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by KingMob 3123 days ago
Not AGSchneiderman, but I'll try my hand at some of these.

2. Because the "gentleman's agreement" behind peering has broken down, and the last-mile telecoms realized they can demand money from both sides.

3. Because any entity the size of the govt has many parts. The NY AG is not working at the FCC, nor do they work at federal antitrust organizations.

4. It certainly would, but the incredible infrastructure investment needed to bring meaningful competition to an area ensures that most companies and investors don't want to commit to such a low ROI.
1 comments
bifrost 3123 days ago
Your points on 2+4 are not based in fact and are extremely general statements.

On point 2 - All of these agreements work, sometimes the agreements where more money is at stake take longer to sort out but they do get sorted out. The biggest fact involved is that when the agreements are slow to get sorted out, the parties involve lose customers and revenue.

On point 4 - in areas where competition for the last mile is able to exist, it does in fact exist. If you want to address the last mile there are a lot of other things that can be done aside from hamstringing ISPs.

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KingMob 3123 days ago
#2 I have no doubt they will get "sorted out", just to the benefit of the telecoms, and the detriment of everyone else. Also, I have no idea why you think Verizon/Spectrum/Comcast would "lose customers and revenue" in a protracted negotiation in any monopoly county. If there's only one broadband provider, you have no meaningful alternative, and they

#4 If you check the Broadband Initiative Data for 2013 (last year of available data) at https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/fcc-b..., you can see for the fastest speeds of 50Mbps down, there's at most one provider for 82% of America.

I'm not suggesting hamstringing ISPs at all, but bringing them to heel since they won't willingly do so. E.g., here in NYC, Verizon is being sued for being unwilling to keep its contract to make FiOS available to every residence (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/13/nyregion/ny-sues-verizon-...)

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