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Obama calls for municipal broadband

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Re: Obama calls for municipal broadband

#101

Post by mholt »

I live in Provo, which has Google Fiber. As the article says, Google took over their failed public fiber project. (Google purchased the infrastructure for $1.)

Provo is a very unique city. It's a big city, but most of its residents are college students or young, newly married recent graduates. It's also a technology hotspot. Comparing the success of its fiber project to predict the success in other cities is hardly fair. For the record, Google Fiber has really lit up this town. Internet service here is unbearable unless you have Google Fiber (or deep pockets to dish out for Comcast). My building only has CenturyLink, and service just came back up an hour ago after suffering 80% packet loss for the last day. And this is our regular experience.

Competition for ISPs, especially around here, is good (Veracity has been grappling to upgrade their network, and Comcast, well, everyone still hates them). On the other hand, the behavior and quality of service from American ISPs in the last 10 years is inexcusable. While I do think that private companies will do better "in the long run", time is running out for them to prove themselves.

Re: Obama calls for municipal broadband

#102

Post by joblessjunkie »

Shivetya wrote: post #88
nostromo wrote: post #11

Municipal governments are a big part of the problem. They make it nearly impossible for companies to build new ISPs. Municipal governments: the cause of, and solution to, your ISP woes. It reminds me of housing. 1) Governments restrict new housing. 2) Housing becomes unaffordable. 3) Government builds public housing because "the free market has failed."

thank you. So many are quick to demonize the companies that spent their money to expand high speed internet do not realize just what you won't get with municipal anything. First is service, second is new technology, and third is support. They simply have to offer the baseline requirement and all responsibility after that is farmed off. Farmed off to companies which meet very politically correct setups. Want to see co…

I get poor service, crummy old modems, and glacial support from my commercial internet provider. If those are your concerns for socialized broadband, then you should already be concerned.

No one is mandating municipal ISPs. The claim is simply that there should be competition in markets, and in many cities (like mine) there is no competition by law.

My city does a great job with providing me with cheap electricity, clean water, and emergency services. Just because a group of people work for local government rather than a giant corporation doesn't make them any more or less lazy or evil.

Perhaps if my city starts investigating a municipal ISP, my one and only commercial broadband provider will finally get of their asses and upgrade my bandwidth, my uptime, and the terrible modem they made me pay for.

Re: Obama calls for municipal broadband

#103

Post by digikata »

ksk wrote: post #45
jfb wrote: post #6

Really, he's calling for the FCC to prevent rent-seeking by local ISP monopolies by allowing the option of municipal networks. It's a really good idea; you can tell because of how stridently Comcast/Verizon/AT&T oppose it.

> you can tell because of how stridently Comcast/Verizon/AT&T oppose it. How so? Whether its good or bad, ISPs would be against it. Most companies do not want competition. (regardless of what they say) >by allowing the option of municipal networks. I personally think its rather unfair to ask a for-profit company to compete against a tax funded service. >Really, he's calling for the FCC to prevent rent-seeking You can…

> I personally think its rather unfair to ask a for-profit company to compete against a tax funded service.

But if last-mile links are a natural monopoly (or at least demonstrably low competition markets), how do we get better broadband than we have now? We have data points from other nations that seem to indicate that publicly owned or open-access last-mile links create market conditions that deliver broadband more efficiently - both in lower cost and higher bandwidth. There is still competition - it just shifts to different market boundaries.

Re: Obama calls for municipal broadband

#104

Post by Crito »

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'…

Why is my government delivering porno mags and religious pamphlets to my mailbox?

The government being in the delivery business is nothing new. Historically, it has worked out for the better more often than not.

Re: Obama calls for municipal broadband

#105

Post by bduerst »

ksk wrote: post #75
jfb wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that you have an asymmetry in resources between e.g. local officials who might want to stand up a fiber network and a company the size of Verizon, who very badly do not want this to happen. You need countervailing size, and in the US only the federal government has it.

The problem of asymmetry of resources exists in all domains that have high sunk costs. To reduce monopolies, using your logic ("you need countervailing size") the government would have to get involved in all of the other industries like shipping, oil refining, TV networks, etc. Instead, why not change the law (if needed) to prevent monopolies from happening?

The government already does, for regional monopolies (power, water, sewer, transportation, etc.)

The problem isn't that the government should prop-up start ups in this specific industry to prevent a monopoly, but that the government should embrace communications as a regional monopoly - i.e. own the utility infrastructure and reduce costs for the entire economy.

Obviously they can't nationalize the current companies, but they can start building public infrastructure.

Re: Obama calls for municipal broadband

#106

Post by discardorama »

nostromo wrote: post #100
discardorama wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Municipal governments are a big part of the problem. They make it nearly impossible for companies to build new ISPs. And whose fault is that? Yep, that's right, the ISPs. The ISPs love to play this game of "shut the door after I've gone through it". They get the municipal governments to sign exclusivity clauses and various other laws to keep competition out. I mean, think about it: nothing gets done in the governme…

With such a dim view of local government, I'm confused as why you want them to run your internet.

But we're OK with letting them run water and power and roads and hospitals and sewage and ... , right?

Plus, they won't be "running" the Internet; they would be providing a link from point A (your domicile) to point B (the gateway or NAP).

Re: Obama calls for municipal broadband

#107

Post by duncan_bayne »

From the perspective of a non-American, it's sad to see you taking _another_ step away from laissez-faire capitalism. In what world is it reasonable to take money from people by force and use it to compete with private business?

If people want municipal broadband, let them form non-profits to provide it through voluntary donations. That should be legal, and if it's not, that'd be something to fix.

Re: Obama calls for municipal broadband

#108

Post by imgabe »

> The president is asking the Federal Communications Commission to preempt those laws.

Can someone explain this? The FCC is part of the administrative branch right? Don't they work for the President? Why doesn't he just tell them to preempt the laws?

Re: Obama calls for municipal broadband

#109

Post by digikata »

ksk wrote: post #75
jfb wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that you have an asymmetry in resources between e.g. local officials who might want to stand up a fiber network and a company the size of Verizon, who very badly do not want this to happen. You need countervailing size, and in the US only the federal government has it.

The problem of asymmetry of resources exists in all domains that have high sunk costs. To reduce monopolies, using your logic ("you need countervailing size") the government would have to get involved in all of the other industries like shipping, oil refining, TV networks, etc. Instead, why not change the law (if needed) to prevent monopolies from happening?

Shipping and oil refining are different. If you apply capital to over come the cost barrier of entering those businesses, you can still access customers and potentially put all that capital to work generating profits.

With last-mile internet, if you lay in a redundant competitive network in a neighborhood - the capital efficiency of both networks goes down, with no mechanism to make that capital work more. You're limited to the houses in the neighborhood. So in that case you have high cost barriers, and natural monopoly conditions limiting how well that capital can be used to generate return...

Re: Obama calls for municipal broadband

#110

Post by rtpg »

ksk wrote: post #75
jfb wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that you have an asymmetry in resources between e.g. local officials who might want to stand up a fiber network and a company the size of Verizon, who very badly do not want this to happen. You need countervailing size, and in the US only the federal government has it.

The problem of asymmetry of resources exists in all domains that have high sunk costs. To reduce monopolies, using your logic ("you need countervailing size") the government would have to get involved in all of the other industries like shipping, oil refining, TV networks, etc. Instead, why not change the law (if needed) to prevent monopolies from happening?

Because some markets will tend towards consolidation ,especially things involving networks, because the economies of scale are so important to costs. So , left to their own devices, the unregulated market would always tend to a monopoly.
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