211–220 of 289 posts
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.
Clearly illegal, but who's taking them to task?
In Waterloo, IA, our neighboring town, the city council initially approved then backed out of working with Cedar Falls to participate in a greater municipal fiber deployment. Following a storm in 2009 that damaged utility lines on poles, I believe Cedar Falls moved forward with their plans to deploy fiber and deployed service to almost all homes over the course of a year and a half. The transition was seamless, and since then bandwidth has more than quintupled for the regular tier. I get 50/25 and it's rock solid. The best internet service I've ever had.
On the other hand, as an IT consultant I have businesses I work with in Waterloo. Some of them would like to switch to technologies like VOIP to reduce costs, but their Mediacom cable goes down on a weekly basis. I have one client for whom I have never seen a whole month of uptime, and they have had multiple business days without service in the past year. The only alternative for most of my clients is CenturyLink DSL, which hardly qualifies as broadband with most of the DSLAMs too widely distributed and over-subscribed for reliable throughput.
Mediacom is the same company that signed a letter to congress decrying municipal investment, and published a press release today[1] about how insulting it was that the President chose to support a municipal utility instead of their investment in Iowa.
If companies like Mediacom and Century Link really cared about providing a service, they would support Title II and competition. But they don't. The high barrier to entry suits them just fine, and as a result, internet options are terrible in Waterloo, and technology businesses have fled to Cedar Falls. We've even apparently been named the "Digital Capital" by Google (but I have no idea what that means, I personally think Des Moines has the best access to the backbone with Microsoft and Facebook both opening up datacenters there).
Sure, our gigabit fiber isn't $70 here, like Google offered, but it's there. And my internet service has never been more reliable. I know people who have Mediacom and Centurylink, and they hate it. And unlike their press release speaks about, the fiber deployment wasn't financially unsustainable or a waste of taxpayer dollars. As Mediacom says, "there is no reason to invest even more government dollars in municipally-owned broadband ventures, many of which wind up in financial difficulty."
Well, I'm curious if Mr. Commisso of Mediacom did any fact checking. CFU is self-funded. Even better, CFU actually contributes back to the city's general fund its excess revenue. It's not so much "spending taxpayer money" as it is saving, at least now that it's up and running.
Edited in addendum: Oh yeah, and for something the network engineers here might approve of: even when torrenting at 50mbps, my latency to Google and Microsoft is unchanged (10-13ms) and there appears to be little or no bufferbloat causing congestion. I've been able to play competitive real-time games and Skype while streaming, downloading, etc.
[1] http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20150114006231/en/Medi...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Even if private companies end up contracted to provide it in some cases, those would be regulated monopolies, not regulated free market businesses. I guess you meant those would be regulated monopolies and not unregulated monopolies ;) ISP scene is quite far from free market at the moment.
I don't understand why people are using monopoly to describe ISPs. Looking at http://www.broadbandmap.gov , can anyone find one city without multiple broadband providers?
I'm looking at the telephone pole near my house and there are only two wires coming off it: one from Comcast and one from the phone company. And the phone lines can't do more than 1mbps.
I hope his next step is setting a goal for 1-5Gbps internet access to everyone in this country within 5-6 years based on this. Reward companies for building it to allow expansion and to non economical areas, which could become more economical with it. Let's build this internet cornerstone for commerce like Eisenhower's interstate system. Everyone can build on a platform that puts us back in competition for internet b…
It needs to be done this way. By all means, pay companies for their investment in infrastructure, after the fact - not before, like has already happened, where these companies were given billions to expand rollouts and we got, well, very little.
Aren't we trading one monopoly for another? Not sure that is any better. Especially considering the track record of the post office or public education. There would need to be some way to allow competition so there is incentive to provide quality service.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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?
I've had recent experience with the DMV, Charter, and my doctor: of the three, I was treated most professionally and with least wasted time, at the DMV.
> As a result, households there can now get 1 gigabit (1,000 Mbps) service for just $70 per month. > The Obama administration is also planning to offer subsidies to promote investments in local broadband. While $70 doesn't seem like an outrageously great deal (it is good), it brings up an interesting point my dad had the other day. Is the true cost of that gigabit internet $100/mo, and tax dollars subsidize $30 while…
Aren't we trading one monopoly for another? Not sure that is any better. Especially considering the track record of the post office or public education. There would need to be some way to allow competition so there is incentive to provide quality service.
You don't typically call publicly owned infrastructure a monopoly. Public utility companies are created to prevent exactly what's going in broadband internet service. If the city owned the lines, it would put all ISP's on a level playing field and enable broadband competition for the first time. They wouldn't be able overcharge you 10,000% mark up for the price of bandwidth anymore, and they'd have to compete based o…
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…
Those for-profit companies have been granted extremely valuable rights-of-way by the municipal governments without needing to negotiate individually with each and every landowner whose property they cross with their lines. Their networks wouldn't be nearly as valuable if they had to negotiate and potentially (gasp!) share revenue with landowners.