[Info-vax] US Broadband

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2015-03-03 16:21:06 +0000, Scott Dorsey said:

> David Froble  <davef at tsoft-inc.com> wrote:
>> 
>> I've tried asking about fractional T1, and nobody at Verizon knows what 
>> I'm talking about.
> 
> ...
> 
> Call the Verizon business office and ask for the "Special Access 
> Services" supervisor.  However, before doing that, contact your state 
> PUC and get a copy of your state tariff.  This will show exactly what 
> services the telco is required to provide in your area.

Also by omission, what is not regulated.  Which was most of broadband 
and broadband carriers, at least up until the details and the effects 
of the most recent FCC "net neutrality" decision are known and sorted 
out.

> You cannot just call some random idiot in the front office and expect 
> them to know about any particular service, you need to talk to the SAS 
> people and get routed to the one person in your area who handles the 
> service you want.
> 
>> We're screwed, and we're probably going to stay screwed.  At least as 
>> long as big money continues to run things.

Broadband is universally available within the US.  Affordable broadband 
is not.  If you can pay for it, you can get what you want and what you 
need.

> Be that as it may, the telco world is not like the computer world.  The 
> telcos are under tariff to provide certain services at certain rates.  
> They may not like to provide them, but they have to provide them.  
> Other services they aren't allowed to provide.

That's true for the regulated telco services involving the common 
carriers.   Broadband wasn't one of these.   The state PUC has little 
or no regulatory authority over broadband providers nor over what are 
referred to as except local exchange carriers, short of cases with 
wires down in the right of way, broken poles causing hazards, or 
related issues.  The FCC preempts most state and local authority over 
broadband, including — as states were informed after another recent FCC 
decision — around various state-level attempts to legislate against and 
to preclude municipal broadband networks.

The details of the FCC "net neutrality" broadband decision — the text 
of which have not been published AFAIK, nor have the particular details 
on how the FCC might choose to regulate broadband carriers as common 
carrier — are not yet clear.

> Your job as an informed telco customer is to know every detail of this, 
> and that means reading and knowing the tariff.
> 
> Big companies have a telco guy on staff whose job it is to know all the 
>  state tariffs by heart.  If you don't have that guy on staff, you have 
> to do the work yourself.

That, and to read through the text of the FCC decision, once that 
becomes available.

Per published statements and in the absence of details of the "net 
neutrality" decision, the FCC decision "regains" the FCC authority to 
regulate broadband, this after the recent court case that the FCC had 
lost as the broadband carriers were not then-classified as common 
carriers, and thus the carriers were not subject to certain forms of 
FCC regulatory oversight.   In short, the US federal court decided that 
the FCC would need to reclassify the broadband carriers as common 
carriers, if the FCC wished to regulate certain details of the carriers 
under the current statutes and regulations.

It is not yet clear if or how the FCC will decide to regulate 
broadband, now that at least some of the broadband carriers have 
(apparently) been reclassified as common carriers.

What is quite clear is that discussions and the decisions around public 
funding for build-outs and upgrades have not been made, and that only 
minimal funding is (sometimes) available from the FCC and the 
Department of Agriculture or other entities as part of various programs 
or legislative acts, and it is clear that any substantive national 
funding will invariably involve substantial debate in the federal 
legislature.

It is also clear that coordinating the build-out of the so-called last 
mile is not presently on the table for discussions nor for funding in 
the US.  This last-mile build-out being a natural monopoly to 
competition, and with parallel build-outs of competitive and 
oft-incompatible physical plants into the most populated (and therefore 
likely most profitable) areas being both expensive and redundant.  What 
are called competitive local exchange carriers (CLECs) were an attempt 
to encourage competition among the telco carriers, though that was with 
copper telco wiring and not optical.  (Installing copper looks 
increasingly questionable, given such problems as corrosion and the 
occasional theft, and distance limitations and electronic interference, 
and the weight and size of copper in comparison to how much more 
bandwidth optical can carry.)  It remains to be determined whether the 
FCC decides to modify or to extend these CLEC regulations to apply to 
optical and thus effectively share the last-mine optical infrastructure 
that available in various areas.

Beyond the ever-shifting regulatory landscape, there are the more 
technical matters of the broadband carriers, such the slow migration of 
existing equipment over to IPv6.




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