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The internet should be a public utility

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Re: The internet should be a public utility

#181

Post by kspacewalk2 »

hanniabu wrote: post #179
zbrozek wrote: post #4

I talked with the mayor of Los Altos Hills, CA yesterday where I advocated for a municipal fiber ISP. It seems crazy to me that in Silicon Valley, and specifically in one of its richest towns, that broadband is not available to every residence. She makes a good point: the residents don't care. Her argument is that ~20 mbps DSL is good enough for the elderly population. And further - that for those who find that inade…

> She makes a good point: the residents don't care. Her argument is that ~20 mbps DSL is good enough for the elderly population. I'd say that's a horrible point. Many people don't care about having guns or being monitored 24/7. That doesn't mean we shouldn't provide those as liberties.

For most non-Americans, it's fairly non-controversial that one of those should definitely be severely restricted.

Re: The internet should be a public utility

#182

Post by dylz »

zbrozek wrote: post #86
bgorman wrote: post #69

The danger with government nationalizing telecommunications networks is that once it is done, innovation and quality go way down. We had nationalized telecommunications for over 70 years and customers could only have one brand of phone, and we're limited in the number of phones available in their houses. In addition, long distance calling was cost-prohibitive. The monopoly only started cracking when MCI introduced mi…

I'm currently using a Netgear LB1121 with external antennas connected to AT&T's 4G network. It's maybe a smidge better than DSL, but not definitively so. Both throughput and latency are all over the map (2-sigma 1 to 70 mbps, 30-60 ms). I don't get a publicly-routable IP. So instead I have to buy another service and expend a bunch of IT-administration mental energy to use a VPS just so I can SSH home. The basic rules…

I'm curious, do you get non-screwed-with service? Try curling any IP on port 80; they seem to proxy everything, from web to TLS handshakes.

Re: The internet should be a public utility

#183

Post by tialaramex »

LatteLazy wrote: post #170
zbrozek wrote: post #4

I talked with the mayor of Los Altos Hills, CA yesterday where I advocated for a municipal fiber ISP. It seems crazy to me that in Silicon Valley, and specifically in one of its richest towns, that broadband is not available to every residence. She makes a good point: the residents don't care. Her argument is that ~20 mbps DSL is good enough for the elderly population. And further - that for those who find that inade…

Who needs electricity when we have candles?

Right, and 40A was good, so let's deliver 400A to every house. Actually 4kA. 4MA! Yes, every house needs a little mini-nuke, tear up everybody's backyard to put in a coal plant - no wait, that didn't happen because it turns out "enough electricity" is good not "more electricity is better".

Always On Internet access matters. But bandwidth, like electricity, is something that you can just have enough of and then more doesn't make much difference. And because of Buffer Bloat people tend to wildly over-estimate how much bandwidth they actually need/ benefit from.

Re: The internet should be a public utility

#184

Post by amylene »

threentaway wrote: post #173
kekeblom wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The city of Zurich has what to my understanding is public fiber which is available to most buildings. (I assume there are some exceptions). It is managed by the electricity company run by the city. https://zuerinet.ch Setting up routers, billing etc. has been delegated to any third party ISP willing to do the job. I think they can charge what they want, as there are some very small differences in price. I pay ~44CHF/…

> ~44CHF/month for 100mb/s. While not dirt cheap That _is_ dirt cheap by US prices. Comcast (my only option) is $75/mo for 250/5 (yes, only 5 megabit up!).

I’m on a 2 year contract with Comcast and getting 600 down for $60. You might give them a call to see if they can lower your rate.

Re: The internet should be a public utility

#185

Post by remir »

_carl_jung wrote: post #66

Here's a question I have about these types of frustrating monopolies, and I'd love a point towards a book or something that can explain. Let's say I have a bunch of money (or funding) for a big new internet provider that could easily outperform the existing provider. What makes it so hard to do it? I hear complaints (and complain myself) about seemingly unfair pricing and slow speeds. The tech is there to make > 100m…

My internet provider uses another bigger telco's network for the "last mile" connection and they have cheaper prices as a result.

Now, if they were to run their own fiber and install their own equipment in telephone poles, that would mean a significant investment. Would they be able to recoup their investment while staying cheaper than competitors? Maybe in denser places (appartment complex come to mind) but in suburban areas, this is doubtful.

Re: The internet should be a public utility

#186

Post by Reelin »

threentaway wrote: post #177
Reelin wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Washington state, this is only permitted in rural counties. The public utility district is allowed to lay fiber, but not to sell access to it directly to consumers. The law requires them to provide common access to the infrastructure at a rate that reflects their operational costs, but only to ISP companies. Someone wrote about their experience here ( https://loomcom.com/blog/0098_fiber_optic_bliss.html ). Meanwhi…

Can you link to the laws around this? I'd love to look into this more.

A summary: https://broadbandnow.com/report/municipal-broadband-roadbloc...

The law (there might be others though): https://app.leg.wa.gov/rcw/default.aspx?cite=54.16.330

It looks like I may have been wrong about populated counties? Not sure.

Re: The internet should be a public utility

#187

Post by endgame »

tialaramex wrote: post #183
LatteLazy wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who needs electricity when we have candles?

Right, and 40A was good, so let's deliver 400A to every house. Actually 4kA. 4MA! Yes, every house needs a little mini-nuke, tear up everybody's backyard to put in a coal plant - no wait, that didn't happen because it turns out "enough electricity" is good not "more electricity is better". Always On Internet access matters. But bandwidth, like electricity, is something that you can just have enough of and then more d…

You snark, but what happens when EV adoption picks up and suddenly those houses need to move a lot more electrons?

Re: The internet should be a public utility

#188

Post by LatteLazy »

sneak wrote: post #29

I'm not sure that I want the government in a position to be a single point of control for which websites I can or cannot access.

The only thing stopping them now is the first amendment. That doesn't change depending on ownership. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for a wider deeper interpretation of 1A. But it's not relevant to this matter really...

Re: The internet should be a public utility

#189

Post by zbrozek »

hkmurakami wrote: post #176
zbrozek wrote: post #4

I talked with the mayor of Los Altos Hills, CA yesterday where I advocated for a municipal fiber ISP. It seems crazy to me that in Silicon Valley, and specifically in one of its richest towns, that broadband is not available to every residence. She makes a good point: the residents don't care. Her argument is that ~20 mbps DSL is good enough for the elderly population. And further - that for those who find that inade…

There are some efforts in LAH at the grassroots level. https://lahcommunityfiber.org/ I imagine the low density of LAH makes the cost of installing fiber throughout town more of a barrier than other areas.

I went to their most-recent meeting. I have some hope for the project, but I don't think it's likely to make it my way before I'm part of the 20-mbps-is-ok elderly population. They've really got to figure out how to be a real ISP and use the preexisting utility easements rather than try to get new ones.

As for the cost, they were talking about $1-3k/house depending on how many signed up in a "corridor". That's peanuts, especially for the area.

Re: The internet should be a public utility

#190

Post by zbrozek »

anderspitman wrote: post #171
zbrozek wrote: post #4

I talked with the mayor of Los Altos Hills, CA yesterday where I advocated for a municipal fiber ISP. It seems crazy to me that in Silicon Valley, and specifically in one of its richest towns, that broadband is not available to every residence. She makes a good point: the residents don't care. Her argument is that ~20 mbps DSL is good enough for the elderly population. And further - that for those who find that inade…

If you have LOS to GOOG headquarters, you probably have LOS to someone with fast internet. You can set up plug-and-play directional internet bridge over several km for a couple hundred USD, and split their internet bill with them. Yeah there's a lot of hurdles, but if you don't have another option might be worth looking in to.

There's a couple of dishes in a box downstairs. It's on the to-do list. :)
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