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The $200 Billion Broadband Rip-Off
Jamie noted that Cringley has a piece about the US Broadband situation. He talks about where we were and where we are: 'not very fast, not very cheap Internet service that is hurting our ability to compete economically with the rest of the world' and about the $200B the phone companies got to make it that way.
I blame lack of competition. What's needed is laws that lower the entry barrier for ISPs.
Mainstream economic theory clearly states that free markets only work when they are both competitive and transparent, and yet, just as clearly, the profit motive drives companies to minimize both competition and transparency. Profit itself is therefore inherently at loggerheads with the two prerequisites of free markets. As competition and transparency decline, so does market efficiency, until at some point inefficiency yields to outright market failure. We already have market failure in many industries - oil, diamonds, OS and Office software, telecommunications - and now broadband too, it seems. It's funny this contradiction raises so few eyebrows...
A-Bomb
These companies can sell you an 8 meg broadband connection, they'll sell it to 100 people and the line they're selling this on is an 80meg connection (example, not right numbers but right point). Any industry that can do this legally (or just get away with it) is clearly going to screw any consumer they can.
100 Mbit connections? WTF, even Canada sucks!
it was fast and cheap, but out here in the sticks, the mid-west, it's never been fast (compared to the coast) or cheap (again compared to).
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
Let me tell you 'bout my friend in Holland. And, no, I don't mean Holland, Michigan. I mean Holland, Holland.
He pays some ridiculous amount of money monthly, 10 or 20 Euros, and gets high speed broadband, TV (including the porn channels) and phone. His mortgage is 3.8%. Sex of any kind is not against the law and he can travel to any country in the EU without even slowing down as he drives across the border. At the risk of going off topic, do I need to add that health care and education are free.
Could it be that there's something not quite right here in America?
...about "completely unbridled market capitalism".
What we have here is the exact opposite: Central-planning. And it has gone haywire, as it usually does.
Throw in a touch of the corruption that centralized power allows, add a little protective legislation, and you get what we have today.
Methinks you tend toward Marxist-style central control.
I pay $15 a month in Arizona for 2mbit down 512kbit up, and that includes the line and everything. That is less money than I spend on food in a day, how is that not cheap?
...that gives them all those strange ideas.
...nothing is free.
Those highly-socialist countries have huge problems ahead when the bills come due.
Is our situation really that bad? I think there are many arguments against this current system, and if we had some real free-market competition instead of government monopolies things might get better, but is our system really such a mess?
I hear some say a 768k down DSL is a non-competitive link (or even ISDN). How exactly? How am I constrained by such a link? What kind of business cant I do on such a link? I can surf, download DVDs, perform remote support, participate in collaborative development and have global communication with friends/co-workers.
In most of America, only two companies are allowed to run wires into your home, the local telco monopoly and the local cable monopoly. The existence of the cable and telco monopolies is responsible for the problem. As long as that's the case, you're just arguing about the best way to manage the ripoff. Any regulatory scheme, at best, simply minimizes the ripoff. At worst, it leads to the two companies having undue influence over regulators.... and indirectly gives the regulators vast power to regulate and monitor private communication.
My own feeling is that the very idea of regulated telecommunications is inconsistent with the First Amendment. I don't think it could be any plainer. But I'm not holding my breath waiting for the court decision.
Over the decade from 1994-2004 the major telephone companies profited from higher phone rates paid by all of us, accelerated depreciation on their networks, and direct tax credits an average of $2,000 per subscriber for which the companies delivered precisely nothing in terms of service to customers. That's $200 billion with nothing to be shown for it.
For instance, later in TFA Cringley says that a five-year phone rate freeze was part of the deal at one point, then says that rates should have really fallen during this time and he calls this a "rate hike".
So this $200B figure sounds like some mix of a bogus number (a "higher" phone rate that is really constant), some bookkeeping shenanigans (accelerated depreciation accounting), and real cash (direct credits.)
I got ADSL In 1996 , back when it was 1.5 Mb download and 120Kb upload, today, eleven years later
I get 8 Mb download and 385 Kb upload, at about 30 percent higher pricing.
Basically broadband in the US is crap. If those various companies mentioned in the article
were forced to refund the money they got for giving us nothing, and I agree we got nothing,
they would be singing a different tune. I say send them a bill for the money they received, but did
not spend on actually providing that which they said they would, PLUS interest.
Broadband should be defined at 20Mb down and 20 Mb up. Period. Too much time has elapsed
with basically zero quality or quantity increases.
...but the telco (Embarq former Sprint) keeps saying 3 months. So for the past year, i've been calling every week, and nothing. It's in the town 8 miles away, so i really don't think it's going to happen.
Is this not geographical discrimination - class action lawsuit anyone? there's racial, sexual discrimination - just because i live somewhere does that not mean i'm entitled to the same service as someone who lives just down the street.
how do other slashdotters cope with telcos like this? can you shed any light on getting them to pony up and give the same service?
Must be nice to have a large oil company pay $21 billion in taxes to a country with only 16.5 million people -- that's $1200+ tax revenue per capita from just one company.
This was my thought as well. I want a 100Mb line for $10/mo as much as anybody. But how exactly will cheap, fast residential internet increase our business standing in the world?
...But I don't think this was just a cash grab on the part of the telcos. Look at how much the various content industries are freaking out over what we have now. Look at the shady, skeevy methods in which they are slowly coming to terms with it in ways that still screw the customer. If we had gone straight from what we had in the early 90s to what they were planning, it'd have been 45Mbit bidirectional ass-raping as far as the industries were concerned. Real broadband, without the period of transition we're going through now, was the sword held at the neck of the RIAA and the MPAA. They had to keep America backwards or the floodgates would be open.
The fact that my ISP doesen't have (customers x downstream kb) capacity on their backbone is totally irrelevant.
What is relevant is how OFTEN they hit their maximum capacity, and for HOW LONG when it happens.
As long as I get the capacity I need and pay for, who cares if the total capacity is lower? No user actually uses their lines 100% 24/7 (unless they are software pirates in which case they deserve to have their connection terminated anyway).
- Jesper
My security clearance is so high I have to kill myself if I remember I have it...
Rural areas don't drive the American economy, and particularly high-speed Internet at the home is not a driving economic force, mostly it's useful for pirating movies. How is lower-quality broadband out in the middle of Bumfuck, Iowa, hurting the American economy?
OK everyone in rural areas stop working, and let's see what happens when kamapuaa realizes that his food is not grown in the supermarket. Rural areas DO drive the economy - just not the part YOU think is important.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
What costs the most is stringing the wire. For new construction you have to string the wire, so omitting the fiber at the same time is negligent.
Congratulations! You have the right answer. Now what do we do?
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Search the /. archives, /.s including myself have been describing and predicting to state of telecommunications in the USA as far back as 1997.
/. whipper-snappers would remember back to 19970901 launch. CmdrTaco, Hemos, ... were all young fellers like yourselves are now ... young, but git'en older, wiser, wizen, creaking and crankier with age.
Yep, that long ago, but do you think any of you younger
Should we ask CmdrTaco and Hemos; When/What/Where are the 10th year celebration' keggers, or is it a BYOB in Death Valley?
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
...of plant and service.
Personally, I'd rather have two bills - one for the physical layer (cables, swtiches, and maintenance) provided either by the government or pseudo-governmental corporation, and one or more for the data (of any kind - voice, video, internet). By segregating the two, you can allow local issues to be dealt with as a local problem, and offermake up funding for low-density where "the government" feels necessary (rural electric comes to mind as an example, if not the best one). For those afraid of government, realize that most areas run their own water and sewer, and do a fairly good job, on the whole. And I'm not saying it has to be government - a corporation can run the plant (under gov. supervision - any monopoly needs close oversight).
By separating the physical and the data, you can offer _real_ competition by local or national providers. Think of long distance telephone service - it's in a hell of a lot better shape (for the consumers and competitive pricing) than, say, local telephone or cell service (Verizon, anyone?). Most places don't even have the possibility of a competing high speed carrier because the physical plant operators can charge whatever they want for access, and as a result their services will always end up being more competitive.
Power would be nice this way, too. I already have the physical plant portion broken out on my bill with generation costs separate. By prohibiting the physical plant operators from having any financial interest in the service operators, there will be a more level footing - and more opportunity for competition.
Oh, in case you're curious, the incumebents know this, and would lobby to their deaths against any mandated separation.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
> How is lower-quality broadband out in the middle of Bumfuck, Iowa, hurting the American economy?
With a name like Bumfuck, it must mean we're missing out on some quality porn.
High-Quality broadband to all Bumfuckers, now!
I can't speak for or about any place but Texas, but it seems to me that while more widely available, less expensive broadband would be a great boon to small, rural businesses all over the state - farmers and ranchers of all kinds could probably find ways to do their business better and faster if they had something more than a dedicated phone line for internet service - it seems to me to be an example of putting the cart before the horse. The state-run primary and secondary education system has been gutted by years of increasing emphasis on grade-level exit tests, so much so that the students themselves are aware of it now.
To put this post back on topic, your question seems to ignore the very real possibility that a person's place of business and place of residence are one and the same. This possibility increases as one moves out into rural areas, which are the least likely to have decent broadband availability.
....spoon feeding the consumers and avoiding telling them or letting them realize what you are doing.
Hey! You leave Bumfuck out of this. We've installed our 8th trailer. Show some respect!
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
When one part of such an assertion is invalid, I can't believe the rest
he can travel to any country in the EU without even slowing down as he drives across the border.
I call bullshit on that. -- any european want to chime in here? from ANY country to any country- so long as it's all EU? I simply find that ubelievable...
and therefore- the rest of it I find hard to believe...
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
A salary of $60k in Iowa is equivalent to $100k in California. $60k/year will buy you a nice family house, decent car, and a easy-going lifestyle. If the national telecom infrastructure was up to date, there would be many jobs that can be done in the middle of Iowa that are now done in California. Alternately, for a bit more than the salary you pay to an Indian programmer (well, a bit more than those who now are demanding more money...), you can get a native English speaker *in a nearby timezone*.
With low-quality or no broadband, you lose this potential workforce.
Or, at least, so goes the theory.
You have fallen for Verizon's marketing. They are not the only ones deploying FTTP. My parents have AT&T and have a fiber INID. They're getting ripped off, charged for DSL service and a landline, but the hardware is clearly FTTP. In certain places in Austin, you can get FTTP through Grande.
Please don't repeat marketing lies from the telcos. They're why we have this mess in the first place.
The band width you are not getting is because spammers are getting it...
You have to be kidding! LOW taxes?
:-(
Do some math here. I can't speak for all states but by the time California and the feds are through, a good 40% of my income is taxes alone. (Bonus tax rate is even higher; I generally see only half of any bonus I get no matter how small it is.) Don't forget the corporate tax rates out there are 35%. And the employers kick in another 7.5% on FICA that you don't see (15% total between them and you).
Then with whatever pitance you have left over, about 8.25% sales taxes to support local governments as well.
And this tax system compounds across every level of a product's manufacture, which is the real reason it's cheaper to print San Francisco post cards in Korea and ship them over than to just print them locally. i.e. Paper company pays taxes, ink company pays taxes, print company pays taxes.
On top of this, the local value of the dollar in California and New York is far, far lower than the rest of the country, yet the federal tax rate is standard no matter where you live.
I'll give you an example...
I was in Billings, Montana and saw an article in the local newspaper about a business that hired school teachers to teach English to Koreans over the Internet via videochat. Koreans learned basic English in local classrooms but could get one-on-one tutoring, mostly to help with pronounciation, something that needs a native speaker to help with.
This was only possible because the local telco had rolled out fiber-to-the-home (yes, fiber in Montana, something I can't get in Nashville, TN, a major metropolitian area). The company paid great salaries, like $60k/yr, people could work at home, the service could eventually be expanded to anywhere in the world, all because of ubiquitous, high speed, low cost Internet access.
I'm a freelance writer most of the time, and I predominantly work for a publisher in the USA. I live in a semi-rural part of Wales (UK). The availability of cheap broadband in an area with a low cost of living allows me to make a contribution to the British economy. My mother lives in a more rural area with almost no broadband penetration. They have a significant problem with unemployed youth who don't have jobs locally. Because of the lack of communications, they also can't work remotely, and many of them can't afford to move.
For a lot of things, your location is less important than your access to information. Rural broadband allows the people with the lowest cost of living (i.e. the best value workers) to be able to contribute to the information economy.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
are all the evil executives who sell out the public on a daily basis, imo.
Hey, how come the cops don't bust the rich people, but just the poor people?
We saved their asses as well. No chance they would have survived without western equipment. The Russian winter alone would not have been enough.
The Soviets fought by using their population (more correctly their subject nations population) as cannon fodder. Claiming they did most of the fighting because they lost the most people isn't accurate. They did most of the losing early, that's true.
Stalin was worse then Hitler. If America and England hadn't built nukes you can bet western Europe would have been the next battlefield.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
The parent poster did not imply it is not post, but I am sure unlike you he is closer to knowing that writing your politicians as a general citizien does not matter.
What really matters is when corporations or rich individuals give large monetary contributions and then meet with this politicians after they are elected to get favorable legislation passed for their cause in return for the favorable campaign contribution.
If a politician does something out of a sense of what is the general good based on an idea in your letter, he will get eaten up. Because the guy taking bribes will get lots more campaign coverage anyway and you are only a single citizien.
Considering every western nation spends less tax dollars then the US per person
So your telling me that nations that have approximately the same per capita GDP as the US (most of western Europe) but tax rates up to twice as high don't spend more tax dollars then we do? What's happening with all that money?
I call BS. Perhaps you mean total health care dollars per person. Not total tax dollars per person.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
This is the standard Slashdot US broadband story. We've seen it a hundred times in different permutations. How the US is falling behind. How the phone companies screw us.
Whatever. I don't fucking care. My company has plenty of bandwidth. So does my university. Bitching that Comcast charges you $40/mo for a 6mbit connection is small potatoes. Compared to nearly any of the other issues we face, it doesn't fucking matter.
Meanwhile I'm reading Slashdot connecting through a mobile phone in rural Utah. Go figure.
That is to provide basic phone service to poor people.
Not broadband connections to country folks.
There is no free lunch. Accept it.
You are at the extreme range possible with a couple of towers, directional antennas and 802.11? Get off your ass and stop complaining.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
You've hit the nail on the head there. The issue is not a choice between a "free market" or a market with regulation - you can't have a truly free market without regulation, unless by "free" you mean a market with no checks on anti-competitive practices or any of the other equally damaging practices that are only natural for private business to pursue. The problem is when the regulations are basically set by the very entities that are supposed to be regulated!
(Good) regulation is essential, and is what keeps snake oil off the pharmacy shelves, among other things, Vioxx notwithstanding. If only our government actually wrote the regulations in the public interest, instead of as a corporate welfare program, we'd be a lot better off.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
"If the European Union were a state in the USA it would belong to the poorest group of states. France, Italy, Great Britain and Germany have lower GDP per capita than all but four of the states in the United States. In fact, GDP per capita is lower in the vast majority of the EU-countries (EU 15) than in most of the individual American states. This puts Europeans at a level of prosperity on par with states such as Arkansas, Mississippi and West Virginia. Only the miniscule country of Luxembourg has higher per capita GDP than the average state in the USA. The results of the new study represent a grave critique of European economic policy."
http://www.timbro.com/euvsusa/
What you see when you look at photographs of an American city circa 1900 is a rat's nest of wires strung everywhere. The infrastructure below ground will be a half-century older, almost as chaotic and only a little less fragile.
I don't want a dozen companies competing for the right to run a trencher across my front lawn. I don't want the complexity and expense of dealing with multiple service providers. I suspect there are many others who feel the same way.
I'm as much for true broadband as the next guy, but what exactly are the economic benefits of having a 45 (or 100) mbps symmetric connection? Yes, it obviously offers an advantage over the 768 kbps dsl line that repeatedly drops you or throttles down to 200 kbps during busy times, but what about over a 10 or 15 mbps symmetric connection? I realize if you have a resource people will find a way of using it, but give me a good example of something you can't do over a 15 mbps line that you can over a 45 mbps line. (and to steal someone's +5 funny, porn is not an acceptable answer) I think HD tv would be on of the few examples, and it's a fairly lame example - i could watch a really high quality broadcast vs an acceptable one. Perhaps remote storage/desktops, but even there you'd get a 300 mb file quite fast, and beyond video or heavy duty programs you'll find few files over 300 mb... and the economic advantage of me being able to stream videos from my PC at home to work is negative....
I am not an expert. If I am misled in something, please correct me.
Ultimately, those are political problems and are the responsibility of the people.
Amen. Unfortunately it has become de rigeur to claim that either the system has been hijacked by "special interests" (they're only special interests if they're not your special interests), or that corporations are simply too powerful to be stopped, or that the (pick one) Liberals/Conservatives/Aliens control everything we see and hear, so we can never make informed judgments. The outcome of all these excuses is a culture that venerates the theoretically perfect over that which is possible. So the jaded and cynical take potshots at the political system and do nothing.
The failures of our politics are allowed to continue because as long as we've all got jobs, homes, SUVs and Big Macs, we're satisfied with bad politics. Hit our fundamental liberties and we'll complain, but won't demand change. We'll just keep voting for candidates on the basis of who is more likely to be fun at a BBQ. Ironically, I don't think it will be the Iraq War or the assault on civil liberties that will bring about change in the electorate. My guess it will ultimately be the failure of hundreds of thousands of subprime mortgages that will focus people's attention on the necessity of competent government.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Cable companies and telephone companies are government supported and maintained regulated monopolies. The video that you watch and the music you listen to over cable networks, the internet, and broadcast TV is protected by government-enforced monopolies that enable industry lawyers to ruin people by sheerest mistake.
In a free market you could take your feed of "MTV" and rebroadcast it through your neighborhood over wifi, low power FM, or anything else you and your neighbors were into and nobody could legally stop you. In a free market all the record and movie companies could depend on is a short term market window before the stuff they produced got onto the net. In a free market there would be weak intellectual property laws, no contracts of adhesion, no free ride on the right-of-way for anyone, and your cable company would be competing with lillypad networks running hop-by-hop to the nearest Google network office.
And maybe it would all come tumbling down, but it's been the government support of these monopolies that has squashed more grassroots infrastructure efforts that I've watched try and get off the ground (since it was modem-linked networked BBSes in the '70s and '80s) than any internal flaws.
Riiight, that's why every country beating the US in the broadband market are such libertarian wetdreams: Sweden, Netherland, France, Japan, etc etc, such shining example of laissez-faire capitalisme!
... oh wait, wrong again!
OH WAIT, THEY'RE NOT!
And that's also why all these countries have government mandated universal health care that sucks so hard compared to laissez-faire USA
To sum it up, if we believe the libertards, sure, countries with MORE government intervention do much better, but if you remove even more government intervention, things MIGHT get better after they get much worse.
Yeah, that makes a LOT of sense. Pardon me, I'm off to drink a barrel of vodka, that's the libertarian cure for drunkenness.
Making strong un-justified claims about a region you've never even been to?
I've been to Europe often, and yes, that is how it works. I've seen it on trains, I've seen it in a car.
This might be the wake-up call you need...start questioning what US society and government tells you.
Blar.
A guy once tried to drive from Paris to London without stopping, and he DIED.
Yeah he drowned.
His friend who went from Madrid to Copenhagen was fine, though.
And that's also why all these countries have government mandated universal health care that sucks so hard compared to laissez-faire USA ... oh wait, wrong again!
Well there's always the scare stories of waiting lists and denial from government bureaucrats. Because no one is ever actually denied care by healthcare bureaucrats in the US of A, nosiree.
And who exactly is "you"? A lot of businesses aren't having as much difficulty as Cringley getting commercial quality broadband. Now commercial broadband at "all you can eat" consumer prices are harder to find. Also Cringley hasn't proven that the US is economically disadvantaged SOLELY from a lack of consumer broadband.
The man has a point, just as the author of the article fails to expand upon how insufficient broadband is hurting our economic competitiveness. Notice Cringley's rather muted defense of the FCC tax for bringing the wunnerful internet to schools, which definitely impact our future economic competiveness and remain among the worst of the big economies of the world. But forget all that. We want our broadband porn videos, pirated rap albums, and Yuutube "programming" now!
"The availability of cheap broadband in an area with a low cost of living allows me to make a contribution to the British economy."
Of course. It use to take days to get a manuscript pony express.
"My mother lives in a more rural area with almost no broadband penetration. They have a significant problem with unemployed youth who don't have jobs locally."
And you're equating the two?
"Because of the lack of communications, they also can't work remotely, and many of them can't afford to move."
Thank God, Alexander Graham Bell came along when he did. You're also assuming that all these youth want the type of job that can be done over a wire. Let alone that there are enough of those type of jobs to eliminate the problem.
"For a lot of things, your location is less important than your access to information. Rural broadband allows the people with the lowest cost of living (i.e. the best value workers) to be able to contribute to the information economy."
India agrees with you.
If we're already as taxed as those "socialists" in Europe, why don't we have the level of services that they do?
My opinion:
competent government > free market > corporate monopolies > incompetent government
We have a combination of the worst two, corporate monopolies and incompetent government. Sucks to be us.
Good point lol!
if I walk into a store and steal a few bucks worth of stuff I can be punished. If I (ahem!)"steal" a movie or a song over the Internet, I can be punished. Rip off taxpayers to the tune of two hundred billion dollars and I can just relax and enjoy the money. What the hell happened? Where did it all go? If they didn't use it for promised network buildouts ... what, exactly, did they do with it?
Unbe-fucking-leivable.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
I was in Japan for vacation visiting family. One house I stayed at had a hell of a good Internet connection through NTT. I uploaded large digital pictures and videos. It was quick and also, did not have the stall down like here in the USA. If a file goes over a certain size, the transfer rate is either slowed down to dial up speeds or even stopped and the connection fails.
Why are we so behind the times on Internet, some of it could be the corporate executives that run the telecom companies get fat paychecks versus the money going into R&D and infrastructure, another is the RIAA & MPAA. The MPAA especially because fast rates are conducive for large file transfers such as movies and artificially keep us behind in order to defend their outdated business model.
This is exactly what I argued at the CPUC hearings for the AT&T-SBC merger. I started off by saying that a mistake was made thirty years ago, when AT&T was forced to divide itself King-Solomon-like. What should have happened, instead, is that AT&T should been forced to become a nonprofit corporation or pseudo-governmental agency, similar to the Postal Service.
Our postal network and roads and highways are generally recognized as common shared infrastructure; we don't allow the construction companies that build and maintain them to OWN the sections upon which they work, do we? Given that telecom and data networks are every bit as much shared public infrastructure, why then have we allowed the corporations that built those to own the pieces?
We fucked up many decades ago, perhaps as far back as the first telegraph lines, when we failed to recognize that the components that make up electronic (and now digital) public networks are common infrastructure, of the same sort as highways, and thus infrastructure which should be publicly owned. This is one instance where MORE socialism, not less, would be an enormously good thing.
As do commercial broadband providers. You made an interesting point, but the fact of the matter is with anything where you absolutely need 99.99% uptime and every kb/s you paid for, then you need a commercial contract with an SLA.
You're nothing; like me.
One day these countries will be so strapped for cash, and they'll go to bump the tax rate up just one more percent and realize that taxing ppl at 100% is not gonna work.
Rural broadband allows the people with the lowest cost of living (i.e. the best value workers) to be able to contribute to the information economy.
How so? Land is cheap, but there's nothing there and utilities are expensive. Rural broadband is cool in that it allows people to possibly move to where the jobs are, but I don't see people just sitting around the farm working a telejob any time soon. People have been clustering to cities for a lot more reasons than just the jobs.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
The cell phone networks compete. WiMAX (802.16e) is currently being built out by several companies with up/down rates of 70Mbps over short distances and 10Mbps at 10km. The fastest HSDPA already runs at 14.4Mpbs. In Japan, DOCOMO is currently working on deploying their Super 3G network, which runs at 300Mbps downstream, 80Mps upstream. We don't need complicated laws to fix this industry -- just laws that allow competition. If the current monopolies that own the wires and cable can't solve the last mile problem, others will.
They don't want to give broadband to everyone. Only to the upper classes and thats for a good penny.
They are cherrypicking and discriminating.
But we only bitch. Why not action.
How about public donations into a fund for national highspeed broadband/HDTV network?
How about giving our 'airwaves' back to the public instead of to the corporations so we could have an 'affordable' mobile phone network?
Nah, we don't believe in it. Just bitch,bitch and don't bother our greedy corrupted congressmen who work for the phone co's like lapdogs.
Well, you will... but you WON'T get more benefits. We're broke here in the US.
You'll need to pay a tax rate of about 78% (GAO figure) or 80% (CRS figure) to keep what we now have going, in about 12-15 years.
Sorry about that, maybe you should have been more politcally active instead of watching the latest Transformers movie, or playing with Legos.
Now there was a cogent analysis, thank you.
Made the thread worth reading.
Corporate personhood really isn't the protection slashdot thinks it is. Otherwise we would have never been able to arrest and convict Kevin Delay (Enron), or some of the other scandals. I've known many a time were an employee who's embezzled from the corporation or from customers who've gone to prison. Even entire corporations dissolved because of crimminal acts (loan fraud). Or to borrow a phrase from Bill Cosby. "I brought you into this world and I can take you out."
Easy. I could do my job from Bumfuck, Iowa, and not have to deal with elitist assholes like you. :)
Actually, I'll have to disagree. The Postal Service has competition from UPS, FedEx, DHL, the Internet, private couriers, dial-in message retrieval systems (being killed by the Net), and fax machines. They don't even handle freight shipments, for which we have road, rail, planes, boats, and combinations thereof. There certainly are private roads in this country, although they are mostly short and local. The railroads were always owned, and even Amtrak, which is highly subsidized, runs on private tracks many places.
AT&T should have been split in three. AT&T Local, Bell Long Distance, and Bell (or AT&T) hardware, which would make switches, billing systems, and phone sets. One huge local provider, one huge long distance provider, and one hardware maker. The Labs probably should have gone with the hardware people.
Then, anyone who want to play long distance provider should have been able to negotiate with the Local company on a level playing field, and should have been able to offer Long Distance rates at their cost + the interconnect with the local + markup.
Anyone who wanted to be a local provider in an area should have had full rights to buy or lease any wire AT&T Local wanted to part with (at a profit to AT&T Local), and also have full rights to pay the locality the same rates for the same right-of-way to lay cable next to AT&T's cables.
Anyone who could make inter-operating equipment should have been able to make and sell equipment to AT&T Local, to Bell Long Distance, or to businesses and consumers.
This would have allowed for the company to have been split up, for the money shifting to be clearer, for competition to have been increased, and for the large network effects to still have been possible for savings and innovations. Unix might have become a single-seller OS from the hardware people this way, but think of the data systems we could have had if there was fully-funded Bell Labs at a hardware company rather than AT&T Long Distance keeping it and screwing it.
As it was, we got Bell Labs pillaged for people and cash by the baby Bells, Unix and a bunch of other innovations turned from liberally licensed to the Novell/SCO/Santa Cruz/BayStar/Open Group/Microsoft/Berkeley/DEC Unix/OSF1/SunOS/Solaris mess, the RBOCs mostly merged together (Verizon and AT&T account for all of them now, right?) anyway, now with long distance anyway, etc.
Cell phones, if the norm was one big local company, would likely have been viewed as another way to get local service. You'd have your land line or your cell phone, and either one ties into a grid and you pay the going LD rate for your LD carrier. You could roam and still have local access to your home local area, and pay long distance per minute (or flat-rate if your LD carrier has that available). Roaming could have been negotiated among locals or even mandated by the government. It could have been a roam-for-roam agreement. Maybe you'd end up paying LD to call your home area while roaming, but just local service to call the community you're currently calling from. That'd be a fair trade when you're on the road for business and calling your local contacts a lot.
Data-only networks should get the same breaks the Bell companies have always had to lay cables and secure rights-of-way. Someone would take FTTH or at least Fiber to the Block seriously if they didn't have to negotiate rights-of-way all over again.
Municipalities should be able to offer phone and data service, just like many offer water, gas, and electric. That shouldn't exclude private companies from offering those services as well.
Springfield, Illinois, where I lived for a number of years, has its own city-owned power plant (sorry, it's not nuclear and not owned by Montgomery Burns). They sell excess power to other, smaller towns around the city. The proceeds from that go to keep prices down and offset what would require tax revenues for city residents. If the city ran fiber to every block and 10Mbit or 100Mbit Etherne
If we expand the scope of the market to include government offices, it resolves some of the debate in this thread. That doesn't have to be anything as crass as lobbyists buying politicians. We can vote them out and they'll land on their feet just fine. It can be purely as crass as "whoever spends the most money to win an election wins." In a great many cases that's the way it goes.
That's one reason people are so surprised by Mike "I'm running for president to reclaim this nation for Christ" Huckabee coming in second in the Iowa Republican Straw Poll when he spent so little money and did so little marketing. It sure sounds folksy doesn't it? A straw poll? The election industry is like any other industry.
When the axe came to the forest, the trees said, "Look out - the handle was once one of us."
where do i sign up for $40 for 6Mb service?
broadband cable costs $60 where i live and i get ~1.5Mb if i'm lucky...
Sounds like Australia. Descriptions of US broadband make it sound like the land of milk and honey in comparison to here.
Here's what I think should be done to help foster both growth and competition.
As you've stated, running lines are expensive and companies would be unwilling to do so unless they were guaranteed a profit on it. Opening up the lines to the world would kind of kill chances for making a quick buck. Sooo...
Give companies a limited lifetime monopoly on new local lines that they run. After this they can collect (reasonable) royalties from their competition for maintenance plus more profits. Of course having a monopoly on an area for a few years should build the company a strong and at least partially loyal customer base, so they can expect to continue to keep a fair amount of customers.
You seem to have completely missed the point. How exactly does lack of cheap broadband keep farmers from growing food you ignorant fool? Is broadband going to help farmers run their tractors?
I didn't realize you needed every home on cheap, fast broadband for them to work a tech job. Hell, I have to go into the office every day and I live smack dab in the middle of a major metro area. No telecommuting for me.
So again, what exactly will broadband in every home do that will miraculously change the economy of every small town in the US?
There is a partial solution. Thanks to the telephone investment earlier, you can get a T1 anywhere, and pay from $300 to $600 / month for 1.5Mb service. Get the neighbors together for a coop, add some WLAN, and you have almost broadband in the sticks that doesn't have multi-second latency like satellite. Get enough neighbors together with a lily pad WLAN, and you can upgrade to T3. (I know people who have done this. Don't use consumer WAPs designed for indoor use. Use outdoor models for a few $100 more that have lightning protection.)
If you can get line of sight to a friend/business partner in a nearby city, you can get 54Mb via a point to point wireless connection. With parabolic antenna, you can go quite a ways. The current record is 237 miles from a city to the side of a mountain in Venezuela (the mountain is critical to this setup as otherwise the horizon would block line of sight at this distance).
Finally, cell phone service goes many more places than broadband, and cell carriers offer broadband plans via their network. (So long, and thanks for all the honey...)
Joe Nacchio, CEO of Qwest during this time, recently got 6 years of fed time. Though it was for insider trading, there is some justice....
The issue really is "is broadband at public utility" level yet? I think we all can agree that the US already has an adequate communications network (aka phone service).* The thing is is that most of the people arguing here haven't proven their argument (beyond anecdotal evidence) that broadband should be a public utility. Broadband presently is a value-add and not a necessity like all the other things people compare broadband too.
*And we've been getting Internet access over that for several decades.
I don't see why a highway analogy isn't a bad idea for explaining the issue with people; or the city water system maybe even the sewage and storm drain systems.
We don't have multiple roads provided by multiple vendors (well most of us dont) 'competing' for drivers or multiple water lines etc. It does not make sense; furthermore, we have public land upon which these utilities almost entirely coexist to get to that "last mile." Cable and Phone must pay for use of the public land (in less corrupt areas they do) to reach your house-- because the "last mile" IS public property! Without that public land they would have to deal with each land owner they passed by. (don't go thinking you could negotiate with ATNT or Commiecast about the line going thru your property and get any real bargains...)
Here in the twin cities, MINNESOTA we have a private power company that does creepy business to extort funding from the state. Our GAS lines are decades behind in repair and we've already had disasters as a result, but the media fails to mention that they power company is only fixing problems as they see them (which sometimes means BOOM!) Its not just that our bridges are under maintained, which was NO SURPRISE to the informed who were just waiting for a big enough disaster--- the thought was (me included) was that most states are worse off and less used bridges would be more likely to fall-- so it would not happen to US (and it just did.) The public wasn't informed and people didn't care when people like myself ranted about the boring problems... (but would listen if you talked about the latest worthless gossip.) The public is ultimately at fault for the bridges, which were publicaly managed - but the gas leaks are privately managed and the blame rests upon the corporation who doesn't plan for long term repair and fights regulation.
Essentially, this is the exact same debate as public utilities. If you live somewhere that has privatized some of them you have no chance for public internet. An "OK" run non-profit government utility will beat a private one (in cost/benefit) and when they do not win its one of two flaws:
1) the service itself doesn't fit will with the organization (which might mean its better off being private)
2) that specific group of citizens are incapable of managing it
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Farmers took big to computers in a big way. Farms are businesses and having fast access to information helps them just as much as it would help other businesses. Back in the 80's farmers could access agro oriented information services, with hefty fees, and the farmers glady paid for it because it made their farm more profitable.
It's still true today.
Thats exactly what they are, scare stories. Usually with very little fact in reality. (Some truth as non-vital things are put off more so the vital things are done. I had to wait 6 months for a vasectomy, half an hour to get patched up from a run in with a chain saw).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
...the natural solution to this problem: making the capital-intensive infrastructure a public utility and allowing providers to do the much less capital-intensive job of competing on the public infrastructure, which would still provide the benefits of competition to consumers. One thing that capitalism is really good at is aggregating and directing capital. Financial markets are way better at that sort of thing than governments. To me it's pretty clear that lack of available capital has not been the one thing holding back better broadband deployment in the United States. In the last 10 years we have had two periods where there was way more capital available than people knew what to do with--and the second one might not be over yet.I think the problem has been lack of applications. You could build out a spectacular infrastructure but what's the point if you don't know to make money with it? That is why cable has enjoyed such a strong lead over DSL in the U.S.--they had a better application (digital video), and so were able to recoup a better ROI, which meant they could raise more capital to build a better network. Now history is repeating itself, because the primary driver for Verizon to build FiOS is not the Web, but digital video to compete with cable.
Right now TV is the leading application for digital broadband. Is that all there is though, to drive innovation? Web use is not doing it--you can't tell me we need 100MB/sec to every home so people can use eBay and Google and read Slashdot and look at LOLcats. The missing piece for the infrastructure is paying services. That's why the big ISPs are so focused on holding content hostage--they need to find a new revenue stream. But IMO they're barking up the wrong tree; no business has ever grown larger by suppressing a major supplier. They'd be better off looking for ways to partner with application experts to invent an integrated service that they can resell.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
And if the French hadn't helped during the American revolutionary war, you would still be an English colony, so fuck off.
"True unbridled capitalism is impossible due entirely to not making the right assumptions about people. Just as Marxist communism is impossible because it fails to account for the same thing. Given the ability to really compete or to bride, cheat, and monopolize all companies would prefer the later."
Interesting how you leave out assumptions about the consumers behavior? That has as much an influence as does corporate behavior.
In the UK (and Canada, for that matter) nobody is running on a NATIONAL ticket. Neither Blair or Harper had to run a NATIONWIDE election. We could run fair, engaging campaigns in our congressional districts in 5 weeks. It would be easy enough. But an actual nationwide campaign, with the fundraising and infrastructure needed to reach any meaningful percentage of the population is going to take quite a bit longer than that.
Now, maybe your system is better. Maybe it's better that the majority party gets to pick the national leadership. Maybe. But I don't think so. And I think that any American that wants to look at how the Republican party organized itself over the course of its 12 year hegemony would agree with me. Would you really have wanted to see a President (or perhaps "Prime Minister") Newt Gingrich, or President Tom Delay? These are people that could never win a true Presidential election but they won the leadership contests within the GOP.
Personally, I think there's merit to having a true nationally-elected office. And I think it's worth the trade-off of the longer election season.
So, in a way, the "40x" number IS correct. Blair had to run in a single district. Assuming that district had fewer than 7.5MM residents, it is, indeed, 40x smaller than the 300MM people that US presidents have to campaign for.
I am appalled at the games being played by EVERYBODY in the telecom business.
What? Did someone hang a sign on my back saying "Ass rape me"?
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
They're made by "Soylent"
The green variety is particularly popular with the elderly. (Not eating them, b-e-i-n-g them.)
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
All the people I know from Europe speak at least two languages and in some cases it's five languages or more.
Languages pairs I have heard spoken: English/Gaelic, German/English, Russian/English, French/Spanish.
We are Turing O-Machines. The Oracle is out there.
You make a good point. The trend in modern society is towards more "necessities". I think it has to do with two things, mainly. One is that people feel better if they're buying something they can call a necessity rather than a luxury. The other is that marketers know that people will buy something more surely if it can be made to appear necessary.
In my line of work, Internet access faster than dial-up is a necessity. I still don't need streaming high-def video type bandwidth even at my office.
At home it's a luxury to have anything faster than dial-up. My wife and I have two TV channels that actually come in clearly. We both drive older, lower mid-range cars. Our newest video game console is the Super Nintendo. When my 61 disc CD changer went bad, I reverted to using the single-disc DVD player to play CDs in the living room. We slept on an old, beat-up mattress until we found a good sale on King-size replacements. So we're not too upset over having 6Mbps DSL be considered a luxury. That, air conditioning, restaurant meals, and long drives to see family are about the only luxuries we use regularly. If we could get cheap (and I don't just mean affordable, I mean cheap enough that we wouldn't have to sacrifice lots of other things in order to get it) higher-speed access, especially with a higher outbound speed, then we'd get that. I'm not spending another $45 a month on top of the $45I'm spending now to get it, though, unless it's something crazy fast like FTTH and has a tight SLA.
Customer owned fiber networks info.
The FAQ about Community Dark Fiber Networks is particularly interesting.
Basically, people own a strand or two of dark fiber in a fiber bundle running from their home to a central point in a "condominium" arrangement. You plug that fiber into whichever service provider you choose. Change the electronics at the ends of the fiber to upgrade service. A municipality contracting out the construction and maintenance of the fiber plant is the most likely scenario. Plain Internet service is cheap and if the usual suspects want to plug an ONT (Optical Networking Terminal) in for "triple play" that works too. Even local ISPs could be competitive under this arrangement.
There are several variations on the theme. Use your imagination.
I rather they got subsidized satellite service. It does not make sense when wiring to ONE house might cost more than wiring hundreds in the cities. However, it seems that the wiring priority is reversed. It's quite sad that many rural areas have FIOS, but afaik, none of the top 5 urban centers do.
As for the farms. It's hard to not sound like a bigot, but the fact is that we can actually IMPORT vast amount of produce and meats from outside US cheaper than using the local products. Remember also the farm subsidy to ask farmers to NOT grow? So, what value do the rural areas provide again?
Dude, you shouldn't scrimp on the mattress. If you're sleeping properly, you're spending roughly 1/3 of your life on that thing. An extra dollar towards a mattress has far greater impact on your quality of life than an extra dollar on a car. If the sale mattress is adequate, then more power to you, though.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
...but I decided that at 4:40pm I was looking forward to going home, and didn't really want to read anything as depressing as the rest of the article is bound to be.
Thanks for the concern. Yeah, I know a mattress makes a lot of difference. We had a nice after-market pad on top of the old one while we tried to figure out what to replace the thing with.
We looked at Select Comfort, and they're nice, but the warranty prorates. We looked and the Tempurpedic foam beds, but my wife didn't like the feel of it.
So, we started looking at conventional mattresses, and there's always a sale somewhere on some brand. We found a store that was changing from multiple suppliers to just one to cut costs, and we got a good one for dirt cheap. This thing's got a fifteen year non-prorated warranty, has a nice thick pillow-top on both sides, and is extra firm beneath the pillow-top. We like it about as well as any hotel or guest room bed we've ever been on.
The postal system is a bad example. A better example of a government controlled entity (although it's not the Federal government) is the municipal water and sewer system. I don't have the choice of who I get my water from. I don't have 4 sets of sewer lines running through my neighborhood. Just 1 each. And, like 98% of all other Americans, I get VERY high quality water. I can't remember the time when my water went out, and there are measurable levels of water pressure, throughput and quality that must be met by my provider. The challenges faced by the water and sewer system are remarkably similar to the challenges faced by a municipal broadband provider. In fact, I could argue that broadband should actually be cheaper than my water service. There are no moving parts in the broadband system. There are technology costs, but if those components were standardized and commoditized, I think the costs would go down dramatically. Should a simple router really cost more than a 20-ton concrete sewer junction? Yes there are back-end bandwidth and peering costs on a broadband network, but do you really think those costs should be greater than the cost to build and maintain large reservoirs, water purification plants and sewage treatment facilities? It's a helluva lot easier to run a few fiber optic lines through a neighborhood than sewer lines. The things that break them are really similar. (read: backhoe drivers.) So why does my 7Mb/1Mb connection cost $150 a month, and my water and sewer cost $20 a month? If we formed municipal broadband systems, (which, IMHO, would be easier to maintain than a federal system) I think the costs would go down and the availability would go up. There would be a federal oversight organization (like the EPA for our water system) but they don't actually need to provide anything. The EPA doesn't provide water to anyone, they just make sure the water systems are delivering what they're supposed to. I'm willing to admit that there might be problems here I'm not considering, but I can't think of what they'd be.
-Arthur
Cave ne ante ullas catapultas ambules