US cable giants calls on FCC to block cities' expansion of high-speed internet • Hacker News Board

Re: US cable giants calls on FCC to block cities' expansion of high-speed internet

#111

Post by AnthonyMouse » Sun, Aug 31, 2014, 1:30 AM UTC

cldellow wrote: post #23

djokkataja wrote: post #8

2 questions: 1. Why aren't cities everywhere doing this? 2. Who do I have to bother in my city to get this to happen?

Big telcos lobby for laws to make it illegal, e.g. Louisiana 844.42 [1]: "To ensure that cable television services and telecommunications and advanced services are provided through fair competition [...]" Advanced services are defined in 844.43 [2] to mean Internet that's faster than 144 kilobits per second. This means that the wifi in MSY (New Orlean's airport, a government facility) is utterly unusable. I can under…

> I can understand the narrative: having government skim the good stuff is a bad deal for corporations since government can do things corporations can't (e.g., taxes, zoning, land use permits, seize land). Presumably, this discourages corporations from providing comprehensive services since they cannot subsidize poorly-performing areas with great performing areas.

The think I can't understand is why we should care. If the government is providing reliable gigabit fiber at a reasonable price, who cares if Comcast can't profitably offer service in the same geography? If the city is doing a good job then you don't need them. Meanwhile if the city does a poor job then Comcast will have no trouble providing better service and winning all the customers, right?

Re: US cable giants calls on FCC to block cities' expansion of high-speed internet

#112

Post by foobarqux » Sun, Aug 31, 2014, 1:35 AM UTC

[deleted] wrote: post #105

foobarqux wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have challenged you about this topic several times and backed it up. I still think the best public data is the FCC international broadband survey and report which I have previously referenced. The Ookla "promise" figures can be used to validate the advertised speeds in that dataset versus actual speeds. The issue is not merely of availability of very high speed (>25mbps) connections but its price, an area in which…

[deleted]

> As I said before, I don't find the FCC survey compelling, because it's not based on measured speeds like Ookla's or Akamai's data.

Again, Akamai and Ookla don't incorporate usable price information and use averages that distort the data. The weakness of the FCC data is mitigated by the fact that you can look at Ookla data to see that the region in question is getting advertised speeds, at least in aggregate.

> Why would we expect the U.S. to be competitive on that front?

The issue is whether the US has better broadband. Price is central to that question, regardless of what we should expect about it.

> The premise of your question is flawed. The urban centers are not the hub of life and wealth in the U.S. like they are in European countries. The word "urban" is a pejorative here.

It is in New York. But what is your point here? That the reason broadband is worse in US urban centers is because there isn't as much income in urban centers compared to those abroad? Or that broadband is going to be worse because the US population prefers suburban areas?

> It's really not useful to judge national telecom policy by comparing U.S. cities to a few European cities that have invested heavily in telecom infrastructure as a way to differentiate themselves.

Again, the question was whether broadband was better or worse in the US. (And Poland was merely an example I remembered. Romania is another. There are many more).

> Almost all of the wealth of the area lives in the suburbs outside the city, which are served very well by fiber service.

Except they pay drastically more than international counterparts.

I am a bit confused by your position, can you summarize it as concisely as possible? You started out by saying that US broadband is not worse than internationally. Then you seemed to implicitly concede that it was worse but only because of price/cost-of-labor/government-policy/distribution-of-population-and-income. Is it "yes, broadband is more expensive but at least the suburbs get fiber"?

Re: US cable giants calls on FCC to block cities' expansion of high-speed internet

#113

Post by foobarqux » Sun, Aug 31, 2014, 1:43 AM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #108

foobarqux wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The easy way to account for problems with the non-uniform definition of urban area is to consider population density. As I said in another comment there are several cities in the US that have a larger density (for whatever defined area) and larger population.

There's two separate issues: 1) What's internet services like in the U.S. at large levels of granularity? 2) What's internet service like in the U.S. in specific cities? Re: 1, I think the available data shows that, at a large granularity, we can say that, e.g. the average speeds in big European countries like the U.K. and Germany, factoring in their rural and urban areas together, are comparable to U.S. cities that…

> Re: 2, the question is why certain European cities have much faster internet than comparably dense U.S. cities. And I think the answer to that is the same as the answer to: why do certain European cities have much better public transit than comparably dense U.S. cities?

Public transit is typically state sector, telecom is often private sector. Are you saying that the reason for superior broadband internationally is primarily because of government subsidies or nationalized telecom infrastructure?

Re: US cable giants calls on FCC to block cities' expansion of high-speed internet

#114

Post by rayiner » Sun, Aug 31, 2014, 1:57 AM UTC

nitrogen wrote: post #80

rayiner wrote: post #5

This is a really good example of how lobbying works. On one hand, these telecom companies have a clear interest in not having to "compete" with cheap, publicly funded broadband. On the other hand, their position just happens to tie in with a broader political debate: states and municipalities are on the verge of bankruptcy, and municipal infrastructure projects are a disaster outside a few well-managed cities like NY…

Honest question, does your repeated support of the cable companies' excuses have anything to do with your living in Philadelphia (per your profile) near Comcast HQ?

I was in Philadelphia for a one year appointment to work for the federal court here. I have no personal affiliation with Comcast. As for my views favoring cable companies, it's because I'm a disgruntled urbanist. If you think Verizon or Comcast are bad, wait till your internet service becomes the subject of the absolute batshit insanity of American municipal politics.

Re: US cable giants calls on FCC to block cities' expansion of high-speed internet

#115

Post by rayiner » Sun, Aug 31, 2014, 2:13 AM UTC

foobarqux wrote: post #113

rayiner wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's two separate issues: 1) What's internet services like in the U.S. at large levels of granularity? 2) What's internet service like in the U.S. in specific cities? Re: 1, I think the available data shows that, at a large granularity, we can say that, e.g. the average speeds in big European countries like the U.K. and Germany, factoring in their rural and urban areas together, are comparable to U.S. cities that…

> Re: 2, the question is why certain European cities have much faster internet than comparably dense U.S. cities. And I think the answer to that is the same as the answer to: why do certain European cities have much better public transit than comparably dense U.S. cities? Public transit is typically state sector, telecom is often private sector. Are you saying that the reason for superior broadband internationally is…

The cities that have much faster broadband than what's available in the U.S. achieved it with targeted public investment and subsidy of fiber deployment. That's also how they achieved much better public transit than what's available in the U.S. The political will doesn't exist for either of those things in the U.S.

Re: US cable giants calls on FCC to block cities' expansion of high-speed internet

#116

Post by ma2rten » Sun, Aug 31, 2014, 2:31 AM UTC

Omniusaspirer wrote: post #102

ams6110 wrote: post #81

Ugh. The answer is not municipally owned ISPs. Sure it's easy for a municipal ISP to have "cheap" rates when you consider that they are taxing authorities and don't have to run a profit. How exactly would this service be put into place? It would take a massive capital investment by the municipality, full of opportunities for fraud. I live in a fairly small, highly liberal town and yet in the past few years we've had…

While I don't really disagree with most of your above points, I will say that when it works (Chattanooga) it really is fantastic. Their internet arm is already profitable all on its own and they've apparently leveraged it to MASSIVELY improve the quality of their electric grid as well. If there's a better ISP anywhere else in the US I'd love to hear about them since I currently believe they do not exist.

Google Fiber has Gigabit internet for $70.

Re: US cable giants calls on FCC to block cities' expansion of high-speed internet

#117

Post by foobarqux » Sun, Aug 31, 2014, 2:36 AM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #115

foobarqux wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Re: 2, the question is why certain European cities have much faster internet than comparably dense U.S. cities. And I think the answer to that is the same as the answer to: why do certain European cities have much better public transit than comparably dense U.S. cities? Public transit is typically state sector, telecom is often private sector. Are you saying that the reason for superior broadband internationally is…

The cities that have much faster broadband than what's available in the U.S. achieved it with targeted public investment and subsidy of fiber deployment. That's also how they achieved much better public transit than what's available in the U.S. The political will doesn't exist for either of those things in the U.S.

I'm pretty sure $/mbps for speeds over 25mbps (probably for all speeds) were much cheaper even before fiber.

Re: US cable giants calls on FCC to block cities' expansion of high-speed internet

#118

Post by binarycrusader » Sun, Aug 31, 2014, 2:41 AM UTC

cbr wrote: post #86

encoderer wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly I think you're way off base on rent control. I'd love to know what experiences you've had with rent control that have led you to such a negative POV? Perhaps living in Philly, as you profile mentions, has blunted you to some of the benefits of RC in housing-crunched cities. The biggest fallacy I hear from people who don't live in one of these housing-crunched cities is the line.. everyone except the lucky fe…

everyone except the lucky few who can get rent controlled apartments No, that's not the problem. As you say, rent control can't be both pervasive and rare at the same time. The real problems with rent control are: * It's hard to move. Say you change jobs and now work in a different part of the city, or your kids move out, or you'd like to move in with a partner. Normally one of the benefits of renting is that you can…

  Rent control reverses this, and the landlord loses the
  incentive to upgrade the apartment and otherwise keep the
  tenant happy.

I'll stop you right there; while that may be what happens in theory, it certainly hasn't seemed that way to me in practice.

Perhaps in a market where there is sufficient supply for demand, but in a market where demand is sufficiently high, many property owners don't do more than what is legally required and keep raising their rents.

You would not believe some of the dumps I've been shown by smiling realtors or owners that wanted thousands of dollars per month -- I'm talking about $2500+ a month for a two-bedroom apartment with boarded-over holes in Windows, holes in walls, a terrible smell and carpet that looks like it was last replaced decades ago.

Time after time, the pattern I've seen from experience in the Bay Area has been that owners will do whatever the market will bear -- in a market with severely constrained supply, the market is forced to bear quite a bit.

Re: US cable giants calls on FCC to block cities' expansion of high-speed internet

#119

Post by rayiner » Sun, Aug 31, 2014, 3:26 AM UTC

foobarqux wrote: post #117

rayiner wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cities that have much faster broadband than what's available in the U.S. achieved it with targeted public investment and subsidy of fiber deployment. That's also how they achieved much better public transit than what's available in the U.S. The political will doesn't exist for either of those things in the U.S.

I'm pretty sure $/mbps for speeds over 25mbps (probably for all speeds) were much cheaper even before fiber.

I don't know the history of Swedish broadband before the fiber investment. I do know that countries like Sweden and Japan that have very high fiber deployment did so through national governmental involvement: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/12/the-broadband-gap-w....

To the extent the federal government has demonstrated an interest in broadband here in the U.S., it has mostly been on issues like the rural-urban broadband gap (i.e. the "digital divide.") Which makes total sense when you consider the demographics: in the U.S., the locus of political power is outside the cities. It's the same reason Obama gets demonized by half the country for talking about rail and public transit.

With the federal government out of the picture, it's left to the state and local governments, which: 1) don't have much money; 2) are politically dysfunctional. Imagine proposing municipal fiber in San Francisco. Comcast wouldn't have to send any lobbyists over to shoot it down. You'd have NIMBY's complaining about the digging and the size of the network cabinets, and they'd paint the whole thing as a boondoggle sop to the "techie types that are ruining the city."

Re: US cable giants calls on FCC to block cities' expansion of high-speed internet

#120

Post by baddox » Sun, Aug 31, 2014, 3:29 AM UTC

jgalt212 wrote: post #6

I remember the day in US when the consumer was king, and its interests were second to all others (govt, big business, etc). Sadly that day has passed. Without getting too political, the root cause is unrestrained campaign giving.

It's interesting that most people (at least around here) point to unrestrained campaign giving, rather than the fact that government even has the regulatory authority to do what it does. Of course, we have both, and stopping either one would in theory stop the other, but it's interesting that people always seem to point exclusively at one or the other. I wonder if there's some correlation between what angle people take and what their broader political leanings are.