“Not” Neutrality?

> If that could be delivered from a CDN within the ISP, that takes a majority of traffic off the congested pipes and leaves enough room for all the current demand with quite a bit of overhead.

For how long?

Every year the hardware vendors come out with faster equipment which makes bandwidth cheaper which causes people to use more. If they won't upgrade the interconnects then all removing Netflix does is buy a little time until the interconnect gets saturated again. When that happens you can't remove the Netflix traffic again, so someone else will be forced to pay, who will be smaller than Netflix and therefore their paying the danegeld will buy even less time for everyone else.

I don't see how the former is better than the latter from a net neutrality point of view. In both cases, Netflix's humongous traffic is being treated as a special case, and in both cases Netflix is paying to deal with it.

Netflix isn't shoving their packets down anyone's throat here, the ISP's whining notwithstanding.

DSL (when not of the ATT U-verse variety) barely gets over 10-Mbit in practice, with speeds closer to 3-Mbit being fairly common.

Satellite can't really be considered high-speed due to latency.

LTE coverage is still poor, and I've yet to see hardware suitable for a home connection for it. (Tethering via a cellphone doesn't count.)

So, no. There's really generally one, maybe two choices for home high-speed internet so it's not like customers can vote with their dollars and move to a Netflix-friendly ISP.

http://mashable.com/2014/07/29/netflix-att-peering-deal/

http://www.satbroadcasts.com/DVB-T_Bitrate_Calculator.html

And:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVB-T2#Technical_details

?

First, I have a new book which details the state materials. “The Book of Broken Promises” and goes through 2014, and covers most of the state commitments to deploy fiber optic broadband, monies collected and the failure to deliver and goes through 2014.

  http://newnetworks.com/bookofbrokenpromises.htm  

>The $2.1 billion is Kushnick's usual fabrication: pick a "rate of return" typical for <regulated monopolies, and call all profits above that number post-deregulation as <"money given to the telephone company."

I didn’t pick the rate of return. Duh- It was based on the current returns that were allowable under state law, and I used the PA numbers—as told by the state-based Bell of PA (now Verizon PA) SEC filings.

The changes in state law happened in every state (though with varying commitments) – such as Verizon states -- PA, NJ, MA, and other states, IL, OH, etc. -- and they were ALL based on direct commitments to rewire parts, if not the entire states as well as schools, depending on the state.

In PA, the original commitment were 100% completed by 2015, (though the commitments were changed over time.) in NJ it is 100% completed by 2010—with fiber 45 Mbps in both directions.

In PA we filed a complaint which said – state laws were changed specifically based on the commitments to upgrade the state utility plant, which was copper, with fiber. It removed the old ‘rate of return’ for new ‘alternative regulation’, that speeded up the write offs of the networks, and no longer examined the profits of a state utility – which had a monopoly on that wire—with the goal to use this extra money for the deployment plan called Opportunity PA.

The profits overall, went from 12%-14%, which was standard in almost every Bell state to about 30% after the new law took effect. In PA it went from 13% then jumped to 30% by 1998. -- But they didn’t deploy the fiber – nor replace the wire. And these numbers were in the SEC-annual reports.

You didn’t bother noting the chart on page 23 outlining the extra profits—directly tied to deploy fiber optics.

And PA and NJ had a timeline of deployment to upgrade to fiber and 45 Mbps—and it didn’t happen. An analyst we quote said:

“As we approach the end of 1998 a point by which BA-PA is supposed to have broadband available throughout 20% of its rural, urban and suburban areas there is no sign of any broadband service being offered to Pennsylvania's residential customers."

And the PA state commission wrote:

“When the Commission accepted Bell's proposal, that proposal became binding on the Company. Any modifications or deviations from a 45 Mbps two way interactive network must be approved by this agency, since such would constitute a modification to the June 28, 1994 Opinion and Order which ruled on the Company's original Petition and Plan.”

You write: >In other words, the accelerated depreciation was to compensate for the fact that once >regulated prices were gone, the telephone plant would become less valuable. It was not >predicated on replacing that plant with fiber.

Wrong… it was to replace the copper wires in the state utility. You obviously didn’t read the documents. This is the language in the New Jersey Bell (Verizon NJ) annual report, 1994, for a $1.013 billion deduction – for the “company’s technology deployment plan” — It was a one-time deduction which every phone company took, called FAS 71, and it says:

"The Company's determination that it was no longer eligible for continued application of the accounting required by Statement No. 71. It was based on the belief that the convergence of competition, technological change (including the Company's technology deployment plans).

And the result is a tax savings of about ½ billion dollars in NJ —from this one change.

And this is on top of ‘accelerated’ depreciation, which was also set by the state commissions to help speed up the deployment to fiber optics—which didn’t show from 1993-2005. – i.e., the company gets more tax deductions per year and didn’t replace the copper.

We documented this in our first book, 1999, Foreword by Dr. Bob Metcalfe, (co-inventor of Ethernet) who went through all the stats. And it was ALL for the commitment to replace the copper wires with fiber.

By around 2009- in NJ we calculated that Verizon NJ collected about 15 billion.

And you’re apologist for the companies deceiving the public and the state commissions and getting billions extra in tax perks and excess profits – which are monies that directly impact customers’ bottom line.

Law changed – extra money garnered – nothing built, (1993-2005) but to you that’s just fine.

And this PA stuff is from 2002-2003, before we uncovered the entire story about Verizon and AT&T financial manipulations—and it was low number.

Anyone interested in knowing the real history about broadband and fiber should do the fact checking themselves – the new book has detailed footnotes and links.

The scam is simple -- by using title II, they get to charge local phone customers rate increases to pay for the fiber optics. Verizon also dumps the construction budgets into the utility networks for its wires to the cell towers and even the 'special access wires' -- which are also classified as Title II. – Title II, then is a cash machine.

And Verizon never told the FCC, the courts, or the public about this.

But the revenues don’t go back to the utility—they appear to go into a “black hole” accounting…

In tracking Verizon New York, we found that there were actually statements made about raising rates for the ‘massive deployment of fiber optics’ in 2009, which was the third increase since 2006.

The increases, including the additional taxes, fees and surcharges (many of which are also either revenues to Verizon or ‘pass-through’ taxes that are on Verizon but charge customers), and the increases to all calling features, etc – came to about $4.5 billion extra since 2006.

However, the data – Verizon stopped publishing its SEC-based state reports in 2010, the FCC stopped publishing the data in 2007, but NY State required an annual report – but it only shows the revenues and expenses for the utility.

The ‘black hole’ funds were uncovered when comparing the state-based SEC reports with the State-filed annual reports; in just New York, in just 2009, there was an additional $2.7 billion in revenues – but no extra construction costs to this ‘black hole revenue.

Verizon then, shows losses in the utility, claiming the networks are uneconomical to upgrade. But the losses are created based on this flow money—the ‘affiliate’ companies, like Verizon Wireless or Verizon Online or Verizon Business, pay less than market prices and have the construction budgets dumped on the regulated side—lowering revenues and adding expenses and creating manipulated losses.

Verizon NY alone showed about $11 billion in losses, about 2 billion a year from 2008…about $5 billion in tax savings… Ie, Verizon New York paid no income taxes since 2008 or earlier.

This is happening in every Verizon state, and we assume AT&T as well but they aren’t required to supply basic data anymore. AT&T stopped publishing its SEC reports a decade ago or more, and most, if not all states, don’t require the level of financials needed to examine this flow of money.

This new financial shell game started to pick up speed after the networks were closed to competition around 2005.

So, on top of the original ‘commitments’ and the extra money that’s been collected since the 1990’s, as no state ever went back and got the money or refunds to even stopped the excess profits, this new financial-game puts the original overcharging customers as a very low number as it doesn’t account for the steriod-based, Title II, cash machine.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4eMBBVG-MNY