Repeal of "Net neutrality"?

[Paul F]

Fiber has unlimited capacity for expansion and throughput with zero interference. Wireless is nice and all, but as with mics, wired is always, always, ALWAYS superior on purely technical grounds, robustness, throughput, latency, persistance and so on. The only thing wirelss has is mobility, which is great, but otherwise I'll take fiber every day all day and twice on Sunday.

Right you are on every point. I will take fiber over wireless as well. But fiber is dead as a deployed technology to the home. That doesn't mean that fiber is not viable for the backbone. It is the method of transport for all but the last mile wherever possible. Some areas are still stuck with DS3 and even DS1 lines, but for the most part, fiber is the default transport.

But when it comes to internet and the home, fiber is dead. Cable never used it, AT&T never deployed it, Google gave up, and Verizon still has FiOS, but they are going to move on. There is no longer any mass-investment in any of the fiber last-mile technologies. The next major campaign will be to put up many more towers to make smaller cells and deploy 5G.

[edit] Correction - AT&T does deploy fiber to the home.

 

[Paul F]

Well, maybe in the US, where rollout costs are insanely high. Here in Spain, with an average required investment so far of just around $50 per household with FTTH, it's the best option available, and it will remain so for years to come. A third of Spanish households are already using FTTH (symmetric 300Mbps connections can cost as low as $50/month), with the remaining two thirds being mostly ADSL (same price as fiber, but slower and with more lag, for those without FTTH available in their homes).

5G may be fast and great, but really: I have ethernet all over my house because wifi is slow and has lag and microcuts. I don't see 5G being a lot better in any of these respects.

Yes, fiber as of this moment is still the best technology. It will remain so for as far as we can see into the future. 5G is not better, its just easier to deploy. As Old Corpse said, wireless is subjected to many interferers including rain-fade and obstructions. But that won't stop it from being the deployment of choice once field trials are complete. The telcos and Google have done as much as they can with fiber in the US and are moving on to 5G.

The $50/ household does not sound correct. The cost to the vendor for the ONT is more than that. The cost of ONTs is also a problem for deploying fiber. Many vendors actually lost money on ONTs to the tune of over $300/unit in the early days and lost millions with their telcos contracts. There was more than one head chopped due to losses on those contracts.

Regarding latency issues with wireless, 5G does away with this problem as it starts to achieve wireline latency rates of 1ms. I'm a bit skeptical of the 1ms claim. We'll see, but regardless, latency will not be the problem it is with previous generations of wireless.

 

[DLD]

... The demand for data throughput will only grow - it's like with the old "64K should be enough for anyone", today's needs are going to be exceeded tomorrow, 4K, 8K video has barely taken off, but you'll see massive escalation of needs as remote control operations explode the need for massive data throughput ...

A 4K 24p, given the present YouTube VP9 compression, needs about 40 Mbps. 60p needs over 80 (I assume because I have 80 and 60p buffers) but a household with multiple sets streaming different 4K images to different devices might need 250-300 tops and the current infrastructure already allows it. And, once again, this is under the H265 type compression and without the 4K free Over The Air.

More internet highways might be nice but the rail roads might serve as a better example. They were heavily overbuilt in the late-19th Century, then had to face competition from gas/oil pipelines, ocean/sea/river shipping, aircraft, personal automobiles and commercial trucking, which combined led to years of economic hardship for its owners.

 

[Paul F]

While the initiative sounds sensible, it is peculiar in how ad-hoc it ends up being and therefore, it's not clear what it achieves.

Example: Municipality X's gas company is going to install a new gas main down 10 blocks of Main Street. Main street, being old, doesn't yet have fiber because the local telco didn't see it as economically viable. So Municipality X gets the gas, electric, cable, telco, and other interested parties to discuss Dig-Once. Cable thinks it's a good investment and wants a conduit. Telco has no interest but is forced to put in the conduit. The project completes and now there is a conduit for every utility.

Did mainstreet get fiber? No, they did not, because there is only 10 blocks of conduit for the telco and there is no conduit going from main street to the nearest other conduit to which fiber could be pulled. Also, no one agreed to do the additional digging from the main street to each building to extend the conduits as needed to get utilities to each building. That would cost too much and is not within the scope of the current project of putting in a new gas main. The conduit remains buried under those 10 blocks. Meanwhile, no other project came along that forced a connection of the conduits. It was a wasted effort. The question is, how often would this initiative bring results? I like it conceptually, but I wonder how pragmatic it is.

 

[Samuel H]

The $50/ household does not sound correct.

You keep thinking about the US. Over there, the cost for Google was between $1000 and $1500 per household with FTTH (link). Here in Spain, Jazztel spent 300 Meur to get to buildings where 5 million households live (link, in Spanish). You're right that it's not $50 (it's $63), and you're right that it doesn't include all the costs: that's just bringing fiber to a blimp at the base of the building (something like this); when I got fiber, then they laid the last 20m of fiber from the blimp at the base of the building to my living room, and "lit" it, which also costs money and I think it's what you're referring to. But they only do that when they get a contract, and it can't be so expensive because I'm paying $60/month and I didn't have to pay an installation fee (that price also includes all calls and data traffic from my mobile phone as well; I couldn't get the 300Mbps symmetric connection, though, so it's 50Mbps download and 10 Mbps upload for me).

Of course, that's Madrid, with 5400 people per km2. In a smaller and less dense city here in Spain (Logroño, 1900 people per km2) costs are already higher: $115/household (link). But really, big American cities should not be a problem in terms of tech: the biggest issue seems to be the horrible regulation you have over there.

 

[jamedia.uk]

You keep thinking about the US. Over there, the cost for Google was between $1000 and $1500 per household with FTTH (link). Here in Spain,

Not just Spain but most of Europe.

Normally there is fiber to the cabinet/blimp in the road. Due to a dig once sort of policy that has been going on for decades the trunking for the phones has been a reality for a long time. most of the Europe (well the urban areas at least which is 85-95% of the population) now have fibre to within 500yards of most buildings. New builds have [dark] fibre laid to the house. The costs for putting fib ere the last few yards and or just turning it on are quite low.

Most residential supplies in the UK are VDSL at 40Mb in and 10 Mb our or better via the coper for the last few 100 yards.

 

[Samuel H]

Yes, of course. And we could also mention Korea or Japan... In Japan, FTTH suspassed DSL already in 2008, with a market share of 45%. And in 2013 they had retail plans at 2Gbps.

 

[jamedia.uk]

Yes, of course. And we could also mention Korea or Japan... In Japan, FTTH suspassed DSL already in 2008, with a market share of 45%. And in 2013 they had retail plans at 2Gbps.

What most Americans don't realise is the USA is not a advanced as they think. Much of it is still in the 1950's as regards the rest of the 1st world. However this is partly due to Geography (large sparely populated areas or comparatively isolated towns) and that in the late 1940's to 1960's most of Europe had a major (total?) urban redevelopment and modernisation. Also again due to history and geography most small (compared to the USA) European countries, and others like Japan that were ravaged by WW2 had state owned telecoms companies and it was comparatively easy to enforce all services to go underground in trunking. Both communications and power.

Therefore it was a lot easier to replace the main feeds from the telephone exchanges out to the local distribution points (cabinets) with fibre. I recall when they did the work near me. A couple of vans buy the manholes each end of the runs running fibre up the trunking. No digging any trenches. Fast to do with low costs and little disruption. Apparently they future proofed by putting in several times what they estimated they needed. So we have capacity for the foreseeable future (middle of 2020? when they will have to re-thread the next generation of fibre.

From the cabinet they have trunking along to the next level of distribution points. Small 1foot square manholes in the pavement (sidewalk) This is copper wires and that is to about 25yards from where I am sitting. They can run fibre to this (but they charge) then the difficult bit is the last 25 yards. AFAIK new houses are automatically wired with fibre from the house to the distribution point.

 

[DLD]

... But really, big American cities should not be a problem in terms of tech: the biggest issue seems to be the horrible regulation you have over there.

An average internet speed in the US is about 50 Mbps and usually over cable (the same that brings cable TV to homes). Comcast (the largest US cable provider and also the owner of NBC and Universal studios) is already delivering up to 1 Gbps symmetrical in selected spots.

https://arstechnica.com/information...bit-cable-will-be-in-15-cities-by-early-2017/

PS. As a side note, the building where I live just had the analog cable TV turned off. We got free digital boxes that deliver 480i compressed to all heck. The HD box is $20/mo.

 

[Paul F]

What most Americans don't realise is the USA is not a advanced as they think.

Indeed, the US was very internet illiterate compared to other nations. It is still catching up. Besides geography, when internet was being established, a good portion of the US had no interest in internet at home and that lack of interest still drags on. A few years ago, 30% of households did not have broadband and were satisfied with dial-up. Many, because they could get it at work and didn't see the need to spend money on it at home (from PEW Research).

Geographically, the US is a big challenge. My relatives in the Midwest still had a party-line telephone line just 15 years ago. Yes, they had to share a telephone line with two other neighbors. That's how slow it is to get infrastucture to the rural US.

Your right, Europe is significantly different than the US. There was much more of a 'were going to get wired' impetus from the state than there ever was in the US.

Regarding prices, I am only talking about the box that terminates the fiber at the house. More than one company that sold equipment to the telcos sold that equipment at a loss to win contracts with the hope of somehow figuring out how to make it cheaper in the near future. It was a matter of winning the new business at any cost. Both companies failed to every make a profit on FTTH.

 

[DLD]

I think a lot of people dropped the broadband-at-home idea because they have smartphones and can check the basic necessities using their wireless account. That's the same reason so many are dropping their land phone lines. Home PC's were used for communication rather than intensive number crunching. Now that communication is achieved via AT&T/Verizon/T-Mobile/Sprint, the need for a big black box next to a special stand has withered away.

 

[Samuel H]

That's a good point: my workstation is crunching numberes right now, while I type on my HTPC, and my third desktop is off, as well as my notebook, and my girlfriend's. All connected on ethernet, and from there on fiber. But that just proves I'm not the average data consumer. Our phones are using wifi, and our TV could do that as well if I didn't prefer an HTPC. For an increasing number of people, phone and TV connectivity is enough, and yes, they may just go with 5G and leave cables for people like me.

 

[combatentropy]

I think a lot of people dropped the broadband-at-home idea because they have smartphones and can check the basic necessities using their wireless account. That's the same reason so many are dropping their land phone lines. Home PC's were used for communication rather than intensive number crunching. Now that communication is achieved via AT&T/Verizon/T-Mobile/Sprint, the need for a big black box next to a special stand has withered away.

Are you talking about people dropping home Internet service and just using their phone's data plan? That would be so expensive!

 

[DLD]

Are you talking about people dropping home Internet service and just using their phone's data plan? That would be so expensive!

People are doing exactly that (and it's not that expensive if you forego the online video, which was my point with regard to the next generation OTA system ... if one were able to receive a dozen HD and two dozen SD channels for free, would there remain a need for anything else? ... for an average iPhone owner, email and chat can be done via their smartphone ... which can also take photos and videos ... and get quick news, sport and weather updates at the same time ... and the laptop works on WiFi too ... and 5G, once it arrives, will do everything in a blink of an eye -- unless you're driving from Pasadena to Simi and your connection goes down twice in half an hour ... but I digress)

 

[combatentropy]

I'm not sure I'm reading you right. Are you saying that it would be affordable if people just "forego the online video"? Are you saying that people will be happy to drop Netflix, Youtube, Amazon Video as long as they have "a dozen HD and two dozen SD channels" over the air? Would people also have to stop streaming music? What about video calling? Photo uploading and downloading? Many people set their phones to do stuff like that only over Wi-Fi.

The average home uses around 100 GB of data per month. If they used their cell phone data plans for that, it would be $1,000.

 

[DLD]

People have been using legacy broadband but there are many "cord cutters" these days who are turning off cable TV while keeping the cable internet. Others are going entirely wireless and that indeed means mostly telephone, email and Facebook. Not everyone wants to stream Netflix, which currently has slightly under 50,000,000 US accounts (out of ~ 120,000,000 households and 320,000,000 individuals). And this is as of now (~ $35 for 2GB of data and up to $80 for "unlimited", with heavy discounts given for multiple lines). What happens when 5G arrives and you'll be able to download a full feature length film in a few seconds? Then, a combination of their wireless, the OTA HD Radio and the OTA TV - presumably, the new OTA system will be in place some time in the next decade - should be enough for lots of folks. Because there are only so many hours in a day.

BTW, back when I arrived in LA in 1987, cellular time was about .45c per minute and most mobile phones had to be installed in the automobile. Thus, they were referred to as "car phones". In the summer of 1988, I had a customer from Beverly Hills, who bought a "portable" phone for $1,800. Portable meant it was inside a briefcase, which contained the battery, the antenna and the home telephone looking attachment (i.e., the corded telephone that looked like a ... home phone). The Motorola Brick was about $2,000 then. Blaupunkt made one the size of a eyeglass case in 1989 for about $500 and Motorola Flip (the first truly portable), arrived toward 1990 and was going for $2,500. People paid that amount because it was soooooooo coool. Even though one could only talk over it. Nothing else.

 

[Paul F]

.......There is a reason why telecom stocks have been rushed to with the new administration. They knew that they were going to have a field day being able to charge whatever they want.

.....They have a field day now. There are no regulations regarding prices for internet access. Price offerings are based upon competition.

While there is no regulation of internet prices for households, there are price caps for business. You have correctly predicted open hunting for business internet: https://www.yahoo.com/tech/fcc-votes-eliminate-price-caps-153956450.html

There is some quite nonsensical rationale in the decision. ""Yesterday’s decision decrees that price caps will be nullified if 50 percent of potential customers in a given county are within half a mile of a location that’s served by a competitive provider."

They may as well be 100 miles away. That 1/2 mile may be an insurmountable wall depending upon current infrastructure. However, this reasoning is true. "The FCC argues that companies will be more inclined to extend their coverage if the price caps are not in effect. Price caps that are set too low could have the undesirable effect of dissuading providers from making upgrades to their infrastructure."

Anyway you look at it, the prices for business are going to go up, competition or not.

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In the latest spectrum auction T-Mobile went all-out and obtained 41% of the available spectrum. They bought up much of the spectrum available in the less densly populated areas, which is not of interest to the big two, but may be very valuable down the road.

In second place was Dish Network. Like AT&T's Direct TV, they know they need to get out of the satellite business and move on to 5G. In third place was Comcast.

AT&T was in the game, but Verizon did not even participate. That indicates that there is plenty of spectrum available when 5G comes along. One would have thought Verizon would buy spectrum just to keep it from competitors or keep it in reserve.

You can see that there will be more wireless players with 5G. With 5Gs 1G+ delivery capability and low latency, there will be more companies providing not just wireless phone, but also television and internet over 5G. This should provide relief to many areas that are underserved for internet speeds.

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In other news, T-Mobile continues to rewrite the wireless pricing and feature set. Verizon's profits are shrinking dramatically (down 20%) as they lose customers to T-Mobile. Verizon tried to keep customers by following T-Mobile's unlimited plans, but it isn't enough.

 

[DLD]

... In second place was Dish Network. Like AT&T's Direct TV, they know they need to get out of the satellite business and move on to 5G.

I was just thinking of the XM/Sirius satellite radio (in conjunction with the Howard Stern Show but that's neither here nor there) and think that they have to siriusly ... eh, seriously rework their business model because 32 Kbps audio is just not sufficient enough when a song in a HiRes format can be downloaded in seconds (off 5G)

You can see that there will be more wireless players with 5G. With 5Gs 1G+ delivery capability and low latency, there will be more companies providing not just wireless phone, but also television and internet over 5G. This should provide relief to many areas that are underserved for internet speeds...

Not that I can predict the future but 5G will, at the very least, drastically change what we know as "radio" and the related music and talk related product.

In video, cable speeds should rise accordingly, at least, deliver instant 4K without any channel limitations by the time 5G starts arriving.

 

[Paul F]

There are some interesting statistics from an FCC report (Jan 2016).

90% of America has access to 25/3Mbs service. That's far better than I expected. Given that, then perhaps 95% or more have access to 8Mbs (ADSL) service?
Of that 90%, only 67% is rural. It shows that in the non-Verizon/AT&T territories, the second tier carriers/MSOs are not providing higher broadband rates available in smaller cities/towns. But then this next statistic may show it doesn't matter.

Here is the most surprising statistic: Americans living in rural and urban areas adopt broadband at similar rates where 25 Mbps/ 3 Mbps service is available, 28 percent in rural areas and 30 percent in urban areas.

That says a full 70% of Americans that have access to high-speed broadband don't take it. So then why bother trying to deploy high speed broadband if the vast majority doesn't take it? This goes back to my comments about American Internet illiteracy. Research reports I read 10 years ago showed that Americans were not interested in broadband internet. It seems this remains true today.

 

[combatentropy]

Is it affordable?