91–100 of 270 posts
"I have met with the Chairman of the FCC, Tom Wheeler, and I believe he is a good actor that wants to do the right thing. But he is fighting against very powerful lobbyists and large companies that want to disrupt the freedom of the Internet." "Prior to working at the FCC, Wheeler worked as a venture capitalist and lobbyist for the cable and wireless industry" -Wikipedia Really? Somehow I doubt that he has turned a f…
This is not the case for the “last mile”. Consumers often can only buy Internet access from a single provider; there is no choice. This is often asserted, but not true. According to the FCC, 97% of consumers have access to at least 2 broadband providers. 67% of people have access to at least 2 providers at 10mbps. Here is the graph from the FCC: http://i.imgur.com/xhn1YCF.png and the original source doc: http://trans…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not necessarily -- if a net-neutral infrastructure as a whole is profitable to operate, then it can be constructed and operated by profit-making businesses without subsidies. But in that case, you need regulation if you want to keep net neutrality -- which is what YC is asking the FCC for.
Merely being profitable is good enough if you're happy to maintain the status quo. If you want companies to invest billions of dollars of new capital to upgrade the infrastructure, you have to make that investment not just profitable, but an attractive one relative to other opportunities. Simple question: Silicon Valley talks a lot about the problems with the telecom industry, but why does nobody want to actually inv…
The incumbent--descendants of local/regional/national monopoly telephone or cable--providers have little competitive pressure to do so, and other people face intrinsic (largely non-regulatory, except to the extent that real property rights are "regulatory", though there are some regulatory burdens as well) barriers to entering the market, which make it enormously expensive with very little chance of any positive return for most players.
I wonder. I wonder. I live in Russia and I have 2-3 very good providers on the block constantly competing with each other and offering better connection and prices. They would show up on time and connect you very fast. They fix things quickly (in my government maintained house, the basement once became filled with water after the rain, and the wires were damaged. Even though it wasn't their fault, the ISP came and fi…
If one of those 2-3 providers bought the others should the government intervene in the free market to stop it? BTW do they operate their own wires to the building? If not is the owner of the wires allowed to compete in the market, raise prices or deny service?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
One option would be to prevent any company from operating a last mile AND selling it to retail customers. Honestly, what I find most striking is how bad cable boxes are simply because there is no completion.
Recently, due to their (Comcast's) own stupidity, I ended up having a couple of visits from Comcast techs trying to fix an issue. Every single one was wowed by my TiVo. Just seeing how fast it was to respond (which has never been a TiVo strong suit) and how reasonable the interface was amazed them. That's pathetic.
I wonder. I wonder. I live in Russia and I have 2-3 very good providers on the block constantly competing with each other and offering better connection and prices. They would show up on time and connect you very fast. They fix things quickly (in my government maintained house, the basement once became filled with water after the rain, and the wires were damaged. Even though it wasn't their fault, the ISP came and fi…
>whereas the only way to fix things is to not allow governmental interference in the first place. But we are past this point. So what is the solution now?
I wonder. I wonder. I live in Russia and I have 2-3 very good providers on the block constantly competing with each other and offering better connection and prices. They would show up on time and connect you very fast. They fix things quickly (in my government maintained house, the basement once became filled with water after the rain, and the wires were damaged. Even though it wasn't their fault, the ISP came and fi…
This is a little imprecise; "free" and "free of governmental interference" are not the same thing. More likely it is because you have a _competitive_ ISP market. That might in turn be because of how free your market is, but in order to really know we'd have to know how your area solved the problems that led city governments to grant monopolies in the first place.
I wonder. I wonder. I live in Russia and I have 2-3 very good providers on the block constantly competing with each other and offering better connection and prices. They would show up on time and connect you very fast. They fix things quickly (in my government maintained house, the basement once became filled with water after the rain, and the wires were damaged. Even though it wasn't their fault, the ISP came and fi…
>whereas the only way to fix things is to not allow governmental interference in the first place. But we are past this point. So what is the solution now?
I wonder. I wonder. I live in Russia and I have 2-3 very good providers on the block constantly competing with each other and offering better connection and prices. They would show up on time and connect you very fast. They fix things quickly (in my government maintained house, the basement once became filled with water after the rain, and the wires were damaged. Even though it wasn't their fault, the ISP came and fi…
Do you know why I pay so little? That's because we have the free-est goddamn ISP market Yes, but also the communist architecture. Those buildings are easier to wire and the way they're managed makes it easier to get a permit. It's the same in Poland, if you live in one of those atrocious apartment blocks[1], you'll have a pick of three, or even seven various ISPs but move to the suburbs and it's suddenly either the n…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In order to post comments, you have to make your name and address available on the site publicly? Am I understanding that correctly?
Yeah, looks that way. Putting my name on protecting the internet is something I'm proud to do. Putting my address down is a bit obnoxious though - I doubt they're going to do any verification on these.
Knowing that the data could be verified is supposed to be a deterrent to acting in bad faith. Later, one could do the verification if they doubted the comments were genuine. Given the amount of tech power behind keeping net-neutrality, we should want the process to be as open as possible, so we could verify it ourselves.