re: Goodbye Net Neutrality; Hello Competition

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What ever did we do before our Savior saved us from Congress?

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We watched as the business case for ISPs doing non-neutral things gained more and more profit potential. We watched as ISPs began to exploit their position as gatekeepers more and more. We watched as these anti-consumer and anti-competitive actions not only failed to spur competition, but competition actually continued to decrease.

So we demanded that something be done to whomever would listen, essentially.

And we can bark up the local government tree to eliminate any regulatory barriers to entry to the ISP market, but I've said time and again that it won't make much difference. Markets involved with expensive infrastructure tend toward local monopolies regardless of government involvement. It just makes economic sense.

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Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

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You can say that again.

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Your question would make more sense if there was a free market right now.

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The question makes sense if you'd bother to recognize why true ISP competition will never materialize regardless of the regulatory environment.

The better question is why would anyone prefer to allow the private ISP industry to regulate the entire internet, rather than regulating the ISP industry so that it can't regulate the internet.

Show me the competition in Baton Rouge.

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The Foundation for Economic Education is a great organization that I have followed since 1982 when at the suggestion of one of my professors I subscribed to their publication "The Freeman".

I encourage you all to poke around their website and perhaps take some of their short courses.

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What additional power does the government obtain (that could result in the same fricked up system) from a rule that requires only the three following items? 

No Blocking: ISPs cannot block legal content, applications, or services. 
No Throttling: ISPs cannot slow down or degrade internet service based on the content, application, or service accessed by users. 
No Paid Prioritization: ISPs cannot accept payment to give content, applications, or services more favorable access to users.

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Giving the FCC control in the first place, which was the sole reason behind the push for NN. As we see from any federal agency, their original rule doesn't fricking matter. It metastasized from there.

Pure wireless cannot handle the demand. Also, 5g shows that capability, but so does fiber coaxial hybrids that bog down whenever more users are using the network. Over the top services like Netflix will cripple 5g wireless if wired home services went away due to bandwidth limitations with the direction that video service is heading.

This is an argument like a tablet vs laptop vs desktop. Desktop will always reign supreme just as fiber to the home will along with people being "okay" with an inferior service for mobility.

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I work in construction and engineering with a major telco and I can assure you wireless is the future and it is much cheaper to maintain and deploy than terrestrial services.

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Of course it's cheaper to cover a given area with wireless, but you are still not dividing the cost by bandwidth delivered.

LTE is fast enough for residential internet, but almost no one uses it. Why? Because it's expensive as frick per byte.

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1 union field tech for the wireline side of the company costs nearly $90 an hour and although the deployment of fiber is still ongoing the proven performance of 5G downloads over 1gbs has changed the game.

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Jumping the gun a bit here, aren't we? We are a year out from the first trickle of 5G deployments, and if the history of the rollout of LTE (and 3G, and etc.) tells us anything, it'll be 5 years before it's kind of widespread, and 10+ years before it's available in most places (if ever). And it's those last places to get 5G that need it the most, where there is and always has been a lack of ISP competition.

And by that point, our internet use will have grown to the point that 5G is not sufficient, and we will be looking forward to 6G, claiming that it will "change the game". Meanwhile, fiber tech will continue advancing, and it will remain miles ahead of every wireless tech, and last-mile fiber laid today will long outlive 5G, 6G, and whatever comes after it.

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Fiber will always be part of the network but the edge of the network for most residential consumers will become a wireless environment.

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There are places that fiber makes sense, and there are places that wireless makes sense. But, again, it will likely be a decade+ before "most" residential consumers even have the option of 5G.




I want wireless to be a real factor, I really really do. But it's just not as simple as "it's cheaper to blanket a neighborhood with wireless than it is to run fiber, therefore competition will emerge". It has ALWAYS been cheaper to blanket a given area with wireless than it has been to run a hard line. The problem for wireless is that, although it has steadily improved, wired connections have likewise steadily improved, and our internet demands have also steadily increased. Fixed-wireless WISPs have been around for a long time now. The hardware is cheap, they can use unlicensed spectrum, the speeds are adequate for home internet, they don't have to fight the local incumbents or government over pole use... so why doesn't every town have 5 or 6 WISP choices? Because it's just not that simple. You still need to pay for wholesale bandwidth, you still need to lease tower space (or buy your own land and tower), you still need to install the CPE, you still need to provide support, etc., etc. It turns out that, while significant, the initial investment of running the last mile lines is a small portion of the long-run costs. And I'm not sure about the spectrum auction process, but I assume it works out like any other auction where more bidders/competition = higher prices. How many players do you think could possibly emerge in the 5G era, and do you think the ongoing costs of spectrum licensing really works out that much cheaper than the one-time cost of running last-mile fiber? What's to stop the big boys from buying up the spectrum to prevent competition?

Again, I hope you're right that 5G will usher in an era of extreme competition where ubiquitous, fast, and cheap internet access is the norm, but I just don't see it happening.

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Jumping the gun a bit here, aren't we? We are a year out from the first trickle of 5G deployments, and if the history of the rollout of LTE (and 3G, and etc.) tells us anything, it'll be 5 years before it's kind of widespread, and 10+ years before it's available in most places (if ever). And it's those last places to get 5G that need it the most, where there is and always has been a lack of ISP competition.

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Nah, it’s coming sooner than you think, the dominance of 5G will take 5-10 years but make no mistake it is the future.

5G wireless article from CES and LA Times