Kansas To Nix Expansion of Google Fiber and Municipal Broadband

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Kansas To Nix Expansion of Google Fiber and Municipal Broadband

Posted by samzenpus on Friday January 31, 2014 @01:04AM 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."

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But Kansas! by N3tRunner · 2014-01-31 01:09 · Score: 5, Funny

Darn, I'm sure Google was excited by the prospect of providing broadband access to the tens of people who live in municipalities in Kansas.
1. Re:But Kansas! by ryanmetcalf · 2014-01-31 01:20 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  Hey, Kansas is more populus than 16 other states in the US. There's at least hundreds of us!
2. Re:But Kansas! by thaylin · 2014-01-31 02:16 · 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.
3. Re:But Kansas! by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-31 04:21 · 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.
Freedom! by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-31 01:12 · Score: 5, Insightful

Freedom for Oligarchs. Higher prices for you.
Re:Sounds like... by SuricouRaven · 2014-01-31 01:15 · Score: 5, Insightful

America has the best government money can buy.
BWAHAHAHAHA! by smooth+wombat · 2014-01-31 01:15 · 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 · 2014-01-31 01:30 · 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.
  
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  Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known. -Carl Sagan
Fiber optic cables are direct analogs to roads by xtal · 2014-01-31 01:16 · 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 · 2014-01-31 05:15 · 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 .03Î¼. 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.
Where is capitalism when you need it? by erroneus · 2014-01-31 01:19 · 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.
A little misleading by swillden · 2014-01-31 01:19 · Score: 4, Informative

I think the bill is a bad idea, but I don't think it would stop Google from deploying fiber elsewhere in Kansas. It doesn't do anything to prevent deployments, it just prevents municipalities from offering the special treatment that helped get KC selected as the first city out of 1100 candidates.

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Re:munis are broke by FictionPimp · 2014-01-31 01:22 · Score: 4, Informative

Because AT&T, Comcast, Verizon, etc didn't get any government assistance to build their networks....http://voices.washingtonpost.com/posttech/2010/07/att_verizon_get_most_federal_a.html
Re:They don't deserve it anyway. by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-31 01:22 · 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.
VoIP, Jabber, Skype, etc, now prohibited (3d)!! by dyfet · 2014-01-31 01:24 · Score: 4, Informative

The law of unintended consequences... While Section 3b, in regards to "video services", makes clear reference to "through wireline facilities located at least in part in the public rights-of-way", and clearly is about cable tv (no thread to netflicks for example), 3d is a very different animal:
(d) "Telecommunications service" means the two-way transmission of
signs, signals, writing, images, sounds, messages, data or other
information of any nature by wire, radio, light waves or other
electromagnetic means, offered to the public generally.
Hmm...does not seem to be based on actual broadband service providers or any specific limitations. The way it is written would seem to exclude any form of VoIP or chat "service" (jabber, skype, etc)!!!! WTF?! Way to go Kansas!
Re:They don't deserve it anyway. by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-31 01:29 · Score: 5, Funny

Kansans mustn't have broadband, they might gain forbidden knowledge.
Re:...On a mattress stuffed with $100s by gaudior · 2014-01-31 01:45 · Score: 4, Interesting

Then again, maybe the politicians just don't even bother trying to have a cover story anymore, because they know we already consider them all nothing but self-serving asshats, yet the majority will still vote them back into office again and again and again.
The only way things will change is to always vote out the incumbent. Every time. Even if you agree with 100% of their positions and votes. Lets spend a few election cycles churning up the sludge. Maybe some of them will get the hint, and maybe some better people will see that they have a shot at getting in, once the old-boy network has been rattled to pieces.
Wacky thinking by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-31 01:51 · 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 · 2014-01-31 02:07 · 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 TheGratefulNet · 2014-01-31 03:56 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  presto piety.
  why did you have to go and say that? now I'm really hungry for pizza, and I have no idea why!
  
  --
  
  --
  "It is now safe to switch off your computer."
3. Re:Wacky thinking by mjr167 · 2014-01-31 04:55 · 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.
Alternative article title by korbulon · 2014-01-31 01:53 · Score: 4, Funny

Hix Nix Quix Netflix.
Re:munis are broke by Stolpskott · 2014-01-31 02:15 · Score: 4, Informative

munis didn't fund wars... nice try though
Maybe not... but spending by Munis is also not responsible for the vast majority of US public debt. As of 2012 (the latest year-end I can find data for without logging into Bloomberg and compiling the data):
US local government debt as a percentage of GDP was around 7-8%.
US state government debt as a percentage of GDP was around 19-20%.
US federal government debt as a percentage of GDP was a touch over 120%.
So, by far the biggest contributor to US public debt is the US Federal Government, and by far the biggest single-ticket item of its expenditure is military spending ($700 Billion per year in direct contract awards), with massive spending on the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. The most thorough study that I can find public reference to is by Brown University, which puts the cost of troop deployments in Iraq, Afghanistan and logistical support in Pakistan, plus domestic spending on debt interest to service that cost, at something over $6 Trillion so far, and that is only since 2003.
The study itself does not seem to be publicly available on the interwebs - Crawford, Neta and Catherine Lutz. "Economic and Budgetary Costs of the Wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan to the United States: A Summary". Costs of War. Brown University.
But you can check out the Wikipedia article to get the basics: Financial cost of the Iraq War
Seeing as the current US Federal Debt burden is somewhere between $17 and $17.5 Trillion, the "non-War" debt burden is still a not-inconsiderable $11 Trillion, but the annual Military Gravy Train in the US dwarfs the rest of the debt components.
The Invisible Hand by DarthVain · 2014-01-31 02:25 · 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 · 2014-01-31 03:46 · 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 · 2014-01-31 04:12 · 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.
Following South Carolina's Lead by EmagGeek · 2014-01-31 03:03 · Score: 5, Informative

We had the same thing happen here a couple of years ago. Oconee county got fed up with the broadband players' reluctance to hook up rural parts of the county, so they decided to go in with the Feds to roll out universal fiber to all, because of the economic implications of such..
In response, AT&T objected, said they had planned on universal coverage, and lobbied the State for a "level playing field" law that would prohibit hooking residences up to any publicly funded infrastructure where the same subsidies were not given to AT&T and other private carriers.
The day the bill was signed into Law, the AT&T CEO declared wireline infrastructure dead, and that not one more penny would be sunk into wireline expansion in South Carolina.
Re:Honest name by sribe · 2014-01-31 03:59 · Score: 4, Interesting

Better idea, how about a bill which bans government from providing or subsidizing broadband in any county in which broadband (at least 5Mb/s) is available to 100% of residences. Think about it ;-)