Re: Level 3 blames Internet slowdowns on Technica
Depends. On some services (L3, etc.), yes, they compete. That should not be conflated with competing at the L1 service. MSOs deliver L1 co-ax or HFC. RLECs deliver copper pairs and/or GPON. Satellite is it’s own peculiar sets of L1 transport. None of them compete head-to-head on the same technology on L1. Owen On Mar 26, 2014, at 10:11 PM, Frank Bulk frnk...@iname.com wrote: And MSOs, wireless carriers, and satellite providers aren't competitors to RLECs? Frank -Original Message- From: Owen DeLong [mailto:o...@delong.com] Sent: Monday, March 24, 2014 9:05 PM To: Frank Bulk Cc: Naslund, Steve; nanog@nanog.org Subject: Re: Level 3 blames Internet slowdowns on Technica Since a second build-out is impractical (if not actually impossible) and they don't sell UNEs, they are, in fact, pretty much exempt from direct competition for the same services. Owen On Mar 23, 2014, at 8:20 PM, Frank Bulk frnk...@iname.com wrote: I think I understand what you're saying -- you believe that RLECs that don't have to provide UNE's are exempt from competition. I guess I don't see the lack of that requirement meaning that there's no competition -- it just means that the kind of competition is different. Frank -Original Message- From: Naslund, Steve [mailto:snasl...@medline.com] Sent: Sunday, March 23, 2014 10:16 PM To: Frank Bulk Cc: nanog@nanog.org Subject: RE: Level 3 blames Internet slowdowns on Technica Many rural LECs are not required to provide unbundled network elements. As a network provider you can resell their service but they are not required to provide unbundled elements necessary to compete against them as a facilities based provider. So, for example, in Alamo Tennessee or Northern Wisconsin you can get a T-1 from a competitive carrier that resells their services but you cannot get competitive POTS service. You can buy DSL service from anyone but they are reselling the RLECs DSL access services not just running on their cable pairs. One of the biggest players that specializes in being a rural LEC is Frontier Communications. Yes, there are wireless carriers and satellite providers but especially in rural areas they are not a real viable alternative for high speed data since we know the characteristic of satellite service and WISPs have the same density problem in providing service in rural areas. It is hard for a WISP to be profitable when you only have a handful of customers per mile. Same formula, low density, long distances, high infrastructure per customer cost for the WISP. Steven Naslund Chicago IL -Original Message- From: Frank Bulk [mailto:frnk...@iname.com] Sent: Sunday, March 23, 2014 10:08 PM To: Naslund, Steve Cc: nanog@nanog.org Subject: RE: Level 3 blames Internet slowdowns on Technica Not sure which rural LECs are exempt from competition. Some areas are effectively exempt from facilities-based (i.e. wireline) competition because it's unaffordable, without subsidy, to build a duplicate wireline infrastructure. There are also wireless carriers and WISPs the compete against RLECs, as well as satellite providers. I'm not aware of any exclusivity. Frank -Original Message- From: Naslund, Steve [mailto:snasl...@medline.com] Sent: Sunday, March 23, 2014 9:00 PM To: Joe Greco Cc: nanog@nanog.org Subject: RE: Level 3 blames Internet slowdowns on Technica snip In a low density area you can never fund a build out which is where universal access charges came from and the reason that rural LECs are exempt from competition. In return for building a network that is not profitable easily they get exclusive access to sell services on it to give them a chance. Will your NRC be reasonable anywhere outside a major metro area? snip Steven Naslund Chicago IL
RE: Level 3 blames Internet slowdowns on Technica
And MSOs, wireless carriers, and satellite providers aren't competitors to RLECs? Frank -Original Message- From: Owen DeLong [mailto:o...@delong.com] Sent: Monday, March 24, 2014 9:05 PM To: Frank Bulk Cc: Naslund, Steve; nanog@nanog.org Subject: Re: Level 3 blames Internet slowdowns on Technica Since a second build-out is impractical (if not actually impossible) and they don't sell UNEs, they are, in fact, pretty much exempt from direct competition for the same services. Owen On Mar 23, 2014, at 8:20 PM, Frank Bulk frnk...@iname.com wrote: I think I understand what you're saying -- you believe that RLECs that don't have to provide UNE's are exempt from competition. I guess I don't see the lack of that requirement meaning that there's no competition -- it just means that the kind of competition is different. Frank -Original Message- From: Naslund, Steve [mailto:snasl...@medline.com] Sent: Sunday, March 23, 2014 10:16 PM To: Frank Bulk Cc: nanog@nanog.org Subject: RE: Level 3 blames Internet slowdowns on Technica Many rural LECs are not required to provide unbundled network elements. As a network provider you can resell their service but they are not required to provide unbundled elements necessary to compete against them as a facilities based provider. So, for example, in Alamo Tennessee or Northern Wisconsin you can get a T-1 from a competitive carrier that resells their services but you cannot get competitive POTS service. You can buy DSL service from anyone but they are reselling the RLECs DSL access services not just running on their cable pairs. One of the biggest players that specializes in being a rural LEC is Frontier Communications. Yes, there are wireless carriers and satellite providers but especially in rural areas they are not a real viable alternative for high speed data since we know the characteristic of satellite service and WISPs have the same density problem in providing service in rural areas. It is hard for a WISP to be profitable when you only have a handful of customers per mile. Same formula, low density, long distances, high infrastructure per customer cost for the WISP. Steven Naslund Chicago IL -Original Message- From: Frank Bulk [mailto:frnk...@iname.com] Sent: Sunday, March 23, 2014 10:08 PM To: Naslund, Steve Cc: nanog@nanog.org Subject: RE: Level 3 blames Internet slowdowns on Technica Not sure which rural LECs are exempt from competition. Some areas are effectively exempt from facilities-based (i.e. wireline) competition because it's unaffordable, without subsidy, to build a duplicate wireline infrastructure. There are also wireless carriers and WISPs the compete against RLECs, as well as satellite providers. I'm not aware of any exclusivity. Frank -Original Message- From: Naslund, Steve [mailto:snasl...@medline.com] Sent: Sunday, March 23, 2014 9:00 PM To: Joe Greco Cc: nanog@nanog.org Subject: RE: Level 3 blames Internet slowdowns on Technica snip In a low density area you can never fund a build out which is where universal access charges came from and the reason that rural LECs are exempt from competition. In return for building a network that is not profitable easily they get exclusive access to sell services on it to give them a chance. Will your NRC be reasonable anywhere outside a major metro area? snip Steven Naslund Chicago IL
Re: Level 3 blames Internet slowdowns on Technica
- Original Message - From: Steve Naslund snasl...@medline.com You are right but that is usually how it works with fiber because that last drop to the home is a pretty expensive piece that you don't usually want installed until it is needed. The LECS usually don't even light a building unless there is a service that requires it. I was trying to make the point that $700 - 800 per premise as quoted seems extremely low to me. The cost of the cable, splices, cases, MPOEs, and especially labor make that number unbelievable to me. I am coming at this as someone who was in charge of a similar project that connected every building on US Air Force bases to a fiber backbone. An Air Force base is very similar to a suburb in a lot of respects in terms of density and utilities structure. I was responsible for the design, pricing, procurement, and contractor management on that project. We had 3,000 buildings in approximately a eight square mile area and the total project cost was in excess of $12 million dollars which equates to something like $4000 per building. Granted we were doing 12 strands per building but cable costs have fallen since this project so they should be pretty close. Marine, Aviation, Mil-Spec, Aerospace, Man-Rated: The five most expensive adjectives in the English language, in ascending order. (When I need rule-of-thumb multipliers, I use 5, 10, 20, 400, and 5000, resp.) For the record, I don't recall whether $800 was all-in -- inclusive of all the central building equipment and labor -- or not. Time to exhume the thread from the archives. It was quite informative. Cheers, -- jra -- Jay R. Ashworth Baylink j...@baylink.com Designer The Things I Think RFC 2100 Ashworth Associates http://www.bcp38.info 2000 Land Rover DII St Petersburg FL USA BCP38: Ask For It By Name! +1 727 647 1274
Re: Level 3 blames Internet slowdowns on Technica
On Monday, March 24, 2014 04:26:11 AM Naslund, Steve wrote: If you are going to try to do a fiber build out to the home, what would be the monthly cost of just the cable if I cannot sell services on it and is anyone will the pay the much. If I have to pay something like say $40 a month for a fiber connection, how much is service and equipment going to cost on top of that? If you have the choice of being a service provider or an infrastructure provider, why would anyone in their right mind want to be the infrastructure provider. The infrastructure guy eats the lion share of the capital expense and takes all of the risk that someone at the home will continue to want the service. That separated model just does not work except in the case of the ILEC which has capitalized that network over the last 50 years. All dark fibre providers I know of, that eventually start off as pure dark fibre players, will eventually enter into the services game. Even those that do so cautiously, but only deploying DWDM spectrum before to maintain the darkness of the fibre, will eventually add yet more serices on top of that. It's just like how wholesale providers have to, at some point, look into enterprise business. You can't just survive being an infrastructure-only provider, in the long run. Mark. signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: Level 3 blames Internet slowdowns on Technica
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.
Re: Level 3 blames Internet slowdowns on Technica
On 24 March 2014 10:47, Joe Greco jgr...@ns.sol.net wrote: 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. I heard you guys have been paying taxes for the war against my country (Spain) since 1898. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_telephone_excise_tax So yea. Is much easier to create a new tax, than to remove it.
Re: Level 3 blames Internet slowdowns on Technica
On 03/23/2014 11:08 PM, Frank Bulk wrote: Not sure which rural LECs are exempt from competition. This is a quagmire;but it boils down to if the FCC says they're exempt, then they're exempt and have a 'rural monopoly' (there's a lot of caselaw and a number of FCC Report and Orders (and further Report and Orders and Notices of Rulemaking and Public Notices and the like) on the subject, but it goes back essentially to the definition found in 47 USC § 153(37) of a Rural Telephone Company). Just being covered by an NECA (National Exchange Carriers Association) tariff doesn't automatically grant this, since there is a subsection in 47 CFR § 61 dealing with Rural CLEC's and their exemptions. This landscape is changing constantly, and it has been quite some time since I've traced the threads in the various RO's and PN's from the FCC on the subject; it would take probably a full week just to get up to date on the current state of things, since it's been five years since I last looked at it. This is one case where you would have to ask a good communications attorney to know for sure.
Re: Level 3 blames Internet slowdowns on Technica
- Original Message - From: Bob Evans b...@fiberinternetcenter.com Well, don't forget the labor, taxes, business licenses fees, county taxes on chairs, Obama care, accountants and time required. $ enable # conf t (conf)# Obamacare ^ command not understood Cheers, -- jra -- Jay R. Ashworth Baylink j...@baylink.com Designer The Things I Think RFC 2100 Ashworth Associates http://www.bcp38.info 2000 Land Rover DII St Petersburg FL USA BCP38: Ask For It By Name! +1 727 647 1274
Re: Level 3 blames Internet slowdowns on Technica
- Original Message - From: Steve Naslund snasl...@medline.com What do you mean by average monthly bill? That is the issue here. The average monthly bill includes the services you are getting. In the Chicago area a fiber optic access circuit unbundled from the imcumbent carrier to a competitive carrier is something like $10 a month or so. How could you possibly think you can fund a build out in a new area for that price? It may be possible to pay for that over 20 years. The problem is that no one goes into business to break even over 20 years. Well, Steve, happens we had this conversation in some detail last year when I was up for a City IT director position, and contemplating fibering 12,000 passings. The magic number is apparently $700-800 per passing, not the $2400 you seem to suggest... Cheers, -- jra -- Jay R. Ashworth Baylink j...@baylink.com Designer The Things I Think RFC 2100 Ashworth Associates http://www.bcp38.info 2000 Land Rover DII St Petersburg FL USA BCP38: Ask For It By Name! +1 727 647 1274
RE: Level 3 blames Internet slowdowns on Technica
That number will change depending on distance, terrain, and a lot of other factors. I have personally installed a lot of outside plant fiber and $700 can turn into $2400 the first time you find a rock or need to add a manhole somewhere. It also depends on distance between customers and their distance from a right of way. Are we talking New York labor or Atlanta labor charges? Big difference there. Did the municipality require conduit? Some do and it becomes much more expensive. Are you digging up any pavement or direct boring it all? It does not matter much though. Bottom line is that if you can get a residential customer to pay even $700 construction charge very often, I will be impressed. Steve -Original Message- From: Jay Ashworth [mailto:j...@baylink.com] Sent: Monday, March 24, 2014 12:25 PM To: NANOG Subject: Re: Level 3 blames Internet slowdowns on Technica - Original Message - From: Steve Naslund snasl...@medline.com What do you mean by average monthly bill? That is the issue here. The average monthly bill includes the services you are getting. In the Chicago area a fiber optic access circuit unbundled from the imcumbent carrier to a competitive carrier is something like $10 a month or so. How could you possibly think you can fund a build out in a new area for that price? It may be possible to pay for that over 20 years. The problem is that no one goes into business to break even over 20 years. Well, Steve, happens we had this conversation in some detail last year when I was up for a City IT director position, and contemplating fibering 12,000 passings. The magic number is apparently $700-800 per passing, not the $2400 you seem to suggest...
RE: Level 3 blames Internet slowdowns on Technica
Thinking about this again, let's take Jay at his word that he can make a passing for $700-800. Unfortunately, the ISP or service provider does not pay for a passing, they pay for an entry. After all we can't let them make their own entry or we will have everyone and their brother in our splice case. We will also have third world aerial spaghetti as they all run their own drop cables using God knows who as skilled labor. I will take my home here in residential Chicago as a best case example because the neighborhood is dense. All of our utilities here are aerial so there are no underground conduits available to you. I assume to keep costs down you are going to try to use what's there and go aerial. If you are in the suburbs that cable is all underground so at a minimum you will need a directional boring machine and put in the necessary pedestals and hand holes. In this county you are required to use conduit every time you go under a public street as well. I digress though, let's take the easy case. 1. You need to decide how many strands you are going to drop to my home. You could drop a single fiber or pair but then you have to put mux equipment on the end of it. After all I want choice and that might include TV from provider X, phone from provider Y, and high speed data from provider Z. 2. Since you are the sole provider of the physical layer, you now have to roll a two man crew with a bucket truck and an experienced splicer. By the way, this is Chicago so we have to have a two man crew at a minimum and they are both IBEW union contractors since this city will NEVER hire non-union labor. Figure they might have a 20-30 minute drive here is traffic cooperates. They get paid hourly so they don't much care how long it takes but let's say they are feeling frisky today and only take about two hours on the job itself plus the hour of travel. 3. Let's assume that the best case exists and the splice case is directly in my alley behind my house. Your crew needs to splice a drop cable in at the splice case (you did pay to install the splice cases right?) and run it about 100 ft to the back of my house and anchor it to my brick home at the prescribed height above ground. You can't get the bucket truck in my yard so they break out the extension ladder. In most case though the splice case will not be that close and certainly can't afford to put a case at every home at $700 per passing. So in reality that cable probably runs to the alley and several poles down the block, they have to anchor that cable at every poll so Tarzan can't use your fiber for fun. 4. Now that they have the cable at my house you have to place a MPOE (minimum point of entry) device on my house. That box probably costs a couple bucks and has to be anchored into brick. Are we getting closer to that $2,400 per home yet? What if this is the suburbs and you have to direct bury enough cable to reach the pedestal on the corner and cross my one acre lot with it? Steven Naslund Chicago IL -Original Message- From: Jay Ashworth [mailto:j...@baylink.com] Sent: Monday, March 24, 2014 12:25 PM To: NANOG Subject: Re: Level 3 blames Internet slowdowns on Technica - Original Message - From: Steve Naslund snasl...@medline.com What do you mean by average monthly bill? That is the issue here. The average monthly bill includes the services you are getting. In the Chicago area a fiber optic access circuit unbundled from the imcumbent carrier to a competitive carrier is something like $10 a month or so. How could you possibly think you can fund a build out in a new area for that price? It may be possible to pay for that over 20 years. The problem is that no one goes into business to break even over 20 years. Well, Steve, happens we had this conversation in some detail last year when I was up for a City IT director position, and contemplating fibering 12,000 passings. The magic number is apparently $700-800 per passing, not the $2400 you seem to suggest...
Re: Level 3 blames Internet slowdowns on Technica
On Sun, Mar 23, 2014 at 6:59 PM, Naslund, Steve snasl...@medline.comwrote: [...] 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. Oh good lord, if anyone could deliver a fiber loop to my property for $50/month, I would prepay the next 20 years right now to make it happen. Heck, I'd pay 10x that for a fiber loop to the property, if I could have it cross connected to the ISP of my choice at the far end. I think you might underestimate what people would be willing to pay for competitive infrastructure access to their property. Conversely, I'd be happy to pay $5,000 in NRC installation charges to get a fiber run to the property, with a correspondingly lower MRC. Matt
Re: Level 3 blames Internet slowdowns on Technica
- Original Message - From: Steve Naslund snasl...@medline.com Thinking about this again, let's take Jay at his word that he can make a passing for $700-800. Let's not. I was quoting vendors who had themselves been quoted by other NANOGers. Whether those other NANOGers had *paid* that price is unclear, but the price was assuming a bulk greenfield install. Whether it included TAs I don't remember, and would have to look at the archives. Unfortunately, the ISP or service provider does not pay for a passing, they pay for an entry. After all we can't let them make their own entry or we will have everyone and their brother in our splice case. They will terminate their equipment in my building, and I will feed them cross-connects. We will also have third world aerial spaghetti as they all run their own drop cables using God knows who as skilled labor. No, cause the fiber that's in the ground is all that's ever going there, since it was installed by the city. You're running with my number, you need to run with *all* the context which accompanied it, none of which you inquired about. 1. You need to decide how many strands you are going to drop to my home. You could drop a single fiber or pair but then you have to put mux equipment on the end of it. After all I want choice and that might include TV from provider X, phone from provider Y, and high speed data from provider Z. I was going to install 3-pair per passing, except in multi-unit res and business, where the ratio would drop off to about 1.2 or so at 500 units. 2. Since you are the sole provider of the physical layer, you now have to roll a two man crew with a bucket truck and an experienced splicer. I do like hell; I have Mongo walk over into the wire room and feed a patch cord. Everything is already wired. By the way, this is Chicago so we have to have a two man crew at a minimum and they are both IBEW union contractors since this city will NEVER hire non-union labor. Figure they might have a 20-30 minute drive here is traffic cooperates. They get paid hourly so they don't much care how long it takes but let's say they are feeling frisky today and only take about two hours on the job itself plus the hour of travel. It's clear that you're making the assumptions for *your* environment, so I won't leave any more of these in now that I've made my point. Are we getting closer to that $2,400 per home yet? What if this is the suburbs and you have to direct bury enough cable to reach the pedestal on the corner and cross my one acre lot with it? Probably, but $2400 got nothing to do with *my* environment. 100% passings, 100% MPOE, on a pedestal for empty lots, of which there aren't many. Helps to be aiming at the target before you pull the trigger, Steve. Cheers, -- jra -- Jay R. Ashworth Baylink j...@baylink.com Designer The Things I Think RFC 2100 Ashworth Associates http://www.bcp38.info 2000 Land Rover DII St Petersburg FL USA BCP38: Ask For It By Name! +1 727 647 1274
Re: Level 3 blames Internet slowdowns on Technica
A natural monopoly exists without force of arms or regulation very easily. Any place where the market density is insufficient to support the cost of multiple providers building out the infrastructure for a given service, a natural monopoly exists. For example, if cities were to simply open up the provision of sewer services* to residential areas, you wouldn’t have a bunch of companies choosing to suddenly get into the sewer business. Instead, whoever has pipes already in the ground will continue to serve customers and no competitor is going to see enough market upside to build a second set of pipes out or build a pipe network on an ad-hoc basis. So it also goes with other similar types of services, such as copper pairs (telephony/DSL), co-ax (Cable), Fiber (GPON, Active Ethernet, Etc). Companies have created the illusion of competition by convincing regulators that cellular competes with cable competes with copper pair, but in reality, the service profiles of those media are so radically different that in most areas, any perceived competition is mostly imaginary. ($99 for 50Mbps/10Mbps co-ax does not, IMHO, compete with $50 for 1.5Mbps/384Kbps DSL, for example) Very few, if any neighborhoods have copper pairs from more than one phone company. You can argue that there are regulations preventing a second phone company from deploying, but in reality, even if such regulations were removed, there wouldn’t be a second phone company laying copper in most areas. In many areas, the regulation is the result of the USF process attempting to get at least one phone company to do a subsidized build-out into the area because subscriber density was so low that it didn’t even support a natural monopoly, let alone competitive environment. Even if the incumbents gave up their “right-of-way”, you wouldn’t see enough of a market in any but the most densely populated areas to support establishment of a competitor and you likely wouldn’t even see initial build-out into most locations. Instead, the part that needs to be heavily regulated, the natural monopoly, the last-mile local loop should be provided by an independent operator who does not have a conflict of interest with regards to serving all of the providers trying to provide higher layer services. An owner of the physical infrastructure that is allowed to use that physical infrastructure in anti-competitive ways against other higher-layer service providers will do so to the detriment of the customers. Prohibiting them from owning the last-mile physical infrastructure and, instead, requiring that to be managed by an independent system operator who provides equal footing to all comers just makes sense. Owen *By sewer services in this context, I mean the actual sewers themselves and the waste-removal service that they provide, not services such as roto-rooter/rescue-rooter/etc. On Mar 21, 2014, at 8:45 PM, Eric Wieling ewiel...@nyigc.com wrote: Make the regulation and force of arms be as targeted as reasonable. In the case of telecommunications as targeted as reasonable means the last mile or, more correctly, the local loop.I advocate stringent ongoing oversight and regulation of the local loop and very little regulation for the rest of the communications industry. If the incumbent telcos want to compete on equal footing in a free market then I invite them to give up their government granted right of ways to run their copper or fiber and compete on a level playing field. They will never do that and therefore the last mile can never be a free market. -Original Message- From: Larry Sheldon [mailto:larryshel...@cox.net] Sent: Friday, March 21, 2014 9:54 PM To: nanog@nanog.org Subject: Re: Level 3 blames Internet slowdowns on Technica *too old, failing memory and all, I'll have to go read up on natural monopoly--I can not think of one that does not require regulation and force of arms to exist.
Re: Level 3 blames Internet slowdowns on Technica
Since a second build-out is impractical (if not actually impossible) and they don’t sell UNEs, they are, in fact, pretty much exempt from direct competition for the same services. Owen On Mar 23, 2014, at 8:20 PM, Frank Bulk frnk...@iname.com wrote: I think I understand what you're saying -- you believe that RLECs that don't have to provide UNE's are exempt from competition. I guess I don't see the lack of that requirement meaning that there's no competition -- it just means that the kind of competition is different. Frank -Original Message- From: Naslund, Steve [mailto:snasl...@medline.com] Sent: Sunday, March 23, 2014 10:16 PM To: Frank Bulk Cc: nanog@nanog.org Subject: RE: Level 3 blames Internet slowdowns on Technica Many rural LECs are not required to provide unbundled network elements. As a network provider you can resell their service but they are not required to provide unbundled elements necessary to compete against them as a facilities based provider. So, for example, in Alamo Tennessee or Northern Wisconsin you can get a T-1 from a competitive carrier that resells their services but you cannot get competitive POTS service. You can buy DSL service from anyone but they are reselling the RLECs DSL access services not just running on their cable pairs. One of the biggest players that specializes in being a rural LEC is Frontier Communications. Yes, there are wireless carriers and satellite providers but especially in rural areas they are not a real viable alternative for high speed data since we know the characteristic of satellite service and WISPs have the same density problem in providing service in rural areas. It is hard for a WISP to be profitable when you only have a handful of customers per mile. Same formula, low density, long distances, high infrastructure per customer cost for the WISP. Steven Naslund Chicago IL -Original Message- From: Frank Bulk [mailto:frnk...@iname.com] Sent: Sunday, March 23, 2014 10:08 PM To: Naslund, Steve Cc: nanog@nanog.org Subject: RE: Level 3 blames Internet slowdowns on Technica Not sure which rural LECs are exempt from competition. Some areas are effectively exempt from facilities-based (i.e. wireline) competition because it's unaffordable, without subsidy, to build a duplicate wireline infrastructure. There are also wireless carriers and WISPs the compete against RLECs, as well as satellite providers. I'm not aware of any exclusivity. Frank -Original Message- From: Naslund, Steve [mailto:snasl...@medline.com] Sent: Sunday, March 23, 2014 9:00 PM To: Joe Greco Cc: nanog@nanog.org Subject: RE: Level 3 blames Internet slowdowns on Technica snip In a low density area you can never fund a build out which is where universal access charges came from and the reason that rural LECs are exempt from competition. In return for building a network that is not profitable easily they get exclusive access to sell services on it to give them a chance. Will your NRC be reasonable anywhere outside a major metro area? snip Steven Naslund Chicago IL
Re: Level 3 blames Internet slowdowns on Technica
This assumes installing a single home on demand. In reality, if you’re going to implement what Jay and I are suggesting, then you dig up a neighborhood at a time and drop a bunch of strands of fiber (I’d guess 8 or 16 as likely numbers) per household. Owen On Mar 24, 2014, at 11:57 AM, Naslund, Steve snasl...@medline.com wrote: Thinking about this again, let's take Jay at his word that he can make a passing for $700-800. Unfortunately, the ISP or service provider does not pay for a passing, they pay for an entry. After all we can't let them make their own entry or we will have everyone and their brother in our splice case. We will also have third world aerial spaghetti as they all run their own drop cables using God knows who as skilled labor. I will take my home here in residential Chicago as a best case example because the neighborhood is dense. All of our utilities here are aerial so there are no underground conduits available to you. I assume to keep costs down you are going to try to use what's there and go aerial. If you are in the suburbs that cable is all underground so at a minimum you will need a directional boring machine and put in the necessary pedestals and hand holes. In this county you are required to use conduit every time you go under a public street as well. I digress though, let's take the easy case. 1. You need to decide how many strands you are going to drop to my home. You could drop a single fiber or pair but then you have to put mux equipment on the end of it. After all I want choice and that might include TV from provider X, phone from provider Y, and high speed data from provider Z. 2. Since you are the sole provider of the physical layer, you now have to roll a two man crew with a bucket truck and an experienced splicer. By the way, this is Chicago so we have to have a two man crew at a minimum and they are both IBEW union contractors since this city will NEVER hire non-union labor. Figure they might have a 20-30 minute drive here is traffic cooperates. They get paid hourly so they don't much care how long it takes but let's say they are feeling frisky today and only take about two hours on the job itself plus the hour of travel. 3. Let's assume that the best case exists and the splice case is directly in my alley behind my house. Your crew needs to splice a drop cable in at the splice case (you did pay to install the splice cases right?) and run it about 100 ft to the back of my house and anchor it to my brick home at the prescribed height above ground. You can't get the bucket truck in my yard so they break out the extension ladder. In most case though the splice case will not be that close and certainly can't afford to put a case at every home at $700 per passing. So in reality that cable probably runs to the alley and several poles down the block, they have to anchor that cable at every poll so Tarzan can't use your fiber for fun. 4. Now that they have the cable at my house you have to place a MPOE (minimum point of entry) device on my house. That box probably costs a couple bucks and has to be anchored into brick. Are we getting closer to that $2,400 per home yet? What if this is the suburbs and you have to direct bury enough cable to reach the pedestal on the corner and cross my one acre lot with it? Steven Naslund Chicago IL -Original Message- From: Jay Ashworth [mailto:j...@baylink.com] Sent: Monday, March 24, 2014 12:25 PM To: NANOG Subject: Re: Level 3 blames Internet slowdowns on Technica - Original Message - From: Steve Naslund snasl...@medline.com What do you mean by average monthly bill? That is the issue here. The average monthly bill includes the services you are getting. In the Chicago area a fiber optic access circuit unbundled from the imcumbent carrier to a competitive carrier is something like $10 a month or so. How could you possibly think you can fund a build out in a new area for that price? It may be possible to pay for that over 20 years. The problem is that no one goes into business to break even over 20 years. Well, Steve, happens we had this conversation in some detail last year when I was up for a City IT director position, and contemplating fibering 12,000 passings. The magic number is apparently $700-800 per passing, not the $2400 you seem to suggest...
RE: Level 3 blames Internet slowdowns on Technica
You are right but that is usually how it works with fiber because that last drop to the home is a pretty expensive piece that you don't usually want installed until it is needed. The LECS usually don't even light a building unless there is a service that requires it. I was trying to make the point that $700 - 800 per premise as quoted seems extremely low to me. The cost of the cable, splices, cases, MPOEs, and especially labor make that number unbelievable to me. I am coming at this as someone who was in charge of a similar project that connected every building on US Air Force bases to a fiber backbone. An Air Force base is very similar to a suburb in a lot of respects in terms of density and utilities structure. I was responsible for the design, pricing, procurement, and contractor management on that project. We had 3,000 buildings in approximately a eight square mile area and the total project cost was in excess of $12 million dollars which equates to something like $4000 per building. Granted we were doing 12 strands per building but cable costs have fallen since this project so they should be pretty close. That project included the backbone and the drops into each building. Between those two, the drops into each building was the biggest challenge for underground deployments since no underground conduits were usually available and there was a lot of existing infrastructure to be avoided. I would imagine that if it was a new subdivision it would be much easier but in a 50 plus year old neighborhood there are tons of unknown obstacles and challenges. The labor for splicing and cable pulling itself was provided by Air Force cable technicians so did not factor into the costs. The costs were mostly civil construction under streets where duct were full and the addition of many manholes and handholes because original manholes were not in the right positions to support the infrastructure or were decayed from being in ground for 50 plus years. I would say that about half of the money went for civil construction of duct infrastructure and the remainder went to cable and various hardware items. Yes, you could go all direct burial but under streets, that is a maintenance nightmare that you are going to pay for someday. The Air Force required manholes and conduit under streets to allow for future serviceability and it was probably a good move since we did use a lot of pre-existing conduit going from copper to fiber. Steven Naslund This assumes installing a single home on demand. In reality, if you're going to implement what Jay and I are suggesting, then you dig up a neighborhood at a time and drop a bunch of strands of fiber (I'd guess 8 or 16 as likely numbers) per household. Owen
Re: Level 3 blames Internet slowdowns on Technica
On Tue, Mar 25, 2014 at 3:56 AM, Naslund, Steve snasl...@medline.com wrote: You are right but that is usually how it works with fiber because that last drop to the home is a pretty expensive piece that you don't usually want installed until it is needed. The LECS usually don't even light a building unless there is a service that requires it. I was trying to make the point that $700 - 800 per premise as quoted seems extremely low to me. If one believes the estimates from the Google Fibre rollout in Kansas City (and I suspect they are all wrong, but they probably have the magnitude right) the cost was (about) $600/premise passed. As you point out, the passed part is important, and did not include that last 100 yards of install and equipment. But that last 100 yards (and equipment) does not need to be spent until a subscriber signs on the dotted line. So the order of magnitude to pass a premise is roughly consistent between this known example of a recent build-out, and Jay's numbers, with all the right stars in alignment (I believe Google Fibre got agreements in advance regarding abbreviated and expedited zoning and permitting, which would likely have substantially decreased their costs (having seen how long/expensive that can take, I can understand why they wanted those agreements in place up front)). Now, whether a city would want to float a 30 year bond for city fibre, or for a new ballpark, or a new pier (or do all three and increase taxes by maybe 10%) and trust that if you build it, they will come is a different question.
RE: Level 3 blames Internet slowdowns on Technica
We don't know because the service provider rolls that cost up along with th= e services they sell. That is my point. They are able to spread the costs= out based on the profitable services they sell. Okay. If they were not able to = sell us services I am not sure they could afford to provide that infrastruc= ture. That's a crock. You can always provide infrastructure without selling services on top of it. It's wire. Or fiber. Or whatever. If you're not able to subsidize the infrastructure with services, then what you actually get is a less distorted reality where you can actually identify the component costs (circuit, services, etc). Sure you could do that. I'm not denying that you could. I am saying good luck making money on that or getting that business model funded. In fact, having been a service provider I can tell you that I paid t= he LEC about $4 a month for a copper pair to your house to sell DSL service= at around ten times that cost. I am sure the LEC was not making money at = the $4 a month and I know I could not fund a build out for that price. Why would you try to fund a build out on that? How are you going to get more than that? I am saying you CAN'T fund a build out that way. That's why a pure infrastructure model is not economically viable unless you have exclusivity that forces people to use it. Why wouldn't you instead charge for the build out as a NRC and then charge for maintenance as a MRC? Because your customer will not pay a NRC for a residential build-out. I know from experience that it is hard to get even business customers to eat a reasonable construction cost of a couple thousand dollars. Try that model against an incumbent cable company and see how that works. Will they be willing to pay thousands to be on your fiber network not knowing what the service is like until they commit or will they be more likely to go with the incumbent cable company with a simple monthly charge. In a low density area you can never fund a build out which is where universal access charges came from and the reason that rural LECs are exempt from competition. In return for building a network that is not profitable easily they get exclusive access to sell services on it to give them a chance. Will your NRC be reasonable anywhere outside a major metro area? What you're suggesting reeks of the deliberate cost distortion games that go on so often. My personal favorite is cell phone contracts where the cost of the phone is *cough* subsidized by the carrier. But what's really happening is that the customer is paying for the phone over the term of the contract, and if the customer doesn't get a different phone at the end of the contract, then the carrier ... lowers their monthly rate accordingly? No, of course not... they keep it as profit. The carriers do subsidize the cost of phones and often they are free. You can also get your phone upgraded on a schedule that is usually a couple years at most, you just have to ask.This is a legacy model to get customers past the entry point of phones that might have cost up to $1,000. Just look at the cost of a cell phone without any service attached to it. It is much greater than what you pay when you buy a phone with service. It is the customer spreading the costs out over the life of a contract because more people care more about monthly costs than overall cost. Do you think people want to fund communications infrastructure to a home they might move out of in a year or two? By the way, how do you continue to collect the NRC if I do move? I can sell my home tomorrow, Do I still have to pay for your fiber build? Can you mandate that the grandma that moves in has to pay for it now even if she does need high speed services? It's not a cost distortion game. What is going on is that the LECs originally built their network out with the model of a captive customer that they could recover costs from for the life of the infrastructure so a 20 - 30 year payout was reasonable. Unfortunately for the competitive communications provider, the capital markets will not fund a model like that and the customer is not captive anymore. Would you bet that any of your customers will be with you 20 -30 years from now? Just about every transport level provider of fiber networks got in serious financial trouble. Look at MFS, Global Crossing, Williams, etc. The more successful model is like Level 3 who sold service on top of an infrastructure (much of which was bought out from under failed transport only providers). It was hard to make money on the city to city and country to country fiber network. The fiber to the home will be completely unprofitable without exclusive access or the ability to sell multiple services on it. 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
RE: Level 3 blames Internet slowdowns on Technica
... In fact, having been a service provider I can tell you that I paid the LEC about $4 a month for a copper pair to your house to sell DSL service at around ten times that cost. I am sure the LEC was not making money at the $4 a month and I know I could not fund a build out for that price. I take it you have not been a service provider for a while? Thanks to its removal from the tariff list, that $4 DSL pair from the ILEC for a third party ISP now costs $34... That doesn't include ISP cost. That price is not what a licensed CLEC pays today for an unbundled pair, that is the price of a DSL access loop which includes electronics. As a CLEC providing DSL we had our own terminal equipment collocated, however the increased cost you quote only strengthens the point. If you are buying a DSL transport loop then the ILEC is actually selling a service on the dry loop (they are working at least at layer 2). In the model being discussed they would not be able to do that, they would only provide the copper path. As a DSL provider you would have to collocate to keep the distance down. In a FTTH model you would have to at least locate some kind of aggregation equipment near the area or the fiber count gets unmanageable. The company I work for now builds a lot of warehouses nationwide. Some of them in rural areas like Alabama. If the LEC did not have to provide access to that building they wouldn't. It just would not be profitable for them to install that much cable (in some cases miles of it) and equipment just to sell loops to competitive carriers. Picture this: our average building has maybe four POTS lines as backups to several MPLS high speed connections that carry the bulk of the voice and data. The LEC gets to charge for four POTS lines and a couple of fiber or copper loops to competitive carriers. That is just not profitable for them. They only do it because those are the ground rules for an incumbent carrier. As residential POTS lines continue to die off, their model has become one of trying to move into the service provider area for video and high speed data. Many of them are also cellular carriers in their own right. If they could not sell these services, the model does not work without drastically increasing costs to the CLECs. This may happen in any case since the residential POTS service was the cash cow that funded the entire network they have today. They were able to rely on that monthly revenue with very little overhead for over 50 years, it required little maintenance and technology upgrades. If you are going to try to do a fiber build out to the home, what would be the monthly cost of just the cable if I cannot sell services on it and is anyone will the pay the much. If I have to pay something like say $40 a month for a fiber connection, how much is service and equipment going to cost on top of that? If you have the choice of being a service provider or an infrastructure provider, why would anyone in their right mind want to be the infrastructure provider. The infrastructure guy eats the lion share of the capital expense and takes all of the risk that someone at the home will continue to want the service. That separated model just does not work except in the case of the ILEC which has capitalized that network over the last 50 years. Steven Naslund Chicago IL
RE: Level 3 blames Internet slowdowns on Technica
There may not need to be competition in the capitalist sense of the word but there needs to be some feedback loop for the consumer of a service to provide feedback on their satisfaction with it. In the case of a government provided service people vote at the polls. With a commercially provided service people vote with their money. Without any recourse for the consumer of a service there is no motivation to improve or advance the technology. Steven Naslund Chicago IL -Original Message- From: Keegan Holley [mailto:no.s...@comcast.net] Sent: Friday, March 21, 2014 1:08 PM To: David Miller Cc: nanog@nanog.org Subject: Re: Level 3 blames Internet slowdowns on Technica How come no one ever asks if competition is required?
RE: Level 3 blames Internet slowdowns on Technica
Not sure which rural LECs are exempt from competition. Some areas are effectively exempt from facilities-based (i.e. wireline) competition because it's unaffordable, without subsidy, to build a duplicate wireline infrastructure. There are also wireless carriers and WISPs the compete against RLECs, as well as satellite providers. I'm not aware of any exclusivity. Frank -Original Message- From: Naslund, Steve [mailto:snasl...@medline.com] Sent: Sunday, March 23, 2014 9:00 PM To: Joe Greco Cc: nanog@nanog.org Subject: RE: Level 3 blames Internet slowdowns on Technica snip In a low density area you can never fund a build out which is where universal access charges came from and the reason that rural LECs are exempt from competition. In return for building a network that is not profitable easily they get exclusive access to sell services on it to give them a chance. Will your NRC be reasonable anywhere outside a major metro area? snip Steven Naslund Chicago IL
RE: Level 3 blames Internet slowdowns on Technica
Many rural LECs are not required to provide unbundled network elements. As a network provider you can resell their service but they are not required to provide unbundled elements necessary to compete against them as a facilities based provider. So, for example, in Alamo Tennessee or Northern Wisconsin you can get a T-1 from a competitive carrier that resells their services but you cannot get competitive POTS service. You can buy DSL service from anyone but they are reselling the RLECs DSL access services not just running on their cable pairs. One of the biggest players that specializes in being a rural LEC is Frontier Communications. Yes, there are wireless carriers and satellite providers but especially in rural areas they are not a real viable alternative for high speed data since we know the characteristic of satellite service and WISPs have the same density problem in providing service in rural areas. It is hard for a WISP to be profitable when you only have a handful of customers per mile. Same formula, low density, long distances, high infrastructure per customer cost for the WISP. Steven Naslund Chicago IL -Original Message- From: Frank Bulk [mailto:frnk...@iname.com] Sent: Sunday, March 23, 2014 10:08 PM To: Naslund, Steve Cc: nanog@nanog.org Subject: RE: Level 3 blames Internet slowdowns on Technica Not sure which rural LECs are exempt from competition. Some areas are effectively exempt from facilities-based (i.e. wireline) competition because it's unaffordable, without subsidy, to build a duplicate wireline infrastructure. There are also wireless carriers and WISPs the compete against RLECs, as well as satellite providers. I'm not aware of any exclusivity. Frank -Original Message- From: Naslund, Steve [mailto:snasl...@medline.com] Sent: Sunday, March 23, 2014 9:00 PM To: Joe Greco Cc: nanog@nanog.org Subject: RE: Level 3 blames Internet slowdowns on Technica snip In a low density area you can never fund a build out which is where universal access charges came from and the reason that rural LECs are exempt from competition. In return for building a network that is not profitable easily they get exclusive access to sell services on it to give them a chance. Will your NRC be reasonable anywhere outside a major metro area? snip Steven Naslund Chicago IL
RE: Level 3 blames Internet slowdowns on Technica
I think I understand what you're saying -- you believe that RLECs that don't have to provide UNE's are exempt from competition. I guess I don't see the lack of that requirement meaning that there's no competition -- it just means that the kind of competition is different. Frank -Original Message- From: Naslund, Steve [mailto:snasl...@medline.com] Sent: Sunday, March 23, 2014 10:16 PM To: Frank Bulk Cc: nanog@nanog.org Subject: RE: Level 3 blames Internet slowdowns on Technica Many rural LECs are not required to provide unbundled network elements. As a network provider you can resell their service but they are not required to provide unbundled elements necessary to compete against them as a facilities based provider. So, for example, in Alamo Tennessee or Northern Wisconsin you can get a T-1 from a competitive carrier that resells their services but you cannot get competitive POTS service. You can buy DSL service from anyone but they are reselling the RLECs DSL access services not just running on their cable pairs. One of the biggest players that specializes in being a rural LEC is Frontier Communications. Yes, there are wireless carriers and satellite providers but especially in rural areas they are not a real viable alternative for high speed data since we know the characteristic of satellite service and WISPs have the same density problem in providing service in rural areas. It is hard for a WISP to be profitable when you only have a handful of customers per mile. Same formula, low density, long distances, high infrastructure per customer cost for the WISP. Steven Naslund Chicago IL -Original Message- From: Frank Bulk [mailto:frnk...@iname.com] Sent: Sunday, March 23, 2014 10:08 PM To: Naslund, Steve Cc: nanog@nanog.org Subject: RE: Level 3 blames Internet slowdowns on Technica Not sure which rural LECs are exempt from competition. Some areas are effectively exempt from facilities-based (i.e. wireline) competition because it's unaffordable, without subsidy, to build a duplicate wireline infrastructure. There are also wireless carriers and WISPs the compete against RLECs, as well as satellite providers. I'm not aware of any exclusivity. Frank -Original Message- From: Naslund, Steve [mailto:snasl...@medline.com] Sent: Sunday, March 23, 2014 9:00 PM To: Joe Greco Cc: nanog@nanog.org Subject: RE: Level 3 blames Internet slowdowns on Technica snip In a low density area you can never fund a build out which is where universal access charges came from and the reason that rural LECs are exempt from competition. In return for building a network that is not profitable easily they get exclusive access to sell services on it to give them a chance. Will your NRC be reasonable anywhere outside a major metro area? snip Steven Naslund Chicago IL
RE: Level 3 blames Internet slowdowns on Technica
Here is the legal definition of an RLEC. http://definitions.uslegal.com/r/rural-telephone-company/ Steven Naslund Chicago IL -Original Message- From: Naslund, Steve [mailto:snasl...@medline.com] Sent: Sunday, March 23, 2014 10:16 PM To: Frank Bulk Cc: nanog@nanog.org Subject: RE: Level 3 blames Internet slowdowns on Technica Many rural LECs are not required to provide unbundled network elements. As a network provider you can resell their service but they are not required to provide unbundled elements necessary to compete against them as a facilities based provider. So, for example, in Alamo Tennessee or Northern Wisconsin you can get a T-1 from a competitive carrier that resells their services but you cannot get competitive POTS service. You can buy DSL service from anyone but they are reselling the RLECs DSL access services not just running on their cable pairs. One of the biggest players that specializes in being a rural LEC is Frontier Communications. Yes, there are wireless carriers and satellite providers but especially in rural areas they are not a real viable alternative for high speed data since we know the characteristic of satellite service and WISPs have the same density problem in providing service in rural areas. It is hard for a WISP to be profitable when you only have a handful of customers per mile. Same formula, low density, long distances, high infrastructure per customer cost for the WISP. Steven Naslund Chicago IL -Original Message- From: Frank Bulk [mailto:frnk...@iname.com] Sent: Sunday, March 23, 2014 10:08 PM To: Naslund, Steve Cc: nanog@nanog.org Subject: RE: Level 3 blames Internet slowdowns on Technica Not sure which rural LECs are exempt from competition. Some areas are effectively exempt from facilities-based (i.e. wireline) competition because it's unaffordable, without subsidy, to build a duplicate wireline infrastructure. There are also wireless carriers and WISPs the compete against RLECs, as well as satellite providers. I'm not aware of any exclusivity. Frank -Original Message- From: Naslund, Steve [mailto:snasl...@medline.com] Sent: Sunday, March 23, 2014 9:00 PM To: Joe Greco Cc: nanog@nanog.org Subject: RE: Level 3 blames Internet slowdowns on Technica snip In a low density area you can never fund a build out which is where universal access charges came from and the reason that rural LECs are exempt from competition. In return for building a network that is not profitable easily they get exclusive access to sell services on it to give them a chance. Will your NRC be reasonable anywhere outside a major metro area? snip Steven Naslund Chicago IL
RE: Level 3 blames Internet slowdowns on Technica
Correct, there is competition to them including the local cable company (if there is one). You just cannot get competitive access to their infrastructure. You have to pay at least the full wholesale rate. That tends to make them the most cost effective choice for wireline services like DSL and local T-1s and makes it impossible to sell facilities based POTS service in their area. The idea was that they are at a competitive disadvantage because the cost of their infrastructure to serve these areas so they deserved some special consideration. If these guys were put in a fully competitive situation that made them insolvent, who would step up to provide POTS service to grandma on the end of that five mile cable run out to the farm. That was the thinking when the Telecom Act passed. The RLEC are where a lot of your universal access charges go to help subsidize their buildouts. My point was that there is some regulation in place that recognizes that in some areas (actually a lot of the US in terms of square miles) it is just not cost effective to provide infrastructure in a fully competitive environment. If you think you can make money just selling infrastructure without services, it might work in a major metro area but not in these areas. Steven Naslund -Original Message- From: Frank Bulk [mailto:frnk...@iname.com] Sent: Sunday, March 23, 2014 10:21 PM To: Naslund, Steve Cc: nanog@nanog.org Subject: RE: Level 3 blames Internet slowdowns on Technica I think I understand what you're saying -- you believe that RLECs that don't have to provide UNE's are exempt from competition. I guess I don't see the lack of that requirement meaning that there's no competition -- it just means that the kind of competition is different. Frank -Original Message- From: Naslund, Steve [mailto:snasl...@medline.com] Sent: Sunday, March 23, 2014 10:16 PM To: Frank Bulk Cc: nanog@nanog.org Subject: RE: Level 3 blames Internet slowdowns on Technica Many rural LECs are not required to provide unbundled network elements. As a network provider you can resell their service but they are not required to provide unbundled elements necessary to compete against them as a facilities based provider. So, for example, in Alamo Tennessee or Northern Wisconsin you can get a T-1 from a competitive carrier that resells their services but you cannot get competitive POTS service. You can buy DSL service from anyone but they are reselling the RLECs DSL access services not just running on their cable pairs. One of the biggest players that specializes in being a rural LEC is Frontier Communications. Yes, there are wireless carriers and satellite providers but especially in rural areas they are not a real viable alternative for high speed data since we know the characteristic of satellite service and WISPs have the same density problem in providing service in rural areas. It is hard for a WISP to be profitable when you only have a handful of customers per mile. Same formula, low density, long distances, high infrastructure per customer cost for the WISP. Steven Naslund Chicago IL -Original Message- From: Frank Bulk [mailto:frnk...@iname.com] Sent: Sunday, March 23, 2014 10:08 PM To: Naslund, Steve Cc: nanog@nanog.org Subject: RE: Level 3 blames Internet slowdowns on Technica Not sure which rural LECs are exempt from competition. Some areas are effectively exempt from facilities-based (i.e. wireline) competition because it's unaffordable, without subsidy, to build a duplicate wireline infrastructure. There are also wireless carriers and WISPs the compete against RLECs, as well as satellite providers. I'm not aware of any exclusivity. Frank -Original Message- From: Naslund, Steve [mailto:snasl...@medline.com] Sent: Sunday, March 23, 2014 9:00 PM To: Joe Greco Cc: nanog@nanog.org Subject: RE: Level 3 blames Internet slowdowns on Technica snip In a low density area you can never fund a build out which is where universal access charges came from and the reason that rural LECs are exempt from competition. In return for building a network that is not profitable easily they get exclusive access to sell services on it to give them a chance. Will your NRC be reasonable anywhere outside a major metro area? snip Steven Naslund Chicago IL
RE: Level 3 blames Internet slowdowns on Technica
There's no monopoly. Stop your lines with them and they are just fiber mpls. If they can't get people are changing and not peering with them, or refusing free ports its their bad. I'll take it up next week. Tell me what you all need. Bryan digitalocean. PS, were not ipv6 because we had to update for growth. 2 weeks you'll be happy. On Mar 21, 2014 11:46 PM, Eric Wieling ewiel...@nyigc.com wrote: Make the regulation and force of arms be as targeted as reasonable. In the case of telecommunications as targeted as reasonable means the last mile or, more correctly, the local loop.I advocate stringent ongoing oversight and regulation of the local loop and very little regulation for the rest of the communications industry. If the incumbent telcos want to compete on equal footing in a free market then I invite them to give up their government granted right of ways to run their copper or fiber and compete on a level playing field. They will never do that and therefore the last mile can never be a free market. -Original Message- From: Larry Sheldon [mailto:larryshel...@cox.net] Sent: Friday, March 21, 2014 9:54 PM To: nanog@nanog.org Subject: Re: Level 3 blames Internet slowdowns on Technica *too old, failing memory and all, I'll have to go read up on natural monopoly--I can not think of one that does not require regulation and force of arms to exist.
Re: Level 3 blames Internet slowdowns on Technica
I want to ask you folks something... How do you as the people operating the network think two exabytes of data gets pushed across your networks to each of the PRISM Collection Sites (daily) with no one noticing... Know what I mean? Todd Glassey On 3/21/2014 6:54 PM, Larry Sheldon wrote: On 3/21/2014 9:13 AM, Sholes, Joshua wrote: How do you get around the problem of natural monopolies, then? My strongly held belief is that if the natural monopoly* becomes oppressive somebody in their garage will find another way, and absent regulation and force of arms available to the natural monopoly, eliminate the monopoly situation and maybe the natural monopolist. Or should we be moving to a world where, say, a dozen or more separate companies are all running fiber or coax on the poles on my street in an effort to get to my house? Could be--we have two energy companies at our house. And two communications companies have boxes on the back wall. Beyond the piped-in water service, we have several competing beverage sources (including for water) in service. The house across the street has, it appears, at least three companies providing TV service (and Internet service?). Three outfits provide waste disposal service in the neighborhood, although I am not bright enough to see a competitor for the sewage component. I wasn't bright enough to see the World Wide Web, either. Nobody uses poles. IMHO, the only way to get real competition on the last mile is to have the actual fiber/wire infrastructure being owned by a neutral party that's required to pass anyone's traffic. As soon as required is in the discussion, we have a monopoly, and a monopoly has the power to abuse the situation. Wire and glass are not the only media available, as if that mattered. And we already have duplicates; what is the big deal? OH! And the reason why one set of wires is idle, is that provider got beat by the completion on the other set. (For this discussion, coaxial cable is a set of wires.) *too old, failing memory and all, I'll have to go read up on natural monopoly--I can not think of one that does not require regulation and force of arms to exist. -- - Personal Email - Disclaimers Apply
Re: Level 3 blames Internet slowdowns on Technica
On Sat, Mar 22, 2014 at 7:18 AM, TGLASSEY tglas...@earthlink.net wrote: I want to ask you folks something... How do you as the people operating the network think two exabytes of data gets pushed across your networks to each of the PRISM Collection Sites (daily) with no one noticing... Know what I mean? Todd Glassey I'm sure you're aware there's no such thing as the network. There are thousands of individual networks, with no high level correlation happening between them. It's trivially easy for an entity wanting to stay somewhat inconspicuous to buy a few dozen waves from provider A, another bunch from provider B, another bunch from provider C, etc. At the end of the day, they've amassed a significant chunk of bandwidth; but unless the providers all get together and start comparing customer lists, circuit locations, delivery dates, etc. nobody is going to realize that all the small individual orders add up to one very big monitoring and collection infrastructure. Thanks! Matt PS--unless my math is off the mark, 2 exabytes a day works out to less than 200Gbps sustained. Even allowing for uneven distribution across the day, a 1Tbps network is almost trivial to build these days without incurring undue notice from providers, especially if you split it across 3 or 4 providers.
RE: Level 3 blames Internet slowdowns on Technica
It's my understanding and experience that most gov't jurisdictions will give CLECs and other telecommunication providers access to the RoW -- generally speaking it's not exclusive to ILECs or MSOs. Now the challenge may be finding room in the existing RoW for another provider, but the challenges are not typically politically or regulatorily motivated. Frank -Original Message- From: Eric Wieling [mailto:ewiel...@nyigc.com] Sent: Friday, March 21, 2014 10:45 PM To: nanog@nanog.org Subject: RE: Level 3 blames Internet slowdowns on Technica Make the regulation and force of arms be as targeted as reasonable. In the case of telecommunications as targeted as reasonable means the last mile or, more correctly, the local loop.I advocate stringent ongoing oversight and regulation of the local loop and very little regulation for the rest of the communications industry. If the incumbent telcos want to compete on equal footing in a free market then I invite them to give up their government granted right of ways to run their copper or fiber and compete on a level playing field. They will never do that and therefore the last mile can never be a free market. -Original Message- From: Larry Sheldon [mailto:larryshel...@cox.net] Sent: Friday, March 21, 2014 9:54 PM To: nanog@nanog.org Subject: Re: Level 3 blames Internet slowdowns on Technica *too old, failing memory and all, I'll have to go read up on natural monopoly--I can not think of one that does not require regulation and force of arms to exist.
Re: Level 3 blames Internet slowdowns on Technica
* snasl...@medline.com (Naslund, Steve) [Fri 21 Mar 2014, 17:00 CET]: I see no reason why the US model would not work in any market economy. Why would market economies switch to the US model? Consumers there pay a lot more for much less performance. -- Niels.
Re: Level 3 blames Internet slowdowns on Technica
Why would market economies switch to the US model? Consumers there pay a lot more for much less performance. stateside consumer internet is a third world country ruled by robber barons supported by a corrupt government. skip the politics and hyperbole and judge by the bottom line. at home in tokyo, i pay a bit over USD30/mo for real 100/100. randy
Re: Level 3 blames Internet slowdowns on Technica
On 3/22/2014 12:24 PM, Frank Bulk wrote: It's my understanding and experience that most gov't jurisdictions will give CLECs and other telecommunication providers access to the RoW -- generally speaking it's not exclusive to ILECs or MSOs. Now the challenge may be finding room in the existing RoW for another provider, but the challenges are not typically politically or regulatorily motivated. IANAL I agree that the nasty gubbermint (much as I would rather be wrong here) has little to do with any of the RoW (Rights of Way) I know anything at all (precious little, it is) about. There are RoW and there are RoW. And the rules for each are different and codified (so far as I know) in the deed. There are railroad RoW granted in most case as a freebie from the gubbermint and over which the owning railroad has absolute control. There is the RoW around the perimeter of my property which is open it appears to me to any utility. I don't know what all is in it here, but at a minimum it is the power company, the telephone company, and the cable company. I know of people whose property has no access to a public street and the owners thereof have a RoW across other people's property which right grants authority to build and maintain a roadway. There are power line and pipeline RoW where the owner has full rights to the surface as long as access to the facility involved is involved. Of course there are RoW owned and maintained by a variety of agencies for roadways and canals and I suppose they can be a little stuff about sharing. -- Requiescas in pace o email Two identifying characteristics of System Administrators: Ex turpi causa non oritur actio Infallibility, and the ability to learn from their mistakes. (Adapted from Stephen Pinker)
Re: Level 3 blames Internet slowdowns on Technica
On Sat, Mar 22, 2014 at 10:18 AM, TGLASSEY tglas...@earthlink.net wrote: How do you as the people operating the network think two exabytes of data gets pushed across your networks to each of the PRISM Collection Sites (daily) with no one noticing... Know what I mean? Wouldn't You Like To Know? drive slow... Paul
Re: Level 3 blames Internet slowdowns on Technica
How do you get around the problem of natural monopolies, then? Or should we be moving to a world where, say, a dozen or more separate companies are all running fiber or coax on the poles on my street in an effort to get to my house? IMHO, the only way to get real competition on the last mile is to have the actual fiber/wire infrastructure being owned by a neutral party that's required to pass anyone's traffic. -- Josh Sholes On 3/21/14, 12:28 AM, Larry Sheldon larryshel...@cox.net wrote: On 3/20/2014 10:47 PM, David Miller wrote: Unless I am reading the tea leaves wrong competition will require regulation. regulation prevents competition. That is why people want regulation. Look at this thread at the people who do not want to be competed-with at L1, for example. -- Requiescas in pace o email Two identifying characteristics of System Administrators: Ex turpi causa non oritur actio Infallibility, and the ability to learn from their mistakes. (Adapted from Stephen Pinker)
RE: Level 3 blames Internet slowdowns on Technica
How do you get around the problem of natural monopolies, then? Or should we be moving to a world where, say, a dozen or more separate companies are all running fiber or coax on the poles on my street in an effort to get to my house? We already did it. The Telecommunications Act allows competitive service providers to buy access circuits on the incumbents infrastructure. There are some limitations in that you can't always get competitive access to new networks like FIOS (this to allow the incumbent to recoup their costs by exclusive access for some period of time). The access rates are low only when the infrastructure is already in the ground. That is why the new stuff is not factored in. IMHO, the only way to get real competition on the last mile is to have the actual fiber/wire infrastructure being owned by a neutral party that's required to pass anyone's traffic. Nice idea, too bad no one can make any money on building infrastructure but not selling the services on top of it. Remember Global Crossing? You are asking one company to put up all the capital expense and then try to recover it by allowing access to their infrastructure to anyone at low rates. Not gonna work. Just on a piece of paper, figure out what it costs to get fiber to your neighborhood from the nearest central office and then how much you have to charge to pay for that. If you can get a reasonable price that returns your investment within 20 years, I will be impressed. The other way that is often suggested is that the municipality own the backbone. That might work except they want to tax you and then also nail the service providers so they do exclusive deals like you see in cable franchises that screw the consumer. Steven Naslund On 3/21/14, 12:28 AM, Larry Sheldon larryshel...@cox.net wrote: On 3/20/2014 10:47 PM, David Miller wrote: Unless I am reading the tea leaves wrong competition will require regulation. regulation prevents competition. That is why people want regulation. Look at this thread at the people who do not want to be competed-with at L1, for example. -- Requiescas in pace o email Two identifying characteristics of System Administrators: Ex turpi causa non oritur actio Infallibility, and the ability to learn from their mistakes. (Adapted from Stephen Pinker)
Re: Level 3 blames Internet slowdowns on Technica
How do you get around the problem of natural monopolies, then? Or should we be moving to a world where, say, a dozen or more separate companies are all running fiber or coax on the poles on my street in an effort to get to my house? IMHO, the only way to get real competition on the last mile is to have the actual fiber/wire infrastructure being owned by a neutral party that's required to pass anyone's traffic. Which closely resembles what the original goal of the National Infrastructure Initiative was, back in the early 1990's. Fiber to the homes. 86 million of them by 2006. The Bells volunteered to do it in exchange for incentives, which they got, and kept, and then never delivered what was promised. The best short summary of what happened is probably here: http://www.newnetworks.com/ShortSCANDALSummary.htm This boooklet is now maybe ~5-10 years old so it doesn't reflect more recent developments. We *let* the monopolies (er, duopolies in some cases) get away with the regulatory and legislative manipulation that led to the current outcome, and the irony that the message I'm responding to was authored by someone who appears to work for one of those companies would write such a message is not lost upon me. ... 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.
Re: Level 3 blames Internet slowdowns on Technica
http://www.newnetworks.com/ShortSCANDALSummary.htm This boooklet is now maybe ~5-10 years old so it doesn't reflect more recent developments. We *let* the monopolies (er, duopolies in some cases) get away with the regulatory and legislative manipulation that led to the current outcome, That's definitely its own set of problems completely outside of where one stands on any idea in the space or on the regulation vs. competition debate in general. Regulation does no good unless it's enforced, and competition can't exist meaningfully in an environment where unfair business practices are allowed to exist. and the irony that the message I'm responding to was authored by someone who appears to work for one of those companies would write such a message is not lost upon me. I'm not wearing that hat right now, and I'm a Linux engineer anyway. =P -- Josh Sholes
Re: Level 3 blames Internet slowdowns on Technica
On Friday, March 21, 2014 04:25:09 PM Naslund, Steve wrote: Nice idea, too bad no one can make any money on building infrastructure but not selling the services on top of it. Remember Global Crossing? You are asking one company to put up all the capital expense and then try to recover it by allowing access to their infrastructure to anyone at low rates. Not gonna work. Just on a piece of paper, figure out what it costs to get fiber to your neighborhood from the nearest central office and then how much you have to charge to pay for that. If you can get a reasonable price that returns your investment within 20 years, I will be impressed. Like I mentioned, some countries Asia-Pac and Africa have seen some of their governments deploying this infrastructure for the citizens. Things go belly-up when the governments sub-contract the actual operations of the network. Either they use the same old incumbents to run it, or they employ private contractors (who are, sometimes, equipment vendors that build the network - which means even more sub-contracting). I've seen such builds focusing on access to the homes, as well as core national backbones. I haven't yet seen both initiatives at the same time in one country. Mark. signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: Level 3 blames Internet slowdowns on Technica
On Fri, Mar 21, 2014 at 10:25 AM, Naslund, Steve snasl...@medline.com wrote: Nice idea, too bad no one can make any money on building infrastructure but not selling the services on top of it. Remember Global Crossing? You are asking one company to put up all the capital expense and then try to recover it by allowing access to their infrastructure to anyone at low rates. Not gonna work. Just on a piece of paper, figure out what it costs to get fiber to your neighborhood from the nearest central office and then how much you have to charge to pay for that. If you can get a reasonable price that returns your investment within 20 years, I will be impressed. IIRC, GLBX didn't receive taxpayer funded subsidies, nor municipal bonds, in order to roll out their infrastructure. I would gather that a fiber plant, on whole, costs less than the number of subscribers, multiplied by average monthly bill, and again by average length of service not to mention 20 years. -Jim P.
Re: Level 3 blames Internet slowdowns on Technica
Well, don't forget the labor, taxes, business licenses fees, county taxes on chairs, Obama care, accountants and time required. Bob Evans CTO Bob Evans CTO Do you need IPv4 space to lease, space you can use until IPv6 is the standard? On Fri, Mar 21, 2014 at 10:25 AM, Naslund, Steve snasl...@medline.com wrote: Nice idea, too bad no one can make any money on building infrastructure but not selling the services on top of it. Remember Global Crossing? You are asking one company to put up all the capital expense and then try to recover it by allowing access to their infrastructure to anyone at low rates. Not gonna work. Just on a piece of paper, figure out what it costs to get fiber to your neighborhood from the nearest central office and then how much you have to charge to pay for that. If you can get a reasonable price that returns your investment within 20 years, I will be impressed. IIRC, GLBX didn't receive taxpayer funded subsidies, nor municipal bonds, in order to roll out their infrastructure. I would gather that a fiber plant, on whole, costs less than the number of subscribers, multiplied by average monthly bill, and again by average length of service not to mention 20 years. -Jim P.
Re: Level 3 blames Internet slowdowns on Technica
On Fri, Mar 21, 2014 at 02:30:45PM +, Sholes, Joshua wrote: http://www.newnetworks.com/ShortSCANDALSummary.htm This boooklet is now maybe ~5-10 years old so it doesn't reflect more recent developments. We *let* the monopolies (er, duopolies in some cases) get away with the regulatory and legislative manipulation that led to the current outcome, That's definitely its own set of problems completely outside of where one stands on any idea in the space or on the regulation vs. competition debate in general. Regulation does no good unless it's enforced, and competition can't exist meaningfully in an environment where unfair business practices are allowed to exist. Which are both permitted and perpetuated in large part by the regulatory environment we are made to operate under. Monopolies usually require some sort of government support in order to survive. Don't forget that it is the old companies (regardless of their current name) making life difficult for the content carriers. They don't want to adapt so they are lobbying to enact policies which make it easier for them to sit there and be stagnant dinosaurs while the rest of the world moves on. It's the same thing the record companies are doing on with a different flavor. -Wayne --- Wayne Bouchard w...@typo.org Network Dude http://www.typo.org/~web/
RE: Level 3 blames Internet slowdowns on Technica
What do you mean by average monthly bill? That is the issue here. The average monthly bill includes the services you are getting. In the Chicago area a fiber optic access circuit unbundled from the imcumbent carrier to a competitive carrier is something like $10 a month or so. How could you possibly think you can fund a build out in a new area for that price? It may be possible to pay for that over 20 years. The problem is that no one goes into business to break even over 20 years. Would you fund my business model if I told you I needed hundreds of millions of dollars in capital expense and I might show you a profit in 20 years? How much are you willing to have added to your cable and Internet service bills for the access component of the service? Now think of this. I am the guy who owns all of the layer 1 in your area. What if I go out of business? What if I overcharge you? What if I charge $100 a month to access the infrastructure? Who fixes that. The government regulations. I think this business model existed before. It was called the Bell System and the only way they could pay for it was to charge you high rates for services. Steven Naslund -Original Message- From: Jim Popovitch [mailto:jim...@gmail.com] Sent: Friday, March 21, 2014 10:15 AM To: Naslund, Steve Cc: Sholes, Joshua; Larry Sheldon; nanog@nanog.org Subject: Re: Level 3 blames Internet slowdowns on Technica On Fri, Mar 21, 2014 at 10:25 AM, Naslund, Steve snasl...@medline.com wrote: Nice idea, too bad no one can make any money on building infrastructure but not selling the services on top of it. Remember Global Crossing? You are asking one company to put up all the capital expense and then try to recover it by allowing access to their infrastructure to anyone at low rates. Not gonna work. Just on a piece of paper, figure out what it costs to get fiber to your neighborhood from the nearest central office and then how much you have to charge to pay for that. If you can get a reasonable price that returns your investment within 20 years, I will be impressed. IIRC, GLBX didn't receive taxpayer funded subsidies, nor municipal bonds, in order to roll out their infrastructure. I would gather that a fiber plant, on whole, costs less than the number of subscribers, multiplied by average monthly bill, and again by average length of service not to mention 20 years. -Jim P.
RE: Level 3 blames Internet slowdowns on Technica
Well, we were originally talking about regulation in the US as discussed by Level 3 in the subject article, but we can get into the international space if you like. So, as far as the government or Wall Street funding the build out of the commercial Internet, that is not what happened. I was there in the beginning selling dial-up service, dedicated data circuits, and finally DSL. Wall Street got into the game very late. We built our company into a $30 million operation before they cared to notice. The government, while they did the initial research that created the Internet, did not help us and was in fact a huge hinderance to progress until the Telecommunications Act where they attempted to deal with us upstarts trying to upset the status quo. Why people think the government was instrumental in the commercial Internet is beyond me. I think some politicians might want you to think so. I see no reason why the US model would not work in any market economy. It is a simple matter of supply and demand. If your economy cannot afford the infrastructure or the people have no money to pay for services, you are going to have a problem. There is a huge problem in that people think GOVERNMENT FUNDED=FREE, it does not and in most cases is more expensive than the commercial alternatives since there is no motivation to be efficient. In that case a hybrid approach like I used in helping schools in the Philippines will work better. We used government funding and private grants to provide high speed internet to rural schools and we did it by buying commercial available wireless and cable services. This helps the people and also helps grow the communications industry there. The government does nothing but pay the bills (and they rarely even do that right). Steven Naslund -Original Message- From: Mark Tinka [mailto:mark.ti...@seacom.mu] Sent: Friday, March 21, 2014 10:01 AM To: Naslund, Steve Subject: Re: Level 3 blames Internet slowdowns on Technica On Friday, March 21, 2014 04:46:13 PM Naslund, Steve wrote: First question to ask yourself is who is paying for it. The governments don't do things out of the kindness of their hearts. They will want to be paid for it. Control means power and people in power want to get paid. No one is denying that. If I have the opportunity for my taxes to do real work like build a national optical backbone, instead of lining some guy's pockets, I'm fine with that. Who else would run the network? Do we think the government can or should be operating communications networks? Do you want the government controlling what content you get or producing that content? I think not. Look at the wonderful job they are doing maintaining our transportation infrastructure. My point was the governments do not know how to seek information on how best to sub-contract running of the network. I certainly don't want the government running my network. Heck, they barely know how to use the lift in their building. But what we need is a more transparent process on choosing the right person (and model) to operate the network. In most deployments, this has been the weakest link. That is because we don't need a government initiative to do that. Most people in the US have access to broadband networks today because they wanted it and they were willing to pay someone for it. That is called a business initiative and it is much more efficient than any government initiative. Right, but that is the U.S. (which is why I specifically mentioned Asia-Pac and Africa). Other countries with smaller economies have realized that the quickest way to close the digital gap is, perhaps for better or worse, have the government fund the projects (in part or whole). Malaysia and Singapore have been relatively successful in this. Australia is still wanting, and Tanzania is not something I'd say was done well but works for the most part. But the use-cases are there, at the very least, for learning. As far as core national backbones the government has built several over the years including the ARPANET, Defense Data Network, NSFnet, etc. None of those really helped the consumer except as models for the public networks. Our service providers have built global backbones that are more resilient and outrun all of those networks because market forces had them do it. I needed an MPLS circuit from my backbone to Shanghai China recently and I could get that from several service providers at reasonable rates. We did get two initiatives to build out access to the home as well as the national backbone. It is called the Internet. Backbone speeds increased at the same time access to the home went from dial up to DSL to cable to FTTH. What's the problem here. Again, you're looking at it from where the U.S. came from, which, for all intents and purposes, is where the Internet started. Great! But that does not help other economies
Re: Level 3 blames Internet slowdowns on Technica
On Fri, Mar 21, 2014 at 11:48 AM, Naslund, Steve snasl...@medline.com wrote: What do you mean by average monthly bill? What is the average monthly (non-subsidized) access cost that your friends and family pay each month? -Jim P.
RE: Level 3 blames Internet slowdowns on Technica
We don't know because the service provider rolls that cost up along with the services they sell. That is my point. They are able to spread the costs out based on the profitable services they sell. If they were not able to sell us services I am not sure they could afford to provide that infrastructure. In fact, having been a service provider I can tell you that I paid the LEC about $4 a month for a copper pair to your house to sell DSL service at around ten times that cost. I am sure the LEC was not making money at the $4 a month and I know I could not fund a build out for that price. Steven Naslund -Original Message- From: Jim Popovitch [mailto:jim...@gmail.com] Sent: Friday, March 21, 2014 11:07 AM To: Naslund, Steve Cc: Sholes, Joshua; Larry Sheldon; nanog@nanog.org Subject: Re: Level 3 blames Internet slowdowns on Technica On Fri, Mar 21, 2014 at 11:48 AM, Naslund, Steve snasl...@medline.com wrote: What do you mean by average monthly bill? What is the average monthly (non-subsidized) access cost that your friends and family pay each month? -Jim P.
Re: Level 3 blames Internet slowdowns on Technica
On Friday, March 21, 2014 05:59:54 PM Naslund, Steve wrote: So, as far as the government or Wall Street funding the build out of the commercial Internet, that is not what happened. Lots of terrestrial and submarine optical fibre was built in the late 90's, and much of it has either gone unused until now, or saw lots of MA's as a result of the bust that left hundreds-of-millions of dollars in investment with just a few cents on the dollar, over night. Many of those cable systems go by other names you may know today. The Internet isn't one thing. I see no reason why the US model would not work in any market economy. It is a simple matter of supply and demand. If your economy cannot afford the infrastructure or the people have no money to pay for services, you are going to have a problem. There is a huge problem in that people think GOVERNMENT FUNDED=FREE, it does not and in most cases is more expensive than the commercial alternatives since there is no motivation to be efficient. No one said they wanted anything free. Everyone knows free Internet only exists at Starbucks and your next Internet communit conference - and even that is not always reliable. In Africa and parts of Asia, supply and demand is equally rife. In fact, in some cases, supply outstrips demand. We could get into a lot of reasons why supply won't reach out to demand, but I'd be digressing. Suffice it to say, while over-supply may be present, it's in the hands of the few who all concert (mostly unknowingly) to keep prices high. As you know, no one will invest in something for a 20-year return. But by the same token, fibre lives for a long while; trying to recoup your investment in six months is not going to help anyone (except open up competition against you, the one who probably went in first). The need for neutral infrastructure which is reasonably and well commercially run is likely a solution to better pricing with professional quality, or the knife that butters the price decline wheat. In that case a hybrid approach like I used in helping schools in the Philippines will work better. We used government funding and private grants to provide high speed internet to rural schools and we did it by buying commercial available wireless and cable services. This helps the people and also helps grow the communications industry there. The government does nothing but pay the bills (and they rarely even do that right). And I do agree that a hybrid approach with a neutral fibre backbone is what is lacking with these national projects. The governments building these backbones know little about how the Internet really works (which includes DNS, ICANN, and that free things don't work :-). What is needed is clue going into these projects that help turn the national project into a well-run, commercial businesses that looks after itself, but also fufills the goal of ubiquitous connectivity. The hurdle isn't running the network. The hurdle is getting the fibre into the ground - and that is a monumentous hurdle. Running the network is where it all falls apart if unchecked. Mark. signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: Level 3 blames Internet slowdowns on Technica
On Mar 21, 2014, at 12:13 PM, Naslund, Steve snasl...@medline.com wrote: We don't know because the service provider rolls that cost up along with the services they sell. That is my point. They are able to spread the costs out based on the profitable services they sell. If they were not able to sell us services I am not sure they could afford to provide that infrastructure. Monthly fees do much more than finance the cost of infrastructure. Most large providers take a significant margin. It’s all about how these services are perceived. The preservation of this margin is the number one reason why internet access isn’t considered a utility or a basic right today. It also allows prices to increase unchecked, based on nothing other than the goals of specific companies. There are many places where infrastructure is subsidized and controlled by the government. To them some things are more important than the need to make markets. They just trust that the overall benefit to society is worth modifying the market. In fact, having been a service provider I can tell you that I paid the LEC about $4 a month for a copper pair to your house to sell DSL service at around ten times that cost. I am sure the LEC was not making money at the $4 a month and I know I could not fund a build out for that price. Being a LEC is more profitable than anything else because they control the prices. If you found an iLEC that charged $4 for something worth $40 that doesn’t mean being a LEC isn’t profitable. After the long-distance carriers were forced to divest from local the LEC’s grew and quickly bought them. It’s more profitable to be a LEC than to resell their services. The only large carriers left are former LEC’s AKA baby bells. -Original Message- From: Jim Popovitch [mailto:jim...@gmail.com] Sent: Friday, March 21, 2014 11:07 AM To: Naslund, Steve Cc: Sholes, Joshua; Larry Sheldon; nanog@nanog.org Subject: Re: Level 3 blames Internet slowdowns on Technica On Fri, Mar 21, 2014 at 11:48 AM, Naslund, Steve snasl...@medline.com wrote: What do you mean by average monthly bill? What is the average monthly (non-subsidized) access cost that your friends and family pay each month? -Jim P.
Re: Level 3 blames Internet slowdowns on Technica
How come no one ever asks if competition is required? On Mar 20, 2014, at 11:47 PM, David Miller dmil...@tiggee.com wrote: Unless I am reading the tea leaves wrong competition will require regulation. Original message From: Mike. the.li...@mgm51.com Date: 03/20/2014 21:56 (GMT-05:00) To: nanog@nanog.org Subject: Re: Level 3 blames Internet slowdowns on Technica On 3/20/2014 at 4:17 PM Bryan Fields wrote: |On 3/20/14, 12:34 PM, Blake Hudson wrote: | The solution seems to be competition or regulation. |I'd prefer competition to regulation. = If real and true competition exists, yes.
Re: Level 3 blames Internet slowdowns on Technica
On Friday 21 March 2014 09:13:28 Naslund, Steve wrote: ... In fact, having been a service provider I can tell you that I paid the LEC about $4 a month for a copper pair to your house to sell DSL service at around ten times that cost. I am sure the LEC was not making money at the $4 a month and I know I could not fund a build out for that price. I take it you have not been a service provider for a while? Thanks to its removal from the tariff list, that $4 DSL pair from the ILEC for a third party ISP now costs $34... That doesn't include ISP cost. Adrian
Re: Level 3 blames Internet slowdowns on Technica
On Mar 21, 2014, at 2:08 PM, Keegan Holley no.s...@comcast.net wrote: How come no one ever asks if competition is required? I think the issue here is there is competition, but those you are seen as competing with are in a different strata providing the same service. eg: Cellular data competes with DSL/DOCSIS/FTT* Now, due to speed, caps, etc.. it may not be a fair comparison, but this isn't about fair, it's about is there competition in the market. I know many folks that live outside the wired high-speed boundaries and things are not getting any better there. Most use some hotspot or similar for their home connectivity. Is there a market for high speed there? certainly, but it's being filled by other technology. There are many folks that work around these issues with other solutions, including satellite, fixed wireless and/or microwave or even localized fiber build-outs. Look at the RUS/NTIA/BTOP focus, it was on getting the anchor institutions well connected to provide a sense of community. The challenge is not everyone is equally equipped. Merit (in my area) has fiber close to me, but they don't offer services to anyone but existing members and have no consumer offerings. Market segmentation happens for a variety of reasons, sometimes economic, sometimes complete differences in ROI models. Nobody can afford to run universal fiber everywhere as a greenfield build, but there are localized markets where it can make sense. Certainly it can make sense to connect some islands to each other via some other technology. Taking list prices from providers webpages, what cogent used to list $4/meg, so that means (assuming everything is perfect) offering 10Mb/s service at a home could possibly cost $40/mo for a provider, not counting capital costs and other elements (support, customer acquisition costs, bad debt, etc). I'm sure folks can build networks for low cost, you can get a 1G active-ethernet NID for sub-$150 with optics, but you still need to aggregate and account for it somewhere. - Jared
Re: Level 3 blames Internet slowdowns on Technica
We don't know because the service provider rolls that cost up along with th= e services they sell. That is my point. They are able to spread the costs= out based on the profitable services they sell. Okay. If they were not able to = sell us services I am not sure they could afford to provide that infrastruc= ture. That's a crock. You can always provide infrastructure without selling services on top of it. It's wire. Or fiber. Or whatever. If you're not able to subsidize the infrastructure with services, then what you actually get is a less distorted reality where you can actually identify the component costs (circuit, services, etc). In fact, having been a service provider I can tell you that I paid t= he LEC about $4 a month for a copper pair to your house to sell DSL service= at around ten times that cost. I am sure the LEC was not making money at = the $4 a month and I know I could not fund a build out for that price. Why would you try to fund a build out on that? Why wouldn't you instead charge for the build out as a NRC and then charge for maintenance as a MRC? What you're suggesting reeks of the deliberate cost distortion games that go on so often. My personal favorite is cell phone contracts where the cost of the phone is *cough* subsidized by the carrier. But what's really happening is that the customer is paying for the phone over the term of the contract, and if the customer doesn't get a different phone at the end of the contract, then the carrier ... lowers their monthly rate accordingly? No, of course not... they keep it as profit. ... 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.
Re: Level 3 blames Internet slowdowns on Technica
On Mar 21, 2014, at 11:01 AM, Joe Greco jgr...@ns.sol.net wrote: Why wouldn't you instead charge for the build out as a NRC and then charge for maintenance as a MRC? I for one would be willing to bear a high NRC start-up cost for someone building fiber to my home. Not everyone would make that tradeoff. I know people who trade between the two local DSL/DOCSIS incumbents every year because it's $5 cheaper/mo to get the next 12-month deal as a switcher. While their time may not be worth ($5*12)/hour to account for this minimal switching cost, it's certainly a real economic cost if you're waiting for a 4 hour window for a tech to show-up and do an install. aside: I recently got natural gas at my home, the install cost was something like $2k, the utility had an option, pay an extra $27/mo for however many months, or pay the $2k up-front. Some folks can't absorb a cost like that, others can. I've heard from FTTH providers their install cost is in that same ballpark. Really wish they would have been able to pull fiber at the same time as the HDPE. The fact that it was a contractor as well certainly means they could run a side-business building their own fiber using the other utility as the main seed-money and have a wholesale fiber network for cheap. - Jared
Re: competition (was: Level 3 blames Internet slowdowns on Technica)
On Mar 21, 2014, at 2:21 PM, Jared Mauch ja...@puck.nether.net wrote: On Mar 21, 2014, at 2:08 PM, Keegan Holley no.s...@comcast.net wrote: How come no one ever asks if competition is required? I think the issue here is there is competition, but those you are seen as competing with are in a different strata providing the same service. My question is competition and the market the goal at all? eg: Cellular data competes with DSL/DOCSIS/FTT* Now, due to speed, caps, etc.. it may not be a fair comparison, but this isn't about fair, it's about is there competition in the market. I know many folks that live outside the wired high-speed boundaries and things are not getting any better there. Most use some hotspot or similar for their home connectivity. Is there a market for high speed there? certainly, but it's being filled by other technology. Again why is the market so important? The inhabitants of this list operate (some help develop) the most complex system created by our species to date. It is one of the few truly global systems and brought with it a new era in human development. We now have more information at our fingertips than at any point in history. What do we argue about? How to profit from it? I’m not saying that profit is bad. I’m arrogant but not arrogant enough to think I can answer such a question. It just fascinates me that no one questions it. If an area isn’t considered not to be profitable it’s just fine that the internet doesn’t stretch there. We don’t even have a definition of what profitable means. It’s completely up to the ISP’s. Still, businesses in that area are limited, children don’t do as well in school and in turn don’t have as much opportunity. All of this happens, unquestioned in the name of profits. There are many folks that work around these issues with other solutions, including satellite, fixed wireless and/or microwave or even localized fiber build-outs. Look at the RUS/NTIA/BTOP focus, it was on getting the anchor institutions well connected to provide a sense of community. The challenge is not everyone is equally equipped. Merit (in my area) has fiber close to me, but they don't offer services to anyone but existing members and have no consumer offerings. Market segmentation happens for a variety of reasons, sometimes economic, sometimes complete differences in ROI models. Market segmentation doesn’t happen as much as market consolidation. There are now three (with a 4th that is close) major carriers in the US with enough market share to compete with each other. There isn’t much segmentation because segmentation isn’t as profitable. Nobody can afford to run universal fiber everywhere as a greenfield build, but there are localized markets where it can make sense. That’s totally untrue. What is affordable to a multi-billion dollar ISP anyway? Are you saying they’d go bankrupt if they ran fiber everywhere? No, it’s just that the infrastructure isn’t profitable in the short term. There’s a reason why energy companies can’t make the same decision. Certainly it can make sense to connect some islands to each other via some other technology. Taking list prices from providers webpages, what cogent used to list $4/meg, so that means (assuming everything is perfect) offering 10Mb/s service at a home could possibly cost $40/mo for a provider, not counting capital costs and other elements (support, customer acquisition costs, bad debt, etc). I'm sure folks can build networks for low cost, you can get a 1G active-ethernet NID for sub-$150 with optics, but you still need to aggregate and account for it somewhere. Again why does everything have to move at the speed of profit? At least here in the US anything that could remotely benefit society is always first shot through the prism of profit and the so-called free market. Is a market with three major players and a 9-figure entry cost really free though? - Jared
Re: Level 3 blames Internet slowdowns on Technica
On Mar 21, 2014, at 12:13 , Jared Mauch ja...@puck.nether.net wrote: On Mar 21, 2014, at 11:01 AM, Joe Greco jgr...@ns.sol.net wrote: Why wouldn't you instead charge for the build out as a NRC and then charge for maintenance as a MRC? I for one would be willing to bear a high NRC start-up cost for someone building fiber to my home. Not everyone would make that tradeoff. I know people who trade between the two local DSL/DOCSIS incumbents every year because it's $5 cheaper/mo to get the next 12-month deal as a switcher. While their time may not be worth ($5*12)/hour to account for this minimal switching cost, it's certainly a real economic cost if you're waiting for a 4 hour window for a tech to show-up and do an install. aside: I recently got natural gas at my home, the install cost was something like $2k, the utility had an option, pay an extra $27/mo for however many months, or pay the $2k up-front. Some folks can't absorb a cost like that, others can. I've heard from FTTH providers their install cost is in that same ballpark. Really wish they would have been able to pull fiber at the same time as the HDPE. The fact that it was a contractor as well certainly means they could run a side-business building their own fiber using the other utility as the main seed-money and have a wholesale fiber network for cheap. - Jared Which is why, in many cases, the most plausible solution is something like muni fiber where the infrastructure is rolled out as many initial public utility builds with tax dollars and/or government bonds, then operated on a cost-recovery basis where the costs considered include both operating and bond-repayment. All L2+ service providers are given equal pricing and access to any subscribers that choose to sign up. Nothing wrong with $27/month for 'however many months' so long as 'however many months' doesn't exceed about 9 years (108 months = 2,916, which I believe approximates reasonable interest for the period in question). If it's $27/month in perpetuity, however, then that's as disingenuous as cellular rates that include phones and is the kind of pricing distortion that people are complaining about. Owen
Re: competition (was: Level 3 blames Internet slowdowns on Technica)
On Fri, Mar 21, 2014 at 3:21 PM, Keegan Holley no.s...@comcast.net wrote: Again why is the market so important? It just fascinates me that no one questions it. Howdy, The impact of competition was extensively questioned and researched with respect to U.S. Government contracting rules in the early '80s. This led to the Competition in Contracting Act of 1984. Since then there's been the routine grumble about the lowest quality bidder and the periodic scandal involving a no-bid contract but no serious question about whether competition reduces cost and improves options. Unless the data starts to suggest otherwise, it's basically a settled matter. No one questions that the sky is blue either and few bother to learn why. Regards. Bill Herrin -- William D. Herrin her...@dirtside.com b...@herrin.us 3005 Crane Dr. .. Web: http://bill.herrin.us/ Falls Church, VA 22042-3004
Re: Level 3 blames Internet slowdowns on Technica
On Mar 21, 2014, at 11:01 AM, Joe Greco jgr...@ns.sol.net wrote: Why wouldn't you instead charge for the build out as a NRC and then = charge=20 for maintenance as a MRC? I for one would be willing to bear a high NRC start-up cost for someone = building fiber to my home. Not everyone would make that tradeoff. I was discussing the cost that the service provider had to pay in the context of a $4/mo copper pair for rental of a copper pair that the ILEC almost certainly did not need to install. I do not see why the cost for build out needs to be included in the actual monthly cost an ILEC needs to charge. I think that utilities have a long history of proving that the cost for build out can be successfully charged to the property owner in several ways as you note. I don't see it as being an insurmountable problem to find some way for an intermediate service provider to deal with this if needed. ... 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.
Re: Level 3 blames Internet slowdowns on Technica
On Mar 21, 2014, at 12:22 PM, Joe Greco jgr...@ns.sol.net wrote: On Mar 21, 2014, at 11:01 AM, Joe Greco jgr...@ns.sol.net wrote: Why wouldn't you instead charge for the build out as a NRC and then = charge=20 for maintenance as a MRC? I for one would be willing to bear a high NRC start-up cost for someone = building fiber to my home. Not everyone would make that tradeoff. I was discussing the cost that the service provider had to pay in the context of a $4/mo copper pair for rental of a copper pair that the ILEC almost certainly did not need to install. I do not see why the cost for build out needs to be included in the actual monthly cost an ILEC needs to charge. I think that utilities have a long history of proving that the cost for build out can be successfully charged to the property owner in several ways as you note. I don't see it as being an insurmountable problem to find some way for an intermediate service provider to deal with this if needed. Sure, but for POTS this installation NRC was regulated for residential (at least last time I ordered a POTS line for a home, which was ) The cost of the OM on the switch and OSP is likely less than what I pay them. The history was they were allowed to show costs and add on a margin and rate increases would be approved. I don't want to know what their costs are after ice storms... Here in Michigan there was a recent law passed to allow ending of service in areas starting January 2017. http://www.legislature.mi.gov/%28S%28la3cxz45kfy2bs55wvsiqy55%29%29/mileg.aspx?page=GetObjectobjectname=2013-SB-0636 - Jared
Re: competition (was: Level 3 blames Internet slowdowns on Technica)
The impact of competition was extensively questioned and researched with respect to U.S. Government contracting rules in the early '80s. This led to the Competition in Contracting Act of 1984. Since then there's been the routine grumble about the lowest quality bidder and the periodic scandal involving a no-bid contract but no serious question about whether competition reduces cost and improves options. Unless the data starts to suggest otherwise, it's basically a settled matter. And that, of course, is that the government doesn't have to care about profit and loss nor quality of workmanship. If they don't like it, they just throw more money at it. A private entity, on the other hand, may cease to be a going concern if they don't weigh carefully who does work for them and how it is done. They also learn very quickly that lowest cost is not necessarily lowest cost because of the problem of compensating for shoddy work. Government doesn't have to learn this lesson, especially when palms are getting greased and spoils are being distributed. -Wayne --- Wayne Bouchard w...@typo.org Network Dude http://www.typo.org/~web/
Re: Level 3 blames Internet slowdowns on Technica
On 3/21/2014 9:13 AM, Sholes, Joshua wrote: How do you get around the problem of natural monopolies, then? My strongly held belief is that if the natural monopoly* becomes oppressive somebody in their garage will find another way, and absent regulation and force of arms available to the natural monopoly, eliminate the monopoly situation and maybe the natural monopolist. Or should we be moving to a world where, say, a dozen or more separate companies are all running fiber or coax on the poles on my street in an effort to get to my house? Could be--we have two energy companies at our house. And two communications companies have boxes on the back wall. Beyond the piped-in water service, we have several competing beverage sources (including for water) in service. The house across the street has, it appears, at least three companies providing TV service (and Internet service?). Three outfits provide waste disposal service in the neighborhood, although I am not bright enough to see a competitor for the sewage component. I wasn't bright enough to see the World Wide Web, either. Nobody uses poles. IMHO, the only way to get real competition on the last mile is to have the actual fiber/wire infrastructure being owned by a neutral party that's required to pass anyone's traffic. As soon as required is in the discussion, we have a monopoly, and a monopoly has the power to abuse the situation. Wire and glass are not the only media available, as if that mattered. And we already have duplicates; what is the big deal? OH! And the reason why one set of wires is idle, is that provider got beat by the completion on the other set. (For this discussion, coaxial cable is a set of wires.) *too old, failing memory and all, I'll have to go read up on natural monopoly--I can not think of one that does not require regulation and force of arms to exist. -- Requiescas in pace o email Two identifying characteristics of System Administrators: Ex turpi causa non oritur actio Infallibility, and the ability to learn from their mistakes. (Adapted from Stephen Pinker)
RE: Level 3 blames Internet slowdowns on Technica
Make the regulation and force of arms be as targeted as reasonable. In the case of telecommunications as targeted as reasonable means the last mile or, more correctly, the local loop.I advocate stringent ongoing oversight and regulation of the local loop and very little regulation for the rest of the communications industry. If the incumbent telcos want to compete on equal footing in a free market then I invite them to give up their government granted right of ways to run their copper or fiber and compete on a level playing field. They will never do that and therefore the last mile can never be a free market. -Original Message- From: Larry Sheldon [mailto:larryshel...@cox.net] Sent: Friday, March 21, 2014 9:54 PM To: nanog@nanog.org Subject: Re: Level 3 blames Internet slowdowns on Technica *too old, failing memory and all, I'll have to go read up on natural monopoly--I can not think of one that does not require regulation and force of arms to exist.
Re: Level 3 blames Internet slowdowns on Technica
Unless I am reading the tea leaves wrong competition will require regulation. Original message From: Mike. the.li...@mgm51.com Date: 03/20/2014 21:56 (GMT-05:00) To: nanog@nanog.org Subject: Re: Level 3 blames Internet slowdowns on Technica On 3/20/2014 at 4:17 PM Bryan Fields wrote: |On 3/20/14, 12:34 PM, Blake Hudson wrote: | The solution seems to be competition or regulation. |I'd prefer competition to regulation. = If real and true competition exists, yes.
Re: Level 3 blames Internet slowdowns on Technica
On 3/20/2014 10:47 PM, David Miller wrote: Unless I am reading the tea leaves wrong competition will require regulation. regulation prevents competition. That is why people want regulation. Look at this thread at the people who do not want to be competed-with at L1, for example. -- Requiescas in pace o email Two identifying characteristics of System Administrators: Ex turpi causa non oritur actio Infallibility, and the ability to learn from their mistakes. (Adapted from Stephen Pinker)
