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It seems like a lot of commenters don't understand the problem. The issue is not about whether that copper wire can be useful. It's not about whether there exis
by ztjio 9y ago
It seems like a lot of commenters don't understand the problem. The issue is not about whether that copper wire can be useful. It's not about whether there exist alternatives to provide in places where the copper is too expensive to maintain.
The point is that regulations previously required the telco provide an alternative service that works just as well as the existing copper before they are allowed to stop maintaining the copper. But that is no longer the case as of this vote.
Now when the telco doesn't want to pay to maintain the copper they can simply do nothing at all, which absolutely will leave people without any form of telecommunication in some areas.
- lucio 9y agoThen that will be a good market for a startup, or other players. Are the telcos obliged to provide you with telecommunication?
- maxerickson 9y agoHistorically, yes, telcos have been obliged to provide service. The post you replied to mentions this: The point is that regulations previously required the telco provide an alternative service that works just as well as the existing copper before they are allowed to stop maintaining the copper. But that is no longer the case as of this vote.
- chx 9y agoUnder current rules yes and they are paid for it. Check Connect America Fund
- brians 9y agoYes, in return for getting poles along streets throughout the rest of America. Similarly, they have to interconnect with other telcos.
- charliesome 9y agoIn other parts of the world, yes. Telstra in Australia is bound by the Universal Service Obligation, for instance: https://www.acma.gov.au/Industry/Telco/Carriers-and-service-providers/Obligations/universal-service-obligation-obligations-i-acma https://www.acma.gov.au/Industry/Telco/Carriers-and-service-... This is an area where it's critically important to regulate the market to make it actually work for the people, not just profit margins. If the service providers were not obliged to provide service to people in remote areas at the same price as everyone else, no service provider would.
- Banthum 9y agoI don't have an established opinion here, just a question. What's the rationale for forcing people who live in densely populated areas to subsidize those who live in remote areas this way? Why don't we subsidize them for, say, gasoline as well, for their longer travel distances?
- abalashov 9y agoThe overriding social policy objective isn't to effect urban-to-rural subsidies per se, but to provide certain types of basic infrastructure universally — and it just so happens that the unit economics point toward a wealth from urban to rural areas as a means of accomplishing that. To the best of my understanding, the consensus around this formed out of the Depression and was bolstered subsequently by post-war thinking. The idea was that we as a society should be able to make certain social guarantees of living standard and access to services. Lots of things gave rise to that strain of thinking across the Western world, some of which were in response to specifically American conditions, others not. To the extent that it was influenced by the same kinds of currents that gave rise to the Western European welfare states, there was a pattern of concern over the ways in which savage inequalities between country and society perpetuated intergenerational poverty, which was in turn exploitable by demagogues and populists. There was a time in American history when the society was moving in the same general political direction as Europe as far as universal social benefits, and while the trend was unquestionably weaker here, it give rise to Medicare and Medicaid and other LBJ War on Poverty-era initiatives. Another, less acknowledged motivation was to defeat the allure of the Soviet model; revolutionary Bolshevism was big on redressing the historical gap between the sophistication and modernity of the city vs. the backward depression of the country, and universal literacy, universal electrification, universal medical infrastructure, etc. were widely touted goals. And of course, this factor was even more pronounced among the European social democracies. The more locally American consideration was most likely that telephone service should be folded, together with farm price supports, into the overall package of stabilising subsidies to the critical agricultural sector. This was thought necessary to cushion them against a repeat of the acute economic devastation of the Depression, the Dust Bowl, etc. Telephone access was essential to economic development and automation in the twentieth century in the same way that Internet access is regarded to be now, and was practically important for farmers as a means of getting their products to market. Last but not least, participation in the social bargain of universal service was generally a condition of being granted some sort of natural monopoly status, as for example with electrical utilities. The same general thinking was extended to the telephone, since AT&T did, after all, monopolise the local loop in most of the country for much of the twentieth century.
- fencepost 9y agoIn the US, the telcos were generally required to provide service. Some of that cost was subsidized. In return they got effective monopolies, easements to put in the infrastructure required to provide service (including in profitable areas), etc.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- nickbauman 9y agoIt's one step closer to a Mad Max world.
- bcoates 9y agoThompson's real high water mark was the Mojave phonebooth, ever since we lost it civilization has been on a long slow decay down to Mad Max world.
- agumonkey 9y agoReading the article I dreamed of a community system were every flat / house was a wireless peer in a mesh grid.
- Invictus0 9y agoHere's a completely random section of Texas that I found on Google Maps. Have fun making a mesh network out of the houses there. You might have more fun playing "I Spy", with the aim to find the houses. https://www.google.com/maps/place/Texas/@32.4826637,-98.4527296,6452m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x864070360b823249:0x16eb1c8f1808de3c!8m2!3d31.9685988!4d-99.9018131 https://www.google.com/maps/place/Texas/@32.4826637,-98.4527...
- inetknght 9y agoAs someone who lives in Texas... Thank you.
- agumonkey 9y agoOk, fair point, but you know, some wifi chips have range far larger than advertised. Especially in flat non crowded area where you can have line-of-sight and less noise. Some youtube video show packets traveling a few miles on a stupid esp8266 chip. I don't know how sparse texas is, but I'm sure you can find a nice % of houses whose distance to each others is lower than 1mile.
- simonh 9y agoA couple of packets barely making it, when the weather happens to be conducive, isn’t a basis for a reliable system.
- agumonkey 9y agoah right..
- twothamendment 9y ago> Especially in flat non crowded area where you can have line-of-sight and less noise. I had about a decade of wireless ISP in a neighborhood. It was ok, but speeds suffered as the number of users increased. BTW, this city of 30,000 doesn't have cable and it didn't really get started until 1999. Cable companies didn't want to build it out. Now I'm in the middle of nowhere and there isn't a WISP to be found. Houses are to far apart and there are too many trees. Noise? I don't have any of that, but line of sight doesn't exist. I think getting a workable mesh going anywhere would be tough, there is always something.
- x0x0 9y agoKind of ironic and funny given the rural vote is what gave Trump the presidency and flipped the FCC.
- leggomylibro 9y agoPlay stupid games, win stupid prizes...I'm having trouble feeling much pity.
- simonh 9y agoThey won’t even blame Trump. They’ll say his hearts in the right place, the political establishment are stitching him up and this was going to happen anyway.
- Freestyler_3 9y agoBecause you pick the president on who he might put on the FCC place alone.
- Freestyler_3 9y agoDownvotes for that. heh