FCC's New Proposal Goes Beyond Open Internet, Focuses On Infrastructure

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targetdrone

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Verizon FIOS already has a backup battery for the ONT. It lasts maybe 6 hours then your phone service is offline until power is restored. A lot of good that does after a hurricane or ice storm leaves a wide area without power for days.
 

FinalHunter

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I work in a central office for a very large telecommunications company. We run generators to continuously provide service. Switching to fiber optics means there is no span power. The consumer would be completely responsible for powering their equipment. This can be done with commercial power, home generators, or backup batteries in equipment. Cell Towers have back up batteries and some automatic generators on reserve. It's not unrealistic to expect consumers to provide their own power on these devices. It has to be this way. When POTS becomes deregulated VOIP will soon be your only option.

Other thoughts; if the copper is removed completely we will lose all payphones as they are span powered. You should own a cell phone.
 

falchard

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O.O is Wheeler living in 1999? There is no need for an electric current anymore as telecoms and cable phone service providers have moved to a battery backup model for connecting service in case of a power outage in 2004. The only zones not affected are ones that could burn down in the cases of wildfires. Also everyone already uses Fiber Optic to the node. Its copper from the node to the street, but that copper only runs a few miles and has vastly more bandwidth than fiber.
Also competitive pricing is not setting price controls. Thats the opposite of competitive. Competitive pricing are prices based on market conditions including competition. These proposals do not increase competition, thus no competitive pricing.
 

rawoysters

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I work in a central office for a very large telecommunications company. We run generators to continuously provide service. Switching to fiber optics means there is no span power. The consumer would be completely responsible for powering their equipment. This can be done with commercial power, home generators, or backup batteries in equipment. Cell Towers have back up batteries and some automatic generators on reserve. It's not unrealistic to expect consumers to provide their own power on these devices. It has to be this way. When POTS becomes deregulated VOIP will soon be your only option.

Other thoughts; if the copper is removed completely we will lose all payphones as they are span powered. You should own a cell phone.

I tend to believe that a generator will be a priority piece of home equipment from here on out. You can't stop the future.
 

SirGCal

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What about an 'emergency phone'? Something with an old-school crank power you charge it up and it works for 10 minutes with something as simple as turning a crank for power. Then you aren't limited to making an emergency call in the first few hours of a large storm or other outage. Need it, crank it.
 


Well the idea about the emergency power for the phones is to make it a new service. It might just be a line of battery products with setup and maintenance services. This part of the idea isn't really a bad deal for service providers, because if they don't want to provide the service, they can just point to a third-party that will. If anything, it is a new source of revenue.
 
I just wish the government would stay away from everything except litigation and disputes.
Everytime they come up with soemthing it goes horribly wrong, and someone at the top gets very rich at the expense of everyone else.

It looks like they want to improved everything right? Here is what it actually means:

First, ever company that has invested in copper based telecommunications will be screwed. Their investment is basically gonna evaporate.
Second: Government will sign it, so it will also give "subsidies" to the companies that agree to replace the copper with fiber+backup.
This subsidy, paid by the tax payer, will then we returned to the government in the form of taxation of the new services as well as donations for political campaigns.
Every new company that wants to start and compete will also have no chance, as their costs will be higher (due to no subsidy), and since fiber is so expensive to expand, it will decrease the chances of competition, creating a government subsidized monopoly.

This might sound far fetched for some of you, but its been done countless times, you only need to read a little bit of economical history to see it happen.

Now you can understand why the guys at the photo are smiling: They want to pass a law that takes yor money, and gives it to them.
 

jungleboogiemonster

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I just wish the government would stay away from everything except litigation and disputes.
Everytime they come up with soemthing it goes horribly wrong, and someone at the top gets very rich at the expense of everyone else.

It looks like they want to improved everything right? Here is what it actually means:

First, ever company that has invested in copper based telecommunications will be screwed. Their investment is basically gonna evaporate.
Second: Government will sign it, so it will also give "subsidies" to the companies that agree to replace the copper with fiber+backup.
This subsidy, paid by the tax payer, will then we returned to the government in the form of taxation of the new services as well as donations for political campaigns.
Every new company that wants to start and compete will also have no chance, as their costs will be higher (due to no subsidy), and since fiber is so expensive to expand, it will decrease the chances of competition, creating a government subsidized monopoly.

This might sound far fetched for some of you, but its been done countless times, you only need to read a little bit of economical history to see it happen.

Now you can understand why the guys at the photo are smiling: They want to pass a law that takes yor money, and gives it to them.

While I have no problems with government regulation, you make some good points. I would like to add that it's highly unlikely any of the regulation Wheeler has implemented or is proposing would be needed if the residential communications markets had true competition. It's going to be very difficult to regulate the involved companies into providing sufficient services at affordable prices without it. However, the telecomms will adamantly fight the deregulation of their markets that would allow competition.
 

Urzu1000

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This is a waste of time. The requirement to provide emergency power is just a political move added into the mess in order to prevent their opponents' strongest objection.

It should be up to the consumer to make sure they're prepared for an emergency. If they switch out all our lines and replace them with fiber, I'll simply buy a battery pack. I've seen ~18,000 - 20,000mAh for around $100, and 16,000 for around $45.

If you just use your cellphone for emergency calls during that time, how long could that last you? Weeks? Long enough.
 

falchard

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Solar Panels are actually dangerous to the environment despite what some may say. They kill birds. The power backup in case of emergency has been something that has been done over a decade ago. Before they used to run 80 something watts through the copper wire directly. When they began using fiber for trunks around the same time they offered broadband services, they started to switch to a battery back up phone modem instead.
 

FinalHunter

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48 volts for DSL and Phone
180ish volts for Copper DS1 (T-1) but sometimes up to just under 300 for some technology
 
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