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I would pay _good money_ for my paid privately-provided services to be as reliable as my utilities, but despite the hallowed "powers of markets" I don't even ha

I would pay _good money_ for my paid privately-provided services to be as reliable as my utilities, but despite the hallowed "powers of markets" I don't even have this option. (>90% of my last 10 years of housing has had no option outside of Comcast, at laughably low speeds) On top of this: I can't remember the last time I had to call my water/gas/electric providers threatening to cancel service unless they undid a stealth rate raise. I can't remember the last time I had a major utility outage that lasted multiple months while the provider tried to justify that it wasn't their fault, leaving me without the service I was paying for. I can't remember the last time I found out a utility provider was throttling/filtering/negatively impacting my service in unexpected fashion. (Parallel to p2p throttling, throughput caps, ad injection, sudden limitations to tethering on my phone) While there are many fair arguments to be made against imposing municipal ownership, comparing it to our current state of internet infrastructure is laughable. As you say, other countries seem to manage much better than we do at utilities. So why not address these issues rather than demonizing what may still be an incremental improvement to the even worse situation present in our communication providers? (for the record, I see the same very vague meta-problem of misaligned incentives and low accountability as the root to both utility degradation and ISP misbehavior)

rayiner 9y ago
Customer service is not the only consideration. Anne Arundel County, where I live, has exemplary customer service. But at the end of the day, its water and sewer rates are too low to fund necessary infrastructure, and the net result is that untreated sewage gets dumped into the Chesapeake Bay after major rainstorms. Such problems, and related problems like failure to replace aging lead pipes, are a problem all over the country. Same thing for transit and roads, which are also uniformly abysmal.
- existencebox 9y ago
  Small world; most of my ISP complaints come from just north of you in Baltimore. Although I think it's unfair to call the numerous problems of monopolistic ISPs "customer service" alone (service interruption, quality?) we certainly had our fair share of main breaks, probably once every few months/years you would see a fountain up through some major intersection, so I'll give you that. But they were fixed. Rapidly, and often motivated political will for higher investment, although unfortunately that never seemed to cross over past "reactionary" to "planning ahead." Meanwhile. when Comcast has an exclusive agreement with an apartment complex, and their connections in a leaky electrical box are so corroded that 20%+ packet loss was the norm, there was effectively 0 avenue for improvement. However, you've summarized the problem well for infra: There's simply a lack of funding/costs are not being accounted for. To my mind that's a MUCH simpler problem than convincing a free market to guarantee equivalent service for something that isn't "optional" in modern life, and that might not have effective competitive pressures. (It's not like our internet service market is miles ahead of competing first world countries, even within large cities where America-scale isn't as big a problem)
  - rayiner 9y ago
    > To my mind that's a MUCH simpler problem than convincing a free market to guarantee equivalent service for something that isn't "optional" in modern life, and that might not have effective competitive pressures. I’ve lived in Baltimore, DC, and Annapolis, and at each address I’ve had Verizon FiOS in competition with Comcast. (At my house, both companies offer fiber). Service was good enough where I’d take the duopoly over BGE any day. I think in most places, you can support enough competition (even with the "natural monopoly" tendencies of the market) to outrun poorly-run U.S. municipal governance/regulation. If you live in a reasonably-sized city or suburb and don't have competition, blame the government. (E.g. Baltimore doesn't have FiOS even though 80% of the rest of Maryland does, because the city denied Verizon a franchise.)
    - existencebox 9y ago
      I had always heard a different story about why Verizon wasn't coming to Baltimore, I tried to dig up some articles to read up more but since most of the events were in 2012 it was sparse; what I did find however suggested that not only is "blame the government" not true in this case, "blame the corporation" might, as I couldn't find any references to it being the Baltimore Govt. and not Fios who made the decision in this matter. From a former councilwoman and president of Baltimore Development Corperation:[0] “The City Council had nothing to do with the fact that Verizon FiOS doesn’t exist in Baltimore city,” said Cole. “The city didn’t stand in their way. They made a business decision.” And from Verizon's own communication in response to redlining accusations:[1] Verizon is not deploying FiOS in Baltimore City or in any other new areas in Maryland or across the country at this time because we’re now focused on delivering our FiOS services in those communities where we already have approved cable franchises and where we already have begun to build our FiOS network. [0]https://technical.ly/baltimore/2016/03/03/broadband-got-hearing-city-council-improving-wont-easy/ https://technical.ly/baltimore/2016/03/03/broadband-got-hear... [1]https://baltimorebrew.com/2010/02/28/waiting-for-fios-baltimore-verizon-says-fuhgeddaboutit/ https://baltimorebrew.com/2010/02/28/waiting-for-fios-baltim... As an aside, While BGE had a handful of outages, usually mid-winter, Comcast had it beat for me by a long shot, across 3 different apartments. I unfortunately had Comcast or DSL as the only options. (And CLEAR, which was surprisingly good ~8 years ago for what it was)

rayiner 9y ago

Customer service is not the only consideration. Anne Arundel County, where I live, has exemplary customer service. But at the end of the day, its water and sewer rates are too low to fund necessary infrastructure, and the net result is that untreated sewage gets dumped into the Chesapeake Bay after major rainstorms. Such problems, and related problems like failure to replace aging lead pipes, are a problem all over the country. Same thing for transit and roads, which are also uniformly abysmal.

existencebox 9y ago
Small world; most of my ISP complaints come from just north of you in Baltimore. Although I think it's unfair to call the numerous problems of monopolistic ISPs "customer service" alone (service interruption, quality?) we certainly had our fair share of main breaks, probably once every few months/years you would see a fountain up through some major intersection, so I'll give you that. But they were fixed. Rapidly, and often motivated political will for higher investment, although unfortunately that never seemed to cross over past "reactionary" to "planning ahead." Meanwhile. when Comcast has an exclusive agreement with an apartment complex, and their connections in a leaky electrical box are so corroded that 20%+ packet loss was the norm, there was effectively 0 avenue for improvement. However, you've summarized the problem well for infra: There's simply a lack of funding/costs are not being accounted for. To my mind that's a MUCH simpler problem than convincing a free market to guarantee equivalent service for something that isn't "optional" in modern life, and that might not have effective competitive pressures. (It's not like our internet service market is miles ahead of competing first world countries, even within large cities where America-scale isn't as big a problem)
- rayiner 9y ago
  > To my mind that's a MUCH simpler problem than convincing a free market to guarantee equivalent service for something that isn't "optional" in modern life, and that might not have effective competitive pressures. I’ve lived in Baltimore, DC, and Annapolis, and at each address I’ve had Verizon FiOS in competition with Comcast. (At my house, both companies offer fiber). Service was good enough where I’d take the duopoly over BGE any day. I think in most places, you can support enough competition (even with the "natural monopoly" tendencies of the market) to outrun poorly-run U.S. municipal governance/regulation. If you live in a reasonably-sized city or suburb and don't have competition, blame the government. (E.g. Baltimore doesn't have FiOS even though 80% of the rest of Maryland does, because the city denied Verizon a franchise.)
  - existencebox 9y ago
    I had always heard a different story about why Verizon wasn't coming to Baltimore, I tried to dig up some articles to read up more but since most of the events were in 2012 it was sparse; what I did find however suggested that not only is "blame the government" not true in this case, "blame the corporation" might, as I couldn't find any references to it being the Baltimore Govt. and not Fios who made the decision in this matter. From a former councilwoman and president of Baltimore Development Corperation:[0] “The City Council had nothing to do with the fact that Verizon FiOS doesn’t exist in Baltimore city,” said Cole. “The city didn’t stand in their way. They made a business decision.” And from Verizon's own communication in response to redlining accusations:[1] Verizon is not deploying FiOS in Baltimore City or in any other new areas in Maryland or across the country at this time because we’re now focused on delivering our FiOS services in those communities where we already have approved cable franchises and where we already have begun to build our FiOS network. [0]https://technical.ly/baltimore/2016/03/03/broadband-got-hearing-city-council-improving-wont-easy/ https://technical.ly/baltimore/2016/03/03/broadband-got-hear... [1]https://baltimorebrew.com/2010/02/28/waiting-for-fios-baltimore-verizon-says-fuhgeddaboutit/ https://baltimorebrew.com/2010/02/28/waiting-for-fios-baltim... As an aside, While BGE had a handful of outages, usually mid-winter, Comcast had it beat for me by a long shot, across 3 different apartments. I unfortunately had Comcast or DSL as the only options. (And CLEAR, which was surprisingly good ~8 years ago for what it was)