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North American Network Operators Group Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical RE: What do we mean when we say "competition?" (was: Re: [Latestdraft of Internet regulation bill])
--On November 16, 2005 4:23:20 AM -0800 David Schwartz <[email protected]> wrote: > > >> In any case, the bottom line is that whether through subsidy, "deal", >> or other mechanism, the "last-mile" infrastructure tends to end up being >> a monopoly or duopoly for most terrestrial forms of infrastructure. >> As such, I think we should accept that monopoly and limit the monopoly >> zone to that area (MPOE<->B-Box or MPEO<->MDF) and prevent an unfair >> advantage by separating the management of that section of infrastructure >> from the service providers offering services which use said >> infrastructure. > > This is the same "create a free market through extensive regulation" that > has created the disaster we have now. Any last mile technology whose cost > of deployment can only be justified by the value of a monopoly on its > deployment just won't be deployed in this model. That's not a free market. > > This separation model may turn out to be a very good one or a very bad > one. But if we choose it and stick with it, what will happen in 50 or 100 > years when it's either broken or irrelevent? Remember, we got to where we > are now by choosing models that made sense in the voice telco time and > make no sense at all now. > The model we have now is a certain amount of facilities from a given center to each residential unit within that centers "serving area". For any form of terrestrial facilities, I don't see many alternatives to that model. I don't see how you plan to change that model. Please explain to me what the alternative model for deploying last-mile terrestrial facilities is. As long as we are stuck with that model, I don't see how you will ever get to a point where parallel facilities are cost effective to deploy, and, I don't think that's necessary to get them deployed. The reality is that a "monopoly on the facilities" isn't required to make them cost effective to deploy, but, it is unlikely to ever be cost effective to deploy parallel facilities to create competition. This is the "natural monopoly" scenario of which I speak. If such facilities would never be deployed under said model, then, why do we have: The golden gate bridge The bay bridge The Carquinez straits bridge The new Carquinez straits bridge The Interstate Highway system Residential Telephone service without party lines CATV Realistically, for last-mile base infrastructure, there are really only a few options today. Co-ax, UTP, and Fiber. A carrier neutral monopoly provider of these base facilities in a given serving area (and nothing says the same monopoly has to run all three) could serve multiple providers of just about any possible service. If we come up with a new terrestrial delivery method which has sufficient promise, I'm betting it won't be that hard to get it deployed. Fiber, however, scales pretty far. A single DWDM pair to the home really is a pretty large amount of bandwidth. We'll have many years of warning on superior technology as it will have to be well and truly deployed in the backbone prior to any need for it at the edge. > Had we done this twenty years ago, the last mile would be dialup and > billions of public dollars would have been spent to create and maintain an > irrelevent technology. Meanwhile, the newer technologies wouldn't be > deployed. > Nope... That shows me how much you truly don't understand how little I'm talking about monopolizing. The UTP between the MPOE and the MDF can be used to serve POTS, ISDN, DSL, DS0, T1, and other services. Since any service provider could put any equipment they wanted at the ends of any of those wire pairs, paying the monopoly maintainer only for the lease of the dry copper pair, we would have seen a much more rapid deployment of ISDN and DSL because the RBOCs would not have had any power to delay it. We would have seen multiple providers competing for PSTN service on an equal footing. We might have seen providers offering true T1 services at residential pricing. >> This, at least on a theoretical level creates a carrier-neutral >> party managing the monopoly portion while maximizing and levelling >> the playing field in all other areas. > > A carrier-netural party may not be technology neutral, business model > neutral, or neutral in many ways that may turn out to be important. As I > see it, you give up on everything that's important from the very first > step. What if a non-carrier neutral last mile turns out to be the scheme > most people really want when it's offered to them? > What technology... This is literally just the dumbest layer 1 part of the network. It's Wire or Fiber. There aren't really any other options. I don't care if we create a monopoly for each of these technologies. Since all they can do is lease an unlit/unpowered piece of wire or fiber from a serving center to a building MPOE, and, nothing else, and they are not allowed to discriminate about what equipment, technology, service, etc. the provider is putting on said wire or fiber, in what way are they able to be not-neutral that you think will matter? > Competition in last mile technologies, deployment strategies, contract > terms, and the like are not just important, they're absolutely vital. > And how does this eliminate that? All this does is recognize that it isn't cost effective to build multiple parallel fiber deployments and multiple parallel UTP deployments and multiple parallel co-ax deployments to every house in every neighborhood. As a result, in the current world, whoever builds the given topology first gets a monopoly advantage almost no matter how bad they are for the consumer. If, OTOH, those minimum facilities are up for use by any provider, all providers are free to compete in deployment strategy, contract terms with the end user, and, technologies which utiliize that infrastructure. If someone wants to build an additional infrastructure, fine... They can do that, but, they risk having to share after being reimbursed for the build. > If you try to pick the winners and losers, or worse let local governments > do so, you'll just get another generation of publically financed mediocre > solutions while the truly innovative technologies get shut out by the > monopoly arrangements. > That's not what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to stop letting the winner always be the first party to deploy. Letting the clock pick the winner isn't any better. Letting the consumer pick the winner by taking the clock and the local government mostly out of the equation seems sensible to me. Owen -- If it wasn't crypto-signed, it probably didn't come from me. Attachment:
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