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The idea that we need to give grants to utilities that are ostensibly better as private institutions since private companies allegedly "drive innovation" is so

The idea that we need to give grants to utilities that are ostensibly better as private institutions since private companies allegedly "drive innovation" is so nonsensical on it's face. All it's led to is a cadre of entrenched corporations that do not give the slightest fuck about their quality of service or uptime, and competitive pricing is a fucking joke in the American broadband market. I have not heard any arguments in favor of this system that hold water in my entire life and it's only getting more and more true as consumers get screwed harder and harder with zero solutions on offer either by these mythical "competitors" or the Government that acts as defacto enforcer of their ability to choke customers out of more and more money for worse and worse service year over year.

toast0 3y ago
> The idea that we need to give grants to utilities that are ostensibly better as private institutions since private companies allegedly "drive innovation" is so nonsensical on it's face. If the idea was we needed to give grants to drive innovation, something was missed. There's not really an unmet need for innovation in broadband delivery; the issue is running new wires broadband has costs, and in a lot of places, the ROI on running new wires for broadband doesn't justify doing it. The grants were supposed to induce large providers to do the runs in areas that weren't commercially viable; of course, it's easier to ask for grants and then do nothing with them, which is even better for the bottom line. Really, we'd be a lot better off if last mile had mandatory line sharing (as the telecom act of 1996 provided), and if there was some cooperation from the major broadband providers to coalesce on some upgradable standard for it. A single fiber to the home built on GPON/10GPON/NG-PON2 could be leveraged by telco, cableco, and others, but since telco and cableco will only use their own lines and won't build unless there's demonstrable ROI, a GPON overbuild by a third network is doomed to poor financials: either the incumbents were right and you won't see the uptake, or the incumbents were wrong, will notice when you overbuild and will update their network and the 3rd network still won't get customer uptake. Where I live, I only get VDSL2; the cable company comes to the corner of my property but won't serve my house. Municipal fiber is available, but only if I pay to run it above ground a couple miles to the drive, and I've also got to pay for undergrounding from the pole to my house. If I could get a few people together, some of the costs would be shared, but not a lot of people are willing to pay tens of thousands of dollars to get better internet, when they have a serviceable alternative now, and the monthly costs are likely more with muni fiber too. Of course, if the cableco or telco decide to roll out to my house, the installation fees will probably be minimal, because those companies can account for the costs in other ways than a public agency.
- ToucanLoucan 3y ago
  > There's not really an unmet need for innovation in broadband delivery; the issue is running new wires broadband has costs, and in a lot of places, the ROI on running new wires for broadband doesn't justify doing it. This sounds like exactly the sort of thing a private company is going to be terrible at. And even with the grants, it seems they are and have been since I was in preschool.
  - toast0 3y ago
    Yeah, grants don't really seem to work here; my point was more that if you thought they were for innovation, that was way off-base. The grants can be helpful for upstarts, but not when the criteria exclude upstarts. If the goal is universal service, it really needs to be mandatory, not voluntary, even with incentives (especially poorly administered incentives). But mandatory service is usually connected with a granted monopoly, which isn't really what we want either. On the other hand, if it takes long enough to get everyone wired, wireless options will become competitive. Between LEO internet services (StarLink, maybe OneWeb and friends) and terrestrial 5G-NR, I think it's quite likely that few places without current wired broadband will ever get it.
chiefalchemist 3y ago
The phrase you're looking for is Cronie Capitalism. It's "capitalism" (note the air quotes, please) with the gov putting it's thumb on the scale to benefit the few. The joke is the "free markets" are better narrative and Cronie Capitalism is anything but free markets. Welcome to The New America.
rhino369 3y ago
>I have not heard any arguments in favor of this system that hold water in my entire life One defense is that the old AT&T system was really expensive and slowed progress. Deregulation was a big win for consumers. I agree that well regulated monopoly ISPs could deliver better service. But I'm deeply skeptical that, in practice, we'd manage to actually regulate the ISPs properly. Our regulated power companies have shitty, underfunded grids that create massive forest fires. I would half expect really cheap nationwide DSL.

toast0 3y ago

> The idea that we need to give grants to utilities that are ostensibly better as private institutions since private companies allegedly "drive innovation" is so nonsensical on it's face. If the idea was we needed to give grants to drive innovation, something was missed. There's not really an unmet need for innovation in broadband delivery; the issue is running new wires broadband has costs, and in a lot of places, the ROI on running new wires for broadband doesn't justify doing it. The grants were supposed to induce large providers to do the runs in areas that weren't commercially viable; of course, it's easier to ask for grants and then do nothing with them, which is even better for the bottom line. Really, we'd be a lot better off if last mile had mandatory line sharing (as the telecom act of 1996 provided), and if there was some cooperation from the major broadband providers to coalesce on some upgradable standard for it. A single fiber to the home built on GPON/10GPON/NG-PON2 could be leveraged by telco, cableco, and others, but since telco and cableco will only use their own lines and won't build unless there's demonstrable ROI, a GPON overbuild by a third network is doomed to poor financials: either the incumbents were right and you won't see the uptake, or the incumbents were wrong, will notice when you overbuild and will update their network and the 3rd network still won't get customer uptake. Where I live, I only get VDSL2; the cable company comes to the corner of my property but won't serve my house. Municipal fiber is available, but only if I pay to run it above ground a couple miles to the drive, and I've also got to pay for undergrounding from the pole to my house. If I could get a few people together, some of the costs would be shared, but not a lot of people are willing to pay tens of thousands of dollars to get better internet, when they have a serviceable alternative now, and the monthly costs are likely more with muni fiber too. Of course, if the cableco or telco decide to roll out to my house, the installation fees will probably be minimal, because those companies can account for the costs in other ways than a public agency.

ToucanLoucan 3y ago
> There's not really an unmet need for innovation in broadband delivery; the issue is running new wires broadband has costs, and in a lot of places, the ROI on running new wires for broadband doesn't justify doing it. This sounds like exactly the sort of thing a private company is going to be terrible at. And even with the grants, it seems they are and have been since I was in preschool.
- toast0 3y ago
  Yeah, grants don't really seem to work here; my point was more that if you thought they were for innovation, that was way off-base. The grants can be helpful for upstarts, but not when the criteria exclude upstarts. If the goal is universal service, it really needs to be mandatory, not voluntary, even with incentives (especially poorly administered incentives). But mandatory service is usually connected with a granted monopoly, which isn't really what we want either. On the other hand, if it takes long enough to get everyone wired, wireless options will become competitive. Between LEO internet services (StarLink, maybe OneWeb and friends) and terrestrial 5G-NR, I think it's quite likely that few places without current wired broadband will ever get it.

chiefalchemist 3y ago

The phrase you're looking for is Cronie Capitalism. It's "capitalism" (note the air quotes, please) with the gov putting it's thumb on the scale to benefit the few. The joke is the "free markets" are better narrative and Cronie Capitalism is anything but free markets. Welcome to The New America.

rhino369 3y ago

>I have not heard any arguments in favor of this system that hold water in my entire life One defense is that the old AT&T system was really expensive and slowed progress. Deregulation was a big win for consumers. I agree that well regulated monopoly ISPs could deliver better service. But I'm deeply skeptical that, in practice, we'd manage to actually regulate the ISPs properly. Our regulated power companies have shitty, underfunded grids that create massive forest fires. I would half expect really cheap nationwide DSL.