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Municipal Networks as Alternative to Commercial Broadband?
"Universally, it seems, people get better service and prices when such networks are implemented. It also forces telecom companies operating in the area to offer better service and prices as well, in short, to compete. But it's also increased companies' lobbying efforts against such municipal activity and it's not hard to see why such companies like AT&T Broadband, Charter Communications (controlled by Microsoft), and Qwest don't like it."
Not many municipalities are saavy enough to think about deploying this sort of infrastructure, however. For those in that situation, what kind of lobbying efforts must a municipality put together before village/town/city officials will take notice? If the government does notice, what kind of arguments should be made to convince them that it might be worthwhile to make such an undertaking?
This might be the only way to get broadband out there faster. The way it is today, service providers are stuck in a corner. They know the demand is out there for broadband. People DO want it, for the most part. They also know that broadband (DSL, for example), has certain requirements like distance which can hinder performance.
So if I live too far from the main DSL switch building, too bad for me! Also, broadband is dependent on the physical characteristics of a customer zone. If I live in an area with old cable networks and nasty phone lines... that just adds to list of what must be upgraded.
So the service providers must be content for now in offering to the few. (I live in a very snazzy community with a lot of money. All of them would buy broadband, yet nobody can get it. So even with guaranteed customers (and hundreds of them), it still might not be profitable!)
Having municipal networks would really bring broadband out. I'm all for it. If we let the markets do it themselves, it'll take years. Not that municipal networks would suddenly spring up overnight, but they would guarantee more broadband (significantly so) and would guarantee a standard and central office from which others could branch themselves.
Having government doing stuff private businesses normally do can have very good effects in certain situations...
The next comment I write will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
Right after I read it I was really excited about this idea. Get out from under Verizon? You betcha!
But, during the (10 second) interval it took between when I clicked "post comment" and when the textbox finally appeared, I rethought. Provide to whom? As a gov't service they can't discriminate. Which is great for us Linux users--no more crappy DHCP/VPN-disabled junk. But pretty sucky for the administrators who have to have configs available for everything from Win98 to VMS to OS2 to BeOS.
Of course, in actual practice they'd only provide service for the "popular" OS's. Which defeats the whole purpose of having a public utility in the first place.
For the love of God, Covad, run a damn line to my house so I can get Speakeasy! Or at least give me a estimate of when you CAN do it so I know how long the wait will be.
324006
They shouldn't do this for the same reason they shouldn't be installing cable tv services, or telephone services, cell phone networks, or movie theaters: these are non-essential services which the private sector is willing and able to provide, and which governments have little experience or expertise with. The only thing governments should be providing for us are public goods which the private sector cannot or will not provide us.
Further, I have little confidence in the ability of a municipal or other government to provide efficient, inexpensive Internet (or other) services, and I can think of many more things I would rather have them provide or improve. If the government really feels a need to provide their citizens with connectivity I think it is best done with a limited number of Internet kiosks at places like libraries, city halls, etc, but I would vote against anybody who would suggest that providing more than this is the job of our government.
The city of Lebanon, Oh has had great success using their system. It's run by the city's Electrical department for Cable TV & reading electric meters. They added high speed internet access - that's working well also. Of course, the local cable companies hate it - prices are only slightly cheaper, but profits go to the city to improve the service. The City is also looking into offering local phone service as well.
Envy my 5 digit Slashdot User ID!
Right now in many areas ISPs must be in bed with the local Bell monopoly, or use a DSL provider who may not be around tomorrow. If the county I was in provided such a network for any two points in the county to talk to each other (read not internet connection) then I would tunnel to my local ISP for my internet connection. This could also let people telecommute by tunneling to the company they work at (if you work in the same county you reside in, or the adjacent and they have an agreement).
Sounds like a win to me. Especially since the local Bell monopolies won't loose anything, just not get control of another market. Sign me up!
"The only thing governments should be providing for us are public goods which the private sector cannot or will not provide us."
Maybe downtown Seattle has a lot of choices, but out here near the sticks I have exactly one broadband choice: Verizon. People actually IN the sticks have zero options.
324006
Plus, the US Gov't doesn't have the greatest track record on building things on-time or on-budget, nor on keeping things in shape.
I'd rather see more Gov't incentives for private companies to build private infrastructure and Gov't regulations to insure consumers are protected.
Karma: Bored. (Thinking about resurrecting the "Anyone else is an imposter" joke.)
The experience with municipal power indicates that this is not beneficial in the long term. The municipal power systems grow to be more expensive, lower quality, poorer service than commercial power. This effect is also seen in things like the Post Office vs UPS or Fedex. At the beginning, they may be quite good, but it becomes a bureaucratic entitlement operation. Also, politics is a poor way to make strategic technology decisions. The local telephone company strategies were controlled by politicians and regulators for decades, and look how they dealt with innovation.
Much more effective is changing the regulatory and licensing cost structure so that there can be several alternatives. It is presently very expensive to get the licenses to install systems. Only the very high value streets (like office parks) are worth the cost. Elsewhere, it is limited to retrofits to pre-existing systems (cable, electric, etc.).
In my area, it is the towns with multiple alternative providers that get the best service. This has the unfortunate side effect that the towns with only one provider get the least investment and worsening service. For a while, this will widen the difference between the towns rather than reduce it. The same effect happens with monopoly municipal offerings.
There is often a problem attracting vendors to small markets. A better approach than the monopoly municipal is a non-monopoly cooperative. If the municipality makes the licensing easy for everyone, a cooperative can be set up. If the market remains very small, the coop may remain the only player. But if the market takes off, the coop knows that it must remain responsive or a commercial vendor will enter the market. Coops have been highly successful in other markets, and they co-exist well with commercial vendors. When the government remains neutral the coops that continue to provide good service thrive, the commercial operations that provide good service thrive, and the low quality vendors fail.
In my job, I deal with goverment in a few states in the Northeast. The state of Michigan as a whole seems to be leading the way in bringing their state into the networked world. Michigan is ahead of the curve with legislation to allow offices (at least at the county level, which I deal with) to not only offer services over the internet, but also charge fees allowing them to break even doing so. In the end, it doesn't cost the tax payers much. (At least that is my impression) Many customers (counties) in other states have a hard time putting information on the internet, since there is no way to pay the cost of doing so. In many cases, the laws make it very cost prohibitive, either in the short or long term.
I bet this project will work because it is probably run like a break even business, instead of a government bucacracey (sp?) that most slashdotters would expect from government project like this. I would love something like this in my area, but the demographic is not well suited for it.
-Pete
Soccer Goal Plans
It is great marketing if your a dot-com trying to sell something, but the fact is most people don't need broadband or even want it.
Government should stay out of it, if not, then they should be required to buy up ALL existing broadband before competeing with those private companies which spent money on it.
It seems that gamers and geeks are the primary wanters of broadband, and they make grandiose claims of the universal need for it without ever proving it. Just like the failed dot-coms, the lies is still there, not the need.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
The standards that are involved do not ensure the same QOS that we're used to with a standard phone or electrical system. When you pick up the phone, it's assumed that there will be a dial tone. When you try to get online (unless you have boradband like me!) you have to dial and try to get a connection. How many times have you been bumped offline? How many times have you crashed your system? How many times have other things happen where you lose your connection?
The fundamental difference with the phone and IT systems is that the phone system works on the basis that not everyone will wnat to use the phone at any given time and even if they do, it'll just be momentary. That's why telco's started to freak when "getting online" started to become popular with the bbses. Suddenly, they had many people making many calls at about the same and then holding the line for hours.
The tcp/ip standards has specific conditions on when it is to drop packets and degrade service for non-vital stuff because it can be re-transmitted later.
This is also why true convergence won't work between these two systems. One works on the basis of having dumb normally unconnected terminals that require incredibly high QoS (phones) while the other works on the basis that eventually the info will get through, but the order doesn't neccessarily matter and the connection could always be live.
Because it's really the same thing.
/. parlance.
The US has a postal system is run by the government and not the private sector in order to make sure ALL citizens get some degree of service, or "connectivity" in
Note how the Postal Service provides a "baseline" for all citizens, but doen't hold a monopoly. If you want to send a package faster, pay a little more and use UPS or a bike courier.
Having a government agency run the show guarantees that everyone can at least send a package somehow. There's no "sorry, your neighborhood just isn't rich enough for us to lay fiber / put in a mail route" going on.
Free markets don't always come to the socially optimal outcome, and they certainly can't be relied on to distribute resources equitably.
Sure, it won't be free, but if we really care about this "digital divide" then this will bridge it a lot faster than waiting for Verizon.
--
Long-term effects of Bush deficits
I am frankly a little afraid of this idea. I do not want government involved any more in my life then it needs to be, whether it be local, state, or federal. The type of government that provides services" to its people is called socialism. I like our democratic republic just fine and believe that if you do not like the way that private companies are acting, then you should work to change them. I know that leviathans like Verizon can see impossible to change, but they can be! First, if you want service in your area and know that upgrading is the problem but your area really wants the bandwidth, have every one right letters saying that you are willing to pay a little higher connection fees for the service for a few years after the service comes. Now obviously that does not sound like a fun plan, but it might work. If you think that you can do a better and/or cheaper job than the current provider, become a competitor. One thing that is true in the post is that competition will make the current system change. The problem with having government be the competitor is that they are not driven by profit so they can always under cut the competition. They also have an endless supply of cash to waste, yours!
A question you must always ask yourself is: "Is this really an area where I feel comfortable having a group of ill-informed non-experts wasting my money?" Remember it was the government that created AT&T and it is government that will rebuild it again if we do not fight it!
Have A Blessed Day and Pray for America.
They shouldn't do this for the same reason they shouldn't be installing cable tv services, or telephone services, cell phone networks, or movie theaters: these are non-essential services which the private sector is willing and able to provide, and which governments have little experience or expertise with.
... often putting small businesses out of business in the process, so the argument that private enterprise isn't living up to basic, acceptable standards carries some degree of weight), but as for providing physical infrastructure I think there is no question that the private, pseudo-monopoly and ad-hoc regulation is an abysmal failure. Following the demonstrated success of the highway system (as opposed to, say, the struggle and arguable failure of America's private railway system, which only serves some population centers and has, during tough times, left entire industries and regions completely out in the cold, without any sort of rail service whatsoever) for the infrastructure and "last mile" makes perfect sense.
Au contrair.
This is exactly the kind of thing government should provide. Your libertarian visions of utopia aside, the private sector isn't providing reliable broadband to end users. I and my employer have both lost DSL service, with no warning. A colleague of mine has lost his DSL service twice, from two different, unrelated providors going out of business, again with no warning.
Internet connectivity has arguably become as critical as having a telephone, perhaps even more so (somewhere between as critical as having a road to your house and having a telephone for many people, myself included).
Worse, the physical cable is an example of a so-called "natural monopoly," in which it is unfeasable and arguably counter-productive to have ten or fifteen competing cable/fibre trunks going to your house. Just as it is absurd to build ten expressways along the same corridor so they can "compete," or several canals along the same route of travel between lakes or rivers.
Whether or not government should provide full ISP services is I think an open question (there again, private ISPs are arbitrarilly disconnecting people based on allegations of wrongdoing with no due process, no standards of evidence much less proof, and no recourse
Private ISPs could use the existing infrastructure to provide higher level services (email, DNS, web hosting, USENET news, etc.), with each competitor gaining access to the public infrastructure under the same, fair, competetive conditions. Far better than having Ameritech own the infrastructure and manipulate ever increasing, and ever more complex, regulatory systems and their accompanying loopholes to drive competitors, who do not own the underlying infrastructure, out of business.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
In my town, the city did just what the article mentions, and the result couldn't have been better. First of all, they forced Charter to bring down their rates to a more reasonable level. What the city is offering to residential customers is both television and data, outsourcing the data service through local ISPs. So, for twenty-five bucks a month, I get what often hits 5mbps download and a solid 1mbps upload. The local ISPs are making money (and keeping it local!), with the added benefit that Paul Allen is so pissed off at the local government that he wants to spit. (Some background: we hava a small but impressive Shakespeare Festival, and guess which software vendor is a primary sponsor) Fsck Paul Allen, anyhow.
:)
My take is that as long as the work is properly planned, this is a good idea. And it is quite nice to be able to go to meetings at city hall to suggest changes in your cable TV lineup. Try doing that with charter
political_news.c: warning: comparison is always true due to limited range of data type
Well, I have Covad (through CAIS, as I wanted to make sure to get a business class line, and be allowed servers and a block of IPs), and at this point, I'm just hoping Covad stays up.
I've had enough problems with GTE in the past, and even though I'm in what was a Bell Atlantic area, from what I've heard about Verizon, it's sounding more like GTE with their customer service.
So well, depending on how things go, you might get your Covad line out there just in time for them to fold...and watch your service get bought by Verizon.
I'm hoping that with the reported increase in teleconferencing due to the events of last week, that we'll also have more folks telcomuting, and helping to bring Covad out of the red, so this doesn't happen.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
What you are experiencing is likely the classic 'bait and switch.' I am experiencing something similar here in the Baltimore area with ComCast cable. Their website plainly states that cable broadband is available in my area, but when I try to order it, I'm told that their digital upgrade won't be finished until January, and their broadband for at least a month after that.
So what do you do? Cussing and whining about it on here won't help you a bit. Instead, take a screen image of their website, and print it out. Then write a (calm, logical, and objective) letter to your local and state public utilities commission complaining about their misleading advertising. Include the print-out of their website (make sure it has the date and time stamped on it, as well as the URL), and also include the name and (if they use them) service badge/number of whoever it was you talked to on their sales/support staff, along with the date and time of your call. With all the support services randomly taping the calls anyway, it's entirely possible that a record of your call exists, and this recording is admissible in court as evidence should the state (or a bored lawyer who's also getting the shaft) file suit. Again, you need to be courteous and respectful in your phone conversations. Being loud and obnoxious will get you nowhere.
I suspect that one of these choices is incorrect. Correct.
Sorry, piecewise, I have to disagree. When government does stuff private businesses do, everyone pays for it, even the people who don't want it. That's wrong, and generally leads to political fights, which get ugly and waste time. It's better to form a private assocation -- a bandwidth cooperative -- to solve this problem, and work closely with government to get permission to run cables, use public rights of way, etc.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
I would like to see governments regulating the Broadband internet service a little more tightly, and maybe even the local govt. providing such access, but I would hate to move to the type of setup that electricity utilities have here in the Southeast, where each company is a government regulated monopoly. There is no competition, and since the govt. regulates what prices they can charge, the service is about as poor as can be. I wouldn't like this, however something needs to be done about a lot of phone companies who are providing broadband because they are doing the normal phone company thing: sticking it to the customers because at this time they are the only ones who can provide it. The following story will show my personal experience with this:
When I first accepted my job here in Atlanta, GA (actually Lawrenceville, a suburb) I visited apartment complexes to determine where I would live. One of the most important factors in my decision was whether or not the apartments offered high speed internet access, of any kind. To my delight, the lady at one of the nicer complexes pulled out a brochure from BellSouth FastAccess about their DSL connections, and informed me that each apartment was "pre-wired for DSL with fiber phone lines!" The brochure had all of this great hype about how you didn't have to have a second phone line, etc, and showed the price of $45/month and a $50 connection fee, DSL modem included! As you can imagine, I was excited about such a nice connection to the net and so that along with the other amenities led me to the decision to live there. Well, when I actually moved in and started setting up my utilities, I was told that in order to get my DSL connection I would have to pay a $250 installation fee, even though the brochure said nothing about that. Well as you can imagine, as a computer literate person I argued that I could easily install whatever DSL modem they brought me and I could plug it into the wall and get my connection working, but they were adamant that I had to get a professional installation. I called about 10 times and spent about 12 hours total on the phone with different types of employees of Bellsouth, and all said that my apartment wasn't ready for DSL, that I needed the prof. installation. This didn't make any sense to me because when we learned about DSL in school we were told that DSL is just a protocol that comes over your 2 wire home phone line and "piggybacks" over the signal, not interrupting phone conversations, and this was not at all something that needed anything more than a phone line... Anyway, long story short, I finally gave in and the installer came to my house with "DSL modem" in hand. It turned out to be a 10/100 Ethernet NIC and the professional install was needed because he had to splice two lines together to make 1 ethernet cable that ran from the network hub in the complex to a phone outlet that I specified (limiting my mobility) where he installed a RJ-45 jack so I could plug my computer into the Ethernet Network. In my opinion I was lied to by not only the apartment complex (pre-wired) but also BellSouth (advertised DSL, installed ethernet.) It took them a month after doing the install to get the access working because apparently they didn't have the network routers in place to support my neighborhood, so after $300 and having billy bob come and install my "DSL" connection and tell me all about "that dad burn internet," I still had nothing. Eventually I did get access though, and it really is very fast and convenient, but it sure isn't the low cost DSL connection advertised.
My point: phone companies are bastards like other utility companies, so I'd like to see the government step up regulation, but I'd hate it to become the same thing as the electricity market.
~ now you know
Private associations may not work any better, but they won't waste your tax dollars.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
The US Postal system is a good metaphor for people to see, in part because the US Postal system is self-sufficient.
It's run as a governmental department, but it's supported entirely by the sale of its services, just as a municipal ISP might be.
Concerns about spending city resources on this kind of thing ("Spend it on fire departments and street signs, not broadband networks!") seem less reasonable in that light, perhaps.
most city governments are run by people who are not blessed with guru level knowledge. Most are AOLers. They get confused easily.
So if you have a larger group of geeks you can go in and take charge of this for the sake of the community. And of course, for your own benefit.
there is not a lot of motivation otherwise. They have a lot of other issues on their plate. Small things like taxes, etc.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Compare to electricity and phone service. Before the government stepped in, people outside of large cities were not serviced. It became apparent that eventually, most would be, but only at a high reletive cost. In the case of electricity, people formed coops that took advantage of special government loans. In the case of phone service, the government required phone companies to provide service to all communities in their territory.
So I guess what I'm saying is maybe a coop in which the city government is a partner or main contributer could work. The city would gain by being able to get better prices through volume for its own needs and by having happy citizens who get a service that nobody else will provide. In fact, I think I'll approach my city council and/or neighbors about this.
science is a religion
Wadsworth's Power and Cable division(NorthEast Ohio) has been providing cable modem service for over 2 years. Not only have provided affordable cable and data service to residents, the have forced their monoply provider to do the same. Many cities use the Wadsworth Cable System as a model for their own implementations.
Municipal systems can be bad or good based on the quality of the staff implementing. A good municipal system is a resource that adds value to the community the same as good schools and smooth roads. The promise of quality, affordable service is an excellent economic development tool.
On a personal note, my mother was on the beta rollout for the system. After two modems and new wiring, she has one of the stablest net connections I have ever seen.
âoeWho knew something as harmless as willful ignorance could end up having real consequences?â
Coming from a Municipal background this is a really bad thing. Many local government officials are power-greedy idiots. (although every person in government is pretty much an idiot or thief) The last city council here wanted to outlaw saying anything "bad" about the council members. one councilwoman was quoted as "Free speech is dangerous, and we need to outlaw it".
It is exactly these types of self serving morons that get elected every day. Now give them control of something as complex as a data network?? They cant manage something as simple as Roads,water, ans sewer! You will not attract employees that are skilled to take care of it. (Working for the City really sucks if you are a foreward thinker and espically if you think out of the box.)
Nope, asking for a public network is like asking a thief to watch your wallet... You'll get your wallet, but all the content will be gone.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Not that I'm saying this is necessarily bad, but it conflicts with what you said.
The USPS has a legally mandated monopoly. It is illegal for anyone else to ship certain kinds of packages - and that helps keep USPS revenues up.
What kinds of packages? Packages which do not require rapid delivery. If it isn't time associated, you can't mail it any other way. You're not _allowed_ to undercut USPS on first-class mail, for instance.
Looking for freelance Actionscript (Flash/Flex) or ColdFusion work and/or freelance developers. Email me, put Slashdot
The postal service *does* have a monopoly. If you don't believe me, try starting up a first-class mail delivery service. You'll find police at your door to shut you down.
Notice that the USPS and FedEx do deliver to practically any place. You just have to pay more if you live in Alaska or Hawii. This is, it seems to me, as it should be-- if you choose to live in a place that's hard to deliver to, you pay the extra societal costs of getting mail. It's not like someone's going to go bankrupt from paying an extra 10 cents per letter for their mail.
The post office should be privatised. All this would really require is to repeal the laws making it illegal to compete with it in first-class mail. Then, when the private sector kicks the USPS's ass and takes away most of its customers, the government can either disband it or turn it into a truly private company that would have some incentive to modernise.
The problem with cable/DSL is that most cable and local phone companies are government-created monopolies. You generally have to get permission from the city council or county zoning board or whomever before you can lay cables. And not surprisingly, once one company has done it, they lobby hard to prevent any other company from laying competing lines. Result: monopoly.
I'm not sure what the exact solution is, but this is certainly not a market failure. What's needed is more genuine competition, not a government takeover of the industry.
Also, it seems to me that there are far more pressing societal problems than the lack of fast internet. I have it and love it, but I'm a middle-class yuppie college student. For your average American, having to dial in with a modem is an extremely minor annoyance. So there are more important things that governments should be doing, like plowing the streets and putting out fires. Let's get them to do a good job of that before we load them up with more responsibilities that rightly belong to the private sector, eh?
Oh well, at least they are doing it now somewhere.
This is my signature. There are many signatures like it but this one is mine..
I saw a post a while back with an idea that I loved: have the infrastructure be built publically, but let ISPs compete to administer and provide services over the network. Not as in "bid and we'll create a contract and let you be the only business to do this and pay you" but as in "Hey, wanna provide services to people in our area? We'll rent you rights to provide it over our broadband network".
This could work with other utilities, too... it'd be cool if we had a public power grid but could choose from several electric companies. Or if none of the telcos actually owned the phone network, but all had to vie within the same public network to provide the best services. We'd have truer competition, and presumably better service..... (maybe).
Tweet, tweet.
>The post office should be privatised. All this would really require is to repeal the laws making it illegal to compete with it in first-class mail.
>Then, when the private sector kicks the USPS's ass and takes away most of its customers, the government can either disband it or turn it into a
>truly private company that would have some incentive to modernise.
Perhaps a noble thought. But what about when a privatized postal service decides that rural mail pickup and delivery is no longer profitable? The reason the Post Office's monopoly in certain areas is mandated is so that they can afford to give 100% coverage. Let all of the more profitable parts get stripped away, and the outlying service would get even more expensive, since it would turn into a bunch of disconnected isolated routes.
As to why 100% coverage... The government *needs* some sort of secure communications channel with everyone, if only to take care of tax time in April. (By law the mail constitutes a secure channel, even if that may not be true in fact.)
The free market is a wonderful invention. But just like to a man with a hammer, every problem looks like a nail, one must not start believing that the free market can be the solution to every problem.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Excellent! I'm supprised by all the negative posts here by people who seem to want to criple themselves without reason. BASJE, for intstance, wrote, "Of course, there will be people whining they cannot run servers off that, or other other limitations. Those people should realize, that, as with all public services there'll be a certain service level for a certain price. If you want/need anything other, you'll have to pay for it yourself.", as if there's a real technical reason to limit bandwith uplinks and as if people can't chose to pay for good bandwith through a municipality. These arguments sound chillingly similar to the old comercial software trolls, "you only get what you pay for and giving me all your money is the best of all worlds." The net was designed as a collection of equal peers and changes weaken it. The web will only be a viable media for publication if it remains free and accesible. Do not surrender your rights to publish on this new media for the sake of a few companies profits!
But pretty sucky for the administrators who have to have configs available for everything from Win98 to VMS to OS2 to BeOS.
Well, what's the problem? Set up a standard for connections that's stable and works. If M$ wants to make things hard for their users, too bad. The post office does not teach you how to pack letters, do they? They simply have guidlines for size and weight. At some point some users have to do something for themselves, and it's no different from the inhomogenious world that admins have to deal with right now.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
If there were a way to fairly devise and administer testing, I think "graduated Internet access," just like the graduated driver's license proposals, would be a good idea. Most people have neither the knowledge nor if truly informed, the wish, to be responsible for an open port. Keep them in "gated communities" (somewhat akin to AOL) until they show desire, motivation, and proficiency to get out on the open road.
But I fear any such test would rapidly devolve into an MSCE-like 'Which boxes do you click?" Perhaps an alternative would be simply net testing and scanning to verify that a machine is adequately administered. Though I hesitate to add it, perhaps a fee to open ports, partly as a deterrence, partly to fund forementioned scanning.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Having read many of the posts here, I find a great deal of mis-information being bandied about, as well as a general lack of understanding as to the current situation involving Muni nets.
First, the RCOC's (Regional Bell Operating Companies) have lobbied furiously against the creation of these networks. Cable has lobbied too, but cable companies have very little influence in statehouses and capital hill, as compared to the RBOCs, which weild enormous lobbying power, especially at the state level. As a result of this all-out lobbying effort, many states flatly prohibit municipalities from building any sort of network which will compete in any way against an RBOC.
Cities have fought back, however. Many towns, where broadband or even basic cable television service are sorely lacking or nonexistent, want to build these networks. There are several lawsuits right now seeking to overturn restrictive state laws by citing a provision in the Telecom Act of 96 which provides that no state may enact law which prohibits, or has the effect of prohibiting the ability of "any entity" from providing telecom service. The FCC, ever beholden to the RBOCs, ruled originally that "any entity" did not include municipal governments, as a sop to telcos who feared taxpayers might just say "screw this, lets build our own". However, there are strong signs that a federal appelate court will overrule the FCC, and force states to allow muni's to start building nets, if taxpayers (us) vote to do so.
The fundamental question is: do we have the right to decide to provide our own?
Municipal governments provide 90% of direct government benefits, to most citizens. The provide streets, street signs, trash pickup, water service, maintain zoning standards, handle legalities like deeds and property matters, and intercede on behalf of citizens in a great many matters. It is an incontrovertible fact, that municipal governments are the best, most effective, and most efficient segment of our democratic system of government here in the US.
Even so, very few people bother to take notice of what your local city government is doing (which no doubt contributes to their efficiency).
I've seen several people here state, that City Governments have no experience with IT, are clueless, incapable, etc. This is flatly false.
City governments are no different than any other large company these days, and all of them larger than about 30,000 population have IT departments. The people that work in those departments often face daunting challenges, as the perils of the annual budget year cycle, and requirements for "low bid" purchases, force them to try and operate non-homogenous networks. They don't have the luxury of saying "100% company X" on anything. IT people that can keep networks like that running, must have skillsets that span very wide areas of knowledge.
And what the RBOCs fear most: Muni's have experienced and expert people in the tough areas of network operation already in place. Consider this: Munis regulate every inch of right-of-way in the "last mile", because they own it. Their people are more familiar with it than anyone, anywhere. Munis also have experts on telco regulation on staff, to deal with franchise agreements, rate regulation, etc. Muni's have contruction inspectors, log-standing relationships with Contractors, and experience in utility location/colocation. And Muni's have strong IT staff, as a rule.
There's one last thing to consider. Are you pissed at the service you recieve from your telco or cable company? Whatyougonnadoaboutit? Answer: not much you can do.
But consider - if your local goverment were your provider, what could you do then? Vote. Run for City Council. Local politics is personal folks - and unlike national politics, your personal problems are likely shared by your next-door neighbor. You as an individual can easily effect the outcome of a City Council election. Think on that, as you consider whether you're likely to get better service from a Muni telco.
I'm usually against the government getting involved in just about anything, because they do tend to screw things up a lot. But the things that I consider valid for the government are basic things that:
A) everyone needs
B)for which there can be little to no market distinction
C)has a costly infrastructure associated with it
One such case is vaccinations. A vaccine will either work or it won't, and every child has to have them before they begin school. Company A's brand will really differ very little from Company B's, and I'd hate to see what kind of disgusting commercials companies would produce to try to distinquish thier product from a competitors. ("See twisted knarled Eddy? He used the wrong Streptomiacin vaccine!)
Another good case is school systems.
I see internet service as being the same. Everybody needs or will soon need a connection if they want to exist normally in a developed nation. One pipe is nearly identical to the next, and it is starting to get ridiculous to have a twisted pair in the ground next to a coax cable next to a fiber optic line while there is a satellite dish on the house next door and a wireless transmitter on a tower down the street. A simple connection (as opposed to the things that the broadband services currently want to provide--they want to sell you 'services', ie. baggage you don't need) is not difficult to provide and puts everyone at a level playing field.
In my view, government run internet equates to government run roads. It's too expensive for everyone to build and manage their own.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Given that we accept that proposition, it might make sense for gov't to build communications infrastructure, which we have seen that private capital is doing slowly, if at all.
If they do this, I think tht they should then make the infrastructure available to any private outfit which wants to run an isp/telco. Ideally, it should be rented to several, which citizens could choose between.
Notice that the reason that we aren't seeing broadband made available seems to be as much due to regulatory difficulties as to high costs. The telcos have their network and monopoly as artifacts of the current and past regulatory environment. They can use this to chop the legs off of anyone who tries to compete using the telco system, and no-one can afford to build their own system when the telcos have an existing system which is at least partially amortized.
So, having started to ``manage'' our economy, we need more government intervention to ``fix'' the problems we caused.
See what I've been reading.
Access == Accumulate Copyright IP
Acumulate Copyright IP == Wealth.
99%,1% vs 1%,99% Wealth == Just plain EVIL(tm)
Therfore...
FCC == Just plain EVIL(tm)
Time to elect FCC officals directly.
There goes any shot for an amature radio licence.
Can't run local municipal Internet access my ass.
Novel theory: Modern Man evolved from psychopath
why shouldn't municipalities take it upon themselves to deliver service for their constituents?
Because the government (in America) is not in the utility or telecom business. Show me where, in the Constitution, it says that local tax dollars should be spent on any of this?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
But it costs the same amount for me to send a letter from the post office to a P.O. Box somewhere as it does for me to send it from a really remote village to some other remote village. Even though it is more expensive to deliver the second letter, the consumer's price is the same. Subsidy!
This is exactly the point. The telco monopolies were formed with a similar policy: you paid the same rate for a phone line if you were downtown next to the CO or out in the sticks half way up the side of a mountain.
The same is true for FedEx and other private delivery services, more or less. It costs FedEx less money to deliver from Philadephia PA to NY, NY than it does from Tuskegee AL to Grass Range MT. They make the PA to NY customers "subsidize" the AL to MT customers -- because the service is more valuable that way.
What you are paying for in the case of the telephone and in the case of mail is simple and universal access to everyone, everywhere. You don't mind subsidizing somebody else's FedEx because you are paying to make sure the service is there when you do need it, and you won't need some complex algorithm to figure out what it will cost.
People have lost sight of the value of this because they take it for granted in places where it has already proven itself.
The Internet works the same way. I remember when I was young, the excitement of logging on to a machine in London UK from Cambridge MA over the ARPANET -- for free (well, paid from my parents taxes and my tuition I guess). If the Internet was designed using a connection oriented protocol such as ATM, we would probably be charged by the geographic barriers between endpoints (think local calls, LATA calls, domestic long distance, international long distance). There have been immense economic side effects of the design goal to make the network more survivable by routing each packet individually.
For example, I'm in Melrose MA, about six or seven miles from the Slashdot data center, which I believe is in Waltham, MA. I'm probably "subsidizing" your connection -- except that it would actually cost me more to "call" Waltham on a regular basis with some connection oriented system.
A high speed, free metropolitan network would facilitate businesses in the town, reduce traffice by enabling telecommuting, assist government, and improve property values -- provided that the means to use the network are universally affordable. Every household has a TV. A fairly decent computer can be had for about the same cost today, and probably as little as a hundred dollars in a few years.
Public investment is not the only way to do it, but the public entities have different agendas than the private ones.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Theoretically, the Constitution only applies to Federal entities. Practically, speaking that's not always true, but doesn't push the argument in your favor.
More specifically, powers not explicity granted to Congress are reserved for the states (10th amendment). And municipalities (cities, counties) are generally charted by the state. Any limits I would imagine would strictly be in the interpritation of the state constitutions and the municipal charters.
Also, the feds have a long history of acting on stuff like this. AT&T had a federally authorized monopoly for decades. Finally, municipalities have a long history of operating utilities. Water, trash collection and electricity distribution are three examples. I fail to see why this would be much different.
--Humpty Dumpty was pushed!
In a bond election for $5 million of bonds to create cable and broadband services, the current cable provider put up a very large fight - and lost. The citizens voted at an over 85% rate to create broadband/internet/cable as a utility.
The results can be seen at http://www.cfu.net/index.shtml . I get most of my mail from Cedar Falls with addresses ending @cfu.net.
My parents, in their 70's are happy to send and receive multimedia presentations, and to create web pages and mailing lists. They get no static about running Mac OS and other non win items.
I would be happy to switch to a municipal system here - that way there would be some public servant I could shake down when things are going poorly.
(My father-in-law, also in his 70's, ran into the street to beg the competing cable firm to wire him up. Customer satisfaction at its nadir.)
No, I don't think you should "clog up" any network, private or public. What do you have in mind, pray tell? It's very difficult to clog things up with original content shared with friends.
What I want is for people to co-operate and build networks. FREE networks that you can do what you want with to compete with the current crop of TOS gimped cable companies and DHCP dial ups. Bleh! Sure, it will cost money but public utilities are almost always cheaper than unregulated monopoly franchises like we have now.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Why shouldn't local governments solve the problem? Yes, they should! Oh, local governments CAUSED the problem. Oops.
Let's review why your RBOC has a monopoly. It is the only one that can connect twisted pair to your home. It has the right of way, the only right of way in most cases to connect. AT&T is trying to break that monopoly with coaxial cable connections, but with at best limited success.
Your local government could just allow a private company to bypass your RBOC and go ahead and do it instead. Or more than one.
Local government created the monopoly. Then it presented itself as the only solution to the monopoly it created and allows. Then, it tries to skim its own cream by pricing itself not at a market price and providing market services, but parasitically pricing itself very near the monopoly cost.
Gee how generous.
According to Information Week article, starting last month most of the USPS Priority and Express mail is being hauled by FedEx for the USPS in exchange for having FedEx drop boxes for returned goods at post offices across the US.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
You're overlooking the role of customers in this. Why do people buy from Wal*Mart? Because it's cheaper than the mom-n-pop stores. Are the customers being mean to the mom-n-pops? Yes. But that's not Wal*Mart's fault, that's the customers fault. They're just choosing the best offer available to them.
If you think you can do better, then you should. That's how we do things in America. Instead of arguing about who's being fair and who's being unfair, we have free markets. So those people who see unfair deals can do something about them.
Are you willing to do something about the unfair deal you see happening? If so, do it! If not, then I have to think that you don't really believe your own arguments.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
My words! You winnowed away all my lovely words!
But other than that...nice summary.