Inevitable death, was Re: Verizon Public Policy on Netflix

Tue Jul 15 17:43:27 UTC 2014

Brett,

You should investigate TVWS (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_spaces_(radio) it works extremely well
in your kind of scenario and at a minimum will solve your over the air data
rate challenges.

The release of TVWS has provided WISPs in rural areas with almost 1 GHz of
unlicensed space and it goes much further than the other unlicensed bands
like ISM and UNII.  Technically the same amount of frequency was released
for everyone, but in urban/suburban markets much more is already taken by
licensed over the air TV broadcasters and wireless microphones, both as
licensed users have absolute rights to the frequencies they're using.

If you want to know vendors that supply the gear, since most of the BWA
guys haven't grabbed it yet, let me know and I'll send what I have off list.

Scott Helms
Vice President of Technology
ZCorum
(678) 507-5000
--------------------------------
http://twitter.com/kscotthelms
--------------------------------

On Tue, Jul 15, 2014 at 1:28 PM, Brett Glass <nanog at brettglass.com> wrote:

> At 09:30 AM 7/15/2014, Baldur Norddahl wrote:
>
> >If that is the case, how would peering with Netflix help you any?
>
> It would not, and that is the point. Netflix' "peering" scheme (again,
> I take issue with the use of the term) doesn't help ISPs with high
> backhaul costs. Measures to reduce the amount of bandwidth that
> Netflix wastes, via uncached unicast streaming, would. But (and this
> is the point of the message which started this thread) they are sitting
> pretty as a monopoly and do not feel a need to work with ISPs to
> solve this problem. It's frustrating and is causing us to look for
> workarounds -- including going as far as to found a competing streaming
> service that is more ISP-friendly.
>
> >I took a look at your plans at http://www.lariat.net/rates.html. You use
> >the Netflix brand in your advertising (in the flyer)
>
> We don't "use" their brand, but do mention them as an example of a
> company that provides streaming media. (We also mention YouTube, Hulu, and
> Amazon Prime.) It's natural for them to be on that list because they have
> such a large market share that they qualify as a monopoly. They are
> attempting
> to leverage their market power against ISPs instead of working with us,
> which
> is a shame. Again, a customer of a small rural ISP ought to be every bit as
> valuable to them as a Comcast customer. We should receive at least the
> amount
> per customer that Comcast receives, especially because our costs are
> higher.
>
> >but none of your plans
> >are actually fast enough to provide Netflix service (up to 6 Mbps per
> >stream for Super HD).
>
> Netflix itself claims that you need only half a megabit to stream. (Whether
> that claim is accurate is another matter, but that is what they themselves
> say.)
>
> >Selling 1 Mbps is just not going to do it going forward, not even in
> rural areas.
>
> Unfortunately, due to the cost of backhaul (which the FCC is doing nothing
> about; it has refused to deal with the problem of anticompetitive price
> gouging on Special Access lines), that's what we can offer. The FCC has
> also
> failed to release enough spectrum (Shannon's Law) to allow us to provide
> much more to the average user; we have to budget access point bandwidth
> carefully.
> We do what we can and price as best we can. Most of our customers, given a
> choice
> of possible levels of service, choose 1 Mbps and in fact are satisfied
> with that because the quality is high. Remember, due to Van Jacobson's
> algorithm,
> a 10 Mbps TCP session that drops packets slows down (by a factor of 2 for
> each dropped packet!) to a net throughput of less than 1 Mbps very quickly.
> So, we concentrate on quality and our customers have a very good
> experience.
> Usually better than with cable modem connections with much higher claimed
> speeds.
>
> We're used to doing a lot with a little and watching every penny. But
> Netflix
> doesn't have the same attitude. It wastes bandwidth. Rural ISPs and their
> customers cannot afford to cover the cost of that waste.
>
> >I can say how we solve the backhaul problem. We only lease dark fiber and
> >then put our own 10 Gbps equipment on it. We can upgrade that any day to
> >40G, 100G or whatever we need, without any additional rent for the fiber.
>
> Nice if you can do that. We have not been able to obtain affordable dark
> fiber
> in our area.
>
> >Given your expertise seems to be wireless links, you could also backhaul
> >using Ubiquiti Airfiber: http://www.ubnt.com/airfiber/airfiber5/
>
> That Ubiquiti radio reaches at most one mile reliably due to rain fade.
> Most of
> our links go much farther. Wireless is our specialty and we do know our
> options;
> we use carefully selected and engineered microwave and millimeter wave
> links
> throughout our network.
>
> Being a WISP is not easy; it employs every skill I've acquired throughout
> my entire
> life and is constantly challenging me to improve and learn more.
>
> --Brett Glass
>
>