Slashdot Mirror
Companies, Government and Community Fiber Rollouts
hype7 writes "Wired is running an interesting article about a number of communities which are dissatisfied with the present communications infrastructure that they are being offered, and are deciding to do something about it. However, many of the corporates who had previously been offering services to these communities have resisted this, with Pennsylvania going so far as to draft law to prevent competition for the communications providers. What is most interesting is that in the communities where the roll outs have taken place, the incumbent providers have "dropped prices to be more competitive ... while not changing rates in areas where it continues to have a monopoly". What I don't understand is why can't a public utilities company provide a public utility if their rate payers want it? What's wrong with additional competition? And why should legislative bodies protect telecommunications monopolies?"
Thats like asking the RIAA to allow us to continue to have Fair Use of our CDs and such.
It just wont happen, businesses do not care about anything other then profit, and stock price. What we think does not matter.
for granting Congress the power to legislate trade between the States. That little crack has widened to an enormous breach, to the point where these days, in America, the Soviet Russia jokes troll you. As the Oracle said in the Matrix "What do all men with power want? More power." As long as State and Federal legislatures exist, they will continue to pass laws. They're never "done". So of course they'll step up and slap down communities for doing this, its legally their perogative, and this is what they DO, they make laws. Not to mention the fact that they're probably all in the pockets of the telecom companies (Valenti, anyone?)
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Excellent! I think the only way we are going to get decent, scalable telecomms to our door is by paying for it ourselves. Can't rely on the government to roll out this infrastructure. It's the same as traffic problems, it costs a heap of money to fix, and won't usually be fixed in the 4 years a politician is in office, and they won't see any return from it, therefore it's not even worth them doing it. Unless we do it ourselves, we'll never get it.
Corporations don't care about the consumer. They never have, and they likely never will. Corporations care about the consumer's money. As long as they can provide the bare minimum required to keep the money flowing into their coffers, that's all they'll do.
Pessimistic, yes. But show me a wildly successful corporation that lavishes it's customers with their every desire. Yeah. Right.
"What's wrong with additional competition? And why should legislative bodies protect telecommunications monopolies?" Because additional competition means less profit for the existing monopolies. Because telecommunication monopolies protect legislative bodies when it comes to election funds. It may sound like paranoi, but it's also the real world.
Whenever our normally capitalist system grants somebody a monopoly, it's usally because two of that kind of business would lead to mutual destruction, and we need that business to exist because it makes other businesses possible.
Netflix would not be able to operate if not for the United States Postal Service, for example. The same goes for most magazine subscriptions. Sure, FedEx, UPS and Airborne Express all compete with the USPS express and priority line of services, but everybody else is prohibited by law from making a daily stop at every address without a pre-existing relationship.
Cities control the local water and sewage systems as well for obvious reasons. We can't afford these services becoming unavailable for any length of time for any reason.
POTS used to be an essential utility as it was the only commonly deployed realtime communnication tech. Now, it's not so much the only game in town, but it still is the only communication lifeline for some elderly people who don't want a cell phone. Because of this, the local Ma Bell company is not allowed to close up shop, and that's why they're basically granted a monopoly to soak the customers the can soak so that the company can afford to give below-cost service to those who can't.
not that they don't try to take advantadge of every situation.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
"And why should legislative bodies protect telecommunications monopolies?"
Campaign donations... It's all about money, if telco's are going to rollout fiber they want to be the only ones to use it. I thought the FCC already ruled on this, and was 'giving' telcos a monopoly nationwide? (Being that if they roll the fiber, they don't 'have' to sell it to competition?)
Regardless, these telcos have deeper pockets and connections then the **AA's do - with the US so far behind in the communications area, I think it has to become painfully obvious there is more at play then just the difficulty and expense of rolling out the glass. IMHO, the telcos are refusing to do it waiting on the government to pay for it AND let them control it. Telcos don't want glass everywhere because once things go digital they don't know how to play anymore. And God knows people are itching to drop telcos like a bad habbit. And after years and years of dog poor service (IE, got a problem? Call support, wait 2 hours on hold - get transferred twice with additional hour of wait time per transfer, then get disconnected. Rinse, repeat. - Then you switch to cable instead of DSL - have a problem - call support - on hold for 10 minutes...)
There's nothing wrong with additional competition. It's good for the economy, and it's good for you and me. It's just bad for telecom giants who are used to lobbying for (and in many cases) getting their way.
Americans have become so used to looking first to giant corporations that we've in many ways lost the ability to come up with our own local solutions. The fact that more and more localities are bucking this trend is a good thing indeed, but at the state and federal level telecom giants hold much more power.
Whether you're a Democrat or a Republican, giving breaks to big players and shutting out small players seems anti-competitive, doesn't it?
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
TelCos and Cable operators don't move into these communities because they can't make a profit on running the cable there because they would charge unreasonable rates. So when a community forms a group that doesn't have to worry about profits, the TelCos and cable companies get mad because they can't compete against someone who doesn't have to make a profit, or waste that profit giving money to shareholders and executives with multi-million-dollar salaries.
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
Clearly The best solution is to have a public utility and a private company offering the same services for a community. This way you force them to compete and since they are different animals they will be very unlikely to make some kind of alliance to hike prices.
I've got answers:
"why can't a public utilities company provide a public utility if their rate payers want it?"
"What's wrong with additional competition? And why should legislative bodies protect telecommunications monopolies?"
Because governmental entities do not give money to political causes. Also, government businesss do not raise taxes.
Accordingly, if a legislature is faced with helping and protecting a private business versus a government business, the legislature will ALWAYS support the private business.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
You don't want 50 seperate startup companies all laying their own custom fiber or coax networks through your city redundantly, when you know that when it all shakes out, at best 3 will survive. Because physical infrastructure is involved, typically communities award a contract to a single player, who will provide said infrastructure - and they tend to keep that contract going because of the infrastructure (there would be financial issues switching to a new provider and possibly having to pay for them to buy the old infrastructure from the previous company).
The government's answer to these competitive problems to date in the electric and telecomm markets is to enforce a really stupid form of competition, and require incumbent telcos and power providers to share their physical network with startups (where "share" means basically resell). So now You can choose Traditional Company A, or one of A's 50 crappy resellers who have no physical infrastructure of their own.
The Right Thing, IMHO, is that municipalities (or states, or whatever) should be putting out bids and taking contracts to build physical cabling infrastructure of various types for the area, and also contracts (perhaps from the same provider, but not neccesarily) to maintain said cabling infrastructure. The cabling infrastructure is then owned by the municipality itself, and it terminates at certain wire-centers where competitive providers can hook in with their own real equipment (much like internet NAPs in some ways - a shared facility where people co-loc edge equipment).
11*43+456^2
My future father-in-law works for the Lt. Governor of PA. I'll be doing my best to raise this issue to him and have him talk with her about it, which will hopefully get this idiotic and corporate-centric bill defeated.
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
To answer the OP's question about why the government allows these monopolies to exist:
Economically, the incumbent firm would not sink the cash required to build the initial infrastructure unless it was guaranteed years and years of profit to recoup the cost. It's not the efficient solution, but it was common decades ago to do this. Regulation prohibited competition so that the incumbent could recoup its costs and profit from its venture. It's unfortunate that legislators still believe the telecommunications giants still need this sort of protection, though. The efficient solution is to allow competition, because lets face it, the incumbents have made their money back and then a lot more.
I just wanted to shed some light on why this happens in the first place. Why it's still happening is that old habits die hard, especially with the lobbying dollars that the telecom firms have!
Lots of people are pointing out the obvious connection between money and politics. But there is a historical connection that needs to be pointed out.
Many moons ago, most places in the US didn't have power, or phone service. So the US made deals with private companies, wherein the utility company would provide a service (such as phone lines) in areas where building the infrastructure would ordinarily be cost prohibitive. In exchange, they got monopoly guarantees for long periods of time on those areas.
Telco's are used to getting their way (I worked for Bellsouth Internet for a few years). After all, BellSouth makes a profit even if you get Earthlink DSL in the South, because BellSouth has a monopoly on the network, provided by the federal government. There is a long history in the USA of enforcing monopolies for utility companies, that in many cases has far outlived it's consumer benefit
The reason we have to protect monopolies is so we can receive our "under-the-desk", "kickbacks" for pushing to have a certain company service a certain area. With guaranteed sales, why shouldn't the person in office, who fights so hard to have the monopoly there in the first place, get a little somethin' somethin'? ;-) This is also referred to as being "in-bed-with" the company. As long as we can promote a monopolistic practice in a large area - leaving no options to the general public for a product made in China by 10-year old kids and supported by half-assed, camel-jockeys in India, I'm cool as long as I get my extra $5,000 a year. :-P Go Corporate America!
-- Game Developers: Stop porting badly-textured games from crappy console systems!
Local governments shouldn't be allowed to compete for local telecom services because they have an unfair advantage in the ability to acquire capital. They just tax you! Cities that claim that they can provide services cheaper than a nationwide telecom are playing a shell game with their funding.
They most often have no clue what it really takes to provide services. They are sold on an idea, they implement it, they realize it is going to cost more than they thought, they subsidize the project, you get the service a rock bottom price, and later your taxes go up because the city is running short on cash.
What has this accomplished? You raised taxes for everyone, even those that don't what the service, you put a legitimate company out of business in you area, and as technology progresses you are left behind because no one will want to serve your area after you the way your city treated the last competitor.
You also mention that the local telecom providers lower rates once a community telecom comes in. You have to understand that the incumbent provider has spent millions and millions of dollars to provide service in the area. They are forced to lower prices to levels that are below the cost of providing service just to survive. Local telecoms are regulated; they have to provide service to anyone who wants it. They can't just pack up there bags and leave. So, its either sell service at below cost or be left with a multimillion dollar network that no on is using.
One of the reason for early regulation of telephone services was the plethora of wires being strung up across cities by competing service providers.
Imagine the same problem today with everyone "rolling their own" communications by digging up roads to lay fibre or putting dozens of wireless access points on the same unlicensed frequencies in the same general location.
It's not just about benefiting consumers, but also about reducing collateral damage...
I'm not trying to sell anything here, but maybe some cities could look at what Frankfort Kentucky did as a case study. Cable Modems 128/128 at $14 per month. 256/128 at $18 and 512 at $24. (higher services available) VOIP telephone at something like $13 per month. Plus long distance calling at good rates. Plus they provide they provide electricity, water, cable tv, and security monitoring at good rates. Everything comes on one bill. Perfect? -NO. A monopoly? -pretty much. but a good service at comparatively low rates? absolutley. http://www.fewpb2.com (too lazy to do html. sorry)
Your point about those in power wanting more power is all well and good, but history is replete with cases of federal and state governments relinquishing power when forced to do so by the electorate (or even against the wishes of the electorate). The deregulation enacted by the Reagan Administration in the 1980s is a good example of this, while Margaret Thatcher had to ram de-socialization down the throats of skeptical Brits.
But the point is that government won't inevitably continue to grow and grow and grow. It is only inevitable if the electorate lets it be.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
What I don't understand is why can't a public utilities company provide a public utility if their rate payers want it?
Your terminology is a bit off. A public utility is a "company that performs a public service; subject to government regulation." It need not be owned by a gov't.
That said, there are examples of systems where distribution is owned by the gov't or by a local cooperative. Many communities, particulary small towns or rural areas in the US, have electrical coops that handle distribution of power to individual homes. I'm not sure why politicians believe internet service should not also be handled like this.
FreeSpeech.org
current "governments", "states", "regulators" etc haven't really built an even slightly more advanced society anywhere as far as I've seen. simple mechanisms to justify, legalize, formalize or otherwise protect the monopolies that their members profit from themselves. i can't recall many monopolies, big business or financial interests being broken down by new efforts the public organizes, in spite of technologies galore. It appears Microsoft might be the first one. We've seen how they keep trying to protect their interests, and it's far from over yet. The auto and oil industry, however, isn't going anywhere soon it seems, in spite of better altrenatives being around forever. All of these monopolies are going to put up real resistance when they see people organize and build their own alternative economies, as they largely did in Argentina, install their own communications infratructures, build their own vehicles and transportation systems, generate their own power, build their own electronics, plant and grow their own food, etc.
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
Wireless should change this - because the provider does not have to make an investment in hardware (even if just wiring) to each destination location, it will be easier for players to enter and exit the market. Until then, you can't use the word capitalism with a straight face when describing the telco markets.
Say, if everybody just roll out the cable to their nearest 4 neighbours, wouldn't the grid be constructed by a cooperative effort?
:(
I don't know how it'd work though, does seem a bit too idealistic
Online backup with Mozy, sounds like Ozzie, but more!
The problem with some of these attempts is that it is direct government involvement. How do you prevent the taxpayers(not rate payers) from directly subsidising the network if a government entity owns the network? I'm all for competition but, not at the cost of creating socialism. There are better ways of solving the problem. Instead of the local municipalities owning the network, create a not-for-profit company that would own and manage the network. You could still get a loan or other favorable treatment from the local municipality and be free of all these silly no-compete laws.
What's wrong with additional competition? And why should legislative bodies protect telecommunications monopolies?
Do you have any idea what the profit margin is on $50/month internet access? A non-profit can provide this service for less than half the cost.
Legislative bodies do whatever their corporate masters (read: big donors) tell them to do. The public good is never a concern. Welcome to the wonderful world of representative "democracy".
do some basic math. This UTOPIA project, the largest and most ambitios, will cost some 340million to deliver service to 140,000 consumers. That's a cost of $2,500 per customer! That's static start up cost, assuming that it all comes in on budget, on time, and you still haven't considered coninuing maintenance and upgrade!
No wonder their are no companies leaping to do this. Someone has to pay for this. You really think your going to get 1.5Mb fiber to your house for $40 a month?
Look I think it's a sleazy as it gets bribeing the gov't to keep competition out of the market. But one does have to ask the questions:
Q:Why isn't their more free market competition to start with?
A:Telecom is a nasty, expensive, buisness. And now that it's been wrapped up with the computer industry it's a moving target. If your crystal ball get's foggy for just a little bit, your out of buisness.
These services will get to consumers, when they can be practically and effectively deployed.
I would rather be ashes than dust!
C'mon....ADMIT IT. Please. Our government sold us out a long time ago. Our elected officials and high level bureaucrats can do whatever they want. You know it. I know it.
And of course, OF COURSE, there is money to be made by eliminating competition for corporations.
And protecting the corporations or the wealthy at the expense of the little guy is what America is all about. In fact America was basically built on slavery, which was an official part of the government. And slavery ended not that long ago. THere were people who were born slaves who died just a few decades ago. And of course we had indentured servants, too. And of course tenant farmers were extant until just recently. 16 tons, and whattaya get, indeed....
And if institutional slavery is not the perfect example of a government SPECIFICALLY BUILT for looking after the interests of the Big Guy at the expense of the Little Guy, then what the hell IS a good example of that type of government?
I will say it again: America was BUILT to EXPLOIT the Little Guy in order to BENEFIT the Big Guy (the wealthy, corporations, etc).
And how SHOCKING that we now see that our government is continually protecting large successful corporations from competition in order to extract higher fees from us, The Little Guy. What a shock; what a surprise!
eat shiat and bark at the moon
I agree with the comments in spirit - here's the argument that kind-of makes sense against allowing non-telecoms to compete in telecommunications. Telecommunications are basically socialized in the US, with subscribers in urban areas subsidizing subscribers in rural areas. People in Hawaii and Alaska don't pay anywhere near what their service costs, while people in the suburbs get soaked. If you let the communities pay only what it actually costs to serve them, then the economics change. Official telecommunications companies have regulations that can make them provide service that would otherwise be against their interest.
This is the same problem that the Postal Service has with UPS and FedEx - they have charges that are related to actual costs, and tend to get used more for people in urban areas than rural areas because of that. In doing so, they take away the customers that the Postal Service counts on to subsidize the rural routes. The result is that they lose money.
Is this trade-off worth the loss of competition that it brings, in exchange for allowing people in Montana to have phones? I'll leave that to the combined wisdom of Slashdot.
Law is whatever is boldly asserted and plausibly maintained. -- Aaron Burr
Tuxter is right. The government shouldn't be rolling out our new communications lines unless they're going to be free (as in roads), maintained by the governmet...
I hate the goddamn monopolies in my area. I have a cable company (Cox) that blocks my school's (UF) football games on channels that I already pay for in order to put them on pay per view. People in nearby cities get all the games for free. I have a phone company that says 'all circuits are full' half the time I pick up my phone to dial out. My utilities company (power and water in one) charged me a $200 fee because I paid my bill late one month. They said they will give me back my $200 when I quit using their service.
Where competition opens up, rates go down. We need less legislation protecting monopolies. If a company cannot survive on its own, then it deserves to die. In the same way it's unnatural to keep a total human vegetable alive on life support for years, it's unnatural to prop a company that our laws treat as a person once it's already proven to be dying.
--- We need more Ron Paul!
Does anyone happen to have a link to the legislation (or at least some info on it, who's behind it, etc?) that's mentioned in the OP? I live in PA, and would like to take a look at it and send my congresscritters some feedback.
Thanks!
IANAL so the terms may be off, but some functions are a vital service that impacts general community health (i.e. water and sanitary services). In some areas power and telephones are considered vital services that are too important to trust to a private industry. For those areas, a public utility is the way to go.
Otherwise it turns into a government vs. industry situation and the gov't will always be able to legislate the industry out of the picture. For this reason, government operated services have to be declared a vital service where there are already market providers. I believe the rules are different where there is no existing market and no private entities have indicated a desire to enter the market.
The solution is to use a hybrid solution; the public co-op. The legal definition meanders about from place to place, but a co-op is generally a not-for-profit/non-profit organization that provides a service to its owners (i.e. the community). Not being a profit-focused organization, the local gov't can usually provide some form of special concessions to "stimulate" the local reinvestment of capital.
There are two problems from my experience is when a co-op (or any competitor) enters a market with an existing monopolist provider.
1) In things like telco, the first person on site spent a fortune to build the infrastructure; ordering them to share with their competitors tends to make them feel like a J.C. Penny's being ordered to allow Sears Roebuck to take over floor space for free. This really does have a sense of unfairness to it, though I agree that an entrenched carrier is in many cases taking advantage of public right-of-ways and thus is required to share.
2) The original service provider is a a real $**thead and is screaming "unfair competition" with no real basis. Where I live the local cable provider threatened lawsuits, failed to provide upgrades, and basically threw temper tantrums as long as the city did not give them an exclusive contract, excluding other carriers from using the right-of-ways even though those other carriers would be forced to build their own network.
Case number 1 is a real fairness issue. The groundbreaker could be taken advantage of by acruing massive debt his competitors don't have to deal with, alternately the system could be well amortized and the carrier just doesn't want competition. #2, IMO, deserves to be beaten with a big publicly-driven cluebat until rationality or cessation of bodily functions happens.
I've been on slashdot so long I'm starting to get out of touch with the cool stuff if it ain't on slashdot.
My point isn't that deregulation per se solves the problem of unchecked government growth. It was merely a broad example, and it is questionable whether the S&L scandal was caused by intent or by execution.
Deregulation of trucking and oil began under Carter.
True, but it was the Reagan Administration that made deregulation a cornerstone of its economic policy. I'm not arguing that as an economic policy the Reagan approach was all good, partially good, or even good at all. I was really more interested in this as an example of elected officials relinquishing government control.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
SBC got really nasty and start bombing the postal mailboxes of all of the residents with FUD mailings about how the new initiative would cost every homeowner a fortune in new taxes. The only indication as to the source of the FUD mailings was "SBC" written in tiny six point font in the corner. There were plenty of similar mailings over the month before the referendum, and it failed (narrowly) in a non-presidential election year. Generally, these tend to be smaller turnouts with mostly older voters.
This year, they got it back on the ballot again, and I hope that it goes through, if not for the "fiber", at least to stick it to SBC. I'm voting for it again.
(Side note: we already have power over leased ComEd lines, but bought from nearby Wisconsin, and our electric rates are relatively low.)
Basically, the approach is to minimize the monopoly. They do the monopoly from the block level greenbox to the house. That's it. They also allow up to a hundred different providers into the greenbox.
The interesting thing about this approach, is that a company like Disney could use it to get into the cable industry and break the monopoly. Since the FCC allowed the merger of Comcast/ATT, my prices have shot up (1.5 with another hike coming that will double it), and service has plummeted (I had an out about every 6 months, now it is weekly). I would love to get off them. But the alternative is qwest dsl. Both Comcast and Qwest vie for the distinction of being the 2 worse companies out of all bandwidth providers.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
On the fewpb2.com webserver....
for the not so lazy.
From excellent karma to terible karma with a single +5 funny post...
It's not just towns and cities that are fed up with the high cost of bandwidth and lousy service from the big telcos. More and more, enterprises are deploying their own private WANs across leased raw fiber which gives them complete control over their own destiny. Companies like Celion Networks make it possible to do this in a cost effective way with drop-dead simple long distance DWDM gear. How'd you like a 10 Gbps pipe between LA and Chicago that easily scales incrementally to 100 Gbps without calling your telco every single time you need a few Gbps more? That, my friend, is control!
You'd have thought the goverment would be anti-monopolistic, as the commercalist state breaks down when you have total monopolies turning into effect a dictatorship by the coperations and sidelineing the goverment.
I guess the telcos just give a lot of campaign contributions, stupid corrupt goverment.
I lived near one of the communities that is providing public Internet access to residents (Kutztown, PA). I called the city government to ask if they'd consider setting up a WiFi broadcast tower on a hill outside of town, so people living outside the city limits (e.g., me) could also take advantage of the service.
The answer was that they were trying to lay low, because Verizon (the Northeast USA's Baby Bell) had filed suit and threatened legislative action as it was, and the city didn't want to do anything to further tick Verizon off.
Guess even the 4,000 residents of Kutztown, PA was too much for Verizon, eh?
Well, the U.S. used to spend next to nothing on its military, but then Europe came to the U.S. twice in a quarter century, hat in hand, begging for help when they didn't have the sense(WW I) or the balls (WW II) to take care of problems in their own countries. Given the increasingly global reach of any potential enemy, isolationism was no longer an option for the U.S.
Feel free to flame away about the U.S. some more and choke on the bitter dregs of your sour grapes.
Not that this is the case all the time, but the state does have an obligation to protect utilities from unfair competition. It has to do with the fact that corporations would only serve profitable areas if they had a choice.
Start with the consideration that utilities are regulated heavily to start with, and that this has always been the case.
States like PA have urban, suburban, and rural areas. If an unregulated company came in to provide a new service, it would only provide the service in areas where it would be profitable -- probably urban and suburban neighborhoods. People in the boondocks would be left without the service, or would have to pay much higher fees for the service.
But utilities, which can be considered more necessary than luxury, are offered statewide because the state has controls over the system.
It is a matter of the greater good... and if a corporation wants to offer a utility service in a state, then it agrees to be regulated by the state. If you don't want to be regulated so heavily, find another business.
Some people always consider regulation to be evil, and ignore the fact that there may be legitimate reasons for regulation. Besides, we do have a system where people can get regulations reduced -- it is called an election. Regulations aren't enacted in a vacuum - they are put in place by elected representatives.
It's interesting that Pennsylvania politicians would be sponsoring such a bill.
/Comcast/Verizon/Adelphia would be pushing these moron politicians... These companies need to be accountable and so do the politicians..
Two large mega corps that do well here in the Keystone state are Verizon/Bell Atlantic and Adelphia.
Verizon/Bell Atlantic has the infamous fame of ripping of Pennsylvania consumers by about 4 billion dollars that consumers paid in surcharges that were to fund fiber to curb as per the the original stuff that said the surcharge was okay...
Here a year or more after the project of fiber to curb was to be completed Verizon hasn't done shit and is shirking the fraud they committed... Lots of talk going on about the matter... I expect to see Verizon end up posting a multi-year loss while they give us our cash back.. theives...
Next, the Adelphia bunch.. a cable company that based themselves over by Philly and grew and grew... WHile the family owned enterprise with monopoly over cable in many neighborhoods pockets the cask even later when they had public money invested in them.
My point is, who in the hell else, other than AT&T
I really think government needs to start outsourcing more. Too many loser citizens that expect a street cleaning truck to clean up outside their home and too much emphasis on rather affordable services that folks should be paying for...
Frankly, I think the local governments need out of schooling too... Pay for your damn kids... Home school... Pay for private school... etc... Hell they don't pay for college and that's necessary these days so screw it, cover it or don't be in the business of it.
I'd rather see the government providing dialtone and bandwidth... it's much more relative to what they do and should than people care to realize..
Why aren't there tons of companies in the fiber to your curb business? Because of localized permits, big cash to rip up streets, run lines, drive poles in, etc. A lot of it involves the permit and right of way costs...
Local utility companies like DQE - Duquesne Light have 600mbits worth of fiber ran all over Pittsburgh. They built it, have right away and own the infracstructure... Now their waiting for the poor deperate companies providing IP to realize it's there and they need to pay them for it...
The United States lacks bandwidth.. 1.5mbit isn't really anything today... Considering a $50 cable modem can run that fast... Their aren't affordable scalable data options for small and emerging businesses... so you are forced to run a T1, DSL or pay for your gear to live in a datacenter with a $400 per megabit usage billing...
The US has lost it's edge with data services because a majority of the population fits the old dialup over-subscription model whereby people use their bandwidth 20 minutes a day or so at most... Sold to accomodate one out of twenty people's use.... Citizens by and large could care less about knowledge, learning and rich media like tutorials and conferencing... The only thing they care about is downloading MP3s and pirating movies...
Nice fascist comment.
The mere right to complain doesn't define a democracy. The right (not priviledge) to expect government to make laws that protect the people (not just their lobbyists) is something slipping away.
No sour grapes here, I'm in Canada. Hope I dont need to remind you that we were fighting in Europe _3_ years before you arrogant fuckheads showed up. Americans like to take credit for destroying the whole nazi regime singlehandedly, but thats far from the truth.
The RAF had already destroyed the luftwaffe before the americans had the balls to show up in europe and 73% of the nazi casualties were inflicted the Russians.
In good american spirit though, you guys claimed to have saved the day.... Hey, I dont blame you... it's better to have hollywood paint you chickenshits as Hero's that saved the universe than the reality.
Skype Me! username: john_allen_mohammed
While the idea of public broadband has always been an attractive one for slashdotters, the incursion into this arena by Grant County PUD in central Washington State stands as an example of why we don't want bureaucrats meddling in business.
In this state the PUDs are treated as municipalities under the law and are given a set of rules under which they can operate. Broadband and electrical power are different services so it took an act of the Legislature to allow them to enter the market. The legislature, under some pressure from the big telecoms who were afraid that the PUDs would "cherry pick" the larger communities and leave the rural people to fend for themselves, allowed the PUDs to be "wholesale" only. The first thing Grant County PUD did was ignore that law.
Grant County PUD had first partnered up with two local ISPs which charged $20 to $25 per month for the broadband servoces back at the inception of the project in 1999. But at the same time the Manager of that PUD was trying to attract an outside competitor, also a utility provider, to enter the market in this county at a subsidized rate of $8 per month.
The PUD did attract that utility but only by entering into secret (and illegal) agreements to subsidize the program at cost plus 10%. So the new provider would risk nothing and could make 10% on the rate-payer's money even if they gave away their services for free. Then the PUD employees threw as many of the new customers to this new competitor as possible while their managers used their position as investors to pressure prices to a point where the commercial ISPs could no longer compete profitably.
It was only after the PUD had spent several million dollars propping up this outside provider that the story became known. Meanwhile, the PUD had raised the electrical rates to cover the $100 Million cost of fibering only 1/3 of the County but lied when asked about it. The Commissioners and Managers claimed that the rate increases were due to other factors. However their own emails, obtained under the State's public disclosure act, showed this to be untrue.
Agricultural interests were incensed because they use a lot of that electrical power. A large farm might have a $500k yearly power bill for their irrigation pumps. While 4% isn't much for my house, it's a chunk of money on a half-million dollars.
It took almost a year after the discovery of the secret contracts and a State Auditor's report which also found illegal and improper actions, to rid ourselves of the management team that led us into this debacle. The largest ISPs in the area, including the first two to partner up with the PUD, went out of business and were gobbled up by another outside competitor; costing jobs and an economic drain on the communities' resources. The Commissioners who were supposed to keep a rein on the PUD managers are now up for re-election and facing some tough questions.
The problem with bureaucrats going into business is that, essentially, they don't understand profit and loss. It's all other people's money and if they make a mistake they just raise the rates to cover it. We could have fibered this County up for the money they spent, had they spent that money wisely. Instead they created a NOC they thought they could make profitable (not at $3 million a year to operate they couldn't), they installed fiber to the areas where their managers lived regardless of population density (it turns out the telecoms fears of "cherry picking" were well-founded, but the managers weren't smart enough to do it that way), and they drove jobs and money out of the area.
Had they simply created the infrastructure for the product instead of getting involved in creating subsidies for favored businesses we would have been ok. But that's the problem. Bureaucrats don't make good business people.
So if you don't want to see jobs go away, money disappear and your power rates rise, treat the entrance of government into business with caution. These things are run by politicians, not business people. And it's not their money.
No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!
People want broadband...there is very little competition in the market...You still have to fork over $30/mo to Verizon...Where's the competition there?
Explain to me, if there is one gas station on the corner, the gas is $1.86/gal. If there are two or three, it is $1.79/gal. Under your logic, if there were many more (say 10), it would be $0.03/gal, right? Or would it now be free?
In the real world, with ten competitors, there would be seven filing for bankruptcy because they probably got to $1.69 in a price war and the three that had deeper pockets to absorb the loss would survive. Guess what they're gonna do when the others are gone? Make it back up (or else they too go under).
Costs just don't disappear because there are more competitors. This is like the phony "screw oil, let's all use solar energy - if we all used it it would cost next to nothing" irrational arguments. This is horse before cart. If solar could be cheaper than oil, we'd all switch. Costs are real things.
Here's a good exercise: Consider people costs so costs aren't an abstraction any more. Let's say your boss hires a hundred more people today in your department, do you automatically slash your paycheck to 10% of what you got last week? You'd better, right? You have to compete or else you'll be driven out by those other people.
Next week he hires a thousand more. Now you should be happy making $0.03/hour. Compete, damn it! Screw your costs. There's a lot of competition, so your costs must go away.
At some point, you're gonna quit. You're running at a deficit, your rent, car payment, bills, etc. are all piling up and you're fed up providing your labor to a loser who doesn't pay you for it. Let him get crappy service from the other people who will work for $2/hour - he'll see why your $15/hour or whatever was worth the difference.
Now for the other falsehood:
Until all the city governments in the nation deploy grass-roots wireless networking to their residents for only the cost of maintenance we won't be using anything that isn't under the control of monopolies.
Here's the clue: it costs them money to do this too. In fact, most studies of municipalities diversifying into broadband show they cost more than a business exclusively focused on it. How can this be?
1. Infrastructure businesses are low margin relatively. Flip this around, and you understand infrastructure is HIGH COST. It is financing capital investment over a long time (fiber overbuilds in major metros cost around $4,000 to $4,200 per resident; cable around $2,400, and DSL around $900).
2. People who do one thing exclusively tend to do it better than people that try to do lots of things. We all have the same amount of time. Spend it across many things, or just one. Those who do just one and suck at it go out of business fast.
3. Diversifying municipalities can get away with sucking at something by cross-subsidizing from their monopoly side. This is the true flaw in the muni model. They piss in the pool enough to drive good competition out of a market, and keep doing a crummy job without dying off because they have another pot of money to raid. Suddenly you're paying twice the competitive rate for electricity, water, natural gas or some other monopoly service. Now your broadband really costs $90/month, not $30, and worst of all, IT SUCKS.
So don't ignore costs. They are real things. Making more competition doesn't affect that, and authorizing munis to steal from a monopoly market and subsidize a crummy broadband operation only guarantees you're gonna be stuck paying three times for bad service.
What I don't understand is why can't a public utilities company provide a public utility if their rate payers want it?
Why? Its my opinion that McCarthyism has so cripled American Public Discourse that the very THOUGHT of community owned co-operative behaviour is tanamount to treason.
McCarthyism did such a fine job of identifying those nasty 'co-operators' (communists) as UnAmerican that today, even the rabble will reflexively defend the 'rights' of their plutocracy to rule.
American People will not consider -- wont even discuss it without flaming liberal/socalist/communist-label throwing -- that maybe, just MAYBE a non-profit, community owned utility can deliver a service better, more cheaply and more uniformly than a for-profit.
Even such public goods utilities, like HEALTH CARE is a for profit venture in the USA. This is UNHEARD of outside the USA. Universal Public Healthcare is the norm in almost all the rest of the worlds' wealthy nations (canada, europe, aus., nz, ?,?,?). Hell, 45million USofAmericans dont have health insurance. In any nation, let alone the self-declared 'most wealthy' this would be a national scandal and shame. In the USA, the discussion isnt even entertained -- why would the for-proift media care to question the for-profit health-industry? They sit on one-another's boards. They are co-invested, and cross-linked. Maybe the Publicly-funded, independant national broadcaster would like to discuss the matter -- oh, dont have one of those either (see cbc.ca; bbc.co.uk; abc.net.au).
If the community considers telecommunications is a universal public good, why dont they mandate the creation of a utility? Instead, in USofAmerica, the plutocracy will use McCarthy's specter to assure that all that effort runs through their private, for-profit structures. Private banks. Private accounting. Private Advertising. Private Broadcasting. These for-profit sectors collude to assure their is no chance of cooperation amoungst citizens.
The person is a Consumer First, never an empowered citizen. That is why, the public need is not being met. If you are a rich consumer, you might be able to convince the for-profits there is enough meat in the market to give you what they want, but forget organizing your community to provide for the community's need... what are you? Some kind of communist?
Want to make political change? Forget it, you cant even get on the ballot... sorry. Ask Mr. Nader.
This arrangement amounts to unfair competition because Eagle Broadband receives "tax exempt public financing" that is not available to other cable and telecommunications providers, Abel said.
.My 3 cents (originally 2 cents but I've been thinking about this for so long that they accrued interest)
This is the argument that will squash this movement unless change is made to open competition at the far end.
Here's what I came up with for a public policy class a few years ago: Have the municipality rollout a fiber plant to each block or superblock of homes, all terminating at one or a small number of COs. Assume the costs of maintaining that fiber plant through property taxes. Over these lines the town can offer their own voice/data/video services OR allow access to similar private services through the magic of Vlans or some similar setup. The cost to the private companies should be lower since they no longer have to maintain the local loop, the municipal service should keep costs down by offering an alternative and legally everything should be on the up and up!
Possible bones of contention include aggregation equipment at the pole level (what kind of pole-mountable switch can switch all three types of service) and the home level (what demux can seperate out these three services once they reach the home). Who would 'own' this local equipment is also an issue, but as technology marches onward I'm sure this is another area the municipality can buy/outsource and keep 3rd party providers OUT of the local business altogether.
Some argue that this is anti-capitalistic (since it's a local givernment entering a formerly privtae market) but in reality it's not. One of the pretenses of a working open market is a low-cost entry barrier. That is, the costs to open a business shouldnt be so high that they discourage the entry of new participants. With telecomm it's virtually impossible to enter the market without rolling out new infrastructure (enormous, prohibitive cost). This setup allows small companies to enter the market because they would only have to deliver PHYSICAL lines to ONE place (the municipality CO).
. .
A few points of clarity:
1) You started late. Real late.
2) Lease-lend. The UK is STILL paying off
3) Pearl Harbour. THAT was when you started fighting
SOMEONE should be allowed to compete for local telecom services because the ILECs (Incumbent Local Carriers) ALSO had an unfair advantage in the ability to acquire capital. They received MASSIVE government subsidies to help build the infrastructure. (They just tax you!) If you don't think the ILECs are played a shell game with their funding, then you're only fooling yourself.
They way you talk about the incumbent companies, you would think they were a legitimate competitive companies that were being bullied by the big bad government.
Local telecoms are regulated; they have to provide service to anyone who wants it.
Phone service. We're not talking about phone service, we're talking about data services which the local telecoms are NOT providing.
These are small, mostly rural towns who want to offer SOME service. If THEY want to fund their own fiber-to-the-home services with THEIR TAX DOLLARS, then isn't it THEIR CHOISE? If you want to petition local governments from competing with the local telecom, then do it in YOUR town. What right do you have to make that decision for other towns?
What the happened to the idea of state and municipal rights?
I live in Cedar Falls Iowa, a small town of about 35,000.The local util company was the first to start competing with a large cable company in Cable internet, in the USA, and has already run the fiber lines through out the city. This actually brought in Target to build one of there wharehouses on the outskirts of town. Plus another local company is building a datacenter, which is a first for Iowa.
you can find out more about Cedar Falls Utilites at http://www.cfu.net/ and the company building the datacenter here locally at http://www.teamnet.net/
Oh, and Mediacom (the large company that CFU compets with) tried getting a law passed to stop CFU, but lost the battle. Oddly enough, Mediacom is actually owned by AT&T, which is one of the providers CFU uses for there connections.
Oh, and we are home to one of Iowas universities, http://www.uni.edu/
Take Australia, where Telstra is the monopoly supplier. They were charter bound to provide Telecommunications to outback [rural and remote] farming communities. Now that Telstra is being privatised, part of the legal restraints is a continuation of the same services. The government and the opinion forming people [voters at large] find it easier to think of this long standing monopoly as being reponsible for this service provision.
I see a lot of talk here on slashdot on the burden of providing 911 [000 in Oz, 999 in UK] access on VOIP. How would these startups feel about having to provide physical remote farm access 10000 KM away from the nearest city?
Part of the sweetener for carrying this loss making enterprise is a bit of fat on the other more lucrative sections.
2) When we put in fibre at a previous work, part of the road had to be torn up to lay it.
This inconvenienced motorists and the public. Sub-letting/dividing existing monopoly resource makes sense in this context. Fair access to this resource is a separate battlefield, along the same lines as this argument
[% slash_sig_val.text %]
----
This concludes our transmission to Oceania.
Where do you go when the only broadband provider in town is the one you're walking away from?
That was exactly what the situation was in Truckee, and probably in most other rural towns in America. For heaven's sake, you can't even get real competition in New York City for broadband access, because the incoming cable is owned by a single company who will not share access. It's either the cable company who wired the building or crappy DSL. Forget about satellite, cause you can't put up satellite dishes on the building due to city code and/or building rules.
In Soviet Russia, I ruled you
filtered at +3 and not even a single "Funny" post...
/.
This is not
Where are the soviet union, all your base , cluster....
I need something funny to digest all the "Informative" posts
Offtopic, or Humor? Sheesh - I guess there's no accounting for taste.
Just another example of how the libertarian idea that privatizing removes corruption is just foolish and wrong.
You mean Republican idea, because you're talking about Republican "privatizing" and "deregulation" where the privately held company is granted an government regulated monopoly while their responsibilities are "deregulated".
A libertarian would advocate the government completely remove itself from regulating this industry.
DSL IMHO is the big problem. Our digital economy is to reliant on it, and it's to limited. Here's why:
It's limited based on distance from the POP (point of presence). As a result, there needs to be rather plentiful hardware to cover an area. So when they started deployment, they scattered some about. See if DSL would catch on... it did.
But the problem is, filling in the gaps isn't cost effective. So there are many small gaps, but it isn't worth the cost to the DSL provider to blanket the area.
Cable on the other hand, has the advantage of blanket coverage. They know they have customers with no options (other than satellite). As a result, they can charge however much they want. If you want broadband, you'll pay it.
IMHO the best option will be when Phone, TV, Internet come in as one fiber into the house. Enough bandwidth for all communications/entertainment needs. As easy to get as a phoneline is today. Connected when they build a house, and you can call to have them activate it.
That will be when broadband will rule.
Phone #, IP should be issued with the line.
Then you pay for service (phone service, email, music download service, Cable TV, VOD, etc.) Anyone can provide them.
Some federal solution IMHO would be best. Provide the bandwidth and IP's. Terminate the line in the house basement. From there on, the homeowner deals with it. Get a router, go wireless, etc. etc.
Cap uplink at perhaps 512k (more than enough for a home user).
If you want to run your own servers, you can contract someone to run a dedicated line for them. communications lines are for personal use only.
That would IMHO be the best option. Fast stable internet in every home...
Imagine how great it would be knowing all americans had broadband. Communication could be endless. Things such as webhosting would include the ability to run a streaming TV station. Talk about taking back the media. You could have your own TV station with nationwide reach.
Cable companies no longer have a monopoly over networks in neighborhoods. In theory as an IP network, it could be a company in CA providing service to your NYC appartment.
Could even get Japaneese TV as good as the Japaneese do.
VoIP would make phone calls much cheaper too.
Life would be sweet.
--
Was my post Informative? Help me get an iPod, by signing up and completing an offer. Get a cool eBay credit card and help me out!
Yeah, you were fighting for several years longer than the U.S... and LOSING.
:-).
If you had matters well in hand by yourselves, why did you need to invite us to the party???
Pearl Harbor got us into war with Japan. We could have fought the Pacific War, and left the European War to Europeans and Canadians (and ignored Hitler's declaration of war on us, since we were far enough away to stay out of it, at least for a while. Long enough for the Canadians to win the war, anyway
And grand parent troll!
Republicans, republicans, republicans, republicans, republicans, republicans, republicans, republicans, republicans, republicans, republicans, republicans...
Smaller government my ass. Democrats and Republicans are the same, big government to justify their jobs. Ever noticed the people who hate the government the most normally work for a federal/state agency? Maybe I need to get a job at the state.
The SLC delegation recently voted on the Utopia project and they turned it down. There were commercials running on TV for people to write their local delegate, probably funded by one of the many companies that could lose their monopoly. The plan would essentially allow unlimited amount of bandwidth to be bought at wholesale from the municipalities, so the claim that it would "destroy jobs" and "cost a lot" was nonsense. It would cost less because cable lines and phone lines could be combined into one, the cable company would move over to fiber and the phone companies would move over to fiber. Talk shows were talking about it, people were calling in all in favor of it, angry at the commercial advertising, but it still passed for some reason (Payola?). Other counties/cities are still on board with it, its only SLC, where the most benefit would be had, that has jumped off the bandwagon.
"What the superior man seeks is in himself; what the small man seeks is in others."
- Confucius
Some people will complain about latency, but the real problem with satellite dish for internet is that it is so damned expensive!
If you must moderate, please moderate as irrelevent, not something bad, because I'm sure someone will find this interest
I have a box of old MacOS's, and I also have an old mac Classic (boo yeah). So, let's try a little game: I give you the MacOS system 3.1 disk, and if you can boot it on a PC with your "tool", and if it works the same as it does on the mac classic (i.e. shows up in black and white, reads mac disks, etc), then you might have something. Otherwise, you can't run "anything" on "anything", you just think you can.
stuff |
First, I will explain why monopolies *can* be a good thing, then how monopolies can also exploit end users horribly.
When it came time for the country I live in to start rolling out a telephone network, they made it law that only one company would be allowed to lay a telecommuncations network. There was a good reason for this, laying down a telephone network is exceptionally expensive, and if there was competition, you may have one or the other party taking *shortcuts* to reduce costs, and undercut their competitors price, having the competitor in turn do that same, resulting in an inferior network. So our telecom comfortably drew up a long term plan make sure that our country can get an advanced, and reliable network, without them risking bad return from investment.
Now, this is where the problem with monopolies comes in:
I live in Johannesburg, South Africa, a first world city, where about the only difference I have compared to say a big city citizen in the US, is that I pay through roof for internet and telephone, because our Telco company is a monopoly. Just to give you an idea, their ADSL offering costs about R900 p/m (appr US $115) we get a 512k down and 256k up connection. Now if that cost doesn't horrify you, listen to this, that only includes 3gb of traffic to anywhere you want, after you hit that 3gb cap, while local bandwidth is still fast, you get put in a 1:50 international pool, which translates to 10kbits/s if you are lucky, although to get around this, you can pay about $15 for a fresh account, which will work nicely until that also reaches it's limit. I don't know exactly how much local landline calls cost, but i am certain it is more than $0.15 per minute, if you want a nice view of how bad things are, visit http://www.hellkom.co.za/, this site is someones attempt to let everyone know just how badly they are being ripped off. And Telkom (our telco) is trying to sue him. It gets more insidous, becuase the South African government (not the ruling party) has large shares in Telkom, they haven't really been overly enthusiastic to sort out the economy cripling state of afairs, they have announced, but also delayed awarding a second network operator license for about 6 years.
Eskom, which provides electricity in our country is also a monopoly, however I have no complaints about them, infact, Eskom is one of the big players that bought the pebble bed reactor technology to where it is today.
We recently had some changes in our telecommunications law, making VOIP and inter site wireless LAN connections legal as of Feb 2005, but this only happened about 2 weeks ago, so things are looking up a bit, and with any luck, this will drive our telco's prices down, as any one will be allowed, and able to sell bandwidth without having to use our hideously overpriced, in fact these two factors will allow people to legally pay nothing to talk to their next door neighbor, or a friend who lives 5km's away.
In summary:
In theory, a monopoly can be a good idea, but in reality, people who run the monopolies generally rip their customers off, simply because the consumer has no choice, and as a monopoly, they can get away with it.
well it doesn't surprise me that you wouldn't have the slighest clue the contributions other nations made during WW2. The only things that you're aware of are american and told repeatadly by Hollywood movies. It's obvious you haven't read very many books, but I dont blame you for being a television addict, you are of course an American.
The bravest men and women during world war 2 were the Canadians, Brits, Australians and Russians.. completely underappreciated by your Hollywood gods. But of course, you would never accept the Russian element as a factor in defeating the Nazi regime, because, after all you're just a stupid american.
Go Fuck Yourself and Die.
Skype Me! username: john_allen_mohammed
I live in Chelan, Washington. Our PUD has put in fiber to Chelan, and many of the other towns and cities in the county. These fiber services deliver ATM-based telephone and data services, and may eventually deliver digital TV.
For my 2Mb/s down 640Kb/s up connection and a telephone line, I pay about $53 per month. The telephone line is not Voice over IP, but is circuit-switched. ATM provides the means to transmit both the voice and data channels down the fiber.
Now, our PUD doesn't offer these services directly. They only run the fiber network. My actual telephone and internet bill come from my provider of these services (Localtel). What the PUD has actually done is open competition by allowing the customer to choose any of a number of service providers using their network. If I don't like Localtel, I can go to NW Telephone, or Panda Computers, or Modern Networking...... The list goes on.
Now, it is actually interesting. Verizon services here suck, to put it mildly. Ok. Their residential services are OK. But they don't offer any reasonable business services. No fractional T1, no PRI.... So if I am implimenting a phone switch for a customer, I am stuck with analog lines. This means I have to deal with echo cancellation and other artifacts of 4 to 2 wire conversion.
Now, if I have my customer go to fiber, some of the service providers *do* offer fractional T1, PRI, etc. services over the fiber. Now everything works great and the phone switch is cheaper, more robust, etc.
Competition is a wonderful thing.
The problem is, from a telecommunications company perspective, that they are used to being monopolies because of the fact that they own the lines. Community-owned fiber networks are a good solution to this problem, but they need to be used to stimulate competition by allowing choice of service providers.....
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
The problem is that corporations and government agencies have different objectives. Corporations attempt to maximize Return on Investment whereas governments want to grow. Therefore, they do a different math problem. Governments care about economic development, they want broadband to encourage businesses and other potential taxpayers to move into their community and generate more taxable activity by existing taxpayers. All the cable guy gets is the monthy fee for service, whereas the government also gets the increased tax revenue due to economic development.
If you must moderate, please moderate as irrelevent, not something bad, because I'm sure someone will find this interest
Before the flames start - I'm not in favor of regulating - however
In our Village, we elected to have a single trash collector, the price went down 70% and as result we have 5 times less wear and tear on our roads.
So there is a model in which minimizing competition lowers consumer prices - dangerous but possible.
It is tempting for unions - be they government corps or otherwise - to avoid the temptation of economies of scale and resulting discounts. Trade restriction is a way to create effeciencies of scale.
The question is how close the utility is to its theoretic max effeceincy.
If a high percenntage of the utilities costs are fixed, and further expansion yields a high derivitaive of profits to costs then growing the utility results in cost savings, however, if growth requires a linear investment, building more capacity, more techs, more help, then there is no benefit to restricting trade.
AIK
CLAIM 1.
Libertarians are a big more extreme when it comes to free trade philosophy since Republicans have noticed that some regulation is required, Libertarians have yet to admit this which despite any Libertarian arguing is fact.
CLAIM 2.
History has demonstrated time and time again that completely free trade creates bigger rifts between higher and lower classes while being horrible for consumers all around.
Before you weasel out of your claims by massaging definitions and pleading ("That's not what I meant), I would like to give you the opportunity to elaborate.
1. Clearly rephrase and state the "fact" in claim 1 that you are asserting, I don't want to be thrown off by any grammitical mistakes.
2. Please define "completely free trade" in Claim 2. Do you define "completely free trade" as commercial anarachy, or do you assume the law applies to everybody and basic property rights are respected?
and I can only get 1 way cable.
RCN doesn't have two nickels to rub together.
I supposedly have a "choice" in my cable provider, but I can only pick RCN. Service Electric is around, but I guess they split up the market with RCN. (If you call, they will say "Oh, you live in an RCN neighborhood")
I am all for my community running fiber. Then I could at least get broadband. As it is now, my dialup connection is generally 21.6 - 24kbps.
Private businesses have to make a profit. The government doesn't. That's unfair competition. So what happens when the government needs more money for the project? They raise taxes. Do you and I want higher taxes? No. Is high speed internet access a necessity? No.
When the government starts taking business away from private companies then we don't have a capitalist country anymore.
-Nick
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
"SBC got really nasty"
That almost should be modded "redundant":
EVERYTHING SBC does is nasty.
I've worked there.
-- It's really a hellish atmosphere to work in, EVEN for higher-level tech pros.
-- My location had (still has) lots of south-Asian contractors who are only allowed to bill for 40hrs/week, even though EVERYONE knows they're all working 60+ to undercut everyone else:
no one dares to work less than 60 or bill for more than 40.
-- SBC puts incredible pressure on employees to work -- outside the office and unpaid -- to advance SBC's political agendas.
-- Employees are pressured to recruit friends and family to switch their business to SBC.
I *think* that employees are now required to use SBC themselves, if they live in an SBC-serviced area.
-- Their "acceptable use" policy for PCs is extremely restrictive and intrusive.
God forbid that a well-meaning friend should innocently email you a picture of her dog.
And it requires an act of Congress to obtain official permission to go outside of The Corporate Standard if you want to use your preferred source-editor, browser, etc.
-- During union strikes, all non-union employees are required to work 7x12, for jobs for which they are grossly under/over-qualified, at locations which may be 2-3 hours from home.
-- Typical true SBC story...An employee *partly* used paid time off (maybe sick time, I don't remember) for her honeymoon. A jealous co-worker snitched.
When the offending employee's return-flight landed, someone from SBC's Asset Recovery dept was waiting for her AT THE AIRPORT.
SBC proudly publicized this story in an email they send periodically to notify everyone of Asset Recovery caught-red-handed "success stories".
Yes, the employee was wrong, but the point is that SBC is a Kafka-esque place to work.
The cable companies have an 80% profit margin in areas where there is only one cable provider. Why do you think digital cable with all the movie channels pushes you up to over $100 a month. That is a $100 just to let your box decrypt a signal they are sending out anyways. Plus they rent the boxes out at 15-20/month as compared to analog boxes they rent out for $5/month. It does not cost them anything near that. Why do you think, some months you can get a deal that gives you a bunch of premium channels for free and other months they want $30+ per month for STARZ. Its because it really does not cost them anything but what they guarantee to the network, so if they set the price low in a promotion it is probably because they are not selling enough of a network to cover their agreements with the network to pay for a minimum number of subscibers.
Congress has the POWER to establish a post office and post roads but is not required to do so.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
let's go south korean before it is too late.
When you read through this article only two people are interviewed who oppose a public fiber optic utility. One is a representative from a telecommunications company. The other person is from a "free market" think tank. But "free market" is another way of saying anti-government. So the only people who are objecting are a company that want to make a profit off of people who they haven't bother to service before this and a nut-case who's opposed to government on general principles. Neither is a very credible opposition to this idea.
One of the things that governments can do and are good at doing is providing services across the entire polity and at a uniform price. The post office is one example. FedEx may be faster and more reliable but they don't have to delivery mail to every address in this country. The Rural Electrification Act brought electricity to parts of the country too poor to attract for-profit electrical companies and in doing so made the country a better place. Broadband in America has been slow to be adopted because for-profit companies only want to do locations where there will be a quick return on their investment. A public utility is designed to look at the long turn return on investment. Publically financed wiring and public ownership of the fiber is the way to go. It's the only way it's going to get done.
Brian Brown
Darn, why did I have to blow mod points on garbage last Friday when I could have used them here?
Parent poster has nailed this concept perfectly. It is impossible to have a pure, free market on services delivered to our homes via cable. Why? Because we limit the number of cables that can be pulled to the home. Even if a second company can pull cable, would you want your street torn up for the 3rd? The 4th? The 10th? No, if we let every company that wants to provide a home cable service the opportunity to pull their own wires, then the public would scream for regulation.
Instead, the cables going into the home have to be limited. This can be done by a private company, who might then open the lines to others. (Aka the electric grid in Texas after deregulation.) Or, it can be done by the community, if it feels that this is a necessary infrastructure for public funds.
The only problems occur when the community tries to provide services over the lines. Then, competition can be stifled. But if the lines are pulled and maintained by the city, and any company can offer services over those lines (paying the city for use of the lines, which covers the cost of maintenance and nothing more) then the best, realistic free market services are available.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
just goes to show how retarded you are
american schools make very sure to teach the russian importance
oh and you wonder why the US doenst give a crap about what other countries think. your attitude is exactly why.
so, you dont have to care about the US, but dont expect the US to give a shit about your opinions.
Why is the company that has a monopoly on the infrastructure allowed to offer services on them? Wouldn't it be a good idea to have only *one* company own the wires, but then not allow them to sell services (phone, tv, internet) over them? This would work for rural as well as urban areas, since once the wires are in place and ready for a service to run on them, the cost to a phone company is pretty low. Especially given that wires (phone-wire, coax, or fibre) can run multiple "services"? Such as TV, Internet, Phone, etc.?
Ciao!
The Doctor What (KF6VNC)
Lots of people here are griping about the cost of fiber to the home to the taxpayer.
Why should this utility be different than any other? New roads cost taxpayers millions of dollars a year, and much more than that to maintain the existing roads. No one ever protests the construction or repair of roads.
Water and sewer lines also cost local governments millions of dollars. No one wants to see those go away either.
Why shouldn't local governments get their citizens connected? Local governments are charged with the responsibility to educate, protect and provide the necessities for it's people. Doesn't information access fall into that category?
Linus Torvalds said it best when asked why anyone would help develop Linux. He said "it's a lot like roads...no one person owns the roads but everyone benefits from having well maintained roads."
Broadband "roads" are that important.
-ted
Was looking at this and decided to post my broadband experience. I live out in the country on the front range of Colorado. After getting tired of our 56k degrading in speed I decided to look for broadband service in the area. Qwest told me there was no way they would offer service, Cable companies told me the same (our area is swiming in fibre cable- odd ain't it?). Another odd fact is that we are verry close to I-25 (I-25 has the main fibre et all connections running under it), yet our 56k was being routed to a city 15-20 miles north of us and then to the I-25 lines.
After a while (and a lot of googling), I came up with nothing except for the remote possibility of a small local company. I sent an e-mail asking them if they could provide service in our area. After about 3 months (and all the local government requirements were met), they set up shop. I now get 1-5 Mbps (depending on the site or ftp I connect to), and only now has Qwest decided to provide wireless broadband here.Only costs $45 a month too!- considering it was going to be $120 a month to get ISDN from Qwest
Mesa Networks is a local company that their whole model is giving broadband service to cities and areas that are left out in the cold by the TelCo's. Not only do they provide a nice connection and speed- they are well known on DSL Reports for being a good company at tech support helping you get the most out of your line and any other quirks that hardly ever happen (none of the pay for more than X amount of computers on a line). People say its soo expensive for the larger telcos but when a small company comes in and does this- you look a little rediculous! Oh and if anyone is here in northern Colorado, and wants good broadband with GREAT tech support here is their site- http://www.mesanetworks.com/
The upgrade and maintainance costs are low on the physical medium itself.
The only upgrades needed are for your routers, which you would upgrade anyway.
The money can be recovered over 5 to 10 years, after which it is purely profit (or savings in this case).
With 5 years, you are looking at 500 USD/year, or about 40 USD/month.
Pretty cheap.
Double this to include maintainance costs, still about 80 USD/mth.
With fibre, its easy to go to 10 Mbit/sec, or even 100 Mbit/sec in the local network. Multiple gigabit backbones, and then you can shove tons of services on that backbone.
Sure, its not 10 Mbit to the Internet, but hook up a bunch of towns to the excess dark fibre that has already been laid and you have a *very large* network.
I can throw myself at the ground, and miss.
I live here in utah and have seen everything on utopia and i support it. you are not seeing all the facts. First it is 100mbit to 1gbit fiber home/bisnis respectivly, http://www.utopianet.org/technology/speed.htm for more info. second they are not just running it for internet services it will also have phone service, cable, video on demand, video phone service etc. second it is not 2,500$ per household that number auctuly varies from city to city http://www.utopianet.org/business_case/costs.htm for more info, total adverage cost is about 1171$ per house hold.
0 .html
if you need more information hitup http://www.utopianet.org/
ps. their are company's leaping out for this just not in the way you though http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,595054887,0
=)
Sure. Look at the ARPANET which evolved into the communications medium we are using right now. Look at the history of the Tennessee Valley Authority and rural electricification. Look at the Interstate Highway network.
Look at all the pissed off customers in areas where local governments are running fiber to the home, who are getting better and cheaper broadband Internet access and frequently, cable TV access than ever before.
How dare governments act against monopolies!
Fact is, there are some things the government frequently does do better than the private sector. We don't contract out the operation of our military to Microsoft.
The non-Libertarian fanatic simply figures that there are some things the government does best, some things best done by the private sector, and tries to make sure that each does what it does best.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Haven't you guys played the game of Monopoly? That is what capitalism is all about. Once you have a monopoly why would you let some stupid community take it away from you? You didn't land on their monopoly with hotels and lose a bunch of money or anything that would force you to sell your monopoly. So its only fair to grant additional legal protection for our wholesome American businesses. They have the community's interests in mind. And I'm sure as soon as they win the game, forcing all their competition to sell their monopolies, they will revolutionize our communications infrastructure.
So have faith. One day AOL will offer 10 Mbps to your street, maybe even to your home. Though you will forever be capped on upload bandwidth because that threatens those RIAA/MPAA Monopolies, so you will have to take that up with them.
As a libertarian, I am strongly against any governmental intervention - we need to keep them out of the private sectors!
This project is a response to all of the extreme amounts of legislation and laws that dictate what the telco/isp's can do. They really need to eliminate all of the regulations involved and allow a complete free-for-all competition for communications - that will give people ("consumers") the best choices and the best prices.
On the flip side of things, I think it is wrong for a governmental entity to intervene in the market and try to compete against business - we all know how inefficient government is, and does not provide any benefit to its community. In fact, I would go so far as to say it is detrimental to the development of proper telecommunications/ISP businesses in its community!
It is unfortunate that the citizens of these communities had to resort to this to try to get good internet access. Just goes to show how corrupt the entire system is.
I don't want you to get the idea that I hate libertarians, if it were merely social debate i'd say the libertarians are the most intelligent and in the right. However, its clear that we need some regulation in order to protect people from coporations. Without regulation unions, workers have no power. It is my opinion that the problem lies in the fact that coporations have the same rights as citizens, they shouldnt, they should have less rights than citizens.
As someone who knows a bit about this community, having been involved in it for over 10 years through various family members that live and work there, I believe that the plan for the utility district to roll out this kind of access does not seem like a losing proposition to me. Truckee is a VERY wealthy town, considering how many live there, as most people who work there are already wealthy. These wealthy citizens have enacted a number of measures that if created in other small towns would be a disaster, including higher taxes on land. I believe that for this case it is actually a good idea for this kind of competition, and the incumbent broadband provider is only fighting to keep a monopoly, not for the good of the community.
1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d Capitalization really works: i helped my uncle jack off a horse
On 13 IX 2004 Leverett MA turned down a possible USD 750,000.00 package from the USA Gov. for Wi Fi so as to insure that we continue with Verizon Copper Cobra.
This House could also be granted veto power over the other bodies. Before going to the Executive's desk for signature, the bill would go through the House of Repeal for a possible veto.
The problem is not the 50 fibers, but the 50 times the street is dug up, or the 50 trucks that string cable on poles. Set a reasonable price for that process that compensates the users of the streets, and allow newcomers to merge and share their infrastructure before they burn through their capital, and you allay a lot of these problems.
haha. I bet if we jumped right in, you would be posting that the US we extending their power, and they weren't needed.
Yeah, American are stupid, that why we own your ass in all practical matters. Good luck trading anywhere that doesn't do it the way we want to.
IT's ok, as soon as our lumber resources are low, you can bet your ass we'll be moving north. Not via government control either, via corporate control. Which is a lot worse my friend.
"But of course, you would never accept the Russian element as a factor in defeating the Nazi regime, because, after all you're just a stupid american."
this shows how little you know about America.
I am very well aware of the heroic contributions of the people from those countries, and I am not unique in the manner. However best case scenerio, you would have stopped Germany but not recaptured much territory.
There is pretty much no way Germany could of really kept going north. The Russians winters make a stubborn and proud people.
Perhaps Canada, Brits and Australians could have seved England. That a big maybe, Hitler had one hell of a hard on for it. for obvious reasons.
"The bravest men and women during world war 2 were the Canadians, Brits, Australians and Russians.."
yes they were brave, but how were they bravior then the Americans who went to war to save a foriegn power from another foriegn power?
"Go Fuck Yourself and Die."
No. keep it up and we'll fuck you and watch you die.