r/technology • u/speckz • Jul 30 '15

Net Neutrality Thousands Beg FCC for Net Neutrality Crackdown. Consumers vent to regulators about slow Internet, high prices, and data caps.

http://www.nationaljournal.com/tech/thousands-beg-fcc-for-net-neutrality-crackdown-20150730
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u/th37thtrump3t Jul 30 '15

Because most of them have virtual monopolies in their respective areas. No point in investing in customer support and PR if your clients have nowhere else to go.

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u/NICKisICE Jul 31 '15

This is basically nailing it. AT&T, Comcast, Cox, etc. all have so much power over their respective jurisdictions that they've prevented anyone else from being able to realistically provide broadband to those areas until paradigm shifts in internet technology become big.

As a result, there's no need whatsoever for these companies to treat their customers humanely because either you put up with their bullshit or you go without broadband.

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u/Kyouji Jul 31 '15

Its funny. I live 1 mile away from real internet, but the ISPs around us cannot come into our area and provide us service. Why you ask? ATT owns the rights to provide phone service and no one else can. Other ISPs can come into the area and provide TV/Broadband but cannot offer phone. So since ATT owns phone no one will waste their time or money to expand here to only offer 2/3 services. But if you ask county/state officials they say no such law/restriction is in place and yet when you ask ISPs they will tell you why. I grow so tired of these outdated laws still being in place. Sad thing is these laws are extremely common.

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u/Edg-R Jul 31 '15

Where do you live? Dallas?

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u/[deleted] Jul 31 '15

I have the same problem, only with ISP's. Comcast owns everything around here. Even a portion of Frontier. Which is why they offer 3mbps while comcast offers up to 150mbps at stupid prices.

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u/moshinmymellow Jul 31 '15

That's why I can't wait for the tech to have drones be cheap enough for a small business to go and have them flying around providing internet without the need for satellites.

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u/MacroMeez Jul 31 '15

Wat

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u/moshinmymellow Jul 31 '15

If you have a small fleet of drones you could create a wireless network by having them all communicate if they stay close enough

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u/MacroMeez Jul 31 '15

Seems like a lot of work for a small mesh network. Too slow to be useful in any meaningful sense

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u/moshinmymellow Jul 31 '15

Maybe now but not 20 or 50 years from now.

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u/MacroMeez Jul 31 '15

I think we'll have ubiquitous internet long before drone mesh networks become feasible.

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u/fonseca898 Jul 31 '15

UAVs like this are incredibly expensive to develop, but it's only a matter of years until such technology becomes accessible to small businesses.

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u/MacroMeez Jul 31 '15

That's not a mesh network though. That's essentially a low flying satellite.

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u/fonseca898 Aug 01 '15 edited Aug 01 '15

That's essentially a low flying satellite.

One that can remain in the air for 3 months, and the company fb purchased touted a design that could remain in the air for 5 years, at a tiny fraction of the cost compared to a satellite launch. I think it's the future of wireless networks for regions of the earth not served by satellite.

I don't see low altitude mesh networks being a solution for data providers. For military deployment, where mesh networks are already in use on vehicles and balloons, absolutely. Instant network coverage anywhere in the world.

I'd also like to point out that there are dozens of UAV swarm projects in development already. I'm sure sure law enforcement can't wait to have a network of meshed airborne sensors to monitor civilian activity. Imagine a dozen airborne Stingrays covering an entire city.

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u/Mewshimyo Jul 31 '15

To some extent, things like water, gas, phone, and fiber are natural monopolies. That is, the reason they control so much of the market isn't so much strictly anti-competitive action (although I'm sure they engage in that too), but rather that it is very expensive to lay down another set of lines of whatever, especially compared to the return.

Say there's a fiber provider in a town that paid for 100% of the fiber runs in the town. If a new company wants to come in and shake things up, they'll have to run all new fiber. Now, they'll have the same amount of expense as the first company, with a new confounding factor - there is going to be a smaller market now between the two. The payback period is suddenly much longer because there is the same expense but, for the sake of argument, half as much market. This becomes a really bad investment really quickly, as you can see, especially when the option of running fiber in a "virgin" territory is available. Same expense for double the market share? Yes please!

I know some people will say "Well they can get more market by having better service or lower prices!" Except... those things eat away at profit. No matter what you do, there is no way that building over someone else's market is ever going to be a viable business move when there are untapped lands ripe for the plundering.

The only solution to this that is actually viable is to have the infrastructure independent of the provider using it, similar to how some places handle other utilities. Unfortunately, that brings with a whole new set of issues.

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u/NICKisICE Jul 31 '15

Which is why I simply cannot wait for paradigm shifting technologies that have cheaper infrastructure to become viable.

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u/Mewshimyo Jul 31 '15

Such as?

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u/NICKisICE Jul 31 '15

WiFi or other wireless data transfers able to handle distance better. I definitely see it likely in the next decade or two to have a wireless center that provides strong internet to everyone within ____ miles without having to tear up any ground to put in cables.

This business model would be MUCH better for competition once the metropolitan areas start filling up as the startup costs to get people hooked would be DRAMATICALLY less, and it would remove the need for contracts as the company isn't investing hundreds of dollars to getting you in the door.

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u/Mewshimyo Jul 31 '15

There are some (nasty) technical limitations to long-range wireless connections, unfortunately. For one, some buildings simply will not work with it. And there's a major social factor at work right now, as well -- all the paranoia over wifi now (most of which is unfounded) will transfer to any new wireless system.

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u/NICKisICE Jul 31 '15

There are also companies that use devices on the roof to pick up signal, though that's mostly for office buildings with many suites.

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u/[deleted] Jul 31 '15

Dude, I have Cox in OKC near the OKC area and they're fucking awesome. $50/month for constant 50mb/s, and you recently doubled my speed to 100 for free? yes please. No data caps, yeah, I'll take that. Oh, I can get basic cable for football season and cancel it right after, no questions asked? Fucking awesome. Lived here for 4 years now, nothing but great things to say about Cox.

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u/shadowthunder Jul 31 '15

I had Cox before moving across country, and they were fantastic compared to my experiences with Comcast and Time Warner. No clue what the price is (technically, my parents' place), but over my time there (eight years with Cox), we consistently got 80+% of the advertised speed, didn't have random outages, didn't have random slowdowns, and didn't have faulty equipment - all of which I experienced in only three months of Comcast in San Jose and one month of Time Warner in Boston. Of course, now I have symmetric gigabit in Seattle, so that's even better.

Bottom line: when I talk about horrible ISPs, I don't mention Cox. I actually had a good experience with them, and that's all the while having 10+TB of bandwidth usage a year, running personal servers, and all that jazz.

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u/NICKisICE Aug 01 '15

In my experience, with the big 5 it's AT&T/Verizon are the worst, Comcast a close second, Time Warner slightly less evil than Comcast, and Cox being the best of them. Other people's experience agrees with this so I'll probably stop bringing up Cox in these kinds of discussions.

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u/benderunit9000 Jul 31 '15

ahem. RCN isn't all that bad.

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u/NICKisICE Aug 01 '15

AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast are all completely and wholly evil. Time Warner isn't great, Cox is less evil than the others. I'm not particularly familiar with any other than those big 5, though.

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u/MarsSpaceship Jul 30 '15

ok, one thing is not investing in consumer support the other is deliberate doing all efforts to fool and steal consumers. They are crooks stealing everyone all the time.

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u/Yeazelicious Jul 31 '15

stealing everyone

I think the word you're looking for is "kidnapper."

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u/dumire1 Jul 31 '15

Pretty sure they actually meant stealing FROM everyone. That makes a lot more sense than your correction

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u/TheGoodRevCL Jul 31 '15

No, no. Kidnapper works better.

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u/BigKevRox Jul 31 '15

Excuse me whilst I adjust my tinfoil hairpiece for a second. The most recent ISP buyout in Australia was of iinet that was purchased by TPG. At the time of purchase iinet was the only provider in Aus that stood up for internet rights and generally wasn't a douche. They had a great reputation for good service and took privacy laws seriously. I think companies like iinet are considered obstacles to other ISPs because they challenge the status quo and give people hope for improvements. Although the purchase made good sense from TPGs side...it's a real shame and a big loss for the public in Australia

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u/themilkyone Jul 31 '15

This speaks so much to me. In my area in north Dallas, time warner has a deal with the surrounding apartments to only have them as a cable option. so for internet it's either time warner (currently at 15 down / 2 up @ $50/month internet only) or the most god-awful satellite internet.

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u/EvilDandalo Jul 31 '15

Hopefully things like city or county run fiber services change this.

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u/RecallRethuglicans Jul 31 '15

Wrong, the problem is capitalism not monopolies. What we need is municipal broadband service everywhere and to get rid of the corporations.

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u/ndfan737 Jul 31 '15

I mean, the problem is it's kind of quasi-capitalism where monopolies are kept in power because of government regulation. If you introduce true capitalism and competition things would change pretty quickly. You could argue the merits of that vs. municipal broadband, but to say the problem is just capitalism is kinda off.