Equipment Makers Want Telecoms to Upgrade Networks

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Krisk7

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May 26, 2013
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ISPs should simply deliver what they have in their contract without even inspecting the content. It's like a post office demanding a share of your stuff because you send / receive more parcels.
 

JohnPMyers

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"...during peak times I regularly find my Internet almost unusable – despite having the highest tier package available."

This is because you have DSL, which was always a gimmick to begin with :) Having to share your connection bandwidth with others, especially when most of those others are paying less than you, is a joke. Your ISP laughs all the way to the bank. Cable internet is far better, and at least in my area, you get *guaranteed* speeds higher than any DSL con can offer, for the same price or less. Plus if you have cable TV anyway, the wiring is already there and it'll appear on the same bill. Easy peasy :p
 

John Bauer

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Unfortunately, with people like myself who find themselves surrounded by 1000's of acres of cornfield, DSL is all I can get.

We don't even have cable running down our road. Everyone on the block has to have satellite TV.
 

southernshark

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The telecoms shouldn't get a dime. The reason that they don't upgrade and charge so much is because they are government created monopolies. The government could take away their monopoly status and let capitalism deal with these problems.
 

h0llow

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@JohnPMyers hate to say it.. but Cable is not a dedicated line either.. more traffic, the slower it goes. It's like a 2 lane neighborhood with a no outlet sign.. more cars, longer it takes, in a nutshell.. DSL is dedicated BUT they still go through other DSL circuits.. thus it's technically not dedicated either. Although my DSL very very rarely slows down. It's typically spot on the speed package I'm paying for.
 

h0llow

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@JohnPMyers no disrespect at all by the way :) but yeah. some areas will easily get some crazy high speeds on cable vs DSL. just depends on the area like you said. unfortunately where i live, cable is complete garbage.. when you see downloads hit 1.2mbps while dsl goes 2.6, it's disappointing that they dont upgrade their system where i'm at.
 

mforce2

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Well it's interesting but countries that should be highly developed have Internet connections that suck big time and are expensive too.
In Romania one thing we do have is fast cheap internet and yeah, it's very nice to have 100 Mbps for 10$.
It's all because one company invested in a fiber optic infrastructure and is very efficient.
It seems to me that US telecom companies are a greedy and incompetent. Sure you can blame it on the low population density and other stuff but if you look for excuses you'll find them.
What would be needed is real competition and willingness to bring fast internet to the people but some companies don't want to or they don't know how to.
 

thechief73

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Hey this is a crazy idea, but how about these companies that are generating insane profits from operating monopolies as southernshark has said. Take some of that money and upgrade these systems as they should have with market growth anyways. Instead they pocketed it, let the demand rise, and then wait till consumers are desperate enough to just get access the'll be willing to pay anything if they can. Just like how we pay taxes that are supposed to go towards upgrading and maintaining public infrastructure. Hmm.. That may just work. But nope, they have to find another way to charge us more mainly by artificially creating demand and then blaming us for using "too much"?!? of the service we pay for.

I have AT&T DSL because cable costs are so high they are not affordable and those are the only two choices here. AT&T keeps raising prices. Tell me how internet access costs more as years go by with more paying customers for identical speeds? They just kept slicing up the same pizza for a decade. AT&T has over sold our area so the only speed available now is 756k DSL. You call and they try to get you to upgrade to U-verse which costs even more for the same speeds of the old DSL service, and on top of that you have to pay all they're ridiculous setup fee's. Its is no secret how bad the US internet is and why.

Anyone that has ever called AT&T knows how bad of a company they are, I never had cable but I assume the same. Everything is your fault, and its all good on their end. But they'll gladly offer to check it out and charge you huge fee's for it.
 

walter87

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Services like Netflix have offered to make caching servers to ease the load on ISP's infrastructure. Not surprisingly, the ISP's refused. That is how out of touch they are. They would rather gouge their customers than offer a better service.

They will hardly change due to the fact that most ISP/cable companies also own all the rights and content and know that they offered better internet services then they would greatly affect their cable services. If customers got decent speeds and bandwidth then services like Netflix would thrive even more and result in far fewer cable subscribers.

At least give Google credit by trying to move the infrastructure forward. The other ISPs are either too stubborn or purposely delaying to expand. Google fiber may be expensive now, but they will put the pressure on current ISPs to compete again or risk losing share. Either way added competition will give people more options and hopefully better services and prices in the future.
 

fat_panda

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First of all, it should be illegal for companies like Time Warner to throttle all Netflix traffic. If we pay for 20 Mbps, we should have access to all 20 Mbps, otherwise it's a complete scam.
 

MKBL

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"This is because you have DSL, ..."

1. I didn't know DSL has tier pricing.
2. Such a tech writer would have known DSL is not the best choice. He or she would exhaust all other options before going to the "gimmick". And surely doesn't need someone preaching about it. It's probably like a high school physics club freshman trying to teach gravity to Albert Einstein.
3. By the context, when the writer said "the highest tier package available.", he most likely have real high speed internet. At least I would not write that way if I have DSL.

 

azgard

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It sure as hell does in rural land, speed and prices are all relative to how much the telecom's can drain from customer's. Out by me 'high speed internet' starts at $40 for a 512 line, costs us $60 for a 1mbit line (we only actually get 896). No competition mean's no incentive.
 

ChromeTusk

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So much can happen "behind the scenes" with network infrastructure: poor future planning, retro-fitting new tech into the old tech, and convincing management what needs to be completely replaced.

I remember having the "same" DSL service years ago at two different locations. The first one was awesome (fast, stable, reliable). The second was great as long as it did not rain. The wiring between my place and the CO needed to be replaced because it was so old. A similar incident happen with cable: a wiring fault between my neighborhood and the CO caused intermittent failures with no common causes (time of day, weather, number of people online, ...).
 

Thomzey

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it would be great if i could have fiber in my town in nz before the next 5 years, its only in the bigger cities and not getting into towns. They don't even have to do much because there is already a fiber cable feeding the town with internet and i know that it costs a lot to lay down but with the price of $130 a month for 150GB you would think they would have enough money to lay it down in everytown. That being said, we dont really need it because the speeds of most towns are between 10-15Mb/s and its enough for just ONE Full HD stream, but it would be nice to be able to have it if you have the money, because we all know the companies have the money for it.
 

Avus

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"... and Huawei will riddle its hardware with backdoor and China can spy any netizen connected to the internet. "

And the American government will do the same without even need to riddle any hardware...
 

bluekoala

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I work in Telecom and I can assure you DSL is not "shared" in the distribution as someone claimed earlier. If you're on DSL and experiencing slowdowns during peak periods it is most likely because of network congestion at your local exchange/CO. If I were you, I would call in everyday to complain about this until they give you a definite ETR, a proper monetary compensation or close your account forcing you to find a better ISP. I can guarantee you that if you call in everyday, it will provide them motivation to get off their asses and do something about it because your calls to them costs money and they wouldn't upgrade equipment that nobody is complaining about.
Hope this helps.
 

teh_chem

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Not that networks don't need upgrades, but the fact of the matter is that the hardware has so much surpassed the capability of how phone (mobile) OS/services have been supported. More data bandwidth isn't necessarily a good or useful thing for making devices more capable.
 

Grandmastersexsay

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In the U.S. the problem itself is exceedingly simple: ISPs have little to no competition. Unfortunately, the solution to this is not so simple.

The lack of competition arises from the bureaucratic nature of building the infrastructure to supply the internet. ISPs must work deals out with every local municipality before they can lay their first foot of fiber. All companies like Verizon and Comcast have to do is throw around a little money and they land exclusive contracts for entire towns. To some, this might sound like this is a problem with capitalism. This is in fact the opposite of capitalism, this is corporatism.

So what's the solution? We've seen European countries try a government controlled infrastructure that gets leased out to the ISPs. The obvious problem in this method is its reliance on corrupt, lazy, inept government agencies. I believe their motto is: Anything the private sector can do, the government can do worse.

If the answer isn't more government control, then the answer has to be less government control, but how is that accomplished? I'm sure there are plenty of federal and state regulations that could be abolished, but the real problem is the local municipalities. It is hard to argue power should be taken away from local municipalities, as centralizing government power is never a good thing. It certainly wouldn't help spur competition among the ISPs. I wouldn't have a problem with states limiting some of the local municipalities power. It would be cheaper for ISPs if regulations were the same from town to town. However, I guess the real answer to the problem is not something people are going to want to hear. Start getting involved in your local government. Your neighbor who is on the town council is the real problem. You need to deal with them, not the federal or state government. Make competition easier in your own town.

 

ntrceptr

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This is the US greed machine at work. Years ago Verizon start rolling out fiber in several places and the cable companies ended up making a deal with Verizon to NOT upgrade. This is because the cable companies dont like Streaming Services like Hulu, Netflix, Google TV. They want the networks to get congested so they can charge for better tiers of service. On a side note the caps the cable companies impose on us are not needed either. If their hardware is configued properly one user cannot use all the bandwidth unless no one else is requesting anything (load balancing anyone). The Govt here in the US even gave out billions to upgrade our internet here. The answer from the cable companies...dont upgrade anything in the infrastructure, pocket the money and just allow burst transfers to exceed the imposed caps, that way the speedtest average will go up. I pay for a 30Mbit downstream and it will speedtest close to that, in realworld use with a sustained download i will always max out at just under 15Mbit.
 
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