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Bogus Experts Fight Your Right To Broadband
An anonymous reader writes, "Karl Bode of Broadband Reports takes aim at supposed telecom experts and think tankers who profess to love the 'free market,' but want to ban the country's un-wired towns and cities from offering broadband to their residents. If you didn't know, incumbent providers frequently determine towns and cities unprofitable to serve (fine), but then turn around and lobby for laws that make it illegal to serve themselves (not so fine). They then pay experts to profess their love for a free market and deregulation — unless that regulation helps their bottom line. A simple point: 'Strange how such rabid fans of a free-market wouldn't be interested in allowing market darwinism to play out.'"
big company won't serve some small area, fights to keep anyone else from doing so, municipalities, private citizens, the Devil...
Beware of the Leopard.
Congratulations, you are a victim of state-mandated monopolies. Government regulation got you into this mess; the city signed a contract giving Cox exclusive rights to your town. It is illegal for another provider to string up lines and offer cable service. Don't like it, petition your city council, tell them to a) make such contracts illegal and allow any company that wants to provide cable service.
Marxism is the opiate of dumbasses
My history teacher told us that there are three keys to understanding American history:
1. Great Britain.
2. People are stupid.
3. Follow the money.
Great Britain doesn't apply here, of course, but the other two are universal...this article is news, but it isn't new. We should expect people to do things entirely for profit. And we should expect people to be blatantly two-faced. Plato or Aristotle or someone like that said that "Those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being ruled by those who are stupider." Or something like that. Stupid people + money = corruption, but corruption != surprise.
The heavens do not fall for such a trifle.
No, you're wrong. You're making the assumption that a municipal wireless service will be a monopoly. As you state in your argument, their service will suck in pretty short order. That is when competitors step in and offer a "premium" service for a fee.
Free wifi is nice, but if it boils down to dial-up speeds because of sub-standard equipment and implementation, then there will be a market for premium services. I can even envision the advertising "Tired of not being able to use your VoIP phone and computer at the same time? Are you tired of always getting fragged in online gaming because you have the worst ping in your group? Then get off the city service and step up to !"
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Large ISPs deploy broadband first (only?) in big cities, where there are lots of potential customers in a small area, producing lots of revenue for their investment. They haven't had a lot of interest - yet - in deploying in small towns and out in the spaces between towns.
Some towns have gotten tired of waiting for some company to decide to wire them for broadband, and have tried to set up their own, local, town-owned-and-operated (or town contracting with some company to operate but town-controlled), tax-subsidized, ISP to get it to happen sooner. This is on the model of other utilities (water, gas, electricity) which some cities operate.
Some of the cities doing this would be hugely profitable for the big ISPs that haven't gotten around to them yet. So they've gone to the state governments containing those cities and lobbied for (and sometimes gotten) state laws passed to block ALL cities, towns, villages, counties, townships, etc. from setting up their own ISPs. That includes the ones they want to wire and profit from, and the ones that they probably won't be interested in for years or decades.
Reason Foundation - a free-market think tank - came up with a report suggesting that municipal ISPs are a bad idea.
The big ISPs are using that to support their lobbying.
Broadband Reports did an editorial flaming the Reason Foundation report.
(I only skimmed the editorial and glanced at the report since I'm at work right now. The editorial seems to be ad-hominems attacking the expertese and independence of the people involved in creating the Reason Foundation report, rather than arguments on the issues. But I could be wrong.)
= = = =
Personal take: Free market theory suggests that if the big guys leave some market untapped that leaves opportunities for others. For instance: If the population is too spread out for DSL to be profitable or high-bandwidth, it might be a good spot for something else, like a WISP (WiMax or WiFI based), to provide lots of bandwidth with little infrastructure and reap a profit while providing service at decent rates. But a subsidized municipial ISP might provide enough service at low enough rates (suplemented by tax money collected whether you subscribe or not) to kill the opportunity for the WISP and leave the residents with only the municipial system (which would likely be lower quality) and satellite.
I'm seeing that in Nevada, where some of the smaller towns are being supplied by a WiMax operator. And they're about 20 miles from my place (with a mountain in the way) and aren't interested in hopping the hill to my valley any time soon. I'm left with a 28Kish dialup unless I want to subscribe to a satellite service.
So I feel for both sides of the argument. B-)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Frankly, I'm shocked that you would think that states should be forbidden to provide services THAT THE FREE MARKET DOESN'T PROVIDE. Small towns can't get high-speed, because no merchants want to provide it. It's not worth it. But if the people of that state feel that they want that service, and are willing to pay for it, what's wrong with them banding together to set that service up themselves? Should construction firms be able to pass laws preventing you and your neighbour from collaborating to build a tool shed that you can then share? A state is no different from you and neighbour working together -- it simply occurs at a larger scale.
Finally, state-run businesses don't necessarily interfere with the functioning of competitors. Frequently, governments will create an organization to supply some service that the free market doesn't provide, and then once it has been established, they split it up and sell it off to merchants who are willing to run these services now that they've been established and proven.
Socialism vs Capitalism isn't a one-or-the-other choice. There are productive balances that can be achieved between total government management of everything and slavery to an oligarchy of industrialists.
But seriously -- how do YOU think small towns should get services like broadband, water-purification plants, sewer systems, and whatnot?
Lastly -- "neoliberal Senators who think that minimum wage laws protect the freedoms of workers"?! You sir, are officially a retard. Neoliberalism is exactly the opposite of that. Neoliberalism is the philosophy that YOU are endorsing in your post -- that of total deregulation. Sorry man, but you're a neoliberal. I know, I know, anything associated with the word "liberal" is automatically evil because of that association with freedom, but deal with it.
so you're trying to equate the dispersion of an infinitely-suppliable product with no reproduction cost (digitally-stored source code) with the real-world actions of people that can result in starvation, deadly pollution or the collapse of states. ok.
the bsd license, as applied to humanity, is the absence of any restriction on any action. everyone is free to kill their neighbor, pour dimethyl-mercury in the water supply, or stab every chinese person in the throat. after all we wouldn't want to restrict anyone's freedom to do anything they want!
the gpl license, as applied to humanity, decrees that some people should give up certain freedoms (for example, stabbing anyone they want in the throat) such that the non-sociopathic 99.9% of the population ends up in a sustainable, even amicable position.
wait, what were you talking about again?