Re: New minimum speed for US broadband connections

[Aaron Wendel <aaron () wholesaleinternet net>]

The reason government incentives exist is because, in a lot of rural 
America, a business case can't be made to connect to Grandma's farm 
that's 10 miles from the nearest splice box.  If you believe that broad 
band is a basic service now, like electricity, then getting Grandma her 
porn is important enough to subsidize.

If I want to run fiber to every home in the 11th larges city with a 
population density of 5,642 people/sq mi, that's an easy case to make 
from a financial perspective.  The issues that come into play are local 
red tape, fees, restrictions, etc.  Compound that with large providers 
agreeing not to overbuild each other and incentives given by said large 
providers to developers and, sometimes, its just not worth it.

Here's an example for you.  North Kansas City, Missouri has FREE gigabit 
fiber to every home in town.  It also has Spectrum (Charter) and AT&T.  
Recently there has been a boom of apartment complexes going up but they 
don't get the free stuff. Why?  Because Spectrum and Charter pay the 
developers to keep the free stuff by assuming internal infrastructure 
costs and/or paying the developments and complexes a kickback for every 
subscriber. Now the FCC says you can't do that but they get around it by 
altering the language in their agreements.

Aaron


On 2/16/2022 11:52 AM, Owen DeLong via NANOG wrote:
> > On Feb 11, 2022, at 13:14 , Josh Luthman 
> > <josh () imaginenetworksllc com> wrote:
> >
> > Because literally every case I've seen along these lines is someone 
> > complaining about the coax connection is "only 100 meg when I pay for 
> > 200 meg". Comcast was the most hated company and yet they factually 
> > had better speeds (possibly in part to their subjectively terrible 
> > customer service) for years.
> >
> > >An apartment building could have cheap 1G fiber and the houses 
> > across the street have no option but slow DSL.
> >
> > Where is this example?  Or is this strictly hypothetical?
>
> There are literally dozens (if not thousands) of such examples in 
> silicon valley alone.
>
> > I am not seeing any examples, anywhere, with accurate data, where 
> > it's what most consider to be in town/urban and poor speeds.  The 
> > only one that was close was Jared and I'm pretty sure when I saw the 
> > map I wouldn't consider that in town (could be wrong) but again, 
> > there's gig fiber there now.  I don't remember if he actually got his 
> > CLEC, or why that matters, but there's fiber there now.
>
> Pretty sure you would have a hard time calling San Jose “not in town”. 
> It’s literally #11 in the largest 200 cities in the US with a 
> population of 1,003,120 (954,940 in the 2010 census) and a population 
> density of 5,642 people/sq. mile (compare to #4 Houston, TX at 
> 3,632/Sq. Mi.).
>
> Similar conditions exist in parts of Los Angeles, #2 on the same list 
> at 3,985,516 (3,795,512 in 2010 census) and 8,499/Sq. Mi.
>
> I speak of California because it’s where I have the most information. 
> I’m sure this situation exists in other states as well, but I don’t 
> have actual data.
>
> The simple reality is that there are three sets of incentives that 
> utilities tend to chase and neither of them provides for the 
> mezzo-urban and sub-urban parts of America…
> 1.USF — Mostly supports rural deployments.
> 2.Extreme High Density — High-Rise apartments in dense arrays, Not 
> areas of town houses, smaller apartment complexes, or single family 
> dwellings.
> 3.Neighborhoods full of McMansions — Mostly built very recently and 
> where the developers would literally pay the utilities to pre-deploy 
> in order to boost sales prices.
>
> Outside of those incentives, there’s very little actual deployment of 
> broadband improvements, leaving vast quantities of average Americans 
> underserved.
>
> Owen
>
>
>
> > On Fri, Feb 11, 2022 at 4:05 PM Brandon Svec via NANOG 
> > <nanog () nanog org> wrote:
> >
> >     What is the point of these anecdotes? Surely anyone on this list
> >     with even a passing knowledge of the broadband landscape in the
> >     United States knows how hit or miss it can be.  An
> >     apartment building could have cheap 1G fiber and the houses
> >     across the street have no option but slow DSL.  Houses could have
> >     reliable high speed cable internet, but the office park across
> >     the field has no such choice because the buildout cost is
> >     prohibitively high to get fiber, etc.
> >
> >     There are plenty of places with only one or two choices of
> >     provider too.  Of course, this is literally changing by the
> >     minute as new services are continually being added and upgraded.
> >     *Brandon Svec*
> >
> >
> >
> >     On Fri, Feb 11, 2022 at 12:36 PM Josh Luthman
> >     <josh () imaginenetworksllc com> wrote:
> >
> >         OK the one example you provided has gigabit fiber though.
> >
> >         On Fri, Feb 11, 2022 at 8:41 AM Tom Beecher
> >         <beecher () beecher cc> wrote:
> >
> >                 Can you provide examples?
> >
> >
> >             https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Twe6uTwOyJo&ab_channel=NANOG
> >             <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Twe6uTwOyJo&ab_channel=NANOG>
> >
> >             Our good friend Jared could only get 1.5M DSL living just
> >             outside Ann Arbor, MI, so he had to start his own CLEC.
> >
> >             I have friends in significantly more rural areas than he
> >             lives in ( Niagara and Orleans county NYS , between
> >             Niagara Falls and Rochester ) who have the same 400Mb
> >             package from Spectrum that I do, living in the City of
> >             Niagara Falls.
> >
> >             This is not to say that rural America is a mecca of
> >             connectivity; there is a long way to go all the way
> >             around regardless. But it is a direct example as you
> >             asked for.
> >
> >             On Thu, Feb 10, 2022 at 3:57 PM Josh Luthman
> >             <josh () imaginenetworksllc com> wrote:
> >
> >                 >There are plenty of urban and suburban areas in
> >                 America that are far worse off from a broadband
> >                 perspective than “rural America”.
> >
> >                 Can you provide examples?
> >
> >                 On Thu, Feb 10, 2022 at 3:51 PM Owen DeLong via NANOG
> >                 <nanog () nanog org> wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> >                     > On Jun 2, 2021, at 02:10 , Mark Tinka
> >                     <mark@tinka.africa> wrote:
> >                     >
> >                     >
> >                     >
> >                     > On 6/2/21 11:04, Owen DeLong wrote:
> >                     >
> >                     >> I disagree… If it could be forced into a
> >                     standardized format using a standardized approach
> >                     to data acquisition and reliable comparable
> >                     results across providers, it could be a very
> >                     useful adjunct to real competition.
> >                     >
> >                     > If we can't even agree on what "minimum speed
> >                     for U.S. broadband connections" actually means,
> >                     fat chance having a "nutritional facts" at the
> >                     back of the "Internet in a tea cup" dropped off
> >                     at your door step.
> >                     >
> >                     > I'm not saying it's not useful, I'm just saying
> >                     that easily goes down the "what color should we
> >                     use for the bike shed" territory, while people in
> >                     rural America still have no or poor Internet access.
> >                     >
> >                     > Mark.
> >
> >                     ROFLMAO…
> >
> >                     People in Rural America seem to be doing just
> >                     fine. Most of the ones I know at least have GPON
> >                     or better.
> >
> >                     Meanwhile, here in San Jose, a city that bills
> >                     itself as “The Capital of Silicon Valley”, the
> >                     best I can get is Comcast (which does finally
> >                     purport to be Gig down), but rarely delivers that.
> >
> >                     Yes, anything involving the federal government
> >                     will get the full bike shed treatment no matter
> >                     what we do.
> >
> >                     There are plenty of urban and suburban areas in
> >                     America that are far worse off from a broadband
> >                     perspective than “rural America”.
> >
> >                     Owen

--
================================================================
Aaron Wendel
Chief Technical Officer
Wholesale Internet, Inc. (AS 32097)
(816)550-9030
http://www.wholesaleinternet.com
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