4 ms·

Comcast, Spectrum, AT&T, etc should not exist. They are rent-seekers. The people in the US who have the best Internet access are those where the service is pro

by jmyeet 3y ago

Comcast, Spectrum, AT&T, etc should not exist. They are rent-seekers. The people in the US who have the best Internet access are those where the service is provided by municipal broadband (eg [1]). You will never fix these big national ISPs because they exist solely to maximize shareholder profit while providing the least service possible at the highest price they can get away with while lobbying to change laws to benefit them and lock in their monopolies (eg to make municipal broadband illegal). As an aside, these national ISPs exemplify capitalism. Municipal broadband, by definition, follows socialistic principles (where the municipality and, by extension, its residents own the means of production). [1]: https://epb.com/fi-speed-internet/ https://epb.com/fi-speed-internet/

mistrial9 3y ago
great bravado but not even close to happening.. here in California apparently there are only two companies that actually supply internet backbone to residential customers - perhaps those are AT&T and Comcast? Every other residential Internet service provider in California are resellers of those services. Why is this? there is what is said and then what is done .. as others have mentioned, no company securing those regulated monopoly positions would ever voluntarily give that up. It is very likely that those providers also play-well with whatever domestic surveillance is on tap since Clinton. Adding the word "socialistic" is simply corking the bottle, it would easily be mocked in public media while the backrooms play out.
RajT88 3y ago
If anyone needed evidence of this, they could look up how some ISP's (Like AT&T) chose to react to the TVPA act: https://www.techspot.com/news/93754-isps-continue-charge-unfair-rental-fees-potentially-breaking.html https://www.techspot.com/news/93754-isps-continue-charge-unf... AT&T made it compulsory to use their gateways by installing certs for Auth on their hardware and just saying they do not offer for sale the same hardware and third party hardware could not (would not?) Be issued those certs. I tried my luck buying a gateway off ebay and trying to get out of the rental fee. Their position was that this was "theft" as they did not sell these devices. Granted, I had to file an FCC complaint to even get that response. The exec I spoke with basically threatened me with legal action if I did not drop it. Shady. They deserve to be replaced by muni or Federal internet indeed.
- martinald 3y ago
  While I don't agree with the shady practice of charging hidden rental fees, I can really understand why they want to provide their own CPEs. That way they can control them a lot better via remote management and ensure they work well with the (very much shared) network. Do people expect to be able to use their own ONTs on FTTH? Clearly not because it would cause a load of issues if you had one bad terminal on it taking the entire GPON segment down. So I don't really understand why providing your own cable modem is any different.
  - crote 3y ago
    > Do people expect to be able to use their own ONTs on FTTH? Yes? Someone could also take down a GPON segment by shining a laser pointer into it, so that's not really a good argument for banning it. The ONT is often just an off-the-shelf box, and there is no technical reason why it has to be ISP-provided - especially when they then try to charge a fee for it. If some enthusiast wants to just stick an SPF module into their homelab Cisco router, why try to ban it? There are a few countries where the ISP is legally required to allow third-party ONTs on their network, and that's not really causing any issues in practice. Those laws were originally introduced to deal with really crappy ISP-provided modem+router combos which lacked basic features, but they still work just fine in the FTTH era.

by jmyeet 3y ago

mistrial9 3y ago

great bravado but not even close to happening.. here in California apparently there are only two companies that actually supply internet backbone to residential customers - perhaps those are AT&T and Comcast? Every other residential Internet service provider in California are resellers of those services. Why is this? there is what is said and then what is done .. as others have mentioned, no company securing those regulated monopoly positions would ever voluntarily give that up. It is very likely that those providers also play-well with whatever domestic surveillance is on tap since Clinton. Adding the word "socialistic" is simply corking the bottle, it would easily be mocked in public media while the backrooms play out.

RajT88 3y ago

If anyone needed evidence of this, they could look up how some ISP's (Like AT&T) chose to react to the TVPA act: https://www.techspot.com/news/93754-isps-continue-charge-unfair-rental-fees-potentially-breaking.html https://www.techspot.com/news/93754-isps-continue-charge-unf... AT&T made it compulsory to use their gateways by installing certs for Auth on their hardware and just saying they do not offer for sale the same hardware and third party hardware could not (would not?) Be issued those certs. I tried my luck buying a gateway off ebay and trying to get out of the rental fee. Their position was that this was "theft" as they did not sell these devices. Granted, I had to file an FCC complaint to even get that response. The exec I spoke with basically threatened me with legal action if I did not drop it. Shady. They deserve to be replaced by muni or Federal internet indeed.

martinald 3y ago
While I don't agree with the shady practice of charging hidden rental fees, I can really understand why they want to provide their own CPEs. That way they can control them a lot better via remote management and ensure they work well with the (very much shared) network. Do people expect to be able to use their own ONTs on FTTH? Clearly not because it would cause a load of issues if you had one bad terminal on it taking the entire GPON segment down. So I don't really understand why providing your own cable modem is any different.
- crote 3y ago
  > Do people expect to be able to use their own ONTs on FTTH? Yes? Someone could also take down a GPON segment by shining a laser pointer into it, so that's not really a good argument for banning it. The ONT is often just an off-the-shelf box, and there is no technical reason why it has to be ISP-provided - especially when they then try to charge a fee for it. If some enthusiast wants to just stick an SPF module into their homelab Cisco router, why try to ban it? There are a few countries where the ISP is legally required to allow third-party ONTs on their network, and that's not really causing any issues in practice. Those laws were originally introduced to deal with really crappy ISP-provided modem+router combos which lacked basic features, but they still work just fine in the FTTH era.