Comcast rejected by small town, residents vote for municipal fiber instead • Hacker News Board

Re: Comcast rejected by small town, residents vote for municipal fiber instead

#201

Post by takeda » Wed, Dec 12, 2018, 10:06 PM UTC

jgust wrote: post #58

quasse wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear this argument all the time, but I don't really see it. What value is the ISP providing here? They sell you service on physical infrastructure that you the taxpayer already paid for? Peering? It seems like it would be much more efficient for a municipality to just negotiate citywide peering agreements for everyone. Some people try to push the "value adds" line, like IPTV and phone service, but I don't see any r…

The last mile infrastructure isn't maintenance free and doesn't last forever, so it has to be paid for somehow be it taxes or commercially. Users (in the above situation) paying an ISP are essentially agreeing to a "maintenance contract".

That's why I said "lease to ISP for a fee", the ISP will of course forward that cost to an user, perhaps under extra fees no extra taxes needed, and people who actually use it will pay for it.

BTW: this is how it was with DSL. Title II has this provision, and telco companies were required to lease their lines to ISPs at a "reasonable fee" which was up to FCC to decide (this was so they wouldn't charge ridiculous prices to kill their competitors).

When Title II was reinstated, Wheeler actually excluded this provision, that's why nothing changed in terms of monopoly.

Re: Comcast rejected by small town, residents vote for municipal fiber instead

#202

Post by MrTonyD » Wed, Dec 12, 2018, 10:27 PM UTC

Over a decade ago I worked on software sold to Cable companies. So I had set up a small cable transmission center, and I had followed with interest the cities providing cable. In short, they were doing a great job providing lots of channels at a tiny fraction of the cost - and often free internet too. And some even funded multiple government programs with high end packages at half the cost of Comcast.

So I approached my town and offered to travel the US (on my dime) and interview those who had set up cable, to write a report so that my town could use best practices (including how to fight off the cable companies as they try to elect different officials - a standard strategy.) But my town was completely uninterested. It turned out that Comcast had paid money to fund a city department, and that same group made cable related decisions. So they didn't want to rock the boat that was paying them good salaries (to people with absolutely no skills beyond knowing somebody who got them the job.)

Re: Comcast rejected by small town, residents vote for municipal fiber instead

#203

Post by greggyb » Wed, Dec 12, 2018, 10:35 PM UTC

dudul wrote: post #182

greggyb wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding 2), that seems like an un-justified expectation that 2x in some category should be 2x price. I can buy a Chevrolet Spark for $14K. Top speed is listed at 110mph. Here's a list of cars that can go 200mph https://www.automobilemag.com/news/all-cars-that-go-200-mph/ . Find me a new one for $28K. I can buy a $90 printer for 27 pages per minute: https://www.amazon.com/Dell-E310DW-Wireless-Monochrome-Print... I c…

I have no idea what point you're trying to make. People in France or Germany have access to literally 12 different providers. Everywhere. Granted, it looks like the overall speed is below the US's according to the report, but prices are so much lower (my parents probably pay in the order of $10$/mo for their TV/Internet package) and access is way more homogenous. I suspect that US results are vastly skewed by hyper-c…

Your second point assumes that scaling some attribute of value by a factor of two should be associated with an exact doubling of price.

These were literally the first three things I could think of, but I'm sure we could braistorm many more items where the price of a product or service that is twice as good along some axis costs more than twice as much.

It is therefore not a strong argument to say, "Now, for fun, let's integrate the price dimension to this report. Yes I have better (maybe 1.5 to 2 times as fast) Internet than my parents who are in Europe, but I also pay 3 times what they pay for it. "

Re: Comcast rejected by small town, residents vote for municipal fiber instead

#204

Post by zzzcpan » Wed, Dec 12, 2018, 10:36 PM UTC

takeda wrote: post #198

pathseeker wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do know that an ISP has much more equipment than the cables that run to your house right? Good internet vs bad internet can easily be entirely in mismanaged peering, qos, aggregation, etc. IPv6, support for static IPs, etc all depend on much more than the wire. I'm not confident municipalities have any motivation to do more than the bare minimum when it comes to managing all of this stuff beyond the physical infr…

By last mile I'm talking about the physical wire between your house and POP. Layer 1-2 none of the protocols you mentioned work on that level, those would be provided by the ISP. The issue is city, users, ISPs can't afford to have a separate wire per ISP per house. It's extremely expensive and wasteful, because most of the time most houses will use at most a single ISP. What I'm saying is that city should be responsi…

Don't think of it like roads. Building roads is very expensive, laying down fibers is cheap. It's so cheap, that ISPs can afford to compete with like a dozen other ISPs in densely populated areas and with at least three in sparse areas. They won't get super rich like this, but it's still profitable and sustainable.

Re: Comcast rejected by small town, residents vote for municipal fiber instead

#205

Post by nicoburns » Wed, Dec 12, 2018, 11:15 PM UTC

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #91

nicoburns wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The obvious solution seems to be a public entity at federal level. They would be big enough to have the relevant expertise without the misaligned incentives of the big corporate companies.

> public entity at federal level > without the misaligned incentives of the big corporate companies There's plenty of misaligned incentives at any Nth level of government. They're just more diverse. Some are political instead of financial.

However, there are plenty of example of government organisation successfully managing broadband infrastructure projects.

Re: Comcast rejected by small town, residents vote for municipal fiber instead

#206

Post by sethrin » Wed, Dec 12, 2018, 11:19 PM UTC

bliblah wrote: post #98

bronco21016 wrote: post #86

I hate Comcast with a passion and have always fantasized about living in a progressive municipality that provides fiber to the home. However, a few years ago I bought a home and it’s only been over the last 6 months or so I’ve realized how horribly corrupt and mismanaged small city governments can be. We’re being sucked dry by our mayor who hired her cousin as city manager for an exorbitant compensation package. They…

The difference is that in this case because this is a more "local" power you, the consumer/voter, actually have the power to hold them liable. Imagine living in a Town with less than 2.5k people living in rural midwest and comcast screws you over, what are you going to do? They only answer to Stockholders and "big fish" markets. Elected officials care and respond to votes and the smaller the area of control, the easi…

Competition is broadly inconsistent with natural monopolies.

Re: Comcast rejected by small town, residents vote for municipal fiber instead

#207

Post by sethrin » Wed, Dec 12, 2018, 11:33 PM UTC

greggyb wrote: post #203

dudul wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no idea what point you're trying to make. People in France or Germany have access to literally 12 different providers. Everywhere. Granted, it looks like the overall speed is below the US's according to the report, but prices are so much lower (my parents probably pay in the order of $10$/mo for their TV/Internet package) and access is way more homogenous. I suspect that US results are vastly skewed by hyper-c…

Your second point assumes that scaling some attribute of value by a factor of two should be associated with an exact doubling of price. These were literally the first three things I could think of, but I'm sure we could braistorm many more items where the price of a product or service that is twice as good along some axis costs more than twice as much. It is therefore not a strong argument to say, "Now, for fun, let'…

No, there was no assumption related to an exact doubling, and it's not reasonable to infer one, and arguing against it by means of analogies to unlike goods is unsound.

Re: Comcast rejected by small town, residents vote for municipal fiber instead

#208

Post by rayiner » Wed, Dec 12, 2018, 11:37 PM UTC

dudul wrote: post #182

greggyb wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding 2), that seems like an un-justified expectation that 2x in some category should be 2x price. I can buy a Chevrolet Spark for $14K. Top speed is listed at 110mph. Here's a list of cars that can go 200mph https://www.automobilemag.com/news/all-cars-that-go-200-mph/ . Find me a new one for $28K. I can buy a $90 printer for 27 pages per minute: https://www.amazon.com/Dell-E310DW-Wireless-Monochrome-Print... I c…

I have no idea what point you're trying to make. People in France or Germany have access to literally 12 different providers. Everywhere. Granted, it looks like the overall speed is below the US's according to the report, but prices are so much lower (my parents probably pay in the order of $10$/mo for their TV/Internet package) and access is way more homogenous. I suspect that US results are vastly skewed by hyper-c…

France and Germany have lots of cheap options because they rely heavily on DSL: https://www.oecd.org/sti/broadband/1.2.OECD-FixedMobileBB-20... (see the "Fixed Broadband" tab).

70-75% of France and German broadband connections are DSL, versus 22% in the U.S. The copper networks are mostly depreciated, and copper-loop unbundling has created a lot of competition. But that's also why internet in those countries is so slow. According to Akamai, just 18% of French broadband connections are above 15 mbps, versus 48% of U.S. connections. Copper is also a complete dead-end, technology wise.

Cable in those countries is not super cheap. Kabel Deutschland's gigabit service has a non-promo price of 69.99 euro ($80): https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=de&u=https:/.... Comcast's non-promo pricing is $105, which is a bit more expensive in nominal terms, but cheaper as a percentage of net adjusted disposable income (which is 33% higher in the U.S. than in Germany).

You also need to account for differences in labor costs. Broadband isn't like an iPhone, where it's the same product made in China whether you buy it in the U.S. or in Germany. It's a service, like a hotel stay or restaurant meal. Labor to build, maintain, operate, and support the network is a huge part of the cost of broadband, and skilled labor is significantly more expensive in the U.S. than in Germany or France. That's one of the things that makes pricing comparisons between the U.S. and say Romania completely specious. You can buy a 2-ride subway ticket in Bucharest for $1.22--that doesn't tell you anything about what's a reasonable price for a subway ticket in D.C. The $10/month cost for gigabit fiber in Romania is equivalent to $80/month in the U.S.

Re: Comcast rejected by small town, residents vote for municipal fiber instead

#209

Post by CountSessine » Wed, Dec 12, 2018, 11:48 PM UTC

supercanuck wrote: post #175

xoa wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> is the panacea we all hope for I have never seen "panacea" used by anyone except those opposed to any public infrastructure, and while you sound like you're speaking in all good faith and I appreciate that I still have trouble seeing this as something other then a strawman. Of course governments can have issues too. Public roads can have potholes. Bridges have not been kept up. Public parks aren't always maintained…

The other point is that with a government, people have the opportunity to vote management out. Not so much with Comcast.

But you don't have the opportunity to vote with your pocketbook at all once it becomes a government service.

Why not use the power of government to create a competitive market that would allow new ISPs to enter the market? Like making a modest investment in common conduits into neighborhoods that all ISPs can wire through?

Re: Comcast rejected by small town, residents vote for municipal fiber instead

#210

Post by Symbiote » Wed, Dec 12, 2018, 11:57 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #194

tcoff91 wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how on earth does it make sense to compare a rail network to an ISP?

Would you rather compare it with the antiquated sewer systems that dump untreated sewage into local rivers every time it rains? https://wtop.com/dc/2017/07/heavy-rain-raw-sewage-potomac-an... ISPs are closer to rail than say water. Most municipalities get along fine with water systems built a century ago. But broadband networks require active maintenance and continual upgrades. Rail technology moves incredibly slowly…

It really doesn't help your argument to compare rail and water with communications infrastructure. They have very little in common.

I struggle to think of anything they do have in common. Capital cost, operating cost, speed of innovation, the average American's interest in the level of service provided, the possibility for competition, the practicality of parallel infrastructures... does rail/water have anything in common with an Internet connection?