NCTA Agrees Title II Virtuous Cycle Is Working

Re:NCTA Agrees Title II Virtuous Cycle Is Working by pdimitar on Monday June 12, 2017 @12:14PM (#14538414)

Bulgaria is a good example why net neutrality works. The capital city of Sofia is brimming with ISPs -- last time I checked, at least 15 companies with good coverage, fiber, and very affordable ($7 to $20 for 100Mbps ingress and egress) connection services. And probably 50 or so more which are smaller and with less coverage, but still with strong connections.

No prioritized traffic. No metered traffic. No endless Facebook and Whatsapp traffic. Shielded and reinforced fiber-optic cables, laid underground. Rain pours down as if it's the Apocalypse, both of my connections never flinch.

It's different in the USA. It's vast, it's costly to make a big fiber-optic network, and the company lobbies and legal monopolies are rampant. I don't think you guys will manage to push back anytime soon. You need somebody like Elon Musk coming over and saying "I don't care about being in a VIP oligopoly club, I'll do my own thing". Then you'll find Comcast suddenly improving service and dropping prices.

People like Pai aren't stopped by words. There has to be a way for the market to do its magic, otherwise it'll only get worse for the USA.

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Re:NCTA Agrees Title II Virtuous Cycle Is Working by otoburb on Monday June 12, 2017 @02:30PM (#14539689)

>>The capital city of Sofia is brimming with ISPs -- last time I checked, at least 15 companies with good coverage, fiber, and very affordable ($7 to $20 for 100Mbps ingress and egress) connection services.

Sounds like a domestic sector ripe for consolidation. I hope that doesn't happen for the sake of the consumers, but that seems like an overwhelmingly large number of players for a total market size of only 1.7M subscribers[1], which is even smaller from the census figures of roughly 500K households.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sofia#Demographics

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Re:NCTA Agrees Title II Virtuous Cycle Is Working by pdimitar on Monday June 12, 2017 @02:59PM (#14539999)

Some of the bigger players have been buying smaller ones but in general the sector almost hasn't changed because the consumers switch away if somebody slacks a lot -- the tricks of "we're in a merge and you may experience some disruptions in the process" and a lot of other corporate lingo absolutely don't fly around here. People just smile and switch away.

The mobile operators also pushed a lot for consolidation several years ago but it seems they didn't have the leverage (and the money) to make it happen. Thank the gods for that.

So far it's all good, we're enjoying healthy competition and extremely good ISPs.

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Re:NCTA Agrees Title II Virtuous Cycle Is Working by crazypyro on Monday June 12, 2017 @04:51PM (#14541015)

>You need somebody like Elon Musk coming over and saying "I don't care about being in a VIP oligopoly club, I'll do my own thing".

How is this different than what Google Fiber tried/is trying?

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Re:NCTA Agrees Title II Virtuous Cycle Is Working by pdimitar on Monday June 12, 2017 @07:18PM (#14541904)

It's not at all different in theory. In practice, Google Fiber is dead on its tracks, isn't it? They are no longer expanding.

The big players in USA need real competition -- something that goes to their cities and offers a better service. A very niche solution like Google Fiber won't do.

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