero rated, eh? Of course we know why - it's to kill the opposing services like Netflix, Hulu, or others... except for their services! I mean there is also the fact that TV and broadband run on entirey separate infrastructure that just happens to share a physical wire. On FiOS, for example, TV is a separate wavelength of laser and is a broadcast signal, not an IP signal.
- AnthonyMouse 8y ago
  How can it be entirely separate infrastructure if it uses the same physical wire? Using those wavelengths for that leaves less carrying capacity for internet data. It's in direct contention for the same resource.
  - shmerl 8y ago
    They don't need to compete for the wire for this to be a problem, they just need to compete for the viewer, which they do.
  - rayiner 8y ago
    The video signal is muxed onto the fiber after the OLT, so the only shared portion of the infrastructure is the passive fiber. That’s effectively an uncontended resource. The single mode fiber has vastly more capacity than you can actually use with the active components of the network. Your limit in data speeds is from the OLT, and the Ethernet ports those OLTs are plugged into, none of which is shared with TV.
    - AnthonyMouse 8y ago
      "The fiber has plenty of capacity" seems like an argument against data caps, considering that getting/keeping the fiber in the ground is the major cost. The whole concept of separation seems like a dodge. Is there any real advantage to using separate equipment for TV vs. using the same hardware resources to provide more data capacity and using IP multicast? Or is that what they are doing, and just doing it on separate hardware in order to claim separation?
      - rayiner 8y ago
        > "The fiber has plenty of capacity" seems like an argument against data caps, considering that getting/keeping the fiber in the ground is the major cost. No, a huge part of the cost is the active equipment, which also requires maintenance and upgrades. Have you priced aggregation routers with 10G ports recently? > Is there any real advantage to using separate equipment for TV vs. using the same hardware resources to provide more data capacity and using IP multicast? Yes, injecting the TV signal as RF over glass is vastly simpler, cheaper, and more reliable than using IP multicast. There is also the fact that it pre-dates streaming services, and is an outgrowth of the analog CATV distribution systems that were in places for decades before streaming Internet TV.
        AnthonyMouse 8y ago
        > No, a huge part of the cost is the active equipment, which also requires maintenance and upgrades. Have you priced aggregation routers with 10G ports recently? At something like $1000/port, for 100 Mbps symmetric broadband customers that's $10/customer divided by the oversubscription ratio, per hardware refresh cycle (say three years). The percentage of the customer's monthly bill rounds to zero. And the maintenance cost may be significant, but it also shouldn't really be proportional to the traffic level. > Yes, injecting the TV signal as RF over glass is vastly simpler, cheaper, and more reliable than using IP multicast. It just seems like the opposite of how everything else is going. Virtualization, SDN, etc. Get everything running on the same kind of hardware so everything is fungible, failed hardware can be swapped out with universal replacements, idle resources can be reallocated to other workloads without changing hardware, etc. > There is also the fact that it pre-dates streaming services, and is an outgrowth of the analog CATV distribution systems that were in places for decades before streaming Internet TV. This would be easier to believe from Comcast than Verizon.
- shmerl 8y ago
  They don't have to. It's only because the alternative is to invest in CDN, which some don't want to do. Real Internet video providers do that however (Youtube, Netflix and so on). Either way, it doesn't mean they aren't competing. Legacy TV business hates Internet video, even though they know well, they are finished and either they'll go bust or they need to switch to Internet video themselves.
  - crankylinuxuser 8y ago
    We used to have a worldwide CDN messaging service: Usenet. Early on (1998-1999) ISPs axed their newsgroup servers. Nobody paid them for those CDNs. But soon after, CDN companies paid ISPs to install their content. Money. Its all about money.

rayiner 8y ago

> And yet when we discuss this, you fall back on caps and justification by contention ratio... But why are their services zero rated, eh? Of course we know why - it's to kill the opposing services like Netflix, Hulu, or others... except for their services! I mean there is also the fact that TV and broadband run on entirey separate infrastructure that just happens to share a physical wire. On FiOS, for example, TV is a separate wavelength of laser and is a broadcast signal, not an IP signal.

AnthonyMouse 8y ago
How can it be entirely separate infrastructure if it uses the same physical wire? Using those wavelengths for that leaves less carrying capacity for internet data. It's in direct contention for the same resource.
- shmerl 8y ago
  They don't need to compete for the wire for this to be a problem, they just need to compete for the viewer, which they do.
- rayiner 8y ago
  The video signal is muxed onto the fiber after the OLT, so the only shared portion of the infrastructure is the passive fiber. That’s effectively an uncontended resource. The single mode fiber has vastly more capacity than you can actually use with the active components of the network. Your limit in data speeds is from the OLT, and the Ethernet ports those OLTs are plugged into, none of which is shared with TV.
  - AnthonyMouse 8y ago
    "The fiber has plenty of capacity" seems like an argument against data caps, considering that getting/keeping the fiber in the ground is the major cost. The whole concept of separation seems like a dodge. Is there any real advantage to using separate equipment for TV vs. using the same hardware resources to provide more data capacity and using IP multicast? Or is that what they are doing, and just doing it on separate hardware in order to claim separation?
    - rayiner 8y ago
      > "The fiber has plenty of capacity" seems like an argument against data caps, considering that getting/keeping the fiber in the ground is the major cost. No, a huge part of the cost is the active equipment, which also requires maintenance and upgrades. Have you priced aggregation routers with 10G ports recently? > Is there any real advantage to using separate equipment for TV vs. using the same hardware resources to provide more data capacity and using IP multicast? Yes, injecting the TV signal as RF over glass is vastly simpler, cheaper, and more reliable than using IP multicast. There is also the fact that it pre-dates streaming services, and is an outgrowth of the analog CATV distribution systems that were in places for decades before streaming Internet TV.
      - AnthonyMouse 8y ago
        > No, a huge part of the cost is the active equipment, which also requires maintenance and upgrades. Have you priced aggregation routers with 10G ports recently? At something like $1000/port, for 100 Mbps symmetric broadband customers that's $10/customer divided by the oversubscription ratio, per hardware refresh cycle (say three years). The percentage of the customer's monthly bill rounds to zero. And the maintenance cost may be significant, but it also shouldn't really be proportional to the traffic level. > Yes, injecting the TV signal as RF over glass is vastly simpler, cheaper, and more reliable than using IP multicast. It just seems like the opposite of how everything else is going. Virtualization, SDN, etc. Get everything running on the same kind of hardware so everything is fungible, failed hardware can be swapped out with universal replacements, idle resources can be reallocated to other workloads without changing hardware, etc. > There is also the fact that it pre-dates streaming services, and is an outgrowth of the analog CATV distribution systems that were in places for decades before streaming Internet TV. This would be easier to believe from Comcast than Verizon.
shmerl 8y ago
They don't have to. It's only because the alternative is to invest in CDN, which some don't want to do. Real Internet video providers do that however (Youtube, Netflix and so on). Either way, it doesn't mean they aren't competing. Legacy TV business hates Internet video, even though they know well, they are finished and either they'll go bust or they need to switch to Internet video themselves.
- crankylinuxuser 8y ago
  We used to have a worldwide CDN messaging service: Usenet. Early on (1998-1999) ISPs axed their newsgroup servers. Nobody paid them for those CDNs. But soon after, CDN companies paid ISPs to install their content. Money. Its all about money.