The only way we will ever see real and true competition is if we prohibit Layer 2+ providers from playing in the Layer 1 space.
At some point, we will need to recognize that for the population densities in the vast majority of the united States (including most urban areas), Layer 1 is effectively a natural monopoly and you will rarely get more than one provider installing any given media type. An independent layer 1 provider required to provide equal access to all competing layer 2+ providers in each are would drive increased competition in L2+ services.
What some governments are doing in Asia-Pac and Africa is
funding national optical backbones that can be shared by
all.
The biggest mistake they make, however, is either contract
the incumbent to run these national backbone, or get the
incumbents and vendors to sub-contract someone of their
choosing to run these networks.
The general idea, however, is a likely solution to
neutralizing the physical layer.
When regulation is done well, competition is the result. Consider the
following hypothetical regulation:
1. Any company which deploys communication cable in a public
right-of-way is forbidden to sell data storage, data content or
services delivering specific data content of any kind including: web
sites or web hosting services, email services, audio and visual
recordings, television channels.
2. Any company which employs communication cable in a public
right-of-way is required to sell its services on a reasonable and
non-discriminatory (RAND) basis to all who wish to buy.
What would be the result?
Incidentally, this isn't a fresh idea. The FCC first got the notion
over 50 years ago and more or less regulated telecommunications that
way for a quarter of a century.
I don't see this as a technical problem, but one of business and ethics.
ISP X advertises/sells customers "up to 8Mbps" (as an example), but when
it comes to delivering that product, they've only guaranteed 512Kbps (if
any) because the ISP hasn't put in the infrastructure to support 8Mbps
per customer. Customer believes he/she has 8Mbps, Content provider says
we provide 8Mbps content, but ISP can (theoretically and in practice)
only deliver a fraction of that. That feels like false advertising to me.
The problem is that the consumer is too stupid to own a computer and use a network.
The consumer purchased a product advertized as "up to 8Mbps" but really wanted "not less than 8Mbps".
It is not false advertizing. What was delivered is exactly what was advertized and exactly what was purchased.
I see this argument, and then I remember working for a company that happily
sold 6 and 12 meg dsl from a dslam that was backhauled by a 3mb pair of t1s.
There needs to be some oversight that it is at least possible / likely to
reach a reasonable expectation of normal destinations with the service
limits you were sold.
This is exactly my point. If a subscriber can use the service for 30 consecutive days and never achieve the "8Mbps" because the network is incapable by design, or by virtue of its over subscription is statistically impossible of delivering it, then I believe this is false advertising. I, and most others, accept that when a service is marketed as "up to", the service may not always deliver the "up to" number. But if the service is marketed as "up to" any number, then the service should at least be capable of delivering that advertised number some reasonable fraction of the time; Never is not a reasonable fraction of the time.
--Blake
Blake Dunlap wrote the following on 3/22/2014 2:59 PM:
Doesn't sound too outlandish. Mind you, I'm sure
it would raise costs, as that testing and validation
wouldn't be free. But I'm sure we'd all be willing to
pay an additional $10/month on our service to be
sure it could deliver what was promised, or at least
to ensure that what was promised was scaled down
to match what could actually be delivered.
* mpetach@netflight.com (Matthew Petach) [Sun 23 Mar 2014, 20:06 CET]:
Doesn't sound too outlandish. Mind you, I'm sure
it would raise costs, as that testing and validation
wouldn't be free. But I'm sure we'd all be willing to
pay an additional $10/month on our service to be
sure it could deliver what was promised, or at least
to ensure that what was promised was scaled down
to match what could actually be delivered.
Nice strawman you erected there.
Thanks!
Yeah, thanks for standing up for industries holding their customers hostage to extract rents from companies trying to serve those customers.
* mpetach@netflight.com (Matthew Petach) [Sun 23 Mar 2014, 20:06 CET]:
Doesn't sound too outlandish. Mind you, I'm sure
it would raise costs, as that testing and validation
wouldn't be free. But I'm sure we'd all be willing to
pay an additional $10/month on our service to be
sure it could deliver what was promised, or at least
to ensure that what was promised was scaled down
to match what could actually be delivered.
Nice strawman you erected there.
Thanks! I thought it looked quite nice up on its pole.
Now it's time for people to take turns poking
holes in it.
Thanks!
Yeah, thanks for standing up for industries holding their customers
hostage to extract rents from companies trying to serve those customers.
I'm not so much standing up for them as
pointing out that simply calling for additional
oversight and regulation often brings increased
costs into the picture. Oddly enough, I'm having
a hard time identifying exactly *where* the money
comes from to pay for government verification of
industry performance claims; I'm sure it's just my
weak search-fu, however, and some person with
more knowledge on the subject will be able to
shed light on how such validation and
compliance testing is typically paid
for.
[ started this, and then got tied up with community theatre. Oops. ]
No part of it is, legally; all of it is, to the paying customer who isn't
versed in oversubscription.
Oversubscription (what I used to call bandwidth-surfing when I had to
do it -- 1995, 60 33k6 modems on a 256k FR link :-), will be around
for a long time to come.
How far you can *push* it without losing customers is the question,
and the feedback loop is slow, and the response to a new provider who
doesn't push it as hard is usually sharper than you can survive...
