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The FCC admits they could not identify any intentional discrimination.[1] So they went further and adopted a "disparate impact" standard which means you don't e

The FCC admits they could not identify any intentional discrimination.[1] So they went further and adopted a "disparate impact" standard which means you don't even need to intend to discriminate. And unlike disparate impact in other areas of law, where having a "legitimate non-discriminatory interest" is a defense, the only defense here will be "economic or technical infeasibility," and they explicitly rejected profit maximization as a way to satisfy that standard. So say you're an ISP deciding whether to invest the same money into building fiber out to one of two areas, one where you'll make 1 million dollars a year and one where you'll take 2 million a year, and you make the rational decision to build out to the more profitable area. The FCC can fine you for that because it turns out the less profitable area was more black and the more profitable area more white, and it was economically feasible for you to make less profit, even though racial factors had nothing to do with your decision. If you think through the implications of this, it's a requirement to engage in discrimination/affirmative action in every single business decision you make. And even then, it's impossible to know whether you're ever in compliance. How much profit do you have to sacrifice in pursuit of racial equity? A quarter? Half? Two-thirds? [1] "As noted above, there is little or no evidence in the legislative history of the Infrastructure Act or the record of this proceeding that impediments to broadband internet access service are the result of intentional discrimination based on the criteria set forth in the statute." https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-397997A1.pdf https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-397997A1.pdf Paragraph 47

jpalawaga 3y ago
didn't ISPs take massive subsidies to build out that less-profitable infrastructure? seems fair that they, you know, build it.
- dolni 3y ago
  If you wanna go down that road, compel them to build the infrastructure where it was promised. Or issue a fine for the amount they were given, plus interest. We don't need to play silly "affirmative action" games to keep them accountable.
  - Chabsff 3y ago
    While I broadly agree with you at surface level, you are missing a piece of the puzzle. The issue is that FCC is, correctly, treating broadband as a utility at a level comparable to electricity/sewer/drinkable water. And as such, ensuring that underserved people get access to the service is more important than punishing contractors for failing to deliver it. I do agree that the discrimination hand-wringing is unnecessary, and a good "Deliver the service to everyone, assholes" should be plenty in theory. But if leaning on those laws is what it takes to get them to comply, then whatever. Results are what matters.
    - dolni 3y ago
      Even from the "underserved people" standpoint, most of the people who have shit-tier internet are people living in very rural areas (read: overwhelmingly white). There is no valid reason to turn this into yet another performative piece of race-bait.
- parineum 3y ago
  They sure did and there were no strings attached to that money. That's not their fault. This would be a bizarre and circuitous way to attempt the recover from that mistake.
  - pdonis 3y ago
    > there were no strings attached to that money There weren't? How do you figure that?
    - parineum 3y ago
      There was little more than a pinky promise. They took the money because there was no downside to them if they didn't do what the money was supposed to be for. Go find the bills and find me some consequences for the companies that failed to do what they were asked. There aren't any. I don't understand why people constantly vilify companies acting like companies instead of the corrupt government that's lying to our faces.
      - pdonis 3y ago
        To be clear, I'm not trying to exonerate the government here. I totally agree that the government failed to keep its promise to make sure the tax money that went to the ISPs actually got used for its intended purpose. I just also think the companies knew full well what they were supposed to do, but chose not to do it because they knew the politicians weren't going to actually hold them accountable. Both sides are at fault here.
        parineum 3y ago
        > Both sides are at fault here. I agree but I also think it's not very practical to expect selfish parties to take advantage of a free lunch (frog and scorpion situation). The companies are supposed to act in their own interest and they did. The Government is supposed to act in our interest and they didn't. Plus, they're the ones that we can hold accountable.
- wholinator2 3y ago
  Yeah, honestly with how the big ISP have fucked around almost every single individual in the entire United States, it seems insane to have literally any sympathy for them when an agency makes rules to try and make things better for people. Why should we all just bend to the whims of random corporations, making billions on anticompetitive practices and exploiting us all for money. They can afford to make non profit maximizing decisions for once in their entire god-forsaken existence.
  - dolni 3y ago
    I don't think people here have sympathy for ISPs. I sure don't. I'm still against this particular rule because it sets a very problematic precedent. There are other non-problematic ways to hold them accountable. Like fining ISPs for the taxpayer dollars they were given, plus interest.
jmyeet 3y ago
And the FCC is completely correct in this, for two reasons: 1. ISPs have been given various money to roll out to those communities in many if not most cases. Currently, noncompliance is cheaper than doing what they said they'd do and were paid to do; and 2. The "rational" thing you point to allows racism by proxy. I mean, look up redlining. Systemic discrimination (of various kinds, not just race) gets more abstract but the end goals remain the same. But really the FCC is trying to put a bandaid on a gaping wound: national ISPs shouldn't exist. The only good broadband is municipal broadband. Any "good" broadband we have now just isn't terrible yet and/or the provider has cherrypicked coverage in much the way you suggest, leaving many under-served communities.
- appleskeptic 3y ago
  The government is not allowed to mandate racial discrimination/affirmative action in the United States. There is fairly clear caselaw on this, including the recent decision prohibiting even remedial discrimination (i.e. affirmative action). As for the subsidies, the way they work is, roughly, the government offers you a certain amount of money to build an area, and if you don't, they either give you an extension or fine you or take the money back or some mixture of the three. There's also been reverse auction type approaches, where the government takes bids for people to build out to an area and awards the subsidy to the lowest bidder. It's not like the government just cuts AT&T a $10 billion check and says go forth and build broadband where you see fit. If you have a problem with how the subsidies work, then redesign them.
  - velcrovan 3y ago
    They are allowed to demand the the infrastructure they paid for be constructed and serviced.
    - appleskeptic 3y ago
      Yes, they'd be totally in their rights to tell ISPs exactly where to spend the money, but that's not what's happening here. Here, they're telling the ISPs they have to set up an affirmative action regime or else they'll be punished.
CharlesW 3y ago
If broadband was a real marketplace, companies could step in and service areas ignored by Big Telecom even if they might be slightly less profitable than rich areas. But as I'm quite sure everyone here knows, it's not. "Here in reality, U.S. broadband is […] a failed market, dominated by a handful of politically powerful regional mono/duopolies, who hoover up untold billions in taxpayer subsidies for networks they routinely fail to fully deploy. All protected by layers upon layers of state and federal corruption policymakers like to pretend doesn’t exist."
- appleskeptic 3y ago
  Even if you are right, the solution is not to mandate racial discrimination. As for the subsidies, the way they work is, roughly, the government offers you a certain amount of money to build an area, and if you don't, they either give you an extension or fine you or take the money back or some mixture of the three. There's also been reverse auction type approaches, where the government takes bids for people to build out to an area and awards the subsidy to the lowest bidder. It's not like the government just cuts AT&T a $10 billion check and says go forth and build broadband where you see fit. If you have a problem with how the subsidies work, then redesign them.
  - CharlesW 3y ago
    FWIW, the article doesn't mention race at all, and the paper you linked to mentions race as one of several factors, the leading factor apparently being income level.
    - appleskeptic 3y ago
      >the paper you linked to mentions race as one of several factors, the leading factor apparently being income level That's not a "paper", it's the final rule that the FCC adopted. And it applies to race, ethnicity, religion, and income level equally.
  - banannaise 3y ago
    Requiring that a utility provide equal service to everyone within a reasonable standard of feasibility is not racial discrimination.
oytis 3y ago
> If you think through the implications of this, it's a requirement to engage in discrimination/affirmative action in every single business decision you make What if you make a decision solely on the number of households, not their income? That wouldn't require taking race into consideration at all.
- appleskeptic 3y ago
  Then if it turns out that the area with the most households is white and the area with fewer is black, you could be held liable.
ixwt 3y ago
[flagged]
- appleskeptic 3y ago
  Regarding the first half of your comment, yeah, they didn't find intentional discrimination so they focused on disparate impact. That's what I said. Perhaps you're not familiar with the concept of disparate impact. And please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38304973 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38304973 for how this is not like other disparate impact standards in American law. >The fact these companies have received significant subsidies and have such little to show for it gives more reason to have regulations in place such as this. No regulations only work if companies aren't greedy profit-first motivated entities. Regulations are important for shaping and limiting the inherit greed that humanity as a collective has. This is a really broad near-truism that doesn't engage with any of the particulars. The point is that the FCC is requiring you to practice discrimination/affirmative action with regards to your build-out (and other) decisions. You have to figure out where the minorities are and make a point of building out to them, and make less money as a result (how much less? they won't tell you. better hope you guess right). Let's say this law didn't exist and you were doing just that, but in favor of white people, contrary your profit interests. That would be a slam dunk racial discrimination case. But that's exactly what the FCC is requiring here, just with good feelings attached because it's in favor of minorities. This is affirmative action, which the Supreme Court has recently said is no longer legal in the United States. As for the subsidies, the way they work is, roughly, the government offers you a certain amount of money to build an area, and if you don't, they either give you an extension or fine you or take the money back or some mixture of the three. There's also been reverse auction type approaches, where the government takes bids for people to build out to an area and awards the subsidy to the lowest bidder. It's not like the government just cuts AT&T a $10 billion check and says go forth and build broadband where you see fit. If you have a problem with how the subsidies work, then redesign them.
  - ixwt 3y ago
    > Regarding the first half of your comment, yeah, they didn't find intentional discrimination so they focused on disparate impact. From the first paragraph of the linked article to this post: > Groups like the National Digital Inclusion Alliance (NDIA) have released studies on cities like Cleveland and Detroit, documenting how this discrimination lines up with 30s “redlining” efforts. I am quite curious as to why TechDirt was able to find these, but a commission wasn't. > Perhaps you're not familiar with the concept of disparate impact. And please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38304973 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38304973 for how this is not like other disparate impact standards in American law. I am no legal scholar, but I have a vague idea of disparate impact. As far as I'm aware, you're correct. There really isn't a disparate impact standard for any private business. It's mostly for government entities (the one I'm mostly familiar with the is the Civil Rights Act and government election rules). > The point is that the FCC is requiring you to practice discrimination/affirmative action with regards to your build out decisions. You have to figure out where the minorities are and build out to them, and make less money as a result (how much less? they won't tell you. better hope you guess right). It's quite easy to find where the minorities are. The Census data is quite accessible. It like is not wholly complete given many minorities lack of trust of government officials, but it will give one a strong idea of where they reside. I do agree with you that the FCC is reaching a bit here. I would be perfectly fine with strong requirements to any of the $56 billion subsidy dollars allocated have strong requirements about disparate impacts and affirmative action. And that applying it to ALL business decisions is almost certainly an overreach. But I do think that something needs to be done about the unintended consequences of profit-before-all-else behavior. And this likely is not it. I have a strong feeling given this current Supreme Courts hate of stare decisis, this decision may not live much longer.
mathgradthrow 3y ago
It used to be a fundamental premise of American society that we all collectivey pay to promote the social mobility of our citizens. Pay to play has gotten more ubiquitous. I'm curious if you defend it in general.
- AlgorithmicTime 3y ago
  [dead]
cbsmith 3y ago
You might feel bad for ISPs, but imagine having to operate under these conditions for decades. Think of all the banks who have had to give out loans in neighbourhoods where they knew the default rate would be higher. The horror. The horror.
kelnos 3y ago
This sounds fine to me. If you're going to be granted natural monopoly status, then you should not be allowed to use profit notice as a reason to do (or not do) anything. Regardless of anyone's race, why are people in one region more deserving of faster Internet than in another? There's a reason why the USPS is required to deliver more or less everywhere. I admit that their service levels do vary, but I think the aspiration is a good one. Maybe our broadband infrastructure just shouldn't be owned by for-profit corporations. They've already proven themselves poor stewards of the commons. (Ditto for utility companies, really.)
- NovemberWhiskey 3y ago
  Yes, because service standards in government monopolies, like the DMV, are so infinitely superior.
  - banannaise 3y ago
    The DMV's service standards have improved dramatically in recent years, at least in my state. It's also important to note that the DMV is customer service, not customer acquisition. When compared to customer service from businesses, the DMV looks quite reasonable, and the service is getting better, whereas nearly every customer service experience I get from a business is getting worse.
    - NovemberWhiskey 3y ago
      Recent experience with the DMV in my state, was that to transfer my license and registration into that state (which is a customer acquisition problem, BTW) required me to book a month ahead of time in their online system, which even then resulted in me having to drive to an office that was the fourth-nearest to my residence. So "YMMV". I have literally never experienced anything that even approaches that level of nonsense in the private sector.
      - adgjlsfhk1 3y ago
        I take it you've never had a serious illness
uoaei 3y ago
If a company puts itself in a position as gatekeeper between people and essential services, it behooves them to put in the effort to equalize access. Intention doesn't have much if anything to do with it, it's a plainly obvious outcome that focusing purely on market economics will disadvantage people in systematic ways, especially if those disadvantages are correlated with other features of their experience and identity. Phone and internet access should be a public good.
tzs 3y ago
> So say you're an ISP deciding whether to invest the same money into building fiber out to one of two areas, one where you'll make 1 million dollars a year and one where you'll take 2 million a year, and you make the rational decision to build out to the more profitable area. Maybe those two areas should be served by two different ISPs. If an ISP is operating in such a large area that they can't afford to keep all of them reasonably up to date then maybe that's a sign that the ISP is too big.
NovemberWhiskey 3y ago
Right - the essential problem here is that the "economic infeasibility" standard is impossible to overcome. Most businesses are looking at impact at the margin - is opening up in this new market going to be profitable or not? On the other hand, it's not economically infeasible to extend FTTH to any given area I decide to point out, it's just a question of how many unprofitable areas you'd have to service before your business as a whole failed. Presumably at that point, you'd meet the economic infeasibility standard. No-one can run a business that way; literally no-one.
StillBored 3y ago
This is just a failure of capitalism. The most profitable areas aren't the ones that have the richest people. Otherwise, NW Austin/etc would be swimming in advanced tech because it is fairly dense, and the residents are some of the richest in the state. Which is why its hard to argue that poor people are being discriminated against. No, the NW of Austin doesn't have good internet service because there isn't any competition, and the incumbents are extremely happy to do absolutely nothing and reap $120+ monthly payments for providing service on 15-year-old modulation schemes on cables that are 40 years old. Timewarner/spectrum/charter could roll out high split on docsis 3.1 (released 2013), but then they would have to invest in the network by fixing the pieces of the network that haven't died of old age over the past 10+ years. Or ATT could run fiber, but why when they have 30% market penetration using DSL technologies that are less than 10Mbit down/1Mbit up and old folks like my neighbor will happily continue to pay them $50 a month for it, and when the cable dies they swap it for a 4G modem. So it's a duoploy where ATT gets the customers that are shopping on absolute price, and Spectrum gets the ones that aren't happy with 100Mbit/sec or data caps. Sub $50 or 100Mbits you get ATT. More than that, you get Specturm. Those of us that want more than 20Mbits up, are SOL, and everyone is getting ripped off because $60/month is what some people are paying for symmetric 1Gbit. So, those people who live 40 miles W in little towns population 600-2000 can get fiber in town, or those areas with Google fiber can get it an/ord ATT and the rest of us are lining the pockets of some billionares.

jpalawaga 3y ago

didn't ISPs take massive subsidies to build out that less-profitable infrastructure? seems fair that they, you know, build it.

dolni 3y ago
If you wanna go down that road, compel them to build the infrastructure where it was promised. Or issue a fine for the amount they were given, plus interest. We don't need to play silly "affirmative action" games to keep them accountable.
- Chabsff 3y ago
  While I broadly agree with you at surface level, you are missing a piece of the puzzle. The issue is that FCC is, correctly, treating broadband as a utility at a level comparable to electricity/sewer/drinkable water. And as such, ensuring that underserved people get access to the service is more important than punishing contractors for failing to deliver it. I do agree that the discrimination hand-wringing is unnecessary, and a good "Deliver the service to everyone, assholes" should be plenty in theory. But if leaning on those laws is what it takes to get them to comply, then whatever. Results are what matters.
  - dolni 3y ago
    Even from the "underserved people" standpoint, most of the people who have shit-tier internet are people living in very rural areas (read: overwhelmingly white). There is no valid reason to turn this into yet another performative piece of race-bait.
parineum 3y ago
They sure did and there were no strings attached to that money. That's not their fault. This would be a bizarre and circuitous way to attempt the recover from that mistake.
- pdonis 3y ago
  > there were no strings attached to that money There weren't? How do you figure that?
  - parineum 3y ago
    There was little more than a pinky promise. They took the money because there was no downside to them if they didn't do what the money was supposed to be for. Go find the bills and find me some consequences for the companies that failed to do what they were asked. There aren't any. I don't understand why people constantly vilify companies acting like companies instead of the corrupt government that's lying to our faces.
    - pdonis 3y ago
      To be clear, I'm not trying to exonerate the government here. I totally agree that the government failed to keep its promise to make sure the tax money that went to the ISPs actually got used for its intended purpose. I just also think the companies knew full well what they were supposed to do, but chose not to do it because they knew the politicians weren't going to actually hold them accountable. Both sides are at fault here.
      - parineum 3y ago
        > Both sides are at fault here. I agree but I also think it's not very practical to expect selfish parties to take advantage of a free lunch (frog and scorpion situation). The companies are supposed to act in their own interest and they did. The Government is supposed to act in our interest and they didn't. Plus, they're the ones that we can hold accountable.
wholinator2 3y ago
Yeah, honestly with how the big ISP have fucked around almost every single individual in the entire United States, it seems insane to have literally any sympathy for them when an agency makes rules to try and make things better for people. Why should we all just bend to the whims of random corporations, making billions on anticompetitive practices and exploiting us all for money. They can afford to make non profit maximizing decisions for once in their entire god-forsaken existence.
- dolni 3y ago
  I don't think people here have sympathy for ISPs. I sure don't. I'm still against this particular rule because it sets a very problematic precedent. There are other non-problematic ways to hold them accountable. Like fining ISPs for the taxpayer dollars they were given, plus interest.

jmyeet 3y ago

And the FCC is completely correct in this, for two reasons: 1. ISPs have been given various money to roll out to those communities in many if not most cases. Currently, noncompliance is cheaper than doing what they said they'd do and were paid to do; and 2. The "rational" thing you point to allows racism by proxy. I mean, look up redlining. Systemic discrimination (of various kinds, not just race) gets more abstract but the end goals remain the same. But really the FCC is trying to put a bandaid on a gaping wound: national ISPs shouldn't exist. The only good broadband is municipal broadband. Any "good" broadband we have now just isn't terrible yet and/or the provider has cherrypicked coverage in much the way you suggest, leaving many under-served communities.

appleskeptic 3y ago
The government is not allowed to mandate racial discrimination/affirmative action in the United States. There is fairly clear caselaw on this, including the recent decision prohibiting even remedial discrimination (i.e. affirmative action). As for the subsidies, the way they work is, roughly, the government offers you a certain amount of money to build an area, and if you don't, they either give you an extension or fine you or take the money back or some mixture of the three. There's also been reverse auction type approaches, where the government takes bids for people to build out to an area and awards the subsidy to the lowest bidder. It's not like the government just cuts AT&T a $10 billion check and says go forth and build broadband where you see fit. If you have a problem with how the subsidies work, then redesign them.
- velcrovan 3y ago
  They are allowed to demand the the infrastructure they paid for be constructed and serviced.
  - appleskeptic 3y ago
    Yes, they'd be totally in their rights to tell ISPs exactly where to spend the money, but that's not what's happening here. Here, they're telling the ISPs they have to set up an affirmative action regime or else they'll be punished.

CharlesW 3y ago

If broadband was a real marketplace, companies could step in and service areas ignored by Big Telecom even if they might be slightly less profitable than rich areas. But as I'm quite sure everyone here knows, it's not. "Here in reality, U.S. broadband is […] a failed market, dominated by a handful of politically powerful regional mono/duopolies, who hoover up untold billions in taxpayer subsidies for networks they routinely fail to fully deploy. All protected by layers upon layers of state and federal corruption policymakers like to pretend doesn’t exist."

appleskeptic 3y ago
Even if you are right, the solution is not to mandate racial discrimination. As for the subsidies, the way they work is, roughly, the government offers you a certain amount of money to build an area, and if you don't, they either give you an extension or fine you or take the money back or some mixture of the three. There's also been reverse auction type approaches, where the government takes bids for people to build out to an area and awards the subsidy to the lowest bidder. It's not like the government just cuts AT&T a $10 billion check and says go forth and build broadband where you see fit. If you have a problem with how the subsidies work, then redesign them.
- CharlesW 3y ago
  FWIW, the article doesn't mention race at all, and the paper you linked to mentions race as one of several factors, the leading factor apparently being income level.
  - appleskeptic 3y ago
    >the paper you linked to mentions race as one of several factors, the leading factor apparently being income level That's not a "paper", it's the final rule that the FCC adopted. And it applies to race, ethnicity, religion, and income level equally.
- banannaise 3y ago
  Requiring that a utility provide equal service to everyone within a reasonable standard of feasibility is not racial discrimination.

oytis 3y ago

> If you think through the implications of this, it's a requirement to engage in discrimination/affirmative action in every single business decision you make What if you make a decision solely on the number of households, not their income? That wouldn't require taking race into consideration at all.

appleskeptic 3y ago
Then if it turns out that the area with the most households is white and the area with fewer is black, you could be held liable.

ixwt 3y ago

[flagged]

appleskeptic 3y ago
Regarding the first half of your comment, yeah, they didn't find intentional discrimination so they focused on disparate impact. That's what I said. Perhaps you're not familiar with the concept of disparate impact. And please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38304973 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38304973 for how this is not like other disparate impact standards in American law. >The fact these companies have received significant subsidies and have such little to show for it gives more reason to have regulations in place such as this. No regulations only work if companies aren't greedy profit-first motivated entities. Regulations are important for shaping and limiting the inherit greed that humanity as a collective has. This is a really broad near-truism that doesn't engage with any of the particulars. The point is that the FCC is requiring you to practice discrimination/affirmative action with regards to your build-out (and other) decisions. You have to figure out where the minorities are and make a point of building out to them, and make less money as a result (how much less? they won't tell you. better hope you guess right). Let's say this law didn't exist and you were doing just that, but in favor of white people, contrary your profit interests. That would be a slam dunk racial discrimination case. But that's exactly what the FCC is requiring here, just with good feelings attached because it's in favor of minorities. This is affirmative action, which the Supreme Court has recently said is no longer legal in the United States. As for the subsidies, the way they work is, roughly, the government offers you a certain amount of money to build an area, and if you don't, they either give you an extension or fine you or take the money back or some mixture of the three. There's also been reverse auction type approaches, where the government takes bids for people to build out to an area and awards the subsidy to the lowest bidder. It's not like the government just cuts AT&T a $10 billion check and says go forth and build broadband where you see fit. If you have a problem with how the subsidies work, then redesign them.
- ixwt 3y ago
  > Regarding the first half of your comment, yeah, they didn't find intentional discrimination so they focused on disparate impact. From the first paragraph of the linked article to this post: > Groups like the National Digital Inclusion Alliance (NDIA) have released studies on cities like Cleveland and Detroit, documenting how this discrimination lines up with 30s “redlining” efforts. I am quite curious as to why TechDirt was able to find these, but a commission wasn't. > Perhaps you're not familiar with the concept of disparate impact. And please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38304973 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38304973 for how this is not like other disparate impact standards in American law. I am no legal scholar, but I have a vague idea of disparate impact. As far as I'm aware, you're correct. There really isn't a disparate impact standard for any private business. It's mostly for government entities (the one I'm mostly familiar with the is the Civil Rights Act and government election rules). > The point is that the FCC is requiring you to practice discrimination/affirmative action with regards to your build out decisions. You have to figure out where the minorities are and build out to them, and make less money as a result (how much less? they won't tell you. better hope you guess right). It's quite easy to find where the minorities are. The Census data is quite accessible. It like is not wholly complete given many minorities lack of trust of government officials, but it will give one a strong idea of where they reside. I do agree with you that the FCC is reaching a bit here. I would be perfectly fine with strong requirements to any of the $56 billion subsidy dollars allocated have strong requirements about disparate impacts and affirmative action. And that applying it to ALL business decisions is almost certainly an overreach. But I do think that something needs to be done about the unintended consequences of profit-before-all-else behavior. And this likely is not it. I have a strong feeling given this current Supreme Courts hate of stare decisis, this decision may not live much longer.

mathgradthrow 3y ago

It used to be a fundamental premise of American society that we all collectivey pay to promote the social mobility of our citizens. Pay to play has gotten more ubiquitous. I'm curious if you defend it in general.

AlgorithmicTime 3y ago
[dead]

cbsmith 3y ago

You might feel bad for ISPs, but imagine having to operate under these conditions for decades. Think of all the banks who have had to give out loans in neighbourhoods where they knew the default rate would be higher. The horror. The horror.

kelnos 3y ago

This sounds fine to me. If you're going to be granted natural monopoly status, then you should not be allowed to use profit notice as a reason to do (or not do) anything. Regardless of anyone's race, why are people in one region more deserving of faster Internet than in another? There's a reason why the USPS is required to deliver more or less everywhere. I admit that their service levels do vary, but I think the aspiration is a good one. Maybe our broadband infrastructure just shouldn't be owned by for-profit corporations. They've already proven themselves poor stewards of the commons. (Ditto for utility companies, really.)

NovemberWhiskey 3y ago
Yes, because service standards in government monopolies, like the DMV, are so infinitely superior.
- banannaise 3y ago
  The DMV's service standards have improved dramatically in recent years, at least in my state. It's also important to note that the DMV is customer service, not customer acquisition. When compared to customer service from businesses, the DMV looks quite reasonable, and the service is getting better, whereas nearly every customer service experience I get from a business is getting worse.
  - NovemberWhiskey 3y ago
    Recent experience with the DMV in my state, was that to transfer my license and registration into that state (which is a customer acquisition problem, BTW) required me to book a month ahead of time in their online system, which even then resulted in me having to drive to an office that was the fourth-nearest to my residence. So "YMMV". I have literally never experienced anything that even approaches that level of nonsense in the private sector.
    - adgjlsfhk1 3y ago
      I take it you've never had a serious illness

uoaei 3y ago

If a company puts itself in a position as gatekeeper between people and essential services, it behooves them to put in the effort to equalize access. Intention doesn't have much if anything to do with it, it's a plainly obvious outcome that focusing purely on market economics will disadvantage people in systematic ways, especially if those disadvantages are correlated with other features of their experience and identity. Phone and internet access should be a public good.

tzs 3y ago

> So say you're an ISP deciding whether to invest the same money into building fiber out to one of two areas, one where you'll make 1 million dollars a year and one where you'll take 2 million a year, and you make the rational decision to build out to the more profitable area. Maybe those two areas should be served by two different ISPs. If an ISP is operating in such a large area that they can't afford to keep all of them reasonably up to date then maybe that's a sign that the ISP is too big.

NovemberWhiskey 3y ago

Right - the essential problem here is that the "economic infeasibility" standard is impossible to overcome. Most businesses are looking at impact at the margin - is opening up in this new market going to be profitable or not? On the other hand, it's not economically infeasible to extend FTTH to any given area I decide to point out, it's just a question of how many unprofitable areas you'd have to service before your business as a whole failed. Presumably at that point, you'd meet the economic infeasibility standard. No-one can run a business that way; literally no-one.

StillBored 3y ago

This is just a failure of capitalism. The most profitable areas aren't the ones that have the richest people. Otherwise, NW Austin/etc would be swimming in advanced tech because it is fairly dense, and the residents are some of the richest in the state. Which is why its hard to argue that poor people are being discriminated against. No, the NW of Austin doesn't have good internet service because there isn't any competition, and the incumbents are extremely happy to do absolutely nothing and reap $120+ monthly payments for providing service on 15-year-old modulation schemes on cables that are 40 years old. Timewarner/spectrum/charter could roll out high split on docsis 3.1 (released 2013), but then they would have to invest in the network by fixing the pieces of the network that haven't died of old age over the past 10+ years. Or ATT could run fiber, but why when they have 30% market penetration using DSL technologies that are less than 10Mbit down/1Mbit up and old folks like my neighbor will happily continue to pay them $50 a month for it, and when the cable dies they swap it for a 4G modem. So it's a duoploy where ATT gets the customers that are shopping on absolute price, and Spectrum gets the ones that aren't happy with 100Mbit/sec or data caps. Sub $50 or 100Mbits you get ATT. More than that, you get Specturm. Those of us that want more than 20Mbits up, are SOL, and everyone is getting ripped off because $60/month is what some people are paying for symmetric 1Gbit. So, those people who live 40 miles W in little towns population 600-2000 can get fiber in town, or those areas with Google fiber can get it an/ord ATT and the rest of us are lining the pockets of some billionares.