Big ISP's working with Nashville government to Stall Google Fiber

[Trik'Stari]

Here we go again, more BS from the big ISP's, working with elected, alleged "representatives" of a local government, to stall or outright prevent any and all competition. This time in Nashville Tennessee.

 

Quote

As the Nashville Metro Council prepares for a final vote to give Google Fiber faster access to utility poles, one council member is sponsoring an alternative plan that comes from AT&T and Comcast.

 

The council has tentatively approved a One Touch Make Ready (OTMR) ordinance that would let a single company—Google Fiber in this case—make all of the necessary wire adjustments on utility poles itself. Ordinarily, Google Fiber must wait for incumbent providers like AT&T and Comcast to send construction crews to move their own wires, requiring multiple visits and delaying Google Fiber's broadband deployment. The pro-Google Fiber ordinance was approved in a 32-7 preliminary vote, but one of the dissenters asked AT&T and Comcast to put forth a competing proposal before a final vote is taken.

 

Quote

Weiner told Ars that she asked AT&T and Comcast to propose a resolution.

 

“I told them that I would file a resolution if they had something that made sense and wasn’t as drastic as OTMR,” Weiner told Ars in an e-mail today, when we asked her what role AT&T and Comcast played in drafting the resolution. Weiner said she is insisting on some changes to the resolution, but the proposal (full text) was submitted without those changes.

 

When asked why she didn't put her suggested changes in the version of the resolution published on the council website, Weiner said, “I had them [AT&T and Comcast] submit it for me as I was out of town all last week on business (my day job)." Weiner said an edited resolution will be considered by the council during its next meeting.

 

The Nashville Metro Council is the legislative authority of Nashville and Davidson counties, with 40 elected members serving in the part-time roles.

Google Fiber offered significant input on the One Touch Make Ready text that is likely to be approved.

 

UPDATE: AT&T denied writing the resolution, but did not say exactly what role it played in the process. "We did not draft this resolution. Councilwoman Weiner has asked many insightful questions of the parties involved in this debate, and we welcome the work that is being done to craft a better solution," an AT&T spokesperson told Ars.

 

Comcast declined comment.

Considering how terrible both companies are at what they do, I see absolutely no reason to involve them. Both have extremely long and sordid histories of offering terrible service, overcharging customers, lying about overcharging customers, actively donating to any "representative" willing to help allow them to not have to compete, etc.

 

They deserve no voice in this matter, imho.

 

Quote

Weiner’s plan could stall the OTMR ordinance and—though it might improve Google Fiber’s current situation—would not provide the quick access to poles sought by Google Fiber and most council members. However, Weiner said she is willing to support OTMR later on if her proposal doesn’t result in significant improvements.

So, let me guess this straight. She voted against OTMR the first time around,, this could stall Google Fiber being rolled out, and now she says she would support OTMR?

 

This woman needs to not be in office. She either has no idea what is actually going one (she doesn't know who she's talking to. Comcast and AT&T are scum, we all know this), or they're in her pocket. (my opinion, but still likely considering the history of corporations paying politicians to lie to get what the companies want. They call it "lobbying", sane people call it bribery).

 

Quote

“A resolution is not us mandating what can be done on private poles but recognizes that there is an infrastructure problem that is impacting our constituents,” Weiner told Ars. If it turns out that companies don’t adhere to the terms of the resolution, “then I would support OTMR,” Weiner said.

 

The resolution calls for the Nashville Electric Service to process permit applications within 30 days (down from the current 45 days), and it gives companies 45 days after that to complete the actual work. The resolution also says the companies should complete work on an average of 125 poles per week, whereas the current process only accommodates 100 poles every 30 days.

 

The resolution suggests that AT&T and Comcast pay penalty fees of $500 a month for each incomplete pole short of the 125-pole weekly target. (The weekly average would be calculated over the course of eight weeks.)

 

Weiner wants to increase the penalty fees. “I have asked them [AT&T and Comcast] to tweak it to make the fines steeper and more of a deterrent,” she said. “Instead of a flat $500 per pole fine, it increases the second month to $1,000 and the third month to $1,500 per pole delayed.” The resolution text doesn’t include those changes yet, but they will be considered during the meeting, she said.

 

Weiner said she originally wanted the council to pass an amended version of OTMR, using a similar approach as the one in her new resolution, but her suggested amendment was not approved at the last meeting.

So basically, her idea amounts to making things slightly faster, and giving the companies a slap on the wrist for misbehaving, and doing what we ALL know they will do.

Source: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/09/att-and-comcast-helped-elected-official-write-plan-to-stall-google-fiber/

 

There is more to read here, but do any of us really doubt that Comcast and AT&T have anyone's interests in mind but their own?

 

The only arguments against OTMR, are completely asinine. Mainly consisting of Comcast and AT&T saying they need to "ensure the quality of Google's work", as if either of those companies are in ANY position to ensure the quality of anyone's work.

 

As for outages? I don't think it would matter much, I would be willing to bet that Comcast and AT&T will lose most of their customers once they realize a better ISP is in town offering a better service at a better price. Hell my workplace uses Comcast, and it gets disrupted regularly. Granted we have a ridiculous amount of traffic (installing ChromeOS on several thousand Chromebooks at once)

[awesomeness10120]

Why does every big conglomerate do this? Oh yeah, they worship the Almighty Dollar. This reminds me strangely of this article:

http://www.detroitnews.com/story/business/autos/2016/09/15/michigan-denies-tesla-dealership-license/90427216/

The government in my home state, Michigan, has been blocking Tesla from opening up a store here. Why? Well they give their "reason," but if you really read between the lines it's the Big Three bribing the politicians in Michigan. They fear Tesla, and ISPs fear cheap gigabit internet.

 

[007agentHP]

Why am i not surprised?

 

im just waiting for google to be able to roll out their fiber network in order to force the rest to compete

[GSTARR]

Weiner’s plan could stall the OTMR ordinance and—though it might improve Google Fiber’s current situation—would not provide the quick access to poles sought by Google Fiber and most council members. However, Weiner said she is willing to support OTMR later on if her proposal doesn’t result in significant improvements.

So, let me guess this straight. She voted against OTMR the first time around,, this could stall Google Fiber being rolled out, and now she says she would support OTMR?

 

This woman needs to not be in office-

 

 

Those few sentences alone not only prove why she is in office, but why you aren't and hopefully never will be.

[Trik'Stari]

6 minutes ago, awesomeness10120 said:

Why does every big conglomerate do this? Oh yeah, they worship the Almighty Dollar. This reminds me strangely of this article:

http://www.detroitnews.com/story/business/autos/2016/09/15/michigan-denies-tesla-dealership-license/90427216/

The government in my home state, Michigan, has been blocking Tesla from opening up a store here. Why? Well they give their "reason," but if you really read between the lines it's the Big Three bribing the politicians in Michigan. They fear Tesla, and ISPs fear cheap gigabit internet.

 

That's more of an issue of local dealship owners not wanting to have to directly compete with a manufacturer. Which is somewhat understandable since the manufacturer has lower costs than the dealership, who has to mark prices up in order to turn a profit. But yeah fairly similar.

 

You could also assume that the big three don't want to have the cost of building their own dealerships to compete with Tesla.

[Trik'Stari]

7 minutes ago, GSTARR said:

Weiner’s plan could stall the OTMR ordinance and—though it might improve Google Fiber’s current situation—would not provide the quick access to poles sought by Google Fiber and most council members. However, Weiner said she is willing to support OTMR later on if her proposal doesn’t result in significant improvements.

So, let me guess this straight. She voted against OTMR the first time around,, this could stall Google Fiber being rolled out, and now she says she would support OTMR?

 

This woman needs to not be in office-

 

 

Those few sentences alone not only prove why she is in office, but why you aren't and hopefully never will be.

Way to cut off the rest of what I said. She clearly has no idea who she is dealing with. Comcast and AT&T are blatantly anti-competitive, and fight against competition at every turn. Both companies are WELL hated by their customers, and realize that if someone better moves in that they will lose business like fucking crazy, so they've paid this woman to fight for them, and hopefully allow them to continue being assholes.

 

Being able to reconsider your decisions, is indeed important in an elected official, being informed on what and who you are getting into bed with on a decision, is FAR more important.

 

By all rights, Comcast and AT&T deserve to be broken up into many MANY tiny little pieces, for a multitude of reasons. Where can I start?

 

Anti-competitive behavior

Anti-consumer behavior

Fraud

Taking tax payer money to upgrade their networks, and then not doing it and charging more as more people use the internet.

Customer service verging on criminal harassment.

 

Need I say more? All you have to do is look some of this shit up. If we truly had a "free market economy", EITHER of these companies would have changed their ways, or failed outright because someone offered better service at a better price. But we don't have that. We have politicians trying to protect these companies from competition, and getting paid for it some or most of the time. Just go take a look at the so called "internet freedom act". Everyone who voted for it got a decent payout from Comcast, Verizon, AT&T, and Time Warner Cable.

 

Thankfully the public backlash from it was so enormous, that the majority of congress voted against it. However, they're planning to do something similar in November, during the presidential election, when no one will be looking.

[KuJoe]

IMO Google Fiber will ruin the internet. As a business owner who deals with DDoS attacks daily that originate from networks that are managed by professionals, I for one am not looking forward to it being rolled out to the masses of uninformed people who don't even change their default login details for their routers or run open WIFI networks. My only hope is that Google Fiber has awful peering. I'm all for competition, but there needs to be limitations in place to protect the internet.

[Trik'Stari]

15 minutes ago, KuJoe said:

IMO Google Fiber will ruin the internet. As a business owner who deals with DDoS attacks daily that originate from networks that are managed by professionals, I for one am not looking forward to it being rolled out to the masses of uninformed people who don't even change their default login details for their routers or run open WIFI networks. My only hope is that Google Fiber has awful peering. I'm all for competition, but there needs to be limitations in place to protect the internet.

Having a larger bandwidth makes DDoS attacks more difficult, as it's a larger "pipe" that you have to fill to prevent service.

 

Sure, it also makes them easier to commit, provided you have the correct equipment, but you still have to fill a larger hole in the end.....so.....meh.

 

Either way, we need more competition. Limiting bandwidth and having datacaps are completely unnecessary.  (unless you are just looking to drive your prices up and make more money.)

 

Edit: From what I am now reading/being told. Bandwidth means very little for DDoS attacks, when you can simply spam  MAC addresses and fill the MAC table on switches, or IPV6 address advertisement flooding on routers.

[KingUnicorn]

even more reasons to hate these companies. i just really want google to roll out fiber in DFW without a hitch so my dad doesn't have to pay so much and get more and i can get EVEN MORE BANDWIDTH (i have about 75mbs download, as tested by a speed tester)

 

EDIT: Make that around 90mbs download and 90 up. my stepdad wants the best internet since he plays online a lot so he pays for it. But the quality went down after Verizon gave Fios off to Frontier. Frontier didn't have the infrastructure to handle Fios so there were city wide outages a lot

[Trik'Stari]

3 minutes ago, Potato_King said:

even more reasons to hate these companies. i just really want google to roll out fiber in DFW without a hitch so my dad doesnt have to pay so much and get more and i can get EVEN MORE BANDWIDTH (i have about 75mbs download, as tested by a speed tester)

I have 10mbps, pay like 70 a month for it, and constantly get disconnected by my ISP for "using too much internet".

 

TL;DR: My ISP oversold this area, and failed to follow through with plans of extending a fiber pipe between our section of their network, to the nearest Level 3 backbone in the area. I get "DNS errors" constantly during peak hours. And if I try to game during non-peak hours, I get disconnected after about 30 minutes or so. I know it's them because I ran a traceroute to the google DNS servers (which I am now using for both IPV4 and IPV6) and each time, the errors and timeouts come from Century Link's (my ISP) servers.

 

I will gladly sell my soul, by contract, to Google for internet. Hell, I'll take 10mbps if I can just NOT GET DISCONNECTED DAMNIT.

[SurvivorNVL]

21 minutes ago, Trik'Stari said:

I have 10mbps, pay like 70 a month for it, and constantly get disconnected by my ISP for "using too much internet".

 

TL;DR: My ISP oversold this area, and failed to follow through with plans of extending a fiber pipe between our section of their network, to the nearest Level 3 backbone in the area. I get "DNS errors" constantly during peak hours. And if I try to game during non-peak hours, I get disconnected after about 30 minutes or so. I know it's them because I ran a traceroute to the google DNS servers (which I am now using for both IPV4 and IPV6) and each time, the errors and timeouts come from Century Link's (my ISP) servers.

 

I will gladly sell my soul, by contract, to Google for internet. Hell, I'll take 10mbps if I can just NOT GET DISCONNECTED DAMNIT.

They have free 10/10mbps with G-Fiber.

[suicidalfranco]

it's a known fact that competition only brings confusion to the consumer, glad to see this happen 

[BuckGup]

4 minutes ago, SurvivorNVL said:

They have free 10/10mbps with G-Fiber.

What..... I pay $100 for 10/700Kb/s. Centurylink sucks

[SurvivorNVL]

3 minutes ago, SamStrecker said:

What..... I pay $100 for 10/700Kb/s. Centurylink sucks

I pay $70 for 1000/1000, and honestly.  I'm looking at moving in to the mountains in fourteen months, where I'd be getting 45/45 over fiber.  Consequently, I'd also be getting 22acres of land, and enough room to fire my Bushmaster AR-15 as fast as I can possibly pull the trigger.  

[BuckGup]

7 minutes ago, SurvivorNVL said:

I pay $70 for 1000/1000, and honestly.  I'm looking at moving in to the mountains in fourteen months, where I'd be getting 45/45 over fiber.  Consequently, I'd also be getting 22acres of land, and enough room to fire my Bushmaster AR-15 as fast as I can possibly pull the trigger.  

I just want to be able to play online games while someone else looks at google

[KuJoe]

1 hour ago, Trik'Stari said:

Having a larger bandwidth makes DDoS attacks more difficult, as it's a larger "pipe" that you have to fill to prevent service.

 

Sure, it also makes them easier to commit, provided you have the correct equipment, but you still have to fill a larger hole in the end.....so.....meh.

 

Either way, we need more competition. Limiting bandwidth and having datacaps are completely unnecessary.  (unless you are just looking to drive your prices up and make more money.)

 

Edit: From what I am now reading/being told. Bandwidth means very little for DDoS attacks, when you can simply spam  MAC addresses and fill the MAC table on switches, or IPV6 address advertisement flooding on routers.

If you're attacking a residential IP then yes, if you're attacking an enterprise IP then no. The problem is that while a 1Gbps uplink for a Google Fiber client costs $100/month, I'm still paying up to $10000/month for a 1Gbps link (unless I want Cogent/HE which is another headache in an of itself). Let's assume I put a single 10Gbps link on my server, in theory 11 hijacked Google Fiber clients can bring down that server that I'm paying a fortune for (even at $4/Mbps that's still $40k/month excluding the cost of equipment, power, and space).

 

Also keep in mind that unlike a residential connection, online businesses have to pay for the bandwidth they use regardless if it's a DDoS attack or legit traffic.

[patrickjp93]

1 hour ago, GSTARR said:

Weiner’s plan could stall the OTMR ordinance and—though it might improve Google Fiber’s current situation—would not provide the quick access to poles sought by Google Fiber and most council members. However, Weiner said she is willing to support OTMR later on if her proposal doesn’t result in significant improvements.

So, let me guess this straight. She voted against OTMR the first time around,, this could stall Google Fiber being rolled out, and now she says she would support OTMR?

 

This woman needs to not be in office-

 

 

Those few sentences alone not only prove why she is in office, but why you aren't and hopefully never will be.

There's still an element of self-contradiction, and from a purely logical standpoint, there's no way her proposal could be any more beneficial to competition and helping consumers.

[Deletist_Jerk]

collusion!

[Zodiark1593]

2 hours ago, Trik'Stari said:

I have 10mbps, pay like 70 a month for it, and constantly get disconnected by my ISP for "using too much internet".

 

TL;DR: My ISP oversold this area, and failed to follow through with plans of extending a fiber pipe between our section of their network, to the nearest Level 3 backbone in the area. I get "DNS errors" constantly during peak hours. And if I try to game during non-peak hours, I get disconnected after about 30 minutes or so. I know it's them because I ran a traceroute to the google DNS servers (which I am now using for both IPV4 and IPV6) and each time, the errors and timeouts come from Century Link's (my ISP) servers.

 

I will gladly sell my soul, by contract, to Google for internet. Hell, I'll take 10mbps if I can just NOT GET DISCONNECTED DAMNIT.

Payed $30 a month for comparable Internet, now Comcast wants $50 a month. Given the lack of any viable alternative, I will soon be without home Internet. 

[Mark77]

Is Google going to provide universal service, or are they just going to put their service into neighbourhoods for which they can derive the maximum amount of profit?

 

Is Google going to pay for new infrastructure and a fair rate of use of existing infrastructure?  Or are they wanting a below-long-term cost rate for use of the infrastructure of others?

 

Is Google willing to contribute towards some of the telcos "stranded costs" when they come to a neighbourhood and render the existing investment in CATV and DSL based Internet access prematurely obsolete? 

 

Its not as easy as saying "Google is good, ISPs are bad".  Building "last mile" access networks is extremely expensive, and the rates that we pay as consumers are calculated on the basis of the infrastructure owners being able to spread their costs over 30-50 years.  Even Google, after a while, will recognize the same reality as they need to earn a competitive return on investment and will either price their services accordingly, or withdraw from the market.  There is nothing to indicate that Google is any better of an ISP than the existing ones.  If anything, the prospect of Google as my ISP is downright scary on account of their likely alterior motives, and I most certainly would only feel comfortable using their service through some sort of anonymizing VPN.

[Mark77]

2 hours ago, KuJoe said:

IMO Google Fiber will ruin the internet. As a business owner who deals with DDoS attacks daily that originate from networks that are managed by professionals, I for one am not looking forward to it being rolled out to the masses of uninformed people who don't even change their default login details for their routers or run open WIFI networks. My only hope is that Google Fiber has awful peering. I'm all for competition, but there needs to be limitations in place to protect the internet.

 

I don't think your comments should be specific to "Google" fiber.  They're really not specific to Google, but rather, can be said of all high speed networks.   However, you've basically hit the nail on the head -- the current IP based protocol networking on a 'public' basis is extremely highly vulnerable to DDoS, and at some point, IP will need to be re-engineered to provide meaningful defenses against DDoS.  'dumb' IP networks work great when there's meaningful control over the endpoints (ie: when the Internet was just a bunch of universities and defense contractors, it was easy to ban abusive users and spammers!).  But now its just trending towards complete and utter chaos and brute-force approaches are largely running their course. 

 

[PlayStation 2]

nashville in a nutshell

[KuJoe]

1 hour ago, Mark77 said:

 

I don't think your comments should be specific to "Google" fiber.  They're really not specific to Google, but rather, can be said of all high speed networks.   However, you've basically hit the nail on the head -- the current IP based protocol networking on a 'public' basis is extremely highly vulnerable to DDoS, and at some point, IP will need to be re-engineered to provide meaningful defenses against DDoS.  'dumb' IP networks work great when there's meaningful control over the endpoints (ie: when the Internet was just a bunch of universities and defense contractors, it was easy to ban abusive users and spammers!).  But now its just trending towards complete and utter chaos and brute-force approaches are largely running their course. 

 

I agree with the network protocol itself being flawed but Google giving out 1Gbps and 10Gbps uplinks to consumers is going to hurt the internet more than help it. The internet is already like the wild west but Google is handing out rocket launchers to kids who are used to BB guns. I really hope I'm wrong, but thinking about this makes me feel sick to my stomach especially after mitigating a "small" 40Gbps DDoS attack.

[Energycore]

I would love to hear about Nashville citizens marching the streets in protest against this colluded government.

 

With signs that say WE WANT FIBER GODDAMMIT

[2FA]

31 minutes ago, KuJoe said:

I agree with the network protocol itself being flawed but Google giving out 1Gbps and 10Gbps uplinks to consumers is going to hurt the internet more than help it. The internet is already like the wild west but Google is handing out rocket launchers to kids who are used to BB guns. I really hope I'm wrong, but thinking about this makes me feel sick to my stomach especially after mitigating a "small" 40Gbps DDoS attack.

Well if you are talking about a DDoS, then by definition the origin of the attack has to be many computers. A regular DoS would be from a single or few computers. DDoS attacks create so much bandwidth because the botnet being used usually numbers from the thousands to the millions of computers. Individually each one doesn't create much traffic but together the bandwidth is massive.