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

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

#231

Post by philipps »

rayiner wrote: post #178
guelo wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In those countries with better infrastructure there isn't as strong of a government-is-always-awful ideology as we have here. Our "conservative" politicians thinks of their job as destroying government. So we get bad government. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Except infrastructure is awful in solidly blue states as well as red states. What "conservative politicians" are to blame for the NYC subway falling apart? I think you've got the causation backward. There's a bigger "market" for anti-government rhetoric in the U.S. than in Europe because the governmental units closest to the people here are so awful.

Democrats in the US would be considered center right in many European countries. The highest income tax rate in Denmark is around 80%. If you want excellent public infrastructure, you need to be willing to invest into the commons (not hand it over to the private sector - there is no example I am familiar with where that has led to better outcomes in the long run).

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

#232

Post by nonce413 »

philipps wrote: post #230
sokoloff wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When considering handing over a [n effective] monopoly on ISP services to a local government, it's reasonable to look around and see if they're generally managing other things that they do have a monopoly on well or poorly. While I don't love Comcast, their uptime and consistency for me has been excellent for me over the last decade and their value-for-money acceptable-[0]. I would not have the automatic expectation…

Comparing the price and quality of Comcast internet in the US with service in other developed countries (and some developing countries) clearly shows how poor a job Comcast is doing. The fact that you find Comcast quality or price reasonable is further evidence that market-based outcomes for internet service in the US are not efficient.

Marked based outcomes are efficient. 90 miles east of here, metro Boston generally has a choice between three modern providers - Comcast, RCN, and Verizon.

The western part of the state seemingly does not have the population density to attract this kind of investment. Comcast here is the monopoly provider of what we consider modern service, and AFAIK engages in their standard monopolistic playbook of throttling, caps, and continual billing shenanigans. Verizon is the ILEC, and could easily upgrade the DSL infrastructure for higher speeds and slowly build out fiber where it makes sense. But they don't because they see no profit in competing!

The worst part is that when Comcast steps up their game to compete with Whip City Fiber, Comcast will then spin those upgrades as an example of how municipal fiber was unnecessary. This has happened pretty much everywhere a city has gotten fed up with an incumbent monopoly and built out municipal infrastructure. And that is my main point - if one is a actual proponent of free markets, then one should support a second player entering the game and creating competition.

In this situation, the main thing municipalities are bringing to the table is the investment capital - investment which the quasi-governmental "private" telecommunications industry has refused to make themselves. Municipal services do not prevent private companies from entering the market - they merely preclude the private companies from receiving the juicy public subsidies that they've become accustomed to for building out their "private" infrastructure.

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

#233

Post by sethrin »

greggyb wrote: post #229
sethrin wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not see anything in the parent comment indicating a linear relationship. Making a more general comparison of prices is perfectly sound. If you must make an inference, you should construe the argument in the most favorable terms. Also, your choice of comparisons were of unlike goods, and "argument from analogy" is a weak form of argument.

> 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. "Yes..., but" is a form of sentence that indicates disagreement. This was in response to a comment indicating that the US has faster internet than most large European nations. The commenter's first argument was abo…

The form of the argument is tangential, but the validity of "argument from analogy" is dependent on the strength of the analogy. Few analogies hold up to substantial scrutiny, and the specific examples cited were all fairly distant in kind from the product in question. I certainly don't mean to dwell on that more than might be relevant, but I did think it reasonable to offer this characterization, since you had similarly characterized the OP's form of argument.

Nothing in the OP's comment can be inferred to be a denial of diminishing returns: if there is "wiggle room", then you should give them the benefit of the doubt. Also, there's no inherent reason to expect that the cost of bandwidth would be anything close to linear. The cost to the ISP does not necessarily increase due to the provisioned speed of a modem, and the used bandwidth is in most senses unmetered. Also, for what it's worth, whether the OP feels like they're getting a good deal is more-or-less independent of the actual mathematics at hand.

There is every reason to believe that bandwidth is a special case: the cost to either the customer or the ISP is not linear with either usage or provisioned speed. However, since the parent's argument is not inconsistent with the concept of diminishing returns, it does not seem valid to arrive at that inconsistency by inference, when other more charitable interpretations exist.

P.S. I'm afraid I don't understand your use of the word "arrant".

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

#234

Post by onetimemanytime »

>>About 160 residents voted, with 56 percent rejecting the Comcast offer, according to news reports.

If it's done it needs to be done by, say, million+ cities. Where is this small town going to the money to pay each time someone complains or a cable is cut?

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

#235

Post by greggyb »

sethrin wrote: post #233
greggyb wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. "Yes..., but" is a form of sentence that indicates disagreement. This was in response to a comment indicating that the US has faster internet than most large European nations. The commenter's first argument was abo…

The form of the argument is tangential, but the validity of "argument from analogy" is dependent on the strength of the analogy. Few analogies hold up to substantial scrutiny, and the specific examples cited were all fairly distant in kind from the product in question. I certainly don't mean to dwell on that more than might be relevant, but I did think it reasonable to offer this characterization, since you had simil…

I guess we'll have to disagree on the interpretation of, "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." To me, the most charitable interpretation of this is that 3x price is a negative that diminishes the argument made previously that speeds are higher in the US.

For that to be true, then there is an implicit argument that the price should be lower. Either this argument is there, or the parent is simply complaining. I don't see much other possibility.

Again, I am not arguing by analogy but offering a general case, movement against which must be justified.

As was mentioned in a cousin post, and as I mentioned, there are different technologies in play: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18668662

With this, why should one expect that the cost for ~2x speed on cable should have any relation to ~x speed on DSL.

As for your argument on bandwidth, you seem to treat it as unlimited. It is absolutely a scarce resource and often overprovisioned. The network gear of any ISP only supports so much throughput. It is not an uncommon experience on cable to see drops in throughput at peak hours. Price and artificial bandwidth restrictions for individual modems (your package level) are the tools to handle such congestion and scarcity.

Regarding arrant, I mistyped errant, a reference to knights-errant.

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

#236

Post by nonce413 »

DenisM wrote: post #165

Me, I'm rooting for 5G broadband. Verizon started the rollout already, T-Mobile can't be far behind. If AT&T joins the fray Comcast will get the bill for all the negative goodwill they were snowplowing on their way to profits. https://www.verizonwireless.com/5g/home/ https://www.fiercewireless.com/5g/new-t-mobile-s-plans-for-h...

5G is a red herring, as 4G would be sufficient. Before Westfield's fiber rollout, I drove around town mapping cell towers hoping to use LTE for home Internet. IMHO they're not really dense enough for such use, especially without directional antennas. Never mind the latency.

Also, Verizon is really the only provider that extends into the more rural areas listed, and I doubt they would want to cut into their mobile profits with the rates required to compete with wired access.

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

#237

Post by sethrin »

greggyb wrote: post #235
sethrin wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The form of the argument is tangential, but the validity of "argument from analogy" is dependent on the strength of the analogy. Few analogies hold up to substantial scrutiny, and the specific examples cited were all fairly distant in kind from the product in question. I certainly don't mean to dwell on that more than might be relevant, but I did think it reasonable to offer this characterization, since you had simil…

I guess we'll have to disagree on the interpretation of, "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." To me, the most charitable interpretation of this is that 3x price is a negative that diminishes the argument made previously that speeds are higher in the US. For that to be true, then there is an implicit argument that th…

No, I am not arguing that bandwidth is unlimited. That would be prima facie impossible. I'm somewhat confused and distressed to read a summation of my argument which implies such an absurdity; it seems objectionable in the context of a calm and reasoned debate. I'm sure that you meant no offense. I'm not incapable of arguing absurdities, but I hope that this is rare, or at least I hope that you may assume so for courtesy's sake.

Bandwidth is not unlimited, but the point seems irrelevant: costs do not scale linearly, in any sense, for any participant. It does not cost the ISP more or less if my modem is provisioned for 10 or 100 Mbps. It may or may not cost them more money if that bandwidth is actually used, but very few individuals have any large impact on their ISP's operating costs. The aggregate utilization does affect this, but the marginal operating cost per customer is much closer to "fixed/negligible" than "linear in proportion to usage". Correspondingly, customers are not billed based on usage (in the normal case).

The implicit argument is certainly that the price should be lower, but they did not argue a linear price relationship. There is no reason to believe their argument would be invalidated if that were the case, but they did not.

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

#238

Post by greggyb »

sethrin wrote: post #237
greggyb wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess we'll have to disagree on the interpretation of, "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." To me, the most charitable interpretation of this is that 3x price is a negative that diminishes the argument made previously that speeds are higher in the US. For that to be true, then there is an implicit argument that th…

No, I am not arguing that bandwidth is unlimited. That would be prima facie impossible. I'm somewhat confused and distressed to read a summation of my argument which implies such an absurdity; it seems objectionable in the context of a calm and reasoned debate. I'm sure that you meant no offense. I'm not incapable of arguing absurdities, but I hope that this is rare, or at least I hope that you may assume so for cour…

When an ISP leases bandwidth to a customer, they must reserve some amount out of their total available. They may reserve the full amount they have leased, or they may reserve some portion of it. Either way, the reserve is finite and proportional to the actual total bandwidth (the proportion may be 1:1, which is the simplest, but the proportion does not matter for this discussion).

The marginal cost of provisioning me 100Mbps is therefore not limited to the cost of the hardware and setup, but is the opportunity cost of reserving bandwidth for my use. They may not lease this reserve to anyone else. This cost is reflected in the price.

Additionally, we can observe that ISPs tend to grow. Even in a fixed area, they will upgrade hardware over time to increase total available bandwidth. This is driven by demand by existing customers for more bandwidth and new customers. This hardware is very expensive to provision. In fact, I expect that going from total bandwidth x to 2x likely costs more than twice as much as x. I would also argue that it likely costs at least thrice as much.

Products of high fixed cost and finite supply will never be sold at marginal cost (or at least not for anything approaching profit). They will approach marginal cost as N increases (where N is the size of the finite supply).

Another way we can think of a customer leasing bandwidth is that they are purchasing a share of that large and expensive network equipment.

I posit that these are valid ways to look at it. The first, because there is not infinite bandwidth, ISPs must price it like the scarce good it is - prices are how we address scarcity. The second, because ISPs must not price their service as if they are never making another network upgrade.

Again, I am willing to haggle on the cost of 2x performance. I would make all of these arguments for any value under 3x price, as I mentioned above, which is clearly stated in the original parent. There is no need to stick to a strict linear interpretation, and I have said as much more than once now.

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

#239

Post by ghaff »

ghostly_s wrote: post #218
ghaff wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The statistics I quoted referred to the OP article. I care about relatively few town issues and have attended meetings or signed a petition when there’s been something of interest. I don’t go to church potlucks or other town events in general nor do I care to for the most part.

Maybe you're arguing something else, but I was responding to the general sentiment on this thread that small towns are somehow more susceptible to corruption than other places. It reads to me like you were trying to provide causation for that. Important local decisions being made by a vote with pitiful turnout happens in towns and cities of all sizes, and if anything I would argue the greater bureaucratic complexity…

I don’t think small towns are corrupt in the traditional big city sense with any frequency. There isn’t enough money involved. Competence is more of a mixed bag I expect.

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

#240

Post by berlinstartup »

rayiner wrote: post #178
guelo wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In those countries with better infrastructure there isn't as strong of a government-is-always-awful ideology as we have here. Our "conservative" politicians thinks of their job as destroying government. So we get bad government. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Except infrastructure is awful in solidly blue states as well as red states. What "conservative politicians" are to blame for the NYC subway falling apart? I think you've got the causation backward. There's a bigger "market" for anti-government rhetoric in the U.S. than in Europe because the governmental units closest to the people here are so awful.

Uh, earth to clueless, New York has plenty of republicans in government. Including the mayor, usually.
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