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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

#151

Post by XorNot »

henrikschroder wrote: post #121
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And, the debate devolved into how there are too many minorities in the US and because of that, no one in any position of power wanted to allow everyone universal access because minorities (which I assumed to be Blacks, Mexicans, Asians, etc.) would need too many handouts to get the same speed, which no one would want to pay for. If anything it's probably the other way around. It will be a long time before it's cost…

> So the telcos end up saddled with build out requirements Whoa there, this story is about "the telcos" opposing municipalities taking the matter in their own hands and ensuring their citizens get fiber. I would assume there would be no build-out requirement for private entities if there is municipal fiber, but they're welcome to offer service over it if they want, but apparently they don't want that. So if they're s…

Ding ding ding we have a winner!

The end goal of all the BS arguments on this topic is too make sure the telcos stay on top. The message gets tuned to the audience no matter how hypocritical the tuning makes it.

"Oh it would be unfair to minorities" "You don't want to subsidize minorities" "anti-free market!" "it's too expensive for the private sector".

When rich people in industries start telling you what's good for the industry, at the end of the day the goal is always to do what's good for them.

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

#152

Post by XorNot »

noisy_boy wrote: post #149

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…

Well for one thing, there's a big difference between a 9.6kbps cellphone voice call (and thus data channel) and 20 mbps+ data.

Wireless sucks. It is a bad solution to everything except where some much larger problem exists (i.e. you are on a plane).

Wireless seems good in India because the networks are not highly demanded - and are expensive to boot so volume is managed. Wireless seems to grow quickly because you throw up a tower and declare "50,000 people now have access!", and telephone service is still kind of a big deal.

But that's all you get from it. You can't provide a 20mbps pipe to those 50,000 people - not even close.

But India is poverty stricken. The electricity grid is bad. And there's the lawlessness that comes with poverty (heard of copper thieves?). Wireless towers are easy central locations to power and protect. Thousands of miles of copper or fiber is not.

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

#153

Post by jasonwocky »

wnevets wrote: post #128
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…

> 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. why is this a bad thing?

Exactly. Why, as a consumer, do I care that Comcast needs to keep its shareholders satisfied by generating profits? If that need drives them to provide better QoS at lower cost than a municipal option, then great. If it doesn't, then that's their problem.

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

#154

Post by atom-morgan »

sitkack wrote: post #63
hayksaakian wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

literally state sanctioned monopolies there was a website posted to HN a while ago that described the hurdles for municipal fiber in each state, i don't have the link any more, but it seems very relevant to this discussion

I think state sanctioned monopolies are _probably_ ok if regulated well. Natural Gas falls in that category here and I think they do a pretty good job. I'd say Comcast falls into state sanctioned monopoly-power-abuse which is different.

> I think state sanctioned monopolies are _probably_ ok if regulated well. Natural Gas falls in that category here and I think they do a pretty good job.

How would you ever know since they literally have no competition?

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

#155

Post by jgalt212 »

baddox wrote: post #120
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 ta…

Well I don't think it's a left/right thing as campaign finance reform has been proposed by both major parties.

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

#156

Post by encoderer »

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…

You've clearly given this a lot of thought, but we are at odds with one another. I hate point-by-point refutation, but just a few thoughts I have...

All of your points are predicated on the notion that rents would decline if you eliminated RC. I think that's... hopeful. I mean, in some places you seem to suggest that landlords are beset by low rents (not improving the place because of it, hoping their longstanding renters move out). So certainly all of those landlords would raise rents. And non-RC units will, what? Reduce their prices to equalize the market? I doubt that. And now you have higher rents all over the city. And that's good for people? Because it might spur more development? But development is slow and favors up-market construction.

And blaming lack of development on the tenant-displacement laws that are part of rent control? And suggesting that rent control is the problem is a farce. If it's these laws that are the problem, why not write a post assailing THEM? And rent control laws are the reason people protest these developments? Really?

Being hard to move... ok... so go tell the family that you're raising their rent so that they'll get used to paying market rate. That way they'll be able to move anywhere they want! What a great deal for them!

I know for some reason you think rents will go down. That developers will build new buildings at high expense in this seismic-zone and then undercut the existing market (of old buildings with tiny rooms and few modern amenities), ignoring the fact that if they build up-market they can write leases at $50/sqft and have no trouble renting out the entire building well before it's finished.

Finally, if you actually read rent control laws, you'll see that they are not these cartoonish works of absurd leftist ideology, they do make carve-outs and exceptions for capital improvements and other large expenses to be passed-thru as bigger rent increases to the tenants. They are surely not perfect but property owners are a very powerful bloc and their voices are heard in the law IMO.

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

#157

Post by Roboprog »

harryh wrote: post #83
nitrogen wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Naturally, at least as fast as the other guy or gal competing for the same job.

If all you're doing is moving text around then faster internet isn't going to help any. Unless you're streaming video or doing a few other high bandwidth activities then even really shitty broadband is going to service your needs just fine.

So you've not had to do a big code pull from source control or something like Maven or the "Go-lang" builder?

Being done in a few seconds is much more fun (and productive) than being done in a few minutes.

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

#158

Post by Roboprog »

wnevets wrote: post #128
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…

> 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. why is this a bad thing?

The implication is that the municipals are not just "non profit", but operating at a (significant) loss. Is this "funded by taxes" aspect usually true?

At least for the case of the Sacramento area electrical company, no. PG&E is substantially more expensive, although I don't know how far-flung rural distribution is funded - by all rate payers, or if there is some kind of govt subsidy to encourage rural distribution. (by rural, I don't mean the parts of Yolo and El Dorado counties that are 10 to 15 miles outside of Sacramento county, I mean areas like the Sierra and Siskiyou mountains)

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

#159

Post by mercurialshark »

raarts wrote: post #19

I think by now it's hard to deny that Comcast & friends are stifling the progress of the US economy. The US is 31st worldwide on bandwidth speed (which really can't be explained by the US's size alone), consumers and businesses are complaining across the board about high pricing, bad service, and lack of options. These companies do the country and its inhabitants a big disservice. I think the only reasonable option f…

It's only when you see a side-by-side comparison daily does it resonate how slow our interwebs are.

Example, every time I log into VPN I barf a little knowing that for various reason I need to use US servers, but that practically every random smaller nation is blowing us away...

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

#160

Post by kordless »

sgt101 wrote: post #145
kordless wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> end of a residential connection does not make economic sense compared to running it in a datacentre

While I agree with you, I believe there exists an in-between solution.

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