Comcast Beats FCC In Throttling Case > Time to build your own community network?

Time to build your own community network?

Some of us have already done so. It's actually fairly straight forward to implement in MDU environments depending on how the building was wired and what's available in the demarc.

Just hire an outside IT firm to manage the transition and equipment config and lease a nice fat pipe from a major ISP.

It works. Comcast, Qwest, etc cannot compete with our setup, and they get their bandwidth for a lot less money. Funny how that works...

Yea.. funny how that works when you're not taking everything into consideration.. you're talking about managing one small piece of property vs. a multi-million subscriber based model.. How many vehicles do you or that company managing your network have? How much government regulation and costs do that company have? How much of a power bill, taxes, etc etc etc etc etc etc. does that company have?

TOTALLY different models, and they don't even compare.

Nonsense.

It's on paper how much these telcos make on "broadband". Take Comcast for example, they make plenty of $$$$.

Read a set of financial statements and then talk to me about the expenses these companies have to deal with.

It costs a smaller site more money to implement access to higher speeds because you can't oversubscribe costs when it's only one property. Larger companies can oversubscribe their technicians, resources, etc.

"nonsense" is right.. and I knew this would be your response..

Okay.. NOW.. take this to the next step... great, you have a good business model that works for that property. NOW, replicate that millions of times over - then look at your financial statement and where your expenses are when you try to manage that. It doesn't come out the same when you're talking one MDU property.

Think about it.. we HAD that model in the past decade.. it was when cable companies and phone companies were much smaller and more pinpointed in their properties, kind of like your MDU. There was not much room for expansion, prices were harder to negotiate, etc. It was after they all merged and consolidated that we saw the explosion in technology and change.

YOUR MDU provider is reaping the benefit off that change of landscape today becuase of those mergers. We're all seeing services like digital cable, voip, cable modem services and fiber BECAUSE of the larger models, not the smaller ones.

And so you know, pure garbage what you said. You most certainly CAN oversubscribe a small property if you don't plan it right.. the LARGER something gets, the more it affects your bottom line.

Not to be rude, I just don't think you have much experience in actually running a business. But some of us do. For the record, I read financial statements regularly all the time - it's how I've paid my bills for quite some time, thank you.

You could replicate this same model in other MDU environments (providing the wiring is sufficient).

The fact is, bandwidth gets cheaper as you require more. Smaller properties (less than 50 units) would have a hard time utilizing this model considering they would not be able to get dedicated bandwidth at a decent price. So for a company that has a huge network, you'd think the bandwidth would be a lot less expensive than a 20mbps circuit (per mbps).

The larger something gets, the more room you have to oversubscribe. This is a well known fact. Between 10 users you would have issues oversubscribing a 10mbps circuit to 10 people (guaranteeing them "up to 10mbps"). Use the same 10 to 1 oversubscription to a property with 1000 users (using a 1000mbps trunk) and you would have no complaints with an "up to 10mbps" guarantee. In fact, you'd have plenty of room to offer more to each user.

Not to be rude either, but if you had taken the time to look through some of these telcos financial statements, you'd know they have fairly high margins on their broadband services. I really don't care about your bills.

They DO have fairly high margins on their broadband services.. how do you think they're able to continue to keep their other prices lower than they are? Basic cable is more of a break-even service. Telephone is rather new to them. They reply HEAVILY on local ad-insertion and now HSI... they also have billions to invest into their plants and investors have to get paid as well, right? And, no one said competition was cheap either.

People think that competition is going to keep things lower in prices as well but they often forget the cost of staying in competition which actually works to keep expenses up as well.

Just becuase the HSI "margins" are fairly high doesn't answer the entire statement of the overall business model. Margins and P&L statements are two totally different things.

In one of my businesses, I have a product/service with a 60% profit margin - but from that margin of profit, I pay the majority of my bills... that business has three profit centers and yes, I have to use one profit center to keep the other centers running so I can continue to stay viable in the industry by offering multiple services to my customers. If I didn't, I'd become a one trick pony, and those that DO offer multiple services, which in that industry people want, would bury me in a heart beat.

We'll agree to disagree on that one.

I DO get what you're saying on the MDU, however, like I said before, a single MDU is much easier to operate and manage as you're saying ESPECIALLY since it's just a service to the building and not a complete "company" structure.. it changes drastically when you move to the large picture of operating an actual business.. not to mention, you're offering a service to a building, you're talking about interconnect, and your largest expense IS the connection itself. When you talk about operating a large nationwide network, you're in a COMPLETELY different model and JUST the cost of the internet connection isn't the only thing you have to factor in.

Comcast, TimeWarner, etc. they're more than just "the internet"... they're far more vast in complexity than just providing internet and their business model includes MORE than just the cost of that internet service you focus on. Like I said, that MDU setup doesn't have employees, vans, expenses, power bills, regulatory expenses, advertising expense (more than many a flyer run for the tenants) etc etc.. it's MUCH more than just about the cost of the wholesale internet connection.

We will agree to disagree. I take everything into consideration.

Comcast, for example, makes a nice profit off of everything. Yes, they use their higher margin areas to offset the lower ones. Yet they still come out with a 10% profit margin after EVERYTHING is taken into consideration. They cash flow nicely and have plenty of dough left over to pay down debt.

FWIW, we gave a smaller ISP the boot originally. I understand how these companies work, but when a business allows their customers to suffer because they are losing money in other areas (different from what they offer you), it's just not right. Comcast was simply an example of a large scale picture. They are very profitable, they have higher margins than those "evil oil companies". Every business needs to be profitable. But if there is no reasonable competition, there's no way to define what pricing is appropriate.

I applaud the smaller ISPs that put in the effort to remain competitive. If you're one of them, keep up the good work. Unfortunately there's a good number of them that operate in a way that makes them inefficient.