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We have a similar system for electrical distribution; per area a single organisation has sole responsibility for the physical infrastructure and they bill your

We have a similar system for electrical distribution; per area a single organisation has sole responsibility for the physical infrastructure and they bill your energy company of choice. That means that on your invoice you have a fixed amount of infrastructure cost as a component, and your service/usage fee from the energy company. Same for gas. This is probably common (or at least more common than internet-infra-as-a-utility), but the concept of doing the same for data would benefit a lot of people. We had that for POTS/PSTN and Coaxical data (CATV/cable/whateveryoucallit) as well, which was privatised and now opened up again so you get your infrastructure component as a national fixed fee and you simply pay your provider of choice for the actual service.

asploder 6y ago
I found this terminology confusing for many years, hope this clarification is helpful: - “Coaxial” refers to the design of the physical cable (Wikipedia has a better explanation than I can offer) - CATV refers to “Community Antenna Television”, the first cable systems in the USA, which fed the signal from a shared “community antenna” to homes in areas with poor broadcast reception. - “Cable” is the generic term for pay-TV and ISP services over coaxial cable
- oneplane 6y ago
  Yeah, the problem is indeed that everyone points to the same general concept but isn't using the same terms which adds to the confusion. Technically you are using a DOCSIS connection which happens to use a coaxial cable. But not the same cable one as you'd have with CATV because that one didn't have the same ratings. There is also a difference with one-way broadcast and two-way communication where you also need a CMTS for that purpose. And to make it worse, sometime EOC is used which in itself is Ethernet, but not over CAT5/6/7 cables. However, all of those words are better than people calling it 'the internet wire'.

asploder 6y ago

I found this terminology confusing for many years, hope this clarification is helpful: - “Coaxial” refers to the design of the physical cable (Wikipedia has a better explanation than I can offer) - CATV refers to “Community Antenna Television”, the first cable systems in the USA, which fed the signal from a shared “community antenna” to homes in areas with poor broadcast reception. - “Cable” is the generic term for pay-TV and ISP services over coaxial cable

oneplane 6y ago
Yeah, the problem is indeed that everyone points to the same general concept but isn't using the same terms which adds to the confusion. Technically you are using a DOCSIS connection which happens to use a coaxial cable. But not the same cable one as you'd have with CATV because that one didn't have the same ratings. There is also a difference with one-way broadcast and two-way communication where you also need a CMTS for that purpose. And to make it worse, sometime EOC is used which in itself is Ethernet, but not over CAT5/6/7 cables. However, all of those words are better than people calling it 'the internet wire'.