[HN Gopher] FCC fines Charter, LTD Broadband more than $3M for R...
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FCC fines Charter, LTD Broadband more than $3M for RDOF defaults
Author : PaulHoule
Score : 81 points
Date : 2022-07-25 17:02 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.fiercetelecom.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.fiercetelecom.com)
| dylan604 wrote:
| Another toothless fine from the government. A measly $3M is
| nothing for these giant corps. If you want a fine to stick, make
| it a not small percentage of their gross sales. Otherwise, this
| just gets rolled into cost of business and not a deterrent for
| future problems.
| m463 wrote:
| I wish it was a multiplier against the cost of actually
| installing broadband in some areas.
|
| So if it costs $1m to install broadband in some community, make
| the fine 3x @ $3m.
|
| If corporations don't have intent and want to risk it, don't
| take the money.
| Arrath wrote:
| A clawback of the full amount initially granted out, as well as
| punitive fines against the revenue from customers in census
| blocks they were supposed to upgrade but kept extracting
| profits from through their ancient existent infrastructure
| seems like a good start.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Some of these rural places they bid on are so rural that in
| their mind it is cost prohibitive to incur the expenses of
| bringing them the service. In their life time of being a
| customer, they will not likely pay enough to cover that
| initial construction cost. This is why I'm sure the bean
| counters have said to just ignore them and pay the fines.
| It'll be cheaper in the long run for the company.
|
| So maybe make the fines the equivelant to all of the
| construction fees they are trying to avoid by reneging on
| their bids + a severe penalty. Make it so that it is more
| financially attractive to do what they promised.
| wmf wrote:
| No, fines are not cheaper than simply not bidding on areas
| they can't serve.
| indigodaddy wrote:
| Exactly my thoughts as well-- why did they bid in the
| first place?
| horsawlarway wrote:
| Because the team drafting the grant application isn't the
| same team that's evaluating the feasibility of doing the
| work.
|
| Honestly - if it's anything at all like some of the
| companies I've peripherally worked for around government
| grants, the team seeking grants doesn't actually give a
| flying fuck if they can do the work. Their job is to
| secure as much grant funding as possible, any way
| possible.
|
| Implementation planning only happens after securing the
| grant. At that point it's far too late.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Also, you may know there are certain areas required by
| the bid that are less desirable. As long as there is
| enough desirable in the there to make up whatever
| punative fines will be levied for failing on the other
| areas, then it's still a win for the company
| dylan604 wrote:
| you bid on it so someone else can't get it before you do.
| you then hope that there's going to be a way to make it
| work, but in the end, you realize it's just not going to
| happen. so now, you just take the fine and walk away
| wmf wrote:
| I'm pretty sure no money was initially granted out because
| these ISPs defaulted before it got to that point. In that
| context I think these fines are fair.
|
| Now I want to know what process the FCC has for re-bidding
| those defaulted areas.
| pavon wrote:
| Before the RDOF auction began there was a controversy about
| the FCC not having accurate service coverage data to
| determine what census tracts should be eligible for the
| program. The result was that something like $16 billion
| would be paid out in this first round of auction, and $4
| billion was held back for a second auction to fill the gaps
| once we had more accurate data. Then the bidding actually
| went low enough that the FCC was able to cover all their
| first-round goals with just $9 billion, leaving $11 billion
| for the second round. My understanding is that any areas
| (and clawed back funds) that weren't serviced during the
| first round will go back into the pot for the next round.
| Arrath wrote:
| > I'm pretty sure no money was initially granted out
| because these ISPs defaulted before it got to that point.
|
| I'm gladdened to hear that, at least.
|
| Is there any mechanism for local, independent ISP's to pop
| up and take advantage of this funding, or is it all
| tailored towards big-telco?
| wmf wrote:
| Lots of RDOF funding went to local ISPs you've never
| heard of so I'd say the mechanism is... RDOF.
| Arrath wrote:
| Nice! I was honestly curious as this program is well
| outside my field.
| [deleted]
| londons_explore wrote:
| So these fines represent 0.3% of the original funding...
|
| Does that mean the other 99.7% of the work has been completed to
| a satisfactory standard?
| wmf wrote:
| RDOF buildout mostly hasn't even started and the deadline is
| 2028. This is a case of ISPs admitting that they can't serve
| areas they bid on. Around 2030 we'll discover the areas that
| ISPs still aren't serving even though they got paid to do so.
| susanasj wrote:
| shameless plug: https://internetforall.nyc/
|
| There is a coalition of organizations trying to get NYC to start
| its own public broadband provider. If you live in NY, talk to
| your friends and reps about it, if you don't, get your city to
| start one. NYC had to sue Verizon because they didn't fulfill
| their contracts to provide broadband to low income parts of the
| city (just like Charter and LTD haven't), but there really is no
| choice except to keep subsidizing these godawful companies unless
| we have a publicly owned alternative.
| IMSAI8080 wrote:
| I think the best approach would be publicly owned
| infrastructure with a mandate to reach all addresses. Run a
| basic no-frills public ISP service over it at a fair price but
| the private sector can also operate added value services over
| the public infrastructure if they want for a nominal
| maintenance fee.
| jnathsf wrote:
| This is exactly the approach SF[1] was taking but
| unfortunately our main political champion, the Mayor, passed
| away unexpectedly. We were estimating $25-30/mo for 1Gb
| symmetrical as a utility tax for all households (subsidized
| for low income).
|
| [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2018/07/12/amer
| ica...
| lelandfe wrote:
| This is great. The flip side of this is NYC Mesh, which is a
| group of fed up volunteers building a giant mesh WiFi, along
| with public access points. It's pretty impressive:
| https://www.nycmesh.net/map
| intrasight wrote:
| Seems a good opportunity for Starlink to get some RDOF funds
| NelsonMinar wrote:
| Starlink is currently expected to get $900M of RDOF funds. I'm
| curious about how FCC is going to enforce performance.
| Starlink's bid promised 20Mbps upload speeds but the reality
| for users is less than 10. Download speeds aren't reliably at
| the 100Mbps the RDOF bid specifies, either.
| https://starlinktrack.com/speedtests/region/us
| smoldesu wrote:
| Just visited fast.com, got 55 Mbps down on a whim (Starlink
| in Michigan). Sure, it doesn't hold a candle to in-home
| fiber, but it definitely beats the pants off HughesNet and
| our local WISP. I'd say for Monday afternoon traffic, I'm
| getting really solid performance. Definitely worth the
| $100/month just for the unmetered connection alone.
|
| I too am curious with how far they can push performance
| though. I've got a hunch that it has something to do with
| balancing satellites, users and regional coverage, but only
| time will tell if they make good on their promise. Even if
| things stay the same as they are right now though, there's
| nothing else that comes close in my area.
| causi wrote:
| Sad to say, but 50% of promised performance is spectacular
| with regard to American telecom companies' rural promises.
| dylan604 wrote:
| How does RDOF test that? Speedtest.net? Fast.com? Rarely have
| I received 100Mbps via http transfer mechanisms, and that's
| the majority of what people do all day. Websites, streaming
| video, etc are all small discrete downloads via lots of
| multiple requests. They don't have time to get "up to speed".
| What that 100Mbps is allow ~10 people to use ~10Mbps at the
| same time. That's the testing I'd be interested in seeing
| proof of their service being met.
| wmf wrote:
| If they do any testing it will probably be through
| SamKnows.
|
| I don't think 10 people has anything to do with a single
| household but maybe I'm just an out-of-touch liberal
| coastal elite. But seriously, one person can use around 25
| Mbps which is why there's discussion of defining broadband
| to be 100 Mbps per household.
| dylan604 wrote:
| NelsonMinar wrote:
| Historically the FCC relied on self-reported numbers from
| ISPs to verify performance. Unsurprisingly, ISPs lied.
| Lately FCC has gotten smarter about verifying performance.
|
| The RDOF performance requirements are much more subtle than
| just average speeds though, there's details about
| percentiles and time of day and the like. I'm hopeful
| someone is being thoughtful at the FCC
| Tuna-Fish wrote:
| Starlink won't get paid until they meet the performance
| goals, but IIRC they have until 2028 to actually fully meet
| them. They do have to have a plan of how that would happen,
| and FCC must accept that plan.
|
| It's public knowledge that they intend to launch a lot more
| satellites before that, so they are probably counting on that
| to help them.
| phkahler wrote:
| >> It's public knowledge that they intend to launch a lot
| more satellites before that, so they are probably counting
| on that to help them.
|
| Yeah, but they also want to substantially increase the
| number of subscribers. It seems a shame to add capacity and
| not users just to get a cheque from the government for
| hitting some arbitrary numbers. IIRC they could have bid
| for a lower speed target that they would probably be
| hitting today.
| wumpus wrote:
| The speed categories were set by the FCC, and SpaceX
| would have gotten nothing if they weren't in the "fast"
| category.
| Tuna-Fish wrote:
| > It seems a shame to add capacity and not users
|
| ... I think they will be doing both. They currently have
| ~2500 sats in the ~53deg constellation. The V2 system
| that has been approved and is targeting similar latitudes
| has 3 times the sats, and each sat is claimed to support
| 9 times the bandwidth of the current ones. So if they
| need to triple bandwidth per user, they can still
| increase subscriber count 9-fold and meet it.
| chrisjc wrote:
| And I believe there is great opportunity for Starlink on the
| RDOF funds they don't win directly and it might/could come in
| two forms:
|
| - Others will end up shipping rebranded/white-label versions of
| Starlink
|
| - Starlink will provide backhaul to others in hard to reach
| places. Then they'll set up their microwave or 5G based off of
| that connectivity. (but wouldn't the first option just be
| easier?)
|
| But is it cheaper to ignore your rural obligations, pocket the
| money and incur the fines than it is to enter into a contract
| with your competition?
|
| Somewhat reminiscent of how Tesla took advantage of zero-
| emissions credits from legacy auto manufacturers that didn't
| want to (or couldn't) produce their own zero-emissions
| vehicles.
| InitialBP wrote:
| Starlink is a god send for my hometown in West Virginia.
|
| Current internet service there is provided by Frontier
| Communications. They offer "advertised" speeds of 6 Mbps but
| for years my parents internet came in around 1 or 2 on a good
| day. Service is abhorrent and they are still using phone lines
| that will likely never be replaced. They've taken serious
| advantage of the state of WV and even after a class action
| lawsuit in 2015 that they settled on I doubt it will ever
| improve.
|
| My parents finally got starlink setup ~3 months ago, it's
| around 100 mbps (roughly 100x as fast) and way more reliable
| even though it's satellite.
| briffle wrote:
| I have an RV I like to use often, and have been watching this
| with quite a bit of interest. Additionally, some of the phone
| companies are starting to have 'real' 5g home connections
| that compete with cable.
|
| While I live in a suburb now, my last home I moved out of in
| 2016 was 2M/256k wireless internet, that was $60/month, and
| only 5-6 miles south of downtown Madison, WI.
|
| Between Starlink and the 5G home connections t-mobile and
| verizon have been selling lately, its going to be interesting
| that Rural locations will suddenly see good internet choices.
| I may be able to finally buy a place in the middle of no-
| where. Working from home has made that not possible
| previously.
| dghughes wrote:
| It's the same in my province for rural areas. I recall fiber
| optic lines being run in the mid 1990s but then nothing.
| Politicians promising just basic Internet connectivity at
| first then "high speed" (the famous up to) for the last 25
| years.
|
| Here in south-eastern Canada we were some of the first to be
| in the Starlink coverage area. From what I hear it's doing
| well not fantastic but better than up to x speed which always
| seems to end up being less than 1MBps. Luckily I am in a town
| with lots of options but still the cost is high $100/month
| for 350Mbps.
|
| Setting aside Musk's abrasive personality, any typical
| satellite Internet issues, orbital clutter, escalating costs,
| it's at least something. Internet access is more than just
| for entertainment these days.
| tuckerpo wrote:
| The default answer in the cable industry for solving
| "underserved" communities seems to be run fiber - but that's
| prohibitively expensive, especially for very rural
| communities. I believe "underserved" is defined as sub 32
| MBps down and sub 6 MBps up. There's HFC which alleviates
| things somewhat but that still implies noise problems and
| signal amplitude loss for each home's coax tap.
|
| It's nice to have Starlink as an intermediary solution for
| rural people while the "fiber everywhere" approach takes slow
| adoption.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Is fiber really more expensive to run than coax? I'd
| imagine that most of the cost is the cost of digging a
| trench or stringing out cables under the power lines. If
| you take a close look at the outdoor plant for a cable
| system there are a large number of large powered boxes that
| also cost money.
|
| Contrast that to a fiber system which has very few active
| parts.
|
| I'd imagine that coaxial cable still dominates in many
| places because it was installed in the 1980s and 1990s.
| When the cable company wants to upgrade the system it is
| cost-effective to replace the uppermost nodes of the
| network with fiber and still leave coax for the last half
| mile.
|
| I know a rural "cable" company that today runs fiber optic
| plant in communities with favorable economics. Their
| primary product is an analog cable signal that is exactly
| what goes over the coax just modulated on a light beam.
| It's an economical and reliable system now and it is
| straightforward to upgrade to GPON or more advanced
| technologies in that future.
| ThaDood wrote:
| It might not be so much that the fiber itself is
| expensive. It might just be the conduit or other delivery
| mechanism that can be rather costly to run. But in
| general, fiber is absolutely a viable option for rural
| communities, usually if the project/roll out is being
| handled by some local organization (Co-op or municipality
| or as you sated a smaller cable company). I wrote my
| thesis on community owned broadband programs in Ohio and
| did a fair amount of research on the topic.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| The one entity that is not going to invest in new plant
| is an entity that has an existing plant.
|
| For instance if there is a phone company with a copper
| plant that can charge $60 a month for DSL it is obviously
| unaffordable for them to upgrade to fiber so they can
| charge $70 a month.
|
| Some other entity might find the new plant is worth
| investing in but it still fights against the old plant.
| For instance the phone company is making crazy profits on
| $60 a month DSL and can probably still make profits on
| $40 a month DSL. This puts a downward pressure on pricing
| for a fiber service and also means the fiber plant is
| going to bypass many possible subscribers because there
| are plenty of people who will put up with a 100x drop in
| performance to save a few dollars.
|
| This book
|
| https://www.commentary.org/articles/leslie-lenkowsky/the-
| zer...
|
| works an interesting case study that was fundamental to
| the Democratic party becoming advocates for free trade.
| In particular, the steel industry in the US in the 1970s
| still depended on open hearth furnaces that were obsolete
| in every way to the basic oxygen furnaces used in Germany
| and Japan.
|
| From a marxist perspective, capital is the "master
| class", maybe even the capital itself (as opposed to the
| capitalist), embodied in those furnaces. Instead of
| replacing the furnaces, the US steel industry pursued
| protectionism which was harmful to the competitiveness of
| other sectors of the economy: inferior and expensive
| steel is an ingredient for inferior and expensive cars,
| buildings, etc.
|
| To analogize, however, the problem is that the copper
| phone network exists. So long as it exists there are
| strong incentives to keep using it. It might not be a
| problem of encouraging investment in fiber as much as
| forcing disinvestment in copper.
| zbobet2012 wrote:
| The question isn't _new_ runs of fiber vs coax, everyone
| just runs fiber for that. It's the cost of upgrading
| existing runs. HFC (hybrid fiber coax) networks have been
| the norm for a long time. When the original coax was run
| it was significantly cheaper to run it even accounting
| for inflation. Like all major construction projects
| (which is what a coax replacement is) costs in the US are
| spiraling upwards:
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-12-08/why-
| build...
| reillyse wrote:
| Do people even dig trenches anymore? I assume there is
| already a services pipe that runs along most city roads
| that has all of the various utilities in it. Am I wrong?
| redtexture wrote:
| Yes.
|
| Utilities may have been buried 20, 30, 40 or 50 years ago
| or more. Without regard to future access, changes or
| modifications.
| [deleted]
| walrus01 wrote:
| Frontier is _famous_ in the telecom /ISP network engineering
| community for having the absolute worst shit tier quality of
| old copper phone wiring running ADSL2+.
|
| Street side pedestals wrapped in plastic garbage bags and
| such.
|
| What you've got there is probably dialtone POTS copper phone
| wiring that was installed in the 1960s to 1980s at a very
| long loop length from where the DSLAM is installed. And wet,
| dirty connections, noisy with crosstalk.
|
| Until they come up with a firm financial commitment to
| overbuild their legacy POTS dialtone copper phone wiring
| outside plant with singlemode fiber it's only going to get
| worse.
| WebbWeaver wrote:
| I've never been satisfied with Frontier internet.
| wnevets wrote:
| Starlink is basically another scam just like Solar City
| crmd wrote:
| I hope fining Charter .00002 of their 51.6 billion annual revenue
| gets them to change their ways.
| [deleted]
| user00012-ab wrote:
| can we fine fiercetelecom.com for breaking the back button on
| that linked page?
|
| and if you don't want a broken internet, stop sharing sites that
| break the internet.
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