Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style

Mon Dec 20 05:25:01 UTC 2010

  On 19/12/10 8:31 PM, Chris Adams wrote:
> Once upon a time, JC Dill<jcdill.lists at gmail.com>  said:
>> Why not open up the
>> market for telco wiring and just see what happens?  There might be 5 or
>> perhaps even 10 players who try to enter the market, but there won't be
>> 50 - it simply won't make financial sense for additional players to try
>> to enter the market after a certain number of players are already in.
> Look up pictures of New York City in the early days of electricty.
> There were streets where you couldn't hardly see the sky because of all
> the wires on the poles.
>
Can you provide a link to a photo of this situation?
>> And there certainly won't be 50 all trying to service the same neighborhood.
> And there's the other half of the problem.  Without franchise agreements
> that require (mostly) universal service, you'd get 50 companies trying
> to serve the richest neighborhoods in town,

No you wouldn't.  Remember those diminishing returns.  At most you would 
likely have 4 or 5.  If you are player 6 you aren't going to spend the 
money to build out in an area where there are 5 other players already - 
you will build out in a different neighborhood where there are only 2 or 
3 players.  Then, later, you might buy out the weakest of the 5 players 
in the rich neighborhood to gain access to that neighborhood when player 
5 is on the verge of going BK.

It's also silly to think that being player 6 to build out in a "richer 
neighborhood" would be a good move.  The rich like to get a good deal 
just like everyone else.  (They didn't *get* rich by spending their 
money unwisely.)

As an example, I will point people to the neighborhood between Page Mill 
Road and Stanford University, an area originally built out as housing 
for Stanford professors.  They have absolutely awful broadband options 
in that area.  They have been *begging* for someone to come in with a 
better option.  This is a very wealthy community (by US national 
standards) with median family incomes in the 6 figures according to the 
2000 census data.

Right now they can only get slow and expensive DSL or slightly faster 
and also expensive cable service.

The city of Palo Alto has sonet fiber running right along the edges of 
this neighborhood. (see, http://poulton.net/ftth/slides.ps.pdf slide 18.)

It's a perfect place for an ISP to put in a junction box and build a 
local fiber network to connect these homes with fiber to the Palo Alto 
fiber.  But apparently the regulatory obstacles make it too 
complicated.  THAT is what I'm talking about above.  Since the 
incumbents don't want to provide improved services, get rid of those 
obstacles, let new players move in and put in service without so many 
obstacles.

jc