[opendtv] Re: Broadband deployment timeline
- From: Craig Birkmaier <brewmastercraig@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 10 Jul 2016 11:36:40 -0400
On Jul 9, 2016, at 8:15 PM, Manfredi, Albert E <albert.e.manfredi@xxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
I'm pretty positive that I can go back through the archives of Topica, and
find posts where the usual trade scribes were hyping up the fact that cable
was getting more broadband subscriptions that ADSL, in those early days.
Because I remember specifically pointing out that (a) cable was under no
obligation to share their broadband link with any independent ISPs, and (b)
when cable provided phone service, they did not have to collect extra fees
from paying subscribers to pay for lifeline telephone service to non-paying
households. Both of which, back then, put telcos at a disadvantage.
That's a huge stretch, but we would welcome any valid sources. That support
your contention.
I would point out that line sharing did not disadvantage the telcos. They made
money whether they sold the service or it was sold by competing ISPs. If anyone
as disadvantaged it was the competing ISPs.
And the cable companies did not gain any advantage in provision of telephone
service. They are subject to the same universal service fund fees as any other
telco; this fund pays for lifeline subsidies, broadband for schools and now
broadband subsidies for low income families.
If anything cable was disadvantaged, as government subsidies for lifeline
telephone service are only available for telco wireline and wireless services.
In March of this year the FCC updated and modernized the lifeline program,
adding subsidies for broadband for low income homes. These subsidies are
available for cable broadband.
This Wiki article on the 1996 Communications Act provides a number of
interesting insights. Initially, opening up the telco lines to competitors had
very little to do with broadband. The first portion of the article describes
all of the industries that were deregulated to one extent or another.
This section of the article is particularly relevant to this discussion:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_Act_of_1996
Claims made in opposition to the Act
When the smaller CLECs faced financial problems, the trend toward competition
slowed, turning into a decade of reconsolidation. [Marcus] The two largest
CLECs, Teleport Communications Group (TCG) and Metropolitan Fiber Systems
(MFS) were acquired by AT&T and MCI/WorldCom.
Looking back five years after the bill was passed, the Consumers Union
reported that wire to wire competition, the reason that sold the bill, had
not succeeded as legislators had hoped. CLECs had captured just under seven
percent of total lines in the country, and only three percent of homes and
small businesses. Wire to wire competition accounted for only one percent of
total lines nationwide.
The Consumers Union also raises one other major point. The Telecommunications
Act of 1996 did not foster competition among ILECs as the bill had hoped.
Instead, of ILECs encroaching on each other, the opposite occurred –
mergers. Before the 1996 Act was passed, the largest four ILECs owned less
than half of all the lines in the country while, five years later, the
largest four local telephone companies owned about 85% of all the lines in
the country.
Robert Crandall has argued that the forced-access provisions of the 1996 Act
have had little economic value, and that the primary, sustainable
competitive forces in phone and related, non-'radio', telecommunications are
the wireline telephone companies, the cable companies, and the wireless
companies.
Interrupting for a moment, the act also had a huge impact on broadcasting and
media companies which were also deregulated...
The Act was claimed to foster competition. Instead, it continued the historic
industry consolidation reducing the number of major media companies from
around 50 in 1983 to 10 in 1996 and 6 in 2005. An FCC study found that the
Act had led to a drastic decline in the number of radio station owners, even
as the actual number of commercial stations in the United States had
increased. This decline in owners and increase in stations has reportedly had
the effect of radio homogenization, where programming has become similar
across formats.
Consumer activist Ralph Nader argued that the Act was an example of corporate
welfare spawned by political corruption, because it gave away to incumbent
broadcasters valuable licenses for broadcasting digital signals on the public
airwaves. There was a requirement in the Act that the FCC not auction off the
public spectrum which the FCC itself valued at $11–$70 billion
So your claims regarding the roll out of broadband services must be taken in
the context of everything that was happening in the media and
telecommunications industries.
But now, both of those issues have been or will soon be rectified. Neither
telcos nor cablecos need to share their lines with competing ISPs, but at the
same time, they are obligated to provide neutral service. Which I think is a
reasonable compromise. And lifeline service will go from a telephone line to
a broadband link, putting both also on an even keel. So, all's good, Craig.
If you love oligopolies...
What the article said was that the telcos were slow. But the
reality was that it took weeks, not years to get service.
Clearly wrong, since service wasn't even offered to us until 2002-2003.
That is completely out of context. Why it took that long for DSL to be offered
at your address can be explained by a number of factors.
1. Distance of your address from the Telco CO;
2. Competitive issues if cable broadband was deployed early in your market;
3. Competitive issues in the telco industry - e.g. The creation of Verizon from
Bell Atlantic.
It took forever. And btw, ISDN was a service that never took off, in the US,
and was not "broadband" by any definition of the word.
Not true. It was the only game in town for businesses for MANY years. It was
too expensive for consumers, and most small businesses. At the time, a full T1
line (1.5 Mbps) was the closest thing a company could get to "broadband"
The original definition of broadband had nothing to do with the rate at which
data could be sent. This Wiki description is relevant:
In the US National Broadband Plan of 2009, the U.S. Federal Communications
Commission (FCC) defined broadband access as "Internet access that is always
on and faster than the traditional dial-up access",[6] although the FCC has
defined it differently through the years.[7] The term broadband was
originally a reference to multi-frequency communication, as opposed to
narrowband or baseband.
So prior to 2009 ISDN was clearly a broadband service, as was the DSL service
that followed.
Acoustic modems at the end time provided 56 Kb/s. ISDN provided two lines of
64 Kb/s, which could be aggregated into a single 128 kb/s line. None of this
was broadband, even in those days. ADSL was the answer, but legislation
unfairly punished the telcos, at first.
Not true. The most popular ISDN service for Internet access was the dual 64
Kbps service you describe. But in most cases it was carried over T1 lines and
sold in various fractional bandwidths, up to the full 1.5 Mbps.
And we disagree about legislation disadvantaging DSL. It is technically
disadvantaged.
DSL competed effectively until video streaming and new FCC definitions of
"broadband" turned DSL into the "second class citizen" it is today.
The following paragraphs are from a 2010 Leitchmann Research report.
A new Leichtman Research Group study revealed that 19 of the largest telcos
and cable operators collectively added 3.4 million net additional high-speed
Internet subscribers in 2010.
But one thing that was clear with LRG's new report is that in the U.S.
broadband subscriber race, cable took the lead in 2010. Cable operators added
2.3 million broadband subscribers in 2010 versus the telcos 1.1 million.
What's likely attracting more consumers to cable are two factors: triple play
packages and higher speeds delivered over their existing HFC plant. Large
cable MSOs such as Comcast and Cox currently offer 50 Mbps and even 100 Mbps
service tiers. Outside of Verizon FiOS with its 150 Mbps/35 Mbps tier, most
traditional telcos' DSL tiers range from as low as 784 Kbps to 25 Mbps on the
high end
Despite this, DSL is still being sold as a more affordable alternative to cable
broadband. As a DSL subscriber this should be obvious to you!
Regards
Craig
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