nanog mailing list archives

Re: Verizon Public Policy on Netflix


From: Owen DeLong <owen () delong com>
Date: Thu, 17 Jul 2014 03:00:25 -0700

Let Comcast, TW, AT&T, Verizon, etc relinquish their monopoly
protections and then perhaps we can see something resembling a free
and open business climate evolve. Even that would deny that they
already have become vast and powerful on these govt-mandated
sinecures.

The problem with this is that so long as service providers are allowed to be facilities providers, there is an economic 
natural tendency to monopoly or small-N oligopoly in all but the densest of population centers that will result as a 
simple matter of external reality. It simply costs too damn much to put facilities in for there to be large-N copies of 
facilities serving the same area.

That is one of the reasons I'm such a huge fan of home-run SWCs[1] with large colos run by a facilities only provider, 
whether that FOP is a municipality, NGO, or for profit entity (or even multiples if that were to somehow be feasible).

Owen

[1] Serving "Wire" Center -- a hub where all of the fiber from a given distribution area (of radius N where N < maximum 
reasonable distance served by common transmission technologies available at the time of construction with costs in 
reason for household usage. Today, I believe that's about 5km, but it may be more).


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