The War on Upstart Fiber Internet Providers

Re:The War on Upstart Fiber Internet Providers by elcomet on Friday June 26, 2020 @05:01PM (#23657010)

In france, last miles are not owned by the people, but usually by the biggest ISP, Orange (which was state-owned before). But all other operators have the right to use the lines. And Orange has the obligation to sell this service without making any benefits (charging only exactly what the costs of maintaining lines).

To ensure that the prices are fairly calculated, we have a public authority which checks that the prices are correct.

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Re:The War on Upstart Fiber Internet Providers by dsr_ on Friday June 26, 2020 @06:51PM (#23657957)

We used to have a similar situation in the US: ILECs (the no-longer-monopoly telephone companies) were required to make lines available to CLECs (competitors) for a particular cost.

What happened was that the ILECs all managed to come up with the same excuses: sorry, no lines available in that office. And, mysteriously, working CLEC lines would stop working, and it would be blamed on a "bad cable", but there wouldn't be a spare cable to switch to... and the ILEC had just installed a customer.

Regulation needs to be enforced.

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Re:The War on Upstart Fiber Internet Providers by icedchai on Friday June 26, 2020 @08:07PM (#23658388)

Then they switched to fiber which didn't have these rules, and let the copper plant rot away.

I had the local ILEC repair my home POTS line so many times, I finally gave up and switched to VOIP. Now a year of service costs me less than a month used to...

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Re:The War on Upstart Fiber Internet Providers by elcomet on Friday June 26, 2020 @07:15PM (#23658089)

Yeah. That's the role of our public regulator, the ARCEP. I believe they have power to fine or give sanctions to companies that don't comply with regulations, which seems essential.

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Re:The War on Upstart Fiber Internet Providers by joecool1029 on Friday June 26, 2020 @06:44PM (#23657895)

This used to be the case in the US for DSL. It still is the case in Canada.

In 2003 and 2005[1] the market was deregulated and all the tiny independent ISP's went under as they were unable to throw wires up on the poles nor able to use the incumbents.

[1] https://transition.fcc.gov/meetings/080505/sharing.pdf?mod=a...

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Re:The War on Upstart Fiber Internet Providers by Godel_unicode on Friday June 26, 2020 @06:46PM (#23657918)

This type of rule is called local loop unbundling.

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Re:The War on Upstart Fiber Internet Providers by philjohn on Saturday June 27, 2020 @04:53AM (#23660443)

Same in the U.K. - except for Kingston upon Hull.

OFCOM sets the price Openreach is allowed to charge for FTTC or LLU access and that’s that. Hence we have tens of ISPs available in most areas that compete on cost and customer service.

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Re:The War on Upstart Fiber Internet Providers by Reason077 on Saturday June 27, 2020 @06:44AM (#23660948)

Openreach is not the only game in town in the UK. Virgin Media has their own extensive broadband network (hybrid fibre/coaxial). Smaller fibre-only ISPs such as Hyperoptic, Cityfibre, and Gigaclear also have their own physical infrastructure.

And wireless providers are now competing pretty effectively with consumer-grade fibre. (I'm happy getting 400 Mbit and streaming 1080p Stadia lag-free on Vodafone 5G for £30 a month - who even needs fibre!)

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Re:The War on Upstart Fiber Internet Providers by ClumsyPilot on Saturday June 27, 2020 @01:12PM (#23663046)

I have hyperoptic, and i will never give up fiber. You will have to pry it from my cold, dead hands!

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