DOJ, FCC to Approve Verizon Cable Deal > If the DOJ was really doing its job

If the DOJ was really doing its job

Government should tell companies *not* to do bad things. I disagree with government telling businesses they must spend money on certain things, and go after certain markets and customers.

What if Verizon says they are going bankrupt and can't pay their workers, do we force the managers and employees to work without pay? Extreme example, but there are some things government should not do.

reply to IowaCowboy
And under what existing regulation could you force any privately owned business to invest many billions they do not have and likely could not borrow for those purposes as a condition of expanding a seperate PARTNERSHIP they also own PART of ????

while your at it make all cattle ranchers give away prime beef to everyone, and exxon can give free gas to fill our free chevies.

Of course all of these companies would walk away from such diadvantages.
the DOJ's job is not to kill deals, it is to examine them for deficiencies and can only REQUEST conditions/agreement in cases where it is most likely to result in an illegal practice with the assumption that the parties intend to act legally.
In this case the FCC has push the spectrum owner to move forward and either use the spectrum for mobile or trade/sell to someone who will.
in this case we have the cableco's release spectrum they have decided not to develop, whcih will be bought /split/traded to allow both verizon and T-mo plenty of new spectrum in useable blocks with the intention of rapid rolling out more wireless services
which meets the FCC's request.
a win for everyone.

seperately we have the 2 largest wireline telcos admitting that the wirelines are no longer affordable to maintain and currently ubiquitous FTTH is not economically viable so the are perparing with their wireless partners to provide wireless service at first outside their wireline areas, that could (if permited) meet their wireline/safety net obligations within their wireline areas as well as quickly rolling out LTE wireless broadband to MANY more areas.

None of this is perfect* but remember PERFECTION is the enemy of GOOD.

we could quickly have pretty GOOD wireless coverage for many, or we can insist on PERFECTION, and watch nothing at all happen for many years.

...so, I guess having the choice between ridiculously capped LTE, cable service, FIOS (in very select markets), muni FTTH (in very select markets), or slow dsl service should be the alternative?

I don't even comprehend why you think taking one step forward and two steps back is a good idea. Even though upgrading areas to FTTH would be costly, long term the profits are there. At least, that's what I've researched and read thus far. I have limited knowledge based on wireless, and I do know that those limits are reached faster than wireline infrastructure. So sure, cheaper now, but what about later?
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"We will evaluate these integrals rigorously if we can, and non-rigorously if we must".
---Victor Moll, invited talk, Tom Osler Fest (April 17, 2010)

You assume that I have stock options like that available at my disposal, not to mention I'm not exactly rolling in the dough either as I wrap up the chapter that is college education. Believe me, if I had the money, I would have already started my own local ISP so that people could have options. I've done a ton of reading, and I know what it takes and how many hours I would be working.

Being a stockholder isn't financially viable at this point in time.
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"We will evaluate these integrals rigorously if we can, and non-rigorously if we must".
---Victor Moll, invited talk, Tom Osler Fest (April 17, 2010)

reply to tshirt
And if that's the case, then I'll pay more knowing that broadband service is guaranteed and regulated like a utility, if that's what you are assuming. I'm sure many here wouldn't be opposed to it, but I feel like that's a slippery slope there. Why charge oodles more? What's the point? I mean, at some point in time, it's going to be "if you expect ::insert random reason here::, then pay up!" I'm glad the power industry didn't devolve into this (for the most part at least).
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"We will evaluate these integrals rigorously if we can, and non-rigorously if we must".
---Victor Moll, invited talk, Tom Osler Fest (April 17, 2010)

reply to tshirt
Maybe they should not be required to upgrade every mile of copper but they should be forced to upgrade densely settled areas (areas where the buildings on average, are less than 200 feet apart).
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I wish I still lived in Iowa; Everything there from rent and groceries to Cable TV is much cheaper in Iowa (especially with an overbuilder in town).

Again how do you FORCE them?

As a term of approving the cableco/telco partnership. If they don't want to upgrade, then they can walk away from the deal.

Another condition I'd like to see is the cablecos lease bandwidth to competing ISPs like Verizon has to lease lines to CLECs.
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I wish I still lived in Iowa; Everything there from rent and groceries to Cable TV is much cheaper in Iowa (especially with an overbuilder in town).

reply to tshirt
Ok, so for a rough estimate, lets say that the average cost to run FTTH to my house would be $5000, which is conservative. Finance that over a period of 10 years.

That's roughly $42 a month. Ok, so the infrastructure is there. Now focus on support and maintenance costs. I'm not sure how much to add, but it can't be much more. Just a guess, add something like $25 per user per month. That's roughly $67 a month. These figures are to purely break even. Add like $10-15 per user per month. That still comes out to be around $82 per month. That's with profit included.

I'm still a newb at these things, but people are willing to pay top dollar for wireless service. Some (and I'm sure MANY) are willing to pay this price to provide service to the home.

And remember, that's if said user doesn't have the money upfront for infrastructure costs. Eliminate that, and you come out cheaper than what most ISPs charge. It's a win for the customer and for the business the way I see it.
--
"We will evaluate these integrals rigorously if we can, and non-rigorously if we must".
---Victor Moll, invited talk, Tom Osler Fest (April 17, 2010)

reply to IowaCowboy
Cable plants don't really work like that, it's not the same as twisted pair which has a dedicated pair(s) all the way back to an RT/CO where it can be routed to any third party who leases rackspace in the CO. fiber-coax plant share media the entire path so you can't have multiple providers just attaching on willy-nilly.
As I said before, Verizon and Verizon wireless are really seperate businesses with the wireless being a partner with vodaphone
so you want to force verizon wireless to upgrade verizons wireline plant.
so that basically says Vodaphone must pay for 45% of the copper to fiber upgrades in verizon's wireline plant, does that make any sense at all?
would you have have told sears to upgrade JC Penny's stores before they could merge with KMart?

reply to The Limit
BTW you forgot to actually add the financing costs in there, so on a 30 year loan with full colateral (like a mortgage) you can expect to pay 2-5 to 3 times the cost over that time. since you are an unknown, with no assets, and what you are building may or maynot have resale value I would guess around the same sort of cost for your shorter term.
$42*3=$126 or $82*3=$246 so a fixed wireless or cable plan* doesn't look all that bad anymore for a zero risk, month to month user.

*using comcast cap and potential overages as a model here

reply to The Limit
Sounds like a plan, incorparate, start raising money and everyone will be using your fiber plant in no time.
Turns out this whole broadband thing is much simpler then anyone knew.
Next up, space flight, maybe it's not rocket science after all.

reply to tshirt
It is technically possible to force sharing of a coax plant. They already do it with video in terms of public/government/educational access not to mention the 3-4 channels that show up in the program guide as leased access. Now technically, if a school district wants to provide Internet access to students, they could require the MSO to provide one upstream channel and one downstream channel and label it educational access and put the CMTS where the public/government/educational access originates.

While I myself am not a fan of regulation (although limited regulation is sometimes needed), I do support competition. I do think regulation is needed when an incumbent does everything they can to snuff out competitors. I personally think the breakup of AT&T/Bell System was the best thing to happen to the American telecom market and it was good for consumers wallets. If AT&T would have never been broken up, then we'd still be paying exhorbitant long distance charges for something that costs them next to nothing to provide (just like ISPs are doing today with data charges and caps).

One example of the benefits of competition is my hometown of Cedar Rapids, IA (where they have an overbuilder) and cable there is somewhat cheaper than it is here in Springfield, MA with Comcast being the only game in town.
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I wish I still lived in Iowa; Everything there from rent and groceries to Cable TV is much cheaper in Iowa (especially with an overbuilder in town).

Ok so you want comcast to become a dumb pipe.
But think about this, they make on average around 10% total profit per year so take the HSI and reduce it 10%, ad your much more complicated distribution stream (this will take alot of equipment an operators/techs to keep this running smoothly so add 20% for operations costs, and then give them back their 10% profit and it doesn't end up cheaper(unless you intend to sieze all privately held ISP's and their assets)
suppose you extend this to video take out the content cost add the overhead, and then each individual can call disney for they best price the can get for ESPN-ABC- DiSney-etc. by the time you get a few packages from content owners 1,2,and 3 to get the few channels you want along with their own billing/subscription/contracts you won't pay less for any of that and maybe a great deal more.
we've (those of us a little older than you) seen what a mandated build out of telephone cost (think of the old "we are the telephone company!!!" Ma Bell)
For all the financial, social and military (a primary purpose) benefit look how unsupportable that business becomes if you allow people to opt out AND remove the massive support funding (including USF) the same thing for rural electrification, it was a great idea, greatly developed this country, but the cost was incredible both through taxes and indivual cost.
Very expensive, but today virtually everywhere has reliable power and phone available, something that many other countries most of the world's population can't say they have and may never have.

So are We The People ready to commit to the same sort of 10-20-30 year build out and the same sort of cost sharing in order to reach nationwide fiberhood?
I'd like it, but I very much doubt it.

reply to tshirt
Ah yea, that's right. Financial backing may be a problem when starting out with no money unfortunately.

reply to tshirt
Hahaha. I like your style.

reply to tshirt
I would be all for it, and I don't make top dollar (unfortunately, unemployed, but trying to change that).