20 ms·

The internet should be a public utility

514 points by laurex 7y ago

alexfromapex 7y ago
Need to start naming and shaming any public figures, companies, and politicians who say otherwise. That’s the only way to fight against the corporate takeover attempt.
- deleted 7y ago
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- lioeters 7y ago
  > corporate takeover attempt Sadly, I think the takeover has happened already, and there's not enough incentive for public figures, companies, and politicians to push for deprivatization. I agree with the article that the Internet should be a public utility, like water or electricity.
  - alexfromapex 7y ago
    I know what you’re saying and I hear you but I think the “it’s already over we should just give up” attitude that comes up whenever these types of discussions arise is what causes them to win. The first step to reversing their influence is not viewing it as acceptable.
    - coldpie 7y ago
      Paying more attention to local politics helps combat this. There are people trying to do good out there, they're just not getting all the attention like those at the federal level.
    - lioeters 7y ago
      > “it’s already over we should just give up” attitude I agree, thank you for pointing that out. I'm trying to fight this defeatist and cynical tendency in myself. > The first step to reversing their influence is not viewing it as acceptable. Right - as a form of local activism, I'll remember to voice my opinion on important matters, where the status quo is unacceptable.
  - deleted 7y ago
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perlpimp 7y ago
... or it should be cheap and regulated on pricing. it is crime what western nations charge for it. suppose areas of differing income levels should have different pricing schemes. coming from russia to canada, it is insane that you have to pay 1500% more for same packages for wireless and wired internet.
- BubRoss 7y ago
  Competition accomplishes the same thing. Look at any area where Comcast or AT&T have competition, they shape up very quickly. DOCSIS 3.0 and 3.1 are actually very fast. Cable companies know however that if the better the internet they sell, the more they canabalize their ability to sell cable TV. They want to sell you data twice and one of their giant sources of revenue is something people would rather leave behind.
  - dahart 7y ago
    Competition does help when it happens. The problem is Comcast and AT&T charge higher prices wherever there is no competition and they actively do whatever they can to prevent competition, they absolutely do not just wait around for other ISPs to compete. A few years ago Comcast’s active anti-competitive bullying of local ISPs in my city pushed me off the ISP I preferred. And there are too many areas in the U.S. where competing is prohibitive, like rural areas where build-out is more expensive, so once a single ISP is there nobody else bothers.
    - topkai22 7y ago
      I think this is how utilities evolved in many places- local monopolies arose, so local governments either built their own system, took over service delivery or created laws on top of the service delivery.
      - _carl_jung 7y ago
        I don't understand this part. As far as I can tell, utility monopolies can only form with government assistance (i.e. lobbying).
zbrozek 7y ago
I talked with the mayor of Los Altos Hills, CA yesterday where I advocated for a municipal fiber ISP. It seems crazy to me that in Silicon Valley, and specifically in one of its richest towns, that broadband is not available to every residence. She makes a good point: the residents don't care. Her argument is that ~20 mbps DSL is good enough for the elderly population. And further - that for those who find that inadequate - Comcast is often (but by no means universally) available. I write this tethered to the cell network because I can't get a decent wired internet solution here, with direct line-of-sight to Google's headquarters and the mega-offices of many of tech's largest players. As I am stuck at home, constantly turning off others' video streams while I try to engage with my coworkers remotely, I deeply wish that we had either a more competitive marketplace or a more belligerently pro-consumer regulator. And, by the way, the FCC thinks I have a dozen options for broadband. That is false.
- Zhenya 7y ago
  Not that this is a solution but get a good directional antenna and point it at Google - instant guest network(advice not guaranteed to work)!
- tarde 7y ago
  > Her argument is that ~20 mbps DSL is good enough that is insane. How having no internet is fine because 20mbps is enough? That could be a good argument against fiber (which i also think is overkill, decent cooper is lower maintenance and with enough repeaters as good as) but it is hardly an argument against it being available to all as a public utility. > And, by the way, the FCC thinks I have a dozen options for broadband. That is false. and the real enemy shows up. FCC, from the bush-omaba-trump admin become the most corrupt organization one can think of. They openly lie and laugh when someone point out the lie.
  - coldpie 7y ago
    > from the bush-omaba-trump admin become the most corrupt organization one can think of I don't know whether they were corrupt, but Tom Wheeler did a fantastic job from a consumer rights & Internet health perspective during the Obama admin. Most notably he implemented Title II regulations to enforce net neutrality (since undone by a Republican), but also supported municipal broadband (since undone by a Republican), fought against several huge communication company mergers (since undone by a Republican), and supported content providers against ISPs charging interconnection fees. https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/03/how-a-former-lobbyist-became-the-broadband-industrys-worst-nightmare/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/03/how-a...
legitster 7y ago
Walk me through this argument - my local utilities are a nightmare! Their pricing is atrocious and regressive (huge flat fixed fees to connect, tiny marginal costs), they constantly have to borrow money from the city to make ends meet. Combined, we pay $350 a month for gas, water & drainage, electricity (over 50% of the bills are fixed costs, unaffected by our consumption). Customer service is awful. In comparison, our internet is relatively painfree and only $30 a month. I get that there are certain high level concepts of why it is good to treat internet as a utility, but as a consumer the idea frustrates me. (Our city offers a municipal internet, btw. But it's worse service for more money, and has generally been a money drain for taxpayers.)
- cactus2093 7y ago
  I don’t even understand what the distinction is. For instance PG&E in California is a private company but regulated by the government. I pay for service and if I stop paying they cut me off. Isn’t Comcast internet service the same thing? A private company but regulated by the FCC. The only difference I can think of is there are still multiple providers for internet service available in most places. Would making internet a public utility just mean giving a government granted monopoly to one provider per region and forbidding anyone else from selling internet service?
  - pdonis 7y ago
    > Would making internet a public utility just mean giving a government granted monopoly to one provider per region and forbidding anyone else from selling internet service? If that's what "public utility" means then Internet is already a public utility in many parts of the US, since this is exactly the arrangement in existence today.
  - jcrawfordor 7y ago
    The details vary substantially by type of utility and jurisdiction, but generally a public utility is subject to far stricter regulation than internet service providers which are regarded as a competitive industry. A key example would be requirements for tariff approvals: public utilities are generally not permitted to make their own pricing decisions, instead they need to publish a tariff and they are not permitted to modify the tariff without petitioning the regulator for permission. The regulatory authority generally has broad authority to order utilities to do whatever it believes should be done, and has to approve almost all changes to the service, which the utility must justify as beneficial to customers. Take a look at your electric bill, for example. Generally there's an interconnection fee and base rate, both of which come directly from the published tariff approved by the regulator. Due to real changes in the energy market there will also be a "fuel cost surcharge," this fee is calculated based on generation costs according to a formula included in the published tariff. If you have any dispute about the pricing or quality of the service you can take that complaint to the regulator, many regulators require that the utilities provide you that phone number as part of your bill. Then look at your internet bill. The rate on it is whatever the ISP wants, and they have no requirement to explain it to you, except for a few mandated taxes. They can raise and lower it more or less at will, subject to your contractual protections, which are usually minimal. With most incumbent ISPs it is standard for the rate to increase significantly after 12 or 24 months. If you have complaints, there is a small chance you can take them to the FCC under certain regulatory authorities the FCC has exercised, but for the most part your only option is to find another provider.
pinacarlos90 7y ago
My question is, what would be the impact on the following areas if the internet was public utility? 1) security/encryption 2) bandwidth distribution 3) content freedom 4) Governance rules (federal gov?)
- dylan604 7y ago
  Why would 1) be an issue at all of the service was a public utility or not? It's not like a website will not use HTTPS just because it's on publicUtil. 2) is problem regardless. Something to be addressed, but it's not anything new just because it's becomes a utility. I could see where 3) & 4) might be questionable. If it's gov't funded, then they like to tack on a lot of rules about what can/can't be used on the service. Obvious things like porn/p2p/etc would be blocked, but would access to things like Planned Parenthood be blocked too?
  - Reelin 7y ago
    In the US, 3 (content freedom) is a clear first amendment guarantee. It also seems to be working out just fine elsewhere in the western world.
- K0SM0S 7y ago
  So I can't obviously "prove" any causality, that would require serious studies; but I can testify how things work here in France. 1) doesn't change anything. Mostly due to ISP practices, which are regulated under typical communication laws (this dates back to radio, landlines, post offices, etc) 2) bandwidth is generally great. The idea is this: you mutualize the pipes (shared by citizens through public organisms, and some private infrastructure / maintenance companies). Then all ISP invest together to build the best shared infrastructure; at which point any customer can just switch to any ISP at any time — you just unplug-replug in the locally shared DSLAM/PON/whatever. FWIW we've got the same infra for elec, water, kitchen gas, even banking... you just hook up with another utility provider and they switch you within days, weeks at most (it's a manual intervention in many cases). Don't like your elec provider? Next month, you're out. The net result is that we've got up to 1Gbps symmetrical for €40/mo (say $45), basic offers for e.g 250Mb at €10-20/mo maybe. There's even a 10Gbps network being deployed (at the routing level, it's mostly equipment) by one ISP, I got it and measured ~3.5Gbps max concurently (I'd rather have 1Gbps symmetrical since I've got servers though, self-hosting is a very real possibility with such bandwidth; all IPs are full stack on demand here (all ports, no sub-1024 shenanigans) unless you're on budget offers. 3) that's freedom of speech most likely (e.g porn is legal... nobody questions that). Also ties to GDPR now, on the source side. We've had such laws in France for two decades now, look up the CNIL. Nothing to report here, ISPs would be fined if not respecting a modicus of neutrality — but there's no data cap on home connections whatsoever, so it's not comparable to the US situation. In the past (DSL era) we observed some early / prime time throttling of selected websites (e.g YouTube) by a certain ISP who was "at war" with Google (so, that was a choice, not a factor of infrastructure). 4) See 2. It's all private but there's gov oversight and regulation to maintain access. For instance, you can't cut internet to poor people, unemployed etc. here: we've determined it's too important to have internet access to find a job and do basic admin stuff (pretty much all state services are now online). That's the real value of internet as a commodity: it's a matter of "can you leave a household without electricity? without water? without internet?", the answer being a resounding "no" because that's inhumane, that's attacking their dignity and our decency. The question thus becomes, how much of it do we 'guarantee' to everyone, like basic healthcare. The answer here in France is: enough to live decently, enough to keep functioning as a normal member of society, notably to get a job (or keep it) and have a social life (we've found that depression doesn't help anyone). Honestly, none of it is perfect, but as far as internet goes, yeah we've nailed it. I don't know of any better offer for the price (many Asian countries have a better infra, but costs are 2-3x for customers).
3fe9a03ccd14ca5 7y ago
I’m generally a libertarian, anti-bureaucracy type, but this is an issue I align with. Having the government provide the bulk of last mile dumb fiber seems to be the best way to move forward internet speeds. Opponents always point towards the remarkable improvements in wireless internet speed, but those of us who understand the technology know it’s not a replacement for fiber. Why compare simple, vacuum packed download tests? Of course people don’t utilize their upload speed: it’s miserably slow! Of course they don’t use more bandwidth: they get charged an arm and a leg for it!
- sneak 7y ago
  Another, simpler solution would be to have the government stop promulgating/supporting the lies regarding fictional competition spread by companies like Comcast. There are lots of places where you have only one or two options, but the large national incumbents who have the ear of regulators will lie and claim that there are three times as many. The government grants them their moat. There are lots of people who would like to be ISPs (including municipalities) who simply aren't allowed to be, because the regulators and the large national ISPs have conspired to pass lots of regulation that outlaws any real competition. It's absolutely shameful. https://www.theverge.com/2015/5/1/8530403/chattanooga-comcast-fcc-high-speed-internet-gigabit https://www.theverge.com/2015/5/1/8530403/chattanooga-comcas... https://boingboing.net/2019/04/19/comcast-vs-america.html https://boingboing.net/2019/04/19/comcast-vs-america.html
- Karunamon 7y ago
  >Of course people don’t utilize their upload speed: it’s miserably slow! The average internet user's bandwidth usage is always going to be asymmetrical, since the average internet user is downloading a lot more than they produce. One or two streaming movies on something like Netflix (15% of worldwide downstream usage by itself) will completely blow away a few video calls. Try to enumerate the use cases for high upload rates, and you find that most of them simply won't apply to most users.
marcusverus 7y ago
Has the author never heard of the Lifeline Program for Low-Income Consumers (aka Obamaphones)? This program already provides a benefit designed to provide free access to mobile internet. The $10 per month subsidy may not seem like much, but it'll buy you ~1Gb per month via Tracfone, for example. It's important to note that this program includes a requirement that "Obamaphones" be hot-spot enabled so that they can be used with laptops (i.e. by kids who have homework on school-provided laptops). https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/lifeline-support-affordable-communications https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/lifeline-support-afford...
- JoBrad 7y ago
  A program that isn’t available to everyone and is routinely under fire. It also doesn’t solve the underlying problem, but instead throws money at the companies exacerbating it for profit. Broadly available, competitive broadband is the answer.
  - evv 7y ago
    > It also doesn’t solve the underlying problem, but instead throws money at the companies exacerbating it for profit Quite similar to Obama's approach to healthcare, what a coincidence! :-)
    - AdamJacobMuller 7y ago
      Just on a massively larger scale.
    - otterley 7y ago
      The better choice - replacing private provisioning for basic healthcare coverage with a public service - was not politically viable. Sometimes you have to make a suboptimal choice for the greater good.
      - evv 7y ago
        True. But the root cause of the problem is the influence of the insurance/pharma industries on our legislative system. Pretty sure Obama was smart enough to see that. Did he do anything about it?
Iwork4Google 7y ago
In order for anything useful to happen in our society, we have to vote. It is now abundantly clear which party values what, and for whom. If we would rather vote based on 'abortion preventing our souls from partying with Jesus in heaven' instead of 'municipal broadband for all residents as a public utility', then we're going to continue to complain about this for another 50 years and beyond. The problem is that saying this out loud means you're politicizing this problem. Well, it's largely a political problem, otherwise we could get the Federal Government to step in and properly fix this. Legislation in the past with the best intensions was purposely weakened at the last moment to allow billions to be taken from Federal programs that left zero actual improvement or infrastructure development. Guess which party is fighting hardest for such loopholes and promising that corporations can do this better than "big government"? If we don't get our acts together in November, not having quality Internet access is going to be the least of our problems. Anyway, everyone enjoy going back to business as normal by Easter during the peak of this pandemic. I'm sure that will help as well.
- _delirium 7y ago
  > It is now abundantly clear which party values what, and for whom. If we would rather vote based on 'abortion preventing our souls from partying with Jesus in heaven' instead of 'municipal broadband for all residents as a public utility', then we're going to continue to complain about this for another 50 years and beyond. If that were true, it'd be great. But which is the party that supports municipal broadband for all residents as a public utility? California has a Democratic governor, Democratic legislature, and in the most populous areas Democratic local government, and yet no municipal broadband. There's a map here of which state legislatures have passed restrictions on municipal broadband, and it seems pretty idiosyncratic relative to blue/red politics: https://broadbandnow.com/report/municipal-broadband-roadblocks/ https://broadbandnow.com/report/municipal-broadband-roadbloc... E.g. WV, OH, IN, IL, KY, GA, NM, VT are friendly to it, while WA, OR, TX, CO, AL, PA, FL, MA are unfriendly.
  - daveFNbuck 7y ago
    Single-issue voters don't vote straight party tickets. You have to learn about the individual candidates and only vote for the ones that support your pet issue. The mayor in this story probably didn't care much either way about municipal broadband. They just don't see it as an issue worth the effort. If there were a real chance that not supporting municipal broadband would hurt their re-election chances, they'd be more likely to support it. If not, perhaps their successor would see things differently.
sneak 7y ago
I'm not sure that I want the government in a position to be a single point of control for which websites I can or cannot access.
- freehunter 7y ago
  Absolutely nothing about public internet in any way implies anything even remotely related to your strawman argument.
  - JumpCrisscross 7y ago
    > nothing about public internet in any way implies anything even remotely related to your strawman argument Why not? If the government has a monopoly on internet access, it becomes easier for voters to call for certain sites being blocked or certain sorts of traffic be monitored and/or intercepted.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - freehunter 7y ago
      If we're playing that game, there's a million things they could do as well, but it doesn't make any of them likely. Hell, they could do what you're talking about right now, other countries do that even though their Internet access isn't controlled by the government. The porn ban in the UK is a great example of privately-controlled ISPs being forced to block certain sites. I'll repeat, there is absolutely nothing about publicly funded Internet service that in any way even remotely connects "internet access as a public utility" to "government starts blocking certain sites". They could do it right now if they wanted to.
      - uk_programmer 7y ago
        The porn ban didn't happen. Even with the "don't go to the pirate bay or we send you a nasty letter" legislation, they stop bothering doing that because nobody paid any attention and threw the letter in the bin.
miguelmota 7y ago
If it's public infrastructure, the government has no incentive to innovate and it'll be a good way to ruin it. Electric, gas, and water utilities are natural monopolies and priced per usage. You'd end up paying more for slower internet.
- raverbashing 7y ago
  Please show me where private run electric or gas utilities have unlimited usage for a flat fee.
  - miguelmota 7y ago
    There’s none for obvious reasons. Give me an example of a government making the internet a public utility and making it better and less censored than a privately run company.
    - zbrozek 7y ago
      https://muninetworks.org/content/owensboro-kentucky-headed-spring-ftth-expansion https://muninetworks.org/content/owensboro-kentucky-headed-s... https://tech.co/news/chattanooga-fastest-internet-usa-2018-08 https://tech.co/news/chattanooga-fastest-internet-usa-2018-0... Those places are offering connections way better than I can get from AT&T.
      - miguelmota 7y ago
        Chattanooga’s municipally-owned telecoms provider (EPB) is charging $57.99 for 300mbs [0], while I get 500mbs for $39.99 in my area from a non-city owned company [1] [0] https://epb.com/home-store/internet https://epb.com/home-store/internet [1] https://frontier.com/offer/experiencefios-c https://frontier.com/offer/experiencefios-c
        zbrozek 7y ago
        You really can't compare across areas. I can get 20 mbps DSL for $50 here. At my old place, eight miles away, I could get 1000 mbps for $90. At my parents' lake cabin in Tennessee they can get 3 mbps for $50. And?
amelius 7y ago
For much of the same reasons, the postal service and Amazon should be public utilities too.
- pdonis 7y ago
  The postal service in the US is a public utility: the US Post Office is required by law to deliver to any US address. The fact that there are private companies delivering something called "mail" does not change that: none of them are permitted to deliver first class mail, that is a USPS monopoly, and none of them are required to deliver to all US addresses, but the USPS is. I don't know why you would want Amazon to be a public utility.
  - amelius 7y ago
    Yes, in the US that's the case but nobody said it will never change. Regarding Amazon, see for example https://stallman.org/amazon.html#size https://stallman.org/amazon.html#size
_carl_jung 7y ago
Here's a question I have about these types of frustrating monopolies, and I'd love a point towards a book or something that can explain. Let's say I have a bunch of money (or funding) for a big new internet provider that could easily outperform the existing provider. What makes it so hard to do it? I hear complaints (and complain myself) about seemingly unfair pricing and slow speeds. The tech is there to make > 100mb internet, why isn't it more widespread? Surely consumers are willing to pay for a competitor that can provide it.
- jcrawfordor 7y ago
  1) laying fiber (either trenched or on utility poles) will likely be your biggest expense, it requires a huge, huge investment to be able to put infrastructure through a significant area. Think about feet of conduit a several-person crew can drive per day whether by trenching/trenchless methods - it's not that many. Microtrenching promised to significantly reduce this cost but Google Fiber's experiment with it went famously poorly. 2) ROWs to run cable will need to be negotiated either with the municipality (if laying underground) which can come with a lot of difficult restrictions on work quality, traffic disruption, etc, or with the electrical utility in the case of utility poles in an area with a typical franchise agreement, in which case the utilities are often uninterested in the project and will just generally make your life difficult through slow consideration of engineering proposals, requiring extensive up-front engineering work, etc. In a small town I had some involvement in the electric utility demanded over $1mm up front for engineering surveys on pole attachment - this for a market of ~8k people, and before any actual attachment fees. Completely blew the budget of the potential broadband provider which had planned a total of $3-4mm in up-front. 3) After running infrastructure, providing drops to each house is a fairly costly and disruptive up-front operation per customer (may even be trenching their front yard), which discourages customers signing up with your service when the incumbent providers already have house drops in place. You will also either have to eat this cost or pass it to the customer as an install fee or a term agreement, all of those options are bad in different ways. 4) IPv4 exhaustion has hit new ISPs hard and you are going to have to do CG-NAT. ISPs like to think customers don't care but in practice this is indeed a headache.
  - 7y ago
bgorman 7y ago
The danger with government nationalizing telecommunications networks is that once it is done, innovation and quality go way down. We had nationalized telecommunications for over 70 years and customers could only have one brand of phone, and we're limited in the number of phones available in their houses. In addition, long distance calling was cost-prohibitive. The monopoly only started cracking when MCI introduced microwave based long distance calling. Fortunately non-governmental is on the way for you. 4G/5G are decent options, many areas (rural and in major cities) have microwave based broadband, and it looks like Starlink will become a reality soon. Putting fiber lines in the ground is extremely expensive (especially in California) and frankly is not really needed by most of the population. Are you just using a cell phone? In your situation or may make sense to buy a repeater or other dedicated hardware solutions.
- heymijo 7y ago
  > We had nationalized telecommunications for over 70 years No. Until 1982 AT&T in the United States was a legal monopoly, not a nationalized telecom. The book, The Idea Factory about Bell Labs has most of the history including why the the defense work Bell Labs did during WWII and beyond helped them justify a nationwide monopoly on telecom.
  - Aloha 7y ago
    And compared to virtually every nationalized telecom it provided better, cheaper service that was universally available. Internet access should be regulated like it was a utility however, and that's the great failing of public policy in that area.
    - greggman3 7y ago
      Cheaper!?!?! I had $1200 one month long distance bill in 1984. That today is effectively free. Only competition made that happen. If AT&T was still in charge we'd be paying by the call and by the byte.
      - 7y ago
keeganjw 7y ago
I think this makes perfect sense. Competition fundamentally doesn't work when it comes to infrastructure like this. I don't hear anyone saying that we need more privatized competition in our sewer systems. Why? Because it's incredibly costly to build and having private companies build two, three, or more sewer systems in one city/town would be insane. The costs per user of each one of those systems would rise dramatically because you would have far fewer people paying into each system. Same goes for our internet connections. Creating multiple competing networks in this case raises prices for everyone and we needlessly duplicate the amount of infrastructure required to serve everyone. That is why we make services like sewer, water, and electricity regulated monopolies. I don't see how internet, in this day in age, is any different. Just like everyone needs electricity, everyone needs internet. That being said, we do need competent government officials that can balance costs with public good. If we elect incompetent people, we get incompetent results.
rubicks 7y ago
Agreed, but this article didn't convince me. Watching the Comcast/Verizon duopoly play out over two decades has overwhelmingly negated the argument for private-sector infrastructure.
williesleg 7y ago
Yes, and Bernie should run it.
GhettoMaestro 7y ago
The first step is to get rid of any state or local laws preventing government entities operating last-mile networks. That should have never happened.
chrisbennet 7y ago
The local government should own the "pipes" and rent them out. Some people are down on "socialism" without realizing they love it. We have socialized police, fire, sewage, (usually) water and road repair plus some others I'm forgetting. Socialism is people getting together to help each other. Businesses have no special right to view citizens as their exclusive feeding ground.
- uk_programmer 7y ago
  > The local government should own the "pipes" and rent them out. This is essentially what happens in the UK. BT have to rent out lines to everyone else. Guess what? Almost all the ISPs are capped at the speed at whatever BT can provide. The only company I believe in the UK that goes above those speeds is Virgin which almost twice the speed at almost the same price as the competition. I used to live in the countryside and until there was fibre installed the speeds were terrible (less than 2mb/s). State own broadband isn't magically better. > Some people are down on "socialism" without realizing they love it. We have socialized police, fire, sewage, (usually) water and road repair plus some others I'm forgetting. In the UK our council tax pay are supposed to pay for road repair. The roads in the UK are awful. There are pot holes everywhere and I've had 3 punctures last year. The toll roads (the few of them that exist in the UK) don't have anyone on them. Take 30 minutes a day off my journey time in the car and the road surface is perfect.
  - pirocks 7y ago
    > The roads in the UK are awful. Not in my experience, though admittedly I live in London. >In the UK our council tax pay are supposed to pay for road repair. I'm sure you realize that council tax is supposed to pay for a lot of things, and that council incomes are way down over the past 10 years.
    - uk_programmer 7y ago
      > Not in my experience, though admittedly I live in London. Well outside of London it is generally awful. TBH London might as well be another planet when compared to the rest of the England (same goes for Manchester and Birmingham, I stay far away). https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-46444109 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-46444109 https://www.telegraph.co.uk/cars/news/britains-pothole-problem-costs-drivers-684m-in-a-year/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/cars/news/britains-pothole-probl... I currently live near Manchester and before that Hampshire. So that is two opposite ends of the country pretty much and it is the problem there. So my experience seems to reflect that of what is reported. >I'm sure you realize that council tax is supposed to pay for a lot of things, and that council incomes are way down over the past 10 years. So? It has been like this since the late 90s. I remember my father complaining about it since then. In anycase the roads are awful.
gameswithgo 7y ago
There are a lot of places where I agree that it should. There are some cities where competition is alive and working well. I think at least we can agree that state governments should not be making it illegal for local communities to create public utility internet, as has been happening in some places.
DavidVoid 7y ago
At the very least, municipal "dark fiber" [1] broadband should be more of a thing. I live in a city in Northern Europe and we have it in pretty much all apartment buildings here. I can choose between 17 different ISPs and the prices per month are: Price Speed (up/down) $20 10 Mb/s $30 100 Mb/s $75 1 Gb/s $142 10 Gb/s If you live in the country-side though, you sadly tend to have much more limited options for a decent Internet connection. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_fibre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_fibre
- briandear 7y ago
  $142 for 10Gb/s? Mine costs $95 per month in Mountain View, CA.
MR4D 7y ago
So, we should have PG&E run it? Or maybe the city of Flint, Michigan? God no. That’s what happens when you make the decision to be a utility. You give up all choice. The solution is more choice in the internet market, not less.
PureParadigm 7y ago
I used to think municipal fiber was the answer to improve internet service, but while it may work, I've seen that it is certainly not the only way. I moved to Berkeley for university and there are several competing options for gigabit internet (including Sonic, LMI, etc.). When the gigabit service arrived to disrupt the AT&T/Comcast duopoly, suddenly the customer was important, and we were able to get great speeds, prices, and customer service. What I'm saying is that you don't necessarily need to make internet a public utility to improve service, just to get some real competition. If that competition needs to come in the form of municipal fiber, then that might also work, but it could also be a private company.
- blululu 7y ago
  More competition is really important for driving down the price and improving the quality of internet supply, however there is still a case for entry level public internet access. You could easily imagine a very slow internet connection (like 1995 level speeds) being supplied by cities as a basic service to help bridge the digital divide and provide basic access to people in need.
- joecool1029 7y ago
  >What I'm saying is that you don't necessarily need to make internet a public utility to improve service, just to get some real competition. You won't get competition in sparsely populated areas. There's not a ton of business sense to expand and try to compete in these markets. The alternative way to get build-out in the underserved areas is to have gov subsidize a few interests. Canada seems have done a good job getting cell coverage in the middle of nowhere paying Rogers and Bell/Telus to build in remote lands. The US usually gives build-out requirements for stuff like spectrum and then doesn't enforce them when a company like DISH runs a scam: https://www.forbes.com/sites/fredcampbell/2018/07/20/dish-network-terrestrial-spectrum-licenses-at-risk/#5d593902af3e https://www.forbes.com/sites/fredcampbell/2018/07/20/dish-ne... DISH btw is in full PR mode lending all their AWS-4 spectrum to AT&T and all their 600mhz to T-Mobile, since they previously didn't do shit with it. In the case of the landline internet providers, there's around a half-trillion USD tax scam that's been perpetuated since the 1990's: https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6c5e97/eli5_how_were_isps_able_to_pocket_the_200_billion/dhsxq6k/ https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6c5e97/e...
mensetmanusman 7y ago
If it was, there would be no starlink
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malingo 7y ago
This weekend here in Los Angeles is the Native Plant Garden Tour [1] which is in its 17th year but being presented this year as a virtual tour. The quality from the gardeners streaming video over their home Wifi connections is sometimes okay, mostly mediocre, sometimes unwatchable. Of course this is somewhat affected by how far they venture away from their router into their yard, but still it's surprising how universally awful internet service is even in major US cities. And it's so much worse in rural areas. [1] https://www.nativeplantgardentour.org/ https://www.nativeplantgardentour.org/
Proven 7y ago
No, it shouldn't. Like everything else it should be private because only then can those who don't use it avoid paying for government mismanagement and corruption, and at the same time get better and more private service.
blackrock 7y ago
The internet needs to have a free service tier, that can be given to under privileged people. The entire government runs on web services, and you must have a decent computer to access it, as well as high speed internet. Well, some basic cable internet services cost $70/month. That’s over $840/year. Good grief! How does someone making $40,000/year afford such an expensive luxury? On top of paying for rent, for food, for transportation, for a phone line, and now, for internet too. This is just too heavy of a burden to bear for under privileged people. Those who are younger, those who are minorities, those who are women that earn less. The greed of corporate America is quite disgusting, and of our elected politicians that work in collusion with them, to prevent such free public services from being made available.
badrabbit 7y ago
I am mildly concerned about the internet being a requrement for participating in society. The utility argument makes sense but people should also keep in mind, not having internet access should not exclude anyone from things like food,safe shelter,clothing,property ownership,trade and employment. Inconvenienced? Sure. Pay reasonable extra costs for having to do things offline? Why not. But let's not go full on dystopian like China here. The cure should not be worse than the disease!
BadMrFrosty 7y ago
Imagine wanting the government to be your ISP. You think private companies mishandle your privacy? Wait until the government has total access to what you do online without warrants. Try putting that genie back in the bottle. Remember, these are the same people whose competence is manifested in pretending the water in Flint wasn’t toxic, intentionally infecting blacks with Syphilis and not treating them, and giving LSD to school children.

514 points by laurex 7y ago

Need to start naming and shaming any public figures, companies, and politicians who say otherwise. That’s the only way to fight against the corporate takeover attempt.

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lioeters 7y ago
> corporate takeover attempt Sadly, I think the takeover has happened already, and there's not enough incentive for public figures, companies, and politicians to push for deprivatization. I agree with the article that the Internet should be a public utility, like water or electricity.
- alexfromapex 7y ago
  I know what you’re saying and I hear you but I think the “it’s already over we should just give up” attitude that comes up whenever these types of discussions arise is what causes them to win. The first step to reversing their influence is not viewing it as acceptable.
  - coldpie 7y ago
    Paying more attention to local politics helps combat this. There are people trying to do good out there, they're just not getting all the attention like those at the federal level.
  - lioeters 7y ago
    > “it’s already over we should just give up” attitude I agree, thank you for pointing that out. I'm trying to fight this defeatist and cynical tendency in myself. > The first step to reversing their influence is not viewing it as acceptable. Right - as a form of local activism, I'll remember to voice my opinion on important matters, where the status quo is unacceptable.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]

perlpimp 7y ago

... or it should be cheap and regulated on pricing. it is crime what western nations charge for it. suppose areas of differing income levels should have different pricing schemes. coming from russia to canada, it is insane that you have to pay 1500% more for same packages for wireless and wired internet.

BubRoss 7y ago
Competition accomplishes the same thing. Look at any area where Comcast or AT&T have competition, they shape up very quickly. DOCSIS 3.0 and 3.1 are actually very fast. Cable companies know however that if the better the internet they sell, the more they canabalize their ability to sell cable TV. They want to sell you data twice and one of their giant sources of revenue is something people would rather leave behind.
- dahart 7y ago
  Competition does help when it happens. The problem is Comcast and AT&T charge higher prices wherever there is no competition and they actively do whatever they can to prevent competition, they absolutely do not just wait around for other ISPs to compete. A few years ago Comcast’s active anti-competitive bullying of local ISPs in my city pushed me off the ISP I preferred. And there are too many areas in the U.S. where competing is prohibitive, like rural areas where build-out is more expensive, so once a single ISP is there nobody else bothers.
  - topkai22 7y ago
    I think this is how utilities evolved in many places- local monopolies arose, so local governments either built their own system, took over service delivery or created laws on top of the service delivery.
    - _carl_jung 7y ago
      I don't understand this part. As far as I can tell, utility monopolies can only form with government assistance (i.e. lobbying).

zbrozek 7y ago

I talked with the mayor of Los Altos Hills, CA yesterday where I advocated for a municipal fiber ISP. It seems crazy to me that in Silicon Valley, and specifically in one of its richest towns, that broadband is not available to every residence. She makes a good point: the residents don't care. Her argument is that ~20 mbps DSL is good enough for the elderly population. And further - that for those who find that inadequate - Comcast is often (but by no means universally) available. I write this tethered to the cell network because I can't get a decent wired internet solution here, with direct line-of-sight to Google's headquarters and the mega-offices of many of tech's largest players. As I am stuck at home, constantly turning off others' video streams while I try to engage with my coworkers remotely, I deeply wish that we had either a more competitive marketplace or a more belligerently pro-consumer regulator. And, by the way, the FCC thinks I have a dozen options for broadband. That is false.

Zhenya 7y ago
Not that this is a solution but get a good directional antenna and point it at Google - instant guest network(advice not guaranteed to work)!
tarde 7y ago
> Her argument is that ~20 mbps DSL is good enough that is insane. How having no internet is fine because 20mbps is enough? That could be a good argument against fiber (which i also think is overkill, decent cooper is lower maintenance and with enough repeaters as good as) but it is hardly an argument against it being available to all as a public utility. > And, by the way, the FCC thinks I have a dozen options for broadband. That is false. and the real enemy shows up. FCC, from the bush-omaba-trump admin become the most corrupt organization one can think of. They openly lie and laugh when someone point out the lie.
- coldpie 7y ago
  > from the bush-omaba-trump admin become the most corrupt organization one can think of I don't know whether they were corrupt, but Tom Wheeler did a fantastic job from a consumer rights & Internet health perspective during the Obama admin. Most notably he implemented Title II regulations to enforce net neutrality (since undone by a Republican), but also supported municipal broadband (since undone by a Republican), fought against several huge communication company mergers (since undone by a Republican), and supported content providers against ISPs charging interconnection fees. https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/03/how-a-former-lobbyist-became-the-broadband-industrys-worst-nightmare/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/03/how-a...

legitster 7y ago

Walk me through this argument - my local utilities are a nightmare! Their pricing is atrocious and regressive (huge flat fixed fees to connect, tiny marginal costs), they constantly have to borrow money from the city to make ends meet. Combined, we pay $350 a month for gas, water & drainage, electricity (over 50% of the bills are fixed costs, unaffected by our consumption). Customer service is awful. In comparison, our internet is relatively painfree and only $30 a month. I get that there are certain high level concepts of why it is good to treat internet as a utility, but as a consumer the idea frustrates me. (Our city offers a municipal internet, btw. But it's worse service for more money, and has generally been a money drain for taxpayers.)

cactus2093 7y ago
I don’t even understand what the distinction is. For instance PG&E in California is a private company but regulated by the government. I pay for service and if I stop paying they cut me off. Isn’t Comcast internet service the same thing? A private company but regulated by the FCC. The only difference I can think of is there are still multiple providers for internet service available in most places. Would making internet a public utility just mean giving a government granted monopoly to one provider per region and forbidding anyone else from selling internet service?
- pdonis 7y ago
  > Would making internet a public utility just mean giving a government granted monopoly to one provider per region and forbidding anyone else from selling internet service? If that's what "public utility" means then Internet is already a public utility in many parts of the US, since this is exactly the arrangement in existence today.
- jcrawfordor 7y ago
  The details vary substantially by type of utility and jurisdiction, but generally a public utility is subject to far stricter regulation than internet service providers which are regarded as a competitive industry. A key example would be requirements for tariff approvals: public utilities are generally not permitted to make their own pricing decisions, instead they need to publish a tariff and they are not permitted to modify the tariff without petitioning the regulator for permission. The regulatory authority generally has broad authority to order utilities to do whatever it believes should be done, and has to approve almost all changes to the service, which the utility must justify as beneficial to customers. Take a look at your electric bill, for example. Generally there's an interconnection fee and base rate, both of which come directly from the published tariff approved by the regulator. Due to real changes in the energy market there will also be a "fuel cost surcharge," this fee is calculated based on generation costs according to a formula included in the published tariff. If you have any dispute about the pricing or quality of the service you can take that complaint to the regulator, many regulators require that the utilities provide you that phone number as part of your bill. Then look at your internet bill. The rate on it is whatever the ISP wants, and they have no requirement to explain it to you, except for a few mandated taxes. They can raise and lower it more or less at will, subject to your contractual protections, which are usually minimal. With most incumbent ISPs it is standard for the rate to increase significantly after 12 or 24 months. If you have complaints, there is a small chance you can take them to the FCC under certain regulatory authorities the FCC has exercised, but for the most part your only option is to find another provider.

pinacarlos90 7y ago

My question is, what would be the impact on the following areas if the internet was public utility? 1) security/encryption 2) bandwidth distribution 3) content freedom 4) Governance rules (federal gov?)

dylan604 7y ago
Why would 1) be an issue at all of the service was a public utility or not? It's not like a website will not use HTTPS just because it's on publicUtil. 2) is problem regardless. Something to be addressed, but it's not anything new just because it's becomes a utility. I could see where 3) & 4) might be questionable. If it's gov't funded, then they like to tack on a lot of rules about what can/can't be used on the service. Obvious things like porn/p2p/etc would be blocked, but would access to things like Planned Parenthood be blocked too?
- Reelin 7y ago
  In the US, 3 (content freedom) is a clear first amendment guarantee. It also seems to be working out just fine elsewhere in the western world.
K0SM0S 7y ago
So I can't obviously "prove" any causality, that would require serious studies; but I can testify how things work here in France. 1) doesn't change anything. Mostly due to ISP practices, which are regulated under typical communication laws (this dates back to radio, landlines, post offices, etc) 2) bandwidth is generally great. The idea is this: you mutualize the pipes (shared by citizens through public organisms, and some private infrastructure / maintenance companies). Then all ISP invest together to build the best shared infrastructure; at which point any customer can just switch to any ISP at any time — you just unplug-replug in the locally shared DSLAM/PON/whatever. FWIW we've got the same infra for elec, water, kitchen gas, even banking... you just hook up with another utility provider and they switch you within days, weeks at most (it's a manual intervention in many cases). Don't like your elec provider? Next month, you're out. The net result is that we've got up to 1Gbps symmetrical for €40/mo (say $45), basic offers for e.g 250Mb at €10-20/mo maybe. There's even a 10Gbps network being deployed (at the routing level, it's mostly equipment) by one ISP, I got it and measured ~3.5Gbps max concurently (I'd rather have 1Gbps symmetrical since I've got servers though, self-hosting is a very real possibility with such bandwidth; all IPs are full stack on demand here (all ports, no sub-1024 shenanigans) unless you're on budget offers. 3) that's freedom of speech most likely (e.g porn is legal... nobody questions that). Also ties to GDPR now, on the source side. We've had such laws in France for two decades now, look up the CNIL. Nothing to report here, ISPs would be fined if not respecting a modicus of neutrality — but there's no data cap on home connections whatsoever, so it's not comparable to the US situation. In the past (DSL era) we observed some early / prime time throttling of selected websites (e.g YouTube) by a certain ISP who was "at war" with Google (so, that was a choice, not a factor of infrastructure). 4) See 2. It's all private but there's gov oversight and regulation to maintain access. For instance, you can't cut internet to poor people, unemployed etc. here: we've determined it's too important to have internet access to find a job and do basic admin stuff (pretty much all state services are now online). That's the real value of internet as a commodity: it's a matter of "can you leave a household without electricity? without water? without internet?", the answer being a resounding "no" because that's inhumane, that's attacking their dignity and our decency. The question thus becomes, how much of it do we 'guarantee' to everyone, like basic healthcare. The answer here in France is: enough to live decently, enough to keep functioning as a normal member of society, notably to get a job (or keep it) and have a social life (we've found that depression doesn't help anyone). Honestly, none of it is perfect, but as far as internet goes, yeah we've nailed it. I don't know of any better offer for the price (many Asian countries have a better infra, but costs are 2-3x for customers).

3fe9a03ccd14ca5 7y ago

I’m generally a libertarian, anti-bureaucracy type, but this is an issue I align with. Having the government provide the bulk of last mile dumb fiber seems to be the best way to move forward internet speeds. Opponents always point towards the remarkable improvements in wireless internet speed, but those of us who understand the technology know it’s not a replacement for fiber. Why compare simple, vacuum packed download tests? Of course people don’t utilize their upload speed: it’s miserably slow! Of course they don’t use more bandwidth: they get charged an arm and a leg for it!

sneak 7y ago
Another, simpler solution would be to have the government stop promulgating/supporting the lies regarding fictional competition spread by companies like Comcast. There are lots of places where you have only one or two options, but the large national incumbents who have the ear of regulators will lie and claim that there are three times as many. The government grants them their moat. There are lots of people who would like to be ISPs (including municipalities) who simply aren't allowed to be, because the regulators and the large national ISPs have conspired to pass lots of regulation that outlaws any real competition. It's absolutely shameful. https://www.theverge.com/2015/5/1/8530403/chattanooga-comcast-fcc-high-speed-internet-gigabit https://www.theverge.com/2015/5/1/8530403/chattanooga-comcas... https://boingboing.net/2019/04/19/comcast-vs-america.html https://boingboing.net/2019/04/19/comcast-vs-america.html
Karunamon 7y ago
>Of course people don’t utilize their upload speed: it’s miserably slow! The average internet user's bandwidth usage is always going to be asymmetrical, since the average internet user is downloading a lot more than they produce. One or two streaming movies on something like Netflix (15% of worldwide downstream usage by itself) will completely blow away a few video calls. Try to enumerate the use cases for high upload rates, and you find that most of them simply won't apply to most users.

marcusverus 7y ago

Has the author never heard of the Lifeline Program for Low-Income Consumers (aka Obamaphones)? This program already provides a benefit designed to provide free access to mobile internet. The $10 per month subsidy may not seem like much, but it'll buy you ~1Gb per month via Tracfone, for example. It's important to note that this program includes a requirement that "Obamaphones" be hot-spot enabled so that they can be used with laptops (i.e. by kids who have homework on school-provided laptops). https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/lifeline-support-affordable-communications https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/lifeline-support-afford...

JoBrad 7y ago
A program that isn’t available to everyone and is routinely under fire. It also doesn’t solve the underlying problem, but instead throws money at the companies exacerbating it for profit. Broadly available, competitive broadband is the answer.
- evv 7y ago
  > It also doesn’t solve the underlying problem, but instead throws money at the companies exacerbating it for profit Quite similar to Obama's approach to healthcare, what a coincidence! :-)
  - AdamJacobMuller 7y ago
    Just on a massively larger scale.
  - otterley 7y ago
    The better choice - replacing private provisioning for basic healthcare coverage with a public service - was not politically viable. Sometimes you have to make a suboptimal choice for the greater good.
    - evv 7y ago
      True. But the root cause of the problem is the influence of the insurance/pharma industries on our legislative system. Pretty sure Obama was smart enough to see that. Did he do anything about it?

Iwork4Google 7y ago

In order for anything useful to happen in our society, we have to vote. It is now abundantly clear which party values what, and for whom. If we would rather vote based on 'abortion preventing our souls from partying with Jesus in heaven' instead of 'municipal broadband for all residents as a public utility', then we're going to continue to complain about this for another 50 years and beyond. The problem is that saying this out loud means you're politicizing this problem. Well, it's largely a political problem, otherwise we could get the Federal Government to step in and properly fix this. Legislation in the past with the best intensions was purposely weakened at the last moment to allow billions to be taken from Federal programs that left zero actual improvement or infrastructure development. Guess which party is fighting hardest for such loopholes and promising that corporations can do this better than "big government"? If we don't get our acts together in November, not having quality Internet access is going to be the least of our problems. Anyway, everyone enjoy going back to business as normal by Easter during the peak of this pandemic. I'm sure that will help as well.

_delirium 7y ago
> It is now abundantly clear which party values what, and for whom. If we would rather vote based on 'abortion preventing our souls from partying with Jesus in heaven' instead of 'municipal broadband for all residents as a public utility', then we're going to continue to complain about this for another 50 years and beyond. If that were true, it'd be great. But which is the party that supports municipal broadband for all residents as a public utility? California has a Democratic governor, Democratic legislature, and in the most populous areas Democratic local government, and yet no municipal broadband. There's a map here of which state legislatures have passed restrictions on municipal broadband, and it seems pretty idiosyncratic relative to blue/red politics: https://broadbandnow.com/report/municipal-broadband-roadblocks/ https://broadbandnow.com/report/municipal-broadband-roadbloc... E.g. WV, OH, IN, IL, KY, GA, NM, VT are friendly to it, while WA, OR, TX, CO, AL, PA, FL, MA are unfriendly.
- daveFNbuck 7y ago
  Single-issue voters don't vote straight party tickets. You have to learn about the individual candidates and only vote for the ones that support your pet issue. The mayor in this story probably didn't care much either way about municipal broadband. They just don't see it as an issue worth the effort. If there were a real chance that not supporting municipal broadband would hurt their re-election chances, they'd be more likely to support it. If not, perhaps their successor would see things differently.

sneak 7y ago

I'm not sure that I want the government in a position to be a single point of control for which websites I can or cannot access.

freehunter 7y ago
Absolutely nothing about public internet in any way implies anything even remotely related to your strawman argument.
- JumpCrisscross 7y ago
  > nothing about public internet in any way implies anything even remotely related to your strawman argument Why not? If the government has a monopoly on internet access, it becomes easier for voters to call for certain sites being blocked or certain sorts of traffic be monitored and/or intercepted.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - freehunter 7y ago
    If we're playing that game, there's a million things they could do as well, but it doesn't make any of them likely. Hell, they could do what you're talking about right now, other countries do that even though their Internet access isn't controlled by the government. The porn ban in the UK is a great example of privately-controlled ISPs being forced to block certain sites. I'll repeat, there is absolutely nothing about publicly funded Internet service that in any way even remotely connects "internet access as a public utility" to "government starts blocking certain sites". They could do it right now if they wanted to.
    - uk_programmer 7y ago
      The porn ban didn't happen. Even with the "don't go to the pirate bay or we send you a nasty letter" legislation, they stop bothering doing that because nobody paid any attention and threw the letter in the bin.

miguelmota 7y ago

If it's public infrastructure, the government has no incentive to innovate and it'll be a good way to ruin it. Electric, gas, and water utilities are natural monopolies and priced per usage. You'd end up paying more for slower internet.

raverbashing 7y ago
Please show me where private run electric or gas utilities have unlimited usage for a flat fee.
- miguelmota 7y ago
  There’s none for obvious reasons. Give me an example of a government making the internet a public utility and making it better and less censored than a privately run company.
  - zbrozek 7y ago
    https://muninetworks.org/content/owensboro-kentucky-headed-spring-ftth-expansion https://muninetworks.org/content/owensboro-kentucky-headed-s... https://tech.co/news/chattanooga-fastest-internet-usa-2018-08 https://tech.co/news/chattanooga-fastest-internet-usa-2018-0... Those places are offering connections way better than I can get from AT&T.
    - miguelmota 7y ago
      Chattanooga’s municipally-owned telecoms provider (EPB) is charging $57.99 for 300mbs [0], while I get 500mbs for $39.99 in my area from a non-city owned company [1] [0] https://epb.com/home-store/internet https://epb.com/home-store/internet [1] https://frontier.com/offer/experiencefios-c https://frontier.com/offer/experiencefios-c
      - zbrozek 7y ago
        You really can't compare across areas. I can get 20 mbps DSL for $50 here. At my old place, eight miles away, I could get 1000 mbps for $90. At my parents' lake cabin in Tennessee they can get 3 mbps for $50. And?

amelius 7y ago

For much of the same reasons, the postal service and Amazon should be public utilities too.

pdonis 7y ago
The postal service in the US is a public utility: the US Post Office is required by law to deliver to any US address. The fact that there are private companies delivering something called "mail" does not change that: none of them are permitted to deliver first class mail, that is a USPS monopoly, and none of them are required to deliver to all US addresses, but the USPS is. I don't know why you would want Amazon to be a public utility.
- amelius 7y ago
  Yes, in the US that's the case but nobody said it will never change. Regarding Amazon, see for example https://stallman.org/amazon.html#size https://stallman.org/amazon.html#size

_carl_jung 7y ago

Here's a question I have about these types of frustrating monopolies, and I'd love a point towards a book or something that can explain. Let's say I have a bunch of money (or funding) for a big new internet provider that could easily outperform the existing provider. What makes it so hard to do it? I hear complaints (and complain myself) about seemingly unfair pricing and slow speeds. The tech is there to make > 100mb internet, why isn't it more widespread? Surely consumers are willing to pay for a competitor that can provide it.

jcrawfordor 7y ago
1) laying fiber (either trenched or on utility poles) will likely be your biggest expense, it requires a huge, huge investment to be able to put infrastructure through a significant area. Think about feet of conduit a several-person crew can drive per day whether by trenching/trenchless methods - it's not that many. Microtrenching promised to significantly reduce this cost but Google Fiber's experiment with it went famously poorly. 2) ROWs to run cable will need to be negotiated either with the municipality (if laying underground) which can come with a lot of difficult restrictions on work quality, traffic disruption, etc, or with the electrical utility in the case of utility poles in an area with a typical franchise agreement, in which case the utilities are often uninterested in the project and will just generally make your life difficult through slow consideration of engineering proposals, requiring extensive up-front engineering work, etc. In a small town I had some involvement in the electric utility demanded over $1mm up front for engineering surveys on pole attachment - this for a market of ~8k people, and before any actual attachment fees. Completely blew the budget of the potential broadband provider which had planned a total of $3-4mm in up-front. 3) After running infrastructure, providing drops to each house is a fairly costly and disruptive up-front operation per customer (may even be trenching their front yard), which discourages customers signing up with your service when the incumbent providers already have house drops in place. You will also either have to eat this cost or pass it to the customer as an install fee or a term agreement, all of those options are bad in different ways. 4) IPv4 exhaustion has hit new ISPs hard and you are going to have to do CG-NAT. ISPs like to think customers don't care but in practice this is indeed a headache.
- 7y ago

bgorman 7y ago

The danger with government nationalizing telecommunications networks is that once it is done, innovation and quality go way down. We had nationalized telecommunications for over 70 years and customers could only have one brand of phone, and we're limited in the number of phones available in their houses. In addition, long distance calling was cost-prohibitive. The monopoly only started cracking when MCI introduced microwave based long distance calling. Fortunately non-governmental is on the way for you. 4G/5G are decent options, many areas (rural and in major cities) have microwave based broadband, and it looks like Starlink will become a reality soon. Putting fiber lines in the ground is extremely expensive (especially in California) and frankly is not really needed by most of the population. Are you just using a cell phone? In your situation or may make sense to buy a repeater or other dedicated hardware solutions.

heymijo 7y ago
> We had nationalized telecommunications for over 70 years No. Until 1982 AT&T in the United States was a legal monopoly, not a nationalized telecom. The book, The Idea Factory about Bell Labs has most of the history including why the the defense work Bell Labs did during WWII and beyond helped them justify a nationwide monopoly on telecom.
- Aloha 7y ago
  And compared to virtually every nationalized telecom it provided better, cheaper service that was universally available. Internet access should be regulated like it was a utility however, and that's the great failing of public policy in that area.
  - greggman3 7y ago
    Cheaper!?!?! I had $1200 one month long distance bill in 1984. That today is effectively free. Only competition made that happen. If AT&T was still in charge we'd be paying by the call and by the byte.
    - 7y ago

keeganjw 7y ago

I think this makes perfect sense. Competition fundamentally doesn't work when it comes to infrastructure like this. I don't hear anyone saying that we need more privatized competition in our sewer systems. Why? Because it's incredibly costly to build and having private companies build two, three, or more sewer systems in one city/town would be insane. The costs per user of each one of those systems would rise dramatically because you would have far fewer people paying into each system. Same goes for our internet connections. Creating multiple competing networks in this case raises prices for everyone and we needlessly duplicate the amount of infrastructure required to serve everyone. That is why we make services like sewer, water, and electricity regulated monopolies. I don't see how internet, in this day in age, is any different. Just like everyone needs electricity, everyone needs internet. That being said, we do need competent government officials that can balance costs with public good. If we elect incompetent people, we get incompetent results.

rubicks 7y ago

Agreed, but this article didn't convince me. Watching the Comcast/Verizon duopoly play out over two decades has overwhelmingly negated the argument for private-sector infrastructure.

williesleg 7y ago

Yes, and Bernie should run it.

GhettoMaestro 7y ago

The first step is to get rid of any state or local laws preventing government entities operating last-mile networks. That should have never happened.

chrisbennet 7y ago

The local government should own the "pipes" and rent them out. Some people are down on "socialism" without realizing they love it. We have socialized police, fire, sewage, (usually) water and road repair plus some others I'm forgetting. Socialism is people getting together to help each other. Businesses have no special right to view citizens as their exclusive feeding ground.

uk_programmer 7y ago
> The local government should own the "pipes" and rent them out. This is essentially what happens in the UK. BT have to rent out lines to everyone else. Guess what? Almost all the ISPs are capped at the speed at whatever BT can provide. The only company I believe in the UK that goes above those speeds is Virgin which almost twice the speed at almost the same price as the competition. I used to live in the countryside and until there was fibre installed the speeds were terrible (less than 2mb/s). State own broadband isn't magically better. > Some people are down on "socialism" without realizing they love it. We have socialized police, fire, sewage, (usually) water and road repair plus some others I'm forgetting. In the UK our council tax pay are supposed to pay for road repair. The roads in the UK are awful. There are pot holes everywhere and I've had 3 punctures last year. The toll roads (the few of them that exist in the UK) don't have anyone on them. Take 30 minutes a day off my journey time in the car and the road surface is perfect.
- pirocks 7y ago
  > The roads in the UK are awful. Not in my experience, though admittedly I live in London. >In the UK our council tax pay are supposed to pay for road repair. I'm sure you realize that council tax is supposed to pay for a lot of things, and that council incomes are way down over the past 10 years.
  - uk_programmer 7y ago
    > Not in my experience, though admittedly I live in London. Well outside of London it is generally awful. TBH London might as well be another planet when compared to the rest of the England (same goes for Manchester and Birmingham, I stay far away). https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-46444109 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-46444109 https://www.telegraph.co.uk/cars/news/britains-pothole-problem-costs-drivers-684m-in-a-year/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/cars/news/britains-pothole-probl... I currently live near Manchester and before that Hampshire. So that is two opposite ends of the country pretty much and it is the problem there. So my experience seems to reflect that of what is reported. >I'm sure you realize that council tax is supposed to pay for a lot of things, and that council incomes are way down over the past 10 years. So? It has been like this since the late 90s. I remember my father complaining about it since then. In anycase the roads are awful.

gameswithgo 7y ago

There are a lot of places where I agree that it should. There are some cities where competition is alive and working well. I think at least we can agree that state governments should not be making it illegal for local communities to create public utility internet, as has been happening in some places.

DavidVoid 7y ago

At the very least, municipal "dark fiber" [1] broadband should be more of a thing. I live in a city in Northern Europe and we have it in pretty much all apartment buildings here. I can choose between 17 different ISPs and the prices per month are: Price Speed (up/down) $20 10 Mb/s $30 100 Mb/s $75 1 Gb/s $142 10 Gb/s If you live in the country-side though, you sadly tend to have much more limited options for a decent Internet connection. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_fibre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_fibre

briandear 7y ago
$142 for 10Gb/s? Mine costs $95 per month in Mountain View, CA.

MR4D 7y ago

So, we should have PG&E run it? Or maybe the city of Flint, Michigan? God no. That’s what happens when you make the decision to be a utility. You give up all choice. The solution is more choice in the internet market, not less.

PureParadigm 7y ago

I used to think municipal fiber was the answer to improve internet service, but while it may work, I've seen that it is certainly not the only way. I moved to Berkeley for university and there are several competing options for gigabit internet (including Sonic, LMI, etc.). When the gigabit service arrived to disrupt the AT&T/Comcast duopoly, suddenly the customer was important, and we were able to get great speeds, prices, and customer service. What I'm saying is that you don't necessarily need to make internet a public utility to improve service, just to get some real competition. If that competition needs to come in the form of municipal fiber, then that might also work, but it could also be a private company.

blululu 7y ago
More competition is really important for driving down the price and improving the quality of internet supply, however there is still a case for entry level public internet access. You could easily imagine a very slow internet connection (like 1995 level speeds) being supplied by cities as a basic service to help bridge the digital divide and provide basic access to people in need.
joecool1029 7y ago
>What I'm saying is that you don't necessarily need to make internet a public utility to improve service, just to get some real competition. You won't get competition in sparsely populated areas. There's not a ton of business sense to expand and try to compete in these markets. The alternative way to get build-out in the underserved areas is to have gov subsidize a few interests. Canada seems have done a good job getting cell coverage in the middle of nowhere paying Rogers and Bell/Telus to build in remote lands. The US usually gives build-out requirements for stuff like spectrum and then doesn't enforce them when a company like DISH runs a scam: https://www.forbes.com/sites/fredcampbell/2018/07/20/dish-network-terrestrial-spectrum-licenses-at-risk/#5d593902af3e https://www.forbes.com/sites/fredcampbell/2018/07/20/dish-ne... DISH btw is in full PR mode lending all their AWS-4 spectrum to AT&T and all their 600mhz to T-Mobile, since they previously didn't do shit with it. In the case of the landline internet providers, there's around a half-trillion USD tax scam that's been perpetuated since the 1990's: https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6c5e97/eli5_how_were_isps_able_to_pocket_the_200_billion/dhsxq6k/ https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6c5e97/e...

mensetmanusman 7y ago

If it was, there would be no starlink

deleted 7y ago

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malingo 7y ago

This weekend here in Los Angeles is the Native Plant Garden Tour [1] which is in its 17th year but being presented this year as a virtual tour. The quality from the gardeners streaming video over their home Wifi connections is sometimes okay, mostly mediocre, sometimes unwatchable. Of course this is somewhat affected by how far they venture away from their router into their yard, but still it's surprising how universally awful internet service is even in major US cities. And it's so much worse in rural areas. [1] https://www.nativeplantgardentour.org/ https://www.nativeplantgardentour.org/

Proven 7y ago

No, it shouldn't. Like everything else it should be private because only then can those who don't use it avoid paying for government mismanagement and corruption, and at the same time get better and more private service.

blackrock 7y ago

The internet needs to have a free service tier, that can be given to under privileged people. The entire government runs on web services, and you must have a decent computer to access it, as well as high speed internet. Well, some basic cable internet services cost $70/month. That’s over $840/year. Good grief! How does someone making $40,000/year afford such an expensive luxury? On top of paying for rent, for food, for transportation, for a phone line, and now, for internet too. This is just too heavy of a burden to bear for under privileged people. Those who are younger, those who are minorities, those who are women that earn less. The greed of corporate America is quite disgusting, and of our elected politicians that work in collusion with them, to prevent such free public services from being made available.

badrabbit 7y ago

I am mildly concerned about the internet being a requrement for participating in society. The utility argument makes sense but people should also keep in mind, not having internet access should not exclude anyone from things like food,safe shelter,clothing,property ownership,trade and employment. Inconvenienced? Sure. Pay reasonable extra costs for having to do things offline? Why not. But let's not go full on dystopian like China here. The cure should not be worse than the disease!

BadMrFrosty 7y ago

Imagine wanting the government to be your ISP. You think private companies mishandle your privacy? Wait until the government has total access to what you do online without warrants. Try putting that genie back in the bottle. Remember, these are the same people whose competence is manifested in pretending the water in Flint wasn’t toxic, intentionally infecting blacks with Syphilis and not treating them, and giving LSD to school children.