elray
join:2000-12-16
Santa Monica, CA | LTE wins! AT&T and Verizon are wise to avoid bedding down with the government, committing to maintain long copper loops in rural settings at below-market rates.
LTE will provide a much faster connection at a lower internal ost without the labor headaches. |
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| said by elray:AT&T and Verizon are wise to avoid bedding down with the government, committing to maintain long copper loops in rural settings at below-market rates.
LTE will provide a much faster connection at a lower internal ost without the labor headaches.
Below market rates? They make plenty of money off DSL. Put in the requirement of a phone line and the subscribers will be profitable.
LTE will be more or less unusable to consumers because of the caps. |
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| Yes, below market rates. In order to receive money from the government, telcos must agree to certain pricing restraints on their products. Much like the CLEC scam worked/s. Telcos are forced, yes, forced to sell their services to 3rd parites, who market the service as their own, with no investment in infrastructure, or its upkeep. They are able to purchase these services at a rate much lower than a direct telco customer, and sell them at a rate lower than the telco. At the same time, the telco is not allowed to advertise what is happening, and if employees of said telco mention that to the end user (while installing or repairing the lines being resold) they open the telco up to lawsuits and fines from the Federal government.
And there is NO requirement (for AT&T at least) stating you must have a phone line to have DSL. It is sold as a dry loop every day.
Those that complain about caps making service unusable are the exception, not the rule. I have LTE service and don't get anywhere near 100GB of use a month, and I stream video daily. |
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| I have not seen any evidence that there are significant price restrictions on Telcos under this stimulus. Or at least none that should make the customers unprofitable. The CLEC mess is another story.
On LTE you can use up to 30GB per month and it costs ~$120 per month with $10 per GB overages. That should be illegal. |
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elray
join:2000-12-16
Santa Monica, CA | reply to silbaco
Re: LTE wins! said by silbaco:I have not seen any evidence that there are significant price restrictions on Telcos under this stimulus. Or at least none that should make the customers unprofitable. The CLEC mess is another story.
On LTE you can use up to 30GB per month and it costs ~$120 per month with $10 per GB overages. That should be illegal.
Rural customers already aren't buying broadband, where available, at urban prices, in sufficient numbers. Telco doesn't have the ability to set prices as you suggest.
I agree that rural LTE pricing needs some work, but there will always be a need to prevent abuse, either through caps/overages or throttling. |
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1 edit | There is absolutely no evidence to suggest they are not or not willing to buy broadband at urban prices. A small town near me has to pay $55 for 1.5mbps DSL says otherwise. Their rural customers don't even get that. The fact that many people are willing to pay for satellite connections and in some instances, even T1's to get broadband, I would say the average rural person pays more. Those who are lucky enough to get DSL, often pay far more per mbps than urban people because DSL usually can't push out more than 1.5mbps at those distances but they charge them full price anyway. My Uncle lives in a very rural area and pays for 10mbps, but receives 1mbps because his company charges one price for all. That is the kind of service rural people receive.
Whoever started that rumor about people not paying full price for rural broadband clearly never tried to get internet out in the rural areas. |
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 tshirtPremium,MVM
join:2004-07-11
Snohomish, WA
kudos:3
 ·Comcast
| reply to silbaco
said by silbaco:On LTE you can use up to 30GB per month and it costs ~$120 per month with $10 per GB overages. it isn't cheap, but it does meet both the current dialtone USF requirement and the (still in the thinking/planning stage) likely future requirement of BASIC, Lifeline internet service, enough bandwidth to fill out job apps and tax forms and get email and and order DVDs and other stuff.
really BASIC service is about as much as you can expect the gov't to REQUIRE.
If you want a higher level of service you may need to become a more tempting customer base ie$$$ |
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elray
join:2000-12-16
Santa Monica, CA
1 edit | reply to silbaco
said by silbaco:There is absolutely no evidence to suggest they are not or not willing to buy broadband at urban prices. A small town near me has to pay $55 for 1.5mbps DSL says otherwise. Their rural customers don't even get that. The fact that many people are willing to pay for satellite connections and in some instances, even T1's to get broadband, I would say the average rural person pays more. Those who are lucky enough to get DSL, often pay far more per mbps than urban people because DSL usually can't push out more than 1.5mbps at those distances but they charge them full price anyway. My Uncle lives in a very rural area and pays for 10mbps, but receives 1mbps because his company charges one price for all. That is the kind of service rural people receive.
Whoever started that rumor about people not paying full price for rural broadband clearly never tried to get internet out in the rural areas.
The evidence is there for the taking. Not every rural hamlet has market prices; some have prices based on MSO statewide charges - and yet the uptake rates speak for themselves. Rural people make more conservative choices when it comes to "needs" vs. "wants". So says the Times' article Kyle posted here back in September. Yesterday, another article cited which implied a lack of high-speed broadband access in rural settings was found to be using data that actually showed only a small percentage lacking, while a much larger number simply chose not to subscribe (NTIA).
"Many" people who are willing to pay for satellite or even T-1 don't constitute the quorum necessary to support wiring the countryside to connect 1 or 2 customers every mile.
LTE compares to satellite in this way - those who want it can buy it, but telco doesn't have to pay for cabling that goes largely unused. LTE will be available, where wired services will never, or never be upgraded.
Your uncle is not the only one who suffers under "one speed fits all". The patron saint of ISPs, Sonic, sells its Fusion product the same way - new customers pay $50 or more per month for the basic service, whether they yield 20Mbits or 1Mbit. Verizon DSL does likewise; you pay the same rate whether you get "up to 3M", or 15M. Its not a rural phenomenon. |
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1 edit | And what does the Times' know about rural people? As someone who has had quite a bit of experience with newspapers, I know there is nothing more biased and uneducated than that of Newspaper editorials.
As someone who has lived in a rural area all my life, I know from experience that it is rare to find a home out here without highspeed internet of some sort. That is why the local cooperative is running FTTH for all their rural customers. There is money to be made and people are willing to pay for it. It just has to be looked at as a long term investment. It is not going to pay itself off in a year or two. People want highspeed internet. People who live in the country want to play games, watch Netflix, and download the latest version of Fedora just as much as those in Urban areas. I am truly not sure why urban people have to look at rural people as second-class citizens.
The lines do not go mainly unused. Most people do subscribe. And the ISP gets 100% of the people willing to buy internet, unlike more urban areas or towns where there may be 2 or more companies fighting over the the same people. Plus if the company rubs fiber, fiber is rather low maintenance compared to copper.
Something tells me Sonic has extremely few people who receive only 1mbps and I bet they don't have a 150-400ms average latency either. There would be no point in buying Sonic.net internet at that speed since nearly all their subscribers have some sort of alternative broadband option. Verizon offers different tiers. |
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| reply to elray
Comcast refuses to run cable the mile and a half from where it stops now to my house, and there is over forty houses in between. |
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elray
join:2000-12-16
Santa Monica, CA | reply to silbaco
It wasn't an editorial, and they weren't the source of the data, and I wasn't the one citing them, it was your populist blogger. Sorry if it contradicts your world view.
If rural people want to watch Netflix, play games, or do other activities that require more bandwidth than is currently available, then they'll have to pay an appropriate rate to get that service. Right now, they aren't willing. It isn't an urban versus rural contest, its simple economics.
I don't know Sonic's demographics, they're not telling. But I see just enough complaints to know that I'm not the only one. You're right, they tend not to have latency issues. |
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elray
join:2000-12-16
Santa Monica, CA | reply to Austin
said by Austin :Comcast refuses to run cable the mile and a half from where it stops now to my house, and there is over forty houses in between.
You illustrate my point.
Comcast isn't refusing. They just aren't going to run a line for you alone that they'll never make a dime off.
Organize those 40 neighbors, and ask Comcast for a quote for a 10-year contract rate, effective only when 60% of you commit with a $2,000 deposit applicable to the installation fee.
Then come back and tell us they're refusing, or whether its your neighbors.
You'll probably do neither, and two years hence, you'll be on LTE, still complaining about Comcast. |
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| reply to elray
said by elray:If rural people want to watch Netflix, play games, or do other activities that require more bandwidth than is currently available, then they'll have to pay an appropriate rate to get that service. Right now, they aren't willing. It isn't an urban versus rural contest, its simple economics.
The connections simply are not there. If you have a DSL connection, it will be only about 1mbps, but you'll be able to do everything. If you don't have that, then you don't have any real options. LTE that maxes at 30GB and satellite that maxes at 25GB are not options. $10 per GB overages is not a real option. Yet people are paying over $100 per month for LTE or satellite. That's why you don't see Verizon running DSL or fiber to rural residents. It is not a matter of not being profitable or that people in rural areas want to pay less than urban. It is a matter of forcing rural people to pay more than urban by denying them any other options. Being as people in rural areas need broadband as much as those in urban, they will pay for it because they have no choice. Notice not all companies turned down this stimulus money. They know money is there to be made, they just don't have a wireless network to come back and milk customers for every cent they can get. |
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elray
join:2000-12-16
Santa Monica, CA | A small number of residents paying for satellite or LTE does not create the quorum necessary to make a wired service profitable.
It is absolutely a matter of profitability. You want Verizon and AT&T to invest heavily in a fiber infrastructure for the rural customer, even though said customers already are unwilling to subscribe.
Not gonna happen. |
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