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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

#41

Post by anigbrowl »

rayiner wrote: post #36
sitkack wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cable could easily offer these rates by using the bandwidth currently occupied by their tv channels. If comcast had a unified digital backbone it wouldn't be a problem. It is only because they have monopoly power. I find it completely distasteful the number of laws that prevent other entities from passing laws in certain domains. Washington state has a law that prevents cities from legislating any form of rent contro…

> I find it completely distasteful the number of laws that prevent other entities from passing laws in certain domains. Washington state has a law that prevents cities from legislating any form of rent control. Are you serious? Rent control laws are awful, destroy the incentive to maintain housing stock or build new housing stock, and ultimately raise rents for everyone except the lucky few who can get rent controlle…

I'm with you on rent control, but states banning municipalities from owning their own broadband networks is at least as myopic. Thea rgument is that publicly owned utilities crowd out competition, but we have abundant evidence for the argument that (unlike typical residential rent markets) utility markets are dominated by oligopolies who are easily able to engage in anti-competitive behaviors without having to form a cartel. Sure, in theory Comcast and AT&T might offer such competitive discounts/service upgrades that they cross some threshold and trigger an all-out price war that would be good for consumers, but I'd put the odds on that actually happening at close to zero.

Now I'm not such a big fan of municipal legislation - as a European, I think American democracy may be too decentralized and exacerbate the public choice problem, but I don't see a clear organizing principle that will only prevent economically bad legislation while allowing economically good legislation. The proposals to ban municipal or county internet services in North Carolina are just as mypopic as rent control laws in many Californian cities.

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

#42

Post by Retric »

rayiner wrote: post #38
Retric wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's see north east US, Main = 14 MBPS or 0.1 MBPS faster than Mongolia woot! Comparing nations to states is ridiculous. However, if you read the report it's damming with faint praise. "the average connection speeds seen in the United States and Mexico remained more than twice as fast as the next fastest country" Sure, if you discount everyone that's better than you then you can call yourself #1 at anything. PS: Not…

Maine has a population density of 43 people per square mile, less than 1/10th the density of the U.K. or Germany. Maine is just Northeast's version of Montana.

Let's see, Washington DC has a population density ~10 times that of Japan. Guess which has the faster Internet speeds? As an independent state that have no need to subsidize anyone in low population areas yet the Internet is just not that fast.

Population density is something of a misnomer as for example parks significantly lower population density but there basicly irrelevant when building a network.

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

#43

Post by anigbrowl »

rayiner wrote: post #5

This is a really good example of how lobbying works. On one hand, these telecom companies have a clear interest in not having to "compete" with cheap, publicly funded broadband. On the other hand, their position just happens to tie in with a broader political debate: states and municipalities are on the verge of bankruptcy, and municipal infrastructure projects are a disaster outside a few well-managed cities like NY…

Poorly-planned infrastructure can lead to a lot of red ink, but it seems to me that the leading cause of bleeding municipal balance sheets is underfunded pension obligations.

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

#44

Post by mkempe »

rayiner wrote: post #38
Retric wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's see north east US, Main = 14 MBPS or 0.1 MBPS faster than Mongolia woot! Comparing nations to states is ridiculous. However, if you read the report it's damming with faint praise. "the average connection speeds seen in the United States and Mexico remained more than twice as fast as the next fastest country" Sure, if you discount everyone that's better than you then you can call yourself #1 at anything. PS: Not…

Maine has a population density of 43 people per square mile, less than 1/10th the density of the U.K. or Germany. Maine is just Northeast's version of Montana.

Please stop bringing up this kind of measurement as if it were an excuse.

Sweden's population density is 21 inhabitants/km2 -- about 54/sq.mile. Finland's population density is lower. Both countries have much better, and cheaper Internet connections on offer than the US.

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

#45

Post by hayksaakian »

sitkack wrote: post #32
davesque wrote: post #10

Telcos are a disease in the American economy.

Unconstrained corporatism.

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

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

#46

Post by orbitingpluto »

Law of unintended consequences. Cable giants lobby to abolish net neutrality and for the FCC to not designate Internet service as a common carrier. Consequently other people band together to provide their own service.

Now the cable giants, one pure local geographic monopoly, lobby to control municipal remediation of the crappy service. The hypocrisy is, unfortunately, unsurprising.

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

#47

Post by oostevo »

Retric wrote: post #42
rayiner wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maine has a population density of 43 people per square mile, less than 1/10th the density of the U.K. or Germany. Maine is just Northeast's version of Montana.

Let's see, Washington DC has a population density ~10 times that of Japan. Guess which has the faster Internet speeds? As an independent state that have no need to subsidize anyone in low population areas yet the Internet is just not that fast. Population density is something of a misnomer as for example parks significantly lower population density but there basicly irrelevant when building a network.

I can't think of any place that I've lived in the US which has consistently worse broadband performance than DC and Northern Virginia. This is especially sad given Northern Virginia's density of large tech companies and history as 'internet alley'[1].

[1] http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/internet-alley

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

#48

Post by jschwartzi »

rayiner wrote: post #5

This is a really good example of how lobbying works. On one hand, these telecom companies have a clear interest in not having to "compete" with cheap, publicly funded broadband. On the other hand, their position just happens to tie in with a broader political debate: states and municipalities are on the verge of bankruptcy, and municipal infrastructure projects are a disaster outside a few well-managed cities like NY…

Yeah, but what does that have to do with their right to build out these projects according to the FCC? The central issue is that the telecoms are lobbying the telecom regulator to prevent municipalities from directly competing because it would be bad for the telecoms.

I don't see the relevance of arguing that the FCC should prevent municipal broadband projects on the grounds that they are a financial boondoggle for the municipalities involved. Plenty of companies in regulated industries fail to generate enough cash flow to stay open yet a company's balance sheet remains unregulated. To suggest that the FCC has any responsibility for a municipality's balance sheet would be quite an expansion of regulatory jurisdiction, to say the least.

I certainly hope that someone at the FCC reads the fiscal arguments in the same way, or else we're really screwed.

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

#49

Post by harryh »

msandford wrote: post #37
rayiner wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The US is 31st worldwide on bandwidth speed (which really can't be explained by the US's size alone) By what measure? Certainly not Akamai's ( http://www.akamai.com/dl/akamai/akamai-soti-q114.pdf?WT.mc_i... ). The top 10 U.S. states (much of which are in the Northeast and are Comcast territory), would appear comfortably in the top 10 of the global rankings (compare page 14-15 with page 18). On Ookla's ranking, the…

I guess part of it is that there's the idea here in the US that everyone should have access to certain things like power, water, telephone, etc. There are a lot of universal service laws about these utilities and the internet is fast becoming another utility. Worse is that with the internet you have to be hooked up to the central grid or else it's useless. A farmer in a rural part of Kansas who's tired of not getting…

Without power or water your basic standard of living drops significantly. Without high speed internet you....don't get netflix?

I don't really see why lumping all these things together in the same category makes sense.

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

#50

Post by sitkack »

rayiner wrote: post #36
sitkack wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cable could easily offer these rates by using the bandwidth currently occupied by their tv channels. If comcast had a unified digital backbone it wouldn't be a problem. It is only because they have monopoly power. I find it completely distasteful the number of laws that prevent other entities from passing laws in certain domains. Washington state has a law that prevents cities from legislating any form of rent contro…

> I find it completely distasteful the number of laws that prevent other entities from passing laws in certain domains. Washington state has a law that prevents cities from legislating any form of rent control. Are you serious? Rent control laws are awful, destroy the incentive to maintain housing stock or build new housing stock, and ultimately raise rents for everyone except the lucky few who can get rent controlle…

Yep totally serious. Cite your claims if you have them. Municipalities have plenty of competing laws to dis/incentivize housing stock. We have buildings that haven't been updated in 30-50 years raising the rate of a studio apartment from 850 to 1250 in the span of a month.

Libertarian nerds aren't the only people in society.

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