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The internet should be a public utility

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Re: The internet should be a public utility

#81

Post by gigatexal »

zbrozek wrote: post #4

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 inade…

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.

Re: The internet should be a public utility

#82

Post by gigatexal »

gigatexal wrote: post #81
zbrozek wrote: post #4

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 inade…

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.

Also nothing is going to make entrenched telcos innovate more than having to compete with 10s or hundreds more players.

Re: The internet should be a public utility

#83

Post by ProZsolt »

zbrozek wrote: post #4

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 inade…

> ~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.

Re: The internet should be a public utility

#84

Post by evv »

otterley wrote: post #50
evv wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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! :-)

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.

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?

Re: The internet should be a public utility

#86

Post by zbrozek »

bgorman wrote: post #69

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 mi…

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.

Re: The internet should be a public utility

#87

Post by pshiryaev »

perlpimp wrote: post #3

... 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.

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.

Re: The internet should be a public utility

#88

Post by mehhh »

wpietri wrote: post #38
zbrozek wrote: post #4

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 inade…

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 m…

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.

Re: The internet should be a public utility

#89

Post by [deleted] »

sneak wrote: post #47
coldpie wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 govern…

[deleted]

Re: The internet should be a public utility

#90

Post by mehhh »

EB66 wrote: post #61
legitster wrote: post #9

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, o…

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.…

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.
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