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A tech antitrust problem no one is talking about: US broadband providers

arstechnica.com

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Re: A tech antitrust problem no one is talking about: US broadband providers

#151

Post by Anon1096 »

0xcde4c3db wrote: post #110
WalterBright wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Democratic party platform explicitly talks about removing barriers to municipal broadband as a goal Since the cities are generally under solid Democratic control (there's not a single Republican in elective office in Seattle, for example), there's something else going on.

A bunch of state governments have either outright banned municipal ISPs or have introduced regulatory barriers to "protect" incumbents from "unfair" competition.

But this isn't happening in all states, yet you see the same consolidation of ISPs almost everywhere across the US.

Re: A tech antitrust problem no one is talking about: US broadband providers

#152

Post by 9HZZRfNlpR »

ceejayoz wrote: post #135
nostromo wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment is content-free and breaks the HN guideline to assume good faith. I’d like to hear why you think it is terrible when Comcast bans a website but fine when Google/Facebook/Twitter do it. Both groups have monopolistic power. And, if anything, the ISPs are much less powerful and less important than the big tech companies. If anything they should be held to a higher standard.

> Your comment is content-free and breaks the HN guideline to assume good faith. Nah. > I’d like to hear why you think it is terrible when Comcast bans a website but fine when Google/Facebook/Twitter do it. In many areas of the country, there is only one ISP available. In my area, there's two, but one only offers very slow DSL; there is a de facto monopoly on meaningful internet service. This is not the case for soci…

You can always use sim card in router and what wrong with dsl. It's like saying you're free to use other social network. Theoretically yes, but...

Re: A tech antitrust problem no one is talking about: US broadband providers

#153

Post by rayiner »

woodruffw wrote: post #146
rayiner wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is that Democrats keep succeeding in enacting strangling regulation, and Republicans keep failing to "kneecap" social programs. What major social program has seen funding cut since the 1970s? The percentage of the economy that goes to means-tested welfare has almost doubled from 1970 to today: https://www.heritage.org/sites/default/files/inline-images/B... . The only blip was right after the 2008 reces…

Perhaps not a kneecapping, but Planned Parenthood recently lost a sizeable chunk of its federal funding thanks to a domestic variant of the global gag rule[1]. The 2018 omnibus budget contained a variety of funding cuts for social programs. A good example of a dramatic reduction is the 21st CCLC (a funding stream for afterschool programs) being eliminated entirely, to the tune of $1.2 billion USD[2]. That was part of…

Sure, programs get cut or funded based on various political considerations, and there might be cuts some years and growth other years. And there is a deliberate attempt to stymie provision of abortion services. That's a fair point.

But overall, education spending consistently goes up over time: https://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/fed/10facts/index.html#ch...

> On a per-pupil basis and adjusted for inflation, public school funding increased: 24 percent from 1991-92 through 2001-02 (the last year for which such data are available); 19 percent from 1996-97 through 2001-02; and 10 percent from 1998-99 through 2001-02.

Re: A tech antitrust problem no one is talking about: US broadband providers

#154

Post by andromeduck »

InitialLastName wrote: post #106
nostromo wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We see this so often now I'm starting to think it's an intentional strategy. Step 1: create conditions that prevent capitalism from solving a problem. Step 2: declare that capitalism has failed and call for government solutions.

This is a strategy we see from both sides. From the other perspective: Step 1: Create conditions that prevent the government from solving a problem. Step 2: Declare that the public sector has failed and call for privatization.

The problem with having an expansive public sector is that it never stops expanding and has an extremely strong tendency of becoming unequal, disconnected or or one-size-fits-all as the scope/complexity of the programs expand.

This is particularly the case when our electoral choices at many a level boil down to binary options that may not project well for individuals with values/views that are largely orthogonal to the options practically available. For example if I were pro ABCDEFG, and one candidate is Anti ABC, and the other anti EFG; Which one should I choose when taken together the value of one set over the other is subjective and not even ordinal?

One mustn't forget that the power to do great good is inherently also the power to do great harm intentionally or not.

Re: A tech antitrust problem no one is talking about: US broadband providers

#155

Post by terinjokes »

carapace wrote: post #40

I was just talking to a person today, it turns out there are parts of Western San Francisco that can't get good connectivity (without shelling out ~$100K to dig a trench or some shit.)

You don't event have to go very far west. I was quoted $87k to get anything better than 8Mbps/1Mbps in the middle of SoMa just a few years ago.

Re: A tech antitrust problem no one is talking about: US broadband providers

#156

Post by daniellarusso »

yaacov wrote: post #81
baq wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

starlink cannot compete in densely populated area because the sats have comparatively (to dsl, fiber, etc.) limited total bandwidth to spare, just like any other shared medium. musk himself was very open about this. starlink is a game changer where the last mile is prohibitively expensive i.e. sparse/rural areas a few dozen miles away from population centers.

Currently urban broadband costs are high in part because they’re subsidizing rural areas, right? So if starlink can cover the rurals for less costs can hopefully come down for everyone

Urban broadband does not subsidize rural broadband.

Are you talking about the Universal Service Fund?

Re: A tech antitrust problem no one is talking about: US broadband providers

#158

Post by daniellarusso »

jcims wrote: post #29
mattferderer wrote: post #20

I am curious how Starlink will change this conversation one way or another. It adds another competitor to the mix. Could it become the monopoly if the tech were to make current ISP tech obsolete or to expensive for most areas? If it became the better method, does that mean our skies will soon be even more polluted with satellites by exponential factors?

I’m curious what happens with rural terrestrial broadband. Does it dry up and die or do the telecoms try to compete at a relatively high cost per customer. Many don’t have dial tone and satellite TV bundles aren’t competitive so they will likely lose the customer completely and are left with an asset that makes no money. They might open the local loop back up to at least get rent?

The DSL providers have already neglected their maintenance and upgrades.

I was the last one in my neighborhood to be allowed 12Mbps download. All new accounts are maximum of 6Mbps.

I would like to see reform in the CATV franchise laws.

Re: A tech antitrust problem no one is talking about: US broadband providers

#159

Post by jfengel »

baq wrote: post #54
Robotbeat wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is odd that Starlink isn’t mentioned in the article. Starlink has impressive speed and latency and the potential to compete to some degree in every market in the US. Twitter angst aside (some of which is fair but much seems to be either dishonest or ignorant, even by those who should definitely know better), SpaceX has also done a remarkably good job of addressing the light pollution problem such that the satellit…

starlink cannot compete in densely populated area because the sats have comparatively (to dsl, fiber, etc.) limited total bandwidth to spare, just like any other shared medium. musk himself was very open about this. starlink is a game changer where the last mile is prohibitively expensive i.e. sparse/rural areas a few dozen miles away from population centers.

Any idea how suburbs fit into that? The last mile isn't prohibitively expensive, but enough that you don't get any kind of competition, either, and the space isn't extremely crowded.

By the time Starlink goes wide it probably won't be any cheaper than I'm currently paying, but what I am paying is quite absurd given that it's not a network of satellites. It's just a fiber optic cable that was long since amortized to zero.

Re: A tech antitrust problem no one is talking about: US broadband providers

#160

Post by inetknght »

jancsika wrote: post #42
908B64B197 wrote: post #4

I'm always surprised this isn't discussed more. Big tech is accused of being monopolistic, but there is a constant flow of new players in the field, all gaining market shares and building the Next Big Thing, while telecom providers are pretty stagnant. I'm curious why cities don't directly lay down the infrastructure work for broadband access. In some cases that might raise property value enough that the town could m…

> I'm curious why cities don't directly lay down the infrastructure work for broadband access. In a lot of states there is legislation banning them from doing just that. Plus-- where are all the videos demoing what it's like having a fiber connection, to rouse all the people who live in internet deserts? For fuck's sake, the article references kids lurking around Taco Bell "scrounging for internet." If you are a tech…

I found this comment deep in an unrelated thread [0] a couple months ago. It describes someone who created his own ISP for his neighborhood using fiber and links to a good video [1] about it. It's worth using youtube-dl to archive it.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24410506

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASXJgvy3mEg

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