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Municipal Net Access: Unfair Competition?
ruvreve writes: "Net Economy has an article about how Los Angles is attempting to provide the ability for end-users to have a choice between multiple ISPs for high-speed bandwidth access, among other things. The article talks about how a city has an unfair advantage to offer such services. Unfair because the government monitors and regulates the cable and phone company but at the same time wants to compete for their customers. If it gets 100Mbit access to my front door it HAS to be good!" This issue's been raised a few times before, but the article raises some points worth thinking about.
It will be awhile until that drops to something more reasonable. Maybe PON (passive optical networks) will be the breakthrough. I'm not very familiar with that technology -- anyone?? anyone?? Ferris?
If the government is serious about getting people interested in broadband they should subsidise it.
Video Game cheats, hints a
For the most obvious example, you can look at the USPS, vs. Fed Ex and UPS. In that area, it's fairly safe to say that the government version hasn't stifled the private sector interests. Fed Ex gets it there faster, and UPS gets it there better, either cheaper, or if it's heavier, or whatever.
I work for city government, in that other city, on the other side of the country. A city run ISP will be concerned with either value, fair service, or information security, or maybe a combination of the three. This is hardly a bad thing. Cities have a way of wanting to avoid lawsuits, badly.
That being that, private offerings will be able to compete with higher speed, more features, package deals, etc. Like the USPS, a city ISP would offer a baseline of service, and any private ISP that couldn't at least match it would crash and burn, but they'd probably deserve it.
Do you suppose it's possible to say something so hypocritical, so mindbendingly and offensively pointing to one's own guilt, that the speakers' head actually spins 360 degrees Exorcist-style then reseats itself as if nothing had happened?
I mean, the telecom behemoths want to complain about unfair competition after the way Excite, Rhythms, etc were treated?
Good gravy. Since the government created these corporate monsters through deregulation, perhaps the government is the only entity that can compete with them. Note to conspiracy theorists- perhaps this is all a clever ploy to keep the telecom bribes flowing, so the fatcats don't get too comfortable.
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
With a few exceptions, the public utility that most americans think least about... Our public road and highway infrastructure, is completely publicly owned. There's just no way to effectively manage an entire system of roads cost-effectively at a profit.
There exist a few turnpikes, toll-roads, and troll bridges out there... (*rimshot*) but for the most part Americans are used to paying for the right to use the system out of tax dollars.
Power is going the same way, as can be evidenced by the collapse of the California power grid. How long will the state pay for the power companies to stay solvent until the state becomes the primary power-provider? Phone will go too, IMHO.
Internet is going to be the next public utility, probably even before the phone system. Already communities all over the country are building 'municipal' internet services. Look for these to become tax-supported in the near future.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
"....it's just so unfair.....I mean....we worked really hard to box in these customers and make them accept our terrible service and with no choice of providers....now the mean bully util's are totally wrecking our whole business model!.....what's capitalism coming to when you have to compete...sounds more like communism to me...."
When the government steps in like this, we should begin to consider the internet access they are offering to be more of a public utility than just a general service. To begin with, this would have the potential to lower prices, increase uptime and public meetings if any real changes in service are going to take place.
Public meetings are already required (in most states) if the electric company wishes to increase rates, or if there will be a loss of service for an extended period of time. Wouldn't it be nice to be able to express your opinion about where the city should increase rates by five dollars if the bandwidth increase is only 128Kbps? If anything, this would allow for more public control over the internet, and how much we pay to recieve it.
DRINK DUFF (responsibly) DRINK DUFF (responsibly) DRINK DUFF
Have a look at the D-Link DFE855 here.
It translates a 100Base-FX fiber optic cable to a normal 100 mbps ethernet card.
The drop can be up to 2 kilometers, and it's not affected by static, radio waves and you don't have to ground it, it's glass/plastic, so 100% pure insulator.
Read the article: It says that the city will offer SONET service to the ISPs/CLECs etc. It's just providing the pipe - It's up to the consumer to choose who to buy the upstream access from!
Was really surprised by the slant of this article. Are we supposed to feel sorry for the cable companies? Here's a couple sentences from the article that make it seem like the cable companies are being handed a raw deal.
Not only must they compete with the city, they must obey regulations from this same entity. A kind of double burden.
The whole reason that cable is regulated is because it's inherently a monopolistic product, in that multiple cable providers can't cost-effectively run multiple cables to every house in a city. So these companies should be constantly under the gun in every way possible. Otherwise, there would be all kinds of pricing abuse.
As I see it, one of the primary advantaes of living in a city is that you should be able to get broadband for far less than you can in the country. If you couldn't, something is be terribly wrong. It's nice to see that LA's Dept. of Water & Power is keeping the cable companies scrambling to provide the best possible deal to consumers. That the cable companies are griping is merely a sign than government is doing its job
.I'm generally "Interesting," "Insightful," and even "Funny" here. What the hell happens to me at parties?
I guess that opening the (deregulated) (customer-gouging) (proprietary) (won't let me run any servers) broadband industry to government competition would be like when FDR created the TVA and opened up the private companies to government competition. I'm happy with the energy we get here. They offer competitive, renewable options. Much better than some of its competitors, like the nearby incenerator which provides power but is going to be shut down because it's incredibly toxic.
As long as there remains private competition, this is a good thing.
The only way it becomes unfair is if the regulation gets mixed in with the competition; ie. the local government puts regulations into effect that directly limits how each company can do business. So long as the regulation serves only to ensure compliance with anti-trust laws, and the government's competitive companies do not themselves violate anti-trust laws, I can't see how this is the least bit unfair. I think oversight is a must, obviously, but this shows excellent potential for a model of how the rest of the country could push broadband to each person's doorstep at an affordable price. Real competition has always forced each company involved to push forward as hard and fast as possible. Look at the difference in browser quality when M$ had competition from Netscape. IE 2 -> IE 3, and up through 5. I like 5 very much, but with no competition anymore from Netscape, 6 is nothing more than 5 with teletubby icons.
Right now, the broadband field had a few, large dominating companies. Verizon and Comcast are huge. Their service sucks, but what other choice is there? 56k modem? I make my living using computers and the internet, and I can't do that effectively on a modem. I hope and pray for something like what Los Angeles is doing to come to my area. Perhaps then my Comcast cable modem wouldn't go down for 2 minutes at a time 20 times a day. Right now it's (high quality | high speed | low cost) -- pick two.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
Nobody seriously believes that our entire road system should be turned over to toll roads, with the obvious congestion and complication this would cause with every burrough, county, city, state and the federal government collecting payments every few miles.
Why must we live with oligopolies that "compete" against each other to provide these services. Somehow, the cable companies always seem to show up within months of the DSL offerings in an area with roughly the same service offering at roughly the same price. Yeah, the free market will bring us the best result, sure.
The US Founding Fathers knew the value of a free people freely communicating. They established the post office to ensure that people could easily communicate over great distances, without regard to their economic status or resources.
These days, this means Internet, and tomorrow, it'll mean broadband. Every aspect of society benefits from cheap and available broadband. Schools, industry, small business, homes, everybody. I'm surprised that local and state governments aren't more involved in making sure that their area has the best broadband service.
Hey, I'm all in favor of the telecommunications industry and the cable industry profiting from providing good service, if they would just get off the dime and do it.
It's time that government, at all levels, makes sure that all of that unused fiber capacity that's supposedly lying around gets lighted up and serving the people. If we leave this to the oligopolies, that fiber won't get used until it's already obsolete.
I'm pretty conservative most of the time, but what's happening now must be some kind of market distortion that the government should work to correct. If there's all this unused capacity and lots of demand but not at the current price point, then the markets need a little prod to close the gap.
Let's do it. Nobody would wait for competing water, sewer or electric services to come hook up your neighborhood. Seeing as Internet can enhance everbody's life in important ways (eGovernment anybody?), we shouldn't have to wait for Broadband either.
I work for a Public Utility Department in the State of Washington. We have built a fiber optic system through out the county which we provide open access to for whoever want to provide services be it internet, video, or phone. I myself benefit from this with what is basically a 100MB link to the internet and a public IP address for only $45 a month. Until this project was undertaken, Qwest refused to run phone lines to some of the more remote residents of the county. Now that phone services are provided via fiber, what a surprise Qwest was out there running phone lines. Television via cable is still limited to 30 some channels while customer with fiber can access over 150+ channels. This is an idea whose time has come.
... but they started out with buying out a bankrupt cable television service. As you would expect, AT&T (the only other cable provider for the area) threw a fit and complained about unfair competition. These complaints took the form of full length commercials on cable TV (their network, of course) telling people to go complain to city hall about how bad it is for the government to get involved in the private sector. I went to the meetings just to "attaboy" the council members. I seriously got flashbacks to the town meeting when I read that article, all the same points got made. The council members told AT&T where they could file their complaints (hint: not in the city office), and I went away happy.
The city recently divested itself of the operational aspects of the cable service, but retained ownership of the wires. The company that bought the management contract pays rent to the city for the line space, and is required in their contract to allow ISPs to use the line also - they don't have exclusive access.
Eventually, the city will start running fiber optic cable throughout the city and will offer the same deal to new ISPs: rent bandwidth, and resell it to your customers. No exclusive contracts. AT&T (the only viable cable internet provider in the area as well) is no doubt throwing another tantrum, probably in cooperation with Qwest DSL (the only significant DSL sevice in the area, partnered with MSN internet, for your convenience). I'll proabably miss the City council meeting, though, since I cancelled my cable contract and AT&T won't get a chance to invite me to oppose them again.
I'd love it if every city in the country followed the examples of these cities, it's about time that internet became an expected utility, just like water, gas, and electricity.
Oh, this is Provo, Utah, in case anyone cares.
"Space Exploration is not endless circles in low earth orbit." -Buzz Aldrin
My fear when dealing with a government run internet utility would be government regulation. Not that it can't happen with private providers, but somehow I can't help but be more worried about the government...
And I'd also worry about quality, given the level of service that one often gets from underpaid and unmotivated civil servants. Private ISPs have enough trouble getting and keeping good techs and customer service people, it would seem to be really tough on government pay scales.
As you seem to have no sig I humbly suggest the above. It's a great line.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
In the US, censorship by a government carrier is much less likely. Such censorship can (and probably will be) challenged in court. Private entities (Blockbuster, Wal-Mart) can and do censor content.
I've never worked on the Quality assurance side of an ISP, but I'd like this answered.
When I pick up my phone, theres a dialtone, and other then some rare occasions, I place a call, I get through.
I turn on a light switch, there is always power. I turn on the stove and the gas is flowing. I turn on the tap, and water comes out.
So why can't my ISP have this quality? My guess is they just hav'nt had the same amount of time other utilities have had to work out all the bugs.
This may be a simple question with a difficult answer, but I'd like to know why.
The Internet is generally stupid
We live about 100 yards from the Mulholland Drive mentioned at the end of the article, right in the middle of Los Angeles. Interestingly, and frustratingly, even though this part of Bel Air and Beverly Hills is full of people who would desparately like to have broadband access, there is none. No DSL, no cable modems. ATT has pulled out its fixed-wireless system. Metricom of course went belly-up.
Adelphia would be our cable modem provider. They've been busily laying cable for the last year, and have all but completed their network. Now I read in this story, Adelpha claims that it being crippled by DWP, because they can't get power to their network.
I wonder if the Department of Water and Power sees Adelphia as competition, and is inhibiting them in the obvious way. Or, this might be another case where you shouldn't attribute to malice what can equally be explained as bumbling by a cable company.
It will be interesting. Adelphia claims that they'll light up the fibers here within the next month or so. I can't wait.
thad
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
I can see vaccinations, I can see schools, I can see libraries, hell I can even see internet access. But is broadband internet access really in that category of things everyone really needs for society to be better? For just getting information dial-up is adequate -- I used it for years. And if you want streaming video, it'd make more sense to subsidize buying people TVs so they can watch the nightly news rather than subsidizing broadband.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
When did people start believing that the purpose of the government is to ensure that someone makes a profit instead of to serve the public interest? "We need the DMCA because what improves the lives of millions of electronics consumers infringes on our right to make money." "We need absurd patent laws because the free exchange of ideas among the people impedes our ability to make money." "Giving everyone cheap broadband makes us less money!"
All these corporations need to remember that the reason we happen to have a free market economy is that we've determined that incentivized competition is the best way to serve the public good, not as an endin and of itself. It's the job of the government to serve the people, and the responsibility of private enterprise to figure out how to make money anyway. I mean, if a magical fairy flew down tomorrow and promised to turn the earth into a paradise, giving everyone as much material comfort as they wanted, all the corporations would be screaming about how it's unfair and going to cost them money.
And yes, I do realize that the "public" is comprised partly by exactly those corporations and people who have a stake in them, but tell that to me again when 1% of the population stops owning 50% of the stocks and bonds.
I'm for privatizing everything, including the sidewalks. And the best way to ensure complete sidewalk construction is through forced adoption of a standard sidewalk shoe, which you can buy from AT&T/TW for $400/pair. Laces are extra.
In Ashland, Oregon the city is running a broadband access network (with cable modems) and faster fiber optic connections for those who want to pay up.
We certainly didn't mind, as it spurred Charter (cable company) to speed up their service deployment so we actually have competition for cable service - what an interesting concept.
On the other hand, the City of Ashland also owns the water and electric utilities... and has put the "telecommunications" (the internet & tv business) as a part of the electric utility... check out the Ashland Fiber Network, and the City of Ashland.
Well... You could get off your rich asses and pitch in on a T1 or T3 that you then split via wire or wireless to each contributors home. But, apparently you are just going to wait for the man to give you the access that you want..
Call your local Baby Bell and get yourself wired. Share your connection with your neighbors for a fee. Is capitalism to advanced a concept for you to grasp?
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blah, somebody needs to pull me over for a PUI, posting under the influence
You can't get much more local than city government. We're not talking about behemoth state governments or the federal government here. And yet here we are debading whether it's unfair for one of the smallest units of government, one of the entities closest to the people who elected it, to offer us services for our taxes.
The privatization of government services seems to have gone so far that we now seriously consider almost every city government function replaceable by private contractors (security services, health services, and so on), yet for local government to "intrude" into an arena now dominated by huge for-profit entities is somehow taboo.
Government is often painfully inefficient - I say that because I've worked in government. But it baffles me that when the people from our own neighborhoods whom we elected to help our cities run better actually offer something superior to what private industry can offer, we run screaming that the free markets are being sabotaged.
Ah, how far we have come.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
They also used the fiber to provide cheaper, better digital cable for everyone in the city as well. Future plans included adding 802.11b to the whole city so cable modem users could be online anywhere in the city for one low fee. For a town of 20,000 people in Southern Oregon that only has a Shakespeare Festival and a University, it's a pretty amazing network. The city also has their own power company, so you can get everything locally, it costs less (when their was a power shortage, the city was still fine), the city gets all the profits from it, parks and roads improve, and there is high bandwidth everywhere. Almost makes me wish I was still going to college there instead of living in Seattle where my DSL line the same speed costs almost $100 a month.
In any case, in a democracy, it is up to the people to decide how public rights-of-way and public airwaves are allocated. We have made a decision in many places to have public utilities, and we can do the same thing with Internet access if we think it serves our needs better.
as for your sig, I had a box once where I had renamed that "Bill's Computer". :)
SSL Certificate
"If it gets 100Mbit access to my front door it HAS to be good!"
I would worship satan if that would bring 100 mbit any closer to my door step.
Insightful? Government owning the roadways information travels on? I don't think so. Next thing you know they'll be owning the roadways cars travel...oh.
Sorry. Carry on.
--Jimmy has fancy plans; and pants to match.
If the private sector cannot or will not provide a public utility at a reasonable rate and with a reasonable level of facility, then the public sector not only should, but must step in and rectify the situation.
The telco's and the cable companies have used deregulation to set themselves up as governing bodies over access to communications, trumping municipal, state or even national mandates with corporate mandates that serve to disenfranchise citizens from a reasonable level of service. No servers on broadband, no broadband to remote or "unprofitable" (read: low income, or worse, black) neigborhoods, long delays for install or repair, recurring technical problems that are deliberately ignored, no choice in providers, etc, etc, etc.
Screw 'em. They have been using the free market to wrangle quasi-monopolies and dictatorial cartels, obviating the entire purpose of a free market. The municipal government must step in, and provide services vital to the growth and prosperity to a community... this means municipal networks, even at the cost of breaking the priovate sector's back.
It's the private sector's own damn fault. They were given a fair chance, and they frittered it away. Now they get to shape up, or loose revenue.
SoupIsGood Food
Now that I've gotten that of my chest, I do believe that cities should be careful about funding (not using municipal bonds, for instance) and do a few other things to insure they are fair. I have written about the movement in the article Echo of the TVA Comes Over Municipal Data Networks. There have been several court cases brought in various states by telephone and cable companies; they've been resolved in different directions and the whole legal ground is unclear.
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Ever see a cost-efficient government service? They'd lose money charging $100 a month.
I apologize but I was looking at it from a cable television (like watching the simpsons) view. Its my hope that in the future neither cable nor dsl will provide my inet access.
I understand a general dislike for the cable company, but come on. What is your cable company motivated by? Profit. Profit is the lifeblood of any company. They didn't spend all that money laying cable so that it could just sit there. They want customers to use it. I find it highly unlikely that your cable company is holding it up on purpose once they've already laid the infrastructure. Their claims regarding DWP are entirely believable.
I don't know that I would attribute it to malice, there's no real need for them to worry about competition, as they are a govt entity, but I think it's quite likely DWP's typical slow-moving-government status is the problem.
"No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare."
--James Madison
Competition = good.
Government = bad.
Competition/government = ???
The problem is that people assume Commercial == Competition and Non-Commercial == Monopoly. Quite clearly many commerical markets are very concentrated, especially utility markets where there are huge economies of scale. In this case, making the system commercial doesn't give competition... where making it public might. Why? Beacuse the government owned entity can control the singleton and have corporations "bid" for sub-contracts to provide the necessary services. Thus, we have internal competition rather than external competition.
Anyway, as for the dicotomy between democracy vs capitalism they are othogonal but must be in ballence. The goal of the democracy is to provide the framework for fair competition within the capitalistic markets; and the goal of capitalisim is to provide goods and services to support the people of the democracy. Both are there to serve the public good in different ways. And it is bad when one or the other is stronger. IMHO, all permanent monopolies should be owned and controlled by the government (aka in a democractic way) and all non-monopolies should be opened for competition. Now, opening monopolies for commercial ownership is just bass-ackwards.
;) Clark
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Comment removed based on user account deletion
What more is there to say?
So I'll say it again.
Censorship, however, is a real danger.
It's always bad, but when somebody has a monopoly, as a government would be likely to, it's much worse.
Of course, the problem also exists if somebody besides the government is the monopoly.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
There should only be four infrastructure links going into your home or apartment: Data, power, water, and sewage. It's pointless to operate and maintain separate feeds for internet, telephone, and cable, and the like when they are all really the same thing - data. It would be far more efficient to maintain a single fiber optic link to the home/complex in terms of cost, lifetime, maintenance (especially of the wires), service addition (especially for novel services), power requirements, billing, and quality of service. In fact, coupled to a wireless network and backup power, it could be far more reliable and flexible in all respects. Why shouldn't the government handle something like that?
I could care less if some greedy cable company gets put out of business - the gov't should be in the business of providing and regulating key services to the public, even if it makes it difficult for private companies. Deal with it.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
The bottom line is that as a taxpayer I don't want to ever be forced to pay for the water to go to your fancy dancing gold-handled faucets and solid marble Crappers, when all you NEED is a hole and a box over it. And what you propose would do exactly that. Plumbing is definately not a public utility. I mean, Jesus Christ didn't have plumbing, and he created one of the world's most influential religious movements!
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
RAMRaid is HERE
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey