Is Verizon a Network Hog? 310
pillageplunder wrote to mention a piece in BusinessWeek asking whether or not Verizon has the right to set aside bandwidth for its own projects. They're planning a television service, and have allocated a swath of their bandwidth (which could otherwise be used for net and phone traffic) to back this service. From the article: "Leading Net companies say that Verizon's actions could keep some rivals off the road. As consumers try to search Google, buy books on Amazon.com, or watch videos on Yahoo!, they'll all be trying to squeeze into the leftover lanes on Verizon's network. On Feb. 7 the Net companies plan to take their complaints about Verizon's plans to the Senate during a hearing on telecom reform."
Verizon's recent purchase makes this subject moot. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Verizon's recent purchase makes this subject mo (Score:3, Interesting)
(1) Pay-to-play - ISP's charging content providers so that traffic to and from their site is not delayed (Internetwork traffic)
(2) QoS - ISPs doing QoS to reserve bandwidth for specific applications they themselves offer their own customers (Intranetwork traffic)
- Tony
Re:You know what? It doesn't matter! (Score:4, Interesting)
Alright, fine -- Internet service might not be a public utility right at this moment. However, in a very short time -- maybe 5 years, or 10 at the max -- Internet access is going to be pretty much required to function as a citizen. People who "can't afford it" have no excuse, you know, because of free access at public libraries and/or free city-wide WiFi.
In five years, which will be more important: Internet service or POTS service? Hell, which is more important now? I say Internet!
Even if Internet service isn't a public utility, it damn well should be!
Except that it's not that simple! Between telecom monopolies and content monopolies, some customers may very well be forced to use Verizon. Your solution works very well in a free market, but the particular market under discussion is approximately as far away from a free market as it can possibly get.
You know, I consider myself to be libertarian, and support the least-interference solution wherever possible. This, however, is an issue of the tragedy of the commons [wikipedia.org] (which, by the way, most Libertarians ought to read [sciencemag.org], since they don't seem to understand the concept). It needs to be protected, and the only effective way to do that is -- unfortunately -- government regulation.
Re:You know what? It doesn't matter! (Score:5, Informative)
As a large bandwidth customer, while nowhere near the levels of Verizon, I am constantly playing the game of deciding what is needed where. I have multiple GigE connections and many servers. I float things around to (hopefully) ensure that I don't run out of bandwidth in any particular spot.
I have places, where I have "essential" services, which I want to leave extra bandwidth available. Those are for my own purposes.
Just on my own scale, I put mail, DNS, and some other internal use machines on a higher priority than say a free hosting server.
Why can't Verizon allocate X for Internet, Y for phone calls, and Z for 'internal' use? Who's freakin' business is it on how they allocate their services. If X suffers because Y and Z get prefered treatment, it's their own business which will be hurt. Customers will get frustrated at slow speeds and high latency, and go somewhere else. Likewise, if they were forced to make X use all available bandwidth, obviously Y and Z will be hurt. Verizon without the ability to pass phone traffic would be interesting. How do you explain to a whole bunch of residential phone customers that they can't make phone calls (frequent all circuits busy tone), because the Internet traffic sucked it all up.
The article references Verizon's new fiber that they've spent a freaking fortune installing. Now that they've put it in, are they under some sort of obligation to allow that to be used for whatever they are told? That really screws with any sort of plans they may have. Ok, so they're going to offer television over IP. Great. Why should they be required to sublet that to me for my latest/greatest ISP venture, or dedicate it to Internet bandwidth. It's their lines. They installed them for a reason.
I know Tier 1 providers frequently sublet fiber as they have it available. It's not like Verizon will hold onto a bunch of dark fiber just for the sake of telling another provider to go screw themselves. Well, it may happen, but they're in the business of making money.
The whole "who gets priority" thing is kind of silly. Providers have been doing it for years anyways. It may not be obvious, but it happens. Here's an example. Like I said, we use lots of bandwidth, and we're frequently checking on how things look. If we aren't, one of our roughly 2 million daily viewers is. People like to complain, and I guarantee at least a few of those 2 million viewers can run a traceroute. If things are slow through a city, either we'll already know about it, or a viewer will complain. A few times, a provider has made the mistake of lowering our quality of service. Someone else was given the prefered routes, and we were left with the crap. A few phone calls to high places in the company, and we can see things start working better and we suddenly get calls from high ranking people in the company apologizing that the mistake ever happened. Sometimes they'll play it off as a simple mistake, but in the end, it's all the same. They changed something (QOS), we complained, they changed it back.
I guarantee, we'll get the prefered routes, over someone with a T1 or even a 10Mb cross connect. It's all in who pays more. Obviously, if we have equipment on the provider in question, we'll always appear faster than someone on another provider, especially across a bad peering. Are we "paying" for this service? Sure. We pay out the ass to have equipment in a facility and bandwidth to support them. Are you as a home DSL/cablemodem customer going to have the same influence with a provider that we have? No freakin' way. On the other hand, we only deal with Tier 1 providers, so you won't be dealing with them directly. Even as a Verizon DSL/cablemodem customer, you aren't talking to the Tier 1 part of the company.
With all that said, we're not Verizon customers. We have been on occasion for lesser services (backup DSL for offices, and the like), but not for our main services. They don't offer the killer deals that others do.
Re:Verizon's recent purchase makes this subject mo (Score:5, Interesting)
This would put any video on demand service that Google may (will) have at a severe disadvantage.
Even if a gob more dark fiber is available for all these pipes, it costs serious amounts of money to light them up. Obviously if VOL can "reserve" a big portion of bandwidth on the existing links to the point where they can offer all their value-add services, they don't have an incentive to light up more fiber.
Why Fiber is expensive to light up (Score:3, Informative)
While the latest hardware can pack a lot more information in a fibre line than in the past, the hardware is also a lot more expensive.
Once you figure in the cost of signal boosters, lighting up any longish stretch of fibre gets expensive pretty quick.
Re:Verizon's recent purchase makes this subject mo (Score:3, Informative)
That's an incredibly stupid way to setup your network though when there are better ways like QoS to prioritize your "premium" traffic over the commodity Internet traffic without carving out arbitrary bandwidth limitations. Basically they'd be far more likely to c
Re:Verizon's recent purchase makes this subject mo (Score:4, Insightful)
I think that is the POINT of google being upset. It's not stupid, it's just a nasty anticompetitive thing to do.
..and consumers will use other connections.. (Score:3, Interesting)
The real issue is if Verizon is required to provide equal access to the local POP or not. This is a regulation issue -- is owning the copper to the home a monopoly?
Re:Verizon's recent purchase makes this subject mo (Score:4, Interesting)
Seriously, capacity is not some monolithic thing that you "have enough of" or "have too much of". Capacity is from a place to a place across a set of resources. VZ can have plenty of capacity from NY to VA but not enough peering to AS3356 (level3). Or They might have plenty of cross-country capacity until a train derails in Colorado causing a 3-4 day outage of the middle path and congesting some other paths. It all depends and the devel is in the detail.
Even using generous estimates of multicast efficiencies, video over packet (or IPTV) is going to consume a *lot* of resources. ~20-25Mb/s per channel. Right now, virtually no one has "enough capacity" for that.
Re:Verizon's recent purchase makes this subject mo (Score:3, Funny)
Is that like when you buy a new hard drive and say "Man, it'll take me forever to fill this thing up!!"
Re:Verizon's recent purchase makes this subject mo (Score:3, Interesting)
They Paid For It (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:They Paid For It (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:They Paid For It (Score:5, Interesting)
The money from many of these fees goes directly to the phone company to "enable them" to build networks to outlying areas, improve their infrastructure, etc. These fees are basically taxes and as such we the people have been paying for their expansion.
And some taxes are OLD like from 1898! (Score:3, Informative)
NewsNet5.com [newsnet5.com] reports that there is a call to repeal a telephone/phone (including cellular/cell phones) tax most Americans probably don't even know they are paying. Anybody who has ever tried to decipher a phone bill knows how tough it can be. One of the charges is a 3 percent fee on every phone bill in America. The origin of the tax predates the invention of the phone by nearly a century.
Every time a person use their his/her phone, he/she supp
Re:They Paid For It (Score:5, Insightful)
Because I paid for it and that's not what I want them to do with it.
Re:They Paid For It (Score:3, Insightful)
However, you paid Verizon for services that Verizon had already rendered. The contractual obligation they have, is to give you one month of ____ service (whatever it might be) in exchange for your payment. They provided the service, you provided the payment. After that, you can't say fuck-all about what they do with THEIR MONEY. It was your money before they gave you a service for which you handed y
Re:They Paid For It (Score:2)
Re:They Paid For It (Score:5, Insightful)
Common Carrier Status
Re:They Paid For It (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:They Paid For It (Score:2)
Re:They Paid For It (Score:3, Informative)
Re:They Paid For It (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:They Paid For It (Score:2)
Re:They Paid For It (Score:2)
I'll also preempt the objection that the government is more controlled by the people. Majority want doesn't alone give the right to take from anyone, just as ten people calling for my
Re:They Paid For It (Score:2)
http://muniwireless.com/community/1023 [muniwireless.com]
Re:They Paid For It (Score:3, Interesting)
No, they paid for the networks, the customers paid them... if the customers don't feel like they get the speed they think their money is worth, a competitor will step up and the customers will go there...
"Free" market (Score:3, Insightful)
What this is talking about isn't verizon's customers, but rather network traffic that has to go over Verizon's network. So, in essence it could cause an aggregate slow down of other network providers. Cu
Re:"Free" market (Score:3, Informative)
That's why it's called a "regulated monopoly." The gov't recognizes that it's a monopoly, but that it's a more efficient use of resources, so they set up special rules by which these telco monopolies must o
Re:They Paid For It (Score:3)
If it's their network... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:If it's their network... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:If it's their network... (Score:5, Interesting)
Let's play devil's advocate. It is their network, why shouldn't they be able to do with it what they want? I mean we hear the I own the software I should be able to do anything I want with it all the time. How is this any different?
OK, here are a few differences. Does the government grant you a localized monopoly on using the software, enforced by federal agents? Does the government grant you immunity from prosecution for anything you do on behalf of your customers using your software in exchange for you not using your software in the proscribed way? Finally, did the government subsidize the creation of your software and facilitate its construction by seizing land and right of ways via immanent domain?
If you can answer "yes" to all of these, then I think the government should have a say in how you use your software.
Its our right of way (Score:4, Insightful)
So, collectively we have a right to impose reasonable regulations on its use. Personally, I don't see any problem with Verizon managing how the bandwidth is used, to a point. Just as the cable companies allocate certain bandwidth for cable tv and internet respectively. I see no difference.
Re:If it's their network... (Score:3, Insightful)
It says they will provide you with service ABC for the period of which you pay for it.
I seriously doubt any 'service company' like this would have a provision that says 'by paying your monthly fee for the service you are getting on a monthly basis, you immediately get to reap the benefit of our company running in the black.
Sorry, this is not communist russia... in communist russia (fill in the blank)
Comp
Re:The markets... (Score:3, Insightful)
On the other point you make of total deregulation, how many sets of wire/fibre should be strung on poles and trenched through peoples yards? I already have four rights of way trenched through the property I own. Now I have to let several other companies trench their infrastructure through my property? No way.
Re:The markets... (Score:3, Informative)
If the local government goes along with it, then they do not have to ask anyone because the right-of-way is already there. It was there when you bought the property.
Try building a subdivision and bypassing all that process. It is a significant pain in the rear because of all of the different players that get involved.
Well they will keep doing stuff like this until... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Well they will keep doing stuff like this until (Score:2)
Re:Well they will keep doing stuff like this until (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes, they do (Score:5, Insightful)
Verizon has the right to do whatever it wants with the bandwidth it pays for. If you don't like it, switch to another service. I'm sure they have a clause somewhere deep in their TOS that allows them to change the bandwidth available to their customers, otherwise they wouldn't be doing this. Anyone with conflicting info care to respond?
Re:Yes, they do (Score:3, Interesting)
This isn't an issue of what they're allowed to do (legally) with their network. It's theirs, and they can do what they want with the parts they control, as far as prioritizing traffic.
The interesting issue is exactly how much Verizon thinks it can get away with before they start irritating customers. It's
Re:Yes, they do (Score:2)
Re:Yes, they do (Score:3, Insightful)
Except that your contention ratio is going to go through the roof.
For FIOS (Score:3, Insightful)
Now for bandwidth out to the rest of the network, let's be real here... if everything was slow except for verizon services, then people would simply complain and move to comcast.
But the video service that Verizon is offering goes over fiber which has enough spare bandwidth that it won't even affect the IP network. I think it's a non-issue, but I'd love to hear the counter argument.
They're not, so point is moot (Score:2)
Kinda like asking "well, what if you just start punching me for no reason, that wouldn't be fair, right?" Well, you're not - so it really isn't fair to even raise the question, invoking unwarranted emotions. (See implications of "have you stopped beating your wife?")
Keeping promised bandwidth (Score:3, Interesting)
How do you know? (Score:2)
1. We can't control the internet, we only control our network.
2. It must be your equiptment.
3. It is network overhead.
How can you tell if the slowness is a result of prioritizing packets from a service giving a kickback \b\b\b\b\b\b\b payments for that priority?
I had my DSL at only 3mb down. They made many claims about distance problems, noise etc. When I
Re:Keeping promised bandwidth (Score:2)
Re:Keeping promised bandwidth (Score:2)
~S
Re:Keeping promised bandwidth (Score:4, Insightful)
They don't promise you bandwidth, just service. You share your bandwidth with other customers and now, their whim.
Most likely, and I've been out of telecom for a year, they'll upgrade your DSLAM with a gigE connection, but enable priority queueing. What they're going to do is put video on a higher priority queue, thus your internet packets may be held up (or dropped during high traffic hours) in favor of ensuring video packets get through within so many milliseconds of arriving in the queue. You probably won't see a loss of bandwidth (except at peak hours), but if you play real time games, or run real time traffic (IP phone), you will experience additional round trip delays or maybe more lost packets.
Networks do need some real time capabilities, but letting Verizon/ATT proxy those is not the right thing to do. These companies do not work and play well with others. There are better ways of adding those services without allowing monopolies to grow their scope of control.
I'm kinda confused (Score:5, Insightful)
This seems a little off. (Score:5, Insightful)
yahoo Finance: Notice the 5.92% return on assets and 22.19% return on equity. [yahoo.com]
I don't about you, but I think they're getting a real nice return. Unless, their management is comparing their returns to cocaine cartels, then they're doing pretty shitty.
Sure than can - provided they keep speeds up (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm supposed to get 768/128 throughput. I actually get more like 640/100 with my Verizon DSL. If Verizon can't maintain something close to this even with their pipe-grab, then I would simply switch to broadband from 1 or 2 of the other options available.
If it's a matter of shared phone lines and other DSL providers being choked out too, then that's a good reason to go with cable or over-air altogether.
Re:Sure than can - provided they keep speeds up (Score:4, Insightful)
That leaves cable or over-the-air. Not a lot of choices.
It's even worse when you have cable and want to switch to DSL. Verizon refuses to tell you what bandwidth you can get until you order a phone line from them. I.e. using their monopoly to force other services down your throat.
I've talked to competing cable providers - since I really don't like Adelphia - and have heard, verbatim: "That is Adelphia's territory". And it sure like heck feels like they piss on me to mark it.
There is no competition in the telco market. It's a smoke screen maintained by local monopolies. Unless the last mile becomes publicly owned, we'll never get real competition.
Re:Sure than can - provided they keep speeds up (Score:2)
Until they know the distance from the CO, they can't really tell what the line attentuation is going to be, so they don't really have any idea what the speed will be. And if you're farther than ~13K ft, it's not likely they can provide *any* level of service.
Personally, I'm switching to Alltel DSL this weekend (allegedly 1.5/256). We'll see how it goes, I'm not turning off my 3M/256 cable modem until I'm satisfied
Re:Sure than can - provided they keep speeds up (Score:3, Interesting)
You'd think so, and most often you'd be right. I did tech support for an ISP for a number of years, including DSL issues. I remember one case where a customer was right next door to the CO, but was too far away because he was at the wrong end of the loop. That's right, the loop went out and came back making him the last customer on the circuit. Don't kn
Re:Sure than can - provided they keep speeds up (Score:2)
I am a Veriozon FiOS user and before that I was a DSL user. I prefered the DSL over cable because I think it is easier to saturate the cable than DSL. With that being said I never got near the quoted bandwidth and I chalked it up to the 40+ year old phone lines that went from the house to the telco boxes. It was a limitation of the DSL technology.
So when Verizon came around with FiOS installations, I jumped on board because of the better bandwidth and the new lines they put in my neighborhood. I've done a
Re:Sure than can - provided they keep speeds up (Score:2)
Competition (Score:5, Insightful)
So let them try.
It's *their* network (Score:4, Informative)
Don't Cable companies do the same? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Don't Cable companies do the same? (Score:2)
Now, Lets look at Verizon. They are providing a massive pipe into the home with the Fibre. Possibly even T3 speeds of 45Mbp/s. Now, there are two ways they can
Hog? In what sense? (Score:4, Interesting)
I'd like to say that more of the laid fiber is lit, but most of it is just plain dark. So long as we're only using a small fraction of the capacity of the medium already in place, what does it matter how much they use? They pay for it, they light it up, they can use it. If there's more demand, light up some more fiber.
Re:Hog? In what sense? (Score:2)
In my area, Cox lights up the last mile, Verizon limps along with copper. In most areas of Washington, DC, Comcast and RCN light up the last mile and Verizon still uses copper.
NO... (Score:3, Funny)
Dont they own their network (Score:2, Interesting)
Welcome to America (Score:5, Insightful)
Not unsurprisingly, people are already screaming for "big gubment" to step in...
Re:Welcome to America (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Welcome to America (Score:2)
We're the Network Hogs! (Score:5, Insightful)
In a better world, we'd of course shift our money from competitor to competitor, settling on the service that offers the best bang for the buck. Of course they know that in most parts of the country, there is only one competitor, and their service sucks in its own unique ways.
Now enter a big business friendly government. Let's not even say friendly, let's say that someone in the government has bent over and offered himself to the monopoly gods. As part of this relationship, the government uses the FCC to ensure that telco's and cable operators get their chance to make insane profits, while the rest of us bicker about Iraq, Intelligent Design, and whether the president has the authority to spy on citizens.
Verizon networks - built with Google's money? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Verizon networks - built with Google's money? (Score:2, Informative)
At the risk of sounding like Saddam's minister of propaganda, "There is no such thing as the Internet!!!" I wish more people would understand this. There are lots of individual networks linked together that have been cooperating in terms of peering and protocols for some time. If you think of it as anything beyond that, you've made 1 assumption too many.
Re:Verizon networks - built with Google's money? (Score:3, Interesting)
Frankly the solution to this problem is to separate service from physical infrastructure - another anti-trust breakup. Have the local ILEC ONLY provide the wires / buildings
Be Serious (Score:4, Insightful)
And? Why would this be a reason to sue? If you don't like Verizon's idea, and it bothers you enough, then use a different provider. Also, who's to say that Verizon would have used the additional bandwidth to fuel their web services?
Yes, of course! Those other companies are especially concerned about Verizon customers, and are willing to spend their own money to sue on the behalf of customers that aren't even theirs and don't make them any money!. So let me ask you - when was the last time you saw a company act so noble and unselfish? Its very rare, of course.
So basically, Verizon has an idea that they think is cool and will possibly make them a lot of money. Their competitors freaked out because they aren't to the point where they can offer the same thing, so they go on the offense and sue.
Seems like there are three ways to make money in America: work, sue, or steal. I think people who file frivolous lawsuits should have to pay the defendants attorney fees, extra court costs for wasting time, and a percentage of what they originally asked for in compensation to the defendant. This "sue everyone for everything" crap is terrible.
PS: I dont think they ever expect to win this case, either. They just want the bad PR to be out there.
So what choices does Verizon have?
a) build a cool idea on their network.
b) pay Sprint or someone to run their video traffic. (rofl)
c) abandon an idea they feel will make decent money.
Look, if their customers don't like it, they will leave Verizon, and Verizon will have wasted a huge amount of money building this thing out and promoting it. Let the freakin market decide what is good or crap - dont freakin sue over every single thing you disagree with. It's disgusting...
Common Carriers must not discriminate (Score:3, Insightful)
Now they want to discriminate traffic to prioritize some traffic over other traffic. Once they do that, they are not a common carrier and should lose that protection against liability of what they carry (porn, XXX video, kiddie sex, gambling, games, terrorist plots, etc.). They wa
Nobody is suing anyone (Score:3, Interesting)
Suing would be a stupid thing for Verizon's competitors to do.
They're taking the smarter path and trying to get the Senate to lay the smack down on Verizon.
Since you read TFA, show me where it says anything about a lawsuit.
Your comment got modded up by the standard "OMG TeH L4w5u1t5 aRe t3h 3viL" crowd.
You = Offtopic
It's their fiber... (Score:5, Informative)
It's their fiber, why can't they allocate it as they wish?
There seems to be a confusion in TFA about whether this applies to any backbones managed by Verizon versus the optical fiber that Verizon is supplying to people's homes via their FiOS service.
Regarding the backbones, as long as they are meeting their contractual commitments, why should anybody else have any say over how they allocate any additional bandwidth they may have.
Regarding fiber-to-the-home (FTTH), they are planning on allocating it as follows using three wavelengths (according to John Dix at Network World):
In the FTTH case, historically the Telcos have been required to provide fair access to their wires (thus you're not required to use Qwest as your ISP if you have Qwest DSL, for example), I would expect that the fair access rules would apply to FTTH.
The surest way to delay getting fiber bandwidth to your home or internet infrastructure is by taking away the incentives (read: profit) for the corporations involved. Verizon is currently making major investements in having a large share of the next generation networks, their competition is being caught flat-footed and behind the curve and will probably try to make legal challenges to slow their growth.
Re:It's their fiber... (Score:2)
30 percent is a lot (Score:2, Interesting)
Roads (Score:3, Insightful)
It's their fiber (Score:2)
Re:It's their fiber (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course they have the RIGHT. They own the cable. Bought it, installed it, paid for it, and maintain the equipment that lights it up.
The government subsidized a lot of the building. They also seized right of ways and property via immanent domain. They also granted them a monopoly on running lines in certain right of ways. They also provide them with a special immunity for prosecution for breaking certain laws on behalf of their customers. All of this was done under the agreement that they would act as a public service and provide equal rights to use their bandwidth to competitors and clients. Before you go off about their rights, remember that if they fail to live up to their half of the bargain, the people as represented by the government should do the same. They should be prosecuted for every bit of child porn and copyright infringement copied from router to router. Any lines in public right of ways should be ripped up and the rights to use them sold to a competitor. Money spent subsidizing the networks should be reclaimed from them and spent paying off the national debt. This is not a free market situation, so don't try to apply free market rules. They made a deal, they have to live up to it.
Verizon? Meet my neighbor Jim (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Verizon? Meet my neighbor Jim (Score:2)
Inaccurate report (Score:3, Informative)
Article on FIOS here - http://news.com.com/Verizons+fiber+race+is+on/210
Enjoy.
Re:Inaccurate report (Score:2)
Maybe that one can be dedicated to pr0n in order to relieve 40% of the load on the "internet" fiber. Or maybe that can be the "spam" line and knock off another 40%.
Simple (Score:2)
Same issue as the SBC "make google pay" issue (Score:2, Insightful)
The issue is clouded by fuzzy-headed thinking. Cable companies already do this. They "reserve bandwidth" (i.e. channels, frequencies, capacity) for their video content and only make a small amount of space available for Internet. The idea that ILECs would do the same when they roll out IPTV or other video-over-packet strateg
It's MY land (Score:5, Insightful)
Excuse me while I dig up the storm drain in my front yard, and cut down the telephone poles in the front and back.
You see, the free market only applies when the market was established via free conditions. If the government intervened in some fashion to create a monopoly (Verizon, you get to be the telephone carrier for this area), then the government MUST intervene to keep the market sane; market failures CAN be created by government, and when they are they should be checked by the government.
Geographic monopolies are often established by the state. I have no idea why one would want a geographic monopoly to run rampant and unregulated.
Otherwise, it's MY land. I want a cut of all the profits that the phone/cable/electrical companies get by stringing their lines on MY land.
Seems to be just like cable (Score:2)
Wasn't the "bandwidth auction" the solution?!?! (Score:2)
Vote with your feet (Score:2)
I would not use Verizon broadband because they block port 80 access.
It's not Verizon's network. I'm leasing it. (Score:2)
For the "last mile", the incumbent carrier is a regulated monopoly, and must not be allowed to exploit that monopoly unduly. We have some problems with the Bush Administration in that area, but that's probably temp
new vs. old telecom at play (Score:3)
Verizon has two effective classes of business. Highly regulated (POTS) and almost unregulated.
If we were talking about DSL DSLAM sharing, the FCC would have something to say (or at least in previous administrations). Anything over "legacy" telco switching equipment like POTS, DSL, T1 PRI interconnects, that sort of thing, is publically regulated. Meaning they have to go to a public utility commission to raise rates or change the way charges are collected (for DSL it's slightly different, but that's on the level of another company leasing dry copper from VZ, rather than the end user data charge.
Anything outside of that, like wireless phone or networks they've developed seperately (think fiber to the home) is a value-added service and therefore much less regulated.
While I'd love unrestricted access to bandwidth for a government subsudized low cost, in this area, they don't have to play nice. It's their pipe and they can use or charge what they want for it.
"Their" pipe? (Score:4, Interesting)
Let's see if we can apply some property rights here...
Verizon (or ANYONE) is not entitled, authorized, or any such thing to dig in MY property. Whether to lay copper, fibre, or dead bodies.
The GOVERNMENT gives the right to do so. But there are some rules. Rules that I (we) impose. If the government has allowed such action (more accurately, has FORCED it), we am entitled to some benefit:
Specifically, access to the property or service at reasonable rates, with reasonable sharing.
Of course "reasonable rates" are debatable; as is "reasonable sharing".
It's not "their" pipe -- it's "our" pipe.
When cable was rolled out, it was rolled out on the understanding that cable TV was to be provided. Was an alternate TV network contemplated when the fibre was rolled out? If it was, then ok; if not, we need a PUBLIC debate.
Nothing against Verizon (or any other public utility), but that IS the rule. And if anyone gives me a hard time about, I'll backhoe my property. Sue me already.
As a final observation: Let's get into this century, already. I don't see the sewage removal provider making a play for Gas delivery. I don't see the Gas provider (delivery only) making a play for water delivery. They kind of stick to their own turf.
But the "data" services are coallescing. Voice, TV, Internet -- its all data. Reasonably, we expect that NEW pipes would treat it the same. If you close your eyes really tight, and pull back 20 years, then, yeah, its different. Which gave rise to "Cable TV" as separate from "Phone".
Now I expect a single bundle of fibre to a home and I expect it to carry ALL the data equally. A separate "bandwidth" supplier distinct from purposing.
As an example: if you have a home heated by a Gas furnace, and a Gas BBQ, and a Gas stove, would you really expect two or three different bills? Of course not, a single bill each month suffices.
I want a single "data" bill every month, that combines "TV", "Phone", "Internet", "VOD" carrier fees. I may have a separate accounting for "VOD movies", "POTS integration", "HBO access".
I advocate complete separation of the cost of maintaining the "plumbing" and "delivering" the data from the data itself. The Gas company here (Enbridge) can do, so I expect the fibre suppliers to be able to do it as well.
Ratboy.
What about cable? (Score:3)
As well, it also depends on where this applies. As long as they meet their contractual obligations, it's a moot point. I'm a FIOS customer and I expect my bandwidth to remain unchanged. I'm on for the 15 mps service and I'll drop it if I don't see that bandwidth even if I am watching a movie. Fortunately, I live in an area where there's a choice so if they drop the ball I can go back to cable broadband.
One of my friends went with VOIP a couple of years ago. It went fine until Charter started offering a competing VOIP service. Shortly afterwards, after more than a year of near perfect service, his voice service started dropping out periodically. He'd be on a conference call and get dropped. He had Charter cable and 10 mps service, at home, during the day working from home and started having problems. He finally had to switch back to SWBell for a landline to continue working from home without interruption.
It's not a case of just the telcos so much as it appears to be the broadband providers that are looking to muscle the competition on their networks. Whatever the telcos get away with, look for the cable companies to follow in those footsteps. If they build 8 lanes to my house and I'm paying for 2 of them, I want my 2 lanes worth of traffic. What they do with the other 6 is up to them. Google pays for multiple 8 lane interstates to the 'Net and they should get that access. But if they want to offer video service, either we're going to move it on the 2 lanes to my house that I pay for, or they're going to have to buy some of those other 6 from whoever is providing them. As long as I get my 15 mbs, how I use it should be up to me.
Re:wah wah wah (Score:2)
They just shoved it underground at my condo yesterday. My development is littered with these huge machines shoving big orange tubing into a hole in the ground. I asked the workers, and they said it should be ready in about 45 days. Can't wait to give Comcast the finger. Although I am probably going to have a tough time without the Flyers action.
Re:wah wah wah (Score:2)