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> Right now, if you're an ISP startup and you identify some neighborhoods where it would make sense to build fiber, most cities won't let you. Instead, to build

> Right now, if you're an ISP startup and you identify some neighborhoods where it would make sense to build fiber, most cities won't let you. Instead, to build anywhere, you have to build everywhere. Which is a good thing, because otherwise you wind up with communities which are further disadvantaged in access to information, education and work. The solution is for the Government (federal, state, or municipal) to provide funding to build out into poor/remote areas (but still require it), not to throw your hands up and suggest that it is OK to exclude entire communities from what is quite possibly the most important technical development of the past couple of decades.

rayiner 12y ago
There is no free lunch. People in more expensive neighborhoods aren't willing to pay more just because the city requires build-out to poor neighborhoods. All build-out requirements do is make the economic case for building fiber even worse, and the end result is that nobody gets fiber. The digital divide issue is much more cheaply solved by subsidizing wireless service for poor people. You don't need fiber to access Wikipedia, submit job applications, etc.
- venomsnake 12y ago
  > The digital divide issue is much more cheaply solved by subsidizing wireless service for poor people. That is completely wrong. Wireless is completely useless in its current form. I burn through 4-5 TB of traffic per month. Nothing beats wire to the home. Municipal owned last miles funded with property taxes is very nice way to redistribute some income, create work and provide ISPs with incentive to do their stuff. And ISPs just hook to them. I think that last miles connections should not be owned by other than the connected property's owner or society.
  - rayiner 12y ago
    > Wireless is completely useless in its current form. We're talking about subsidies to the poor to access the informational content of the internet. The vast majority of that is text or low-resolution video. I don't think it's a good use of public money to subsidize high-bandwidth games and entertainment. > Municipal owned last miles funded with property taxes is very nice way to redistribute some income Municipalities are already facing the prospect of having to hike property taxes to pay for existing obligations. Shit, e.g. Chicago won't even pay to replace all the lead pipes it put in decades ago which are leaching poison into peoples' drinking water! There's so many higher priorities that are underfunded before "multiple Netflix streams for everyone."
    - venomsnake 12y ago
      > We're talking about subsidies to the poor to access the informational content of the internet. I don't think it's a good use of public money to subsidize high-bandwidth games and entertainment. Have you seen the size of Visual Studio lately. Or photo shop. Or Linux installs. Or their ability to have a normal cloud backup.
      - rayiner 12y ago
        Poor people can afford Visual Studio or Photoshop? Cloud backup for what, so they can access their data from home or work?
        venomsnake 12y ago
        Both VS and Creative Suite have free/trial version. Cloud backup for not losing accumulated photos/videos and memories. Of course a poor guy would have great use of all those online courses he will access trough wifi, if he cannot obtain the needed software.
        rayiner 12y ago
        VS Express 2010 is a 800 meg download. So 15-20 minute download on LTE, for something you'll use for months or years. Even 2013 is only a one-to-two hour download over LTE. It'd be far cheaper for the government to just pay for the LTE bandwidth for the small number of people who will avail themselves of these things than to build fiber out to everyone hoping a few will do so.
      - EpicEng 12y ago
        So...it takes longer to download? Who is in such a rush to download an IDE that they will be significantly disadvantaged of they can't do it in under 15 minutes?
  - vxNsr 12y ago
    You're an edge case, even in my home which has 7+ users who stream and torrent we rarely hit 1tb. (What I'm about to say is gonna be unpopular, but:) Most importantly, there is no reason why the rich should subsidize the poor's porn and movie addiction. If you want those types of amenities make more money and make it lucrative for a company to bring you the services that they require.
- leereeves 12y ago
  > People in more expensive neighborhoods aren't willing to pay more The government specializes in making people do things they "aren't willing to do".
  - deleted 12y ago
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    - deleted 12y ago
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- chimeracoder 12y ago
  > People in more expensive neighborhoods aren't willing to pay more just because the city requires build-out to poor neighborhoods. They may very well be in some cities/towns; this isn't fundamentally different from them paying more in taxes to subsidize other services that are used equally by all residents. There's so much regional variability on this that it makes more sense for the FCC to allow cities and towns the right to determine this for themselves. If constituents are unhappy with the results, they can raise the issue at a town hall or with the city council, which is a far lower bar than trying to change FCC policy.
  - rhino369 12y ago
    The problem is they already have cable internet incumbents who can price below the new fiber with you make the fiber more expensive. And the fiber companies know this and do the math. This sort of subsidy for poor areas worked when there as a telephone monopoly. Well there isn't a monopoly anymore so you can't just make customer eat your price no matter what.
    - AnthonyMouse 12y ago
      It seems like a duopoly is about the worst possible market you can have. Monopolies basically have to be regulated (or government operated, or broken up), but at least monopolies have economics of scale and can justify research spending like Bell Labs. A duopoly doesn't give you any kind of vigorous competition but it still doubles all the fixed costs by requiring two networks to be built and maintained and then gives each provider a disincentive to invest in anything its competitor could benefit from.
- vertex-four 12y ago
  > You don't need fiber to access Wikipedia, submit job applications, etc. You do need a decent, reliable connection to access video-based educational materials (which form the bulk of many MOOCs), and more so to watch livestreamed conferences and tutorials. Do you plan to force mobile phone networks to provide virtually-unlimited bandwidth on top of supporting tethering when they're already struggling with physical bandwidth issues as it stands? The rest of the developed world manages to provide high-speed (>50Mbps) Internet to at least almost the full population of their major cities (ignoring rural areas for now), with plenty of competition, so I don't really see why the US can't.
  - rayiner 12y ago
    The bandwidth used by a whiteboard + audio stream is minimal. The government could easily pay market rates for the requisite wireless bandwidth.
    - vertex-four 12y ago
      > The bandwidth used by a whiteboard + audio stream is minimal. Might be the case in theory, but I've yet to get a WebEx or Youtube live stream working reliably over 3G from my own home. Paying market rates doesn't help when the infrastructure is already struggling to deal with current, unsubsidised load. 3G/4G based Internet is a dead end in reality, barring huge technical leaps.
      - rayiner 12y ago
        Existing 4G networks are plenty fast for educational streaming, and the additional load from a few subsidized users watching MOOCs isn't going to break the bank. Take a place like downtown Wilmington, DE, the kind of city that would be a key target for such a program. On T-Mobile, I'd regularly get 8-15 mbps. Your argument ignores a key demographic statistic: 80% of people below the poverty level already have cell phones, while under 60% have computers.[1] Given trends in PC-use, that disparity is going to increase, not decrease. Subsidizing cell phones is a much better fit for the social trends in poor communities. [1] http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/terence-p-jeffrey/census-americans-poverty-typically-have-cell-phones-computers-tvs http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/terence-p-jeffrey/census....

rayiner 12y ago

There is no free lunch. People in more expensive neighborhoods aren't willing to pay more just because the city requires build-out to poor neighborhoods. All build-out requirements do is make the economic case for building fiber even worse, and the end result is that nobody gets fiber. The digital divide issue is much more cheaply solved by subsidizing wireless service for poor people. You don't need fiber to access Wikipedia, submit job applications, etc.

venomsnake 12y ago
> The digital divide issue is much more cheaply solved by subsidizing wireless service for poor people. That is completely wrong. Wireless is completely useless in its current form. I burn through 4-5 TB of traffic per month. Nothing beats wire to the home. Municipal owned last miles funded with property taxes is very nice way to redistribute some income, create work and provide ISPs with incentive to do their stuff. And ISPs just hook to them. I think that last miles connections should not be owned by other than the connected property's owner or society.
- rayiner 12y ago
  > Wireless is completely useless in its current form. We're talking about subsidies to the poor to access the informational content of the internet. The vast majority of that is text or low-resolution video. I don't think it's a good use of public money to subsidize high-bandwidth games and entertainment. > Municipal owned last miles funded with property taxes is very nice way to redistribute some income Municipalities are already facing the prospect of having to hike property taxes to pay for existing obligations. Shit, e.g. Chicago won't even pay to replace all the lead pipes it put in decades ago which are leaching poison into peoples' drinking water! There's so many higher priorities that are underfunded before "multiple Netflix streams for everyone."
  - venomsnake 12y ago
    > We're talking about subsidies to the poor to access the informational content of the internet. I don't think it's a good use of public money to subsidize high-bandwidth games and entertainment. Have you seen the size of Visual Studio lately. Or photo shop. Or Linux installs. Or their ability to have a normal cloud backup.
    - rayiner 12y ago
      Poor people can afford Visual Studio or Photoshop? Cloud backup for what, so they can access their data from home or work?
      - venomsnake 12y ago
        Both VS and Creative Suite have free/trial version. Cloud backup for not losing accumulated photos/videos and memories. Of course a poor guy would have great use of all those online courses he will access trough wifi, if he cannot obtain the needed software.
        rayiner 12y ago
        VS Express 2010 is a 800 meg download. So 15-20 minute download on LTE, for something you'll use for months or years. Even 2013 is only a one-to-two hour download over LTE. It'd be far cheaper for the government to just pay for the LTE bandwidth for the small number of people who will avail themselves of these things than to build fiber out to everyone hoping a few will do so.
    - EpicEng 12y ago
      So...it takes longer to download? Who is in such a rush to download an IDE that they will be significantly disadvantaged of they can't do it in under 15 minutes?
- vxNsr 12y ago
  You're an edge case, even in my home which has 7+ users who stream and torrent we rarely hit 1tb. (What I'm about to say is gonna be unpopular, but:) Most importantly, there is no reason why the rich should subsidize the poor's porn and movie addiction. If you want those types of amenities make more money and make it lucrative for a company to bring you the services that they require.
leereeves 12y ago
> People in more expensive neighborhoods aren't willing to pay more The government specializes in making people do things they "aren't willing to do".
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
chimeracoder 12y ago
> People in more expensive neighborhoods aren't willing to pay more just because the city requires build-out to poor neighborhoods. They may very well be in some cities/towns; this isn't fundamentally different from them paying more in taxes to subsidize other services that are used equally by all residents. There's so much regional variability on this that it makes more sense for the FCC to allow cities and towns the right to determine this for themselves. If constituents are unhappy with the results, they can raise the issue at a town hall or with the city council, which is a far lower bar than trying to change FCC policy.
- rhino369 12y ago
  The problem is they already have cable internet incumbents who can price below the new fiber with you make the fiber more expensive. And the fiber companies know this and do the math. This sort of subsidy for poor areas worked when there as a telephone monopoly. Well there isn't a monopoly anymore so you can't just make customer eat your price no matter what.
  - AnthonyMouse 12y ago
    It seems like a duopoly is about the worst possible market you can have. Monopolies basically have to be regulated (or government operated, or broken up), but at least monopolies have economics of scale and can justify research spending like Bell Labs. A duopoly doesn't give you any kind of vigorous competition but it still doubles all the fixed costs by requiring two networks to be built and maintained and then gives each provider a disincentive to invest in anything its competitor could benefit from.
vertex-four 12y ago
> You don't need fiber to access Wikipedia, submit job applications, etc. You do need a decent, reliable connection to access video-based educational materials (which form the bulk of many MOOCs), and more so to watch livestreamed conferences and tutorials. Do you plan to force mobile phone networks to provide virtually-unlimited bandwidth on top of supporting tethering when they're already struggling with physical bandwidth issues as it stands? The rest of the developed world manages to provide high-speed (>50Mbps) Internet to at least almost the full population of their major cities (ignoring rural areas for now), with plenty of competition, so I don't really see why the US can't.
- rayiner 12y ago
  The bandwidth used by a whiteboard + audio stream is minimal. The government could easily pay market rates for the requisite wireless bandwidth.
  - vertex-four 12y ago
    > The bandwidth used by a whiteboard + audio stream is minimal. Might be the case in theory, but I've yet to get a WebEx or Youtube live stream working reliably over 3G from my own home. Paying market rates doesn't help when the infrastructure is already struggling to deal with current, unsubsidised load. 3G/4G based Internet is a dead end in reality, barring huge technical leaps.
    - rayiner 12y ago
      Existing 4G networks are plenty fast for educational streaming, and the additional load from a few subsidized users watching MOOCs isn't going to break the bank. Take a place like downtown Wilmington, DE, the kind of city that would be a key target for such a program. On T-Mobile, I'd regularly get 8-15 mbps. Your argument ignores a key demographic statistic: 80% of people below the poverty level already have cell phones, while under 60% have computers.[1] Given trends in PC-use, that disparity is going to increase, not decrease. Subsidizing cell phones is a much better fit for the social trends in poor communities. [1] http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/terence-p-jeffrey/census-americans-poverty-typically-have-cell-phones-computers-tvs http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/terence-p-jeffrey/census....