4 ms·

> Internet is a utility. Most people also don't have a choice in who they get electric, water, gas, etc. from. Wait, you don’t get to choose who your electrici

by Aaargh20318 6y ago

> Internet is a utility. Most people also don't have a choice in who they get electric, water, gas, etc. from. Wait, you don’t get to choose who your electricity and gas provider is either ? Here we get to choose from literally dozens of providers. Same goes for internet. I can choose from 13 different ISPs at my address on fiber alone. I thought the US believed in competition and free markets ?

pwinnski 6y ago
"Competition for thee, but not for me" is the order of the day. Outsiders and upstarts wants competition, and once they establish a majority market share, they spend and fight to ensure nobody else can do the same. Money controls everything.
jldugger 6y ago
Do you have 13 different gas pipelines leading to your home?
- drdaeman 6y ago
  That's the difference why ISPs are not like gas, water or sewer. There are places where there are multiple fiber lines leading to one's home. I don't know about 13, but I've used to live in a place where there were 6 different providers, each with their fiber or copper (sharing the communal conduits, so it did not require constant digging to bury every single line). Solve the inability of new providers to get to the market, and incentivize settlements to provide conduits as an utility. If any regulations are needed - it's the regulations that nullify the exclusivity agreements. That is already proven to work in many countries that have started late (esp. post-Soviet countries) and haven't had those ancient monopolies dragging them down. What else is proven, is that no matter how hard one tries to regulate an utility, it would suck, because there's absolutely no incentive for them to improve (unless they're forced to). Competition naturally forces to stay put all the time (you screw up - your customers are gone), regulation does not - just keeping it conforming to the regulations - i.e. tolerable, just above the bottom line (customers won't go anywhere).
- Aaargh20318 6y ago
  No, I don’t need to. The gas I use doesn’t necessarily come from the energy company I’m contracted with. Say I use 2000 cubic meters of gas a year, then my gas company is obligated to pump that amount of gas into the national gas network somewhere. There is no gas line for each company, instead they are each responsible for providing enough gas into the national network to cover their customers. In the same way I don’t have 13 fiber lines to my home. There is just 1 fiber from my home to a PoP. The company that owns that fiber is obligated to provide a level playing field, open access to anyone. They don’t actually operate an ISP, they simply rent out the fiber and rack space in the PoPs to the ISPs. Some smaller ISPs may simply piggy-back on the equipment of larger ISPs and resell part of their capacity. Others install their own equipment and only pay a fixed price for each customers fiber + rent for the rack space they use. Neighborhood PoPs are connected to city PoPs which are then connected to whatever backhaul network your ISP has. Same applies here, you can either rent capacity from someone else or just pay for the dark fiber and run your own network. You can be a pure ‘paper’ provider and simply resell someone else’s stuff, or you can only rent the dark fibers and PoP space and do everything yourself, or anything in between. You can also transition from one to the other. My current ISP started out by reselling bandwidth, but after a few years they started converting to using their own network and equipment, one city at a time. That’s how they were able to provide gbit service before anyone else.
  - war1025 6y ago
    This makes sense to me on a conceptual level, and I think that's more or less how it works here. The difference is I believe the company you pay is just whoever owns the local infrastructure, and they take care of buying / supplying on the wholesale market. For example, I live in Iowa, which is a huge wind energy state. Most of the wind farms are actually owned by out of state electric companies though. I'm sure the electricity actually gets used in the strictest sense right here next to the wind mills, but it gets credited to people hundreds of miles away. The wind farm up by where I grew up is actually owned by the Tennessee Valley Authority [1], despite being no where near Tennessee. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_Prairie_Wind_Farm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_Prairie_Wind_Farm
    - 6y ago
war1025 6y ago
> Here we get to choose from literally dozens of providers How does this work? Is it similar to all the various wireless providers that are actually just resellers for the people who own the actual infrastructure? I don't understand how you could choose to get electric or natural gas from someone else when there is a physical line that comes to your residence.
- maccard 6y ago
  Yes, it is. I (not op) live in the UK, and have the same situation but they are all resellers. Presumably the company I buy from (a snaller, self claimed "clean" company) pay a base rate plus some ount specifically to the sources they claim to generate from, rather than a company like EDF or Scottish Power who will likely charge resale + profit
- Aaargh20318 6y ago
  There is a physical infrastructure, owned by company A. You pay a fixed fee for access as part of your energy bill. You have no choice in that. Your actual subscription is with energy company B, Who you can choose freely. Of course company B doesn’t hook up directly to your home, instead they look at the total amount of power used by customers of company B and they are obligated to supply that amount of power to the national grid.
  - war1025 6y ago
    Seems like an odd model. I guess it makes sense though.

pwinnski 6y ago

"Competition for thee, but not for me" is the order of the day. Outsiders and upstarts wants competition, and once they establish a majority market share, they spend and fight to ensure nobody else can do the same. Money controls everything.

jldugger 6y ago

Do you have 13 different gas pipelines leading to your home?

drdaeman 6y ago
That's the difference why ISPs are not like gas, water or sewer. There are places where there are multiple fiber lines leading to one's home. I don't know about 13, but I've used to live in a place where there were 6 different providers, each with their fiber or copper (sharing the communal conduits, so it did not require constant digging to bury every single line). Solve the inability of new providers to get to the market, and incentivize settlements to provide conduits as an utility. If any regulations are needed - it's the regulations that nullify the exclusivity agreements. That is already proven to work in many countries that have started late (esp. post-Soviet countries) and haven't had those ancient monopolies dragging them down. What else is proven, is that no matter how hard one tries to regulate an utility, it would suck, because there's absolutely no incentive for them to improve (unless they're forced to). Competition naturally forces to stay put all the time (you screw up - your customers are gone), regulation does not - just keeping it conforming to the regulations - i.e. tolerable, just above the bottom line (customers won't go anywhere).
Aaargh20318 6y ago
No, I don’t need to. The gas I use doesn’t necessarily come from the energy company I’m contracted with. Say I use 2000 cubic meters of gas a year, then my gas company is obligated to pump that amount of gas into the national gas network somewhere. There is no gas line for each company, instead they are each responsible for providing enough gas into the national network to cover their customers. In the same way I don’t have 13 fiber lines to my home. There is just 1 fiber from my home to a PoP. The company that owns that fiber is obligated to provide a level playing field, open access to anyone. They don’t actually operate an ISP, they simply rent out the fiber and rack space in the PoPs to the ISPs. Some smaller ISPs may simply piggy-back on the equipment of larger ISPs and resell part of their capacity. Others install their own equipment and only pay a fixed price for each customers fiber + rent for the rack space they use. Neighborhood PoPs are connected to city PoPs which are then connected to whatever backhaul network your ISP has. Same applies here, you can either rent capacity from someone else or just pay for the dark fiber and run your own network. You can be a pure ‘paper’ provider and simply resell someone else’s stuff, or you can only rent the dark fibers and PoP space and do everything yourself, or anything in between. You can also transition from one to the other. My current ISP started out by reselling bandwidth, but after a few years they started converting to using their own network and equipment, one city at a time. That’s how they were able to provide gbit service before anyone else.
- war1025 6y ago
  This makes sense to me on a conceptual level, and I think that's more or less how it works here. The difference is I believe the company you pay is just whoever owns the local infrastructure, and they take care of buying / supplying on the wholesale market. For example, I live in Iowa, which is a huge wind energy state. Most of the wind farms are actually owned by out of state electric companies though. I'm sure the electricity actually gets used in the strictest sense right here next to the wind mills, but it gets credited to people hundreds of miles away. The wind farm up by where I grew up is actually owned by the Tennessee Valley Authority [1], despite being no where near Tennessee. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_Prairie_Wind_Farm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_Prairie_Wind_Farm
  - 6y ago

war1025 6y ago

> Here we get to choose from literally dozens of providers How does this work? Is it similar to all the various wireless providers that are actually just resellers for the people who own the actual infrastructure? I don't understand how you could choose to get electric or natural gas from someone else when there is a physical line that comes to your residence.

maccard 6y ago
Yes, it is. I (not op) live in the UK, and have the same situation but they are all resellers. Presumably the company I buy from (a snaller, self claimed "clean" company) pay a base rate plus some ount specifically to the sources they claim to generate from, rather than a company like EDF or Scottish Power who will likely charge resale + profit
Aaargh20318 6y ago
There is a physical infrastructure, owned by company A. You pay a fixed fee for access as part of your energy bill. You have no choice in that. Your actual subscription is with energy company B, Who you can choose freely. Of course company B doesn’t hook up directly to your home, instead they look at the total amount of power used by customers of company B and they are obligated to supply that amount of power to the national grid.
- war1025 6y ago
  Seems like an odd model. I guess it makes sense though.