The internet should be a public utility • Hacker News Board

Re: The internet should be a public utility

#141

Post by cheez » Sat, Mar 28, 2020, 9:02 PM UTC

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…

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.

Re: The internet should be a public utility

#142

Post by bananabreakfast » Sat, Mar 28, 2020, 9:05 PM UTC

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…

Not true at all. There has never been nationalized telecommunications in America, ever. Gets your facts straight.

Re: The internet should be a public utility

#143

Post by tarde » Sat, Mar 28, 2020, 9:05 PM UTC

coldpie wrote: post #39

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…

> 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), f…

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.

Re: The internet should be a public utility

#144

Post by briandear » Sat, Mar 28, 2020, 9:07 PM UTC

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…

See Telmex for how bad it gets..

Re: The internet should be a public utility

#145

Post by erik_seaberg » Sat, Mar 28, 2020, 9:11 PM UTC

jcrawfordor wrote: post #97

_carl_jung wrote: post #66

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 > 100m…

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 f…

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?

Re: The internet should be a public utility

#146

Post by otterley » Sat, Mar 28, 2020, 9:12 PM UTC

evv wrote: post #84

otterley wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Like what, change the Constitution to alter the First Amendment? That's not something within the President's powers.

Re: The internet should be a public utility

#147

Post by akiselev » Sat, Mar 28, 2020, 9:17 PM UTC

_delirium wrote: post #36

Iwork4Google wrote: post #25

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 sayin…

> 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…

> 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.

Re: The internet should be a public utility

#148

Post by TomMckenny » Sat, Mar 28, 2020, 9:23 PM UTC

fsckboy wrote: post #131

jcrawfordor wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 L…

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…

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.

Re: The internet should be a public utility

#149

Post by briandear » Sat, Mar 28, 2020, 9:25 PM UTC

DavidVoid wrote: post #127

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…

$142 for 10Gb/s? Mine costs $95 per month in Mountain View, CA.

Re: The internet should be a public utility

#150

Post by bluntfang » Sat, Mar 28, 2020, 9:26 PM UTC

heymijo wrote: post #70

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…

> 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.

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.