I live in a country in which all internet is divided by a vertically-integrated duopoly.
One of the companies (let's call is "Bell") owns a national fibre network, the last mile of copper or fiber to the home, ISP service, mobile phone service, and several national content networks. It receives significant subsidies from the federal government for providing national backbone service, fixed wireless service in rural areas from its extensive network of towers, and content production on its networks. The other duopolist is similar, but started in the cable TV business instead of the telephone business.
These duopolists are required by law to allow third-party ISPs to use their backhauls and last-miles in exchange for some of the government subsidies. They do this grudgingly, using loopholes like providing twisted copper pairs to the third-party offices even when fibre passes outside their door. Regulations allow (and there is plenty of admission of, and lawsuits over) deep packet inspection to allow "traffic shaping" based on content and connection. At one point the cable company was successfully sued because they throttled all encrypted traffic on the assumption that it was VPN streaming pirated video content in competition with their own service., causing gaming to be useless for half the country.
I understand these are first-world problems. I own shared of some of these companies, and they pay good dividends. It doesn't mean they are not unethical.
They are. Second (and some of the third) world countries often have much better internet, both in terms of competition, prices, and overall quality, than US and Europe, in my experience.
I have the same impression and don't understand why. Maybe it's because it's such an important part of the infrastructure that having slow internet is not the biggest concern.
I have my bunch of anecdotes from the time I lived in Berlin, one of the best was how on my building I had access to 500mbps fiber and a friend living on a building one block from me had to register on a wait list, wait for more than 3 months to get a 50 mbps ADSL, this was the only provider still accepting new customers at the time for his address. And this was happening just 3km from city center.
Comms infrastructure is often greenfield in emerging-markets so there’s no legacy systems getting in the way, and the companies doing the deployment have the incentive to deploy the then-latest-and-greatest. But in 20-30 years’ time they’ll be having the same problems we have :)
Another issue is a lack of the kind of regulations (or their enforcement) that comms companies really dislike: things like regs about how to correctly bury cables and land-use rights or how to share overhead cable line poles - and most importantly: minimum service requirements. It’s easy to focus your entire org on a flashy new FTTP set-up in one single rich urban city when you’re not legally required to also keep a 75+ year-old unprofitable rural copper system running.
(No, I’m not a libertarian - and I’m happy to pay more for my service with the understanding that I’m subsidising a system that keeps isolated and vulnerable people connected.)
Certain types of corruption at the local level also play a part - which ordinarily would lead to worse outcomes overall, but in my case, at least, I’d love it if the suits that run BT’s OpenReach could be bribed to stop propping up copper :/
> One of the companies (let's call is "Bell") owns a national fibre network, the last mile of copper or fiber to the home, ISP service, mobile phone service, and several national content networks. It receives significant subsidies from the federal government for providing national backbone service, fixed wireless service in rural areas from its extensive network of towers, and content production on its networks.
Sounds like Deutsche Telekom. There were instances of those assholes ripping fibre out of the ground so they could put copper lines back in.
When DSL was becoming more and more prominent in our area during the early-mid 2000s Telekom always BS'd their way around giving my family more than that trash-tier ISDN hookup.
In the end my father had enough and went to 1&1 for internet access which also wasn't that easy since Telekom had (and IIRC still has) control over the "last mile" from the roadside box to the customer.
> The other duopolist is similar, but started in the cable TV business instead of the telephone business.
> At one point the cable company was successfully sued because they throttled all encrypted traffic
Sounds like Kabel Deutschland (now after its acquisition called "Vodafone Kabel Deutschland") which had its run-ins with net neutrality
One of the companies (let's call is "Bell") owns a national fibre network, the last mile of copper or fiber to the home, ISP service, mobile phone service, and several national content networks. It receives significant subsidies from the federal government for providing national backbone service, fixed wireless service in rural areas from its extensive network of towers, and content production on its networks. The other duopolist is similar, but started in the cable TV business instead of the telephone business.
These duopolists are required by law to allow third-party ISPs to use their backhauls and last-miles in exchange for some of the government subsidies. They do this grudgingly, using loopholes like providing twisted copper pairs to the third-party offices even when fibre passes outside their door. Regulations allow (and there is plenty of admission of, and lawsuits over) deep packet inspection to allow "traffic shaping" based on content and connection. At one point the cable company was successfully sued because they throttled all encrypted traffic on the assumption that it was VPN streaming pirated video content in competition with their own service., causing gaming to be useless for half the country.
I understand these are first-world problems. I own shared of some of these companies, and they pay good dividends. It doesn't mean they are not unethical.