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The internet should be a public utility

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Re: The internet should be a public utility

#221

Post by TaylorAlexander »

coffeefirst wrote: post #212
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…

I never understand the "green box is ugly" argument. Yes it is. Can we not work out a deal where a local artist paints it and puts a statue on top. It needs to be a box with stuff in it and access panels, the outer aesthetic doesn't matter and can conform to local tastes.

It’s a good point. Sebastopol CA is full of cute metal statues up and down the front yards of homes and entrances to businesses. A local artist makes them. It’s cute. You’d think we could do that with infrastructure too.

Re: The internet should be a public utility

#223

Post by asdff »

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 have a private system, and already the quality is low. I live in the second largest city in the U.S. and I can only get spectrum "100mbps" in my building. Nothing I can do, the building is wired for spectrum. 4G reception is even worse, constantly drops.

Re: The internet should be a public utility

#224

Post by est31 »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #192
est31 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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. That's a ground station, not towers. The "towers" are the satellites. And the number of grounds stations you need doesn't really have much to do with how much bandwidth you use, because they can use directional wireless or laser communications at higher power levels t…

> And the combination of that doesn't leave much left for cellular to do.

you know how big the starlink antennas are? They don't fit in smartphones, not the directional ones.

Re: The internet should be a public utility

#225

Post by temp20160423 »

hiram112 wrote: post #191
threentaway wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ~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!).

That's approximately $46 USD, which is actually in line with most cable companies when you are a new customer. Of course, they get you by turning that $45 for 100Mb down with the modem rental for $10 / month, the 'fees' and taxes that are another $10 / month. Then, after your 'introductory' prices expire, you end up at $70 / month for the same 100Mb. But listen to this - a deal you can't refuse when your intro prices…

You can get the original promo price if you threaten to cancel. There's a song and dance with CSR but once they transfer you to the retentions dept, they are authorized to give you the original price again for a year. Actually, Comcast did give me a different deal once where the price was slightly higher than my original introductory offer but speeds were also better.

Re: The internet should be a public utility

#226

Post by blackrock »

The internet needs to have a free service tier, that can be given to under privileged people.

The entire government runs on web services, and you must have a decent computer to access it, as well as high speed internet.

Well, some basic cable internet services cost $70/month. That’s over $840/year.

Good grief! How does someone making $40,000/year afford such an expensive luxury?

On top of paying for rent, for food, for transportation, for a phone line, and now, for internet too. This is just too heavy of a burden to bear for under privileged people. Those who are younger, those who are minorities, those who are women that earn less.

The greed of corporate America is quite disgusting, and of our elected politicians that work in collusion with them, to prevent such free public services from being made available.

Re: The internet should be a public utility

#227

Post by philshem »

kekeblom wrote: post #64
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…

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/…

I’m also a Zürich resident. There is a healthy competition between ISPs and it’s easy to switch between them since the fiber network is provided by the city. When your contract is expiring, ask your ISP for a loyalty discount. I’m paying CHF 35/month for 1 Gbps (although in the last few weeks it hasn’t been that fast).

Re: The internet should be a public utility

#228

Post by lostmsu »

marcusverus wrote: post #198
lostmsu wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The author isn't arguing that people need access to the internet so that they can binge Netflix or venture down the YouTube rabbithole. The tug-at-the-heart-strings examples that the author used to justify her pet project are all easily fulfilled with 1GB per month.

I'd measure using Wikipedia as one of the most used resources worldwide. Currently, loading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronavirus_disease_2019 once with warm cache transfers 1.3MB. Single Google search takes just short of 1MB. At this rate 1GB will run out pretty quickly.

Re: The internet should be a public utility

#229

Post by _8j50 »

I am mildly concerned about the internet being a requrement for participating in society. The utility argument makes sense but people should also keep in mind, not having internet access should not exclude anyone from things like food,safe shelter,clothing,property ownership,trade and employment. Inconvenienced? Sure. Pay reasonable extra costs for having to do things offline? Why not. But let's not go full on dystopian like China here. The cure should not be worse than the disease!

Re: The internet should be a public utility

#230

Post by gumby »

mulmen wrote: post #218
mr_toad wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Power lines are horrendously ugly. So is the 20 foot wide expanse of dirty tar next to the power lines. But people have lived with that all their lives, and barely notice it.

I’m not sure what you are suggesting here. Power lines can be buried but what’s the alternative to residential streets?

Walkable,neighbourhoods designed for people rather than having them designed for cars first.
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