back to article Surprise, surprise. Here comes Big Cable to slay another rule that helps small ISPs compete

If Americans want fast internet access, they need to tighten the screws on Big Cable, not give it yet more power. That is the conclusion – yet again – of another study into the the United States' broadband market, this time one lodged in opposition to a push by Big Cable lobbying group US Telecom to kill off a federal rule …

  1. Mark 85

    So the FCC gets to make the decision.

    Well, we know how that will turn out, don't we since Pai has the big kids' backs. It's too bad that he's not elected and could be voted out.

    1. bombastic bob Silver badge
      Devil

      Re: So the FCC gets to make the decision.

      de-regulation is usually better. I used to hear similar kinds of screaming decades ago when, in california, there were 'fair trade' liquor prices, set by gummint regulation, intended to "protect" liquor stores from those competing drug and grocery and even convenience stores that could ALSO sell liquor. Decades later, after the government-based price fixing was removed, and free market restored, I don't know of ANY liquor stores that closed because the grocery and drug stores could charge 'whatever they wanted' for liquor. In fact, I think it got BETTER for everyone, if I remember correctly. i was working in a drug store at that time, and remember the first "on sale" ad that went out after 'fair trade' went away. It was pretty much ALL brand-named liquor and wine and beer on sale that week. And the liquor stores didn't go belly up because of the "no more price fixing". In fact I wouldn't be surprised if THEY did even BETTER afterwards.

      Point: free market works. gummint needs to get out of the way.

      1. Mark 85

        Re: So the FCC gets to make the decision.

        Point: free market works. gummint needs to get out of the way.

        In an open market where there is competition, yes, it works very well. In a monopoly market, not so well to the point of not at all.

        1. This post has been deleted by its author

  2. Throatwarbler Mangrove Silver badge
    Trollface

    I, for one, look forward to Big John's tortured defense of the incumbent monopoly.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Yay for Sonic

    They're currently running a promo for 1 Gb fiber-to-the-prem for $60 + $10/modem rental. That's got to be luring folks away from Comcrap. (Yes, I'm a happy Sonic customer.)

    1. Oengus

      Re: Yay for Sonic

      Can you get them to come down under and offer that kind of service in Australia. I'd sign up tomorrow. I am still waiting for the NBN to be available is an upmarket Sydney suburb and it looks like I will be waiting for months yet. Even when the NBN finally arrives it won't be fibre to the premises and they definitely won't offer 1Gb...

    2. My other car WAS an IAV Stryker
      Unhappy

      Re: Yay for Sonic

      If I could get alternatives like that, I'd ditch AT&T U-verse in a snap, buy a new Wi-Fi/Ethernet router for the house at Costco (assuming the modem doesn't do that), sign up some streaming services and still save money in the long run.

      Until then, it's all just a tease. Good for you, you lucky bastard, but also shame for showing me the future I want but can't have.

    3. jelabarre59

      Re: Yay for Sonic

      That's great if you're in the midst of Silicon Valley, where the market can support a wide range of competitors. Now, go to an economically depressed area like the Lower Hudson Valley, and you'll be lucky they arn't expecting you to use two tin cans with a string between them. A wet, frayed string.

  4. Emmeran

    To get real competition municipalities need to re-take ownership of the last mile. When you don't own your infrastructure you are at the mercy of monopolistic corporations and their pet legislators.

    1. Donn Bly

      @Emmeran

      To get real competition municipalities need to re-take ownership of the last mile. When you don't own your infrastructure you are at the mercy of monopolistic corporations and their pet legislators

      Have you seriously thought about this? You want to take the private property away from the companies that built it, only to then let the government control who can provide you with services? And you think you are the mercy of pet legislators now but won't be once the lines are nationalized?

      All you would do is trade one monopoly for another.

    2. jelabarre59

      Our dismal situation now is the result of the decision by all the local governments selecting single-providers for cable services way back in the early 1980's. Had they allocated or allowed competition way back *then*, we'd be in much better condition now. But as usual, the responsible people are now comfortably retired or dead now.

      At this stage, it's near impossible to restore/build up the free market we should have had all along, the ecosystem is so contaminated.

      1. Charles 9

        There was never an opportunity. Rollout to rural areas involves so much capital investment that providers would've refused to roll out AT ALL without sweetheart deals. When rural communities desperate to keep residents are stuck with a Hobson's Choice, it's literally a matter of Take It or Leave It.

      2. Someone Else Silver badge
        Coat

        @jelabarre59

        I'm not sure I like the concept that the responsible people might be comfortably dead. Given who theses bastards are (or were), I think I'd prefer them to be most uncomfortably dead.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: @jelabarre59

          "Given who theses bastards are (or were), I think I'd prefer them to be most uncomfortably dead."

          No, because the odds are they won't STAY dead; they'll rise up and seek revenge.

  5. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    Unhappy

    People bang on about "creative destruction" and this about the only rule that encourages it

    In the UK (where Openreach sets the prices) small ISP's can only dream of the ability to do this.

    1. EnviableOne

      Re: People bang on about "creative destruction" and this about the only rule that encourages it

      If its a small ISP in the UK, they dont install their own equipment, they use a BT Wholesale whitelable service.

      The Pricing for LLU and BTW lines are actually quite reasonable, goes to show how much BT Retail are fleecing those that dont have an option

      1. Martin-73 Silver badge

        Re: People bang on about "creative destruction" and this about the only rule that encourages it

        Indeed, and the Openreach monopoly only reaches to the exchange in any case... almost every exchange in the country has at least Talktalk and BT backhaul available to other ISPs (TT wholesale aren't crappy like TT retail).

  6. mrobaer

    Companies won't compete with each other

    In my area, the phone lines are owned by Sprint. They refuse to compete in the local broadband market, leaving it all to Comcast. The fastest speed they offer is 40mbit. For the same price, you can get 100mbit from Xfinity, or double the price and get 400mbit. If you're really feeling it, you can tripple the price and get 1000mbit.

  7. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    Unhappy

    What benefits does a "Nationwide" ISP give you?

    The days when you had to be on AOL or CompuServe to have a big enough user group to share with are decades gone.

    The perceived better service? Is it really?

    1. Donn Bly

      Re: What benefits does a "Nationwide" ISP give you?

      The perceived service certainly isn't better. After all, customer satisfaction on cable and phone companies ranks at the bottom.

      What it does give you, however, is that the nationwide ISP has more exit points. It has more diverse connections to the Internet "backbone" than a smaller regional ISP.

      As such, the regional ISP may have better customer service, but be more susceptible to an outage caused by an upstream provider. With the nationwide ISP if there is an outage it is generally caused by an internal problem. In theory that should mean that they will be able to address and fix it faster, but of course theory and reality are often in disagreement.

  8. deadlockvictim

    Change

    All of you undecided voters had better vote Republican next time. Voting Republican means change and the broadband market will change under Republican stewardship. Just look at all of the changes that have since A. Pai has taken over.

    1. James 51
      Headmaster

      Re: Change

      You forgot the joke/big brother/think of the children icon.

      1. Fatman

        Re: Change

        or his <sarcasm> tag!

        1. deadlockvictim

          Re: Change

          I did, didn't I?

          Oh well, it seemed so obvious at the time.

          I wonder how many realised that any change from Republicans benefits the Big Company and rarely the Little Person. Of course, it could very well be that Republican voters see Internet access as a great evil and want to have as bad a connection as possible. Nostalgia for 56K modems and all of that.

          The Trickle-Down Effect will see them right in the end, so I'm not worried.

  9. Donn Bly

    How to lie with statistics?

    The article/report talks about ILECS and CLECs -- which are phone company manifestations, then switches years to cable without any correlation and acts as though they are equivalent. They are not.

    The report talks about CLECs not having equipment in exchanges -- and that is blatantly false. CLECs often/usually have equipment in exchanges, as they use the incumbent lines but their own switching equipment which is how they can gain their competitive advantage.

    I don't know if it is something that crept in as an editing error, whether the author just copied something from the report without reading it, or whether the author honestly doesn't know the difference between a CLEC, ILEC, and white label reseller.

    The report talks about how CLECs have installed fiber in 8% while ILECs have installed in only 6%, and uses that as justification that ILECs don't make investment. The entire cable plant of the ILEC is an investment. For a CLEC a fiber run is an green-field buildout. A new line is always going to be implemented using now-current technologies. For an ILEC the fiber run is just maintenance and expansion because they ALREADY have copper plant installed. To compare one against the other is like saying that the guy who buys a car is making an investment but the guy who changes the oil on the car already purchased does not. It is not an equivalent comparison.

    Likewise, saying that the newer, smaller companies have invested more in comparative terms than the established players ignores in newer and faster technologies ignores that ALL of the investments in a startup are going to be in new stuff, so of course the percentage of investment is going to be higher. Is the new carpenter that buys all new tools better than the guy who is already working and has been using the same hammer for the last 20 years? Tooling is not something that you can use to make an accurate comparison. You have to look at what they do with the tooling. From THAT you can say that the smaller companies are doing a better job at serving the consumer.

    I am sceptical of the statement in the article that that there is no place in the country where an ILEC or cable company, in the absence of competitive carrier reusing their lines, offers broadband as currently defined by the FCC. If true, it says more about the FCC and their changing definition than it does about ISPs, because I've been on broadband for over 20 years.

    And you really expect me to believe that an incumbent carrier only offers faster lines when they are pressured by competition? If that were true, we would still be on 128K DSL because the lack of competition would never have driven carriers to improve. Heck, we might even still be on dialup.

    Consumer demand is what drives growth, not competition. Competition can SOMETIMES help drive consumer demand, but it does not directly drive company growth. Consumer demand is more than just the consumer wanting it, it is the consumer willing to PAY for it. When consumer demand exceeds the existing supply, a new supplier will form to pick up the slack. When consumers were willing to pay for service above what Sprint offered, Sonic was formed to take up that slack. Good for them, good for the consumer, and that is how the free market is supposed to work.

    "Big Cable" is bad enough that you don't have to make stuff up to discredit them. It looks like the report on which this article was based would have been better subtitled "how to lie with statistics"

    1. J. Cook Silver badge
      Thumb Up

      Re: How to lie with statistics?

      When consumers were willing to pay for service above what Sprint offered, Sonic was formed to take up that slack.

      Which is also why laws got put on the books to keep Google Fiber out of a bunch of US cities, and lock out municipalities from offering internet access as a service as well, ignoring the fact that a lot of munis have put their own infrastructure in because the telcos either wanted too much, or flat out refused.

      My area is served by exactly two companies: the local telco (centurylink *spits*) and the local cable company (Cox *spits again*) Neither company appears to want to invest in running fiber to households or even to neighborhoods, with last mile being high bandwidth copper.

      When we heard that Google was thinking of using our area for a fiber rollout, we were ecstatic- $70/month for gigabit internet? head and shoulders above what the cable company could provide (while they offer 'gigabit' service, it's almost double what google offers, it's shared with everyone else on the line, it's not guaranteed, and there's still that pesky 1 TB/month data cap. Oh, and it's not symetrical. uploads are throttled to 20 Mbit.)

    2. JohnFen

      Re: How to lie with statistics?

      "Consumer demand is what drives growth, not competition."

      Competition is what keeps companies from ripping consumers off, though -- if only because it allows consumers another option when the company gets too egregious in their misbehavior.

      Growth means nothing to me when I have no option but to use Comcast.

      1. Donn Bly

        Re: How to lie with statistics?

        Competition certainly provides more options, and it may depress prices and lessen the amount of price gouging, but it won't really keep them from ripping you off unless the competition is organically generated through the free market.

        If you have "no option" to any anything but Comcast, then what that really means is that there is a market opportunity for a new player. In a free market, that new ISP could put in their own lines and provide service, and if they can provide the same or better service for less money then they will win the market.

        If a municipality or other government mucks with the free market by creating an artificial monopoly, it is rather hard for them to complain that there is lack of competition. Regulations should be put in place to ensure a free market, not limit it. Laws passed to keep Google or any other provider out of a city are bad, but laws that require an ILEC to let a CLEC use any infrastructure without the CLEC having to pay any build-out expenses can be just as bad because those laws not only discourage investment in overcapacity, they actively discourage rolling out new technology that has a high build-out expense but a low maintenance expense -- such as fiber.

        1. JohnFen

          Re: How to lie with statistics?

          "Regulations should be put in place to ensure a free market, not limit it."

          I agree, but what I see the existing monopolies pushing for (and, lately, the FCC agreeing with), are regulations intended to ensure that the existing players remain the only players.

        2. Charles 9

          Re: How to lie with statistics?

          You forget about Barriers of Entry. Utilities, especially rural ones, are notorious for a combination of high initial cost (capital outlay for infrastructure) and NIMBY issues that make them among the most likely to form natural monopolies.

        3. strum

          Re: How to lie with statistics?

          >Competition certainly provides more options, and it may depress prices and lessen the amount of price gouging, but it won't really keep them from ripping you off unless the competition is organically generated through the free market.

          Donn, there is no such thing as a free market. I can't set up a telco; I can't afford it. It isn't free.

          The existing big telcos inherited most of their cable runs. Many of the rest were subsidised by the gummint they now despise. I can't inherit anything (and I can't afford to bribe a congressman/senator - they're not free, either).

          1. Charles 9

            Re: How to lie with statistics?

            "Donn, there is no such thing as a free market. I can't set up a telco; I can't afford it. It isn't free.

            The existing big telcos inherited most of their cable runs. Many of the rest were subsidised by the gummint they now despise. I can't inherit anything (and I can't afford to bribe a congressman/senator - they're not free, either)."

            It's like I said: Barriers of Entry. A high barrier of entry tends an industry towards monopolies and cartels because it's easy for incumbents to keep upstarts out. Utilities have high upfront costs (utilities have a high capital prerequisite; they require lots of infrastructure to operate) and thus a naturally high barrier of entry (as in it's a trait of the industry itself, not of any particular part of it, and thus hard if not impossible to skimp).

    3. strum

      Re: How to lie with statistics?

      >Consumer demand is what drives growth, not competition.

      Needs both. Without competition (or regulation) consumer demand is met at the lowest acceptable level/highest acceptable price. Without consumer demand, competition doesn't matter.

      When they combine - then you're getting somewhere. Better product becomes affordable, driving demand, driving supply.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Unhappy

    Time for Pai to hold out for some more stock options from Big Cable

    Maybe after Chairman Pai throttles the regional ISPs, Comcast will buy him his own G6. No more worrying about frequent flyer miles like the rest of us poor bitches!

    1. bombastic bob Silver badge
      Meh

      Re: Time for Pai to hold out for some more stock options from Big Cable

      If a gummint official EVER profits from his position like that, he deserves the jail time for insider trading and unethical conduct. There's a Congressman who was recently indicted with charges over similar kinds of profiteering. I forget his name, just remember reading about it on Fox News.

      Jokes aside, I doubt Pai will be profiteering from his position at the FCC. If he ever does, he'll deserve the consequences.

      1. Charles 9

        Re: Time for Pai to hold out for some more stock options from Big Cable

        "If a gummint official EVER profits from his position like that..."

        ...he probably has enough resources to make the problem go away, too.

        Money talks. All else walks.

  11. DCFusor

    Not so sure

    Governments are so happy about us all suddenly being able to communicate with each other.

    They may be in collusion, deliberate or adventitious, with this.

    China censors for example. Other governments do their best to "encourage" other platorms to censor.

    Upload too many messages or videos (which takes bandwidth) with convincing "wrong speak" and bam...and you obviously don't have to be in China for this to happen.

    When I started "hanging out" on line with a buncha people from around the planet via free vidchats, one of the first truths we came upon with consensus was that, by and large, we were OK - it was governments promoting war (or, well the owners of government, the MICC and bankers) - we'd get along fine and police the few jerks with little fuss and far less collateral damage to innocents than happens now.

    This message is utter anathema to governments worldwide, and other population-botherers. They depend on us "needing" them to save us from crises they create. Even the useful idiots who attempt to get everything blamed on some other country - to keep their own paychecks coming, are "in on it" without even realizing they ARE the problem (or they do know yet have no moral qualms - "I got 5 kids to feed").

    No, I'm no anarchist. But that doesn't mean I have to like the mis and malfeasance all around me by governments. It could, in theory, be done quite a bit closer to correctly than now.

    Remember the old saying that if Apple didn't exist, Microsoft would have to create it? Well, apply to those who have a heck of a lot more ability and need to do just that sort of thing, and look around - judge for yourself.

  12. Roboiii

    So I lay the cable

    And am forced to allow my competitors to use it. Sounds fair.

    1. Kernel

      Re: So I lay the cable

      The way it works in New Zealand is that whoever lays the cable, fibre or copper, has to let any provider who asks use it at the same cost as they charge against their own retail arm to use it. About the only preferential pricing allowed is for the end customer, where you normally get a small discount in the monthly cost if you take your phone service and internet from the same provider - not that you have to have a phone service to get internet if you don't want one.

      So far I've had three different ISPs offering to run fibre from the street into my house and provide me with service, although the fibre infrastructure in this area was laid by a fourth company who as far as I'm aware don't actually sell internet services at all.

    2. Paul Hovnanian Silver badge

      Re: So I lay the cable

      "allow my competitors to use it"

      Allow my competitors to purchase bandwidth on it, to be precise. At the same price as my own Internet service division. So I'd better see to it that the services I provide are competitive with those of the companies who share the cable. Rather than sitting on my a*s, rent-seeking based on regulatory manipulation of the market.

      If the cable infrastructure is that valuable, then the wholesale rental of capacity to other ISPs should bring in healthy profits. If not, then perhaps other ISPs can create more value once they can reach customers.

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