dslreports logo
 story category
New York City Report Blasts Lack of Broadband Competition

New York City has released a new "truth in broadband" report the city claims provides a more accurate picture of broadband availability in the city than traditionally provided by incumbent ISPs. The full report (pdf) notes that two thirds (69%) of NYC homes and nearly three quarters (72%) of small businesses have the choice of just 1 or 2 broadband providers, while 14% of small businesses have no choice of commercial fiber provider. Gigabit broadband also remains hard to come by, with nearly half of New York City small businesses lacking access to gigabit speeds.

Click for full size
The report is also quick to highlight the digital divide, noting that nearly one third of New York City households lack a home broadband subscription, and that 56% of New York City’s lowest-income households lacking a home broadband subscription (traditionally due to high costs).

“To succeed in a 21st century economy, people must have access to 21st century technology,” said Mayor Bill de Blasio. “The Truth in Broadband Report is an important step in assessing the digital divide in New York City so we can work to ensure greater equity in internet access.”

The report comes as New York City is in the middle of a protracted legal battle with Verizon. The city sued Verizon just about a year ago, claiming that the company failed to live up to a 2008 franchise agreement requiring it deliver fiber to all five boroughs by 2014, something that pretty clearly never happened. As it has done in other cities and states, Verizon tap danced around requirements using semantics and legalese, and continues to claim it did nothing wrong.

New York City, meanwhile, continues to state that the country needs better broadband mapping data to determine where service is or isn't available. Especially given the unreliability of FCC maps and data. ISPs like Verizon and Comcast have routinely lobbied against better mapping, given the result would only highlight competition and deployment shortcomings.

"The Federal Communications Commission Form 477 data counts any census block where an internet service provider has a single customer as having that level of service available across the entire census block, which may overstate the number of households and businesses that can readily obtain a broadband connection," the city's report notes. "Such shortcomings in publicly available data impact the ability to precisely reflect and track the availability and the adoption of broadband service in New York City and thus cannot depict with complete accuracy broadband service as all New Yorkers experience it."

A growing number of cities obviously have it much worse off than New York, and have increasingly turned toward deploying their own broadband networks to provide services ISPs won't. There too ISP lobbying has proven destructive, with Comcast, AT&T, CenturyLink and other ISPs having all but directly written and purchased laws in 21 states hamstringing towns and cities from exploring the option, even when ISPs refuse to expand or improve service.

Most recommended from 47 comments



maartena
Elmo
Premium Member
join:2002-05-10
Orange, CA

12 recommendations

maartena

Premium Member

Split infrastructure from service.

Let 1 company build a physical fiber network, and all they do is maintain the infrastructure. Then, they can lease out space on that fiber network for anyone that wants to be a provider, and with fiber infrastructure this could be hundreds of them in theory. In reality it will probably only 5 or 6, but that is enough for the people to have choices.

These service providers can provide internet, television (in a wide variety of package possibilities), home phone, business phone (like 30 lines or something), security systems, and special needs services such as church service for the elderly that can't go to church anymore but still want to be part of the service. You name it. If it can transfer over a fiber cable, it can happen.

The only downfall with this approach is that if there is a BIG fiber breach somewhere, all service providers could be down. But if you build up your back-end infrastructure in rings, a fiber cable going in two directions, forming a ring in a city, it doesn't matter if someone digs up your fiber, as traffic will just go the other way, as two points on the ring can be reached in either direction on the ring.

Of course there is ONE problem with this approach: The existing cable and telco companies will fight till they are cold and dead to prevent this from happening, so the only way it will happen is if the government makes a law that will allow this. In a great many European countries they have implemented a law that if a provider is building a new network, they have to allow access to other providers at reasonable cost, as they don't want 20 providers running 20 different cable networks, when with fiber optic cabling really only 1 network will do as the capacity is in theory unlimited.

The same fiber strand that brings you 1 Gbps now is good enough to actually bring you 40 Gbit/s or even 100 Gbit/s with only changing the equipment at your home and on the poles..... the cable itself, once its there, only has to be replaced if it breaks.

I understand cities don't want a 4th, 5th network, digging up streets and getting into people's back yards every time a provider wants to run their cables.... that's why infrastructure should be separated from service. The infrastructure provider doesn't provide service to the people, they only build, maintain the network. A infrastructure guy will hook up the cable to your house, and your service provider guy will bring THEIR modem or gateway to connect to THEIR network. Voila, service. And if you aren't happy, you just call another service provider to come bring their modem for their network.

Competition is good.
Internet freedom is good.

If only the United States would be willing to actually implement net neutrality everywhere.... (like most western countries), and implement laws that make this kind of competition possible. But noooo, the power of lobbyism is greater than the power of the common good.

TIGERON
join:2008-03-11
Boston, MA

7 recommendations

TIGERON

Member

I don?t get it

Why do the ISPs fight so hard to keep the truth about internet broadband availability from the public and hamstring cities and towns from deploying their own even when the incumbents refuse to???

Is it greed? Is it laziness? I don’t get it.

cralt
join:2011-01-07
CT

3 recommendations

cralt

Member

And how many care?

How many would even sign up for service?
Does that report say how many have mobile phones?
People seem to be moving away from desktop and laptops and going more and more mobile as their primary internet device. Home internet is just something you need now if you want Netflix on your TV And if your in a rental in NYC it may be easier to hotspot it rather then deal with the costs of bringing in a line and dealing with the landlord. The few people I know who live in the city basically just treat their little apartments as a place to sleep. There are so many public places to hang out in that mobile internet and wifi is all they are really care about.

Packeteers
Premium Member
join:2005-06-18
Forest Hills, NY
Asus RT-AC3100
(Software) Asuswrt-Merlin

4 edits

3 recommendations

Packeteers

Premium Member

no FiOS on UWS

even affluent areas are being neglected;

I was shocked to discover there's still zero FiOS on the upper west side,
even the big commercial tenants on the main avenues can't get it.
all you can get is Charter so they charge everyone $20 extra monthly,
while Verizon's old PoTs lines are so neglected that aDSL is barely 2m.

in addition the FCC should send teams to check the area for wireless abuse
some cellular and wifi channels are so over saturated that they are useless.
there is absolutely no excuse this area should be under served now in 2018.

worse yet, i know a lot of low income people living in rent controlled apartments
where the isp rates are set based on the resale real estate value of that area,
this basically leaves modest income tenants with no affordable internet options.
i know a teacher who can't afford to do any of her student support work at home.

this is why i keep bitching that verizon and charter have no realistically useful
low speed low price options - not every working poor person is on food stamps,
and 3/1 speeds are simply not enough to be broadband functional.
cablevision in brooklyn offers a modest price/speed that others should emulate,
and they would probably all have to if not for the current cable|fiber monopolies.

mt999999
join:2016-06-16
East Liverpool, OH

2 recommendations

mt999999

Member

David Peel

Is that David Peel in the photo? That just threw off the whole point of this article for me... For those of you that don't know, you-tube him... Lol