4 ms·

Shmerl, love to learn more about what you mean by this. Do you mean a rule that a network could not sell to consumers both TV and internet access and phone?

by malchow 12y ago

shmerl 12y ago
No, that competitors should be allowed to use the last mile to provide service. See: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local-loop_unbundling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local-loop_unbundling * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competitive_local_exchange_carrier https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competitive_local_exchange_car...
- hawkice 12y ago
  A rural Washington state regulatory and infrastructure organization, KPUD, is attempting to encourage access to the fiber they've added to the Kitsap county area. They have implemented this rule in a fairly watered down sense. The result is that, years after the large federal government grant to help high speed rural internet access, and almost two years after construction has been completed, no one in Kitsap county has access to fiber internet. I have spoken to entrepreneurs and investors, and the reason they refuse to get involved is, without exclusive access to the last mile infrastructure, they would be spending thousands of dollars per building and be immediately replaced by anyone who could bankroll loss-leading services the longest (notably Comcast, who is setting up Fiber in Seattle). This issue may be politicized, but I've run the unit economics with these people. The people of Kitsap county will simply not have fiber internet until this rule is removed.
  - shmerl 12y ago
    And other people will never have fiber Internet, lower prices and higher bandwidth because current monopolist in their area doesn't care to do any of the above. So how do you propose to fix that? Unbundling is the only way. Not sure about Kitsap, but unbundling worked well in Europe. How weren't they scared there of the same thing?
    - hawkice 12y ago
      A lot of the difference in economics between Europe and rural Washington state has to do with the extremely high fixed cost of "last mile" internet connection in rural areas, which are, for a number of reasons, substantially more prohibitive in America. Trying to pay off $9000 in fixed costs with $30/mo internet simply isn't going to happen if a competitor can swoop in and offer the same service for $20/mo with no investment in infrastructure. If the cost is lower, due to having either higher population density or more available infrastructure to scaffold off of, this becomes a less-insane business prospect. But I'm somewhat confused by your initial sentiment. At least four small, local ISPs have investigated installing last mile connectivity to the fiber, and all declined. The status quo (largely a single provider per household) has little to do with this. Are you saying we need unbundling because otherwise we won't have both fiber internet and low prices? Without the rules regarding ISPs being unable to have ownership over infrastructure they pay 100% of the costs for, fiber could be provided profitably for less than $90/mo. to many portions of Kitsap county. Additionally: There are some households in Kitsap that have never had internet access at all -- surely blaming "the monopoly" is nonsense for those customers, and yet they too are hurt by this local policy. EDIT: I anticipate this being non-productive. Suffice it to say, I'm not trying to say "Unbundling is not the best policy." I'm saying, while we consider this policy, let us understand that it is not a pure, unalloyed good in all situations for all people. Policy decisions should not seem one-sided.
      - shmerl 12y ago
        > Are you saying we need unbundling because otherwise we won't have both fiber internet and low prices? I guess it can differ in scenarios when there is no infrastructure in place yet, and when it's already there. For instance when infrastructure is in place and there is one monopolist owning it (it can be already fiber, or coaxial cable for example) charging high prices for mediocre bandwidth while having an ability to provide way more bandwidth for lower price, unbundling can fix it. But if there is nothing there, it's of course different. May be unbundling rules can be applied based on that difference. There sure should be some incentive to build up the network, but it has to be balanced with restricting the natural monopoly which develops when that network is built.
  - xrange 12y ago
    Is this something that might be cured by a technical means in the future? Should we be opening up more radio spectrum for "last mile" connectivity? Maybe blimps instead of satellites? Microwave? Line-of-site laser towers? I'm reminded of an acquaintance who was busy wiring his house with cat5 cable in the late 90s, when wifi was available, but not ubiquitous. Now I can't imagine anyone but the most super-hardcore running wires inside their house for connectivity.
    - hawkice 12y ago
      WiMax is generally promising, as is the idea that cell networks speed up way past 4G bandwidth. Lasers / line of sight is somewhat cheaper but still has a not-great marginal cost. Radio spectrum for last mile seems like an essential step in universal wide area internet (WiMax needs spectrum, and we are running out of decent frequencies for cell network internet). I am personally not sure what blimps would add, but this is ignorance, not even an attempt at saying they won't matter. That all being said: Comcast is a big pain in the butt. But I'd prefer not to worry about downloading more than 3 gigs of data a month. So if the future is in cell network internet we should all except them to be nicer if they want our money.
      - xrange 12y ago
        Blimps would seem to be cheaper to deploy compared to satellites, and have much lower latency. How about drones delivering SD cards? The latency might be bad, but you might still have a pretty high data rate.
        hawkice 12y ago
        Same problem, but worse: marginal costs would kill you with the drone delivered SD cards. Blimps... might be interesting. I feel like the blimps I've seen are so close to the ground they'd just be harder-to-maintain cell/WiMax towers.
        xrange 12y ago
        The drone idea was just something crazy I threw out there for the heck of it, but now I'm kind of warming up to it a little more. Let's say you, the end-user, owns the drone, a one-time cost of let's make up a number of several hundred dollars. You give it instructions to download the next 10 episodes of your favorite netflix shows, etc.. It flies to your nearest library3 miles away where you've got an account, and it downloads it wirelessly while hovering overhead. It then flies back and land on your roof and acts as an access point for you. And maybe you share ownership of the drone with your neighbors. Or maybe there are 10 drones at the library waiting for commands that come over dialup to deliver your content. It flies to your place, where you download it while it hovers over your house for a few minutes, and then heads back. In that instance maybe the library owns the drones, and you just pay for a subscription? What marginal costs are you thinking would be the killer?
theandrewbailey 12y ago
Unbundling means that one of several companies can provide service over the line that the "utility" installed. E.g. you could buy Cablevision service over Comcast's network. This is unrelated to service "bundles". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_loop_unbundling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_loop_unbundling

Shmerl, love to learn more about what you mean by this. Do you mean a rule that a network could not sell to consumers both TV and internet access and phone?

by malchow 12y ago

Shmerl, love to learn more about what you mean by this. Do you mean a rule that a network could not sell to consumers both TV and internet access and phone?

shmerl 12y ago

No, that competitors should be allowed to use the last mile to provide service. See: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local-loop_unbundling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local-loop_unbundling * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competitive_local_exchange_carrier https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competitive_local_exchange_car...

hawkice 12y ago
A rural Washington state regulatory and infrastructure organization, KPUD, is attempting to encourage access to the fiber they've added to the Kitsap county area. They have implemented this rule in a fairly watered down sense. The result is that, years after the large federal government grant to help high speed rural internet access, and almost two years after construction has been completed, no one in Kitsap county has access to fiber internet. I have spoken to entrepreneurs and investors, and the reason they refuse to get involved is, without exclusive access to the last mile infrastructure, they would be spending thousands of dollars per building and be immediately replaced by anyone who could bankroll loss-leading services the longest (notably Comcast, who is setting up Fiber in Seattle). This issue may be politicized, but I've run the unit economics with these people. The people of Kitsap county will simply not have fiber internet until this rule is removed.
- shmerl 12y ago
  And other people will never have fiber Internet, lower prices and higher bandwidth because current monopolist in their area doesn't care to do any of the above. So how do you propose to fix that? Unbundling is the only way. Not sure about Kitsap, but unbundling worked well in Europe. How weren't they scared there of the same thing?
  - hawkice 12y ago
    A lot of the difference in economics between Europe and rural Washington state has to do with the extremely high fixed cost of "last mile" internet connection in rural areas, which are, for a number of reasons, substantially more prohibitive in America. Trying to pay off $9000 in fixed costs with $30/mo internet simply isn't going to happen if a competitor can swoop in and offer the same service for $20/mo with no investment in infrastructure. If the cost is lower, due to having either higher population density or more available infrastructure to scaffold off of, this becomes a less-insane business prospect. But I'm somewhat confused by your initial sentiment. At least four small, local ISPs have investigated installing last mile connectivity to the fiber, and all declined. The status quo (largely a single provider per household) has little to do with this. Are you saying we need unbundling because otherwise we won't have both fiber internet and low prices? Without the rules regarding ISPs being unable to have ownership over infrastructure they pay 100% of the costs for, fiber could be provided profitably for less than $90/mo. to many portions of Kitsap county. Additionally: There are some households in Kitsap that have never had internet access at all -- surely blaming "the monopoly" is nonsense for those customers, and yet they too are hurt by this local policy. EDIT: I anticipate this being non-productive. Suffice it to say, I'm not trying to say "Unbundling is not the best policy." I'm saying, while we consider this policy, let us understand that it is not a pure, unalloyed good in all situations for all people. Policy decisions should not seem one-sided.
    - shmerl 12y ago
      > Are you saying we need unbundling because otherwise we won't have both fiber internet and low prices? I guess it can differ in scenarios when there is no infrastructure in place yet, and when it's already there. For instance when infrastructure is in place and there is one monopolist owning it (it can be already fiber, or coaxial cable for example) charging high prices for mediocre bandwidth while having an ability to provide way more bandwidth for lower price, unbundling can fix it. But if there is nothing there, it's of course different. May be unbundling rules can be applied based on that difference. There sure should be some incentive to build up the network, but it has to be balanced with restricting the natural monopoly which develops when that network is built.
- xrange 12y ago
  Is this something that might be cured by a technical means in the future? Should we be opening up more radio spectrum for "last mile" connectivity? Maybe blimps instead of satellites? Microwave? Line-of-site laser towers? I'm reminded of an acquaintance who was busy wiring his house with cat5 cable in the late 90s, when wifi was available, but not ubiquitous. Now I can't imagine anyone but the most super-hardcore running wires inside their house for connectivity.
  - hawkice 12y ago
    WiMax is generally promising, as is the idea that cell networks speed up way past 4G bandwidth. Lasers / line of sight is somewhat cheaper but still has a not-great marginal cost. Radio spectrum for last mile seems like an essential step in universal wide area internet (WiMax needs spectrum, and we are running out of decent frequencies for cell network internet). I am personally not sure what blimps would add, but this is ignorance, not even an attempt at saying they won't matter. That all being said: Comcast is a big pain in the butt. But I'd prefer not to worry about downloading more than 3 gigs of data a month. So if the future is in cell network internet we should all except them to be nicer if they want our money.
    - xrange 12y ago
      Blimps would seem to be cheaper to deploy compared to satellites, and have much lower latency. How about drones delivering SD cards? The latency might be bad, but you might still have a pretty high data rate.
      - hawkice 12y ago
        Same problem, but worse: marginal costs would kill you with the drone delivered SD cards. Blimps... might be interesting. I feel like the blimps I've seen are so close to the ground they'd just be harder-to-maintain cell/WiMax towers.
        xrange 12y ago
        The drone idea was just something crazy I threw out there for the heck of it, but now I'm kind of warming up to it a little more. Let's say you, the end-user, owns the drone, a one-time cost of let's make up a number of several hundred dollars. You give it instructions to download the next 10 episodes of your favorite netflix shows, etc.. It flies to your nearest library3 miles away where you've got an account, and it downloads it wirelessly while hovering overhead. It then flies back and land on your roof and acts as an access point for you. And maybe you share ownership of the drone with your neighbors. Or maybe there are 10 drones at the library waiting for commands that come over dialup to deliver your content. It flies to your place, where you download it while it hovers over your house for a few minutes, and then heads back. In that instance maybe the library owns the drones, and you just pay for a subscription? What marginal costs are you thinking would be the killer?

theandrewbailey 12y ago

Unbundling means that one of several companies can provide service over the line that the "utility" installed. E.g. you could buy Cablevision service over Comcast's network. This is unrelated to service "bundles". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_loop_unbundling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_loop_unbundling