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I think people also need to accept that you can’t ignore basic economics. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to run fiber a hundred miles to the middle of nowhere b

by codexb 2y ago

I think people also need to accept that you can’t ignore basic economics. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to run fiber a hundred miles to the middle of nowhere because there’s one small town there. To me, it’s a bit like saying every town needs a Starbucks, and a Home Depot, and a target. And if the town can’t sustain the economics of those businesses, everyone else needs to pay higher prices to subsidize them, because... reasons.

ryandrake 2y ago
Those reasons that we sometimes should do things that don't make economic sense are called "the public good". We don't need government and regulations to do things that are aligned with economic incentives--those things do themselves in a reasonably free market. We need government for those things that don't make economic sense, but that we should do anyway because it is better for everyone. Unfortunately, the way the US and state governments tend to do these uneconomical "public good" things is: "Throw money at already-large corporations, who pocket the money and don't do the thing anyway, because there were no strings attached."
- codexb 2y ago
  I don't think you can really argue that there is "public good" in building essential infrastructure wastefully and inefficiently. Ghosts towns and abandoned towns have always been a thing, since the dawn of civilization. They're abandoned usually precisely because it doesn't make sense to invest in infrastructure there - a railroad, a post office, a port, an electric plant. This isn't new. It's okay if cities die. The people that lived there aren't dying too. They're moving elsewhere, where they have better access to infrastructure and services. There's nothing wrong with that. And we shouldn't be wasting money to prevent it.
  - dcow 2y ago
    We’re not talking about economically inefficient ghost towns. We’re talking about large telco not being interested in building out fiber because the _profit_ wouldn’t make a blip on their spreadsheets and thus wouldn't drive the type of growth their shareholders are looking to see reflected in their company OKRs or whatever. The deal with these protected monopolies, when the public grants them, is that the receiver is required to build out infrastructure to serve all the citizens who granted them the privilege of planting poles or digging trenches all over their public property (for comfy profit) in the first place. However those incentives are at conflict with a for profit charter as you understand. We’ve done a woefully terrible job holding these companies accountable for building and investing in infrastructure even when it wouldn’t be convenient, which has been demonstrated time and again as people are raising in this thread. These telcos literally take billions in gov’t grants and sit on them saying “we tried it was too expensive, moar $$ plz”, which is complete and utter BS. If we didn't have these arrangements then sure, let a for profit company do as it pleases. Let it negotiate the land rights with individual citizens. Let it raise the initial capital privately to fund buildouts. Etc. That’s just not how we handle common good utilities.
    - xnx 2y ago
      > The deal with these protected monopolies A lot of the problems seems to be that Internet service doesn't need to be a full monopoly. Separate the organization that tears up the ground and from the one that provides data service.
      - wsintra2022 2y ago
        BT (British telecom) tried that, first they split the network infrastructure biz into openreach, then they opened up the work for more contractors winning bids.
    - codexb 2y ago
      All the same "profit" arguments you're making against Telco's hold equally well against Starbucks or Home Depot or anyone else for that matter. Bad, risky investments are bad and risky no matter how much you try to subsidize them. I agree that throwing tax money at corporations without clear deliverables is bad policy. It's also bad policy to waste taxpayer dollars building bridges to nowhere, which is precisely what broadband access in the middle of nowhere is. Access to infrastructure makes places more desirable to live. It increases property values, which in turn encourage more development. I get it. I understand why local governments throw incentives to telcos to artificially make their cities more attractive and lucrative for business. It's not just telcos. We do it for sports stadiums, factories, movie productions. By and large, these policies end up being wealth transfers from the poor and middle class to wealthy people.
      - dcow 2y ago
        I get what you’re saying. I think you’re over simplifying. Building a bridge to a town of 10,000 is hardly nowhere. What you’re saying sounds like we should all just live in cheap concrete studio apartment complexes in one big city where we can hyper optimize human existence and squeeze maximal profit out of society… A bridge to a town of 10k can be quite profitable. Maybe not as much as a bridge to a town of 10 million, but my point is that because these companies are so big they shy away from projects with smaller rewards. Small locally owned mom and pop ISP would step in and fill the gap, but big telco has the monopoly on infra and won’t do the build out. Nobody is running negative and the line still doesn’t get deployed.
duped 2y ago
You're right, but that's why the Rural Electrification Act has been used for almost 90 years to provide electrical and communication services to communities where it's uneconomical without federal loans.
dimask 2y ago
Same can go for electricity, water (if there is no local enough source of good water), as well as transportation infrastructure, mobile network coverage, and access to goods. I guess the main question is, does it make sense for a lot of such places to be abandoned, just because they will never be able to compete with cities in terms of cost due to distance and being smaller markets?
hedora 2y ago
It does make sense to run fiber, even to places like that. Aerial fiber cable costs ~ $8 per foot. Those towns already have electricity, so they have telephone polls. 100 miles * 5280 * 16 (doubling the material cost to account for termination, connectors, etc), is $8.5M. Assuming the fiber lasts 30 years, that’s $281K per year. Small towns in the US have 2500-4999 people. At the minimum size to qualify as a town, that’s $112 per person per year, or under $10/month for the trunk line. At $100/month per house that should be profitable. Also, the trunk will serve people outside of town. The ACP money should be used to fund build-outs like this and dictate that the resulting lines have common carrier status (any ISP can rent bandwidth on them at the same price and priority).
- codexb 2y ago
  I'm going to go out on a limb and assume you've massively underestimated the true cost of installing fiber (you include no labor, or maintenance, or any equipment costs besides just the fiber for the trunk line (last mile installation is often much more expensive)), and massively overestimated the amount people in small towns are willing to pay for internet. Factor in that construction and installation in remote areas can be significantly more expensive, and the high risk that small, remote towns are likely to disappear and die over the course of 30 years, and there aren't many reasons to invest in expensive long-term infrastructure there.

by codexb 2y ago

ryandrake 2y ago

Those reasons that we sometimes should do things that don't make economic sense are called "the public good". We don't need government and regulations to do things that are aligned with economic incentives--those things do themselves in a reasonably free market. We need government for those things that don't make economic sense, but that we should do anyway because it is better for everyone. Unfortunately, the way the US and state governments tend to do these uneconomical "public good" things is: "Throw money at already-large corporations, who pocket the money and don't do the thing anyway, because there were no strings attached."

codexb 2y ago
I don't think you can really argue that there is "public good" in building essential infrastructure wastefully and inefficiently. Ghosts towns and abandoned towns have always been a thing, since the dawn of civilization. They're abandoned usually precisely because it doesn't make sense to invest in infrastructure there - a railroad, a post office, a port, an electric plant. This isn't new. It's okay if cities die. The people that lived there aren't dying too. They're moving elsewhere, where they have better access to infrastructure and services. There's nothing wrong with that. And we shouldn't be wasting money to prevent it.
- dcow 2y ago
  We’re not talking about economically inefficient ghost towns. We’re talking about large telco not being interested in building out fiber because the _profit_ wouldn’t make a blip on their spreadsheets and thus wouldn't drive the type of growth their shareholders are looking to see reflected in their company OKRs or whatever. The deal with these protected monopolies, when the public grants them, is that the receiver is required to build out infrastructure to serve all the citizens who granted them the privilege of planting poles or digging trenches all over their public property (for comfy profit) in the first place. However those incentives are at conflict with a for profit charter as you understand. We’ve done a woefully terrible job holding these companies accountable for building and investing in infrastructure even when it wouldn’t be convenient, which has been demonstrated time and again as people are raising in this thread. These telcos literally take billions in gov’t grants and sit on them saying “we tried it was too expensive, moar $$ plz”, which is complete and utter BS. If we didn't have these arrangements then sure, let a for profit company do as it pleases. Let it negotiate the land rights with individual citizens. Let it raise the initial capital privately to fund buildouts. Etc. That’s just not how we handle common good utilities.
  - xnx 2y ago
    > The deal with these protected monopolies A lot of the problems seems to be that Internet service doesn't need to be a full monopoly. Separate the organization that tears up the ground and from the one that provides data service.
    - wsintra2022 2y ago
      BT (British telecom) tried that, first they split the network infrastructure biz into openreach, then they opened up the work for more contractors winning bids.
  - codexb 2y ago
    All the same "profit" arguments you're making against Telco's hold equally well against Starbucks or Home Depot or anyone else for that matter. Bad, risky investments are bad and risky no matter how much you try to subsidize them. I agree that throwing tax money at corporations without clear deliverables is bad policy. It's also bad policy to waste taxpayer dollars building bridges to nowhere, which is precisely what broadband access in the middle of nowhere is. Access to infrastructure makes places more desirable to live. It increases property values, which in turn encourage more development. I get it. I understand why local governments throw incentives to telcos to artificially make their cities more attractive and lucrative for business. It's not just telcos. We do it for sports stadiums, factories, movie productions. By and large, these policies end up being wealth transfers from the poor and middle class to wealthy people.
    - dcow 2y ago
      I get what you’re saying. I think you’re over simplifying. Building a bridge to a town of 10,000 is hardly nowhere. What you’re saying sounds like we should all just live in cheap concrete studio apartment complexes in one big city where we can hyper optimize human existence and squeeze maximal profit out of society… A bridge to a town of 10k can be quite profitable. Maybe not as much as a bridge to a town of 10 million, but my point is that because these companies are so big they shy away from projects with smaller rewards. Small locally owned mom and pop ISP would step in and fill the gap, but big telco has the monopoly on infra and won’t do the build out. Nobody is running negative and the line still doesn’t get deployed.

duped 2y ago

You're right, but that's why the Rural Electrification Act has been used for almost 90 years to provide electrical and communication services to communities where it's uneconomical without federal loans.

dimask 2y ago

Same can go for electricity, water (if there is no local enough source of good water), as well as transportation infrastructure, mobile network coverage, and access to goods. I guess the main question is, does it make sense for a lot of such places to be abandoned, just because they will never be able to compete with cities in terms of cost due to distance and being smaller markets?

hedora 2y ago

It does make sense to run fiber, even to places like that. Aerial fiber cable costs ~ $8 per foot. Those towns already have electricity, so they have telephone polls. 100 miles * 5280 * 16 (doubling the material cost to account for termination, connectors, etc), is $8.5M. Assuming the fiber lasts 30 years, that’s $281K per year. Small towns in the US have 2500-4999 people. At the minimum size to qualify as a town, that’s $112 per person per year, or under $10/month for the trunk line. At $100/month per house that should be profitable. Also, the trunk will serve people outside of town. The ACP money should be used to fund build-outs like this and dictate that the resulting lines have common carrier status (any ISP can rent bandwidth on them at the same price and priority).

codexb 2y ago
I'm going to go out on a limb and assume you've massively underestimated the true cost of installing fiber (you include no labor, or maintenance, or any equipment costs besides just the fiber for the trunk line (last mile installation is often much more expensive)), and massively overestimated the amount people in small towns are willing to pay for internet. Factor in that construction and installation in remote areas can be significantly more expensive, and the high risk that small, remote towns are likely to disappear and die over the course of 30 years, and there aren't many reasons to invest in expensive long-term infrastructure there.