8 ms·

> Conversely, the specter of governments operating broadband networks in competition with the private sector, or of state or local governments serving as both r

by blt 5y ago

> Conversely, the specter of governments operating broadband networks in competition with the private sector, or of state or local governments serving as both regulators and owners of competing broadband networks, could stifle investment or reduce private-sector access to capital. > Larry Irving, 2014 Oh, no! Reduce private-sector access to capital? How will society continue? Seriously though, there is plenty of money to be made in private sector manufacturing and installation of networking equipment. The point of public internet is to place the infrastructure planning and the mediation of access under control of a body that is interested in long-term societal benefit instead of short-term profit.

linsomniac 5y ago
In our area we had two choices: Copper cat-3 that was installed in 1971, or coax that was installed in the '80s. The first provider got billions of dollars of increased tariffs by promising to deliver fiber to the home by the year 2000. They had their chance to demonstrate they were interested in investing in the infrastructure. 3-4 months ago we got our municipal fiber connection, gigabit symmetric, no caps, and it's glorious! We can also get 10-gig, but that's $300/mo and I don't have the internal network to handle it.
- legutierr 5y ago
  This sounds great. Where are you? It seems like a promising place to open a business.
  - linsomniac 5y ago
    Much of the Northern Front Range of Colorado has this sort of setup rolling or rolled out: Longmont, Loveland, Fort Collins. I'm in the latter. I'm one of the earlier deploys, but they plan to have the whole city deployed in the next year-ish. My office is expecting to be built out in around 4 months. Pricing for residential is: $59.95 (landed) for gigabit (symmetric, no caps), or $299.95/mo for 10-gig. This is Internet only, they also have phone and TV. For businesses, the pricing is different: 250M/500M/1G is $99.95/199.95/399.95. Pretty much directly competitive with Comcast Business pricing we've been paying, but with much, much more outbound bandwidth.
  - artificialLimbs 5y ago
    Bismarck AR and several surrounding communities have fiber through a Coop. They ran 12 strands to my wall. Plans only show 1Gb on their sales brochure. Maybe they don't have infra for 10G yet... I haven't bothered to ask. https://www.catc.net/services/internet https://www.catc.net/services/internet
- aksss 5y ago
  This sounds exactly like the residential situation in my city, minus the happy ending.
- judge2020 5y ago
  It'd be nice if there were a registry of cities/companies with a 2 or 10 gigabit residential fiber offering. Google has 2gbit but (for Atlanta) it's only at specific apartment communities: https://fiber.google.com/2gig/ https://fiber.google.com/2gig/ https://fiber.google.com/cities/atlanta/#:~:text=Find%20a,Fiber%20neighborhood https://fiber.google.com/cities/atlanta/#:~:text=Find%20a,Fi...
lotsofpulp 5y ago
> Oh, no! Reduce private-sector access to capital? How will society continue? All that private sector access and 95% of people still have the same 3Mbps upload and slow latency as 20 years ago when cable broadband first came out in the US. Zero reason to not have fiber be delivered the same way as electric, gas, and water.
- gruez 5y ago
  >Zero reason to not have fiber be delivered the same way as electric, gas, and water. ...provided by private companies? eg. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consolidated_Edison https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consolidated_Edison, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Gas_and_Electric_Company https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Gas_and_Electric_Compa..., or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Water_Works https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Water_Works
  - HarryHirsch 5y ago
    Isn't Con.Ed. the one with the continuous transformer explosions because they cut maintenance to the bone? As far as I know in Berlin they are considering re-nationalizing the waterworks because the current owner fails to adequately maintain the infrastructure.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    Utilities have government oversight. I’m not sure why they even bother with the distinction, since pricing and whatnot has to go through government approval. In contrast to internet, where Comcast and their peers can do whatever they want whenever they want.
  - ashtonkem 5y ago
    If we can have Comcast provide service and regulate is aggressively as we do power companies, that seems like a great deal to me.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
ouid 5y ago
I believe that the ISP monopolies are also interested in long term profit.
- HarryHirsch 5y ago
  Sure, consequently they invest in lobbying instead of physical plant, it provides a better return on investment.
- colejohnson66 5y ago
  But there’s a way to do that: invest in infrastructure. If everyone in town offers 50/10 and you build out fiber for 1000/1000, you’ll get customers from the other companies. But no one does that; they just don’t compete.
  - sokoloff 5y ago
    If Comcast then offered 150/10 at a discount if you bought cable TV services from them, they could still compete favorably against municipal broadband for many households.
HarryHirsch 5y ago
Conversely, the specter of governments operating water and sewage plants in competition with the private sector, or of state or local governments serving as both regulators and owners of competing water and sewage plants, could stifle investment or reduce private-sector access to capital. One shudders to think what Comcast Water and Sewage would be like.
- cure 5y ago
  > One shudders to think what Comcast Water and Sewage would be like. It's funny, caps on Comcast Water and Sewage would be illegal in many states!
- colejohnson66 5y ago
  Our records show that you’ve flushed your toilet more than 100 times this billing period. Each addition flush will incur an addition $10/flush fee. Thank you for choosing Comcast!
  - aksss 5y ago
    Or you can opt for throttled flushes.
- sokoloff 5y ago
  At least we could crap on them for a change.
dv_dt 5y ago
I would say under-investment by private holders of last-mile infrastructure holds back a lot of other business sectors as well as quality of life for people in those cities. This from a city dweller who watched the mega telecom extract profits while installed infrastructure decayed to unusable in my last neighborhood. I recall getting sent technicians telling me, well they don't have enough diagnostic units to actually figure out this problem, but I'll switch you to another pair and you can see if that works - call us back if it doesn't.

by blt 5y ago

linsomniac 5y ago

In our area we had two choices: Copper cat-3 that was installed in 1971, or coax that was installed in the '80s. The first provider got billions of dollars of increased tariffs by promising to deliver fiber to the home by the year 2000. They had their chance to demonstrate they were interested in investing in the infrastructure. 3-4 months ago we got our municipal fiber connection, gigabit symmetric, no caps, and it's glorious! We can also get 10-gig, but that's $300/mo and I don't have the internal network to handle it.

legutierr 5y ago
This sounds great. Where are you? It seems like a promising place to open a business.
- linsomniac 5y ago
  Much of the Northern Front Range of Colorado has this sort of setup rolling or rolled out: Longmont, Loveland, Fort Collins. I'm in the latter. I'm one of the earlier deploys, but they plan to have the whole city deployed in the next year-ish. My office is expecting to be built out in around 4 months. Pricing for residential is: $59.95 (landed) for gigabit (symmetric, no caps), or $299.95/mo for 10-gig. This is Internet only, they also have phone and TV. For businesses, the pricing is different: 250M/500M/1G is $99.95/199.95/399.95. Pretty much directly competitive with Comcast Business pricing we've been paying, but with much, much more outbound bandwidth.
- artificialLimbs 5y ago
  Bismarck AR and several surrounding communities have fiber through a Coop. They ran 12 strands to my wall. Plans only show 1Gb on their sales brochure. Maybe they don't have infra for 10G yet... I haven't bothered to ask. https://www.catc.net/services/internet https://www.catc.net/services/internet
aksss 5y ago
This sounds exactly like the residential situation in my city, minus the happy ending.
judge2020 5y ago
It'd be nice if there were a registry of cities/companies with a 2 or 10 gigabit residential fiber offering. Google has 2gbit but (for Atlanta) it's only at specific apartment communities: https://fiber.google.com/2gig/ https://fiber.google.com/2gig/ https://fiber.google.com/cities/atlanta/#:~:text=Find%20a,Fiber%20neighborhood https://fiber.google.com/cities/atlanta/#:~:text=Find%20a,Fi...

lotsofpulp 5y ago

> Oh, no! Reduce private-sector access to capital? How will society continue? All that private sector access and 95% of people still have the same 3Mbps upload and slow latency as 20 years ago when cable broadband first came out in the US. Zero reason to not have fiber be delivered the same way as electric, gas, and water.

gruez 5y ago
>Zero reason to not have fiber be delivered the same way as electric, gas, and water. ...provided by private companies? eg. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consolidated_Edison https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consolidated_Edison, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Gas_and_Electric_Company https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Gas_and_Electric_Compa..., or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Water_Works https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Water_Works
- HarryHirsch 5y ago
  Isn't Con.Ed. the one with the continuous transformer explosions because they cut maintenance to the bone? As far as I know in Berlin they are considering re-nationalizing the waterworks because the current owner fails to adequately maintain the infrastructure.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  Utilities have government oversight. I’m not sure why they even bother with the distinction, since pricing and whatnot has to go through government approval. In contrast to internet, where Comcast and their peers can do whatever they want whenever they want.
- ashtonkem 5y ago
  If we can have Comcast provide service and regulate is aggressively as we do power companies, that seems like a great deal to me.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

ouid 5y ago

I believe that the ISP monopolies are also interested in long term profit.

HarryHirsch 5y ago
Sure, consequently they invest in lobbying instead of physical plant, it provides a better return on investment.
colejohnson66 5y ago
But there’s a way to do that: invest in infrastructure. If everyone in town offers 50/10 and you build out fiber for 1000/1000, you’ll get customers from the other companies. But no one does that; they just don’t compete.
- sokoloff 5y ago
  If Comcast then offered 150/10 at a discount if you bought cable TV services from them, they could still compete favorably against municipal broadband for many households.

HarryHirsch 5y ago

Conversely, the specter of governments operating water and sewage plants in competition with the private sector, or of state or local governments serving as both regulators and owners of competing water and sewage plants, could stifle investment or reduce private-sector access to capital. One shudders to think what Comcast Water and Sewage would be like.

cure 5y ago
> One shudders to think what Comcast Water and Sewage would be like. It's funny, caps on Comcast Water and Sewage would be illegal in many states!
colejohnson66 5y ago
Our records show that you’ve flushed your toilet more than 100 times this billing period. Each addition flush will incur an addition $10/flush fee. Thank you for choosing Comcast!
- aksss 5y ago
  Or you can opt for throttled flushes.
sokoloff 5y ago
At least we could crap on them for a change.

dv_dt 5y ago

I would say under-investment by private holders of last-mile infrastructure holds back a lot of other business sectors as well as quality of life for people in those cities. This from a city dweller who watched the mega telecom extract profits while installed infrastructure decayed to unusable in my last neighborhood. I recall getting sent technicians telling me, well they don't have enough diagnostic units to actually figure out this problem, but I'll switch you to another pair and you can see if that works - call us back if it doesn't.