Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why is European broadband faster and cheaper? Blame the government

engadget.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 145 posts

Re: Why is European broadband faster and cheaper? Blame the government

#71

Post by biturd »

Where can I find out more about the "last mile" wireless links near the end of the video?

I will be moving to an retirement area that has a summer population of a few hundred and a winter population of many thousands. There is no internet currently aside from cellular. I wanted to look into long link wifi, but only have found expensive point to point solutions that are multiple thousands of dollars.

I don't even know if it is possible. The closest town is only a few miles, but I doubt Comcast is going to let me share a few business class accounts to all those users.

I was going to try to keep it free to near free, a few bucks a month and cover the equipment costs on my end up to a few thousand dollars. If I can't hook into cable without violation of TOS, then I have to go right to the telco and lease a line, which I have no idea the costs of these days. I would need at least several hundred Mb/s I believe. Hopefully there is a datacenter or ISP nearby that would allow me to work with them to put something on the roof or on a neighbors property.

Suggestions on resources?

Re: Why is European broadband faster and cheaper? Blame the government

#72

Post by lutorm »

maxharris wrote: post #60
logjam wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>... after creating monopolies in the first place If you are really trying to advance the theory that "the market", left to itself, won't generate monopoly after monopoly, perhaps you could point us to actual examples of those golden times when the absence of regulation served consumers more than they served business oligarchy.

Properly speaking, the concept "monopoly" properly pertains only to situations where the government enforces the monopoly. This is the original meaning of the word (before it was altered in the 19th and 20th centuries). There is no proper political right for a "consumer" to have a choice between multiple brands of a product. If there were such a right, it would be violated the moment they walked into a remote store t…

You lost me with that post there, Max. The opposite of "there is an absolute right to have choice" is not "you must not do anything to promote choice".

Besides, rights are not contextually absolute, as exercising them may conflict with the rights of others.

Re: Why is European broadband faster and cheaper? Blame the government

#73

Post by jbooth »

jerf wrote: post #59
jbooth wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Want to put a dollar figure on the Enron/Worldcom implosions? How about if we threw a couple of those into the 2008 disaster, same time as Lehman collapsed? What's the cost there? People are really, really bad at pricing catastrophic events. Not to say that the bill couldn't be cleaned up, probably. But the conservative half of the aisle seems to be more interested in talkshow ideological invective than sucker's game…

First, you assume without proof that Sarbanes-Oxley will actually prevent the next Enron. Goals aren't results. I do not accept this as unarguably obvious. The rule of thumb is that it is easier to undetectably game complex systems than simple ones. Second, you've not mentioned the fact that Sarbanes-Oxley has real costs, not just in terms of direct compliance but also the business that they've simply shut out in adv…

Sarbox only applies to public companies, no? I wasn't papering over the costs, I assumed we both knew they exist. Public companies can typically afford a little accounting overhead, I don't think anyone's being dissuaded from starting a business because if they go public and become megamillionaires, there will be marginally more sarbox-related accounting work than there would've been anyways.

Libertarian is functionally equivalent to conservative in a post-january-2009 world. Sorry, it's not my fault, blame the tea party. The point still holds regarding the triumphant freshman class of 2010-2012 -- where are these guys on reforming sarbox? They're too busy ranting about socialism or death panels on Fox News and threatening to default the government.

Like I said, I'm all for reform that makes it cheaper, more effective or more efficient. Where are you actually disagreeing with me here?

EDIT: I actually do think it says something in favor of sarbox that nobody had an Enron style accounting disaster during the implosion. I mean, given that we saw every other form of financial bad behavior on display, why not that form too? Impossible to prove a negative, of course.

Re: Why is European broadband faster and cheaper? Blame the government

#74

Post by mturmon »

maxharris wrote: post #60
logjam wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>... after creating monopolies in the first place If you are really trying to advance the theory that "the market", left to itself, won't generate monopoly after monopoly, perhaps you could point us to actual examples of those golden times when the absence of regulation served consumers more than they served business oligarchy.

Properly speaking, the concept "monopoly" properly pertains only to situations where the government enforces the monopoly. This is the original meaning of the word (before it was altered in the 19th and 20th centuries). There is no proper political right for a "consumer" to have a choice between multiple brands of a product. If there were such a right, it would be violated the moment they walked into a remote store t…

Your definitions do not address the point of the comment to which you're replying.

To restate, the point is that many markets tend to wind up as monopolies or cartels. This turns out to be bad for the people making up society, and they (we) will not put up with it, so we pass laws against it.

This is why we have and use the words "monopoly" and "cartel". And other terms like "price fixing", "bid rigging", "market failure", etc.

Re: Why is European broadband faster and cheaper? Blame the government

#75

Post by seabee »

russell wrote: post #58
logjam wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>... after creating monopolies in the first place If you are really trying to advance the theory that "the market", left to itself, won't generate monopoly after monopoly, perhaps you could point us to actual examples of those golden times when the absence of regulation served consumers more than they served business oligarchy.

Are you trying to say that unregulated monopolies like US Steel, Standard Oil, the railroads, AT&T, American Tobacco didnt have the best interests of the public in mind? After all Carnegie gave us lots of libraries and without Rockefeller we would not have had the Rockettes.

If American Tobacco had the best interests of the public in mind, do you think they'd still exist in any form?

Being philanthropic is not mutually exclusive with owning an amoral or even unethical business.

Re: Why is European broadband faster and cheaper? Blame the government

#76

Post by lutorm »

jerf wrote: post #20
jarin wrote: post #5

On one hand, more government regulation brings things like Sarbanes-Oxley. On the other hand, you get faster, cheaper Internet access, and arguably more jobs from that. This is why I cannot bring myself to identify with a political party.

This is why I really don't like it when people treat "government regulation" like it's something that you have "more of" or "less of". Government regulation created the slow, expensive Internet access in the US, government regulation helped create faster, cheaper internet access in the UK and Europe. Government regulation isn't an atomic entity that either exists or doesn't, or there's "more" or "less". There's good…

There's good regulation and bad regulation, and sometimes the best regulation is none at all but that's not always the case.

That's the key point there. Unless of course you're against regulation or government on principle.

Re: Why is European broadband faster and cheaper? Blame the government

#77

Post by ori_b »

masklinn wrote: post #26
bgentry wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The government doesn't have to create these monopolies. Utility (i.e. telecom) companies naturally tend towards a monopoly because of the absurdly high cost of rolling out duplicate infrastructure. Usually the first mover is able to fend off any real competition by lowering its prices below that which its competitors can afford, given that they still have an infrastructure to build.

And even if the first mover does not end up alone on the market, after some time the market tends to undergo significant consolidation (once most of the organic growth has been achieved). And you end up with a natural monopoly anyway. You can even see that in very recent history: the US government broke up Bell in 7 in 1984, it's already merged back into 2 companies (AT&T and Verizon are composed of 3 baby bells each…

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the baby bell split was a vertical split. In other words, it left 7 regional monopolies, rather than 7 companies covering the same regions, competing for the same customers.

That means that customers were still stuck with one choice for phone and internet access, but the choice merely varied based on where you went. The Baby Bells weren't competing with each other.

Re: Why is European broadband faster and cheaper? Blame the government

#78

Post by bobo888 »

ojbyrne wrote: post #2

For those who think this is going to be an anti-government regulation, libertarian orthodoxy type article, here's the tl;dr: "government regulators who have forced more competition"

Well this is how it happend in Romania:

----------------- 2000 - 2002

There was NO regulation. We just threw UTP cables from building to building, and bought external connectivity from bulk sellers. We didn't pay any taxes. We didn't have any signed agreements with "customers". We didn't have any permits from the city council either. There were no employees... heck, we weren't even registered as a business.

We just threw UTP cables through the city like it was in our own backyard. The only problem was after thunderstorms, when there was a shortage of switches to replace the burned ones :) Oh, and from time to time I had to call some customer's mom to ask her to reset the stuck switch hosted by her kid, because half the network couldn't connect to the internet.

Users paid about $10 for 100 mbps connectivity with other users (multiplayer games and movie/mp3 sharing) and 64 kbps internet access.

Basically we were just some highscool/college kids building a LAN, and every user paid a share of the costs. My network had about 200 subscribers and covered a 2x2 km area. Several networks like this one were scattered throughout the city. Every month a couple of new networks appeared, while others bit the dust (including my own).

----------------- 2003 - 2004

(By this time me and my friends lost interest in being a "pseudo-ISP", so I can only speak from the POV of a customer)

Networks with 100-300 users began joining together forming networks of 1000+ subscribers. Companies were formed, real sys-admins were hired. Some backbones were now built with fiber optics.

Big companies noticed this and started to complain in the mass-media, calling such networks "illegal". Well, they were partly right (nobody gave a f#ck about building permits and taxes).

Now users paid $10 for 100 mbps connectivity with hundreds and even thousands of other people, and 256 kbps internet access. Big telcos were barely able to offer 128 kbps with a monthly traffic limit.

----------------- 2005 - 2008

Big telcos stopped complaining and began building their networks. Then increased their networks speeds, removed the FUP, offered subscriber packages (phoneline + cable + internet access). For $10 you could get a landline and 5 mbps internet.

A lot of city "LANs" couldn't keep up with the big guys and crumbled. Others joined forces and became real ISPs (with tech support, tax payments, ...) and some even managed to obtain money from investment funds. They could still compete with the main ISPs because they offered much better tech support, and the 100 mbps LAN speed was still of huge interest, even if the internet access was limited to 1-10 mbps.

----------------- 2009 - 2010

Small ISPs begin implementing Fiber to the Building. Hello Gigabit (well, 1000 mbps with others subscribers only... the internet connection is limited to 20-30 mbps).

Big telcos buy more and more small ISPs, but also continue to improve their infrastructure. Some drop the old cable (with its DOCSIS modems) and begin implementing Fiber to the Building too.

----------------- Today

For $10 per month you can get 100 mbps internet access + 5GB of mobile 3G connection. My ISP started installing Fiber Optics to the home (GPON technology) for houses and continues installing Fiber to the Builing (and UTP from there to your apartment) for high buildings. They also began installing WiFi access points through the cities (free access for all subscribers).

-----------------

IN THE END, I WOULD LIKE TO THANK THE ROMANIAN GOVERMENT FOR NOT INTERFERING. And if the large companies will try to form monopolies, I'm sure new ISPs will appear. I don't care about regulations. Thank you.

Re: Why is European broadband faster and cheaper? Blame the government

#79

Post by chopsueyar »

bobo888 wrote: post #78
ojbyrne wrote: post #2

For those who think this is going to be an anti-government regulation, libertarian orthodoxy type article, here's the tl;dr: "government regulators who have forced more competition"

Well this is how it happend in Romania: ----------------- 2000 - 2002 There was NO regulation. We just threw UTP cables from building to building, and bought external connectivity from bulk sellers. We didn't pay any taxes. We didn't have any signed agreements with "customers". We didn't have any permits from the city council either. There were no employees... heck, we weren't even registered as a business. We just t…

Awesome story. I like the idea of a city or neighborhood LAN with an internet gateway.

This makes a lot of sense, especially when local online businesses want to serve their local community (like a local Groupon or live streaming of the neighborhood's Little League game from multiple cameras).

Re: Why is European broadband faster and cheaper? Blame the government

#80

Post by chopsueyar »

themal wrote: post #48

It's worth highlighting that although broadband over-the-phone is competitive in the UK, the cable internet service (which was built with US money) is a virtual monopoly and there's no sign of its network being unbundled.

It is also the least expensive way to build out infrastructure (US cable).
Post reply on HN