9 ms·

The "last mile" (couple KM) of physical infrastructure should be owned by the people. This is the way that it works best for walkways, roads, and even utilitie

The "last mile" (couple KM) of physical infrastructure should be owned by the people. This is the way that it works best for walkways, roads, and even utilities like power and water where (at least I've only ever seen) one single option exists and is highly regulated. In the case of power that's true for 'transmission' but there have been times I've had options for generation. IMO laws like the ones in Washington State that were put in place by entrenched and abusive commercial monopolies (like the cable companies and telephone companies) harm competition, by restricting existing and new utilities from partnering with the people to create these last mile platforms, and allow competition on top of them. Just as how there is competition in package delivery service on top of the roadways.

knjoy 6y ago
Totally agree here. I live in a building that only has Time Warner (ya, didn't think about the ISP before renting my apartment.....). Every week I lose internet for a day or two. Internet is a public good and should be treated as such...
- freeopinion 6y ago
  I don't think internet is a public good. But I do think there is a public interest. This is how I see it: Communication must be transported through some medium. That could be air, copper, fiber, etc. For the sake of this discussion, let's focus on fiber. To connect everybody with fiber, the utility has to bury fiber under property it doesn't own. (Or it could run it arial over property it doesn't own.) For the little section that runs from the street through my property to the network interface device attached to my house, I am more than happy to give the utility permission to trench and bury fiber. But they own the fiber and are responsible for its maintenance. If there is ever any maintenance issue with that small portion buried in my yard, they don't have an easement to dig it up and service it. They need my permission. Because it is directly affecting my internet connection, I'm usually happy to grant permission. But when it runs under my driveway, I don't want them digging up my driveway. We work together to find some option that isn't too expensive, but doesn't involve the destruction of my driveway. Let's say I want to switch providers. The new provider can't just reuse the fiber in my yard because it doesn't belong to them, nor to me. So each potential provider has to bury their own across my yard without disturbing the others. Because this seems suboptimal to me and because I take the long view, I have my network interface device moved to the curb, and I own the fiber in my yard. But now the burden is on me to have the right kind of fiber and the right type of fiber connects and to fix any issues. Now let's say that my neighbor's connection also runs through my yard. Neither my neighbor nor the utility want to be beholden to me for maintenance. They will want an easement that gives them the right to do whatever it takes to fix the fiber in my yard. But if my neighbor ever wants to switch providers, the new provider will need another easement. Generally most of the property across which the fiber is installed is publicly owned. Each utility has their own easements through that property. Aside from the obvious duplication of infrastructure with its associated price inflation, there is another problem. There is only a limited space for easements. If there are multiple water utilities and multiple power utilities and multiple gas utilities and multiple telecom utilities, the easement corridor gets pretty crowded and could conceivably even be exhausted. How do you decide which private company gets a free easement and which doesn't. Should we start charging for the easements? Also, it stands to reason that if there are 25 utility easements under main street, there is a much higher probability on any given day that one of them will dig up main street for maintenance than if there were only 5 utility easements. So in the end, I think all private utilities should have equal access to easements on public land. You can do that by auctioning those easements every set interval. Kind of like we do with spectrum. But I'm not very satisfied with how that has worked in the past. It is impossible for any little guy to get a foot over that hurdle. The only acceptable alternative I have encountered is to deny easements to them all. We still need transmission lines and those will still need easements on public property. One obvious solution is to have those lines be publicly owned. Just like I took ownership of that hypothetical fiber running through my yard. In the case of fiber, you could run 144 x 144 fiber in very nearly the same space it takes one utility to run 144 fiber. So you could conceivably rent out fiber to utilities. But that doesn't work as well for water utilities. With telecom, we can mingle data on the same fiber. That doesn't work so great for water. It is probably practical to have a different solution for water or gas than for telecom. Power may require a solution of its own. Through this line of reasoning I have come to believe that public ownership of transmission lines across public property is the best arrangement for telecom. Any provider that wants to buy up private property or buy up easements across private property is still free to do so.
- mjevans 6y ago
  Making kickbacks and other freebies illegal would help, as would requiring all contracts entered into by such middle-management public records. I recall hearing something about a former apartment complex mentioning how costly (letting an additional provider) in was for them; but I never did learn the details of _what_ was costly about that. Having said data out in the bright sunlight of public records would make planning a beneficial change to the status quo much easier.
  - chrishacken 6y ago
    The problem with this is you can name a “kickback” by anything else, like “rent”, and that makes it legal.
jonpurdy 6y ago
Back in 2016 in Toronto, I chose a condominium specifically because it had Beanfield fiber (it was $50CAD/mo for 250 Mbit symmetric, no cap). Other buildings had Bell or Rogers at double the cost, with caps, and sometimes asymmetric. Those other buildings signed agreements with either Bell or Rogers and for the rest of the life of the building, those residents will be stuck with inferior, more expensive service. When we moved to SF a few months ago, Sonic wasn't available in our building so we had to get AT&T. I'm paying almost double what Sonic charges for basically the same service. In both cases, where buildings had exclusivity agreements or had the fiber providers lay the fiber themselves, residents are worse off. Buildings should be running their own fiber and letting residents hook up to whoever they want. Same thing with residential house internet; cities should own the last mile infrastructure (sure, pay providers to dig it and run it if you have to). Especially since we're migrating off of copper and onto fiber; this is the chance to get it right for the next few decades!
- vzidex 6y ago
  > Back in 2016 in Toronto, I chose a condominium specifically because it had Beanfield fiber I'm in Toronto, thank goodness this is becoming more common, not less. I was recently condo hunting and I noticed most new buildings had Beanfield or their competitor, FibreStream. The building we ended up with has the latter, so we're getting 500Mbps symmetric/no cap. Yay for not having to annually fight with Bell for a "promotional" rate anymore!
  - nikon 6y ago
    I'm looking forward to this when I move next. I currently have Rogers 1Gbps on a promotional rate, which is pretty good, but 30Mbps upload cap. Also double what you're paying!
    - ls65536 6y ago
      The asymmetry between download and upload speeds on cable connections is really awful in recent years. I see advertised download speeds like 300 Mbps and 1 Gbps available in many places, but the upload speeds seem to never exceed 30 Mbps around here (which is just 3% of the download speed at 1 Gbps!). Having something like 250/250 Mbps symmetric available would be overall more preferable than 1000/30 in all but the most extreme download situations, in my opinion. I suppose maybe the cable networks are more optimized for average user behaviour (far more download than upload), but maybe there's also a fundamental limitation with the cable infrastructure that prevents faster uploads, perhaps to do with cable's legacy delivering television broadcasts? Whereas with fibre, almost everything I've seen available comes with symmetric speeds by default.
ipnon 6y ago
Mesh networking is a great solution here. NYC Mesh puts a fiber connected node with a laser receiver on a tall building. You install a laser receiver on top of your building. Anyone with line of sight to the node now has fast, affordable internet access. They don't have to deal with mega telecoms anymore. [0] https://www.nycmesh.net/ https://www.nycmesh.net/
- save_ferris 6y ago
  This is great for urban areas, but connectivity in more rural parts of the country is shockingly bad, and doesn't seem to have as many elegant solutions as densely populated urban areas do. I live "out in the country" now during COVID and I'm now paying $60 for 250MB/s down, as opposed to paying $70 for gigabit a couple months ago living in the city. It cannot be understated how badly the more rural parts of the country are being screwed by big telecom right now.
  - cheerlessbog 6y ago
    > $60 for 250MB/s dow I’m going to guess that 80% of the US can’t get that.
    - freeopinion 6y ago
      I live in a rural area where the incumbent is building out FTTH as fast as they can. For all residences that have fiber, the price difference between 50M, 300M, and 1000M is significant. The actual bandwidth used by a 300M customer and a 1000M customer is usually the same. The provider's upstream contracts would not change much if they put every one of their customers on 1000M. But their pricing is regulated. The arm and a leg they charge for 1000M service is largely a function of that regulation, even though it hardly affects their costs otherwise. You might think that if the infrastructure costs are the same for 1M or 1000M and that the infrastructure costs are 90% of all costs, 1M and 1000M could be priced within 25% of each other. It might seem that a price jump from $100/50M to $1000/1000M is unreasonable. But the U.S. government right now is handing out $billions to rural providers to build out fiber, then requiring them to charge ridiculously high prices.
tracker1 6y ago
You're largely right... local ISPs (cable, telco) have serious entrenchment. They received public funding and easements to roll out infrastructure and pulled up the ladders behind them. Often localities are hindered by their state governments thanks to lobbying from the incumbents. I would prefer to see more local governments actively rolling their own telecom infrastructure to inter-city/state endpoints (should they choose to). From a security standpoint I feel that most locations should have two options at the least. I'd also like to see any civil funding start and end at the local municipalities. The feds don't do well managing these things as noted in TFA.
elcomet 6y ago
In france, last miles are not owned by the people, but usually by the biggest ISP, Orange (which was state-owned before). But all other operators have the right to use the lines. And Orange has the obligation to sell this service without making any benefits (charging only exactly what the costs of maintaining lines). To ensure that the prices are fairly calculated, we have a public authority which checks that the prices are correct.
- joecool1029 6y ago
  This used to be the case in the US for DSL. It still is the case in Canada. In 2003 and 2005[1] the market was deregulated and all the tiny independent ISP's went under as they were unable to throw wires up on the poles nor able to use the incumbents. [1] https://transition.fcc.gov/meetings/080505/sharing.pdf?mod=article_inline https://transition.fcc.gov/meetings/080505/sharing.pdf?mod=a...
- Godel_unicode 6y ago
  This type of rule is called local loop unbundling.
- dsr_ 6y ago
  We used to have a similar situation in the US: ILECs (the no-longer-monopoly telephone companies) were required to make lines available to CLECs (competitors) for a particular cost. What happened was that the ILECs all managed to come up with the same excuses: sorry, no lines available in that office. And, mysteriously, working CLEC lines would stop working, and it would be blamed on a "bad cable", but there wouldn't be a spare cable to switch to... and the ILEC had just installed a customer. Regulation needs to be enforced.
  - elcomet 6y ago
    Yeah. That's the role of our public regulator, the ARCEP. I believe they have power to fine or give sanctions to companies that don't comply with regulations, which seems essential.
  - icedchai 6y ago
orthecreedence 6y ago
Widespread public infrastructure rented/leased to private companies is the only way to solve net neutrality, long-term. Otherwise it's just going to ping pong back and forth in the legislative/executive system for the next 50 years while a bunch of useful idiots argue that we should let companies turn internet access into tiered cable TV plans.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
tzs 6y ago
Washington State seems kind of weird to pick for your example. Unlike many other states which do not allow municipal or county broadband at all, Washington's just prevents governments from offering it retail to consumers. They can offer it wholesale to resellers who can then use it to provide retail broadband.
ripdog 6y ago
This is close to what happens in New Zealand. We built a fibre network (FTTH) funded by the state starting in 2011. The project was put up for tender on a area-by-area basis, but with a small mountain of regulations attached. Basically, the companies which received the contracts were required to not act as ISPs, instead to wholesale access to their fibre network to any ISP interested. Maximum rates and minimum level of service are set by the Commerce Commission (the govt), though the fibre holders are free to reduce prices or improve services, which they are (we now can get gigabit internet nationwide for less than 100NZD - an excellent price considering there's no competition for the last mile itself). This is true for our old copper network too. It was built by Telecom, the old govt monopoly, in the 20th century. In 2009(?) the copper network was spun off into its own company, Chorus, and Chorus was bound by the same wholesale and non-ISP regulations. As a result of these enlightened regulations, NZ now has a super-competitive ISP market. ISPs are super cheap to set up - you basically just need to provide the core network and lease the last mile and backbone. I'd advise anyone campaigning for better ISP regulations in any other country to look at the NZ example. The free market may work better for extremely high density cities, but these regs are great for any markets where there is only demand for one last-mile network.
- postingawayonhn 6y ago
  > funded by the state Subsidised. Private funding covered much of the cost.
  - lostlogin 6y ago
    Cost was split about 50:50 as far as the initial deal was concerned I think (2013 link below) but I am unsure how the later stages have been funded. https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10867554 https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&...
- jiggawatts 6y ago
  For reference, Australia tried the same thing with the National Broadband Network. We would have had the same end-result as NZ, except that Rupert Murdoch didn't like the newfangled Internet-based media competing with his Fox cable network, so he told Tony Abbott that he'd get him elected as Prime Minister if he killed it off. The deal was struct, Tony was suddenly the "wonderkid" that could do no wrong and Fox News made sure the whole world heard his name. He was promptly elected by retired country morons who've never heard of the Internet but watched Fox on the telly every evening. Tony licked Rupert's boots like a good little boy and did his best to kill the NBN: https://delimiter.com.au/2012/07/06/australia-doesnt-need-the-nbn-says-abbott/ https://delimiter.com.au/2012/07/06/australia-doesnt-need-th... Thankfully his power didn't last long, but his short stint nonetheless had lasting damage: https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/national/2019/01/10/rupert-murdoch-nbn-kevin-rudd/ https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/national/2019/01/10/rupert-m... We can now (as of just a few weeks ago!) get gigabit on the Australian NBN, except that instead of NZD 100 it costs AUD 150 monthly. You also have to be one of the lucky 19% to be on the FTTH network that was built before Tony stopped its construction: https://thenewdaily.com.au/finance/property/2019/01/28/what-homebuyers-should-know-about-the-nbn/ https://thenewdaily.com.au/finance/property/2019/01/28/what-... Fuck Rupert Murdoch. Seriously. He is one of the most evil, vile, hateful, greedy, self-centered cunts alive on this planet.
onionjake 6y ago
UTOPIA in Utah is an example of a network that is pretty close to what you propose. The city installs all the last mile fiber and leases the lines to private ISPs. They have ~10 ISPs to choose from, and you can get 10 Gbps connections. My city is placing a similar proposal on the ballot this November (https://connectkaysville.com/ https://connectkaysville.com/).
marcthe12 6y ago
Singapore is the best. Here they separated the fiber from ISP. So ISP just rent the fiber and a nationalise company does the fibre. This creates cheap high speed internet plans in Singapore since new isp do not need to lay cables

knjoy 6y ago

Totally agree here. I live in a building that only has Time Warner (ya, didn't think about the ISP before renting my apartment.....). Every week I lose internet for a day or two. Internet is a public good and should be treated as such...

freeopinion 6y ago
I don't think internet is a public good. But I do think there is a public interest. This is how I see it: Communication must be transported through some medium. That could be air, copper, fiber, etc. For the sake of this discussion, let's focus on fiber. To connect everybody with fiber, the utility has to bury fiber under property it doesn't own. (Or it could run it arial over property it doesn't own.) For the little section that runs from the street through my property to the network interface device attached to my house, I am more than happy to give the utility permission to trench and bury fiber. But they own the fiber and are responsible for its maintenance. If there is ever any maintenance issue with that small portion buried in my yard, they don't have an easement to dig it up and service it. They need my permission. Because it is directly affecting my internet connection, I'm usually happy to grant permission. But when it runs under my driveway, I don't want them digging up my driveway. We work together to find some option that isn't too expensive, but doesn't involve the destruction of my driveway. Let's say I want to switch providers. The new provider can't just reuse the fiber in my yard because it doesn't belong to them, nor to me. So each potential provider has to bury their own across my yard without disturbing the others. Because this seems suboptimal to me and because I take the long view, I have my network interface device moved to the curb, and I own the fiber in my yard. But now the burden is on me to have the right kind of fiber and the right type of fiber connects and to fix any issues. Now let's say that my neighbor's connection also runs through my yard. Neither my neighbor nor the utility want to be beholden to me for maintenance. They will want an easement that gives them the right to do whatever it takes to fix the fiber in my yard. But if my neighbor ever wants to switch providers, the new provider will need another easement. Generally most of the property across which the fiber is installed is publicly owned. Each utility has their own easements through that property. Aside from the obvious duplication of infrastructure with its associated price inflation, there is another problem. There is only a limited space for easements. If there are multiple water utilities and multiple power utilities and multiple gas utilities and multiple telecom utilities, the easement corridor gets pretty crowded and could conceivably even be exhausted. How do you decide which private company gets a free easement and which doesn't. Should we start charging for the easements? Also, it stands to reason that if there are 25 utility easements under main street, there is a much higher probability on any given day that one of them will dig up main street for maintenance than if there were only 5 utility easements. So in the end, I think all private utilities should have equal access to easements on public land. You can do that by auctioning those easements every set interval. Kind of like we do with spectrum. But I'm not very satisfied with how that has worked in the past. It is impossible for any little guy to get a foot over that hurdle. The only acceptable alternative I have encountered is to deny easements to them all. We still need transmission lines and those will still need easements on public property. One obvious solution is to have those lines be publicly owned. Just like I took ownership of that hypothetical fiber running through my yard. In the case of fiber, you could run 144 x 144 fiber in very nearly the same space it takes one utility to run 144 fiber. So you could conceivably rent out fiber to utilities. But that doesn't work as well for water utilities. With telecom, we can mingle data on the same fiber. That doesn't work so great for water. It is probably practical to have a different solution for water or gas than for telecom. Power may require a solution of its own. Through this line of reasoning I have come to believe that public ownership of transmission lines across public property is the best arrangement for telecom. Any provider that wants to buy up private property or buy up easements across private property is still free to do so.
mjevans 6y ago
Making kickbacks and other freebies illegal would help, as would requiring all contracts entered into by such middle-management public records. I recall hearing something about a former apartment complex mentioning how costly (letting an additional provider) in was for them; but I never did learn the details of _what_ was costly about that. Having said data out in the bright sunlight of public records would make planning a beneficial change to the status quo much easier.
- chrishacken 6y ago
  The problem with this is you can name a “kickback” by anything else, like “rent”, and that makes it legal.

jonpurdy 6y ago

Back in 2016 in Toronto, I chose a condominium specifically because it had Beanfield fiber (it was $50CAD/mo for 250 Mbit symmetric, no cap). Other buildings had Bell or Rogers at double the cost, with caps, and sometimes asymmetric. Those other buildings signed agreements with either Bell or Rogers and for the rest of the life of the building, those residents will be stuck with inferior, more expensive service. When we moved to SF a few months ago, Sonic wasn't available in our building so we had to get AT&T. I'm paying almost double what Sonic charges for basically the same service. In both cases, where buildings had exclusivity agreements or had the fiber providers lay the fiber themselves, residents are worse off. Buildings should be running their own fiber and letting residents hook up to whoever they want. Same thing with residential house internet; cities should own the last mile infrastructure (sure, pay providers to dig it and run it if you have to). Especially since we're migrating off of copper and onto fiber; this is the chance to get it right for the next few decades!

vzidex 6y ago
> Back in 2016 in Toronto, I chose a condominium specifically because it had Beanfield fiber I'm in Toronto, thank goodness this is becoming more common, not less. I was recently condo hunting and I noticed most new buildings had Beanfield or their competitor, FibreStream. The building we ended up with has the latter, so we're getting 500Mbps symmetric/no cap. Yay for not having to annually fight with Bell for a "promotional" rate anymore!
- nikon 6y ago
  I'm looking forward to this when I move next. I currently have Rogers 1Gbps on a promotional rate, which is pretty good, but 30Mbps upload cap. Also double what you're paying!
  - ls65536 6y ago
    The asymmetry between download and upload speeds on cable connections is really awful in recent years. I see advertised download speeds like 300 Mbps and 1 Gbps available in many places, but the upload speeds seem to never exceed 30 Mbps around here (which is just 3% of the download speed at 1 Gbps!). Having something like 250/250 Mbps symmetric available would be overall more preferable than 1000/30 in all but the most extreme download situations, in my opinion. I suppose maybe the cable networks are more optimized for average user behaviour (far more download than upload), but maybe there's also a fundamental limitation with the cable infrastructure that prevents faster uploads, perhaps to do with cable's legacy delivering television broadcasts? Whereas with fibre, almost everything I've seen available comes with symmetric speeds by default.

ipnon 6y ago

Mesh networking is a great solution here. NYC Mesh puts a fiber connected node with a laser receiver on a tall building. You install a laser receiver on top of your building. Anyone with line of sight to the node now has fast, affordable internet access. They don't have to deal with mega telecoms anymore. [0] https://www.nycmesh.net/ https://www.nycmesh.net/

save_ferris 6y ago
This is great for urban areas, but connectivity in more rural parts of the country is shockingly bad, and doesn't seem to have as many elegant solutions as densely populated urban areas do. I live "out in the country" now during COVID and I'm now paying $60 for 250MB/s down, as opposed to paying $70 for gigabit a couple months ago living in the city. It cannot be understated how badly the more rural parts of the country are being screwed by big telecom right now.
- cheerlessbog 6y ago
  > $60 for 250MB/s dow I’m going to guess that 80% of the US can’t get that.
  - freeopinion 6y ago
    I live in a rural area where the incumbent is building out FTTH as fast as they can. For all residences that have fiber, the price difference between 50M, 300M, and 1000M is significant. The actual bandwidth used by a 300M customer and a 1000M customer is usually the same. The provider's upstream contracts would not change much if they put every one of their customers on 1000M. But their pricing is regulated. The arm and a leg they charge for 1000M service is largely a function of that regulation, even though it hardly affects their costs otherwise. You might think that if the infrastructure costs are the same for 1M or 1000M and that the infrastructure costs are 90% of all costs, 1M and 1000M could be priced within 25% of each other. It might seem that a price jump from $100/50M to $1000/1000M is unreasonable. But the U.S. government right now is handing out $billions to rural providers to build out fiber, then requiring them to charge ridiculously high prices.

tracker1 6y ago

You're largely right... local ISPs (cable, telco) have serious entrenchment. They received public funding and easements to roll out infrastructure and pulled up the ladders behind them. Often localities are hindered by their state governments thanks to lobbying from the incumbents. I would prefer to see more local governments actively rolling their own telecom infrastructure to inter-city/state endpoints (should they choose to). From a security standpoint I feel that most locations should have two options at the least. I'd also like to see any civil funding start and end at the local municipalities. The feds don't do well managing these things as noted in TFA.

elcomet 6y ago

In france, last miles are not owned by the people, but usually by the biggest ISP, Orange (which was state-owned before). But all other operators have the right to use the lines. And Orange has the obligation to sell this service without making any benefits (charging only exactly what the costs of maintaining lines). To ensure that the prices are fairly calculated, we have a public authority which checks that the prices are correct.

joecool1029 6y ago
This used to be the case in the US for DSL. It still is the case in Canada. In 2003 and 2005[1] the market was deregulated and all the tiny independent ISP's went under as they were unable to throw wires up on the poles nor able to use the incumbents. [1] https://transition.fcc.gov/meetings/080505/sharing.pdf?mod=article_inline https://transition.fcc.gov/meetings/080505/sharing.pdf?mod=a...
Godel_unicode 6y ago
This type of rule is called local loop unbundling.
dsr_ 6y ago
We used to have a similar situation in the US: ILECs (the no-longer-monopoly telephone companies) were required to make lines available to CLECs (competitors) for a particular cost. What happened was that the ILECs all managed to come up with the same excuses: sorry, no lines available in that office. And, mysteriously, working CLEC lines would stop working, and it would be blamed on a "bad cable", but there wouldn't be a spare cable to switch to... and the ILEC had just installed a customer. Regulation needs to be enforced.
- elcomet 6y ago
  Yeah. That's the role of our public regulator, the ARCEP. I believe they have power to fine or give sanctions to companies that don't comply with regulations, which seems essential.
- icedchai 6y ago

orthecreedence 6y ago

Widespread public infrastructure rented/leased to private companies is the only way to solve net neutrality, long-term. Otherwise it's just going to ping pong back and forth in the legislative/executive system for the next 50 years while a bunch of useful idiots argue that we should let companies turn internet access into tiered cable TV plans.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

tzs 6y ago

Washington State seems kind of weird to pick for your example. Unlike many other states which do not allow municipal or county broadband at all, Washington's just prevents governments from offering it retail to consumers. They can offer it wholesale to resellers who can then use it to provide retail broadband.

ripdog 6y ago

This is close to what happens in New Zealand. We built a fibre network (FTTH) funded by the state starting in 2011. The project was put up for tender on a area-by-area basis, but with a small mountain of regulations attached. Basically, the companies which received the contracts were required to not act as ISPs, instead to wholesale access to their fibre network to any ISP interested. Maximum rates and minimum level of service are set by the Commerce Commission (the govt), though the fibre holders are free to reduce prices or improve services, which they are (we now can get gigabit internet nationwide for less than 100NZD - an excellent price considering there's no competition for the last mile itself). This is true for our old copper network too. It was built by Telecom, the old govt monopoly, in the 20th century. In 2009(?) the copper network was spun off into its own company, Chorus, and Chorus was bound by the same wholesale and non-ISP regulations. As a result of these enlightened regulations, NZ now has a super-competitive ISP market. ISPs are super cheap to set up - you basically just need to provide the core network and lease the last mile and backbone. I'd advise anyone campaigning for better ISP regulations in any other country to look at the NZ example. The free market may work better for extremely high density cities, but these regs are great for any markets where there is only demand for one last-mile network.

postingawayonhn 6y ago
> funded by the state Subsidised. Private funding covered much of the cost.
- lostlogin 6y ago
  Cost was split about 50:50 as far as the initial deal was concerned I think (2013 link below) but I am unsure how the later stages have been funded. https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10867554 https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&...
jiggawatts 6y ago
For reference, Australia tried the same thing with the National Broadband Network. We would have had the same end-result as NZ, except that Rupert Murdoch didn't like the newfangled Internet-based media competing with his Fox cable network, so he told Tony Abbott that he'd get him elected as Prime Minister if he killed it off. The deal was struct, Tony was suddenly the "wonderkid" that could do no wrong and Fox News made sure the whole world heard his name. He was promptly elected by retired country morons who've never heard of the Internet but watched Fox on the telly every evening. Tony licked Rupert's boots like a good little boy and did his best to kill the NBN: https://delimiter.com.au/2012/07/06/australia-doesnt-need-the-nbn-says-abbott/ https://delimiter.com.au/2012/07/06/australia-doesnt-need-th... Thankfully his power didn't last long, but his short stint nonetheless had lasting damage: https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/national/2019/01/10/rupert-murdoch-nbn-kevin-rudd/ https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/national/2019/01/10/rupert-m... We can now (as of just a few weeks ago!) get gigabit on the Australian NBN, except that instead of NZD 100 it costs AUD 150 monthly. You also have to be one of the lucky 19% to be on the FTTH network that was built before Tony stopped its construction: https://thenewdaily.com.au/finance/property/2019/01/28/what-homebuyers-should-know-about-the-nbn/ https://thenewdaily.com.au/finance/property/2019/01/28/what-... Fuck Rupert Murdoch. Seriously. He is one of the most evil, vile, hateful, greedy, self-centered cunts alive on this planet.

onionjake 6y ago

UTOPIA in Utah is an example of a network that is pretty close to what you propose. The city installs all the last mile fiber and leases the lines to private ISPs. They have ~10 ISPs to choose from, and you can get 10 Gbps connections. My city is placing a similar proposal on the ballot this November (https://connectkaysville.com/ https://connectkaysville.com/).

marcthe12 6y ago

Singapore is the best. Here they separated the fiber from ISP. So ISP just rent the fiber and a nationalise company does the fibre. This creates cheap high speed internet plans in Singapore since new isp do not need to lay cables