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Ohio Republicans close to imposing near-total ban on municipal broadband

577 points by samizdis 5y ago

goatse_aas 5y ago
When the citizen revolution comes, should we jail them or just cut their heads off?
hpaavola 5y ago
In which ways such ban would benefit people living in Ohio?
- cure 5y ago
  None. But it would benefit the big ISPs, so...
- aequitas 5y ago
  If you own ISP shares and live in Ohio, very much.
  - csharptwdec19 5y ago
    Or if you are an elected official that gets lobbying from Buckeye Cable...
    - post_break 5y ago
      I can't wait for starlink and tmobile home internet to eat their lunch.
  - Gustomaximus 5y ago
    More, "If you own ISP shares and live outside Ohio"
- goatse_aas 5y ago
  Why would you ever presume that to be the intent of any American politicians, especially the caricatured evil manifested as living human shit that is the Republican party?
- renewiltord 5y ago
  It would allow them to compete to set up high quality ISPs rather than being forced to subsidize a low quality local alternative. It’s one thing to pay a bill. It’s another thing to pay it twice.
  - LocalH 5y ago
    In what part of the US does this ever happen? Where are all the small “mom and pop” ISPs? Oh, right.
    - criddell 5y ago
      There are actually a lot of mom and pop ISPs. Mostly wireless (WISPs). https://www.wispa.org/what_is_a_wisp.php https://www.wispa.org/what_is_a_wisp.php
  - only_as_i_fall 5y ago
    Could you explain your reasoning here? Do you expect a ban on municipal broadband to improve either the quality or price of internet service and if so are there any examples of this happening?
  - Mordisquitos 5y ago
    Surely the "high quality ISPs" would easily outcompete the "low quality local alternatives". Let the market decide, and let ISP customers vote the local alternatives out with their wallets! And if a local authority were to insist on using public money to subsidize a thoroughly outcompeted municipal broadband, then the locals will be free to vote them out with their, well... votes.
    - renewiltord 5y ago
      A fine principle in theory but there are serious status quo effects with governments. Governments rarely ever roll back benefits that don’t pencil out. The reason being that people are loss averse. Knowing from behavioral economics about loss aversion, it is reasonable for us to want to avoid placing ourselves in a situation where it forces us into foolish policy decisions. For what it’s worth, I am generally in agreement with you, except that majority rule to extract money from some people to provide for others strikes me as poor taste. If the ones who want the service want to collectivize to pay for it, it makes sense to me that the government run that enterprise. The difference between a market and the government is that if a product is unviable with 50%+1 but viable with 99%, that 50%+1 population can force it upon the rest. That difference to me is significant enough that I don’t think claiming voting as equivalent to market spending is reasonable.
- justin66 5y ago
  > In which ways such ban would benefit people living in Ohio? It wouldn't. It's also completely crazy to assume that concern entered into the minds of the legislation's sponsors at all. See the other thread today about the nuclear bribery scandal if you have any doubts about the Ohio legislature's integrity: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27534408 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27534408
viraptor 5y ago
Is there a realistic way for the US to get away from piling on extra conditions to large existing bills? This kind of thing seems to come up every few months and especially with budget bills. Or is it basically in the "as soon as there's more than 2 parties" area?
- imNotTheProb 5y ago
  Democracy? The issue is that we have too many people per representative. You representative doesn't need to care about you, they need to care about donors for mass media. I see parallels in tech as well. Some companies are openly anti consumer but run massive advertising/brainwashing campaigns. One will go as far as saying 'privacy' but turn around and give your information to the US government and China.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    First past the post voting systems are also a problem, as you are always voting for the lesser evil.
    - dragonwriter 5y ago
      FPTP isn’t “also” a problem, it (and more broadly the absence of proportionality in the electoral system) is the empirically verifiable problem. (See, e.g., Lijphardt’s Patterns of Democracy.) Representation ratio is much discussed, but unlIke FPTP there's not really support in comparative study of democracies for it being a source of adverse results (poor satisfaction, reduce dimensionality of the policy option space, etc.) Much as the accuracy of sampling is, despite common intuition to the contrary, dependent on the absolute, not relative, size of the sample, representation ratio probably doesn't practically matter much once the absolute size of the representative body gets past a certain point (and beyond a certain absolute size, logistics make size increases adverse independent of ratio.)
- meepmorp 5y ago
  I don't know about state budget bills, but at the Federal level, the budget bill regularly gets unrelated stuff tacked on because it can't be filibustered in the Senate and there's a lot of political pressure to pass the bill. As to fixing the underlying problem, I've been advocating for a benevolent dictatorship by a race of alien superbeings. It neatly avoids the political turmoil and will hopefully result in cheap, easy to use jetpack-based transportation.
jetrink 5y ago
I understand the opposition to another government service on ideological grounds, but the response in Ohio seems merely pro-monopoly and not pro-market. Is there anywhere in the country where state Republicans are looking for ways to increase competition in the broadband market? Everyone uses the internet, I don't understand why only one party is looking for a solution to this problem.
- dboreham 5y ago
  Because corruption.
- cure 5y ago
  Afaik only in Arkansas have Republicans seen the light and are actually supporting municipal broadband (https://www.govtech.com/policy/arkansas-opens-the-door-for-municipal-broadband-networks.html https://www.govtech.com/policy/arkansas-opens-the-door-for-m...). I wonder what made them come to that conclusion, it would be interesting to see if that can be replicated elsewhere. Everywhere else, Republicans are trying to shut muni broadband out. They are colluding with the legacy ISP monopolies to keep speeds low and costs high. I find this surprising because they don't seem to consider the long term economic damage this will do to their states. Who is going to want to move there to work remotely if the internet is expensive and slow?
  - falcolas 5y ago
    It honestly feels like short term thinking is dominating not only businesses, but government officials too. It boggles my mind, frankly, because of the exact things you mentioned: losing citizens, economic damage, and so forth. Perhaps the incentives just aren’t there to think long term, for either business leaders or politicians.
    - soco 5y ago
      Could it have something to do with which party supporters are gonna lose more if internet is slow? Can internet be linked in some way to poll results?
ThaDood 5y ago
ISPs cannot compete with local cities offering the fastest and cheapest access in their area, so rather than improving the services offered or incentivizing their customers they simply buy a stake in the Ohio legislature and ban the competition. This is so, so stupid.
- zentiggr 5y ago
  Yes, it is. But the ground rule has always been 'follow the money'. Expect companies, and their paid for legislators, to protect their revenue streams, no matter how badly it screws any individuals. This is the fight we are in, and have been since the post-WW2 boom.
- fitblipper 5y ago
  They can compete even with municipal internet. They just don't want to because then it will become a commodity market which will cause prices to race to the bottom instead of a scarce market which allows them to charge higher prices and avoid reinvesting in their network to improve quality since there is no comparable service to compare their quality against.
- duxup 5y ago
  >ISPs cannot compete Or they simply don't choose to...
mbg721 5y ago
Although the other provisions in the bill mean that urban areas would be subject to the ban anyway, I do want to point out that when the article mentions "cities or towns", the Cincinnati and Cleveland metropolitan areas have a lot of neighborhoods that are independent political entities with their own city-councils, police forces, schools, etc. (I think Columbus is more just one big city.) So there can be weird quirks in local law.
- jrsj 5y ago
  Columbus is weird. It’s simultaneously one big city but also has many other independent local governments working within it that split tax revenue with the city itself. Most of the suburbs surrounding the city have an arrangement like this but they also have their own city government, police, schools, etc.
nemacol 5y ago
I don't know how common this is but I live just outside of Ohio and use a small ISP based in Ohio that is a sort of spinoff from the municipal service they have. That is to say, A municipal service exists as CompanyA and they started a private CompanyB to service people outside of the municipal service area. To the best of my knowledge it uses the same core infrastructure for both companies. If they shutdown I will have no options in my area besides dish. It is a good product too; 400/10 with 40ms latency and very stable at a decent price. Honestly, I would have to move to keep my job unless Starlink became available. EDIT - I called my ISP and I am wrong. Both company A and B are private and this ruling will not impact them. While this news is still terrible, it should not impact me as directly as I had originally thought.
- acdha 5y ago
  I hope you’re letting your representatives know that — I feel like a lot of these guys assume there’s not much cost to the decision, so why not take that lobbyist’s money? The prospect of losing good jobs in their district is a bit more noteworthy.
  - nemacol 5y ago
    I live in WV and work a job based in PA. Working on a communication (will call and email) to Ohio reps now, but they have less than zero reason to care about my opinion on the subject. I contacted my ISP to see if they think it would impact them and asked if I can help in some way. Apparently something similar passed in PA recently https://broadbandnow.com/report/municipal-broadband-roadblocks-2018/ https://broadbandnow.com/report/municipal-broadband-roadbloc...
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
asimpletune 5y ago
One thing I wonder is why couldn’t private companies be formed to accomplish the same thing? Honest question.
- acdha 5y ago
  ISPs have a high cost to entry: you have to run fiber everywhere to offer service and you don’t get revenue until you do that and people sign up. Major players can slash prices below cost until you fold and then jack the rates up (I live in an area with 3 gigabit options: service here is cheaper and better than only a few blocks away where it’s just Comcast - and everyone you call on the phone knows whether you have competition at your address). The model I’d like would be having fiber either be owned by the city or a highly regulated utility, with a market for ISPs to provide service on that infrastructure. It’d be much easier to enter the market if you just need to peer at a few locations rather than each house, and it’d be nice if there was a no-frills option for people who only want reliable IP without all of the add-on services.
  - naveen99 5y ago
    That high cost of entry is paid to the municipality isn’t it ? Why build and run a business when you can just collect rent / taxes instead.
    - acdha 5y ago
      The idea is that it’s a long-term investment which everyone can share, similar to how most places build roads or water pipes rather than expecting businesses to build those with duplication and gaps.
  - eecc 5y ago
    > The model I’d like would be having fiber either be owned by the city or a highly regulated utility, with a market for ISPs to provide service on that infrastructure. That's how telecoms are organized in NL, although through loosening of regulations, mergers and acquisitions the service geography is reducing to separate islands of non-competing monopolies. Yet, it still works decently well. Also energy is the same (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_the_Netherlands https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_the_Neth...) As a counterexample, the creation of the "energy free market" by spinning off the local infra from the energy brokers and producers has turned into a convenient excuse to screw customers over billing and passing the buck back-and-forth to keep the money.
uhtred 5y ago
Voting for The GOP really is like being a slug and voting for more salt.
andrew_ 5y ago
What an odd hill to die on. The article doesn't mention lobbying efforts at all, and I'd be very curious to take a look at the money trail - there's got to be one. This isn't a strong enough idealogical position and both parties are expanding government. Theres no way the majority of the house and senate have managed to avoid slow speed and service interruptions, so they must know that 10Mbps might as well be dial-up these days.
deleted 5y ago
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mattcantstop 5y ago
In Fort Collins there is NextLight broadband that is a municipal service. I am in southern Denver and have Comcast. I would far prefer NextLight. Competition, regardless of private or public, makes things better. Anyone advocating for less competition (and removing a public option does that) doesn't have our best interests at heart and is likely just advocating for their lobbied interests.
djohnston 5y ago
"It's not even clear who proposed the new law. "The language, inserted without prior public discussion during recent state Senate deliberations on Ohio's two-year budget, is drawing condemnation from numerous sources. Officials have not said who put the language in the Senate budget document, only that they learned of it for the first time last week," the Akron Beacon Journal wrote on June 13." How did we end up with such a gross lack of accountability? That seems more scandalous than the bad idea itself.
- endtime 5y ago
  I think it's common for Congress to vote on legislation thousands of pages long well before any of them could possibly have had time to read the final version. So this is, sadly, not surprising.
  - bottled_poe 5y ago
    Well then, they are failing to fulfil their responsibilities.
  - dlp211 5y ago
    This is a generally overly simplistic take. It would be impossible for any single legislature to read all the bills, so that is not done. The vast majority of large bills are produced ahead of time and only marginal changes are made as the bill gets closer to a final vote. The bills are read ahead of time by key members from each party and almost every legislature's staff.
  - WoahNoun 5y ago
    The bill was produced by the legislative staff working for the legislator. I assume their staff read the bill they were in charge of producing.
  - cogman10 5y ago
    This is a symptom of the problem. At this point, the only bills we can pass federally are budget reconciliation bills an small token "Juneteenth is a holiday" bills. Why? Primarily because of the senate filibuster rule. We require that 60+ senators agree on every bill passed because every bill gets filibustered. That doesn't work well when you have A: A party that coined the phrase "do nothing democrats" B: A senate minority leader that openly says their job is to stop any legislation from passing. Compromise is dead at this point, because regardless of the compromises made, the minority party will filibuster. So the end result is the only bills that get passed are budget reconciliation bills and those try and cram in everything that could possible be thought as "budgetary" into a single bill. Hence, thousands of pages long legislation. If you want to be mad at giant bills, be mad at the party that filibusters all tiny bills. Go read HR-1 and be mad that THAT bill is being filibustered (make federal voting day a national holiday and extending early voting). Go read any of the small common sense bills that get filibustered simply because they came from the opposing party. And if you really want to get mad, go read up on the Jan 6. investigation bill that had 24 amendments added by republicans and 6 added by democrats that was ultimately filibustered. That's where we are at. We've got Democrats bending over backwards to try and appear bipartisan and Republicans who are playing the game of "The best way to make democrats look bad is to filibuster everything".
jrsj 5y ago
Kasich, DeWine etc get a lot of relative praise from the media but the reality is that they’re among the most corrupt state politicians in the nation. They’re just on the right people’s payroll. A much more extreme example of this is JobsOhio (started under Kasich). We don’t know what money was given to what businesses under what conditions. I know from personal experience that people did shady things with grants that were supposed to be repaid to charities though — a business gets a grant, gives it to a charity, then that charity returns most of the money by buying a product they don’t actually use from the business. & this stuff was absolutely being given out at least partially on the basis of personal connections to politicians, who I suspect are probably also investors in some of these companies. However, there was a complete lack of transparency with JobsOhio. So good luck figuring out where all that taxpayer money went (in a red state with one of the highest overall tax burdens in the nation by the way)
whalesalad 5y ago
Come up north to Michigan where the air is crisp. Ohio is the worst. People need to vote with their ballot, wallet, but also with where they choose to take residence.
- jschwartzi 5y ago
  A lot of people can’t even afford to put down a security deposit on a new rental. Moving is completely out of reach for them.
  - whalesalad 5y ago
    I really dislike this rhetoric. You are not wrong but at the same time I think too many groups hold fast to this notion that people are weak and powerless and need government to take care of them. So if you can’t move, you’re just gonna stay for the rest of your life in a state you hate? No way, live free or die. It might take longer but it can be done.
  - jrsj 5y ago
    I don’t think that’s entirely realistic, I was able to do it when I worked at McDonald’s and they actually pay better here relative to rents than they did at the time. There a certainly people in that situation but it’s a relatively small %.
- azemetre 5y ago
  When you tell people to "vote with their wallet" it means that money equates to will/democracy and there is a far far far larger "warchest" of dollars from Comcast, Verizon, and ATT. Does this mean Comcast is the will of the people since they have the ability to spend more? I'd sincerely hope not. I know what you meant by your comment, but the "with wallet" part has been irking me lately because there is substantial corporate interests that has more money than us but they don't have more votes than us (not yet at least).
  - whalesalad 5y ago
    I was trying to illustrate that there are different ways to 'vote' for what you want in the world. At the end of the day you are electing your officials in Ohio and they are the ones helping to make these things happen. tl;dr - reward good behavior and specifically do not reward bad behavior.
eatonphil 5y ago
> Fairlawn's city-run FairlawnGig network has consistently ranked as one of the fastest ISPs in the country, serving residents and businesses in Fairlawn, Akron, and Bath with affordable gigabit Internet services. The slowest service tier delivers 300Mbps symmetrical speeds for $55/month. The municipal network has resulted in more businesses choosing to locate in Fairlawn, and at least 700 jobs can be directly attributed to the network. In recent subscriber surveys, 95 percent of respondents rated FairlawnGig's service as "very good to excellent," with some customer testimonials referring to the network as "a life saver" throughout the pandemic. From the article. That is very impressive and a really bad sign for private broadband to be beat out like this.
- pulisse 5y ago
  > a really bad sign for private broadband to be beat out like this Why is it bad? Sounds like customers are getting high quality service for a good price.
  - neogodless 5y ago
    A better way to word that would be "That's pretty damning" or "A clear indicator that private ISPs aren't trying to optimize for the best result of cost-effective speed for their customers."
    - jliptzin 5y ago
      Why would it be a surprise to anyone that a major corporation is optimizing for shareholder profits rather than anything else
      - eatonphil 5y ago
        Do you buy Apple products or Samsung phones? Not every for-profit company is so myopic. For broadband companies to be orders of magnitude worse in _the key performance metric_ than public offerings should be a wakeup call.
s1artibartfast 5y ago
Do municipal ISPs have to operate with positive revenue? It seems like reasonable people could object public services competing with with private companies if not. A middle ground would be supporting nonprofit NGO or Co-ops, which seems to be an underutilized option in the US
- smolder 5y ago
  Municipal broadband commonly is self funded through subscribership. It is not at all difficult to provide better value than the cable company while staying cash positive, excepting the artificial barriers created to protect that profitability.
  - treis 5y ago
    >Municipal broadband commonly is self funded through subscribership. They make that claim but it typically exclude construction costs. As an example, quick googling says that the Fairlawn network mentioned in the article covers operating costs but does not make enough to pay down the initial $10 million worth of bonds (~$1,200 per resident). That seems to be the best that municipal fiber does. That level of success is probably worth it, but it's not exactly a slam dunk. On the flip side there have been disasters. Provo as an example borrowed $40 million to build out their fiber and then lost millions more operating it. Eventually they had to pay more money for Google to take it off their hands. There's this idea going around that ISPs are these terrible monopolies rolling in cash. It's just not true. Their profit margin is average for the S&P 500 and it's a risky business due to intense capital requirements. There's a reason Google walked away from the business despite municipalities falling over themselves to get it.
    - s1artibartfast 5y ago
      Wow, the story of iProvo is really grim.[1] On top of the 40 million bond, charged every household a $5 fee including non-users, and still lost millions per year until they gave it away. It looks like Google paid them $1 for it, with the option to give it back. https://reason.org/news-release/think-tank-iprovos-losses-at-8/ https://reason.org/news-release/think-tank-iprovos-losses-at...
williesleg 5y ago
Nice work! the government does not need to control my internet.
efitz 5y ago
I didn’t see any discussion in the article of WHY. I really don’t think I’m well informed by an article that implies that the proposed change in law is A Bad Thing(tm) but fails to present the proponents’ arguments.
- iso1631 5y ago
  https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/ohio-senate-gop-budget-proposal-would-ban-municipal-broadband-programs/ar-AAL2KCA https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/ohio-senate-gop-budg... has coverage from John Fortney
  - VLM 5y ago
    To summarize: 1) They just signed a bill into law to provide various grants and such to increase BB. Its bad law to change everything every month. They wanted $200M but shrunk it to a pilot program $20M and want to see how that will work and how it relates to getting federal handouts. Its an area of bad law, they have multiple hands in the pot doing multiple semi-opposing things at the same time, and when you find yourself stuck in the bottom of a hole, first stop digging. There is no central legislation or department for BB in Ohio, only stuff tacked onto other bills, and this is a bad way to legislate something important. 2) Historical small cherry picked successes do not imply expansion is a good idea. If Tesla sold 10K cars to millionaires in 2015, that does not imply one million fully electric F-150 would be sold in 2020, and that was indeed not the case. If its such a universal success, why isn't it happening? It seems fully electric F-150s are coming and NOT because of municipal laws but market forces and federal laws. If it (muni broadband) works so well, how come its always tiny anecdotes, not, perhaps, the entire eastern seaboard including all of NYC, or the entire state of CA or something? And if it doesn't always work, why should little ole Ohio be the lab rat, experiment on someone else? 3) Phone market (and wireless hotspots) seem to be doing better without local government interference than even the most optimistic muni-broadband projections. Why are we doing all of this, the whole debate and everything, if everyone will get better faster service from a wireless hotspot anyway? Its 2021 why are we arguing over the minutiae of how to run wires to every house when cheaper faster already more competitive wireless is the future anyway? My view (as opposed to Fortney) would be muni competition would mean 1% of the monopoly would be broken, thus Americans being American, we'd eliminate all regulation on the 99% remaining monopoly victims. Nothing quite says "USA" free market quite like a handful of lucky people in a lucky area getting a great deal, and the masses will be paying more and getting less. In the long run, much like long distance in the 80s thru 20s, competition would increase until the product is too cheap to meter or technologically irrelevant meanwhile most billed revenue would go toward accounting expenses for that billed revenue and of course advertising to compete between dinosaurs, its not a productive use of our income. In the long run wired ISP is dead and we'll get satellite or wireless anyway; by the time we run multiple 70s era cable TV hardline to each home or fiber to each home under some legacy wired internet competition system, we'll all be using wireless hotspots that are 100x faster and 10x cheaper anyway. Would have been an interesting bill in 1996 or even as late as 2006, but in 2021 why even bother, by the time muni fiber for $50 arrives at your farm, you'll already be on a years later generation of Starlink running 100 times faster for $15.
kmeisthax 5y ago
Ohio: Google is a public utility Also Ohio: ISPs should be entirely unregulated
- Keverw 5y ago
  First thing I thought reading this too. They ate making a fool of themselves and think it hurts Ohio’s position as a tech leader.
scdp 5y ago
Surely AG Dave Yost has something to say about this, seems right down his alley. Unless suing Google was a purely a political stunt...
erchwe 5y ago
If you live in Ohio, here's what you can do to call your rep: Find your rep at http://www.ohiohouse.gov http://www.ohiohouse.gov. Call 1-800-282-0253 [0] and tell the aide you oppose House Bill 110 [1], Section 122.4091.B [2], and state your reasoning in 1-2 min. May be good to cite the municipal ISP FairlawnGig's success: this [3] is a good read on the subject. [0] http://www.occ.ohio.gov/content/how-call-your-legislator http://www.occ.ohio.gov/content/how-call-your-legislator [1] https://www.legislature.ohio.gov/legislation/legislation-summary?id=GA134-HB-110 https://www.legislature.ohio.gov/legislation/legislation-sum... [2] https://muninetworks.org/sites/www.muninetworks.org/files/Ohio%20Municipal%20Broadband%20Amendment.pdf https://muninetworks.org/sites/www.muninetworks.org/files/Oh... [3] https://muninetworks.org/content/new-fact-sheet-ohios-community-broadband-solutions https://muninetworks.org/content/new-fact-sheet-ohios-commun...
- question000 5y ago
  Don't do this, it's pointless if you complain about Republican elected officials they typically just try to siphon resources away from your area. If you really think this will work please use a false identity to avoid being targeted.
  - spuz 5y ago
    Can you cite your source for this? I've never heard of a politician retaliating against a constituent for voicing their concerns.
    - frockington1 5y ago
      I live in Ohio, can confirm this is false. Every state representative I've met with has been happy a citizen is taking interest in local politics and has been open to a conversation. A state rep is not going to target you house or street (not even sure how this would happen) because they disagree with you
      - question000 5y ago
        I live in Virginia and I was proudly told this by a Republican running for office. They have a DB so they can pool data state-by-state and cross-reference it with social media.
anothernewdude 5y ago
No excuse for it. It's corruption.
decremental 5y ago
> approved a budget bill that contains an anti-municipal broadband ammendment With 100% certainty it contains lots of things completely unrelated to the one tiny part of it this article is about. It's most likely those other unrelated things are what was objected to. Do some digging and you're sure to find some very strange things in that bill. This is entry level knowledge about US politics. It's predictable but nonetheless disappointing to see that HN commenters took the intellectually lazy path here.
hiidrew 5y ago
Hmm, this pro-monopoly stance reminds me of the cannabis legalization initiative that was proposed previously in Ohio. It didn't pass and I believe the main reason was limiting licenses to the market to ~4 organizations.
the_only_law 5y ago
Isn’t this the same state that was so fearful of monopolies they were trying to sue Google and declare it a public utility. I guess the only bad monopolies are the ones that aren’t personally stuffing cash in your pocket.
jjice 5y ago
This is basically comical. Elected officials actively sabotaging something good that has helped the people that elected them. I'd love to sit down and have a conversation with politicians like this over coffee and just try to wade through their BS to see what their awful justifications are. Actively destroying competition that has benefited the public? Cool moves guys.
StreamBright 5y ago
Internet is bad because government, solution is to bring in more government. I am not sure how the US ended up with this situation otherwise. I also think that the solution is not to have a state owned internet provider. https://www.telecompetitor.com/broadband-monopoly-report-at-least-49-7-million-americans-served-by-only-one-provider/ https://www.telecompetitor.com/broadband-monopoly-report-at-...
deleted 5y ago
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shmerl 5y ago
How much were they paid by the monopolists who wrote the actual bill?
rdiddly 5y ago
If I can take the naive view for theatrical effect here, who thinks this is a good idea? Who thinks this is how you serve, help, and represent the people of Ohio? On what grounds would you assert that the people are saying "Please stop me from enjoying this kind of service, for I lack the willpower to resist the scourge of fast cheap connectivity!" In other words I guess the thing that jumps out is how blatant and transparent it is. If you're a corporate lapdog all set to fuck your constituents, at least cover it up.
- dfxm12 5y ago
  Look at the recent history of the Ohio general assembly. These representatives know their jobs are safe, or at the very least, the party knows they will remain in power. Why is that? It could be a combination of many things: their constituents are single issue voters and they happen to be on the same side, they have too strong of an incumbent's advantage, the state is gerrymandered in a way to make it impossible for their party to lose control, pending voter laws, etc. We see time and time again, at all levels of government: people voting against what they claim are their interests. It goes to show that corporate lapdogs don't need to cover anything up, because of the positive feedback loop where corporate lapdogs keep getting elected!
- sonotathrowaway 5y ago
  Why should they bother covering it up though? Ohioans approve wholeheartedly of this, and will reaffirm their approval in the next election. Sure they’ll complain about the extra costs and the poorer service, but then they’ll go vote for the people who made this decision for them. Most will consider it a small sacrifice to protect against the dangers of socialism. The people with options and who disapprove have already left - Ohio and it’s cities are losing population for good reason.
- andrewmcwatters 5y ago
  Easy, it’ll be done by saying this protects the consumer and taxpayer from poor infrastructure and waste, versus having the best in class available for Ohioans.
heavyset_go 5y ago
In the midst of a shift towards remote working, they're really shooting themselves in the foot with bans like this. Ohio needs a tax base more than individual workers need Ohio.
exabrial 5y ago
Municipal broadband sounds like a good idea, until you see it happen in reality. What happens is cities are often forced to take the buildout to auction, when Comcast comes in with an absurdly low bid and says "oh yeah we'll 'build' it ROFLMAO". Don't get me wrong, the community coming together to compete is a good idea. But we need to start examining the failures and avoid them. An independent organization would be a FAR better approach in my opinion.
lucasmullens 5y ago
Am I wrong in thinking that a lot of our ISP problems in the US will fade away due to Starlink? A few people I know with it went from 1Mbps to 20-30Mbps and they're thrilled with it. Once the capacity is higher, there won't be an ISP monopoly anywhere, since Starlink will always be an option. And isn't the monopoly issue the bulk of the problem?
alkonaut 5y ago
Idea: ban ”campaign contributions”. Cap spending and fund politicians with campaign money so they can reach voters.
pronlover723 5y ago
If you want cheap and fast internet you're not going to get it by making it a utility. You're going to get it by removing the regulations that let ISPs have local monopolies and removing the barriers to competition. Sure, it might require other regulations to enforce competition so companies don't consolidate too much but at the moment the issue is most localities regulate out all the competition. Korea, Japan, Singapore, etc have fast internet because of competition. Adding municipal broadband might make things temporarily better but long term it will go bad. See roads and transportation systems all over the country. Then remember that tech moves much faster than road tech. Is the municipal going to upgrade to terabit speeds? No, but competition will. Note: I'm not saying I support the bill. Rather I'm saying municipal broadband will be a net negative. You'll all cheer it on and it will feel good at first and then in 10-15 yrs you'll wonder why we're so far behind countries that encouraged competition as their ISPs competed on faster speeds and those municipal IPSs are still in government committees arguing over funding.
greyhair 5y ago
Republican voters have been voting against their own self interest for the last forty years because of Reaganism. And this last year, they capped it off with Trumpism. Because both Reagan and Trump (though very different) had such a grasp of showmanship and stage craft. As far as I am concerned, the people of Ohio are getting exactly what they want, which is exactly what they deserve.
- lukifer 5y ago
  You won't find a more vigorous critic of Reaganite neo-liberalism than myself; but the phenomenon of "voting against self-interest" is not limited to one party. The feedback loops of electoral politics are distant and slow (especially at the national scale), and the winner-take-all voting system constrains political preferences to a relatively narrow spectrum of choices (the Overton window). These factors conspire to make voting more heavily tilted towards tribal signaling [0] than policy outcomes, and entrenched power structures (both public and private) are incentivized to maximize this phenomenon from both sides of the aisle [1]. [0] https://www.elephantinthebrain.com/ https://www.elephantinthebrain.com/ [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent
tibbydudeza 5y ago
They should put up new signs saying "Welcome to Ohio - Find It Here - powered by Comcast".
okareaman 5y ago
My City Was Gone by The Pretenders I went back to Ohio But my pretty countryside Had been paved down the middle By a government that had no pride The farms of Ohio Had been replaced by shopping malls And Muzak filled the air From Seneca to Cuyahoga Falls Said, ay, oh, way to go, Ohio
sys_64738 5y ago
"Follow the money"

577 points by samizdis 5y ago

goatse_aas 5y ago

When the citizen revolution comes, should we jail them or just cut their heads off?

hpaavola 5y ago

In which ways such ban would benefit people living in Ohio?

cure 5y ago
None. But it would benefit the big ISPs, so...
aequitas 5y ago
If you own ISP shares and live in Ohio, very much.
- csharptwdec19 5y ago
  Or if you are an elected official that gets lobbying from Buckeye Cable...
  - post_break 5y ago
    I can't wait for starlink and tmobile home internet to eat their lunch.
- Gustomaximus 5y ago
  More, "If you own ISP shares and live outside Ohio"
goatse_aas 5y ago
Why would you ever presume that to be the intent of any American politicians, especially the caricatured evil manifested as living human shit that is the Republican party?
renewiltord 5y ago
It would allow them to compete to set up high quality ISPs rather than being forced to subsidize a low quality local alternative. It’s one thing to pay a bill. It’s another thing to pay it twice.
- LocalH 5y ago
  In what part of the US does this ever happen? Where are all the small “mom and pop” ISPs? Oh, right.
  - criddell 5y ago
    There are actually a lot of mom and pop ISPs. Mostly wireless (WISPs). https://www.wispa.org/what_is_a_wisp.php https://www.wispa.org/what_is_a_wisp.php
- only_as_i_fall 5y ago
  Could you explain your reasoning here? Do you expect a ban on municipal broadband to improve either the quality or price of internet service and if so are there any examples of this happening?
- Mordisquitos 5y ago
  Surely the "high quality ISPs" would easily outcompete the "low quality local alternatives". Let the market decide, and let ISP customers vote the local alternatives out with their wallets! And if a local authority were to insist on using public money to subsidize a thoroughly outcompeted municipal broadband, then the locals will be free to vote them out with their, well... votes.
  - renewiltord 5y ago
    A fine principle in theory but there are serious status quo effects with governments. Governments rarely ever roll back benefits that don’t pencil out. The reason being that people are loss averse. Knowing from behavioral economics about loss aversion, it is reasonable for us to want to avoid placing ourselves in a situation where it forces us into foolish policy decisions. For what it’s worth, I am generally in agreement with you, except that majority rule to extract money from some people to provide for others strikes me as poor taste. If the ones who want the service want to collectivize to pay for it, it makes sense to me that the government run that enterprise. The difference between a market and the government is that if a product is unviable with 50%+1 but viable with 99%, that 50%+1 population can force it upon the rest. That difference to me is significant enough that I don’t think claiming voting as equivalent to market spending is reasonable.
justin66 5y ago
> In which ways such ban would benefit people living in Ohio? It wouldn't. It's also completely crazy to assume that concern entered into the minds of the legislation's sponsors at all. See the other thread today about the nuclear bribery scandal if you have any doubts about the Ohio legislature's integrity: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27534408 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27534408

viraptor 5y ago

Is there a realistic way for the US to get away from piling on extra conditions to large existing bills? This kind of thing seems to come up every few months and especially with budget bills. Or is it basically in the "as soon as there's more than 2 parties" area?

imNotTheProb 5y ago
Democracy? The issue is that we have too many people per representative. You representative doesn't need to care about you, they need to care about donors for mass media. I see parallels in tech as well. Some companies are openly anti consumer but run massive advertising/brainwashing campaigns. One will go as far as saying 'privacy' but turn around and give your information to the US government and China.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  First past the post voting systems are also a problem, as you are always voting for the lesser evil.
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    FPTP isn’t “also” a problem, it (and more broadly the absence of proportionality in the electoral system) is the empirically verifiable problem. (See, e.g., Lijphardt’s Patterns of Democracy.) Representation ratio is much discussed, but unlIke FPTP there's not really support in comparative study of democracies for it being a source of adverse results (poor satisfaction, reduce dimensionality of the policy option space, etc.) Much as the accuracy of sampling is, despite common intuition to the contrary, dependent on the absolute, not relative, size of the sample, representation ratio probably doesn't practically matter much once the absolute size of the representative body gets past a certain point (and beyond a certain absolute size, logistics make size increases adverse independent of ratio.)
meepmorp 5y ago
I don't know about state budget bills, but at the Federal level, the budget bill regularly gets unrelated stuff tacked on because it can't be filibustered in the Senate and there's a lot of political pressure to pass the bill. As to fixing the underlying problem, I've been advocating for a benevolent dictatorship by a race of alien superbeings. It neatly avoids the political turmoil and will hopefully result in cheap, easy to use jetpack-based transportation.

jetrink 5y ago

I understand the opposition to another government service on ideological grounds, but the response in Ohio seems merely pro-monopoly and not pro-market. Is there anywhere in the country where state Republicans are looking for ways to increase competition in the broadband market? Everyone uses the internet, I don't understand why only one party is looking for a solution to this problem.

dboreham 5y ago
Because corruption.
cure 5y ago
Afaik only in Arkansas have Republicans seen the light and are actually supporting municipal broadband (https://www.govtech.com/policy/arkansas-opens-the-door-for-municipal-broadband-networks.html https://www.govtech.com/policy/arkansas-opens-the-door-for-m...). I wonder what made them come to that conclusion, it would be interesting to see if that can be replicated elsewhere. Everywhere else, Republicans are trying to shut muni broadband out. They are colluding with the legacy ISP monopolies to keep speeds low and costs high. I find this surprising because they don't seem to consider the long term economic damage this will do to their states. Who is going to want to move there to work remotely if the internet is expensive and slow?
- falcolas 5y ago
  It honestly feels like short term thinking is dominating not only businesses, but government officials too. It boggles my mind, frankly, because of the exact things you mentioned: losing citizens, economic damage, and so forth. Perhaps the incentives just aren’t there to think long term, for either business leaders or politicians.
  - soco 5y ago
    Could it have something to do with which party supporters are gonna lose more if internet is slow? Can internet be linked in some way to poll results?

ThaDood 5y ago

ISPs cannot compete with local cities offering the fastest and cheapest access in their area, so rather than improving the services offered or incentivizing their customers they simply buy a stake in the Ohio legislature and ban the competition. This is so, so stupid.

zentiggr 5y ago
Yes, it is. But the ground rule has always been 'follow the money'. Expect companies, and their paid for legislators, to protect their revenue streams, no matter how badly it screws any individuals. This is the fight we are in, and have been since the post-WW2 boom.
fitblipper 5y ago
They can compete even with municipal internet. They just don't want to because then it will become a commodity market which will cause prices to race to the bottom instead of a scarce market which allows them to charge higher prices and avoid reinvesting in their network to improve quality since there is no comparable service to compare their quality against.
duxup 5y ago
>ISPs cannot compete Or they simply don't choose to...

mbg721 5y ago

Although the other provisions in the bill mean that urban areas would be subject to the ban anyway, I do want to point out that when the article mentions "cities or towns", the Cincinnati and Cleveland metropolitan areas have a lot of neighborhoods that are independent political entities with their own city-councils, police forces, schools, etc. (I think Columbus is more just one big city.) So there can be weird quirks in local law.

jrsj 5y ago
Columbus is weird. It’s simultaneously one big city but also has many other independent local governments working within it that split tax revenue with the city itself. Most of the suburbs surrounding the city have an arrangement like this but they also have their own city government, police, schools, etc.

nemacol 5y ago

I don't know how common this is but I live just outside of Ohio and use a small ISP based in Ohio that is a sort of spinoff from the municipal service they have. That is to say, A municipal service exists as CompanyA and they started a private CompanyB to service people outside of the municipal service area. To the best of my knowledge it uses the same core infrastructure for both companies. If they shutdown I will have no options in my area besides dish. It is a good product too; 400/10 with 40ms latency and very stable at a decent price. Honestly, I would have to move to keep my job unless Starlink became available. EDIT - I called my ISP and I am wrong. Both company A and B are private and this ruling will not impact them. While this news is still terrible, it should not impact me as directly as I had originally thought.

acdha 5y ago
I hope you’re letting your representatives know that — I feel like a lot of these guys assume there’s not much cost to the decision, so why not take that lobbyist’s money? The prospect of losing good jobs in their district is a bit more noteworthy.
- nemacol 5y ago
  I live in WV and work a job based in PA. Working on a communication (will call and email) to Ohio reps now, but they have less than zero reason to care about my opinion on the subject. I contacted my ISP to see if they think it would impact them and asked if I can help in some way. Apparently something similar passed in PA recently https://broadbandnow.com/report/municipal-broadband-roadblocks-2018/ https://broadbandnow.com/report/municipal-broadband-roadbloc...
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]

asimpletune 5y ago

One thing I wonder is why couldn’t private companies be formed to accomplish the same thing? Honest question.

acdha 5y ago
ISPs have a high cost to entry: you have to run fiber everywhere to offer service and you don’t get revenue until you do that and people sign up. Major players can slash prices below cost until you fold and then jack the rates up (I live in an area with 3 gigabit options: service here is cheaper and better than only a few blocks away where it’s just Comcast - and everyone you call on the phone knows whether you have competition at your address). The model I’d like would be having fiber either be owned by the city or a highly regulated utility, with a market for ISPs to provide service on that infrastructure. It’d be much easier to enter the market if you just need to peer at a few locations rather than each house, and it’d be nice if there was a no-frills option for people who only want reliable IP without all of the add-on services.
- naveen99 5y ago
  That high cost of entry is paid to the municipality isn’t it ? Why build and run a business when you can just collect rent / taxes instead.
  - acdha 5y ago
    The idea is that it’s a long-term investment which everyone can share, similar to how most places build roads or water pipes rather than expecting businesses to build those with duplication and gaps.
- eecc 5y ago
  > The model I’d like would be having fiber either be owned by the city or a highly regulated utility, with a market for ISPs to provide service on that infrastructure. That's how telecoms are organized in NL, although through loosening of regulations, mergers and acquisitions the service geography is reducing to separate islands of non-competing monopolies. Yet, it still works decently well. Also energy is the same (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_the_Netherlands https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_the_Neth...) As a counterexample, the creation of the "energy free market" by spinning off the local infra from the energy brokers and producers has turned into a convenient excuse to screw customers over billing and passing the buck back-and-forth to keep the money.

uhtred 5y ago

Voting for The GOP really is like being a slug and voting for more salt.

andrew_ 5y ago

What an odd hill to die on. The article doesn't mention lobbying efforts at all, and I'd be very curious to take a look at the money trail - there's got to be one. This isn't a strong enough idealogical position and both parties are expanding government. Theres no way the majority of the house and senate have managed to avoid slow speed and service interruptions, so they must know that 10Mbps might as well be dial-up these days.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

mattcantstop 5y ago

In Fort Collins there is NextLight broadband that is a municipal service. I am in southern Denver and have Comcast. I would far prefer NextLight. Competition, regardless of private or public, makes things better. Anyone advocating for less competition (and removing a public option does that) doesn't have our best interests at heart and is likely just advocating for their lobbied interests.

djohnston 5y ago

"It's not even clear who proposed the new law. "The language, inserted without prior public discussion during recent state Senate deliberations on Ohio's two-year budget, is drawing condemnation from numerous sources. Officials have not said who put the language in the Senate budget document, only that they learned of it for the first time last week," the Akron Beacon Journal wrote on June 13." How did we end up with such a gross lack of accountability? That seems more scandalous than the bad idea itself.

endtime 5y ago
I think it's common for Congress to vote on legislation thousands of pages long well before any of them could possibly have had time to read the final version. So this is, sadly, not surprising.
- bottled_poe 5y ago
  Well then, they are failing to fulfil their responsibilities.
- dlp211 5y ago
  This is a generally overly simplistic take. It would be impossible for any single legislature to read all the bills, so that is not done. The vast majority of large bills are produced ahead of time and only marginal changes are made as the bill gets closer to a final vote. The bills are read ahead of time by key members from each party and almost every legislature's staff.
- WoahNoun 5y ago
  The bill was produced by the legislative staff working for the legislator. I assume their staff read the bill they were in charge of producing.
- cogman10 5y ago
  This is a symptom of the problem. At this point, the only bills we can pass federally are budget reconciliation bills an small token "Juneteenth is a holiday" bills. Why? Primarily because of the senate filibuster rule. We require that 60+ senators agree on every bill passed because every bill gets filibustered. That doesn't work well when you have A: A party that coined the phrase "do nothing democrats" B: A senate minority leader that openly says their job is to stop any legislation from passing. Compromise is dead at this point, because regardless of the compromises made, the minority party will filibuster. So the end result is the only bills that get passed are budget reconciliation bills and those try and cram in everything that could possible be thought as "budgetary" into a single bill. Hence, thousands of pages long legislation. If you want to be mad at giant bills, be mad at the party that filibusters all tiny bills. Go read HR-1 and be mad that THAT bill is being filibustered (make federal voting day a national holiday and extending early voting). Go read any of the small common sense bills that get filibustered simply because they came from the opposing party. And if you really want to get mad, go read up on the Jan 6. investigation bill that had 24 amendments added by republicans and 6 added by democrats that was ultimately filibustered. That's where we are at. We've got Democrats bending over backwards to try and appear bipartisan and Republicans who are playing the game of "The best way to make democrats look bad is to filibuster everything".

jrsj 5y ago

Kasich, DeWine etc get a lot of relative praise from the media but the reality is that they’re among the most corrupt state politicians in the nation. They’re just on the right people’s payroll. A much more extreme example of this is JobsOhio (started under Kasich). We don’t know what money was given to what businesses under what conditions. I know from personal experience that people did shady things with grants that were supposed to be repaid to charities though — a business gets a grant, gives it to a charity, then that charity returns most of the money by buying a product they don’t actually use from the business. & this stuff was absolutely being given out at least partially on the basis of personal connections to politicians, who I suspect are probably also investors in some of these companies. However, there was a complete lack of transparency with JobsOhio. So good luck figuring out where all that taxpayer money went (in a red state with one of the highest overall tax burdens in the nation by the way)

whalesalad 5y ago

Come up north to Michigan where the air is crisp. Ohio is the worst. People need to vote with their ballot, wallet, but also with where they choose to take residence.

jschwartzi 5y ago
A lot of people can’t even afford to put down a security deposit on a new rental. Moving is completely out of reach for them.
- whalesalad 5y ago
  I really dislike this rhetoric. You are not wrong but at the same time I think too many groups hold fast to this notion that people are weak and powerless and need government to take care of them. So if you can’t move, you’re just gonna stay for the rest of your life in a state you hate? No way, live free or die. It might take longer but it can be done.
- jrsj 5y ago
  I don’t think that’s entirely realistic, I was able to do it when I worked at McDonald’s and they actually pay better here relative to rents than they did at the time. There a certainly people in that situation but it’s a relatively small %.
azemetre 5y ago
When you tell people to "vote with their wallet" it means that money equates to will/democracy and there is a far far far larger "warchest" of dollars from Comcast, Verizon, and ATT. Does this mean Comcast is the will of the people since they have the ability to spend more? I'd sincerely hope not. I know what you meant by your comment, but the "with wallet" part has been irking me lately because there is substantial corporate interests that has more money than us but they don't have more votes than us (not yet at least).
- whalesalad 5y ago
  I was trying to illustrate that there are different ways to 'vote' for what you want in the world. At the end of the day you are electing your officials in Ohio and they are the ones helping to make these things happen. tl;dr - reward good behavior and specifically do not reward bad behavior.

eatonphil 5y ago

> Fairlawn's city-run FairlawnGig network has consistently ranked as one of the fastest ISPs in the country, serving residents and businesses in Fairlawn, Akron, and Bath with affordable gigabit Internet services. The slowest service tier delivers 300Mbps symmetrical speeds for $55/month. The municipal network has resulted in more businesses choosing to locate in Fairlawn, and at least 700 jobs can be directly attributed to the network. In recent subscriber surveys, 95 percent of respondents rated FairlawnGig's service as "very good to excellent," with some customer testimonials referring to the network as "a life saver" throughout the pandemic. From the article. That is very impressive and a really bad sign for private broadband to be beat out like this.

pulisse 5y ago
> a really bad sign for private broadband to be beat out like this Why is it bad? Sounds like customers are getting high quality service for a good price.
- neogodless 5y ago
  A better way to word that would be "That's pretty damning" or "A clear indicator that private ISPs aren't trying to optimize for the best result of cost-effective speed for their customers."
  - jliptzin 5y ago
    Why would it be a surprise to anyone that a major corporation is optimizing for shareholder profits rather than anything else
    - eatonphil 5y ago
      Do you buy Apple products or Samsung phones? Not every for-profit company is so myopic. For broadband companies to be orders of magnitude worse in _the key performance metric_ than public offerings should be a wakeup call.

s1artibartfast 5y ago

Do municipal ISPs have to operate with positive revenue? It seems like reasonable people could object public services competing with with private companies if not. A middle ground would be supporting nonprofit NGO or Co-ops, which seems to be an underutilized option in the US

smolder 5y ago
Municipal broadband commonly is self funded through subscribership. It is not at all difficult to provide better value than the cable company while staying cash positive, excepting the artificial barriers created to protect that profitability.
- treis 5y ago
  >Municipal broadband commonly is self funded through subscribership. They make that claim but it typically exclude construction costs. As an example, quick googling says that the Fairlawn network mentioned in the article covers operating costs but does not make enough to pay down the initial $10 million worth of bonds (~$1,200 per resident). That seems to be the best that municipal fiber does. That level of success is probably worth it, but it's not exactly a slam dunk. On the flip side there have been disasters. Provo as an example borrowed $40 million to build out their fiber and then lost millions more operating it. Eventually they had to pay more money for Google to take it off their hands. There's this idea going around that ISPs are these terrible monopolies rolling in cash. It's just not true. Their profit margin is average for the S&P 500 and it's a risky business due to intense capital requirements. There's a reason Google walked away from the business despite municipalities falling over themselves to get it.
  - s1artibartfast 5y ago
    Wow, the story of iProvo is really grim.[1] On top of the 40 million bond, charged every household a $5 fee including non-users, and still lost millions per year until they gave it away. It looks like Google paid them $1 for it, with the option to give it back. https://reason.org/news-release/think-tank-iprovos-losses-at-8/ https://reason.org/news-release/think-tank-iprovos-losses-at...

williesleg 5y ago

Nice work! the government does not need to control my internet.

efitz 5y ago

I didn’t see any discussion in the article of WHY. I really don’t think I’m well informed by an article that implies that the proposed change in law is A Bad Thing(tm) but fails to present the proponents’ arguments.

iso1631 5y ago
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/ohio-senate-gop-budget-proposal-would-ban-municipal-broadband-programs/ar-AAL2KCA https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/ohio-senate-gop-budg... has coverage from John Fortney
- VLM 5y ago
  To summarize: 1) They just signed a bill into law to provide various grants and such to increase BB. Its bad law to change everything every month. They wanted $200M but shrunk it to a pilot program $20M and want to see how that will work and how it relates to getting federal handouts. Its an area of bad law, they have multiple hands in the pot doing multiple semi-opposing things at the same time, and when you find yourself stuck in the bottom of a hole, first stop digging. There is no central legislation or department for BB in Ohio, only stuff tacked onto other bills, and this is a bad way to legislate something important. 2) Historical small cherry picked successes do not imply expansion is a good idea. If Tesla sold 10K cars to millionaires in 2015, that does not imply one million fully electric F-150 would be sold in 2020, and that was indeed not the case. If its such a universal success, why isn't it happening? It seems fully electric F-150s are coming and NOT because of municipal laws but market forces and federal laws. If it (muni broadband) works so well, how come its always tiny anecdotes, not, perhaps, the entire eastern seaboard including all of NYC, or the entire state of CA or something? And if it doesn't always work, why should little ole Ohio be the lab rat, experiment on someone else? 3) Phone market (and wireless hotspots) seem to be doing better without local government interference than even the most optimistic muni-broadband projections. Why are we doing all of this, the whole debate and everything, if everyone will get better faster service from a wireless hotspot anyway? Its 2021 why are we arguing over the minutiae of how to run wires to every house when cheaper faster already more competitive wireless is the future anyway? My view (as opposed to Fortney) would be muni competition would mean 1% of the monopoly would be broken, thus Americans being American, we'd eliminate all regulation on the 99% remaining monopoly victims. Nothing quite says "USA" free market quite like a handful of lucky people in a lucky area getting a great deal, and the masses will be paying more and getting less. In the long run, much like long distance in the 80s thru 20s, competition would increase until the product is too cheap to meter or technologically irrelevant meanwhile most billed revenue would go toward accounting expenses for that billed revenue and of course advertising to compete between dinosaurs, its not a productive use of our income. In the long run wired ISP is dead and we'll get satellite or wireless anyway; by the time we run multiple 70s era cable TV hardline to each home or fiber to each home under some legacy wired internet competition system, we'll all be using wireless hotspots that are 100x faster and 10x cheaper anyway. Would have been an interesting bill in 1996 or even as late as 2006, but in 2021 why even bother, by the time muni fiber for $50 arrives at your farm, you'll already be on a years later generation of Starlink running 100 times faster for $15.

kmeisthax 5y ago

Ohio: Google is a public utility Also Ohio: ISPs should be entirely unregulated

Keverw 5y ago
First thing I thought reading this too. They ate making a fool of themselves and think it hurts Ohio’s position as a tech leader.

scdp 5y ago

Surely AG Dave Yost has something to say about this, seems right down his alley. Unless suing Google was a purely a political stunt...

erchwe 5y ago

If you live in Ohio, here's what you can do to call your rep: Find your rep at http://www.ohiohouse.gov http://www.ohiohouse.gov. Call 1-800-282-0253 [0] and tell the aide you oppose House Bill 110 [1], Section 122.4091.B [2], and state your reasoning in 1-2 min. May be good to cite the municipal ISP FairlawnGig's success: this [3] is a good read on the subject. [0] http://www.occ.ohio.gov/content/how-call-your-legislator http://www.occ.ohio.gov/content/how-call-your-legislator [1] https://www.legislature.ohio.gov/legislation/legislation-summary?id=GA134-HB-110 https://www.legislature.ohio.gov/legislation/legislation-sum... [2] https://muninetworks.org/sites/www.muninetworks.org/files/Ohio%20Municipal%20Broadband%20Amendment.pdf https://muninetworks.org/sites/www.muninetworks.org/files/Oh... [3] https://muninetworks.org/content/new-fact-sheet-ohios-community-broadband-solutions https://muninetworks.org/content/new-fact-sheet-ohios-commun...

question000 5y ago
Don't do this, it's pointless if you complain about Republican elected officials they typically just try to siphon resources away from your area. If you really think this will work please use a false identity to avoid being targeted.
- spuz 5y ago
  Can you cite your source for this? I've never heard of a politician retaliating against a constituent for voicing their concerns.
  - frockington1 5y ago
    I live in Ohio, can confirm this is false. Every state representative I've met with has been happy a citizen is taking interest in local politics and has been open to a conversation. A state rep is not going to target you house or street (not even sure how this would happen) because they disagree with you
    - question000 5y ago
      I live in Virginia and I was proudly told this by a Republican running for office. They have a DB so they can pool data state-by-state and cross-reference it with social media.

anothernewdude 5y ago

No excuse for it. It's corruption.

decremental 5y ago

> approved a budget bill that contains an anti-municipal broadband ammendment With 100% certainty it contains lots of things completely unrelated to the one tiny part of it this article is about. It's most likely those other unrelated things are what was objected to. Do some digging and you're sure to find some very strange things in that bill. This is entry level knowledge about US politics. It's predictable but nonetheless disappointing to see that HN commenters took the intellectually lazy path here.

hiidrew 5y ago

Hmm, this pro-monopoly stance reminds me of the cannabis legalization initiative that was proposed previously in Ohio. It didn't pass and I believe the main reason was limiting licenses to the market to ~4 organizations.

the_only_law 5y ago

Isn’t this the same state that was so fearful of monopolies they were trying to sue Google and declare it a public utility. I guess the only bad monopolies are the ones that aren’t personally stuffing cash in your pocket.

jjice 5y ago

This is basically comical. Elected officials actively sabotaging something good that has helped the people that elected them. I'd love to sit down and have a conversation with politicians like this over coffee and just try to wade through their BS to see what their awful justifications are. Actively destroying competition that has benefited the public? Cool moves guys.

StreamBright 5y ago

Internet is bad because government, solution is to bring in more government. I am not sure how the US ended up with this situation otherwise. I also think that the solution is not to have a state owned internet provider. https://www.telecompetitor.com/broadband-monopoly-report-at-least-49-7-million-americans-served-by-only-one-provider/ https://www.telecompetitor.com/broadband-monopoly-report-at-...

deleted 5y ago

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shmerl 5y ago

How much were they paid by the monopolists who wrote the actual bill?

rdiddly 5y ago

If I can take the naive view for theatrical effect here, who thinks this is a good idea? Who thinks this is how you serve, help, and represent the people of Ohio? On what grounds would you assert that the people are saying "Please stop me from enjoying this kind of service, for I lack the willpower to resist the scourge of fast cheap connectivity!" In other words I guess the thing that jumps out is how blatant and transparent it is. If you're a corporate lapdog all set to fuck your constituents, at least cover it up.

dfxm12 5y ago
Look at the recent history of the Ohio general assembly. These representatives know their jobs are safe, or at the very least, the party knows they will remain in power. Why is that? It could be a combination of many things: their constituents are single issue voters and they happen to be on the same side, they have too strong of an incumbent's advantage, the state is gerrymandered in a way to make it impossible for their party to lose control, pending voter laws, etc. We see time and time again, at all levels of government: people voting against what they claim are their interests. It goes to show that corporate lapdogs don't need to cover anything up, because of the positive feedback loop where corporate lapdogs keep getting elected!
sonotathrowaway 5y ago
Why should they bother covering it up though? Ohioans approve wholeheartedly of this, and will reaffirm their approval in the next election. Sure they’ll complain about the extra costs and the poorer service, but then they’ll go vote for the people who made this decision for them. Most will consider it a small sacrifice to protect against the dangers of socialism. The people with options and who disapprove have already left - Ohio and it’s cities are losing population for good reason.
andrewmcwatters 5y ago
Easy, it’ll be done by saying this protects the consumer and taxpayer from poor infrastructure and waste, versus having the best in class available for Ohioans.

heavyset_go 5y ago

In the midst of a shift towards remote working, they're really shooting themselves in the foot with bans like this. Ohio needs a tax base more than individual workers need Ohio.

exabrial 5y ago

Municipal broadband sounds like a good idea, until you see it happen in reality. What happens is cities are often forced to take the buildout to auction, when Comcast comes in with an absurdly low bid and says "oh yeah we'll 'build' it ROFLMAO". Don't get me wrong, the community coming together to compete is a good idea. But we need to start examining the failures and avoid them. An independent organization would be a FAR better approach in my opinion.

lucasmullens 5y ago

Am I wrong in thinking that a lot of our ISP problems in the US will fade away due to Starlink? A few people I know with it went from 1Mbps to 20-30Mbps and they're thrilled with it. Once the capacity is higher, there won't be an ISP monopoly anywhere, since Starlink will always be an option. And isn't the monopoly issue the bulk of the problem?

alkonaut 5y ago

Idea: ban ”campaign contributions”. Cap spending and fund politicians with campaign money so they can reach voters.

pronlover723 5y ago

If you want cheap and fast internet you're not going to get it by making it a utility. You're going to get it by removing the regulations that let ISPs have local monopolies and removing the barriers to competition. Sure, it might require other regulations to enforce competition so companies don't consolidate too much but at the moment the issue is most localities regulate out all the competition. Korea, Japan, Singapore, etc have fast internet because of competition. Adding municipal broadband might make things temporarily better but long term it will go bad. See roads and transportation systems all over the country. Then remember that tech moves much faster than road tech. Is the municipal going to upgrade to terabit speeds? No, but competition will. Note: I'm not saying I support the bill. Rather I'm saying municipal broadband will be a net negative. You'll all cheer it on and it will feel good at first and then in 10-15 yrs you'll wonder why we're so far behind countries that encouraged competition as their ISPs competed on faster speeds and those municipal IPSs are still in government committees arguing over funding.

greyhair 5y ago

Republican voters have been voting against their own self interest for the last forty years because of Reaganism. And this last year, they capped it off with Trumpism. Because both Reagan and Trump (though very different) had such a grasp of showmanship and stage craft. As far as I am concerned, the people of Ohio are getting exactly what they want, which is exactly what they deserve.

lukifer 5y ago
You won't find a more vigorous critic of Reaganite neo-liberalism than myself; but the phenomenon of "voting against self-interest" is not limited to one party. The feedback loops of electoral politics are distant and slow (especially at the national scale), and the winner-take-all voting system constrains political preferences to a relatively narrow spectrum of choices (the Overton window). These factors conspire to make voting more heavily tilted towards tribal signaling [0] than policy outcomes, and entrenched power structures (both public and private) are incentivized to maximize this phenomenon from both sides of the aisle [1]. [0] https://www.elephantinthebrain.com/ https://www.elephantinthebrain.com/ [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent

tibbydudeza 5y ago

They should put up new signs saying "Welcome to Ohio - Find It Here - powered by Comcast".

okareaman 5y ago

My City Was Gone by The Pretenders I went back to Ohio But my pretty countryside Had been paved down the middle By a government that had no pride The farms of Ohio Had been replaced by shopping malls And Muzak filled the air From Seneca to Cuyahoga Falls Said, ay, oh, way to go, Ohio

sys_64738 5y ago

"Follow the money"