7 ms·

Hopefully this piece gets a lot more views, because this is an issue that pretty much any rational technoligist should get involved with. Here in NC, our state

by ncphil 4y ago

Hopefully this piece gets a lot more views, because this is an issue that pretty much any rational technoligist should get involved with. Here in NC, our state legislature also caved to cableco and telecom pressure to make it nearly impossible for muni broadband to spread. That was after a single city's service succeeded so spectacularly that the incumbents had visions of Armageddon. That's because they knew that even in this relatively center-right leaning state, people will know a good deal when they see it: so job 1 was to make sure they never do. So far their efforts at blocking competition have been successful. Except for a few very limited areas where Google Fiber was able to pry its way in, there has been no competition to the incumbents from muni or private parties. At this point our best hope may be that changing demographics and the undeniable drift away from traditional programming will result in their financial collapse, finally allowing communities to serve themselves. The other option is for people to get out and pressure their political reps to make muni or community broadband easier to deploy, maybe even run for office themselves and replace those who have sold out. Broadband access isn't as important as homelessness or healthcare, but it is important. Maybe it's a good place to start reversing the crappification of everything many here have lived through their whole lives.

germinalphrase 4y ago
There should be(and maybe, probably, is?) be political action organization that provides case studies and background research materials to support community level action. Give ammo to average folks to advocate for muni broadband in a manner that is simple and compelling. Anyone have a resource?
bigjimmyk3 4y ago
I live in an area with great fiber internet service (gigabit synchronous unmetered) thanks to a rural electric co-op. It worked here because co-ops still have a fair bit of political power (in my state anyway).
- walrus01 4y ago
  One of the great advantages of a last mile rural electrical coop is that they already own/control the ROW (right of way), for the most part, wood utility poles, they have crews of linemen, bucket trucks, spool trailers, GIS people who know how to do aerial ROW planning, etc. If you have the aerial ROW fully under your own ownership and control the $/km to do rural FTTH is vastly reduced. There are a lot of efficiencies if this is done as a nonprofit at a municipal/county level entity, one random example, county run fiber PUD calls up the same-county sheriff's department and is like "oh yeah we're gonna need to block a lane and have some traffic flaggers at place X and Y and Z, and we need to shut down avenue C for a while", and everything goes very smoothly.
freeopinion 4y ago
There are subtle things that can be done. For instance, most utilities enjoy access to easements and right-of-ways across public and private property. A simple two bit tax per mile of rights on public land is chicken scratch to the utilities. They will, of course, just pass it on to their customers, and nobody will notice. Then, a few years later, bump it to four bits, then on and on. Eventually it will be like a gas tax. A big tax that amounts to a lot of revenue. Naturally, utilities owned by the people--all the people--would be exempt from taxes for access to the people's land. Taxes paid by private telecoms could fund research into the viability and advisability of muni services. It will cost more and more money for the private companies to own the political landscape.
- bruce511 4y ago
  I hear you, but I feel this approach is wrong. There's nothing wrong with municipal networks, or competition in general, but there should be a level playing field. Muni should not be subsidised by taxes, it should be paid for by users. Increasing competition is a valid way to increase value while decreasing price, and markets with good compeditive options are the ones that fare best. Unfortunately tax-supported ones, or ones which have other unfair advantages don't need to keep improving or maintaining good levels of service. Plus,bear in mind there are competent and incompetent munis. Whatever scheme you adopt should work regardless. Having them compete on equal footing means that in some places Muni will win, in others cable might, and in others small local ISP might emerge.
  - fivre 4y ago
    In what bizarro world are you living where there is a competitive market for ISPs? 2 ISPs at best, via the municipality-granted local telecom and cable monopolies, is the norm for most of the US. Service does not improve because there is no competitive reason to improve it outside a tiny subset of markets. Services that require physical infrastructure over a wide area, such as power, water, and telecom service tend to result in natural monopolies as a rule. The limited competition between consumer ISPs in the current landscape isn't providing value by any meaningful assessment. Internet service is functionally a commodity: so long as it's fast enough with consistent uptime it's functionally identical no matter who's providing it. As much as Comcast would like to believe otherwise, consumers largely aren't choosing them for their shitty Netflix knockoff or their free email inbox, they're choosing them because they're probably faster than AT&T DSL. In most markets they're "providing value" by deferring infrastructure upgrades and leveraging dark patterns to generate additional revenue (lol at the common scam-level prices for router rental) to increase profits for their shareholders. Commercial consumer ISPs do not have the best interests of residents in the service areas as a priority. If nothing else, allowing municipalities to run fiber is in favor of far better competition than the status quo. I sincerely doubt that competence is a major concern with the simple practice of laying infrastructure in a trench (if it is, it doesn't bode well for your water and sewage systems, and that's probably a far more pressing concern), and that's the main barrier to entry for competition. /Running an ISP/, an entity that handles routing and uplink agreements with peers for its customers, is not profoundly heavy on infrastructure cost: you can start your own with leased access, a couple blokes in a shed, some routing and switching gear, and someone who can negotiate a transit contract or two. /Laying a shitton of last-mile fiber across public land/ is infrastructure intensive. The incumbent providers just happen to do both. You could easily have a municipality provide only the fiber or have it provide both the physical infrastructure and run an ISP service atop it while leasing out line bandwidth to other ISPs. A single ISP can't really monopolize last-mile bandwidth--its usage is a function of the last mile users, not who offers service over it. Fundamentally though, choosing whether subsidize an entire ISP including infrastructure, subsidizing infrastructure alone and renting it, or subsidizing nothing should be the choice of citizens through their government. There's no god-given right that telecom companies have to that market, but they're often able to secure it by bribing a few state reps to listen to their stories about the SCARY PERILS OF MUNICIPAL INFRASTRUCTURE and THE GREAT THREAT TO THE TOTALLY REAL VIBRANT ISP COMPETIIVE LANDSCAPE and vote on something most constituents aren't aware of for a continued stream of campaign contributions.
jancsika 4y ago
I'm having trouble seeing a practical way forward: 1. small NC municipality had a town manager with the foresight to deploy municipal wifi and plan for fiber during that interim period when FCC declared it legal. Good service (symmetric, price adjusted for the actual signal you get), good support 2. that FCC ruling was overturned in the courts 3. municipality spun off the wifi into a little company. Still good service, good support 4. fiber got rolled out 5. municipality leased it to some company that somehow has worse ratings than comcast. That company took also took over operations of the little wifi company So now what? Even if technologists in NC band together to overturn that state law, the municipality still has a 20-year lease with that company.
- walrus01 4y ago
  municipal "wifi" / last-mile point to multipoint wireless service in unlicensed bands is a technological dead end, and can't match the capacity of a wireline based DOCSIS3 cable operator, let alone a GPON or active ethernet based fiber plant. the only thing that municipal run wireless services do is serve to sour people on the concept of municipal run network infrastructure, because almost inevitably they're flakier, slower, and less reliable than the existing terrestrial based for profit ISPs in the area. show me a single municipal run wireless operator today that can match the speeds of a LTE/3gpp based MU-MIMO last mile with carrier aggregation. skip the wireless part and go straight to fiber.
- stefan_ 4y ago
  Who mentioned WiFi? "municipal wifi" is not a thing, that's a terrible idea for any sort of internet service.
- dangerface 4y ago
  > So now what? Even if technologists in NC band together to overturn that state law, the municipality still has a 20-year lease with that company. A company wouldn't let a little thing like contract law stop them from doing what they want, as they did when they overturned the FCC the rule of law is made to be broken. We could just change the law to make comcast and all isps owned by the government because the the law says so and comcast could do nothing about it. I know its not smart to advocate that we just change the law to steal stuff from others but this is what corporations, do they take wifi paid for by the public and change the law so that its owned by them, why don't we just do this to corporations? Oh yea because thats socialism.
geodel 4y ago
Maybe some municipality can do muni healthcare but it is so unsexy/boring/hard that they end up saying "meh, we ain't gonna do it". Besides nothing get tech bros more excited like cheap unlimited broadband fulfilling the lurid dreams of 16K super ultra HD videos and AR/VR setups.
sidewndr46 4y ago
I just don't get why anyone would want their city to run an internet service? It seems like the most of awful thing that I could ever be forced to endure. I'll give you a few easy examples: I moved from one house to another, the city owned electric company demanded a $200 deposit. Literally in the same area, same city owned electric. According to them I had a "history of non-payment". I asked about my original deposit, the employee told me I got it back. I asked when, he told me he could not tell me. I asked to speak to his supervisor, who also told me he could not tell me. He then proceeded to tell me to shut up about it. So far, I've payed $400 in deposits that I'll never see again. The same city utility routinely sent me water bills that made no sense. I would get bills for <500 gallons of usage per month. Then suddenly a bill for 10x the usage amount, but all billed for water. Somehow I didn't use any sewer. Had a plumber confirm no leaks in the system. Later I would find out the meter readers simply falsify the readings in that area. Somehow when I moved, they put trash service on my account. I'm not even in their service area for trash. But the real icing is COVID! For years the city has operated a bulk trash collection at the curb and hazardous waste collection at a facility. When COVID started, they just suspended it. For health concerns. 2 years later they are still collecting fees while city council is holding meetings about the increase in illegal dumping of trash in the area. This is the same group that is going to provide me internet service? Pass.
- rectang 4y ago
  > I just don't get why anyone would want their city to run an internet service? It seems like the most of awful thing that I could ever be forced to endure. I agree, but the "limited government" alternative in practice is monopoly telcos. What's the difference? Actual competition is not on offer from anyone.
  - sidewndr46 4y ago
    A government granting a monopoly to a private business is in no way "limited". In fact, it is one of the largest uses of power a state can apply.
    - rectang 4y ago
bsagdiyev 4y ago
This saddened me to learn before we moved out to NC. We're lucky enough to have the possibility of Ting coming in at some point but not until our development is done being built. It's a Spectrum monopoly until then. Hopefully these sorts of laws get overturned and the limiting providers via contracts/deals with the city or development gets made illegal.

by ncphil 4y ago

germinalphrase 4y ago

There should be(and maybe, probably, is?) be political action organization that provides case studies and background research materials to support community level action. Give ammo to average folks to advocate for muni broadband in a manner that is simple and compelling. Anyone have a resource?

bigjimmyk3 4y ago

I live in an area with great fiber internet service (gigabit synchronous unmetered) thanks to a rural electric co-op. It worked here because co-ops still have a fair bit of political power (in my state anyway).

walrus01 4y ago
One of the great advantages of a last mile rural electrical coop is that they already own/control the ROW (right of way), for the most part, wood utility poles, they have crews of linemen, bucket trucks, spool trailers, GIS people who know how to do aerial ROW planning, etc. If you have the aerial ROW fully under your own ownership and control the $/km to do rural FTTH is vastly reduced. There are a lot of efficiencies if this is done as a nonprofit at a municipal/county level entity, one random example, county run fiber PUD calls up the same-county sheriff's department and is like "oh yeah we're gonna need to block a lane and have some traffic flaggers at place X and Y and Z, and we need to shut down avenue C for a while", and everything goes very smoothly.

freeopinion 4y ago

There are subtle things that can be done. For instance, most utilities enjoy access to easements and right-of-ways across public and private property. A simple two bit tax per mile of rights on public land is chicken scratch to the utilities. They will, of course, just pass it on to their customers, and nobody will notice. Then, a few years later, bump it to four bits, then on and on. Eventually it will be like a gas tax. A big tax that amounts to a lot of revenue. Naturally, utilities owned by the people--all the people--would be exempt from taxes for access to the people's land. Taxes paid by private telecoms could fund research into the viability and advisability of muni services. It will cost more and more money for the private companies to own the political landscape.

bruce511 4y ago
I hear you, but I feel this approach is wrong. There's nothing wrong with municipal networks, or competition in general, but there should be a level playing field. Muni should not be subsidised by taxes, it should be paid for by users. Increasing competition is a valid way to increase value while decreasing price, and markets with good compeditive options are the ones that fare best. Unfortunately tax-supported ones, or ones which have other unfair advantages don't need to keep improving or maintaining good levels of service. Plus,bear in mind there are competent and incompetent munis. Whatever scheme you adopt should work regardless. Having them compete on equal footing means that in some places Muni will win, in others cable might, and in others small local ISP might emerge.
- fivre 4y ago
  In what bizarro world are you living where there is a competitive market for ISPs? 2 ISPs at best, via the municipality-granted local telecom and cable monopolies, is the norm for most of the US. Service does not improve because there is no competitive reason to improve it outside a tiny subset of markets. Services that require physical infrastructure over a wide area, such as power, water, and telecom service tend to result in natural monopolies as a rule. The limited competition between consumer ISPs in the current landscape isn't providing value by any meaningful assessment. Internet service is functionally a commodity: so long as it's fast enough with consistent uptime it's functionally identical no matter who's providing it. As much as Comcast would like to believe otherwise, consumers largely aren't choosing them for their shitty Netflix knockoff or their free email inbox, they're choosing them because they're probably faster than AT&T DSL. In most markets they're "providing value" by deferring infrastructure upgrades and leveraging dark patterns to generate additional revenue (lol at the common scam-level prices for router rental) to increase profits for their shareholders. Commercial consumer ISPs do not have the best interests of residents in the service areas as a priority. If nothing else, allowing municipalities to run fiber is in favor of far better competition than the status quo. I sincerely doubt that competence is a major concern with the simple practice of laying infrastructure in a trench (if it is, it doesn't bode well for your water and sewage systems, and that's probably a far more pressing concern), and that's the main barrier to entry for competition. /Running an ISP/, an entity that handles routing and uplink agreements with peers for its customers, is not profoundly heavy on infrastructure cost: you can start your own with leased access, a couple blokes in a shed, some routing and switching gear, and someone who can negotiate a transit contract or two. /Laying a shitton of last-mile fiber across public land/ is infrastructure intensive. The incumbent providers just happen to do both. You could easily have a municipality provide only the fiber or have it provide both the physical infrastructure and run an ISP service atop it while leasing out line bandwidth to other ISPs. A single ISP can't really monopolize last-mile bandwidth--its usage is a function of the last mile users, not who offers service over it. Fundamentally though, choosing whether subsidize an entire ISP including infrastructure, subsidizing infrastructure alone and renting it, or subsidizing nothing should be the choice of citizens through their government. There's no god-given right that telecom companies have to that market, but they're often able to secure it by bribing a few state reps to listen to their stories about the SCARY PERILS OF MUNICIPAL INFRASTRUCTURE and THE GREAT THREAT TO THE TOTALLY REAL VIBRANT ISP COMPETIIVE LANDSCAPE and vote on something most constituents aren't aware of for a continued stream of campaign contributions.

jancsika 4y ago

I'm having trouble seeing a practical way forward: 1. small NC municipality had a town manager with the foresight to deploy municipal wifi and plan for fiber during that interim period when FCC declared it legal. Good service (symmetric, price adjusted for the actual signal you get), good support 2. that FCC ruling was overturned in the courts 3. municipality spun off the wifi into a little company. Still good service, good support 4. fiber got rolled out 5. municipality leased it to some company that somehow has worse ratings than comcast. That company took also took over operations of the little wifi company So now what? Even if technologists in NC band together to overturn that state law, the municipality still has a 20-year lease with that company.

walrus01 4y ago
municipal "wifi" / last-mile point to multipoint wireless service in unlicensed bands is a technological dead end, and can't match the capacity of a wireline based DOCSIS3 cable operator, let alone a GPON or active ethernet based fiber plant. the only thing that municipal run wireless services do is serve to sour people on the concept of municipal run network infrastructure, because almost inevitably they're flakier, slower, and less reliable than the existing terrestrial based for profit ISPs in the area. show me a single municipal run wireless operator today that can match the speeds of a LTE/3gpp based MU-MIMO last mile with carrier aggregation. skip the wireless part and go straight to fiber.
stefan_ 4y ago
Who mentioned WiFi? "municipal wifi" is not a thing, that's a terrible idea for any sort of internet service.
dangerface 4y ago
> So now what? Even if technologists in NC band together to overturn that state law, the municipality still has a 20-year lease with that company. A company wouldn't let a little thing like contract law stop them from doing what they want, as they did when they overturned the FCC the rule of law is made to be broken. We could just change the law to make comcast and all isps owned by the government because the the law says so and comcast could do nothing about it. I know its not smart to advocate that we just change the law to steal stuff from others but this is what corporations, do they take wifi paid for by the public and change the law so that its owned by them, why don't we just do this to corporations? Oh yea because thats socialism.

geodel 4y ago

Maybe some municipality can do muni healthcare but it is so unsexy/boring/hard that they end up saying "meh, we ain't gonna do it". Besides nothing get tech bros more excited like cheap unlimited broadband fulfilling the lurid dreams of 16K super ultra HD videos and AR/VR setups.

sidewndr46 4y ago

I just don't get why anyone would want their city to run an internet service? It seems like the most of awful thing that I could ever be forced to endure. I'll give you a few easy examples: I moved from one house to another, the city owned electric company demanded a $200 deposit. Literally in the same area, same city owned electric. According to them I had a "history of non-payment". I asked about my original deposit, the employee told me I got it back. I asked when, he told me he could not tell me. I asked to speak to his supervisor, who also told me he could not tell me. He then proceeded to tell me to shut up about it. So far, I've payed $400 in deposits that I'll never see again. The same city utility routinely sent me water bills that made no sense. I would get bills for <500 gallons of usage per month. Then suddenly a bill for 10x the usage amount, but all billed for water. Somehow I didn't use any sewer. Had a plumber confirm no leaks in the system. Later I would find out the meter readers simply falsify the readings in that area. Somehow when I moved, they put trash service on my account. I'm not even in their service area for trash. But the real icing is COVID! For years the city has operated a bulk trash collection at the curb and hazardous waste collection at a facility. When COVID started, they just suspended it. For health concerns. 2 years later they are still collecting fees while city council is holding meetings about the increase in illegal dumping of trash in the area. This is the same group that is going to provide me internet service? Pass.

rectang 4y ago
> I just don't get why anyone would want their city to run an internet service? It seems like the most of awful thing that I could ever be forced to endure. I agree, but the "limited government" alternative in practice is monopoly telcos. What's the difference? Actual competition is not on offer from anyone.
- sidewndr46 4y ago
  A government granting a monopoly to a private business is in no way "limited". In fact, it is one of the largest uses of power a state can apply.
  - rectang 4y ago

bsagdiyev 4y ago

This saddened me to learn before we moved out to NC. We're lucky enough to have the possibility of Ting coming in at some point but not until our development is done being built. It's a Spectrum monopoly until then. Hopefully these sorts of laws get overturned and the limiting providers via contracts/deals with the city or development gets made illegal.