NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad
[ NNSquad ] Re: Unbundling rates [ +Administrivia ]
Il giorno 30/ago/2010, alle ore 04.37, "George Ou" <george_ou@lanarchitect.net> ha scritto:
this is not so in europe
> The price per burst rate Mbps isn't comparable between the US and other nations because nearly all other nations have very small usage caps on their wired broadband services.
regulations impose a wholesale offer from the incumbent including bitstream and unbundling of the local loop
bitstream means the incumbent provides almost everything, collecting traffic from a single specific user and delivering it to a remote point where the ISP interconnects to (access loop, backhauling, backbone, interconnection trunk). these offers are normally charged in terms of capacity of the four segments. n access loops are collected to a backhauling area; n backhauling areas are collected to the backbone and the backbone transport is delivered on an interconnection link.
this ensures that an isp can serve even a single customer in a remote town where the incumbent has infrastructure, as long as he belongs to an area where the isp has other customers. effectively this means that basically all ISPs can serve all the country. of course the access speeds configurations are limited to those decided by the incumbent, who's the one owning and managing the dslams.
but that's where ULL has an influence.
ULL means that the copper loop from the user is detached at the exchange from the incumbent and connected to the altnet devices. Shared access is becoming more popular in some countries: the frequencies are split so that voice is served by the incumbent and data is provided by an altnet. what often happens next is that the altnet provides voip (prioritizing voip traffic on the access loop) and the user cancels his PSTN subscription with the incumbent.
the access loop in ULL is charged from the incumbent to the altnet on a flat monthly rate, the speed the altnet can provide to the customer is only decided by the altnet. his colocation costs (altnet's devices in the exchange) are fixed, they do not depend on speed. the altnet tends to have his own leased/owned fibre going into the exchange and therefore the cost is marginally influenced by usage.
in those exchanges where there's ULL based competition you then have unlimited offers at the maximum speeds achievable on the access loop.
therefore, in order to compete with altnets, the incumbent has to provide a similar offer .
but, as the incumbent's offers have to be replicable by competitors who buy from him wholesale, there must be a corresponding bitstream wholesale offer, so all providers can serve all the country with flat rate offers at the maximum speed achievable by the access link. (ull based altnets tend to perform better as they face less problems managing the overbooking levels along the four segments I described above)
In those exchanges where there's no fibre backhauling the overall available capacity is limited and some incumbents try managing the traffic. in some area there are other infrastructures (fibre, catv) but this is overall quite limited (with some notable exceptions). geographic segmentation of regulation so that there are different pro-competitive remedies (e.g. no obligation for bitstream or replicability tests) by regulators is something that incumbents keep asking for but the EU commission is very careful about.
issues on net neutrality tend to be limited to exchanges where there's no fibre, because if there's fibre, all isp are present and you will find one of them who does not make any traffic management and therefore a basic best effort access is available.
this seems in line with brough turner's recent post where he says that what is needed are rules ensuring common carriage.
ciao, s.
> More generous usage caps (or no hard caps) translates to a higher base price so those higher base prices aren't that bad a deal when you're capped on usage. In fact if you're a heavy user, you're getting a steal because the majority of users are paying a little more to subsidize you.
>
> Even the controversial (but failed) usage caps proposed by Time Warner dwarfed the typical usage caps of most other nations listed by the OECD.
> http://www.digitalsociety.org/files/gou/compare-bb-2.png
>
>
> Ranking 9th place at lower monthly costs while offering some of the most generous usage caps is fairly respectable and certainly not the rip off that so many portrait it to be.
>
>
>
>
> George
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: nnsquad-bounces+george_ou=lanarchitect.net@nnsquad.org [mailto:nnsquad-bounces+george_ou=lanarchitect.net@nnsquad.org] On Behalf Of Mischa Beitz
> Sent: Sunday, August 29, 2010 7:17 PM
> To: nnsquad@nnsquad.org
> Subject: [ NNSquad ] Re: Unbundling rates [ +Administrivia ]
>
>> * Every responsible study of the rates US operators charge for low-end
>> broadband and cell calls finds that we have rates among the lowest in
>> the world; check OECD, Merrill Lynch, any source you want. The carriers
>> give the service away at the low end and charge more for the high end,
>> which is as it should be.
>
> OECD recently released their 2009 broadband data here:
>
> http://www.oecd.org/document/54/0,3343,en_2649_34225_38690102_1_1_1_1,00.html
>
> I've only cursorily looked at what seem to be the pertinent data
> regarding Richard's claim regarding broadband. Here's what I found:
>
> In "average monthly subscription price for very low-speed connections"
> US ranks 9th out of 24 OECD nations. Not bad, but "among the lowest"?
> 8 out of 24, or fully 1/3 of the other nations, had less expensive
> average low-end prices than the US.
>
> In pricerange per Mbit/s, the low-end of the pricerange places the US
> at 25th of 30 OECD nations, suggesting that 24 nations have less
> expensive price offerings when measured in price per Mbit/s. Whether
> "high-speed" or "low-speed", the OECD data certainly doesn't suggest
> to me that US broadband providers are "giving the service away".
>
> The other graphs seems to suggest a similar picture. However, that's
> just from a quick glance at the graphs provided by OECD on my way to
> work this morning, I'm ready to be corrected in my reading of them.
>
> Regards,
>
> Mischa Beitz
>
>
> --
> Mischa Beitz
> http://mischa.beitz.org
>
>
>