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Verizon Seeks To Nix Fee-Based Municipal Wireless Grids
millermp writes "It looks like Verizon has succeeded in banning municipal WiFi networks in Pennsylvania. Since Verizon is looking to broadband service to fuel its growth, it calls municipal WiFi 'unfair competition.' This bill is following similar legislation earlier this year in Utah, Louisiana, and Florida." The bill has yet to be signed by Pennsylvania's governor, and as the story says, does not ban municipal wireless per se, but would place great restrictions on how it could be funded.
Meh, I'll just get verizon's fiber to the home service. Then setup a Less Networks node, roll my own NoCat Auth AP or join one of the great Area Wide Wireless networks.
Verizon is just a 500lb gorilla that can't see more than 2inches infront of its face!
What could possibly go wrong?
For those of you who didn't RTFA and got right to the misinforming posts, this is about fee-based services. To subscribe to the wireless service in Philly the article states that it will cost you $15-20 a month, which puts the issue in a different perspective.
You gotta find first gear in your giant robot car
Nowhere does it prevent municipalities from offering public networks such as the one already deployed in Altoona, PA.
Actually, Phoenix has one of the best fire companies in the nation and it's private by subscription. Also, don't forget all those volunteer fire companies in suburbs, small towns and rural areas. Their high level of service for the negligible price negates the need for most local governments to fund a fire company. Also, private security officers outnumber local police by five to one in this country. So, there is competition in providing police and fire services.
My point here is not to make you "wrong" for saying that Verizon is a crybaby. It's just to show that even for services that are usually thought of as government functions, when a private company comes along and provides that service, it's often better than the government. When you need to send a package overnight, guaranteed, do you choose FedEx/UPS or the Post Office?
Philly's wifi service must be paid for by the people of Philadelphia. If the gov't provides the service, there's no incentive to excell and it costs everyone more. Even if you fund it with a tax on businesses or the rich, every tax dollar you take from a business or a rich person eventually comes out of the pocket of a poorer person. Where do you think that business/rich person will go to replenish the money the gov't just took from them? They'll charge higher prices or more interest or donate less to charity, etc.
If you let the businesses compete for the wifi customers, then there's competition to drive down prices and drive up quality. Eventually, the service becomes affordable to poorer people and everyone ends up paying less in the end. Example: I park in a low-income neighborhood every day and see plenty of cell phones around me. That happened without gov't subsidies or gov't-run cell phone companies. It can happen for wifi, too, if we're patient and give the free market a chance. Sometimes the most compassionate thing we can do is let the "heartless capitalists" do what they do best: produce good products at low prices.
User Training for Busy Programmers
Verizon SUCKS. I have ordered and prequalified for DSL 7 times, yet I am unable to get it because Verizon has almost halted the DSL rollout in Texas.
if there's competition in the market, service qualities will go up and prices will go down. A government monopoly funded by tax dollars will give government style service with no incentive to keep costs down. (emphasis mine) Of course, the key here is competition in the market. Where I live, I would pay more than double for cable service than someone who lives across town, because two different providers have mini- monopolies in each area. Of course, we wanted to go with the cheaper provider (for basically the same level of service), but were told that we had no choice because of our location. Hmm... they have no competition in our neighborhood, so it seems that there is no incentive to keep costs down...
For many things, what you say is exactly right. The problem is, there will always be small cases here and there that a true free market system simply fails.
Some people think that having broadband helps economic prospects. If that is true, and that Verizon and the other ISPs can't provide it, why let that be an excuse to hold back other parts of economic progress?
There are cities that provide utilities and happen to do them better than a for-profit company can do.
Broadband is not a freemarket model. You can't shop around for it since there are virtual monopolies. Do you want everyone digging up the streets every day and breaking water pipes ? How can anyone compare broadband to soup at the grocery store? You are not going to see the price drop enough for the poor to afford.
Broadband is a communications network just like our government builds networks of roads that no private business would take on. Broadband and the internet should be public utilities.
By the way , our utilities are great and don't gouge us like the CRIMINAL broadband robber barrons.
This is why I prefer a local cooperative that is mandated by the government not to make a profit; that anything over expenses is voted on by its members as to its use (refund, reinvestment). It's worked for credit unions. Where else could a 23 year old get a $5,000 line of credit witha 9.9% fixed interest rate, and free bill pay and internet banking?
You have two hands and one brain, so always code twice as much as you think!
You have to understand
If you want to write down a convincing argument, argue using reason, not your own prejudices. "Comrade?" Give me a break. The fact is that Verizon has a monopoly, which they have because they were granted it by the government. Does the municipal WiFi project compete unfairly? We can't tell. It's hopeless to try to sort it out at this late date.
What we can tell is that Verizon is doing a *terrible* job of providing broadband to its customers. My father has been waiting for broadband from Verizon forever, and he's never going to get it, because it's not "cost effective." Meanwhile, I've done live internet broadcasts from a mud-walled hut twenty minutes outside of a town of 300, two hours from Tucson, over a DSL line that's costing $70/month.
I don't have anything against Verizon, but if they can't deliver the kind of service that's being proposed here at a competitive rate, I'm just not able to work up any sympathy. They are asking for a government-granted right to cherry-pick the most lucrative customers in the Philadelphia area. I don't see any reason why the legislature should have granted it to them, and I'm sorry to see that it did.
Your talk of "Comrade" and "it is not the job of government to blah blah blah" is just noise. Thank you for playing.
Perhaps this is a way for Verizon to force themselves into the wireless throughput game? Perhaps it prevents WISPs from forming.
Here in Pittsburgh, there ain't much going on, 'cept at CMU, and one of the local mom and pop shops. There are a few players, but none who talkabout it -- it's taboo here, most people are happy with their dialup (Ugh!).
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
The goverment shouln't be in competition with the free market, but it shouln't be leting the free market do whatever it likes as long as it's within the law.
;)
Public industury may be a bad idea, but the free market doesn't have any interest helping the poor, when I visit a poor neighbourhood I see betting shops, pawn brokers, check cachers, and the like, the free market at work, making a profit from those who really can't afford to be used as a profit making scheme.
Private enterprise needs to be regulated, after all the goverment is represnentive of the people, and as a representitive of the private sector's customers should have the right to demand a certain level of service for all customers, be they the poor, the sick or the internetless