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New York starts enforcing $15 broadband law that ISPs tried to kill

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Re: New York starts enforcing $15 broadband law that ISPs tried to kill

#51

Post by fn-mote »

daedrdev wrote: post #38
doctorpangloss wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a lot of words. Do you think Internet should be a utility, or not? Obviously: yes. You enjoy water, schools, roads and power. Trash removal in NYC is free, and it's better for that community than being private. But also, you work in tech or something. More customers, less money being paid on meaningless rents. And fuck Comcast, right? Think critically. We don't need ISPs, and little about that ecosystem resul…

Compare this to California regulating how much insurance companies can charge. IN that case, its lead to horrendous side effects where insurance companies are leaving the state, dropping customers, etc because they will literally lose money on the policies, which has lead to bad outcomes. Id rather that the state actually pay for the things it wants and not put in a bunch of hidden taxes that have strong distortions…

Call me when you have a free market economy delivering broadband.

You don’t.

The situations are not comparable.

Re: New York starts enforcing $15 broadband law that ISPs tried to kill

#52

Post by vel0city »

jbombadil wrote: post #14

While I agree that people getting internet in this day and age is _basically_ a necessity (and thus the govt should interfere when needed to make that happen), doing it in this way is the worse possible implementation. Was it necessary in this case? I don't know. First, foster competition. I don't know the NY landscape, but in the West Coast, it's not uncommon for a residency to have effectively a single option for I…

> First, foster competition.

What are you imagining, a dozen companies constantly tearing up the streets to lay down yet another run of fiber to everyone's homes?

Once you get to a certain density, things like 5G or Starlink or whatever aren't going to scale. It doesn't make capital sense to have a bunch of companies run practically identical lines to every home.

Re: New York starts enforcing $15 broadband law that ISPs tried to kill

#53

Post by bko »

snakeyjake wrote: post #44
bko wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does that have to do with what I wrote? If you want to transfer some ISP profits to low income New Yorkers, do that directly

Did you read what you wrote or was it a stream-of-consciousness thing? Because you wrote: > This will increase costs for ISPs and likely increase prices for others. It will not increase costs. Which is what I wrote.

That wasn't a crucial point of my argument. I disagree but everything I said still applied if you replace increase costs to decrease profits. And there is a response to these things, like increased costs. This is pretty uncontroversial basic economics.

Even that doesnt matter. Just do it directly so you know exactly how much the subsidy is worth. Tax their profits and transfer it to the people. It's simpler, more visible, less unintended consequences

Re: New York starts enforcing $15 broadband law that ISPs tried to kill

#54

Post by theideaofcoffee »

This is fantastic. We need more controls like this to put the screws on the obscenities that are modern telecoms. What would be the next great step to take is to mandate local loop unbundling like was done with copper. The fiber should be publically owned and privately owned providers have the option of a handoff to deliver their service over that local loop. But I'll take one minor win at a time.

Hopefully the users most interested in these benefits can start to get them as soon as possible. Any bit helps for those where $20 is actually a big stretch.

Re: New York starts enforcing $15 broadband law that ISPs tried to kill

#55

Post by Dylan16807 »

bko wrote: post #19
doctorpangloss wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a lot of words. Do you think Internet should be a utility, or not? Obviously: yes. You enjoy water, schools, roads and power. Trash removal in NYC is free, and it's better for that community than being private. But also, you work in tech or something. More customers, less money being paid on meaningless rents. And fuck Comcast, right? Think critically. We don't need ISPs, and little about that ecosystem resul…

Trash removal is free in NY, sure. The city says people should have trash removal provided and it should be centralized. The equivalent would be that the city pays ISPs to provide service to certain people. Instead they say "you have to provide them service even though you'll lose money on these customers". Do you see why this is different?

> Do you see why this is different?

Not particularly, as long as they have a monopoly/duopoly, because that acts as a giant pile of free money which can pay for these things.

If we had some kind of mechanism in place that resulted in aggressive competition, then maybe "you have to provide service for $15-20" would be a problem.

I think it would be quite a bad idea for the city to pay the asking price to this kind of monopoly/duopoly, because that rent will get jacked up extra high.

Re: New York starts enforcing $15 broadband law that ISPs tried to kill

#56

Post by bickfordb »

bko wrote: post #5

> The New York law requiring Internet providers to offer cheap plans to people with low incomes will take effect on Wednesday this week following a multi-year court battle in which the state defeated broadband industry lobby groups. I don't like these types of mandates because it distorts the market. Politicians get to say "we provided X people with internet service and we didn't use a dollar of tax payers' money". W…

The market is already distorted by the telephone and cable companies being granted local monopolies.

Re: New York starts enforcing $15 broadband law that ISPs tried to kill

#57

Post by saalweachter »

adolph wrote: post #33
doctorpangloss wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a lot of words. Do you think Internet should be a utility, or not? Obviously: yes. You enjoy water, schools, roads and power. Trash removal in NYC is free, and it's better for that community than being private. But also, you work in tech or something. More customers, less money being paid on meaningless rents. And fuck Comcast, right? Think critically. We don't need ISPs, and little about that ecosystem resul…

> Trash removal in NYC is free Trash pickup costs the city $109 billion. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-01-16/nyc-mayor...

... the total NYC budget is $109 billion. They are not spending $13k/resident on trash collection.

Edit: according to https://www.ibo.nyc.ny.us/iboreports/understandingthebudget.... residential garbage collection is $10 million per week.

Re: New York starts enforcing $15 broadband law that ISPs tried to kill

#58

Post by plagiarist »

doctorpangloss wrote: post #6
bko wrote: post #5

> The New York law requiring Internet providers to offer cheap plans to people with low incomes will take effect on Wednesday this week following a multi-year court battle in which the state defeated broadband industry lobby groups. I don't like these types of mandates because it distorts the market. Politicians get to say "we provided X people with internet service and we didn't use a dollar of tax payers' money". W…

This is a lot of words. Do you think Internet should be a utility, or not? Obviously: yes. You enjoy water, schools, roads and power. Trash removal in NYC is free, and it's better for that community than being private. But also, you work in tech or something. More customers, less money being paid on meaningless rents. And fuck Comcast, right? Think critically. We don't need ISPs, and little about that ecosystem resul…

It should be a utility. I'd like the government to eminent domain all internet infrastructure and resell bandwidth to ISPs at fair prices.

I would in fact enjoy a great deal of schadenfreude. The carriers pocketed giant government handouts but did not make the commensurate improvements in infrastructure those were intended to fund.

Re: New York starts enforcing $15 broadband law that ISPs tried to kill

#59

Post by snakeyjake »

bko wrote: post #53
snakeyjake wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you read what you wrote or was it a stream-of-consciousness thing? Because you wrote: > This will increase costs for ISPs and likely increase prices for others. It will not increase costs. Which is what I wrote.

That wasn't a crucial point of my argument. I disagree but everything I said still applied if you replace increase costs to decrease profits. And there is a response to these things, like increased costs. This is pretty uncontroversial basic economics. Even that doesnt matter. Just do it directly so you know exactly how much the subsidy is worth. Tax their profits and transfer it to the people. It's simpler, more vis…

> Just do it directly

It is impossible to do it more directly than at the point of sale.

Literally every other method is less direct.

A tax is ten thousand times less direct.

Re: New York starts enforcing $15 broadband law that ISPs tried to kill

#60

Post by mindslight »

bko wrote: post #5

> The New York law requiring Internet providers to offer cheap plans to people with low incomes will take effect on Wednesday this week following a multi-year court battle in which the state defeated broadband industry lobby groups. I don't like these types of mandates because it distorts the market. Politicians get to say "we provided X people with internet service and we didn't use a dollar of tax payers' money". W…

Right on! You're not even covering the half of it. Incumbent dinosaur ISPs will fight this kicking and screaming, but after they have their tantrums they will embrace it because it keeps new competition out of the market. This general pattern of "unfunded mandates" creates time bombs that become entrenched and impossible to fix (look at the catastrophe of the healthcare industry)

If you want to actually screw big cable (and you should), support the direct action of municipal fiber. The funds for the build out don't even need to come from the general tax fund - with the popularity of such services in 2025, municipal bonds are more than sufficient.

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