Comment by notdonspaulding | Hacker News Reader

Comment by notdonspaulding | Hacker News Reader

notdonspaulding

Comcast can do what it does because Democrats portray the company as a problem with capitalism, while Republicans portray it as a problem with regulation.

In truth, it's both. It's a problem where a company has co-opted well-meaning regulation to snuff out competition, which is a thing capitalist companies do. Meanwhile, citizens point the finger at each other instead of removing Comcast's ability to monopolize.

Either the regulations that make competing as an ISP difficult need to be stripped out (my personal favorite), or the last mile needs to be public property. Either way, Comcast getting to be the only one sitting on that last-mile connection is what has given rise to its stranglehold on the internet.

We need to support fixing this on a local/state level. Support smaller ISPs in their attempts to disrupt the incumbents, and support legislation that actually encourages innovation in the marketplace (even if that means striking policies from the law books).

This is the brilliance of what Google is doing. They are making cities compete for Google Fiber. You compete by making it easier, faster, and cheaper to lay fiber.

It seems to be working. Seattle's new mayor recently talked about how the city needs to make it easier to build out internet infrastructure.

http://murray.seattle.gov/murray-seattle-must-be-a-national-...

> Another possible solution includes granting internet companies access to utility poles at little or no charge, so that building more infrastructure is not cost prohibitive.

> We are considering [changing policies] which make it nearly impossible for internet providers to expand existing services without an unusually high super majority of support from neighbors.

GFiber is the antidote to these parasitic bastards. They have the cash to push last-mile FTTH to every metro area in the country. I think they own the dark fiber backbone to do it too.

Here's hoping that G thoroughly topples every last one of them.

Seconded, both comments. Google has a real chance to become a dominant ISP without becoming a despicable one.

Five years ago I might have agreed with you. There's no reason to trust that google (another giant private company that disabled my ability to comment on youtube or rate android apps because I dared not to want to join g+) won't pull some crap once they're in a dominant position in the ISP market. Like with many other things google saw the writing on the wall regarding how they at the behest of the ISP and looked for ways to be at least minimally prepared for the worst.

At the risk of a trite response, it's the evil you know versus the evil you don't, and frankly getting rid of the evil I know (pretty consistent 5-10% packet loss across the board, spiking during bad weather, repeatedly tracked to terrible work in the outdoor cable boxes, but that I get charged 40$ a pop to temporarily have them fix) is worth a gamble in my books.

Being coerced into joining a free social network that no one uses is nothing compared to the horrors offered by Comcast.

But is it a good use of their cash? Fiber isn't a high return business, especially in a regulated environment with build out requirements.

It's not the Fiber that's the fee earner. By having more people connected with faster, more stable connections they can continue pushing the envelope with things like higher definition on YouTube and suchlike but this is the razzle-dazzle that people will see without noting the true purpose; you're accessing the net through their service so they can now pin all of your surfing habits to a physical person driving more benefit to their primary Ad business.

Just imagine what end-users can do with gigabit upload speeds. If you think streaming is big now, just wait until Google Fiber kicks the gigabit market into high gear. This is one of the best things Google is doing right now, and I can't wait to see how it changes the Internet.

> GFiber is the antidote to these parasitic bastards.

Google Fiber is a contended service, just like every other retail ISP. They're not doing anything particularly different.

Here's the average transfer rate on their 1 Gbps headline product:

http://www.speedtest.net/isp/google-fiber

Yes, 190 Mbps. Fast, but still contended.

Is it possible that's more to do with people testing over WiFi than with the speed of Google Fiber itself? It's hard to tell a lot about the data, since they only provide averages.

I think that average includes the free tier of Google Fiber which if I remember correctly is 5 mbps.

I've heard that Google Fiber has inspired other ISPs in its service areas to initiate high-speed service. I wanted to see this contention though so I clicked around in speedtest.net a bit. Can you point out some contention, because I didn't actually find it [http://www.speedtest.net/local/kansas-city-mo].

This is the best thing about what Google is doing. 90% of the blame for this situation belongs on municipalities. They're the ones that created these franchises in the first place. They're the ones that imposed huild-out requirements and regulated rates. They're the ones that have made it impossible to build new infrastructure even after Congress made exclusive franchises illegal in 1992.

As someone who's trying to bootstrap a small, local, last-mile ISP right now, my only wish is that there were many more people that held your opinion on this matter, and were willing to back that opinion with their dollars.

Where is this ISP? :)

May I suggest a link in your profile?

Grand Rapids, Michigan.

(And, if I'm ever successful and allowed to dream, Seattle would be my next target)

Thanks for the suggestion, I updated my profile.

Ah, I'm thousands of miles away. Best of luck with your project!

I can't offer you cash (I'm in Chicago), but if you ever want free help, even with trenching, pulling fiber, long-haul wireless throws, system/network admin, email me (email in profile).

I fully support all alternatives to Comcast.

Please tell me you're building in the Houston area. I'd jump ship from AT&T in a heartbeat.

Hah! I'm right there with you, attempting to do the same thing in Central IL!

(Should I have acknowledged my bias?)

ITV-3?

Nope, that's not me. :-)

Best of luck. May I ask for a high level overview of what is involved with bootstrapping a small ISP?

Sure, you can ask me anything :)

The process so far has involved :

- Figure out how to get access to right of ways [Completed] - Figure out how to get internet access to sell [Completed] - Figure out how much it will cost to start a CO [Mostly Completed] - Acquire a place to put a CO [Completed] - Acquire high quality, redundant backhaul [Under Construction Now]

- Figure out who's willing to pay to switch away from Comcast [I have some names, but this is definitely not completed] - Beg them for money [Some have subscribed, but definitely not enough yet]

There's a couple of big things that work against me:

City + State taxes for right of ways are pricy. We're talking multiple thousands of dollars per mile per year, on every single mile, just in taxes. (And I'm lucky, my city still owns a lot of their own right of ways. A lot of cities just wholesale gave them away to AT&T/Comcast).

Backhaul is expensive. Most ISP's are monopolies, so they can safely buy in scale. I have zero scale, so I pay full retail for everything. This is obviously very pricy. (I'm guessing I pay at least 3 times more, per Mbps, than Charter pays for backhaul, and probably 4 - 6+ times more than Comcast pays)

Fiber lines are dirt cheap. Install is expensive. Easily 95% of the cost of the network is that initial installation, and it can run into past the million dollar mark even in the smallest of neighborhoods.

If you want more info, let me know. I'd happily talk more about this, and provide solid numbers.

Are you targeting businesses first? I know that some local ISPs have been successful by first poaching the fraternities/sororities around a school, then expanding from there.

This sounds fascinating, I'd love to hear more. Incidentally, that makes me wonder if the backhaul cost problem could be something Google could see their way to sell to local ISPs at closer to bulk rates. It aligns with the general goals of Google Fiber, while allowing Google to pressure big telecom companies with less capital outlay.

Is backhaul more expensive than getting a big Cogent connection for like $1/Mbps? Or do places like Charter/etc pay even less than that for their paid peering connections?

Yes. I've never seen a quote at $1/Mbps regardless of scale.

It wouldn't surprise me if speed/pricing like that existed around major network hubs (like Chicago).

I'm paying $8/Mbps. If I were to afford five times more backhaul than I have now, that price eventually drops to about $3.8/Mbps.

Places like Charter and Comcast pay less for their backhaul, in part because they are their backhaul, in part because they are large enough to negotiate their own peering agreements.

Recently, that's swung even more in their favour. Netflix, for instance, pays Comcast money for the "privilege" of paying the costs for all of the backhaul Netflix uses over Comcasts lines.

People sometimes call this "double dipping". But it's actually "triple dipping". Comcast charges subscribers money, Comcast makes Netflix buy the backhaul to Comcast, and Comcast charges Netflix again, to allow them to connect the backhaul they already bought, to Comcast's network.

Yeah I'm not sure the cost for the infrastructure but I've seen quotes of $1-$2/Mbps for Cogent in various datacenters (assuming a 1-2Gbps commit I think).

Makes sense though, I'm sure if you had to get the fiber to your location that would easily push the price up a ton.

This makes me wonder how hard it would be to create a cooperative ISP, where the users own the network. I wonder if you could crowdfund something like that easily in, say, San Francisco.

Are you in the Seattle area? Please be in the Seattle area (Comcast is the only viable thing we have in most areas).

No, but I wish I was.

Seattle is one of my favourite places. Very expensive though.

If this somehow ever becomes successful in Michigan, Seattle is the very next place I would head.

I'm game - I worked for a major national DSL provider doing field work, a major ISP doing support, and a major telecom carrier now doing field support.

103 years ago, the UK government nationalized the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Telephone_Company. Within two years of that, the US justice department managed to extract from AT&T the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingsbury_Commitment. In this, AT&T, unlike NTC, was allowed to keep ownership of its respective telephone network in exchange for interconnecting fairly with its competitors.

There were fights at the municipal level too, but by that point, only a few medium-sized places like Hull in the UK, and Rochester, New York had phone companies that weren't owned by NTC or AT&T.

All of this seems strikingly familiar today, except that there seem to be a lot fewer politicians willing to propose any of the real profound changes like the ones that came a century ago.

> Either the regulations that make competing as an ISP difficult need to be stripped out [...]

Which regulations are we talking about here? This seems like really low hanging fruit, but of course it probably isn't.

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