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

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

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 106 posts

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

#61

Post by toast0 »

snakeyjake wrote: post #26
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 does not increase the cost to ISPs. It does marginally decrease their profits. A profit is not a cost, and despite what finance bros think lower profits are also not a cost. It is perfectly possible to supply 1000Mbps symmetrical fiber service to end users for $20/mo because numerous self-sufficient non-profit municipal broadband organizations in the United States are doing just that. This is 2.5% the capacity f…

> It is perfectly possible to supply 1000Mbps symmetrical fiber service to end users for $20/mo because numerous self-sufficient non-profit municipal broadband organizations in the United States are doing just that.

Probably depends on a lot of things, but my local municipal broadband is an open provider model, my provider charges $95/month and the municipal network takes $59 of that (as of Jan 1 2023). The municipal network doesn't provide IP transit, just gets my bits to my ISP's office. Where in the US is it $20/month?

> This is 2.5% the capacity for 75% the money. If ISPs can't figure out how to do that profitably, they deserve to fail.

Most of the actual cost is maintaining a line to customer premises. My municipality charges ISPs $49/month for 100m and $59/month for 1G, although there's not a real difference in operating costs; either the fiber is up or it's down, and the truck roll to fix an issue is the same. There's maybe an argument that a 100m customer can't/won't cause congestion on the municipal network because (as implemented on my local network), the biggest oversubscription is 48 customers on a 10G uplink. A 25mbps plan would have the same basic costs for my municipality as a 100m plan, although it might actually be trickier because they couldn't just use an ethernet speed setting somewhere in the path to limit speed.

I suspect incumbent broadband providers have some cost advantages over my municipal system, because incumbents have better take ratios, but I honestly doubt they can actually cover costs of just providing a line with service to a home in their territory for $15/month or $20/month.

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

#62

Post by [deleted] »

twoodfin wrote: post #17
the_clarence wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Subsidising doesn't make the market more efficient. As a capitalist American you should have said "we need more competition!" In France Free dropped the price from something like 45$ to 15$/month, and then they did the same with mobile plans and a 2$/month plan that still exist today. Recently the senate invited the CEO and asked them why they don't increase their prices. The CEO got mad at them for even asking the q…

Right, and mandates like this make the market that much less appealing for anyone considering the massive capital costs needed to compete.

[deleted]

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

#63

Post by _bin_ »

snakeyjake wrote: post #26
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 does not increase the cost to ISPs. It does marginally decrease their profits. A profit is not a cost, and despite what finance bros think lower profits are also not a cost. It is perfectly possible to supply 1000Mbps symmetrical fiber service to end users for $20/mo because numerous self-sufficient non-profit municipal broadband organizations in the United States are doing just that. This is 2.5% the capacity f…

You are considering only short run marginal cost, not long run; i.e., you're not factoring things like amortizing infra build-out. if repaying that is restricted to a smaller pool of customers, prices for them will go up. worse, this intentionally affects only large, national ISPs, so NY state is effectively leeching off customers in other states to subsidize a NY-only social program. there should be a credible challenge under the commerce clause because of this.

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

#64

Post by braiamp »

scarface_74 wrote: post #20
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…

> I don't like these types of mandates because it distorts the market. Internet access is more or less a “natural monopoly” because of right of way issues and cost to build just like electricity and gas and water. Those things have always been regulated and had price controls. > Politicians get to say "we provided X people with internet service and we didn't use a dollar of tax payers' money". Which sounds nice, but…

> Internet access is more or less a “natural monopoly”

Finally someone with some economic sense. Natural monopolies don't get to dictate prices or conditions of services. That's something that monopolies, have to be content with. If you put yourself in a position where no one can realistically compete with you, you can't complain that the state makes sure that the consumers aren't harmed by the lack of options.

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

#65

Post by jerlam »

saalweachter wrote: post #57
adolph wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Assuming this covers all of NYC's population (8.2 million), that's pretty cheap - $1.22/week. I'm paying $160/quarter, so that's $13.33/week or over ten times the cost to a private company. I assume that my prices are regulated locally in some kind of private/public partnership deal.

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

#66

Post by theideaofcoffee »

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…

> Only as a last resort should these types of heavy hand price enforcements should be taken.

Yep, because capital-intensive businesses like ISPs will so generously compete among themselves and the market will identify the one most willing to drive its own price down and get even below the level of the program's lowest-mandated price. All of that competition will surely help their subscribers!

I can feel that free market itching for the opportunity here, any day now.

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

#67

Post by nobody9999 »

esafak wrote: post #25
johnnyanmac wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the $15 plan is about what I expected. the $20 plan is kinda absurd. I'm in CA, but I'm paying 100/month for a 400 Mbps plan.

The prices in CA are what's absurd. $100 for 400Mbps in 2025 is gouging.

>The prices in CA are what's absurd. $100 for 400Mbps in 2025 is gouging.

Really? I pay $160 for similar speeds in NYC. Which is more absurd?

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

#68

Post by adrr »

bityard wrote: post #43
esafak wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The prices in CA are what's absurd. $100 for 400Mbps in 2025 is gouging.

Nah, try living in the midwest suburbs. Comcast charges me $70 for 75 Mbps. I would gladly pay a lower price for less speed by they don't offer anything lower.

Thats all suburbs with one real provider. I used to pay $160/m for uncapped 200Mbs with Cox. Then Google Fiber came to my neighborhood and now i pay $100m for 2Gbit.

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

#69

Post by braiamp »

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…

Private companies looking for profit and leaving when they notice that is not profitable is not a undesired thing. If your margins depend on you screwing your customers, your business model shouldn't exist. California will figure something out, maybe making high density residences easier to build, would make a difference. Also, that's not exactly why they are leaving, they are leaving because the state forces them to pay the insurance if an "act of god" (systemic risk, like a wildfire) happens.

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

#70

Post by mindslight »

fn-mote wrote: post #51
daedrdev wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Call me when these type of indirect unfunded mandates ever succeed at squeezing blood out of the corpo stone, or when they don't end up entrenching the existing corpos.

Broadband is indeed a market failure in many places. The answer is to create direct competition in the form of municipal fiber, not to cheer on weasely half-baked approaches that just solidify the positions of the monopolist dinosaurs.

Post reply on HN