7 ms·

Distances in the US can be so much bigger than in other countries, leading to rural areas being much more rural than in pretty much any other developed country.

Distances in the US can be so much bigger than in other countries, leading to rural areas being much more rural than in pretty much any other developed country. This makes servicing some rural communities very expensive. Not only for ISPs but for pretty much any infrastructure. Living in a rural area is a decision, that's fine for people to make, but I'm not sure we all need to be subsidizing it. Yes, cities have become very expensive, but it would be much cheaper as a society to solve that problem by getting rid of NIMBY regulation and make it easier and cheaper to build denser than to keep maintaining small, remote settlements with very little economic value

cannonedhamster 7y ago
Cities have some of the most expensive internet rates. The US has some of the most expensive internet in the entire world. Your distance argument only makes sense if you take away the billions given to ISPs to lay black fiber. Cities would be super cheap internet. That's not what happened. ISPs charge exorbitant fees for a service they barely keep up to date. Remote settlements are often what allows those cities to exist and who are you to tell people where and how they should live?
- dantheman 7y ago
  People can and should live anywhere they want. We however should not subsidize it. This way the true cost of living there is apparent, and if the services/resources they provide are needed then the cost of those services/resources will need to go up so that they can afford to live there.
- rayiner 7y ago
  Survey after survey shows that the US beats most large European countries for internet speeds. So how does the meme that ISPs barely keep the service up to date survive?
  - adventured 7y ago
    There's always immense lag between when the anti-US propaganda online catches up with reality. For example, the US has a great beer market now. It took several years before US beer - as a broad concept - was removed from the official foreigner list of things to bash the US with (which still includes such fan favorite fallback items as American cheese and Hershey chocolate). That the US has had faster Internet access than most of Europe - including Germany and France - for the past decade, is a bash list counter that people intentionally pretend doesn't exist. It's very inconvenient reality and your typical American has no idea what the access speeds are across Europe, so they can't counter argue properly. The access cost issue is also - fairly - of course on the bash list, although people never adjust for the far higher US incomes when pointing it out, naturally. The US rolled out 4G much faster than Europe and it's going to roll out 5G much faster than Europe. That too is universally, intentionally ignored (despite the stream of articles you can google on the subject reporting how far behind Europe was in rolling out 4G and now again with 5G). That despite the fact that these items are matters of infrastructure and the US is supposed to be the worst on the planet when it comes to infrastructure (the US is spending more of its GDP on infrastructure than the EU).
  - nitrogen 7y ago
    Which US city vs which European city? What metric? Median throughput? 99th percentile latency? Worst case packet loss? Is the average good but some places really terrible while in Europe the worst case is closer to the average?
- ajmurmann 7y ago
  I'm not saying that there aren't systemic problems with ISPs in the US. I don't think the market is properly solving the issue on many areas because there is no significant competition. The impact from Google just announcing fiber coming at some point to an area was significant. Also net neutrality should be a no-brainer. I'm however unwilling to focus on bringing the wonders of civilization to people who decided to move as far away as possible from it. I also might be disgruntled because it's largely the same people who then turnaround and punish you for it with their vote.
tclancy 7y ago
And cities in the US can be so much more expensive to dig up than rural areas.
iron0013 7y ago
There's truth to that, but affordable rural high speed internet is possible. Paul Bunyan Communications in northern Minnesota, for example, runs affordable fiber optic service deep into the country. My friend lives 25 miles from any town, and they happily ran fiber out to his house. The main difference between Paul Bunyan Communications and other rural providers who claim that such a thing is "impossible" seems to be that Paul Bunyan is a Co-operative: https://paulbunyan.net/cooperative/our-history/ https://paulbunyan.net/cooperative/our-history/
- Rebelgecko 7y ago
  Did your friend have to pay installation costs for the fiber? If so, do you know how much it was?
  - iron0013 7y ago
    I don't know. The website says that there's an $85 activation fee, and my friend's income is such that a large installation fee would have been impossible for him (just like most folks in the north woods!).
    - stouset 7y ago
      I genuinely don’t understand how this is possible/profitable. $80/mo is just shy of $10,000 in $10yr. Even if all of that is marginal profit (e.g., the costs to them after running the lines once are zero), there’s no way that pays for the crews to lay even 10mi of fiber. Something has to be missing here.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      - iron0013 7y ago
        I asked a customer service rep about it on the online chat. Here's what they said (I doubt they'd mind me posting it here): 16:10:46 Thank you for contacting us. An operator will be with you shortly. 16:10:46 Guest: Is there an installation fee for Gigazone internet? 16:11:08 Guest: Hi, I see that there's an $85 activation fee, but is there also an additional installation fee? 16:11:40 Operator JJ joined the chat 16:11:47 JJ: Hi there! 16:11:51 Guest: Hi! 16:12:13 JJ: There is no installation fee. It is rolled in with the activation fee which is waived if you sign a 6 month contract. 16:12:54 Guest: That's great--I was discussing this with friends and we can't figure out how it's possible! How can you afford to run fiber optic out into the country and charge so little for it? 16:14:36 Guest: Part of why I ask is because almost no other rural areas have this figured out 16:14:56 JJ: Well, there's a couple of ways. For a long time we required our members to have phone lines along with our internet service as there are a number of government grants that we can qualify for as long as we're building rural telephone infrastructure. That's the reason we still are required to require phone service in some of our service area. 16:15:13 Guest: I see, cool 16:15:52 JJ: Secondly, we're a co-op and committed to the community. If we plow a fiber line to your home and you end up moving some time in the future, the line remains for some other lucky co-op member in the future. It's kind of a "long-game" mentality. 16:16:05 Guest: Makes sense, thank you!
mrexroad 7y ago
> Living in a rural area is a decision, that's fine for people to make, but I'm not sure we all need to be subsidizing it. Sure... I can see your point that it “is a decision” for folks that choose to move to a rural area, but I don’t believe that’s the case for the other 99% of folks living there.
aguyfromnb 7y ago
>Living in a rural area is a decision, that's fine for people to make, but I'm not sure we all need to be subsidizing it. You can stop subsidizing our internet, and we'll stop supplying you with cheap food. Deal?
- serf 7y ago
  it's totally off-topic to the discussion of this thread, but that 'cheap food' is cheap very much in part to government subsidies, already. if subsidies weren't already being used by those supplying the food, entire businesses and families would fail. 'feeding the nation' isn't all that profitable without subsidies, from most angles. so, I guess my point is that 'we'll stop supplying you with cheap food' is a hollow threat, given that the cheap food is over-produced and under-valued for the sake of an artificial economy that's largely enforced and legislated by 'citydwellers'. Most of the motivation to supply food is drawn from the incentives provided by the few in legislative power, not from profit nor moral imperative from 'rural-livers'.
  - AngryData 7y ago
    Cheap food is "overproduced" so that a bad storm doesn't cause the price of bread to rise 3x in a week. Without food subsidies, food shortages are a constant threat.
    - Paradigma11 7y ago
      Why wouldn't you import the missing food then? If it's profitable to export soy from the US to china it most certrainly is profitable to import food from africa or australia after a storm.
- scarmig 7y ago
  We subsidize the cheap food, but whatever, I'm fine with that. Let the market incorporate the costs of broadband access into the price of food. The extra cost will almost certainly amount to fractions of a cent on the dollar.
Wheaties466 7y ago
While it is true that the US is very sprawling, it is absolutely ridiculous that in 2019 internet giants haven't provided basic internet access to rural areas. I am really not a big fan of the democratic party at large but a plan like this to take power away from the large internet monopoloies is going to be one of the only ways to make sure that internet infrastructure is kept up to date and that fast internet is available to everyone in the US. Infrastructure like the internet pipes shouldn't be privately owned, simply because they value profit over maintaining and upgrading the infrastructure. Maybe we can compromise with a system I have heard of ( in the nordic countries I believe) Where the local municipalities own the wires but you buy the service from a number of internet companies who rent the lines and provide service. This would increase competition and allow for private companies to not have to worry about the cost of upgrading the infrastructure.
- rayiner 7y ago
  It’s funny you mention the Nordic countries. People always take one piece of the Nordic solution then ignore the other pieces. It’s true that in Stockholm, a publicly owned entity (Stokab) owns the fiber. But: 1) It receives no public funding. 2) It has few public mandates or price controls. (No, “must offer subsidized service to disenfranchised people” or similar requirements.) 3) It faces no build-out or universal service requirements. It took Stokab almost 20 years to wire the city. They did it based entirely on demand/revenue potential. They deployed first to businesses and areas with the most revenue potential. Stokab didn’t need public funding because it could deploy in a revenue-directed manner. This is illegal in almost every US city. New York flipped out and tried to file a civil rights lawsuit when Verizon couldn’t meet the five year deadline for wiring the city. 4) It charges large up front fees to hook up to the network. Stokab would be burned to the ground with civil rights lawsuits if it was attempted in New York or San Francisco. Likewise, Sweden’s approach to wiring rural areas was very market oriented. Unlike the US, it didn’t mandate providers to serve rural areas (cross subsidizing them with revenues from urban areas). It gave rural homeowners a tax credit of about $600 to subsidize laying their own fiber.
  - selimthegrim 7y ago
AngryData 7y ago
I would agree except that we wired all rural areas with power and phone lines when it was far more expensive and had far less utility than internet alone has now. Also, you claim that "remote settlements" have little economic value, and yet their economic value is highly restricted when they don't have access to the internet so how can we claim that to be true?
manifestsilence 7y ago
One could say that about the U.S. highway system too, though. And some do, advocating the privatized highways some states have adopted. But I would argue that things like internet and highway do not make sense to be privatized because they are inherently centralized and monopolistic - you can't have two competing sets of roads in the same location, and can only have so many cables going through the same neighborhood. It's a massive inefficiency to let the free market do its work in these regions and leads to monopolistic behaviors. Since nearly everyone uses internet and to a relatively consistent degree, it's a pretty reasonable candidate for centralized subsidy and/or control.

cannonedhamster 7y ago

Cities have some of the most expensive internet rates. The US has some of the most expensive internet in the entire world. Your distance argument only makes sense if you take away the billions given to ISPs to lay black fiber. Cities would be super cheap internet. That's not what happened. ISPs charge exorbitant fees for a service they barely keep up to date. Remote settlements are often what allows those cities to exist and who are you to tell people where and how they should live?

dantheman 7y ago
People can and should live anywhere they want. We however should not subsidize it. This way the true cost of living there is apparent, and if the services/resources they provide are needed then the cost of those services/resources will need to go up so that they can afford to live there.
rayiner 7y ago
Survey after survey shows that the US beats most large European countries for internet speeds. So how does the meme that ISPs barely keep the service up to date survive?
- adventured 7y ago
  There's always immense lag between when the anti-US propaganda online catches up with reality. For example, the US has a great beer market now. It took several years before US beer - as a broad concept - was removed from the official foreigner list of things to bash the US with (which still includes such fan favorite fallback items as American cheese and Hershey chocolate). That the US has had faster Internet access than most of Europe - including Germany and France - for the past decade, is a bash list counter that people intentionally pretend doesn't exist. It's very inconvenient reality and your typical American has no idea what the access speeds are across Europe, so they can't counter argue properly. The access cost issue is also - fairly - of course on the bash list, although people never adjust for the far higher US incomes when pointing it out, naturally. The US rolled out 4G much faster than Europe and it's going to roll out 5G much faster than Europe. That too is universally, intentionally ignored (despite the stream of articles you can google on the subject reporting how far behind Europe was in rolling out 4G and now again with 5G). That despite the fact that these items are matters of infrastructure and the US is supposed to be the worst on the planet when it comes to infrastructure (the US is spending more of its GDP on infrastructure than the EU).
- nitrogen 7y ago
  Which US city vs which European city? What metric? Median throughput? 99th percentile latency? Worst case packet loss? Is the average good but some places really terrible while in Europe the worst case is closer to the average?
ajmurmann 7y ago
I'm not saying that there aren't systemic problems with ISPs in the US. I don't think the market is properly solving the issue on many areas because there is no significant competition. The impact from Google just announcing fiber coming at some point to an area was significant. Also net neutrality should be a no-brainer. I'm however unwilling to focus on bringing the wonders of civilization to people who decided to move as far away as possible from it. I also might be disgruntled because it's largely the same people who then turnaround and punish you for it with their vote.

tclancy 7y ago

And cities in the US can be so much more expensive to dig up than rural areas.

iron0013 7y ago

There's truth to that, but affordable rural high speed internet is possible. Paul Bunyan Communications in northern Minnesota, for example, runs affordable fiber optic service deep into the country. My friend lives 25 miles from any town, and they happily ran fiber out to his house. The main difference between Paul Bunyan Communications and other rural providers who claim that such a thing is "impossible" seems to be that Paul Bunyan is a Co-operative: https://paulbunyan.net/cooperative/our-history/ https://paulbunyan.net/cooperative/our-history/

Rebelgecko 7y ago
Did your friend have to pay installation costs for the fiber? If so, do you know how much it was?
- iron0013 7y ago
  I don't know. The website says that there's an $85 activation fee, and my friend's income is such that a large installation fee would have been impossible for him (just like most folks in the north woods!).
  - stouset 7y ago
    I genuinely don’t understand how this is possible/profitable. $80/mo is just shy of $10,000 in $10yr. Even if all of that is marginal profit (e.g., the costs to them after running the lines once are zero), there’s no way that pays for the crews to lay even 10mi of fiber. Something has to be missing here.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - iron0013 7y ago
      I asked a customer service rep about it on the online chat. Here's what they said (I doubt they'd mind me posting it here): 16:10:46 Thank you for contacting us. An operator will be with you shortly. 16:10:46 Guest: Is there an installation fee for Gigazone internet? 16:11:08 Guest: Hi, I see that there's an $85 activation fee, but is there also an additional installation fee? 16:11:40 Operator JJ joined the chat 16:11:47 JJ: Hi there! 16:11:51 Guest: Hi! 16:12:13 JJ: There is no installation fee. It is rolled in with the activation fee which is waived if you sign a 6 month contract. 16:12:54 Guest: That's great--I was discussing this with friends and we can't figure out how it's possible! How can you afford to run fiber optic out into the country and charge so little for it? 16:14:36 Guest: Part of why I ask is because almost no other rural areas have this figured out 16:14:56 JJ: Well, there's a couple of ways. For a long time we required our members to have phone lines along with our internet service as there are a number of government grants that we can qualify for as long as we're building rural telephone infrastructure. That's the reason we still are required to require phone service in some of our service area. 16:15:13 Guest: I see, cool 16:15:52 JJ: Secondly, we're a co-op and committed to the community. If we plow a fiber line to your home and you end up moving some time in the future, the line remains for some other lucky co-op member in the future. It's kind of a "long-game" mentality. 16:16:05 Guest: Makes sense, thank you!

mrexroad 7y ago

> Living in a rural area is a decision, that's fine for people to make, but I'm not sure we all need to be subsidizing it. Sure... I can see your point that it “is a decision” for folks that choose to move to a rural area, but I don’t believe that’s the case for the other 99% of folks living there.

aguyfromnb 7y ago

>Living in a rural area is a decision, that's fine for people to make, but I'm not sure we all need to be subsidizing it. You can stop subsidizing our internet, and we'll stop supplying you with cheap food. Deal?

serf 7y ago
it's totally off-topic to the discussion of this thread, but that 'cheap food' is cheap very much in part to government subsidies, already. if subsidies weren't already being used by those supplying the food, entire businesses and families would fail. 'feeding the nation' isn't all that profitable without subsidies, from most angles. so, I guess my point is that 'we'll stop supplying you with cheap food' is a hollow threat, given that the cheap food is over-produced and under-valued for the sake of an artificial economy that's largely enforced and legislated by 'citydwellers'. Most of the motivation to supply food is drawn from the incentives provided by the few in legislative power, not from profit nor moral imperative from 'rural-livers'.
- AngryData 7y ago
  Cheap food is "overproduced" so that a bad storm doesn't cause the price of bread to rise 3x in a week. Without food subsidies, food shortages are a constant threat.
  - Paradigma11 7y ago
    Why wouldn't you import the missing food then? If it's profitable to export soy from the US to china it most certrainly is profitable to import food from africa or australia after a storm.
scarmig 7y ago
We subsidize the cheap food, but whatever, I'm fine with that. Let the market incorporate the costs of broadband access into the price of food. The extra cost will almost certainly amount to fractions of a cent on the dollar.

Wheaties466 7y ago

While it is true that the US is very sprawling, it is absolutely ridiculous that in 2019 internet giants haven't provided basic internet access to rural areas. I am really not a big fan of the democratic party at large but a plan like this to take power away from the large internet monopoloies is going to be one of the only ways to make sure that internet infrastructure is kept up to date and that fast internet is available to everyone in the US. Infrastructure like the internet pipes shouldn't be privately owned, simply because they value profit over maintaining and upgrading the infrastructure. Maybe we can compromise with a system I have heard of ( in the nordic countries I believe) Where the local municipalities own the wires but you buy the service from a number of internet companies who rent the lines and provide service. This would increase competition and allow for private companies to not have to worry about the cost of upgrading the infrastructure.

rayiner 7y ago
It’s funny you mention the Nordic countries. People always take one piece of the Nordic solution then ignore the other pieces. It’s true that in Stockholm, a publicly owned entity (Stokab) owns the fiber. But: 1) It receives no public funding. 2) It has few public mandates or price controls. (No, “must offer subsidized service to disenfranchised people” or similar requirements.) 3) It faces no build-out or universal service requirements. It took Stokab almost 20 years to wire the city. They did it based entirely on demand/revenue potential. They deployed first to businesses and areas with the most revenue potential. Stokab didn’t need public funding because it could deploy in a revenue-directed manner. This is illegal in almost every US city. New York flipped out and tried to file a civil rights lawsuit when Verizon couldn’t meet the five year deadline for wiring the city. 4) It charges large up front fees to hook up to the network. Stokab would be burned to the ground with civil rights lawsuits if it was attempted in New York or San Francisco. Likewise, Sweden’s approach to wiring rural areas was very market oriented. Unlike the US, it didn’t mandate providers to serve rural areas (cross subsidizing them with revenues from urban areas). It gave rural homeowners a tax credit of about $600 to subsidize laying their own fiber.
- selimthegrim 7y ago

AngryData 7y ago

I would agree except that we wired all rural areas with power and phone lines when it was far more expensive and had far less utility than internet alone has now. Also, you claim that "remote settlements" have little economic value, and yet their economic value is highly restricted when they don't have access to the internet so how can we claim that to be true?

manifestsilence 7y ago

One could say that about the U.S. highway system too, though. And some do, advocating the privatized highways some states have adopted. But I would argue that things like internet and highway do not make sense to be privatized because they are inherently centralized and monopolistic - you can't have two competing sets of roads in the same location, and can only have so many cables going through the same neighborhood. It's a massive inefficiency to let the free market do its work in these regions and leads to monopolistic behaviors. Since nearly everyone uses internet and to a relatively consistent degree, it's a pretty reasonable candidate for centralized subsidy and/or control.