[Info-vax] US Broadband

[Jan-Erik Soderholm]

Bill Gunshannon skrev den 2015-03-02 21:53:
> In article <md2344$kho$1 at news.albasani.net>,
> 	Jan-Erik Soderholm <jan-erik.soderholm at telia.com> writes:
>> Stephen Hoffman skrev den 2015-03-02 17:11:
>>> On 2015-03-02 14:45:08 +0000, Jan-Erik Soderholm said:
>>>
>>>> I just looked up Sweden and all but a few *very* low populated areas in
>>>> the far north has 10 Mb/s or better to over 90% of households.
>>>>
>>>> The governements goal is that at least 90% of all housholds and business
>>>> will have 100 Mb/s via fiber at year 2020.
>>>
>>> In my experience, United States broadband speeds and coverage are not
>>> particularly comparable to that of countries that consider broadband to be
>>> a competitive advantage or to be a regional or national priority, nor does
>>> the United States presently classify nor regulate nor encourage broadband
>>> coverage similarly to that of telephone and electrical services; as basic
>>> services.  The US government holds central the regulatory authority for
>>> broadband.  The US only recently decided to reclassify broadband providers
>>> as what are called common carrier (though AFAIK, the details of that FCC
>>> decision and the new regulations have not yet been published), and the US
>>> generally remains committed to private carriers and to private broadband
>>> infrastructure funding as the appropriate path forward for broadband
>>> coverage, and (with a different recent FCC decision) to the possibility of
>>> public-private and municipal broadband for those localities that wish to
>>> vote on and fund and build that.
>>>
>>> This funding model of course means that broadband carriers add coverage
>>> only where that's likely to be most profitable and the investment most
>>> quickly recouped, and the industry trends and profits have also been
>>> leading to consolidations and to mergers among carriers — for the potential
>>> merger of Time Warner Cable with Comcast, for instance.  It also means that
>>> there is quite often duplicated and competing infrastructure in populated
>>> areas, and no infrastructure and no coverage in others.  As for optical
>>> coverage, it's also been reported that a major wireline and wireless
>>> carrier Verizon is ending their optical network build-out
>>> <http://arstechnica.com/business/2015/01/verizon-nears-the-end-of-fios-builds/>
>>> and concentrating their investments on wireless infrastructure.
>>>
>>> The regional wireline incumbent telco carrier has met the planned 85%
>>> broadband coverage of the state back around December 2010.  The carrier
>>> likely met 95% coverage back in April 2013, though that's with 75%
>>> broadband coverage of their rural exchange customers; for what the telco
>>> carrier refers to has UNE Zone 3 exchanges.  Those exchanges are for some
>>> parts of suburbs and the more rural areas.   Those coverage percentages are
>>> also based on a much lower bandwidth definition for broadband coverage than
>>> is now in common use, too.  These build-outs are slow and very expensive,
>>> and wireline subscriptions are in decline, as folks move over to cellular
>>> communications.   Further complicating the upgrades and increasing the
>>> expenses, most of the regional broadband coverage is (still) on copper
>>> wiring, and at ADSL speeds that are sometimes hardware limited to 3 Mbps /
>>> 768 Kbps, or similar speeds.  More than a few nearby folks have no cable
>>> and no ADSL available, and are connecting on wireless or satellite links,
>>> where those signals can propagate.  For some of these folks, the dial-up
>>> modem speeds they can achieve are exceptionally low, due in no small part
>>> to the distances and the state of the copper wiring involved, and some of
>>> those folks also have no cellular coverage.
>>>
>>> As for addressing and funding these build-outs, the policies of the US
>>> presently seek to ensure a market for privatized and profitable broadband
>>> providers, and — outside of a few local municipalities and local
>>> governments — neither the federal government nor state governments are
>>> seeking ubiquitous or publicly-funded broadband build-outs.  Wireline and
>>> wireless build-outs are proceeding in the US, but slowly — chunks of state
>>> highways in this area have spotty or no cellular coverage, for instance —
>>> and without the benefits (and issues, of course) that national coordination
>>> and national build-out plans can involve.
>>>
>>> There's also that the population distribution in the US tends to differs
>>> from that of Sweden and of most of Europe, and that the US is a very large
>>> and — in many areas — comparatively empty country.   To borrow an old
>>> networking joke, broadband coverage around the US can variously involve
>>> FedEx, which has rotten latency but massive bandwidth.
>>>
>>> Outside of the population centers and particularly outside of the areas
>>> deploying Google Fiber or equivalent, or with progressive telcos and
>>> carriers as incumbents — US broadband is not particularly comparable with
>>> what I've experienced in other countries.
>>>
>>> But yes, having 100 Mbps fiber coverage for 90% of the local region would
>>> be nice, but that's just not happening anytime soon; not in this region.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>> Yes, having private business running the broadband networks has the
>> drawback that every single connection is measured for profitability. With
>> a certain degree of regulation, you can force them to offer reasonable
>> services to more for a slightly higher cost in the high volume regions.
>
> I was waiting for this one.  Guess what.  They just voted to regulate
> the Internet here under the misnomer "Net Neutrality".  That move has
> all but guaranteed that there will never be Internet where I now live.
> t totally removed any chance of doing at anything but a major financial
> loss.
>
>>
>> And yes, the Swedish government does consider IT and network access
>> as an important tool to let the whole country "live", so to speak.
>>
>> But then, the last decades, other services has been deregulated such as
>> post handling. Before we had a single "Royal Mail" that *had* to deliver
>> latter and parcels anywhere within Sweden at a national flat rate. The
>> Royal Mail was 350 years old and the flat rate had been in use since 1855.
>
> That's called robbing peter to pay paul.  Or did you really think the
> cost had never increased?

I don't understand what you are saying here. Or did you got the
impression that I claimed the the postage fees never had increased
since 1855? Of course they have. But the point is that is is the
same fee no matter if you send a letter to someone in the same
city or someone 2.000 Km away.

If you ment something else with "cost", then I have no clue.


>> Then there come local post business that only had to deliver within the
>> larger cities, and took the profitable areas with the net result that the
>> old Royal Mail got problems to support less profitable areas. Idiots...
>
> Services cost money.  Most people are willing to pay if they get their
> money's worth.

The point is that those in large cities maybe pays 5% extra on their
postage fees just so that they also can send a letter at the same
fee to the other end of the country. That is what makes the whole
county live. Now, if you let small private business *only* operate
in the large cities, well, the result is given, less postage
services in the far ends of the country. And all this is what
helped build this country over the last centuries.