Fans posted:

You started doing it in 1996, stopped doing it in 2001 due to legal struggles and finally reversed the main parts of it in 2005, including Optical Fiber and Line Sharing.

Pauline Kael posted:

Um, no. I buy 'type 2' fiber all day long. at least 3/4ths of what I sell is 'out of region' and depends on LEC or CLEC access into my core.

Dallan Invictus posted:

I don't think local loop unbundling solves the problem on its own, though.

Fans posted:

You started doing it in 1996, stopped doing it in 2001 due to legal struggles and finally reversed the main parts of it in 2005, including Optical Fiber and Line Sharing.

Fans posted:

You're behind pretty much the entire of Europe. France, Germany, UK, Spain and none of those are tiny and highly clustered populations. It's not a "Little bit more expensive" either, you're paying at least twice as much for a service that just isn't as good.

Nintendo Kid posted:

Nope, we still let any DSL provider that wants into the premises to provide DSL if they want. Of course, they can all only offer the same lovely DSL service through there and the prices barely differ. Because DSL is a trash way of providing internet service especially past 7000 feet.

Nintendo Kid posted:

And according to the UK government, they believe their services are just on par with America, and still have worse actual:advertised performance ratios compared to America.

Fans posted:

2005 FCC Halt DSL line sharing

Their networks are closed to competitors if they want to. Which they do. Maybe the people near you keep them open and that's great! They are not in any way required to by law.

Fans posted:

I have never seen a news story like this here. They're pretty proud of catching up to the rest of Europe and being better than the US.

Yes the EU hammers people about false advertising, EU regulation is always fairly strict. ISP's lie wildly about speeds in the USA too, we're no different there.

Fans posted:

2005 FCC Halt DSL line sharing

Their networks are closed to competitors if they want to. Which they do. Maybe the people near you keep them open and that's great! They are not in any way required to by law.

Pauline Kael posted:

I have operational and sales familiarity with AT&T and Verizon, both in and out of region. Between the two of them they account for what, 80% of the ILEC footprint in the country? Both of them (and Frontier and Windstream, BTW) are still doing unbundled local access. I don't know where you're getting your information, but it's bad.

Nintendo Kid posted:

You've never seen a news story, but the governments are reporting it. You know, the people who have the data.

Nintendo Kid posted:

In practice this has happened almost nowhere.

Fans posted:

I think the news would pick up on that. Feel free to Source that up though.

Fans posted:

What? This is the reason the line sharing law even got struck down in the first place. Brand X wanted to buy access to provide competition and were shut down by the larger providers who didn't want to compete. Earthlink had similar problems and a bunch of smaller ISP's have been clamoring for Broadband at wholesale rates for years.

Fans posted:

I think the news would pick up on that. Feel free to Source that up though.

Nintendo Kid posted:

I can't believe you're trying to claim cable is DSL now. That's a hell of a goalpost move.

Nintendo Kid posted:

Why would the news pick up on "UK speeds continue to be similar to US speeds"? To put it simply, that isn't news.
Check out http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/market-data-research/other/telecoms-research/broadband-speeds/broadband-speeds-may2013/ and especially https://www.gov.uk/government/uploa...014_-_Final.pdf (page 11 in particular)

Fans posted:

They did the same thing to DSL as a follow on to the case five weeks later. I just couldn't find anything as well written covering Earthlink's side of it.



That's showing a 15% faster downstream speed and doesn't even go into the price paid for it.

Nintendo Kid posted:

It is not showing a 15% faster downstream speed, you are reading an entirely different country for that. It shows about 9% faster and that's with most of the UK being concentrated far more densely than most of America's population, and thus less rural outliers to bring down averages. And for peak connection speed the difference is under 2%.

Fans posted:

Since it didn't provide the figures I looked them up

It's actually 13%, lazy maths gets me in trouble.

Nintendo Kid posted:

Ookla makes do with fewer privately run servers to collect data from, the peak performance stats for the US, UK, and European Union countries in the UK government report come from actually installing monitoring equipment at customer premises and to a lesser extent within ISPs. It measures what the connections actually are capable of, instead of the often congested OOKLA speedtest network.

Fans posted:

ISP's lie wildly about speeds in the USA too, we're no different there.

Fans posted:

Oh and doesn't give US figures at all to compare with.

Kalman posted:

But yes, that's "lying wildly." Care to come up with equivalent data on the UK?

Fans posted:

This should do

The worst is 86%.

computer parts posted:

So the US is equivalent to the UK.

Fans posted:

This should do

The worst is 86%.

redreader posted:

What are people using in the UK mostly if not adsl? or has adsl tech improved dramatically recently and now people can get way better speeds?

Kalman posted:

So the UK has zero providers who deliver better than advertised speed, while the US has several (including Comcast)?


70% of the UK uses DSL. The UK is denser than a lot of US areas, so my guess is simply that they have shorter local loops leading to better DSL performance.

Kalman posted:

So the UK has zero providers who deliver better than advertised speed, while the US has several (including Comcast)?

redreader posted:

Yeah but last I checked, if you're right next to the exchange the max possible down speed is something like 16mb/s and anyone 1km away or so will get under 10mb/s. Also since it's A, the up speed is utter poo poo. What I'm saying is 'how does the UK have better internet access if I'm getting 42+ mb/s from comcast cable?' Or am I the 1% of USA internet users and the average is worse than the UK?

redreader posted:

I lived in the UK for 4 years and left in 2007. Internet there was all adsl (called dsl in the USA for some reason, and yes I know what it means, I've never heard of non-a dsl being offered) and I never got more than 10mb/s in the best conditions, normally closer to 7 or 8. What are people using in the UK mostly if not adsl? or has adsl tech improved dramatically recently and now people can get way better speeds?

Fans posted:

We have zero providers who deliver better than the maximum attainable speed for hopefully obvious reasons.

Nintendo Kid posted:

Your ISPs shouldn't be advertising a speed they know is impossible for the customer to ever attain.

Fans posted:

Some people do get higher than the Maximum speed they advertise. On average they don't because an average higher than the maximum would be kind of weird.

Fans posted:

We have zero providers who deliver better than the maximum attainable speed for hopefully obvious reasons.

Nintendo Kid posted:

Nintendo Kid posted:

So which is it, is the maximum speed impossible attain or isn't it?

Kalman posted:

The US tests are percent of advertised maximum speed, and a number of US providers deliver better than advertised speed.

Fans posted:

An average speed higher than the Maximum speed isn't impossible to attain in theory I guess. It won't happen because why would you be advertising a maximum speed lower than the average?


Conveniently the news is just reporting on the FCC's findings of advertisement claims

Nobody there is delivering faster internet than they claim on average. Frontier Fiber get pretty close though.

redreader posted:

That's way better than I expected. Yeah, at a certain point it stops being 'my internet is too slow' and starts being 'it would be nice to have more speed I suppose?' these days that speed is probably between 15 and 20 mbps? either way, yeah that's not bad. 25+ on adsl! looks like something happened to the tech recently.

Fans posted:

An average speed higher than the Maximum speed isn't impossible to attain in theory I guess. It won't happen because why would you be advertising a maximum speed lower than the average?


Conveniently the news is just reporting on the FCC's findings of advertisement claims

Nobody there is delivering faster internet than they claim on average. Frontier Fiber get pretty close though.

Nintendo Kid posted:

It's amazing that you trust some random Vice writer over the actual data that you've been repeatedly shown!

Kalman posted:

Actually satellite does pretty well at delivering at least advertised speed. Probably does help that it's metered so there's less congestion during peak periods.

Nintendo Kid posted:

You don't advertise maximum speed in the first place if you want to be at all honest. You advertise the speed your customers can expect to get. If your service provides on average 20 megabits but one guy on it might get 30 megabits, you should be advertising it as a 20 megabit service, not as a 30 megabit service.

The actual data shows that most US providers consistently deliver a higher average speed, at all times of the day, then their advertised speed. That article is calling out the few ISPs who do not follow the rest of the industry, who are also mostly satellite or DSL providers.

It's amazing that you trust some random Vice writer over the actual data that you've been repeatedly shown!

QuarkJets posted:

But many metropolitan regions are only serviced by a pair of the shittier providers on that list, such as Cox Cable and AT&T (where I used to live) or Time Warner Cable and Verizon DSL (where I live now!). It sucks knowing that you're not getting what you're paying for most of the time, and that you have no alternatives. It's not clear to me how this situation came to be.

e: I'm glad that on average people are getting better speeds than advertised, but shouldn't we do something about the companies that are being dishonest?

quote:

June 4, 2014

Hundreds of Cities Are Wired With Fiber—But Telecom Lobbying Keeps It Unused

...

The reasons vary by city, but in many cases, the reason you can't get gigabit internet speeds—without the threat of that service being provided by a company that wants to discriminate against certain types of traffic—is because of the giant telecom businesses that want to kill net neutrality in the first place.

...

According to MuniNetworks, a group that tracks community access to fiber nationwide, at least 20 states have laws or other regulatory barriers that make it illegal or difficult for communities to offer fiber access to their residents. Even in states where there are no official rules, non-compete agreements between government and big business are common.

...

San Francisco's average internet speeds don't even rank in the top 100 municipalities in the country, but, like many other places, most of the city is wired with municipal fiber that's used by government officials, police stations, and city colleges. In 2008, the city made some of that network available to low-rise public housing projects, but still doesn't offer fiber to its other residents.

...

quote:

A Revolving Door of Telecom Lobbyists Is Paving a Fast Lane Over the Open Web

...

The telecom industry—which sees those fast lanes as a potentially massive source of profit—has persistently fought for business-friendly rules that allow for bandwidth throttling, the practice of giving preference to some kinds of traffic over others. In the meanwhile, it wormed a business-friendly crew of pro-telecom pencil pushers into the highest offices, ingratiating itself to the Democratic party through fundraisers and campaign donations. Comcast and Verizon alone have donated at least $1 million to Obama during the last elections.

"The telecoms and other businesses have engaged in tried and true regulatory capture tactics," David Segal, the chairman of Demand Progress, wrote me in an email, "by becoming massive donors to politicians who have oversight over the agencies, by spending untold millions each year on lobbying, and by offering jobs to people who've recently held regulatory posts."

That's no exaggeration. The FCC is a greased-up a revolving a door of ex-telecom industry personnel. According to OpenSecrets.org, "18 people have both lobbied for Comcast and spent time in the public sector. Of those, 12 are currently registered lobbyists for Comcast, with five of them having spent time at the FCC." Conversely, there are at least four workers in Wheeler's office alone that have either lobbied directly for Comcast, a trade group that represents its interests, or a law firm that advises the company.

...

So how corrupted is the office charged to protect consumers from telecom monopolists and traffic profiteers? How bad is it, really? According to the watchdog group LittleSis.org, which maintains a "free database of who-knows-who at the heights of business and government," it's about as bad as it gets. Kevin Connor, the org's co-founder, used LittleSis's new mapping tool, which is currently in beta, to whip up a chart of the interconnected FCC-telecom lovefest transpiring in just Wheeler's office alone for Motherboard:



"The FCC might as well be a subsidiary of Comcast, once you map out the org chart," Connor told me. "The regulators used to work for the industry, they will in the future, and they think they do right now. So they make the policy work for the industry, and that's how you get proposals like this one."

Let's begin, again, with Thomas Wheeler—follow along on the chart above! The Sunlight Foundation, a "nonpartisan resource for tracking Congress," nicely summarizes Wheeler's long history and deep ties with the telecom industry: "Deemed the 'Bo Jackson' of the communications world by a President Obama, Wheeler had played nearly every position in the telecom industry by the time he was nominated to Chair the agency."

He was the head of the CTIA, the wireless industry's largest lobbying group. "In addition to presiding over the CTIA and, before that, the National Cable Television Association (NCTA), Wheeler was a managing director at a venture capital firm and a co-founder of SmartBrief," Sunlight explains. The NCTA, of course, has heavy ties to Comcast. While Wheeler was steering the telecom industry's lobbying operations, he also happened to be a major bundler for Obama's election campaigns. Between the 2008 and 2012 elections, he raised around $1 million and hosted high-profile fundraisers.

No wonder net neutrality advocates fumed when Obama handed Wheeler the keys to the FCC. As soon as he got them, Wheeler also opened the door for a cadre of pro-industry players that joined his team, including Ruth Milkman, Wheeler's chief of staff. Milkman is an attorney, formerly of Lawler, Metzger, Milkman, and Kenney, a firm that now represents Comcast. While she was on board, it lobbied on behalf of Sprint Nextel, too.

Or how about Philip Verveer, Wheeler's senior counsel? He used to work for Willkie Farr & Gallagher, when the law firm was Comcast's "principal regulatory counsel," according to the National Law Journal. The article notes that Verveer "has been involved with the cellular phone industry since its inception." He's lawyered for Sprint, too, and before joining the FCC, held a high post in the CTIA.

The list goes on. It's almost a pointless exercise to connect the dots if they're just going to create giant, blurry blob of ink that engulfs both Comcast and the FCC. Daniel Alvarez, another member of Wheeler's legal council, worked at the Comcast-representing Willkie Farr, too. Maria Kirby hails from Davis Polk, "one of the most active law firms advising major media and telecommunications companies." Diane Kirby, Wheeler's special counsel, was the vice president of regulatory policy at CTIA.

...

"Wheeler was a cable lobbyist. Comcast spent at least $19 million lobbying last year, and its PAC has already spent more than $2 million this cycle," Segal says. "How can the public interest possibly compete with all of that?"

quote:

The brief, ridiculously productive reign of FCC Chairwoman Mignon Clyburn

The interim boss tackled a huge workload in her six-month stint

...

Clyburn was already jumping into action at her first commission meeting as boss, announcing licensing for the so-called H Block, 10MHz of precious spectrum in the same PCS range used by all four national carriers. (The auction for the H Block has more recently been set for January of next year.) New spectrum in a frequency range that can be readily employed by wireless carriers for broadband data is a rarity, and when the FCC announces an auction for it, it’s a milestone event. And in July, it laid down a proposal for selling off a bundle of spectrum known as AWS-3, a band that’s been in limbo since former chairman Kevin Martin tried to turn it into a pornography-free, no-cost wireless internet service several years ago.

Just days later, Clyburn’s FCC signed off on an epic three-way transaction transferring control of Clearwire to Sprint and Sprint to Japan’s SoftBank, giving the nation’s third-largest carrier the support (and cash) it needed to bolster flagging operations. That transaction eventually led to the recent announcement of Spark, a multi-band LTE network that Sprint promises could deliver speeds of up to 60Mbps. To be sure, the decision under previous FCC chairman Julius Genachowski to block AT&T’s purchase of T-Mobile USA was just as important — if not more so — but he did so in a four-year tenure. For Clyburn, the decision to approve or reject one of the largest deals in telecommunications history fell on her commission less than two months into a six-month lame duck stint.

Clyburn also oversaw the creation of new rules for phone calls that inmates make from prisons, the culmination of a decade-long fight with service providers where monopolies and a captive audience (literally) have led to absurdly high rates — rates that, as the FCC pointed out in an August ruling, prevented some low-income families from staying connected. Clyburn’s commission capped the per-minute rate for long distance from prison phones, tying fees to market rates; previously, many prisoners had been paying multiple dollars simply to make a connection. In the wake of the ruling, some providers are threatening to sue the FCC.

At times, it seemed as though Clyburn was looking to solve virtually every controversy on the FCC’s plate — a tall order for an organization that attracts it almost constantly. She sounded support for wireless customers to be able to legally unlock their phones. Under her charge, the Commission put a pause to Verizon’s controversial plan to discontinue landline service on New York’s Fire Island and replace it entirely with cellular. And, perhaps most incredibly of all, she helped usher in 700MHz interoperability, a sticky issue that has plagued smaller carriers for years.

And with just days to go until Wheeler’s swearing in to office, Clyburn oversaw a set of actions aimed at completely overhauling (and saving) AM radio, and — practically on her way out of the door — a proposal to dump federal sports blackout rules, the bane of TV-watching football and baseball fans everywhere.

At times, it seemed as though Clyburn was looking to solve virtually every controversy on the FCC’s plate — a tall order for an organization that attracts it almost constantly. She sounded support for wireless customers to be able to legally unlock their phones. Under her charge, the Commission put a pause to Verizon’s controversial plan to discontinue landline service on New York’s Fire Island and replace it entirely with cellular. And, perhaps most incredibly of all, she helped usher in 700MHz interoperability, a sticky issue that has plagued smaller carriers for years.

And with just days to go until Wheeler’s swearing in to office, Clyburn oversaw a set of actions aimed at completely overhauling (and saving) AM radio, and — practically on her way out of the door — a proposal to dump federal sports blackout rules, the bane of TV-watching football and baseball fans everywhere.

...