Re: [WISPA] Broadband Baloney? An FCC Commissioner's takeonBroadband..
Fiber is definitely higher capacity than coax; you would be stupid to do a from-scratch coax buildout. The two main difficulties with coax infrastructure is 1. It's broadcast--meaning that's a shared capacity, and, technically speaking, everything that goes to one subscriber goes to all subscribers (kinda like wireless in a sense). 2. Slow return path. It's hard to do a large capacity on the return path simply because the equipment on the subscriber end usually is fairly low end and has a lot more noise to start out with. If you amp it up to get more power (and capacity) you increase the noise way to quickly. Not really too different from wireless in those ways, just has a lot more theoretical capacity Fiber doesn't have any of these problems (although a lot of FTTH implementations are vaguely broadcast-style as well), and the massive speeds we see out of fiber are only the beginning. Still, for the time being, cable MSOs are in good shape in terms of the actual physical cabling technology and aren't facing the hard physical limits of copper pair like the telcos. -Clint Ricker Kentnis Technologies On 7/25/07, Mike Hammett [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Coax can do 50 gigabit? Fiber can do a heck of a lot more than that. A 32 channel DWDM system can currently do 320 gigs with 1280 gigs not far off. I have heard of systems doing more than 32 channels. - Mike Hammett Intelligent Computing Solutions http://www.ics-il.com - Original Message - From: Clint Ricker [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; WISPA General List wireless@wispa.org Sent: Wednesday, July 25, 2007 1:41 PM Subject: Re: [WISPA] Broadband Baloney? An FCC Commissioner's takeonBroadband.. -- Forwarded message -- From: Clint Ricker [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED], WISPA General List wireless@wispa.org Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2007 14:40:19 -0400 Subject: Re: [WISPA] Broadband Baloney? An FCC Commissioner's take onBroadband.. I think you missed my point here. My point is that forcing telcos to resell their network layer does absolutely nothing to connect additional people. If I resell ATT DSL to someone on ATT's network, they could have just as easily gotten it from ATT. So you think that CLEC's and ISP's have never actually brought the Internet or a new service to anyone? That's striking. Yes the footprint does not grow, but certainly the penetration does. Back when the Internet was new, they were great for this because they generally had better customer relationships with the customers. These days, Internet is commodity--in almost every case, if they didn't get it from the ISP or CLEC, they would get it from the cable company or telco. And without the revenue from the rented network, how would anyone build new facilities? Revenue from the services sold on the network through retail options, as has always been the case... Dynamic T1 and Integrated T1 were CLEC inventions. VoIP didn't come to the masses from the ILEC's and neither did DSL or dial-up. CLEC style VoIP is not really all that interesting--in the end, it is all to often POTS over IP and leaves out much of what is potentially interesting on VoIP. Definitely, without the CLEC competition, Internet access would have evolved in a much different manner. However, I'm more arguing that the CLECs are more or less irrelevant today (from any sort of policy standpoint)--most of the market forces really do come down to telco/cable in the metro areas and wireless in rural markets. The CLECs were the forerunners in a lot of areas--but, by and large, their era of innovation is long over. I'm not saying that these aren't decent business models, btw, and can't make people some dough. But, national policy is not structured around making sure that an extra couple of CLECs or NSPs are cash positive... running the same old tired copper to the same old customers does not increase broadband penetration. National policy! HA! It's about Innovation and Competition. In which case, the CLECs only have themselves to blame :) Would we have DSL today if not for Covad/Northpoint/Rhythms? DSL was invented in Bell Labs in 1965! RBOC's did not want to cannibalize their $1500 T1 revenue. (Then they went the exact opposite way). Agreed...but that was 1998-2002. What have they done for us lately? Does it hurt the ILEC? Heh...probably not all that much. But, are CLECs really helping the consumer? I tend to argue no, by and large...why IS CLEC market share so small? Why are independent ISPs have so little market share? Clint, I could spend days on this. For you even to ask this, . it almost feels like you are trolling (or do I hear the clinking of ice?) I'm honestly not trolling here, although, given the forum, it definitely comes across that way. Definitely, back in the 1990's and early 2000's, CLECs drove costs down and drove in new services that Bell had little
Re: [WISPA] Broadband Baloney? An FCC Commissioner's takeonBroadband..
Scottie Arnett wrote: I am thinking out loud and not actually thinking this through, but here is my idea. Do as they started with Computer Inquires...All ILEC's and Cable Co's should not be allowed in the ISP business. They can start their own ISP as a separate entity, but the parent ILEC/CC will have to sell to all ISP's, including their own at a wholesale rate for use of their transport. There should be no cross subsidization from one to the other. That was how the original TA96 was written. Separate entity without cross-subsidization. However, the FCC did not actually enforce that piece. No bundling was supposed to occur (DSL, LD nor Local) until 3 years after the RBOC's received 272 relief (were allowed to sell LD again). During those 3 years prior to sunset, the FCC was suppose to monitor to insure that the networks were open to competition, that there was no cross-sub, etc. Never happened. The FCC did not in any way enforce this piece of the law. (Yeah, this was law, no some FCC guideline). I live in an area full of Cooperatives. Cooperatives do not have to follow many of the Tele Act of 1996 rules (rural exemptions). I live in TN where, I actually lost count, but there are approximately 20 +/- telephone cooperatives. So I do not and have not got to do many of the things you guys have got to do. Now that talk all this BS about bridging the digital divide, but they still let these cooperatives get away with monopolies and not having to follow half the rules that the rest of the US ILEC's have to follow. TA96 was mainly about RBOC's not ILEC's. Even Sprint United (now calling itself Embarq) was not regulated by much of the TA96. There was a nother section of TA96 about cable. And a general section about ILEC's. Rural ILEC's (RLEC's) get a special deal because of their size / status. They also get lost of USF funding. As long as this goes on, rural America may see 20 Meg speeds by the end of the next century. We never had ISDN here until around 2001 and DSL around 2003 and of course it was done by the co-op telcos that were given almost every penny to do it by the USDA. Ah, I am through with my rant. I could complain and gripe all day. I spend a lot of time on http://www.cybertelecom.org/ and teletruth.org that goes much deeper into the points I stated above. No wonder you are ranting - you hang out with two of the biggest ranting and raving guys in telecom - Bruce and Bob. I have nothing against either one, but you can only spend so much time, energy and effort screaming before you have to get an army and go to battle... or go do something. - Peter Would you like to see your advertisement here? Let the WISPA Board know your feelings about allowing advertisements on the free WISPA lists. The current Board is taking this under consideration at this time. We want to know your thoughts. -- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/
Re: [WISPA] Broadband Baloney? An FCC Commissioner's takeonBroadband..
Coax can do 50 gigabit? Fiber can do a heck of a lot more than that. A 32 channel DWDM system can currently do 320 gigs with 1280 gigs not far off. I have heard of systems doing more than 32 channels. - Mike Hammett Intelligent Computing Solutions http://www.ics-il.com - Original Message - From: Clint Ricker [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; WISPA General List wireless@wispa.org Sent: Wednesday, July 25, 2007 1:41 PM Subject: Re: [WISPA] Broadband Baloney? An FCC Commissioner's takeonBroadband.. -- Forwarded message -- From: Clint Ricker [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED], WISPA General List wireless@wispa.org Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2007 14:40:19 -0400 Subject: Re: [WISPA] Broadband Baloney? An FCC Commissioner's take onBroadband.. I think you missed my point here. My point is that forcing telcos to resell their network layer does absolutely nothing to connect additional people. If I resell ATT DSL to someone on ATT's network, they could have just as easily gotten it from ATT. So you think that CLEC's and ISP's have never actually brought the Internet or a new service to anyone? That's striking. Yes the footprint does not grow, but certainly the penetration does. Back when the Internet was new, they were great for this because they generally had better customer relationships with the customers. These days, Internet is commodity--in almost every case, if they didn't get it from the ISP or CLEC, they would get it from the cable company or telco. And without the revenue from the rented network, how would anyone build new facilities? Revenue from the services sold on the network through retail options, as has always been the case... Dynamic T1 and Integrated T1 were CLEC inventions. VoIP didn't come to the masses from the ILEC's and neither did DSL or dial-up. CLEC style VoIP is not really all that interesting--in the end, it is all to often POTS over IP and leaves out much of what is potentially interesting on VoIP. Definitely, without the CLEC competition, Internet access would have evolved in a much different manner. However, I'm more arguing that the CLECs are more or less irrelevant today (from any sort of policy standpoint)--most of the market forces really do come down to telco/cable in the metro areas and wireless in rural markets. The CLECs were the forerunners in a lot of areas--but, by and large, their era of innovation is long over. I'm not saying that these aren't decent business models, btw, and can't make people some dough. But, national policy is not structured around making sure that an extra couple of CLECs or NSPs are cash positive... running the same old tired copper to the same old customers does not increase broadband penetration. National policy! HA! It's about Innovation and Competition. In which case, the CLECs only have themselves to blame :) Would we have DSL today if not for Covad/Northpoint/Rhythms? DSL was invented in Bell Labs in 1965! RBOC's did not want to cannibalize their $1500 T1 revenue. (Then they went the exact opposite way). Agreed...but that was 1998-2002. What have they done for us lately? Does it hurt the ILEC? Heh...probably not all that much. But, are CLECs really helping the consumer? I tend to argue no, by and large...why IS CLEC market share so small? Why are independent ISPs have so little market share? Clint, I could spend days on this. For you even to ask this, . it almost feels like you are trolling (or do I hear the clinking of ice?) I'm honestly not trolling here, although, given the forum, it definitely comes across that way. Definitely, back in the 1990's and early 2000's, CLECs drove costs down and drove in new services that Bell had little interest in offering. That was 5 years ago, though. By and large, the bells are usually fairly competitive price wise in the business market and by far the best value out there in the residential / SOHO market. Now, it is largely the cable/telco competition that is keeping prices down, not the CLECs... I worked for several years at an ISP that did the whole BellSouth DSL NSP stuff. The FISPA list, etc...continually trashed BellSouth DSL service and their poor customer service, and so forth, and espoused the the glories of independent ISPs, which I largely agreed with until one day when I setup a friends self-install DSL kit from BellSouth. It was a very slick automated installation procedure that was _much_ better than what we were doing. The Independent ISP community did _way_ too much talking about their own value and their own great customer service while, by and large, doing very little to actually improve workflows, improve the customer experience (in terms of ease of turn up) and way too little time / effort spent actually selling and marketing. Simply put, by 2005 the telco offering by and large was, for most people, a better product. Again, this isn't a universal
Re: [WISPA] Broadband Baloney? An FCC Commissioner's takeonBroadband..
Oh brother. Here we go again. marlon - Original Message - From: Scottie Arnett [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: WISPA General List wireless@wispa.org Sent: Tuesday, July 24, 2007 7:34 AM Subject: Re: [WISPA] Broadband Baloney? An FCC Commissioner's takeonBroadband.. Thats the problem...most of the senate, congress, heck the whole government and their appointees do not know the difference in a piece of twine with two cans attached and a copper line with telephones attached, much less how the internet works and the physics behind it. They only know how to listen to the people that pad their or their parties back pockets. IMHO. -- Original Message -- From: Drew Lentz [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: WISPA General List wireless@wispa.org Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2007 08:57:57 -0500 In an article entitled Broadband Baloney in the Wall Street Journal today, Robert McDowell, a Commissioner on the FCC stated: Criticisms of our definition of broadband being too lax are already irrelevant as over 50 million subscribers are in the 1.5 to 3.0 megabits-per-second fast lane. That my friends, is EXACTLY what the problem is: 1.5 to 3mb FAST LANE Who are they trying to kid? Then he goes on to say: Today, video applications are tugging hard on America's broadband infrastructure. YouTube alone uses as much bandwidth today as the entire Internet did in 2000. Not surprisingly, our broadband adoption rate continues to increase concurrently with the proliferation of this latest killer app. He talks about how much of a push video is, even citing that it eats up a large amount of bandwidth, but is insistent on 1.5 to 3 Mb being fast? I don't get it. The article sums up why he thinks that all this talk about us lagging behind in the broadband proliferation table is Broadband Baloney.. boo I say. The fact that the WSJ would print this is baloney. Article is here: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118524094434875755.html?mod=googlenews_wsj Drew Lentz [EMAIL PROTECTED] 956.878.0123 Would you like to see your advertisement here? Let the WISPA Board know your feelings about allowing advertisements on the free WISPA lists. The current Board is taking this under consideration at this time. We want to know your thoughts. -- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/ --- [This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus] Dial-Up Internet service from Info-Ed, Inc. as low as $9.99/mth. Check out www.info-ed.com for information. Would you like to see your advertisement here? Let the WISPA Board know your feelings about allowing advertisements on the free WISPA lists. The current Board is taking this under consideration at this time. We want to know your thoughts. -- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/ Would you like to see your advertisement here? Let the WISPA Board know your feelings about allowing advertisements on the free WISPA lists. The current Board is taking this under consideration at this time. We want to know your thoughts. -- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/
Re: [WISPA] Broadband Baloney? An FCC Commissioner's takeonBroadband..
oh, and hardly any of the auctioned spectrum has or will in the short term be used for broadband. It's used for cellular and other services. - Mike Hammett Intelligent Computing Solutions http://www.ics-il.com - Original Message - From: Mike Hammett [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: WISPA General List wireless@wispa.org Sent: Tuesday, July 24, 2007 2:05 PM Subject: Re: [WISPA] Broadband Baloney? An FCC Commissioner's takeonBroadband.. 3 mbit is not fast. The US IS behind other countries, there's no point in whining about it. Yes, there are very substantial reasons why our numbers don't look as good as theirs, but there's no need to skew the system to make us look better... just solve the problem. Fixed wireless is broadband. WIFI hotspots, cell phones, etc. are not broadband (maybe the cell broadband cards). The reason our numbers are climbing is because this has been a problem for some time and we're working on fixing it. It takes a lot to change things like that for the third most populous country in the world. Perhaps it should be measured per household and not per capita, I dunno. The reason why there's less competition elsewhere is because what is present is doing a good enough job! Their telcos have delivered 15 meg DSL for years, while ours don't yet offer it. That's why cable is taking on so well here. It surely isn't because anything connected to Comcast has a good price point (DSL and satellite TV are both better values). - Mike Hammett Intelligent Computing Solutions http://www.ics-il.com - Original Message - From: Drew Lentz [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: 'WISPA General List' wireless@wispa.org Sent: Tuesday, July 24, 2007 8:57 AM Subject: [WISPA] Broadband Baloney? An FCC Commissioner's take onBroadband.. In an article entitled Broadband Baloney in the Wall Street Journal today, Robert McDowell, a Commissioner on the FCC stated: Criticisms of our definition of broadband being too lax are already irrelevant as over 50 million subscribers are in the 1.5 to 3.0 megabits-per-second fast lane. That my friends, is EXACTLY what the problem is: 1.5 to 3mb FAST LANE Who are they trying to kid? Then he goes on to say: Today, video applications are tugging hard on America's broadband infrastructure. YouTube alone uses as much bandwidth today as the entire Internet did in 2000. Not surprisingly, our broadband adoption rate continues to increase concurrently with the proliferation of this latest killer app. He talks about how much of a push video is, even citing that it eats up a large amount of bandwidth, but is insistent on 1.5 to 3 Mb being fast? I don't get it. The article sums up why he thinks that all this talk about us lagging behind in the broadband proliferation table is Broadband Baloney.. boo I say. The fact that the WSJ would print this is baloney. Article is here: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118524094434875755.html?mod=googlenews_wsj Drew Lentz [EMAIL PROTECTED] 956.878.0123 Would you like to see your advertisement here? Let the WISPA Board know your feelings about allowing advertisements on the free WISPA lists. The current Board is taking this under consideration at this time. We want to know your thoughts. -- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/ Would you like to see your advertisement here? Let the WISPA Board know your feelings about allowing advertisements on the free WISPA lists. The current Board is taking this under consideration at this time. We want to know your thoughts. -- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/ Would you like to see your advertisement here? Let the WISPA Board know your feelings about allowing advertisements on the free WISPA lists. The current Board is taking this under consideration at this time. We want to know your thoughts. -- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/
Re: [WISPA] Broadband Baloney? An FCC Commissioner's takeonBroadband..
I guess I'm the opposite. I have plans that currently range from 256 to 2048. Most customers pick the 2048, with 256 coming in second. There are some on other plans, but they were the fastest at the time. Prices range from $25 for 256 to $55 for 2048. Business accounts are 50% higher $ and all picked the fastest at the time. As the users get around the net more, they will use it more. It's a cycle. Faster Internet causes more demanding applications causes faster Internet causesOnce I solve a pile of unrelated issues I have, I foresee going to 3 megs, then 5, then 7.5, then 10. I should have that completed in 12 - 18 months. I only have 20 customers now, so its hard to upgrade quickly. ;-) - Mike Hammett Intelligent Computing Solutions http://www.ics-il.com - Original Message - From: Sam Tetherow [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; WISPA General List wireless@wispa.org Sent: Tuesday, July 24, 2007 3:53 PM Subject: Re: [WISPA] Broadband Baloney? An FCC Commissioner's takeonBroadband.. Peter R. wrote: Mike Hammett wrote: 3 mbit is not fast. The US IS behind other countries, there's no point in whining about it. Yes, there are very substantial reasons why our numbers don't look as good as theirs, but there's no need to skew the system to make us look better... just solve the problem. Fixed wireless is broadband. WIFI hotspots, cell phones, etc. are not broadband (maybe the cell broadband cards). The reason our numbers are climbing is because this has been a problem for some time and we're working on fixing it. It takes a lot to change things like that for the third most populous country in the world. Perhaps it should be measured per household and not per capita, I dunno. The reason why there's less competition elsewhere is because what is present is doing a good enough job! Their telcos have delivered 15 meg DSL for years, while ours don't yet offer it. That's why cable is taking on so well here. It surely isn't because anything connected to Comcast has a good price point (DSL and satellite TV are both better values). - Mike Hammett Intelligent Computing Solutions http://www.ics-il.com If they change the definition to 1MB, EVDO won't count and neither will IDSL and DSL Lite. The numbers of BB users in the stats will drop - the telcos will look like they have very few BB subs since about 10-20% buy Lite (depending who you believe). So the FCC will never voluntarily change the definition. BTW, in countries with deep BB penetration, the regulators are TOUGH - as in the FCC Chairman does not have Ivan and Ed's hands up his butt so he can talk like Charlie McCarthy. But ALL of that is beside the point. End of the day, YOU guys have to find, acquire and retain profitable customers. No matter what the regulatory or competitive environment looks like. - Peter @ RAD-INFO, Inc. I know it has been brought up before, but I'll bring it up again, the majority of my customers are plenty happy at 1mbit service. How do I know this? The upgrade is only $10/month to go from 380K to 2M on my system, but less than 10% of my customers have opted for the higher cost plan ($40/mo instead of $30/mo). In fact if I remove business accounts from the equation then less that 5% opt for the 2 meg plan. What is even more telling is that 15% of my customer base is unwilling to pay $5/month more to upgrade from 128K to 380K Are we ranked so low because we actually only provide service that is requested by our customers instead of over providing? I wonder of the 14 other countries above us if their consumers were given the ability to halve their ISP bill for half the speed if they would be willing to still pay the higher rate. Sam Tetherow Sandhills Wireless Would you like to see your advertisement here? Let the WISPA Board know your feelings about allowing advertisements on the free WISPA lists. The current Board is taking this under consideration at this time. We want to know your thoughts. -- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/ Would you like to see your advertisement here? Let the WISPA Board know your feelings about allowing advertisements on the free WISPA lists. The current Board is taking this under consideration at this time. We want to know your thoughts. -- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/
Re: [WISPA] Broadband Baloney? An FCC Commissioner's takeonBroadband..
I'd be curious to know if your percentages will scale. I know the first 100 or so customers I had were opting for the higher speeds as a rule, but at the 600 mark the trend for me is $30 for 380K in the residential space. Sam Tetherow Sandhills Wireless Mike Hammett wrote: I guess I'm the opposite. I have plans that currently range from 256 to 2048. Most customers pick the 2048, with 256 coming in second. There are some on other plans, but they were the fastest at the time. Prices range from $25 for 256 to $55 for 2048. Business accounts are 50% higher $ and all picked the fastest at the time. As the users get around the net more, they will use it more. It's a cycle. Faster Internet causes more demanding applications causes faster Internet causesOnce I solve a pile of unrelated issues I have, I foresee going to 3 megs, then 5, then 7.5, then 10. I should have that completed in 12 - 18 months. I only have 20 customers now, so its hard to upgrade quickly. ;-) - Mike Hammett Intelligent Computing Solutions http://www.ics-il.com Would you like to see your advertisement here? Let the WISPA Board know your feelings about allowing advertisements on the free WISPA lists. The current Board is taking this under consideration at this time. We want to know your thoughts. -- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/
RE: [WISPA] Broadband Baloney? An FCC Commissioner's takeonBroadband..
Scottie, exactly what regulation would you recommend? I think the FCC had it going going in the right direction with Computer Inquires I, II, and III. Problem was, they never enforced these! The even took out the office in early 2000 that investigated the companies that broke the rules. I am thinking out loud and not actually thinking this through, but here is my idea. Do as they started with Computer Inquires...All ILEC's and Cable Co's should not be allowed in the ISP business. They can start their own ISP as a separate entity, but the parent ILEC/CC will have to sell to all ISP's, including their own at a wholesale rate for use of their transport. There should be no cross subsidization from one to the other. Of course I am limiting this to the ILECs/CC that have received some kind of government subsidization (whether it be grants, tax cuts,etc...) to build out their networks for Cable TV and telephone. For us WISP's, give us all the tax cuts, grants, etc...that they have gave the CC and telcos. Why should we not get subsidization when they have and refuse anyone access to their networks? Give me a couple of million dollars and I will have my county and the next county covered with wireless within two years and providing access to some people that have never had anything but dial-up and about 26k dial-up at that. I live in an area full of Cooperatives. Cooperatives do not have to follow many of the Tele Act of 1996 rules (rural exemptions). I live in TN where, I actually lost count, but there are approximately 20 +/- telephone cooperatives. So I do not and have not got to do many of the things you guys have got to do. Now that talk all this BS about bridging the digital divide, but they still let these cooperatives get away with monopolies and not having to follow half the rules that the rest of the US ILEC's have to follow. As long as this goes on, rural America may see 20 Meg speeds by the end of the next century. We never had ISDN here until around 2001 and DSL around 2003 and of course it was done by the co-op telcos that were given almost every penny to do it by the USDA. Ah, I am through with my rant. I could complain and gripe all day. I spend a lot of time on http://www.cybertelecom.org/ and teletruth.org that goes much deeper into the points I stated above. -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Clint Ricker Sent: Tuesday, July 24, 2007 3:47 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; WISPA General List Subject: Re: [WISPA] Broadband Baloney? An FCC Commissioner's takeonBroadband.. I'll duck after this post, but I by and large tend to agree with the basis of the article. Scottie, exactly what regulation would you recommend? What has regulation solved in the past 11 years? By and large, I've not seen a single bit of FCC regulation that has had a net positive impact for getting access to the consumer, especially post 2000 (it was probably a good force behind making dialup Internet access widely available and affordable). We had over 11 years of forced network unbundling for the ILECS (ie where the ILECs are required to sell the bare copper at cost). The idea, of course, was to help service providers get on their feet while they were building out their own network. By and large, for a policy standpoint, it did very little to actually increase network buildout. Almost all of the CLECs took the easy money of reselling the Bell networks and ran, making agreegates of billions of dollars and not really building out any network to speak of. (Yes, there are some exceptions, but, this sums up the general problem). Forced wholesale access of the physical layer / network layer does absolutely nothing to increase availability and, in fact, actually hurts availabilty. The ISP / CLEC that is basically reselling ILEC copper is not connecting anyone who wouldn't / couldn't have been connected via the ILEC. However, because the ILEC is less profitable due to forced reselling, then they can't buildout as much infrastructure (theoretically). The only real change in FCC policy in the past 11 years (fundamentally) is that more people actually have to provide the services that they are selling. It's harder now to buy Bell DSL service, stick your own label on it, and say that you're competing with Ma Bell. All in all, I think that's a good thing. I understand that it isn't necessarily economically efficient to have multiple sets of copper / coax going to the same house / office building, and that telecommunication companies often constitute a natural monopoly of sorts. Forced selling of the network layer still doesn't get any new people access to the Now, if they wanted to successfully regulate the market, force a separation of the network layer and the physical layer into two separate companies, a model that is being vaguely adopted for some muni-funded developments. The fact of the matter is that the US is doing pretty damn well at broadband deployment
Re: [WISPA] Broadband Baloney? An FCC Commissioner's takeonBroadband..
Forced wholesale access of the physical layer / network layer does absolutely nothing to increase availability and, in fact, actually hurts availabilty. You are incorrect there. The plant company would need to keep building out to increase revenue. The Application side would want that as well. I think you missed my point here. My point is that forcing telcos to resell their network layer does absolutely nothing to connect additional people. If I resell ATT DSL to someone on ATT's network, they could have just as easily gotten it from ATT. I definitely agree that seperating the physical layer and the network layer would be a great way of regulating and getting good competition; it forces each component to become more efficient and breaks up the vertical monopoly (which is, in the end, more damaging than the horizontal monopoly). However, I think the idea of forcing ILECs to (when all is said and done) allow resell of their retail products is just stupid. It doesn't increase broadband penetration at all The ISP / CLEC that is basically reselling ILEC copper is not connecting anyone who wouldn't / couldn't have been connected via the ILEC. However, because the ILEC is less profitable due to forced reselling, then they can't buildout as much infrastructure (theoretically). Sure it is. CLEC's and ISP's are always stealing clients from each other and ILEC's. Sometimes they steal them from cable. But more than just the red ocean is the blue ocean when a new idea like Metro E over copper or VDSL or HPNA or BPL comes along and stretches the use of the copper and brings consumers new apps and new access. (Covad is rolling out 15MB DSL - are any ILECs? NO). In most cases, the gov't has made subsidizations to the ILEC to build out their infrastructure's, no matter what has happened, forced competition or not! They refuse to do it in this case because they have to share their network. Look at http://www.newnetworks.com/broadbandscandals.htm and the deal SBC, Verizon, BellSouth and US West were supposed to do! The point is that the FCC were either paid off to forget this point or they must have just had a brain lapse? Dial-Up Internet service from Info-Ed, Inc. as low as $9.99/mth. Check out www.info-ed.com for information. Would you like to see your advertisement here? Let the WISPA Board know your feelings about allowing advertisements on the free WISPA lists. The current Board is taking this under consideration at this time. We want to know your thoughts. -- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/
