Fwd: Fwd: Re FreePress is suing the FCC. Here's how the process works.

["Dave Farber" <dave () farber net>]

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Chuck McManis <chuck.mcmanis () gmail com>
Date: Sat, Dec 30, 2017 at 4:50 PM
Subject: Re: Fwd: [IP] Re FreePress is suing the FCC. Here's how the
process works.
To: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>, ip <ip () listbox com>


As with probably most everyone else on this list I have lived with the
evolution of "the internet" from ARPAnet/Usenet through today. I have
been suggesting (at the local level) that we re contextualize it
(which has had a hiccup as Sunnyvale lost its City Manager and is
replacing them.)

My thesis is that physical data transport is no longer a 'service' it
is a 'public good.' And my view shifted dramatically when I considered
three aspects of it.

I started down that road by asking the question, "Why does the
community pay taxes to maintain the roads?" Seriously. It is one of
the things that most people cannot imagine not having, roads, and one
of the things they understand quite intuitively having only one or two
choices of 'road provider' would be a poor way to serve a community
which depended on roads for everything that made the community work,
emergency services, getting to and from work, and moving goods and
services around.

I also realized that people do not understand networks as many of us
do, in that there are two very distinct parts to a network. One is the
'road' the physical cable/copper/fiber that moves the data from point
A to point B, and the other are the services that are made available
on that connection. What is more, the companies themselves almost
universally contract out the 'facilities plant' work of getting the
cables from point A to point B. There are a dozen unknown companies
that trench the street, lay fiber into it, and patch it up badly.

As the guy running operations for a company I had a choice of as few
as 5, to over 12 "internet' providers at my various data centers.
These companies all bring a fiber into the 'meet me' rack at the data
center, and when I want to use carrier A or carrier B, the data center
charges me a modest 'cross connect' fee and they provide a fiber
between the meet-me room and my 'cage' in the data center. The data
center 'owns' the bit of infrastructure between the meet-me room and
the cage but it is just either wire or fiber, they don't have any
investment in what signals are passed, it could be internet access,
and it could be POTS service, they don't care.

Applying those concepts to the governance of communities, it struck me
that as a community we should agree that the city provide the physical
infrastructure for communications between every address in the city
and city owned 'connection' centers. The later would have space and
power for **third parties** to install switching equipment that could
connect between a port in the connection center (that port is
connected to a street address) and their switching equipment
provider's network. Maintenance of the connection centers, the roads,
and the physical media between the addresses and the connection center
would be paid for by property taxes, and an 'access tax' that would be
levied on third parties who wished to have access to the cities
connection grid. There are a lot of interesting things that citizens,
cities, and network providers get out of moving to this sort of
structure.

For citizens, this completely removes the 'last mile' monopoly and
replaces it with a common shared infrastructure. Once Data Service
Provider (DSP) access is normalized (more on this in a bit), there
will exist an actual market where providers can offer services without
incurring a huge cost to provide connectivity. A small ISP could buy
tier 2 Internet from Cogent and resell it to as few as one, and as
many as a thousands of residents or businesses. The cost to implement
physical connectivity and maintenance of the physical plant is
removed, they just provide bits on the wire and access to upstream or
back haul networks. Citizen's costs go down, their service choices go
up, and they can switch providers easily if they find their current
provider is not providing equal access to their chosen network
providers (say NetFlix and Amazon). There is no need for network
neutrality when there is no way to prevent an ISP that supports it as
a policy from competing on an equal playing field with the 'big guys'.
It also can mitigate the digital divide where essential city services
provided by network access can be made available to everyone far more
efficiently and simply without having to negotiate with an internet
monopoly.

For cities, this has a opportunity to greatly simplify the management
and maintenance of core city services and easements. Today there are
many different services that go under sidewalks and long streets, and
parallel to sewer systems. Each vendor, whether it is the legacy
telephone service, the cable service, or bespoke data services there
is a tremendous burden on surveying, and coordinating amongst all of
the providers when city maintenance is being done. All of that can be
consolidated into the city department of data infrastructure, which is
likely a part of their roads and sewers department. Instead of dozens
of different easements, multiple 'vaults' and other small  structures,
there is just the single city information/data grid. This simplifies
city planning, it simplifies permitting, and it simplifies city
maintenance. The city can, as can its citizens, construct an entirely
private network among different buildings in the city with the
maintenance of some simple switching and routing gear at a few
connection centers. They can rent space and easily add that space to
the city only network if they want. Run video conferencing and audio
'phones' across that data infrastructure without any third parties at
all if they want.

For network providers it opens up every converted city as a place they
can offer services. It removed a sunk cost (physical plant
maintenance) from their balance sheet and lets them set their margins
based on their cost of bandwidth and their value added. An entirely
new type of business market is created, address to address network
data services. Companies that want to sell inter-address video
conferencing services and function on a pure peer to peer basis
without having to buy or share bandwidth from other networks. A 10
mbps (1080p HD Video) always on audio/video link between two places is
quite reasonable when there are no data charges or bandwidth charges
between them. There isn't a need for a third party ISP to be involved
if you can just cross connect the port from address A to the port to
address B and use your own gigabit switch to route the network
packets.

Shifting to this sort of structure where the 'road' for data
interchange is a given in cities and towns completely re-frames and
the conversations around network neutrality and network monopolies.
The monopolies exist today because it is impossible to support
duplicating 'last mile' connectivity for each new competitor.
Ownership of that last mile infrastructure by private parties harms
the public good by allowing abuse of a the consumers without recourse.

Now that we understand the role of data services in our lives better,
its time to rewrite public policy to support that.

--Chuck McManis


On Sat, Dec 30, 2017 at 11:55 AM, Dave Farber <dave () farber net> wrote:
> ---------- Forwarded message ---------
> From: Joel M Snyder <Joel.Snyder () opus1 com>
> Date: Sat, Dec 30, 2017 at 1:34 PM
> Subject: Re: Fwd: [IP] Re FreePress is suing the FCC. Here's how the
process
> works.
> To: <dave () farber net>, ip <ip () listbox com>, <larrypress () gmail com>
>
>
> I have to agree with Larry.  Brett is always an outspoken opponent of
> regulation and acts on the assumption that consumers consider a
> tri-opoly of cable/wireline/wireless as a "real market."  I'm sorry, but
> that just doesn't represent MY reality, or anyone else in Tucson Arizona.
>
> I own an ISP, older than Brett's, and our residential service was
> destroyed by the duopoly of cable/wireline.  I don't hold a
> grudge---cable/wireline out-competed, out-invested, and out-priced me
> and they deserve the business.  But that doesn't mean that there isn't a
> duopoly in our city, now.
>
> Yes, we also have a wireless carrier (like Brett's), but neither I nor
> most residential consumers consider them an equal alternative.  The
> anecdotes of the few people who enjoy their wireless carrier (especially
> when contrasted with the fraudulent sales and contracting processes of
> most cable carriers) are nice to hear, but there is a natural monopoly
> that "wired" carriers have (either incumbent LEC or cable).
>
> Statistics from the FCC are clear: in their 2016 report, for broadband
> of 25 Mbps or more, only 3% of "developed census blocks" had 3 carriers.
>
> You can argue about whether mobile providers will begin to displace or
> supplement the two wired carriers, as well as relatively simpler
> switching between carriers, whether it's more important to also provide
> regulation on folks like Facebook, etc., but the bottom line is that few
> households have truly diverse high-quality equal-priced choice in their
> ISP.
>
> Now, whether the FCC and Title II are the "right way" to do this, I
> can't say. I certainly see the merits of some of the arguments against
> the FCC's regulatory approach.
>
> But sweeping away FCC regulation in the hope that our oh-so-functional
> and oh-so-capable Congress will do a better job in the undetermined
> future by doing it the "right way" strikes me as absurd.  If a credible
> congressman had a credible proposal on how to deal with Net Neutrality
> and Internet and carriers, then there might be a more solid argument
> that repealing Net Neutrality at the FCC was a wide move.
>
> But in the absence of a replacement in the wings, I'd say "put the
> pressure on" and then let the Carriers work with their purchased
> Senators and Representatives to come up with a regulatory framework that
> they feel is better.
>
> jms
>
>
> On 12/30/17 10:18 AM, Dave Farber wrote:
> > ---------- Forwarded message ---------
> > From: Larry press <larrypress () gmail com <mailto:larrypress () gmail com>>
> > Date: Sat, Dec 30, 2017 at 11:57 AM
> > Subject: Re: [IP] Re FreePress is suing the FCC. Here's how the process
> > works.
> > To: Dave Farber <dave () farber net <mailto:dave () farber net>>
> >
> >
> >  > Richard Bennett wrote: "It’s a lot easier - and less consequential -
> > for me to switch from the Wi-Fi network back ended by Comcast to the
> > Wi-Fi hotspot back ended by AT&T than to switch from Facebook to
Google+".
> >  > Brett Glass wrote: Customers "will very quickly switch, costing the
> > ISP thousands of dollars, if the ISP does anything that they
> > do not like".
> >
> > They would be correct in the case of a competitive market, but only one
> > broadband provider serves my home. Some in my zip code have two choices,
> > but a duopoly is not a competitive market nor is a small oligopoly.
> >
> > That being said, there are application and engineering-efficiency
> > arguments in favor of "net partiality." Some applications require low
> > latencies or fast data transfer and ISPs can improve network efficiency
> > by dynamically allocating resources.
> >
> > There is no simple right or wrong answer.
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> --
> Joel M Snyder, 1404 East Lind Road, Tucson, AZ, 85719
> Senior Partner, Opus One       Phone: +1 520 324 0494
> jms () Opus1 COM                http://www.opus1.com/jms
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