12 ms·

Don’t Blame Big Cable. It’s Local Governments That Choke Broadband Competition

162 points by apu 12y ago

sp332 12y ago
Every local government in America?
- Aloha 12y ago
  No, but the places that HN commentators are likely to live, yes. The bigger the city, the more likely.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- higherpurpose 12y ago
  I heard something about 20 states doing this recently.
Aloha 12y ago
I work for a major wireless carrier - we see this all the time with permitting - many of our rural sites dont even require a permit - we can just go out and swap the equipment on the pad, hand the new stuff on the tower. Our urban sites, some of them are just now getting permits that were applied for in 2011, not to mention the couple hundred bucks in fees (or more) to get said permits - all to simply change a bit of hardware bolted to a concrete pad - and on top, often costs for reinspection once were done bolting the new stuff on.
stcredzero 12y ago
We seem to be in as bad a situation now, as we were in when the telephone company had a monopoly running right up to the jacks in your house. (And most likely sold you the phone that plugged into that jac on top of it!)
- Sanddancer 12y ago
  Oh, it was worse than that. You used to not even own your phone, only rent it from the telephone company; a lot of elderly couples are still getting charged for that phone they rented, and threw out, decades ago [1]. Thankfully, most customers are now at least allowed the tiny luxury of their own cable modem. http://www.consumerwarningnetwork.com/2009/03/25/is-grandmom-still-renting-her-old-telephone/ http://www.consumerwarningnetwork.com/2009/03/25/is-grandmom...
zdw 12y ago
The fundamental problem here is that in most places we've arbitrarily decided that certain things like: - Roads - Water/Trash/Sewer - Police/Fire service Are a part of municipal government, whereas: - Electrical - Telephone - Cable TV Are frequently not, but are regulated. Frequently, one of these last 3 will own the poles (usually the Electrical company, but sometimes the municipality) and the Phone/Cable companies lease the poles to put up their lines. So, what do you do? Make the Electric company put up New Companies A-Z's lines for free? That doesn't work and would quickly lead to companies covering the lucrative part of town (read: "rich") and widening the digital divide. It comes back to the bad decision that didn't force Cable to be a common carrier. Had that happened, we'd end up with a situation like DSL where there are multiple vendors, except the lines would have the same speed capabilities as Cable. So, in short, it comes back to a bad FCC decision. Requiring a bunch of new physical infrastructure isn't needed when the existing could just be broken up and leased out as dumb pipes.
- epistasis 12y ago
  I believe that to be an eminently reasonable interpretation of the history and current situation. What was the history that led to a the non-common carrier ruling? Was it thought that cable companies would upgrade infrastructure more quickly if they didn't have to sell access to their lines? Here's what the NCTA has to say about it now: https://www.ncta.com/platform/public-policy/why-its-a-good-thing-that-broadband-isnt-a-common-carrier/ https://www.ncta.com/platform/public-policy/why-its-a-good-t... Given the success of broadband in areas where the lines are sold like they would be in a common carrier situation, it's hard to believe anything they say.
  - tbrownaw 12y ago
    The version I learned is that it's a historical artifact from dial-up Internet. You had the phone lines from the phone company (natural monopoly, common carrier), and completely separately you had an ISP with a modem bank hooked up to an Internet uplink (competitive, information service). Then you had the Telecommunications Act of 1996 (I turned twelve that year!), where the phone company had to allow the ISPs to use the phone lines at wholesale rates. So you get ISDN and later DSL with that same split between who controls the wires and who controls the Internet uplink. Then you get cable Internet. Which does not use common-carrier wires (I assume this is related to not-so-modern TV being entirely one-way). And which end up classified the same way as potentially-unbundled Internet that runs over the phone company's wires, despite being controlled by the same people as the wires it runs on. Then for whatever reason all the independent DSL providers disappeared (or at least shrunk to where they can't afford noticeable advertising campaigns). I don't know if the phone companies found a way around having to share their lines, or put less effort into maintaining lines used by independent ISPs to discourage people using them (I know I heard this suggested back when it was new, no idea if it was reasonable or just a conspiracy theory), or just out-competed them based on there being a single bill and a single point-of-contact (and no finger-pointing) for problems. I guess it can't be the first option, since I've heard that a few parts of the country actually have more than 2 choices (cable company & phone company) for Internet service.
VikingCoder 12y ago
Wow, it can double the cost? Well, then we should have seen $150 billion in delivered broadband, since we have given $300 billion in tax subsidies to broadband providers, in exchange for broadband development. We have not seen $150 billion in delivered broadband value. Ergo, this argument is wrong. I do blame Big Cable.
- NoPiece 12y ago
  Do you have a primary source for the $300 billion tax subsidy claim (which would be an indictment of the telcos if true). Something besides a link to a link to a link to something Bruce Kushnick has claimed? I've read his reports, and while there seems to be a kernel of truth, the numbers are not, IMO, substantiated. He gets big numbers by claiming the telcos are making undeserved profits, which even if true, is not a subsidy.
  - adventured 12y ago
    This is a constantly repeated urban legend. The telcos never received anywhere near $300 billion in tax subsidies. It comes up constantly in threads like this, and the people claiming it can never back it up with actual data or proof of any sort, just vague statements.
    - mikeyouse 12y ago
      Not a tax subsidy, a spectrum subsidy. We gifted the digital TV spectrum to the telcos, 300MHz of public property. In 2008, 52MHz of adjacent spectrum was auctioned for $19B, so do the math on what 300MHz would be worth.
      - rgbrenner 12y ago
        The article you linked to in your other comment talks about spectrum being given to CBS and other TV broadcasters. Are you saying that CBS agreed to launch a broadband service in exchange for that spectrum? I'm going to need some evidence to believe that.
NorthGuy1 12y ago
Can I blame both?
- closetnerd 12y ago
  yes please
jinushaun 12y ago
Seattle and SF
wnevets 12y ago
Bullshit. When local governments (i.e counties) attempt to roll out their own broadband, big cable (i.e comcast) sue to prevent it from happening.
imgabe 12y ago
So the cable companies aren't aggressively lobbying municipal governments to keep out competition? Where do you think these costs came from? And god forbid the municipality try to build out its own network. That will just inspire the incumbent cable company to take them to court until the project gets scrapped. No, I think we can pretty easily blame Big Cable for this one.
- nostromo 12y ago
  The thought of getting my internet from the City of San Francisco gives me cold sweats.
- ericingram 12y ago
  Governments create and enforce laws, so they must be held accountable for them. If the government didn't have such discretionary power, lobbying would not be a thing at all. I don't blame the big cable companies for doing it, since they'd be at a competitive disadvantage otherwise. Remember that humans operate companies and governments alike. Except governments use force and companies are subject to it.
  - dhmholley 12y ago
    It astounds me how people will happily let companies off the hook for causing negative externalities, while simultaneously blaming the government for failing to regulate them effectively and decrying the regulation in the first place. "Remember that humans operate companies and governments alike. Except governments use force and companies are subject to it." What utter drivel.
    - smsm42 12y ago
      He who wields the weapon is responsible for the results. Government wields the power of coercion, thus the results of coercion is their responsibility - and the shared responsibility of those that consent to such government. Yes, the lobbyists who abuse the coercive power of government share the blame - but so do you, if you support the existence of this coercive power and their ability to abuse it. If somebody tricks you into shooting yourself in the foot by claiming your foot is a space alien intending to eat you - he is to blame for tricking you, and you are to blame for being an idiot. You can say we should get the world rid of the people who are willing to trick idiots for their own profit, but I say it may be much more practical to try and be idiots less frequently. Because the former is not very likely to happen anytime soon.
yaur 12y ago
Municipally owned/maintained FTTH with ISP access from an analog to a CO is a good thing IMO and something that the incumbents have used the courts to shut down in the past[1]. The Wired piece makes a seemingly legitimate argument (franchise agreements increase the cost for new entrants) while ignoring the actual alternative (which would dramatically decrease the cost for new entrants) that those outside of the industry may not even be aware of and in that regard is a bit dishonest. Why is this coming up now? One of the interesting tidbits I picked up from industry coverage[2] of the current round of FCC rule making is "Wheeler intends to nullify state laws that prevent local governments from establishing broadband service". Which is something I don't think the industry wants to happen. So, yeah open access is great but giving cities the "If you don't provide acceptable internet service we will" stick is valuable as well. [1] http://arstechnica.com/uncategorized/2008/07/telco-wont-install-fiber-sues-to-keep-city-from-doing-it/ http://arstechnica.com/uncategorized/2008/07/telco-wont-inst... [2] http://www.cedmagazine.com/blogs/2014/05/fcc-four-more-months-of-bickering-about-net-neut http://www.cedmagazine.com/blogs/2014/05/fcc-four-more-month...
- Spooky23 12y ago
  Hopefully, they are successful. Municipal governments aren't equipped to make these decisions. In my city (Albany, NY), the city signed a 10 year franchise agreeing giving Time Warner a monopoly on tv services, which makes the city much less attractive for FIOS, which is available in most surrounding communities. Why did they do this? Some idiot activists got the city to demand that TWC provide a public access channel (hello, 1982) and to build a "TV studio" in the local high school.
dba7dba 12y ago
Wow, really? It's the local govt fault that our internet connectivity sxxxxs?
- spikels 12y ago
  Yes - were it not for municipalities' ability to enforce monopoly rights we would often have multiple landline, cable, garbage, electric and other providers competing on quality and cost. Some say these are "natural monopolies" but there are cities around the world where consumers have a choice of providers for these services. True natural monopolies are very, very rare but are almost always created by government action. Patents are another example.
  - gnopgnip 12y ago
    The natural affect of this is that many neighborhoods would not be served at all.
  - bsder 12y ago
    > Yes - were it not for municipalities' ability to enforce monopoly rights we would often have multiple landline, cable, garbage, electric and other providers competing on quality and cost. You are conflating different types of problems. Things which are natural monopolies are phone, cable, internet, electricity, water, etc. It is needlessly expensive to lay in multiple cables/pipes to a house solely in order to provide competition. Oddly, cable/internet is one of the few places where this actually isn't completely true since pulling a single fiber is almost as expensive as pulling multiple fibers. I don't know why you cite garbage collection, though. Garbage collection is completely different. I know many towns that have multiple garbage collection services. You don't have to lay in an infrastructure in order to collect garbage.
rayiner 12y ago
I think it is absolutely key to look past all the rhetoric and see what Google is actually asking for in return for building fiber. > In Kansas City and Austin, local governments wanted Google Fiber more than they wanted kickbacks. So they expedited the permitting process, gave Google rights-of-way access for little to no cost, and allowed Google to build-out selectively — i.e., in neighborhoods where consumers actually expressed demand. Kansas City agreed to get the permits done in 5 days. Provo sold Google for $1 a fiber network they had spent over $30 million constructing. Most if not all of the cities declined to impose build-out requirements: enough users had to sign up in each "Fiberhood" to justify Google deploying there. This stands in stark contrast to what happens when companies try to deploy fiber or cable in other places. Read Comcast's franchise agreement for Wilmington, DE, a small, poor, city of about 70,000 people: http://www.wilmingtonde.gov/docs/1320/3716Rev1.pdf http://www.wilmingtonde.gov/docs/1320/3716Rev1.pdf. In addition to the hefty franchise fee, paid out of gross, the city extracts a couple of million dollars in funding for government programs, and imposes a built-out requirement that requires Comcast to build out to every neighborhood above a certain (low) density, even if enough customers don't sign up to make it profitable. Similar build-out requirements killed FIOS deployment in the city: http://www.fiercetelecom.com/story/verizon-defends-honor-wilmington-fios-talks/2008-12-08 http://www.fiercetelecom.com/story/verizon-defends-honor-wil.... In short, I can't have FIOS because Verizon wasn't willing to build it out to all the neighborhoods in the city that have 30-50% of its residents living under the poverty line. This sort of article typifies the local response: http://seattletimes.com/html/businesstechnology/2023420101_briercolumn21xml.html http://seattletimes.com/html/businesstechnology/2023420101_b.... ("Once cities provide these handouts, they don’t have much leverage. They’ll end up bowing and scraping and hoping that Uncle Google throws a bit more fiber their way, someday. The experience in Kansas City — where suburbs are stuck waiting for Google to extend its fiberhoods — suggests that cities in a region targeted by Google Fiber should work together on setting expectations and deadlines. Yes, a provider like Google may abandon a city that doesn’t play along. But is that such a loss if the company ends up cherry-picking and making the market less attractive to other providers — including public utilities — that might come and provide fast broadband for everyone?") In other words, they want to subject fiber deployment to the typical class warfare that characterizes municipal politics. It's better for nobody to have fiber than for wealthier areas to get it while communities that can't afford it don't. In New York City, the mayor has turned Verizon's FIOS deployment into an economic justice issue and hired a civil rights lawyer: http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20140219/TECHNOLOGY/140219845/mayor-pushes-verizon-to-discount-fios-for-poor http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20140219/TECHNOLOGY/140.... Who do you blame for not having fiber? How many cities would already have competitors deploying fiber if they had adopted the kind of regulatory regimes Google is demanding as a pre-condition for launching fiber?
tormeh 12y ago
Who would want an ISP to innovate? Latency, bandwidth and cost are the only things that matter. ISPs should be prohibited from offering anything else than internet access. No phone, no video, no toilet cover delivery.
- NoPiece 12y ago
  Doesn't it require innovation to improve latency, bandwidth, and cost?
  - wmf 12y ago
    Does replacing a router with a newer model count as innovation? Some would say yes, but I wouldn't.
    - NoPiece 12y ago
      A lot more happened than just swapping the box on my desk when Verizon came and installed FIOS. It took innovation to get from the 768kbps DSL line I had to the 50mbps FIOS connection. How much credit Verizon deserves for it, I don't know. Even if they did none of the innovation directly, they ended up paying for a lot of it.
  - dublinben 12y ago
    Not by the ISP. All their equipment is made by other companies (like Cisco, Juniper, etc.) who do that kind of innovation. They're just buying the pieces and snapping them together.
    - NoPiece 12y ago
      Fair enough, but AT&T does spend ~1 billion in R&D. Verizon doesn't report their number but supposedly it is less. Innovation isn't just hardware development, and even if they are relying on other companies, they are pushing innovation by paying Cisco/Juniper.
    - jsz0 12y ago
higherpurpose 12y ago
Blame both. The cable companies asked for the local monopoly in the first place...
adventured 12y ago
Where I live Comcast is barred from offering me Internet access due to the small city I live in offering another cable company a long term monopoly. So I pay $75 for 15 mbps. I could be paying $25 less and getting twice the speed if I lived 10 minutes another direction. Local governments are at least half the problem, but it's clearly a public + private collusion problem, in which both parties work together to establish monopolies. And the solution is simple (but will never happen): all telecom monopoly contracts should be voided nationally, immediately.
- dublinben 12y ago
  Cable franchise monopolies have been illegal since 1992. I highly doubt the situation in your town is as simple as that.
- rayiner 12y ago
  The 1992 Cable Act made it illegal to grant exclusive cable franchises. Since the franchises were generally renewed every 10-12 years, very few places (I don't know of any) still have legal monopolies.
- jsz0 12y ago
  > Where I live Comcast is barred from offering me Internet access You can partly thank the FCC for this. They imposed limitations on Comcast's growth that effectively require Comcast to sell off an existing market if they want to enter a new market. I'm sure their intentions were good at the time but it turns out if you limit the growth of company they might try to find new revenue streams like I dunno... paid traffic prioritization.
Goronmon 12y ago
So, say that every town/city in the country streamlined the process for handling "right of way" and reduced the asking price for access. Would this actually lead to an increase in competition or would it just lead to greater profits for the incumbents?
- Sanddancer 12y ago
  There are a number of cities in the San Francisco Bay area that do offer such agreements, and competition has sprung up. When I used to live in Daly City, there was a choice between Comcast and Astound, and from what I could see by reviews, both services seemed to be better than the neighboring cities because of it.
closetnerd 12y ago
no blame both big cable AND local governments ... its always a distraction to polarize the argument ...
ozten 12y ago
Many local governments have given exclusive rights to a single private company. I wish that opinion editorial had some data to backup it's assertions.
saalweachter 12y ago
If I'm reading Wikipedia correctly, Wired is owned by Conde Nast, which is owned by Advance Publications, which also has a large stake in the Discovery network. Hooray for an independent press!
z3t4 12y ago
I'd say blame the people that don't want more then 10 Mbit. And think that everyone who has 10+ Mbit only use it for "illegal activities".

162 points by apu 12y ago

sp332 12y ago

Every local government in America?

Aloha 12y ago
No, but the places that HN commentators are likely to live, yes. The bigger the city, the more likely.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
higherpurpose 12y ago
I heard something about 20 states doing this recently.

Aloha 12y ago

I work for a major wireless carrier - we see this all the time with permitting - many of our rural sites dont even require a permit - we can just go out and swap the equipment on the pad, hand the new stuff on the tower. Our urban sites, some of them are just now getting permits that were applied for in 2011, not to mention the couple hundred bucks in fees (or more) to get said permits - all to simply change a bit of hardware bolted to a concrete pad - and on top, often costs for reinspection once were done bolting the new stuff on.

stcredzero 12y ago

We seem to be in as bad a situation now, as we were in when the telephone company had a monopoly running right up to the jacks in your house. (And most likely sold you the phone that plugged into that jac on top of it!)

Sanddancer 12y ago
Oh, it was worse than that. You used to not even own your phone, only rent it from the telephone company; a lot of elderly couples are still getting charged for that phone they rented, and threw out, decades ago [1]. Thankfully, most customers are now at least allowed the tiny luxury of their own cable modem. http://www.consumerwarningnetwork.com/2009/03/25/is-grandmom-still-renting-her-old-telephone/ http://www.consumerwarningnetwork.com/2009/03/25/is-grandmom...

zdw 12y ago

The fundamental problem here is that in most places we've arbitrarily decided that certain things like: - Roads - Water/Trash/Sewer - Police/Fire service Are a part of municipal government, whereas: - Electrical - Telephone - Cable TV Are frequently not, but are regulated. Frequently, one of these last 3 will own the poles (usually the Electrical company, but sometimes the municipality) and the Phone/Cable companies lease the poles to put up their lines. So, what do you do? Make the Electric company put up New Companies A-Z's lines for free? That doesn't work and would quickly lead to companies covering the lucrative part of town (read: "rich") and widening the digital divide. It comes back to the bad decision that didn't force Cable to be a common carrier. Had that happened, we'd end up with a situation like DSL where there are multiple vendors, except the lines would have the same speed capabilities as Cable. So, in short, it comes back to a bad FCC decision. Requiring a bunch of new physical infrastructure isn't needed when the existing could just be broken up and leased out as dumb pipes.

epistasis 12y ago
I believe that to be an eminently reasonable interpretation of the history and current situation. What was the history that led to a the non-common carrier ruling? Was it thought that cable companies would upgrade infrastructure more quickly if they didn't have to sell access to their lines? Here's what the NCTA has to say about it now: https://www.ncta.com/platform/public-policy/why-its-a-good-thing-that-broadband-isnt-a-common-carrier/ https://www.ncta.com/platform/public-policy/why-its-a-good-t... Given the success of broadband in areas where the lines are sold like they would be in a common carrier situation, it's hard to believe anything they say.
- tbrownaw 12y ago
  The version I learned is that it's a historical artifact from dial-up Internet. You had the phone lines from the phone company (natural monopoly, common carrier), and completely separately you had an ISP with a modem bank hooked up to an Internet uplink (competitive, information service). Then you had the Telecommunications Act of 1996 (I turned twelve that year!), where the phone company had to allow the ISPs to use the phone lines at wholesale rates. So you get ISDN and later DSL with that same split between who controls the wires and who controls the Internet uplink. Then you get cable Internet. Which does not use common-carrier wires (I assume this is related to not-so-modern TV being entirely one-way). And which end up classified the same way as potentially-unbundled Internet that runs over the phone company's wires, despite being controlled by the same people as the wires it runs on. Then for whatever reason all the independent DSL providers disappeared (or at least shrunk to where they can't afford noticeable advertising campaigns). I don't know if the phone companies found a way around having to share their lines, or put less effort into maintaining lines used by independent ISPs to discourage people using them (I know I heard this suggested back when it was new, no idea if it was reasonable or just a conspiracy theory), or just out-competed them based on there being a single bill and a single point-of-contact (and no finger-pointing) for problems. I guess it can't be the first option, since I've heard that a few parts of the country actually have more than 2 choices (cable company & phone company) for Internet service.

VikingCoder 12y ago

Wow, it can double the cost? Well, then we should have seen $150 billion in delivered broadband, since we have given $300 billion in tax subsidies to broadband providers, in exchange for broadband development. We have not seen $150 billion in delivered broadband value. Ergo, this argument is wrong. I do blame Big Cable.

NoPiece 12y ago
Do you have a primary source for the $300 billion tax subsidy claim (which would be an indictment of the telcos if true). Something besides a link to a link to a link to something Bruce Kushnick has claimed? I've read his reports, and while there seems to be a kernel of truth, the numbers are not, IMO, substantiated. He gets big numbers by claiming the telcos are making undeserved profits, which even if true, is not a subsidy.
- adventured 12y ago
  This is a constantly repeated urban legend. The telcos never received anywhere near $300 billion in tax subsidies. It comes up constantly in threads like this, and the people claiming it can never back it up with actual data or proof of any sort, just vague statements.
  - mikeyouse 12y ago
    Not a tax subsidy, a spectrum subsidy. We gifted the digital TV spectrum to the telcos, 300MHz of public property. In 2008, 52MHz of adjacent spectrum was auctioned for $19B, so do the math on what 300MHz would be worth.
    - rgbrenner 12y ago
      The article you linked to in your other comment talks about spectrum being given to CBS and other TV broadcasters. Are you saying that CBS agreed to launch a broadband service in exchange for that spectrum? I'm going to need some evidence to believe that.

NorthGuy1 12y ago

Can I blame both?

closetnerd 12y ago
yes please

jinushaun 12y ago

Seattle and SF

wnevets 12y ago

Bullshit. When local governments (i.e counties) attempt to roll out their own broadband, big cable (i.e comcast) sue to prevent it from happening.

imgabe 12y ago

So the cable companies aren't aggressively lobbying municipal governments to keep out competition? Where do you think these costs came from? And god forbid the municipality try to build out its own network. That will just inspire the incumbent cable company to take them to court until the project gets scrapped. No, I think we can pretty easily blame Big Cable for this one.

nostromo 12y ago
The thought of getting my internet from the City of San Francisco gives me cold sweats.
ericingram 12y ago
Governments create and enforce laws, so they must be held accountable for them. If the government didn't have such discretionary power, lobbying would not be a thing at all. I don't blame the big cable companies for doing it, since they'd be at a competitive disadvantage otherwise. Remember that humans operate companies and governments alike. Except governments use force and companies are subject to it.
- dhmholley 12y ago
  It astounds me how people will happily let companies off the hook for causing negative externalities, while simultaneously blaming the government for failing to regulate them effectively and decrying the regulation in the first place. "Remember that humans operate companies and governments alike. Except governments use force and companies are subject to it." What utter drivel.
  - smsm42 12y ago
    He who wields the weapon is responsible for the results. Government wields the power of coercion, thus the results of coercion is their responsibility - and the shared responsibility of those that consent to such government. Yes, the lobbyists who abuse the coercive power of government share the blame - but so do you, if you support the existence of this coercive power and their ability to abuse it. If somebody tricks you into shooting yourself in the foot by claiming your foot is a space alien intending to eat you - he is to blame for tricking you, and you are to blame for being an idiot. You can say we should get the world rid of the people who are willing to trick idiots for their own profit, but I say it may be much more practical to try and be idiots less frequently. Because the former is not very likely to happen anytime soon.

yaur 12y ago

Municipally owned/maintained FTTH with ISP access from an analog to a CO is a good thing IMO and something that the incumbents have used the courts to shut down in the past[1]. The Wired piece makes a seemingly legitimate argument (franchise agreements increase the cost for new entrants) while ignoring the actual alternative (which would dramatically decrease the cost for new entrants) that those outside of the industry may not even be aware of and in that regard is a bit dishonest. Why is this coming up now? One of the interesting tidbits I picked up from industry coverage[2] of the current round of FCC rule making is "Wheeler intends to nullify state laws that prevent local governments from establishing broadband service". Which is something I don't think the industry wants to happen. So, yeah open access is great but giving cities the "If you don't provide acceptable internet service we will" stick is valuable as well. [1] http://arstechnica.com/uncategorized/2008/07/telco-wont-install-fiber-sues-to-keep-city-from-doing-it/ http://arstechnica.com/uncategorized/2008/07/telco-wont-inst... [2] http://www.cedmagazine.com/blogs/2014/05/fcc-four-more-months-of-bickering-about-net-neut http://www.cedmagazine.com/blogs/2014/05/fcc-four-more-month...

Spooky23 12y ago
Hopefully, they are successful. Municipal governments aren't equipped to make these decisions. In my city (Albany, NY), the city signed a 10 year franchise agreeing giving Time Warner a monopoly on tv services, which makes the city much less attractive for FIOS, which is available in most surrounding communities. Why did they do this? Some idiot activists got the city to demand that TWC provide a public access channel (hello, 1982) and to build a "TV studio" in the local high school.

dba7dba 12y ago

Wow, really? It's the local govt fault that our internet connectivity sxxxxs?

spikels 12y ago
Yes - were it not for municipalities' ability to enforce monopoly rights we would often have multiple landline, cable, garbage, electric and other providers competing on quality and cost. Some say these are "natural monopolies" but there are cities around the world where consumers have a choice of providers for these services. True natural monopolies are very, very rare but are almost always created by government action. Patents are another example.
- gnopgnip 12y ago
  The natural affect of this is that many neighborhoods would not be served at all.
- bsder 12y ago
  > Yes - were it not for municipalities' ability to enforce monopoly rights we would often have multiple landline, cable, garbage, electric and other providers competing on quality and cost. You are conflating different types of problems. Things which are natural monopolies are phone, cable, internet, electricity, water, etc. It is needlessly expensive to lay in multiple cables/pipes to a house solely in order to provide competition. Oddly, cable/internet is one of the few places where this actually isn't completely true since pulling a single fiber is almost as expensive as pulling multiple fibers. I don't know why you cite garbage collection, though. Garbage collection is completely different. I know many towns that have multiple garbage collection services. You don't have to lay in an infrastructure in order to collect garbage.

rayiner 12y ago

I think it is absolutely key to look past all the rhetoric and see what Google is actually asking for in return for building fiber. > In Kansas City and Austin, local governments wanted Google Fiber more than they wanted kickbacks. So they expedited the permitting process, gave Google rights-of-way access for little to no cost, and allowed Google to build-out selectively — i.e., in neighborhoods where consumers actually expressed demand. Kansas City agreed to get the permits done in 5 days. Provo sold Google for $1 a fiber network they had spent over $30 million constructing. Most if not all of the cities declined to impose build-out requirements: enough users had to sign up in each "Fiberhood" to justify Google deploying there. This stands in stark contrast to what happens when companies try to deploy fiber or cable in other places. Read Comcast's franchise agreement for Wilmington, DE, a small, poor, city of about 70,000 people: http://www.wilmingtonde.gov/docs/1320/3716Rev1.pdf http://www.wilmingtonde.gov/docs/1320/3716Rev1.pdf. In addition to the hefty franchise fee, paid out of gross, the city extracts a couple of million dollars in funding for government programs, and imposes a built-out requirement that requires Comcast to build out to every neighborhood above a certain (low) density, even if enough customers don't sign up to make it profitable. Similar build-out requirements killed FIOS deployment in the city: http://www.fiercetelecom.com/story/verizon-defends-honor-wilmington-fios-talks/2008-12-08 http://www.fiercetelecom.com/story/verizon-defends-honor-wil.... In short, I can't have FIOS because Verizon wasn't willing to build it out to all the neighborhoods in the city that have 30-50% of its residents living under the poverty line. This sort of article typifies the local response: http://seattletimes.com/html/businesstechnology/2023420101_briercolumn21xml.html http://seattletimes.com/html/businesstechnology/2023420101_b.... ("Once cities provide these handouts, they don’t have much leverage. They’ll end up bowing and scraping and hoping that Uncle Google throws a bit more fiber their way, someday. The experience in Kansas City — where suburbs are stuck waiting for Google to extend its fiberhoods — suggests that cities in a region targeted by Google Fiber should work together on setting expectations and deadlines. Yes, a provider like Google may abandon a city that doesn’t play along. But is that such a loss if the company ends up cherry-picking and making the market less attractive to other providers — including public utilities — that might come and provide fast broadband for everyone?") In other words, they want to subject fiber deployment to the typical class warfare that characterizes municipal politics. It's better for nobody to have fiber than for wealthier areas to get it while communities that can't afford it don't. In New York City, the mayor has turned Verizon's FIOS deployment into an economic justice issue and hired a civil rights lawyer: http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20140219/TECHNOLOGY/140219845/mayor-pushes-verizon-to-discount-fios-for-poor http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20140219/TECHNOLOGY/140.... Who do you blame for not having fiber? How many cities would already have competitors deploying fiber if they had adopted the kind of regulatory regimes Google is demanding as a pre-condition for launching fiber?

tormeh 12y ago

Who would want an ISP to innovate? Latency, bandwidth and cost are the only things that matter. ISPs should be prohibited from offering anything else than internet access. No phone, no video, no toilet cover delivery.

NoPiece 12y ago
Doesn't it require innovation to improve latency, bandwidth, and cost?
- wmf 12y ago
  Does replacing a router with a newer model count as innovation? Some would say yes, but I wouldn't.
  - NoPiece 12y ago
    A lot more happened than just swapping the box on my desk when Verizon came and installed FIOS. It took innovation to get from the 768kbps DSL line I had to the 50mbps FIOS connection. How much credit Verizon deserves for it, I don't know. Even if they did none of the innovation directly, they ended up paying for a lot of it.
- dublinben 12y ago
  Not by the ISP. All their equipment is made by other companies (like Cisco, Juniper, etc.) who do that kind of innovation. They're just buying the pieces and snapping them together.
  - NoPiece 12y ago
    Fair enough, but AT&T does spend ~1 billion in R&D. Verizon doesn't report their number but supposedly it is less. Innovation isn't just hardware development, and even if they are relying on other companies, they are pushing innovation by paying Cisco/Juniper.
  - jsz0 12y ago

higherpurpose 12y ago

Blame both. The cable companies asked for the local monopoly in the first place...

adventured 12y ago

Where I live Comcast is barred from offering me Internet access due to the small city I live in offering another cable company a long term monopoly. So I pay $75 for 15 mbps. I could be paying $25 less and getting twice the speed if I lived 10 minutes another direction. Local governments are at least half the problem, but it's clearly a public + private collusion problem, in which both parties work together to establish monopolies. And the solution is simple (but will never happen): all telecom monopoly contracts should be voided nationally, immediately.

dublinben 12y ago
Cable franchise monopolies have been illegal since 1992. I highly doubt the situation in your town is as simple as that.
rayiner 12y ago
The 1992 Cable Act made it illegal to grant exclusive cable franchises. Since the franchises were generally renewed every 10-12 years, very few places (I don't know of any) still have legal monopolies.
jsz0 12y ago
> Where I live Comcast is barred from offering me Internet access You can partly thank the FCC for this. They imposed limitations on Comcast's growth that effectively require Comcast to sell off an existing market if they want to enter a new market. I'm sure their intentions were good at the time but it turns out if you limit the growth of company they might try to find new revenue streams like I dunno... paid traffic prioritization.

Goronmon 12y ago

So, say that every town/city in the country streamlined the process for handling "right of way" and reduced the asking price for access. Would this actually lead to an increase in competition or would it just lead to greater profits for the incumbents?

Sanddancer 12y ago
There are a number of cities in the San Francisco Bay area that do offer such agreements, and competition has sprung up. When I used to live in Daly City, there was a choice between Comcast and Astound, and from what I could see by reviews, both services seemed to be better than the neighboring cities because of it.

closetnerd 12y ago

no blame both big cable AND local governments ... its always a distraction to polarize the argument ...

ozten 12y ago

Many local governments have given exclusive rights to a single private company. I wish that opinion editorial had some data to backup it's assertions.

saalweachter 12y ago

If I'm reading Wikipedia correctly, Wired is owned by Conde Nast, which is owned by Advance Publications, which also has a large stake in the Discovery network. Hooray for an independent press!

z3t4 12y ago

I'd say blame the people that don't want more then 10 Mbit. And think that everyone who has 10+ Mbit only use it for "illegal activities".