Makes you wonder how long theyve been able to do this
But an organization like a co-op or a government would built the lines with no concern for profitability, and find some scheme to lease them to users at cost. Compared to a for-profit which artificially keeps speeds low, the government or co-op would lead to better cheaper service.
So broadly the pursuit of profit changes the way the organization works. The profit incentive potentially directly leads to the lack of competition. It also leads these organizations to lobby for government intervention which impedes competition. This last point is also why I would advocate for a co-op over government management, but I’d take either over for-profit networks.
>It also leads these organizations to lobby for government intervention which impedes competition
The problem with both of these scenarios is the same, government corruption. Without the corruption, municipal fiber or the free market would work great.
The bad guys here are the corrupt regulators, not the evil capitalists.
Absolutely no reason to believe it must be one or the other. They are in fact working together. You propose that eliminating the government component would fix the issue, and I contend that eliminating the for-profit component would fix the issue. Both can be true.
> Without the corruption, municipal fiber or the free market would work great.
Entrenched networks are a well established phenomenon in relatively free markets. The cost to build a replacement for Facebook is relatively low, yet they still have a large moat due to their sizable subscriber base. In a physical system like a digital data network, the start up costs are much higher. It’s not a direct comparison to Facebook because one ISP is generally as good as any other, but generally it is difficult to compete with established companies when gaining a foothold involves a substantial investment from the outset.
Finally I did directly address your main point, I’m not quite sure why we’re still at the “either government or private for-profit firms” stage of the discussion when co-ops are a viable third option:
>> This last point is also why I would advocate for a co-op over government management, but I’d take either over for-profit networks.
No, they are absolutely concerned about staying in the green. Apart from the federal government, local governments have to make enough money to avoid bankruptcy. Co-ops are even more constrained.
This makes them even less likely to invest in risky cutting edge technology or anything approaching R&D.
The only place these works are well established technologies. We’ve hit the point in the last decade where fiber is pretty well understood and future proof, so it now is low risk to lay a bunch of it and relatively cheap to upgrade endpoints as needed.
Make no mistake though, the only reason fiber has reached the commoditization point is because of a bunch of very profit driven networking gear manufactures dethroning each other over who can pack the most bits over wavelength.
that's why the only hope is municipal fibre - we've all seen what happens to the new ISP who's going to save us from the greedy telcos, they disappear. municipal governments are at least a little bit resistant to being bought.
No, the issue is that nobody can compete because of NIMBYs and regulatory capture. Comcast doesn’t buy competitors, it just picks up regional cable providers in areas it doesn’t already own. Companies that try to compete without government intervention are doomed to fail.
High-split DOCSIS 3.1 topped out at about 1.5gbit/sec upstream shared among all customers on a segment.
DOCSIS 4.0 spec[1] was first issued circa Aug 2019 and has undergone 6-10 revisions since.
[1] https://www.cablelabs.com/specifications/search?currentPage=...
"up to 10 Gbit/s downstream and 1 Gbit/s upstream"
Most of the 4.0 improvement is upload.
3.1 wouldn't do 2Gbps symmetrical, but it would do 2Gbps down with a reasonable up.