FCC Broadband Proposal: too little, too late, too timid

People always seem to want the government to provide some great benefit as long as someone else pays for it.

But they DO have Internet, unlike us.

And it isn't just speed. All of my telephone service is self-provided VOIP, with IAX trunks to firms all over the country. With some notable (expensive) exceptions, every provider has its own phone service offering. They consider my activity to be competing with their own service. I discovered that trying to get VOIP to work over Comcast was nearly impossible (but theirs worked just fine...fancy that).

We need Internet connectivity provided by companies that are not in the content or network services business. That's why I'm beginning to believe that a government solution may be the only effective answer.

I suggest, if you want some very interesting reading, that you check into the lobbying efforts of ILECs to make sure that CLECs get the short end of all regulatory sticks. For instance, reciprocal payments, a policy designed by the RBOCs to financially burden upstart CLEC had the policy blow up in their faces and found the money flowing in the reverse direction. AT&T's answer? Just don't pay. AT&T is big enough that it seems to be able to thumb its nose at everyone.

Yes, "anyone can become a CLEC" but what happens after that might be something you will want to investigate.

Amsterdam's FTTH. "The second decision was to build an open-access, passive fiber plant that would support multiple ISPs in competition. In practice this translates to:

• Unbundled dark fiber access lines which can be rented individually by an ISP who wants to serve that particular customer * ISPs can get access to APOPs to install their line cards and related equipment, patch in their customer access line, and connect to their own backhaul network"

John Higdon wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@news.announcetech.com:

I get full saturation of 10 mbps d/l speeds from Time/Warner in a suburb of Buffalo, NY when using two d/l threads from Giganews. Using any more d/l threads is a waste, as more threads don't come down any faster.

This 10mbps from Giganews happens at any time of the day. There doesn't seem to be any other provider of anything that has the capability to send to me at that speed....or maybe more accurately, web pages are 'bursty' data, so it may be that fast, but for a very short time period. When d/l'g from Giganews, it is sustained at that level, for hours on end.

From home, when I do a bandwidth test from a T/W server, 'in network', the d/l results are usually over 20mbps. But real life is choked down to 10mbps.

I never said I wanted something for free. I just don't understand why if I want the same level of Internet service at home that my friends in other countries get, I have to become a CLEC or trench fiber optic circuits from MaeWest to my home. Sure, I could set up a microwave link from one of my clients and make an arrangement to get Internet from them...but that is hardly "easy availability of broadband".

Aren't you fortunate? This is the Bay Area. Note the "ba" in the newsgroup name. We don't have such service here. We don't have anything close. Comcast advertises "15Mbps" connectivity, but what it really is amounts to this: you get 15Mbps burst speed for the first five to ten megabytes of a file download. After that, it drops to something like

3Mbps. You have to read the fine print to find that out.

I'm so happy for you. Be glad you don't live in Silicon Valley.

I was a CLEC so I am familiar with the landscape. We were going to do data only so things like reciprocal payments aren't applicable. There was little in the way as long as you didn't try to use the phone company's resources. As an example, renting pole space from PG&E was straight forward.

Check out

Personal income tax in the Netherlands is 10% higher.

My CLEC experience is on the telephone side. Nevertheless, even taking what you say at face value, starting a major company seems at least trivially more difficult than simply ordering the service, as those in other countries are able to do.

"Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes commented: ?Business activities of public authorities in the liberalised electronic communications sector have to be analysed carefully because of the potentially distortive effect of any state aid on the business of private operators, especially in metropolitan areas. However, in this particular case, our investigation found that the municipality of Amsterdam invests on market terms and that several private parties make significant investments in the project."

Together with other shareholders, Amsterdam is investing in a company building a "fibre-to-the-home" broadband access network connecting

37,000 households in Amsterdam. The total equity investment in the project is ?18 million. The Amsterdam municipality owns one third of the shares, two private investors, ING Real Estate and Reggefibre together another third, while five housing corporations own the remaining third. The wholesale operator of the new fibre network was selected through a tender procedure and will provide open, non-discriminatory access to retail operators which offer TV, broadband and telephony services."

Some of us are reading this in alt.internet.wireless.

I'm also with Comcast, out in the Midwest. Around here they advertise

12Mbps and 16Mbps service tiers. I'm on the 12Mbps tier and get at least 18Mbps as my burst speed, after which it falls back to a very steady 12Mbps for as long as I want, any time of the day or evening. If they're advertising 15Mbps service out there, I'm surprised to hear that's your burst speed.

I've been using Vonage over Comcast since late 2005, and I know of quite a few others who are using 3rd party VoIP services over Comcast without any issues. What were you doing that you found it nearly impossible to get VoIP to work? Feel free to drop into the .comcast newsgroup if you need help.

Or more correctly, people always seem to want the government to provide some great benefit as long as everyone else helps pay for it.

John Higdon wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@news.announcetech.com:

Actually, the fine print calls that Powerboost, and it is supposed to about double your d/l bandwidth for the first x amount of the file, and then after that, drop down to your advertised/paid for speed. The page said if you have 6mb, you'll powerboost to 12, or 10 will powersboost to 20. Others also said the cable system there is antiquated and in need of rebuilding.

Yeah, well.....high-speed internet does not an area make.

I use ulaw and frequently have four or five channels active. Works fine over Speakeasy DSL, but over Comcast everything breaks up and falls apart, particularly with multiple channels active. I'm told by those whose opinion I trust that "Comcast business" seems to work OK.

But this brings us back to wondering why there's a distinction between business service and consumer service Internet. I thought we were past that artificial distinction by now. I recall the days when the only difference between residential and business telephone service was the price. I'm not willing to carry that nonsense over to the Internet.

Indeed. You get to live in a nice place AND get decent Internet! Getting first-world Internet probably wouldn't make this a better place to live in any significant way.

Because you are overlooking the main thing that differentiates us and practically everyone else. We have urban sprawl. It sounds like you may live some distance from existing plant. Would you be willing to pay for the excess cost to deliver service to widely spaced out homes as compared to homes that are sited like your friends in other countries?

If it were necessary, yes. I think living in the center of a city of one million population is hardly having an issue with "urban sprawl".