4 ms·

I always kinda thought multiple providers in the same area would be a logistical and technical challenge, could t eh share the same lines? Like Comcast and Cha

by Keverw 6y ago

I always kinda thought multiple providers in the same area would be a logistical and technical challenge, could t eh share the same lines? Like Comcast and Charter both providing cable as a option to the same house.

sokoloff 6y ago
If they were both on the poles outside, it wouldn’t be any logistical trouble to switch from one to the other. It would take a truck roll, but that’s why they have trucks.
lotsofpulp 6y ago
Yes, it would be wasteful to run multiple fibers all over the place, just like it would be wasteful to run multiple water, sewer, electrical, and gas lines. Hence fiber internet should be a public utility, like water, sewer, gas, and electric.
- ncmncm 6y ago
  Fiber takes up overwhelmingly less space than others services' lines. So, in principle there should be little trouble having two or even more providers. Furthermore: fibers provide overwhelmingly more bandwidth capacity than (almost) anyone needs, and hardly nobody needs two fiber connections. So, different providers can share the same fiber installation, either renting to one another, or renting from local government. Finally, maintaining fiber is much less costly than, say, sewers, they last much longer, and are way simpler to manage, so local governments can operate them directly, and provide service more cheaply by dispensing with billing activity, folding costs into the tax base, as with sewage service.
  - dividedbyzero 6y ago
    > fibers provide overwhelmingly more bandwidth capacity than (almost) anyone needs Until everyone wants to use the SpaceX Mars Landing Live Immersion app on their Apple Shades that streams the entire 360° 3D 16k Ultra HDR helmet camera with fully directional sound. Or a protracted pandemic forces people to actually iterate on remote work tech, and instead of god-awful laptop webcams, eventually setups with 4k 3D video become the norm, and then you may have two working adults and kids taking remote lessons at the same time... not saying that current-gen fiber will become too slow anytime soon, and I'm sure there's still a lot of headroom left, but such statements have a tendency to age badly. Not that I'm against treating this as a utility (I think that's absolutely the way to go), but it should be one that has frequent upgrades planned into it (unlike e.g. sewers)
physicsguy 6y ago
In the UK we have a really odd situation like this. British Telecom was privatised by the government in the 1980s, and since then, it's been split into two arms - BT, which is the consumer company, and OpenReach, which is the infrastructure company. OpenReach have to offer access to other providers, and so you can sign up to internet via their lines via Sky, TalkTalk, etc. Simultaneously, in the late 1980s, various regional companies tried to set up cable TV and phone networks by laying their own cable, and eventually they consolidated into NTL, which was eventually rebranded. These have their own fibre cable network, but because it was privately funded and set up, there's no obligation for other companies to have access to it.
PoignardAzur 6y ago
The technical term is "local loop unbundling". There's multiple levels of sharing, but just having regulation to force telecoms to lease the most local part (the cable that goes from your house to a shared switch) goes a long way. The US isn't well-regulated on that front. In France, not only is the local loop (and much of the network) shared, when Orange came to install fiber in our apartment they had to install four fiber ports + wires in the same cable, so we can switch to any the other major 3 operators painlessly (or, we could if any of them had fiber in our building). The infrastructure-sharing regulations, as well as aggressive anti-trust action, is why France has one of the best internet coverages in the world at one of the lowest prices, 15 years after the public telecom operator was privatized.

by Keverw 6y ago

sokoloff 6y ago

If they were both on the poles outside, it wouldn’t be any logistical trouble to switch from one to the other. It would take a truck roll, but that’s why they have trucks.

lotsofpulp 6y ago

Yes, it would be wasteful to run multiple fibers all over the place, just like it would be wasteful to run multiple water, sewer, electrical, and gas lines. Hence fiber internet should be a public utility, like water, sewer, gas, and electric.

ncmncm 6y ago
Fiber takes up overwhelmingly less space than others services' lines. So, in principle there should be little trouble having two or even more providers. Furthermore: fibers provide overwhelmingly more bandwidth capacity than (almost) anyone needs, and hardly nobody needs two fiber connections. So, different providers can share the same fiber installation, either renting to one another, or renting from local government. Finally, maintaining fiber is much less costly than, say, sewers, they last much longer, and are way simpler to manage, so local governments can operate them directly, and provide service more cheaply by dispensing with billing activity, folding costs into the tax base, as with sewage service.
- dividedbyzero 6y ago
  > fibers provide overwhelmingly more bandwidth capacity than (almost) anyone needs Until everyone wants to use the SpaceX Mars Landing Live Immersion app on their Apple Shades that streams the entire 360° 3D 16k Ultra HDR helmet camera with fully directional sound. Or a protracted pandemic forces people to actually iterate on remote work tech, and instead of god-awful laptop webcams, eventually setups with 4k 3D video become the norm, and then you may have two working adults and kids taking remote lessons at the same time... not saying that current-gen fiber will become too slow anytime soon, and I'm sure there's still a lot of headroom left, but such statements have a tendency to age badly. Not that I'm against treating this as a utility (I think that's absolutely the way to go), but it should be one that has frequent upgrades planned into it (unlike e.g. sewers)

physicsguy 6y ago

In the UK we have a really odd situation like this. British Telecom was privatised by the government in the 1980s, and since then, it's been split into two arms - BT, which is the consumer company, and OpenReach, which is the infrastructure company. OpenReach have to offer access to other providers, and so you can sign up to internet via their lines via Sky, TalkTalk, etc. Simultaneously, in the late 1980s, various regional companies tried to set up cable TV and phone networks by laying their own cable, and eventually they consolidated into NTL, which was eventually rebranded. These have their own fibre cable network, but because it was privately funded and set up, there's no obligation for other companies to have access to it.

PoignardAzur 6y ago

The technical term is "local loop unbundling". There's multiple levels of sharing, but just having regulation to force telecoms to lease the most local part (the cable that goes from your house to a shared switch) goes a long way. The US isn't well-regulated on that front. In France, not only is the local loop (and much of the network) shared, when Orange came to install fiber in our apartment they had to install four fiber ports + wires in the same cable, so we can switch to any the other major 3 operators painlessly (or, we could if any of them had fiber in our building). The infrastructure-sharing regulations, as well as aggressive anti-trust action, is why France has one of the best internet coverages in the world at one of the lowest prices, 15 years after the public telecom operator was privatized.