nanog mailing list archives
Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style
From: Owen DeLong <owen () delong com>
Date: Mon, 20 Dec 2010 11:30:08 -0800
On Dec 20, 2010, at 11:16 AM, Leo Bicknell wrote:
In a message written on Mon, Dec 20, 2010 at 12:20:37PM -0500, Steve Schultze wrote:Congress went so far as to force ILECs (the incumbents) to lease their lines to competitors for awhile, with the idea that it would lead the competitors to build out their own "facilities-based" lines. Even with those incentives, line-based competition failed to materialize to any substantial degree.They did, I had my $300 T1 for a while years ago, and Covad/Megapath et all did a very good business buying the local lines (as UNE)'s and selling DSL services over them. While I don't think the model was the success I had hoped for, I think it was a success.
However through a series of steps the iLEC's have effectively shut these folks out of the market. They lobbied, and won, that Fiber is not part of the requirements. Want to buy UNE "FIOS" fiber? Verizon won't sell it, the government won't make them. The AT&T's of the world went and installed "FTTN" (Fiber to the Node), where a node serves a small neighborhood. This allows them to be less than 1m from the house and offer up to 24Mbps DSL. The other providers sued saying they need space in the nodes, and lost. So Covad gets to be in the CO, with 20kft of copper, while AT&T gets to be in the node with 3kft of copper to the user.
The argument being made is that the CLECs could run their own copper from their own COs to the residences. I don't buy that argument, but, that is the argument being made. Personally, I think that enforced UNE is the right model. If you sell higher level services, you should not be allowed to operate the physical plant. The physical plant operating companies should sell access to the physical plant to higher level service providers on an equal footing. Unfortunately, the market forces have way too much invested in the status quo and the lobbyists will block this at every turn. A grass roots consumer movement could probably change that, but, it would require an impractical level of consumer education on the subject.
The exclusivity for cable providers went away with the Cable Television Consumer Protection and Competition Act of 1992, which you can read about in the Background section of the FCC's 2007 Order Implementation of Section 621(a)(1) (the first of two orders that sought to further remove local control over many aspects of the franchising process): http://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2007/03/21/E7-5119/implementation-of-section-621a1-of-the-cable-communications-policy-act-of-1984-as-amended-by-the#p-21And yet, I don't know of any location in the US with two cable operators. You see, these rules weren't changed to provide for a second cable TV plant to be put in the ground, even in the FCC knew that cost too much. Rather, if you read carefully the problem was that Verizon, AT&T, and Bell South (all mentioned by name in the article) wanted to deliver video over FIOS/DSL. Most areas had coverage rules, to be a cable provider you had to pass 95%+ of the houses or such, and these folks didn't meet many of the local rules and went to the government for help.
I think that I recall encountering one or two such places in the past, but, I cannot recall them to make a specific citation. Certainly it is the exception and not the rule. Owen
Current thread:
- Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style, (continued)
- Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style Joe Provo (Dec 20)
- Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style JC Dill (Dec 20)
- Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style Seth Mattinen (Dec 20)
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- Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style Seth Mattinen (Dec 20)
- Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style JC Dill (Dec 20)
- Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style Joe Provo (Dec 20)
- Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style Seth Mattinen (Dec 20)
- Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style Leo Bicknell (Dec 20)
- Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style Joe Provo (Dec 20)
- Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style Leo Bicknell (Dec 20)
- Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style Owen DeLong (Dec 20)
- Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style Jeremy Bresley (Dec 20)
- RE: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style Rettke, Brian (Dec 20)
- Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style Owen DeLong (Dec 20)
- Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style Chris Adams (Dec 20)
- RE: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style George Bonser (Dec 20)
- Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style Randy Carpenter (Dec 20)
- Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style Dorn Hetzel (Dec 20)
- Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style Jared Mauch (Dec 21)
- Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style Scott Reed (Dec 21)
- Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style Josh Miller (Dec 22)