Comment by ilaksh | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ilaksh | Hacker News Reader

To me as long as you have only a few physical cables, or a few places to put the cables that are difficult to get to, buried in the ground, companies are going to take advantage of that, because you just don't have a lot of options. Its just not an option for most groups who would want to compete to get into that market.

For it to not suck I think the physical circumstances have to change. Maybe there will be some kind of tech breakthrough with wireless technology. Or maybe we will change the laws so that everyone has the right to lay down a cable along any public road or freeway as long as it doesn't pose a significant threat to traffic.

But seems like its hard to make a law that creates a fair and democratic situation when you have limited access to such a critical resource in fairly specific places in under the street.

I mean, if there is already a place for fiber under the street, and you really need another line or whatever they call them, you can't dig another trench or whatever in the street. You have to put it with the other ones, in which case you are at the mercy of whoever controls access to that place where the lines go. If there really isn't a need for a new fiber line, then whoever controls the existing ones has a lot of power.

Just seems like the fact that there is a specific place these lines go, and a big expense and regulation, is what is causing the issues with pricing. If this were someone's brain being wired up like this, by a heavily regulated and monopolized cable industry, that person would be retarded.

I say we invent a glue or something that will attach a fiber strand to the street, a pole, or the side of a building, and declare open season. Just put them all over the place. Like a spider web, but on the street.

LOL. Sounds crazy, but I think it might actually be workable if we keep it in a thin layer on the ground. And pretty much anything would be better than having our balls kept in a vice like this by a handful of giant companies and governments.

In Europe, most countries have a reasonable solution: The incumbent telco in most countries have been required to separate out the business unit that owns and operates the cable sufficiently that it can be accounted for separately.

This business is then generally required to provide equal access to anyone on a "cost plus" basis exactly because the cost and complexity of laying new cable is considered a massive barrier to competition, and besides we don't want a ton of companies digging up the street all the time or erecting new poles.

E.g. in the UK, the "last mile" of all landlines installed by BT are now handled by BT OpenReach. Consumers can call their preferred ISP or phone provider and ask them to take over the provision of services on the line, and the ISP deals with BT once you've authenticated the request.

The service is then either provided via backhaul over BT's network - that is, the ISP provides a few central nodes where they interface with BT, and hands over a raw data stream from each subscriber at those points - or the ISPs pay (on a cost regulated basis) to put equipment in BT's echanges. The latter has the advantage that they can offer services BT can't/won't and that ISPs that depend on backhaul from BT can't - some ISPs beat BT in certain areas this way.

It's not perfect - it's limited by BT's upgrade/buildout schedule, but BT does face competitive pressure from Virgin (cable provider), and also does face the possibility that someone will able to get finance together to lay cable to compete if they don't watch out, though the latter is less likely.

But beyond the last mile, there's fierce competition.

Exactly what is missing in the US! Here, there are ample legislation for telephony-related services, but none that enable competition within the last mile of internet service providers.

It's a very similar story in Australia.

Most of our telecom infrastructure was built by our government, then privatized, transferring ownership to Telstra.

Telstra is required to sell equal access to its landline network (although it seems not mobile) to other ISPs and phone providers.

We had that at one point, but got rid of it, in exchange for promises from the telcos that they then proceeded to not keep.

I remember around the the start of the consumer DSL era this being a thing. At some point the Telcos just started undercutting all the competition and/or deprioritizing installs for non-telco purchasers.

This is why I'd rather just have common-carrier. Forget the bullshit of trying to make nationwide infrastructure that makes it easy for Company X to lay yet another strand of fiber, identical to the hundred others already there. Just have a public holding company that lays & leases fiber.

That is socialism and benefits only the end users and the society as a whole. No way it is gonna fly.

Why not look at companies that had something like that ? Take the railway companies in Europe versus everyone else.

The railway (ie. "socialist") optical lines :

1) use ancient infrastructure on SDH (on direct current, meaning they have to buy ridiculously expensive equipment. Not that they've looked for better in the last 20 years)

1b) therefore the speeds attainable over government fiber are pathetic, compared to private lines.

2) are VERY hard to deal with.

3) are very expensive compared to private lines (except in cases where, read on)

4) delays are legendary (months to open up a frequency on an existing tract that usually works fine if I turn it up before contract agreement)

5) Termination fees are ridiculous, and of course, you can't just do it yourself. Suppose you have fiber delivered to the edge of your own property and want it linked up to the inside of your building. You'd think, well I'll just do that, costs me $150 in equipment, a drill, a shovel and an afternoon. No dice. You have to pay $18000 to the railway company to make this happen.

6) Their engineers are utterly clueless when it comes to fiber. "I want a 6 km fiber from X to Y, are you going to regen ? Using what equipment ?". You get empty stares. They regen if they pass a regen station, using their equipment (that they can't even NAME) and if not, they don't. You're screwed if they regen. There's no good reason to regen a 6km fiber since 1985 or so. AARGH. Then you get to explain to your boss how you just paid $35k for a fiber, and you need to redo it, lovely. Or you have to get a 20km cable where a 3 km one would normally suffice but you need to avoid regen stations. Great.

They also have advantages, of course

1) reach. You need a fiber delivered to any city that has a railway line ? They have one. You need a fiber in a LEX ? They've got fibers to every LEX.

2) they are utterly unbeatable if you need a new fiber. They can lay down fiber while moving on average 30km/h. Digging fiber has speeds that are expressed in meters/week.

Now I don't know why this happens, but I'm not very impressed with a government based fiber holding company. And yes, they do connect end-users. Hell, it's usually a better idea to use the existing telco to connect to their fibers (they get to use their own amplification equipment). Don't know why this makes a difference at all.

There are also government fiber providers that I am impressed with. The one of the government of the city of Amsterdam for example gets it right. They don't regen, but if you need it you can rent racks in buildings along the fiber path and place your own equipment, and they pass through the fiber or not depending on your requirements. Unfortunately it's the city of Amsterdam. The reach is somewhat limited.

The barriers to other companies entering Comcast's market are more legal than logistical - consider how Google hasn't had a problem entering the broadband market when they have been allowed to.

OK, I hadn't even considered the legal barriers. What are they specifically?

I was thinking more in terms of getting governments to go along with it, and having enough capital to do the job, and enough capital to get access from the people who own the spaces where the cables go or are going to go.

Local government must approve each company that uses the telephone pole right-of-ways. But the cities and counties generally already have a contract with Comcast, ATT and whoever and this contract may prevent competition regardless of the government's desires. Moreover, these monopolies can mobilize their state and national level allies (some state was trying to outlaw municipal broadband utilities recently, for example).

The thing about State-sanctioned monopolies is that since their whole revenue stream depends on their relation to governments, they spend a substantial portion of their income getting influence within our presently rather corrupt government system.

It's hard to companies that operate more on the "open market" to move into a "turf" of this sort.

That depends on the state.

Often that licensing is done at a statewide level, rather than city by city.

The franchise agreement is to actually offer service - not to place crap on the poles.

There is a bit of misinformation in your post. The practice of granting exclusive cable franchises has been illegal since 1992. Many places still have one franchise simply because its not desirable to compete against the incumbent cable company.

My city actually signed Comcast into a legal monopoly to get them to bring service here in the 80s and 90s. That deal is still good, and states that they will be the sole provider of cable TV service at least until the end of this decade. From what I've seen, this was a common practice, and has apparently happened in a lot of smaller towns.

It happened a lot in smaller towns because without the carrot of the monopoly grant, it would've been undesirable for companies to wire up those little towns at all.

It's a hard problem, because the market and regulatory frameworks are very different for me, in San Francisco, than for my dad, on the Big Island of Hawai'i, and both in turn are very different from people in Manhattan, or Montana, or in Nome. A national solution might not be workable; but then again, the Federal government is probably the only entity that can treat with companies like Comcast and actually force their hand.

I personally think that divestiture of the physical cabling from the content provision business is the ideal solution, but I have no (0) illusions about the likelihood of that ever happening. Whether you chalk that up to regulatory capture or the growing pains of a changing business model at the end of the day really makes no matter.

Is there any reason we can't use the sewer system instead?

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