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Obama calls for municipal broadband

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Re: Obama calls for municipal broadband

#141

Post by ksk »

cbd1984 wrote: post #134
ksk wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Why? If the Free Market Fundamentalists are correct, the for-profit company should have it all over the tax-funded service, because the company would be interested in efficiency and technological advances and so on, as opposed to just being a... welfare ... thing ... like the US Post Office and everything else…

Why is it unfair? Because unlike companies, governments¹ can function long-term even if they don't balance budgets.

¹Modulo obvious caveats.

Re: Obama calls for municipal broadband

#142

Post by ksk »

digikata wrote: post #109
ksk wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 lim…

>you can still access customers and potentially put all that capital to work generating profits.

Not so much -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertical_integration#Oil_indust...

Re: Obama calls for municipal broadband

#143

Post by shmerl »

ksk wrote: post #138
shmerl wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't there Sherman act already? Why can't it be applied to ISPs? I.e. there are existing laws which can put an end to anticompetitive behavior of ISPs, but no one applies them. So why would adding more laws improve anything?

Well anti-trust law are mostly applied on case by case basis. I believe the un-official term for judging is "workable competition". I don't know whether the ISP market passes that definition.

There are also various prohibitions about collusion. And that's a major problem with ISPs, i.e. even if there are several in the area they agree not to compete and hold prices high for example. I never saw anyone applying these laws to ISPs so far. Not sure why that is, may be government is too much in their pocket to actually apply existing law.

Re: Obama calls for municipal broadband

#144

Post by bmelton »

paulhauggis wrote: post #37

I'm fine with it, if there are laws in place that prevent governments from stifling free speech through Internet controls.

Censorship is on the rise in popularity. The most recent polls indicate that 51% of democrats and 33% of the nation overall is supportive of censorship, so in the absence of treating the first amendment as absolute, which simply does not happen, there could be no law put in place now that would not be equally superseded by the law that repeals it.

As such, there may as well not be any such laws in place, as they would only serve to supply false confidence.

http://hotair.com/archives/2014/10/02/poll-51-of-democrats-s...

Re: Obama calls for municipal broadband

#145

Post by rosser »

ksk wrote: post #132
digikata wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Okay, so you could to break down the ISP vertical into companies that only supply service and companies that only do the last-mile infrastructure. It would allow the government to regulate the industry without being involved in the supply side of things. One other option is to opt for a consumer ownership model where the each home pays for the bit of fiber that connects them to the neighborhood hub or w/e.

And Comcast would somehow like that better?

Re: Obama calls for municipal broadband

#146

Post by davidgerard »

hackerboos wrote: post #139
davidgerard wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. This works really well in the UK. OpenReach, the bit of BT that operates the infrastructure, is part of a private company, but operates like part of the civil service. They are completely impartial. It is so illegal for OpenReach to offer BT anything they don't offer anyone else, that both BT Broadband and OpenReach staff cringe at the very concept. tl;dr public wires that many ISPs can supply service over.

It's different to what's being suggested. BT is private company and runs most of the infrastructure. That's not what is being proposed here.

As I note, OpenReach is, despite a couple of name changes and a privatisation, functionally the old GPO. Except a connection now takes three weeks instead of six months.

Re: Obama calls for municipal broadband

#147

Post by ksk »

rtpg wrote: post #110
ksk wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I am not proposing getting rid of regulation. Perhaps you meant to reply to someone else.

Re: Obama calls for municipal broadband

#148

Post by jacobwcarlson »

justizin wrote: post #21
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.

I definitely agree, and this is one reason I advocate against overly harsh or vindictive rules that are unbalanced against ISPs because of our feelings about AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, Time Warner - it would bite us later if we have a massive shift to municipal broadband. Sure, we can change the law, but we would have regulations in place that could interfere with the government entering the market, we might have gotten…

I was under the impression that SF's electricity came from Hetch Hetchy and that PG&E was just a backup. Is that not the case?

Re: Obama calls for municipal broadband

#149

Post by jfb »

ksk wrote: post #132
digikata wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Okay, so you could to break down the ISP vertical into companies that only supply service and companies that only do the last-mile infrastructure. It would allow the government to regulate the industry without being involved in the supply side of things. One other option is to opt for a consumer ownership model where the each home pays for the bit of fiber that connects them to the neighborhood hub or w/e.

I would be happy with either (particularly the first) but politically the chances of something like that, which almost certainly would require legislation -- and would without question require a Sherman act prosecution from a Justice Department with some actual spine -- are approximately nil.

Re: Obama calls for municipal broadband

#150

Post by rnovak »

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 don't think it's unfair at all to ask a multi-billion dollar company that doesn't compete with anyone to compete with someone.

Comcast alone reported a $1,900,000,000 PROFIT in the first 3 months of 2014.

To paraphrase Sam Waterston: "What can you buy for $2 billion that you can't still buy for $1.2 billion?"

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