7 ms·

Wasn't there a bill back in 80s/90s to pay the ISPs to modernize the grid with 100mbps across the entire country? Politics isn't the sole problem, lobbying in

Wasn't there a bill back in 80s/90s to pay the ISPs to modernize the grid with 100mbps across the entire country? Politics isn't the sole problem, lobbying in the company interests instead of the customers is the other problem. There has to be strict federal laws to outlaw lobbying and any type of incentives for all federal employees including the politicians. No gifting, no promises for the future (job), and so on. If such an occasion has occurred, both sides must be punished and the company must be stripped of its ability to do business in the country. The politician must be banned from holding the office and any company that they were involved with for life. How about we start with removing all free healthcare from the congress, they pay the same as the rest of us and they must go through the healthcare system just like us. If they have a problem, fracking fix it.

MrFantastic 9y ago
The public paid for the ISP infrastructure via Tax credits we should own it.
arca_vorago 9y ago
What lots of people don't know is many ISPs across the country took that money and shoved it in exec pockets and then raised rates and never invested in infrastructure. An exec of one in my area for example was caught embezzling millions of that grant money.
- jonomw 9y ago
  Do you have a source that shows their misuse of funds? I don't believe it to be wrong, I have parroted this fact many times myself. But I just realised that I don't have any evidence of it either.
  - ethbro 9y ago
    Different topic, but on the legal side of the law you'll find that most exclusive franchise agreements by an ISP contain something to the effect of "we will pay the city/county $A, give them an ongoing amount of $B/yr (and are not allowed to break that out as a line item), and perform C, D, and E at no cost." All these agreements are public. Go down to your local city hall or courthouse and ask for a copy of the franchise agreement. Point being, part of the evil is Comcast. The other part is your elected local politicians...
    - pseudalopex 9y ago
      Franchise agreements can't be exclusive anymore. Officials at any level can still play favorites, of course.
      - ethbro 9y ago
        I stand corrected. I'd read ours recently, as I was curious. It was essentially an inherited document from the first cable company to build a network for the city. It specifically noted it was non-exclusive, but I assumed that was the exception rather than the rule.
- deelowe 9y ago
  Like most things, what really happened is complicated. Here's a good hn thread on the matter. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7709556 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7709556 If you have more interest in understanding the issue, there's plenty of good assessments. Everything from the explosion of wireless, to hdtv, to local municipalities, to mergers, and technological limitations are to blame.
  - anigbrowl 9y ago
    I really wish that we as a society would spend less time sitting around figuring out who to blame for shit and actually invest in the things we claim to care about. I am sick to the back teeth of bullshit free market ideologies that have an extremely poor track record in reality. That does not mean I am opposed to or deny the value of markets.
    - rayiner 9y ago
      The issue in the U.S. is (and has historically been) that neither side wants to invest in telecom infrastructure--both want private companies to foot the bill. When you start from that premise, all your options are limited by the overriding need to ensure adequate incentives to invest. As a matter of personal ideology, I'd say: let's build a nationwide public system with a federal/state partnership, and import regulators from Scandinavia to run it. But that's not one of the choices.
      - anigbrowl 9y ago
        You know perfectly well that several states have passed laws forbidding municipal entities to construct their own broadband networks. The left has made some tentative moves towards articulating a goal of investing in national broadband infrastructure (citing the example of the Tennessee Valley Authority as a working example of public utility investment) but has understandably been scared off by the right's strident equivalence of any kind of public investment with communism. I don't want to oversimplify the issue and don't disagree that everyone in politics would prefer if better broadband infrastructure just happened and all they had to do was show up and cut a few ribbons without investing any political capital. But I think you're being a tad disingenuous here. You are too smart and well-informed to buy this argument if I were to make it to you.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
rhino369 9y ago
>Wasn't there a bill back in 80s/90s to pay the ISPs to modernize the grid with 100mbps across the entire country? No, it's a popular uban legend based on a misunderstanding of agreements between telecoms and the government. A telecom, IIRC Verizon, promised to upgrade their network to 45mbps access across their footprint. People are now interpreting that to mean they promised to build build a FTTH residential network (capable of 45mbps) to each home for prices similar to what you pay for DSL or cable internet. But that is a total misread. Really, Verizon was promising to upgrade their Trunk lines (T-Carrier) from T1 to T3. A T3 line is 44.736 Mbit/s. And they weren't promising to deliver a trunk line to each house for 60 bucks a month. They were expecting to charge thousands a month. This was basically a service for businesses and datacenters. Not for residential use. And they actually did do that upgrade.

MrFantastic 9y ago

The public paid for the ISP infrastructure via Tax credits we should own it.

arca_vorago 9y ago

What lots of people don't know is many ISPs across the country took that money and shoved it in exec pockets and then raised rates and never invested in infrastructure. An exec of one in my area for example was caught embezzling millions of that grant money.

jonomw 9y ago
Do you have a source that shows their misuse of funds? I don't believe it to be wrong, I have parroted this fact many times myself. But I just realised that I don't have any evidence of it either.
- ethbro 9y ago
  Different topic, but on the legal side of the law you'll find that most exclusive franchise agreements by an ISP contain something to the effect of "we will pay the city/county $A, give them an ongoing amount of $B/yr (and are not allowed to break that out as a line item), and perform C, D, and E at no cost." All these agreements are public. Go down to your local city hall or courthouse and ask for a copy of the franchise agreement. Point being, part of the evil is Comcast. The other part is your elected local politicians...
  - pseudalopex 9y ago
    Franchise agreements can't be exclusive anymore. Officials at any level can still play favorites, of course.
    - ethbro 9y ago
      I stand corrected. I'd read ours recently, as I was curious. It was essentially an inherited document from the first cable company to build a network for the city. It specifically noted it was non-exclusive, but I assumed that was the exception rather than the rule.
deelowe 9y ago
Like most things, what really happened is complicated. Here's a good hn thread on the matter. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7709556 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7709556 If you have more interest in understanding the issue, there's plenty of good assessments. Everything from the explosion of wireless, to hdtv, to local municipalities, to mergers, and technological limitations are to blame.
- anigbrowl 9y ago
  I really wish that we as a society would spend less time sitting around figuring out who to blame for shit and actually invest in the things we claim to care about. I am sick to the back teeth of bullshit free market ideologies that have an extremely poor track record in reality. That does not mean I am opposed to or deny the value of markets.
  - rayiner 9y ago
    The issue in the U.S. is (and has historically been) that neither side wants to invest in telecom infrastructure--both want private companies to foot the bill. When you start from that premise, all your options are limited by the overriding need to ensure adequate incentives to invest. As a matter of personal ideology, I'd say: let's build a nationwide public system with a federal/state partnership, and import regulators from Scandinavia to run it. But that's not one of the choices.
    - anigbrowl 9y ago
      You know perfectly well that several states have passed laws forbidding municipal entities to construct their own broadband networks. The left has made some tentative moves towards articulating a goal of investing in national broadband infrastructure (citing the example of the Tennessee Valley Authority as a working example of public utility investment) but has understandably been scared off by the right's strident equivalence of any kind of public investment with communism. I don't want to oversimplify the issue and don't disagree that everyone in politics would prefer if better broadband infrastructure just happened and all they had to do was show up and cut a few ribbons without investing any political capital. But I think you're being a tad disingenuous here. You are too smart and well-informed to buy this argument if I were to make it to you.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

rhino369 9y ago

>Wasn't there a bill back in 80s/90s to pay the ISPs to modernize the grid with 100mbps across the entire country? No, it's a popular uban legend based on a misunderstanding of agreements between telecoms and the government. A telecom, IIRC Verizon, promised to upgrade their network to 45mbps access across their footprint. People are now interpreting that to mean they promised to build build a FTTH residential network (capable of 45mbps) to each home for prices similar to what you pay for DSL or cable internet. But that is a total misread. Really, Verizon was promising to upgrade their Trunk lines (T-Carrier) from T1 to T3. A T3 line is 44.736 Mbit/s. And they weren't promising to deliver a trunk line to each house for 60 bucks a month. They were expecting to charge thousands a month. This was basically a service for businesses and datacenters. Not for residential use. And they actually did do that upgrade.