Re: Level 3 blames Internet slowdowns on Technica

[Joe Greco <jgreco () ns sol net>]

> The economic reality is that if I build out an expensive infrastructure I have to pile on as many high priced 
> services as possible to order to maximize the revenue from it.  A customer who does not balk at a $200 a  month 
> TV/voice/Internet service is not going to be happy getting a bill of $50 a month for a fiber loop.  The services are 
> what the customer really wants and where you can add bells and whistle with little added expense.  The infrastructure 
> is the expensive part.

That's correct, but it is still the wrong way to try to approach the
problem.  It is simply not practical for N different companies to all
try to build out their own networks; we already had the cable and telco
monopolies each building out communications infrastructure, which in
hindsight seems a little foolish, though it was largely due to the
available technologies at the time.

> BTW, if you think that NRC infrastructure charge would ever go away, you are kidding yourself.  

The "N" in NRC means non-recurring.

> Here in Illinois, we have been paying for the construction of our tollway in perpetuity.  When it was originally 
> built the state promised to remove the tolls as soon as construction costs were recovered.  We are still waiting and 
> will be forever.

As someone who has worked in the Loop on and off for twenty years, I am 
fully aware of the history and folly of the Illinois trollway.  As an 
out-of-stater, I've watched the way that the tollways have been modified 
over the years to more heavily impact those of us coming from the north 
(Deerfield/Waukegan restructuring), to more heavily impact those paying
cash, etc.  I note that it wasn't all that many years ago that I was 
paying 40c cash at the Waukegan toll; today that same toll is $2.80.


> If you want, you can criticize the model of the free economic that use profit to determine viability but 
> unfortunately someone pays the bill in the end.  Whether it is government funded, a grant, or a commercial 
> enterprise, expenses get recovered.  The only difference is that in a free market the customer gets to choose what 
> they pay for.  In any other model, everyone pays whether they like it or not.  I think our communications model had 
> to develop as a managed monopoly otherwise it would not have been the universal solution that it is today.  Now we 
> have to deal with the downside of the monopoly as well.

The problem is that if you accept such a fatalistic position as the only
possible way, you end up with Comcast and U-Verse.

Unfortunately it is a fallacy to imagine that this is the only way it can
be.  We've seen last mile infrastructure built by municipalities, for
example.  We know from the historical examples of gas, water, sewer, power,
oh and also telephone and cable that it is perfectly possible to create a
monopoly to deliver basic services.  The entire point, in fact, of my first
post in this thread was to point out that this is in fact what Ma Bell had
promised to deliver as part of the NII, to provide the last mile fiber to
the house, and then to allow competitive access to that network.  They did
want - and in fact got - concessions and other inducements to actually
deliver such a network, by some accounts as much as $200 billion in
incentives, which they promptly kept, but then slowly chipped away at what
they were expected to deliver in return, until they were finally allowed
to just deliver their own services on the infrastructure.

So guess what.  In this case, we actually spent the money to do it already
and in return we got shafted with U-Verse.

... JG
-- 
Joe Greco - sol.net Network Services - Milwaukee, WI - http://www.sol.net
"We call it the 'one bite at the apple' rule. Give me one chance [and] then I
won't contact you again." - Direct Marketing Ass'n position on e-mail spam(CNN)
With 24 million small businesses in the US alone, that's way too many apples.