[Starlink] [Bloat] On fiber as critical infrastructure w/Comcast chat

[Doc Searls]

Always a mistake to generalize from a sample of one, but in my case I have four, because I live in four places. So I like to think that, to some degree, I represent a kind of market demand.

All those places—Santa Barbara (CA), New York (NY), Bloomington (IN), and San Marino (CA)—are served by cable monopolies (Cox, Spectrum, Comcast/Xfinity) that provide (or at least claim) 1 Gb service... downstream of course. One (Cox) provides 36 Mb of upstream capacity. The other two provide just 10 Mb.  Because of that, residents have no option to do much work, or to store large amounts of data, in clouds (to mention just one grace of upstream capacity). The market is rigged for consumption, not production, on the TV model. Same as it has been since commercial activity began to explode in 1995, when John Perry Barlow wrote Death From Above. It's killer. Please read it: https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/203356.203358 <https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/203356.203358>. 

But here in Bloomington, where I am writing now, the city has come up with a public/private arrangement that has much promise:

https://www.bloomington.in.gov/fiber <https://www.bloomington.in.gov/fiber>

See what you think. 

For me, the promise of fiber is a huge attraction to living and working here. And I am not alone.

Doc

> On Mar 29, 2023, at 8:27 AM, Dave Collier-Brown via Starlink <starlink at lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
> 
> 
> On 3/29/23 04:28, Sebastian Moeller via Starlink wrote:
>> Hi Bob,
>> 
>> 
>>> On Mar 28, 2023, at 19:47, rjmcmahon <rjmcmahon at rjmcmahon.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>> Interesting. I'm skeptical that our cities in the U.S. can get this (structural separation) right.
>> There really isn't that much to get wrong, you built the access network and terminate the per household fibers in arge enough "exchanges" there you offer ISPs to lighten up the fibers on the premise that customers can use any ISP they want (that is present in the exchange)... and on ISP change will just be patched differently in the exchange.
>> While I think that local "government" also could successfully run internet access services, I see no reason why they should do so (unless there is no competition).
>> The goal here is to move the "natural monopoly" of the access network out of the hand of the "market" (as markets simply fail as optimizing resource allocation instruments under mono- and oligopoly conditions, on either side).
> 
> We see  the same issue in Canada: some provinces and cities happily
> manage the delivery of services over cables hung from province-owned
> poles (eg, TCP/IP in New Brunswick).  Other provinces did less well, and
> we have "telephone poles" and "hydro poles" on the same street (in
> Toronto, Ontario)
> 
> There is no real difference between New Brunswick, Ontario or, for that
> matter, Minnesota. If a province or city has operated natural monopolies
> like the last mile for water and sewer, it can operate the last mile for
> any other monopoly.
> 
> --dave
> 
> --
> David Collier-Brown,         | Always do right. This will gratify
> System Programmer and Author | some people and astonish the rest
> dave.collier-brown at indexexchange.com |              -- Mark Twain
> 
> 
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