[IP] BS and FCC v Us and Comcast v ATT

[David Farber <dave@farber.net>]

________________________________________
From: Bob Frankston [Bob19-0501@bobf.frankston.com]
Sent: Saturday, February 16, 2008 2:11 PM
To: David Farber; 'ip'
Cc: 'Dave Burstein'; 'Andrew C Burnette'
Subject: BS and FCC v Us and Comcast v ATT

I apologize for making this about me – but then shouldn’t we all be making it about our use and needs rather than the carriers’?

After reading the comments below I realize that we’re playing a game of Whack-a-Mole® -- we aren’t dealing with a well-defined question but a menagerie of woes and confusing very interim practices and problems with long term policy issues.

I find it telling that BellSouth (AKA BS) is quibbling over price and arguing about when capacity would be available not whether. Are we simply arguing about temporary relief or intrinsic problems? It’s also striking how differently each of the carriers approach the problem. Is Comcast just arguing about a very transient problem? Is ATT really arguing that they can’t afford a neutral network even if the prices continue to drop? Or does ATT just like to snoop – why are they so interested in judging which bits are good and which are bad?

Of course I do take this personally – after all home networking did force the issue. Yet at the FCC hearings on the 25th are framed in terms of the network and not in terms of using the network.

Why is the goal is to maximize the value to the operators and not to the community. You maximize the network value by minimizing capacity. It’s also strange to talk about costs and prices when we don’t have a real marketplace – just arbitrary measures and synthetic scarcity. We have companies that think of bytes as consumables. They are telecom companies coming to terms with anti-telecom –Internet connectivity. It isn’t hard to project this out to having zero value in the network itself and all the value in the use – what happens to the idea of a carrier? It’s not a funding problem – it’s cheap and once you see the value you just pay for the infrastructure. It’s a problem created by the FCC’s attempt to create a solution to a problem they don’t understand.

Ultimately we have a depression-era creation – the FCC – that is stuck in a time when a 25 Watt light bulb was an extravagance. Today they are seeking to limit the amount of light even as newer bulbs actually consume less power. Even worse they seem to take this metaphor literally and view the Internet itself as a consumable!

The question for the hearing shouldn’t be how to manage the network – it should be “whose network”? Why do we define neutrality in terms of what network operators should not do – why can’t we have a simple measure such as my ability to get more (local) capacity rather accepting my allotment?

But then I can’t be considered an expert because I don’t accept the premises – even if I played a role in causing the problem.

http://www.frankston.com/public

PS: I find Andrew’s comments on ATT’s problems very interesting. The woes in dealing with IP addresses are real but for me they are reasons to move beyond today’s prototype rather than treating them as sacred texts to be obeyed. But then if you focus on the network in isolation you find yourself missing the point of the Internet which is that the particulars of networking as practices and not requirements.



-----Original Message-----
From: David Farber [mailto:dave@farber.net]
Sent: Saturday, February 16, 2008 07:27
To: ip
Subject: [IP] bellsouth quote on $1 per sub cost of bandwidth





________________________________________

From: Andrew C Burnette [acb@acb.net]

Sent: Friday, February 15, 2008 7:16 PM

To: Dave Burstein; David Farber

Subject: Re: bellsouth quote on $1 per sub cost of bandwidth



Dave, and Dave,



Yes, his costs are indeed out of proportion by a wide margin. Perhaps

he's too far off the beaten path. (there are still populated places in

the US where no major carrier serves cell phones too).



As for the quote, ask and you'll get it :-)



http://telephonyonline.com/iptv/news/BellSouth_VOD_costs_030706/

FTA:  BellSouth’s Chief Architect Henry Kafka quoted:



Today’s average residential broadband user consumes about 2 gigbytes of

data per month, Kafka estimated, which costs the service provider about

$1. As downloading feature films becomes more popular, they might

consume an average of 9 gigabytes per month, costing carriers $4.50.....





I know some folks inside comcast, and the "bet" they placed on the table

in 2004 was that DOCSIS 3.0 would be deployed before they hit the wall,

the rational being the CxO didn't want to upgrade the cable plant twice.

The bet wasn't a winning hand in retrospect. I do have reputable sources

who let me in on this back in 2003 and again in 2005. I simply posed the

question over a brew, "so, when do I get 100Mbps symmetrical at my

house?" and out came a lot of interesting info.



The detachment from AT&T has been and is still an ongoing distraction.

Far more work than they first estimated. Stitching together 57+/- MSO's

into one autonomous system is a non trivial problem. Everything from

collisions in RFC1918 space to IP address exhaustion have taken their

toll on efforts to build out their own backbone.  Many of the cable

operators built 'organically grown' networks creating pockets here and

there, with no operational connection between them. Even Time Warner

still has email subsystems scattered about with the state's two letter

code in front of rr.com.



Twenty years ago, the cost driver to bundle the MSO's together was the

expense and licensing of satellite downlink sites. Now, it's simply

time, materials, and willingness to do so.



As most of us know all too well, none of the RBOCs had any better

individual strategies, particularly with respect to settlement free

peering arrangements, that is, until verizon bought the MCI backbone,

and little at&t bought up my old playground, the common backbone.

Essentially, they've all bought "up" into an established market.



Very interesting stuff, in any case.



Best regards, and I do enjoy your informative posts (I sub to your DSL

Prime list as well:-) )



andy burnette



Dave Burstein wrote:

> Andrew

>

> I'd love to know where BellSouth said that publicly. I have it off the

> record, but not reportable from anyone in North America. On the record,

> I have Liberty Global Cable and direct estimates based on equipment

> costs.  My off the record sources are authoritative.

>

>      I've written the problem with cable upstream is that they are still

> essentially using a 1998 design. Dave (who wrote a book on that subject)

> knows the details better than I. Both the CEO of Comcast and the CTO of

> Scientific Atlanta told me in 2006 we'd have full DOCSIS 3.0 in 2007,

> which would address the problem quickly. Unfortunately, the chips still

> aren't ready and will probably put this off until 2009.

>

>     Some thoughts from my economics training, now very rusty. Brett's

> problem actually is "cost", not "value" He really does have higher

> costs, so he and his competitors would need to charge more.  Prices are

> related to cost when there are competitive providers. The value of a

> service to most user is higher,but more suppliers drive the price closer

> to marginal cost + an "ordinary rate of profit." (Difficult issues here

> in telecom with very high fixed costs, but that doesn't change this

> argument.) The value of my broadband service to me might be $75/month,

> but competition forces Verizon to sell it for $35. When a seller

> explains a price is based on "value", that suggests there is demand but

> insufficient supply. Otherwise prices would come down. This is

> interesting because you can draw an inference competition is weak when

> prices move in a way different than cost. For example, DSL costs overall

> have been coming down, even including a generous allowance for bandwidth

> costs. (Modems are cheaper, support drops significantly when most of

> your users have been on the service over a year, scale matters, etc.)

> Therefore, when AT&T raised most DSL prices about 20% a few weeks ago, I

> took that as confirmation competition isn't working well.

>

> It is possible to run a large broadband network without traffic shaping

> like Comcast, because Verizon, AT&T, and Free.fr do it. A key Comcast

> claim in the FCC filing is that this is impossible. Source: Verizon SVP

> Tom Tauke, AT&T SVP Jim Cicconi, AT&T CEO testifying at the Senate,

> numerous technical sources.

>>> Internet growth rates per subscriber are little changed for the last

>>> five years at 35-45%, not increasing or a crisis brought on by video.

>>> Source: Odlyzko's excellent MINTS page and Comcast's filing with the

>>> 40% number for 2007

>>> Over that same period, the costs of delivering that bandwidth have

>>> gone down at a Moore's Law pace of 25-40% (switches, routers, etc.)

>>> The result is that the carrier's cost of bandwidth has been flat to

>>> down for five years. The total bandwidth cost is typically

>>> $1/month/customer. Multiple sources

>>> It's probably impossible to build a network that never degrades even

>>> in emergencies like 9/11 or Katrina. It is possible to affordably

>>> build a network that virtually never seriously degrades even

>>> demanding applications like highquality web video. Evidence: Free.fr,

>>> Verizon FIOS, AT&T U-Verse, and my home DSL line do that today, by

>>> company claim and all reports I've found.

>>> My conclusion, which allows one to be in favor or opposed to NN, is

>>> that neutral networks aren't free, but are practical at a definable

>>> price.

>>>     I respect the opinion of Dave and others that getting the

>>> government involved could create even more problems. My opinion is

>>> grounded on my research that almost any likely scenario puts the

>>> maximum cost of upgrading to a neutral network less than $1/month,

>>> and it's easy to project costs of a few dimes on a $30-50 month

>>> service. I believe that's a good tradeoff for the customer and system.

>>> Dave Burstein

>>> Editor, DSL Prime

>>> -------------------------------------------






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