5 ms·

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.

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
  What ended up happening with Verizon in NY?
  - pc86 7y ago
    My guess is the answer is available through Google.
  - rayiner 7y ago
    Still in litigation.
- 0xffff2 7y ago
  $600? Every time I’ve ever seen anyone talk about getting lines run for rural internet, the price starts at tens of thousands even if there is a line nearby already.
  - Wheaties466 7y ago
    yeah I personally know that when I was getting quotes for a fiber run about ~125m the best quote I got was for just under $10k. That was without having to dig up concrete and repair too.
    - namibj 7y ago
      Burial fiber is like 20~40ct/m. Whether you can get a bucket wheel trench excavator through it at speed or have to dig by hand depends on what's in the ground and how hard the ground is, and how long the stretches are. Otherwise, it's like 10~20min to sufficiently properly terminate the fiber at the ends and that. You can likely get around that if you just order pre-terminated fiber at like 1$/plug and just plug it in at the ends instead of splicing. Sure, this will higher losses, but money. Fiber is literally cheaper than copper for >150m or >=10Gbit/s (though direct-attach cables up to 3~5m are even cheaper) if you can get by without field-terminating fibers.
    - rasz 7y ago
ryanmercer 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. The contiguous United States is 3,119,884.69 square miles (the United States makes up a little less than 1/3 of North America). There are individual states larger than several European and Asian countries. Sure, there's not someone living in every single square mile but they are spread out. The fastest I can get at home, in a city fo nearly 900k people, is 75mbps down without going to a business line. Even delivering that speed to 80% of the population would probably require several billion in just equipment (lines included).
- Wheaties466 7y ago
  I think you're just making my point for me. The telco companies have made several times that in the past 10 years. There is simply not enough reinvested into the infrastructure.
  - ryanmercer 7y ago
    Yes they've made profits, but as it stands now I can get in my car and drive 5 minutes and not be able to get AT&T Uverse but I"ll be able to get Comcast where at home I can get Uverse AND Comcast but can't get Spectrum. To go into a market, an ISP has to be able to reasonably recover their roll-out costs from that market. If they spend xxx dollars rolling out to a town, and then if they can hope to sell service to 75% of the homes, but are only going to make 0.5x or even xx of that back each year as profit, is it reasonable for them to spend xxx amount just to deploy when it might be a decade or more before they recover their initial investment? And what about the (likely) x to xx a year to maintain the equipment from squirrels/birds/storms/drunk drivers, and then upgrading the technology etc. It's great when you have a small country, that you can drive across in a day, but when you're talking about 1/3 of a continent everything is orders of magnitude more expensive and more difficult. I think people easily fall into the "well that country has it!" but they don't realize that "that" country is tiny. Let's take the country with the fastest internet [1], Taiwan, with an average speed of 85.02Mbps - it is 13,974 square miles, that's 0.44% (zero point four four) of the contiguous United States. 41 states are larger than Taiwan. [1] https://www.swedishnomad.com/fastest-internet-in-the-world/ https://www.swedishnomad.com/fastest-internet-in-the-world/

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
What ended up happening with Verizon in NY?
- pc86 7y ago
  My guess is the answer is available through Google.
- rayiner 7y ago
  Still in litigation.
0xffff2 7y ago
$600? Every time I’ve ever seen anyone talk about getting lines run for rural internet, the price starts at tens of thousands even if there is a line nearby already.
- Wheaties466 7y ago
  yeah I personally know that when I was getting quotes for a fiber run about ~125m the best quote I got was for just under $10k. That was without having to dig up concrete and repair too.
  - namibj 7y ago
    Burial fiber is like 20~40ct/m. Whether you can get a bucket wheel trench excavator through it at speed or have to dig by hand depends on what's in the ground and how hard the ground is, and how long the stretches are. Otherwise, it's like 10~20min to sufficiently properly terminate the fiber at the ends and that. You can likely get around that if you just order pre-terminated fiber at like 1$/plug and just plug it in at the ends instead of splicing. Sure, this will higher losses, but money. Fiber is literally cheaper than copper for >150m or >=10Gbit/s (though direct-attach cables up to 3~5m are even cheaper) if you can get by without field-terminating fibers.
  - rasz 7y ago

ryanmercer 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. The contiguous United States is 3,119,884.69 square miles (the United States makes up a little less than 1/3 of North America). There are individual states larger than several European and Asian countries. Sure, there's not someone living in every single square mile but they are spread out. The fastest I can get at home, in a city fo nearly 900k people, is 75mbps down without going to a business line. Even delivering that speed to 80% of the population would probably require several billion in just equipment (lines included).

Wheaties466 7y ago
I think you're just making my point for me. The telco companies have made several times that in the past 10 years. There is simply not enough reinvested into the infrastructure.
- ryanmercer 7y ago
  Yes they've made profits, but as it stands now I can get in my car and drive 5 minutes and not be able to get AT&T Uverse but I"ll be able to get Comcast where at home I can get Uverse AND Comcast but can't get Spectrum. To go into a market, an ISP has to be able to reasonably recover their roll-out costs from that market. If they spend xxx dollars rolling out to a town, and then if they can hope to sell service to 75% of the homes, but are only going to make 0.5x or even xx of that back each year as profit, is it reasonable for them to spend xxx amount just to deploy when it might be a decade or more before they recover their initial investment? And what about the (likely) x to xx a year to maintain the equipment from squirrels/birds/storms/drunk drivers, and then upgrading the technology etc. It's great when you have a small country, that you can drive across in a day, but when you're talking about 1/3 of a continent everything is orders of magnitude more expensive and more difficult. I think people easily fall into the "well that country has it!" but they don't realize that "that" country is tiny. Let's take the country with the fastest internet [1], Taiwan, with an average speed of 85.02Mbps - it is 13,974 square miles, that's 0.44% (zero point four four) of the contiguous United States. 41 states are larger than Taiwan. [1] https://www.swedishnomad.com/fastest-internet-in-the-world/ https://www.swedishnomad.com/fastest-internet-in-the-world/