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Obama calls for municipal broadband

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Re: Obama calls for municipal broadband

#61

Post by acdha »

lukeschlather wrote: post #35
debacle wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> to the curb for $57/mo. What's the setup fee to run fiber 100 feet and into your house to set up the box? Because Verizon did it for free. I still think private competition is better here. Verizon only did it for free because they're trying to tread on Time Warner, which is the way it should be.

Comparable Verizon service appears to cost between $200-$400 a month (though it's available almost nowhere.) At that price you can bet they'll waive a $100 installation fee.

You're talking about Verizon, though – the dslreports.com forums are full of people talking about being charged installation fees even when they've moved into a place which was already wired by the previous occupant.

In my neighborhood they ran promos (we have 3 competing high-speed ISPs) but even then some people reported having to call to actually get the correct bill.

Re: Obama calls for municipal broadband

#62

Post by Jtsummers »

WillNotDownvote wrote: post #41
jfb wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who cares? The Feds here are not in the business of bandwidth provision; they're acting to counterbalance the elephantine mass of Comcast by preventing them from overpowering municipal politics.

A thought that occurs to me is that if the government is providing internet access, various pressure groups will leverage that for various kinds of censorship. Why is my government providing access to porn? To religious sites? To sites that violate copyright? To sites that contain many sorts of 'unsavory' content? Allowing children uncensored access to many things? I don't know how those complaints would fare, but I'…

This is already an issue faced by other government entities that provide access to the internet. See libraries. Their solution is to leave it open because it's not their place to censor. Parents already have (I assume faulty, never checked it out myself) software solutions to block "unsavory" content.

Re: Obama calls for municipal broadband

#63

Post by metaphorm »

cubano wrote: post #58
metaphorm wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

are you serious? you can't be serious. i usually assume that hacker news has a bit more sophistication than this. i would actively celebrate a legitimate socialized health care system in the U.S. but that's not what we got. ACA is basically a huge middle class tax with the proceeds paid almost entirely to health insurance companies. its a massive expansion of a deeply entrenched private industry.

I, personally, would not celebrate that outcome. I believe in the power in markets and price signaling, ala Hayek, and there is nothing unsophisticated about that. We agree on more then you may be aware...the HI industry is a giant problem, and must be fundamentally altered for the market-based solutions I prefer to do their magic.

so if you really do read a lot of Austrian economics and really do have a sophisticated view of political economy then why did you label ACA as "socialist"? at best that's ignorant, and at worst it's an actively deceptive slander of both ACA and real socialism.

Re: Obama calls for municipal broadband

#64

Post by meesterdude »

I think its simple. Municipalities should at this point feel responsible for ensuring their residents have good internet access. Its also good for the tax payers, because its money going back into the government, and not into the coffers of some mega-corp who's just going to hoard it.

I think there is a balance to be had between too much government and not enough. I think its easy to sway too far one way or another as history has shown, and neither are particularly good. Corporations will run rampant just like government will, given the freedom to do so.

Re: Obama calls for municipal broadband

#65

Post by walterbell »

metaphorm wrote: post #42
jMyles wrote: post #15

Absent from the conversation is the actual obvious generational shift: final-mile mesh networks in every sufficiently large and dense community.

not a mature technology. how would the mesh be established? run ethernet cables between people's homes? have everyone open a port on their wifi router? this is beyond the technical capability of the vast majority of people. it would require a company to coordinate this, and at that point you've got just got an ISP running the last mile anyway.

Some work on these issues is being done by the Free Network Foundation, https://thefnf.org/

Edit: There's also Guifi.net in Spain, http://guifi.net/en

Re: Obama calls for municipal broadband

#66

Post by metaphorm »

walterbell wrote: post #65
metaphorm wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

not a mature technology. how would the mesh be established? run ethernet cables between people's homes? have everyone open a port on their wifi router? this is beyond the technical capability of the vast majority of people. it would require a company to coordinate this, and at that point you've got just got an ISP running the last mile anyway.

Some work on these issues is being done by the Free Network Foundation, https://thefnf.org/ Edit: There's also Guifi.net in Spain, http://guifi.net/en

cool! thanks for the link.

Re: Obama calls for municipal broadband

#67

Post by bluedino »

What are the implications of this? What would it cost to build out fiber to even 10 or 15 % of homes and businesses that don't currently have it?

What kind of insane cyberattacks could you get from 10% of the consumer market having gigabit connections? How much backbone upgrades would there be required?

Re: Obama calls for municipal broadband

#68

Post by djrogers »

jfb wrote: post #51
rev_bird wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the idea was that if Disney can get the government to essentially destroy the idea of 20th century work entering the public domain, they could probably get the government to act against an open internet.

They can do this now. Municipal ownership of some of the pipes isn't going to stop what is essentially an orthogonal fight from happening at a higher level.

Yeah - I think the point was that if the pipes are owned by the same government that's already in the pocket of hollywood, then the laws (more likely regulations written by bureaucrats, not laws passed by elected officials, but..) against torrenting/pirating/distributing would be easier to get written and enforced.

Re: Obama calls for municipal broadband

#69

Post by zerocrates »

Jtsummers wrote: post #62
WillNotDownvote wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A thought that occurs to me is that if the government is providing internet access, various pressure groups will leverage that for various kinds of censorship. Why is my government providing access to porn? To religious sites? To sites that violate copyright? To sites that contain many sorts of 'unsavory' content? Allowing children uncensored access to many things? I don't know how those complaints would fare, but I'…

This is already an issue faced by other government entities that provide access to the internet. See libraries. Their solution is to leave it open because it's not their place to censor. Parents already have (I assume faulty, never checked it out myself) software solutions to block "unsavory" content.

Libraries already have to use internet filtering/blocking software under CIPA (though adult users are supposed to be able to get the filter disabled).

Re: Obama calls for municipal broadband

#70

Post by WillNotDownvote »

Jtsummers wrote: post #62
WillNotDownvote wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A thought that occurs to me is that if the government is providing internet access, various pressure groups will leverage that for various kinds of censorship. Why is my government providing access to porn? To religious sites? To sites that violate copyright? To sites that contain many sorts of 'unsavory' content? Allowing children uncensored access to many things? I don't know how those complaints would fare, but I'…

This is already an issue faced by other government entities that provide access to the internet. See libraries. Their solution is to leave it open because it's not their place to censor. Parents already have (I assume faulty, never checked it out myself) software solutions to block "unsavory" content.

Right, and libraries in various municipalities are in fact censored, both in terms of publications and in internet access they allow.

Why would this be different?

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