Re: symmetric vs. asymmetric [was: Verizon Policy Statement on Net Neutrality]

[Owen DeLong <owen () delong com>]

> On Feb 28, 2015, at 10:59 , Miles Fidelman <mfidelman () meetinghouse net> wrote:
>
> Michael Thomas wrote:
> > On 02/28/2015 08:59 AM, Mike Hammett wrote:
> > > 20 years ago was into AOL's prime, so yes they did.
> > >
> > > Great, let's re-evaluate the system when demand necessitates it. For many systems, it's literally as simple as 
> > > changing how many channels are allocated to what directions.
> > >
> > > By that logic, we would have been running 486s with 32 gigs of RAM because some people today use that much. *shakes 
> > > head* Obviously the majority of the dissent here works with OPM.
> >
> > The point is that the incumbents (= telephants) at the time looked at even the
> > minuscule AOL user base with disdain saying that their market share was irrelevant.
> > Even into the early 2000's these same guys thought that voice was the only thing
> > that really mattered because the new fangled internet users were outliers from their
> > pots bread and butter. We now know those outliers were important. Being dismissive
> > of them is dangerous.
>
> Actually, I think the incumbents do get it, at this point - at least Verizon does.  FIOS is a pretty nice offering, 
> and they offer some pretty high speeds, both up and down.  It's just that they've stopped their buildout with the 
> large markets; but they've been a power behind the state level anti-municipal broadband laws.  Kind of annoying that, 
> in areas where they have no intention of building out, they want to stand in the way of folks who want to do it 
> themselves.

It’s not that they have no intention of building out… It’s that they want to get the right bribes^wkickbacks^wsubsidies 
to do so. If the city can build their own fiber, they’re a lot less likely to bribe^wpayoff^wsubsidize Verizon to do it 
for them. Also, if a municipality owns fiber, they might actually allow open competition on the services side of things 
which would not only be bad for FIOS, but might also be bad for VZW, too.


Owen