[walrus01]

Something not really covered is this concept: "Maybe don't let one telecom company acquire too much control".

Look at the history of everything that was acquired by either Qwest/CenturyLink or Level3, and then the merger of Level3. You can't tell me that the existence of Lumen, the combined Centurylink-Level3 entity is good for anyone, except for their shareholders.

It's the very definition of too much centralization.

Look at all of the things that have now been jammed together into the modern Verizon, as well.

Look at the sad state of competition in Canada, with Rogers and Shaw trying to merge.

[lotsofpulp]

Also need fat upload pipes (i.e. fiber) to individuals’ homes so they can operate their own backup and peer to peer services.

When 90%+ of people have no upload capacity at their house, and are behind tons of CGNAT, then onedrive/iCloud/google drive become the only solution for storing your things you can access later. Same with chat protocols.

[tkojames]

They just rolled out att fiber into my neighborhood. I was surprised as I live in a older neighborhood. Have overhead power lines talked with att installer and he said that was the reason we go it. Went from 1 gig down 30 mbps upload cable for 100 a month to 70 for gig full up and down and they gave me 400 bucks for signing up. It is pretty awesome having a direct fiber line to the house. My brother lives in Santa Rosa California and is on the list to get 10 gig fiber from Sonic for 65 a month. Hopefully things are starting to change. Once he has it I was thinking of just doing rysnc between us for backup.

[pabs3]

What equipment does the fiber line plug into? Can you run your own device? Is it PON or AON fiber?

[judge2020]

AT&T's residential offering requires you use their terminal[0] which is apparently a G-010G-A[1], so PON. They also require you use their own gateway+wifi combo unit[2], although you can do full IP passthrough so that the gateway doesn't even do ipv4 NAT. I have an installation tomorrow and will reply in case the box is a different model.

0: https://www.att.com/support/article/u-verse-high-speed-inter...

1: https://www.ebay.com/itm/164939095713

2: https://forums.att.com/conversations/att-internet-equipment/...

[OldTimeCoffee]

ATT Fiber is mostly GPON with some areas that are XGS-PON. They just started rolling out 2gbit and 5gbit service in one city.

There are a couple of bypass methods on the GPON network that let you use your equipment with the ONT and bypass the RG. I don't think I would bother, though, and I'd just use the 'IP Passthrough' DMZ to assign the public IP to your router. The only problem was the size of the internal connection table on the RG was historically very small and didn't clear quickly which really only causes problems if you torrent. The newer RGs don't have this problem.

On the XGS-PON network the ONT is integrated into the RG so it's not possible right now, but again the DMZ 'IP Passthrough' mode actually works well.

They support IPv6 and they give out a /56 if that matters to you.

[tzs]

I don't understand. If my upload bandwidth is sufficient for me to keep my stuff on OneDrive/iCloud/Google Drive, why wouldn't it be sufficient to keep my stuff on any other remote storage service?

[lotsofpulp]

You can keep it on other services, but economies of scale, bundle pricing, and security concerns benefit the large incumbents. For example, I stick to iCloud, because all of my data is already exposed to Apple, so exposing it to another entity is just increasing the number of entities my data resides at just increases my vulnerability.

However, as an individual, I could gain great utility by not exposing any of my data to any company. And I would not have to if I could setup a NAS at home with a 1Gbps+ upload that me and my family can setup our devices to backup to, or use in a similar fashion as Dropbox or run a peer to peer chat protocol like WhatsApp.

But all of that is a nonstarter because of the minuscule number of people with 1Gbps+ connections at home with ipv6 and not hidden behind CGNAT, there is no viable market for selling the software and NAS that can cut out the big tech companies.

[FridayoLeary]

Is it? In the UK BT owns all the wires and stuff yet i don't think it majorly affects consumers, nor are their competitiors being crushed.

[ssss11]

There are a couple of others who own wires but really only in London (colt, forget the other one)

BT retail (the arm that sells to clients) has strict rules that forbid it from sharing with BT wholesale (the arm that sells to the other ISPs) so BT retail really can’t crush the competitors.. I don’t know the exact arrangement but they’re treated like any other ISP customer I believe

[gerdesj]

See if you can find our ENUM registry and use it.

BT doesn't own our wires as such. OpenReach does (yes they were formally BT but spinned off).

BT or OpenReach - who cares? The important thing is functionality. I'd like to provide you with a novel telephony setup but the lack of ENUM means I am not able to do that.

[M2Ys4U]

>BT doesn't own our wires as such. OpenReach does (yes they were formally BT but spinned off).

Openreach are a wholly-owned subsidiary of BT, they're not really independent.

[cortesoft]

Depends on how heavily regulated it is

[serverholic]

Starlink should help with this by bypassing traditional networks.

[melony]

They are the definition of centralized.

[serverholic]

Two networks are less centralized than one. Why do people think centralization is binary?

[justinpombrio]

And Starlink is especially good, because it can compete with all of the cable companies at once. No one will have a monopoly anymore. Hopefully a lot of people will suddenly start getting better service, which I hear is common when competition rolls into town.

[tzs]

Starlink will not have enough bandwidth, even after the full constellation is deployed, to compete with even one cable company in a major metropolitan area. Starlink is designed for places where there is not a high customer density.

[serverholic]

Do you have any resources to learn more about this?

[immibis]

Unless Starlink becomes the new monopoly, which is worse because it's one global monopoly instead of a different monopoly per region.

[hansel_der]

why?

wireless is only radically different from a consumer perspective and the capacity is nothing to write home about. It's the coverage and latency that bring value.