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Another strategy to this (not exclusive of other strategies) is to encourage municipal ISPs, or even go further and roll out federal ISP infrastructure ala the

Another strategy to this (not exclusive of other strategies) is to encourage municipal ISPs, or even go further and roll out federal ISP infrastructure ala the federal highway system. I've always thought that this would be well within the rubric of the USPS. The constitutional mandate for a postal service was drafted at a time when the internet could not have been conceived of. I would argue that the intent of the constitutional mandate was to establish communications and not necessarily paper mail per se. I think if the founders were alive today they would say that ISPs were the sort of thing that was intended. I.e., have the USPS start acting as an ISP, and charging for it like it would mail services. I'm not saying that private ISPs should go away, just that I'm sick of this government handout to companies that want to have their cake and eat it too. No net neutrality? Fine. But then allow public ISPs--no, actively fund public ISP infrastructure--and allow for unfettered lawsuits against private ISPs for content going over their pipes. Also, take away right of way to private ISPs, and let citizens and municipalities charge arbitrary amounts for anything going over their property.

snowwrestler 8y ago
The next step beyond the mail was the telegraph and then the telephone. Those were built out by private companies, but operated under a regulatory regime called "common carrier," which protected the network owner from liability so long as it charged and carried traffic from all parties equally. These days, that concept is called "net neutrality" in the context of the Internet, and I suppose you may have heard it mentioned in the news recently once or twice. (I think it was a mistake to rename common carrier, but too late I guess.) Personally, I think that private buildouts are a better way to go than a government-funded network infrastructure. Private industry is better at investment and product development than the government, and any enterprise that generates a profit contributes to the long-term economic sustainability of innovation. A government-run economy becomes starved for capital and innovation slows way down; that is why the Soviet Union lagged U.S. technology and why Cubans still drive 50-year-old cars. But privately run networks need regulation to deliver the results that citizens want. Railroads needed it, telephone companies needed it, airlines needed it, and yes, ISPs need it. And if that is thwarted, then sure, let municipalities take a swing at it. My town is looking into muni fiber now, and I'm in favor of it because the local service from Comcast is so bad and so expensive and there seems to be no other way to do something about it.
- lovich 8y ago
  Cubans drive 50 year old cars because their closest neighbor, who is also a superpower, has been enforcing sanctions on them for decades. It's disenguous to try and measure how a system works then another party is putting their foot on the scale. As for private buildouts being better than government funded infrastructure, that is only true as long as profit is your single measure of "better". When it comes to services that we don't want any downtime for and want everyone to have access to, then government funded infrastructure has done better than capitalist forces. Water and electricity are both services we want everyone to have access to that as uninterrupted as possible. It's still not perfect as situations like Flint or industrial water usage in California pulling out water without paying enough to be sustsinable, but a capitalist system for those services would lead to many not being able to pay enough for access and going without as well as interruptions in service as companies push their systems to the bone for efficiency or go out of business
  - at-fates-hands 8y ago
    >> Cubans drive 50 year old cars because their closest neighbor, who is also a superpower, has been enforcing sanctions on them for decades. It's disenguous to try and measure how a system works then another party is putting their foot on the scale. There are a myriad of reasons for the embargo on Cuba. Let's not sugar coat this fact just to use it as an example of "American imperialism". The reason they drive classic cars has nothing to do with the embargo: After Fidel Castro assumed power in 1959, he imposed a new law that prevented anyone without government permission from importing foreign automobiles. That turned Cuba into a car museum in the making, sealing the island off from the automotive future. http://time.com/money/3640018/cuba-classic-cars/ http://time.com/money/3640018/cuba-classic-cars/ You should also keep in mind it was possible to get a new car imported, but you needed government permission to do so. This meant only the rich, celebrities and professional athletes were allowed to do so, keeping the majority of the population fending for themselves to keep their old decaying cars alive and working.
- 086421357909764 8y ago
  The even shittier thing is, assuming your muni get the efforts going, it's not uncommon for comcast to all of a sudden have a competing product at a cheaper rate. Where the didn't have bandwidth they suddenly can support the increased rates due to competition. It's just nuts.
cwp 8y ago
> Also, take away right of way to private ISPs, and let citizens and municipalities charge arbitrary amounts for anything going over their property. That would make private ISPs go away.
- spruciefic399 8y ago
  Perhaps. I'd prefer it not to--I'd rather have an ecosystem with private and public competition, and one with net neutrality regulation. But it seems to me the discussion is generally really lopsided, with little to no acknowledgment of what ISPs get from the public. If the ISPs really want unfettered competition, then I say fine--but I think, as you say, if we really took competition seriously the consequences would be far more dire for them than I think people realize. The problem is the scope of what real competition would entail is often obscured, because what they get from the public is just sort of assumed to be a given and off the table.
  - cwp 8y ago
    Agreed, we do give a lot to private companies in order to get the benefits of their products, and they're constantly pushing for more. I just feel that the internet as a utility is still too new for us to know exactly what the right regulator regime is or the optimal role of government in actually providing internet services. Ideally regulation would be more reactive than proactive. Rather than defining explicitly the terms and services that ISPs must provide, we'd let them compete with each other and try different products and business models. The government would only step in when they do something that turns out to be harmful. The trick would be to actually step in where needed and not just let anything go.
  - cf498 8y ago
    Private public doesnt work, its even worse then a market economy. Only public providers will bring internet to people further and further away from main cities, while private companies will focus on the densest areas of the biggest cities. We have all of that in Germany already. It doesnt work, laying fiberglass or even copper outside of major cities is just not a reasonable thing to do in a market economy. Same as its not worth while to send a postmen every day, or even every week, to a small village. This is something that needs to be financed through a shared burden, otherwise you have the situation, that large part of your country dont have DSL yet. With private companies siphoning of easily provided customers, the public is stuck with a gigantic burden to provide the absolut minimum to people.
AtlasBarfed 8y ago
This could be done even at a block association level with 5G/wifi or maybe even 4G. 4G/5G/Wifi is critical to undermining the incumbent ISPs. Urban and heavy to medium suburban rollout could be rapid. Perhaps google should buy T-Mobile to get access to cell towers as a start... take the licenses from Nextel/Sprint for ISP-level data delivery, and keep T-Mobile for regular coverage. Of course, I haven't tracked the status of T-Mobile / Nextel / Sprint's spectrum rights in a long time. But google or a consortium could provide turnkey solutions to doing block / neighborhood / community / village / city wireless ISP that actually works. And provide the legal backing when the prolific army of telecom lawyers come knocking to shake down smaller operations. Or balloons. Weren't there supposed to be balloons?
- VectorLock 8y ago
  I'm not sure if Google wants to get in on that game. They might now that net neutrality is a thing of the past. From what I understand their few entries into spectrum bidding were mostly to get the incumbents to up their bids.
Someone1234 8y ago
A better approach might be a government managed last mile (i.e. cable from a central data center to your home/business), but not the ISP itself. That way ISPs can continue to compete for your business, but the market would be significantly less restrictive because the ISP only needs physical equipment at the data center and upstream of it. The biggest thing stopping ISP competition today is that local markets don't want the road dug up ten times to lay different cables. So instead lay them a single time, and re-sell access. The ISPs would pay a fee to use the government cables from the data center to the end user (and equipment). That fee would be used to expand and maintain the network. Other countries have done this with huge success. It wouldn't even put ISPs out of business, they can use this network just like their competitors.
- tbyehl 8y ago
  Seems the logical way to go, but Provo, UT tried that and it became so politically toxic that the city wound up giving the network away to Google and swallowing the debt. If you look at EPB being forced to pull out of neighboring areas and the actions of other states to prevent muni / utility Internet projects, it's pretty clear that America doesn't want to solve the last mile problem unless it involves preserving the incumbent's market position.
- mikedilger 8y ago
  New Zealand does this. It works well. There is plenty of ISP competition - I can choose between at least 20 providers, probably a lot more. Edit: A colleague just mentioned to me that New Zealand doesn't have net neutrality and doesn't need it for this very reason.
  - ksec 8y ago
    I tried reading this in Wiki and it wasn't very clear. Are the last mile fibre? Do government owns it or are they like infrastructure owned by companies like electricity and water where there are requirement for them to open up? Do ISP only manage the fibre connection from Node / Curb? Who owns this Node / Curb? Are there any single major companies that owns the backbone? And Submarine cables?
WillPostForFood 8y ago
* I'm sick of this government handout to companies that want to have their cake and eat it too* So you're advocating a federal subsidy so Google (4x the market cap of AT&T) and Netflix don't have to deal with the problem themselves? It is like fighting corporate welfare for big companies with even bigger corporate welfare for even bigger corporations.
rayiner 8y ago
This (1) would not happen; (2) would be awful. Utilities and infrastructure are state and local issues. The states and cities that would build public broadband infrastructure are in dire financial straits and can't afford it. You invoke "government handouts," but for decades the government has been loathe to get into the business of building broadband. All the "handouts" you hear about are intra-industry transfer payments: a special tax is levied on telecom service in urban areas to subsidize telecom service in rural areas. It doesn't cost the government anything, it just moves money from mostly urban ISPs to mostly rural ISPs. Even if there was the money for it, you wouldn't want it. Public Internet in the U.S. does not look like "fiber for everyone." Instead, it would be 25 mbps DSL for everyone. It would be that way for the same reason we build six-lane highways to far-flung exurbs while public transit in urban areas decays, and why we continue to use lead-piped water systems in order to keep water rates extremely low. Our political situation tilts things heavily toward favoring coverage over quality. Over the last 10 years, my private-sector broadband speeds have gotten 10 times faster, even as bandwidth usage exploded. But my public-sector subway ride has gotten slower (and more jerky when they turned off automation), even as ridership went down. It seems absolutely insane to me that anyone would want to put the people responsible for the latter in charge of the former.
jaredklewis 8y ago
> I would argue that the intent of the constitutional mandate was to establish communications and not necessarily paper mail per se. A minor point, but if the federal government wanted to run an ISP (inside or outside of the USPS), they don't need anything new in the constitution to do it. If the Interstate Commerce Clause can be used as justification to create the departments of Agriculture, Education, Energy, Health/Human Services, Housing/Urban Development, Labor, and Transportation [1] as well as the FBI and just about everything else, I can see no reason why it couldn't be used to create a national ISP. As to whether it would be a good idea, I don't have a strong opinion. 1. Some might argue the Department of Transporation is justified under article I, section 8, paragraph 7 (not paragraph 3), though I don't think either theory has ever been tested

snowwrestler 8y ago

The next step beyond the mail was the telegraph and then the telephone. Those were built out by private companies, but operated under a regulatory regime called "common carrier," which protected the network owner from liability so long as it charged and carried traffic from all parties equally. These days, that concept is called "net neutrality" in the context of the Internet, and I suppose you may have heard it mentioned in the news recently once or twice. (I think it was a mistake to rename common carrier, but too late I guess.) Personally, I think that private buildouts are a better way to go than a government-funded network infrastructure. Private industry is better at investment and product development than the government, and any enterprise that generates a profit contributes to the long-term economic sustainability of innovation. A government-run economy becomes starved for capital and innovation slows way down; that is why the Soviet Union lagged U.S. technology and why Cubans still drive 50-year-old cars. But privately run networks need regulation to deliver the results that citizens want. Railroads needed it, telephone companies needed it, airlines needed it, and yes, ISPs need it. And if that is thwarted, then sure, let municipalities take a swing at it. My town is looking into muni fiber now, and I'm in favor of it because the local service from Comcast is so bad and so expensive and there seems to be no other way to do something about it.

lovich 8y ago
Cubans drive 50 year old cars because their closest neighbor, who is also a superpower, has been enforcing sanctions on them for decades. It's disenguous to try and measure how a system works then another party is putting their foot on the scale. As for private buildouts being better than government funded infrastructure, that is only true as long as profit is your single measure of "better". When it comes to services that we don't want any downtime for and want everyone to have access to, then government funded infrastructure has done better than capitalist forces. Water and electricity are both services we want everyone to have access to that as uninterrupted as possible. It's still not perfect as situations like Flint or industrial water usage in California pulling out water without paying enough to be sustsinable, but a capitalist system for those services would lead to many not being able to pay enough for access and going without as well as interruptions in service as companies push their systems to the bone for efficiency or go out of business
- at-fates-hands 8y ago
  >> Cubans drive 50 year old cars because their closest neighbor, who is also a superpower, has been enforcing sanctions on them for decades. It's disenguous to try and measure how a system works then another party is putting their foot on the scale. There are a myriad of reasons for the embargo on Cuba. Let's not sugar coat this fact just to use it as an example of "American imperialism". The reason they drive classic cars has nothing to do with the embargo: After Fidel Castro assumed power in 1959, he imposed a new law that prevented anyone without government permission from importing foreign automobiles. That turned Cuba into a car museum in the making, sealing the island off from the automotive future. http://time.com/money/3640018/cuba-classic-cars/ http://time.com/money/3640018/cuba-classic-cars/ You should also keep in mind it was possible to get a new car imported, but you needed government permission to do so. This meant only the rich, celebrities and professional athletes were allowed to do so, keeping the majority of the population fending for themselves to keep their old decaying cars alive and working.
086421357909764 8y ago
The even shittier thing is, assuming your muni get the efforts going, it's not uncommon for comcast to all of a sudden have a competing product at a cheaper rate. Where the didn't have bandwidth they suddenly can support the increased rates due to competition. It's just nuts.

cwp 8y ago

> Also, take away right of way to private ISPs, and let citizens and municipalities charge arbitrary amounts for anything going over their property. That would make private ISPs go away.

spruciefic399 8y ago
Perhaps. I'd prefer it not to--I'd rather have an ecosystem with private and public competition, and one with net neutrality regulation. But it seems to me the discussion is generally really lopsided, with little to no acknowledgment of what ISPs get from the public. If the ISPs really want unfettered competition, then I say fine--but I think, as you say, if we really took competition seriously the consequences would be far more dire for them than I think people realize. The problem is the scope of what real competition would entail is often obscured, because what they get from the public is just sort of assumed to be a given and off the table.
- cwp 8y ago
  Agreed, we do give a lot to private companies in order to get the benefits of their products, and they're constantly pushing for more. I just feel that the internet as a utility is still too new for us to know exactly what the right regulator regime is or the optimal role of government in actually providing internet services. Ideally regulation would be more reactive than proactive. Rather than defining explicitly the terms and services that ISPs must provide, we'd let them compete with each other and try different products and business models. The government would only step in when they do something that turns out to be harmful. The trick would be to actually step in where needed and not just let anything go.
- cf498 8y ago
  Private public doesnt work, its even worse then a market economy. Only public providers will bring internet to people further and further away from main cities, while private companies will focus on the densest areas of the biggest cities. We have all of that in Germany already. It doesnt work, laying fiberglass or even copper outside of major cities is just not a reasonable thing to do in a market economy. Same as its not worth while to send a postmen every day, or even every week, to a small village. This is something that needs to be financed through a shared burden, otherwise you have the situation, that large part of your country dont have DSL yet. With private companies siphoning of easily provided customers, the public is stuck with a gigantic burden to provide the absolut minimum to people.

AtlasBarfed 8y ago

This could be done even at a block association level with 5G/wifi or maybe even 4G. 4G/5G/Wifi is critical to undermining the incumbent ISPs. Urban and heavy to medium suburban rollout could be rapid. Perhaps google should buy T-Mobile to get access to cell towers as a start... take the licenses from Nextel/Sprint for ISP-level data delivery, and keep T-Mobile for regular coverage. Of course, I haven't tracked the status of T-Mobile / Nextel / Sprint's spectrum rights in a long time. But google or a consortium could provide turnkey solutions to doing block / neighborhood / community / village / city wireless ISP that actually works. And provide the legal backing when the prolific army of telecom lawyers come knocking to shake down smaller operations. Or balloons. Weren't there supposed to be balloons?

VectorLock 8y ago
I'm not sure if Google wants to get in on that game. They might now that net neutrality is a thing of the past. From what I understand their few entries into spectrum bidding were mostly to get the incumbents to up their bids.

Someone1234 8y ago

A better approach might be a government managed last mile (i.e. cable from a central data center to your home/business), but not the ISP itself. That way ISPs can continue to compete for your business, but the market would be significantly less restrictive because the ISP only needs physical equipment at the data center and upstream of it. The biggest thing stopping ISP competition today is that local markets don't want the road dug up ten times to lay different cables. So instead lay them a single time, and re-sell access. The ISPs would pay a fee to use the government cables from the data center to the end user (and equipment). That fee would be used to expand and maintain the network. Other countries have done this with huge success. It wouldn't even put ISPs out of business, they can use this network just like their competitors.

tbyehl 8y ago
Seems the logical way to go, but Provo, UT tried that and it became so politically toxic that the city wound up giving the network away to Google and swallowing the debt. If you look at EPB being forced to pull out of neighboring areas and the actions of other states to prevent muni / utility Internet projects, it's pretty clear that America doesn't want to solve the last mile problem unless it involves preserving the incumbent's market position.
mikedilger 8y ago
New Zealand does this. It works well. There is plenty of ISP competition - I can choose between at least 20 providers, probably a lot more. Edit: A colleague just mentioned to me that New Zealand doesn't have net neutrality and doesn't need it for this very reason.
- ksec 8y ago
  I tried reading this in Wiki and it wasn't very clear. Are the last mile fibre? Do government owns it or are they like infrastructure owned by companies like electricity and water where there are requirement for them to open up? Do ISP only manage the fibre connection from Node / Curb? Who owns this Node / Curb? Are there any single major companies that owns the backbone? And Submarine cables?

WillPostForFood 8y ago

* I'm sick of this government handout to companies that want to have their cake and eat it too* So you're advocating a federal subsidy so Google (4x the market cap of AT&T) and Netflix don't have to deal with the problem themselves? It is like fighting corporate welfare for big companies with even bigger corporate welfare for even bigger corporations.

rayiner 8y ago

This (1) would not happen; (2) would be awful. Utilities and infrastructure are state and local issues. The states and cities that would build public broadband infrastructure are in dire financial straits and can't afford it. You invoke "government handouts," but for decades the government has been loathe to get into the business of building broadband. All the "handouts" you hear about are intra-industry transfer payments: a special tax is levied on telecom service in urban areas to subsidize telecom service in rural areas. It doesn't cost the government anything, it just moves money from mostly urban ISPs to mostly rural ISPs. Even if there was the money for it, you wouldn't want it. Public Internet in the U.S. does not look like "fiber for everyone." Instead, it would be 25 mbps DSL for everyone. It would be that way for the same reason we build six-lane highways to far-flung exurbs while public transit in urban areas decays, and why we continue to use lead-piped water systems in order to keep water rates extremely low. Our political situation tilts things heavily toward favoring coverage over quality. Over the last 10 years, my private-sector broadband speeds have gotten 10 times faster, even as bandwidth usage exploded. But my public-sector subway ride has gotten slower (and more jerky when they turned off automation), even as ridership went down. It seems absolutely insane to me that anyone would want to put the people responsible for the latter in charge of the former.

jaredklewis 8y ago

> I would argue that the intent of the constitutional mandate was to establish communications and not necessarily paper mail per se. A minor point, but if the federal government wanted to run an ISP (inside or outside of the USPS), they don't need anything new in the constitution to do it. If the Interstate Commerce Clause can be used as justification to create the departments of Agriculture, Education, Energy, Health/Human Services, Housing/Urban Development, Labor, and Transportation [1] as well as the FBI and just about everything else, I can see no reason why it couldn't be used to create a national ISP. As to whether it would be a good idea, I don't have a strong opinion. 1. Some might argue the Department of Transporation is justified under article I, section 8, paragraph 7 (not paragraph 3), though I don't think either theory has ever been tested