Some areas still have both a contract with the local government, and tax
breaks and other services provided to them by the local government. This is
why the 'open access' arguement is raging fiercly in places like Northern
Virginia -- Fox Cable got millions in tax and right of access breaks from
the government over the years, but now claims that they own the cable and
shouldn't be required to resell access to competitors.
Non-germane to this discussion. Roland Meyers claimed that US cable
companies had current, exclusive contracts to provide high speed
Internet access. We are waiting for him to come up with quotations
from said contracts. It is accepted by all that cable companies have
contracts with local municipalities.
regards,
fletcher
Some areas still have both a contract with the local government, and tax
breaks and other services provided to them by the local government. This is
why the 'open access' arguement is raging fiercly in places like Northern
Virginia -- Fox Cable got millions in tax and right of access breaks from
the government over the years, but now claims that they own the cable and
shouldn't be required to resell access to competitors.
The above is just plain wrong, fact-wise. I live in Northern
VA. The cable company you are trying to name is "Cox Cable",
I think, though it might be Comcast. They got ZERO in breaks,
because they just took over the system from Media General.
The system they got from Media General was so run down that
Cox is having to re-build the entire system. Ditto for Comcast,
which took over the Reston, Prince William County, Arlington,
and Alexandria systems, which were also in bad shape (e.g.
mostly copper, little if any fibre) prior to Comcast.
There might be different places where the CATV firms got a break,
but Northern VA was not one of them.
Oh, and there is no raging "open access" debate in Northern VA
going on. By and large, the folks with Cox/RoadRunner or
Comcast@Home are happy with their service. There aren't protests,
the newspapers (e.g. The Washington Post) don't have any articles
about such a local 'debate', etc.
Oh yes, and before you get into ad hominem attacks, I don't
own stock in either Cox or Comcast (never have) and don't work
for them (never did), so I have no axe to grind in what I say
above.
There might or might not be merits in forced access to CATV
cabling, but inventing fictional accounts of what's happened
in Northern VA is not contributing to a discussion of that topic.
Ran
rja@inet.org
Here is an article in a local publication about the local CATV service. The local county government is getting involved.
-craig
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From "The Connection", Volume XV, Number 18 May 2-8, 2001, Page 11
Cox Internet Quality Questioned
Having received numerous telephone calls and e-mails from constituents about the quality of Road Runner Internet service, a subsidiary of Cox Communications, Supervisor Gerald Connolly (D-Providence) has decided to get the Board of Supervisors involved.
"Road Runner represents that it provides quick and efficient service with infrequent downtime, said COnnolly. "Unfortunately, Road Runner does not seem to be living up to its image."
According to Connolly there have been times where service has been down for as much as a day.
Connolly asked the board's support in asking the County's Department of Telecommunications and Consumer Services to require Cox to advise the department of all outage times and find a mechanism for automatically applying a credit to consumer's accounts for delays in excess of hour hours a day.
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According to reporting by The Washington Post, the issue
is essentially outside the scope of the Fairfax County
government. While they took notes and listened to constituents,
like clever politicians, The Post reports no substantive action
by the county against Cox/RR is being contemplated.
As others have noted, this CATV system is nearly all copper
coax, with very little fibre (essentially no fibre in the
ground as of the date that Cox bought the system from MG).
MG was even using (unlicenced) microwave links to connect
several different parts of the county together, which caused
some rain fade on the CATV video service in bad weather.
Cox has announced an effort to convert the system from
a dual-330MHz all-copper system into a single-cable HFC
system over the next N years.
Ran
I live in Fairfax County and have for most of the past
decade at least. If there was any fibre-to-the-home system,
it was not done by the CATV folks. Media General owned the
CATV system several years ago; Cox bought MG's Fairfax system,
perhaps ~18-24 months back. While some surrounding areas
(e.g. Alexandria, Arlington) have real HFC, they don't have
FTTH from their cable company. No one I can find here has
ever heard of an FTTH that went to any of their neighborhoods
and there certainly isn't one now to my neighborhood.
So if an experiment was here, it was never county-wide
and hasn't gone production. If it was production and county-wide,
it was someplace else.
I do know of places with fibre-to-the-curb, mostly in
Sweden, but also including Palo Alto CA and a few other US
places.
This is pretty far off topic for NANOG folks, lets
please have followups be private rather than on-list.
Thanks,
Ran