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Obama calls for municipal broadband

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Re: Obama calls for municipal broadband

#161

Post by lsiebert »

ksk wrote: post #141
cbd1984 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

The vast majority of local municipalities have to balance their budget. And their options for credit are vastly more constrained. And they have essential services that can not go unfunded.

A private company that thinks it can be profitable can go to a bank. A city will probably have to have a bond on the ballot. And a city can't really get out of things like road repair, law enforcement, etc (they can subcontract, but they still have to provide service) whereas a private company can sell of or shut down any unprofitable aspect of it's business.

So on the surface, comcast or whomever has a lot more leeway then a city.

The issue is, a service like last mile broadband is not incredibly profitable, for a telecom. But if a city can do it, or have a local company do it and it doesn't cost too much (they can waive fees for running cable, or whatever) then it may pay for itself, at least in part, because not only do they benefit from whatever they collect in fees, but broadband can increase local tax revenue (a house with 1000mb/s internet is worth more then a house with 2mb internet).

Re: Obama calls for municipal broadband

#162

Post by grecy »

metaphorm wrote: post #13

I wish we had seen this more progressive, pro-active Obama 6 years ago. Squandered his political capital on a shitty health care reform bill, got shell shocked by Republican opposition and crawled up his own ass for a couple of years. Now that he doesn't give a shit about elections anymore he's actually doing something.

> Squandered his political capital on a shitty health care reform bill

I suspect he thought health care for all was more important than fast internet for all.

Re: Obama calls for municipal broadband

#164

Post by aphexairlines »

biot wrote: post #117
jrochkind1 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but they effectively have to compete with the terrible speeds and service of the muni, which conspires to improve nothing Wait, shouldn't that be easy for them to compete with, then? You say it like terrible speeds and service are somehow challenging competition for the cable company? Of course, they would prefer no competition at all, as all companies would.

> Wait, shouldn't that be easy for them to compete with, then? Oh, but it is. If the municipal service can only offer 1.5Mbps for $40/month, the private ISPs can offer 2.5Mbps for $70/month, 5Mbps for $125/month, 10Mbps for $199/month, or the ultimate in performance of 25Mbps for $350/month. They're effectively free to gouge people if the only alternative is the crappy, low-speed government service.

Without the municipal service there, the alternative is no service at all.

Re: Obama calls for municipal broadband

#165

Post by dsrguru »

ksk wrote: post #141
cbd1984 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I think the parent is asking/claiming that public options are almost universally less desirable than the product of self-interest in the presence of competition, so their main effect is just to ensure that the private would-be monopolies need to actually provide a good service.

In domains like Internet infrastructure and health insurance which are empirically pretty terrible when there's no public option, I think there's a lot to be said for that argument.

Is it "fair" for a monopoly to have to compete against an organization that has nearly infinite resources but terribly inefficient operating ability? I don't know. Maybe yes, maybe no. Is it fair to huge ISPs to impose net neutrality on them? Maybe yes, maybe no. But it's no less fair for them than not having net neutrality would be for companies who want to use that infrastructure. It's certainly no less fair than life would be for a child who can't afford access to health care in a black market-like total laissez-faire economic system. I'd prefer to live in an imperfect implementation of capitalism that tries to regulate out negative externalities when possible (despite often failing) and provide as much fairness for as many people as possible, to one that provides so much "fairness" to certain corporations that they can make the game unfair for everyone else, people and companies alike.

Re: Obama calls for municipal broadband

#166

Post by cbd1984 »

ksk wrote: post #141
cbd1984 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> Because unlike companies, governments¹ can function long-term even if they don't balance budgets.

Except that shouldn't matter if the private company can compete on technology and service.

If your opponent has unlimited funds but the customer service policies of the DMV and the technological acumen of, uh, some very-non-technical government office of your choice, shouldn't you win?

Re: Obama calls for municipal broadband

#167

Post by xamuel »

davidgerard wrote: post #80
Someone1234 wrote: post #28

The ultimate solution is for the government (federal and local) to run the physical side of the internet (e.g. run wires to homes/business, manage the exchanges, etc) but let private companies actually sell the data access directly to the public. As an analogy this is like the Greyhound Bus Line. When you buy a ticket to go from A to B on Greyhound you pay the bus company money and they provide you the service (and s…

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.

Internet in the UK has downsides too (I learned when I moved here). BT lets all these other ISPs use its infrastructure, but the actual installation is still BT, and they've no incentive to do it in a timely manner. It can take weeks or months after requesting service before you get connected.

In my case it took three weeks after signing up with an ISP, despite living a stone's throw from London. Especially bad for foreigners because in order to sign up, you first need a UK bank account, and to get that you need things like electric bills to prove your address (the apartment lease paperwork isn't enough, at least at Barclays). If you're moving here, be prepared for over a month without broadband.

Re: Obama calls for municipal broadband

#168

Post by digikata »

ksk wrote: post #142
digikata wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

If all the gas stations in an area are owned by Exxon & priced too high, the customer drives their car elsewhere. There is a very, very high capital barrier to entering the market, but customers still hold choice.

You can probably observe some region-locking effects short of monopoly by relate the cost of gas in come areas with ability to choose alternatives. e.g. Driving in the middle of nowhere, there are few gas stations and the cost of gas is high. Redundant stations aren't built in competition to one another along those stretches because the volume of traffic isn't high enough along the 'network' of the road, but within the range of the typical car, some will drive on and others will be forced the stop. So even that isn't as airtight a natural monopoly as last-mile internet.

Re: Obama calls for municipal broadband

#169

Post by cbd1984 »

dsrguru wrote: post #165
ksk wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it unfair? Because unlike companies, governments¹ can function long-term even if they don't balance budgets. ¹Modulo obvious caveats.

I think the parent is asking/claiming that public options are almost universally less desirable than the product of self-interest in the presence of competition, so their main effect is just to ensure that the private would-be monopolies need to actually provide a good service. In domains like Internet infrastructure and health insurance which are empirically pretty terrible when there's no public option, I think the…

> I think the parent is asking/claiming that public options are almost universally less desirable than the product of self-interest in the presence of competition, so their main effect is just to ensure that the private would-be monopolies need to actually provide a good service.

Well, actually, I'm claiming that a Free Market alternative should be able to win even if the Free Market includes the government.

Nobody is guaranteed to win, and I don't think a public option would necessarily be odious, but if someone's so gung-ho about competition, they shouldn't be scared of competing with a government.

Edit: OK, yes, I was mocking the Free Market Fundamentalists in my post. Fair's fair, they mock the government and the moderates, often using japes invented by Ronald Reagan (peace be upon him).

Re: Obama calls for municipal broadband

#170

Post by zdw »

randyrand wrote: post #98

Municipal broadband has a serious problem. Namely, those that don't want it are still forced to pay for it. If you don't see how this is unfair competition well... I don't know what to tell you.

Ah, like the military, and any number of other similarly wasteful government projects?

There will always be things the government buys that you won't particularly want or feel are necessary.

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