9 ms·

I get what they're trying to accomplish, we all want faster more reliable service, but as comparison is anyone 100% happy with their utility (power, water, etc)

I get what they're trying to accomplish, we all want faster more reliable service, but as comparison is anyone 100% happy with their utility (power, water, etc)? That's where this is headed.

relaytheurgency 12y ago
Before I got Google Fiber I was definitely happier with my water and electric than my service provider. Now I am probably actually still happier, but I don't have too many complaints about Google Fiber. I can't think of the last time I had an issue with my water! It's got 100% uptime.
- res0nat0r 12y ago
  The issue most here are not mentioning is the sad state of affairs of much of the US public infrastructure. I wonder how old the pipes running to your house are and how long ago they should have been upgraded? This is also a possibility if internet becomes a utility.
  - relaytheurgency 12y ago
    Well, it doesn't really matter how old the pipes are as long as they continue working and provide water that meets the EPA/state standards for health. The US public water system is, for all intents and purposes, a miracle that most people do not even think about. They just rely on it. It's also your duty to replace the pipes leading up to your own house off of the mains in most cases, so I guess take it up with your landlord.
    - vonmoltke 12y ago
      > Well, it doesn't really matter how old the pipes are as long as they continue working and provide water that meets the EPA/state standards for health. Actually, it does. Water loss due to deteriorating infrastructure is becoming a significant issue as water supplies get strained. The EPA estimates that the average US water system loses 16% of their water during distribution, and about 75% of that can be prevented or recovered by maintaining and upgrading the systems.[1] Here in Texas this is a serious issue because our reservoirs are increasingly strained by population growth. [1] http://water.epa.gov/type/drink/pws/smallsystems/upload/epa816f13002.pdf http://water.epa.gov/type/drink/pws/smallsystems/upload/epa8...
  - freehunter 12y ago
    Do you remember the other day when the FCC changed the definition of broadband to 25/3? If they can continue to do that, we would no longer be beholden to the ISPs upgrading out of the goodness of their hearts. They would upgrade whenever their regulating agency told them they had to.
  - forgotpasswd3x 12y ago
    Uh, there's already a lot of network infrastructure that's the equivalent of "old pipes" that should have been upgraded long ago, at least in my area. I can't see why you'd expect this to make it any worse than it already is.
mjs2600 12y ago
I have a lot less issues with all of my utilities combined than I have with comcast...
markbao 12y ago
Depends on where you live, I suppose. I have zero problems with my ConEd power and whoever supplies my water, and I find the pricing pretty reasonable. My power supplier even offers different energy sources to use other than the standard one, which honestly blows my mind. And then I call into Time Warner spend more time trying to get them to understand what I'm talking about than I've ever spent on the phone with my other utilities.
- tptacek 12y ago
  I also have generally positive experiences with power company employees. On the other hand: i. I can't fire my power company, nor can I ever really expect to gain that ability. ii. As nice and hardworking as the power company employees are, there's still only one main power run for the 1/8th of Oak Park that I live in, and any time a tree goes down in the alley along that run, or a squirrel detonates a transformer along it, I lose power for 6-8 hours. My block has a truly awful electric service uptime. It's not poor customer service I worry about. It's a total lack of infrastructure investment.
  - pluma 12y ago
    Wait, you can't chose between different power companies in the US? Even in socialist Europe that isn't normally a problem. I can choose between at least a dozen different providers of electricity, and at least half a dozen providers of Internet and landline telephone access. And that's just in the rural parts of the country. Granted most of the infrastructure is centralized, but that doesn't stop competition on extending it. Maybe the problem isn't whether Internet access should be regulated as a utility service but simply that utility services in the US are crap?
    - lutorm 12y ago
      You used to be able to choose. Then http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_electricity_crisis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_electricity_crisis happened.
      - 12y ago
mey 12y ago
I'm actually very happy with my power, water and sewer. The only utility I currently hate is garbage which I blame mostly on WM.
punkcoder 12y ago
When I call the water company, I don't talk to some guy in India who has never heard of my state, let alone my city. When the power and water go out, the service isn't great but compared to my internet provider it would be a huge improvement. YMMV.
- brandonmenc 12y ago
  I don't think net neutrality will dictate that support staff be located in America.
  - sliverstorm 12y ago
    No, but part of the idea is that you will get small local providers again (like you did fifteen to twenty years ago), and five-man companies don't usually outsource tech support to India.
    - briandear 12y ago
      That ship has sailed. There's be no margin in the business. That's why you don't have little water utility startups popping up everywhere.
  - punkcoder 12y ago
    The statement was more in the direction that when it's a utility local people / municipality are responsible for the maintenance of that system, local people means that there is a far greater chance of getting local, mostly because there is someone local with _responsibility_ for keeping it working.
    - brandonmenc 12y ago
      I worked at a utility, the phone company (GTE), in the mid-90s. Our call centers, while domestic, were certainly not local. Customers in Muskegon, MI were always shocked that we didn't know what local street they were talking about. How could we? We were in Pennsylvania. I don't think anyone has run a truly local call support center, for anything, in decades.
moskie 12y ago
Maybe not 100%. But whatever percent it is, it is a higher percent than the one I attribute to Comcast.
HelloMcFly 12y ago
I'm not 100% happy with my utility companies, but I'm 500% more satisfied with them than any cable company I've ever had.
- cranklin 12y ago
  I can dump my cable company if they piss me off. I can't do that with my utility companies
  - lutorm 12y ago
    I can too, and then not have cable. At least with the utility company, I can put up PV panels and live off grid.
    - VLM 12y ago
      Say goodbye to your occupancy permit, which will probably cause mortgage default. You won't be kicked out of your house for canceling cable.
    - cranklin 12y ago
      as if electricity is the only utility, right?
  - fletchowns 12y ago
    For a lot of people, they can't dump their cable company if they piss them off, because that's the only option they have available.
  - rkuykendall-com 12y ago
    Most Americans can't dump their cable company.
  - bratsche 12y ago
    In my area, the cable provider is the only one that offers somewhat fast speeds. Whenever they overcharge me and I spend hours sorting it out (this has happened a few times) with them I wish I could switch, but DSL is just not fast enough for working remotely. I don't have other options for all my other utilities, but so far they have overcharged me and screwed things up royally exactly zero times.
ceejayoz 12y ago
> I get what they're trying to accomplish, we all want faster more reliable service, but as comparison is anyone 100% happy with their utility (power, water, etc)? I am. My water is clean and I've never had an outage. My power is reasonably cheap and quite reliable. The state doesn't allow either one to raise rates exorbitantly from year to year, either, and despite that both have made major upgrades to their facilities in the last few years.
- spiritplumber 12y ago
  I'm surprised at how reliable utilities are in America. I was in a low income neighborhood in San Antonio during university, and had maybe 2 blackouts in 3 years.
  - pluma 12y ago
    Where are you from exactly? I live in Europe and 2 blackouts in 3 years would still be an outrage. (To be fair, we have less natural disasters.)
    - soccerdave 12y ago
      The length of the blackout would probably need to be given to provide some perspective. 2 30 minute blackouts would be much easier to deal with than 1 3 day blackout.
    - sliverstorm 12y ago
      We're missing a lot of context. San Antonio is in Texas, which means these could have been rolling blackouts, one of the last-ditch efforts employed by power companies during record summer temperature spikes (which translate to monumental load spikes in the form of A/C)
      - mbreese 12y ago
        Or it could be weather related (like most outages), or a bad transformer, or a car running into a pole, or a ton of things... So, you're right that we're missing a lot of context - including the duration. A 30 min outage due to an accident is very different from a 3 day outage due to a storm. And like you said, AC can be a big drain on the grid during the summer. (Disclaimer: I'm not sure what the weather in San Antonio is like...)
supergeek133 12y ago
Agree with all of you, was just trying to gauge the difference. The government regulates the utilities pretty tight, but there is also little to no room for competition in those spaces anymore either. Which is one thing that's improving service in Google Fiber markets.
Shivetya 12y ago
As in, better be damn happy with the speed you have now because you ain't going to get faster anytime soon. Well unless your lucky and someone politically connected on your street. Going back to the days before cable, when high speed was whatever the regulated its a utility phone company decided I was allowed to have There is no free lunch and regulation will just mean normalization at best, to the lowest allowed numbers. People below the allowed numbers will eventually be put on a schedule where their area will be upgraded, after meetings and such mostly all not public. You might get lucky and see movement in five years. Where they really need to be acting is mobile data. This is where the real thievery is going on. I am all for having no fast or slow lanes, but if regulation comes out dictating speeds you can guarantee the lowest allowed levels will be met with gusto
- sliverstorm 12y ago
  Going back to the days before cable, when high speed was whatever the regulated its a utility phone company decided I was allowed to have What did you get, and what did you want instead?
- bsder 12y ago
  > As in, better be damn happy with the speed you have now because you ain't going to get faster anytime soon. Yeah, well my internet speed has been stagnant in all the areas I spend decent amounts of time for basically the last 5 years anyway. Except where Google Fiber threatens to come in. So, we can revisit this question when Google Fiber is a choice for 80% of the US. And, Google fiber might be exempt because it won't be a cable provider. That would be an interesting thing, now, wouldn't it?
djrogers 12y ago
The FCC doesn't regulate power and water, what they're talking about is making to Telco regulation - AKA Title II. The same regulation that left the telephone system unchanged for near 50 years, and made it near-legal to get the cell system off the ground until dramatic changes were made. I'm very torn on this - I want net neutrality, but I have zero faith in the ability of a bunch of unelected bureaucrats to write 10,000 pages of regulations that will make things better.
benmorris 12y ago
I get what you're saying, but living in rural Indiana I could say yes basically. Our water, gas and power companies here locally are coop non profits and the employees are residents (and users themselves). The whole experience dealing with these entities are night and day when compared to say Comcast or Verizon.
amputect 12y ago
My tap water is clean and delicious and I have never, ever had a problem with it. I have never experienced an unscheduled service interruption with my water, and scheduled service interruptions are very rare and advertised well in advance. My electricity is stable and reliable, and any power outages I've experienced have been brief, and exclusively due to exceptional weather events. I'm also a Comcast customer, and I would say that I have some sort of partial or total service interruption (internet is completely gone, or set top box stops working) on average, once every other week or so. These outages are usually relatively brief (a few minutes), but at least once a year I lose one or both services for 6 hours or more. Plus the internet speed varies wildly from "high-end dialup modem" at the low end, to "significantly less than the advertised value" at the high end. Needless to say, I have never actually experienced the advertised speeds. If I got the same service from my utilities as I did from Comcast, I would end up brushing my teeth with raw sewage about once a month, and trying to toast bread would occasionally cause a power dip that would brown-out every other outlet in my house. I probably wouldn't be able to shower some nights because the cold water pressure would be unusably low, and I would have to reset every clock in my house a couple times a month. The one similarity is that I would still be unable to shop around for better service, because Comcast is the only option in my area. If you want a TLDR, it's that I would figuratively kill to get Internet service that's even just half as good as my utility service, because right now my internet service is much worse than that.
- nickff 12y ago
  Why would a lack of service by an internet provider be comparable to a utility pumping sewage? Shouldn't you be looking at water restrictions which the utilities blame on drought? This is the most similar type of event to the Comcast outage which you are describing. Both could have been prevented through better planning, capital expenditures, and forethought. If this is the comparison, both Comcast and many water providers fail, though the internet providers have gradually improving products, while the utilities do not (as far as I know). Most industries' products do not fall from the sky, yet they still manage to provide an adequate supply.
  - xamuel 12y ago
joshuaheard 12y ago
I live in Washington state where it rains constantly, buy my water bill is about $200/month. Likewise, my power bill for a family of 5 is $400 per month. My power company still uses power poles to transmit electricity, like they have done is the 1800s. Meanwhile, we lost electricity for days during the last storm. I argue that with competition, electric companies could innovate their distribution, ie bury the power lines, and the price of water would be cheaper.
bluthru 12y ago
>but as comparison is anyone 100% happy with their utility (power, water, etc)? Yes. Do you remember what happened in California when power was deregulated and Enron was causing brownouts? Compared to my private utilities (phone and home internet) I freaking love my public utilities.
bratsche 12y ago
I don't know about 100%, but I am certainly much happier with my electric, water, and gas providers than I am with my cable provider.
pnathan 12y ago
The telcos in the US are uniformly obnoxious and offensive in their delight in advertising, fees, etc, and trying to rip me off in all sorts of ways. Without a doubt, if the City Internet & Federal Mobile Phone Service were as "just works" and "no marketing" as the septic system and the water system, it would be a measurable quality of life increase. It's also worth contemplating if the brute fact of the matter is that public goods & natural monopolies (cable companies, cell towers perhaps) should be regulated as a utility. Particularly if the preferred mechanisms for interacting with a government in the US require/highly suggest the use of a computer or cell phone. If that assumption is being made (and it is), then it's not just a luxury, or even a popular service... it's becoming a common utility.
mbreese 12y ago
I have power with 99.9% reliability and my water is usually pretty good quality. The only issues I've had with water (ever) is that recently there has been so much conservation in CA that the system wasn't designed to handle (ironic, no?). So, I'd be okay with that service.
0xdeadbeefbabe 12y ago
Someone should downvote you for implying the government is not satisfying us 100%.
ForHackernews 12y ago
> is anyone 100% happy with their utility (power, water, etc)? Yes, absolutely. My water is clean, potable and available with at least 99.99% uptime. Same goes for electricity, which is only slightly less reliable (down for a few hours in a major blizzard several years ago) If my electricity were slightly cheaper, that'd be nice, but it's still less than half my cable/internet bill. Power is already deregulated here, so if I really cared, I could shop around for a cheaper rate, or for electricity generated from renewable sources.

I get what they're trying to accomplish, we all want faster more reliable service, but as comparison is anyone 100% happy with their utility (power, water, etc)? That's where this is headed.

relaytheurgency 12y ago

Before I got Google Fiber I was definitely happier with my water and electric than my service provider. Now I am probably actually still happier, but I don't have too many complaints about Google Fiber. I can't think of the last time I had an issue with my water! It's got 100% uptime.

res0nat0r 12y ago
The issue most here are not mentioning is the sad state of affairs of much of the US public infrastructure. I wonder how old the pipes running to your house are and how long ago they should have been upgraded? This is also a possibility if internet becomes a utility.
- relaytheurgency 12y ago
  Well, it doesn't really matter how old the pipes are as long as they continue working and provide water that meets the EPA/state standards for health. The US public water system is, for all intents and purposes, a miracle that most people do not even think about. They just rely on it. It's also your duty to replace the pipes leading up to your own house off of the mains in most cases, so I guess take it up with your landlord.
  - vonmoltke 12y ago
    > Well, it doesn't really matter how old the pipes are as long as they continue working and provide water that meets the EPA/state standards for health. Actually, it does. Water loss due to deteriorating infrastructure is becoming a significant issue as water supplies get strained. The EPA estimates that the average US water system loses 16% of their water during distribution, and about 75% of that can be prevented or recovered by maintaining and upgrading the systems.[1] Here in Texas this is a serious issue because our reservoirs are increasingly strained by population growth. [1] http://water.epa.gov/type/drink/pws/smallsystems/upload/epa816f13002.pdf http://water.epa.gov/type/drink/pws/smallsystems/upload/epa8...
- freehunter 12y ago
  Do you remember the other day when the FCC changed the definition of broadband to 25/3? If they can continue to do that, we would no longer be beholden to the ISPs upgrading out of the goodness of their hearts. They would upgrade whenever their regulating agency told them they had to.
- forgotpasswd3x 12y ago
  Uh, there's already a lot of network infrastructure that's the equivalent of "old pipes" that should have been upgraded long ago, at least in my area. I can't see why you'd expect this to make it any worse than it already is.

mjs2600 12y ago

I have a lot less issues with all of my utilities combined than I have with comcast...

markbao 12y ago

Depends on where you live, I suppose. I have zero problems with my ConEd power and whoever supplies my water, and I find the pricing pretty reasonable. My power supplier even offers different energy sources to use other than the standard one, which honestly blows my mind. And then I call into Time Warner spend more time trying to get them to understand what I'm talking about than I've ever spent on the phone with my other utilities.

tptacek 12y ago
I also have generally positive experiences with power company employees. On the other hand: i. I can't fire my power company, nor can I ever really expect to gain that ability. ii. As nice and hardworking as the power company employees are, there's still only one main power run for the 1/8th of Oak Park that I live in, and any time a tree goes down in the alley along that run, or a squirrel detonates a transformer along it, I lose power for 6-8 hours. My block has a truly awful electric service uptime. It's not poor customer service I worry about. It's a total lack of infrastructure investment.
- pluma 12y ago
  Wait, you can't chose between different power companies in the US? Even in socialist Europe that isn't normally a problem. I can choose between at least a dozen different providers of electricity, and at least half a dozen providers of Internet and landline telephone access. And that's just in the rural parts of the country. Granted most of the infrastructure is centralized, but that doesn't stop competition on extending it. Maybe the problem isn't whether Internet access should be regulated as a utility service but simply that utility services in the US are crap?
  - lutorm 12y ago
    You used to be able to choose. Then http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_electricity_crisis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_electricity_crisis happened.
    - 12y ago

mey 12y ago

I'm actually very happy with my power, water and sewer. The only utility I currently hate is garbage which I blame mostly on WM.

punkcoder 12y ago

When I call the water company, I don't talk to some guy in India who has never heard of my state, let alone my city. When the power and water go out, the service isn't great but compared to my internet provider it would be a huge improvement. YMMV.

brandonmenc 12y ago
I don't think net neutrality will dictate that support staff be located in America.
- sliverstorm 12y ago
  No, but part of the idea is that you will get small local providers again (like you did fifteen to twenty years ago), and five-man companies don't usually outsource tech support to India.
  - briandear 12y ago
    That ship has sailed. There's be no margin in the business. That's why you don't have little water utility startups popping up everywhere.
- punkcoder 12y ago
  The statement was more in the direction that when it's a utility local people / municipality are responsible for the maintenance of that system, local people means that there is a far greater chance of getting local, mostly because there is someone local with _responsibility_ for keeping it working.
  - brandonmenc 12y ago
    I worked at a utility, the phone company (GTE), in the mid-90s. Our call centers, while domestic, were certainly not local. Customers in Muskegon, MI were always shocked that we didn't know what local street they were talking about. How could we? We were in Pennsylvania. I don't think anyone has run a truly local call support center, for anything, in decades.

moskie 12y ago

Maybe not 100%. But whatever percent it is, it is a higher percent than the one I attribute to Comcast.

HelloMcFly 12y ago

I'm not 100% happy with my utility companies, but I'm 500% more satisfied with them than any cable company I've ever had.

cranklin 12y ago
I can dump my cable company if they piss me off. I can't do that with my utility companies
- lutorm 12y ago
  I can too, and then not have cable. At least with the utility company, I can put up PV panels and live off grid.
  - VLM 12y ago
    Say goodbye to your occupancy permit, which will probably cause mortgage default. You won't be kicked out of your house for canceling cable.
  - cranklin 12y ago
    as if electricity is the only utility, right?
- fletchowns 12y ago
  For a lot of people, they can't dump their cable company if they piss them off, because that's the only option they have available.
- rkuykendall-com 12y ago
  Most Americans can't dump their cable company.
- bratsche 12y ago
  In my area, the cable provider is the only one that offers somewhat fast speeds. Whenever they overcharge me and I spend hours sorting it out (this has happened a few times) with them I wish I could switch, but DSL is just not fast enough for working remotely. I don't have other options for all my other utilities, but so far they have overcharged me and screwed things up royally exactly zero times.

ceejayoz 12y ago

> I get what they're trying to accomplish, we all want faster more reliable service, but as comparison is anyone 100% happy with their utility (power, water, etc)? I am. My water is clean and I've never had an outage. My power is reasonably cheap and quite reliable. The state doesn't allow either one to raise rates exorbitantly from year to year, either, and despite that both have made major upgrades to their facilities in the last few years.

spiritplumber 12y ago
I'm surprised at how reliable utilities are in America. I was in a low income neighborhood in San Antonio during university, and had maybe 2 blackouts in 3 years.
- pluma 12y ago
  Where are you from exactly? I live in Europe and 2 blackouts in 3 years would still be an outrage. (To be fair, we have less natural disasters.)
  - soccerdave 12y ago
    The length of the blackout would probably need to be given to provide some perspective. 2 30 minute blackouts would be much easier to deal with than 1 3 day blackout.
  - sliverstorm 12y ago
    We're missing a lot of context. San Antonio is in Texas, which means these could have been rolling blackouts, one of the last-ditch efforts employed by power companies during record summer temperature spikes (which translate to monumental load spikes in the form of A/C)
    - mbreese 12y ago
      Or it could be weather related (like most outages), or a bad transformer, or a car running into a pole, or a ton of things... So, you're right that we're missing a lot of context - including the duration. A 30 min outage due to an accident is very different from a 3 day outage due to a storm. And like you said, AC can be a big drain on the grid during the summer. (Disclaimer: I'm not sure what the weather in San Antonio is like...)

supergeek133 12y ago

Agree with all of you, was just trying to gauge the difference. The government regulates the utilities pretty tight, but there is also little to no room for competition in those spaces anymore either. Which is one thing that's improving service in Google Fiber markets.

Shivetya 12y ago

As in, better be damn happy with the speed you have now because you ain't going to get faster anytime soon. Well unless your lucky and someone politically connected on your street. Going back to the days before cable, when high speed was whatever the regulated its a utility phone company decided I was allowed to have There is no free lunch and regulation will just mean normalization at best, to the lowest allowed numbers. People below the allowed numbers will eventually be put on a schedule where their area will be upgraded, after meetings and such mostly all not public. You might get lucky and see movement in five years. Where they really need to be acting is mobile data. This is where the real thievery is going on. I am all for having no fast or slow lanes, but if regulation comes out dictating speeds you can guarantee the lowest allowed levels will be met with gusto

sliverstorm 12y ago
Going back to the days before cable, when high speed was whatever the regulated its a utility phone company decided I was allowed to have What did you get, and what did you want instead?
bsder 12y ago
> As in, better be damn happy with the speed you have now because you ain't going to get faster anytime soon. Yeah, well my internet speed has been stagnant in all the areas I spend decent amounts of time for basically the last 5 years anyway. Except where Google Fiber threatens to come in. So, we can revisit this question when Google Fiber is a choice for 80% of the US. And, Google fiber might be exempt because it won't be a cable provider. That would be an interesting thing, now, wouldn't it?

djrogers 12y ago

The FCC doesn't regulate power and water, what they're talking about is making to Telco regulation - AKA Title II. The same regulation that left the telephone system unchanged for near 50 years, and made it near-legal to get the cell system off the ground until dramatic changes were made. I'm very torn on this - I want net neutrality, but I have zero faith in the ability of a bunch of unelected bureaucrats to write 10,000 pages of regulations that will make things better.

benmorris 12y ago

I get what you're saying, but living in rural Indiana I could say yes basically. Our water, gas and power companies here locally are coop non profits and the employees are residents (and users themselves). The whole experience dealing with these entities are night and day when compared to say Comcast or Verizon.

amputect 12y ago

My tap water is clean and delicious and I have never, ever had a problem with it. I have never experienced an unscheduled service interruption with my water, and scheduled service interruptions are very rare and advertised well in advance. My electricity is stable and reliable, and any power outages I've experienced have been brief, and exclusively due to exceptional weather events. I'm also a Comcast customer, and I would say that I have some sort of partial or total service interruption (internet is completely gone, or set top box stops working) on average, once every other week or so. These outages are usually relatively brief (a few minutes), but at least once a year I lose one or both services for 6 hours or more. Plus the internet speed varies wildly from "high-end dialup modem" at the low end, to "significantly less than the advertised value" at the high end. Needless to say, I have never actually experienced the advertised speeds. If I got the same service from my utilities as I did from Comcast, I would end up brushing my teeth with raw sewage about once a month, and trying to toast bread would occasionally cause a power dip that would brown-out every other outlet in my house. I probably wouldn't be able to shower some nights because the cold water pressure would be unusably low, and I would have to reset every clock in my house a couple times a month. The one similarity is that I would still be unable to shop around for better service, because Comcast is the only option in my area. If you want a TLDR, it's that I would figuratively kill to get Internet service that's even just half as good as my utility service, because right now my internet service is much worse than that.

nickff 12y ago
Why would a lack of service by an internet provider be comparable to a utility pumping sewage? Shouldn't you be looking at water restrictions which the utilities blame on drought? This is the most similar type of event to the Comcast outage which you are describing. Both could have been prevented through better planning, capital expenditures, and forethought. If this is the comparison, both Comcast and many water providers fail, though the internet providers have gradually improving products, while the utilities do not (as far as I know). Most industries' products do not fall from the sky, yet they still manage to provide an adequate supply.
- xamuel 12y ago

joshuaheard 12y ago

I live in Washington state where it rains constantly, buy my water bill is about $200/month. Likewise, my power bill for a family of 5 is $400 per month. My power company still uses power poles to transmit electricity, like they have done is the 1800s. Meanwhile, we lost electricity for days during the last storm. I argue that with competition, electric companies could innovate their distribution, ie bury the power lines, and the price of water would be cheaper.

bluthru 12y ago

>but as comparison is anyone 100% happy with their utility (power, water, etc)? Yes. Do you remember what happened in California when power was deregulated and Enron was causing brownouts? Compared to my private utilities (phone and home internet) I freaking love my public utilities.

bratsche 12y ago

I don't know about 100%, but I am certainly much happier with my electric, water, and gas providers than I am with my cable provider.

pnathan 12y ago

The telcos in the US are uniformly obnoxious and offensive in their delight in advertising, fees, etc, and trying to rip me off in all sorts of ways. Without a doubt, if the City Internet & Federal Mobile Phone Service were as "just works" and "no marketing" as the septic system and the water system, it would be a measurable quality of life increase. It's also worth contemplating if the brute fact of the matter is that public goods & natural monopolies (cable companies, cell towers perhaps) should be regulated as a utility. Particularly if the preferred mechanisms for interacting with a government in the US require/highly suggest the use of a computer or cell phone. If that assumption is being made (and it is), then it's not just a luxury, or even a popular service... it's becoming a common utility.

mbreese 12y ago

I have power with 99.9% reliability and my water is usually pretty good quality. The only issues I've had with water (ever) is that recently there has been so much conservation in CA that the system wasn't designed to handle (ironic, no?). So, I'd be okay with that service.

0xdeadbeefbabe 12y ago

Someone should downvote you for implying the government is not satisfying us 100%.

ForHackernews 12y ago

> is anyone 100% happy with their utility (power, water, etc)? Yes, absolutely. My water is clean, potable and available with at least 99.99% uptime. Same goes for electricity, which is only slightly less reliable (down for a few hours in a major blizzard several years ago) If my electricity were slightly cheaper, that'd be nice, but it's still less than half my cable/internet bill. Power is already deregulated here, so if I really cared, I could shop around for a cheaper rate, or for electricity generated from renewable sources.