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There is a lot wrong with internet/general utility regulation in the US, but I think it's mostly the last-mile cable logistics which are preventing competition

There is a lot wrong with internet/general utility regulation in the US, but I think it's mostly the last-mile cable logistics which are preventing competition in heavily populated areas, and that results in localized monopolies or duopolies. This piece addresses the philosophy of the potential issues better than some, but this net neutrality hysteria in general seems to me like a lot of well intentioned folks are trying to solve a problem which does not exist, despite having had decades to develop (while the associated technology is still rapidly transforming, the Internet is no longer such an immature, radical new thing). Adding controversial regulations to the most innovative technology sector in the US to solve a problem which might develop (and could in all likelihood be undone very quickly and without significant infrastructure changes, were this to begin to develop into a problem) seems ridiculous to me. I imagine there are many better trees to bark up. But to entertain the idea, of the three final 'key principles' the author lists, the first two are reasonable and unlikely to break things (if it was possible for Congress to write a one-page bill that contains only the language necessary to implement these rules, and nothing else). The third one is a slap in the face of innovation and new services in my eyes, although the author acknowledges it may be extreme. The only sweeping public policy that I could support to address a problem in this space would be for one which already DOES exist: the lack of competition in the ISP space for the last mile. A possible public solution could include cities implementing a basic cabling system that cover all residences in urban areas (independent from any other private cables, which would likely be superior) that any ISP can connect to and serve via a city hub (much closer to the backbone, with an access point being outside the urban area, allowing many competitors to build infrastructure around it).

pitaj 8y ago
A lot of people look at ISPs and call them a natural monopoly because if they weren't, we would have redundant last mile infrastructure. Who cares if last mile infrastructure is redundant? Redundancy is good most other places, and having more than one fiber line running past my house doesn't sound like a bad thing at all. Even if it was definitively inefficient, it would still be better for consumers than any monopoly on such infrastructure, regulated or not. People need to just let ISPs run whatever cables they want wherever they want, whether that be attaching them to overhead power lines or under ground. We should have competition at every stage of the internet, from backbone to search engines to last mile connectivity. Much like the debate around affordable housing, the answer is to "let them build!" There are companies like Google/Alphabet willing to build out infrastructure if only they were allowed.
- pessimizer 8y ago
  > it would still be better for consumers than any monopoly on such infrastructure, regulated or not. This is the case to be made, and I don't see where you're making it here. You're just assuming it to be true, then repeating it. The question is: why would the waste caused by the inefficiency be less costly than regulation? Or: why would regulation be necessarily less effective for customers than arbitrary redundancy at every level? Or come up with another question, and answer it. "Unregulated competition is better than regulated monopoly" is just a religion.
- lend000 8y ago
  > There are companies like Google/Alphabet willing to build out infrastructure if only they were allowed. This is true, and I agree that enabling infrastructure development is an important aspect. > any monopoly on such infrastructure, regulated or not. I would never propose that the state monopolizes any aspect of the infrastructure, but rather that it offers an alternative while also enabling private infrastructure development (which as I mentioned, would likely have the most advanced infrastructure). I think there is a case to be made that the externalities of multi-layered private cabling in densely populated areas are sufficiently prohibitive to warrant a public alternative.
- hristov 8y ago
  That is unlikely to happen. People in america value their property, and I doubt people would be happy if everyone was allowed to dig under your house or back yard or property. Access rules could be tweaked but any way you look at it connecting every residence in the US with wires is very slow and expensive process and it basically fits the definition of natural monopoly.
  - matwood 8y ago
    > People in america value their property, and I doubt people would be happy if everyone was allowed to dig under your house or back yard or property. Easements already exist for this purpose.
- bedhead 8y ago
droopybuns 8y ago
There are a lot of unskilled workers who could get gainful employment if local governments have tax waivers to companies who dig trenches and run cable for the purpose of delivering last line competition. Digging trechnes is expensive, boring and critical path for kickstarting diversity of ISP competition.
- wmf 8y ago
  Please don't dig up my yard N times; one Internet is all I can handle.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
jon_richards 8y ago
> trying to solve a problem which does not exist There are multiple instances of internet service providers blocking VOIP in order to promote their telephone services, among other violations of net neutrality. They mostly got shut down by the FCC, until the FCC was sued claiming they didn't have the power to do this as internet wasn't title 2. Basically the problem didn't exist only because it was regulated against. Now it is no longer regulated against.
- TheGRS 8y ago
  Even before Net Neutrality became policy there were shenanigans happening with ISPs throttling the biggest service in terms of broadband usage: Netflix. And Netflix opted to pay instead of battling it at the time.
  - bkor 8y ago
    > And Netflix opted to pay instead of battling it at the time. Netflix didn't just pay. They battled it for a huge amount of time.
hristov 8y ago
Yet another false argument against net neutrality. The problem that net neutrality seeks to address is certainly well understood, it already exists in many places around the world and the only reason it does not quite exist yet in the US is because we had net neutrality rules active until recently. It will take a while for cable and telecom companies to take advantage of the lack of net neutrality, but I am sure they are already considering it. The only thing keeping them back nowadays, is the obvious weakness of the current administration and the uncertainty as to what the next administration will bring. So the reason the "problem does not exist" is because the problem behavior has been banned until recently and may be banned again soon. You may as well say "why ban slavery, it is clearly a problem that does not exist in the US, therefore the thirteenth amendment is useless." Your later argument is a clever misdirection. "Let us all instead of arguing for this problematic net neutrality argue for something else that sounds better on the face of it, but is unlikely to ever happen." Sure I would prefer it if there was more competition at the local level, most people that are not connected to the telecom industry would. But that would be so incredibly expensive that it is unlikely to ever happen. Best case scenario it may happen in 20 years if we are lucky. And if you smother our internet industry in a monopoly for 20 years, it is unlikely to ever recover. But hey, if we get real competition for local internet access, I am very much willing to give up net neutrality. But meanwhile, for those 20 or more years, while we are waiting for that competition to emerge, we must have net neutrality.
- throwaway111122 8y ago
  "the only reason it does not quite exist yet in the US is because we had net neutrality rules active until recently" Net neutrality regulations were not created in the US until 2014. It is ignorant to think these stopped companies before 2014.
  - bkor 8y ago
    > Net neutrality regulations were not created in the US until 2014. It is ignorant to think these stopped companies before 2014. Such regulations were in place before that. Companies started questioning the authority which resulted in new laws needing to be made. Saying the law is recent, unneeded, etc has been mentioned and refuted many times in previous discussions.
wpietri 8y ago
> a problem which does not exist The problem doesn't exist yet because a) the spirit of the early Internet is one of academic collaboration, b) early ISPs did not have much market power and could grow rapidly without squeezing their customers, c) existing telcos were bound by common carrier laws, and d) there has been substantial pushback from citizens, companies, and politicians during previous attempts to overturn the status quo. This is the sort of excuse that was used in the run-up to the 2008 crash. Sometimes things are fine until they aren't. > could in all likelihood be undone very quickly Oh, really? There's some reason to think the US government would quickly act to reduce the income of large corporations by billions? Perhaps you can give an example of previous legislation that you think demonstrates your case? > competition in the ISP space for the last mile I am entirely in favor of this, but I believe it's in practice unachievable. I happen to be in one of the few places where I get competitive access. It's great! But for most places in the US, that ship sailed 15 years ago. Existing telcos have been very good at extinguishing competition and preventing significant new rivals from emerging. Markets can be very good regulators. But when there is no market, regulation is a reasonable and necessary alternative.
- ghaff 8y ago
  Or people just live in places where no one wants to run broadband. Which is probably fine; they can get satellite as a last resort. Last mile is an issue but I'm not sure there's a fix outside of a major program.
  - wpietri 8y ago
    Some people live in places where nobody wants to run broadband. About 10-20% depending on how you measure: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/06/50-million-us-homes-have-only-one-25mbps-internet-provider-or-none-at-all/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/06/50-mi... Most people live in areas where people do want to run broadband. But they still don't have a competitive market; only 5% of people have at least 3 options, which is the point at which you get real competition.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
s73v3r_ 8y ago
"but this net neutrality hysteria in general seems to me like a lot of well intentioned folks are trying to solve a problem which does not exist" It very much does exist. https://www.freepress.net/our-response/expert-analysis/explainers/net-neutrality-violations-brief-history https://www.freepress.net/our-response/expert-analysis/expla...
vel0city 8y ago
> trying to solve a problem which does not exist, despite having had decades to develop It hasn't developed because the FCC has previously been actively trying to prevent it from happening, resulting in a few different policy statements, rules, and court cases. We've had some level of net neutrality rules on the books for over a decade. It wasn't until recently they were removed. You're ignoring history by making this claim. http://www.techlawjournal.com/topstories/2005/20050805.asp http://www.techlawjournal.com/topstories/2005/20050805.asp https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/FCC-05-151A1.pdf https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/FCC-05-151A1.pdf
PaulHoule 8y ago
One reason the threat of net anti-neutrality hasn't materialized since then because Cisco and similar vendors could not ship hardware that would let carriers implement it. That's what "Software Defined Networking" is for; it is pure evil in an open source wrapper, why else would telecoms be contributing to it?

pitaj 8y ago

A lot of people look at ISPs and call them a natural monopoly because if they weren't, we would have redundant last mile infrastructure. Who cares if last mile infrastructure is redundant? Redundancy is good most other places, and having more than one fiber line running past my house doesn't sound like a bad thing at all. Even if it was definitively inefficient, it would still be better for consumers than any monopoly on such infrastructure, regulated or not. People need to just let ISPs run whatever cables they want wherever they want, whether that be attaching them to overhead power lines or under ground. We should have competition at every stage of the internet, from backbone to search engines to last mile connectivity. Much like the debate around affordable housing, the answer is to "let them build!" There are companies like Google/Alphabet willing to build out infrastructure if only they were allowed.

pessimizer 8y ago
> it would still be better for consumers than any monopoly on such infrastructure, regulated or not. This is the case to be made, and I don't see where you're making it here. You're just assuming it to be true, then repeating it. The question is: why would the waste caused by the inefficiency be less costly than regulation? Or: why would regulation be necessarily less effective for customers than arbitrary redundancy at every level? Or come up with another question, and answer it. "Unregulated competition is better than regulated monopoly" is just a religion.
lend000 8y ago
> There are companies like Google/Alphabet willing to build out infrastructure if only they were allowed. This is true, and I agree that enabling infrastructure development is an important aspect. > any monopoly on such infrastructure, regulated or not. I would never propose that the state monopolizes any aspect of the infrastructure, but rather that it offers an alternative while also enabling private infrastructure development (which as I mentioned, would likely have the most advanced infrastructure). I think there is a case to be made that the externalities of multi-layered private cabling in densely populated areas are sufficiently prohibitive to warrant a public alternative.
hristov 8y ago
That is unlikely to happen. People in america value their property, and I doubt people would be happy if everyone was allowed to dig under your house or back yard or property. Access rules could be tweaked but any way you look at it connecting every residence in the US with wires is very slow and expensive process and it basically fits the definition of natural monopoly.
- matwood 8y ago
  > People in america value their property, and I doubt people would be happy if everyone was allowed to dig under your house or back yard or property. Easements already exist for this purpose.
bedhead 8y ago

droopybuns 8y ago

There are a lot of unskilled workers who could get gainful employment if local governments have tax waivers to companies who dig trenches and run cable for the purpose of delivering last line competition. Digging trechnes is expensive, boring and critical path for kickstarting diversity of ISP competition.

wmf 8y ago
Please don't dig up my yard N times; one Internet is all I can handle.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

jon_richards 8y ago

> trying to solve a problem which does not exist There are multiple instances of internet service providers blocking VOIP in order to promote their telephone services, among other violations of net neutrality. They mostly got shut down by the FCC, until the FCC was sued claiming they didn't have the power to do this as internet wasn't title 2. Basically the problem didn't exist only because it was regulated against. Now it is no longer regulated against.

TheGRS 8y ago
Even before Net Neutrality became policy there were shenanigans happening with ISPs throttling the biggest service in terms of broadband usage: Netflix. And Netflix opted to pay instead of battling it at the time.
- bkor 8y ago
  > And Netflix opted to pay instead of battling it at the time. Netflix didn't just pay. They battled it for a huge amount of time.

hristov 8y ago

Yet another false argument against net neutrality. The problem that net neutrality seeks to address is certainly well understood, it already exists in many places around the world and the only reason it does not quite exist yet in the US is because we had net neutrality rules active until recently. It will take a while for cable and telecom companies to take advantage of the lack of net neutrality, but I am sure they are already considering it. The only thing keeping them back nowadays, is the obvious weakness of the current administration and the uncertainty as to what the next administration will bring. So the reason the "problem does not exist" is because the problem behavior has been banned until recently and may be banned again soon. You may as well say "why ban slavery, it is clearly a problem that does not exist in the US, therefore the thirteenth amendment is useless." Your later argument is a clever misdirection. "Let us all instead of arguing for this problematic net neutrality argue for something else that sounds better on the face of it, but is unlikely to ever happen." Sure I would prefer it if there was more competition at the local level, most people that are not connected to the telecom industry would. But that would be so incredibly expensive that it is unlikely to ever happen. Best case scenario it may happen in 20 years if we are lucky. And if you smother our internet industry in a monopoly for 20 years, it is unlikely to ever recover. But hey, if we get real competition for local internet access, I am very much willing to give up net neutrality. But meanwhile, for those 20 or more years, while we are waiting for that competition to emerge, we must have net neutrality.

throwaway111122 8y ago
"the only reason it does not quite exist yet in the US is because we had net neutrality rules active until recently" Net neutrality regulations were not created in the US until 2014. It is ignorant to think these stopped companies before 2014.
- bkor 8y ago
  > Net neutrality regulations were not created in the US until 2014. It is ignorant to think these stopped companies before 2014. Such regulations were in place before that. Companies started questioning the authority which resulted in new laws needing to be made. Saying the law is recent, unneeded, etc has been mentioned and refuted many times in previous discussions.

wpietri 8y ago

> a problem which does not exist The problem doesn't exist yet because a) the spirit of the early Internet is one of academic collaboration, b) early ISPs did not have much market power and could grow rapidly without squeezing their customers, c) existing telcos were bound by common carrier laws, and d) there has been substantial pushback from citizens, companies, and politicians during previous attempts to overturn the status quo. This is the sort of excuse that was used in the run-up to the 2008 crash. Sometimes things are fine until they aren't. > could in all likelihood be undone very quickly Oh, really? There's some reason to think the US government would quickly act to reduce the income of large corporations by billions? Perhaps you can give an example of previous legislation that you think demonstrates your case? > competition in the ISP space for the last mile I am entirely in favor of this, but I believe it's in practice unachievable. I happen to be in one of the few places where I get competitive access. It's great! But for most places in the US, that ship sailed 15 years ago. Existing telcos have been very good at extinguishing competition and preventing significant new rivals from emerging. Markets can be very good regulators. But when there is no market, regulation is a reasonable and necessary alternative.

ghaff 8y ago
Or people just live in places where no one wants to run broadband. Which is probably fine; they can get satellite as a last resort. Last mile is an issue but I'm not sure there's a fix outside of a major program.
- wpietri 8y ago
  Some people live in places where nobody wants to run broadband. About 10-20% depending on how you measure: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/06/50-million-us-homes-have-only-one-25mbps-internet-provider-or-none-at-all/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/06/50-mi... Most people live in areas where people do want to run broadband. But they still don't have a competitive market; only 5% of people have at least 3 options, which is the point at which you get real competition.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

s73v3r_ 8y ago

"but this net neutrality hysteria in general seems to me like a lot of well intentioned folks are trying to solve a problem which does not exist" It very much does exist. https://www.freepress.net/our-response/expert-analysis/explainers/net-neutrality-violations-brief-history https://www.freepress.net/our-response/expert-analysis/expla...

vel0city 8y ago

> trying to solve a problem which does not exist, despite having had decades to develop It hasn't developed because the FCC has previously been actively trying to prevent it from happening, resulting in a few different policy statements, rules, and court cases. We've had some level of net neutrality rules on the books for over a decade. It wasn't until recently they were removed. You're ignoring history by making this claim. http://www.techlawjournal.com/topstories/2005/20050805.asp http://www.techlawjournal.com/topstories/2005/20050805.asp https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/FCC-05-151A1.pdf https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/FCC-05-151A1.pdf

PaulHoule 8y ago

One reason the threat of net anti-neutrality hasn't materialized since then because Cisco and similar vendors could not ship hardware that would let carriers implement it. That's what "Software Defined Networking" is for; it is pure evil in an open source wrapper, why else would telecoms be contributing to it?