Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style

Mon Dec 20 18:22:17 UTC 2010

  On 20/12/10 9:19 AM, Jeffrey S. Young wrote:
>
> Having lived through the telecom bubble (as many of us did) what makes you believe that player 6 is going to know about the financial conditions of players 1-5?  What if player two has a high-profile chief scientist who, on a speaking circuit, starts telling the market that his bandwidth demands are growing at the rate of 300% per year and players 6-10 jump into the market with strong financial backing?  While I believe in free-market economics and I will agree with you that the situation will eventually sort itself out; thousands of ditch-diggers and poll-climbers will lose their jobs, but this is "the way of things."

Apples and oranges.  The telcom bubble didn't involve building out *to 
the home*.  The cost to build a data center and put in modems or lease 
dry copper for DSL is dramatically lower than the cost to build out to 
the home.  It was financially feasible (even if not the best decision, 
especially if you based the decision on a provably false assumption on 
market growth) to be player 6 in the early days of the Internet, it's 
not financially feasible to be player 6 to build out fiber to the home.
> I do  not agree that the end-consumer should be put through this fiasco and I am confident that the money spent digging more ditches and stringing more ugly overhead cables would be better spent on layers 3 and more importantly on services at layers 4-7.

The problem is getting fair access to layer 1 for all players.  If it 
takes breaking the monopoly rules for putting in layer 1 facilities to 
get past this log jam, then that may be the solution.

>   The utopian solution (pun intended) would be to develop a local, state, federal system of broadband similar to the highway system of roads.  Let those broadband providers who can compete by creating layer 3 backbones and services at layers 4-7 (and layer 1-2 with wireless) survive. Let the innovation continue at layers 4-7 without constant saber-rattling from the layer 1-2 providers.

But how do we GET there?  I don't see a good path, as the ILECs who own 
the layer 1 infrastructure have already successfully lobbied for laws 
and policies that allow them to maintain their monopoly use of the layer 
1 facilities to the customer's location.
> And as a byproduct we can stop the ridiculous debate on Net Neutrality which is molded daily by telecom lobbyists.

Yes, that would be nice.  But where's a feasible path to this ultimate goal?

jc