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This article is ridiculous shilling. Who do you think lobbies state and local governments to keep the cost of entry high for access to the streets they've been

This article is ridiculous shilling. Who do you think lobbies state and local governments to keep the cost of entry high for access to the streets they've been digging around in? The "big cable" trade association who "shouldn't be blamed." The cost argument is based on numbers that factor out long-term costs of letting contractors dig wherever they want. They rip the streets to shreds and since it's the lowest bidder the asphalt has to be completely redone after one or two winters. In Boston we watched this happen to most of the region during the big dig and that work was being done by the best people available. The open access argument is absurd. What they mean is they want to run fiber down streets with high incomes and let the cable monopolies continue to gouge everyone else. It's a real shame but if you want residential internet to get better in the US there's probably going to be a lot of federal spending involved. Which we could have managed back when all the cable lines were first being run. Back when we had a functioning government. In the 1970s.

fluidcruft 13y ago
I gave up when I hit this nugget: "The problem? Local governments and their public utilities charge ISPs far more than these things actually cost. For example, rights of way and pole attachments fees can double the cost of network construction" Actually digging holes in streets, obtaining right-of-way access to private property, and putting up your own poles is half as expensive as just using the holes and poles the public has already built? Oh, really? I'm more inclined to think they're grousing about not being able to mooch the public's infrastructure investments for free.
rayiner 13y ago
> What they mean is they want to run fiber down streets with high incomes You can't have your cake and eat it too. If you want cheap prices and high quality service, then you have to deregulate the industry, and a deregulated telecom industry will focus on the high-end consumers, just like every company does. Apple doesn't focus on making computers for poor people, and all those companies peddling their wares on Facebook aren't selling basic essentials affordable by poor people and people in rural areas. Someone in the tech industry should understand better than most that in nearly any industry, companies will chase premium, up-market consumers because that's where the money happens to be. If you want poor people and people in rural areas to have high-quality internet service (or really, any internet service), you have to be willing to pay for that. The way municipalities have chosen to pay for that is granting utility monopolies. That decision isn't something that comes for free. It comes at the cost of worse service for the wealthier urban people who would get better and cheaper service in a free market. Also, as a practical matter, municipal and state governments destroy everything they touch. I'm not a small government drum-beater, and I'm a proponent of regulation in many contexts, but the lack of transparency and scrutiny makes municipal government regulation the worst kind of regulation.
- tbrownaw 13y ago
  If you want cheap prices and high quality service, then you have to deregulate the industry, and a deregulated telecom industry will focus on the high-end consumers, just like every company does. Or acknowledge that regulations are not all created equal.
- cube13 13y ago
  >If you want cheap prices and high quality service, then you have to deregulate the industry, and a deregulated telecom industry will focus on the high-end consumers, just like every company does. Uh, if the industry is focusing on high-end consumers, they're going to be gouging the hell out of them. That's hardly cheap.
- jacobquick 13y ago
  Apple isn't a utility so isn't a relevant comparison. Cake isn't a utility either, that's a foolish aphorism and is not a relevant comparison because we aren't talking about a limited resource. I can have both reasonable prices and universal service because now that Verizon is cutting people off from land-based phone lines, broadband is the country's communications utility, and it is entirely reasonable for a society to use its elected government to construct infrastructure and guarantee utility service to all of its citizens. It means both regulation and spending at the federal level: Verizon or Google or whoever picks up the cost of digging where it's profitable, taxes are spent make them whole where it isn't, but the regulation is they have to do whole counties at once. Yes, once you've gotten everyone to 1gbps or 10gbps or whatever "as good as it can reasonably get" is you can go ahead and deregulate for a while. Municipal governments have, for good reason, the right to manage their local right-of-way, because no one outside of town cares about that one blind turn on Middleofnowhere Street where someone's going to get killed one of these days. That's the only scale of government that can or will manage traffic safety or road conditions for local streets, and they have to have a say on how construction is done. The federal government will end up writing a huge novelty check to solve this or it won't happen. It'll be 10 times bigger than it needs to be because the corruption there is somehow just as bad as at the municipal level.
  - rayiner 13y ago

fluidcruft 13y ago

I gave up when I hit this nugget: "The problem? Local governments and their public utilities charge ISPs far more than these things actually cost. For example, rights of way and pole attachments fees can double the cost of network construction" Actually digging holes in streets, obtaining right-of-way access to private property, and putting up your own poles is half as expensive as just using the holes and poles the public has already built? Oh, really? I'm more inclined to think they're grousing about not being able to mooch the public's infrastructure investments for free.

rayiner 13y ago

> What they mean is they want to run fiber down streets with high incomes You can't have your cake and eat it too. If you want cheap prices and high quality service, then you have to deregulate the industry, and a deregulated telecom industry will focus on the high-end consumers, just like every company does. Apple doesn't focus on making computers for poor people, and all those companies peddling their wares on Facebook aren't selling basic essentials affordable by poor people and people in rural areas. Someone in the tech industry should understand better than most that in nearly any industry, companies will chase premium, up-market consumers because that's where the money happens to be. If you want poor people and people in rural areas to have high-quality internet service (or really, any internet service), you have to be willing to pay for that. The way municipalities have chosen to pay for that is granting utility monopolies. That decision isn't something that comes for free. It comes at the cost of worse service for the wealthier urban people who would get better and cheaper service in a free market. Also, as a practical matter, municipal and state governments destroy everything they touch. I'm not a small government drum-beater, and I'm a proponent of regulation in many contexts, but the lack of transparency and scrutiny makes municipal government regulation the worst kind of regulation.

tbrownaw 13y ago
If you want cheap prices and high quality service, then you have to deregulate the industry, and a deregulated telecom industry will focus on the high-end consumers, just like every company does. Or acknowledge that regulations are not all created equal.
cube13 13y ago
>If you want cheap prices and high quality service, then you have to deregulate the industry, and a deregulated telecom industry will focus on the high-end consumers, just like every company does. Uh, if the industry is focusing on high-end consumers, they're going to be gouging the hell out of them. That's hardly cheap.
jacobquick 13y ago
Apple isn't a utility so isn't a relevant comparison. Cake isn't a utility either, that's a foolish aphorism and is not a relevant comparison because we aren't talking about a limited resource. I can have both reasonable prices and universal service because now that Verizon is cutting people off from land-based phone lines, broadband is the country's communications utility, and it is entirely reasonable for a society to use its elected government to construct infrastructure and guarantee utility service to all of its citizens. It means both regulation and spending at the federal level: Verizon or Google or whoever picks up the cost of digging where it's profitable, taxes are spent make them whole where it isn't, but the regulation is they have to do whole counties at once. Yes, once you've gotten everyone to 1gbps or 10gbps or whatever "as good as it can reasonably get" is you can go ahead and deregulate for a while. Municipal governments have, for good reason, the right to manage their local right-of-way, because no one outside of town cares about that one blind turn on Middleofnowhere Street where someone's going to get killed one of these days. That's the only scale of government that can or will manage traffic safety or road conditions for local streets, and they have to have a say on how construction is done. The federal government will end up writing a huge novelty check to solve this or it won't happen. It'll be 10 times bigger than it needs to be because the corruption there is somehow just as bad as at the municipal level.
- rayiner 13y ago