[imgabe]

True. I recall reading somewhere that Japan has a law requiring the owner of the physical wires to lease them to anyone as long as they pay some set fee - sort of like mechanical royalties that we have for music. This is part of the reason why Japan has some of the fastest and cheapest Internet in the world.

[warfangle]

That's called last mile unbundling, and is one thing the FCC has refused to consider.

aDSL used to be unbundled, too. And while it was unbundled, speeds were increasing.

aDSL speeds have been pretty flat since they removed the requirement, even though newer DSL technologies are available.

[bogomipz]

Yep, local loop unbundling was a thing in the US, it was basically a provision in the 1996 Telecommunications Act to promote competition. It largely worked too, you used to have your choice of 10 or 12 DSL providers in the US. You could do that with things like copper local loops, I would love to see it with Cable but I suppose theres not a good way to share the local loops in cable plant as they are mostly fiber now. It too bad EEOC(ethernet over copper) never took off.

[lstamour]

> I suppose theres not a good way to share the local loops in cable plant as they are mostly fiber now

Well, here in Canada they're mostly fiber also -- but it still works. See, for example, https://www.teksavvy.com/ and https://www.start.ca/ ... "TPIA" is what they're called.

In looking them up, I stumbled on mailing lists for TPIAs hosted by Torix. Realised at that point that TPIAs have a lot in common with Canadian IXPs -- both put pressure on prices from Canadian ISPs, TIPAs by consumers and IXPs from businesses/services aghast at how much certain folks charge. See https://cira.ca/sites/default/files/cira-ixp-overview-web.pd... for more on IXPs. I wonder if there's a book on this somewhere, or what ISPs think. Rogers Cable peers with Torix, so it's not exclusively smaller players, in fact I'd say it's the everybody-but-telcos club but I'm sure telcos and US players are welcome if they cared to... (let's pretend they simply are unaware of the ahem, savings...)

[rahimnathwani]

Local loop unbundling works very well in the UK.

[mariuolo]

> aDSL speeds have been pretty flat since they removed the requirement, even though newer DSL technologies are available.

Playing devil's advocate here.

How would they increase adsl speed if it's very much distance-related? It tops out at 24Mbps and even then in ideal conditions.

Those newer DSL technologies require laying fiber closer to the customer and that's a nontrivial investment.

[izacus]

Huh? Here in EU the DSL speeds have been steadily growing up to 50Mbit without users doing much (ISPs deploy either modern ADSL2+ or versions of VDSL). A copper wire that could only carry 8Mbit before now carries full triple-play at 30+Mbits.

Most of that has come from legislation that forced the monopolistic owner of copper wires to let competition use them.

[darkr]

Parent was referring to the fact that VDSL/VDSL2 is more sensitive to loop attenuation that ADSLx. Yes, you can get 100MB symmetric over a copper pair, but only for 300M or so.

Hence VDSLx is usually rolled out only as part of an FTTC deployment, where the ISP needs to roll out new fibre (rather than copper) to the caninet/junction box, and in most cases install DSLAM units in those cabinets also.

[brianwawok]

To get full DSL speed you need to be within X feet of a junction box, which many people are not.

[Shivetya]

well when the state of Georgia deregulated natural gas sales that is effectively what happened. A management company became the owners of the gas lines, responsible for maintenance and expansion. That fee appears on every gas bill