potpourri (Re: Clearwire May Block VoIP Competitors )

Thu Mar 31 20:40:07 UTC 2005

On Thu, 31 Mar 2005, Paul Vixie wrote:

> to that end, i've wondered why the US doesn't join other industrialized
> nations in regulating cellular roaming agreements and tower spacing and
> coverage.  in the parts of sweden with a density less than 10 people per
> square kilometer, cell phones work.  in similar parts of the US, they don't.

Being a Swedish cellphone subscriber, I cannot roam at all between the 
Swedish providers. If you are an user from outside Sweden, you can roam 
with them all. Three parallell networks trying to cover a country the size 
of california but with only 9 million people in it, and generally they're 
not allowed to use each others infrastructure. Silly.

The best coverage in the less populated parts of Sweden is still with an 
analogue 450MHz based system from the 80ties that is going to be shut 
down soon.

But I do agree, the whole US market would be better off with more 
regulation in all areas actually. There is no need for a lot of parallell 
networks really, in theory you only need one, especially in parts that are 
less populated. So the local loop is regulated in Sweden and a lot of the 
swedish population can choose from 3-4 different DSL providers, all 
competing with price and speed. Current best price for 8M/1M adsl is $35 
excluding tax. Of this the phone company gets $8 for the shared copper 
used in the local loop. Wholesale of bandwidth and capacity and dark fiber 
works well, everybody buys from everybody at decent prices. The capital 
municipality runs its own fiber business where anyone can rent fiber for 
approx $200 per month and kilometer of fiber (cost per kilometer goes down 
as distance goes up). The PTT is competing with the same prices, they have 
to. Telia (the PTT) is even one of the first to aggressively offer digital 
broadcast TV over broadband to compete with the cable companies.

Comparing to other countries where the municipalities aren't involved in 
infrastructure, fiber in Sweden is cheap. When the municipality puts down 
other infrastructure such as heating and cooling pipes, paving roads etc, 
they also put in fiber. Doesn't cost much more when you're doing work 
anyway. The important thing of course is that they have to sell to 
everybody, otherwise you run into problems.

-- 
Mikael Abrahamsson    email: swmike at swm.pp.se