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Frontier's Bankruptcy Reveals Why Big ISPs Choose to Deny Fiber to So Much of America
Moving on from the political features to the tech and business features of a shit hole country... from the Electronic Frontier Foundation:
Frontier's bankruptcy announcement forced the company to explain in great detail its finances, past investment decisions, and ultimately why it has refused to upgrade so many of its DSL connections to fiber to the home. This gives us a window into why ISPs like Frontier—large, dominant, with little-to-no competition—are choosing not to invest in better, faster, and more accessible Internet infrastructure.
The reason American Internet lags so far behind South Korea, Japan, and Norway isn’t because fiber isn’t profitable. It just falls under the old adage “you have to spend money to make money,” an anathema to American ISPs’ entrenched position of prioritizing short-term profit over making lasting investments.
So long as major national ISPs continue to operate with that same short-term mindset, they will never deliver high-speed fiber to the home broadband of their own accord.
Investors denounced fiber investment as a waste because Verizon would have to spend many billions more on fiber to get the same results as the cable giants would get with cable lines. Of course, these dollars-to-dollars estimates missed the real point: fiber has the vastly superior maximum speeds, while cable tops out at a tiny fraction of fiber's possible speed. Even though the superiority of fiber is obvious today, the thinking of big ISPs has not changed.
That blinkered, short-term mindset doesn't just explain America's anemic fiber rollout, it also explains so much about Frontier's bankruptcy. Frontier has filed papers explaining how it intends to escape bankruptcy, and these conclusively show that millions of Americans currently stuck in the DSL Internet slow-lanes could be upgraded to blazing-fast fiber without a dime in government subsidies.
...The revelations from Frontier's bankruptcy filings don't end there. Equally important is how Frontier cultivated, maintained, and abused its monopolies. ISPs like Frontier know exactly where they have monopolies, and therefore know exactly who has no choice and therefore is not worth spending money on.
The fact that Frontier—and its competitors—treat monopolies as a bankable asset would seem a sign that there should be some oversight. Since the FCC has removed its ability to oversee this industry since 2017 under the so-called Restoring Internet Freedom Order, that oversight will have to be from the states.
The reason American Internet lags so far behind South Korea, Japan, and Norway isn’t because fiber isn’t profitable. It just falls under the old adage “you have to spend money to make money,” an anathema to American ISPs’ entrenched position of prioritizing short-term profit over making lasting investments.
So long as major national ISPs continue to operate with that same short-term mindset, they will never deliver high-speed fiber to the home broadband of their own accord.
Investors denounced fiber investment as a waste because Verizon would have to spend many billions more on fiber to get the same results as the cable giants would get with cable lines. Of course, these dollars-to-dollars estimates missed the real point: fiber has the vastly superior maximum speeds, while cable tops out at a tiny fraction of fiber's possible speed. Even though the superiority of fiber is obvious today, the thinking of big ISPs has not changed.
That blinkered, short-term mindset doesn't just explain America's anemic fiber rollout, it also explains so much about Frontier's bankruptcy. Frontier has filed papers explaining how it intends to escape bankruptcy, and these conclusively show that millions of Americans currently stuck in the DSL Internet slow-lanes could be upgraded to blazing-fast fiber without a dime in government subsidies.
...The revelations from Frontier's bankruptcy filings don't end there. Equally important is how Frontier cultivated, maintained, and abused its monopolies. ISPs like Frontier know exactly where they have monopolies, and therefore know exactly who has no choice and therefore is not worth spending money on.
The fact that Frontier—and its competitors—treat monopolies as a bankable asset would seem a sign that there should be some oversight. Since the FCC has removed its ability to oversee this industry since 2017 under the so-called Restoring Internet Freedom Order, that oversight will have to be from the states.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/04/frontiers-bankruptcy-reveals-cynical-choice-deny-profitable-fiber-millions?fbclid=IwAR1J32e1T4Ho3UNEqe5PIBOaIRueOB4rnhP_Qg-5dbnsnEuEUAbXdr36_cc
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