Why America's
Internet Is So Bad and Slow
Adam Clark Estes gizmmodo.com
3-11-15
You may have heard that the internet is winning: net
neutrality was saved, broadband was redefined to encourage
higher speeds, and the dreaded Comcast-Time Warner Cable megamerger potentially
thwarted. But the harsh reality is that America's internet is still
fundamentally broken, and there's no easy fix.
FCC Passes Strongest Net Neutrality Rules In America's History FCC Passes Strongest Net Neutrality Rules In America's History
The open internet finally got the protection it deserves
from profit-hungry cable companies.
An Economy Built on Wires
When I say "fundamentally broken" I don't just
mean that it's slow and shitty, though there is that. It's also broken as a
paid service.
The internet is a tangible thing, a network of
infrastructure pulsing with light, winding its way into and beneath buildings.
It's also a marketplace. There is the physical location where the fiber-optic
cables full of data cross, and then there are the financial deals that direct
the traffic down each specific set of wires. This combination of physical wires
and ephemeral business transactions will shape the future of the digital world.
In order to comprehend just how broken internet service is,
you first have to understand how the physical infrastructure of the internet
works. Former Gizmodo
contributor Andrew Blum described the underlying infrastructure
wonderfully his book about the physical heart of the internet, Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet:
In
the basest terms, the internet is made of pulses of light. Those pulses might
seem miraculous, but they're not magic. They are produced by powerful lasers
contained in steel boxes housed (predominantly) in unmarked buildings. The
lasers exist. The boxes exist. The internet exists…
There's also wireless data of course, but even those signals
need physical towers to send and receive them.
Those pulses of lights—which are packets of data—travel
through the internet's wires, taking wrong turns, finding faster routes, and
eventually reaching their destinations. But each of those routes is owned and
maintained by somebody. If you think of the wires as roads, the setup is
something like city streets, state highways, and interstates. In internet
terms, those different kinds of roads are called tiers, and there are many
network tiers stacked up across the US's continent-spanning network.
Tier 1 is the most powerful as it more or less makes up the
backbone of the internet. These are the networks that span the entire globe,
sending data under the ocean to far-flung places, the ones that never need to
connect to another network to deliver a packet of content. There are only a
handful of such networks, run by global corporations like AT&T and Verizon.
The smaller, tier 2 networks connect with each other and
with the internet backbone to make it more efficient for those packets of data
to reach their destinations. This is the level where a lot of corporate
handshake deals to direct traffic take place. And then there's the so-called
"last mile." You've probably heard a lot about this idea, and how
traffic gets across it.
The last mile is the part of the data's voyage that takes it
from local utility poles or underground tubes, into your house, and through the
cable that plugs into your computer. It's literally the last stretch of
infrastructure that data must traverse on its long journey from the server
where it's hosted, to your web browser or email client or whatever. It's the
physical infrastructure that connects individual homes to the rest of the
network. This is the part of the internet that the new
Federal Communications Commission's rules regulate.
The Decaying Last Mile
In the US, the last mile of internet infrastructure is an
enormous problem. There are two reasons for this: technical restraints holding
back the bandwidth needed to support modern-day internet traffic, and a lack of
competition between the major carriers selling internet service to the end
user.
Most of America's telecommunications infrastructure relies on outdated technology, and it runs over the same
copper cables invented by Alexander Graham Bell over 100 years ago. This copper
infrastructure—made up of "twisted pair" and coaxial cables—was
originally designed to carry telephone and video services. The internet wasn't built to handle streaming video or audio.
When your streaming video reaches that troubled last mile of
copper, those packets will slam on their brakes as they transition from fiber
optic cables to copper coaxial cables. Copper can only carry so much bandwidth,
far less than what the modern internet demands. Only fiber optic cables, thick
twists of ultra-thin glass or plastic filaments that allow data to travel at
the speed of light, can handle that bandwidth. They're also both easier to
maintain and more secure than copper.
As consumers demand more bandwidth for things like streaming
HD movies, carriers must augment their networks—upgrade hardware, lay more
fiber, hire more engineers, etc.—to keep traffic moving freely between them.
But that costs big money—like, billions of
dollars in some cases. Imagine the cost of swapping out the coaxial
cables in every American home with fiber optic cables. It's thousands of
dollars per mile according to some government records.
And here's the kicker. The last mile infrastructure is
controlled by an oligarchy—three big cable companies: Comcast, Time Warner
Cable, and Verizon. You know this well. One in three Americans only have one
choice for broadband service; most of the others only have two
internet providers to choose from.
Without competition, there's no incentive for internet
providers to improve improve infrastructure. These massive telecom companies
create a bottleneck in the last mile of service by refusing
to upgrade critical infrastructure. And they can charge exorbitant
prices for the sub-par service while they're at it.
So your internet is bad and slow and expensive.
The Network of Bureaucracy
If you want to load a webpage or watch a movie on Netflix,
it's not just the last mile of infrastructure that slows down your internet,
however. It's also the tier 2 networks, where the weird web of business
connections starts tangling things up.
Like last mile infrastructure, there's only a small handful
of companies controlling much of the backbone of the internet. Including, once
again, telecom giants AT&T and Verizon. AT&T and Verizon not only
control tier 1 network, they're also the big players on tier 2, which
gives them a huge amount of bargaining power, and a huge amount of bureaucratic
control over your slow and shitty internet.
The other carriers that operate tier 2 networks are
companies you probably haven't heard of—Cogent and Zayo are a couple—and
they're integral to the internet's success as a global network. These are the
networks that manage the crossroads of the internet, making deals that dictate
how traffic travels between networks.
A rough sketch of how the internet works. On the left, you
have end users—homes and business. On the right, you have the networks making
the deals that dictate how internet traffic flows around the globe. Note how
content providers (Netflix, YouTube) peer directly with carriers.
Regardless of the physical infrastructure, data can only
travel as fast as its predetermined route allows. If tier 2 networks don't
strike the right agreements with other networks, that could mean that your data
will take a longer route to its destination.
Broadly speaking, a tier 1 network can reach every part of
the internet without paying for transit on another network; these are the
internet's biggest power brokers. But each of the lesser-known tier 2 middleman
carriers must depend on other networks to provide their customers with access
to all of the content on the internet.
So picture a map of the internet. If every single network
agreed to let other networks use its infrastructure data would flow freely
between all points. Unfortunately, not all of the tier 2 networks cooperate.
To keep traffic moving between networks, the carriers have
to make interconnect agreements. One type is called a peering agreement, where
two carriers exchange traffic freely for mutual benefit. The other is a transit
agreement, exchanging traffic for a fee. The economics of these agreements are
quite complex—here's a great explainer—but suffice it to say the larger the
network, the fewer transit agreements it must pay for.
Tier 2 carriers also forge peering and transit agreements
with content providers like Google, Amazon, and Netflix to provide more direct
routes to consumers.
This gets complicated because you have a countless number of
different networks relying on a limited amount of infrastructure. While fixing
the decaying last mile means monopolistic telecom firms shelling out to upgrade
copper wires, fiber optic cable is already the industry standard on tier 2
networks—so your internet speeds are affected more by how well these tier 2
carriers are getting along. When these deals go wrong, carriers end up in locked in negotiations that mean you'll wait longer
for webpages to load.
The Fiber Future Relies on
Competition
In a climate without sufficient competition, American
carriers can refuse to improve infrastructure and augment capacity without the
fear of losing customers. Where are they going to go? They can
either pay a high price for bad service or pay nothing for no service. This has
been the status quo in the USA for years, and companies like Verizon have worked
hard to keep this status quo by preventing the FCC from doing its
job.
That's also why carriers like Verizon are going
straight to content providers like Netflix and asking it to
pay for more direct routes to customers. Why would Verizon spend its
own money on infrastructure, when it can get a content provider to pick up the
tab?
This is where the net neutrality debate comes from. The FCC is finally
getting aggressive about protecting the open web, and that's great.
But net neutrality is not enough. Improving your slow and shitty internet comes
down to increasing competition. We need to build new networks with better last
mile technology that will give tier 2 networks an alternative to the big cable
cartel.
This is going to require some radical approaches, like the
bootstrapped ISPs and experimental municipal broadband networks we're starting to see.
While laying fiber is wildly expensive, startups could take
a different tack. A San Francisco local ISP called Monkeybrains is
using roof-mounted wireless connections and direct fiber access to data centers
to offer high speed wireless internet. It costs about $250 to set up the
equipment to join Monkeybrains' innovative network, but after that, you can get "insane speeds" for just $35 a month.
There's also the option of building a network from the
ground up, like the city of Chattanooga, Tennessee did a few years ago. Starting this year, the federal
government is funneling more money towards
municipal broadband projects that treat the internet more like a
public utility and offer high speeds at low prices. Now it's up to the
communities to start up their municipal broadband projects.
President Obama has applauded this path
forward, and the FCC is paving the
way by tweaking regulations so that help municipal broadband
overcome regulations that have traditionally favored big cable and discouraged
competition. Some cracks in the oligarchy are starting to show.
At the end of the day, America's broken internet isn't going
to fix itself. Monopolistic problems deserve capitalistic solutions. In this
case, it's competition—pure and simple. The alternative isn't just frustrating.
It's
dysfunctional.
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