On 08/15/2015 09:44 AM, Owen DeLong wrote: <snip
The most viable solution, IMHO, is to require a separation between physical infrastructure providers and those that provide services over that infrastructure. Breaking the tight coupling between the two and requiring physical infrastructure providers to lease facilities to operators on an equal footing for all operators will reduce the barriers to competition in the operator space. It will also make limited competition in the facilities space possible, though unlikely. This model exists to some extent in a few areas that have municipal residential fiber services, and in most of those localities, it is working well. That’s one of the reasons that the incumbent facilities based carriers have lobbied so hard to get laws in states where a city has done this that prevent other cities from following suit. Fortunately, one of the big gains in recent FCC rulings is that these laws are likely to be rendered null and void. Unfortunately, there is so much vested interest in the status quo that achieving this sort of separation is unlikely without a really strong grass roots movement. Sadly, the average sound-bite oriented citizen doesn’t know (or want to learn) enough to facilitate such a grass-roots movement, so if we want to build such a future, we have a long slog of public education and recruitment ahead of us. In the mean time, we’ll get to continue to watch companies like CC, VZ, TW screw over their customers and the content providers their customers want to reach for the sake of extorting extra money from both sides of the transaction. Owen
I have talked about this idea for years, but most places seem to have a difficult time understanding the difference between layer 0, layer 2, and layer 3 networks.
IMHO the should be one residential fiber network (either passive or active, depending on the deployment and the physical layout of the area), and it should be run by an "essential" utility, such as the city/county water department, or if necessary the local electric company (I far prefer the water department). The access would be near universal, and the layer 0 and layer 2 network fees would be part of the "water" bill. Apartment complexes may have to be serviced with G.fast or other technologies to make the deployment faster and easier.
Getting IP bandwidth, technical support, voice service, and video service would be a competitive service provider model, with local ISPs, and large Cable COs and TelCOs competing on top of this physical network. You could even have providers that specialize in low income "life line" services, such as 5Mbit of IP bandwidth and local voice service with e911.
Historically services that have huge sunk costs, and high build out costs have been a natural monopoly and regulated. You would not think of trying to build out a competitive water or sewer network, and most building codes prevent the installation of a septic system if a sewer connection is at all possible. Why we are not going this way for a high cost of build out network (last mile) is beyond me.
Before this happens (ie when hell freezes over), I would like to see new home communities deploying fiber networks as part of the building of the "master plan" of the community. That way the home owners association can go out for bid every year or few years for a service provider to operate the fiber network. Around here (souther AZ) new communities tend to either alliance with CenturyLink, Cox, or Comcast depending on the location, and they DO NOT bring in the other providers. If a builder goes with Cox, you can NOT get a CenturyLink (ILEC) landline or DSL, if a builder goes with CenturyLink, Cox will not run anything into the community.
-Harry
