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Kansas To Nix Expansion of Google Fiber and Municipal Broadband

Posted by samzenpus on from the not-in-my-state dept.

symbolset writes: "Consumerist, among others, is reporting on a Kansas bill to restrict municipal support of broadband expansion. Purportedly to ensure a 'level playing field' to encourage commercial expansion in this area, these bills are usually referred to as oligopoly protection acts. Everywhere they have been implemented expansion of new broadband technology stops. In this specific case no municipal entity in Kansas will be able to enter the same sort of agreements that enabled Google Fiber. From the bill:
Except with regard to unserved areas, a municipality may not, directly or indirectly:
(1) Offer to provide to one or more subscribers, video, telecommunications or broadband service; or
(2) purchase, lease, construct, maintain or operate any facility for the purpose of enabling a private business or entity to offer, provide, carry, or deliver video, telecommunications or broadband service to one or more subscribers."

16 of 430 comments (clear)

  1. Freedom! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Freedom for Oligarchs. Higher prices for you.

  2. Re:Sounds like... by SuricouRaven · · Score: 5, Insightful

    America has the best government money can buy.

  3. BWAHAHAHAHA! by smooth+wombat · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I love subsection b of Section 2. Quote:

    encourage the development and widespread use of technological advances in providing video, telecommunications and broadband services at competitive rates; and

    That will never happen. Under no circumstances will people be able to get any of those services at competitive rates. What they will get are high prices for slow speeds.

    Looks like Verizon/Comcast/whomever was successful in bribing Kansas State House members into bringing this bill up for consideration.

    Gotta love fascism. Nothing like getting shafted by the government AND private industry.

    --
    We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
    1. Re:BWAHAHAHAHA! by riis138 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You speak the truth. In Michigan where I reside, Comcast and Verizon have a crushing monopoly in the home isp market using decades old technology. While our broadband speeds are not the slowest in the nation by any means, there is no competition for them to build and upgrade existing infrastructure. Something like Google fiber is one of the only hopes we have of getting some real competition in the area.

      --
      Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known. -Carl Sagan
  4. Fiber optic cables are direct analogs to roads by xtal · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What's so hard to understand?

    Municipalities should own infrastructure.

    We have a situation where the roads of the future are privately owned, gated, and tolled. The rest of the world is preparing to steamroller over you.

    Stupid, stupid, stupid.

    --
    ..don't panic
    1. Re:Fiber optic cables are direct analogs to roads by swb · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I think you're stacking the deck here pretty unfavorably.

      In Minneapolis, the water utility is self funding and has done infrastrucure upgrades. Our water plant is state of the art, with filtration down to .03μ. They have been engaged in a multi-year project to reline water mains to prevent corrosive sclerosis of the iron piping.

      I can't think of any specific catastrophes with the sewer system and I know for a fact that upgrades of the treatment plants are ongoing as I drive by one frequently and know it has been updated and expanded because I've seen the construction, plus Federal water quality rules would be unlikely to let them get worse.

      Gas and electric utilities, while private in most places, are also heavily regulated. The state PUC has turned down or drastically reduced rate increases; the only reason they trim trees is to contain their own costs from damage, the cost is built into the states' approved rate structure and an inherent safety concern over downed lines. Don't kid yourself into thinking its done as a consumer initiative, especially with how badly they butcher the trees. Gas line maintenance is also heavily driven not by consumer need but by safety. There have been at least two gas line explosions I can think of in the last 10 years despite this.

      Cable TV prices have oustripped inflation by nearly 10%, yet performance has stagnated and poor service is pretty much common, and cable does everything it can to resist any pro-consumer initiatives. Ala carte pricing where it exists is a joke, explicitly structured to be uncompetitive. Cable card was resisted with maximum effort to maintain device rental monopolies. Internet service remains slow, expensive and fraught with all manner of rules and restrictions, and likely to get worse with the recent loss of net neutrality rules.

      I dont think most people want a purely municiple cable TV, I think what they want is a municipal fiber backbone that can be leased out to private operators to offer services. Cable doesn't want this because it would mean choice and choice would cut out their rent seeking and just further the march to internet delivered content from someone else.

  5. Where is capitalism when you need it? by erroneus · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Communism and Capitalism both have some things in common. Not only do they both begin with the letter C, but they are both "great ideas" and neither ever actually happen.

    Every time I see a story about a municipality taking their lack of development and progress into their own hands, some previously uninterested party steps in and says, "This is my territory and you can't build where we don't want to build." On its face it's ridiculous. They want to cherry pick -- to invest in the markets which offer the best returns. We all get that. But to deny anyone else the opportunity to operate in less favored zones is 100% anti-competitive and 100% anti-capitalist. Trying to keep other parties from participating in the marketplace takes the free out of free markets.

    I think it's about time there were some public hearings on the situation so that we can get them to say things they don't mean and can later be held to account on.

  6. Re:They don't deserve it anyway. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Perhaps if they pray really hard, God will create a super fast broadband network for them.

    They'll need to pray harder than the lobbyists who wrote this bill.

  7. Wacky thinking by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It is quite humourous that normally when people hold wacky beliefs - beliefs that have no evidence and defy common sense - are labeled "kooks"; but as soon as they identify themselves as "Christian", we have to treat those beliefs with respect.

    1. Re:Wacky thinking by ILongForDarkness · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Exactly. If someone had a few thousand followers now who claimed he could bring people back from the dead, create food out of nothing, his mother was a virgin etc etc. they'd be called a cult and laughed at. Point to an old book that claims the same thing and ... presto piety.

    2. Re:Wacky thinking by mjr167 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      And that is an attitude that we seem to lack around here. We, as a society, need to learn to be able to not give a damn about other people's wacky beliefs (unless you believe I need to be set on fire or something and then we have a problem). There are people in the world who believe that cows are sacred. We slaughter and eat these sacred cows daily. They are going to teach their children that cows are sacred and we are going to teach our children that cows are tasty.

      It does not hurt you for someone to believe that the world was created by a flying spaghetti monster or aliens or green mold. It does not hurt anyone that people want to believe that invisible space monkeys have a plan for them that involves them giving food to the poor. It does not hurt anyone if someone wants to believe that the world magically sprung into being cause their invisible magic man cried or something. And it doesn't hurt anyone when they teach their children these things. No one complains that Amish kids grow up without electricity. If the kids decide their parents are crack pots, they will figure that out on their own when they realize that cows and bacon are tasty and the internet is grand thing.

      I wish we would stop trying to force our beliefs on each other. Let people teach their kids about their invisible men or aliens or evolution as they see fit.

  8. Re:But Kansas! by thaylin · · Score: 4, Insightful

    That is the GOP for you, they are for no regulation unless that regulation benefits one of their members.

    --
    When you cant win, ad hominem.
  9. The Invisible Hand by DarthVain · · Score: 4, Insightful

    of the market at work, not God! Except when it is not.

    All these companies bleat and cry every time they might get regulated even a little, yet will lobby for these sort of laws to increase their profitability.

    WWJD? Pretty sure he would dickpunch the lot of them.

    1. Re:The Invisible Hand by DarthVain · · Score: 4, Insightful

      "yet another bit of evidence that markets work better than regulated rent seeking"

      I don't agree. You are assuming that all regulation is the same. If however regulation was say, I don't know, made for say consumer protection, and for the citizens rather than bought and paid for by corporations, I think you would see regulation that works for the most part. It just happens that regulation is bent one way or another depending upon which corporate lobby paid for it (or took perfectly good regulation, to amend it to include loopholes for them and their buddies).

      Unless you can totally separate the state from the commercial interests their will always be political interference. Having totally independent regulation without corporate bias would enable the markets rather than detract from them. The market becomes skewed when one commercial interest gains leverage via regulation which is exactly what is happening in this story. Then you get several lobbies in a political bidding war, which is exactly what the politician wants to help win his/her next election.

    2. Re:The Invisible Hand by khallow · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You are assuming that all regulation is the same.

      The phrase "Regulated rent seeking" implies the shitty kind of regulation.

      If however regulation was say, I don't know, made for say consumer protection, and for the citizens rather than bought and paid for by corporations, I think you would see regulation that works for the most part.

      "If".

      The market becomes skewed when one commercial interest gains leverage via regulation which is exactly what is happening in this story.

      I agree. I just don't see the point of trying to make a dig at the "Invisible Hand", when the market is being so blatantly thwarted and bypassed. It's like complaining a technology is unsafe because someone died after going through considerable trouble to remove the safeguards on the technology.

  10. Re:But Kansas! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You can get 150mbps for $99/mo BECAUSE Google fiber moved into your state. Maybe not your direct neighborhood, but near enough that your cable providers upped their offerings so less people clamored for Google to roll out fiber to their neighborhood.

    This bill is about cable companies protecting their monopolies/profits so that no Municipalities get the bright idea to compete. Those small rural towns are pure profit for cable--the infrastructure is already in place (thanks to government money), there is no competition, and they can offer low speeds at high prices.