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I'm glad to see this. Internet service is a necessary utility like electricity, water, sewer, roads, and police and fire protection. Particularly at the level o
I'm glad to see this. Internet service is a necessary utility like electricity, water, sewer, roads, and police and fire protection. Particularly at the level of last-mile infrastructure, it's inevitable that there's going to be a monopoly on high-speed service. So it makes sense for it to be built out by the municipalities themselves. In fact, the federal government should be helping this along. Once we have fiber to everyone's house, ISPs who want to offer something beyond the raw connectivity the city provides can do so, and make use of that last-mile infrastructure on a resident-initiated opt-in basis.
You have enumerated a list of the worst services available to today's consumer. In none of those areas has there been any significant improvement in service level, cost, efficiency, or technology for many years (, though you could argue 'smart meters' will be a small step forward for electricity). Governments regularly use all of these utilities as revenue-raising 'businesses', which they consistently strip of any capital that could be used for infrastructure improvements.
In addition, some of the services have consistently proven unreliable, as they are run for the benefit of certain special interest groups at the expense of everyone else. Water is subsidized for farmers and golf courses, and this often causes everyone else to suffer droughts. Roads are often subsidized for truckers, which causes everyone else to pay higher gas taxes than they should, and suffer damaged road surfaces. Police departments are poorly regulated, and the policemen protect each other, resulting in the consistent and horrific violation of the rights of many people on a regular basis. Fire departments are run for the firemen, as can be seen from the fact that the number of paid firemen has been consistently increasing over the last 50 years, despite the increase of fire resistance of buildings, and the decrease of blazes.
All of these utilities also have some of the worst customer service available. On could argue that it is possible to get roads fixed through the city council, but this is the only one of the utilities mentioned which gives the consumer a modicum of recourse.
In short, if you are going to argue that ISPs should be a utility, please describe how it will be different from the existing ones, not how it will be the same.
Particularly at the level of last-mile infrastructure, it's inevitable that there's going to be a monopoly on high-speed service.
What about federal legislation to regulate municipalities, such that competition is enabled between municipalities and broadband companies? Could there be something akin to the telephony monopoly breakup? Could we address cable lobby objections to government monopolies while also enabling local governments to address constituents needs?
> Particularly at the level of last-mile infrastructure, it's inevitable that there's going to be a monopoly on high-speed service. So it makes sense for it to be built out by the municipalities themselves.
Both sentences are debatable. Regarding the first sentence, it's possible that the optimal firm count in some communities and especially sparsely populated areas is one (i.e. an actual natural monopoly), but in most communities I would expect it top be at least two or three, since broadband can be delivered through phone lines and cable television lines (which most communities are wired for). There are obviously other feasible media, like power lines and wireless. Could you explain why you believe that last-mile infrastructure is inevitably a monopoly?
Regarding the second sentence, it's debatable that government control is a good solution even in situations where the optimal firm count is one. An ideal government solution may be better than the average private solution, but likewise the ideal private solution may be better than the average government solution. We ought to compare the average case for both solutions, which is to say, the actual outcome we can reasonably expect to get given our specific inputs (our system of government, existing infrastructure, market demand, etc.). I won't claim to have any convincing evidence either way, but I'm not so confident that a government solution is obviously going to be better than a private solution, even in a true natural monopoly.
I love the ideal, but the reality is that a lot of people are getting a half-assed effort from one company that has no economic incentive to improve. Even the threat of governments coming in can provide some of that incentive to make service better. Add to this that the cities that have created their own broadband networks have done it extremely well, and it's hard to make abstract private/public arguments.
In Chattanooga, TN:
Public: 1 gigabit, $70 a month;
Comcast: 25 mbps, $45 a month (I just looked it up for a zip code in the city)
25 mbps / 1 gbps = 0.025
Assuming linear scaling: 1gbps at Comcast would cost $1800/mo. Holy shit.
This is exactly what economic theory predicts will happen in the absence of competition. What's often ignored is the efficacy of the government getting stuff done is largely dependent on the competency of the officials. But if you have good officials, the government solution to the high speed problem is a fantastic one.
It's like you live in a parallel universe from me.
My water, electricity, etc utilities are far more reliable (probably by an order of magnitude) than any private service I've experienced. They don't cut corners in design or safety, and when there is a problem, it's far easier to get in touch with them (they're usually already aware of it and don't pretend to act surprised like say your Telco or ISP) and scheduling is more flexible.
Case in point: I was wondering if my home water pressure could be increased at the meter. I'd gotten conflicting advice from plumbers. I called up one afternoon. They said they'd send someone out to check. I got a knock on my door at 8PM that same evening. I told him I measured 42psi at the hose bib, which was over the zone's minimum of 36. Which was disappointing to me. But still. The level of service just floored me. I've never experienced anything close to that from Time Warner, DiSH, AT&T, T-Mobile, you-name-it. I replaced my 150amp electric meter with a 200amp meter (city provided), it was inspected for less than most people would bother getting out of bed for and I had a fire hazard from our "new to us" house replaced with almost no cost from the utility.
I also feel like I get a lot more for my dollar. Obviously the power grid is far more complex than Time Warner's cabling. Not to mention it can kill you. From TWC I get internet access. From the electric company I get 100% Wind Power generated electricity (for an additional $0.5 I believe), and hundreds of kilowatts of power each and every month.
I never give a thought to wether my sewer service is going to work. It doesn't have "off" days where it backs up a bit. My water doesn't decide to stop flowing every once in awhile so I have to try turning the faucet off and on until it works. When we moved in a couple years ago, I thought I smelled gas outside near the meter. Someone came out within 30 minutes. They found a minor leak (someone in the alley actually ran into the meter!), had it fixed up in no time flat. No charge.
If an ISP could come close to my Utilities experience I'd be overjoyed personally. And it'd be the last time I ever saw an Early Termination Fee, obscene equipment charges for commodity hardware, it'd actually work 99.999% of the time, and (maybe the biggest issue of all with ISPs) I'd actually get the service level I'm paying for.
seemingly good point but I think you're comparing apples to oranges. Providing electrical power, sewage lines, etc.. is not very difficult compared to handling Internet traffic. To make more clear what I mean, I wonder how your electric company would deal with a set of problems like when a torrent shows up on one of your customer's computers? Not to mention that IT support is probably more expensive than having your gas line checked for a leak.
To check for that leak they had to have customer service reps, city vehicles, fleet insurance, technicians qualified to work on a live, potentially leaking gas line, gasoline for the vehicle, and they arrived at my home in less time than a phone-call to TWC generally takes. I really doubt some IT staff costs more.
As for the Torrent: Give the customer what they pay for, and no more. If my internet issues are because of Torrents, I have to ask: Why does the lack of competency ISPs have never seem to work in my favor?
edit: Also "not very difficult compared to":
I have an amateur's idea of the utility side (mostly from DIY and having relatives in the trades) and I think you're sorely underestimating the skill and care involved in making sure this stuff actually works. Large scale projects for anyone can be challenging, but it'd be amazing if anything ever worked at all if utilities put the same (lack of) planning care into their projects that most tech companies do.
Most people probably don't even know what a P-trap is for. Or ever noticed that their gutters are actually sloped for drainage. What material their plumbing is made from. How many receptacles can be placed on a circuit. That the brick on your house isn't actually load-bearing. What weeping holes are for.
This stuff has to last decades.
>> "Providing electrical power, sewage lines, etc.. is not very difficult compared to handling Internet traffic."
There is no question that each of these things is difficult at scale. Furthermore I have never done either of them.
However, power systems EE is perhaps the most widely-known example of Big Boy Engineering except building rockets. In the power business, they have an distribution/cabling problem which is at best isomorphic to that found in the ISP business (though probably greater, because ISP's don't have millions of volts to worry about) wedded to far greater stationing/substationing/production problems, and they still have (as noted by someone else in this thread) far more 9's of uptime than Time Warner. As compensation for this, ISP's have a greater Signals and Systems flavored problem, but it doesn't seem like it balances out.
So basically I'm trying to say that "... not very difficult..." seems inaccurate.
If you want to swap meaningless anecdotes I can tell you that my cable service is more reliable than my electrical service. Neither are perfect but I have not yet had an internet outage this year that I've noticed; my power has been out for significant amounts of time (> 1 hour) at least a couple of times, and if you count momentary off/on outages it's been closer to a dozen.
Where I grew up we had persistently poor water pressure. It took over a decade for the city-owned water utility to admit there was a problem and install a booster pump for that neighborhood.
All my area utilities have fees for establishing service, deposit requirements if you have low credit or are a new customer, and if you call them out for service and the problem turns out to be with your plumbing or your wiring, you can bet there will be a charge.
I think what we are really seeing here is that different municipalities have different degrees of success... In mine, no one even thinks about power/water/sewage/roads (except during road repair), but the poor quality of internet service is a weekly subject.
Just this morning, comcast had a massive outage across philadelphia and southern new jersey. Comcast is BASED in philadelphia. There was no explanation or warning, just as the work day started. If that were electric, it'd be national news; instead, it's just another day in the shitty world of comcast: accountability is way down on the list compared to fees, bugging me to upgrade my service.
So still anecdotal, but hundreds of thousands of people were affected.
You are addressing the 'seen' issues, but not the 'unseen', and to paraphrase Bastiat, "[the] bad [analyst] confines himself to the visible effect; the good [analyst] takes into account both the effect that can be seen and those effects that must be foreseen".
Please address this part of my post: "none of those areas has [seen] any significant improvement in service level, cost, efficiency, or technology for many years". ISPs and cell service providers have many faults, but they have been constantly improving the service level (bandwidth); I would like to know what comparable improvements have been made with respect to electricity, sewage, potable water supplies, police protection, fire services, or other utilities. These utilities have been constantly increasing in price (at least nominally, and in most cases after correcting for inflation), while providing no improvement in the basic service.
Most utilities providers have not even been improving their back-end technologies, which would serve to reduce costs, or improve the service's availability. As I mentioned in the previous post, this is likely because of how governments use utilities' capital improvement funds as 'piggy banks', preventing infrastructure and technology upgrades.
In addition, you are not addressing any of the drought/road quality & cost/police abuse/fire department cost which I raised, and which are real problems.
> Please address this part of my post: "none of those areas has [seen] any significant improvement in service level, cost, efficiency, or technology for many years".
What improvements are you expecting? Some things don't need to change. It serves its purpose the same way it did a hundred years ago and there is nothing wrong with that.
> ISPs and cell service providers have many faults, but they have been constantly improving the service level (bandwidth)
That's the terminating equipment. The expensive part, which is the wire or fiber in the ground, hasn't changed materially in decades or more. You could easily have a municipal last mile and competing providers who supply their own terminating equipment at the endpoints.
> In addition, you are not addressing any of the drought/road quality & cost/police abuse/fire department cost which I raised, and which are real problems.
Would you like to explain how a monopoly for-profit entity can be expected to do any better? Why would they care about droughts or abuse if it isn't costing them money?
to be fair, pge did just blow up a city and completely fuck up record keeping for their gas pipelines
But... fuck comcast, their high prices, their annual price increases, their data caps, their shitty service, their missed appointments, their slow speeds. We need government owned broadband.
> Governments regularly use all of these utilities as revenue-raising 'businesses', which they consistently strip of any capital that could be used for infrastructure improvements.
Is there any evidence of this? I was unable to find anything of value in a cursory web search. I found a couple of counter-examples, such as the Enron (NYSE:ENE)
scandal of intentionally causing blackouts and brownouts.
> worst services available
In many places, e.g. DC area, electricity (PEPCO) takes a long time to be restored and is objectively bad. However, regulated utilities are bound to serve rural and otherwise unprofitable customers.
> Roads are often subsidized for truckers
How do you get your food, iPhones, and button-up shirts?
> Water is subsidized for farmers and golf courses, and this often causes everyone else to suffer droughts.
Agreed that it is suboptimal for golf courses and manufacturers (including breweries) to use disproportionate amounts of water. Farmers? Maybe if they're raising livestock or other luxury food products. Causing droughts? How?
> You have enumerated a list of the worst services available to today's consumer.
Are you being sarcastic or trolling, can't tell.
What are the worst services? Water? You need better water? You need competition for water and would like 5 companies to lay water pipes through the neighborhoods? You know strawberry flavored water, some with extra calcium ions, maybe one with beer flavor.
> Roads are often subsidized for truckers, which causes everyone else to pay higher gas taxes than they should, and suffer damaged road surfaces
Maybe we should tax truckers more. Wait, we do that. The easiest way to do it is to tax diesel fuel at the moment. Not ideal but we something is already in place.
> Police departments are poorly regulated,
Well go vote against it then.
I don't remember having even the ability to vote on how good or crappy I want my Verizon FIOS experience to be.
I don't know the financials of Chattanooga's system, but if they're losing money (when you don't count tax revenue) the price comparison isn't very useful from an economic standpoint, at least without introducing another argument like that wealthier people ought to subsidize Internet access for poorer people.
> This is exactly what economic theory predicts will happen in the absence of competition.
Well, I would expect competition to emerge in the absence of competition, if the existing firm is charging so much that competition can be profitable (and if competition isn't prohibited by force). It's true that in an actual natural monopoly (which, remember, I think is rare for Internet access) the monopoly firm has notable market power (the ability to set prices higher than marginal cost). But that market power is not unlimited, and the government solution to a natural monopoly requires the government to be both able and willing to produce at a favorable marginal cost and set prices accordingly.
> What's often ignored is the efficacy of the government getting stuff done is largely dependent on the competency of the officials. But if you have good officials, the government solution to the high speed problem is a fantastic one.
Certainly true. That would be one of the "inputs" I mentioned in my previous comment. Of course, "good officials" probably doesn't mean much more than "true Scotsman."
> Regarding the first sentence, it's possible that the optimal firm count in some communities and especially sparsely populated areas is one (i.e. an actual natural monopoly), but in most communities I would expect it top be at least two or three, since broadband can be delivered through phone lines and cable television lines (which most communities are wired for). There are obviously other feasible media, like power lines and wireless.
You literally described what we already have today. We already know how that turns out, too: horribly.
> Could you explain why you believe that last-mile infrastructure is inevitably a monopoly?
Could you explain why you think we don't already have one? DSL lost against DOCSIS.
If you want last-mile internet of a decent speed, your choice almost everywhere is cable, period.
Here's my favorite story of said "Big Boy Engineering":
http://www.jwz.org/blog/2002/11/engineering-pornography/ http://www.jwz.org/blog/2002/11/engineering-pornography/
It's about fixing a short in a power transmission line. Sounds simple, right? It involves liquid nitrogen and hundreds of people with possibility of explosions or huge oil spills. That's right, the line is suspended in pressurized oil! It goes on…
I tried to find a good pull quote, and it's basically all mind-blowing pull quotes. But here:
"Every vault also has a nipple which allows sampling of the pipe oil. They said you withdraw the oil through a thick membrane with a syringe (?). This happens monthly on all feeders in the LA area. The samples are analyzed downtown by a staff of chemists who can relate the presence of things like acetylene, butane, and benzene in the oil to arcing, coronas, and so forth. Apparently the oil chemistry is a very good indicator of the health of the segments."
>"What improvements are you expecting? Some things don't need to change. It serves its purpose the same way it did a hundred years ago and there is nothing wrong with that."
You could have said the same of steel if its quality had not improved, or airline travel if it had not gotten much cheaper, and become available to the masses. You are falling into the trap of only analyzing the 'seen', and failing to think of the 'unseen'.
>"The expensive part, which is the wire or fiber in the ground, hasn't changed materially in decades or more."
It will soon have to change if we are to have fibre on the last mile, and may change again when the technology evolves further; one of my concerns is that utilitization causes ossification, and prevents further progress, as is the case with the sewer, power, and water last miles.
>"Would you like to explain how a monopoly for-profit entity can be expected to do any better? Why would they care about droughts or abuse if it isn't costing them money?"
Thanks for setting up a false choice, I love those! I have no idea why there should be a monopoly on the purification and distribution of water.
Having private entities selling water would reduce the number of droughts, as they are likely to price according to volumetric use, and to price based on scarcity. Droughts are a problem of pricing, not of the scarcity of water; if you want a good example of how this is the case, motor vehicles never fall from the sky, and there is no shortage of them.
P.S. people are coming by and down-voting all my comments at once (I have gotten at least 25 down-votes here so far), could someone please let me know if I am being offensive, discriminatory, or going off-topic?
Just because you aren't aware of them don't mean they don't exist.
PEX is very common for new residential/commercial buildings for example. I'd be surprised if municipalities in need of water treatment plant upgrades aren't looking at technologies that weren't widely available 20 or 30 years ago when the original system was put into place.
Also, complaining about increasing price (which is modest IME) is an unusual tactic. The price would have to increase at a greater rate than inflation in order to account for the increasing concentration of wealth the past couple decades right? It's a little fuzzy for me, but I feel like that's just math. If 95% of your subscribers make less than they did two decades ago, but your per-subscriber bill is the same, then average cost is going to increase.
Also tightened environmental standards that didn't exist in 80's when the systems were put into place undoubtedly play a role in increasing costs.
I get 200amp service to my house today. It originally (in the 70's) had 100amp service. I'd call doubling the power requirements for the electrical grid quite an upgrade. Houses are most certainly increasing in size. Not to mention 20 years ago you didn't have the option to pay an extra half-cent per kWh to ensure the electric company purchased enough renewable power wholesale to cover your usage.
I pay all my utilities online with auto-pay. There's another upgrade.
The police of today are most certainly better equipped, better prepared, better trained, respond quicker and there are more of them. I don't agree with all of that but it's what the voters want. All that costs money, and it's most definitely different today than a couple decades ago.
Are roads worse today? I feel like they're not. At least not where I live (which is in Dallas proper where the average home is around 2,000sqft and $150K, so not some rich enclave). I feel like we spend too much money on roads in fact. The new 635 toll-road seems a terrible waste of money when we could have just had a DART (commuter train) run West/East along it (there are almost no West/East running lines in Dallas, which makes the public rail system not all that useful for many).
I can't remember the last time I drove on a gravel road. Even the state parks are fully paved. That definitely wasn't the case 30 years ago.
So sure, we pay more today than we did decades ago. Changing subscriber-base, voter priorities and deploying the exact tech you're complaining doesn't exist is a big part of it.
This feels like an argument of "Government Bad! Business Good!" at this point to be honest.
Like saying: "Most utilities providers have not even been improving their back-end technologies, which would serve to reduce costs, or improve the service's availability."
Where do you get that from? Anecdotally that seems far from the truth considering the payment options and Customer Service available to people these days.
So they're not tearing up the roads every few years to upgrade the pipe. That's a good thing. They are OTOH purchasing more efficient fleet vehicles. Even in gas loving TX it's common for Municipal vehicles to run on LNG. My Dad as a TxDOT employee working on the Galveston ferry has been through a lot of training. I can personally guarantee you TxDOT is not the same agency or using the same tech they were 30 years ago. Except where it's not broken.
You appear to want to fix what isn't broken.