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Hundreds of Cities Wired With Fiber, But Telecom Lobbying Keeps It Unusable
Jason Koebler writes: 'In light of the ongoing net neutrality battle, many people have begun looking to Google and its promise of high-speed fiber as a potential saving grace from companies that want to create an "internet fast lane." Well, even without Google, many communities and cities throughout the country are already wired with fiber — they just don't let their residents use it. Companies like Comcast, Time Warner Cable, CenturyLink, and Verizon have signed agreements with cities that prohibit local governments from becoming internet service providers and prohibit municipalities from selling or leasing their fiber to local startups who would compete with these huge corporations.'
watch this:
https://plus.google.com/115956...
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
That should be an end-run around those restrictions. The city/locality owns the fiber, but sells access to companies who sell it to end users. (I'm not sure if this counts as "leasing". The locality maintains control of the fiber.)
Google, through it's lobbying contributions to ALEC is a supporter of the current monopoly system.
The core issue is whether a government should be providing a service. But that should not be an issue.
The government should provide the pipes (fibre or copper or whatever) to the houses that it covers. Paid for by taxes.
The pipes terminate at a government facility that the government leases space at to ANY AND ALL companies that want to provide ISP services over those pipes. As cheap as possible but without allowing one company to lease ALL the space.
Then switching between ISP's should be as simple as moving a patch cord.
Your taxes pay for the pipes and their maintenance and the facility and its maintenance (minus the lease revenue).
Comcast themselves say "Comcast and TWC do not compete against each other in any area" (direct quote).
This collusion clearly violates the ideals of free-market capitalism, but at what point does it violate the law?
(Sorry to anyone who's seen me post this comment before, but I'm still scratching my head over this)
The last mile is not amenable to free market solutions. Not unless you want dozens of fibers from dozens of companies all terminated at your doorstep, each alone capable of transmitting the contents of the library of congress before you finish reading the bathroom newspaper. Why would we want this? It's stupid. Get everyone a single fiber to their home, pay for it collectively, and lease the rights to use it to your ISP. Tell me about a better plan.
More cities need to treat internet access as a utility. It's the best way to break the current monopoly.
You have no clue what net neutrality is, do you? OR maybe you do ant you want 1 company dictating what people can see and do?
"Stop trying to make rules for how the Internet works. "
sense, you make none. The internet functions on rules.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Screw the consumer. Its how barely regulated (virtual) monopolies, that are out of control, operate.
Break them up, jail the board of directors. Return control to the people.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
" The tax paid agency has no incentive to not lose money. "
they actually do.
becasue
" All they need to do is spend their budget."
that will go away.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Allow me to correct that for you.
A collection of private businesses acting as a monoply trying to compete with a tax paid government agency is at a great advantage, because they can lobby the federal and state governments to make their model more profitable and they can sue the municipailities into compliance
If it's implemented as you imply, I'd be fine with fast lanes too. I just don't think it will be.
While what you say isn't wrong, it is no different than any other competition. If it were paid for with tax dollars, then that local government wouldn't have much incentive to provide a [i]good[/i] service, just the basics. If an ISP can't compete with that, they have no reason to be in business. Of course, they've grown used to not having any competition at all, and expect that to always be the case.
Oh, also, ISPs take in tax dollars all the time. Remember a year ago when Verizon took $4.5 billion in tax dollars to improve services in New York, and in doing so claimed it was entitled to tax money as it was providing a service as a utility? Well, funny that now, only a year later, they are suddenly not subject to certain things as they claim they are not a utility. Hmm... something about having your cake and eating it, too.
That's why we should have private enterprise competing to build roads. I can't wait to have ten road providers to choose from.
becasue
" All they need to do is spend their budget."
that will go away.
... at the end of the fiscal year.
Those private businesses all took public money to build their infrastructure. If they don't want to compete with the government, then they can give back those billions.
you're on drugs if you think your local government will upgrade their networks every time netflix doubles their data that they send. it might seem good now but 5-10 years in the future if local governments run the ISP's out of business they will laugh at you when you complain you can't stream 8K or whatever the next one is. they will act like any other local utility and tell you to wait 5 years until they gather enough data that there is a demand for it, then take another few years to study the problem, then spend another 5 years begging for money in the budget and finally upgrading the network
The people running the tax paid agency have incentives to do a good job. If they do not, they get fired.
So you want a privatized sewer system with multiple redundant sets of sewer pipes strewn about the city all owned by different private enterprises. Then when you want to switch they come to your house, dig up your yard and the street in front of your house to connect your sewer pipes to their sewer pipes. Sounds like a grand idea!
A basic responsibility of government is infrastructure. It's what allows large systems to operate and compete. When phones were new, every phone company ran their own lines. We don't do that anymore. We have a quasi-private enterprise that lays one set of phone lines, then the consumer chooses who they want for their service (for long distance at least, you're still stuck with the monopoly of your single local provider).
Let the people (via government) lay the basic infrastructure (pipes/wires) then let private businesses pay to use said infrastructure to sell consumers goods/services.
I want competition, not government ISP.
You're (probably intentionally) ignoring a huge point. As pointed out in the summary, the agreements also prohibit the leasing of the already existing fiber lines:
and prohibit municipalities from selling or leasing their fiber to local startups who would compete with these huge corporations.
So it's not just that the government can't operate an ISP, it's that nobody else can. And before you try and say it's not fair that the cable company had to run their own lines, while the government ran them for these other ISPs, keep in mind these points:
1. The competing ISPs would still have to pay for the lines.
2. The cable companies have received huge subsidies from the government.
Personally, I *want* "fast lanes" because they remove popular traffic off the main transit links.
Okay, now I know something's up. I also see that all of your recent comments pro-big-corporate-ISP. What you're pretending to not understand is that "fast lane" doesn't mean fast lane, it means everything else is slow lane. They're not talking about building out new faster infrastructure. And it's not simply about peering, it's about charging providers extra to provide this "fast lane" which amounts to "give us money or we're gonna slow you down."
My home town, Burbank, CA has metro fiber for businesses. Studios love it. The fiber is actually owned by the cable company. Heh!
See! You think fiber is okay if it's the cable company making a profit on it, but not if it's a competing ISP.
needs it
Do you understand the difference between the city providing fiber and a business providing Internet? Really, talk about knee jerk reactions. The bulk of the cost of an ISP startup is the last mile, this does not affect the backbone of the Internet, the ISP would be responsible for getting services to the fiber shack, which btw is no different than it is today except that the fiber shack was paid for with taxes but is owned by Verizon and the likes.
Your are funny. (I assume that was a joke)
You're on drugs if you think you have to upgrade fiber to increase bandwidth.
It is TRIVIAL to supply 100Mbit/100Mbit to every home and that is more tan enough for running 20 netflix feeds per home. In fact the gear for 100Mbit is dirt freaking cheap and all over the place used.
The entire City Plant can be 100/100 and the only hard part is the Internet POP. so you need a couple of fibers to the next town. In fact if you do it right every town has a 2 fibers off to the next town to create a web like the internet is supposed to be. suddenly your STATE is completely online and now it is trivial to get backbone wholesale rates for internet access from a backbone provider. comcast did this using leftover gear from the @home days to have a backbone all over several states in the midwest back in 2003 and it is STILL running on that now 15 year old gear and is still more than they need in bandwidth for flinging TV commercials all over multiple states.
Let me guess, you actually don't know shit about how networking works let alone fiber?
In my view municipally run fiber networks are an inevitable necessity, whether they are open-access or the service is run by the city. Internet access has become a vital utility and becomes all the more so every year; and fiber networks are the only viable way to provide it and grow with future needs. I wish the average person could understand this. Competition doesn't happen partly because building multiple physical network infrastructures in the same place makes no more sense than having multiple electrical or water systems. The only reason there are two hardwired Internet providers in any place to start with is because two completely unrelated infrastructures(cable and phone) were converted to provide service; both of which, ironically, have been made obsolete by the Internet. It worked for a while, but it has been obvious for years that it is time to move on. That is why so much fiber infrastructure was built in the first place. The incumbent ISPs know this, and are terrified by it. Hence why they have gamed the entire system and greased legislators with bribes---excuse me--"lobbying money", and done a very thorough job of it.
Stop trying to make rules for how the Internet works.
but this is precisely what the corporate lobbyists are doing. do you have ANY solution that will stop these lobbyists from undermining actual competition? this is where government CAN step in, to stop these shenanigans and enforce an equitable, competitor-filled marketplace. otherwise, an unregulated "free" market quickly becomes anything but, full of Comcast-esque fiefdoms.
Net neutrality as was originally defined was that packets shouldn't be treated any different than any other packet. The idea was to prevent traffic shaping. I pointed out, quite awhile ago, that no shaping had to be done. All a company would have to do is let some ports get congested and upgrade ports that serviced their preferred services. Few seemed understood this point. I also wondered exactly how this would be regulated since peering is an integral part of how the Internet works. Fast forward to present. Now everyone is talking about peering. Welcome all! This was my point all along. I just feared the day when people would realize this point. I don't want the government approving every single stupid change an ISP has to make to their peering. It sounds like a regulatory disaster. More lobbying, more corruption. The best way to solve the problem is to pressure local governments to open up right of ways. The cable companies can sue. Let them.
So here's a thought for you.
Certain things are natural monopolies. Generally speaking, these are things that cost a relatively large amount of money to deploy to everybody, but which have relatively low marginal costs once the infrastructure is in place.
Electricity.
Water.
Gas (in the sense of natural gas, rather than the liquid hydrocarbons that the USA calls gas.)
Telecommunications.
So instead of having private companies providing these services, why not have the government pay for the infrastructure - out of tax payer's dollars, yes - and provide them to the community, whilst private companies pay the government to provide the necessary services on top of that infrastructure? You get competition, in the form of multiple private companies providing similar services at differing price levels (and, presumably, differing service levels), without having to worry about somebody charging juuuuuust underneath what the market is willing to tolerate before somebody else comes in to build duplicate infrastructure (or even better, charging more than that level, only to drop prices when somebody threatens to build duplicate infrastructure until such time as that somebody goes away, at which point the prices go right back up again...)
Or is that too socialistic for the United States of America?
Because my city council demands that any new company providing cable TV commit to wire every home and apartment building before getting permission to operate in my town, Nashua, NH, Verizon FIOS was driven out of town. As it happens they sold what fiber they'd laid down to a regional operator, so I can get fiber Internet, but not TV.
I'm not saying that Comcast lobbied hard and spent a lot of money to get this rule enforced, but obviously this kind of barrier to entry benefits Comcast or any incumbent ISP greatly.
It has been implemented this way already. Starting with Yahoo! years ago. AOL too. If a company has a large national network, they can deliver data to peering points bypassing expensive transit links. Do you think Yahoo! and AOL had unfair advantages?
Who will invest in the Internet infrastructure that we badly need, indeed, and who will go out of their way to hinder its operation?
Last mile utilities are natural monopolies. If you want 4 companies to run fiber past your house your price will reflect running the fiber four separate times. The entire reason broadband costs in this country are triple or more those of the rest of the developed world is we are paying to run the same wires multiple times.
They beauty of not recognizing the natural monopoly is that two things will happen, the first is that if you are a high enough density with wealthy enough customers you might get a singe overbuilder who will conspire with the incumbent to ensure prices remain high, and the if you aren't in an area conducive to overbuilding your price will go up dramatically just because they can.
The solution is to either recognize the last mile monopoly and make it government administered (government build-out of neighborhood connections with leased access to all comers), or let it be private and regulate the shit of out as a utility. Anything other than those two will result in high prices, bad service and abuse of monopoly. We're currently doing the later in the US in the name of competition and free market that doesn't exist. As a result we pay 10 times more than countries like sweden (with worse density than the US and worse construction conditions) and we have worse service than some third world countries in both speed and reliability. The worst of all worlds for no other reason that to make rich people richer. It's the height of stupidity.
At some point people need to realize that pretending we live in some ideal free market is just that, pretending. Monopolies are contraventions of the free market and MUST be regulated or you end up with something far worse than government run. Republicans helped spearhead trust busting back in the day (because trusts break free markets), it's ironic how they want to prevent trust busting today.
I want competition, not government ISP.
You're (probably intentionally) ignoring a huge point. As pointed out in the summary, the agreements also prohibit the leasing of the already existing fiber lines:
and prohibit municipalities from selling or leasing their fiber to local startups who would compete with these huge corporations.
So it's not just that the government can't operate an ISP, it's that nobody else can. And before you try and say it's not fair that the cable company had to run their own lines, while the government ran them for these other ISPs, keep in mind these points: 1. The competing ISPs would still have to pay for the lines. 2. The cable companies have received huge subsidies from the government.
Personally, I *want* "fast lanes" because they remove popular traffic off the main transit links.
Okay, now I know something's up. I also see that all of your recent comments pro-big-corporate-ISP. What you're pretending to not understand is that "fast lane" doesn't mean fast lane, it means everything else is slow lane. They're not talking about building out new faster infrastructure. And it's not simply about peering, it's about charging providers extra to provide this "fast lane" which amounts to "give us money or we're gonna slow you down."
My home town, Burbank, CA has metro fiber for businesses. Studios love it. The fiber is actually owned by the cable company. Heh!
See! You think fiber is okay if it's the cable company making a profit on it, but not if it's a competing ISP.
I'm not pro-big-ISP, I'm just skeptical of FCC regulation. There is a difference. I am also convinced that most people have no idea how the Internet works. My comment about Burbank just a funny thing. It works just like you want. Burbank doesn't own the fiber, it is owned by the "evil" big-ISP. They just sub-out to the cable company for maintaining a neutral network that all businesses can connect to. Transit is optional and doesn't have to be provided by the cable company. Burbank had a huge incentive to do this because of all the studios in the area. They needed high speed point to point links to send large amounts of data.
Community Wifi is also targeted with this. My experience was from Comcast targeting the one community WiFi project we had running and was shut down.
we were illegally providing internet service for free without paying franchise fees to the local government to the tune of $10K a month.
It's a fucking Mobster kickback is what it is...
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Provo, Utah tried this approach: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IProvo. Unfortunately, it didn't work out too well, and Google had to come save the day...
The ISP's WANT net neutrality, and they want the FCC to regulate them.
That would put the final nail in the competition coffin.
Could you imagine what would happen if you had, let's say, 33 ISP's to choose from in your area?
Except they are treating the packets differently by allowing vastly different percentages of them the be dropped over different peering links. If the packet is destined for their network and they have control over the link then the packet should be treated equally to all other packets destined for their network. They have (partial) control over the bandwidth of the peering link.
The same also applies to packets leaving their network.
I'm moving and my new place has 200Mbps down/100Mbps up fiber, so that's an upgrade from the 100Mbps I've had for about 15 years. And the price is going down to about US$38/month. Not bad, huh? I could choose 1 Gbps, since everywhere has been upgraded with it for years now, but it would only be useful for content inside the country. The infrastructure is far more advanced than the U.S.
Of course there are no caps and no provider-conspired speed throttling. I've never had a provider-caused outage in 20 years of internet service.
That's that service level and pricing that competition has created over time in Japan. I'm in a small town, so don't even think about the "U.S. is too big" reply. Every time I go the U.S. I'm shocked at the level of service. You are really under the thumb of the internet provider mafia.
You need to vote in representatives that will actually to start representing you. I don't see any hope for you without that.
they will act like any other local utility and tell you to wait 5 years until they gather enough data that there is a demand for it, then take another few years to study the problem, then spend another 5 years begging for money in the budget and finally upgrading the network
Utilities don't get funded through the general budget.
They petition the PUC/PSC/etc with a plan, it gets approved (or not),
then the utility either raises prices the approved amount to cover the direct cost
or the utility issues bonds... and then raises prices the approved amount to cover the bonds.
And AFAIK there's no such thing as a government utility, only government chartered corporations.
They are self funding and mostly independent of government, except where they have to interact with the Public Utilities Commission, like any other utility.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
In Los Angeles, there is a heck of a lot of fiber. I remember talking down the sidewalk in Burbank. Three man holes a few feet apart. One said "MFN 20K" (which is now AboveNet), another "ATT 20K", and another "Layer3 20K".Admittedly, these are obviously backhaul links, but they were on the same street as the muni sewer. Given how they were laid out, they were probably using the same conduit. Fiber is not the same as water, sewer, etc. It can be done and is already being done. I'm pretty sure AT&T and Charter fiber run on the very same poles in a city.
Again with this one-sided uninformed bullshit. Why did the city sign those agreements? A gift to the telecom? It's a joke. City after city trys to install their own network and gets their ass sued by their local telecom. And they lose... every time. Why? Because it's breach of contract.
Those telecoms agreed to maintain the cities aging copper network in exchange for no direct competition for teleco services. Maintaining that network is hugely expensive. The city comes in and plans to install fiber which will clearly be a direct competitor to the old copper network. Does the city want to release the telco from their obligation to maintain the copper? If they were I'd pretty damned sure the telco would jump at the chance. But they're not. They want the telephone company to continue to maintain a dieing network while the city installs fiber to only the most profitable areas, in direct competition with the telco.
No city is required to sign these agreements. They are up for renewal all over the country every day of the year. Yet, they all sign. They could maintain the network themselves, but they don't. If it was such a profit rich venture why don't we see cities doing this all over? Because it's not very profitable. They city could certainly buy out the contract, even in the middle of the contract and take over the network any time they wanted. But then they would have to maintain that network... the WHOLE network. Not just that business park where they wanted the fiber.
What I'd suggest, is if the cities want more control over this sort of thing. They should buy the network, not sign any more contracts and then install fiber conduit only. Lease conduit to vendors. They you have competition. Any vendor can come in, blow a new fiber through the conduit, and get going. When they dont need it anymore they pull their fiber, and viola. The governments not providing your intenet and you have real competition. This will require the city to maintain the phonelines however. No phone company is going to touch them if they're losing the most profitable part of town, they'll lose money.
do you have ANY solution that will stop these lobbyists from undermining actual competition? this is where government CAN step in, to stop these shenanigans and enforce an equitable, competitor-filled marketplace.
Are you listening to yourself, at all?
...the government has already stepped in, or else you wouldn't have a problem with the lobbyists. You do understand who lobbyists lobby, right?
"His name was James Damore."
If government couldn't do a better job, then why are corporations working so hard to keep them out?
Actually one "polices" them rather than "regulating" them. It's called the "police power of the state", and refers to a lot more than the cops. Anything that gets you dragged in front of a magistrate or board who can punish you is policing
Regulation is a technical term for bylaw-like legislation, is misleading as heck, and historically is a term that lots of people in the 'States and Canada viscerally hate.
davecb@spamcop.net
This allows them to not pay for right of way access, for building tunnels, installing poles, etc. etc. It's a "socialize expenses, privatize profits" thing -- essentially leveraging the worst parts of socialism to further the worst parts of capitalism.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
I do want to correct you with the only example that I know of. The Tennessee Valley Authority power company.
I haven't looked at information on it in years, but my understanding is that it is one of the best power companies (at least to work for) in the nation. I do like the tidbit about them not needing tax money on the right hand side.
"If government couldn't do a better job, then why are corporations working so hard to keep them out?"
Because it's unfair competition. These guys whine like you are proposing to waterboard them at the hint of *fair* competition, so you can imagine how they feel about unfair competition.
And it really is unfair competition. The private ISP has to charge enough to cover their costs, a government has options to subsidize the service and charge less than they are actually spending on it, among other advantages.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
they will act like any other local utility and tell you to wait 5 years until they gather enough data that there is a demand for it, then take another few years to study the problem, then spend another 5 years begging for money in the budget and finally upgrading the network
Actually, go check out Wilson, North Carolina. They embarrassed Time Warner so badly, Time Warner strongarmed the state into making municipal broadband illegal. It creates a lot of cognitive dissonance with the "government can't do anything right" crowd.
Which is hilarious considering the current system is just government-granted monopoly anyway, yet they defend it voraciously because, uh...privatization!
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
"And AFAIK there's no such thing as a government utility,"
there are many.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The physical infrastructure---dark fiber---is a natural monopoly, and could be supplied and owned by government.
The service itself, equipment to transport information on and off, and policies would be privately owned and maintained, and competition required.
It's little different than rails or roads which have cars and service operated by competing carriers on the same transport infrastructure.
that will go away.
If they don't spend it. Anyone in the supply industry knows about March madness where government departments spend their budget whether they need to or not. If they go over budget they get a bigger one next time.
What are you talking about? Comcast, Verizon, and others are not backbone providers that would be places like Level 3 Communications
The scary thing is that Verizon is a Tier 1 provider. When they bought MCI several years ago, they got UUNET too.
The problem; is Netflix isn't sending the data into comcast or whatever for shits and giggles.
If Netflix wasn't being asked to send data to Comcast; they wouldn't fucking do it. Comcast customers are asking Netflix for data. Comcast across its whole network has ample bandwidth to receive the data (Comcast subscribers can VPN elsewhere in order to re-route Netflix traffic), but is refusing to upgrade its links to Netflix.
Not because it is too expensive (we are talking a one off 30,000 dollar cost for a multi-billion dollar entity). But because they want to extort Netflix.
The problem; is Comcast has too many customers asking Netflix for data. Comcast should get rid of those customers, charge those customers more, or upgrade the damned links to the content their customers want.
You say it is trivial for Netflix to pass that cost on? It is Comcast customers that are generating the cost!.
But Telecom Lobbying Keeps It Unusable.
Of course they do.
Corporations are Evil.
no exceptions.
Capitalism is reptilian.
And all of your points are ???
Dog eat dog?
No. Dogs work in packs - socialism.
Capitalism is reptilian.
Reptilians eat their children because they can't make it on their own.
The American Way.
Sucks to be you if you can't.
You ignore that 10gb equipment will become cheaper and will be a transparent drop in replacement for 1gb equipment. No extra work other than regular maintenance. Same thing for 100gb when it comes out.
If the government did nothing more than replace network hardware with the cheapest hardware, they would stay ahead of the curve.
If you want to test this theory, go to HP or Cisco, and ask them to build you a brand new fresh off the line 10mb hub, then ask them for a basic 1gb switch. See which one is cheaper. It would cost more to make the 10mb hub.
they want to get rid of copper and replace it with 4g/lte with low caps and $10 a gig for going over.
1gb gear is cheaper than 100mb gear. Your point still stands though, but I think it would have been better if you rubbed it in a bit more.
Don't you have a vote for city council?
If government couldn't do a better job, then why are corporations working so hard to keep them out?
First of all, the idea that the government can run anything well is ridiculous. This has been proven time and again throughout history. It should be no surprise, as government has no incentive to do anything better, since they have no equal competitors.
The reason businesses object to government encroaching on their industry is because government doesn't play by the same rules as private sector businesses. Government can raise near unlimited funding via taxation, they can artificially set prices, and they can arbitrarily make regulations that advantage government over their private sector counter-parts. They aren't worried government can do anything better -- most know better -- they are worried of being run out of business. Whether government can do better is as unlikely as it is irrelevant.
If a private sector monopoly is deemed bad, why would a government-enforced public sector monopoly be deemed better? At least with the private sector, you can choose not to purchase the product. You don't have that choice with government -- if you pay taxes, you bought it. Therefore, given a private sector not hobbled by unnecessary government obstacles, voting with your dollars is much more effective and provides much better representation of your desires than voting for a politician that you hope does what he says. Your dollars, or lack thereof, are counted every time.
While nothing is perfect, free market competition has a strong history of providing the best product for the lowest cost. Free market competition is responsible for the rise of the United States and the better quality of life we've enjoyed through the years. As we see government intrude on our freedoms, economic and otherwise, we see our quality of life diminish. Yet the hopelessly naive among us continue to blindly demand yet more of the same government that's the cause of so many of our problems. Unfortunately, some people never learn . . .
That is why you split the difference, muni fiber only handing off CWDM. Fiber has been pretty standard for a LONG time and not expected to change. With CWDM/DWDM your ISP gets to determine the speeds the muni is just passing light back and forth, it literally has nothing that requires power with a CDWM network.
No sir I dont like it.
I would really not want the muni to have any networking gear. We need to back away from ugly refrigerators on telephone polls. Cheap optics are good for 40km that is far more larger than any town.
No sir I dont like it.
Good grief, shut your shill asshole up already.
But I guess the NSA is piping everything through their basement already, so maybe it doesn't matter...
you're on drugs if you think your local government will upgrade their networks every time netflix doubles their data that they send. it might seem good now but 5-10 years in the future if local governments run the ISP's
But at least I could demand, elect, levy, or lobby to have it done. Right now I can call someone at one of the 2 players in town and say I want faster service/better service/service at all, but I get nothing. They are fine with providing 10/1 because I can't get better service at a reasonable price from satellite or DSL, and nobody else is around to compete. If my city handled it I could at least get involved in making the decision happen.
You people make me sick. :eyeroll:
I've been caught in the telecom's shenanigans before. Go ask the early directors of the e-NC program in N Carolina around 2003 about the tricks Sprint pulled to halt potential competition at the taxpayers expense..
Keep voting for candidates financed by ANY big money interest and keep expecting them to care about your poor asses. Nooooo.... y'all aren't insane.....
When the king heard the words of the Book of the Law he tore his robes.2Kings22:11
"And AFAIK there's no such thing as a government utility,"
there are many.
So many, that you can not list a single one?
And what if Netflix stopped peering with those ISP's? Then what? The problem started because Netflix was depending on Cogent to have sufficient peering links. Cogent didn't. Cogent also didn't have any incentive to upgrade those links because Cogent likes to have settlement-free links.
Its effectively a contract to form monopolies.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
And it has been for ten years. The city water and electric board put it in (we have municipal water and electricity).
Century Link still stuck with DSL at turn of the century speeds.
Comcast will sell some band width but you pay.
Sad
The point was not that the municipal governments should run the ISP out of business but that the municipal government should provide last mile fiber to designated fiber sheds that the ISP then connect to networks ..... wait for it .... FRAND. Then the Big ISPs who have screwed most of the US out of decent costs and services now have local competition from small and medium sized ISP's
My drug of choice is logic - your drug of choice seems to be wilful stupidity.
Here's a list of 251 publicly owned electric & gas utilities in the U.S. At the bottom of the list are state and federal power agencies.
Everywhere I've lived (approximately 15 cities across five states) the water utility has been owned by a municipality or county. I know there are plenty of others that are privately owned, I just haven't lived there.
The cable and telephone companies that I know used to be owned by municipalities were sold off to private enterprises some time ago though I expect that many still exist.
they will act like any other local utility and tell you to wait 5 years until they gather enough data that there is a demand for it, then take another few years to study the problem, then spend another 5 years begging for money in the budget and finally upgrading the network
Actually, go check out Wilson, North Carolina. They embarrassed Time Warner so badly, Time Warner strongarmed the state into making municipal broadband illegal. It creates a lot of cognitive dissonance with the "government can't do anything right" crowd.
Which is hilarious considering the current system is just government-granted monopoly anyway, yet they defend it voraciously because, uh...privatization!
That's what is happening in my state, only it is Comcast that is buying off the state legislature to try to kill Utopia. I'm so glad that these 2 companies are going to merge so that they can more efficiently purchase our elected officials.
Enigma
I wouldn't argue that government can't do anything right though you probably consider me part of that crowd.
I would argue that the larger the government entity, the less efficiently it can do anything. If there was government ownership of utility infrastructure I would prefer it was done at a local government level where there's some level of accountability to the voters. I firmly believe that federal ownership and management of internet infrastructure would be a disaster.
I've only lived in a couple of places that had actual competition amongst cable TV providers. My experience with government owned infrastructure was no different than that owned by private entities. While we may argue that government should own the last-mile the fact is that whether it's run by a government entity or business the entity has to have a way of covering costs - either through rates or taxes. Again, this comes to size. I'd prefer to deal with a small, local entity than a large, national one.
An issue faced by networking infrastructure providers is that it has, so far, needed to be upgraded on a fairly consistent basis.
The water, electricity and POTS lines have needed maintenance but have, for the most part, been a rather stable infrastructure. Networking infrastructure, on the other hand, has had significant requirements for upgrading over the past 30 years. There will always be a segment of the population that wants the latest and fastest (I'm in that category) and another segment that sees no reason to upgrade (my 83 year old father actually preferred, at one time, when the web page loaded no faster than he could read it). If taxes are required to cover the cost of upgrading infrastructure then you will likely face a large opposition to raising those taxes from people who think the service is "good enough."
This is because Comcast is in the business of selling access to their customers. Their cable TV business charges the customer for access then they sell the customer's eyeballs to advertisers. They are used to getting paid twice for the same thing so they were mystified by the Internet because they were only getting paid by their subscribers. Fortunately, they have figured out they can start extorting money from companies providing services to their customers "It would be a shame if anything happened to that packet, Netflix". Since the FCC is packed with cable and telco insiders they certainly aren't going to do anything about it. In the end, the costs will get passed on to the consumer and Comcast stockholders will get to upgrade their yachts.
Enigma
Fiber has enough bandwidth that you don't need fiber for every company that provides services. My city's fiber network terminates in a central NOC in which all the service providers on the network have a peering presence. When my packet hits the NOC it routes it to my ISP who contracts with tier 1/2 providers for transit across the internet. Why would I need multiple fibers to my house when any company can provide services across the existing network by peering at the central NOC? Municipal networks are the way to go, the people should own the network.
Enigma
do you have ANY solution that will stop these lobbyists from undermining actual competition? this is where government CAN step in, to stop these shenanigans and enforce an equitable, competitor-filled marketplace.
Are you listening to yourself, at all? ...the government has already stepped in, or else you wouldn't have a problem with the lobbyists. You do understand who lobbyists lobby, right?
you mean the same lobbyists employed by the very telcos trying to influence lawmakers? yes, i'm fully aware. what i am arguing is that we take a stand, make our "representatives" in Washington actually do that for once, and stop the corporations from trying to screw us all over. THAT is the point. your solution appears to be "let's just place our trust in the free market!" that doesn't work. you understand who pays the lobbyists, right? .
> It doesn't make sense to install multiple fibers.
In the same way that it doesn't "make sense" to have multiple cell towers covering the same area. Thing is, there used to be one company with cell towers in this area. The company with the towers charged $85 / month. Another company came in and offered unlimited everything for $45 / month. Now there are three or four and I pay $30 / month.
Competition is inefficient in a way, but it's how you go from $85 2G to $30 4G.
It doesn't "make sense" to have multiple grocery stores servicing the same area, the duplication is wasteful. Why have two barbershops servicing Ive neighborhood? It would be more efficient to have one. Theoretically, communism would be more efficient - if people were perfect. If people weren't lazy, if tbthey were perfectly charitable, if people didn't want to earn money to buy nice things, you'd
have one service provider per neighborhood. When dealing with actual humans - well ask the Soviets or the Cubans how well that worked.
Not all cities.
http://www.ci.longmont.co.us/lpc/tc/index.htm
As part of the November 5 election, Longmont's voters approved funding for the full development of the City's fiber optic broadband network. We would like to thank the community for supporting this move toward a future filled with progress and opportunity. As a true gigabit city, we are and will be positioned to be a leader in digital communications and a global information hub. We are lighting tomorrow, today.
> History has proven that privatisation universally results in increase of charges to the individual and major reductions in the provisions of services.
You are far to the left and Al Gore and Bill Clinton on that one. They made a big deal about reducing bureaucratic waste and getting things done faster by hiring the private companies that did the same job for half the price and in half the time. I think Gore even wrote a book about it.
> It is logical, governments attempts to provide the maximum possible service
They better not, not in the US. In the US they are supposed to provide the FAIREST possible service, with the most possible input from the taxpayers who are paying for it. If my (govt service) is better than yours, that's unfair and wrong. If I live in the boonies and are therefore limited to 1 mbps, everyone else should be limited to 1 mbps too.
> Private industry attempts to provide the least possible service for the maximum possible cha rge, for fuck sake they publicly brag about, it's called profit.
Please look up the definitionbof profit. Profit = the value generated minus the cost incurred. Maximum profit, therefore, is when you have the best service (therefore most sales) at the lowest cost.
> PR=B$ types to run around spreading the delusion that corporations love you, the really, really do).
They love your money. They can get your money in either of two ways. A) you choose to give them your money in exchange for their service, because theirs is the best or B) the local government essentially forces you to give them your money because they don't allow you to have any choice. In the US, internet service is mostly b. Thelocal governments grant monopolies to one cable provider and one phone provider. Coincidentally, the same company that government grants monopoly power so they overcharge you also turns around and donates the money they got from you to the politicians. So the politicians force you to give Comcast too much money, then Comcast gives that money to the politicians who helped set the thing up. Here's a great solution - get MORE politicians involved!
There's a good reason not even Net Neutrality, the one piece of cable company fuckery we staved off, didn't last very long after Citizens United.
It's because it "takes a lot of money" to win elections, and government representatives know where their bread is buttered in that regard. If you don't play ball, the money will go to your opponent.
Then when you do get elected, partisan bickery is so bad that both parties (and especially Republicans http://nymag.com/daily/intelli...) demand full loyalty to the party, which consolidates votes around the money winners even more.
Then when you are done as an elected official, you are free to get an even higher paying job as a lobbyist, and you know who they like? That's right, the ones who play ball.
This sounds like a mad conspiracy, but it happens over, and over, and over again.
So no, there will be no voting in representatives who oppose this until we reign in campaign finance and the opportunity to get double your pay later as a lobbyist.
When I first came to America I was very impressed with the idea that America has a government of the people, by the people and for the people
For a kid from a Communist country, I can't tell you how much awe I had for the notion that a government is actually on the side of the people !
But then ... I was naive
It turns out that the government of the United States is not what I imagined to be
The government of China is definitely NOT on the side of the people - and they do not have to be, because they never say that they are a democracy
But in the United States of America, we are supposed to be a Democracy, which means that the government has to rely on the VOTES of the people in order to be formed
So, what the fuck has gone wrong ???
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Not directly, but they do get to tell the government: "Hey, we're having a problem with X. You guys should go fix that."
This could range from saltwater infiltration into wells, monitoring of water levels, building of dams and other flood control structures, cleaning specific pollutants out of ground water (some wells are located in EPA Superfund sites), free allocation of public land, protection of endangered species due to systematic drainage of bodies of water, repairs to damaged wetlands, etc., etc. etc.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
I have pointed out REPEATEDLY on Slashdot that the "net neutrality" fight is a PHONY one that [1] distracts from the REAL problem of the "last-mile", and [2] is actually VERY dangerous to a "free" (as-in speech) internet... PARTICULARLY when Democrats in the Senate have just proposed a constitutional amendment to limit First Amendment "free speech" rights, equating speech to guns and porn which must "naturally" be restricted for the "common good".
EVERY "Net Neutrality" bill/proposal has introduced new government regulation and authority over the net, eventually eliminating it's wildly-creative "wild west" nature, while doing NOTHING to prevent the eventual "crony capitalist"-"big government" alliance that ALWAYS forms in profitable "mature" areas of human activity where government is given regulatory authority.
The REAL problem we all SAY we want to solve is: lowering the costs to use the net, while increasing performance and access. Who cares if somebody else gets their data moved across the net faster or more-cheaply as long as WE can move ours as quickly as we need and as cheaply as possible? When's the last time any Slashdotter got angry that somebody else got a burger more quickly or for less money at McDonalds??? Nobody argues about costs or speeds when something is cheap-enough and fast-enough to make everybody happy. The IDEAL way to lower costs and improve performance in a free market is by COMPETITION and NOT by government mandates.... and the KEY to that competition on the internet is getting MULTIPLE high-speed providers access to every doorstep. This can be done by getting local governments to own optical fibers to every door and letting service providers negotiate for portions of the bandwidth (making CERTAIN every user has CHOICE), OR it can be done by demanding local governments stop blocking new entrants and stop making monopoly deals with vendors. Huge numbers of cities have made deals with telcos to lock-in their citizens with a single cable TV (and high-speed internet) company - and this ELIMINATES competition. No amount of "net neutrality" legislation will fix this problem, it MUST be adressed locally. "Net Neutrality" that guarantees non-discriminatory data packet handling will NOT improve service, or access, or lower rates for ANYBODY in a place with a monopoly provider.
Well played, sir.
First of all, the idea that the government can run anything well is ridiculous.
Which should make you wonder what the frack is wrong when people would rather have the government step in than keep the same bullshit politician-bribe generated monopolies in place across America.
Seriously, the President hires Tom Wheeler for the FCC? Can we please retro Mitt Romney into office? How could it possibly be any worse?
As long as you keep calling it lobbying instead of what it really is, bribing, you're not going to move forward very much.
Stockholm (among others) has a fiber network built and owned by the city. It is neutral, and various providers can sell services over it.
Selecting and switching service is simple. Moving patchcord is out of fashion, you just reprogram devices to redirect traffic where it should go - no need for physical action.
http://www.investstockholm.com...
This is how this should work. Sadly with various EU laws in effect this model is much harder to replicate now.
...it's not always "their" (the municipalities') fiber. The providers paid for most of the parts/equipment....which is why there were signed agreements...
This is exactly what Australia is trying to do with the National Broadband Network; Telstra - the incumbent last mile monopoly for cable and copper DSL - will eventually phase out their copper network to be replaced with the the government-funded mostly fibre based Nbnco last mile network.
Of course, the project is political dynamite, the rollout is massively delayed, has run over budget, and the current government is trying to change the fibre to the premises network to fibre to the node, but the intention is to provide common "wholesale" last mile connectivity that any ISP can resell to consumers.
The "well off" are able to invest in the private water utility. They are making money from this, or some other, private enterprise. If we make everything public, then no one can make money to pay taxes.
That said, this is really about anti-trust laws. Neither the government nor any company should have exclusive rights to provide a service.
> If you can't see how a physical connection to shared infrastructure is different to two grocery stores or two cell companies you might want to take some time to acquaint yourself with the differences,
Roads are infrastructure, my friend. In my case , one road, called WJB Parkway, connects me to the Kroger grocery store. Another road, hwy 6, connects me to the Walmart store. Yet another, Villa Maria, connects me to the HEB grocery store. It would be more efficient to have one road, going to one store. That store could then sell rotten bananas for $6/pound since there would be no competition.
In Springfield, Illinois for example the electric and water are both handled by City Water, Light, and Power which is a non-profit company owned by the city. They actually have deals with smaller cities and towns to sell them electricity. Those rates are less than some of the private companies were charging, but higher than those paid by city residents. The other deals are actually used to offset costs for the residents' utility provision, keeping their rates even lower.
Sewer is a utility. Show me a commercially operated one in the US. Just one.
Seriously, what is needed is to require TIGHT regulations on companies that do this kind of BS. If they make agreements like this, then the feds should tax those companies for those areas. In fact, they should be able to limit the profits from those areas to say no more than 5%/year.
The reason is simple. With competition, each company has incentives to invest to keep customers happy. Without it, and esp. when prevented by those companies, then they have NO incentive to invest. So, by keeping profit for that region to below 5% (if not 3%)/year, then they have a strong incentive to invest to offer more amenities (i.e. more revenue to increase the profits), OR allow competition to come.
Regardless, this kind of BS is killing America. It is disgusting that companies are doing this, but understandable. What is REALLY disgusting, is that cities go along with this BS, and do not put time limits on it.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
what i am arguing is that we take a stand, make our "representatives" in Washington actually do that for once, and stop the corporations from trying to screw us all over.
Translation: With good intentions, increase government influence, because this time the lobbyists wont take advantage of the increased influence.
You are everything that was, is, and will continue to be wrong with populations of governed people. You just dont get that your ideas when implemented have made things worse, do make things worse, and will continue to make things worse. It was always good intentions that supported the increases in government scope that you complain about today, and your soluton is good intentions that increase government scope even more.
Take a few years out of your life and learn some god damned history.
"His name was James Damore."
Take a few years out of your life and learn some god damned history.
i've been around a while. watched various corporations dump all over people in terms of pay, pollution, discrimination, gentrification, and most recently, cutting up the internet into fiefdoms and, just recently, demanding that people pay twice for the same connection. so you'll understand when i say, an unregulated free market doesn't work. it ultimately boils down to how many people can make as much money as they can in as little time as they can and damn the consequences to others.
reducing government ability to regulate only allows corporates like Comcast, Time Warner, AT&T, BP, Walmart, McDonalds, Monsanto, et al. to destroy ordinary people just to make a buck. excuse me if i don't put much faith in such companies to miraculously realize that they can treat people well without regulations or laws to tell them as such. if history has shown us anything, they DON'T.
the answer isn't just government regulation. it's also getting the populace to work with government and to vote jokers out when government also overreaches. in this case, we don't have enough people telling government to tell the corps to knock it off. and people can't tell the corps to knock it off directly because they've created a situation that is not a competitive "free" market where people can choose with their dollars.
the answer is not a binary "all government or no government." it. is. a. BALANCE. of the two.
if you're claiming that i haven't the years of experience in this, i would turn that around on you. trying to pass off a black and white binary as the only possible solutions speaks of incredible naiveté!
No, but I do think years ago Yahoo and AOL had a lot more interest in customer happiness than Comcast does now.
trying to pass off a black and white binary as the only possible solutions speaks of incredible naiveté!
Naiveté is repeatedly trying the same thing, getting the same result again and again, only to expect that this time things will be different.
Again, learn some history, because you clearly haven't learned any if you think that doing the same thing again and again will somehow magically lead to different results.
"His name was James Damore."
trying to pass off a black and white binary as the only possible solutions speaks of incredible naiveté!
Naiveté is repeatedly trying the same thing, getting the same result again and again, only to expect that this time things will be different. Again, learn some history, because you clearly haven't learned any if you think that doing the same thing again and again will somehow magically lead to different results.
i'm sorry, i must have missed the part where you proposed a unique and never-before-tried solution. before it just sounded like you wanted to let the corporations sort it out without regulation in the "free" market. yeah, that certainly hasn't been done before, to no malicious effect against regular people whatsoever.
I agree with the +Informative mods, but I'd like to point out that it doesn't follow that public fiber should be outlawed because one city tried and failed.