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The internet should be a public utility

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Re: The internet should be a public utility

#121

Post by solarwind »

chrisbennet wrote: post #109

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.

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).

Re: The internet should be a public utility

#122

Post by creato »

greedo wrote: post #98
tarde wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 b…

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…

> 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.

Re: The internet should be a public utility

#123

Post by est31 »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #108
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…

> 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 t…

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.

Re: The internet should be a public utility

#124

Post by heymijo »

greggman3 wrote: post #106
Aloha wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.

Re: The internet should be a public utility

#125

Post by gameswithgo »

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.

Re: The internet should be a public utility

#126

Post by [deleted] »

ctdonath wrote: post #110
marcusverus wrote: post #18

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…

1GB/mo = 385B/s = 3086b/s Average 3kb/s. Yes, one tends to use data in bursts. Bracketing helps understand usage.

[deleted]

Re: The internet should be a public utility

#127

Post by DavidVoid »

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

Re: The internet should be a public utility

#128

Post by zbrozek »

creato wrote: post #122
greedo wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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 nic…

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.

Re: The internet should be a public utility

#129

Post by Rychard »

lostmsu wrote: post #22
marcusverus wrote: post #18

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…

1G is not enough. Dial-up would let you get more.

> 1G is not enough. Dial-up would let you get more.

Yep, a lot more.

    (56 kbps) * 1 month = 18.4082068 gigabytes

Re: The internet should be a public utility

#130

Post by sedatk »

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.…

Off-topic but I loved visiting Lake Chelan during my attempt at Cascade Loop. Your comment suddenly sparked warm memories.
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