[1st-mile-nm] Is Faster not always better ?

[Doug Orr]

Hey Doug,

(a) Did broadband companies raise endpoint bandwidth and upgrade all their
other junk with the expectation that there would be significant uptick in
usage...or did they raise endpoint speeds, meaning they can charge higher
prices, and implement minimal core improvements to back it up with.

I have, for example (anecdote alert!), a house in a podunk Michigan town
(3000 population). The only provider is Charter. They used to have several
packages, all of which could stream Netflix. They switched to where the
minimum package is 40mbps for $80/mo. Way more bandwidth than I need and
way more than I'd prefer to pay. Does that sound more like forcing everyone
into a higher grade of service because they are totally going to be better
competitors and provide better service, or updating cheap endpoint gear in
order to justify price increases which offset losses from cord cutting? (Here's
an articl
<https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/01/charter-will-spend-less-on-cable-network-in-2019-but-charge-customers-more/>e
reporting Charter is spending less on its cable network in 2019 and
charging its customers more. Here's an article
<https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/01/sorry-ajit-comcast-lowered-cable-investment-despite-net-neutrality-repeal/>
saying, roughly, the same thing about Comcast [Comcast says they're
spending more on infrastructure, but, who'd know if that's right?])

(b) I agree that school aged children and young people are bigger bandwidth
users (as, I wouldn't be surprised, are children of Internet professionals
:) And the question absolutely is, as you say, who are the isps making the
network for? But, again, the question, fully, is, who are they building the
whole thing out for -- caching, peering, aggregate bandwidth... Because
it's the end-to-end performance that matters to the intensive consumers,
not the "speed test" number, and raising end to end performance is way more
expensive than giving people a faster endpoint. (Cable companies seem to be
reporting getting done with their upgrade to docsys 3.1, which all fits.
And, maybe not coincidentally, one of the big features in 3.1 is "active
queue management.") Throttling and traffic shaping can give you a whole lot
cheaper implementation than upgrading line cards.

Better numbers sound sexier. It's a marketing benefit to have higher
numbers, and it makes the bar higher for potential competitors.

I'll stick with my baseless assertion that our isps are advertising and
pricing for gamers and building and provisioning for 50 year-olds watching
Netflix :)

  Doug

On Wed, Aug 28, 2019, 9:32 AM Doug Dawson <blackbean2 at ccgcomm.com> wrote:

> This is a topic I've been giving a lot of thought to lately, because this
> seem to be one of the new arguments that opponents of funding rural
> broadband are now using.
>
> It takes pages to write a full response to the question (and luckily for
> me I have a blog where I can do that), but here are a few ideas that are
> part of the response to refute this concept:
> - 2/3 of the broadband customers in the country are now served by the big
> cable companies, and those companies all now have set the minimum speeds of
> broadband for new customers between 100 Mbps and 200 Mbps. They didn't do
> this in a vacuum and the big companies unilaterally increase speeds every
> 3-5 years as a way to cut down on customer complaints about speed. I think
> there is a strong argument that these companies have established the
> 'market' speeds that customers want. Nobody made the cable companies
> increase speeds and this is one of those examples of the marketplace at
> work.
> - Like with everything in this world, the users of broadband run the gamut
> on the spectrum from homes that barely use it to homes that will use
> everything they can get. It's really easy to talk to folks along the bottom
> half of that spectrum and assume that homes don't need faster speeds. This
> raises the really interesting policy question: do you set speeds based upon
> the average customer, upon the 10% biggest users, or something else? There
> is no automatic answer to that question, although I point to the answer
> above where the cable companies seem to have decided to cater to the top
> half of the spectrum.
> - There is a huge difference in homes with school-age students and those
> without. In my opinion any discussion of the right amount of bandwidth
> needs to consider homes with students - other homes just come along for the
> ride.
> - We know that the need for bandwidth and speed increases every year. If
> the policy is to build broadband that takes care of today's needs, such a
> network will be inadequate in five years and obsolete in ten years.
>
> Doug Dawson
> President
> CCG Consulting
> 202 255-7689
>
> Check out my blog at http://potsandpansbyccg.com
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: 1st-mile-nm <1st-mile-nm-bounces at mailman.dcn.org> On Behalf Of John
> Brown
> Sent: Tuesday, August 27, 2019 10:18 PM
> To: 1st-mile-nm at mailman.dcn.org
> Subject: [1st-mile-nm] Is Faster not always better ?
>
> https://www.wsj.com/graphics/faster-internet-not-worth-it/
>
> --
> Respectfully,
>
> John Brown, CISSP
> Managing Member, CityLink Telecommunications NM, LLC
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