[Discuss] recent Internet speed upgrade by Comcast?

[Jerry Feldman]

Shirley, I think you are pointing out the pilitics involved with
communications in the U.S. Telephone is and has been franchised at the
community level. Each community has its own CO[s], exchange, et. al.
Cable is also franchised at the local level. The reason Boston does not
have FIOS is that Verizon was told to make FIOS available for the whole
city of not at all. Early on, there was Cablevision of Boston, an
essentially one-of cable TV system, not to be confused with Continental
Cablevision which was much more advanced and brought the first
cable-internet to the region. Any you are on a very slippery slope
because of the foundations of your building. Much of Comcast's installed
base is Continental Cablevision where a lot of fibre was installed
before AT&T BI bought them. In these days where town borders don't make
any real sense any longer, it is the politics that somehow affects the
decisions on whether to invest or not. But we also have the wireless
companies, like Verizon and AT&T (and Spring and T-Mobile). They have a
lock on the Smartphone and tablet business. Wait until they decide they
want to connect your household Internet and TV. Look at the marketshare
for household phone services.
But Comcast advertises speed. By giving Bogstad 100Mbps, they are not
preventing him from leaving yet, but it will only be a few years where
the wireless providers will be getting serious about household services.

So, in the meantime Shirley has to live with her butter and cocoa.

On 05/07/2014 02:51 PM, Shirley Márquez Dúlcey wrote:
> In my part of Boston, the choices are Comcast and Comcast. Oh, and
> very bad Verizon DSL service, and Clearwire service that you can no
> longer sign up for and was bad anyway. They aren't under any market
> pressure here but they did the upgrade anyway.
>
> On Wed, May 7, 2014 at 2:46 PM, Jack Coats <jack at coats.org> wrote:
>> It might not make short term business sense, but doing the long term upgrade
>> to their infrastructure is in their best interest to keep their business
>> viable.
>>
>> US ISPs of all kinds are getting bad press with the USA being the highest
>> price and slowest network of all developed countries.
>>
>> My guess is they aren't about to lower their income (your cost) but they can
>> do the next best thing in providing better connectivity especially where it
>> is of no significant cost to them.
>>
>> They need to work on making us believe we are getting good service for our
>> cash, and real competition would not result in significantly better service.
>> If they do this, they can stay the 800lb gorilla in the room for a long
>> time.  If not, and customers demand it, eventually there will be google to
>> the desktop, or direct broadcast mesh or satellite networking for a
>> reasonable price after a few more court battles are fought over current ISP
>> 'benevolent monopoly' philosophy.
>>
>> At least that is my guess.  It is probably wrong.
>

-- 
Jerry Feldman <gaf at blu.org>
Boston Linux and Unix
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