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> For consumers who qualify for means-tested government benefits, the state law requires ISPs to offer "broadband at no more than $15 per month for service of 2

> For consumers who qualify for means-tested government benefits, the state law requires ISPs to offer "broadband at no more than $15 per month for service of 25Mbps, or $20 per month for high-speed service of 200Mbps," the ruling noted. The law allows for price increases every few years and makes exemptions available to ISPs with fewer than 20,000 customers. Okay, so they're either going to make the application process an extremely painful experience so nobody will want to go through it, or make a ton of shell companies where each one is dealing with less than 20k customers.

vidarh 2y ago
I don't know New York law, but pretty much every jurisdictions has mechanisms for determining that a company is a subsidiary that is not an independent entity. Whether or not the law currently takes that into account, if anyone plays stupid games with that expect the law to be changed accordingly. This is hardly difficult to untangle.
- hanniabu 2y ago
  > expect the law to be changed There's tons of loopholes everywhere allowing companies to get away with ridiculous stuff, getting it fixed is the last thing I'd expect
swatcoder 2y ago
You think it's more cost effective for a company to artificially restructure itself into a obscured collage of vanishingly small cells than for them to offer a fixed-price minimal-service tier to a specific set of low-opportunity customers who probably have high collections issues under normal circumstances?
- BugsJustFindMe 2y ago
  200Mbps isn't minimal service. It's more than most people need for anything they do online. Netflix suggests 25Mbps for 4K streaming.
  - cbg0 2y ago
    This assumes you only have one TV doing 4K streaming, but most households might have more devices consuming bandwidth. Also, between $15 for 25mbps and $20 for 200mbps, the telco is making more profit off the latter, because at that scale bandwidth is dirt cheap and most services like Netflix deploy servers on-premise inside the telco's network.
    - BugsJustFindMe 2y ago
      > This assumes you only have one TV doing 4K streaming, but most households might have more devices consuming bandwidth But no households are doing 8 simultaneous 4K streams. The "but you might be doing more than one thing at a time" case is really uncompelling once you get up past 100Mbps, as much as ISPs want to make people believe otherwise in their marketing.
      - hughesjj 2y ago
        I wanna live in this world where the advertised rate is the minimum and not the optimistic maximum.
crazygringo 2y ago
The application process is trivial, because all you have to do is show you're already a recipient of an existing government program such as Medicaid or free school lunches. And courts will see right through shell companies. It's such a non-starter no company would be dumb enough to even try it.
- kotaKat 2y ago
  And for what it's worth right now, Charter Spectrum in the state already sells a 50mbps access package for $25/mo all-in with similar requirements. So they just gotta save face and drop the price another ten bucks and figure out what broadcast fee they'll slowly increase over time to compensate across the rest of the customer base.

vidarh 2y ago

I don't know New York law, but pretty much every jurisdictions has mechanisms for determining that a company is a subsidiary that is not an independent entity. Whether or not the law currently takes that into account, if anyone plays stupid games with that expect the law to be changed accordingly. This is hardly difficult to untangle.

hanniabu 2y ago
> expect the law to be changed There's tons of loopholes everywhere allowing companies to get away with ridiculous stuff, getting it fixed is the last thing I'd expect

swatcoder 2y ago

You think it's more cost effective for a company to artificially restructure itself into a obscured collage of vanishingly small cells than for them to offer a fixed-price minimal-service tier to a specific set of low-opportunity customers who probably have high collections issues under normal circumstances?

BugsJustFindMe 2y ago
200Mbps isn't minimal service. It's more than most people need for anything they do online. Netflix suggests 25Mbps for 4K streaming.
- cbg0 2y ago
  This assumes you only have one TV doing 4K streaming, but most households might have more devices consuming bandwidth. Also, between $15 for 25mbps and $20 for 200mbps, the telco is making more profit off the latter, because at that scale bandwidth is dirt cheap and most services like Netflix deploy servers on-premise inside the telco's network.
  - BugsJustFindMe 2y ago
    > This assumes you only have one TV doing 4K streaming, but most households might have more devices consuming bandwidth But no households are doing 8 simultaneous 4K streams. The "but you might be doing more than one thing at a time" case is really uncompelling once you get up past 100Mbps, as much as ISPs want to make people believe otherwise in their marketing.
    - hughesjj 2y ago
      I wanna live in this world where the advertised rate is the minimum and not the optimistic maximum.

crazygringo 2y ago

The application process is trivial, because all you have to do is show you're already a recipient of an existing government program such as Medicaid or free school lunches. And courts will see right through shell companies. It's such a non-starter no company would be dumb enough to even try it.

kotaKat 2y ago
And for what it's worth right now, Charter Spectrum in the state already sells a 50mbps access package for $25/mo all-in with similar requirements. So they just gotta save face and drop the price another ten bucks and figure out what broadcast fee they'll slowly increase over time to compensate across the rest of the customer base.