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> Here in Maryland, our Comcast/Verizon duopoly is working pretty well. 60% of households have access to fiber. Only 2 providers, especially in a heavily urban

> Here in Maryland, our Comcast/Verizon duopoly is working pretty well. 60% of households have access to fiber. Only 2 providers, especially in a heavily urbanized area, is not that many. How do your rates compare to other countries? > our other government run services are so much worse? Surely the answer is to improve the quality of government run services then, instead of accepting that the US is somehow intrinsically bad at providing them. In many cases, it's also a self-fulfilling prophecy: government services suck, so let's underfund/have low expectations of them, now they really do suck. For many functions government services are the only game in town, so it's in everyone's interest to have them be as efficient as possible.

komali2 8y ago
Remarkable that this is being downvoted. It's a great illustration of the strong vs weak government debates. What did jogjayr say that people find not contribute to the discussion? I believe they are right on point - why not make our government better? You can say it is inefficient and still want to make it better. Other governments somehow do a good job, as we can see with public infrastructure in Germany et al. Is it really a reasonable perspective to say "the US government has failed in the past, therefore it will always fail?" I don't think it is reasonable to make a claim like that in a country where "government" is a word that refers to a federal executive branch that refreshes every 4-8 years, two houses of federal legislative branches that cycle every 2 years, a federal judicial branch, a state level executive, legislative, and judicial branch, a county level judicial branch, a city level executive and legislative branch, and then elected bureaucratic offices at an even more granular local level. To me, it seems obvious that these positions could be filled with competent people, they certainly have been in the past and they can be in the future. There is no "government" homogeneous entity in America and thus there's no way to unequivocally say "the guvmint of the USA is bad at infrastructure."
- rayiner 8y ago
  > What did jogjayr say that people find not contribute to the discussion? I believe they are right on point - why not make our government better? It’s not a helpful point. The government (at least in a democracy) is a reflection of the people and their culture. Even to put it charitably, we’re a culture that puts many other things ahead of infrastructure. In France to build a train line, the government does a study, passes a law that preempts all other laws, and then the thing gets built. Here, any project is tied up in years of litigation before it can move forward. Why is our metro service so bad? The WMATA union is completely broken. They had track inspectors falsify reports. Management fired them, the union sued, and they were hired back. But you can’t take on the WMATA union because then you’re a capitalist pig and now you’re mired in a larger national debate about unions versus right-to-work. Or compare how Stockholm did fiber deployment. The municipal entity built out over more than a decade, wiring up profitable neighborhoods first in a demand driven way. Here, if you tried that it would explode in a shit show about “digital redlining.” (Which is not to minimize that problem—just pointing out that the legacy of actual redlining in America makes it politically impossible for us to adopt a policy that worked very well in Sweden.) You can’t fix all that. And if you can’t fix it, there is a good reason to keep the government away from markets that are at least kinda working.
  - komali2 8y ago
    >You can’t fix all that. And if you can’t fix it, there is a good reason to keep the government away from markets that are at least kinda working. Comcast and ATT have as disgusting a history with our infrastructure as the government. Throwing our arms up in the air with "the government can't do it" while simultaneously saying "oh well I guess trust profit driven companies with our data transmission" doesn't sound at all sustainable to me. "You can't fix all that," so I guess I'll die? I'm not going to roll over and let Comcast have its way with me.
    - rayiner 8y ago
      > Comcast and ATT have as disgusting a history with our infrastructure as the government Except that’s not true, right? Comcast’s top speed has gone from 12-20 mbps in 2008 (last time I had Comcast service in Atlanta) to 1 gbps today. That involved a ton of investment—each new versions of DOCSIS require you to split nodes and move fiber closer to each subscriber to hit the required performance on the analog side. Over that time period, Comcast cable has improved way faster than almost every other aspect of computing besides iPhones. My MacBook from then (2 GHz Core 2 Duo) would still make a pretty serviceable machine. But I’d be pretty salty about a 20 mbps internet connection. (And stuff like Facebook, Gmail, and Google Search arguably have regressed, rather than improved, over that time period.) Over that exact same time period, Metro had to disable driverless train operation, which was built into the system when it opened in the 1970s, because it had let the signaling equipment deteriorate too much for it to be reliable. They had to decrease train spacing from 6 minutes to 8 minutes, and increase the scheduled time between stops because track conditions (and human drivers) didn’t permit maintaining the more aggressive schedule. From my point of view, I’m looking for ways to have Comcast take over Metro, not have WMATA take over my broadband.
      - komali2 8y ago
        I don't measure infrastructure by speed alone. So what they increased broadband speed. The Spaniards brought guns to the native Americans, then shot them. Doesn't make sense as a "thus it is good" argument. https://www.freepress.net/our-response/expert-analysis/explainers/net-neutrality-violations-brief-history https://www.freepress.net/our-response/expert-analysis/expla... Comcast blocked peer to peer. ATT blocked Skype and Google Voice. MetroPCS tried to block everyone but YouTube. Great, you found a time a local government did a stupid. One local government, one instance. I can provide for you a storied history of big Telecom's attempts to wrestle control over a consumer's choices. Again, and again, and again, they try to take from us. We have no say in any of their decisions - we can't even vote with our wallets because they have functional monopolies. At least we can elect our government representatives. At least portions of the government support net neutrality (when literally no Telecom company actually does in practice).
rayiner 8y ago
You have to put the number in context. Maryland’s GDP per capita is 60% higher than France’s. Labor costs make up lion’s share of broadband deployment and maintenance, and those costs are very high here. Gigabit fiber (1000/1000) from Verizon is about $80-90 per month (not a promo rate). With basic TV maybe $110. According to the Internet, the non-promo rate for 1000/300+TV from Orange in France is 48 euros per month, or $54. Equivalent to $90 here in MD. In the UK, Hyperoptic is well regarded. It’s 60 pounds per month after the promo period for gigabit, or $80. That is about the same nominal cost, but in reality less affordable for your average UK person, given that Maryland’s per capita GDP is 50% higher than the UK’s.
- jogjayr 8y ago
  It seems unfair to compare Maryland, a relatively wealthy state, to all of France, a nation with regional economic disparities. The Île-de-France region has a per-capita GDP about $10k higher than Maryland - but the price of internet service isn't correspondingly higher, that I can find.
  - rayiner 8y ago
    Maryland ranges from quite wealthy near DC to quite poor in Baltimore, and very rural in much of the state. (It’s also more populous than Denmark or Norway, which gets compared to France all the time.) This data is a bit old, but it shows the Washington metro area (I think the fairest comparison to Paris) having a 50% higher GDP per capita than the Paris metro area: http://www.demographia.com/db-gdp-metro.pdf http://www.demographia.com/db-gdp-metro.pdf. Paris is comparable in income to second-tier US cities, like Cleveland.
    - selimthegrim 8y ago
      I wonder how the internet was in the banlieues until that guy started Free
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - 8y ago

komali2 8y ago

Remarkable that this is being downvoted. It's a great illustration of the strong vs weak government debates. What did jogjayr say that people find not contribute to the discussion? I believe they are right on point - why not make our government better? You can say it is inefficient and still want to make it better. Other governments somehow do a good job, as we can see with public infrastructure in Germany et al. Is it really a reasonable perspective to say "the US government has failed in the past, therefore it will always fail?" I don't think it is reasonable to make a claim like that in a country where "government" is a word that refers to a federal executive branch that refreshes every 4-8 years, two houses of federal legislative branches that cycle every 2 years, a federal judicial branch, a state level executive, legislative, and judicial branch, a county level judicial branch, a city level executive and legislative branch, and then elected bureaucratic offices at an even more granular local level. To me, it seems obvious that these positions could be filled with competent people, they certainly have been in the past and they can be in the future. There is no "government" homogeneous entity in America and thus there's no way to unequivocally say "the guvmint of the USA is bad at infrastructure."

rayiner 8y ago
> What did jogjayr say that people find not contribute to the discussion? I believe they are right on point - why not make our government better? It’s not a helpful point. The government (at least in a democracy) is a reflection of the people and their culture. Even to put it charitably, we’re a culture that puts many other things ahead of infrastructure. In France to build a train line, the government does a study, passes a law that preempts all other laws, and then the thing gets built. Here, any project is tied up in years of litigation before it can move forward. Why is our metro service so bad? The WMATA union is completely broken. They had track inspectors falsify reports. Management fired them, the union sued, and they were hired back. But you can’t take on the WMATA union because then you’re a capitalist pig and now you’re mired in a larger national debate about unions versus right-to-work. Or compare how Stockholm did fiber deployment. The municipal entity built out over more than a decade, wiring up profitable neighborhoods first in a demand driven way. Here, if you tried that it would explode in a shit show about “digital redlining.” (Which is not to minimize that problem—just pointing out that the legacy of actual redlining in America makes it politically impossible for us to adopt a policy that worked very well in Sweden.) You can’t fix all that. And if you can’t fix it, there is a good reason to keep the government away from markets that are at least kinda working.
- komali2 8y ago
  >You can’t fix all that. And if you can’t fix it, there is a good reason to keep the government away from markets that are at least kinda working. Comcast and ATT have as disgusting a history with our infrastructure as the government. Throwing our arms up in the air with "the government can't do it" while simultaneously saying "oh well I guess trust profit driven companies with our data transmission" doesn't sound at all sustainable to me. "You can't fix all that," so I guess I'll die? I'm not going to roll over and let Comcast have its way with me.
  - rayiner 8y ago
    > Comcast and ATT have as disgusting a history with our infrastructure as the government Except that’s not true, right? Comcast’s top speed has gone from 12-20 mbps in 2008 (last time I had Comcast service in Atlanta) to 1 gbps today. That involved a ton of investment—each new versions of DOCSIS require you to split nodes and move fiber closer to each subscriber to hit the required performance on the analog side. Over that time period, Comcast cable has improved way faster than almost every other aspect of computing besides iPhones. My MacBook from then (2 GHz Core 2 Duo) would still make a pretty serviceable machine. But I’d be pretty salty about a 20 mbps internet connection. (And stuff like Facebook, Gmail, and Google Search arguably have regressed, rather than improved, over that time period.) Over that exact same time period, Metro had to disable driverless train operation, which was built into the system when it opened in the 1970s, because it had let the signaling equipment deteriorate too much for it to be reliable. They had to decrease train spacing from 6 minutes to 8 minutes, and increase the scheduled time between stops because track conditions (and human drivers) didn’t permit maintaining the more aggressive schedule. From my point of view, I’m looking for ways to have Comcast take over Metro, not have WMATA take over my broadband.
    - komali2 8y ago
      I don't measure infrastructure by speed alone. So what they increased broadband speed. The Spaniards brought guns to the native Americans, then shot them. Doesn't make sense as a "thus it is good" argument. https://www.freepress.net/our-response/expert-analysis/explainers/net-neutrality-violations-brief-history https://www.freepress.net/our-response/expert-analysis/expla... Comcast blocked peer to peer. ATT blocked Skype and Google Voice. MetroPCS tried to block everyone but YouTube. Great, you found a time a local government did a stupid. One local government, one instance. I can provide for you a storied history of big Telecom's attempts to wrestle control over a consumer's choices. Again, and again, and again, they try to take from us. We have no say in any of their decisions - we can't even vote with our wallets because they have functional monopolies. At least we can elect our government representatives. At least portions of the government support net neutrality (when literally no Telecom company actually does in practice).

rayiner 8y ago

You have to put the number in context. Maryland’s GDP per capita is 60% higher than France’s. Labor costs make up lion’s share of broadband deployment and maintenance, and those costs are very high here. Gigabit fiber (1000/1000) from Verizon is about $80-90 per month (not a promo rate). With basic TV maybe $110. According to the Internet, the non-promo rate for 1000/300+TV from Orange in France is 48 euros per month, or $54. Equivalent to $90 here in MD. In the UK, Hyperoptic is well regarded. It’s 60 pounds per month after the promo period for gigabit, or $80. That is about the same nominal cost, but in reality less affordable for your average UK person, given that Maryland’s per capita GDP is 50% higher than the UK’s.

jogjayr 8y ago
It seems unfair to compare Maryland, a relatively wealthy state, to all of France, a nation with regional economic disparities. The Île-de-France region has a per-capita GDP about $10k higher than Maryland - but the price of internet service isn't correspondingly higher, that I can find.
- rayiner 8y ago
  Maryland ranges from quite wealthy near DC to quite poor in Baltimore, and very rural in much of the state. (It’s also more populous than Denmark or Norway, which gets compared to France all the time.) This data is a bit old, but it shows the Washington metro area (I think the fairest comparison to Paris) having a 50% higher GDP per capita than the Paris metro area: http://www.demographia.com/db-gdp-metro.pdf http://www.demographia.com/db-gdp-metro.pdf. Paris is comparable in income to second-tier US cities, like Cleveland.
  - selimthegrim 8y ago
    I wonder how the internet was in the banlieues until that guy started Free
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - 8y ago