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.'

Comments

Re:speaking of FCC

[geekoid]

crap. linked to my g+. Sorry, my bad.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Annoying.

[khasim]

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).

Re:Annoying.

[burne]

The core issue is whether a government should be providing a service.

Is a road, street lighting or waste disposal a 'service'?

Is intarwebs a service?

Re:Annoying.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, for starters, they could try using the billions they've been giving to providers to upgrade their damn equipment even though they never do...

Re:Annoying.

[Anonymous Coward]

Where is the government going to come up with the billions of dollars to buy out the investors in those companies?

Who gives a shit? It's not the government's responsibility to coddle obsolete industries and their investors. Or at least, it SHOULDN'T be the government's responsibility.

Re:Annoying.

[khasim]

So in effect you want to nationalize the internet backbone and put all backbone providers out of business.

I think you are a little bit confused on what the "backbone" is. It is not the same as the "last mile" which is what I am discussing.

In my suggestion, each of the ISP's that were leasing space would also need a connection to an "upstream" provider. Whether that was one of the backbones or an intermediary would be up to each company.

All the government does is provide access to the pipes from the government site to the houses.

Re:Annoying.

[Lumpy]

"Where is the government going to come up with the billions of dollars to buy out the investors in those companies?"

We found more than that to fund killing people in the middle east for more than 10 years... It would not be hard at all to find the funds to buy up all the backbone companies.

Re:Annoying.

[Anonymous Coward]

>he thinks the NSA doesn't already have black boxes in private datacenters already.

Re:Annoying.

[anagama]

"Nationalize" ... whatever.

How is it what we have all that different from nationalized net access when 99% of users are locked into one of three major providers who then use that money to buy legislation and ordinances which favor them making even more money.

In the choice between a monopoly or nationalization, nationalization is a no brainer, because out of it might spring real competition as a GP poster pointed out, by leasing the pipes to any and all ISP wannabes. In contrast, monopolization leads to fat profits at users' expense, poor service, and crappy laws and it can never ever get better. Obviously, a free market would be better than either the other two, but we have a free market in net services like N. Korea has a free and open society.

Secondly -- exactly who invested in the network? I know I saw a recent article about cable companies taking Federal money to build out their networks and then claiming those lines aren't covered by common carrier rules --- a corollary to "socialize losses, privatize profits" would thus be "socialize expenses, privatize profits." I did find this about Comcast using $40m of public funds to build itself an office building Philly:

http://newslanc.com/2014/01/16...

Also how these assholes are making competition illegal: http://arstechnica.com/tech-po...

Or what about the fact that to lay all this wire, they are using public utility rights of way. If they aren't going to be a public utility they should have no right to use that right of way -- it's a kind of robbery of the commons -- a robbery of every American.

Until these monopolies start actually using their own money for stuff, the whole cry for the investors shit is just that, fetid stinking steaming shit. Cry a river of it. Then go swimming.

Re:Annoying.

[currently_awake]

Yes, I think the government should nationalize the internet pipes, last mile right up to long haul. And then run it like it runs the national highway system. They would run the entire internet super-highway, but not the traffic on it, just like they run the highways but not the trucks and cars that use it.

Re:Annoying.

[anagama]

Here's another example.

1. Claim common carrier status
2. Get access to public rights of way
3. Raise rates
4. Say you aren't a common carrier
5. Profit.

there is no ?

http://www.theverge.com/2014/5...

Today New York's Public Utility Law Project (PULP) published a report, authored by New Networks, which contains previously unseen documents. It demonstrates how Verizon deliberately moves back and forth between regulatory regimes, classifying its infrastructure either like a heavily regulated telephone network or a deregulated information service depending on its needs. The chicanery has allowed Verizon to raise telephone rates, all the while missing commitments for high-speed internet deployment.

It's a mess -- and, by all appearances, it's completely legal.

* * *

First, Title II designation gives carriers broad power to compel other utilities -- power, water, and so on -- to give them access to existing infrastructure for a federally controlled price, which makes it simpler and more cost-effective for cables to be run. And that infrastructure adds up: poles, ducts, conduits running beneath roads, the list goes on. Second, Title II gave Verizon a unique opportunity to justify boosting telephone rates in discussions with regulators, arguing that these phone calls would run over the same fiber used by FiOS, Verizon's home internet service. According to PULP's report, Verizon raised traditional wired telephone rates in New York some 84 percent between 2006 and 2009, blessed by regulators in return for its "massive investment in fiber optics."

Re:Annoying.

[currently_awake]

Are you also suggesting government get out of the police and military business? Because after all they can't do anything right, so clearly it would be better if private enterprise handled those jobs.

Re:Annoying.

[Anonymous Coward]

Right. The last mile is prone to natural monopoly. It doesn't make sense to install multiple fibers.

So the core decision is preference between handing the last-mile monopoly over to a private company, or to the government. A pretty good case can be made for the government solution. I'd sure like more than one choice (aka no choice) in provider for my cable Internet.

Re:Annoying.

[OdinOdin_]

Very similar to how it works in the UK.

A business called "BT Wholesale / aka OpenReach" operates as a corporate entity in its own right, that the government regulates. They more of less have last mile monopoly over the old British Telecom (which used to be the incumbent single telephone operator that was originally a public entity). So this was made private maybe 20 years ago but with certain caveats.

Such as a uniform pricing policy to all other telecom operators wishing to buy their wholesale services. Think like FRAND, as opposed to scheming and back office deals to maintain pricing.

Such as not offering the full package, i.e. only offering wholesale services. A regular home or business consumer never buys directly anything from the wholesale division. The end customer buys from the many (more than 500 in our little island) brand names, who in turn pay the wholesale rental fees out of your subscription.

Such as allowing politicians to have influence (through regulation) over certain aspects of governance. This is a good thing when there is a last mile monopoly, there is at least some kind of elected accountability. Especially when the government paid for the original construction of the network.

There is of course a parallel cable network now, that also have their own independent last mile. So in almost all urban/suburban locations another option exists, but BTs copper POTS network has a much higher coverage.

There also exists some areas (such as Kingston and Hull) which ended up with their own last mile services that operate their own telecoms independently.

Here in the UK now (with BT wholesale) the whole country is getting more street side cabinets (to within of 100 meters of every urban and suburban location) and fibre optics installed to those cabinets back to the local exchange site. The last 100 meters is still largely delivered over copper but at speeds around 80MBit/20Mbit, but I'm sure further speed increases will take places like ADSL/ADSL2/ADSL2+ in the future. This national roll out is over half way through and I'm sure within the next 3 years the original plan will be complete.

There are still issues with many rural locations being on dialup quality, hopefully as cellular like technology improves this could be utilized as back haul for rural locations. Rural in the UK might mean just being 8 miles out of town.

Re:Annoying.

[Anonymous Coward]

universal SLIC

Forcing phone companies to upgrade them to digital SLICs would do more to speed up Internet access as a percentage of current capacity than any other thing the government could do.

For those that don't know, SLIC stands for Subscriber Line Interface Circuit, and they are typically used to take a few POTS (plain old telephone service, a standard analog phone line) lines from a CO (central office) and multiplex them to all of the homes in a neighborhood. This allows the phone monopolies to sell many more phone lines than they actually have. For example, my old neighborhood in Seattle had only nine incoming POTS lines, but Qwest could support more than forty houses. We just couldn't make or receive calls for a few hours a day because all of the circuits were busy. The problem with universal SLICs is the extra conversion of the analog signal from your house to a digital one in the SLIC then the conversion back to an analog to the CO. That prevents 56k from working. Typically, you are limited to 26,400 bps with this sort of system. If the phone monopolies were required to upgrade the SLICs so that instead of using analog, they were digital to the CO then we would be able to have a chance at a much faster 56k connection to the Internet. For places like Seattle where you still have a lot of people that don't have DSL or cable as an option, getting rid of the universal SLICs would almost double the connection speeds for many people. I know my friends where would love a chance to get a 56k connection.

Re:Annoying.

[geekoid]

Because with taxes it will be cheaper, the people will have a larger say, and it is beneficial to all people.

Interesting anecdote:

I worked for a Water Bureau. The number clearly show that taxing people instead of having a water bill would be substantially cheaper for everyone.
I mean 20% cheaper, if not more.

But if you mention it to the public, when they hear 'taxes', the well off scream bloody murder when though it would also be cheaper for them as well.
With taxes, you no longer need a billing system. So you loose the expense of that, the infrastructures for that, the expense of maintaining PCI compliance, accountants, taking people to court who don't pay there bills, cut down on meter reading, paper.

" Should someone who doesn't use the service be forced to help pay for it through their taxes?"
you mean like the taxes used as subsidies for you phone infrastructure?

Re:Annoying.

[jklovanc]

Different budgets different objectives. National defense is a much better sell than nationalizing companies.

Re:Annoying.

[Pulzar]

If you are correct that taxes collect themselves, then why couldn't billing use the same technology?

I think the point is that there is a tax collection system in place already. Adding a line item on the form to cover water is not going to increase the cost and complexity of the system.

Re:Annoying.

[NormalVisual]

I am. I already pay $800 or so per year for connectivity, so what difference does it make whether it's to AT&T or to the government, especially if I end up getting far better service as a result?

Re:Annoying.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, the last mile needs to be government run, but with minimum standards, so that yes it is mostly a matter of moving a patch cord, save you should not even have to do that. For the most part the providers equipment should just be on fast links to the rest of the system and everything configured in software. You would also include a satelite link that provides emergency service should the primary links be down. Emergency service might be a basic news site with some cached video/audio along with a way to send and receive text messages of some kind and 911 calling.

Put another way suppose that you put fiber in every home. That would be expensive to start with, but it would be a one time cost likely sufficient for the next generation with reasonable planning. Sure some of the equipment may change, but that last run of fiber likely won't need to very often, if at all. [One presumed you would also run enough spare fiber to deal with any issues that may arise.] At any rate, once that one time sunk cost is done then its mostly just about picking an ISP. Better yet you would have logical places for places like netflix to add their equipment, since nothing says you have to get all of your data through one ISP. A caching server could supply much of it.

Also with regards to coddling obsolete industries I fully agree. The government is supposed to serve the people and if it can do a better job in this case, because it is not so determined to be quite as evil, then it should do it. Just because the legal fiction exists where corporations are treated as people, doesn't mean we should ignore the wishes of _actual_ people. AT&T for one has flat out ignored a great deal of customers who would love to be able to get plain old DSL, because they are not required to give a damn and don't, if it won't make them an immediate profit. So yes, I for one would love to put out of business all the last mile providers, although to be fair I have had decent luck with Charter...

Re:Annoying.

[Enigma2175]

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).

This is how my fiber network is operated. The 15 member cities contributed to the network and their residents are seeing the benefits. I can choose what ISP I want (but I would probably never change because I LOVE my ISP) and any ISP, telephone or TV provider can provide service over the network. If my ISP starts any Comcast-style extortion shenanigans with service providers then I can simply switch, there aren't constraints on who owns the wire like private cable/telco networks.

If course Comcast and US West/Qwest/Century Link fought tooth and nail against the network and they are fighting it still. I think the last tactic was getting a bill introduced in the state legislature to prohibit the Utopia network from selling any network service in cities that border Utopia cities. This is just a long line in bills written by the cable lobbyists but so far the cities have resisted [crosses fingers].

So if 15 cities can get something like this done in Republican dominated, pro-business Utah then what's your city's excuse? It's not that hard to get something done on a city level if you can get a few voters on board. The Internet has quickly become an almost indispensible part of life and a majority of a person's day-to-day business (paying bills, communicating with friends, scheduling appointments, etc.) is conducted over the network. It has become important enough that cities should treat it like the utility that it is. Put pressure on your local elected officials to get your own network and bypass the attempted takeover of the Internet by Comcast.

Re:Annoying.

[Solandri]

Those are services, but the means to provide them are pretty clear and straightforward. That wasn't the case with Internet service. Nobody was really sure what was the best way to provide Internet: ISDN/DSL over phone lines? Cable modems? Satellite? Fiber?

In cases like this with unclear optimal solutions, the government gets out of the way and lets private industry pick the horses. The government provides the easement for placing the lines, but responsibility for constructing and maintaining the lines rests with the private companies. That way a wide variety of solutions are tried, not on the government's dime, and over time it becomes clear which solutions are superior.

At this point though, it's pretty clear that fiber to the home is the future. There's still some uncertainty about exactly the type of fiber interfaces, but for the most part changing those won't require burying completely new cable. So while I think it was necessary to have the intermediate step where private companies offered different types of Internet service, I can also agree with now having the government provide Internet service over fiber lines. (Well, provide the fiber lines. The service itself along with any peering agreements should be offered by private companies, since it's not at all clear what arrangement of peering agreements is optimal.)

Re:Annoying.

[Sarius64]

I really wanted to moderate but this bullshit changed my mind.

When the companies are openly bribing politicians to create monopolies and regulating the possible competition out of business it has become the responsiblity of government to step in. The situation we have with Cox, Comcast, AT&T, and Time Warner as ISPs easily constitutes a larger set of monopolies than ever existed when AT&T telco was broken up. There is no competition in San Diego, where I live. The choices you have are screw you and bend over. Cox acknowledges they can't even provide the contracted business services I paid for but their answer isn't to meet the contract, it's OFW. Cox is the only high-speed choice I have in my area, period, in my Chula Vista suburb, population 252,422. You sir, are full of crap and these ISPs should all be broken into competitive zones. If this happens I only hope Virgin Media moves into my suburb as they are outstanding at the flat in England I'm staying in at the moment.

Re:Annoying.

[swillden]

Flat rates only work where water is abundant. Where I live, it's really important that water be metered so that people have an incentive to keep their consumption down.

Re:Annoying.

[anagama]

Because I'm not a common carrier.

Here's the deal as referenced in the article I linked to above:

1) Claim common carrier status (this puts them under title II and they would have to lease out the lines they install to competitors) as a prerequisite for
2) getting access to public rights of way, and then once built,
3) Claim they are not common carriers and thus not subject to title II.

It's a scam on the public.

Re:Annoying.

[evilviper]

the cost is so low that I would have to halve my water usage to save the cost of a lunch.

I know several people, living in just modest houses with very small lawns, who pay well over $100/month for their water bill, here.

Not watering the lawn here doesn't mean less-frequent mowing, it means not having a lawn at all.

A big chunk of the US is some degree of desert.

Anyways an easy way to help curb wasteful use could just be to install valves that automatically shut off whenever you surpass the authorized usage.

That would be illegal. Utilities aren't allowed to shut off service, even for non-payment, without an epic load of red-tape and procedures. Shutting off someone's electricity or gas in winter can result in serious illness or death.

Lack of water could be many, many, many times worse. No cooling (swamp cooler) in 120F degree weather. No bathing, no flushing toilets, etc, and in the extreme, just 2-3 days to live, if you don't have access to several gallons of it. I've even heard that lack of running water is sufficient reason by itself for code enforcement to condemn a building as uninhabitable, in most areas.

Make it a utility.

[B33rNinj4]

More cities need to treat internet access as a utility. It's the best way to break the current monopoly.

Re:Make it a utility.

[JeffOwl]

Oddly enough electricity providers in parts of Texas and not completely monopolies. There is still a company that maintains the lines and infrastructure but you buy your electricity from one of several providers who compete with each other on price and plans like "nights or weekends free." So that's great.

However, the phase of the development in which I live only has DSL. Two streets down or over and they also get the option of cable. Not on my street though. Not sure how that happened.

The city has a municipal monopoly on garbage collection

Business as usual

[nurb432]

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.

Re:Noncompetition

[Jane Q. Public]

but at what point does it violate the law?

It started violating Federal and State antitrust laws many, many years ago.

The deeper question you should really be asking is: why haven't they been called on it?

Re:Government ISP?

[NoKaOi]

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.

Re:Level playing field

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

A war well waged

[Dega704]

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.

the "agreements" cover more than fiber...

[Lumpy]

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...

see iProvo

[Anonymous Coward]

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...

Re:see iProvo

[Anonymous Coward]

Provo paid for the lowest bidder, who so happened to have a history of messing up fiber Installs. If you're going to outsource your work, get someone competent.

And Outside the U.S.

[fullback]

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.

Re:And Outside the U.S.

[l0n3s0m3phr34k]

must be nice. My apartment complex has been enforcing an illegal "exclusive" were only AT&T is provided, even though recently they said "whatever", now I face the task of trying to convince Cox to come in. I get a HUGE 2.4 down, 712k up. Kazakhstan has faster speeds than my apartments, and I have the "fastest" business connection available. Once AT&T got the place locked in, why ever upgrade?

Re:Level playing field

[TubeSteak]

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.

Re:Government ISP?

[currently_awake]

If government couldn't do a better job, then why are corporations working so hard to keep them out?

Verizon

[asgalvan]

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.

Re:speaking of FCC

[ShaunC]

Isn't YouTube also considered social media?

Judging by the comments on the average YouTube video, I'm pretty sure it's considered antisocial media.

Re: Allow Virtual ISPs or Last Mile

[TheScorpion420]

I lived in Indianola Iowa and the city owns the fiber ran next to their totally underground power network. They lease access to Mahaska Communications Group out of Oskaloosa Iowa who then sells Internet access at ridiculously good rates. I paid $50/month for 100/100 with a 10ms ping and NO cap.

Government of the people ?

[Taco Cowboy]

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 ???

Re:Government of the people ?

[dave420]

Just a guess - maybe people believed the hype? All those years of hearing how awesome America is and how it's the greatest country on Earth, singing the pledge every day at School, flags everywhere, etc. made them complacent, and any suggestion it wasn't was shot down in patriotic pique, meaning the situation only got worse. If something can not be rationally criticized - be it China or the US - it will fester, with its worse aspects eventually challenging its better aspects. Nationalism and patriotism are reasons for the US's decline. Both are fine and useful concepts for struggling countries or communities, but when it becomes de rigueur in more powerful countries or communities, it outlives its usefulness to the extent it tends to becomes a problem. Just think how much shit a President would get if he/she didn't wear a US flag pin - that's not healthy for a country.

Re:Government of the people ?

[Sigmon]

Really? Seriously? Do you ACTUALLY believe that people having a sense of patriotism is how we got to where the U.S. is now? (Meaning it's not so much a government for the people, by the people, but more-so a ruling class lording their power over us.) How shallow. No, my dear fellow... We USED to have something to be relatively proud of... and still do to some extent, but it's almost gone. Freedom has been under assault for almost a century in our country... by men who believe they can make better decisions than I could and should make for myself. They go by many names... Progressives, Liberals, Democrats, Socialists... even some call themselves Republicans. All of them thirst for power and consider the 'masses' to be dumb hicks who couldn't feed themselves if the 'elite' weren't in charge. You are like one of these. Do you think a people smart enough to govern themselves are so dumb that they would just 'believe the hype'? Not at all. The sense of patriotism is toward the ideal this nation represents... not toward the government. Indeed, part of that ideal is quite suspicious and wary of people in government gathering too much power unto themselves.

Re:Government of the people ?

[Zalbik]

They go by many names... Progressives, Liberals, Democrats, Socialists...

And here's why they win. They've convinced Americans that the battle lines are "left vs. right", "republican vs. democrat", "liberal vs. socialist".

This keeps people fighting amongst themselves, arguing whether their shade of grey is the "right" way to run a government.

It's pretty obvious to an outsider what the power division is in America. It's pretty obvious if you look at america's decline over the past decades & see how authority has been consolidated & maintained. It's pretty obvious if you look at how fear and uncertainty are utilized by the government to herd the population in the direction they want them to go.

The battle lines are: "rich vs. poor". They almost always have been.

Until people understand that, and as long as people believe that stupid side issues like minor health care reforms (and yes, they are quite minor), gay marriage, abortion, gun ownership, immigration reform, etc are what is going to ruin / save the country, the longer the people in power stay that way.

Re:multiple cell towers too, or grocery stores

[Calydor]

This is why there would be multiple ISPs AT THE DATACENTER.

Do you have ten different sets of plumbing running to your house so you can pick and choose between the best supplier of fresh water? A dozen different power cables so you can switch power company easily?

Re:speaking of FCC

[Phroggy]

That's like going to Slashdot to read the articles. Sure, you COULD, but...

see iProvo

[q4Fry]

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.