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Yeah the government's goal is totally a "free and open Internet." Except that part of the government dedicated to vacuuming up and storing and analyzing every signal from every network-enabled device on the planet.
I get what they're trying to accomplish, we all want faster more reliable service, but as comparison is anyone 100% happy with their utility (power, water, etc)? That's where this is headed.
Depends on where you live, I suppose. I have zero problems with my ConEd power and whoever supplies my water, and I find the pricing pretty reasonable. My power supplier even offers different energy sources to use other than the standard one, which honestly blows my mind. And then I call into Time Warner spend more time trying to get them to understand what I'm talking about than I've ever spent on the phone with my…
i. I can't fire my power company, nor can I ever really expect to gain that ability.
ii. As nice and hardworking as the power company employees are, there's still only one main power run for the 1/8th of Oak Park that I live in, and any time a tree goes down in the alley along that run, or a squirrel detonates a transformer along it, I lose power for 6-8 hours. My block has a truly awful electric service uptime.
It's not poor customer service I worry about. It's a total lack of infrastructure investment.
If you don't like your current service levels now, just wait until the government gets involved.
I get what they're trying to accomplish, we all want faster more reliable service, but as comparison is anyone 100% happy with their utility (power, water, etc)? That's where this is headed.
The government regulates the utilities pretty tight, but there is also little to no room for competition in those spaces anymore either. Which is one thing that's improving service in Google Fiber markets.
That will be a sad day. Internet technology still has a lot of room to improve before the government steps in and kills all market forces that encourage those improvements. If you don't like your current service levels now, just wait until the government gets involved.
Any 'utility' by government terms is highly regulated and has no market competition. Hell, they have to ask a judge before they can increase rates or change anything. Ha.
Setting aside the ultimate politics and ramifications of this, it is interesting (and kind of scary) to watch the fight between a non-elected bureaucracy and our elected house of representatives to regulate the internet. Congress seems to be completely incapable of doing more than grandstanding, while the bureaucrats may wind up dramatically increasing their own power with a single stroke of their unelected pens. It'…
It's certainly not pretty, but it's not unaccountable, and it seems to be moving things in the generally correct direction. We can hope, anyway.
I get what they're trying to accomplish, we all want faster more reliable service, but as comparison is anyone 100% happy with their utility (power, water, etc)? That's where this is headed.
Going back to the days before cable, when high speed was whatever the regulated its a utility phone company decided I was allowed to have
There is no free lunch and regulation will just mean normalization at best, to the lowest allowed numbers. People below the allowed numbers will eventually be put on a schedule where their area will be upgraded, after meetings and such mostly all not public. You might get lucky and see movement in five years.
Where they really need to be acting is mobile data. This is where the real thievery is going on.
I am all for having no fast or slow lanes, but if regulation comes out dictating speeds you can guarantee the lowest allowed levels will be met with gusto
Yeah the government's goal is totally a "free and open Internet." Except that part of the government dedicated to vacuuming up and storing and analyzing every signal from every network-enabled device on the planet.
That has nothing to do with whether or not it's a utility. They're clearly already capable of doing so.
I get what they're trying to accomplish, we all want faster more reliable service, but as comparison is anyone 100% happy with their utility (power, water, etc)? That's where this is headed.
Before I got Google Fiber I was definitely happier with my water and electric than my service provider. Now I am probably actually still happier, but I don't have too many complaints about Google Fiber. I can't think of the last time I had an issue with my water! It's got 100% uptime.