6 ms·

This problem is never going to go away as long as ISP are private companies. Think what would happen if your power/utility company was driven by profit and not

by evo_9 9y ago

This problem is never going to go away as long as ISP are private companies. Think what would happen if your power/utility company was driven by profit and not solely to provide a critical service. Internet access should be de-privitized, the free market isn't going to fix this ever and this battle is going to just going to repeat itself every 6-12 months until they win.

JoshTriplett 9y ago
Because we should trust government to provide Internet access? That would certainly make it far easier to monitor. And instead of fixing the problem that not everyone has a choice of ISPs, that would ensure that no one has a choice of ISPs, so when the one ISP that exists is terrible there's no recourse. I do think it might make sense to treat fiber as infrastructure, so that we could then have numerous competing ISPs everywhere that just need to light up the fiber that's already there. That seems like an improvement.
- QAPereo 9y ago
  How could we be more comprehensively monitored than what ISP’s and the NSA are willing and able to do?
- maxxxxx 9y ago
  I wonder how MVNOs for cell phone services came to be. There you have multiple companies competing while using the bigger networks. I would like to see the same for ISPs where Comcast would rent their infrastructure to other companies that then can compete with different plans. 1
  - toast0 9y ago
    Be careful using mvno as the model. In the US, many of the mvnos have shaky financials and often end up as a subsidiary of the carrier (Virgin Mobile USA, Boost, Cricket)
    - maxxxxx 9y ago
      At least there is some competition and variation in plans. For example, I have a 2GB plan with unlimited voice and text on T-Mobile. Not bad.
- hackermailman 9y ago
  I liked the idea that cities/towns should own their own last-mile infrastructure, then you get the choice of ISP you wish that plugs into your area instead of me being forced to use X ISP because they're the only monopoly that could afford (or had enough influence) to lay fiber. Since it's local you retain some level of control over it as well instead of a nationalized abstraction.
- s73ver_ 9y ago
  "Because we should trust government to provide Internet access?" Prove that is part of it, or stop lying.
- davrosthedalek 9y ago
  This is somewhat close how Germany handles it. When the monopoly of the state-run telephone service was destroyed, Telekom was allowed to keep the physical lines, but had to rent them out to any company that wants them, at a rate set by an official oversight organization. I think this was a great success.
njarboe 9y ago
Do you realize that most power/utility companies in the US are private and do want to make a profit and pay dividends to share holders? They are just highly regulated due to their monopoly position. Having common carrier status and regulation of ISPs is obviously the rational thing to do for the good of the country, but it looks like we are not going to take that path. The only positive I can see coming out of this is SpaceX's global satellite internet system looks a lot more profitable in this environment.
- brightsize 9y ago
  > Do you realize that most power/utility companies in the US are private and do want to make a profit and pay dividends to share holders? You're right, and I don't understand why the discussion here seems to insist that the two options available are having either no NN or having the big, bad gubbmint provide internet services. Among the solutions that lie between these two extremes are private, for profit, regulated utilities. For example, where I live our electric+gas services come from a company named Avista, NYSE:AVA[1]. It's shareholder-owned, for-profit, and regulated by the state[2]. In fact this private, regulated utility is so private that it's currently busying itself with being acquired by a Canadian company[3], after which it will of course still be regulated by the state of Washington to ensure that the corporation continues operating for the public good. "Avista's purpose is to improve life's quality by providing energy and energy-related services, as well as certain non-energy related services. We do this by safely and reliably delivering these services at a competitive price and by helping our customers get the most value from their dollar, while providing our investors a fair return."[4] Fair return, not maximum return. Our nation's economy, infrastructure, and access to government information and services now rely on the internet. ISPs, whether private or public, need to be regulated in ways that reflect that fact. [1] https://www.avistacorp.com/about/Pages/aboutus.aspx https://www.avistacorp.com/about/Pages/aboutus.aspx [2] https://goo.gl/y54zFV https://goo.gl/y54zFV [utc.wa.gov] [3] https://goo.gl/Av1vx3 https://goo.gl/Av1vx3 [investor.avistacorp.com] [4] https://goo.gl/fGAAW8 https://goo.gl/fGAAW8 [investor.avistacorp.com] edit:format
- arise 9y ago
  Just FYI... part of that regulation is that they are capped on the max profit they can make. In addition, rate changes must be approved by an elected body (the state's public service commission).
Kodix 9y ago
It's the obvious next step, but the issue there is that the current US government is likewise profit driven. Net Neutrality wouldn't have been an issue again in the first place, otherwise.
carry_bit 9y ago
> This problem is never going to go away as long as ISP are private companies. What would be wrong with an ISP co-op?
- Simon_says 9y ago
  My understanding is that several small cities are doing this to generally rave reviews.
bluetonium 9y ago
Giving the government near-total control over our internet access is going to introduce more problems that it would solve. We're already seeing that Western countries too can be just as censorship happy (e.g. the UK where the government pressures ISPs, and is seeking to enshrine in law, the blocking of a huge assortment of content including such ridiculous things to block as female ejaculation) Just imagine how easy and unescapable that censorship will be if the government is the ISP itself. We've seen repeated attempts in congress to illegalize encryption the government cannot easily break. District Attorney General Rod Rosenstein hinted just this very month that in wake of the Texas shooting the Trump administration will take a harder line against "unbreakable encryption." Just imagine how stronger their effort against encryption will be once it's the only thing standing between them and completely blocking your access to information they'd rather you not have? Let's just settle for net neutrality and incentivizing new cable lines and ISPs, rather than open the "nationalize the web" can of worms.
- hackermailman 9y ago
  The government here collects fees through nationalized institutions like vehicle insurance and licensing, so if you get a police ticket/fine for anything including jaywalking you have to pay it before they will let you renew insurance. I would imagine a nationalized ISP would do the same, seize your access to the internet in exchange for paying off city/state/provincial fines or even student debt. Another problem of public owned utilities is the ruling regime raiding the coffers for party funds, which forces the utility to jack the rates every year since they are a corporation that operates without any savings. They also parachute in a new regime crony every election to be the well paid CEO and fill the board with party hacks as well, ensuring the public utility never goes against the wishes of the regime (and gives their friends huge salaries in the +1m range). Public ISPs would have to operate at the city/local level and no higher for the public to retain any control over it and not have it turn into yet another fine collecting branch.
- kadenshep 9y ago
  >Giving the government near-total control over our internet access is going to introduce more problems that it would solve. I love how we are facing a present, practical problem that is the complete opposite of this dystopian hypothetical that people damn near have a fetish over. Yet it still gets brought up as some kind of counter weight to current circumstances. And this kind of attitude is why we're here. We elected a host of representatives that basically ran on "gummit bad!" and when they start handing power over to private entities some of you still don't have the self-awareness to see how absolutely ABSURD it is to sit there and go "But if the government had all the power think about how BAD it would be!" -- all while willfully ignoring that we're still a republic. It's unlikely to be that bad. We're here because we choose to be. Right now, giving more power to private entities is going to cause far more problems than the government having/had power is/did or maybe even ever could. Never in the history of this country have we had a problem in where the government has too much power and private entities have too little. Not once. The U.S. government has only had its scope of responsibilities expanded due to the misconduct of private entities over the course of our history. Yeah, governments CAN be bad and they CAN do bad things -- in general. But right now what we have is, in a glorious stroke of irony, people running the government who hate the government. Basically, TL;DR, the whole censorship boogeyman is just rhetorical misdirection and is completely, utterly, and frustratingly unproductive.
foxyv 9y ago
> Think what would happen if your power/utility company was driven by profit and not solely to provide a critical service. Southern California Edison reporting in! Bilking consumers for all their worth!
jordanb 9y ago
What we should really have is municipal fiber running to each home the same way as we have municipal roads and water/sewer lines. Then anyone could set up business as an ISP and provide service over that publicly owned infrastructure.
- xellisx 9y ago
  That would be nice, but a lot of cities have contracts with companies, which I'm pretty sure have a clause saying the city will not create their own network.
m12k 9y ago
Regulating them should work too. The problem is a broken political system, exacerbated by Citizens United basically legalizing political bribery, hence leading to regulatory capture like the current FCC.
libertymcateer 9y ago
I would gladly pay a substantial premium for an ISP that was a co-op (i.e., subscribers are also 'owners') or run as a not for profit. Not for profit is probably easier. Hell, I would donate my time as a lawyer to helping out.
- grahamburger 9y ago
  How serious are you about this? I've built networks for small to medium sized ISPs using wireless and some wired technology and the Internet co-op idea is something I've thought about a lot. Happy to chat more email in my profile.
  - Fjolsvith 9y ago
    Are there inexpensive technologies that allow line of site communication across 5-8 miles? Something that could be erected on the top of a barn or windmill, that would mesh and route among adjacent nodes? Something like that would allow communication across the countryside and allow communities to interconnect irrespective of the existing monopoly infrastructure.
    - grahamburger 9y ago
      Yes, what you're describing is a WISP* and they're fairly common in suburban and rural communities in the US (and other places I just know the US best). Some of the companies that make equipment for this are Ubiquiti, Mimosa, BaiCells and Cambium. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_Internet_service_provider https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_Internet_service_prov...
icebraining 9y ago
I don't see why you'd have to de-privitize the market. Why not offer a public service alongside private providers?
curun1r 9y ago
ISPs actually serve two distinct functions that we should separate to get the best mixture of public private. Net neutrality laws are only necessary because we conflate these two functions, but there's no reason that both functions need to be served by the same company. If we mandated separate ownership for last-mile infrastructure and heavily regulate that to ensure open access to all ISPs, then we can have a market with healthy competition and let consumers decide whether they care about neutral networks. Ideally, that last mile infrastructure would be owned by communities/municipalities who'd contract out maintenance and pay for it with open access fees added to ISP bills. Then any ISP could connect to the municipal network and serve any customer without ever having to install anything at the customer location. Free market competition works well in an environment where its hard to build a durable advantage and customers can easily switch to competitors with a more compelling offering. Separating the part of an ISP that gives a durable advantage from the part that doesn't would allow us to lean on the free market to handle the rest.

by evo_9 9y ago

JoshTriplett 9y ago

Because we should trust government to provide Internet access? That would certainly make it far easier to monitor. And instead of fixing the problem that not everyone has a choice of ISPs, that would ensure that no one has a choice of ISPs, so when the one ISP that exists is terrible there's no recourse. I do think it might make sense to treat fiber as infrastructure, so that we could then have numerous competing ISPs everywhere that just need to light up the fiber that's already there. That seems like an improvement.

QAPereo 9y ago
How could we be more comprehensively monitored than what ISP’s and the NSA are willing and able to do?
maxxxxx 9y ago
I wonder how MVNOs for cell phone services came to be. There you have multiple companies competing while using the bigger networks. I would like to see the same for ISPs where Comcast would rent their infrastructure to other companies that then can compete with different plans. 1
- toast0 9y ago
  Be careful using mvno as the model. In the US, many of the mvnos have shaky financials and often end up as a subsidiary of the carrier (Virgin Mobile USA, Boost, Cricket)
  - maxxxxx 9y ago
    At least there is some competition and variation in plans. For example, I have a 2GB plan with unlimited voice and text on T-Mobile. Not bad.
hackermailman 9y ago
I liked the idea that cities/towns should own their own last-mile infrastructure, then you get the choice of ISP you wish that plugs into your area instead of me being forced to use X ISP because they're the only monopoly that could afford (or had enough influence) to lay fiber. Since it's local you retain some level of control over it as well instead of a nationalized abstraction.
s73ver_ 9y ago
"Because we should trust government to provide Internet access?" Prove that is part of it, or stop lying.
davrosthedalek 9y ago
This is somewhat close how Germany handles it. When the monopoly of the state-run telephone service was destroyed, Telekom was allowed to keep the physical lines, but had to rent them out to any company that wants them, at a rate set by an official oversight organization. I think this was a great success.

njarboe 9y ago

Do you realize that most power/utility companies in the US are private and do want to make a profit and pay dividends to share holders? They are just highly regulated due to their monopoly position. Having common carrier status and regulation of ISPs is obviously the rational thing to do for the good of the country, but it looks like we are not going to take that path. The only positive I can see coming out of this is SpaceX's global satellite internet system looks a lot more profitable in this environment.

brightsize 9y ago
> Do you realize that most power/utility companies in the US are private and do want to make a profit and pay dividends to share holders? You're right, and I don't understand why the discussion here seems to insist that the two options available are having either no NN or having the big, bad gubbmint provide internet services. Among the solutions that lie between these two extremes are private, for profit, regulated utilities. For example, where I live our electric+gas services come from a company named Avista, NYSE:AVA[1]. It's shareholder-owned, for-profit, and regulated by the state[2]. In fact this private, regulated utility is so private that it's currently busying itself with being acquired by a Canadian company[3], after which it will of course still be regulated by the state of Washington to ensure that the corporation continues operating for the public good. "Avista's purpose is to improve life's quality by providing energy and energy-related services, as well as certain non-energy related services. We do this by safely and reliably delivering these services at a competitive price and by helping our customers get the most value from their dollar, while providing our investors a fair return."[4] Fair return, not maximum return. Our nation's economy, infrastructure, and access to government information and services now rely on the internet. ISPs, whether private or public, need to be regulated in ways that reflect that fact. [1] https://www.avistacorp.com/about/Pages/aboutus.aspx https://www.avistacorp.com/about/Pages/aboutus.aspx [2] https://goo.gl/y54zFV https://goo.gl/y54zFV [utc.wa.gov] [3] https://goo.gl/Av1vx3 https://goo.gl/Av1vx3 [investor.avistacorp.com] [4] https://goo.gl/fGAAW8 https://goo.gl/fGAAW8 [investor.avistacorp.com] edit:format
arise 9y ago
Just FYI... part of that regulation is that they are capped on the max profit they can make. In addition, rate changes must be approved by an elected body (the state's public service commission).

Kodix 9y ago

It's the obvious next step, but the issue there is that the current US government is likewise profit driven. Net Neutrality wouldn't have been an issue again in the first place, otherwise.

carry_bit 9y ago

> This problem is never going to go away as long as ISP are private companies. What would be wrong with an ISP co-op?

Simon_says 9y ago
My understanding is that several small cities are doing this to generally rave reviews.

bluetonium 9y ago

Giving the government near-total control over our internet access is going to introduce more problems that it would solve. We're already seeing that Western countries too can be just as censorship happy (e.g. the UK where the government pressures ISPs, and is seeking to enshrine in law, the blocking of a huge assortment of content including such ridiculous things to block as female ejaculation) Just imagine how easy and unescapable that censorship will be if the government is the ISP itself. We've seen repeated attempts in congress to illegalize encryption the government cannot easily break. District Attorney General Rod Rosenstein hinted just this very month that in wake of the Texas shooting the Trump administration will take a harder line against "unbreakable encryption." Just imagine how stronger their effort against encryption will be once it's the only thing standing between them and completely blocking your access to information they'd rather you not have? Let's just settle for net neutrality and incentivizing new cable lines and ISPs, rather than open the "nationalize the web" can of worms.

hackermailman 9y ago
The government here collects fees through nationalized institutions like vehicle insurance and licensing, so if you get a police ticket/fine for anything including jaywalking you have to pay it before they will let you renew insurance. I would imagine a nationalized ISP would do the same, seize your access to the internet in exchange for paying off city/state/provincial fines or even student debt. Another problem of public owned utilities is the ruling regime raiding the coffers for party funds, which forces the utility to jack the rates every year since they are a corporation that operates without any savings. They also parachute in a new regime crony every election to be the well paid CEO and fill the board with party hacks as well, ensuring the public utility never goes against the wishes of the regime (and gives their friends huge salaries in the +1m range). Public ISPs would have to operate at the city/local level and no higher for the public to retain any control over it and not have it turn into yet another fine collecting branch.
kadenshep 9y ago
>Giving the government near-total control over our internet access is going to introduce more problems that it would solve. I love how we are facing a present, practical problem that is the complete opposite of this dystopian hypothetical that people damn near have a fetish over. Yet it still gets brought up as some kind of counter weight to current circumstances. And this kind of attitude is why we're here. We elected a host of representatives that basically ran on "gummit bad!" and when they start handing power over to private entities some of you still don't have the self-awareness to see how absolutely ABSURD it is to sit there and go "But if the government had all the power think about how BAD it would be!" -- all while willfully ignoring that we're still a republic. It's unlikely to be that bad. We're here because we choose to be. Right now, giving more power to private entities is going to cause far more problems than the government having/had power is/did or maybe even ever could. Never in the history of this country have we had a problem in where the government has too much power and private entities have too little. Not once. The U.S. government has only had its scope of responsibilities expanded due to the misconduct of private entities over the course of our history. Yeah, governments CAN be bad and they CAN do bad things -- in general. But right now what we have is, in a glorious stroke of irony, people running the government who hate the government. Basically, TL;DR, the whole censorship boogeyman is just rhetorical misdirection and is completely, utterly, and frustratingly unproductive.

foxyv 9y ago

> Think what would happen if your power/utility company was driven by profit and not solely to provide a critical service. Southern California Edison reporting in! Bilking consumers for all their worth!

jordanb 9y ago

What we should really have is municipal fiber running to each home the same way as we have municipal roads and water/sewer lines. Then anyone could set up business as an ISP and provide service over that publicly owned infrastructure.

xellisx 9y ago
That would be nice, but a lot of cities have contracts with companies, which I'm pretty sure have a clause saying the city will not create their own network.

m12k 9y ago

Regulating them should work too. The problem is a broken political system, exacerbated by Citizens United basically legalizing political bribery, hence leading to regulatory capture like the current FCC.

libertymcateer 9y ago

I would gladly pay a substantial premium for an ISP that was a co-op (i.e., subscribers are also 'owners') or run as a not for profit. Not for profit is probably easier. Hell, I would donate my time as a lawyer to helping out.

grahamburger 9y ago
How serious are you about this? I've built networks for small to medium sized ISPs using wireless and some wired technology and the Internet co-op idea is something I've thought about a lot. Happy to chat more email in my profile.
- Fjolsvith 9y ago
  Are there inexpensive technologies that allow line of site communication across 5-8 miles? Something that could be erected on the top of a barn or windmill, that would mesh and route among adjacent nodes? Something like that would allow communication across the countryside and allow communities to interconnect irrespective of the existing monopoly infrastructure.
  - grahamburger 9y ago
    Yes, what you're describing is a WISP* and they're fairly common in suburban and rural communities in the US (and other places I just know the US best). Some of the companies that make equipment for this are Ubiquiti, Mimosa, BaiCells and Cambium. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_Internet_service_provider https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_Internet_service_prov...

icebraining 9y ago

I don't see why you'd have to de-privitize the market. Why not offer a public service alongside private providers?

curun1r 9y ago

ISPs actually serve two distinct functions that we should separate to get the best mixture of public private. Net neutrality laws are only necessary because we conflate these two functions, but there's no reason that both functions need to be served by the same company. If we mandated separate ownership for last-mile infrastructure and heavily regulate that to ensure open access to all ISPs, then we can have a market with healthy competition and let consumers decide whether they care about neutral networks. Ideally, that last mile infrastructure would be owned by communities/municipalities who'd contract out maintenance and pay for it with open access fees added to ISP bills. Then any ISP could connect to the municipal network and serve any customer without ever having to install anything at the customer location. Free market competition works well in an environment where its hard to build a durable advantage and customers can easily switch to competitors with a more compelling offering. Separating the part of an ISP that gives a durable advantage from the part that doesn't would allow us to lean on the free market to handle the rest.