Obama calls for municipal broadband • Hacker News Board

Re: Obama calls for municipal broadband

#251

Post by broadband432 » Thu, Jan 15, 2015, 2:20 PM UTC

shmerl wrote: post #186

redi90000 wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why people are using monopoly to describe ISPs. Looking at http://www.broadbandmap.gov , can anyone find one city without multiple broadband providers?

Something like DSL or satellite service is not comparable with others (it's too inferior). As well as a capped service is not comparable. Discarding all that you get something that is clearly a monopoly. Plus several companies which do offer something substantial but operate in collusion are essentially a monopoly anyway. Real competition is for example Google Fiber or some other small ISP on the scene. That's when y…

Going by your definition, does Apple have a monopoly on phones since every other phone is inferior? Just because one broadband provider has greater speeds than the others, it doesn't mean it has a 'broadband monopoly'. Again most Americans don't need 100Mbps+. They are fine with 25Mbps. Netflix only requires 3Mbps.

Now the "cable monopoly" is a separate issue entirely. Comcast has superior speed in some areas because the municipalities create bottlenecks that keep new wires from being laid (like charging exorbitant fees to do so). See, http://www.wired.com/2013/07/we-need-to-stop-focusing-on-jus...

Re: Obama calls for municipal broadband

#252

Post by davidgerard » Thu, Jan 15, 2015, 2:20 PM UTC

Marazan wrote: post #247

xamuel wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Internet in the UK has downsides too (I learned when I moved here). BT lets all these other ISPs use its infrastructure, but the actual installation is still BT, and they've no incentive to do it in a timely manner. It can take weeks or months after requesting service before you get connected. In my case it took three weeks after signing up with an ISP, despite living a stone's throw from London. Especially bad for f…

OpenReach legally cannot prioritise BT over other providers.

And, more to the point, both OpenReach and BT's broadband retail take this very seriously.

Re: Obama calls for municipal broadband

#253

Post by gfdgh54yhgf » Thu, Jan 15, 2015, 2:31 PM UTC

mhurron wrote: post #249

broadband432 wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you give me your zip code or a surrounding zip code, I can assure you that I'll find more than 1 residential broadband provider in your area.

And of course, if one person in a zip code can get it, everyone can. I could give you my old Zip code, it would include a small city that had DSL providers and Cable. Where I lived there was one provider, 3mb DSL. That finally showed up about 4 years ago.

Even with 3Mbps, that's still sufficient for vast majority of Americans. Netflix, like the guy said, recommends only 3Mbs. Heck it requires only 0.5MBps[1]

[1] https://help.netflix.com/en/node/306

Re: Obama calls for municipal broadband

#254

Post by fnordfnordfnord » Thu, Jan 15, 2015, 2:33 PM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #198

justizin wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I definitely agree, and this is one reason I advocate against overly harsh or vindictive rules that are unbalanced against ISPs because of our feelings about AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, Time Warner - it would bite us later if we have a massive shift to municipal broadband. Sure, we can change the law, but we would have regulations in place that could interfere with the government entering the market, we might have gotten…

If the government was your ISP, what are the privacy implications?

Good point! Terrible, but probably not worse than what we have today.

Re: Obama calls for municipal broadband

#255

Post by willyt » Thu, Jan 15, 2015, 2:33 PM UTC

swombat wrote: post #232

curun1r wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it would bite us later if we have a massive shift to municipal broadband. Municipal broadband doesn't mean shutting out ISPs. If done right, it means that the municipalities own the last mile infrastructure and charge a per-customer rate to ISPs that serve residents. But what that does is significantly lower the bar for ISPs to offer service. It can cost millions of dollars to build out that infrastructure in a cit…

That's kind of how it works in the UK, with BT being that last-mile provider for every UK ISP. Let me tell you: BT sucks. They are technically a private company, but operating with all the ills that a large governmental monolith has accumulated over decades. With the system you're proposing, you're basically creating a BT. Hopefully it's a small, city-specific BT so at least if one city has a very shitty infrastructu…

Yes. But the way the system in the UK works is the worst of both worlds. Openreach is a private company (a subsidiary of BT I believe), which has been granted a monopoly and as a result has to be constantly audited by the government at great expense to ensure that they are not making too much profit or favouring some ISP's over others. As a result, the way they make a profit for their shareholders is by being as tight as possible about everything that has no regulated minimum requirement.

For example, the broadband service in my town suffers from random slowdowns where everyone's speed drops from 8mb/s down to 0.1mb/s for days at a time. As a town we have been complaining about it for years but nothing ever happens as we have no power over Openreach because they are a private company and are not answerable to us and they also have a de facto monopoly on the infrastructure so we can't take our business elsewhere.

At least if broadband was provided by the local council, we could complain to our local councillor when it's not working. This system works fine for other infrastructure, e.g. if the council haven't gritted the roads we phone our councillor and she gets on to the right department, gives them a row and they sort it out.

As it is, most broadband infrastructure improvement projects in the UK are government driven any way. I don't see the point of Openreach existing as a private company, seems like extra unnecessary bureaucracy which exists purely for the dogmatic reason that private companies are supposedly always more efficient, a claim which I have never seen any serious peer reviewed research to support.

If anyone can explain why this is not a stupid system, then I'm all ears.

Re: Obama calls for municipal broadband

#256

Post by gfdgh54yhgf » Thu, Jan 15, 2015, 2:37 PM UTC

fnordfnordfnord wrote: post #250

broadband432 wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For Olympia, WA, http://www.broadbandmap.gov/internet-service-providers/olymp... There's Comcast, Verizon, ATT, T-Mobile and a host of others. EDIT: Facts deserve downvotes?

Select "wired" and you're back to what FireBeyond said. One provider. As I replied to you earlier in another thread, cellular internet isn't equivalent, nor is it priced comparably. http://www.broadbandmap.gov/internet-service-providers/olymp... re: EDIT: I didn't DV you but you shouldn't be surprised. There probably isn't a single HN'er without direct experience shopping for an ISP, and thus few without the knowledg…

But the argument here is "broadband monopoly" not "wired broadband monopoly", which municipalities have direct control over on who gets to lay cables. The "broadband monopoly" argument should stop since American consumers aren't limited to one broadband provider.

Anyway, one of the wired ones that's listed (CenturyLink) does residential internet from what I can tell[1]. Another wired one that's also listed for residential in Olympia is MegaPath (owned by Platinum Equity, another wired one)[2].

[1] http://www.centurylink.com/home/internet/

[2] http://www.megapath.com/services-residential/

Re: Obama calls for municipal broadband

#257

Post by sp332 » Thu, Jan 15, 2015, 2:37 PM UTC

lhc- wrote: post #96

sp332 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but that's not that hard to account for. Private companies don't seem to have much trouble. My question isn't "would municipal government be better than private companies", but "would federal government be worse"?

Private companies often don't serve (or underserve) those less populated areas. Their solution to that problem is to not provide service as they aren't required. Municipal broadband which is provided as a public service/utility, however, is better suited to serve everyone, as they are often required to do that rather than only focus on the areas that generate the most profit.

Most local franchise agreements require a certain level of internet service to be offered to a particular percentage of people. It's not regulated at the national level like the Universal Service Fund does for phones, but a national internet would certainly have similar targets.

Re: Obama calls for municipal broadband

#258

Post by mikelbring » Thu, Jan 15, 2015, 2:41 PM UTC

If there is anything that can be done to give me a better option at internet than the local crappy / expensive DSL provider I have to go with now, I am all for it.

Re: Obama calls for municipal broadband

#259

Post by TheCondor » Thu, Jan 15, 2015, 2:43 PM UTC

redi90000 wrote: post #172

shmerl wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even if private companies end up contracted to provide it in some cases, those would be regulated monopolies, not regulated free market businesses. I guess you meant those would be regulated monopolies and not unregulated monopolies ;) ISP scene is quite far from free market at the moment.

I don't understand why people are using monopoly to describe ISPs. Looking at http://www.broadbandmap.gov , can anyone find one city without multiple broadband providers?

There are loop holes to getting in the database. The wireless providers aren't selling w data rate at every location, they sell a package that can reach that rate in the right locations.

Likewise, why are speeds so low still if there is all that competition? Once the wiring is done, it should be fairly inexpensive to upgrade performance and that should be a pretty clear competitive edge. Are they colluding? Or is it really somehow a noncompetitive market?

I've been in Comcast country a couple times, as soon as there were even whispers of not renewing their franchise, comcast just magically upgraded everyone's performance, I saw that twice. No fee increase.

Re: Obama calls for municipal broadband

#260

Post by tormeh » Thu, Jan 15, 2015, 2:51 PM UTC

jdmichal wrote: post #181

redi90000 wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why people are using monopoly to describe ISPs. Looking at http://www.broadbandmap.gov , can anyone find one city without multiple broadband providers?

That site has... Interesting data. It seems to be granulated based on zip code. It shows, for mine: 1 cable provider 2 ADSL providers It shows FiOS also, but I can almost guarantee that there is no residence within this zip code that can get it. So, the real question is, how much do you consider ADSL "broadband"?

Considering most urban ADSL runs at 15/1Mbps standard it very much is broadband. I guess American providers just like having larger distances and thus lower speed on their wires, but there's nothing wrong with ADSL.