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The communications monopolies are quasi-governmental entities whose primary business is crafting plausible sounding narratives about why they can't be bothered

The communications monopolies are quasi-governmental entities whose primary business is crafting plausible sounding narratives about why they can't be bothered to do anything without one-way handouts from the de jure government. In reality municipal fiber has no problem building out out complete cities and towns, with obvious mandates to the serve the whole population, and from what I've seen they're doing a great job. Regardless of density, infrastructure has an intrinsic capital cost that needs to be accounted on the order of a decade, and moribund dinosaurs based around short term revenue extraction aren't capable of doing that. It sounds like Baltimore's problem is, as you said, having no money. Getting an advance from a loan shark when you have no money is a poor idea, as you will be under their thumb and paying it back forever. My own experience: GPON. moderate density (power goes out at least several times a year due to trees), under $80/mo fixed (no continual price hikes, no deliberately confusing fees, no contract), full gigabit up/down with no usage-based gouging, no incentive to surveil my traffic and sell the proceeds. If in 30 years 1Gb is considered slow and it's stuck there because "government", I'll let the municipal fiber doomers say I told you so - assuming Ma Bell isn't still offering 384k ADSL on the two pairs of copper they'll have left.

JJMcJ 3y ago
They get the monopoly without the universal service requirements that the utility and wire-line phone companies have.
rayiner 3y ago
> It sounds like Baltimore's problem is, as you said, having no money That’s true of most municipalities. And they have higher priorities for infrastructure expenditures. Cities and states need to spend $745 billion just to bring water infrastructure up to existing health and environmental standards. Broadband is way behind lead pipes or crumbling bridges on governments’ list of priorities. > Regardless of density, infrastructure has an intrinsic capital cost that needs to be accounted on the order of a decade, and moribund dinosaurs based around short term revenue extraction aren't capable of doing that. I heard this a decade ago, when Google was going to show up the “dinosaurs.” How is that going?
- mindslight 3y ago
  Yes, the problem of looted local institutions is pervasive. This doesn't mean that a Faustian bargain with the incumbent communications monopolies is a good thing, especially when they're insisting on offering a substandard product - lack of coverage area, hostile billing practices, DPI based surveillance/throttling, etc. Such crap was passable for cable TV, which was essentially an elective entertainment service, but is utterly unacceptable with the importance of Internet connectivity in the 21st century. I said this in another comment, but I don't know why you're holding Google up as an exemplar. They don't even have the attention span to follow through on software projects that bear fruit over a few years. Meanwhile my electric company has been providing electricity for well over a century, with de jure government successfully preventing it from running away with extractive customer-hostile dynamics. From other comments I believe you live in an area where you have a choice of several competing corporate wired providers. That's fantastic, and I'm glad your own needs are taken care of that way - where a functioning market can exist, we should celebrate it. However, most people don't live in such an area, including even people in dense areas with horror stories about their buildings signing monopoly contracts with a single provider.
  - rayiner 3y ago
    > I said this in another comment, but I don't know why you're holding Google up as an exemplar. Because Google has enormous financial incentives to disrupt the industry and drive down prices. Google delivers their product over infrastructure owned by other companies, and thus has tremendous incentives to commoditize that infrastructure. https://marginalfutility.substack.com/p/11-commoditizing-your-complements https://marginalfutility.substack.com/p/11-commoditizing-you... If Google is complaining that build out requirements make building fiber too expensive, that tells you an important fact about the economics of building fiber. > Meanwhile my electric company has been providing electricity for well over a century … over last mile infrastructure that pretty much hasn’t changed in that time. The fact that public utilities can maintain that infrastructure doesn’t tell you much about how to build completely new infrastructure. The difference in costs is massive. We couldn’t even build the electric grid again at today’s costs. That also means that public utility infrastructure in this country is a ticking time bomb. For the stuff that does need large scale replacement, like water and sewage pipes, there’s a multi-trillion backlog because public utilities have not invested sufficiently in the infrastructure. > From other comments I believe you live in an area where you have a choice of several competing corporate wired providers. Because it’s a county that makes it easy to build stuff. We also have pretty affordable housing, for the same reason. > However, most people don't live in such an area, including even people in dense areas It’s especially the people in dense areas that have the most trouble getting broadband. What do these dense urban areas have in common, I wonder.

JJMcJ 3y ago

They get the monopoly without the universal service requirements that the utility and wire-line phone companies have.

rayiner 3y ago

> It sounds like Baltimore's problem is, as you said, having no money That’s true of most municipalities. And they have higher priorities for infrastructure expenditures. Cities and states need to spend $745 billion just to bring water infrastructure up to existing health and environmental standards. Broadband is way behind lead pipes or crumbling bridges on governments’ list of priorities. > Regardless of density, infrastructure has an intrinsic capital cost that needs to be accounted on the order of a decade, and moribund dinosaurs based around short term revenue extraction aren't capable of doing that. I heard this a decade ago, when Google was going to show up the “dinosaurs.” How is that going?

mindslight 3y ago
Yes, the problem of looted local institutions is pervasive. This doesn't mean that a Faustian bargain with the incumbent communications monopolies is a good thing, especially when they're insisting on offering a substandard product - lack of coverage area, hostile billing practices, DPI based surveillance/throttling, etc. Such crap was passable for cable TV, which was essentially an elective entertainment service, but is utterly unacceptable with the importance of Internet connectivity in the 21st century. I said this in another comment, but I don't know why you're holding Google up as an exemplar. They don't even have the attention span to follow through on software projects that bear fruit over a few years. Meanwhile my electric company has been providing electricity for well over a century, with de jure government successfully preventing it from running away with extractive customer-hostile dynamics. From other comments I believe you live in an area where you have a choice of several competing corporate wired providers. That's fantastic, and I'm glad your own needs are taken care of that way - where a functioning market can exist, we should celebrate it. However, most people don't live in such an area, including even people in dense areas with horror stories about their buildings signing monopoly contracts with a single provider.
- rayiner 3y ago
  > I said this in another comment, but I don't know why you're holding Google up as an exemplar. Because Google has enormous financial incentives to disrupt the industry and drive down prices. Google delivers their product over infrastructure owned by other companies, and thus has tremendous incentives to commoditize that infrastructure. https://marginalfutility.substack.com/p/11-commoditizing-your-complements https://marginalfutility.substack.com/p/11-commoditizing-you... If Google is complaining that build out requirements make building fiber too expensive, that tells you an important fact about the economics of building fiber. > Meanwhile my electric company has been providing electricity for well over a century … over last mile infrastructure that pretty much hasn’t changed in that time. The fact that public utilities can maintain that infrastructure doesn’t tell you much about how to build completely new infrastructure. The difference in costs is massive. We couldn’t even build the electric grid again at today’s costs. That also means that public utility infrastructure in this country is a ticking time bomb. For the stuff that does need large scale replacement, like water and sewage pipes, there’s a multi-trillion backlog because public utilities have not invested sufficiently in the infrastructure. > From other comments I believe you live in an area where you have a choice of several competing corporate wired providers. Because it’s a county that makes it easy to build stuff. We also have pretty affordable housing, for the same reason. > However, most people don't live in such an area, including even people in dense areas It’s especially the people in dense areas that have the most trouble getting broadband. What do these dense urban areas have in common, I wonder.