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Why Is Connectivity So Cheap In Stockholm?
lpress writes "Symmetric, 100 Mbps service in Stockholm, costs $11/month. Conditions in every city are different, but part of the explanation for the low cost is that the city owns a municipal fiber network reaching every block. They lease network access to anyone who would like to offer service. The ISPs, including incumbent telephone and cable companies, compete on an equal footing."
Socialism?
Why Is Connectivity So Cheap In Stockholm?
Because their taxes are so high, it had better be cheap!
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
I'm not a big fan of a huge federal government, but at the local level, cities and towns should have been building out the last mile of service instead of granting local monopolies. If building that infrastructure IS so expensive that no business would do it without the monopoly status, then it probably is something best left to local governments to fund/build and then lease out to whomever wants to offer services to the residents.
My Dad has this problem. He has the choice between the sucky local phone monopoly for DSL or the sucky local cable monopoly for cable.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
Lafayette, LA, Cox Cable $140 5 50
Capitalism working for the consumer as usual.
How much of the operating expense is subsidized by revenue not generated through subscriber fees?
Any cost element that's not accounted for in the price calculation that subscribers pay directly makes the apparent benefit of such an arrangement apparent only... not real.
I read a study on plasitic recycling that did something similar; they wanted to show how much more economically sound it was to recycle, so they compared costs (including some estimated) of the recycling processes (transport, processing, etc.) with just plain dumping. And part of their rationale was that dumping fees were really high. But they didn't account for artifical elements in the fees (government environmental impact taxes and fees, etc. designed to make dumping more expensive) and the fact that significant portions of those fees went to subsidize recycling activities (a double whammy in terms of the study dollar per dollar there). This made to whole thing silly, but it looked good if you didn't ask the questions.
This low pricing sounds like it could be suffering from the same sorts of distortions.
My first thought was that because the city owns the entire network, much of the reason for the low cost is self-explanatory. But then I imagined if a similar arrangement were formed in the US, I would be extremely surprised if the same prices were attained. Local governments would likely see this as a source of income and either charge a similar rate to competitors, or possibly undercut their neighbors by a narrow margin in order to appear generous and possibly gain a few extra votes for the incumbents. Does anybody know more particulars of this arrangement and local laws in the area? Is the portion of the Stockholm government that runs this program have any sort of "no-profit" legislation?
But, but, communism! It axiomatically cannot work!
Does the money they get from leasing it cover the cost of laying it and maintaining it, or is the network subsidised by other taxes? I can get Internet access for free here - I just have to pay for a really expensive phone contract...
Yes, I'm aware that other, private, networks are government-subsidised in many parts of the world. I'm also aware that, when done well, government-run infrastructure projects can be cheaper than private equivalents. That doesn't mean it's not intellectually dishonest to only count the price the end-user pays if a larger fraction is paid out of their taxes. We can compare healthcare in the USA and countries with socialised schemes by comparing the amount that is paid, in total by individual and state, in both cases, but comparing them by just contrasting the amount the individual pays is misleading.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Dragging the fiber can't be that expensive. I mean, compared to water or sewer pipes (which they can even be bunded with).
What's wrong here in the US is a strong public distrust of having the government do anything, because the government may screw you over. So instead people prefer to give important tasks to businesses, who will screw you over.
I'm on the Stockholm network mentioned in the summary, and it's more like 80Mbps downlink and 20Mbps uplink in actual usable bandwidth. But I can live with it.
It's the lack of profiteering that keeps the price down.
If you see communications as a service to be provided to your community; rather than something to be exploited for profit then the dynamics change drastically.
The Pirate Bay, of course!
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
Ok, this is not quit so. Fiber connections are not so widespread as people imagine, and in fact most of the people I know use ADSL 24/1. At my place it costs me around 700Kr (~U$87) for 100/100 with Telia. Some people can get it for around 300Kr, but it depends very much where you live.
Let's stop this nonsense, please.
This is a prime example of the mistake people of any nation state thinking that any company, particularly one that's granted a local monopoly will in any way, shape or form act in the consumer's best interest.
I don't think we'll see this in US. I work for a network equipment provider and we do xDSL and FTTH. Even when our customers deploy fiber technology, they still limit the pipe. With video becoming more prominent, they'll have to increase the bandwidth. However, the only advancement we'll see is if there were more players as opposed to only one or two choices.
Here in Australia the government owns just about all the last-mile copper, and the only difference is the sucky local phone monopoly is nation-wide, and there is no sucky local cable monopoly.
// MD_Update(&m,buf,j);
There is something called "statsnät" (City Grid) in the inner city. Government has a recent ruling about pricing regarding this network. Anything not connected to this grid or even just 1 mile outside of the city and you'll pay at least $30.00 a month for basic DSL.
It really comes down to the fact that last mile connectivity is pretty much a natural monopoly(not quite as severe as roads; but pretty much on par with water and power).
For reasons that, I assume, have to do with a mixture of lobbying by incumbents and a strong distrust of "socialism" we've mostly been denying this fact for years.
It is a simple matter of empirical fact that free markets work pretty well. However, when you are dealing with natural monopolies, free markets aren't really an option, so that is irrelevant. The choice is pretty much between (ill) regulated monopoly and municipal ownership. Frankly, municipal ownership is likely the better choice. I know that I have way, way less trouble with my water service than with my phone service or ISP.
The Evils of Socialism!!!
p.s. their income taxes are lower than ours in most cases.
The US people should own the rails (or the fiber) just as they already own the roads.
Most countries have figured this out - but why not in the US, I dare not imagine.
We're being told it costs like $4k-8k per household to wire fiber. Don't ask me where all the money is going.
Your confusion is that you assume the government "may" screw us over and that chance is better than a certain monopoly.
When government does something, they WILL screw it up, and it IS a monopoly. Name something governments do well, aside perhaps from national defense.
Sorry, I'm from Chicagoland. I know better than to let government do ANYTHING if you can help it.
Where do I turn to get this cheap connection?
Swedish plasma phys. PhD student; MSc EE; knows maths, programming, electronics; finance interest; seeks opportunities
Do I speak for more than myself when I say, *That's all that we really ask.*? We should apply this to every major industry, and probably more than a few "minor" ones.
Todos mis movimientos están friamente calculados
Internet access is slowly becoming another "must have" commodity. And as with water, electricity, telephones (the landline type), mail, public transport, etc. They are simply best left to the government to finance. Or subside.
If running water, electricity, or mail would be left only for big corporations to run, citizens of smaller (sub 10,000 people) cities would barely have running water.
Consider mail. Do you really think the post office wants to deliver mail to everyone? If the recipient lives in an urban area and the postman gets an average of at least 5 letters per mile, then it isn't bad. But when someone lives in the middle of nowhere and the postman needs to travel five miles per letter, then it simply isn't profitable. Yet people would rebel if suddenly half of the country wouldn't be able to receive mail or have electricity.
The U.S. should use an infrastructure already in place. Pipe fiber through residential gas lines. It's only light traveling across the line so it shouldn't ignite the fuel.
And they got something for it in return, fuck Rand-bots and that bathtub drowning retard (what's his face again?)
One thing the feds have no monopoly on is corruption. Think "monorail".
Todos mis movimientos están friamente calculados
I think the US is completely backwards the way we do things as far as telecomm. However, I think it's going to eventually be a moot point as wireless technologies get better and better. I can get slow broadband right now through several different wireless carriers. Once this technology improves and is ubiquitous, the debate will be largely over. I can't wait!
Yes, the fear of government and of Government regulation can be quite misplaced.
It is well known that in some markets regulation is the only thing that keeps the market even remotely resembling a free market, rather than an oligarchy.
Now regulation can have its issues too. N o doubt that some government regulation is actively harmful. Some of it is well intention regulation that goes sour, which is pretty common considering that macro-scale economics is not a science by any means. Other harmful regulation is that which is supported by the major players in the regulated industry. In general that indicates that the regulation dictates what they would be doing anyway, yet makes it more difficult for competitors to enter the market, or compete with the big players.
In a similar way, having the government perform some function may be very helpful, or may be quite harmful.
Look at the United States Postal Service. People complain about them, but they function pretty well all things considered. The pricing on first class mail is definitely very competitive despite the complete lack of competitors. If the market were opened do you really think UPS, FedEx, or DHL could offer first class mail services at a significantly lower price? Probably not. Perhaps a few cents lower, but not much. The USPS does tend to be slightly more expensive than the alternatives when shipping packages, but that does not really matter, because they have competition there.
Overall the USPS works well. Why does it work well? Perhaps the most important thing to notice is that it is well insulated from the elected politicians. They can't continually mess with it, making changes all the time. It is not profit driven. The apparent goal is to net exactly zero profit, with income covering all the expenses, and employee salaries, upkeep etc, thus requiring no treasury funding. It does reasonably well at that, although they almost never actually reach that goal.
That goes to show that a government institution can work effectively. One that owns last mile infrastructure could also work well, if set up well, such that the politicians have little influence over it, it is set up such that it must price fairly (be this some sort of per endpoint, or bandwidth based pricing scheme, the important thing is that Ma Bell gets no better deal than Joe's DSL Shack), and be set up so that the net profit is zero (the all income covers infrastructure, maintenance, and upgrades).
But alas, the average American is to scared of the government to allow such a thing, and don't see the absurd television, phone, and internet pricing as a real issue.
Stylish sheet to fix many problems in Slashdot's D3: https://gist.github.com/801524
What is the upstream like? Something that seems popular in various contries is selling more or less a WAN type connection. What I mean is you sell a very fast conneciton to the person's home, however there isn't the kind of bandwidth to back that up at higher levels.
Net effect is it ends up working kind of like a campus WAN. If you are on campus, you'll have probably 100mbit, maybe even gigabit to your desktop. You of course get those speeds to others in your building. However the building itself then has only a 100mbit or maybe gigabit uplink. The whole campus then has perhaps a few hundred megabits. So the net effect is that while your connection is quick, provided others aren't being greedy, it isn't nearly as quick as the end rate might suggest. You don't get gigabit Internet speeds.
I encountered this some years ago with a service somewhere in Europe that had the initials BBB (I don't know what it stood for). The BBB users claimed to have 10mbit VDSL lines. This was back when such a thing was rare. However, I never got more than something in the 200-400kbps rate to them. I was on a high bandwidth connection, and actually worked for network operations so I could check and make sure the problem wasn't on my end. A bit of research revealed that they had 10mbit links, but not so much upstream. So to other BBB members it was generally pretty fast. To the rest of the net, not so much.
So, things like that could potentially be part of the reason the price is so low. When you provide a big WAN, more or less, that is much cheaper than trying to provide that kind of bandwidth through and through. It is oversubscription to a much larger degree than you see on most US ISPs.
If that's the case, then it isn't so impressive to me. I pay a lot for a 10mbit line, but the upside of it is that there is low oversubscription so I basically get that bandwidth all the time to anywhere. It isn't fast just to people that live in my city, or my area, it is fast to any site on the net that also has good bandwidth.
I'm not saying this is necessarily the reason, or that it is the only reason, but it could be part of it.
Companies are building up without the monopoly benefit. Here where I live, Comcast cable is a fiber backbone with coax last mile system, and Verizon fiber to the premises (fiber backbone and last mile, coax and twisted pairs inside the house) is promised to be on the way in less than four years, although it's expected in two.
Verizon's fiber is fast, but as half the customers get off of Comcast, that's more capacity for those who stay. Duopoly here we come.
Nuff Said.
The company is owned by the city of Stockholm and is not a private business. Stokab was founded in 1994 and is owned by the company group Stockholms Stadshus AB, which is in turn owned by the City of Stockholm.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
like the "idealogical barrier" that prevents the Postal Service from doing an efficient job at anything.
When I was a child, my father often spoke proudly about the U.S. Postal Service, bragging about how a first-class letter could get to just about anywhere in the United States in just 2 days, for the cost of a 7 cent stamp.
Today, it costs 6 times as much, and as often as not takes 6 times as long. What is wrong with this picture?
There is a world of difference between Sweden and Cuba. Cuba is a totalitarian regime with communist economy. Sweden is free market economy and democratic society. The so-called "socialist economy" has never been precisely defined, but *please* don't get confuse what's called "socialist economy" in some western countries with those countries which call themselves "socialist" and whose economy is completely centralized and controlled by the state.
Free market evangelists know what they are talking about. You don't.
Telstra is one of those wonderful privatized monopolies. It's the worst of both worlds.
Name something governments do well, aside perhaps from national defense.
National Defense.
Police.
Fire Supression.
National Resource management. (National Parks).
Airspace management.
Worker/Business relations. (When was the last time you heard of employees rioting and fighting in the streets. Used to be common before the government stepped in.)
Airwaves regulation and leasing.
Autmobile safety regulation. (Airbags, Seat belts, Padded stearing columns etc..)
National Highway system.
Airports.
Bank Deposit Insurance. (FDIC).
Public Libraries.
Driving Regulations. (Standardized safe driving practices and enforcement).
Street Parking Management. (Much cheaper than a parking lot most of the time and super easy).
Science Grant Writing.
Medical Grant Writing.
Drug Testing and Approval.
Food Safety Oversight. (The last few years was a great example of what happens when they lose funding.)
City planning. (Go to Bankok and try getting anywhere. This one is huge.)
Public Transportation.
Baseline Medical Insurance for impoverished children.
A social safety net so that to some degree the poorest in our population can feel free to change jobs and not let the economy completely devolve into a slave/endentured servitude in practice.
Unemployment insurance.
Tobacco taxation. (Reduces smoking use while not banning cigarettes.)
The FBI. If your child is kidnapped or a bank robbed you want these people on your side.
The National Weather Service.
Air Traffic Controllers.
The Public School system. It takes in EVERYBODY unlike a private school. Unlike my school (Private school) they don't expell students who fail a class or get caught with a beer. (shock and amaze, when you expell all the kids who fail classes your overall test scores go up!). They also accept vegetables and make their best effort to get them to an employable state at Burger King or stocking shelves. This saves the government a lot of money from having dependent adults who can't contribute to society.
The US Coast Guard. (If your boat flips you want these people to be well funded.)
I apologize for the other million other government employees who also do a great job every day. I only have so much time to stand up for them.
You are a councilman.
In a city where 45% of your population are on Food Stamps.
You can vote to raise sales and property taxes across the board to lay and maintain municipal fiber or you can let Comcast finance the project and collect a franchise fee.
Provide last-mile networking infrastructure in Stockholm?
CNET story from February of this year:
After nearly five years of planning and fighting with local cable and phone companies, the Lafayette Utilities System opened its fiber-optic broadband network for business.
The city of Lafayette had to fight HARD to pull this off -- BellSouth (phone) and Cox Communications (cable TV) did NOT want this to happen.
what about all that tax money of yours that went to the telcos, long before Verizon came along, to lay fiber to your house? Where is the fiber? Where is the money?
he said things the government does well!
Out of your list, I would keep maybe Food Safety, Air Traffic Control and the National Weather Service (NOAA).
It might be argued that our government does well at national defense, but if you are talking about a per-dollar value, then most of this list is absolutely pathetic.
Some companies are born with a bailout, some companies have a bailout given to them and some companies create their own bailout.
I may agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to face the consequences of saying it.
It really comes down to the fact that last mile connectivity is pretty much a natural monopoly(not quite as severe as roads; but pretty much on par with water and power). For reasons that, I assume, have to do with a mixture of lobbying by incumbents and a strong distrust of "socialism" we've mostly been denying this fact for years.
I also think it's because "broadband" is quite more ambigious than water and power, they're much more binary like served/not served. If I move across the country to a completely different utility company, water and power is pretty much identical. It's very easy to agree on whether I got power or not. Broadband on the other hand is a bunch of competing services with different speeds, prices and other qualities. Where there is competition it makes sense that cable and telco and fiber and power companies compete over delivering the same service. I'm very happy with my commercial service here, knowing that there's 3-4 companies that really would like to serve this apartment block. From the US I hear the problem is they give one company a monopoly in an area, and yet give them free reign to exploit everyone in it. That's neither competition or regulated monopoly, that's just being asked to bend over and lube up.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Exactly. This service doesn't really cost $10 per month. To figure out the real cost of the network, you'd have to add together all the expenses the city incurred creating/maintaining the service, and divide that by the number of people using the service. At $10 per month, I doubt the service will ever be profitable (maintenance will be expensive!), but the city's goal isn't to make a profit anyway.
The thing is, the reason people using the service are paying $10 per month is because the rest of the money is coming from taxes/deficit spending. Hell, some people who aren't even using the service might be paying more than that for the people who are making use of it.
The better situation is one where people pay for what they make use of. I'd rather not pay for other people's luxuries and I wouldn't want others paying for me.
It just goes to show the importance of moderation in all things. Moderation in regulation. Moderation in privatization.
How DARE you imply that the Invisible Market Fairy is anything other than the perfect solution?!?!?!
I DEMAND that you retract your statement. This is America, where anything less than 100% unfettered unregulation is pure unadulterated evil!
Your phone service is not a (federally) regulated monopoly, and hasn't been for decades. In fact, landline telephone service (the service, not the telephones) probably operated best when it was. It was not the service that got Ma Bell broken up; rather, that was a hardware (telephone handset) monopoly issue.
When telephone infrastructure was first being established, the United States went with a regulated monopoly, while a number of European countries, for example, allowed competition in their markets. They typically ended up with a plethora of separate private networks, none of which interoperated with the others. If you were on one network, you could not call someone on another. In the long run, most of these networks had to be completely rebuilt later.
In the meantime, the U.S. built a single, solid, nationwide network that was completely compatible from coast to coast... no mean feat. It was the envy of the world.
Do not denigrate regulated "natural" monopolies. They work. And they can work very well.
GREED... Telcos and ISP's will charge what ever the market will tolerate, period! Don't expect to see anything like this in the US, politicians are bought and sold to the highest bidder. The RIAA, Telcos and ISP's will conjure up the "rampant piracy" boogie man in order to charge all sorts of fictitious fees and sur charges to line their pockets... Oops, I mean combat piracy as a ruse to gouge the shit out of you for your Internet access. Anyone else remember when the Telco's petitioned congress to charge you extra fees to have 45Mb synchronous fiber to your home by 2006 way back in 1995?
"I bow to no man" - Riddick
This is exactly what I've been saying - to anyone that would listen, including the California Public Utilities Commission - should have happened in the United States. What sets the described situation completely apart from anything here is that the "people" collectively own the telecom infrastructure: the companies that built it were paid ad CONTRACTORS and not allowed to retain ownership of that common infrastructure.
The sad thing is that there are other examples of that here in the U.S., like out public highway system; we paid the construction companies (through taxes) to build the roads, but the ownership remains in public hands.
That is what SHOULD have happened with our entire telecom infrastructure, but we screwed up way back in the Eighteen Hundreds; we allowed American Telephone & Telegraph - remember them? - to build telegraph and telephone systems but keep ownership of it. That misperception is perhaps solely responsible for getting us in the mess we're in now here in the U.S. We actually had a chance to rectify this during the anti-trust proceedings against AT&T in the 1970s: we could have reclaimed the wires or forced the monopoly to become "nonprofit" similar to the USPS. What we did instead was to slice and dice the beast but let all the parts keep control of the wires in their new little fiefdoms.
Forget all the breathless FUD about "socialism": common shared infrastructure SHOULD be publicly owned. The fact that Sweden is a nation with a marginally socialist economy is quite possibly irrelevent; what is relevant is that Sweden observed and learned a bit from our mistake.
because Sweden hates freedom
Yes, the fear of government and of Government regulation can be quite misplaced.
It is well known that in some markets regulation is the only thing that keeps the market even remotely resembling a free market, rather than an oligarchy.
Well said. One of the core contradictions in many defenses of the supposedly magical free market is that all property rights exist in a socially meaningful way (as opposed to a philosophical ideal) only because the state defines and protects them. People who claim to want government out of their lives are still quick to call the police or to sue if they feel as though their property is threatened or their contracts aren't being enforced.
.sig withheld by request
It really comes down to the fact that last mile connectivity is pretty much a natural monopoly
Only for physical hardwired cables and fiber. But not for the airwaves. Almost anyone can setup a transceiver, ham radio or shortwave operators may even design and build their own.
For reasons that, I assume, have to do with a mixture of lobbying by incumbents and a strong distrust of "socialism" we've mostly been denying this fact for years.
It's precisely because big businesses wanted to restrict competition that the airwaves were licensed, in the beginning they weren't.
It is a simple matter of empirical fact that free markets work pretty well.
As much as I wish it weren't true, there is no free market. Some markets are freer than other but there is no free market, ie one without regulations or other government interference.
Fslcon
Should there be a Law?
You can vote to raise sales and property taxes across the board to lay and maintain municipal fiber or you can let Comcast finance the project and collect a franchise fee.
And after 10 or 20 years require them to open up access. By then the cable should be paid for.
Fslcon
Should there be a Law?
I live in Illinois, arguably one of the most corrupt states in the country. (Governor Rod is just the tip of an iceberg, folks.)
This is a state where elected officials use public funds to put their names on signs attached to public works projects, taking credit for those projects. And it is accepted as normal.
That said, broadband access cries for governmental intervention. There was the rural electrification act of 1936, and subsidy for telephone service later. These technologies were the broadband of their day, in a sense, and the country made sure they were available to everyone.
Today, even in a major metropolitan area (I live in a Chicago suburb) it can be hit or miss whether you can get residential broadband at a decent speed.
I work for a major international retailer, in the US division. Broadband isn't mission critical into our locations, so we're not willing to invest in very expensive options. It's OK to just have a residential service SLA.
There is a shockingly high percentage of our locations where wired broadband just isn't available at all, and we have to fall back to either dial-up modems or satellite.
The preferred solution is to not have a problem.
It's so funny how everyone outside of the U.S. (mostly Europeans) think they have such a forward-thinking, intellectual society. How can this be? Every major technological invention happened in the U.S., or by a European who, 9 times out of 10, moved to the U.S. Do they not have the "forward-thinking reason", as you put it? Why wouldn't they try to keep these intellectuals? Or is it that intellectuals, who produce, don't want these socialist leeches to take what they have invented? Come to think of it, what has Sweden done in recent times? Nothing. All these "progressive" governments in Europe, how long do they last? Typical about 50 years. But they are so, so, so smart! How can they only breed mediocrity, and shoo away all the real intellectuals. Ask yourself this, do intellectuals just read books or do they produce results? Compare GPDs, compare inventions, compare results. The debt argument is misleading. The proof is in the pudding, and that is your argument for capitalism over socialism; recent U.S. trouble are just due to leeches of a different form. Anyone who has some smarts and wants to work will find success in the U.S. and will earn hundreds of times more than the $40 they save on the internet per month.
But that's nonsense, because if the pricing weren't affordable relative to value customers would 'leave it' and the monopoly would shrink in size. If the prices were high relative to the costs, competitors would start to enter the market and investment would be there for the easy money.
The first part, shrinking of market, is true but the second part does not have to be true. In the case of a natural monopoly it definitely is not true. How how many people have a choice as to whom they get landline cable or phone service from?
Fslcon
Should there be a Law?
Ikea, Volvo, Ericcson, H&M,etc,etc
Stokab's price for this in Stockholm is $3k or 20k SEK + 25% Tax. This is the connection fee per building not per household. Source: http://www.netel.se/fs_netel/publicfiles/stokabpunkten/Stokabpunkt_brev_rev.pdf
No-one need pay anything for an internet connection. Most people's hardware is quite sufficient to support a mesh network.
All that's needed is wide use of a software implementation. In practice this means mesh networking on-by-default in Ubuntu.
... the country which every free market holistic economist zealot fails to mention while condemning socialism, because it breaks their entire house of cards. almost socialist swedes enjoy 100 mbit for $11, whereas in the pinnacle of 'free' market capitalism, america, americans pay hoards of cash and still not get anywhere near the service they promised.
enjoy it while you are there, if you are there.
Read radical news here
Stockab has fibers connected to municipal housing. That's about 20% of all fiber, and they cost more as both ISP and stockab get paid. The reason why it's so cheap is because of fierce competition between the different broadband providers. There was zero regulation and great tax benefits during the IT-boom era which led to a large number of broadband providers. That made a huge difference.
I pay (in Stockholm) about $7/month for a 100 Mbit connection and that's through privately owned fiber, not the municipal one. It also varies from city to city. In the case of Västerås (another Swedish city) they did actually build a full municipal fiber network and through laws and regulations made it a monopoly (the fibers, not the service). Prices there are about $30-40/month for a 20 Mbit connection.
Why is connectivity so expensive in the USA ? - keywords: Time Warner, Artificial scarcity.
that guy spurt a lot of bullshit without knowing what he is talking about, yet, you people modded that comment to +5 ? how did you conclude he was talking the truth without knowing how ISPs in sweden work, yourself ?
Read radical news here
"Moderation in regulation. Moderation in privatization."
pretty good punchline you got there. i wont forget that one.
Read radical news here
The connectivity in Stockholm is "cheap", because the taxpayers are subsidizing it. There ain't no such thing as a free lunch. There is a cost to the network infrastructure and its continued maintenance, and that cost is being paid. It just doesn't show up in the end user's bill.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
It is well known that in some markets regulation is the only thing that keeps the market even remotely resembling a free market, rather than an oligarchy.
This is not in some markets. This is absolutely true in every market. A "Free Market" can't possibly ever exist in reality. Approaching that theoretical ideal is the best we will ever be able to do in that arena. A completely unregulated market will always be far away from a free market.
This is easy to prove absolutely.
Want to win in a market without being the best? Murder your competition. What's that, you'll go to prison? Wow, market regulation, It's everywhere and it is an essential requirement of a functioning market.
Over regulation is also bad, but the most commonly deluded types are the ones who not only believe that free markets are real, but they think unregulated markets and free markets are the same thing.
So how will the proposed fiber network(100mbit) in Australia compare in terms of service and price? I've been told prices of up to AU$100(US$70) may be expected for this service in oz. Would it be possible for competition to push down prices anywhere near the stockolm levels on such a large piece of infrastructure? would some ghanges in our legislation be required to permit such a commercial environment?
Actually when cities have tried to build their own fiber or wireless networks, the cable and telephone companies take them to court and sue them for unfair competition. The problem in the US isn't distrust of local governments to do these things, it's the fact that the cable and telephone companies have money and a lot of lawyers, plus they pay off people too. So in the end big corporations win and consumers lose. It's the American way.
I live in Stockholm, please tell me where I can sign up for a 100Mb/s connection for $11/month. The blog post is pure nonsense. The uplink speed is not really that interesting. Sure you can get a connection with that kind of uplink but how does that differ from a 1Gb/s service? Hell I can sell you a 10Gb/s service for 12$/month. It won't connect anywhere but it will give you a really cool uplink and you will a nice 10Gb/s to all my other customers in your appartment.
Actually, the government sold all the last-mile copper to Telstra, a private corporation.
The government is proposing to build a FTTP network because Telstra put a too high a price on using the last mile copper for a high speed National Broadband Network.
The Public School system. It takes in EVERYBODY unlike a private school. Unlike my school (Private school) they don't expell students who fail a class or get caught with a beer. (shock and amaze, when you expell all the kids who fail classes your overall test scores go up!). They also accept vegetables and make their best effort to get them to an employable state at Burger King or stocking shelves. This saves the government a lot of money from having dependent adults who can't contribute to society.
DAMN STRAIGHT. We cant go scarring people by allowing failure to actually have CONSEQUENCES, can we? By removing all consequences for mistakes and misbehavior, we'll have a well educated and responsible country in NO time!
/sarcasm
Im pretty certain you could attribute at least a fair portion of the blame for the current economic situation on people not understanding what consequences are.
Maybe it's because, by itself, government ownership of anything is obviously no guarantee of good service and reasonable pricing. Chances of that are higher (compared to a private monopoly), but it still takes an effort to achieve this (including for citizens to prod their government into doing so).
Actually, there's plenty of well known death metal bands from Sweden:
At the Gates
Hypocrisy,
In Flames,
Dark Tranquility,
Arch Enemy,
Soilwork,
Amon Amarth,
Opeth,
The Haunted.
Stockholm's cheap, symmetric 100 Mbps Internet is like a dream, for Australians, whose highest speeds come over very costly ( $150 / GB "excess" data usage ) Big Pond cable... if they can get that speed at all.
Nest down, in speed, is ADSL2+ but it also comes at high cost, for very little data "allocation"
(I think it's ISP's - first Telstra Big Pond, in its day, now most others - trying to force fit "scarcity" model onto the Australian market, ie, even after Australians have discovered that the land has excess data capacity, not a scarcity.)
Symmetric DSL is quite rare in Australia, except where the main application is VoIP, and there it comes at unaffordable cost (ie, for home users).
Even looking at asymmetric DSL Australia's "unlimited" Internet plans are dwindling...
Au $ 99/mon only buys ADSL 1.5Mbps / 256Kbps, It costs more, without a 24 month contract!
One of the few -affordable- "unlimited" Internet plans wasn't even listed (last time I checked) on Broadband Choice (ie: http://bc.whirlpool.net.au/ which lists & lets user to search through nearly all Australian ISP plans.
(It's offered by South East Queensland Telco, apparently a merger/takeover of iTel, itself an affiliate to Bendigo Telco, which once offered unlimited Internet plans, itself, but has since gone to limited ones, albeit with reasonably high limits.)
Asymmetric Internet speeds can limit one's modes of expression.
The earlier choice to go for technologies that brought savings (eg, splitting available uplink bandwidth into slices, to provide for several customers' upward data needs) is coming back to bite Aussie ISPs, as has their arbitrary & tiny download "data quotas" - both of these following the gov't-owned (now, majority held) Telstra [Big Pond] near-monopoly.
Past is prologue... colonial gov'ts gave less than optimal treatment to early Aussies, just at they gave less than optimal treatment to Aboriginals... and - more recently - Telstra offered (& offers) less than optimal Internet plans to Aussie Internet users.
Only friendless, new Internet users continue to fall for Telstra's Big Pong retail ISP near saturation advertising & telemarketing of its overpriced Internet plans (retaining the ancient & exploitative $150 / GB "excess data" fees).
Soon after these new-to-Internet Aussies discover that Telstra Big Pond's prices are highly non-competitive...
EXCEPT in Australia's Internet "black holes" ...such as some parts of Adelaide's pricy (& otherwise trendy) Mawson Lakes development, where the telling non-upgrade of RIM's to more sensible "last mile" technologies continues to embarrass the State, the Delfin developers... while, of course, either continues to fill Telstra Big Pond's coffers with cash, or leaves (eg, international students & other) residents without fast Internet at home.
This surprises most people, when they first learn of it, since Mawson Lakes is located immediately beside South Australia's Technology Park and a UniSA campus (formerly known as The Levels).
This also occurs outside of Adelaide, of course. We just had YET ANOTHER report of Telstra Big Pond -shocking- a property owner with a HUGE (4-digit) Internet bill, almost all of which was for "excess usage"... at the $ 150 / GB rate.
Most of Australia's ISP's seem quite punishing, having inherited & embraced Telstra's data-usage "cash cow" (for ADSL, ADSL2+ or Cable: $150 per GB for "excess data usage" as if it were precious water... several ISPs have reduced it), rather than seek better & lower cost Internet upstream suppliers
No one seems brave ehough to even try to approximate Stockholm's or the France's, etc. of this world, ie, in fast, Internet pricing.
Internet threatens on-shore businesses, and the gov't reflects this in not working very hard to do anything to bring Internet costs down.
By contrast, the Swedes seem - as always - confident that opening the Inte
Tax payers subsidize roadways, for cars that polute the air (harmful, in short-term) & emit CO2 (harmful, in log-term).
Internet lets people learn, etc. at home, which reduces the amount of both air pollution & CO2 emitted.
I'd prefer to subsidize the Internet, wouldn't you?
Dragging the fiber can't be that expensive
Yes, it can be that expensive. This is why we need a strong WISP (wireless ISP) industry to fight back against the Qwests, Comcasts, Verizons, and AT&Ts of this country - to use a medium that is mile for mile cheaper and overall speedy enough for 97% or more of Internet users to start shaking the boat, to start getting the monopolies in the ivory oligopolis to take notice and to stop fucking us over every step of the way.
What's wrong here in the US is a strong public distrust of having the government do anything, because the government may screw you over. So instead people prefer to give important tasks to businesses, who will screw you over.
There's a distinction. The FEDERAL government in the US can be depended on to do the absolute WORST thing possible. Local governments (cities and counties) can be generally depended upon to do things that are sane. STATE governments are like the Feds - they just think "oh I'm just one level below the feds, I can fuck up all I want too!"
Just think - on the whole, who are YOU more happy with? Your City, State, or your Country?
Consider yourself spoken to.
I think the real question is: "Why is connectivity so expensive elsewhere?" Maintaining a network connection like providers do costs them hardly anything compared to what you have to pay. Stockholm providers aren't doing anything special to reduce costs, they just don't overcharge you.
Princess Leia: The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers
The word socialism is completely taboo in Sweden as much as it is in the US.
I'm not Swedish, I'm Danish... But I can ensure that in both Denmark, Sweden and many other European countries socialism is not a bad word...
Note: Our liberal parties are more socialistic that Obama.
Prodding the government is a much less effective motivator for change than when someone is threatened with going out of business
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National Defense.-Right, because allowing 9/11 to happen and then invading two sovereign nations under false pretenses using billions of dollars is "doing a great job every day"
Police.-Police have been abusing power at an ever-increasing rate, are you mad?
Fire Supression.-Which is why we have so many volunteer fire departments
National Resource management.-No disputes about fair land use or eminent domain
Airspace management.-The FAA bends over backward to accommodate the industry, give me a break
Worker/Business relations.-Plus we have that super-healthy auto-industry!
Airwaves regulation and leasing.-The DTV transition is going marvelous and censorship on TV and radio never happens.
Autmobile safety regulation.-If they were truly concerned with safety over the appearance of safety, helmets and 5-point harnesses would replace seatbelts and airbags.
National Highway system.-Using federal funding for highways as blackmail money to force states to comply with all manner of unrelated federal demands
Airports.-Airport safety is so great that I only get sexually assaulted in public 33% of the time I fly (thank FSM I'm caucasian)
Bank Deposit Insurance. (FDIC).-Yes, printing valueless money when our financial collapse nears completion is super-important.
Public Libraries.-Libraries which censor net access and will report your activities without a warrant
Driving Regulations.-Regulations which prohibit citizens from using biofuels and allowing the import of environmentally friendly vehicles, also encouraging the following of rules dogmatically over driving safely
Street Parking Management.-Only about 20 years behind private lots in payment systems
Science Grant Writing.-Yes, public money for research that is only available in super-expensive, inaccessible journals
Medical Grant Writing.-See above...
Drug Testing and Approval.-Vioxx and Fen-phen are many in a long list of great decisions made here. Not to mention disallowing many drugs that have been tested safely in other countries - perhaps international voluntary cooperation and load-balancing instead of dogmatic corruption?
Food Safety Oversight.-It's why we can eat raw meat and uncooked eggs without worrying
City planning.-No corruption here, just a transparent and unbiased process taking into account public opinion
Public Transportation.-Privatized transport is only cheaper and more efficient in foreign countries because America is soooo big, right? Same reason our internet access is soooo expensive, right guys?
Baseline Medical Insurance for impoverished children.-Helping create ensure the hegemony of the insurance cartels so those without insurance can no longer afford any healthcare...you either need to be unemployed or have a good employer.
A social safety net so...-The welfare state argument would be stronger if it actually produced results; but the reality is that welfare is a way of life the majority of its recipients; despite the best effort of the minority who cycle through the system briefly and use it correctly , the rest exploit the system and those of us who pay for it
Unemployment insurance.-A job is a right, not a privilege
Tobacco taxation.-If this was true, why don't they tax other illicit drugs?
The FBI.-Waco, Ruby Ridge, etc. Nowadays, if it doesn't involve terr'r'ism, they don't care (aside from producing fun videos that criminalize photography, being lost, being foreign, etc.)
The National Weather Service.-Without them, we would never know if it was raining or snowing or just cloudy with a chance of meatballs.
Air Traffic Controllers.-Dude, seriously, "Airports" and "Ai
Two reason the income tax in Sweden is gastronomic and when you convert from US dollars to Swedish Kronor's it looks cheap.
ADSL 1.5 Mbps (down) / 256 Kbps (up) unlimited downloads (I guess that's the norm outside of Australia, but it's the exception here)
It's only available from a few daring Australian ISPs; we pay Au$ 99 / month (there's NO setup fee, with a 24 month contract), but it's S-L-O-W...
Help! I wanna move BACK to Stockholm... NOW!!!
I lived in SE for 5 "winters" --(my little joke)
and once tested the "Say, can I use your public [computer] terminal, please?" (I asked in English)
I was immediately taken behind the counter, a "read-only, restricted access" card was swiped in & I was given access to one of the Tax Office's computer terminals to use without (stated) restriction of any kind.
Although I was able to look-up inviduals' details, including income (as seen for local & state taxation purposes, resp.), the names of any children born out-of-wedlock were NOT available.
Try this next time you're passing throught SE.
PS: Alternatively, ask - in any Public Library - to see the (local) "Taxeringskalendar" It looks like a phone book, but - instead of tel.no's - you get two incomes (again: local & state taxations' view of income for the named individual).
Enjoy!
Fire Suppression — done at the state level, and largely ineffectual because the goal is impossible. National Parks — several are slated for closing, and the majority of land "managed" by the federal government is "BLM" (Bureau of Land Management) property, which they will at will grant leases on for clear-cutting and strip-mining. Oh, don't forget oil-drilling. Airspace management mdash; massive fail. The FAA is mostly a pork producer, for example they have held back safety in small aircraft by placing absurdly high limitations on what you're allowed to sell, which reduces the instrumentation most small-craft pilots have access to. Worker/Business relations — It's harder and harder to support a family by working, and more and more people are taking second jobs for the purpose. Airwaves regulation and leasing has been utterly proven to be a complete boondoggle. In particular only corporate interests are represented, which is why the frequencies are auctioned off instead of decided in the public interest; the airwaves are supposed to be managed on that basis, not on the basis of maximum profit. Autmobile safety regulation is a sad joke, since the government has continually allowed larger and larger vehicles to be produced, which makes the road unsafe for small and efficient vehicles. The National Highway system is not only in a continual state of disrepair, but the nation would have been better-served by improving the nationwide rail system which was already extant and operating at the time when the automobile companies were permitted to buy up rail, bus, and trolley lines (gaining a transportation monopoly) and shut them down. Street Parking Management is performed by county governments, not even state, and certainly not federal. Science grants are used to kill research not desired by the current administration through lack of funding. Medical Grant Writing/Drug Testing and Approval is a horrible boondoggle and misprescription of prescription medication is the #1 killer in America. In order to get a new drug approved it is not necessary to prove that it is more effective, or even do a test on it to prove that it is reasonably safe if it is substantially similar to a drug already on the market. City planning is done by states and counties.
I could go on, but the fact is that every single one of your examples is shit.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
This is already been done in a few cities, without any risks at all; read more here.
If Fiber optics would ignite the gas, any beam of light would be dangerous and we'd not be using gas at all...
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
Giving up your utilities to a company whose basic goal is to pressure as much as possible from the community ? What could possibly go wrong ?
Right, but once the gov't starts screwing you over, it cannot be stopped. Don't want a corporation to screw you over? Stop giving them money. The feds send people to your house with guns when you stop giving them money.
BTW, what makes you think everyone has public water?
There are four boxes used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order.
Yet people would rebel if suddenly half of the country wouldn't be able to receive mail or have electricity.
It's not that they wouldn't be able to receive it. It would simply be more expensive to them, because they have chosen to live in a place that is harder to supply with such services.
So my question for you is: If someone chooses to live in an area where it is easy and cheap to deliver mail, why should they also pay part of the bill to deliver mail out to my remote residence? My decision to live inefficiently is easier when I don't have to pay all the costs. Is that really something you want to encourage?
"I also think it's because "broadband" is quite more ambigious than water and power, they're much more binary like served/not served."
You think this because water and power are so well stablished and serviced you already forgot about how lame they can be.
Your home is two flatted? Sorry but forget about taking a shower on the high floor; not enough water pressure. Of course, in august watter supply will be offered just four hours a day.
What do you mean, 15KW for your home? We'll offer you just 6KW, so it will your wash machine or your air conditioner, but won't be able to use both of them at the same time. Oh, and every day from 23:00 to 8:00 you will see how your lamps bright much less; and you will have cuts at least monthly, and spikes will be usual (hey, but that boosts market; you'll have to renew your VCR yearly).
Telecoms (specially Internet) at home are still maturing. The problem is economics have changed you much that it is still to be seen if they will be able to be as stable and respectable as water/electricity in the future.
But a beer costs six Euros, so it evens out
http://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowTopic-g189852-i233-k635713-Beer_Price_in_Stockholm-Stockholm.html
Serious point - you can cherry pick individual items that are more expensive or cheaper over different countries, but just comparing one item means you are totally out of context. Then you throw in fluctuating exchange rates as well, and the comparison isn't worth that much.
It's hard to threaten a private monopoly with going out of business. Free unregulated market does not always mean competition. In fact, if left on its own for long enough, it's virtually guaranteed that competition will be suppressed.
"Don't want a corporation to screw you over? Stop giving them money."
If the corporation is big enough they will sue you if you try to do that. If they cannot sue you directly they'll change laws first (say RIAA).
"The feds send people to your house with guns when you stop giving them money."
Just like it will happen if big corporation happens to be on a country with a less powerful government (say bloody diamonds).
Cities and towns have been doing this to some degree. The problem is the public service commission and state government in some states have given the telcos permission to do whatever they want and the small towns can't do anything about it. In some states the law explicitly prohibits local towns from providing anything at all that might conceivably be used to compete with the telcos.
Don't blame the small towns. In most cases they are the ones being victimized right along with their residents.
Seriously? How the hell can the private industry do something well when the government has a monopoly on it?
Most of the things on that list the government does pretty poorly on a per-dollar basis. If your only argument is "the government doesn't exclude people like private industry would", it's a pretty easy fix to create a basic regulation framework where the private entity has to provide that service to EVERYONE and not discriminate on x,y,z factors.
Presto! More efficient done privately than publicly.
I'd prefer if the government stuck to its legitimate functions and stopped playing the subsidy shell game.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
Yes, but apart from that, what did the Romans ever do for us? Nothing!
I see a lot of "if"s about corporations, but the government already does that stuff NOW.
There are four boxes used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order.
Cuba has a functional health care system with higher average lifespans and lower infant mortality rates. Wouldn't it be better for them to mention North Korea instead of Cuba?
First of all, I've never had a letter take two weeks to deliver. Anyway, how exactly do you figure that the for-profit letter carriers are "more efficient" if they charge orders of magnitude more money for their service? You're using a definition of "efficient" that I am not familiar with.
A "Free Market" can't possibly ever exist in reality. Approaching that theoretical ideal is the best we will ever be able to do in that arena. A completely unregulated market will always be far away from a free market.
Agreed, but not for the reason you think. Regulation is needed. But government regulation is not necessarily needed.
Want to win in a market without being the best? Murder your competition. What's that, you'll go to prison? Wow, market regulation, It's everywhere and it is an essential requirement of a functioning market.
I'm not a real fan of viewing the basic criminal laws as government regulation of markets, but I will admit that it does function to help regulate some markets. However, the government regulation here is not essential. The key is that there must be something to prevent you from murdering your competition. There can be alternatives to the law there. Consider organized crime. The criminal law is largely irrelevant in the avoiding of murder there. What prevents it is generally the protection of the crime lords from each other, such that they really couldn't murder each other.
In general the black markets are is interesting in general, since they often approximate a free market fairly well, tending to rely on internal regulation where regulation is needed. (Of course the black markets can vary in levels of openness. Those dominated by crime lords are often closed markets, but that still compete fairly well, while others are more or less a free-for-all).
Over regulation is also bad, but the most commonly deluded types are the ones who not only believe that free markets are real, but they think unregulated markets and free markets are the same thing.
True. A market without government regulation can most certainly fail to be even remotely free, while markets with significant government regulations can approximate a free market really well in some cases. Generally I find that over-regulation in the sense of too many regulations is not the problem. The problem is generally specific regulations that have major harmful effects. In rare cases we get many regulations with small harmful effects that just add up to become significant, but generally it seems to be a small number of regulations bought and payed for by the big players in the market that are the problem.
Stylish sheet to fix many problems in Slashdot's D3: https://gist.github.com/801524