Have you factored in the reality that there is NO other valid reason?
- Build your own custom phones:
Nope, Google can already do this. Remember the 3 Nexus models?Also, a pretty telling example is Apple, that does not make the iPhone. It is outsourced to Foxconn. That Apple doesn't build the iPhone makes it pretty hard to argue that Google needs to buy an OEM to make a special, customized phone.
- Channel conflict:
The one thing that Google certainly gets with MMI is actually a negative. They scare off their OEM partners who don't like the fact that Motorola is likely to get preferred status.
So, go ahead and argue that it was a BAD patent purchase if you want, but there is no other reason for the MMI acquisition that holds up to even light scrutiny.
It's about quantity. Remember, this is a Mutually Assured Destruction scenario, not an actual patent lawsuit. The way to win in a "cold war" is not to have the most/best weapons, but SIMPLY TO CONVINCE THE ENEMY THAT YOU DO.
Thus, we have military 'game theory' strategies like inflatable tanks, which look like real tanks from satellite or airborne surveillance. The message, don't attack us on this flank, because we've got tanks up the wazoo.
For nukes, you don't actually need all the nukes. You just need a few highly visible nuclear tests, then you build missile compounds with visible terrestrial surface features. You don't really even need to dig the subterranean components. The 'bad guys' will think you've got ICBMs with nuke warheads down there, and will not launch their fake missiles because if they did, you would fake bomb the shit outta them.
In some 17,000 patents, nobody is expected to take the time to find out if there is a "real bomb". All it takes is one, and everyone just assumes that among 17k, there probably is one that is ticking.
The above article shows that AT&T has overstated/exaggerated/lied about one of their arguments supporting the deal.
That's not good, but it's hardly news to me, nor was this particular claim of theirs even that credible to begin with. AT&T is making a variety of claims on the pro side of the deal, some true, some specious. The people on the con side of the deal are doing much the same. When has the beltway lobby circuit ever had a debate that was not thus?
The reason I support the deal is because I don't like government market interference unless it is necessary (which it often is). I see a fairly competitive market, with many new competitors entering the market, and I see T-Mobile as a fading power.
Most people look at this deal by considering the T-Mo and the market of TODAY. Today, T-Mobile is arguably the best competitor out there. They offer lower pricing, a national network, competitive phones, and relatively good customer service. They have been, and remain today very important to competition in the US marketplace.
But what everyone seems to fail to consider (since they don't spend their day analyzing telecom and predicting trends) is that the independent T-Mo is at an impasse. It is out of spectrum. This is why Deutsche Telekom wants to unload it. T-Mo is doing great in a 2G and 3G market, but has NO spectrum for 4G, and NO roadmap to be competitive in 3 years. It's spectrum is completely full (unlike, say Sprint), and they did not win any more at the 700MHz auction.
In 3 years (if no merger), Sprint, MetroPCS, Verizon, AT&T, Clear, and others will all have 4G networks, and the latest and greatest phones running on them. T-Mo will be stuck offering the best 3G phones available (like bringing a knife to a gunfight). Sprint will use its excess spectrum to be more competitive and will become the low-price national competitor. T-Mo will be low price, but also low-quality because of the lack of 4G. MetroPCS and others will grow and remain the best priced packages, but will remain regional with national roaming.
Some of these companies will be increasingly significant:
MetroPCS
Clearwire
Cox cable
Comcast
LightSquared
Dish Network
Leap / Cricket
Wi-Fi (or some new technology)
They have all made serious moves towards entering or expanding in the wireless market.
So, tell me again why we need T-Mo to make the market competitive in 2013-2020?
Nope, they are for it. And parent company Deutsche Telekom is for it. They want to cash out, since T-Mo is performing poorly, and the future prospects aren't that good.
The question facing policymakers should not be "do we want to approve this deal?" That implies we should have government meddle in deals, "approve" of whatever we do, and distort business unnecessarily.
The question should be "Is this deal detrimental enough to the state of competition in the industry that we should choose the strong and undesirable move of market interference in order to protect consumers?"
A case can be made for the second question on either side of the debate. But THAT should be the question.
The market does not need T-Mo to be competitive. Many new entrants are entering / about to enter / planning to enter. Many of the have already bought spectrum for $ billions.
I mean, you were called out and busted about your lack of comprehension of a single, specific word...and you are stubborn enough to argue back about the definition of surreptitious without (obviously) even clicking over to a dictionary site to look it up.
That is so weaksauce/pigheaded/lame/wrong and immediately proven so that I am impressed by how brazenly you executed it.
Was the camera surreptitious? The fact that the Market President and the police immediately saw it, and demanded it be shut off prove that it was not surreptitious.
Yeah. I wish there was somebody who would go out on the streets and fight to support civil rights. You know, be fully informed of his rights, stand up to power, and win a few small battles. So we could all just sit back on our asses and enjoy summer and potato chips.
When will someone like that be the main subject of the video and topic of this article in this blog?
You'll note that no pricing is displayed. I did a research report on this industry a year ago, and my conclusion was that the prices are dropping so steadily that no vendor wants to post the deals they are currently making...or all their existing customers would want to re-set their deal to the new low market price.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: someones got some bad math going on, so let me clear it up.
To answer a few of the points of both you and dan0 at once:
Yeah, there has been substantial investment at the core in the last decade. But it is true that drastic over-investment running up to the dot-com bust and 2002 left lots of "dark fiber" in the ground. So in the decade since then, the increase of Internet use has been able to leverage that sunk cost investment.
But lots more fiber is being laid, undersea cables laid, middle mile trenches for Fiber to the Curb, satellite redundancy, metro ethernet. On top of the physical media being buried, technology improvements are being implemented to get more out of the cables. Coarse Wave Division Multiplexing, faster termination equipment, CDNs, caches, transcoders. All of these upgrades are being rolled out by telecom providers. Some will argue it's not enough, and they may be right. But those that argue that there is NO investment lose all credibility with me. You have to be blind and have no knowledge of telecom to think that.
OTOH, telecom was pretty damned stagnant before 1996.
"It sure felt at the time like a monopolistic rent that manifested itself as differential pricing."
You are right. Although I would say oligopolistic. There is not enough competition in last mile broadband in the US, but I think there is enough at the core. However, my definition of "enough" falls short of a perfectly competitive industry.
Why would I accept a non-competitive industry? Because I don't make the laws of economics, I just live with them. Many segments (core, last mile) of a telecom network are what is know as a "natural monopoly". That is, in a free market, it will tend on its own towards vendors with price power and market control, who are able to extract some rents above Marginal Costs.
Telecom is characterized by huge capital requirements. Especially in an era with rapidly evolving technology. The massively difficult act of having to bury or string cables over thousands of miles means the barrier to entry is huge. Such a market does not exhibit the MC=P characteristics of perfect competition. In most nations, a regulator steps in to "oversee" that the economic rents being charged are not egregious. For more, read the wikipedia entry above. The buried cables around the nation ARE scarce, and it is that scarcity that is driving the prices, NOT the bits which are almost free to send about.
DanO's point is correct. It's not "capitalism" (although I think you mean a free market). It's a natural monopoly. Before it was a heavily regulated natural monopoly. Now it's a lightly-regulated oligopoly. Yes, way back these companies got favored treatment, free rights-of-way, land access, franchise (exclusivity) rights for towns, and all kinds of other advantages. The compact with the people was, supposedly, that this would give the telco an incentive to serve the town with universal communication access. It may be hard to conceive, but this was not assured back in the day. Telcos would have happily skipped entire small or remote towns that were unprofitable to connect. Just consider the towns that don't have DSL right now.
Now, after all that preferential treatment, the telcos do not appear to have much gratitude. But this is a grey area, too. Do they owe us much? They were forced to offer universal service to unprofitable regions in exchange for privileged access. Is that deal complete and history, or do they still owe us? I don't think the answer is clear. But like you, Dan0, I don't think they should get preferential treatment anymore.
Sorry people. When we dig down into telecom policy this deep, the answers are not obvious. Lobby groups or not, even the truth is murky and unclear. Making good policy is complicated enough. So we absolutely don't need paid shillheads like Ford and Sununu deliberately lying to get their payoff.
Level 3 is definitely a Tier 1. It mostly passes off its cargo through peering arrangements, not transit agreements.
But I think the AC gets it, other than the scale of Level 3.
Level 3 and Comcast have been at each other's throats for years. Most recently, Comcast tried to get Level 3 to change from a free peering deal to a paid transit deal...in fact, this Nov 2010 article frames the entire issue around which Ford and Sununu are now lobbying:
Reading the article above will make you 10 telecom IQ points smarter. I guarantee it. You'll also see how both Comcast AND Level 3 are duplicitous in this debate. The Nov. article is also prophetic with this quote from Matt Wood, associate director of Media Access Project: "Netflix will have to raise its costs...but ultimately customers will pay."
Well, for me, and the general Techdirt editorial stance, a policy that treats customers badly or punitively is a bad business policy. Gouging customers fits that bill.
Business are tempted to gouge to meet short-term goals, get their bonuses, hit the numbers Wall Street (or Bay Street in your case) expects of them. However, we generally feel that that is BAD policy that harms the business long-term.
Pissing off your customers just ensures that your time as their vendor will be limited. As soon as another option pops up, your customers will leave you. They'll even leave for worse deals just out of spite.
I've been there. I worked at Ameritech (a Baby Bell) when the FCC opened the former monopoly local phone market to competition. There was an exodus.
"I am tired of pecking here to hear you dismiss my argument with 'bad implementation.'".
If you were hoping I could act as Cogeco customer service, or fix your beef with them in any way, you were barking up the wrong tree!
The movie theaters were considering "jamming", which is broadcasting powerful radio noise on the same frequencies that cellular phones use, obscuring the signal and thus rendering them useless.
Jamming is illegal because those frequencies are auctioned off, then licensed for the exclusive use of the spectrum rights owner, say AT&T or Verizon. A theater owner who jams cellular phones is broadcasting on Verizon's spectrum, and that is a violation of a law.
In contrast, BART just turned off their repeaters, which they normally operate in cooperation with the spectrum rights owners.
BART passengers use BART's repeaters because the trains travel underground where normal cellular towers don't reach. BART installs either a Distributed Antenna System (DAS) or leaky coax antennas to relay the cellular carriers signals through the tunnels. They own and operate this sub-network. The movie theater is served by regular cellular towers from nearby outside.
The US federal policy has always been to offer telecom services to people in any state at similar federal rates. To do so, the government set up the Universal Service Fund, which puts a USF tax on the dense population areas (where it is much cheaper to deliver telecom to a customer), and it uses the collected fees to subsidize the rates in rural areas.
As such, most of the US pays a rate that is based on the AVERAGE cost of providing telecom services in the USA. And the USA is, relatively speaking, very sparsely populated. Your effort to compare other countries to US densities state-by-state is irrelevant, since federal policy has pushed for a single unified market, as much as possible.
So I will give you the population density argument. And the difference between you and I is that I understand all the factors at play, such as the very important USF, the rural broadband stimulus package (also a transfer from dense areas to rural) and the desire of the ISPs to offer somewhat similar rates to all their customers.
I am on your side of the debate versus Sununu...but I prefer to use accurate arguments as opposed to emotional ones. Like I often say here: you can hate telcos for a variety of real reasons, you don't need to make up fictional ones.
Your first point,"1/3 GB more per day" etc. Sorry. I can't address that. I just don't understand what you're getting at.
I dunno what type of cap enforcement your ISP gives you. For now, most have a pretty bad policy of letting it ride for a month or three (that's good) but then sending a nasty letter implying you're a bad person, and that you should spend more with them or go away. They clearly are not throttling.
Sounds to me like Cogeco, like most others, has a fairly bad implementation of policy around their caps.
Re: Re: Re: someones got some bad math going on, so let me clear it up.
"so as long as the infrastrusture is there"
...is a clause that obviates a lot of capital investment.
Now, I'll be among the first to say that marginal costs determine price in perfectly competitive markets, not sunk costs in capital. But is it a competitive market when one vendor is selling the last generation Internet, and another is selling the latest? With Internet service, we are not making "the same phone calls" we made a couple of years ago. People selling faster Internet can charge more.
Since 1997, we've gone through many generations of infrastructure. Dial up modems, DSL, aDSL, vDSL, DOCSIS 1, 2, 3, FiOS, FTTC, FTTx, WiMAX, LTE. We have had steadily increasing speeds as a result. That happens not because "the infrastrusture is there" but because somebody keeps investing in new infrastructure. It's not free.
You say "there is no cost to increasing supply". But that's wrong. Supply is increased by investing capital in faster networks. That capital seeks rents.
So if you make the "so as long as the infrastructure is there" argument, then I will happily accept that as long as you are using your dial-up modem to make your post.
For example, in a DOCSIS 3 cable system, certain frequencies are allocated for upload, others are allocated for download. The cable head-end 'listens' on the upload channels while it broadcasts on the download channels.
Normally, the upload channels are lower than the download channels, so that your cheap CPE gets the benefit of the better propagation characteristics of lower frequency. Your CPE is cheap because it needs to be priced to scale to every home, while the head-end equipment is much higher-grade.
Those download channels could be re-allocated to more upload if that is what the average user actually did. But they are not dynamically allocated in real-time.
It's called FDD for Frequency Division Duplexing. If that's a new concept to you, you have no business trying to correct me. Now, TDD, or Time Division Duplexing, used in some systems, uses the same channels for up and down transmission, using chunks of time for each direction. There are systems that can dynamically alter the proportion of up/down. This is not used by any fixed line ISP that I know of.
"American ISP's use the upload portion to limit bandwidth usage, you see the less upload you have the slower is your download too"
...which is just entirely wrong.
A business-class service. Also sold as "partials" by some service providers.
You get the whole pipe to yourself, get guaranteed minimum speeds (unlike "best-effort" consumer service), and a Service Level Agreement to assure your QoS.
On the post: Are Any Of The Patents Google Got With Motorola Mobility Any Good?
Re: Re: Just more money to waste...
On the post: Are Any Of The Patents Google Got With Motorola Mobility Any Good?
Re: Re: Wrong Measure
- Build your own custom phones:
Nope, Google can already do this. Remember the 3 Nexus models?Also, a pretty telling example is Apple, that does not make the iPhone. It is outsourced to Foxconn. That Apple doesn't build the iPhone makes it pretty hard to argue that Google needs to buy an OEM to make a special, customized phone.
- Channel conflict:
The one thing that Google certainly gets with MMI is actually a negative. They scare off their OEM partners who don't like the fact that Motorola is likely to get preferred status.
So, go ahead and argue that it was a BAD patent purchase if you want, but there is no other reason for the MMI acquisition that holds up to even light scrutiny.
On the post: Are Any Of The Patents Google Got With Motorola Mobility Any Good?
MAD and Inflatable Fake Tanks
Thus, we have military 'game theory' strategies like inflatable tanks, which look like real tanks from satellite or airborne surveillance. The message, don't attack us on this flank, because we've got tanks up the wazoo.
For nukes, you don't actually need all the nukes. You just need a few highly visible nuclear tests, then you build missile compounds with visible terrestrial surface features. You don't really even need to dig the subterranean components. The 'bad guys' will think you've got ICBMs with nuke warheads down there, and will not launch their fake missiles because if they did, you would fake bomb the shit outta them.
In some 17,000 patents, nobody is expected to take the time to find out if there is a "real bomb". All it takes is one, and everyone just assumes that among 17k, there probably is one that is ticking.
On the post: FCC Asks AT&T To Explain Discrepancy Over Claimed Need For T-Mobile vs. Internal Discussions
I'm For The Deal
That's not good, but it's hardly news to me, nor was this particular claim of theirs even that credible to begin with. AT&T is making a variety of claims on the pro side of the deal, some true, some specious. The people on the con side of the deal are doing much the same. When has the beltway lobby circuit ever had a debate that was not thus?
The reason I support the deal is because I don't like government market interference unless it is necessary (which it often is). I see a fairly competitive market, with many new competitors entering the market, and I see T-Mobile as a fading power.
Most people look at this deal by considering the T-Mo and the market of TODAY. Today, T-Mobile is arguably the best competitor out there. They offer lower pricing, a national network, competitive phones, and relatively good customer service. They have been, and remain today very important to competition in the US marketplace.
But what everyone seems to fail to consider (since they don't spend their day analyzing telecom and predicting trends) is that the independent T-Mo is at an impasse. It is out of spectrum. This is why Deutsche Telekom wants to unload it. T-Mo is doing great in a 2G and 3G market, but has NO spectrum for 4G, and NO roadmap to be competitive in 3 years. It's spectrum is completely full (unlike, say Sprint), and they did not win any more at the 700MHz auction.
In 3 years (if no merger), Sprint, MetroPCS, Verizon, AT&T, Clear, and others will all have 4G networks, and the latest and greatest phones running on them. T-Mo will be stuck offering the best 3G phones available (like bringing a knife to a gunfight). Sprint will use its excess spectrum to be more competitive and will become the low-price national competitor. T-Mo will be low price, but also low-quality because of the lack of 4G. MetroPCS and others will grow and remain the best priced packages, but will remain regional with national roaming.
Some of these companies will be increasingly significant:
MetroPCS
Clearwire
Cox cable
Comcast
LightSquared
Dish Network
Leap / Cricket
Wi-Fi (or some new technology)
They have all made serious moves towards entering or expanding in the wireless market.
So, tell me again why we need T-Mo to make the market competitive in 2013-2020?
On the post: FCC Asks AT&T To Explain Discrepancy Over Claimed Need For T-Mobile vs. Internal Discussions
Re: Re: Re: Re: Of course it will get approved..
The question facing policymakers should not be "do we want to approve this deal?" That implies we should have government meddle in deals, "approve" of whatever we do, and distort business unnecessarily.
The question should be "Is this deal detrimental enough to the state of competition in the industry that we should choose the strong and undesirable move of market interference in order to protect consumers?"
A case can be made for the second question on either side of the debate. But THAT should be the question.
On the post: FCC Asks AT&T To Explain Discrepancy Over Claimed Need For T-Mobile vs. Internal Discussions
Re:
It's coming:
MetroPCS
Clearwire
Cox cable
Comcast
LightSquared
Dish Network
Leap / Cricket
Wi-Fi
The market does not need T-Mo to be competitive. Many new entrants are entering / about to enter / planning to enter. Many of the have already bought spectrum for $ billions.
On the post: Concord PD Hits For The Cycle: Lemonade Stand + Camera + Wiretap Law
Re: Re: Re:
I mean, you were called out and busted about your lack of comprehension of a single, specific word...and you are stubborn enough to argue back about the definition of surreptitious without (obviously) even clicking over to a dictionary site to look it up.
That is so weaksauce/pigheaded/lame/wrong and immediately proven so that I am impressed by how brazenly you executed it.
Here's a link, Lazy Joe:
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/surreptitious
and since you probably can't be bothered, here's on for "authorized"
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/authorized
Was the camera surreptitious? The fact that the Market President and the police immediately saw it, and demanded it be shut off prove that it was not surreptitious.
On the post: Concord PD Hits For The Cycle: Lemonade Stand + Camera + Wiretap Law
Re: Re:
When will someone like that be the main subject of the video and topic of this article in this blog?
sarc off
On the post: Concord PD Hits For The Cycle: Lemonade Stand + Camera + Wiretap Law
Re:
Yeah. What a lame cause, too. Civil rights. Freedom. What an ass whole.
On the post: Let's Up The Ante: We'll Pay John Sununu & Harold Ford Jr. $1,000 To Pay Netflix's Broadband Bill
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Prices are higher to reflect this unlimited (and guaranteed to be available) bandwidth.
Check out XO communications offers:
http://www.xo.com/services/network/dia/Pages/overview.aspx
You'll note that no pricing is displayed. I did a research report on this industry a year ago, and my conclusion was that the prices are dropping so steadily that no vendor wants to post the deals they are currently making...or all their existing customers would want to re-set their deal to the new low market price.
On the post: Let's Up The Ante: We'll Pay John Sununu & Harold Ford Jr. $1,000 To Pay Netflix's Broadband Bill
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: someones got some bad math going on, so let me clear it up.
Yeah, there has been substantial investment at the core in the last decade. But it is true that drastic over-investment running up to the dot-com bust and 2002 left lots of "dark fiber" in the ground. So in the decade since then, the increase of Internet use has been able to leverage that sunk cost investment.
But lots more fiber is being laid, undersea cables laid, middle mile trenches for Fiber to the Curb, satellite redundancy, metro ethernet. On top of the physical media being buried, technology improvements are being implemented to get more out of the cables. Coarse Wave Division Multiplexing, faster termination equipment, CDNs, caches, transcoders. All of these upgrades are being rolled out by telecom providers. Some will argue it's not enough, and they may be right. But those that argue that there is NO investment lose all credibility with me. You have to be blind and have no knowledge of telecom to think that.
OTOH, telecom was pretty damned stagnant before 1996.
"It sure felt at the time like a monopolistic rent that manifested itself as differential pricing."
You are right. Although I would say oligopolistic. There is not enough competition in last mile broadband in the US, but I think there is enough at the core. However, my definition of "enough" falls short of a perfectly competitive industry.
Why would I accept a non-competitive industry? Because I don't make the laws of economics, I just live with them. Many segments (core, last mile) of a telecom network are what is know as a "natural monopoly". That is, in a free market, it will tend on its own towards vendors with price power and market control, who are able to extract some rents above Marginal Costs.
The first paragraph in this entry give a good brief on what Natural Monopolies are:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly
Telecom is characterized by huge capital requirements. Especially in an era with rapidly evolving technology. The massively difficult act of having to bury or string cables over thousands of miles means the barrier to entry is huge. Such a market does not exhibit the MC=P characteristics of perfect competition. In most nations, a regulator steps in to "oversee" that the economic rents being charged are not egregious. For more, read the wikipedia entry above. The buried cables around the nation ARE scarce, and it is that scarcity that is driving the prices, NOT the bits which are almost free to send about.
DanO's point is correct. It's not "capitalism" (although I think you mean a free market). It's a natural monopoly. Before it was a heavily regulated natural monopoly. Now it's a lightly-regulated oligopoly. Yes, way back these companies got favored treatment, free rights-of-way, land access, franchise (exclusivity) rights for towns, and all kinds of other advantages. The compact with the people was, supposedly, that this would give the telco an incentive to serve the town with universal communication access. It may be hard to conceive, but this was not assured back in the day. Telcos would have happily skipped entire small or remote towns that were unprofitable to connect. Just consider the towns that don't have DSL right now.
Now, after all that preferential treatment, the telcos do not appear to have much gratitude. But this is a grey area, too. Do they owe us much? They were forced to offer universal service to unprofitable regions in exchange for privileged access. Is that deal complete and history, or do they still owe us? I don't think the answer is clear. But like you, Dan0, I don't think they should get preferential treatment anymore.
Sorry people. When we dig down into telecom policy this deep, the answers are not obvious. Lobby groups or not, even the truth is murky and unclear. Making good policy is complicated enough. So we absolutely don't need paid shillheads like Ford and Sununu deliberately lying to get their payoff.
On the post: Let's Up The Ante: We'll Pay John Sununu & Harold Ford Jr. $1,000 To Pay Netflix's Broadband Bill
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
But I think the AC gets it, other than the scale of Level 3.
Level 3 and Comcast have been at each other's throats for years. Most recently, Comcast tried to get Level 3 to change from a free peering deal to a paid transit deal...in fact, this Nov 2010 article frames the entire issue around which Ford and Sununu are now lobbying:
http://money.cnn.com/2010/11/30/technology/netflix_level3_comcast_traffic/index.htm
Reading the article above will make you 10 telecom IQ points smarter. I guarantee it. You'll also see how both Comcast AND Level 3 are duplicitous in this debate. The Nov. article is also prophetic with this quote from Matt Wood, associate director of Media Access Project: "Netflix will have to raise its costs...but ultimately customers will pay."
Once again, if Abraham Stoltzfus (above) wants clarity on how the core network deals work, just read:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tier_1_network
On the post: Will John Sununu And Harold Ford Jr. Agree To Pay Netflix's Broadband Bill Next Month?
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Business are tempted to gouge to meet short-term goals, get their bonuses, hit the numbers Wall Street (or Bay Street in your case) expects of them. However, we generally feel that that is BAD policy that harms the business long-term.
Pissing off your customers just ensures that your time as their vendor will be limited. As soon as another option pops up, your customers will leave you. They'll even leave for worse deals just out of spite.
I've been there. I worked at Ameritech (a Baby Bell) when the FCC opened the former monopoly local phone market to competition. There was an exodus.
"I am tired of pecking here to hear you dismiss my argument with 'bad implementation.'".
If you were hoping I could act as Cogeco customer service, or fix your beef with them in any way, you were barking up the wrong tree!
On the post: A Legal Analysis For Why BART's Mobile Phone Shutdown Was Illegal
Re: Re:
The movie theaters were considering "jamming", which is broadcasting powerful radio noise on the same frequencies that cellular phones use, obscuring the signal and thus rendering them useless.
Jamming is illegal because those frequencies are auctioned off, then licensed for the exclusive use of the spectrum rights owner, say AT&T or Verizon. A theater owner who jams cellular phones is broadcasting on Verizon's spectrum, and that is a violation of a law.
In contrast, BART just turned off their repeaters, which they normally operate in cooperation with the spectrum rights owners.
BART passengers use BART's repeaters because the trains travel underground where normal cellular towers don't reach. BART installs either a Distributed Antenna System (DAS) or leaky coax antennas to relay the cellular carriers signals through the tunnels. They own and operate this sub-network. The movie theater is served by regular cellular towers from nearby outside.
On the post: Let's Up The Ante: We'll Pay John Sununu & Harold Ford Jr. $1,000 To Pay Netflix's Broadband Bill
Re: Re:
The US federal policy has always been to offer telecom services to people in any state at similar federal rates. To do so, the government set up the Universal Service Fund, which puts a USF tax on the dense population areas (where it is much cheaper to deliver telecom to a customer), and it uses the collected fees to subsidize the rates in rural areas.
Suggested reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Service_Fund
As such, most of the US pays a rate that is based on the AVERAGE cost of providing telecom services in the USA. And the USA is, relatively speaking, very sparsely populated. Your effort to compare other countries to US densities state-by-state is irrelevant, since federal policy has pushed for a single unified market, as much as possible.
So I will give you the population density argument. And the difference between you and I is that I understand all the factors at play, such as the very important USF, the rural broadband stimulus package (also a transfer from dense areas to rural) and the desire of the ISPs to offer somewhat similar rates to all their customers.
Here's more about how US policy for universally accessible service is being extended from phone dialtone to Internet:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Broadband_Plan_(United_States)
I am on your side of the debate versus Sununu...but I prefer to use accurate arguments as opposed to emotional ones. Like I often say here: you can hate telcos for a variety of real reasons, you don't need to make up fictional ones.
On the post: Let's Up The Ante: We'll Pay John Sununu & Harold Ford Jr. $1,000 To Pay Netflix's Broadband Bill
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
On the post: Will John Sununu And Harold Ford Jr. Agree To Pay Netflix's Broadband Bill Next Month?
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
I dunno what type of cap enforcement your ISP gives you. For now, most have a pretty bad policy of letting it ride for a month or three (that's good) but then sending a nasty letter implying you're a bad person, and that you should spend more with them or go away. They clearly are not throttling.
Sounds to me like Cogeco, like most others, has a fairly bad implementation of policy around their caps.
On the post: Let's Up The Ante: We'll Pay John Sununu & Harold Ford Jr. $1,000 To Pay Netflix's Broadband Bill
Re: Re: Re: someones got some bad math going on, so let me clear it up.
...is a clause that obviates a lot of capital investment.
Now, I'll be among the first to say that marginal costs determine price in perfectly competitive markets, not sunk costs in capital. But is it a competitive market when one vendor is selling the last generation Internet, and another is selling the latest? With Internet service, we are not making "the same phone calls" we made a couple of years ago. People selling faster Internet can charge more.
Since 1997, we've gone through many generations of infrastructure. Dial up modems, DSL, aDSL, vDSL, DOCSIS 1, 2, 3, FiOS, FTTC, FTTx, WiMAX, LTE. We have had steadily increasing speeds as a result. That happens not because "the infrastrusture is there" but because somebody keeps investing in new infrastructure. It's not free.
You say "there is no cost to increasing supply". But that's wrong. Supply is increased by investing capital in faster networks. That capital seeks rents.
So if you make the "so as long as the infrastructure is there" argument, then I will happily accept that as long as you are using your dial-up modem to make your post.
On the post: Let's Up The Ante: We'll Pay John Sununu & Harold Ford Jr. $1,000 To Pay Netflix's Broadband Bill
Re: Re: Re: Re:
For example, in a DOCSIS 3 cable system, certain frequencies are allocated for upload, others are allocated for download. The cable head-end 'listens' on the upload channels while it broadcasts on the download channels.
Normally, the upload channels are lower than the download channels, so that your cheap CPE gets the benefit of the better propagation characteristics of lower frequency. Your CPE is cheap because it needs to be priced to scale to every home, while the head-end equipment is much higher-grade.
Those download channels could be re-allocated to more upload if that is what the average user actually did. But they are not dynamically allocated in real-time.
It's called FDD for Frequency Division Duplexing. If that's a new concept to you, you have no business trying to correct me. Now, TDD, or Time Division Duplexing, used in some systems, uses the same channels for up and down transmission, using chunks of time for each direction. There are systems that can dynamically alter the proportion of up/down. This is not used by any fixed line ISP that I know of.
"American ISP's use the upload portion to limit bandwidth usage, you see the less upload you have the slower is your download too"
...which is just entirely wrong.
On the post: Let's Up The Ante: We'll Pay John Sununu & Harold Ford Jr. $1,000 To Pay Netflix's Broadband Bill
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OC1
A business-class service. Also sold as "partials" by some service providers.
You get the whole pipe to yourself, get guaranteed minimum speeds (unlike "best-effort" consumer service), and a Service Level Agreement to assure your QoS.
Prices start around $150/mo in the USA.
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