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> Maybe we could have afforded a national deployment of fiber. Verizon and other telcos already learned they can get billions in subsidies for building fiber n

> Maybe we could have afforded a national deployment of fiber. Verizon and other telcos already learned they can get billions in subsidies for building fiber networks, and never follow through with it with no consequences. https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20131012/02124724852/decades-failed-promises-verizon-it-promises-fiber-to-get-tax-breaks-then-never-delivers.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20131012/02124724852/decad... At this point I think municipal run ISP utilities are the future we should be shooting for.

rayiner 9y ago
Verizon never got subsidies from New York. Verizon pays the city for the right to wire it up (5% of gross revenues).
- learc83 9y ago
  How much is ability to use the power of government to force property owners to let you build on their land worth? It's possible that it's worth more than a 5% cut--in which case it's still a subsidy.
  - rayiner 9y ago
    Now we’re getting into the weeds. Generally, telecom infrastructure is run along poles or conduits, usually owned by the power company, sometimes the telephone company (or jointly). In New York City, a Verizon subsidiary called ECS operates a conduit network under an 1891 franchise. It pays the city a fee based on the assessed value of real estate, about $20 million per year. Verizon pays ECS standardized rates to use the conduit, but the city alleges that ECS sets rates too low, and the shortfall is about $260 million over six years. https://comptroller.nyc.gov/wp-content/uploads/documents/FP08_103A.pdf https://comptroller.nyc.gov/wp-content/uploads/documents/FP0.... Of that, 80% is allocable to Verizon, or about $42 million per year owed to the city. The franchise fee is 5% of gross. Assuming about one million FIOS households in NYC in the steady state (consistent with Verizon’s uptake rate of about 40% and 2-3 million households passed), plus the average revenue per subscriber of $110 per month, that’s $65 million per year paid to the city. On top of that, you’ve got to consider the value of build-out requirements. The city forces Verizon to build in neighborhoods that aren’t otherwise sufficiently profitable to justify building in. That’s a concsssion extracted by the city that also must be accounted for, because each house passed that doesn’t subscribe costs Verizon hundreds of dollars. (Going back further in history, this was the quid pro quo between AT&T and governments. My FIOS is run on a pole jointly owned by Verizon and BGE. Is this a subsidy to Verizon? On one hand, the easement is valuable. On the other hand, the pole was inherited from AT&T, who got the easement in return for running a phone line it otherwise would not have, into what used to be farmland.) New York is also a bit of an odd situation because of ECS. In most places, the power company owns the conduit of the poles, and unlike ECS has no incentive to undercharge for attachments.
- jessaustin 9y ago
  So false! Read anything by Kushnick... https://www.huffingtonpost.com/bruce-kushnick/the-book-of-broken-promis_b_5839394.html https://www.huffingtonpost.com/bruce-kushnick/the-book-of-br...
  - rayiner 9y ago
    See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7709556 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7709556.
    - jessaustin 9y ago
      The premise of deregulation was that it would lead to increased infrastructure spending. And it has: the late 1990's and the 2000's saw massive investment into cable and wireless. People assumed at the time the money would go into fiber, but demand exploded in wireless so investment went there instead. The RBOCs promised they would roll out fiber, FCC and PUCs promised they would enforce that, and we assumed any of them had any integrity. Whoops! Then, with the 1996 act, RBOCs traded lots of competitive requirements for the right to reconsolidate into Ma Bell (which at this time they have mostly completed, only now with substantial monopoly of the wireless market in addition to that of the wired one). Again we assumed integrity on the part of any of them. More importantly, lots of wealthy investors assumed that. The two decades since then have been a clinic on how a monopolist who owns the regulators can steal billions from the rest of us. "Too bad about all that money you spent setting up that CLEC... You can forget about us obeying (or the regulators enforcing) any of those leasing or interconnection rules... We'll give you ten cents on the dollar for your now-worthless network and customer base." Is it any wonder that ATT, SBC, VZN monopolized the wireless market? At the very moment that the market was expanding and big infrastructure investments needed to be made, we had just given them hundreds of billions of dollars! Their abuse of the landline market financed their capture of the wireless market. How could anyone else compete with that? More to the point, who would be stupid enough to try, after getting their asses kicked on the wired side, in direct violation of the 1996 Act? The problem with treating changed circumstances as some sort of extenuation for all the broken promises and unenforced laws, is that the changed circumstances were intentionally engineered by Ma Bell, regardless of the lies they told. Fool us a dozen times, shame on us.
droopybuns 9y ago
I don’t want the governments monitoring our internet access any more than they already are.
- learc83 9y ago
  There's a difference between "the government"--the federal government--and thousands of local municipalities. If anything, having thousands of small ISPs would make it harder for the feds to spy on everyone.

rayiner 9y ago

Verizon never got subsidies from New York. Verizon pays the city for the right to wire it up (5% of gross revenues).

learc83 9y ago
How much is ability to use the power of government to force property owners to let you build on their land worth? It's possible that it's worth more than a 5% cut--in which case it's still a subsidy.
- rayiner 9y ago
  Now we’re getting into the weeds. Generally, telecom infrastructure is run along poles or conduits, usually owned by the power company, sometimes the telephone company (or jointly). In New York City, a Verizon subsidiary called ECS operates a conduit network under an 1891 franchise. It pays the city a fee based on the assessed value of real estate, about $20 million per year. Verizon pays ECS standardized rates to use the conduit, but the city alleges that ECS sets rates too low, and the shortfall is about $260 million over six years. https://comptroller.nyc.gov/wp-content/uploads/documents/FP08_103A.pdf https://comptroller.nyc.gov/wp-content/uploads/documents/FP0.... Of that, 80% is allocable to Verizon, or about $42 million per year owed to the city. The franchise fee is 5% of gross. Assuming about one million FIOS households in NYC in the steady state (consistent with Verizon’s uptake rate of about 40% and 2-3 million households passed), plus the average revenue per subscriber of $110 per month, that’s $65 million per year paid to the city. On top of that, you’ve got to consider the value of build-out requirements. The city forces Verizon to build in neighborhoods that aren’t otherwise sufficiently profitable to justify building in. That’s a concsssion extracted by the city that also must be accounted for, because each house passed that doesn’t subscribe costs Verizon hundreds of dollars. (Going back further in history, this was the quid pro quo between AT&T and governments. My FIOS is run on a pole jointly owned by Verizon and BGE. Is this a subsidy to Verizon? On one hand, the easement is valuable. On the other hand, the pole was inherited from AT&T, who got the easement in return for running a phone line it otherwise would not have, into what used to be farmland.) New York is also a bit of an odd situation because of ECS. In most places, the power company owns the conduit of the poles, and unlike ECS has no incentive to undercharge for attachments.
jessaustin 9y ago
So false! Read anything by Kushnick... https://www.huffingtonpost.com/bruce-kushnick/the-book-of-broken-promis_b_5839394.html https://www.huffingtonpost.com/bruce-kushnick/the-book-of-br...
- rayiner 9y ago
  See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7709556 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7709556.
  - jessaustin 9y ago
    The premise of deregulation was that it would lead to increased infrastructure spending. And it has: the late 1990's and the 2000's saw massive investment into cable and wireless. People assumed at the time the money would go into fiber, but demand exploded in wireless so investment went there instead. The RBOCs promised they would roll out fiber, FCC and PUCs promised they would enforce that, and we assumed any of them had any integrity. Whoops! Then, with the 1996 act, RBOCs traded lots of competitive requirements for the right to reconsolidate into Ma Bell (which at this time they have mostly completed, only now with substantial monopoly of the wireless market in addition to that of the wired one). Again we assumed integrity on the part of any of them. More importantly, lots of wealthy investors assumed that. The two decades since then have been a clinic on how a monopolist who owns the regulators can steal billions from the rest of us. "Too bad about all that money you spent setting up that CLEC... You can forget about us obeying (or the regulators enforcing) any of those leasing or interconnection rules... We'll give you ten cents on the dollar for your now-worthless network and customer base." Is it any wonder that ATT, SBC, VZN monopolized the wireless market? At the very moment that the market was expanding and big infrastructure investments needed to be made, we had just given them hundreds of billions of dollars! Their abuse of the landline market financed their capture of the wireless market. How could anyone else compete with that? More to the point, who would be stupid enough to try, after getting their asses kicked on the wired side, in direct violation of the 1996 Act? The problem with treating changed circumstances as some sort of extenuation for all the broken promises and unenforced laws, is that the changed circumstances were intentionally engineered by Ma Bell, regardless of the lies they told. Fool us a dozen times, shame on us.

droopybuns 9y ago

I don’t want the governments monitoring our internet access any more than they already are.

learc83 9y ago
There's a difference between "the government"--the federal government--and thousands of local municipalities. If anything, having thousands of small ISPs would make it harder for the feds to spy on everyone.