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

theguardian.com

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

#141

Post by scrollaway »

harryh wrote: post #88
tehwalrus wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without the internet you cannot function well in the economy - many many deals (including those for utility companies as well as retailers) are only available either online, or if you found them online and then mentioned them in the shop/on the phone. The internet is an information network that gives consumers nearly perfect information about price; which translates to a much more ideal market (in economic jargon,) w…

You conveniently left out the words "high speed." Everything you talk about can be done just fine even on the mediocre broadband speeds that people in this thread are complaining about.

"high speed" can be swapped out for "high quality" in this context.

Spotty connectivity, packet loss, frequent disconnects - all things that come with shoddy internet infrastructure. High speed generally means higher quality.

And let's not forget that even just for work the internet is not only used to send plaintext emails. We video chat, we work with crappy bandwidth-hungry web apps, and those are just the smaller of the hungrier things we can do. At my work I have to download tens of gigabytes of foreign data every few days.

And as someone who works at home and manages a work-entertainment schedule to keep sane, it's pretty pathetic to see people try to squeeze out an "Admit it! You just want a faster netflix!" from others. So what if they do? If you compare internet access to access to drinking water, then high speed internet access is drinking water that doesn't taste like piss. Just because you can live off it doesn't mean it's pleasant.

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

#142

Post by scrollaway »

kalleboo wrote: post #91
bjelkeman-again wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmmm. "All-white like Sweden", is a poor way of describing Sweden. "As of 2011, Statistics Sweden reported that around 19.6% or 1.858.000 inhabitants of Sweden had foreign background, defined as born abroad or born in Sweden by two parents born abroad." http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Sweden#Immigr... That said, I think that the fact that the Swedish regulatory and legislative process isn't captured by…

Although of those born abroad, only 40% were born outside of the EU, so you'll probably have to cut your number in half

Are you seriously arguing to which extent Sweden is not actually racist enough to base its investments into internet technology on merit rather than skin color? What?

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

#144

Post by andy_ppp »

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…

    If everyone in SF rented, and everyone had to pay market rates, then there 
    would be the political backing for changes that would make housing more 
    affordable.
This is demonstrably not true in London where rent just keeps on going up and hardly any new housing is being built. For example, an MP has just resigned his £130k+ (total remuneration, that's $215'000) job because he can't afford to rent a 4 bedroom house anywhere near Westminster [1].

Sometimes the state just needs to step in and actually help people (by directly building high quality housing and selling it to people below market value). Currently if you buy a new build in London it is priced so high that you can expect it to be under water for a few years (the builders provide special mortgages because banks refuse to do them directly in many cases - the flats are not worth what they are being sold for).

[1] http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/aug/11/tory-foreign...

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

#145

Post by sgt101 »

kordless wrote: post #96
sitkack wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The last mile should be open to the people and supported as infrastructure. I should be able to send packets across town for zero cost.

You should also be able to host your own services. These two things are more closely related than a lot of people realize.

Two points - someone has to maintain the network; holes need digging, kit needs buying, upgrading and monitoring. This cannot be free. It could be a government utility, but paying for it would then come out of taxes and the choice would be between paying for that, aircraft carriers or incubators.

Second, networks are designed to deliver different things at different price points. Running a web service at the end of a residential connection does not make economic sense compared to running it in a datacentre connected directly to a peering point on 40gig-e.

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

#146

Post by xeroxmalf »

zeroed wrote: post #136
sehrope wrote: post #4

> Chattanooga has the largest high-speed internet service in the US, offering customers access to speeds of 1 gigabit per second – about 50 times faster than the US average. The service, provided by municipally owned EPB, has sparked a tech boom in the city and attracted international attention. EPB is now petitioning the FCC to expand its territory. Comcast and others have previously sued unsuccessfully to stop EPB’…

"I don't know of any city where the local cable co offers anything like that" Any internet provider in Moscow. It's actually even cheaper.. US internet and phone service prices are ridiculously high.

As a Canadian: It is unfortunately not just the US where internet service prices are ridiculously high, but all of North America.

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

#147

Post by jessaustin »

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…

Why do you oppose federalism so? If the rustic uneducated hicks of Chattanooga want to handle internet service differently than the brilliant elites of Philadelphia, in this system they're supposed to be free to do so. Perhaps eventually it will be more clear that Chattanooga has better ideas and policies than the geniuses in the telcos' pocket have. Even then, a federalist would not suggest laws enforcing the new consensus.

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

#148

Post by jessaustin »

tim333 wrote: post #69
oldmanjay wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When was this glorious time? Certainly doesn't seem like that would have been anytime since the 19th century, at the latest.

I remember 30 years ago in the UK being envious of US telecom regulation. The US had free local calls - unheard of in the UK then and you could connect modems to the phone line. In the UK that was banned as the lines were all owned by the government monopoly and could not be touched so you had to put an acoustic coupler on the phone handset, believe it or not. Now the UK surprisingly seems to have better telecom regs…

Are you sure the handset-suction-cup thing wasn't just the average technology 30 years ago? Because while I was too young to know about that, I distinctly remember seeing it in use here in USA at that time.

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

#149

Post by noisy_boy »

Atleast in areas where the laws permit, why isn't a competitor, e.g. Google Fiber, not taking advantage of this clearly prevalent customer dissatisfaction with Comcast/TWC etc?

Also, some people seem to say that laying Fiber/infrastructure has costs which may be the reason. Then what happened to the wireless technologies which were presented as options for covering a city with connectivity? There was so much chatter about Wi-Max and such technologies - why are they are not being researched/refined/pushed? One of the best example of the vast advantage of penetration of wireless vs wired in terms of speed of deployment and impact is in India - especially rural areas where one can't expect clean drinking water but the cellphone signal is strong. Everytime somebody complains that in smaller towns in US that Comcast is the only choice in such places due to their infrastructure, assuming there are no laws prohibiting wireless competition, wireless should be the best option, no? So what am I missing (seriously)?

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

#150

Post by acd »

horse vs unicorn

US cable wants to keep monopoly over subscriber base and keep things as they always were. Nice steady revenue per cable subscriber per month.

High speed internet access is disrupting their business model. Pick any streaming service you like as long as you have fast broadband.

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