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> It shows how far we've fallen that at one point we ran electric wires and telephone wires to people's houses but today we can't run a simple strand of fiber.

> It shows how far we've fallen that at one point we ran electric wires and telephone wires to people's houses but today we can't run a simple strand of fiber. It's less "can't" and more "won't". CenturyLink and co. make a lot more from reusing and overpricing very expensive 5Mb DSL instead of rolling out fiber, and whenever the fed wants to push fiber rollout, they take the funding and "may not meet" deadlines[1]. Same reason some ISPs ask some for hundreds of thousands of dollars[2][3][4] when they're "out of reach" from their network, even when the house nextdoor isn't (can't find that one now). Sometimes that amount is for cable or DSL, not even fiber. Disclaimer: I'm not American, but I followed these US telco stories for a few years. 1: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/01/centurylink-frontier-took-fcc-cash-failed-to-deploy-all-required-broadband/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/01/centurylink-fron... 2: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/09/man-builds-house-then-finds-out-cable-internet-will-cost-117000/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/09/man-b... 3: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/08/want-fiber-internet-thatll-be-383500-isp-tells-farm-owner/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/08/want-... 4: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2021/01/jared-mauch-didnt-have-good-broadband-so-he-built-his-own-fiber-isp/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2021/01/jared...

PaulHoule 4y ago
Lester Thurow in his 1980 book https://www.amazon.com/Zero-Sum-Society-Distribution-Possibilities-Change/dp/0465085881 https://www.amazon.com/Zero-Sum-Society-Distribution-Possibi... talks about numerous problems we experience today, such as windfall profits in the petroleum industry, but the most interesting bit in my mind was the fall of the steel industry in the US which based on the Open Hearth Furnace and the Bessmer process. Japan and Germany had there obsolete factories blown up so they switched to the newly developed Basic Oxygen process which was faster, cheaper and produced superior steel. US Steel lobbied to get protectionism, but this had a negative effect on other parts of US industry. For instance US automakers were making expensive and inferior cars out of expensive and inferior steel. The problem wasn't that the US Steel industry had to invest in new steelmaking capacity, but rather it had to disinvest in the old technology because so long as it could make profits without investing it wouldn't invest. This character played a role in it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Mellon_Scaife https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Mellon_Scaife and he later got famous for bankrolling a campaign to harry Bill Clinton when he was in office. Oddly Bill Clinton became friends with RMS later because RMS let him "triangulate", so long as he could keep his head above water he could do nothing for leftists and have them blame the Republicans and not Clinton. If the phone lines just disappeared it would be perfectly profitable to roll out a fiber network, but so long as the copper wires exist phone companies have every reason to postpone copper retirement indefinitely.
- smileybarry 4y ago
  Right -- what ended up pushing the monopoly telco here (Israel) out of passive income was a few government regulations which then actually created competition: - Bezeq was forced to lease the VDSL infrastructure line to ISPs for a (low) capped price. Only the wholesale lease price to ISPs was capped, they could charge individual customers as they wish. - Other ISPs were allowed to deploy fiber gradually and slowly but Bezeq's rollout had rural coverage requirements This sounds intrusive but Bezeq was originally government-owned and most (if not all) of its infrastructure was paid for by taxes during that time. Once it was spun off into a private company, they kept all of the profits. So this was more reminding Bezeq their existing telco infrastructure was gov-funded.

PaulHoule 4y ago

Lester Thurow in his 1980 book https://www.amazon.com/Zero-Sum-Society-Distribution-Possibilities-Change/dp/0465085881 https://www.amazon.com/Zero-Sum-Society-Distribution-Possibi... talks about numerous problems we experience today, such as windfall profits in the petroleum industry, but the most interesting bit in my mind was the fall of the steel industry in the US which based on the Open Hearth Furnace and the Bessmer process. Japan and Germany had there obsolete factories blown up so they switched to the newly developed Basic Oxygen process which was faster, cheaper and produced superior steel. US Steel lobbied to get protectionism, but this had a negative effect on other parts of US industry. For instance US automakers were making expensive and inferior cars out of expensive and inferior steel. The problem wasn't that the US Steel industry had to invest in new steelmaking capacity, but rather it had to disinvest in the old technology because so long as it could make profits without investing it wouldn't invest. This character played a role in it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Mellon_Scaife https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Mellon_Scaife and he later got famous for bankrolling a campaign to harry Bill Clinton when he was in office. Oddly Bill Clinton became friends with RMS later because RMS let him "triangulate", so long as he could keep his head above water he could do nothing for leftists and have them blame the Republicans and not Clinton. If the phone lines just disappeared it would be perfectly profitable to roll out a fiber network, but so long as the copper wires exist phone companies have every reason to postpone copper retirement indefinitely.

smileybarry 4y ago
Right -- what ended up pushing the monopoly telco here (Israel) out of passive income was a few government regulations which then actually created competition: - Bezeq was forced to lease the VDSL infrastructure line to ISPs for a (low) capped price. Only the wholesale lease price to ISPs was capped, they could charge individual customers as they wish. - Other ISPs were allowed to deploy fiber gradually and slowly but Bezeq's rollout had rural coverage requirements This sounds intrusive but Bezeq was originally government-owned and most (if not all) of its infrastructure was paid for by taxes during that time. Once it was spun off into a private company, they kept all of the profits. So this was more reminding Bezeq their existing telco infrastructure was gov-funded.