[HN Gopher] The internet should be a public utility
___________________________________________________________________
The internet should be a public utility
Author : laurex
Score : 344 points
Date : 2020-03-28 14:53 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (qz.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (qz.com)
| keeganjw wrote:
| I think this makes perfect sense. Competition fundamentally
| doesn't work when it comes to infrastructure like this. I don't
| hear anyone saying that we need more privatized competition in
| our sewer systems. Why? Because it's incredibly costly to build
| and having private companies build two, three, or more sewer
| systems in one city/town would be insane. The costs per user of
| each one of those systems would rise dramatically because you
| would have far fewer people paying into each system. Same goes
| for our internet connections. Creating multiple competing
| networks in this case raises prices for everyone and we
| needlessly duplicate the amount of infrastructure required to
| serve everyone. That is why we make services like sewer, water,
| and electricity regulated monopolies. I don't see how internet,
| in this day in age, is any different. Just like everyone needs
| electricity, everyone needs internet. That being said, we do need
| competent government officials that can balance costs with public
| good. If we elect incompetent people, we get incompetent results.
| legitster wrote:
| Walk me through this argument - my local utilities are a
| nightmare! Their pricing is atrocious and regressive (huge flat
| fixed fees to connect, tiny marginal costs), they constantly have
| to borrow money from the city to make ends meet. Combined, we pay
| $350 a month for gas, water & drainage, electricity (over 50% of
| the bills are fixed costs, unaffected by our consumption).
| Customer service is awful.
|
| In comparison, our internet is relatively painfree and only $30 a
| month. I get that there are certain high level concepts of why it
| is good to treat internet as a utility, but as a consumer the
| idea frustrates me.
|
| (Our city offers a municipal internet, btw. But it's worse
| service for more money, and has generally been a money drain for
| taxpayers.)
| EB66 wrote:
| If the municipality lays the fiber and provides the internet
| service, the result may be poor. But that doesn't have to be
| the arrangement. The municipality can lay the fiber and allow
| multiple companies to offer internet service over that
| infrastructure.
|
| In Chelan County, WA they've blended the best of public and
| private. The government took on the large upfront costs and
| laid municipal fiber down all over the place. Literally cabins
| in the woods are connected up to fiber optics. Then they
| somehow facilitated the capability for multiple providers to
| sell internet connectivity over that fiber. I'm not exactly
| sure how they did that -- maybe they laid multiple fiber
| strands, maybe they leased a variety of wavelengths, etc -- but
| the end result is that residents of Chelan County with fiber
| have multiple ISPs to choose from, the prices are very
| competitive and the service is good.
|
| In Chelan County, LocalTel offers 1000Mbps down and 100Mbps up
| for $74.95 per month. No performance issues whatsoever with all
| the COVID-19 related traffic spikes and when you call LocalTel
| with a tech problem, a real human answers the phone -- it's
| wonderful.
| Reelin wrote:
| In Washington state, this is only permitted in rural
| counties. The public utility district is allowed to lay
| fiber, but not to sell access to it directly to consumers.
| The law requires them to provide common access to the
| infrastructure at a rate that reflects their operational
| costs, but only to ISP companies. Someone wrote about their
| experience here
| (https://loomcom.com/blog/0098_fiber_optic_bliss.html).
|
| Meanwhile, public utility districts in more populated
| counties (King, Snohomish, etc) are forbidden to offer
| network infrastructure at all. Tacoma has some weird public
| private partnership that seems somewhat dysfunctional and may
| predate these laws.
|
| Note that I haven't checked in a few years, so the above
| could potentially be out of date.
| threentaway wrote:
| Can you link to the laws around this? I'd love to look into
| this more.
| mehhh wrote:
| All of those providers share the same non-redundant transport
| provider out of Chelan County FYI. City of Tacoma also has a
| similar setup, but they moved too early and are stuck with a
| cable network.
| sedatk wrote:
| Off-topic but I loved visiting Lake Chelan during my attempt
| at Cascade Loop. Your comment suddenly sparked warm memories.
| keeganjw wrote:
| I think that has a lot to do with your municipality. I have
| municipal electricity and not only is it very affordable, it's
| 100% renewable because they started the shift to renewables
| back in the 1980s. They haven't had to raise rates in years. My
| internet is also municipally owned and it is about half the
| cost for double the speed as Comcast, which is it's only local
| competition. So, I think it largely depends on how well the
| government is run. If government officials look out for the
| public interest, listen to science, and think long-term, we'll
| get better outcomes.
| cactus2093 wrote:
| I don't even understand what the distinction is. For instance
| PG&E in California is a private company but regulated by the
| government. I pay for service and if I stop paying they cut me
| off. Isn't Comcast internet service the same thing? A private
| company but regulated by the FCC.
|
| The only difference I can think of is there are still multiple
| providers for internet service available in most places. Would
| making internet a public utility just mean giving a government
| granted monopoly to one provider per region and forbidding
| anyone else from selling internet service?
| threentaway wrote:
| > of is there are still multiple providers for internet
| service available in most places
|
| No there aren't. There's generally one cable provider
| (100Mbps+) and one DSL (10-20Mbps down max). These services
| aren't comparable.
| jcrawfordor wrote:
| The details vary substantially by type of utility and
| jurisdiction, but generally a public utility is subject to
| far stricter regulation than internet service providers which
| are regarded as a competitive industry.
|
| A key example would be requirements for tariff approvals:
| public utilities are generally not permitted to make their
| own pricing decisions, instead they need to publish a tariff
| and they are not permitted to modify the tariff without
| petitioning the regulator for permission. The regulatory
| authority generally has broad authority to order utilities to
| do whatever it believes should be done, and has to approve
| almost all changes to the service, which the utility must
| justify as beneficial to customers.
|
| Take a look at your electric bill, for example. Generally
| there's an interconnection fee and base rate, both of which
| come directly from the published tariff approved by the
| regulator. Due to real changes in the energy market there
| will also be a "fuel cost surcharge," this fee is calculated
| based on generation costs according to a formula included in
| the published tariff. If you have any dispute about the
| pricing or quality of the service you can take that complaint
| to the regulator, many regulators require that the utilities
| provide you that phone number as part of your bill.
|
| Then look at your internet bill. The rate on it is whatever
| the ISP wants, and they have no requirement to explain it to
| you, except for a few mandated taxes. They can raise and
| lower it more or less at will, subject to your contractual
| protections, which are usually minimal. With most incumbent
| ISPs it is standard for the rate to increase significantly
| after 12 or 24 months. If you have complaints, there is a
| small chance you can take them to the FCC under certain
| regulatory authorities the FCC has exercised, but for the
| most part your only option is to find another provider.
| Reelin wrote:
| > Would making internet a public utility just mean giving a
| government granted monopoly to one provider per region and
| forbidding anyone else from selling internet service?
|
| Quite the opposite, generally. Many places legislate common
| access to the infrastructure, so a single provider runs the
| cables but any number of ISPs can compete to sell service on
| it.
|
| This removes the primary barrier to entry for ISPs (last mile
| infrastructure) which allows for actual competition to take
| place.
| pdonis wrote:
| _> Would making internet a public utility just mean giving a
| government granted monopoly to one provider per region and
| forbidding anyone else from selling internet service?_
|
| If that's what "public utility" means then Internet is
| already a public utility in many parts of the US, since this
| is exactly the arrangement in existence today.
| ulkesh wrote:
| Zero competition in an egregiously high amount of locations in
| the United States.
|
| The internet is a fundamental human right, like access to water
| and power. It is now required by most school systems. It should
| be protected by Net Neutrality legislation and in places with
| zero competition, treated as a utility. Or, at minimum, the
| laws should make it easier to allow for competition -- such as
| outlawing geographic cable internet monopolies, outlawing cable
| company monopoly deals with cities and counties, and providing
| access to physical infrastructure for new players in the space.
|
| Your anecdote, while understandable, doesn't apply to all. My
| utilities are just fine with customer service just fine.
| legitster wrote:
| If internet is a fundamental human right, then over the air
| broadband should be perfectly acceptable. In which case there
| are a ton of competitive options across the US. Unless the
| argument is that a specific type of internet access at a
| specific speed is a human right.
| Klinky wrote:
| Yes, a specific minimum speed would be required, otherwise
| you could claim IP over Pigeon or Postal Service would be
| sufficient.
|
| Also cost would play a role. LTE typically has restrictive
| caps and high costs, especially for at-home/hotspot
| internet. Someone having a 15 - 60 minute teledoc video
| conference with their doctor shouldn't blow through half
| their monthly data allowance.
| slavik81 wrote:
| Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full
| of tapes hurtling down the highway. You can get a very
| respectable average speed out of the postal service.
|
| Latency is an oft-neglected metric. You can browse the
| web on a satellite internet connection with a 200ms ping,
| but it's anywhere from bad to unusable for a lot of other
| applications.
| gameswithgo wrote:
| There are a lot of places where I agree that it should. There are
| some cities where competition is alive and working well. I think
| at least we can agree that state governments should not be making
| it illegal for local communities to create public utility
| internet, as has been happening in some places.
| rubicks wrote:
| Agreed, but this article didn't convince me. Watching the
| Comcast/Verizon duopoly play out over two decades has
| overwhelmingly negated the argument for private-sector
| infrastructure.
| _carl_jung wrote:
| Here's a question I have about these types of frustrating
| monopolies, and I'd love a point towards a book or something that
| can explain.
|
| Let's say I have a bunch of money (or funding) for a big new
| internet provider that could easily outperform the existing
| provider. What makes it so hard to do it?
|
| I hear complaints (and complain myself) about seemingly unfair
| pricing and slow speeds. The tech is there to make > 100mb
| internet, why isn't it more widespread? Surely consumers are
| willing to pay for a competitor that can provide it.
| jcrawfordor wrote:
| 1) laying fiber (either trenched or on utility poles) will
| likely be your biggest expense, it requires a huge, huge
| investment to be able to put infrastructure through a
| significant area. Think about feet of conduit a several-person
| crew can drive per day whether by trenching/trenchless methods
| - it's not that many. Microtrenching promised to significantly
| reduce this cost but Google Fiber's experiment with it went
| famously poorly.
|
| 2) ROWs to run cable will need to be negotiated either with the
| municipality (if laying underground) which can come with a lot
| of difficult restrictions on work quality, traffic disruption,
| etc, or with the electrical utility in the case of utility
| poles in an area with a typical franchise agreement, in which
| case the utilities are often uninterested in the project and
| will just generally make your life difficult through slow
| consideration of engineering proposals, requiring extensive up-
| front engineering work, etc. In a small town I had some
| involvement in the electric utility demanded over $1mm up front
| for engineering surveys on pole attachment - this for a market
| of ~8k people, and before any actual attachment fees.
| Completely blew the budget of the potential broadband provider
| which had planned a total of $3-4mm in up-front.
|
| 3) After running infrastructure, providing drops to each house
| is a fairly costly and disruptive up-front operation per
| customer (may even be trenching their front yard), which
| discourages customers signing up with your service when the
| incumbent providers already have house drops in place. You will
| also either have to eat this cost or pass it to the customer as
| an install fee or a term agreement, all of those options are
| bad in different ways.
|
| 4) IPv4 exhaustion has hit new ISPs hard and you are going to
| have to do CG-NAT. ISPs like to think customers don't care but
| in practice this is indeed a headache.
| erik_seaberg wrote:
| I looked up microtrenching and it looks like they're
| basically stopping traffic and pointing an angle grinder
| straight down. Directional boring machines are out there, why
| aren't we running a bunch of those 24/7? Do they need a lot
| of supervision?
| jcrawfordor wrote:
| While the range of directional trenching is limited,
| requiring regular access points, the bigger issue is setup.
| Surveys and tests need to be done to determine if the area
| is suitable for directional trenching, and it only works
| well in certain circumstances. It's definitely heavily used
| in telecom installation but not a panacea.
|
| Microtrenching is extremely simple and fast, but so far I
| don't know that anyone has nailed durability. Google's
| Louisville install used microtrenching and was an absolute
| debacle with the sealant constantly failing and the cables
| ending up laying on the surface of the pavement. Google
| ended up shutting down service in Louisville and the cost
| of repairing the failed microtrenching may have been a big
| reason why. Certainly get them a lot of bad press and ill
| will from their customer base.
| williesleg wrote:
| Yes, and Bernie should run it.
| miguelmota wrote:
| If it's public infrastructure, the government has no incentive to
| innovate and it'll be a good way to ruin it. Electric, gas, and
| water utilities are natural monopolies and priced per usage.
| You'd end up paying more for slower internet.
| raverbashing wrote:
| Please show me where private run electric or gas utilities have
| unlimited usage for a flat fee.
| miguelmota wrote:
| There's none for obvious reasons. Give me an example of a
| government making the internet a public utility and making it
| better and less censored than a privately run company.
| radicaldreamer wrote:
| Almost every place offering municipal FTTH/FTTN? I guess
| it's a wash if you're comparing it to a top-tier Indy
| provider like Sonic or Webpass, but compared to AT&T and
| Comcast, they're all better.
| zbrozek wrote:
| https://muninetworks.org/content/owensboro-kentucky-
| headed-s...
|
| https://tech.co/news/chattanooga-fastest-internet-
| usa-2018-0...
|
| Those places are offering connections way better than I can
| get from AT&T.
| miguelmota wrote:
| Chattanooga's municipally-owned telecoms provider (EPB)
| is charging $57.99 for 300mbs [0], while I get 500mbs for
| $39.99 in my area from a non-city owned company [1]
|
| [0] https://epb.com/home-store/internet [1]
| https://frontier.com/offer/experiencefios-c
| pinacarlos90 wrote:
| My question is, what would be the impact on the following areas
| if the internet was public utility?
|
| 1) security/encryption
|
| 2) bandwidth distribution
|
| 3) content freedom
|
| 4) Governance rules (federal gov?)
| dylan604 wrote:
| Why would 1) be an issue at all of the service was a public
| utility or not? It's not like a website will not use HTTPS just
| because it's on publicUtil.
|
| 2) is problem regardless. Something to be addressed, but it's
| not anything new just because it's becomes a utility.
|
| I could see where 3) & 4) might be questionable. If it's gov't
| funded, then they like to tack on a lot of rules about what
| can/can't be used on the service. Obvious things like
| porn/p2p/etc would be blocked, but would access to things like
| Planned Parenthood be blocked too?
| Reelin wrote:
| In the US, 3 (content freedom) is a clear first amendment
| guarantee. It also seems to be working out just fine
| elsewhere in the western world.
| cma wrote:
| Those are almost all big issues with private companies too, and
| you get no vote in them and weaker constitutional protections.
|
| It is less of an issue if there is lots of competition (that
| doesn't collude) though.
| K0SM0S wrote:
| So I can't obviously "prove" any causality, that would require
| serious studies; but I can testify how things work here in
| France.
|
| 1) doesn't change anything. Mostly due to ISP practices, which
| are regulated under typical communication laws (this dates back
| to radio, landlines, post offices, etc)
|
| 2) bandwidth is generally great. The idea is this: you
| mutualize the pipes (shared by citizens through public
| organisms, and some private infrastructure / maintenance
| companies). Then all ISP invest together to build the best
| shared infrastructure; at which point any customer can just
| switch to any ISP at any time -- you just unplug-replug in the
| locally shared DSLAM/PON/whatever.
|
| FWIW we've got the same infra for elec, water, kitchen gas,
| even banking... you just hook up with another utility provider
| and they switch you within days, weeks at most (it's a manual
| intervention in many cases). Don't like your elec provider?
| Next month, you're out.
|
| The net result is that we've got up to 1Gbps symmetrical for
| EUR40/mo (say $45), basic offers for e.g 250Mb at EUR10-20/mo
| maybe. There's even a 10Gbps network being deployed (at the
| routing level, it's mostly equipment) by one ISP, I got it and
| measured ~3.5Gbps max concurently (I'd rather have 1Gbps
| symmetrical since I've got servers though, self-hosting is a
| very real possibility with such bandwidth; all IPs are full
| stack on demand here (all ports, no sub-1024 shenanigans)
| unless you're on budget offers.
|
| 3) that's freedom of speech most likely (e.g porn is legal...
| nobody questions that). Also ties to GDPR now, on the source
| side. We've had such laws in France for two decades now, look
| up the CNIL. Nothing to report here, ISPs would be fined if not
| respecting a modicus of neutrality -- but there's no data cap
| on home connections whatsoever, so it's not comparable to the
| US situation. In the past (DSL era) we observed some early /
| prime time throttling of selected websites (e.g YouTube) by a
| certain ISP who was "at war" with Google (so, that was a
| choice, not a factor of infrastructure).
|
| 4) See 2. It's all private but there's gov oversight and
| regulation to maintain access. For instance, you can't cut
| internet to poor people, unemployed etc. here: we've determined
| it's too important to have internet access to find a job and do
| basic admin stuff (pretty much all state services are now
| online). That's the real value of internet as a commodity: it's
| a matter of "can you leave a household without electricity?
| without water? without internet?", the answer being a
| resounding "no" because that's inhumane, that's attacking their
| dignity and our decency. The question thus becomes, how much of
| it do we 'guarantee' to everyone, like basic healthcare. The
| answer here in France is: enough to live decently, enough to
| keep functioning as a normal member of society, notably to get
| a job (or keep it) and have a social life (we've found that
| depression doesn't help anyone).
|
| Honestly, none of it is perfect, but as far as internet goes,
| yeah we've nailed it. I don't know of any better offer for the
| price (many Asian countries have a better infra, but costs are
| 2-3x for customers).
| solarwind wrote:
| You already know the answer based on the history of repressive
| regimes that have monopolies on telecom systems.
| topkai22 wrote:
| My opinions, this all depends on the unknowable future, and
| utilities are typically regulated at the state level, so the
| answer will vary by state.
|
| 1) Probably about the same. I suspect law enforcement might end
| up with "easier" access (mostly because inter agency processes
| will be put in place) but the regulated ISP will be less able
| to do silly things like MITM 404 responses to thier search
| engine/ad page. Intel is a big question mark, but heck, it
| seems like they have just about everything already. 2) Better
| for underserved communities, possibly worse in the long term
| for everyone else. The closest existing utility, electricity,
| hasn't seen anywhere near the same rate of change in
| consumption as bandwidth has. Once the utility level
| requirement is set for bandwidth it's going to be hard to
| increase. 3) probably better, first amendment protection would
| still apply to individuals, while the quasi government status
| off utilities would make it harder for them to argue for any
| sort of "editorial control." 4) Utilities are typically
| regulated at the state or local level. My local water district
| has to adhere to federal laws, but most of their governance is
| very local
| miguelmota wrote:
| The 1st amendment goes out the window in times of "national
| security". The government will censor things if they believe
| its for the best interest of national security, which can be
| many things and anytime they want.
| ldoughty wrote:
| Depends how we do it.
|
| What if the infrastructure was government owned but you bought
| service through a reseller. This is the US cell phone model for
| many carriers. Also old school AOL / dial-up style. Perhaps
| your reseller provides your modem/router (or states what
| modems(/+router) you can configure for their service)
|
| Want everything managed for you? Get AOL. They send you a box,
| it had their configurations and management tools so they can
| monitor your traffic and ensure good service... Read your
| emails, whatever. You had a thousand options and trusted this
| provider.
|
| Want a security focused provider? Sign up for one that provides
| a setup that VPNs traffic to your specification. You had 30
| different options here, so you pick the right balance for you.
|
| Want to trust the government and just pass through? Will that
| might not be allowed... But someone will probably provide you
| an option for bare minimum pricing.
|
| With these options, perhaps you get your government provided
| service, but if there's issues you get support through that
| private entity that escalates issues or perhaps does doorstop
| support (or remote testing) and then they escalate to
| government-run infrastructure system. If the government needs
| work done, they contract out work to a vendor appropriate for
| the type of work and area of the service request (assuming the
| issues is outside the home.. inside the home is on your
| reseller).
|
| NOT saying this is the way to go, just that this is an option
| for public-private partnership.
|
| With this style of service, the fiber will probably have
| issues, but how often does a bridge actually collapse and not
| get cleaned up/ fixed? Currently we play hot potato with
| decaying lines, selling the infrastructure praying they're not
| holding the asset when it actually fails massively.
|
| In response to your questions: 1) if you want
| security/encryption, this model could allow you to get that by
| your ISP through the in-home equipment. 2) let people buy
| bandwidth plans, your ISP marks it up for their service and
| support fee, and passes it to you. Government could adjust
| what's available based on the capacity of the
| area/infrastructure with the same options being available
| regardless of your ISP. If you're a business and you need more
| than what a single fiber line can provide, perhaps offer an
| additional service to run additional lines with additional
| costs. 3) traffic should be encrypted, so government can't see
| in the first place, but when if it wasn't.. if you're accessing
| illegal material they should have just cause.. and should then
| make a request to your ISP (much like they do to access your
| cell phone records). Pick an ISP that meets your
| morals/concerns. 4) not sure exactly what your mean here.. but
| given shouldn't be directly serving people. They have the
| mailmen driving to your house delivering packets hopefully in
| sealed safes... But your service provider (easy mode) or your
| personal hardware (advanced) handles opening the safe.
|
| Again, this is a 30 minute free flowing thought. Not at all a
| proposal... Just an idea.
| bgorman wrote:
| The danger with government nationalizing telecommunications
| networks is that once it is done, innovation and quality go way
| down. We had nationalized telecommunications for over 70 years
| and customers could only have one brand of phone, and we're
| limited in the number of phones available in their houses. In
| addition, long distance calling was cost-prohibitive. The
| monopoly only started cracking when MCI introduced microwave
| based long distance calling.
|
| Fortunately non-governmental is on the way for you. 4G/5G are
| decent options, many areas (rural and in major cities) have
| microwave based broadband, and it looks like Starlink will become
| a reality soon. Putting fiber lines in the ground is extremely
| expensive (especially in California) and frankly is not really
| needed by most of the population.
|
| Are you just using a cell phone? In your situation or may make
| sense to buy a repeater or other dedicated hardware solutions.
| zbrozek wrote:
| I'm currently using a Netgear LB1121 with external antennas
| connected to AT&T's 4G network. It's maybe a smidge better than
| DSL, but not definitively so. Both throughput and latency are
| all over the map (2-sigma 1 to 70 mbps, 30-60 ms). I don't get
| a publicly-routable IP. So instead I have to buy another
| service and expend a bunch of IT-administration mental energy
| to use a VPS just so I can SSH home.
|
| The basic rules of radio propagation should make it obvious to
| anyone that something like satellite (or even terrestrial) RF
| links will never achieve the density of fiber. And like power
| lines, they'll be something we run once and then occasionally
| fix for many decades. That may be too expensive in some parts
| of the country, but around here the argument rings hollow.
|
| But you're right. It may be good enough for now. I just don't
| think it'll be good enough for decades.
| tarde wrote:
| It's a very wide _guess_ to pick technological advances and
| attribute to one segment.
|
| It's not like the non-telecom segments were flying cars in the
| 50s.
| nixass wrote:
| Some utilities should be heavily regulated, or even owned by
| the state. Internet access is one of them. Everything else is
| just "deregulate everything 'Murica" propaganda
| jcrawfordor wrote:
| AT&T also provided an extremely high quality of service, not
| really seen since that time, and operated a corporate R&D arm
| that I think could fairly be called the global center of
| innovation for decades, designing as an almost side-effect of
| telephone switches a large portion of the computer technology
| we use today from silicon to operating system. One wonders
| where the state of the industry would be today had Bell Labs
| and Western Electric been able to continue with the lavish
| funding and long-term vision that their monopolistic parents
| afforded them. And the reverse, would T-Mobile invent the
| transistor?
|
| It's hard to argue that innovation and quality of the telephone
| system went down under AT&T's monopoly when, during that time
| period, AT&T played a fundamental role in the invention of the
| computer and famously took measures as extreme as moving
| buildings while telephone operators work inside in order to
| avoid service disruption. It seems that other factors must have
| been in play as well in the eventual decline of "ma bell".
|
| The story of AT&T's monopoly on telephone service and its
| subsequent breakup at the hands of both court and MCI/Sprint is
| a complex one that cannot be so simply used as an argument for
| or against the arrangement. It was a very particular situation
| in a very particular time, perhaps most significantly because
| AT&T created an entire market sector which the government had
| no coherent strategy to manage. So-called competition has also
| been quite insufficient to revolutionize the landline telephone
| market, it remains perhaps as consumer-hostile as it has ever
| been, something forgotten largely only because the cellular
| industry has replaced it (which, facing stiff competition but
| the regulatory wild west of the internet, is consumer-hostile
| in a whole new way).
| basilgohar wrote:
| I can only argue back that the state of AT&T was such that it
| was such a massively profitable entity that exuded such power
| in terms of resources that what you are describing would not
| have been unique to AT&T had a less monopolistic situation
| arisen. The technologies that AT&T advanced, while notable,
| are far from impossible to have emerged had other entities
| had a fair share of the resources that AT&T monopolized.
|
| To say AT&T should not have been broken-up due to its
| achievements is akin to say that Mussolini should have stayed
| in power because "he made the trains run on time". Yes,
| maybe, but at what other, hidden costs?
| TheColorYellow wrote:
| This is awesome content. Any chance you have a book you could
| recommend on this subject?
| jcrawfordor wrote:
| Both siblings name the books that I would most likely to
| recommend. Also, Steve Call's "The Deal of the Century" and
| "Telephone: The First Hundred Years," John Brooks. The
| latter is a 1976 book which was commissioned by AT&T as a
| corporate history. As a result it is both outdated and
| paints a rather rosy picture[1], but I think that's part of
| what makes that book rather interesting - it's sort of
| AT&T's best version of itself at the peak of its dominance.
|
| [1] for what it's worth, John Brooks engages right in the
| introduction with the conflict of a history funded by its
| subjects, and the book was researched and written
| independently
| kick wrote:
| The title is bad enough that I won't mention it, but the
| alternative title is good (and will find you the book):
|
| ' _The Criminal Wrecking of the Best Telephone System in
| the World_ ' by Kraus and Duerig.
| jdsnape wrote:
| It's mentioned below, but 'The Idea Factory' covers Bell
| labs and is an excellent read.
| fsckboy wrote:
| the argument you are making, from the perspective of
| microeconomic theory, in short: no.
|
| for a monopolist to offer high quality products and service
| is exactly part of the monopolist's playbook, not any sort of
| consumer benefit. The overly generous profits they earn allow
| them to use comparatively smaller quality enhancements as a
| barrier to entry for competition. The point is that "high
| quality service that you pay too much for" reduces the
| overall level of consumption. So, while the smaller market is
| happy with the service they receive, a larger market is
| receiving less service than they want because the price is
| artificially too high.
|
| Monopolists absolutely do restrict supply, and economists all
| agree that monopolists are bad for markets.
|
| The part where you suggest "particular situations" is
| essentially reflective of the other monopolist tactic of
| "bundling", product mixes designed to price discriminate
| separate market segments, again, always to the monopolists
| benefit.
|
| The theory of monopoly is quite robust, and your arguments in
| favor of the benefits of monopoly do not hold any water
| whatsoever.
| TomMckenny wrote:
| As you point out, competition is better than monopoly
| because it provides a surplus that advantages consumers.
| But some things we do not want a surplus of, for example
| river dams. Other things can not be competitive even in
| principle like surface streets. Likewise as was discovered
| with mass transit and utilities in the last century in a
| world that did it's absolute best to be laissez faire.
|
| So there are some rare cases where there must be monopolies
| and if you must have a monopoly, it is better to have one
| controlled by a democratic government than a self
| interested clique. At least then there is some possibility
| of working in the public interest on price and innovation.
|
| That ISPs must always be a monopoly seems unlikely to me.
| But if it's politically impossible to break them up, then
| nationalizing them is still far better than the current
| situation.
| jcrawfordor wrote:
| The problem is that AT&T was pretty heavy federally
| regulated _prior to_ the breakup, Carterfone, etc, and the
| company achieved most of this work under a regulatory
| framework that was an early version of what we have today
| for the industry - and in fact because this was prior to
| CLECs and RBOCs was actually more similar to a "public
| utility" regime (e.g. electricity) than what we have today
| in the telecom industry, with regulated tariffs and the
| gov't achieving the policy goal of ubiquitous availability
| through tariff rate rather than the modern surcharge
| arrangement. The benefits of AT&T's golden era are most
| attributable not to their monopoly status but to their
| status as a government-regulated monopoly in a fashion
| similar to utilities operating under franchise - one which,
| unlike typical franchise utilities today, was permitted by
| regulators to maintain a substantial R&D operation.
|
| The system was always somewhat haphazard, for example post-
| WWII AT&T faced 'competition' from rural telephone
| cooperatives under the REA as a means of speeding up rural
| development. However, this was initially a bright-line
| geographical division of duties and REA telephone coops
| continued to rely on Long Lines for transit.
|
| Of course many, many things went wrong, including the
| regulatory regime being a cause of AT&T's decay even prior
| to court action against their favor. However, it's hard to
| say if that would be the outcome of such a regulatory
| framework today (or outright nationalization), because this
| was the nascent stage of telecom regulation which both the
| government and AT&T had equal hands in "making up as they
| went." This was the era in which regulatory capture was
| more or less invented, for example, and not necessarily on
| purpose.
|
| My point though is exactly that describing AT&T as "a bad
| monopoly" or "a good regulated private interest" are not
| really great arguments in that both of those things were
| entirely true at the same time, and the particular
| environment in which The Bell System formed is not one that
| will likely ever exist again. Newer communications
| utilities have broadly been shoved into the category of
| telephony for regulatory purposes or entirely left alone,
| so it's hard to foresee any future in which we will have a
| second "telephone era" in which a new debatably-utility
| emerges to be managed.
| jt2190 wrote:
| > ... government nationalizing telecommunications networks...
|
| Is that extreme the _only_ other option we can imagine? In
| Texas, for example, the power transmission lines are managed by
| the Electric Reliability Council [1], and treated as kind of a
| "electricity market".
|
| [1] http://www.ercot.com/
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > The danger with government nationalizing telecommunications
| networks is that once it is done, innovation and quality go way
| down.
|
| Who needs nationalization? The market for transit is reasonably
| competitive. Local municipalities could install fiber along the
| roads they already maintain at a modest incremental cost, then
| offer the service to residents for a monthly fee to pay off the
| bonds without even spending any taxpayer money.
|
| All you really need from the federal government is to have them
| do something about incumbent ISPs actively interfering with
| municipalities that want to do that.
|
| > 4G/5G are decent options
|
| No they're not. The nature of wireless is that it's cheaper if
| you have a low population density, because one tower for
| hundreds of people is much cheaper than installing hundreds of
| miles of fiber for hundreds of people.
|
| It flips completely the other way in anything resembling a
| city. To get a fraction of the bandwidth available from fiber,
| you'd need a tower on every street corner, which isn't
| dramatically less expensive than installing fiber (especially
| when you count all the spectrum you have to pay for) and is
| still slower even then.
|
| And cellular is even less attractive when you have Starlink --
| then you don't even need the towers. It's great for rural
| areas. But it's hardly going to have enough aggregate bandwidth
| to let all of New York City watch Netflix in 4K.
| est31 wrote:
| Starlink does require towers because the data has to be
| beamed back to the ground. The more bandwidth you serve in an
| area, the more towers you need. However, in areas with low
| bandwidth demands where cellular towers are currently as
| dense as they are in order to reach every part of the area,
| Starlink does make sense.
|
| Starlink, Cellular and ground based internet serve different
| points on the density /mobility curve.
| bananabreakfast wrote:
| Not true at all. There has never been nationalized
| telecommunications in America, ever. Gets your facts straight.
| briandear wrote:
| See Telmex for how bad it gets..
| heymijo wrote:
| > _We had nationalized telecommunications for over 70 years_
|
| No.
|
| Until 1982 AT&T in the United States was a legal monopoly, not
| a nationalized telecom.
|
| The book, The Idea Factory about Bell Labs has most of the
| history including why the the defense work Bell Labs did during
| WWII and beyond helped them justify a nationwide monopoly on
| telecom.
| bluntfang wrote:
| And I ask, what's the difference? Let's try not to be
| pedantic here, because if they are a legal monopoly, at the
| end of the day they have to do what the government says,
| because if they don't the government could just tear the
| monopoly down and prop up competitors.
| heymijo wrote:
| 1) Ownership
|
| Nationalized companies are owned by the state. AT&T had/has
| private shareholders.
|
| 2) Control
|
| With ownership comes control. The U.S. government granted
| AT&T a conditional monopoly. In the early 20th century it
| was in exchange for extending service across the nation.
| Mid-20th century for defense work.
|
| Aside from these conditions the U.S. government did not
| exert control on AT&T's operations.
| Aloha wrote:
| And compared to virtually every nationalized telecom it
| provided better, cheaper service that was universally
| available.
|
| Internet access should be regulated like it was a utility
| however, and that's the great failing of public policy in
| that area.
| greggman3 wrote:
| Cheaper!?!?! I had $1200 one month long distance bill in
| 1984. That today is effectively free. Only competition made
| that happen. If AT&T was still in charge we'd be paying by
| the call and by the byte.
| fragmede wrote:
| That seems overly simplistic, especially considering my
| phone bill today is still billed by the byte, for
| instance.
| Aloha wrote:
| The price of long distance has more to do with the
| changes in technology since then than the regulatory
| environment. Competitive long distance could have
| happened without lifting the overall regulatory framework
| that governed telecommunications for 60+ years. Sometime
| between 1975 and 2005, long haul bandwidth became
| effectively free - consider that in 1975 the widest
| bandwidth deployed carrier system was about 108,000
| simultaneous calls, a fiber system deployed in 1999, is
| now carrying 320gb/s which if I did my math right works
| out to 500m simultaneous calls.
|
| To give you an idea, a residential phone bill from 1982
| with unlimited local calling in Seattle was around 13.50
| inclusive, in 2019, that same service cost 50 dollars -
| inflation alone would expect the cost of that service to
| only be 36 dollars or so - and technological advantages
| should make that service cheaper, not more expensive.
|
| AT&T was a different company, at one point before
| divestiture they were the single largest private employer
| (1973) in the US, providing union jobs with good benefits
| and stable (effectively) lifetime employment. Beyond
| this, they were also a leader in providing equal
| opportunity for minorities.
|
| The money generated by AT&T was paid back in technology
| dividends - dividends that underpin much of the
| technological innovation we've seen over the last 60
| years.
|
| AT&T's disaster preparedness is a whole other topic that
| could be gone into as well.
| heymijo wrote:
| You seem to have interpreted this as monopoly prices were
| less than today's prices.
|
| My read of the parent comment is that monopoly era phone
| service from AT&T was cheaper when compared to phone
| service in other parts of the world during that era.
|
| I can't speak to the veracity of this claim.
| Aloha wrote:
| I was making the argument that the price for a local loop
| was price competitive with nationalized telecoms, but
| with little to no wait to have service provisioned - in
| many cases though the nationalized services were cheaper,
| by far even - but you may be pressed with a months or
| years long wait to establish service, because of capacity
| limitations, similarly in some countries you often would
| have experienced a dial tone delay of minutes from the
| time you picked up the phone, and/or would have had to
| schedule your long distance call many hours or days in
| advance because of limited circuit capacity.
| tinus_hn wrote:
| As opposed to the monopolies which have contributed innovations
| such as quotas, pay for play internet and snooping.
| Iwork4Google wrote:
| In order for anything useful to happen in our society, we have to
| vote. It is now abundantly clear which party values what, and for
| whom. If we would rather vote based on 'abortion preventing our
| souls from partying with Jesus in heaven' instead of 'municipal
| broadband for all residents as a public utility', then we're
| going to continue to complain about this for another 50 years and
| beyond.
|
| The problem is that saying this out loud means you're
| politicizing this problem. Well, it's largely a political
| problem, otherwise we could get the Federal Government to step in
| and properly fix this. Legislation in the past with the best
| intensions was purposely weakened at the last moment to allow
| billions to be taken from Federal programs that left zero actual
| improvement or infrastructure development. Guess which party is
| fighting hardest for such loopholes and promising that
| corporations can do this better than "big government"?
|
| If we don't get our acts together in November, not having quality
| Internet access is going to be the least of our problems. Anyway,
| everyone enjoy going back to business as normal by Easter during
| the peak of this pandemic. I'm sure that will help as well.
| sloshnmosh wrote:
| While I agree with (some) of what you said, you should know
| that it was the Telecommunications ACT during the Clinton
| presidency that created these huge monopoly's and destroyed all
| the smaller telecoms and choices back in the mid 90's.
| the8472 wrote:
| > It is now abundantly clear which party values what
|
| The problem is you only (effectively) have two of those. Many
| other democracies use proportional elections instead of first
| past the post, which generally results in a more diverse party
| landscape which in turn makes it easier to pick a party that
| aligns more closely with multiple of your personal preferences
| instead of one.
|
| The party abstraction is incredibly lossy for people who don't
| slot all their preferences into the same bucket along a single
| axis. So having only two of those makes things even worse.
|
| It also prevents the political landscape from shifting much
| since there are fewer players at the margins.
| _delirium wrote:
| > It is now abundantly clear which party values what, and for
| whom. If we would rather vote based on 'abortion preventing our
| souls from partying with Jesus in heaven' instead of 'municipal
| broadband for all residents as a public utility', then we're
| going to continue to complain about this for another 50 years
| and beyond.
|
| If that were true, it'd be great. But which is the party that
| supports municipal broadband for all residents as a public
| utility? California has a Democratic governor, Democratic
| legislature, and in the most populous areas Democratic local
| government, and yet no municipal broadband.
|
| There's a map here of which state legislatures have passed
| restrictions on municipal broadband, and it seems pretty
| idiosyncratic relative to blue/red politics:
| https://broadbandnow.com/report/municipal-broadband-roadbloc...
| E.g. WV, OH, IN, IL, KY, GA, NM, VT are friendly to it, while
| WA, OR, TX, CO, AL, PA, FL, MA are unfriendly.
| akiselev wrote:
| _> If that were true, it 'd be great. But which is the party
| that supports municipal broadband for all residents as a
| public utility? California has a Democratic governor,
| Democratic legislature, and in the most populous areas
| Democratic local government, and yet no municipal broadband._
|
| California politics is a clusterfuck of epic proportions
| because of systemic deficiencies so I'd caution against
| taking any conclusions from it, even though on paper one
| party has had near total control for decades. The major bills
| like budgets and taxes require a 2/3 supermajority and until
| independent redistricting was implemented, any sort of
| progress on those issues required capitulating to a small
| number of gerrymandered districts that tended to produce
| extremist politicians (relative to their demographics). I'm
| not talking about districts in Fresno or something, but
| several right in the middle of Orange County. Passing a
| budget in California used to be a year round job of
| porkbarelling and horse trading for a significant fraction of
| the legislature.
|
| Once the FCC introduced net neutrality rules, no one felt it
| was worth the effort to revisit the rules that limited
| municipalities from establishing ISPs. Trump really
| galvanized the party in CA but now, the state is a
| battleground between the "neoliberal" and "progressive"
| factions which are both ostensibly Democrats but have
| fundamentally different views on the free market's place in
| society. Even though a lot of the "read my lips, no new
| taxes" types are out, there is still a fundamental
| philosophical difference within the party that requires
| compromise and politics moves slowly.
|
| That said, (late?) last year CA won a major ruling against
| the FCC (remains to be seen what the Supreme Court will say)
| that allows it to diverge from FCC regulations so expect a
| lot more progress once the list of high priority items
| shrinks.
| daveFNbuck wrote:
| Single-issue voters don't vote straight party tickets. You
| have to learn about the individual candidates and only vote
| for the ones that support your pet issue.
|
| The mayor in this story probably didn't care much either way
| about municipal broadband. They just don't see it as an issue
| worth the effort.
|
| If there were a real chance that not supporting municipal
| broadband would hurt their re-election chances, they'd be
| more likely to support it. If not, perhaps their successor
| would see things differently.
| yummypaint wrote:
| NC is missing from the unfriendly list. I believe it was time
| warner cable who bribed the state legislature a bit over a
| decade ago, and again recently. By the legislature i mean
| almost everyone in one party, and a few in the other. They
| are of course the only viable ISP in much of the state,
| though now they go by spectrum because of the constant
| unchecked mergers. They are worse than ever.
|
| It's true municipal broadband is spreading in all kinds of
| districts, but in places where it's being debated one
| particular party always sides with the telecoms. Lets not
| forget their appointee ajit pai.
|
| https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20161031/07232735920/after.
| ..
| claydavisss wrote:
| Democrats have a statewide monopoly on power thanks in part to
| the people who live in Los Altos Hills. And why would any
| government ever prioritize subsidizing infrastructure for the
| wealthiest zip code in the entire nation?
| dionian wrote:
| > " If we would rather vote based on 'abortion preventing our
| souls from partying with Jesus in heaven' instead of 'municipal
| broadband for all residents as a public utility', then we're
| going to continue to complain about this for another 50 years
| and beyond."
|
| I really think this is not a useful simplification of the
| various policy positions of the major voting blocs in the US. I
| think there is a lot of nuance and if we start to reduce the
| arguments we risk making a caricature of some of the positions
| out there.
| cle wrote:
| The two political parties are already caricatures. Of course
| it's a gross simplification, but participation means being
| forced into those by the procrustean American voting system.
| DavidVoid wrote:
| At the very least, municipal "dark fiber" [1] broadband should be
| more of a thing.
|
| I live in a city in Northern Europe and we have it in pretty much
| all apartment buildings here.
|
| I can choose between 17 different ISPs and the prices per month
| are: Price Speed (up/down) $20
| 10 Mb/s $30 100 Mb/s $75 1 Gb/s
| $142 10 Gb/s
|
| If you live in the country-side though, you sadly tend to have
| much more limited options for a decent Internet connection.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_fibre
| briandear wrote:
| $142 for 10Gb/s? Mine costs $95 per month in Mountain View, CA.
| alexfromapex wrote:
| Need to start naming and shaming any public figures, companies,
| and politicians who say otherwise. That's the only way to fight
| against the corporate takeover attempt.
| lioeters wrote:
| > corporate takeover attempt
|
| Sadly, I think the takeover has happened already, and there's
| not enough incentive for public figures, companies, and
| politicians to push for deprivatization.
|
| I agree with the article that the Internet should be a public
| utility, like water or electricity.
| [deleted]
| alexfromapex wrote:
| I know what you're saying and I hear you but I think the
| "it's already over we should just give up" attitude that
| comes up whenever these types of discussions arise is what
| causes them to win. The first step to reversing their
| influence is not viewing it as acceptable.
| lioeters wrote:
| > "it's already over we should just give up" attitude
|
| I agree, thank you for pointing that out. I'm trying to
| fight this defeatist and cynical tendency in myself.
|
| > The first step to reversing their influence is _not
| viewing it as acceptable_.
|
| Right - as a form of local activism, I'll remember to voice
| my opinion on important matters, where the status quo is
| unacceptable.
| coldpie wrote:
| Paying more attention to local politics helps combat this.
| There are people trying to do good out there, they're just
| not getting all the attention like those at the federal
| level.
| [deleted]
| sneak wrote:
| I'm not sure that I want the government in a position to be a
| single point of control for which websites I can or cannot
| access.
| ksk wrote:
| A private company has to comply with all governmental laws and
| regulations. If the government wants something banned, they can
| just create a law that lets them do that. They've already
| demonstrated that they can easily do that with the patriot act.
| freehunter wrote:
| Absolutely nothing about public internet in any way implies
| anything even remotely related to your strawman argument.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _nothing about public internet in any way implies anything
| even remotely related to your strawman argument_
|
| Why not? If the government has a monopoly on internet access,
| it becomes easier for voters to call for certain sites being
| blocked or certain sorts of traffic be monitored and/or
| intercepted.
| freehunter wrote:
| If we're playing that game, there's a million things they
| could do as well, but it doesn't make any of them likely.
| Hell, they could do what you're talking about _right now_ ,
| other countries do that even though their Internet access
| isn't controlled by the government. The porn ban in the UK
| is a great example of privately-controlled ISPs being
| forced to block certain sites.
|
| I'll repeat, there is absolutely nothing about publicly
| funded Internet service that in any way even remotely
| connects "internet access as a public utility" to
| "government starts blocking certain sites". They could do
| it _right now_ if they wanted to.
| uk_programmer wrote:
| The porn ban didn't happen. Even with the "don't go to
| the pirate bay or we send you a nasty letter"
| legislation, they stop bothering doing that because
| nobody paid any attention and threw the letter in the
| bin.
| [deleted]
| coldpie wrote:
| This is a blatant violation of the 1st amendment. You are at
| more risk of this from private entities, who are not bound by
| the 1st amendment.
| sneak wrote:
| Perhaps. Competition is a _realtime_ mechanism for stopping
| this sort of fuckery on a provider level presently. I can
| switch ISPs immediately (provided that there is more than one
| around).
|
| Remediations for 1A violations are _anything but_ realtime.
|
| You could suffer rights abuses for a very long time with no
| immediate or cost-effective recourse. Also, such a
| circumstance in which your 1A rights are violated by your
| government ISP, which may be eventually protected by courts,
| remains inherently dangerous for example during declared
| periods of emergency where the usual rights and remedies are
| "temporarily" (weeks or months) suspended. Imagine the
| situation were this the case right now, and your government
| ISP disconnects you _today_ (let 's say on some bogus "local"
| authority). How long do you think it would be before the
| thing winds its way through the courts and your port finally
| gets ordered to be turned back on? A month? Three months?
| Six?
|
| How much money has it cost you in legal fees? How many
| dollars did you lose from not being able to work in that time
| due to being entirely offline?
|
| I don't trust any one player being the "only game in town" no
| matter who they are or what remedies I have against them.
| Making it state-run means that not only are they the only
| game in town (like Comcast is now in a lot of places), but
| that it's _impossible to change that situation_. It makes it
| permanent. We need _more_ competition, not less. _More_
| opportunity for _more_ people to create businesses and jobs,
| not less.
|
| I think the people of Flint should be able to chime in on
| this thread.
| enraged_camel wrote:
| >> I can switch ISPs immediately (provided that there is
| more than one around).
|
| You may want to look at what percentage of America has this
| kind of choice (and whether it is a choice between viable
| and high quality alternatives, as opposed to ones that are
| equally shitty).
| dantheman wrote:
| Most places without options are where those localities
| gave a monopoly to a single company -- so that they would
| subsidize rural people. In the US we need to stop
| subsidizing the costs of living in the middle of nowhere.
| Mail, electricity, phone, etc should all cost
| substantially more - it should reflect the cost of living
| there.
| sneak wrote:
| I understand that the situation is dire. I'm saying we
| need _more_ options, not fewer.
|
| What we basically have now is a government monopoly
| network that happens to be Comcast branded. It's bad.
| [deleted]
| Reelin wrote:
| As a counterexample, authoritarian regimes in countries
| with private ISPs have cut off or filtered internet access
| by fiat. A private ISP isn't magically exempt from
| government demands. I believe Turkey is a recent example of
| this.
|
| Iran is a particularly good one.
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Iran)
|
| > Every ISP must be approved by both the Telecommunication
| Company of Iran (TCI) and the Ministry of Culture and
| Islamic Guidance, and must implement content-control
| software for websites and e-mail.
|
| More competition in physical last mile infrastructure just
| isn't feasible given the costs. A single physical provider
| (ie fiber as a utility) with legislated common access (ie
| ISP competition) has worked out quite well for the rest of
| the western world.
| 3fe9a03ccd14ca5 wrote:
| I'm generally a libertarian, anti-bureaucracy type, but this is
| an issue I align with. Having the government provide the bulk of
| last mile dumb fiber seems to be the best way to move forward
| internet speeds.
|
| Opponents always point towards the remarkable improvements in
| wireless internet speed, but those of us who understand the
| technology know it's not a replacement for fiber. Why compare
| simple, vacuum packed download tests? Of course people don't
| utilize their upload speed: it's miserably slow! Of course they
| don't use more bandwidth: they get charged an arm and a leg for
| it!
| Karunamon wrote:
| >Of course people don't utilize their upload speed: it's
| miserably slow!
|
| The average internet user's bandwidth usage is always going to
| be asymmetrical, since the average internet user is downloading
| a lot more than they produce. One or two streaming movies on
| something like Netflix (15% of worldwide downstream usage by
| itself) will completely blow away a few video calls.
|
| Try to enumerate the use cases for high upload rates, and you
| find that most of them simply won't apply to most users.
| sneak wrote:
| Another, simpler solution would be to have the government stop
| promulgating/supporting the lies regarding fictional
| competition spread by companies like Comcast. There are lots of
| places where you have only one or two options, but the large
| national incumbents who have the ear of regulators will lie and
| claim that there are three times as many. The government grants
| them their moat.
|
| There are lots of people who would like to be ISPs (including
| municipalities) who simply aren't allowed to be, because the
| regulators and the large national ISPs have conspired to pass
| lots of regulation that outlaws any real competition. It's
| absolutely shameful.
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2015/5/1/8530403/chattanooga-comcas...
|
| https://boingboing.net/2019/04/19/comcast-vs-america.html
| perlpimp wrote:
| ... or it should be cheap and regulated on pricing. it is crime
| what western nations charge for it. suppose areas of differing
| income levels should have different pricing schemes. coming from
| russia to canada, it is insane that you have to pay 1500% more
| for same packages for wireless and wired internet.
| pshiryaev wrote:
| But in turn, the income of average Russians is 1500% less than
| in the western nations so the ratio we pay here is adequate.
|
| Besides, Russia has good internet only in major cities
| (>1,000,000 million residents) with residents living in high-
| rise buildings (like NYC) so the distance and the cost to lay
| the cables is minimal. Now compare that to a single-family
| residences in California and you see the argument is false.
|
| P.S. Russians making $200 per month are officially considered
| middle-class in Russia.
| BubRoss wrote:
| Competition accomplishes the same thing. Look at any area where
| Comcast or AT&T have competition, they shape up very quickly.
| DOCSIS 3.0 and 3.1 are actually very fast. Cable companies know
| however that if the better the internet they sell, the more
| they canabalize their ability to sell cable TV. They want to
| sell you data twice and one of their giant sources of revenue
| is something people would rather leave behind.
| dahart wrote:
| Competition does help _when_ it happens. The problem is
| Comcast and AT &T charge higher prices wherever there is no
| competition and they actively do whatever they can to prevent
| competition, they absolutely do not just wait around for
| other ISPs to compete. A few years ago Comcast's active anti-
| competitive bullying of local ISPs in my city pushed me off
| the ISP I preferred. And there are too many areas in the U.S.
| where competing is prohibitive, like rural areas where build-
| out is more expensive, so once a single ISP is there nobody
| else bothers.
| BubRoss wrote:
| That's my point. Instead of having a government regulate a
| monopoly, if government is going to intervene it should be
| to allow others to compete first.
| dahart wrote:
| Ah, I see. It looks like that is happening in some
| locales, at least according to https://en.wikipedia.org/w
| iki/Internet_in_the_United_States#...
|
| Unfortunately competition still doesn't always work,
| because crafty companies know how to fix prices without
| explicitly colluding - witness the insulin market, for
| example. I don't particularly believe that my cell phone
| plan prices are the result of providers competing on
| price, it often seems more like a silent unspoken
| agreement among the providers to not lower the prices,
| which in addition to insulin has happened in lots of
| other markets.
| BubRoss wrote:
| If there is municipal internet, it should set a price
| that is sustainable but forces other ISPs to compete.
| Also competition doesn't only mean two of the same thing.
| More competition helps in general, even when the number
| of ISPs seems redundant.
| topkai22 wrote:
| I think this is how utilities evolved in many places- local
| monopolies arose, so local governments either built their
| own system, took over service delivery or created laws on
| top of the service delivery.
| _carl_jung wrote:
| I don't understand this part. As far as I can tell,
| utility monopolies can only form with government
| assistance (i.e. lobbying).
| dahart wrote:
| What is making you think that monopolies can only occur
| with government action? The first utility to service a
| region is a de-facto monopoly. I also gave two examples
| already of ways monopolies have occurred without
| government intervention: anti-competitive behavior and
| barriers to entry. Monopolies without government
| intervention are common enough that there's a term for
| it: Natural Monopoly
| https://www.investopedia.com/terms/n/natural_monopoly.asp
|
| That article gives more examples of ways monopolies occur
| without government intervention, such as mergers and
| takeovers, and collusion and price fixing. All of these
| things have happened multiple times in the past, so
| history provides all the proof we need that lobbying or
| other government assistance is not required for
| monopolies to form.
| perlpimp wrote:
| what I know about US is that localities allow for 1-2
| providers to run cables, wonder if similar thing is in place
| in Canada. So while FTC can make noises, nature of
| anticompetitive pricing is very antifragile.
| zbrozek wrote:
| I talked with the mayor of Los Altos Hills, CA yesterday where I
| advocated for a municipal fiber ISP. It seems crazy to me that in
| Silicon Valley, and specifically in one of its richest towns,
| that broadband is not available to every residence.
|
| She makes a good point: the residents don't care. Her argument is
| that ~20 mbps DSL is good enough for the elderly population. And
| further - that for those who find that inadequate - Comcast is
| often (but by no means universally) available.
|
| I write this tethered to the cell network because I can't get a
| decent wired internet solution here, with direct line-of-sight to
| Google's headquarters and the mega-offices of many of tech's
| largest players. As I am stuck at home, constantly turning off
| others' video streams while I try to engage with my coworkers
| remotely, I deeply wish that we had either a more competitive
| marketplace or a more belligerently pro-consumer regulator.
|
| And, by the way, the FCC thinks I have a dozen options for
| broadband. That is false.
| tarde wrote:
| > Her argument is that ~20 mbps DSL is good enough
|
| that is insane. How having no internet is fine because 20mbps
| is enough?
|
| That could be a good argument against fiber (which i also think
| is overkill, decent cooper is lower maintenance and with enough
| repeaters as good as) but it is hardly an argument against it
| being available to all as a public utility.
|
| > And, by the way, the FCC thinks I have a dozen options for
| broadband. That is false.
|
| and the real enemy shows up. FCC, from the bush-omaba-trump
| admin become the most corrupt organization one can think of.
| They openly lie and laugh when someone point out the lie.
| coldpie wrote:
| > from the bush-omaba-trump admin become the most corrupt
| organization one can think of
|
| I don't know whether they were corrupt, but Tom Wheeler did a
| fantastic job from a consumer rights & Internet health
| perspective during the Obama admin. Most notably he
| implemented Title II regulations to enforce net neutrality
| (since undone by a Republican), but also supported municipal
| broadband (since undone by a Republican), fought against
| several huge communication company mergers (since undone by a
| Republican), and supported content providers against ISPs
| charging interconnection fees.
|
| https://arstechnica.com/information-
| technology/2016/03/how-a...
| tarde wrote:
| on his first year he passed the "internet fast lane"
| regulation, against net neutrality, and made lots of
| profits for his cable and wireless business.
|
| only to four months later start a huge campaign with obama
| pro net neutrality for the classification of ISPs as
| utilities under Title II of the Communications Act of 1934
| (with profitable exceptions). Opening the floodgates on
| direct white house influence on the FCC and permanently
| making it the political tool which Ajit Pai wields.
| tzs wrote:
| > on his first year he passed the "internet fast lane"
| regulation, against net neutrality, and made lots of
| profits for his cable and wireless business
|
| No, he _proposed_ a net neutrality regulation that would
| allow fast lanes, and said he was open to a stronger rule
| if it had enough support. The comments on the first
| proposal overwhelmingly favored a stronger approach, and
| so the final rule that he actually passed was the Title
| II reclassification.
|
| He took this approach because the courts had struck down
| the Open Internet Order of 2010, and this was the safest
| way to restore as much of that as possible without doing
| a very politically difficult and risky Title II
| reclassification.
|
| And what do you mean "his cable and wireless business"?
| In the distant past he had held executive positions in
| first the main cable trade group, and later the main
| wireless trade group, but the first was something like 30
| years before he was on the FCC and the second something
| like 10 years before he was on the FCC.
|
| The cable stuff was so long ago that it was just
| television--the cable modem had not yet been invented. It
| was also a time when the cable industry was the
| disruptive new kid on the block trying to bring
| competition for the big entrenched OTA broadcast
| networks.
|
| Same thing when he worked for the wireless industry. It
| was when they were the new thing trying to make inroads
| against the big landline telecom companies.
| plussed_reader wrote:
| What choice is there when congress can't/won't legislate?
|
| The regulation is (still) badly needed. We see the
| shortcomings of the current delivery system laid bare but
| if a company won't invest to keep a competitive
| advantage, again what choice is there?
| greedo wrote:
| I'm not sure why you think "decent cooper" is as good as
| fiber. Unless you can deliver me 1Gbps symmetrically like my
| current fiber, you're inadequate. I currently have two kids
| doing remote learning, a wife who's starting to VPN at times,
| and I myself work remotely at least 9 hours a day for the
| last 20 days.
|
| My podunk town has FTH through a municipal partnership. It
| works great. If my town can do it, I expect every other town
| above a population of 300K to do it as well. It's not rocket
| science.
|
| The problem is with people saying crap like "good enough."
| The Network Director at my company said that a wireless (GSM)
| connection of 1Mbps was "good enough." I laughed and said
| that explains why our LAN and WAN speeds are so bad. WiFi in
| a conference room with an access point directly overhead
| fails half the time.
|
| Good enough...
|
| Times are changing. 20 years ago I worked at a distance
| learning company creating H.S. courseware. Cutting edge stuff
| that was lost in a market that didn't care. Too many
| competing interests. But I bet all those education
| administrators wish they had invested in more than
| Chromebooks that don't have courseware.
| creato wrote:
| > Unless you can deliver me 1Gbps symmetrically like my
| current fiber, you're inadequate. I currently have two kids
| doing remote learning, a wife who's starting to VPN at
| times, and I myself work remotely at least 9 hours a day
| for the last 20 days.
|
| This really shouldn't require such exotic internet. Unless
| you are downloading large files, it's _hard_ to use more
| than a few megabits per person on average.
|
| Often the nice thing about fiber is the surrounding
| infrastructure is newer and better.
| namrog84 wrote:
| > it's hard to use more than a few megabits per person on
| average.
|
| With the coming rise of streaming services(currently
| using 6 to 12 mbps) and other things I can regularly see
| each individual person using 25mbps or more with the rise
| of 4k. And in a house of 4. That means the house needs
| 100mbps real capacity. And then it needs to not be
| bottlenecked on the street with dozens of other houses.
|
| And not just streaming of games. But of movies.
| Education. Meetings. And tons of other streaming related
| activities compounded on potential normal usage non
| streaming.
|
| And lets not forget that my predictions are based on the
| short term (<5 years) time frames. Infrastructure
| shouldn't need replacing every 5 years, but perhaps every
| 10-15 years at the lowest. So in that regard I'd bump it
| up to say at minimum every household should be able to
| sustain 500mbps symmetrically during peak concurrency
| strain hours.
|
| Perhaps offer up to 1 gbps to 10 gbps during non peak
| times and during short spikes.
| zbrozek wrote:
| Try living in a place with only 3 mbps down. You'll find
| your various computing devices are constantly pegging the
| connection doing nothing but downloading updates.
|
| I have a lot of computing devices. Probably more than the
| average American. But both of those numbers are only
| going up.
| Klinky wrote:
| >This really shouldn't require such exotic internet.
| Unless you are downloading large files, it's hard to use
| more than a few megabits per person on average.
|
| You're assuming averages, but just looking at Youtube
| buffering, it downloads videos in bursts, despite being a
| "streaming" service. Combine bursty behavior with latency
| sensitive applications like video conferencing or gaming,
| and having that headroom is nice.
|
| That said 1000/1000 may not be absolutely needed, but
| 100/100 or even 100/10 does not seem like it should be
| that big of an ask.
| ClikeX wrote:
| My provider gives me 250/25. That the upload speed has
| been a tenth of the download has never been an issue
| before.
|
| But video calling with colleagues and while doing syncing
| data with servers has been a bitch.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I understand that running physical cable to all locations is
| expensive, and if there is not a guarantee of minimum customer
| buy in it makes no financial sense for companies to do that. I
| grew up in the 80s and should be of the MTV generation, but
| because of the economics I never had an option for cable until
| I moved away from the parental units. I couldn't imagine not
| having access to the internet in today's society.
|
| I have hopes that with 5G, we could have a way to deliver gov't
| subsidized internet plans that allow everyone to be able to
| have a minimum amount of reliable bandwidth. Buy your $20USD
| receiver to receive a basic 10Mbps down, 1.5Mbps up connection.
| I think that should be free. Just enough to watch some video,
| enough to push normal attachments in email/web post (homework,
| resumes, etc). After that, if you want/need more bandwidth,
| then buy what you want. But at least this would provided a way
| to get past that last mile problem while making basic internet
| for all a viable thing.
| zbrozek wrote:
| Comcast offered to connect my place for something around
| $22,000. When I asked them to write a bid, they vanished. So
| as far as I can tell, they were bluffing and did not expect
| me to call them on it.
|
| And on 5G? I have little hope. At least here in the US where
| we've decided that it should be millimeter-wave, the range is
| insufficient to circumvent NIMBYism and FUD around
| installation and RF emissions.
| hkmurakami wrote:
| There are some efforts in LAH at the grassroots level.
|
| https://lahcommunityfiber.org/
|
| I imagine the low density of LAH makes the cost of installing
| fiber throughout town more of a barrier than other areas.
| pshiryaev wrote:
| So basically you are advocating that someone else (the
| taxpayers) picks up you internet connection bill?
|
| Have you considered to move somewhere else with a better
| internet rather than complain about everything and everyone?
| dang wrote:
| This comment breaks the site guidelines. Would you mind
| reviewing them and commenting in the intended spirit of the
| site? We'd be grateful.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| pgt wrote:
| We tried this in South Africa. It ended badly with Telkom.
| kekeblom wrote:
| The city of Zurich has what to my understanding is public fiber
| which is available to most buildings. (I assume there are some
| exceptions). It is managed by the electricity company run by
| the city. https://zuerinet.ch
|
| Setting up routers, billing etc. has been delegated to any
| third party ISP willing to do the job. I think they can charge
| what they want, as there are some very small differences in
| price. I pay ~44CHF/month for 100mb/s. While not dirt cheap,
| It's ok considering the price of other stuff here. Service so
| far has been very reliable.
| pdonis wrote:
| This is the sort of model that many US municipalities have
| tried to implement. Unfortunately, many of them have been
| blocked from doing so by ISP lawsuits.
| threentaway wrote:
| > ~44CHF/month for 100mb/s. While not dirt cheap
|
| That _is_ dirt cheap by US prices. Comcast (my only option)
| is $75/mo for 250/5 (yes, only 5 megabit up!).
| hanniabu wrote:
| > She makes a good point: the residents don't care. Her
| argument is that ~20 mbps DSL is good enough for the elderly
| population.
|
| I'd say that's a horrible point. Many people don't care about
| having guns or being monitored 24/7. That doesn't mean we
| shouldn't provide those as liberties.
| jimmaswell wrote:
| I'm hopeful for that satellite internet from SpaceX to solve
| availability.
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| Why should that be what it takes to solve this issue, though?
| We _have_ the capabilities down here on Earth; they 're just
| stymied by crony capitalism and regulatory capture.
| gdubs wrote:
| It's pretty exciting for rural areas -- not that it should
| be hard to run fiber everywhere (not my area of expertise).
| It just seems like a very quick way to turn on access for a
| lot of areas. Especially places just beyond towns and
| cities that are still well within civilization, but just
| not connected. Current satellite is _ok_ but the latency is
| pretty unfortunate.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| Who needs electricity when we have candles?
| gigatexal wrote:
| All it would take to get muni-fiber to really get going would
| be for the FCC to get behind it and for federal aid to spur
| development in places to go to these muni-fiber cooperatives
| rather than the telcos.
|
| I see the internet as a road. I think it'd be cool if road tech
| advanced but if it didn't the economy would still function
| because all of the things built on the robust road system are
| there.
| gigatexal wrote:
| Also nothing is going to make entrenched telcos innovate more
| than having to compete with 10s or hundreds more players.
| anderspitman wrote:
| If you have LOS to GOOG headquarters, you probably have LOS to
| someone with fast internet. You can set up plug-and-play
| directional internet bridge over several km for a couple
| hundred USD, and split their internet bill with them. Yeah
| there's a lot of hurdles, but if you don't have another option
| might be worth looking in to.
| ProZsolt wrote:
| > ~20 mbps DSL is good enough for the elderly population
|
| I used 30 mbps internet for years till my ISP upgraded my
| lovest tear and I worked from home. Even gigabit was available
| I don't really care about speed. If you don't work with big
| files that needs to be synced often slow speed is fine.
|
| I only care that my internet is stable. In this regard, fiber
| is way better, but for most elderly even a few hours a week
| downtime is not a big deal.
| cbhl wrote:
| I daresay, it's even worse than that. Your neighbors are
| actively fighting against the installation of infrastructure
| that would enable faster internet speeds.
|
| AT&T tried to bring FTTN to San Francisco years ago, but
| neighbors decried the "ugly" green boxes that would run down
| the street. Boxes that are standard in literally any suburb
| with fast internet.
|
| There are limited parts of the bay area with gigabit fiber,
| including some large apartment buildings. The rent is higher in
| those places, of course.
| jessriedel wrote:
| It's so crazy because if you have ever seen the same
| neighborhood with and without power lines, the difference is
| dramatic. Power lines are horrendously ugly. But after people
| got use to them, they can barely be bothered to pay 10% extra
| on their power bill for the lines to be buried.
|
| Likewise, people would instantly forget about the green boxes
| after a few year.
| bluejekyll wrote:
| AT&T can put those under the ground. They are ugly. And they
| take up already limited sidewalk space in many areas.
| plussed_reader wrote:
| Do you want to put up taxes for additional trenching,
| nevermind the overhead associated with the different
| agencies when digging is involved?
| bluejekyll wrote:
| Put them in the street, take up parking spaces from cars.
| The attitude that people don't deserve the same
| guarantees as cars is a bad one.
| wpietri wrote:
| I don't think her DSL argument is coherent. The only reason DSL
| is available to most houses is that those wires were put in by
| a municipal phone company or highly regulated monopoly. Anybody
| who has talked to a DSL tech knows that a lot of that
| infrastructure is creaky, many decades old. We need to figure
| out what to do for the next century.
|
| Personally, I think we should at least look at the local loop
| as a natural monopoly. Just like the city is expected to own
| and maintain the road to your house, it should own and maintain
| the digital equivalent. From your house to the POP, it's city
| fiber. From the POP onward, sure, let that be run commercially,
| with a free minimum tier, say 5 mb/s. If you want anything
| more, you can contract with any ISP who has a presence in your
| POP. That way we get both a truly competitive marketplace and
| universal access.
| mehhh wrote:
| Those same DSL techs often know exactly what needs to be done
| to save the telecom company they work for, deploy GPON.
|
| Verizon broke new ground and did it in the early 2000s, and
| its the only reason they still have as many customers as they
| do. The assets they sold to Frontier were partially upgraded,
| and have taken a beating due to Frontier's internal
| incompetence and poor service. Reactivating service to an
| existing ONT should not take more than a few minutes, yet it
| takes 24+hrs with Frontier.
|
| The cable companies are willing to do what is neccesary to
| get customers up and running, which is how they have hollowed
| out the incumbent telecom's business.
| cheez wrote:
| Here's the sad truth: you're not going to be able to do
| anything for the next century. The next century will not
| happen in the US cities you are thinking about. They will
| happen in other US cities or elsewhere in the world.
| claydavisss wrote:
| Most residents of Los Altos Hills could afford to have
| dedicated fiber brought directly to their homes, including all
| of the hardware to terminate it. But thanks for your
| humblebrag...I'm sure we'll make it a top priority to attend to
| the poor residents of America's most expensive zip code.
| gnopgnip wrote:
| Common.net is planning on gigabit wireless service in Alameda
| and San Leandro later this year. And they offer 300mbit service
| now. The technology is there to do this without laying fiber or
| other traditional infrastructure. If there are many people that
| want something better than DSL start a wireless ISP.
| Zhenya wrote:
| Not that this is a solution but get a good directional antenna
| and point it at Google - instant guest network(advice not
| guaranteed to work)!
| marcusverus wrote:
| Has the author never heard of the Lifeline Program for Low-Income
| Consumers (aka Obamaphones)? This program already provides a
| benefit designed to provide free access to mobile internet. The
| $10 per month subsidy may not seem like much, but it'll buy you
| ~1Gb per month via Tracfone, for example. It's important to note
| that this program includes a requirement that "Obamaphones" be
| hot-spot enabled so that they can be used with laptops (i.e. by
| kids who have homework on school-provided laptops).
|
| https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/lifeline-support-afford...
| lostmsu wrote:
| 1G is not enough. Dial-up would let you get more.
| Rychard wrote:
| > 1G is not enough. Dial-up would let you get more.
|
| Yep, a lot more. (56 kbps) * 1 month =
| 18.4082068 gigabytes
| JoBrad wrote:
| A program that isn't available to everyone and is routinely
| under fire. It also doesn't solve the underlying problem, but
| instead throws money at the companies exacerbating it for
| profit. Broadly available, competitive broadband is the answer.
| evv wrote:
| > It also doesn't solve the underlying problem, but instead
| throws money at the companies exacerbating it for profit
|
| Quite similar to Obama's approach to healthcare, what a
| coincidence! :-)
| otterley wrote:
| The better choice - replacing private provisioning for
| basic healthcare coverage with a public service - was not
| politically viable. Sometimes you have to make a suboptimal
| choice for the greater good.
| evv wrote:
| True. But the root cause of the problem is the influence
| of the insurance/pharma industries on our legislative
| system.
|
| Pretty sure Obama was smart enough to see that. Did he do
| anything about it?
| otterley wrote:
| Like what, change the Constitution to alter the First
| Amendment? That's not something within the President's
| powers.
| AdamJacobMuller wrote:
| Just on a massively larger scale.
| joveian wrote:
| I've had that and a major issue is that the $10/month covers
| both phone and internet, not just internet. The combined plan I
| had was supposed to include 500MB per month internet but I'm
| fairly sure hot-spot was not enabled and direct tethering was
| certainly not enabled. Also the phones are extremely locked
| down and don't even allow USB audio devices. The $10/month can
| be used towards a more expensive plan which is what the
| providers would really prefer that you do. There are obviously
| corrupt limitations like a six month (at least, maybe longer?)
| waiting period between services if you want to change data
| plans (this does not apply to phone service). There are
| $10/month DSL plans available in my area but it is extremely
| slow, maybe 2mbps I think. The phones have some security
| issues; a six digit numerical PIN is all that protects full
| call records and the ability to change devices for the Virgin
| plan I was on.
|
| Lifeline is better than nothing when needed but there are
| reasons it is still mostly used for phone access. It seems like
| a fairly corrupt program.
| ctdonath wrote:
| 1GB/mo = 385B/s = 3086b/s
|
| Average 3kb/s.
|
| Yes, one tends to use data in bursts. Bracketing helps
| understand usage.
| [deleted]
| amelius wrote:
| For much of the same reasons, the postal service and Amazon
| should be public utilities too.
| pdonis wrote:
| The postal service in the US _is_ a public utility: the US Post
| Office is required by law to deliver to any US address. The
| fact that there are private companies delivering something
| called "mail" does not change that: none of them are permitted
| to deliver first class mail, that is a USPS monopoly, and none
| of them are required to deliver to all US addresses, but the
| USPS is.
|
| I don't know why you would want Amazon to be a public utility.
| amelius wrote:
| Yes, in the US that's the case but nobody said it will never
| change.
|
| Regarding Amazon, see for example
| https://stallman.org/amazon.html#size
| GhettoMaestro wrote:
| The first step is to get rid of any state or local laws
| preventing government entities operating last-mile networks. That
| should have never happened.
| chrisbennet wrote:
| The local government should own the "pipes" and rent them out.
|
| Some people are down on "socialism" without realizing they love
| it. We have socialized police, fire, sewage, (usually) water and
| road repair plus some others I'm forgetting.
|
| Socialism is people getting together to help each other.
| Businesses have no special right to view citizens as their
| exclusive feeding ground.
| uk_programmer wrote:
| > The local government should own the "pipes" and rent them
| out.
|
| This is essentially what happens in the UK. BT have to rent out
| lines to everyone else.
|
| Guess what? Almost all the ISPs are capped at the speed at
| whatever BT can provide. The only company I believe in the UK
| that goes above those speeds is Virgin which almost twice the
| speed at almost the same price as the competition.
|
| I used to live in the countryside and until there was fibre
| installed the speeds were terrible (less than 2mb/s). State own
| broadband isn't magically better.
|
| > Some people are down on "socialism" without realizing they
| love it. We have socialized police, fire, sewage, (usually)
| water and road repair plus some others I'm forgetting.
|
| In the UK our council tax pay are supposed to pay for road
| repair. The roads in the UK are awful. There are pot holes
| everywhere and I've had 3 punctures last year.
|
| The toll roads (the few of them that exist in the UK) don't
| have anyone on them. Take 30 minutes a day off my journey time
| in the car and the road surface is perfect.
| solarwind wrote:
| A few places in the U.S. do already have this system and it
| works well. The city owns the fiber optic links between your
| house and a central office, but you get to choose your own ISP
| (often from dozens of options).
| PureParadigm wrote:
| I used to think municipal fiber was the answer to improve
| internet service, but while it may work, I've seen that it is
| certainly not the only way.
|
| I moved to Berkeley for university and there are several
| competing options for gigabit internet (including Sonic, LMI,
| etc.). When the gigabit service arrived to disrupt the
| AT&T/Comcast duopoly, suddenly the customer was important, and we
| were able to get great speeds, prices, and customer service.
|
| What I'm saying is that you don't necessarily need to make
| internet a public utility to improve service, just to get some
| real competition. If that competition needs to come in the form
| of municipal fiber, then that might also work, but it could also
| be a private company.
| blululu wrote:
| More competition is really important for driving down the price
| and improving the quality of internet supply, however there is
| still a case for entry level public internet access. You could
| easily imagine a very slow internet connection (like 1995 level
| speeds) being supplied by cities as a basic service to help
| bridge the digital divide and provide basic access to people in
| need.
| joecool1029 wrote:
| >What I'm saying is that you don't necessarily need to make
| internet a public utility to improve service, just to get some
| real competition.
|
| You won't get competition in sparsely populated areas. There's
| not a ton of business sense to expand and try to compete in
| these markets.
|
| The alternative way to get build-out in the underserved areas
| is to have gov subsidize a few interests. Canada seems have
| done a good job getting cell coverage in the middle of nowhere
| paying Rogers and Bell/Telus to build in remote lands. The US
| usually gives build-out requirements for stuff like spectrum
| and then doesn't enforce them when a company like DISH runs a
| scam:
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/fredcampbell/2018/07/20/dish-ne...
|
| DISH btw is in full PR mode lending all their AWS-4 spectrum to
| AT&T and all their 600mhz to T-Mobile, since they previously
| didn't do shit with it.
|
| In the case of the landline internet providers, there's around
| a half-trillion USD tax scam that's been perpetuated since the
| 1990's:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6c5e97/e...
| jhgorrell wrote:
| Left the East Bay a couple of years ago - I was very happy with
| LMI while I was there. Thumbs up for their service and staff.
| MR4D wrote:
| So, we should have PG&E run it? Or maybe the city of Flint,
| Michigan?
|
| God no.
|
| That's what happens when you make the decision to be a utility.
| You give up _all_ choice.
|
| The solution is _more_ choice in the internet market, not less.
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