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The internet should be a public utility

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Re: The internet should be a public utility

#161

Post by plussed_reader »

bluejekyll wrote: post #158
cbhl wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, in…

AT&T can put those under the ground. They are ugly. And they take up already limited sidewalk space in many areas.

Do you want to put up taxes for additional trenching, nevermind the overhead associated with the different agencies when digging is involved?

Re: The internet should be a public utility

#162

Post by bluejekyll »

plussed_reader wrote: post #161
bluejekyll wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AT&T can put those under the ground. They are ugly. And they take up already limited sidewalk space in many areas.

Do you want to put up taxes for additional trenching, nevermind the overhead associated with the different agencies when digging is involved?

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.

Re: The internet should be a public utility

#163

Post by plussed_reader »

tarde wrote: post #143
coldpie wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 an…

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?

Re: The internet should be a public utility

#164

Post by heymijo »

bluntfang wrote: post #150
heymijo wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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.

Re: The internet should be a public utility

#165

Post by Reelin »

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.…

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.

Re: The internet should be a public utility

#166

Post by blululu »

PureParadigm wrote: post #160

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, p…

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.

Re: The internet should be a public utility

#167

Post by joecool1029 »

PureParadigm wrote: post #160

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, p…

>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...

Re: The internet should be a public utility

#168

Post by jhgorrell »

PureParadigm wrote: post #160

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, p…

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.

Re: The internet should be a public utility

#169

Post by Reelin »

cactus2093 wrote: post #14
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…

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 inter…

> 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.

Re: The internet should be a public utility

#170

Post by LatteLazy »

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…

Who needs electricity when we have candles?
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