Is It Time?

[Bruce Wrenn]

With all this work from home, and on line schooling, is it time for legislators, or congress to declare high speed internet access a utility? We live in the most wealthy county in central NC. Capital building is less than twenty miles away by air, so we ain't exactly in the boonies anymore. In any direction I drive, it's less than two miles to high speed internet (broad band, cable, and fiber) but in our neighborhood, we get (on good days) 0.69MB. There is no way children can do live streaming lessons, unless they like watching a circle going round in the instructor's belly, and lots of it. Is it time?

[Joe Bradshaw]

Amen Bruce. My next door neighbor has AT&T fiber, but internet is not available at my address. I also live in Wake county.

[Brian Elfert]

I don't understand how declaring something a utility automatically makes it available to everyone.

[Frank Pratt]

in our neighborhood, we get (on good days) 0.69MB.

Ouch! My son lives well out of the city & he has pretty slow internet, but he can still watch Netflix without a problem. At my house, our internet provider is trying to get me to upgrade to 600 Mb/sec from 300. I just can't see the need though.

[John Lanciani]

I don't understand how declaring something a utility automatically makes it available to everyone.

In most, if not all states, utilities have a mandate to provide service to all.

[Rod Sheridan]

Yes, it’s time to spend the money to bring high speed internet to almos everyone.

This would require money from the government as many areas do not have the density to make access commercially viable.

[Keith Outten]

The problem is that it is expensive to run Internet services to remote homes. Should your local government mandate that everyone receive access the additional cost will be shared by every subscriber. Is it reasonable for your neighbors to pay for you to have service from a remote location? If your neighbors agree you better get ready for an increase, this is an opportunity for the utility to increase rates and they will not be shy about the new billing structure. Converting a private company to a public utility is a costly endeavor particularly since the new utility will have to satisfy a multitude of organizations. When I worked for Virginia Power we had 137 government agencies with specifications that governed our industry. It's not just the cost of running cable, there are costs associated that will forever continue to increase.

If you open this door the industry will change dramatically. I know for a fact that the big corporations have wanted to convert Internet delivery services to a metered rate system since 2001. Look at the changes in monthly fees in just the last 20 years. Remember when cable TV was just $19.95 per month with no commercials. In all fairness I don't keep up with the industry anymore so my comments are worth what you paid. I once owned an Internet Service Provider business for ten years until 2003 and can tell you when the door is opened we will all regret it.

[Brian Elfert]

Just because you can get a utility doesn't mean it will be cheap. I know a Boy Scout camp in Wisconsin that doesn't have a telephone in a sub camp that was built in the 1990s. The phone company wanted $20,000 so they decided not to have it installed. The main part of camp has phone service so messages were relayed via the camp radio system. They use a cell phone now that cell service is usable in the area.

On the other hand, I know a different Boy Scout camp in Minnesota that is about 8 miles from a paved road yet has fiber optic Internet service. Taxes paid for that installation.

[Bruce Wrenn]

Keith, sorry your arguments don't hold water. Remember now school children are REQUIRED to do lessons on line. Schools systems have been giving out computers, but without high speed access, they are as useful a "tits on a boar hog."Look at your phone bill (land line, or cell) and you will see a universal service fee. That's used to help those who can't afford it, plus pay for 911 service. As a regulated utility, all providers would have to justify charges to regulators. None of this "Mickey Mouse Stuff" you now see on your bill would exist. As an example, Verizon charges for sending you a bill, electronically, or by snail mail. How the heck (polite term) are you supposed to pay them if you don't know what your bill is? Look at the co-op phone companies and how they embraced high speed internet. Friend lives in southwest Virginia mountains. Co-op phone company provides high speed internet to all customers. When he lived in Cary (one of the richest towns in NC) he had to use satillite for internet as neither provider wanted to run lines down his street, a total distance of less than 1/4 mile, serving six houses. Their argument, in ten years, this area will have street widened and housing developments in place. As for rates, and service, only competition regulates price on both internet, and cell service. Across the creek from us (22 houses) less than 1/4 mile away they have three choices for internet, Century Link, Spectrum, and Ting, all offering 200 MB, or faster speed, for less than $50 / month (average,) plus the junk fees.

[Mike Henderson]

Amen Bruce. My next door neighbor has AT&T fiber, but internet is not available at my address. I also live in Wake county.

How far away is your neighbor? I'd talk with him/her and see if there's a way to share his/her access. It's technically against the service agreement to share your service but this may be the only way you can get it.

There's a number of ways to get a connection from their house to your house. A plain Ethernet cable can run 100 meters and there are wireless techniques that can go line-of-sight for longer distances.

Make an offer to pay half the Internet cost.

Mike

[Mike Henderson]

The problem is that it is expensive to run Internet services to remote homes. Should your local government mandate that everyone receive access the additional cost will be shared by every subscriber. Is it reasonable for your neighbors to pay for you to have service from a remote location? If your neighbors agree you better get ready for an increase, this is an opportunity for the utility to increase rates and they will not be shy about the new billing structure. Converting a private company to a public utility is a costly endeavor particularly since the new utility will have to satisfy a multitude of organizations. When I worked for Virginia Power we had 137 government agencies with specifications that governed our industry. It's not just the cost of running cable, there are costs associated that will forever continue to increase.

If you open this door the industry will change dramatically. I know for a fact that the big corporations have wanted to convert Internet delivery services to a metered rate system since 2001. Look at the changes in monthly fees in just the last 20 years. Remember when cable TV was just $19.95 per month with no commercials. In all fairness I don't keep up with the industry anymore so my comments are worth what you paid. I once owned an Internet Service Provider business for ten years until 2003 and can tell you when the door is opened we will all regret it.

I will point out that in our nation's history telephone service was considered a utility and telephone lines were run to rural houses because we (as a nation) felt that telephone service was a necessity. Electric service was similar.

It's possible that 5G will provide high speed wireless access to rural areas but I's skeptical.

Mike

[roger wiegand]

My most hilarious experience with internet access was the last company I started, a biotech in Cambridge, MA in 2015. Our building with physically on the MIT campus, on MIT-owned land, in the heard of the most technologically overloaded city in the country. Our choices for internet access were a telephone dialup line. Period. To get a decent connection we had to mount a directional antenna on the roof that talked to another antenna across the river in Boston to give us a 0.5 mb/s connection at a cost of $5000/month as long as it wasn't raining or snowing. Eventually we had a fiber optic line installed to a connection point at our expense to give us a useable connection.

[Rod Sheridan]

I will point out that in our nation's history telephone service was considered a utility and telephone lines were run to rural houses because we (as a nation) felt that telephone service was a necessity. Electric service was similar.

It's possible that 5G will provide high speed wireless access to rural areas but I's skeptical.

Mike

I work for a satellite company, we provide heavy route capacity into northern and arctic communities where it is then provided to the customer by the local commnications provider.

During this pandemic we've been asked to increase bandwidth to support increased activities.

Today, if you don't have high speed access you can't interact with the government, have telemedicine, distance learning, work from home and a lot of stuff I'm not aware of.

There's a reason Germany declared internet access a basic human right.

We're basically at the point where a conventional phone isn't required, however digital connectivity is.

Mike's comment above is spot on, we subsidized phone, electric, water and gas utilities to provide services to our citizens, this is as important in this century..........Rod.

P.S. High speed internet also has the ability to transform our lives, and the environment. I've been working from home since March 13, looks like I may be home until June due to the pandemic.

I haven't purchased gasoline in 3 weeks, the air quality all over the globe is far better, and over 3 weeks I've saved more than 40 hours commuting to work. It's astounding how much money and time I spent commuting, and how much better the environment is because we're not doing that now.

[Malcolm McLeod]

With all this work from home, and on line schooling, is it time for legislators, or congress to declare high speed internet access a utility? ...

Are y'all Tesla fans? He wanted wireless electricity, and IIRC the documentary said he thought it would be globally accessible and free. He was bit wide of the mark there.

I believe if you look at the history of utilities, they are granted a monopoly for a given area. They get ALL the customers in the high-profit high-density customer areas, and in return build the infrastructure to supply the money-pit low-density areas. Only after the build-out was paid for did Uncle Sugar allow competition. Generally, "monopoly" and "low-cost" are not used in the same sentence - at least in the world I live in.

I guess we could have Congress legislate billing rates, universal service areas, minimum speeds, and service reliability. SWWWEEEEET! (I may have found my next start-up!)

And what was that old, pre-break-up motto of Ma Bell...??? Oh, yeah.... "We don't care. We don't have to! ...We're the PHONE COMPANY!"

[Jim Becker]

There are all kinds of reasons that the idea of making high speed Internet accessible and ubiquitous can be phoo-phooed, but in the end, it's essential to our society that it happens and happens soon. The US is so far behind a huge chunk of the world in this and it isn't funny--we are almost a "third-world" country compared to many countries relative to connectivity. The only way it's going to happen is if the leadership of the country commits to it including both public and private funding to build it out. Big telecom kowtows to Wall Street and short term results and refuses to build out in underserved or unserved areas yet they block community efforts to address the issue in those areas, too. They are not going to make the investments that will lower their financial performance or allow others to address the issue unless compelled to do so. That means hard choices both philosophical/political and financial. But it has to get done almost as much as another key thing that we don't need to go into here. When you have 300+ million citizens, structures and processes have to change to support their needs.

[Bruce Wrenn]

Jim, one local town (Wilson) did build their own fiber network, because current providers weren't willing to offer level of service needed, plus serve ALL of the town. Internet service providers went to legislator crying FOWL, and had a law enacted to prevent other towns from following suit. Remember these ISP's are BIG campain donors, so members of legislator are their "lap dogs." Law prohibited Wilson from providing internet service outside of town limits, even though City Of Wilson Electric supplies most of that county and parts of a couple surrounding counties with electric service. Now they get requests for annexation, just to get high speed . Holly Springs ,closest town to us, put in a fiber network to connect government services, but had to lease it out to a third party to allow citizens to use it, even though their taxes paid for it.

[Brian Elfert]

Two requirements when I last moved in 2014 were natural gas service and high speed Internet. I seriously considered a house without natural gas, but the large garage/shop wasn't tall enough for my RV. Propane is a lot more expensive than natural gas plus the price can be more variable. I feel lucky to have cable Internet as the DSL services can be pretty slow, but DSL is way better than dial up.

[glenn bradley]

With all this work from home, and on line schooling, is it time for legislators, or congress to declare high speed internet access a utility?

We're nearly there. With the FCC buckling the original vision of the internet has sailed. Regulating it may eliminate some of the sleazy traffic engineering going on but, having been involved since the 90's I chafe at the idea. Time marches on. We evolve or we're left behind.

[Thomas McCurnin]

In today’s era of anti-big government, privatization of everything, and no regulation, asking the current crop of politicians to embrace government sponsored internet, regulation, and mandates is not going to happen.

I’ll be surprised if we still have a post office in a year.

[Mel Fulks]

In today’s era of anti-big government, privatization of everything, and no regulation, asking the current crop of politicians to embrace government sponsored internet, regulation, and mandates is not going to happen.

I’ll be surprised if we still have a post office in a year.
The Post Offfice was from the beginning a big deal and something this country has always been proud of. I don't think
anyone alive now will see it go. They did stop putting up the wanted posters. When I saw that I was hoping they had
caught all of them. But NO ! They just quit looking for them.

[Jim Koepke]

I know a Boy Scout camp in Wisconsin that doesn't have a telephone in a sub camp that was built in the 1990s. The phone company wanted $20,000 so they decided not to have it installed.
[edited]
On the other hand, I know a different Boy Scout camp in Minnesota that is about 8 miles from a paved road yet has fiber optic Internet service. Taxes paid for that installation.

To some extent each state has its own form of a Public Utilities Commission. It may have different names in different states. It is why in one state 8 miles from a paved road has public taxes paying for fiber optic when another state doesn't do diddly.

As long as there is money to be made by controlling subscriber bandwidth, you can bet there will be people doing everything they can to hang on to every bit of it they can.

jtk

[Bruce Wrenn]

DSL services can be pretty slow, but DSL is way better than dial up.Just barely in our area. Look at our speed, and that's on a good day( 0.69MB.) There is no such thing as live streaming in our neighborhood, unless you enjoy watching a circle go round and round in the belly of a person..

[Kev Williams]

Yesterday while attempting some surfing, it was going so slow I did a speed test, my normally 30-50 mbps clocked in at .03 mbps..! It was like that for several minutes, yet I WAS able to do email and have sites load- but all the ads just stopped it cold pretty much. Then all of a sudden like a light switch I had 43 megs. Today we've had the same thing, sporadic slowdowns. Really sucks to be talking via Ooma when that happens. I'm guessing net bandwidth is really being taxed these days...

[Jim Becker]

DSL services can be pretty slow, but DSL is way better than dial up.

Unfortunately, DSL is also a dying service as copper is being retired at an accelerated rate because it's become nearly impossible to maintain in many areas anymore. VZ is completely shutting down copper infrastructure in what appears to be the majority of its footprint by August of this year. While much of that will get taken care of with renewed deployment of fiber, that's not true everywhere. ATT is doing similar in many areas. One other aspect of this is that once an area converts to fiber, that essentially puts CLECs out of business because unlike with copper that was originally subsidized, the fiber is "private" and there's no regulation that requires VZ or ATT or whomever to share that fiber with any other entity. That copper sharing was something that helped DSL to thrive in many areas, but once it's shut down...it's "gone" even though it will still be hanging out on the poles until the world ends or it disintegrates on its own.

[Jim Koepke]

That copper sharing was something that helped DSL to thrive in many areas, but once it's shut down...it's "gone" even though it will still be hanging out on the poles until the world ends or it disintegrates on its own.

If it is unused and has scrap value, it will be quickly gone.

We have fiber to a nearby distribution point. Not long ago a vehicle took out a pole and kinked the fiber about 10 miles away. Kinked copper still works, kinked fiber doesn't. It took a couple days to get our internet and phone service back.

We have copper to the house. The distribution point is about a mile away if my guess is correct:

429982

This was done about a minute ago.

jtk

[Mike Henderson]

In this area, they run fiber to an access point, and then copper to the homes. I have an access point about a quarter mile from me and have 50Mbps down, 10Mbps up with VDSL across a single twisted pair. I can't see the company putting in fiber in our area - at least not in my lifetime.

The backbone of the Internet is massively over provisioned (capacity) so if people are experiencing slow downs, it's probably local congestion.

I have noticed things don't load as quickly now as they did, however.

Mike

[Edwin Santos]

Is it feasible at all for high speed internet service to be distributed on a wide area basis wirelessly? I don't know if this would be by satellite or the same concept as wi-fi on a large scale?

I agree that distance learning for kids and maybe telemedicine are really casting light on how much of a disadvantage it is to not have access to high speed internet.

[Mike Henderson]

Is it feasible at all for high speed internet service to be distributed on a wide area basis wirelessly? I don't know if this would be by satellite or the same concept as wi-fi on a large scale?

I agree that distance learning for kids and maybe telemedicine are really casting light on how much of a disadvantage it is to not have access to high speed internet.

The problem with satellite is the propagation delay up and back to a geosynchronous satellite. All of the companies who are planning for satellite Internet are using low earth orbit because of that. Maybe one of them will get going and "universal" access will be available. The number of satellites for some of these systems is mind boggling - maybe 1,000 satellites for one system.

One of the selling points of 5G is that it could be used for home access. But the frequencies of 5G are relatively short range so they'd have to put antennas on lots of telephone poles in neighborhoods. We definitely might see that because it would bypass the monopoly Internet providers. For example, most places only have one cable company because laying the cable is expensive and one company was given a monopoly in order to get them to make the investment.

Mike

[Bruce Wrenn]

Is it feasible at all for high speed internet service to be distributed on a wide area basis wirelessly? I don't know if this would be by satellite or the same concept as wi-fi on a large scale?

I agree that distance learning for kids and maybe telemedicine are really casting light on how much of a disadvantage it is to not have access to high speed internet.AT&T has had "Mobleys" for years. They were designed to create mobile hot spots in cars and campers. Plug into the OBD port for power, so they only worked with later model cars, but it didn't take long for plug in power supplies to become available. One of the conditions of T-Moble and Sprint's merger was to create such mobile hot spot devices, at reasonable prices.

[Jim Becker]

If it is unused and has scrap value, it will be quickly gone.

That's actually not happening because in aerial areas, a huge portion of the fiber infrastructure is lashed to the old copper. Even when not, it actually costs them more in labor to remove the copper than the could get for scrap value. So they leave it to rot...

[Jim Becker]

Is it feasible at all for high speed internet service to be distributed on a wide area basis wirelessly? I don't know if this would be by satellite or the same concept as wi-fi on a large scale?.

Yes, it is and that's one of the reasons for the push for 5G. (Although in rural areas, it's likely going to all be low-band and therefore, only about 205 faster than 4G LTE is today for data transmission. The challenge with wireless service is that the providers are going to have to be willing to re-jigger how they charge for bandwidth. It can be truly very expensive at the current time for "hot spot" type use because of bandwidth limitations/caps/throttling, etc. None of that is good for folks who want to stream content with the same fervor they do on fixed line services like cable Internet or fiber services like the Verizon FiOS I use.

[Brian Elfert]

Unfortunately, DSL is also a dying service as copper is being retired at an accelerated rate because it's become nearly impossible to maintain in many areas anymore. VZ is completely shutting down copper infrastructure in what appears to be the majority of its footprint by August of this year. While much of that will get taken care of with renewed deployment of fiber, that's not true everywhere. ATT is doing similar in many areas. One other aspect of this is that once an area converts to fiber, that essentially puts CLECs out of business because unlike with copper that was originally subsidized, the fiber is "private" and there's no regulation that requires VZ or ATT or whomever to share that fiber with any other entity. That copper sharing was something that helped DSL to thrive in many areas, but once it's shut down...it's "gone" even though it will still be hanging out on the poles until the world ends or it disintegrates on its own.

My understanding is Verizon is providing land line service via a cellular box placed in the home if one still wants land line service. I recall that some phone companies did not replace copper lines after hurricane Sandy.

[Brandon Speaks]

As much as I tend to be anti big government, internet access to rural areas is a problem that needs to be solved.

Fyi thou being a utility does not guarantee access. There is one permanent resident on the road my cabin is on and we dont have electricity on that road.

Finding a way to make internet significantly more accessible needs to happen though. Alternatively 5g coverage could work. My hotspot is fast and reliable.

[John Goodin]

Just to highlight the significance of high speed internet, our local school district issues laptops to every kid in grades 6-12. Most assignments are completed and turned in online. They are going to deploy 6000 more to students in the higher elementary grades soon to help with at home learning as a result of the virus. Almost all school communication — homework calendars, official notices, report cards, grade book access — is completely online.

The district has over 35,000 students and parents pay $70 per year maintenance fee for the laptop. If there is a financial need the fee is waived.

[Jim Becker]

My understanding is Verizon is providing land line service via a cellular box placed in the home if one still wants land line service. I recall that some phone companies did not replace copper lines after hurricane Sandy.
They attempted to do that after Sandy, but the push-back was huge because what they were using didn't work with medical devices, etc., and the largest portion of folks needing them were older with medical requirements. They stopped doing that and are currently tying up loose ends for all of the wiring centers (COs) that are decommissioning copper by August by finishing fiber build-outs. There will still be some copper wiring centers still running in parts of VA and some other areas, but most of their area is (finally) moving to 100% fiber.

[Art Mann]

Bruce, sorry your arguments don't hold water. At least where I live, if you choose to build or move into an existing house that is far awat from power or phone service, you will have to pay for the utility to run the service to your house. The cost of your decision could be many thousands of dollars. I just built a new house in an upscale neighborhood. The company that was already in the neighborhood wanted to charge me $500 for running service to the house because they needed to add more than just a cable. I did my research and concluded that there was no way to escape the fee. Fortunately, another competing company came into the neighborhood and agreed to provide service for zero installation dollars. I doubt if this would be true if cable was considered a utility.

It is not the cable company's responsibility to provide you with high speed internet for no installation fee no matter how your children are educated. Neither is it their responsibility to deliver bills to you.


Keith, sorry your arguments don't hold water. Remember now school children are REQUIRED to do lessons on line. Schools systems have been giving out computers, but without high speed access, they are as useful a "tits on a boar hog."Look at your phone bill (land line, or cell) and you will see a universal service fee. That's used to help those who can't afford it, plus pay for 911 service. As a regulated utility, all providers would have to justify charges to regulators. None of this "Mickey Mouse Stuff" you now see on your bill would exist. As an example, Verizon charges for sending you a bill, electronically, or by snail mail. How the heck (polite term) are you supposed to pay them if you don't know what your bill is? Look at the co-op phone companies and how they embraced high speed internet. Friend lives in southwest Virginia mountains. Co-op phone company provides high speed internet to all customers. When he lived in Cary (one of the richest towns in NC) he had to use satillite for internet as neither provider wanted to run lines down his street, a total distance of less than 1/4 mile, serving six houses. Their argument, in ten years, this area will have street widened and housing developments in place. As for rates, and service, only competition regulates price on both internet, and cell service. Across the creek from us (22 houses) less than 1/4 mile away they have three choices for internet, Century Link, Spectrum, and Ting, all offering 200 MB, or faster speed, for less than $50 / month (average,) plus the junk fees.

[Ronald Blue]

Bruce, sorry your arguments don't hold water. At least where I live, if you choose to build or move into an existing house that is far awat from power or phone service, you will have to pay for the utility to run the service to your house. The cost of your decision could be many thousands of dollars. I just built a new house in an upscale neighborhood. The company that was already in the neighborhood wanted to charge me $500 for running service to the house because they needed to add more than just a cable. I did my research and concluded that there was no way to escape the fee. Fortunately, another competing company came into the neighborhood and agreed to provide service for zero installation dollars. I doubt if this would be true if cable was considered a utility.

It is not the cable company's responsibility to provide you with high speed internet for no installation fee no matter how your children are educated. Neither is it their responsibility to deliver bills to you.

I will agree with that Art. When we built our new home 2 years ago even though the power company had lines right in front of our property it still cost me about $5000 to get power ran 300 feet to where the transformer is setting. As for cable/internet...well Mediacom is a joke. Because the "technician" didn't want to do the work they declined to run their service in. Interesting how when he wheeled off the distance he circled around to the back of the property to add distance. It worked out for the best though. We now have fiber and couldn't be happier with it. Fast and dependable. At what cost does the government mandate everyone get high speed internet? How much are we to pay for sparsely populated areas to get high speed internet?

[Brian Elfert]

They attempted to do that after Sandy, but the push-back was huge because what they were using didn't work with medical devices, etc., and the largest portion of folks needing them were older with medical requirements. They stopped doing that and are currently tying up loose ends for all of the wiring centers (COs) that are decommissioning copper by August by finishing fiber build-outs. There will still be some copper wiring centers still running in parts of VA and some other areas, but most of their area is (finally) moving to 100% fiber.

It seems like it would have been cheaper to just run in a smaller number of copper pairs to reflect reduced usage. I suppose they hope to repay the cost of the fiber by getting more Internet customers and maybe supplying TV service too.

[Brian Elfert]

A local large school district gave out 1,700 wireless hot spots recently for students without Internet to do online learning. This is an urban district so I don't think the issue is not being able to get high speed Internet. The issue is generally that the households are low income and couldn't afford Internet service.

[Jim Becker]

It seems like it would have been cheaper to just run in a smaller number of copper pairs to reflect reduced usage. I suppose they hope to repay the cost of the fiber by getting more Internet customers and maybe supplying TV service too.
They are decommissioning all the copper support infrastructure since most of it is unsupported by the original manufacturers and parts are non-existent. Moving to fiber also solves the distance issue for HSI...something that has plagued DSL from the beginning. The fiber networks are passive optical networks (PON) and require no electronics outside of the central office other than the optical network terminal (ONT) at the subscriber's location. For that reason, they are much more reliable and resilient relative to things like power outages. Yes, the end user needs to provide UPS or generator to maintain service, but unlike Cable and hybrid fiber/copper infrastructure, power problems don't bring the network down for consumers. And yes..."phone" service isn't the goal here, although it can be a benefit for folks who still want it. It's all about Internet access and content distribution. VZ has even now moved away from pushing land lines in bundles with their current "buy what you want" mix and match pricing. For the record, I use VZ for my Internet service (currently 400/400) but am using Hulu Plus LiveTV for content.

[Keith Outten]

I expect that not one of you have a guaranteed "Certified Information Rate" (CIR). You purchase bandwidth at a variety of speeds but the speed is not guaranteed, you get what you get. When I owned Hampton Roads Online we had a direct commercial connection to a primary pipe with a guaranteed CIR that never slowed down. In those days it was expensive but it was the only choice for Internet Providers.

[Mike Henderson]

I agree with getting rid of the copper loop. We've pushed it about as far as it will go with all the various flavors of DSL. It would be foolish to put in new copper loops.

I expect we'll see the fiber infrastructure pushed in a similar manner eventually. People are developing QAM for optical communications that will allow fiber to carry higher data rates than it can today.

Mike

[Jim Becker]

Keith, you're absolutely correct that consumer grade service isn't guaranteed and that "up to" phrase is very much part of the offer language. But what's troubling is that so many can't get any kind of "high speed" service in so much of our great country. That affects education, gainful employment and quality access to information since so much of the world we live in is dependent on access at this point.

[Ronald Blue]

Keith, you're absolutely correct that consumer grade service isn't guaranteed and that "up to" phrase is very much part of the offer language. But what's troubling is that so many can't get any kind of "high speed" service in so much of our great country. That affects education, gainful employment and quality access to information since so much of the world we live in is dependent on access at this point.

But how much are you willing to shoulder for those in low density population areas to have high speed internet? It takes a large investment to build a network. I have no idea how much but it's always based on enough subscribers to generate revenue flow on the positive side. If they can create the technology to funnel it through the electrical service that would be a great solution. They have some ability here because my electric meter has been read remotely for quite a few years now. We might never see high speed for all in our life time.

[Jim Becker]

That's a good question, Ronald...but ultimately, the answer is what is best for the people in our society and country and how we are able to compete with the rest of the world.

BTW, the technology already exists to travel Internet traffic via power systems. But it's not very efficient and has a level of complexity that's served as a barrier to adoption. Your electrical meter (and gas meter if that applies) usually has an RF radio that transmits to collection points spaced on the infrastructure...if you look carefully, you'll see the receivers on the poles. That's low level, low bandwidth transmission of simple data, however.

[Rod Sheridan]

Agreed Jim, high speed internet access is as important as being able to read and write in previous centuries.

Without high speed internet for everyone, a country winds up at an enormous disadvantage compared to other countries, or even regions in the same country.

At present we find ourselves in the Fourth Industrial Revolution, like previous versions it will have winners and losers, we certainly don't want entire groups of people, or nations to be left behind due a failure to plan for the future.

High speed data will be crucial for the future.

[Mark Bolton]

The other major problem with Keiths argument at least in our area is that companies (Frontier who is now under numerous investigations) were paid BY THE GOVERNMENT to run fiber and increase capacity in many areas and the reels are sitting in a field somewhere covered in weeds. The "government" money that was suppose to fund the expansion was pilfered on corporate executive compensation and not at the lower level to increase bandwidth. They will likely be going down for the count at any minute as will many others when the same issue comes to bear.

I dont know anyone in our area on any of three providers that EVER see's their contracted speeds. None. I am lucky that I see close to mine almost daily but I am only on a 6 meg service and there is a Frontier switch building 10' off the upper side of my shop so the wire from there to where Im sitting is about 140' long. At the house we are to have 40 megs (sudden-stink) and we are lucky to see 23-25.

Its no shock that developing countries have gig internet all day long as they are running on brand new infrastructure. The problem in the US, no different than the power company, the gas company, and so on, is that executive and shareholder compensation has TRUMPED upgrading the infrastructure. In my small community, and I would argue on my small 115 acres of property, there is enough natural gas leaked from gathering lines from numerous wells, dumped straight into the air due to a shear lack of maintenance to heat thousands of homes daily. DAILY. Yet there will be a petition in front of the public service commission every year for a rate increase.

The cost to recover from the pilfering of not maintaining our utility infrastructure and allowing that money to be bled off to executive and shareholder profits will be staggering.

[Ole Anderson]

I am certainly no expert when it comes to internet, other than to say I have been a Comcast customer for 35 years. In that time I believe they upgraded our local distribution network once, from copper to copper. They keep finding ways to get more through the old copper coax. Now I get 200/20 easily and I could pay for twice that at my home. On copper. Who is going to pay for distribution to rural areas? Subsidies by the other regional users? That is us. The government? That is us. Or by charging actual costs to the end user? I agree, everybody needs it. But who is willing to pay for it? It is all about population density. That is why many other countries with much higher densities than us can afford to provide stellar speeds. Ever look out the airliner window going cross country over the United States? A lot of vacant land there folks.

[Jim Becker]

We will either pay for it out of our pockets or we will pay for it by stepping back from being a world leader...

[Keith Outten]

There are benefits and disadvantages to living in a rural area. Those of us who do know and understand there might not be services in the country that are common in the city. We don't have access to fiber networks where I live and many areas of the County still do not have cable TV or Internet services. Satellite dishes are still being used by some. You cannot expect the world to come to you at someone else's expense. For most of us the benefits of living in the country are far more important than access to some technologies that city folk enjoy or just take for granted. When my parents moved here from the city we had a party line telephone and a roof top antenna and it took years before we had access to cable services.

My wife is a high school teacher and I am aware that we have school children in our county that do not have Internet access at home. Most of the people who do not have access can't afford cable. They do have access at the local library and at school. What these children do have access to is a space that they enjoy more then most city people know. There are also friendly neighbors and close friends, we have watched generations of our neighbors grow up here and establish their own homes and families. Living here in the county is a world away from growing up in the city and I could never go back, but that option is always available.

If you live up North and get tired of the cold Winters you know what your options are, but don't expect other people to pay you to move. We were a world leader before the Internet was created, its not that critical IMO. I am a big fan on Internet connectivity but I also understand that there is an extremely bad side of the Net and when it comes to children we have not properly managed the dark side and we will pay for being irresponsible.

[Mark Bolton]

The issue at least to me is that infrastructure is always funded by the mass population. Roads are not paid for proportionately out of each individuals pockets. Fuel tax from people traveling through, trucking, and so on, along with national government subsidies pay for roads, power transmission lines, natural gas and oil transmission lines, and so on. I dont think anyone that enjoys life in a rural area is expecting gig internet service. The question then becomes has high speed internet become an essential no different than electricity and telephone.

The problem to me is not that the speeds are not through the roof the problem is that the providers have been paid by their customers and the tax payer to improve and expand service and they have squandered and misappropriated the money they were given to do so. At the house where we have sudden-stink they went through a bad spot and had contractors in from other areas and we had one at the house for some work and he said he had been in the industry for 20 years and had never seen switch gear and equipment as out-dated as he was working on. Yet the CEO and shareholders continue to get paid.

My property is off grid. There is no option for internet other than tethered cell access. I agree fully you choose where you live. But when you are connected to a phone/dsl and you simply cant get ANY service what so ever its a bit ridiculous.

[Edwin Santos]

That's a good question, Ronald...but ultimately, the answer is what is best for the people in our society and country and how we are able to compete with the rest of the world.




We will either pay for it out of our pockets or we will pay for it by stepping back from being a world leader...

It's not a cut and dry issue. If it were, there wouldn't be a persisting debate. But I tend to agree with the above comments. Each person has the right to define their own balancing act between what is good for themselves personally, and what is good for society as a whole, the so-called me vs. we equation. Where it gets tricky is where we can't have our cake and eat it too, but rather must sacrifice one side of the equation for the good of the other.
Private enterprise is very important, but it cannot be a total societal solution for the economic reasons many here are pointing out. However history shows us that when a society becomes polarized into classes of haves and have-nots, it never results in a stable, sustainable society for the long run.

Paradoxically, the immigration wave that brought immigrant to the US in the 19th and early 20th century was comprised of a large percentage of people fleeing the class system of Europe where they were shut out of opportunity. The idea of the American Dream was that a level playing field made opportunity available to all. The internet was supposed to be a democratizer, making education and knowledge available to all, but if the tool itself is inaccessible to a meaningful number of people, those people are shut out of an opportunity.

The President has been talking lately about economic stimulation through Federal investment in infrastructure. Again, looking back to history, public investment in national infrastructure was definitely a cylinder in the post-war economic engine, and it may have the potential to do it again. Perhaps widespread internet access could be part of such a movement, even if it were a hybrid public/private approach in respect of the existing infrastructure. It seems to me the Fed and State highway system did not ignore rural areas, so if physical transportation could blanket the entire country, why couldn't internet access?
Edwin

BTW, yes, the comment above about the dark side of the internet is totally valid. But the benefits of the tool outweigh the risks of the dark aspects. To forego it entirely for safety reasons would be like foregoing owning a car only because there are accidents on the road all the time. In our case, we're fortunate enough to have high speed internet for our family and to afford to buy content filtering controls to at least attempt to keep the kids safe online. I realize it's probably still not 100% safe, but even 80% is better than 0%.

[Bruce Wrenn]

Right now children enjoy access to neither local library, nor school for internet services. As for rural, we live between two towns separated by less than three miles on our road, and co joined most other roads. Regularly these two towns are ranked as the best place to live, so we AIN"T IN THE BOON DOCKS. For many years both towns granted EXCLUSIVE franchises to providers, which meant the was no competition. I ride thru rural areas in other parts of the state, where houses are MILES APART, and see co-ax/ fiber strung from the poles with service drops to the houses. Remember at one time there was no rural mail delivery, you had go to post office to get your mail. RFD stands for Rural Free Delivery, FYI. When buying gas in Virginia, the gas taxes help pay for roads I will never drive on. Supposed I could get those taxes back? Fat chance. You go to hospital and part of your bill is to cover those who can't pay. The federal road taxes on fuel seldom return 100% to originating states. Only a few states get back what they pay, and a few get a lot more than they pay. Look at the roads around northern Virginia as an example. I-95 south of Richmond is little changed since it was built in the sixties, but north of Richmond, it's a different story. Again, we are paying for roads we will never drive on. We have an arena in this county that I have never set foot in. It's supported by the hotel / motel / prepared foods taxes, which means every time I buy a burger, or take wife to dinner, I'm helping pay for something I don't use. The list is endless

[Rod Sheridan]

Yes Bruce, and that's great, all those taxes make for a society worth living in.........Regards, Rod.

[Keith Outten]

Our system of roads are there for anyone to use, we share them equally, however I must drive much farther to get on an Interstate highway because I live in a rural area. I accept that there isn't enough traffic in my area to warrant the expense of providing better access. I cannot use your internet connection.

Northern Virginia is politically powerful. Richmond is the capital of Virginia where everyone sends their tax money, they take care of their city before anyone else is considered for funds.

We are and have always been a society of have and have-nots. General Washington didn't cross the Delaware River with his feet wrapped in rags, he wore comfortable warm boots. The street I live on was in terrible shape for decades until someone who lived on our street was elected to the Board Of Supervisors. The difference between our system and many others is that the have-nots have the same voting power as the haves and when the have-nots decide to exercise their authority in mass they can make the earth tremble.

Fair is just a word in the dictionary somewhere between faint and fart :)

[Thomas McCurnin]

Cable TV and Internet was never developed, installed, maintained, and paid for by Government Funds, for the simple reason that wiring large cities and small rural areas was a hugely expensive proposition and would yield zero income from the subscribers. Therefore, cities granted exclusive franchises to large cable companies to pay for the wire, run the cables, maintain the system and to provide content. This is the business model that 100% of the municipalities have chosen, and as far as I know, it is the only politically feasible way of dealing with TV and Internet.

The options are:

1. 100% Government Take Over. One could have Government buy the cable, run it to the home, maintain it, and then contract with a cable company for content. I don't see any City wanting to undertake that massive expense. The Federal Government has a similar problem with Post Offices, and maintaining Post Offices in small, rural areas is simply not profitable and is not justified. But then again, if bringing mail service at an enormous expense to Podunk Center Iowa, population 538, is deemed to be "worth it," in the scheme of the greater good, then terrific, have your Post Office and lets build high speed Internet to this backwater town for the sake of the 75 students there. President Roosevelt's TVA program took that exact approach and felt building roads, bridges, and dams providing electricity, telephones, and other modern services to rural America was important. Perhaps we want to re-visit an infrastructure program. But there's no free lunch--you have to pay for it with taxes.

2. Franchising the Cable Rights to a Private Vendor and Extract Additional Promises. This is capitalism and where we are at right now, franchising the rights to operate cable within muncipalities. The idea that we are going to burden the private industry e.g., "regulate" the private sector, taking away the free market and supply and demand, is simply a non-starter in most political circles, especially in rural America. These franchises come up for renewals every decade or two, and there are many competing concepts, such as keeping rates low, providing better content and faster service. The fact of the matter is that forcing the cable company to provide high speed Internet to Podunk Center, Iowa population 538, is a complete loss for the cable vendor, and they ain't gonna do it, unless the 538 citizens collectively agree to reimburse the company with increased taxes, as there is no free lunch. If you don't like this option, then go up to Option One, above.

I offer no opinion on these options, other than to say we have collectively chosen Option Two--we have to deal with it.

[Jim Becker]

Tom, only a portion of Internet access is provided by "cable" operators. While current fiber installs by the big telcos were not funded by the government, the copper infrastructure absolutely was and while it's less used now for Internet, it was one of the primary vectors for earlier access, starting with dial-up and then progressing to various forms of DSL. I mentioned this earlier, but because that copper was to a large extent funded by government "back in the day", the carriers were required to permit alternative providers to use that copper to provide competitive services for DSL and in many cases, even for land-line phone service. They are not required to do that for their fiber installation because that was paid for by the independent companies. However, they were indeed given financial tax incentives by government to build out new infrastructure and as has been mentioned by at least one other person, they didn't perform while still getting the incentives.

[Jim Becker]

Related to this discussion...

Why rural Americans are having a hard time working from home
https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/29/us/rural-broadband-access-coronavirus-trnd/index.html

[Brian Elfert]

I've written before about the Boy Scout camp in Northern Minnesota that has fiber optic Internet in the middle of nowhere about 8 miles from a paved road. The local phone company spent about $150 million to wire a 5,000 square mile area. No idea how much was from taxes. It is better service than I get at home although my home speed is plenty fast.

I believe Comcast has installed fiber optics in my area although the fiber is only to neighborhoods where it switches back to coax. I have 175 megabit and no trouble working from home.

[Mike Henderson]

I believe Comcast has installed fiber optics in my area although the fiber is only to neighborhoods where it switches back to coax. I have 175 megabit and no trouble working from home.

I believe just about all the cable systems have replaced their backbone with fiber to the neighborhood. When I was working, back in 2000, that was pretty common.

The thing to look out for with cable is that they can give you very high speed down (from the Internet to your computer) but the speed up (from your computer to the Internet) is often really limited. It has to do with the spectrum allocation on the cable - upstream doesn't have a lot of spectrum. Of course, my knowledge of cable systems is dated (I retired shortly after 2000) so they may have made some changes.

Mike

[Perry Hilbert Jr]

high speed internet is not available in about half of our school district. There are some folks who because of steep hillsides can't get satellite anything and cable is not strung in their area and likely will not be. Some areas can't even get cell service reliably. One parent took their kid to the library just to do his home computer homework, and the library was only open two week nights and the librarian made arrangements to leave the internet on so they could sit in the parking lot and do the work. I am told by a buddy that some towns provide internet for free and the entire town is wired and has routers up on unitility poles so the towns folk can access the net anywhere in town. He suggested that to a small town he lives in. The town has about 250 homes and businesses, is surrounded by steep mountains and is less than a square mile and the town fathers thought he was nuts. When it came out that the town could provide it for a cost of about $7 per household per month and the cable company was charging $64, they took notice.

Most internet is provided by cable companies and cable companies have "franchise" agreements with most municipalities. Basically in exchange for the exclusive cable rights, the company pays the municipality a certain fee per month. ie, your town has sold you down the river, forced you to buy from just one company and the company send them a legal bribe called a franchise fee. These franchise agreements expire and must be renewed. Just get two or three people to start questioning why a franchise agreement should be renewed and every one gets nervous. Being told that I can only get cable from one company at that company's price is a monopoly and should be illegal, same when they are the only provider of internet. However, since fios and satellite, the cable company gets to claim they are no longer a monopoly.

[Jim Becker]

The thing to look out for with cable is that they can give you very high speed down (from the Internet to your computer) but the speed up (from your computer to the Internet) is often really limited. It has to do with the spectrum allocation on the cable - upstream doesn't have a lot of spectrum. Of course, my knowledge of cable systems is dated (I retired shortly after 2000) so they may have made some changes.


This is correct. Under the standards that Cable Internet is currently distributed, the service is asymmetrical because of spectrum on the cable infrastructure which was originally developed for content distribution, not content retrieval. The next generation of the standard will better support symmetrical bandwidth but it will be some time before that becomes deployed in the industry.

FTTP (fiber to the premise) like I have with FiOS doesn't have the physical spectrum limitation so the service is symmetrical. Comcast does have a high-end 2gb service available that's symmetrical but AFAIK, they have to deliver it via fiber rather than the normal cable connection to the premise.

[Brian Elfert]

One of the reasons cities grant monopolies for utilities is they don't want poles and cables everywhere if there were a dozen phone companies, a dozen electric companies, and a dozen cable companies all running their own lines. Of course, they like the franchise fee money they can get for granting monopolies. The utilities just pass the franchise fees to the customer anyhow.

The city I live in long ago forced all utilities to be underground. There are some older sections that are still above ground, but most are underground.

[Lee DeRaud]

This is correct. Under the standards that Cable Internet is currently distributed, the service is asymmetrical because of spectrum on the cable infrastructure which was originally developed for content distribution, not content retrieval. The next generation of the standard will better support symmetrical bandwidth but it will be some time before that becomes deployed in the industry.The odd bit with my ISP (Spectrum) is that the upload speed never seems to change with the download speed. A couple years ago I had 50Mbs download and 10Mbs upload. Two upgrade cycles later, I have >200Mbs down and still only 10Mbs up...seems like the upload speed would have also scaled with whatever changes they made (encoding scheme?) to get the 4X download increase.

[Mike Henderson]

The odd bit with my ISP (Spectrum) is that the upload speed never seems to change with the download speed. A couple years ago I had 50Mbs download and 10Mbs upload. Two upgrade cycles later, I have >200Mbs down and still only 10Mbs up...seems like the upload speed would have also scaled with whatever changes they made (encoding scheme?) to get the 4X download increase.

On a cable system, the download is located at a frequency above about 50MHz - could be a lot higher than 50MHz - even above 1 GHz. And the bandwidth of that "channel" is pretty much unconstrained. So they can give you a very high speed. Additionally, that channel uses a modulation called QAM (more than likely) and there are different levels of QAM, with the higher levels allowing higher speed - but requiring less noise on the channel. As the cable company pushed fiber closer to the home, the noise got less (fiber doesn't contribute any noise to the coax section of the system). If they bring fiber to the curb and only have to use coax from there to your house, the noise is very low and they can use a very high level of QAM.

The upload is somewhere below 50MHz and it's not dedicated. It's more than likely a shared channel so you essentially have to be allocated a time slot on the channel you're working on. That channel uses QAM also, but most likely a lower level of QAM for certain reasons.

Anyway, the short answer is that the cable company can increase the download speed fairly easily but is very constrained on the upload. Since they only advertise the download speed - and very few people ever ask about the upload - the system works for them.

Mike

[I'm going from memory here - I haven't worked on cable modems since I retired and that was almost 20 years ago.]

[Jim Becker]

Lee, Mike is correct. The system that your cable provider is using is "physically" constrained for upload, apparently to 10 Mbs up, due to "what" their network is built with. I've been on fiber with symmetrical service (currently 400/400) for many years now and even being retired, a slow upload would drive my crazy! This is a particularly touchy thing for all the folks who are working from home and schooling from home right now, too, because unlike the common pattern of most consumer use being content consumption, work and school generate a lot of content creation and slow uploads can be frustrating, especially with multiple people trying at once.

[Brian Elfert]

I have Comcast with 175 megabits down and I think 10 megabits up. I didn't even realize the upload was so slow until about a week ago. I have worked from home about five weeks now and only once was the upload speed an issue.

I just thought Comcast is stopping people from running servers and such from home so they keep the upload speed low. I didn't realize it is an inherent limitation of Internet over cable.

[Mike Henderson]

I have Comcast with 175 megabits down and I think 10 megabits up. I didn't even realize the upload was so slow until about a week ago. I have worked from home about five weeks now and only once was the upload speed an issue.

I just thought Comcast is stopping people from running servers and such from home so they keep the upload speed low. I didn't realize it is an inherent limitation of Internet over cable.

For many people, a slower uplink is not a problem. When you do a web access, only a small amount of data is sent to the Internet and then the Internet sends you a lot of data for your web page. Maybe you'll download a large file. While that's happening the only thing going up is the acknowledgements for the packets sent, which is a small amount of data.

Where it gets to be a problem is (like Jim) you need to send a lot of data to the Internet.

When ADSL was the "thing" it was the same way - high speed down and much slower up. But it was a heck of a lot better than dial up.

Mike

[Lee DeRaud]

Where it gets to be a problem is (like Jim) you need to send a lot of data to the Internet.E.g. when people talk about how great "the cloud" is for backups. :)

[Brian Elfert]

I do backups to the cloud with my 10 Megabit up and it hasn't been an issue. They run starting at midnight and are done by morning.

[Lee DeRaud]

I do backups to the cloud with my 10 Megabit up and it hasn't been an issue. They run starting at midnight and are done by morning.
That works out to what, 20GB? Suffice it to say, I have quite a bit more than that to deal with.

[Brian Elfert]

That works out to what, 20GB? Suffice it to say, I have quite a bit more than that to deal with.

I only have a 250GB SSD in my PC that has 125GB on it so, yes, my daily backups are tiny.